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diff --git a/old/zdbsn11h.htm b/old/zdbsn11h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ece0a3a --- /dev/null +++ b/old/zdbsn11h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,9852 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<title>New File</title> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content= +"text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> +<style type="text/css"> +<!-- +body {margin:10%; text-align:justify} +blockquote {font-size:14pt} +P {font-size:14pt} +--> +</style> +</head> +<body> +<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Zuleika Dobson, +<br>by Max Beerbohm</h1> + +<pre> +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Zuleika Dobson + +Author: Max Beerbohm + +Release Date: August, 1999 [EBook #1845] +[Most recently updated: February 17, 2003] + +Edition: 11 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ZULEIKA DOBSON *** + + + + +</pre> + +This Etext prepared by Judy Boss, of Omaha, NE + +<p>ZULEIKA DOBSON OR AN OXFORD LOVE STORY</p> + +<p>by Max Beerbohm</p> + +<p>NOTE to the 1922 edition</p> + +<p>I was in Italy when this book was first published. A year +later (1912) I visited London, and I found that most of my +friends and acquaintances spoke to me of Zu-like-a -- a name +which I hardly recognised and thoroughly disapproved. I had +always thought of the lady as Zu-leek-a. Surely it was thus that +Joseph thought of his Wife, and Selim of his Bride? And I do hope +that it is thus that any reader of these pages will think of Miss +Dobson.</p> + +<p>M.B. Rapallo, 1922.</p> + +<p>ILLI ALMAE MATRI</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p> </p> + +<h2 align="center">ZULEIKA DOBSON</h2> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>That old bell, presage of a train, had just sounded through +Oxford station; and the undergraduates who were waiting there, +gay figures in tweed or flannel, moved to the margin of the +platform and gazed idly up the line. Young and careless, in the +glow of the afternoon sunshine, they struck a sharp note of +incongruity with the worn boards they stood on, with the fading +signals and grey eternal walls of that antique station, which, +familiar to them and insignificant, does yet whisper to the +tourist the last enchantments of the Middle Age.</p> + +<p>At the door of the first-class waiting-room, aloof and +venerable, stood the Warden of Judas. An ebon pillar of tradition +seemed he, in his garb of old-fashioned cleric. Aloft, between +the wide brim of his silk hat and the white extent of his +shirt-front, appeared those eyes which hawks, that nose which +eagles, had often envied. He supported his years on an ebon +stick. He alone was worthy of the background.</p> + +<p>Came a whistle from the distance. The breast of an engine was +descried, and a long train curving after it, under a flight of +smoke. It grew and grew. Louder and louder, its noise foreran it. +It became a furious, enormous monster, and, with an instinct for +safety, all men receded from the platform's margin. (Yet came +there with it, unknown to them, a danger far more terrible than +itself.) Into the station it came blustering, with cloud and +clangour. Ere it had yet stopped, the door of one carriage flew +open, and from it, in a white travelling dress, in a toque +a-twinkle with fine diamonds, a lithe and radiant creature +slipped nimbly down to the platform.</p> + +<p>A cynosure indeed! A hundred eyes were fixed on her, and half +as many hearts lost to her. The Warden of Judas himself had +mounted on his nose a pair of black-rimmed glasses. Him espying, +the nymph darted in his direction. The throng made way for her. +She was at his side.</p> + +<p>"Grandpapa!" she cried, and kissed the old man on either +cheek. (Not a youth there but would have bartered fifty years of +his future for that salute.)</p> + +<p>"My dear Zuleika," he said, "welcome to Oxford! Have you no +luggage?"</p> + +<p>"Heaps!" she answered. "And a maid who will find it."</p> + +<p>"Then," said the Warden, "let us drive straight to College." +He offered her his arm, and they proceeded slowly to the +entrance. She chatted gaily, blushing not in the long avenue of +eyes she passed through. All the youths, under her spell, were +now quite oblivious of the relatives they had come to meet. +Parents, sisters, cousins, ran unclaimed about the platform. +Undutiful, all the youths were forming a serried suite to their +enchantress. In silence they followed her. They saw her leap into +the Warden's landau, they saw the Warden seat himself upon her +left. Nor was it until the landau was lost to sight that they +turned--how slowly, and with how bad a grace!--to look for their +relatives.</p> + +<p>Through those slums which connect Oxford with the world, the +landau rolled on towards Judas. Not many youths occurred, for +nearly all--it was the Monday of Eights Week--were down by the +river, cheering the crews. There did, however, come spurring by, +on a polo-pony, a very splendid youth. His straw hat was +encircled with a riband of blue and white, and he raised it to +the Warden.</p> + +<p>"That," said the Warden, "is the Duke of Dorset, a member of +my College. He dines at my table to-night."</p> + +<p>Zuleika, turning to regard his Grace, saw that he had not +reined in and was not even glancing back at her over his +shoulder. She gave a little start of dismay, but scarcely had her +lips pouted ere they curved to a smile--a smile with no malice in +its corners.</p> + +<p>As the landau rolled into "the Corn," another youth--a +pedestrian, and very different--saluted the Warden. He wore a +black jacket, rusty and amorphous. His trousers were too short, +and he himself was too short: almost a dwarf. His face was as +plain as his gait was undistinguished. He squinted behind +spectacles.</p> + +<p>"And who is that?" asked Zuleika.</p> + +<p>A deep flush overspread the cheek of the Warden. "That," he +said, "is also a member of Judas. His name, I believe, is +Noaks."</p> + +<p>"Is he dining with us to-night?" asked Zuleika.</p> + +<p>"Certainly not," said the Warden. "Most decidedly not."</p> + +<p>Noaks, unlike the Duke, had stopped for an ardent retrospect. +He gazed till the landau was out of his short sight; then, +sighing, resumed his solitary walk.</p> + +<p>The landau was rolling into "the Broad," over that ground +which had once blackened under the fagots lit for Latimer and +Ridley. It rolled past the portals of Balliol and of Trinity, +past the Ashmolean. From those pedestals which intersperse the +railing of the Sheldonian, the high grim busts of the Roman +Emperors stared down at the fair stranger in the equipage. +Zuleika returned their stare with but a casual glance. The +inanimate had little charm for her.</p> + +<p>A moment later, a certain old don emerged from Blackwell's, +where he had been buying books. Looking across the road, he saw, +to his amazement, great beads of perspiration glistening on the +brows of those Emperors. He trembled, and hurried away. That +evening, in Common Room, he told what he had seen; and no amount +of polite scepticism would convince him that it was but the +hallucination of one who had been reading too much Mommsen. He +persisted that he had seen what he described. It was not until +two days had elapsed that some credence was accorded him.</p> + +<p>Yes, as the landau rolled by, sweat started from the brows of +the Emperors. They, at least, foresaw the peril that was +overhanging Oxford, and they gave such warning as they could. Let +that be remembered to their credit. Let that incline us to think +more gently of them. In their lives we know, they were infamous, +some of them-- "nihil non commiserunt stupri, saevitiae, +impietatis." But are they too little punished, after all? Here in +Oxford, exposed eternally and inexorably to heat and frost, to +the four winds that lash them and the rains that wear them away, +they are expiating, in effigy, the abominations of their pride +and cruelty and lust. Who were lechers, they are without bodies; +who were tyrants, they are crowned never but with crowns of snow; +who made themselves even with the gods, they are by American +visitors frequently mistaken for the Twelve Apostles. It is but a +little way down the road that the two Bishops perished for their +faith, and even now we do never pass the spot without a tear for +them. Yet how quickly they died in the flames! To these Emperors, +for whom none weeps, time will give no surcease. Surely, it is +sign of some grace in them that they rejoiced not, this bright +afternoon, in the evil that was to befall the city of their +penance.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>The sun streamed through the bay-window of a "best" bedroom in +the Warden's house, and glorified the pale crayon-portraits on +the wall, the dimity curtains, the old fresh chintz. He invaded +the many trunks which--all painted Z. D.--gaped, in various +stages of excavation, around the room. The doors of the huge +wardrobe stood, like the doors of Janus' temple in time of war, +majestically open; and the sun seized this opportunity of +exploring the mahogany recesses. But the carpet, which had faded +under his immemorial visitations, was now almost ENTIRELY hidden +from him, hidden under layers of fair fine linen, layers of silk, +brocade, satin, chiffon, muslin. All the colours of the rainbow, +materialised by modistes, were there. Stacked on chairs were I +know not what of sachets, glove-cases, fan-cases. There were +innumerable packages in silver-paper and pink ribands. There was +a pyramid of bandboxes. There was a virgin forest of boot-trees. +And rustling quickly hither and thither, in and out of this +profusion, with armfuls of finery, was an obviously French maid. +Alert, unerring, like a swallow she dipped and darted. Nothing +escaped her, and she never rested. She had the air of the born +unpacker--swift and firm, yet withal tender. Scarce had her arms +been laden but their loads were lying lightly between shelves or +tightly in drawers. To calculate, catch, distribute, seemed in +her but a single process. She was one of those who are born to +make chaos cosmic.</p> + +<p>Insomuch that ere the loud chapel-clock tolled another hour +all the trunks had been sent empty away. The carpet was unflecked +by any scrap of silver-paper. From the mantelpiece, photographs +of Zuleika surveyed the room with a possessive air. Zuleika's +pincushion, a-bristle with new pins, lay on the dimity-flounced +toilet-table, and round it stood a multitude of multiform glass +vessels, domed, all of them, with dull gold, on which Z. D., in +zianites and diamonds, was encrusted. On a small table stood a +great casket of malachite, initialled in like fashion. On another +small table stood Zuleika's library. Both books were in covers of +dull gold. On the back of one cover BRADSHAW, in beryls, was +encrusted; on the back of the other, A.B.C. GUIDE, in amethysts, +beryls, chrysoprases, and garnets. And Zuleika's great +cheval-glass stood ready to reflect her. Always it travelled with +her, in a great case specially made for it. It was framed in +ivory, and of fluted ivory were the slim columns it swung +between. Of gold were its twin sconces, and four tall tapers +stood in each of them.</p> + +<p>The door opened, and the Warden, with hospitable words, left +his grand-daughter at the threshold.</p> + +<p>Zuleika wandered to her mirror. "Undress me, Melisande," she +said. Like all who are wont to appear by night before the public, +she had the habit of resting towards sunset.</p> + +<p>Presently Melisande withdrew. Her mistress, in a white +peignoir tied with a blue sash, lay in a great chintz chair, +gazing out of the bay-window. The quadrangle below was very +beautiful, with its walls of rugged grey, its cloisters, its +grass carpet. But to her it was of no more interest than if it +had been the rattling court-yard to one of those hotels in which +she spent her life. She saw it, but heeded it not. She seemed to +be thinking of herself, or of something she desired, or of some +one she had never met. There was ennui, and there was +wistfulness, in her gaze. Yet one would have guessed these things +to be transient--to be no more than the little shadows that +sometimes pass between a bright mirror and the brightness it +reflects.</p> + +<p>Zuleika was not strictly beautiful. Her eyes were a trifle +large, and their lashes longer than they need have been. An +anarchy of small curls was her chevelure, a dark upland of +misrule, every hair asserting its rights over a not discreditable +brow. For the rest, her features were not at all original. They +seemed to have been derived rather from a gallimaufry of familiar +models. From Madame la Marquise de Saint-Ouen came the shapely +tilt of the nose. The mouth was a mere replica of Cupid's bow, +lacquered scarlet and strung with the littlest pearls. No +apple-tree, no wall of peaches, had not been robbed, nor any +Tyrian rose-garden, for the glory of Miss Dobson's cheeks. Her +neck was imitation-marble. Her hands and feet were of very mean +proportions. She had no waist to speak of.</p> + +<p>Yet, though a Greek would have railed at her asymmetry, and an +Elizabethan have called her "gipsy," Miss Dobson now, in the +midst of the Edvardian Era, was the toast of two hemispheres. +Late in her 'teens she had become an orphan and a governess. Her +grandfather had refused her appeal for a home or an allowance, on +the ground that he would not be burdened with the upshot of a +marriage which he had once forbidden and not yet forgiven. +Lately, however, prompted by curiosity or by remorse, he had +asked her to spend a week or so of his declining years with him. +And she, "resting" between two engagements--one at Hammerstein's +Victoria, N.Y.C., the other at the Folies Bergeres, Paris--and +having never been in Oxford, had so far let bygones be bygones as +to come and gratify the old man's whim.</p> + +<p>It may be that she still resented his indifference to those +early struggles which, even now, she shuddered to recall. For a +governess' life she had been, indeed, notably unfit. Hard she had +thought it, that penury should force her back into the +school-room she was scarce out of, there to champion the sums and +maps and conjugations she had never tried to master. Hating her +work, she had failed signally to pick up any learning from her +little pupils, and had been driven from house to house, a sullen +and most ineffectual maiden. The sequence of her situations was +the swifter by reason of her pretty face. Was there a grown-up +son, always he fell in love with her, and she would let his eyes +trifle boldly with hers across the dinner-table. When he offered +her his hand, she would refuse it--not because she "knew her +place," but because she did not love him. Even had she been a +good teacher, her presence could not have been tolerated +thereafter. Her corded trunk, heavier by another packet of +billets-doux and a month's salary in advance, was soon carried up +the stairs of some other house.</p> + +<p>It chanced that she came, at length, to be governess in a +large family that had Gibbs for its name and Notting Hill for its +background. Edward, the eldest son, was a clerk in the city, who +spent his evenings in the practice of amateur conjuring. He was a +freckled youth, with hair that bristled in places where it should +have lain smooth, and he fell in love with Zuleika duly, at first +sight, during high-tea. In the course of the evening, he sought +to win her admiration by a display of all his tricks. These were +familiar to this household, and the children had been sent to +bed, the mother was dozing, long before the seance was at an end. +But Miss Dobson, unaccustomed to any gaieties, sat fascinated by +the young man's sleight of hand, marvelling that a top-hat could +hold so many goldfish, and a handkerchief turn so swiftly into a +silver florin. All that night, she lay wide awake, haunted by the +miracles he had wrought. Next evening, when she asked him to +repeat them, "Nay," he whispered, "I cannot bear to deceive the +girl I love. Permit me to explain the tricks." So he explained +them. His eyes sought hers across the bowl of gold-fish, his +fingers trembled as he taught her to manipulate the magic +canister. One by one, she mastered the paltry secrets. Her +respect for him waned with every revelation. He complimented her +on her skill. "I could not do it more neatly myself!" he said. +"Oh, dear Miss Dobson, will you but accept my hand, all these +things shall be yours--the cards, the canister, the goldfish, the +demon egg-cup--all yours!" Zuleika, with ravishing coyness, +answered that if he would give her them now, she would "think it +over." The swain consented, and at bed-time she retired with the +gift under her arm. In the light of her bedroom candle Marguerite +hung not in greater ecstasy over the jewel-casket than hung +Zuleika over the box of tricks. She clasped her hands over the +tremendous possibilities it held for her--manumission from her +bondage, wealth, fame, power. Stealthily, so soon as the house +slumbered, she packed her small outfit, embedding therein the +precious gift. Noiselessly, she shut the lid of her trunk, corded +it, shouldered it, stole down the stairs with it. Outside--how +that chain had grated! and her shoulder, how it was aching!--she +soon found a cab. She took a night's sanctuary in some +railway-hotel. Next day, she moved into a small room in a +lodging- house off the Edgware Road, and there for a whole week +she was sedulous in the practice of her tricks. Then she +inscribed her name on the books of a "Juvenile Party +Entertainments Agency."</p> + +<p>The Christmas holidays were at hand, and before long she got +an engagement. It was a great evening for her. Her repertory was, +it must be confessed, old and obvious; but the children, in +deference to their hostess, pretended not to know how the tricks +were done, and assumed their prettiest airs of wonder and +delight. One of them even pretended to be frightened, and was led +howling from the room. In fact, the whole thing went off +splendidly. The hostess was charmed, and told Zuleika that a +glass of lemonade would be served to her in the hall. Other +engagements soon followed. Zuleika was very, very happy. I cannot +claim for her that she had a genuine passion for her art. The +true conjurer finds his guerdon in the consciousness of work done +perfectly and for its own sake. Lucre and applause are not +necessary to him. If he were set down, with the materials of his +art, on a desert island, he would yet be quite happy. He would +not cease to produce the barber's-pole from his mouth. To the +indifferent winds he would still speak his patter, and even in +the last throes of starvation would not eat his live rabbit or +his gold-fish. Zuleika, on a desert island, would have spent most +of her time in looking for a man's foot-print. She was, indeed, +far too human a creature to care much for art. I do not say that +she took her work lightly. She thought she had genius, and she +liked to be told that this was so. But mainly she loved her work +as a means of mere self-display. The frank admiration which, into +whatsoever house she entered, the grown-up sons flashed on her; +their eagerness to see her to the door; their impressive way of +putting her into her omnibus--these were the things she revelled +in. She was a nymph to whom men's admiration was the greater part +of life. By day, whenever she went into the streets, she was +conscious that no man passed her without a stare; and this +consciousness gave a sharp zest to her outings. Sometimes she was +followed to her door--crude flattery which she was too innocent +to fear. Even when she went into the haberdasher's to make some +little purchase of tape or riband, or into the grocer's--for she +was an epicure in her humble way--to buy a tin of potted meat for +her supper, the homage of the young men behind the counter did +flatter and exhilarate her. As the homage of men became for her, +more and more, a matter of course, the more subtly necessary was +it to her happiness. The more she won of it, the more she +treasured it. She was alone in the world, and it saved her from +any moment of regret that she had neither home nor friends. For +her the streets that lay around her had no squalor, since she +paced them always in the gold nimbus of her fascinations. Her +bedroom seemed not mean nor lonely to her, since the little +square of glass, nailed above the wash-stand, was ever there to +reflect her face. Thereinto, indeed, she was ever peering. She +would droop her head from side to side, she would bend it forward +and see herself from beneath her eyelashes, then tilt it back and +watch herself over her supercilious chin. And she would smile, +frown, pout, languish--let all the emotions hover upon her face; +and always she seemed to herself lovelier than she had ever +been.