Jacobs Room | Page 9

a little behind her,
smoking his pipe. She would ask him questions--who people
were--who now kept Mr. Jones's shop--then about the season--and had
Mrs. Dickens tried, whatever it might be--the words issuing from her
lips like crumbs of dry biscuit.
She closed her eyes. Mr. Dickens took a turn. The feelings of a man
had not altogether deserted him, though as you saw him coming
towards you, you noticed how one knobbed black boot swung
tremulously in front of the other; how there was a shadow between his
waistcoat and his trousers; how he leant forward unsteadily, like an old
horse who finds himself suddenly out of the shafts drawing no cart. But
as Mr. Dickens sucked in the smoke and puffed it out again, the
feelings of a man were perceptible in his eyes. He was thinking how
Captain Barfoot was now on his way to Mount Pleasant; Captain
Barfoot, his master. For at home in the little sitting-room above the
mews, with the canary in the window, and the girls at the
sewing-machine, and Mrs. Dickens huddled up with the rheumatics--at
home where he was made little of, the thought of being in the employ
of Captain Barfoot supported him. He liked to think that while he
chatted with Mrs. Barfoot on the front, he helped the Captain on his

way to Mrs. Flanders. He, a man, was in charge of Mrs. Barfoot, a
woman.
Turning, he saw that she was chatting with Mrs. Rogers. Turning again,
he saw that Mrs. Rogers had moved on. So he came back to the
bath-chair, and Mrs. Barfoot asked him the time, and he took out his
great silver watch and told her the time very obligingly, as if he knew a
great deal more about the time and everything than she did. But Mrs.
Barfoot knew that Captain Barfoot was on his way to Mrs. Flanders.
Indeed he was well on his way there, having left the tram, and seeing
Dods Hill to the south-east, green against a blue sky that was suffused
with dust colour on the horizon. He was marching up the hill. In spite
of his lameness there was something military in his approach. Mrs.
Jarvis, as she came out of the Rectory gate, saw him coming, and her
Newfoundland dog, Nero, slowly swept his tail from side to side.
"Oh, Captain Barfoot!" Mrs. Jarvis exclaimed.
"Good-day, Mrs. Jarvis," said the Captain.
They walked on together, and when they reached Mrs. Flanders's gate
Captain Barfoot took off his tweed cap, and said, bowing very
courteously:
"Good-day to you, Mrs. Jarvis."
And Mrs. Jarvis walked on alone.
She was going to walk on the moor. Had she again been pacing her
lawn late at night? Had she again tapped on the study window and cried:
"Look at the moon, look at the moon, Herbert!"
And Herbert looked at the moon.
Mrs. Jarvis walked on the moor when she was unhappy, going as far as
a certain saucer-shaped hollow, though she always meant to go to a
more distant ridge; and there she sat down, and took out the little book

hidden beneath her cloak and read a few lines of poetry, and looked
about her. She was not very unhappy, and, seeing that she was forty-
five, never perhaps would be very unhappy, desperately unhappy that is,
and leave her husband, and ruin a good man's career, as she sometimes
threatened.
Still there is no need to say what risks a clergyman's wife runs when
she walks on the moor. Short, dark, with kindling eyes, a pheasant's
feather in her hat, Mrs. Jarvis was just the sort of woman to lose her
faith upon the moors--to confound her God with the universal that is--
but she did not lose her faith, did not leave her husband, never read her
poem through, and went on walking the moors, looking at the moon
behind the elm trees, and feeling as she sat on the grass high above
Scarborough... Yes, yes, when the lark soars; when the sheep, moving a
step or two onwards, crop the turf, and at the same time set their bells
tinkling; when the breeze first blows, then dies down, leaving the cheek
kissed; when the ships on the sea below seem to cross each other and
pass on as if drawn by an invisible hand; when there are distant
concussions in the air and phantom horsemen galloping, ceasing; when
the horizon swims blue, green, emotional--then Mrs. Jarvis, heaving a
sigh, thinks to herself, "If only some one could give me... if I could
give some one...." But she does not know what she wants to give, nor
who could give it her.
"Mrs. Flanders stepped out only five minutes ago, Captain," said
Rebecca. Captain Barfoot sat him down