Providence Read Online Free PDF Page B

Department, Italian to the Italians, German to the Germans, and still try to maintain some sort of autonomy, and last of all, Maurice Bishop. In front of every seat was a pencil and a pad of paper. With one accord, as Professor Redmile welcomed them at the start of a new term and looked forward to soon being able to give them some definite news about the New Building, all picked up their pencils and started drawing, a defensive move intended to drown out the hearty delight in Professor Redmile’s voice but one which gave them the appearance of a rather retarded occupational therapy class. Kitty, all innocent attention, watched the Roger Fry Professor incising a deep jagged abstract on his pad. Mme de Marcoussis favoured a delicate shading, involving ceaseless motion with the pencil. Professor Gault always drew an Archimedes spiral. Once, at the end of the meeting, Kitty had stolen round the table after everyone had left to see what Maurice had drawn: a flying buttress.
    To Kitty, who lacked extensive diversion, these occasions were ones of pure entertainment. They also gave her an opportunity to look at Maurice, if he were within her line of sight, and to savour the extreme delight of anticipating their next and more private meeting. Her expression was always rigorously schooled and she was discreet in a way that would have been becoming in a nineteenth-century governess; nevertheless, the Roger Fry Professor, looking up unexpectedly from his cubist design, had once noticed her look and was thus in possession of her secret. She had not seen him, but theRoger Fry Professor had noted with an inward sigh that his wife had been right and that Maurice had made another conquest. His dislike of the man was becoming unmanageable. Maurice, all delicate attention to what Professor Redmile was saying, was not aware of any of this.
    Maurice, thought Kitty, will you not look in my direction? I am only here for your sake. I do not, I confess, care about the New Building, or even believe in it. I am fond of all these people, even of Professor Redmile, but if you were to vanish and they were to remain I cannot think that I should stay here long. You have done so much for me. You have made me believe in what I am doing, whereas I really only started it as a sort of hobby; since knowing you, I have tried harder than I would have normally, and I have done better than I thought I could. And they are pleased with me; that is a new sensation for me. I find this work easy because in a way I am doing it for you. I want to be excellent, for you. The fact that Pauline is quite openly reading an essay – a fact noted by Jennifer; the fact that the Roger Fry Professor is once again demonstrating that he can knock off a respectable drawing in the manner of Delaunay; the fact that Mrs Vogel is making out her shopping list: all this delights me because we are in the same room and sharing the same experience. I shall remember a day like this, although you will not. You have more important things to remember. Will you not meet my eye?
    But Maurice, with his pleasant smile, only leaned over to Jennifer and slipped a small note into her hand. Blushing, she looked at it, then, rather more slowly, handed it over to Professor Redmile.
    Kitty, her hands idle, had seen Jennifer’s change of expression, and resolved sternly never, ever, to look like that. She switched her thoughts to the Romantic Tradition,with which she was supposed to be eternally preoccupied, and wondered if it really existed. Could one build a tradition out of a series of defiantly autonomous individuals, all of them insisting that what they felt had never been felt before by any human being? They were an impressive but disheartening lot, she always thought, coming so rapidly to maturity, haggard with experience by the age of twenty-five, and somehow surviving their own disastrous youth into a normal life-span. Even an abnormal one: look at Victor Hugo. Except, of course, Gérard de Nerval. He