</p> + +<p>Yet was there nothing Narcissine in her spirit. Her love for +her own image was not cold aestheticism. She valued that image +not for its own sake, but for sake of the glory it always won for +her. In the little remote music-hall, where she was soon +appearing nightly as an "early turn," she reaped glory in a +nightly harvest. She could feel that all the gallery-boys, +because of her, were scornful of the sweethearts wedged between +them, and she knew that she had but to say "Will any gentleman in +the audience be so good as to lend me his hat?" for the stalls to +rise as one man and rush towards the platform. But greater things +were in store for her. She was engaged at two halls in the West +End. Her horizon was fast receding and expanding. Homage became +nightly tangible in bouquets, rings, brooches--things acceptable +and (luckier than their donors) accepted. Even Sunday was not +barren for Zuleika: modish hostesses gave her postprandially to +their guests. Came that Sunday night, notanda candidissimo +calculo! when she received certain guttural compliments which +made absolute her vogue and enabled her to command, thenceforth, +whatever terms she asked for.</p> + +<p>Already, indeed, she was rich. She was living at the most +exorbitant hotel in all Mayfair. She had innumerable gowns and no +necessity to buy jewels; and she also had, which pleased her +most, the fine cheval- glass I have described. At the close of +the Season, Paris claimed her for a month's engagement. Paris saw +her and was prostrate. Boldini did a portrait of her. Jules Bloch +wrote a song about her; and this, for a whole month, was howled +up and down the cobbled alleys of Montmartre. And all the little +dandies were mad for "la Zuleika." The jewellers of the Rue de la +Paix soon had nothing left to put in their windows-- everything +had been bought for "la Zuleika." For a whole month, baccarat was +not played at the Jockey Club--every member had succumbed to a +nobler passion. For a whole month, the whole demi-monde was +forgotten for one English virgin. Never, even in Paris, had a +woman triumphed so. When the day came for her departure, the city +wore such an air of sullen mourning as it had not worn since the +Prussians marched to its Elysee. Zuleika, quite untouched, would +not linger in the conquered city. Agents had come to her from +every capital in Europe, and, for a year, she ranged, in +triumphal nomady, from one capital to another. In Berlin, every +night, the students escorted her home with torches. Prince +Vierfuenfsechs-Siebenachtneun offered her his hand, and was +condemned by the Kaiser to six months' confinement in his little +castle. In Yildiz Kiosk, the tyrant who still throve there +conferred on her the Order of Chastity, and offered her the +central couch in his seraglio. She gave her performance in the +Quirinal, and, from the Vatican, the Pope launched against her a +Bull which fell utterly flat. In Petersburg, the Grand Duke +Salamander Salamandrovitch fell enamoured of her. Of every +article in the apparatus of her conjuring-tricks he caused a +replica to be made in finest gold. These treasures he presented +to her in that great malachite casket which now stood on the +little table in her room; and thenceforth it was with these that +she performed her wonders. They did not mark the limit of the +Grand Duke's generosity. He was for bestowing on Zuleika the half +of his immensurable estates. The Grand Duchess appealed to the +Tzar. Zuleika was conducted across the frontier, by an escort of +love-sick Cossacks. On the Sunday before she left Madrid, a great +bull-fight was held in her honour. Fifteen bulls received the +coup-de-grace, and Alvarez, the matador of matadors, died in the +arena with her name on his lips. He had tried to kill the last +bull without taking his eyes off la divina senorita. A prettier +compliment had never been paid her, and she was immensely pleased +with it. For that matter, she was immensely pleased with +everything. She moved proudly to the incessant music of a paean, +aye! of a paean that was always crescendo.</p> + +<p>Its echoes followed her when she crossed the Atlantic, till +they were lost in the louder, deeper, more blatant paean that +rose for her from the shores beyond. All the stops of that +"mighty organ, many-piped," the New York press, were pulled out +simultaneously, as far as they could be pulled, in Zuleika's +honour. She delighted in the din. She read every line that was +printed about her, tasting her triumph as she had never tasted it +before. And how she revelled in the Brobdingnagian drawings of +her, which, printed in nineteen colours, towered between the +columns or sprawled across them! There she was, measuring herself +back to back with the Statue of Liberty; scudding through the +firmament on a comet, whilst a crowd of tiny men in evening-dress +stared up at her from the terrestrial globe; peering through a +microscope held by Cupid over a diminutive Uncle Sam; teaching +the American Eagle to stand on its head; and doing a +hundred-and-one other things--whatever suggested itself to the +fancy of native art. And through all this iridescent maze of +symbolism were scattered many little slabs of realism. At home, +on the street, Zuleika was the smiling target of all +snap-shooters, and all the snap-shots were snapped up by the +press and reproduced with annotations: Zuleika Dobson walking on +Broadway in the sables gifted her by Grand Duke Salamander--she +says "You can bounce blizzards in them"; Zuleika Dobson yawning +over a love-letter from millionaire Edelweiss; relishing a cup of +clam-broth--she says "They don't use clams out there"; ordering +her maid to fix her a warm bath; finding a split in the gloves +she has just drawn on before starting for the musicale given in +her honour by Mrs. Suetonius X. Meistersinger, the most exclusive +woman in New York; chatting at the telephone to Miss Camille Van +Spook, the best-born girl in New York; laughing over the +recollection of a compliment made her by George Abimelech Post, +the best-groomed man in New York; meditating a new trick; +admonishing a waiter who has upset a cocktail over her skirt; +having herself manicured; drinking tea in bed. Thus was Zuleika +enabled daily to be, as one might say, a spectator of her own +wonderful life. On her departure from New York, the papers spoke +no more than the truth when they said she had had "a lovely +time." The further she went West-- millionaire Edelweiss had +loaned her his private car--the lovelier her time was. Chicago +drowned the echoes of New York; final Frisco dwarfed the +headlines of Chicago. Like one of its own prairie-fires, she +swept the country from end to end. Then she swept back, and +sailed for England. She was to return for a second season in the +coming Fall. At present, she was, as I have said, "resting."</p> + +<p>As she sat here in the bay-window of her room, she was not +reviewing the splendid pageant of her past. She was a young +person whose reveries never were in retrospect. For her the past +was no treasury of distinct memories, all hoarded and classified, +some brighter than others and more highly valued. All memories +were for her but as the motes in one fused radiance that followed +her and made more luminous the pathway of her future. She was +always looking forward. She was looking forward now--that shade +of ennui had passed from her face--to the week she was to spend +in Oxford. A new city was a new toy to her, and--for it was +youth's homage that she loved best--this city of youths was a toy +after her own heart.</p> + +<p>Aye, and it was youths who gave homage to her most freely. She +was of that high-stepping and flamboyant type that captivates +youth most surely. Old men and men of middle age admired her, but +she had not that flower-like quality of shyness and helplessness, +that look of innocence, so dear to men who carry life's secrets +in their heads. Yet Zuleika WAS very innocent, really. She was as +pure as that young shepherdess Marcella, who, all unguarded, +roved the mountains and was by all the shepherds adored. Like +Marcella, she had given her heart to no man, had preferred none. +Youths were reputed to have died for love of her, as Chrysostom +died for love of the shepherdess; and she, like the shepherdess, +had shed no tear. When Chrysostom was lying on his bier in the +valley, and Marcella looked down from the high rock, Ambrosio, +the dead man's comrade, cried out on her, upbraiding her with +bitter words--"Oh basilisk of our mountains!" Nor do I think +Ambrosio spoke too strongly. Marcella cared nothing for men's +admiration, and yet, instead of retiring to one of those +nunneries which are founded for her kind, she chose to rove the +mountains, causing despair to all the shepherds. Zuleika, with +her peculiar temperament, would have gone mad in a nunnery. +"But," you may argue, "ought not she to have taken the veil, even +at the cost of her reason, rather than cause so much despair in +the world? If Marcella was a basilisk, as you seem to think, how +about Miss Dobson?" Ah, but Marcella knew quite well, boasted +even, that she never would or could love any man. Zuleika, on the +other hand, was a woman of really passionate fibre. She may not +have had that conscious, separate, and quite explicit desire to +be a mother with which modern playwrights credit every unmated +member of her sex. But she did know that she could love. And, +surely, no woman who knows that of herself can be rightly +censured for not recluding herself from the world: it is only +women without the power to love who have no right to provoke +men's love.</p> + +<p>Though Zuleika had never given her heart, strong in her were +the desire and the need that it should be given. Whithersoever +she had fared, she had seen nothing but youths fatuously +prostrate to her--not one upright figure which she could respect. +There were the middle-aged men, the old men, who did not bow down +to her; but from middle-age, as from eld, she had a sanguine +aversion. She could love none but a youth. Nor--though she +herself, womanly, would utterly abase herself before her +ideal--could she love one who fell prone before her. And before +her all youths always did fall prone. She was an empress, and all +youths were her slaves. Their bondage delighted her, as I have +said. But no empress who has any pride can adore one of her +slaves. Whom, then, could proud Zuleika adore? It was a question +which sometimes troubled her. There were even moments when, +looking into her cheval-glass, she cried out against that +arrangement in comely lines and tints which got for her the dulia +she delighted in. To be able to love once--would not that be +better than all the homage in the world? But would she ever meet +whom, looking up to him, she could love--she, the omnisubjugant? +Would she ever, ever meet him?</p> + +<p>It was when she wondered thus, that the wistfulness came into +her eyes. Even now, as she sat by the window, that shadow +returned to them. She was wondering, shyly, had she met him at +length? That young equestrian who had not turned to look at her; +whom she was to meet at dinner to-night . . . was it he? The ends +of her blue sash lay across her lap, and she was lazily +unravelling their fringes. "Blue and white!" she remembered. +"They were the colours he wore round his hat." And she gave a +little laugh of coquetry. She laughed, and, long after, her lips +were still parted in a smile.</p> + +<p>So did she sit, smiling, wondering, with the fringes of her +sash between her fingers, while the sun sank behind the opposite +wall of the quadrangle, and the shadows crept out across the +grass, thirsty for the dew.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>The clock in the Warden's drawing-room had just struck eight, +and already the ducal feet were beautiful on the white bearskin +hearthrug. So slim and long were they, of instep so nobly arched, +that only with a pair of glazed ox-tongues on a breakfast-table +were they comparable. Incomparable quite, the figure and face and +vesture of him who ended in them.</p> + +<p>The Warden was talking to him, with all the deference of +elderly commoner to patrician boy. The other guests--an Oriel don +and his wife--were listening with earnest smile and submissive +droop, at a slight distance. Now and again, to put themselves at +their ease, they exchanged in undertone a word or two about the +weather.</p> + +<p>"The young lady whom you may have noticed with me," the Warden +was saying, "is my orphaned grand-daughter." (The wife of the +Oriel don discarded her smile, and sighed, with a glance at the +Duke, who was himself an orphan.) "She has come to stay with me." +(The Duke glanced quickly round the room.) "I cannot think why +she is not down yet." (The Oriel don fixed his eyes on the clock, +as though he suspected it of being fast.) "I must ask you to +forgive her. She appears to be a bright, pleasant young +woman."</p> + +<p>"Married?" asked the Duke.</p> + +<p>"No," said the Warden; and a cloud of annoyance crossed the +boy's face. "No; she devotes her life entirely to good +works."</p> + +<p>"A hospital nurse?" the Duke murmured.</p> + +<p>"No, Zuleika's appointed task is to induce delightful wonder +rather than to alleviate pain. She performs +conjuring-tricks."</p> + +<p>"Not--not Miss Zuleika Dobson?" cried the Duke.</p> + +<p>"Ah yes. I forgot that she had achieved some fame in the outer +world. Perhaps she has already met you?"</p> + +<p>"Never," said the young man coldly. "But of course I have +heard of Miss Dobson. I did not know she was related to you."</p> + +<p>The Duke had an intense horror of unmarried girls. All his +vacations were spent in eluding them and their chaperons. That he +should be confronted with one of them--with such an one of +them!--in Oxford, seemed to him sheer violation of sanctuary. The +tone, therefore, in which he said "I shall be charmed," in answer +to the Warden's request that he would take Zuleika into dinner, +was very glacial. So was his gaze when, a moment later, the young +lady made her entry.</p> + +<p>"She did not look like an orphan," said the wife of the Oriel +don, subsequently, on the way home. The criticism was a just one. +Zuleika would have looked singular in one of those lowly +double-files of straw-bonnets and drab cloaks which are so +steadying a feature of our social system. Tall and lissom, she +was sheathed from the bosom downwards in flamingo silk, and she +was liberally festooned with emeralds. Her dark hair was not even +strained back from her forehead and behind her ears, as an +orphan's should be. Parted somewhere at the side, it fell in an +avalanche of curls upon one eyebrow. From her right ear drooped +heavily a black pearl, from her left a pink; and their difference +gave an odd, bewildering witchery to the little face between.</p> + +<p>Was the young Duke bewitched? Instantly, utterly. But none +could have guessed as much from his cold stare, his easy and +impassive bow. Throughout dinner, none guessed that his +shirt-front was but the screen of a fierce warfare waged between +pride and passion. Zuleika, at the foot of the table, fondly +supposed him indifferent to her. Though he sat on her right, not +one word or glance would he give her. All his conversation was +addressed to the unassuming lady who sat on his other side, next +to the Warden. Her he edified and flustered beyond measure by his +insistent courtesy. Her husband, alone on the other side of the +table, was mortified by his utter failure to engage Zuleika in +small-talk. Zuleika was sitting with her profile turned to +him--the profile with the pink pearl--and was gazing full at the +young Duke. She was hardly more affable than a cameo. "Yes," +"No," "I don't know," were the only answers she would vouchsafe +to his questions. A vague "Oh really?" was all he got for his +timid little offerings of information. In vain he started the +topic of modern conjuring-tricks as compared with the +conjuring-tricks performed by the ancient Egyptians. Zuleika did +not even say "Oh really?" when he told her about the +metamorphosis of the bulls in the Temple of Osiris. He primed +himself with a glass of sherry, cleared his throat. "And what," +he asked, with a note of firmness, "did you think of our cousins +across the water?" Zuleika said "Yes;" and then he gave in. Nor +was she conscious that he ceased talking to her. At intervals +throughout the rest of dinner, she murmured "Yes," and "No," and +"Oh really?" though the poor little don was now listening +silently to the Duke and the Warden.</p> + +<p>She was in a trance of sheer happiness. At last, she thought, +her hope was fulfilled--that hope which, although she had seldom +remembered it in the joy of her constant triumphs, had been +always lurking in her, lying near to her heart and chafing her, +like the shift of sackcloth which that young brilliant girl, +loved and lost of Giacopone di Todi, wore always in secret +submission to her own soul, under the fair soft robes and the +rubies men saw on her. At last, here was the youth who would not +bow down to her; whom, looking up to him, she could adore. She +ate and drank automatically, never taking her gaze from him. She +felt not one touch of pique at his behaviour. She was tremulous +with a joy that was new to her, greater than any joy she had +known. Her soul was as a flower in its opetide. She was in love. +Rapt, she studied every lineament of the pale and perfect +face--the brow from which bronze-coloured hair rose in tiers of +burnished ripples; the large steel-coloured eyes, with their +carven lids; the carven nose, and the plastic lips. She noted how +long and slim were his fingers, and how slender his wrists. She +noted the glint cast by the candles upon his shirt-front. The two +large white pearls there seemed to her symbols of his nature. +They were like two moons: cold, remote, radiant. Even when she +gazed at the Duke's face, she was aware of them in her +vision.</p> + +<p>Nor was the Duke unconscious, as he seemed to be, of her +scrutiny. Though he kept his head averse, he knew that always her +eyes were watching him. Obliquely, he saw them; saw, too, the +contour of the face, and the black pearl and the pink; could not +blind himself, try as he would. And he knew that he was in +love.</p> + +<p>Like Zuleika herself, this young Duke was in love for the +first time. Wooed though he had been by almost as many maidens as +she by youths, his heart, like hers, had remained cold. But he +had never felt, as she had, the desire to love. He was not now +rejoicing, as she was, in the sensation of first love; nay, he +was furiously mortified by it, and struggled with all his might +against it. He had always fancied himself secure against any so +vulgar peril; always fancied that by him at least, the proud old +motto of his family--"Pas si bete"--would not be belied. And I +daresay, indeed, that had he never met Zuleika, the irresistible, +he would have lived, and at a very ripe old age died, a dandy +without reproach. For in him the dandiacal temper had been +absolute hitherto, quite untainted and unruffled. He was too much +concerned with his own perfection ever to think of admiring any +one else. Different from Zuleika, he cared for his wardrobe and +his toilet-table not as a means to making others admire him the +more, but merely as a means through which he could intensify, a +ritual in which to express and realise, his own idolatry. At Eton +he had been called "Peacock," and this nick-name had followed him +up to Oxford. It was not wholly apposite, however. For, whereas +the peacock is a fool even among birds, the Duke had already +taken (besides a particularly brilliant First in Mods) the +Stanhope, the Newdigate, the Lothian, and the Gaisford Prize for +Greek Verse. And these things he had achieved currente calamo, +"wielding his pen," as Scott said of Byron, "with the easy +negligence of a nobleman." He was now in his third year of +residence, and was reading, a little, for Literae Humaniores. +There is no doubt that but for his untimely death he would have +taken a particularly brilliant First in that school also.