Jacobs Room | Page 6

same blurred, drugged expression, and through the chinks in the planks
at their feet they could see the green summer waves, peacefully,
amiably, swaying round the iron pillars of the pier.
But there was a time when none of this had any existence (thought the
young man leaning against the railings). Fix your eyes upon the lady's
skirt; the grey one will do--above the pink silk stockings. It changes;
drapes her ankles--the nineties; then it amplifies--the seventies; now it's
burnished red and stretched above a crinoline--the sixties; a tiny black
foot wearing a white cotton stocking peeps out. Still sitting there?
Yes--she's still on the pier. The silk now is sprigged with roses, but
somehow one no longer sees so clearly. There's no pier beneath us. The
heavy chariot may swing along the turnpike road, but there's no pier for

it to stop at, and how grey and turbulent the sea is in the seventeenth
century! Let's to the museum. Cannon-balls; arrow- heads; Roman
glass and a forceps green with verdigris. The Rev. Jaspar Floyd dug
them up at his own expense early in the forties in the Roman camp on
Dods Hill--see the little ticket with the faded writing on it.
And now, what's the next thing to see in Scarborough?
Mrs. Flanders sat on the raised circle of the Roman camp, patching
Jacob's breeches; only looking up as she sucked the end of her cotton,
or when some insect dashed at her, boomed in her ear, and was gone.
John kept trotting up and slapping down in her lap grass or dead leaves
which he called "tea," and she arranged them methodically but absent-
mindedly, laying the flowery heads of the grasses together, thinking
how Archer had been awake again last night; the church clock was ten
or thirteen minutes fast; she wished she could buy Garfit's acre.
"That's an orchid leaf, Johnny. Look at the little brown spots. Come,
my dear. We must go home. Ar-cher! Ja-cob!"
"Ar-cher! Ja-cob!" Johnny piped after her, pivoting round on his heel,
and strewing the grass and leaves in his hands as if he were sowing
seed. Archer and Jacob jumped up from behind the mound where they
had been crouching with the intention of springing upon their mother
unexpectedly, and they all began to walk slowly home.
"Who is that?" said Mrs. Flanders, shading her eyes.
"That old man in the road?" said Archer, looking below.
"He's not an old man," said Mrs. Flanders. "He's--no, he's not--I
thought it was the Captain, but it's Mr. Floyd. Come along, boys."
"Oh, bother Mr. Floyd!" said Jacob, switching off a thistle's head, for
he knew already that Mr. Floyd was going to teach them Latin, as
indeed he did for three years in his spare time, out of kindness, for there
was no other gentleman in the neighbourhood whom Mrs. Flanders

could have asked to do such a thing, and the elder boys were getting
beyond her, and must be got ready for school, and it was more than
most clergymen would have done, coming round after tea, or having
them in his own room --as he could fit it in--for the parish was a very
large one, and Mr. Floyd, like his father before him, visited cottages
miles away on the moors, and, like old Mr. Floyd, was a great scholar,
which made it so unlikely--she had never dreamt of such a thing. Ought
she to have guessed? But let alone being a scholar he was eight years
younger than she was. She knew his mother--old Mrs. Floyd. She had
tea there. And it was that very evening when she came back from
having tea with old Mrs. Floyd that she found the note in the hall and
took it into the kitchen with her when she went to give Rebecca the fish,
thinking it must be something about the boys.
"Mr. Floyd brought it himself, did he?--I think the cheese must be in
the parcel in the hall--oh, in the hall--" for she was reading. No, it was
not about the boys.
"Yes, enough for fish-cakes to-morrow certainly--Perhaps Captain
Barfoot--" she had come to the word "love." She went into the garden
and read, leaning against the walnut tree to steady herself. Up and
down went her breast. Seabrook came so vividly before her. She shook
her head and was looking through her tears at the little shifting leaves
against the yellow sky when three geese, half-running, half-flying,
scuttled across the lawn with Johnny behind them, brandishing a stick.
Mrs. Flanders flushed with anger.
"How many times have I told you?" she cried, and seized him and
snatched his stick away from him.
"But they'd escaped!" he cried, struggling to get free.
"You're a very naughty boy. If I've told you once,