</p> + +<p>For the rest, he had many accomplishments. He was adroit in +the killing of all birds and fishes, stags and foxes. He played +polo, cricket, racquets, chess, and billiards as well as such +things can be played. He was fluent in all modern languages, had +a very real talent in water-colour, and was accounted, by those +who had had the privilege of hearing him, the best amateur +pianist on this side of the Tweed. Little wonder, then, that he +was idolised by the undergraduates of his day. He did not, +however, honour many of them with his friendship. He had a +theoretic liking for them as a class, as the "young barbarians +all at play" in that little antique city; but individually they +jarred on him, and he saw little of them. Yet he sympathised with +them always, and, on occasion, would actively take their part +against the dons. In the middle of his second year, he had gone +so far that a College Meeting had to be held, and he was sent +down for the rest of term. The Warden placed his own landau at +the disposal of the illustrious young exile, who therein was +driven to the station, followed by a long, vociferous procession +of undergraduates in cabs. Now, it happened that this was a time +of political excitement in London. The Liberals, who were in +power, had passed through the House of Commons a measure more +than usually socialistic; and this measure was down for its +second reading in the Lords on the very day that the Duke left +Oxford, an exile. It was but a few weeks since he had taken his +seat in the Lords; and this afternoon, for the want of anything +better to do, he strayed in. The Leader of the House was already +droning his speech for the bill, and the Duke found himself on +one of the opposite benches. There sat his compeers, sullenly +waiting to vote for a bill which every one of them detested. As +the speaker subsided, the Duke, for the fun of the thing, rose. +He made a long speech against the bill. His gibes at the +Government were so scathing, so utterly destructive his criticism +of the bill itself, so lofty and so irresistible the flights of +his eloquence, that, when he resumed his seat, there was only one +course left to the Leader of the House. He rose and, in a few +husky phrases, moved that the bill "be read this day six months." +All England rang with the name of the young Duke. He himself +seemed to be the one person unmoved by his exploit. He did not +re-appear in the Upper Chamber, and was heard to speak in +slighting terms of its architecture, as well as of its +upholstery. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister became so nervous +that he procured for him, a month later, the Sovereign's offer of +a Garter which had just fallen vacant. The Duke accepted it. He +was, I understand, the only undergraduate on whom this Order had +ever been conferred. He was very much pleased with the insignia, +and when, on great occasions, he wore them, no one dared say that +the Prime Minister's choice was not fully justified. But you must +not imagine that he cared for them as symbols of achievement and +power. The dark blue riband, and the star scintillating to eight +points, the heavy mantle of blue velvet, with its lining of +taffeta and shoulder-knots of white satin, the crimson surcoat, +the great embullioned tassels, and the chain of linked gold, and +the plumes of ostrich and heron uprising from the black velvet +hat--these things had for him little significance save as a fine +setting, a finer setting than the most elaborate smoking-suit, +for that perfection of aspect which the gods had given him. This +was indeed the gift he valued beyond all others. He knew well, +however, that women care little for a man's appearance, and that +what they seek in a man is strength of character, and rank, and +wealth. These three gifts the Duke had in a high degree, and he +was by women much courted because of them. Conscious that every +maiden he met was eager to be his Duchess, he had assumed always +a manner of high austerity among maidens, and even if he had +wished to flirt with Zuleika he would hardly have known how to do +it. But he did not wish to flirt with her. That she had bewitched +him did but make it the more needful that he should shun all +converse with her. It was imperative that he should banish her +from his mind, quickly. He must not dilute his own soul's +essence. He must not surrender to any passion his dandihood. The +dandy must be celibate, cloistral; is, indeed, but a monk with a +mirror for beads and breviary --an anchorite, mortifying his soul +that his body may be perfect. Till he met Zuleika, the Duke had +not known the meaning of temptation. He fought now, a St. +Anthony, against the apparition. He would not look at her, and he +hated her. He loved her, and he could not help seeing her. The +black pearl and the pink seemed to dangle ever nearer and clearer +to him, mocking him and beguiling. Inexpellible was her +image.</p> + +<p>So fierce was the conflict in him that his outward nonchalance +gradually gave way. As dinner drew to its close, his conversation +with the wife of the Oriel don flagged and halted. He sank, at +length, into a deep silence. He sat with downcast eyes, utterly +distracted.</p> + +<p>Suddenly, something fell, plump! into the dark whirlpool of +his thoughts. He started. The Warden was leaning forward, had +just said something to him.</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon?" asked the Duke. Dessert, he noticed, was +on the table, and he was paring an apple. The Oriel don was +looking at him with sympathy, as at one who had swooned and was +just "coming to."</p> + +<p>"Is it true, my dear Duke," the Warden repeated, "that you +have been persuaded to play to-morrow evening at the Judas +concert?"</p> + +<p>"Ah yes, I am going to play something."</p> + +<p>Zuleika bent suddenly forward, addressed him. "Oh," she cried, +clasping her hands beneath her chin, "will you let me come and +turn over the leaves for you?"</p> + +<p>He looked her full in the face. It was like seeing suddenly at +close quarters some great bright monument that one has long known +only as a sun-caught speck in the distance. He saw the large +violet eyes open to him, and their lashes curling to him; the +vivid parted lips; and the black pearl, and the pink.</p> + +<p>"You are very kind," he murmured, in a voice which sounded to +him quite far away. "But I always play without notes."</p> + +<p>Zuleika blushed. Not with shame, but with delirious pleasure. +For that snub she would just then have bartered all the homage +she had hoarded. This, she felt, was the climax. She would not +outstay it. She rose, smiling to the wife of the Oriel don. Every +one rose. The Oriel don held open the door, and the two ladies +passed out of the room.</p> + +<p>The Duke drew out his cigarette case. As he looked down at the +cigarettes, he was vaguely conscious of some strange phenomenon +somewhere between them and his eyes. Foredone by the agitation of +the past hour, he did not at once realise what it was that he +saw. His impression was of something in bad taste, some discord +in his costume . . . a black pearl and a pink pearl in his +shirt-front!</p> + +<p>Just for a moment, absurdly over-estimating poor Zuleika's +skill, he supposed himself a victim of legerdemain. Another +moment, and the import of the studs revealed itself. He staggered +up from his chair, covering his breast with one arm, and murmured +that he was faint. As he hurried from the room, the Oriel don was +pouring out a tumbler of water and suggesting burnt feathers. The +Warden, solicitous, followed him into the hall. He snatched up +his hat, gasping that he had spent a delightful evening--was very +sorry--was subject to these attacks. Once outside, he took +frankly to his heels.</p> + +<p>At the corner of the Broad, he looked back over his shoulder. +He had half expected a scarlet figure skimming in pursuit. There +was nothing. He halted. Before him, the Broad lay empty beneath +the moon. He went slowly, mechanically, to his rooms.</p> + +<p>The high grim busts of the Emperors stared down at him, their +faces more than ever tragically cavernous and distorted. They saw +and read in that moonlight the symbols on his breast. As he stood +on his doorstep, waiting for the door to be opened, he must have +seemed to them a thing for infinite compassion. For were they not +privy to the doom that the morrow, or the morrow's morrow, held +for him--held not indeed for him alone, yet for him especially, +as it were, and for him most lamentably?</p> + +<p>IV</p> + +<p>The breakfast-things were not yet cleared away. A plate +freaked with fine strains of marmalade, an empty toast-rack, a +broken roll--these and other things bore witness to a day +inaugurated in the right spirit.</p> + +<p>Away from them, reclining along his window-seat, was the Duke. +Blue spirals rose from his cigarette, nothing in the still air to +trouble them. From their railing, across the road, the Emperors +gazed at him.</p> + +<p>For a young man, sleep is a sure solvent of distress. There +whirls not for him in the night any so hideous a phantasmagoria +as will not become, in the clarity of next morning, a spruce +procession for him to lead. Brief the vague horror of his +awakening; memory sweeps back to him, and he sees nothing +dreadful after all. "Why not?" is the sun's bright message to +him, and "Why not indeed?" his answer. After hours of agony and +doubt prolonged to cock-crow, sleep had stolen to the Duke's +bed-side. He awoke late, with a heavy sense of disaster; but lo! +when he remembered, everything took on a new aspect. He was in +love. "Why not?" He mocked himself for the morbid vigil he had +spent in probing and vainly binding the wounds of his false +pride. The old life was done with. He laughed as he stepped into +his bath. Why should the disseizin of his soul have seemed +shameful to him? He had had no soul till it passed out of his +keeping. His body thrilled to the cold water, his soul as to a +new sacrament. He was in love, and that was all he wished for . . +. There, on the dressing-table, lay the two studs, visible +symbols of his love. Dear to him, now, the colours of them! He +took them in his hand, one by one, fondling them. He wished he +could wear them in the day-time; but this, of course, was +impossible. His toilet finished, he dropped them into the left +pocket of his waistcoat.</p> + +<p>Therein, near to his heart, they were lying now, as he looked +out at the changed world--the world that had become Zuleika. +"Zuleika!" his recurrent murmur, was really an apostrophe to the +whole world.</p> + +<p>Piled against the wall were certain boxes of black japanned +tin, which had just been sent to him from London. At any other +time he would certainly not have left them unopened. For they +contained his robes of the Garter. Thursday, the day after +to-morrow, was the date fixed for the investiture of a foreign +king who was now visiting England: and the full chapter of +Knights had been commanded to Windsor for the ceremony. Yesterday +the Duke had looked keenly forward to his excursion. It was only +in those too rarely required robes that he had the sense of being +fully dressed. But to-day not a thought had he of them.</p> + +<p>Some clock clove with silver the stillness of the morning. Ere +came the second stroke, another and nearer clock was striking. +And now there were others chiming in. The air was confused with +the sweet babel of its many spires, some of them booming deep, +measured sequences, some tinkling impatiently and outwitting +others which had begun before them. And when this anthem of +jealous antiphonies and uneven rhythms had dwindled quite away +and fainted in one last solitary note of silver, there started +somewhere another sequence; and this, almost at its last stroke, +was interrupted by yet another, which went on to tell the hour of +noon in its own way, quite slowly and significantly, as though +none knew it.</p> + +<p>And now Oxford was astir with footsteps and laughter--the +laughter and quick footsteps of youths released from +lecture-rooms. The Duke shifted from the window. Somehow, he did +not care to be observed, though it was usually at this hour that +he showed himself for the setting of some new fashion in costume. +Many an undergraduate, looking up, missed the picture in the +window-frame.</p> + +<p>The Duke paced to and fro, smiling ecstatically. He took the +two studs from his pocket and gazed at them. He looked in the +glass, as one seeking the sympathy of a familiar. For the first +time in his life, he turned impatiently aside. It was a new kind +of sympathy he needed to-day.</p> + +<p>The front door slammed, and the staircase creaked to the +ascent of two heavy boots. The Duke listened, waited irresolute. +The boots passed his door, were already clumping up the next +flight. "Noaks!" he cried. The boots paused, then clumped down +again. The door opened and disclosed that homely figure which +Zuleika had seen on her way to Judas.</p> + +<p>Sensitive reader, start not at the apparition! Oxford is a +plexus of anomalies. These two youths were (odd as it may seem to +you) subject to the same Statutes, affiliated to the same +College, reading for the same School; aye! and though the one had +inherited half a score of noble and castellated roofs, whose mere +repairs cost him annually thousands and thousands of pounds, and +the other's people had but one little mean square of lead, from +which the fireworks of the Crystal Palace were clearly visible +every Thursday evening, in Oxford one roof sheltered both of +them. Furthermore, there was even some measure of intimacy +between them. It was the Duke's whim to condescend further in the +direction of Noaks than in any other. He saw in Noaks his own +foil and antithesis, and made a point of walking up the High with +him at least once in every term. Noaks, for his part, regarded +the Duke with feelings mingled of idolatry and disapproval. The +Duke's First in Mods oppressed him (who, by dint of dogged +industry, had scraped a Second) more than all the other +differences between them. But the dullard's envy of brilliant men +is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad +end. Noaks may have regarded the Duke as a rather pathetic +figure, on the whole.</p> + +<p>"Come in, Noaks," said the Duke. "You have been to a +lecture?"</p> + +<p>"Aristotle's Politics," nodded Noaks.</p> + +<p>"And what were they?" asked the Duke. He was eager for +sympathy in his love. But so little used was he to seeking +sympathy that he could not unburden himself. He temporised. Noaks +muttered something about getting back to work, and fumbled with +the door-handle.</p> + +<p>"Oh, my dear fellow, don't go," said the Duke. "Sit down. Our +Schools don't come on for another year. A few minutes can't make +a difference in your Class. I want to--to tell you something, +Noaks. Do sit down."</p> + +<p>Noaks sat down on the edge of a chair. The Duke leaned against +the mantel-piece, facing him. "I suppose, Noaks," he said, "you +have never been in love."</p> + +<p>"Why shouldn't I have been in love?" asked the little man, +angrily.</p> + +<p>"I can't imagine you in love," said the Duke, smiling.</p> + +<p>"And I can't imagine YOU. You're too pleased with yourself," +growled Noaks.</p> + +<p>"Spur your imagination, Noaks," said his friend. "I AM in +love."</p> + +<p>"So am I," was an unexpected answer, and the Duke (whose need +of sympathy was too new to have taught him sympathy with others) +laughed aloud. "Whom do you love?" he asked, throwing himself +into an arm-chair.</p> + +<p>"I don't know who she is," was another unexpected answer.</p> + +<p>"When did you meet her?" asked the Duke. "Where? What did you +say to her?"</p> + +<p>"Yesterday. In the Corn. I didn't SAY anything to her."</p> + +<p>"Is she beautiful?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. What's that to you?"</p> + +<p>"Dark or fair?"</p> + +<p>"She's dark. She looks like a foreigner. She looks like--like +one of those photographs in the shop-windows."</p> + +<p>"A rhapsody, Noaks! What became of her? Was she alone?"</p> + +<p>"She was with the old Warden, in his carriage."</p> + +<p>Zuleika--Noaks! The Duke started, as at an affront, and +glared. Next moment, he saw the absurdity of the situation. He +relapsed into his chair, smiling. "She's the Warden's niece," he +said. "I dined at the Warden's last night."</p> + +<p>Noaks sat still, peering across at the Duke. For the first +time in his life, he was resentful of the Duke's great elegance +and average stature, his high lineage and incomputable wealth. +Hitherto, these things had been too remote for envy. But now, +suddenly, they seemed near to him--nearer and more overpowering +than the First in Mods had ever been. "And of course she's in +love with you?" he snarled.</p> + +<p>Really, this was for the Duke a new issue. So salient was his +own passion that he had not had time to wonder whether it were +returned. Zuleika's behaviour during dinner . . . But that was +how so many young women had behaved. It was no sign of +disinterested love. It might mean merely . . . Yet no! Surely, +looking into her eyes, he had seen there a radiance finer than +could have been lit by common ambition. Love, none other, must +have lit in those purple depths the torches whose clear flames +had leapt out to him. She loved him. She, the beautiful, the +wonderful, had not tried to conceal her love for him. She had +shown him all--had shown all, poor darling! only to be snubbed by +a prig, driven away by a boor, fled from by a fool. To the +nethermost corner of his soul, he cursed himself for what he had +done, and for all he had left undone. He would go to her on his +knees. He would implore her to impose on him insufferable +penances. There was no penance, how bittersweet soever, could +make him a little worthy of her.</p> + +<p>"Come in!" he cried mechanically. Entered the landlady's +daughter.</p> + +<p>"A lady downstairs," she said, "asking to see your Grace. Says +she'll step round again later if your Grace is busy."</p> + +<p>"What is her name?" asked the Duke, vacantly. He was gazing at +the girl with pain-shot eyes.</p> + +<p>"Miss Zuleika Dobson," pronounced the girl.</p> + +<p>He rose.</p> + +<p>"Show Miss Dobson up," he said.</p> + +<p>Noaks had darted to the looking-glass and was smoothing his +hair with a tremulous, enormous hand.</p> + +<p>"Go!" said the Duke, pointing to the door. Noaks went, +quickly. Echoes of his boots fell from the upper stairs and met +the ascending susurrus of a silk skirt.</p> + +<p>The lovers met. There was an interchange of ordinary +greetings: from the Duke, a comment on the weather; from Zuleika, +a hope that he was well again--they had been so sorry to lose him +last night. Then came a pause. The landlady's daughter was +clearing away the breakfast-things. Zuleika glanced +comprehensively at the room, and the Duke gazed at the hearthrug. +The landlady's daughter clattered out with her freight. They were +alone.</p> + +<p>"How pretty!" said Zuleika. She was looking at his star of the +Garter, which sparkled from a litter of books and papers on a +small side-table.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he answered. "It is pretty, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Awfully pretty!" she rejoined.</p> + +<p>This dialogue led them to another hollow pause. The Duke's +heart beat violently within him. Why had he not asked her to take +the star and keep it as a gift? Too late now! Why could he not +throw himself at her feet? Here were two beings, lovers of each +other, with none by. And yet . . .</p> + +<p>She was examining a water-colour on the wall, seemed to be +absorbed by it. He watched her. She was even lovelier than he had +remembered; or rather her loveliness had been, in some subtle +way, transmuted. Something had given to her a graver, nobler +beauty. Last night's nymph had become the Madonna of this +morning. Despite her dress, which was of a tremendous tartan, she +diffused the pale authentic radiance of a spirituality most high, +most simple. The Duke wondered where lay the change in her. He +could not understand. Suddenly she turned to him, and he +understood. No longer the black pearl and the pink, but two white +pearls! . . . He thrilled to his heart's core.</p> + +<p>"I hope," said Zuleika, "you aren't awfully vexed with me for +coming like this?"</p> + +<p>"Not at all," said the Duke. "I am delighted to see you." How +inadequate the words sounded, how formal and stupid!</p> + +<p>"The fact is," she continued, "I don't know a soul in Oxford. +And I thought perhaps you'd give me luncheon, and take me to see +the boat-races. Will you?"</p> + +<p>"I shall be charmed," he said, pulling the bell-rope. Poor +fool! he attributed the shade of disappointment on Zuleika's face +to the coldness of his tone. He would dispel that shade. He would +avow himself. He would leave her no longer in this false +position. So soon as he had told them about the meal, he would +proclaim his passion.</p> + +<p>The bell was answered by the landlady's daughter.</p> + +<p>"Miss Dobson will stay to luncheon," said the Duke. The girl +withdrew. He wished he could have asked her not to.</p> + +<p>He steeled himself. "Miss Dobson," he said, "I wish to +apologise to you."</p> + +<p>Zuleika looked at him eagerly. "You can't give me luncheon? +You've got something better to do?"</p> + +<p>"No. I wish to ask you to forgive me for my behaviour last +night."</p> + +<p>"There is nothing to forgive."</p> + +<p>"There is. My manners were vile. I know well what happened. +Though you, too, cannot have forgotten, I won't spare myself the +recital. You were my hostess, and I ignored you. Magnanimous, you +paid me the prettiest compliment woman ever paid to man, and I +insulted you. I left the house in order that I might not see you +again. To the doorsteps down which he should have kicked me, your +grandfather followed me with words of kindliest courtesy. If he +had sped me with a kick so skilful that my skull had been +shattered on the kerb, neither would he have outstepped those +bounds set to the conduct of English gentlemen, nor would you +have garnered more than a trifle on account of your proper +reckoning. I do not say that you are the first person whom I have +wantonly injured. But it is a fact that I, in whom pride has ever +been the topmost quality, have never expressed sorrow to any one +for anything. Thus, I might urge that my present abjectness must +be intolerably painful to me, and should incline you to forgive. +But such an argument were specious merely. I will be quite frank +with you. I will confess to you that, in this humbling of myself +before you, I take a pleasure as passionate as it is strange. A +confusion of feelings? Yet you, with a woman's instinct, will +have already caught the clue to it. It needs no mirror to assure +me that the clue is here for you, in my eyes. It needs no +dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the +windows of the soul. And I know that from two open windows my +soul has been leaning and signalling to you, in a code far more +definitive and swifter than words of mine, that I love you."</p> + +<p>Zuleika, listening to him, had grown gradually paler and +paler. She had raised her hands and cowered as though he were +about to strike her. And then, as he pronounced the last three +words, she had clasped her hands to her face and with a wild sob +darted away from him. She was leaning now against the window, her +head bowed and her shoulders quivering.</p> + +<p>The Duke came softly behind her. "Why should you cry? Why +should you turn away from me? Did I frighten you with the +suddenness of my words? I am not versed in the tricks of wooing. +I should have been more patient. But I love you so much that I +could hardly have waited. A secret hope that you loved me too +emboldened me, compelled me. You DO love me. I know it. And, +knowing it, I do but ask you to give yourself to me, to be my +wife. Why should you cry? Why should you shrink from me? Dear, if +there were anything . . . any secret . . . if you had ever loved +and been deceived, do you think I should honour you the less +deeply, should not cherish you the more tenderly? Enough for me, +that you are mine. Do you think I should ever reproach you for +anything that may have--"</p> + +<p>Zuleika turned on him. "How dare you?" she gasped. "How dare +you speak to me like that?"</p> + +<p>The Duke reeled back. Horror had come into his eyes. "You do +not love me!" he cried.</p> + +<p>"LOVE you?" she retorted. "YOU?"</p> + +<p>"You no longer love me. Why? Why?"</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"You loved me. Don't trifle with me. You came to me loving me +with all your heart."</p> + +<p>"How do you know?"</p> + +<p>"Look in the glass." She went at his bidding. He followed her. +"You see them?" he said, after a long pause. Zuleika nodded. The +two pearls quivered to her nod.</p> + +<p>"They were white when you came to me," he sighed. "They were +white because you loved me. From them it was that I knew you +loved me even as I loved you. But their old colours have come +back to them. That is how I know that your love for me is +dead."</p> + +<p>Zuleika stood gazing pensively, twitching the two pearls +between her fingers. Tears gathered in her eyes. She met the +reflection of her lover's eyes, and her tears brimmed over. She +buried her face in her hands, and sobbed like a child.</p> + +<p>Like a child's, her sobbing ceased quite suddenly. She groped +for her handkerchief, angrily dried her eyes, and straightened +and smoothed herself.</p> + +<p>"Now I'm going," she said.</p> + +<p>"You came here of your own accord, because you loved me," said +the Duke. "And you shall not go till you have told me why you +have left off loving me."</p> + +<p>"How did you know I loved you?" she asked after a pause. "How +did you know I hadn't simply put on another pair of +ear-rings?"</p> + +<p>The Duke, with a melancholy laugh, drew the two studs from his +waistcoat-pocket. "These are the studs I wore last night," he +said.</p> + +<p>Zuleika gazed at them. "I see," she said; then, looking up, +"When did they become like that?"</p> + +<p>"It was when you left the dining-room that I saw the change in +them."</p> + +<p>"How strange! It was when I went into the drawing-room that I +noticed mine. I was looking in the glass, and"-- She started. +"Then you were in love with me last night?"</p> + +<p>"I began to be in love with you from the moment I saw +you."</p> + +<p>"Then how could you have behaved as you did?"</p> + +<p>"Because I was a pedant. I tried to ignore you, as pedants +always do try to ignore any fact they cannot fit into their pet +system. The basis of my pet system was celibacy. I don't mean the +mere state of being a bachelor. I mean celibacy of the +soul--egoism, in fact. You have converted me from that. I am now +a confirmed tuist."</p> + +<p>"How dared you insult me?" she cried, with a stamp of her +foot. "How dared you make a fool of me before those people? Oh, +it is too infamous!"</p> + +<p>"I have already asked you to forgive me for that. You said +there was nothing to forgive."</p> + +<p>"I didn't dream that you were in love with me."</p> + +<p>"What difference can that make?"</p> + +<p>"All the difference! All the difference in life!"</p> + +<p>"Sit down! You bewilder me," said the Duke. "Explain +yourself!" he commanded.</p> + +<p>"Isn't that rather much for a man to ask of a woman?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I have no experience of women. In the abstract, +it seems to me that every man has a right to some explanation +from the woman who has ruined his life."</p> + +<p>"You are frightfully sorry for yourself," said Zuleika, with a +bitter laugh. "Of course it doesn't occur to you that _I_ am at +all to be pitied. No! you are blind with selfishness. You love +me--I don't love you: that is all you can realise. Probably you +think you are the first man who has ever fallen on such a +plight."</p> + +<p>Said the Duke, bowing over a deprecatory hand, "If there were +to pass my window one tithe of them whose hearts have been lost +to Miss Dobson, I should win no solace from that interminable +parade."</p> + +<p>Zuleika blushed. "Yet," she said more gently, "be sure they +would all be not a little envious of YOU! Not one of them ever +touched the surface of my heart. You stirred my heart to its very +depths. Yes, you made me love you madly. The pearls told you no +lie. You were my idol--the one thing in the wide world to me. You +were so different from any man I had ever seen except in dreams. +You did not make a fool of yourself. I admired you. I respected +you. I was all afire with adoration of you. And now," she passed +her hand across her eyes, "now it is all over. The idol has come +sliding down its pedestal to fawn and grovel with all the other +infatuates in the dust about my feet."</p> + +<p>The Duke looked thoughtfully at her. "I thought," he said, +"that you revelled in your power over men's hearts. I had always +heard that you lived for admiration."</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Zuleika, "of course I like being admired. Oh yes, I +like all that very much indeed. In a way, I suppose, I'm even +pleased that YOU admire me. But oh, what a little miserable +pleasure that is in comparison with the rapture I have forfeited! +I had never known the rapture of being in love. I had longed for +it, but I had never guessed how wonderfully wonderful it was. It +came to me. I shuddered and wavered like a fountain in the wind. +I was more helpless and flew lightlier than a shred of +thistledown among the stars. All night long, I could not sleep +for love of you; nor had I any desire of sleep, save that it +might take me to you in a dream. I remember nothing that happened +to me this morning before I found myself at your door."</p> + +<p>"Why did you ring the bell? Why didn't you walk away?"</p> + +<p>"Why? I had come to see you, to be near you, to be WITH +you."</p> + +<p>"To force yourself on me."</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"You know the meaning of the term 'effective occupation'? +Having marched in, how could you have held your position, +unless"--</p> + +<p>"Oh, a man doesn't necessarily drive a woman away because he +isn't in love with her."</p> + +<p>"Yet that was what you thought I had done to you last +night."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but I didn't suppose you would take the trouble to do it +again. And if you had, I should have only loved you the more. I +thought you would most likely be rather amused, rather touched, +by my importunity. I thought you would take a listless advantage, +make a plaything of me --the diversion of a few idle hours in +summer, and then, when you had tired of me, would cast me aside, +forget me, break my heart. I desired nothing better than that. +That is what I must have been vaguely hoping for. But I had no +definite scheme. I wanted to be with you and I came to you. It +seems years ago, now! How my heart beat as I waited on the +doorstep! 'Is his Grace at home?' 'I don't know. I'll inquire. +What name shall I say?' I saw in the girl's eyes that she, too, +loved you. Have YOU seen that?"</p> + +<p>"I have never looked at her," said the Duke.</p> + +<p>"No wonder, then, that she loves you," sighed Zuleika. "She +read my secret at a glance. Women who love the same man have a +kind of bitter freemasonry. We resented each other. She envied me +my beauty, my dress. I envied the little fool her privilege of +being always near to you. Loving you, I could conceive no life +sweeter than hers--to be always near you; to black your boots, +carry up your coals, scrub your doorstep; always to be working +for you, hard and humbly and without thanks. If you had refused +to see me, I would have bribed that girl with all my jewels to +cede me her position."</p> + +<p>The Duke made a step towards her. "You would do it still," he +said in a low voice.</p> + +<p>Zuleika raised her eyebrows. "I would not offer her one +garnet," she said, "now."</p> + +<p>"You SHALL love me again," he cried. "I will force you to. You +said just now that you had ceased to love me because I was just +like other men. I am not. My heart is no tablet of mere wax, from +which an instant's heat can dissolve whatever impress it may +bear, leaving it blank and soft for another impress, and another, +and another. My heart is a bright hard gem, proof against any +die. Came Cupid, with one of his arrow-points for graver, and +what he cut on the gem's surface never can be effaced. There, +deeply and forever, your image is intagliated. No years, nor +fires, nor cataclysm of total Nature, can efface from that great +gem your image."</p> + +<p>"My dear Duke," said Zuleika, "don't be so silly. Look at the +matter sensibly. I know that lovers don't try to regulate their +emotions according to logic; but they do, nevertheless, +unconsciously conform with some sort of logical system. I left +off loving you when I found that you loved me. There is the +premiss. Very well! Is it likely that I shall begin to love you +again because you can't leave off loving me?"</p> + +<p>The Duke groaned. There was a clatter of plates outside, and +she whom Zuleika had envied came to lay the table for +luncheon.</p> + +<p>A smile flickered across Zuleika's lips; and "Not one garnet!" +she murmured.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>V</h3> + +<p>Luncheon passed in almost unbroken silence. Both Zuleika and +the Duke were ravenously hungry, as people always are after the +stress of any great emotional crisis. Between them, they made +very short work of a cold chicken, a salad, a gooseberry-tart and +a Camembert. The Duke filled his glass again and again. The cold +classicism of his face had been routed by the new romantic +movement which had swept over his soul. He looked two or three +months older than when first I showed him to my reader.</p> + +<p>He drank his coffee at one draught, pushed back his chair, +threw away the cigarette he had just lit. "Listen!" he said.</p> + +<p>Zuleika folded her hands on her lap.</p> + +<p>"You do not love me. I accept as final your hint that you +never will love me. I need not say--could not, indeed, ever +say--how deeply, deeply you have pained me. As lover, I am +rejected. But that rejection," he continued, striking the table, +"is no stopper to my suit. It does but drive me to the use of +arguments. My pride shrinks from them. Love, however, is greater +than pride; and I, John, Albert, Edward, Claude, Orde, Angus, +Tankerton,* Tanville-Tankerton,** fourteenth Duke of Dorset, +Marquis of Dorset, Earl of Grove, Earl of Chastermaine, Viscount +Brewsby, Baron Grove, Baron Petstrap, and Baron Wolock, in the +Peerage of England, offer you my hand. Do not interrupt me. Do +not toss your head. Consider well what I am saying. Weigh the +advantages you would gain by acceptance of my hand. Indeed, they +are manifold and tremendous. They are also obvious: do not shut +your eyes to them. You, Miss Dobson, what are you? A conjurer, +and a vagrant; without means, save such as you can earn by the +sleight of your hand; without position; without a home; all +unguarded but by your own self- respect. That you follow an +honourable calling, I do not for one moment deny. I do, however, +ask you to consider how great are its perils and hardships, its +fatigues and inconveniences. From all these evils I offer you +instant refuge. I offer you, Miss Dobson, a refuge more glorious +and more augustly gilded than you, in your airiest flights of +fancy, can ever have hoped for or imagined. I own about 340,000 +acres. My town-residence is in St. James's Square. Tankerton, of +which you may have seen photographs, is the chief of my country- +seats. It is a Tudor house, set on the ridge of a valley. The +valley, its park, is halved by a stream so narrow that the deer +leap across. The gardens are estraded upon the slope. Round the +house runs a wide paven terrace. There are always two or three +peacocks trailing their sheathed feathers along the balustrade, +and stepping how stiffly! as though they had just been +unharnessed from Juno's chariot. Two flights of shallow steps +lead down to the flowers and fountains. Oh, the gardens are +wonderful. There is a Jacobean garden of white roses. Between the +ends of two pleached alleys, under a dome of branches, is a +little lake, with a Triton of black marble, and with +water-lilies. Hither and thither under the archipelago of +water-lilies, dart gold- fish--tongues of flame in the dark +water. There is also a long strait alley of clipped yew. It ends +in an alcove for a pagoda of painted porcelain which the Prince +Regent--peace be to his ashes!--presented to my +great-grandfather. There are many twisting paths, and sudden +aspects, and devious, fantastic arbours. Are you fond of horses? +In my stables of pine-wood and plated-silver seventy are +installed. Not all of them together could vie in power with one +of the meanest of my motor-cars."</p> + +<p>*Pronounced as Tacton.</p> + +<p>**Pronounced as Tavvle-Tacton.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I never go in motors," said Zuleika. "They make one look +like nothing on earth, and like everybody else."</p> + +<p>"I myself," said the Duke, "use them little for that very +reason. Are you interested in farming? At Tankerton there is a +model farm which would at any rate amuse you, with its heifers +and hens and pigs that are like so many big new toys. There is a +tiny dairy, which is called 'Her Grace's.' You could make, +therein, real butter with your own hands, and round it into +little pats, and press every pat with a different device. The +boudoir that would be yours is a blue room. Four Watteaus hang in +it. In the dining-hall hang portraits of my forefathers--in +petto, your forefathers-in-law--by many masters. Are you fond of +peasants? My tenantry are delightful creatures, and there is not +one of them who remembers the bringing of the news of the Battle +of Waterloo. When a new Duchess is brought to Tankerton, the +oldest elm in the park must be felled. That is one of many +strange old customs. As she is driven through the village, the +children of the tenantry must strew the road with daisies. The +bridal chamber must be lighted with as many candles as years have +elapsed since the creation of the Dukedom. If you came into it, +there would be"--and the youth, closing his eyes, made a rapid +calculation--"exactly three hundred and eighty-eight candles. On +the eve of the death of a Duke of Dorset, two black owls come and +perch on the battlements. They remain there through the night, +hooting. At dawn they fly away, none knows whither. On the eve of +the death of any other Tanville-Tankerton, comes (no matter what +be the time of year) a cuckoo. It stays for an hour, cooing, then +flies away, none knows whither. Whenever this portent occurs, my +steward telegraphs to me, that I, as head of the family, be not +unsteeled against the shock of a bereavement, and that my +authority be sooner given for the unsealing and garnishing of the +family-vault. Not every forefather of mine rests quiet beneath +his escutcheoned marble. There are they who revisit, in their +wrath or their remorse, the places wherein erst they suffered or +wrought evil. There is one who, every Halloween, flits into the +dining-hall, and hovers before the portrait which Hans Holbein +made of him, and flings his diaphanous grey form against the +canvas, hoping, maybe, to catch from it the fiery flesh-tints and +the solid limbs that were his, and so to be re-incarnate. He +flies against the painting, only to find himself t'other side of +the wall it hangs on. There are five ghosts permanently residing +in the right wing of the house, two in the left, and eleven in +the park. But all are quite noiseless and quite harmless. My +servants, when they meet them in the corridors or on the stairs, +stand aside to let them pass, thus paying them the respect due to +guests of mine; but not even the rawest housemaid ever screams or +flees at sight of them. I, their host, often waylay them and try +to commune with them; but always they glide past me. And how +gracefully they glide, these ghosts! It is a pleasure to watch +them. It is a lesson in deportment. May they never be laid! Of +all my household- pets, they are the dearest to me. I am Duke of +Strathsporran and Cairngorm, Marquis of Sorby, and Earl +Cairngorm, in the Peerage of Scotland. In the glens of the hills +about Strathsporran are many noble and nimble stags. But I have +never set foot in my house there, for it is carpeted throughout +with the tartan of my clan. You seem to like tartan. What tartan +is it you are wearing?"</p> + +<p>Zuleika looked down at her skirt. "I don't know," she said. "I +got it in Paris."</p> + +<p>"Well," said the Duke, "it is very ugly. The Dalbraith tartan +is harmonious in comparison, and has, at least, the excuse of +history. If you married me, you would have the right to wear it. +You would have many strange and fascinating rights. You would go +to Court. I admit that the Hanoverian Court is not much. Still, +it is better than nothing. At your presentation, moreover, you +would be given the entree. Is that nothing to you? You would be +driven to Court in my statecoach. It is swung so high that the +streetsters can hardly see its occupant. It is lined with +rose-silk; and on its panels, and on its hammer-cloth, my arms +are emblazoned--no one has ever been able to count the +quarterings. You would be wearing the family-jewels, reluctantly +surrendered to you by my aunt. They are many and marvellous, in +their antique settings. I don't want to brag. It humiliates me to +speak to you as I am speaking. But I am heart-set on you, and to +win you there is not a precious stone I would leave unturned. +Conceive a parure all of white stones--diamonds, white sapphires, +white topazes, tourmalines. Another, of rubies and amethysts, set +in gold filigree. Rings that once were poison-combs on Florentine +fingers. Red roses for your hair--every petal a hollowed ruby. +Amulets and ape-buckles, zones and fillets. Aye! know that you +would be weeping for wonder before you had seen a tithe of these +gauds. Know, too, Miss Dobson, that in the Peerage of France I am +Duc d'Etretat et de la Roche Guillaume. Louis Napoleon gave the +title to my father for not cutting him in the Bois. I have a +house in the Champs Elysees. There is a Swiss in its courtyard. +He stands six-foot- seven in his stockings, and the chasseurs are +hardly less tall than he. Wherever I go, there are two chefs in +my retinue. Both are masters in their art, and furiously jealous +of each other. When I compliment either of them on some dish, the +other challenges him. They fight with rapiers, next morning, in +the garden of whatever house I am occupying. I do not know +whether you are greedy? If so, it may interest you to learn that +I have a third chef, who makes only souffles, and an Italian +pastry-cook; to say nothing of a Spaniard for salads, an +Englishwoman for roasts, and an Abyssinian for coffee. You found +no trace of their handiwork in the meal you have just had with +me? No; for in Oxford it is a whim of mine--I may say a point of +honour--to lead the ordinary life of an undergraduate. What I eat +in this room is cooked by the heavy and unaided hand of Mrs. +Batch, my landlady. It is set before me by the unaided and--or +are you in error?--loving hand of her daughter. Other ministers +have I none here. I dispense with my private secretaries. I am +unattended by a single valet. So simple a way of life repels you? +You would never be called upon to share it. If you married me, I +should take my name off the books of my College. I propose that +we should spend our honeymoon at Baiae. I have a villa at Baiae. +It is there that I keep my grandfather's collection of majolica. +The sun shines there always. A long olive-grove secretes the +garden from the sea. When you walk in the garden, you know the +sea only in blue glimpses through the vacillating leaves. +White-gleaming from the bosky shade of this grove are several +goddesses. Do you care for Canova? I don't myself. If you do, +these figures will appeal to you: they are in his best manner. Do +you love the sea? This is not the only house of mine that looks +out on it. On the coast of County Clare --am I not Earl of +Enniskerry and Baron Shandrin in the Peerage of Ireland?--I have +an ancient castle. Sheer from a rock stands it, and the sea has +always raged up against its walls. Many ships lie wrecked under +that loud implacable sea. But mine is a brave strong castle. No +storm affrights it; and not the centuries, clustering houris, +with their caresses can seduce it from its hard austerity. I have +several titles which for the moment escape me. Baron Llffthwchl +am I, and . . . and . . . but you can find them for yourself in +Debrett. In me you behold a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, and +a Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. Look well at me! +I am Hereditary Comber of the Queen's Lap-Dogs. I am young. I am +handsome. My temper is sweet, and my character without blemish. +In fine, Miss Dobson, I am a most desirable parti."</p> + +<p>"But," said Zuleika, "I don't love you."</p> + +<p>The Duke stamped his foot. "I beg your pardon," he said +hastily. "I ought not to have done that. But--you seem to have +entirely missed the point of what I was saying."</p> + +<p>"No, I haven't," said Zuleika.</p> + +<p>"Then what," cried the Duke, standing over her, "what is your +reply?"</p> + +<p>Said Zuleika, looking up at him, "My reply is that I think you +are an awful snob."</p> + +<p>The Duke turned on his heel, and strode to the other end of +the room. There he stood for some moments, his back to +Zuleika.</p> + +<p>"I think," she resumed in a slow, meditative voice, "that you +are, with the possible exception of a Mr. Edelweiss, THE most +awful snob I have ever met."</p> + +<p>he Duke looked back over his shoulder. He gave Zuleika the +stinging reprimand of silence. She was sorry, and showed it in +her eyes. She felt she had gone too far. True, he was nothing to +her now. But she had loved him once. She could not forget +that.</p> + +<p>"Come!" she said. "Let us be good friends. Give me your hand!" +He came to her, slowly. "There!"</p> + +<p>The Duke withdrew his fingers before she unclasped them. That +twice- flung taunt rankled still. It was monstrous to have been +called a snob. A snob!--he, whose readiness to form what would +certainly be regarded as a shocking misalliance ought to have +stifled the charge, not merely vindicated him from it! He had +forgotten, in the blindness of his love, how shocking the +misalliance would be. Perhaps she, unloving, had not been so +forgetful? Perhaps her refusal had been made, generously, for his +own sake. Nay, rather for her own. Evidently, she had felt that +the high sphere from which he beckoned was no place for the likes +of her. Evidently, she feared she would pine away among those +strange splendours, never be acclimatised, always be unworthy. He +had thought to overwhelm her, and he had done his work too +thoroughly. Now he must try to lighten the load he had +imposed.</p> + +<p>Seating himself opposite to her, "You remember," he said, +"that there is a dairy at Tankerton?"</p> + +<p>"A dairy? Oh yes."</p> + +<p>"Do you remember what it is called?"</p> + +<p>Zuleika knit her brows.</p> + +<p>He helped her out. "It is called 'Her Grace's'."</p> + +<p>"Oh, of course!" said Zuleika.</p> + +<p>"Do you know WHY it is called so?"</p> + +<p>"Well, let's see . . . I know you told me."</p> + +<p>"Did I? I think not. I will tell you now . . . That cool +out-house dates from the middle of the eighteenth century. My +great-great- grandfather, when he was a very old man, married en +troisiemes noces a dairy-maid on the Tankerton estate. Meg +Speedwell was her name. He had seen her walking across a field, +not many months after the interment of his second Duchess, Maria, +that great and gifted lady. I know not whether it was that her +bonny mien fanned in him some embers of his youth, or that he was +loth to be outdone in gracious eccentricity by his crony the Duke +of Dewlap, who himself had just taken a bride from a dairy. (You +have read Meredith's account of that affair? No? You should.) +Whether it was veritable love or mere modishness that formed my +ancestor's resolve, presently the bells were ringing out, and the +oldest elm in the park was being felled, in Meg Speedwell's +honour, and the children were strewing daisies on which Meg +Speedwell trod, a proud young hoyden of a bride, with her head in +the air and her heart in the seventh heaven. The Duke had given +her already a horde of fine gifts; but these, he had said, were +nothing--trash in comparison with the gift that was to ensure for +her a perdurable felicity. After the wedding-breakfast, when all +the squires had ridden away on their cobs, and all the squires' +ladies in their coaches, the Duke led his bride forth from the +hall, leaning on her arm, till they came to a little edifice of +new white stone, very spick and span, with two lattice- windows +and a bright green door between. This he bade her enter. +A-flutter with excitement, she turned the handle. In a moment she +flounced back, red with shame and anger--flounced forth from the +fairest, whitest, dapperest dairy, wherein was all of the best +that the keenest dairy-maid might need. The Duke bade her dry her +eyes, for that it ill befitted a great lady to be weeping on her +wedding-day. 'As for gratitude,' he chuckled, 'zounds! that is a +wine all the better for the keeping.' Duchess Meg soon forgot +this unworthy wedding-gift, such was her rapture in the other, +the so august, appurtenances of her new life. What with her fine +silk gowns and farthingales, and her powder-closet, and the +canopied bed she slept in--a bed bigger far than the room she had +slept in with her sisters, and standing in a room far bigger than +her father's cottage; and what with Betty, her maid, who had +pinched and teased her at the village-school, but now waited on +her so meekly and trembled so fearfully at a scolding; and what +with the fine hot dishes that were set before her every day, and +the gallant speeches and glances of the fine young gentlemen whom +the Duke invited from London, Duchess Meg was quite the happiest +Duchess in all England. For a while, she was like a child in a +hay-rick. But anon, as the sheer delight of novelty wore away, +she began to take a more serious view of her position. She began +to realise her responsibilities. She was determined to do all +that a great lady ought to do. Twice every day she assumed the +vapours. She schooled herself in the mysteries of Ombre, of +Macao. She spent hours over the tambour-frame. She rode out on +horse-back, with a riding-master. She had a music-master to teach +her the spinet; a dancing-master, too, to teach her the Minuet +and the Triumph and the Gaudy. All these accomplishments she +found mighty hard. She was afraid of her horse. All the morning, +she dreaded the hour when it would be brought round from the +stables. She dreaded her dancing-lesson. Try as she would, she +could but stamp her feet flat on the parquet, as though it had +been the village-green. She dreaded her music-lesson. Her +fingers, disobedient to her ambition, clumsily thumped the keys +of the spinet, and by the notes of the score propped up before +her she was as cruelly perplexed as by the black and red pips of +the cards she conned at the gaming-table, or by the red and gold +threads that were always straying and snapping on her +tambour-frame. Still she persevered. Day in, day out, sullenly, +she worked hard to be a great lady. But skill came not to her, +and hope dwindled; only the dull effort remained. One +accomplishment she did master--to wit, the vapours: they became +for her a dreadful reality. She lost her appetite for the fine +hot dishes. All night long she lay awake, restless, tearful, +under the fine silk canopy, till dawn stared her into slumber. +She seldom scolded Betty. She who had been so lusty and so +blooming saw in her mirror that she was pale and thin now; and +the fine young gentlemen, seeing it too, paid more heed now to +their wine and their dice than to her. And always, when she met +him, the Duke smiled the same mocking smile. Duchess Meg was +pining slowly and surely away . . . One morning, in Spring-time, +she altogether vanished. Betty, bringing the cup of chocolate to +the bedside, found the bed empty. She raised the alarm among her +fellows. They searched high and low. Nowhere was their mistress. +The news was broken to their master, who, without comment, rose, +bade his man dress him, and presently walked out to the place +where he knew he would find her. And there, to be sure, she was, +churning, churning for dear life. Her sleeves were rolled above +her elbows, and her skirt was kilted high; and, as she looked +back over her shoulder and saw the Duke, there was the flush of +roses in her cheeks, and the light of a thousand thanks in her +eyes. 'Oh,' she cried, 'what a curtsey I would drop you, but that +to let go the handle were to spoil all!' And every morning, ever +after, she woke when the birds woke, rose when they rose, and +went singing through the dawn to the dairy, there to practise for +her pleasure that sweet and lowly handicraft which she had once +practised for her need. And every evening, with her milking-stool +under her arm, and her milk-pail in her hand, she went into the +field and called the cows to her, as she had been wont to do. To +those other, those so august, accomplishments she no more +pretended. She gave them the go-by. And all the old zest and +joyousness of her life came back to her. Soundlier than ever +slept she, and sweetlier dreamed, under the fine silk canopy, +till the birds called her to her work. Greater than ever was her +love of the fine furbelows that were hers to flaunt in, and +sharper her appetite for the fine hot dishes, and more +tempestuous her scolding of Betty, poor maid. She was more than +ever now the cynosure, the adored, of the fine young gentlemen. +And as for her husband, she looked up to him as the wisest, +kindest man in all the world."</p> + +<p>"And the fine young gentlemen," said Zuleika, "did she fall in +love with any of them?"</p> + +<p>"You forget," said the Duke coldly, "she was married to a +member of my family."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I beg your pardon. But tell me: did they ALL adore +her?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Every one of them, wildly, madly."</p> + +<p>"Ah," murmured Zuleika, with a smile of understanding. A +shadow crossed her face, "Even so," she said, with some pique, "I +don't suppose she had so very many adorers. She never went out +into the world."</p> + +<p>"Tankerton," said the Duke drily, "is a large house, and my +great- great-grandfather was the most hospitable of men. +However," he added, marvelling that she had again missed the +point so utterly, "my purpose was not to confront you with a past +rival in conquest, but to set at rest a fear which I had, I +think, roused in you by my somewhat full description of the high +majestic life to which you, as my bride, would be +translated."</p> + +<p>"A fear? What sort of a fear?"</p> + +<p>"That you would not breathe freely--that you would starve (if +I may use a somewhat fantastic figure) among those +strawberry-leaves. And so I told you the story of Meg Speedwell, +and how she lived happily ever after. Nay, hear me out! The blood +of Meg Speedwell's lord flows in my veins. I think I may boast +that I have inherited something of his sagacity. In any case, I +can profit by his example. Do not fear that I, if you were to wed +me, should demand a metamorphosis of your present self. I should +take you as you are, gladly. I should encourage you to be always +exactly as you are--a radiant, irresistible member of the upper +middle-class, with a certain freedom of manner acquired through a +life of peculiar liberty. Can you guess what would be my +principal wedding-gift to you? Meg Speedwell had her dairy. For +you, would be built another outhouse--a neat hall wherein you +would perform your conjuring-tricks, every evening except Sunday, +before me and my tenants and my servants, and before such of my +neighbours as might care to come. None would respect you the +less, seeing that I approved. Thus in you would the pleasant +history of Meg Speedwell repeat itself. You, practising for your +pleasure--nay, hear me out!--that sweet and lowly handicraft +which--"</p> + +<p>"I won't listen to another word!" cried Zuleika. "You are the +most insolent person I have ever met. I happen to come of a +particularly good family. I move in the best society. My manners +are absolutely perfect. If I found myself in the shoes of twenty +Duchesses simultaneously, I should know quite well how to behave. +As for the one pair you can offer me, I kick them away--so. I +kick them back at you. I tell you--"</p> + +<p>"Hush," said the Duke, "hush! You are over-excited. There will +be a crowd under my window. There, there! I am sorry. I +thought--"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know what you thought," said Zuleika, in a quieter +tone. "I am sure you meant well. I am sorry I lost my temper. +Only, you might have given me credit for meaning what I said: +that I would not marry you, because I did not love you. I daresay +there would be great advantages in being your Duchess. But the +fact is, I have no worldly wisdom. To me, marriage is a +sacrament. I could no more marry a man about whom I could not +make a fool of myself than I could marry one who made a fool of +himself about me. Else had I long ceased to be a spinster. Oh my +friend, do not imagine that I have not rejected, in my day, a +score of suitors quite as eligible as you."</p> + +<p>"As eligible? Who were they?" frowned the Duke.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Archduke this, and Grand Duke that, and His Serene +Highness the other. I have a wretched memory for names."</p> + +<p>"And my name, too, will soon escape you, perhaps?"</p> + +<p>"No. Oh, no. I shall always remember yours. You see, I was in +love with you. You deceived me into loving you . . ." She sighed. +"Oh, had you but been as strong as I thought you . . . Still, a +swain the more. That is something." She leaned forward, smiling +archly. "Those studs--show me them again."</p> + +<p>The Duke displayed them in the hollow of his hand. She touched +them lightly, reverently, as a tourist touches a sacred relic in +a church.</p> + +<p>At length, "Do give me them," she said. "I will keep them in a +little secret partition of my jewel-case." The Duke had closed +his fist. "Do!" she pleaded. "My other jewels--they have no +separate meanings for me. I never remember who gave me this one +or that. These would be quite different. I should always remember +their history . . . Do!"</p> + +<p>"Ask me for anything else," said the Duke. "These are the one +thing I could not part with--even to you, for whose sake they are +hallowed."</p> + +<p>Zuleika pouted. On the verge of persisting, she changed her +mind, and was silent.</p> + +<p>"Well!" she said abruptly, "how about these races? Are you +going to take me to see them?"</p> + +<p>"Races? What races?" murmured the Duke. "Oh yes. I had +forgotten. Do you really mean that you want to see them?"</p> + +<p>"Why, of course! They are great fun, aren't they?"</p> + +<p>"And you are in a mood for great fun? Well, there is plenty of +time. The Second Division is not rowed till half-past four."</p> + +<p>"The Second Division? Why not take me to the First?"</p> + +<p>"That is not rowed till six."</p> + +<p>"Isn't this rather an odd arrangement?"</p> + +<p>"No doubt. But Oxford never pretended to be strong in +mathematics."</p> + +<p>"Why, it's not yet three!" cried Zuleika, with a woebegone +stare at the clock. "What is to be done in the meantime?"</p> + +<p>"Am not I sufficiently diverting?" asked the Duke +bitterly.</p> + +<p>"Quite candidly, no. Have you any friend lodging with you +here?"</p> + +<p>"One, overhead. A man named Noaks."</p> + +<p>"A small man, with spectacles?"</p> + +<p>"Very small, with very large spectacles."</p> + +<p>"He was pointed out to me yesterday, as I was driving from the +Station . . . No, I don't think I want to meet him. What can you +have in common with him?"</p> + +<p>"One frailty, at least: he, too, Miss Dobson, loves you."</p> + +<p>"But of course he does. He saw me drive past. Very few of the +others," she said, rising and shaking herself, "have set eyes on +me. Do let us go out and look at the Colleges. I do need change +of scene. If you were a doctor, you would have prescribed that +long ago. It is very bad for me to be here, a kind of Cinderella, +moping over the ashes of my love for you. Where is your hat?"</p> + +<p>Looking round, she caught sight of herself in the glass. "Oh," +she cried, "what a fright I do look! I must never be seen like +this!"</p> + +<p>"You look very beautiful."</p> + +<p>"I don't. That is a lover's illusion. You yourself told me +that this tartan was perfectly hideous. There was no need to tell +me that. I came thus because I was coming to see you. I chose +this frock in the deliberate fear that you, if I made myself +presentable, might succumb at second sight of me. I would have +sent out for a sack and dressed myself in that, I would have +blacked my face all over with burnt cork, only I was afraid of +being mobbed on the way to you."</p> + +<p>"Even so, you would but have been mobbed for your incorrigible +beauty."</p> + +<p>"My beauty! How I hate it!" sighed Zuleika. "Still, here it +is, and I must needs make the best of it. Come! Take me to Judas. +I will change my things. Then I shall be fit for the races."</p> + +<p>As these two emerged, side by side, into the street, the +Emperors exchanged stony sidelong glances. For they saw the more +than normal pallor of the Duke's face, and something very like +desperation in his eyes. They saw the tragedy progressing to its +foreseen close. Unable to stay its course, they were grimly +fascinated now.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>VI</h3> + +<p>"The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft +interred with their bones." At any rate, the sinner has a better +chance than the saint of being hereafter remembered. We, in whom +original sin preponderates, find him easier to understand. He is +near to us, clear to us. The saint is remote, dim. A very great +saint may, of course, be remembered through some sheer force of +originality in him; and then the very mystery that involves him +for us makes him the harder to forget: he haunts us the more +surely because we shall never understand him. But the ordinary +saints grow faint to posterity; whilst quite ordinary sinners +pass vividly down the ages.</p> + +<p>Of the disciples of Jesus, which is he that is most often +remembered and cited by us? Not the disciple whom Jesus loved; +neither of the Boanerges, nor any other of them who so +steadfastly followed Him and served Him; but the disciple who +betrayed Him for thirty pieces of silver. Judas Iscariot it is +who outstands, overshadowing those other fishermen. And perhaps +it was by reason of this precedence that Christopher Whitrid, +Knight, in the reign of Henry VI., gave the name of Judas to the +College which he had founded. Or perhaps it was because he felt +that in a Christian community not even the meanest and basest of +men should be accounted beneath contempt, beyond redemption.</p> + +<p>At any rate, thus he named his foundation. And, though for +Oxford men the savour of the name itself has long evaporated +through its local connexion, many things show that for the +Founder himself it was no empty vocable. In a niche above the +gate stands a rudely carved statue of Judas, holding a money-bag +in his right hand. Among the original statutes of the College is +one by which the Bursar is enjoined to distribute in Passion Week +thirty pieces of silver among the needier scholars "for saike of +atonynge." The meadow adjoining the back of the College has been +called from time immemorial "the Potter's Field." And the name of +Salt Cellar is not less ancient and significant.</p> + +<p>Salt Cellar, that grey and green quadrangle visible from the +room assigned to Zuleika, is very beautiful, as I have said. So +tranquil is it as to seem remote not merely from the world, but +even from Oxford, so deeply is it hidden away in the core of +Oxford's heart. So tranquil is it, one would guess that nothing +had ever happened in it. For five centuries these walls have +stood, and during that time have beheld, one would say, no sight +less seemly than the good work of weeding, mowing, rolling, that +has made, at length, so exemplary the lawn. These cloisters that +grace the south and east sides--five centuries have passed +through them, leaving in them no echo, leaving on them no sign, +of all that the outer world, for good or evil, has been doing so +fiercely, so raucously.</p> + +<p>And yet, if you are versed in the antiquities of Oxford, you +know that this small, still quadrangle has played its part in the +rough-and- tumble of history, and has been the background of high +passions and strange fates. The sun-dial in its midst has told +the hours to more than one bygone King. Charles I. lay for twelve +nights in Judas; and it was here, in this very quadrangle, that +he heard from the lips of a breathless and blood-stained +messenger the news of Chalgrove Field. Sixty years later, James, +his son, came hither, black with threats, and from one of the +hind-windows of the Warden's house--maybe, from the very room +where now Zuleika was changing her frock--addressed the Fellows, +and presented to them the Papist by him chosen to be their +Warden, instead of the Protestant whom they had elected. They +were not of so stern a stuff as the Fellows of Magdalen, who, +despite His Majesty's menaces, had just rejected Bishop Farmer. +The Papist was elected, there and then, al fresco, without +dissent. Cannot one see them, these Fellows of Judas, huddled +together round the sun-dial, like so many sheep in a storm? The +King's wrath, according to a contemporary record, was so appeased +by their pliancy that he deigned to lie for two nights in Judas, +and at a grand refection in Hall "was gracious and merrie." +Perhaps it was in lingering gratitude for such patronage that +Judas remained so pious to his memory even after smug +Herrenhausen had been dumped down on us for ever. Certainly, of +all the Colleges none was more ardent than Judas for James +Stuart. Thither it was that young Sir Harry Esson led, under +cover of night, three- score recruits whom he had enlisted in the +surrounding villages. The cloisters of Salt Cellar were piled +with arms and stores; and on its grass--its sacred grass!--the +squad was incessantly drilled, against the good day when Ormond +should land his men in Devon. For a whole month Salt Cellar was a +secret camp. But somehow, at length--woe to "lost causes and +impossible loyalties"--Herrenhausen had wind of it; and one +night, when the soldiers of the white cockade lay snoring beneath +the stars, stealthily the white-faced Warden unbarred his +postern--that very postern through which now Zuleika had passed +on the way to her bedroom--and stealthily through it, one by one +on tip-toe, came the King's foot-guards. Not many shots rang out, +nor many swords clashed, in the night air, before the trick was +won for law and order. Most of the rebels were overpowered in +their sleep; and those who had time to snatch arms were too dazed +to make good resistance. Sir Harry Esson himself was the only one +who did not live to be hanged. He had sprung up alert, sword in +hand, at the first alarm, setting his back to the cloisters. +There he fought calmly, ferociously, till a bullet went through +his chest. "By God, this College is well-named!" were the words +he uttered as he fell forward and died.</p> + +<p>Comparatively tame was the scene now being enacted in this +place. The Duke, with bowed head, was pacing the path between the +lawn and the cloisters. Two other undergraduates stood watching +him, whispering to each other, under the archway that leads to +the Front Quadrangle. Presently, in a sheepish way, they +approached him. He halted and looked up.</p> + +<p>"I say," stammered the spokesman.</p> + +<p>"Well?" asked the Duke. Both youths were slightly acquainted +with him; but he was not used to being spoken to by those whom he +had not first addressed. Moreover, he was loth to be thus +disturbed in his sombre reverie. His manner was not +encouraging.</p> + +<p>"Isn't it a lovely day for the Eights?" faltered the +spokesman.</p> + +<p>"I conceive," the Duke said, "that you hold back some other +question."</p> + +<p>The spokesman smiled weakly. Nudged by the other, he muttered +"Ask him yourself!"</p> + +<p>The Duke diverted his gaze to the other, who, with an angry +look at the one, cleared his throat, and said "I was going to ask +if you thought Miss Dobson would come and have luncheon with me +to-morrow?"</p> + +<p>"A sister of mine will be there," explained the one, knowing +the Duke to be a precisian.</p> + +<p>"If you are acquainted with Miss Dobson, a direct invitation +should be sent to her," said the Duke. "If you are not--" The +aposiopesis was icy.</p> + +<p>"Well, you see," said the other of the two, "that is just the +difficulty. I AM acquainted with her. But is she acquainted with +ME? I met her at breakfast this morning, at the Warden's."</p> + +<p>"So did I," added the one.</p> + +<p>"But she--well," continued the other, "she didn't take much +notice of us. She seemed to be in a sort of dream."</p> + +<p>"Ah!" murmured the Duke, with melancholy interest.</p> + +<p>"The only time she opened her lips," said the other, "was when +she asked us whether we took tea or coffee."</p> + +<p>"She put hot milk in my tea," volunteered the one, "and upset +the cup over my hand, and smiled vaguely."</p> + +<p>"And smiled vaguely," sighed the Duke.</p> + +<p>"She left us long before the marmalade stage," said the +one.</p> + +<p>"Without a word," said the other.</p> + +<p>"Without a glance?" asked the Duke. It was testified by the +one and the other that there had been not so much as a +glance.</p> + +<p>"Doubtless," the disingenuous Duke said, "she had a headache . +. . Was she pale?"</p> + +<p>"Very pale," answered the one.</p> + +<p>"A healthy pallor," qualified the other, who was a constant +reader of novels.</p> + +<p>"Did she look," the Duke inquired, "as if she had spent a +sleepless night?"</p> + +<p>That was the impression made on both.</p> + +<p>"Yet she did not seem listless or unhappy?"</p> + +<p>No, they would not go so far as to say that.</p> + +<p>"Indeed, were her eyes of an almost unnatural brilliance?"</p> + +<p>"Quite unnatural," confessed the one.</p> + +<p>"Twin stars," interpolated the other.</p> + +<p>"Did she, in fact, seem to be consumed by some inward +rapture?"</p> + +<p>Yes, now they came to think of it, this was exactly how she +HAD seemed.</p> + +<p>It was sweet, it was bitter, for the Duke. "I remember," +Zuleika had said to him, "nothing that happened to me this +morning till I found myself at your door." It was bitter-sweet to +have that outline filled in by these artless pencils. No, it was +only bitter, to be, at his time of life, living in the past.</p> + +<p>"The purpose of your tattle?" he asked coldly.</p> + +<p>The two youths hurried to the point from which he had diverted +them. "When she went by with you just now," said the one, "she +evidently didn't know us from Adam."</p> + +<p>"And I had so hoped to ask her to luncheon," said the +other.</p> + +<p>"Well?"</p> + +<p>"Well, we wondered if you would re-introduce us. And then +perhaps . . ."</p> + +<p>There was a pause. The Duke was touched to kindness for these +fellow- lovers. He would fain preserve them from the anguish that +beset himself. So humanising is sorrow.</p> + +<p>"You are in love with Miss Dobson?" he asked.</p> + +<p>Both nodded.</p> + +<p>"Then," said he, "you will in time be thankful to me for not +affording you further traffic with that lady. To love and be +scorned--does Fate hold for us a greater inconvenience? You think +I beg the question? Let me tell you that I, too, love Miss +Dobson, and that she scorns me."</p> + +<p>To the implied question "What chance would there be for you?" +the reply was obvious.</p> + +<p>Amazed, abashed, the two youths turned on their heels.</p> + +<p>"Stay!" said the Duke. "Let me, in justice to myself, correct +an inference you may have drawn. It is not by reason of any +defect in myself, perceived or imagined, that Miss Dobson scorns +me. She scorns me simply because I love her. All who love her she +scorns. To see her is to love her. Therefore shut your eyes to +her. Strictly exclude her from your horizon. Ignore her. Will you +do this?"</p> + +<p>"We will try," said the one, after a pause.</p> + +<p>"Thank you very much," added the other.</p> + +<p>The Duke watched them out of sight. He wished he could take +the good advice he had given them . . . Suppose he did take it! +Suppose he went to the Bursar, obtained an exeat, fled straight +to London! What just humiliation for Zuleika to come down and +find her captive gone! He pictured her staring around the +quadrangle, ranging the cloisters, calling to him. He pictured +her rustling to the gate of the College, inquiring at the +porter's lodge. "His Grace, Miss, he passed through a minute ago. +He's going down this afternoon."</p> + +<p>Yet, even while his fancy luxuriated in this scheme, he well +knew that he would not accomplish anything of the kind--knew well +that he would wait here humbly, eagerly, even though Zuleika +lingered over her toilet till crack o' doom. He had no desire +that was not centred in her. Take away his love for her, and what +remained? Nothing--though only in the past twenty-four hours had +this love been added to him. Ah, why had he ever seen her? He +thought of his past, its cold splendour and insouciance. But he +knew that for him there was no returning. His boats were burnt. +The Cytherean babes had set their torches to that flotilla, and +it had blazed like match-wood. On the isle of the enchantress he +was stranded for ever. For ever stranded on the isle of an +enchantress who would have nothing to do with him! What, he +wondered, should be done in so piteous a quandary? There seemed +to be two courses. One was to pine slowly and painfully away. The +other . . .</p> + +<p>Academically, the Duke had often reasoned that a man for whom +life holds no chance of happiness cannot too quickly shake life +off. Now, of a sudden, there was for that theory a vivid +application.</p> + +<p>"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer" was not a point by +which he, "more an antique Roman than a Dane," was at all +troubled. Never had he given ear to that cackle which is called +Public Opinion. The judgment of his peers--this, he had often +told himself, was the sole arbitrage he could submit to; but +then, who was to be on the bench? Peerless, he was +irresponsible--the captain of his soul, the despot of his future. +No injunction but from himself would he bow to; and his own +injunctions--so little Danish was he--had always been peremptory +and lucid. Lucid and peremptory, now, the command he issued to +himself.</p> + +<p>"So sorry to have been so long," carolled a voice from above. +The Duke looked up. "I'm all but ready," said Zuleika at her +window.</p> + +<p>That brief apparition changed the colour of his resolve. He +realised that to die for love of this lady would be no mere +measure of precaution, or counsel of despair. It would be in +itself a passionate indulgence--a fiery rapture, not to be +foregone. What better could he ask than to die for his love? Poor +indeed seemed to him now the sacrament of marriage beside the +sacrament of death. Death was incomparably the greater, the finer +soul. Death was the one true bridal.</p> + +<p>He flung back his head, spread wide his arms, quickened his +pace almost to running speed. Ah, he would win his bride before +the setting of the sun. He knew not by what means he would win +her. Enough that even now, full-hearted, fleet-footed, he was on +his way to her, and that she heard him coming.</p> + +<p>When Zuleika, a vision in vaporous white, came out through the +postern, she wondered why he was walking at so remarkable a pace. +To him, wildly expressing in his movement the thought within him, +she appeared as his awful bride. With a cry of joy, he bounded +towards her, and would have caught her in his arms, had she not +stepped nimbly aside.</p> + +<p>"Forgive me!" he said, after a pause. "It was a mistake--an +idiotic mistake of identity. I thought you were . . ."</p> + +<p>Zuleika, rigid, asked "Have I many doubles?"</p> + +<p>"You know well that in all the world is none so blest as to be +like you. I can only say that I was over-wrought. I can only say +that it shall not occur again."</p> + +<p>She was very angry indeed. Of his penitence there could be no +doubt. But there are outrages for which no penitence can atone. +This seemed to be one of them. Her first impulse was to dismiss +the Duke forthwith and for ever. But she wanted to show herself +at the races. And she could not go alone. And except the Duke +there was no one to take her. True, there was the concert +to-night; and she could show herself there to advantage; but she +wanted ALL Oxford to see her--see her NOW.</p> + +<p>"I am forgiven?" he asked. In her, I am afraid, self-respect +outweighed charity. "I will try," she said merely, "to forget +what you have done." Motioning him to her side, she opened her +parasol, and signified her readiness to start.</p> + +<p>They passed together across the vast gravelled expanse of the +Front Quadrangle. In the porch of the College there were, as +usual, some chained-up dogs, patiently awaiting their masters. +Zuleika, of course, did not care for dogs. One has never known a +good man to whom dogs were not dear; but many of the best women +have no such fondness. You will find that the woman who is really +kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in +men. For the attractive woman, dogs are mere dumb and restless +brutes--possibly dangerous, certainly soulless. Yet will coquetry +teach her to caress any dog in the presence of a man enslaved by +her. Even Zuleika, it seems, was not above this rather obvious +device for awaking envy. Be sure she did not at all like the look +of the very big bulldog who was squatting outside the porter's +lodge. Perhaps, but for her present anger, she would not have +stooped endearingly down to him, as she did, cooing over him and +trying to pat his head. Alas, her pretty act was a failure. The +bulldog cowered away from her, horrifically grimacing. This was +strange. Like the majority of his breed, Corker (for such was his +name) had ever been wistful to be noticed by any one--effusively +grateful for every word or pat, an ever-ready wagger and nuzzler, +to none ineffable. No beggar, no burglar, had ever been rebuffed +by this catholic beast. But he drew the line at Zuleika.</p> + +<p>Seldom is even a fierce bulldog heard to growl. Yet Corker +growled at Zuleika.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>VII</h3> + +<p>The Duke did not try to break the stony silence in which +Zuleika walked. Her displeasure was a luxury to him, for it was +so soon to be dispelled. A little while, and she would be hating +herself for her pettiness. Here was he, going to die for her; and +here was she, blaming him for a breach of manners. Decidedly, the +slave had the whip-hand. He stole a sidelong look at her, and +could not repress a smile. His features quickly composed +themselves. The Triumph of Death must not be handled as a cheap +score. He wanted to die because he would thereby so poignantly +consummate his love, express it so completely, once and for all . +. . And she--who could say that she, knowing what he had done, +might not, illogically, come to love him? Perhaps she would +devote her life to mourning him. He saw her bending over his +tomb, in beautiful humble curves, under a starless sky, watering +the violets with her tears.</p> + +<p>Shades of Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel and other despicable +maunderers! He brushed them aside. He would be practical. The +point was, when and how to die? Time: the sooner the better. +Manner: . . less easy to determine. He must not die horribly, nor +without dignity. The manner of the Roman philosophers? But the +only kind of bath which an undergraduate can command is a +hip-bath. Stay! there was the river. Drowning (he had often +heard) was a rather pleasant sensation. And to the river he was +even now on his way.</p> + +<p>It troubled him that he could swim. Twice, indeed, from his +yacht, he had swum the Hellespont. And how about the animal +instinct of self- preservation, strong even in despair? No +matter! His soul's set purpose would subdue that. The law of +gravitation that brings one to the surface? There his very skill +in swimming would help him. He would swim under water, along the +river-bed, swim till he found weeds to cling to, weird strong +weeds that he would coil round him, exulting faintly . . .</p> + +<p>As they turned into Radcliffe Square, the Duke's ear caught +the sound of a far-distant gun. He started, and looked up at the +clock of St. Mary's. Half-past four! The boats had started.</p> + +<p>He had heard that whenever a woman was to blame for a +disappointment, the best way to avoid a scene was to inculpate +oneself. He did not wish Zuleika to store up yet more material +for penitence. And so "I am sorry," he said. "That gun--did you +hear it? It was the signal for the race. I shall never forgive +myself."</p> + +<p>"Then we shan't see the race at all?" cried Zuleika.</p> + +<p>"It will be over, alas, before we are near the river. All the +people will be coming back through the meadows."</p> + +<p>"Let us meet them."</p> + +<p>"Meet a torrent? Let us have tea in my rooms and go down +quietly for the other Division."</p> + +<p>"Let us go straight on."</p> + +<p>Through the square, across the High, down Grove Street, they +passed. The Duke looked up at the tower of Merton, "os oupot +authis alla nyn paunstaton." Strange that to-night it would still +be standing here, in all its sober and solid beauty--still be +gazing, over the roofs and chimneys, at the tower of Magdalen, +its rightful bride. Through untold centuries of the future it +would stand thus, gaze thus. He winced. Oxford walls have a way +of belittling us; and the Duke was loth to regard his doom as +trivial.</p> + +<p>Aye, by all minerals we are mocked. Vegetables, yearly +deciduous, are far more sympathetic. The lilac and laburnum, +making lovely now the railed pathway to Christ Church meadow, +were all a-swaying and a-nodding to the Duke as he passed by. +"Adieu, adieu, your Grace," they were whispering. "We are very +sorry for you--very sorry indeed. We never dared suppose you +would predecease us. We think your death a very great tragedy. +Adieu! Perhaps we shall meet in another world-- that is, if the +members of the animal kingdom have immortal souls, as we +have."</p> + +<p>The Duke was little versed in their language; yet, as he +passed between these gently garrulous blooms, he caught at least +the drift of their salutation, and smiled a vague but courteous +acknowledgment, to the right and the left alternately, creating a +very favourable impression.</p> + +<p>No doubt, the young elms lining the straight way to the barges +had seen him coming; but any whispers of their leaves were lost +in the murmur of the crowd returning from the race. Here, at +length, came the torrent of which the Duke had spoken; and +Zuleika's heart rose at it. Here was Oxford! From side to side +the avenue was filled with a dense procession of youths--youths +interspersed with maidens whose parasols were as flotsam and +jetsam on a seething current of straw hats. Zuleika neither +quickened nor slackened her advance. But brightlier and +brightlier shone her eyes.</p> + +<p>The vanguard of the procession was pausing now, swaying, +breaking at sight of her. She passed, imperial, through the way +cloven for her. All a-down the avenue, the throng parted as +though some great invisible comb were being drawn through it. The +few youths who had already seen Zuleika, and by whom her beauty +had been bruited throughout the University, were lost in a new +wonder, so incomparably fairer was she than the remembered +vision. And the rest hardly recognised her from the descriptions, +so incomparably fairer was the reality than the hope.</p> + +<p>She passed among them. None questioned the worthiness of her +escort. Could I give you better proof the awe in which our Duke +was held? Any man is glad to be seen escorting a very pretty +woman. He thinks it adds to his prestige. Whereas, in point of +fact, his fellow-men are saying merely "Who's that appalling +fellow with her?" or "Why does she go about with that ass +So-and-So?" Such cavil may in part be envy. But it is a fact that +no man, howsoever graced, can shine in juxtaposition to a very +pretty woman. The Duke himself cut a poor figure beside Zuleika. +Yet not one of all the undergraduates felt she could have made a +wiser choice.</p> + +<p>She swept among them. Her own intrinsic radiance was not all +that flashed from her. She was a moving reflector and refractor +of all the rays of all the eyes that mankind had turned on her. +Her mien told the story of her days. Bright eyes, light feet--she +trod erect from a vista whose glare was dazzling to all +beholders. She swept among them, a miracle, overwhelming, +breath-bereaving. Nothing at all like her had ever been seen in +Oxford.</p> + +<p>Mainly architectural, the beauties of Oxford. True, the place +is no longer one-sexed. There are the virguncules of Somerville +and Lady Margaret's Hall; but beauty and the lust for learning +have yet to be allied. There are the innumerable wives and +daughters around the Parks, running in and out of their little +red-brick villas; but the indignant shade of celibacy seems to +have called down on the dons a Nemesis which precludes them from +either marrying beauty or begetting it. (From the Warden's son, +that unhappy curate, Zuleika inherited no tittle of her charm. +Some of it, there is no doubt, she did inherit from the +circus-rider who was her mother.)</p> + +<p>But the casual feminine visitors? Well, the sisters and +cousins of an undergraduate seldom seem more passable to his +comrades than to himself. Altogether, the instinct of sex is not +pandered to in Oxford. It is not, however, as it may once have +been, dormant. The modern importation of samples of femininity +serves to keep it alert, though not to gratify it. A like result +is achieved by another modern development--photography. The +undergraduate may, and usually does, surround himself with +photographs of pretty ladies known to the public. A phantom +harem! Yet the houris have an effect on their sultan. Surrounded +both by plain women of flesh and blood and by beauteous women on +pasteboard, the undergraduate is the easiest victim of living +loveliness--is as a fire ever well and truly laid, amenable to a +spark. And if the spark be such a flaring torch as Zuleika?-- +marvel not, reader, at the conflagration.</p> + +<p>Not only was the whole throng of youths drawing asunder before +her: much of it, as she passed, was forming up in her wake. Thus, +with the confluence of two masses--one coming away from the +river, the other returning to it--chaos seethed around her and +the Duke before they were half-way along the avenue. Behind them, +and on either side of them, the people were crushed inextricably +together, swaying and surging this way and that. "Help!" cried +many a shrill feminine voice. "Don't push!" "Let me out!" "You +brute!" "Save me, save me!" Many ladies fainted, whilst their +escorts, supporting them and protecting them as best they could, +peered over the heads of their fellows for one glimpse of the +divine Miss Dobson. Yet for her and the Duke, in the midst of the +terrific compress, there was space enough. In front of them, as +by a miracle of deference, a way still cleared itself. They +reached the end of the avenue without a pause in their measured +progress. Nor even when they turned to the left, along the rather +narrow path beside the barges, was there any obstacle to their +advance. Passing evenly forward, they alone were cool, unhustled, +undishevelled.</p> + +<p>The Duke was so rapt in his private thoughts that he was +hardly conscious of the strange scene. And as for Zuleika, she, +as well she might be, was in the very best of good humours.</p> + +<p>"What a lot of house-boats!" she exclaimed. "Are you going to +take me on to one of them?"</p> + +<p>The Duke started. Already they were alongside the Judas barge. +"Here," he said, "is our goal."</p> + +<p>He stepped through the gate of the railings, out upon the +plank, and offered her his hand.</p> + +<p>She looked back. The young men in the vanguard were crushing +their shoulders against the row behind them, to stay the oncoming +host. She had half a mind to go back through the midst of them; +but she really did want her tea, and she followed the Duke on to +the barge, and under his auspices climbed the steps to the +roof.</p> + +<p>It looked very cool and gay, this roof, under its awning of +red and white stripes. Nests of red and white flowers depended +along either side of it. Zuleika moved to the side which +commanded a view of the bank. She leaned her arms on the +balustrade, and gazed down.</p> + +<p>The crowd stretched as far as she could see--a vista of faces +upturned to her. Suddenly it hove forward. Its vanguard was swept +irresistibly past the barge--swept by the desire of the rest to +see her at closer quarters. Such was the impetus that the vision +for each man was but a lightning-flash: he was whirled past, +struggling, almost before his brain took the message of his +eyes.</p> + +<p>Those who were Judas men made frantic efforts to board the +barge, trying to hurl themselves through the gate in the +railings; but they were swept vainly on.</p> + +<p>Presently the torrent began to slacken, became a mere river, a +mere procession of youths staring up rather shyly.</p> + +<p>Before the last stragglers had marched by, Zuleika moved away +to the other side of the roof, and, after a glance at the sunlit +river, sank into one of the wicker chairs, and asked the Duke to +look less disagreeable and to give her some tea.</p> + +<p>Among others hovering near the little buffet were the two +youths whose parley with the Duke I have recorded.</p> + +<p>Zuleika was aware of the special persistence of their gaze. +When the Duke came back with her cup, she asked him who they +were. He replied, truthfully enough, that their names were +unknown to him.</p> + +<p>"Then," she said, "ask them their names, and introduce them to +me."</p> + +<p>"No," said the Duke, sinking into the chair beside her. "That +I shall not do. I am your victim: not your pander. Those two men +stand on the threshold of a possibly useful and agreeable career. +I am not going to trip them up for you."</p> + +<p>"I am not sure," said Zuleika, "that you are very polite. +Certainly you are foolish. It is natural for boys to fall in +love. If these two are in love with me, why not let them talk to +me? It were an experience on which they would always look back +with romantic pleasure. They may never see me again. Why grudge +them this little thing?" She sipped her tea. "As for tripping +them up on a threshold-- that is all nonsense. What harm has +unrequited love ever done to anybody?" She laughed. "Look at ME! +When I came to your rooms this morning, thinking I loved in vain, +did I seem one jot the worse for it? Did I look different?"</p> + +<p>"You looked, I am bound to say, nobler, more spiritual."</p> + +<p>"More spiritual?" she exclaimed. "Do you mean I looked tired +or ill?"</p> + +<p>"No, you seemed quite fresh. But then, you are singular. You +are no criterion."</p> + +<p>"You mean you can't judge those two young men by me? Well, I +am only a woman, of course. I have heard of women, no longer +young, wasting away because no man loved them. I have often heard +of a young woman fretting because some particular young man +didn't love her. But I never heard of her wasting away. Certainly +a young man doesn't waste away for love of some particular young +woman. He very soon makes love to some other one. If his be an +ardent nature, the quicker his transition. All the most ardent of +my past adorers have married. Will you put my cup down, +please?"</p> + +<p>"Past?" echoed the Duke, as he placed her cup on the floor. +"Have any of your lovers ceased to love you?"</p> + +<p>"Ah no, no; not in retrospect. I remain their ideal, and all +that, of course. They cherish the thought of me. They see the +world in terms of me. But I am an inspiration, not an obsession; +a glow, not a blight."</p> + +<p>"You don't believe in the love that corrodes, the love that +ruins?"</p> + +<p>"No," laughed Zuleika.</p> + +<p>"You have never dipped into the Greek pastoral poets, nor +sampled the Elizabethan sonneteers?"</p> + +<p>"No, never. You will think me lamentably crude: my experience +of life has been drawn from life itself."</p> + +<p>"Yet often you talk as though you had read rather much. Your +way of speech has what is called 'the literary flavour'."</p> + +<p>"Ah, that is an unfortunate trick which I caught from a +writer, a Mr. Beerbohm, who once sat next to me at dinner +somewhere. I can't break myself of it. I assure you I hardly ever +open a book. Of life, though, my experience has been very wide. +Brief? But I suppose the soul of man during the past two or three +years has been much as it was in the reign of Queen Elizabeth and +of--whoever it was that reigned over the Greek pastures. And I +daresay the modern poets are making the same old silly +distortions. But forgive me," she added gently, "perhaps you +yourself are a poet?"</p> + +<p>"Only since yesterday," answered the Duke (not less unfairly +to himself than to Roger Newdigate and Thomas Gaisford). And he +felt he was especially a dramatic poet. All the while that she +had been sitting by him here, talking so glibly, looking so +straight into his eyes, flashing at him so many pretty gestures, +it was the sense of tragic irony that prevailed in him--that +sense which had stirred in him, and been repressed, on the way +from Judas. He knew that she was making her effect consciously +for the other young men by whom the roof of the barge was now +thronged. Him alone she seemed to observe. By her manner, she +might have seemed to be making love to him. He envied the men she +was so deliberately making envious--the men whom, in her +undertone to him, she was really addressing. But he did take +comfort in the irony. Though she used him as a stalking-horse, +he, after all, was playing with her as a cat plays with a mouse. +While she chattered on, without an inkling that he was no +ordinary lover, and coaxing him to present two quite ordinary +young men to her, he held over her the revelation that he for +love of her was about to die.</p> + +<p>And, while he drank in the radiance of her beauty, he heard +her chattering on. "So you see," she was saying, "it couldn't do +those young men any harm. Suppose unrequited love IS anguish: +isn't the discipline wholesome? Suppose I AM a sort of furnace: +shan't I purge, refine, temper? Those two boys are but scorched +from here. That is horrid; and what good will it do them?" She +laid a hand on his arm. "Cast them into the furnace for their own +sake, dear Duke! Or cast one of them, or," she added, glancing +round at the throng, "any one of these others!"</p> + +<p>"For their own sake?" he echoed, withdrawing his arm. "If you +were not, as the whole world knows you to be, perfectly +respectable, there might be something in what you say. But as it +is, you can but be an engine for mischief; and your sophistries +leave me unmoved. I shall certainly keep you to myself."</p> + +<p>"I hate you," said Zuleika, with an ugly petulance that +crowned the irony.</p> + +<p>"So long as I live," uttered the Duke, in a level voice, "you +will address no man but me."</p> + +<p>"If your prophecy is to be fulfilled," laughed Zuleika, rising +from her chair, "your last moment is at hand."</p> + +<p>"It is," he answered, rising too.</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" she asked, awed by something in his +tone.</p> + +<p>"I mean what I say: that my last moment is at hand." He +withdrew his eyes from hers, and, leaning his elbows on the +balustrade, gazed thoughtfully at the river. "When I am dead," he +added, over his shoulder, "you will find these fellows rather coy +of your advances."</p> + +<p>For the first time since his avowal of his love for her, +Zuleika found herself genuinely interested in him. A suspicion of +his meaning had flashed through her soul. --But no! surely he +could not mean THAT! It must have been a metaphor merely. And +yet, something in his eyes . . . She leaned beside him. Her +shoulder touched his. She gazed questioningly at him. He did not +turn his face to her. He gazed at the sunlit river.</p> + +<p>The Judas Eight had just embarked for their voyage to the +starting- point. Standing on the edge of the raft that makes a +floating platform for the barge, William, the hoary bargee, was +pushing them off with his boat-hook, wishing them luck with +deferential familiarity. The raft was thronged with Old +Judasians--mostly clergymen--who were shouting hearty hortations, +and evidently trying not to appear so old as they felt--or +rather, not to appear so startlingly old as their contemporaries +looked to them. It occurred to the Duke as a strange thing, and a +thing to be glad of, that he, in this world, would never be an +Old Judasian. Zuleika's shoulder pressed his. He thrilled not at +all. To all intents, he was dead already.</p> + +<p>The enormous eight young men in the thread-like skiff--the +skiff that would scarce have seemed an adequate vehicle for the +tiny "cox" who sat facing them--were staring up at Zuleika with +that uniformity of impulse which, in another direction, had +enabled them to bump a boat on two of the previous "nights." If +to-night they bumped the next boat, Univ., then would Judas be +three places "up" on the river; and to-morrow Judas would have a +Bump Supper. Furthermore, if Univ. were bumped to-night, Magdalen +might be bumped to-morrow. Then would Judas, for the first time +in history, be head of the river. Oh tremulous hope! Yet, for the +moment, these eight young men seemed to have forgotten the awful +responsibility that rested on their over-developed shoulders. +Their hearts, already strained by rowing, had been transfixed +this afternoon by Eros' darts. All of them had seen Zuleika as +she came down to the river; and now they sat gaping up at her, +fumbling with their oars. The tiny cox gaped too; but he it was +who first recalled duty. With piping adjurations he brought the +giants back to their senses. The boat moved away down stream, +with a fairly steady stroke.</p> + +<p>Not in a day can the traditions of Oxford be sent spinning. +From all the barges the usual punt-loads of young men were being +ferried across to the towing-path--young men naked of knee, armed +with rattles, post-horns, motor-hooters, gongs, and other +instruments of clangour. Though Zuleika filled their thoughts, +they hurried along the towing-path, as by custom, to the +starting-point.</p> + +<p>She, meanwhile, had not taken her eyes off the Duke's profile. +Nor had she dared, for fear of disappointment, to ask him just +what he had meant.</p> + +<p>"All these men," he repeated dreamily, "will be coy of your +advances." It seemed to him a good thing that his death, his +awful example, would disinfatuate his fellow alumni. He had never +been conscious of public spirit. He had lived for himself alone. +Love had come to him yesternight, and to-day had waked in him a +sympathy with mankind. It was a fine thing to be a saviour. It +was splendid to be human. He looked quickly round to her who had +wrought this change in him.</p> + +<p>But the loveliest face in all the world will not please you if +you see it suddenly, eye to eye, at a distance of half an inch +from your own. It was thus that the Duke saw Zuleika's: a +monstrous deliquium a-glare. Only for the fraction of an instant, +though. Recoiling, he beheld the loveliness that he knew--more +adorably vivid now in its look of eager questioning. And in his +every fibre he thrilled to her. Even so had she gazed at him last +night, this morning. Aye, now as then, her soul was full of him. +He had recaptured, not her love, but his power to please her. It +was enough. He bowed his head; and "Moriturus te saluto" were the +words formed silently by his lips. He was glad that his death +would be a public service to the University. But the salutary +lesson of what the newspapers would call his "rash act" was, +after all, only a side-issue. The great thing, the prospect that +flushed his cheek, was the consummation of his own love, for its +own sake, by his own death. And, as he met her gaze, the question +that had already flitted through his brain found a faltering +utterance; and "Shall you mourn me?" he asked her.</p> + +<p>But she would have no ellipses. "What are you going to do?" +she whispered.</p> + +<p>"Do you not know?"</p> + +<p>"Tell me."</p> + +<p>"Once and for all: you cannot love me?"</p> + +<p>Slowly she shook her head. The black pearl and the pink, +quivering, gave stress to her ultimatum. But the violet of her +eyes was all but hidden by the dilation of her pupils.</p> + +<p>"Then," whispered the Duke, "when I shall have died, deeming +life a vain thing without you, will the gods give you tears for +me? Miss Dobson, will your soul awaken? When I shall have sunk +for ever beneath these waters whose supposed purpose here this +afternoon is but that they be ploughed by the blades of these +young oarsmen, will there be struck from that flint, your heart, +some late and momentary spark of pity for me?"</p> + +<p>"Why of course, of COURSE!" babbled Zuleika, with clasped +hands and dazzling eyes. "But," she curbed herself, "it is--it +would--oh, you mustn't THINK of it! I couldn't allow it! I--I +should never forgive myself!"</p> + +<p>"In fact, you would mourn me always?"</p> + +<p>"Why yes! . . Y-es-always." What else could she say? But would +his answer be that he dared not condemn her to lifelong +torment?</p> + +<p>"Then," his answer was, "my joy in dying for you is made +perfect."</p> + +<p>Her muscles relaxed. Her breath escaped between her teeth. +"You are utterly resolved?" she asked. "Are you?"</p> + +<p>"Utterly."</p> + +<p>"Nothing I might say could change your purpose?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing."</p> + +<p>"No entreaty, howsoever piteous, could move you?"</p> + +<p>"None."</p> + +<p>Forthwith she urged, entreated, cajoled, commanded, with +infinite prettiness of ingenuity and of eloquence. Never was such +a cascade of dissuasion as hers. She only didn't say she could +love him. She never hinted that. Indeed, throughout her pleading +rang this recurrent motif: that he must live to take to himself +as mate some good, serious, clever woman who would be a not +unworthy mother of his children.</p> + +<p>She laid stress on his youth, his great position, his +brilliant attainments, the much he had already achieved, the +splendid possibilities of his future. Though of course she spoke +in undertones, not to be overheard by the throng on the barge, it +was almost as though his health were being floridly proposed at +some public banquet --say, at a Tenants' Dinner. Insomuch that, +when she ceased, the Duke half expected Jellings, his steward, to +bob up uttering, with lifted hands, a stentorian "For-or," and +all the company to take up the chant: "he's--a jolly good +fellow." His brief reply, on those occasions, seemed always to +indicate that, whatever else he might be, a jolly good fellow he +was not. But by Zuleika's eulogy he really was touched. "Thank +you--thank you," he gasped; and there were tears in his eyes. +Dear the thought that she so revered him, so wished him not to +die. But this was no more than a rush-light in the austere +radiance of his joy in dying for her.</p> + +<p>And the time was come. Now for the sacrament of his immersion +in infinity.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye," he said simply, and was about to swing himself on +to the ledge of the balustrade. Zuleika, divining his intention, +made way for him. Her bosom heaved quickly, quickly. All colour +had left her face; but her eyes shone as never before.</p> + +<p>Already his foot was on the ledge, when hark! the sound of a +distant gun. To Zuleika, with all the chords of her soul strung +to the utmost tensity, the effect was as if she herself had been +shot; and she clutched at the Duke's arm, like a frightened +child. He laughed. "It was the signal for the race," he said, and +laughed again, rather bitterly, at the crude and trivial +interruption of high matters.</p> + +<p>"The race?" She laughed hysterically.</p> + +<p>"Yes. 'They're off'." He mingled his laughter with hers, +gently seeking to disengage his arm. "And perhaps," he said, "I, +clinging to the weeds of the river's bed, shall see dimly the +boats and the oars pass over me, and shall be able to gurgle a +cheer for Judas."</p> + +<p>"Don't!" she shuddered, with a woman's notion that a jest +means levity. A tumult of thoughts surged in her, all confused. +She only knew that he must not die--not yet! A moment ago, his +death would have been beautiful. Not now! Her grip of his arm +tightened. Only by breaking her wrist could he have freed +himself. A moment ago, she had been in the seventh-heaven . . . +Men were supposed to have died for love of her. It had never been +proved. There had always been something--card-debts, ill-health, +what not--to account for the tragedy. No man, to the best of her +recollection, had ever hinted that he was going to die for her. +Never, assuredly, had she seen the deed done. And then came he, +the first man she had loved, going to die here, before her eyes, +because she no longer loved him. But she knew now that he must +not die--not yet!</p> + +<p>All around her was the hush that falls on Oxford when the +signal for the race has sounded. In the distance could be heard +faintly the noise of cheering--a little sing-song sound, drawing +nearer.</p> + +<p>Ah, how could she have thought of letting him die so soon? She +gazed into his face--the face she might never have seen again. +Even now, but for that gun-shot, the waters would have closed +over him, and his soul, maybe, have passed away. She had saved +him, thank heaven! She had him still with her.</p> + +<p>Gently, vainly, he still sought to unclasp her fingers from +his arm.</p> + +<p>"Not now!" she whispered. "Not yet!"</p> + +<p>And the noise of the cheering, and of the trumpeting and +rattling, as it drew near, was an accompaniment to her joy in +having saved her lover. She would keep him with her--for a while! +Let all be done in order. She would savour the full sweetness of +his sacrifice. Tomorrow--to-morrow, yes, let him have his heart's +desire of death. Not now! Not yet!</p> + +<p>"To-morrow," she whispered, "to-morrow, if you will. Not +yet!"</p> + +<p>The first boat came jerking past in mid-stream; and the +towing-path, with its serried throng of runners, was like a live +thing, keeping pace. As in a dream, Zuleika saw it. And the din +was in her ears. No heroine of Wagner had ever a louder +accompaniment than had ours to the surging soul within her +bosom.</p> + +<p>And the Duke, tightly held by her, vibrated as to a powerful +electric current. He let her cling to him, and her magnetism +range through him. Ah, it was good not to have died! Fool, he had +meant to drain off- hand, at one coarse draught, the delicate +wine of death. He would let his lips caress the brim of the +august goblet. He would dally with the aroma that was there.</p> + +<p>"So be it!" he cried into Zuleika's ear--cried loudly, for it +seemed as though all the Wagnerian orchestras of Europe, with the +Straussian ones thrown in, were here to clash in unison the full +volume of right music for the glory of the reprieve.</p> + +<p>The fact was that the Judas boat had just bumped Univ., +exactly opposite the Judas barge. The oarsmen in either boat sat +humped, panting, some of them rocking and writhing, after their +wholesome exercise. But there was not one of them whose eyes were +not upcast at Zuleika. And the vocalisation and instrumentation +of the dancers and stampers on the towing-path had by this time +ceased to mean aught of joy in the victors or of comfort for the +vanquished, and had resolved itself into a wild wordless hymn to +the glory of Miss Dobson. Behind her and all around her on the +roof of the barge, young Judasians were venting in like manner +their hearts through their lungs. She paid no heed. It was as if +she stood alone with her lover on some silent pinnacle of the +world. It was as if she were a little girl with a brand-new and +very expensive doll which had banished all the little other old +toys from her mind.</p> + +<p>She simply could not, in her naive rapture, take her eyes off +her companion. To the dancers and stampers of the towing-path, +many of whom were now being ferried back across the river, and to +the other youths on the roof of the barge, Zuleika's air of +absorption must have seemed a little strange. For already the +news that the Duke loved Zuleika, and that she loved him not, and +would stoop to no man who loved her, had spread like wild-fire +among the undergraduates. The two youths in whom the Duke had +deigned to confide had not held their peace. And the effect that +Zuleika had made as she came down to the river was intensified by +the knowledge that not the great paragon himself did she deem +worthy of her. The mere sight of her had captured young Oxford. +The news of her supernal haughtiness had riveted the chains.</p> + +<p>"Come!" said the Duke at length, staring around him with the +eyes of one awakened from a dream. "Come! I must take you back to +Judas."</p> + +<p>"But you won't leave me there?" pleaded Zuleika. "You will +stay to dinner? I am sure my grandfather would be delighted."</p> + +<p>"I am sure he would," said the Duke, as he piloted her down +the steps of the barge. "But alas, I have to dine at the Junta +to-night."</p> + +<p>"The Junta? What is that?"</p> + +<p>"A little dining-club. It meets every Tuesday."</p> + +<p>"But--you don't mean you are going to refuse me for that?"</p> + +<p>"To do so is misery. But I have no choice. I have asked a +guest."</p> + +<p>"Then ask another: ask me!" Zuleika's notions of Oxford life +were rather hazy. It was with difficulty that the Duke made her +realise that he could not--not even if, as she suggested, she +dressed herself up as a man--invite her to the Junta. She then +fell back on the impossibility that he would not dine with her +to-night, his last night in this world. She could not understand +that admirable fidelity to social engagements which is one of the +virtues implanted in the members of our aristocracy. Bohemian by +training and by career, she construed the Duke's refusal as +either a cruel slight to herself or an act of imbecility. The +thought of being parted from her for one moment was torture to +him; but "noblesse oblige," and it was quite impossible for him +to break an engagement merely because a more charming one offered +itself: he would as soon have cheated at cards.</p> + +<p>And so, as they went side by side up the avenue, in the mellow +light of the westering sun, preceded in their course, and +pursued, and surrounded, by the mob of hoarse infatuate youths, +Zuleika's face was as that of a little girl sulking. Vainly the +Duke reasoned with her. She could NOT see the point of view.</p> + +<p>With that sudden softening that comes to the face of an angry +woman who has hit on a good argument, she turned to him and asked +"How if I hadn't saved your life just now? Much you thought about +your guest when you were going to dive and die!"</p> + +<p>"I did not forget him," answered the Duke, smiling at her +casuistry. "Nor had I any scruple in disappointing him. Death +cancels all engagements."</p> + +<p>And Zuleika, worsted, resumed her sulking. But presently, as +they neared Judas, she relented. It was paltry to be cross with +him who had resolved to die for her and was going to die so on +the morrow. And after all, she would see him at the concert +to-night. They would sit together. And all to-morrow they would +be together, till the time came for parting. Hers was a naturally +sunny disposition. And the evening was such a lovely one, all +bathed in gold. She was ashamed of her ill-humour.</p> + +<p>"Forgive me," she said, touching his arm. "Forgive me for +being horrid." And forgiven she promptly was. "And promise you +will spend all to-morrow with me." And of course he promised.</p> + +<p>As they stood together on the steps of the Warden's +front-door, exalted above the level of the flushed and swaying +crowd that filled the whole length and breadth of Judas Street, +she implored him not to be late for the concert.</p> + +<p>"I am never late," he smiled.</p> + +<p>"Ah, you're so beautifully brought up!"</p> + +<p>The door was opened.</p> + +<p>"And--oh, you're beautiful besides!" she whispered; and waved +her hand to him as she vanished into the hall.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>VIII</h3> + +<p>A few minutes before half-past seven, the Duke, arrayed for +dinner, passed leisurely up the High. The arresting feature of +his costume was a mulberry-coloured coat, with brass buttons. +This, to any one versed in Oxford lore, betokened him a member of +the Junta. It is awful to think that a casual stranger might have +mistaken him for a footman. It does not do to think of such +things.</p> + +<p>The tradesmen, at the doors of their shops, bowed low as he +passed, rubbing their hands and smiling, hoping inwardly that +they took no liberty in sharing the cool rosy air of the evening +with his Grace. They noted that he wore in his shirt-front a +black pearl and a pink. "Daring, but becoming," they opined.</p> + +<p>The rooms of the Junta were over a stationer's shop, next door +but one to the Mitre. They were small rooms; but as the Junta had +now, besides the Duke, only two members, and as no member might +introduce more than one guest, there was ample space.</p> + +<p>The Duke had been elected in his second term. At that time +there were four members; but these were all leaving Oxford at the +end of the summer term, and there seemed to be in the ranks of +the Bullingdon and the Loder no one quite eligible for the Junta, +that holy of holies. Thus it was that the Duke inaugurated in +solitude his second year of membership. From time to time, he +proposed and seconded a few candidates, after "sounding" them as +to whether they were willing to join. But always, when election +evening--the last Tuesday of term-- drew near, he began to have +his doubts about these fellows. This one was "rowdy"; that one +was over-dressed; another did not ride quite straight to hounds; +in the pedigree of another a bar-sinister was more than +suspected. Election evening was always a rather melancholy time. +After dinner, when the two club servants had placed on the +mahogany the time-worn Candidates' Book and the ballot-box, and +had noiselessly withdrawn, the Duke, clearing his throat, read +aloud to himself "Mr. So-and-So, of Such-and-Such College, +proposed by the Duke of Dorset, seconded by the Duke of Dorset," +and, in every case, when he drew out the drawer of the +ballot-box, found it was a black-ball that he had dropped into +the urn. Thus it was that at the end of the summer term the +annual photographic "group" taken by Messrs. Hills and Saunders +was a presentment of the Duke alone.</p> + +<p>In the course of his third year he had become less exclusive. +Not because there seemed to be any one really worthy of the +Junta; but because the Junta, having thriven since the eighteenth +century, must not die. Suppose--one never knew--he were struck by +lightning, the Junta would be no more. So, not without +reluctance, but unanimously, he had elected The MacQuern, of +Balliol, and Sir John Marraby, of Brasenose.</p> + +<p>To-night, as he, a doomed man, went up into the familiar +rooms, he was wholly glad that he had thus relented. As yet, he +was spared the tragic knowledge that it would make no +difference.*</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>* The Junta has been reconstituted. But the apostolic line was +broken, the thread was snapped; the old magic is fled.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>The MacQuern and two other young men were already there.</p> + +<p>"Mr. President," said The MacQuern, "I present Mr. +Trent-Garby, of Christ Church."</p> + +<p>"The Junta is honoured," said the Duke, bowing.</p> + +<p>Such was the ritual of the club.</p> + +<p>The other young man, because his host, Sir John Marraby, was +not yet on the scene, had no locus standi, and, though a friend +of The MacQuern, and well known to the Duke, had to be +ignored.</p> + +<p>A moment later, Sir John arrived. "Mr. President," he said, "I +present Lord Sayes, of Magdalen."</p> + +<p>"The Junta is honoured," said the Duke, bowing.</p> + +<p>Both hosts and both guests, having been prominent in the +throng that vociferated around Zuleika an hour earlier, were +slightly abashed in the Duke's presence. He, however, had not +noticed any one in particular, and, even if he had, that fine +tradition of the club--"A member of the Junta can do no wrong; a +guest of the Junta cannot err"--would have prevented him from +showing his displeasure.</p> + +<p>A Herculean figure filled the doorway.</p> + +<p>"The Junta is honoured," said the Duke, bowing to his +guest.</p> + +<p>"Duke," said the newcomer quietly, "the honour is as much mine +as that of the interesting and ancient institution which I am +this night privileged to inspect."</p> + +<p>Turning to Sir John and The MacQuern, the Duke said "I present +Mr. Abimelech V. Oover, of Trinity."</p> + +<p>"The Junta," they replied, "is honoured."</p> + +<p>"Gentlemen," said the Rhodes Scholar, "your good courtesy is +just such as I would have anticipated from members of the ancient +Junta. Like most of my countrymen, I am a man of few words. We +are habituated out there to act rather than talk. Judged from the +view-point of your beautiful old civilisation, I am aware my +curtness must seem crude. But, gentlemen, believe me, right +here--"</p> + +<p>"Dinner is served, your Grace."</p> + +<p>Thus interrupted, Mr. Oover, with the resourcefulness of a +practised orator, brought his thanks to a quick but not abrupt +conclusion. The little company passed into the front room.</p> + +<p>Through the window, from the High, fading daylight mingled +with the candle-light. The mulberry coats of the hosts, +interspersed by the black ones of the guests, made a fine pattern +around the oval table a-gleam with the many curious pieces of +gold and silver plate that had accrued to the Junta in course of +years.</p> + +<p>The President showed much deference to his guest. He seemed to +listen with close attention to the humorous anecdote with which, +in the American fashion, Mr. Oover inaugurated dinner.</p> + +<p>To all Rhodes Scholars, indeed, his courtesy was invariable. +He went out of his way to cultivate them. And this he did more as +a favour to Lord Milner than of his own caprice. He found these +Scholars, good fellows though they were, rather oppressive. They +had not--how could they have?--the undergraduate's virtue of +taking Oxford as a matter of course. The Germans loved it too +little, the Colonials too much. The Americans were, to a +sensitive observer, the most troublesome--as being the most +troubled--of the whole lot. The Duke was not one of those +Englishmen who fling, or care to hear flung, cheap sneers at +America. Whenever any one in his presence said that America was +not large in area, he would firmly maintain that it was. He held, +too, in his enlightened way, that Americans have a perfect right +to exist. But he did often find himself wishing Mr. Rhodes had +not enabled them to exercise that right in Oxford. They were so +awfully afraid of having their strenuous native characters +undermined by their delight in the place. They held that the +future was theirs, a glorious asset, far more glorious than the +past. But a theory, as the Duke saw, is one thing, an emotion +another. It is so much easier to covet what one hasn't than to +revel in what one has. Also, it is so much easier to be +enthusiastic about what exists than about what doesn't. The +future doesn't exist. The past does. For, whereas all men can +learn, the gift of prophecy has died out. A man cannot work up in +his breast any real excitement about what possibly won't happen. +He cannot very well help being sentimentally interested in what +he knows has happened. On the other hand, he owes a duty to his +country. And, if his country be America, he ought to try to feel +a vivid respect for the future, and a cold contempt for the past. +Also, if he be selected by his country as a specimen of the best +moral, physical, and intellectual type that she can produce for +the astounding of the effete foreigner, and incidentally for the +purpose of raising that foreigner's tone, he must--mustn't +he?--do his best to astound, to exalt. But then comes in this +difficulty. Young men don't like to astound and exalt their +fellows. And Americans, individually, are of all people the most +anxious to please. That they talk overmuch is often taken as a +sign of self-satisfaction. It is merely a mannerism. Rhetoric is +a thing inbred in them. They are quite unconscious of it. It is +as natural to them as breathing. And, while they talk on, they +really do believe that they are a quick, businesslike people, by +whom things are "put through" with an almost brutal abruptness. +This notion of theirs is rather confusing to the patient English +auditor.</p> + +<p>Altogether, the American Rhodes Scholars, with their splendid +native gift of oratory, and their modest desire to please, and +their not less evident feeling that they ought merely to edify, +and their constant delight in all that of Oxford their English +brethren don't notice, and their constant fear that they are +being corrupted, are a noble, rather than a comfortable, element +in the social life of the University. So, at least, they seemed +to the Duke.</p> + +<p>And to-night, but that he had invited Oover to dine with him, +he could have been dining with Zuleika. And this was his last +dinner on earth. Such thoughts made him the less able to take +pleasure in his guest. Perfect, however, the amenity of his +manner.</p> + +<p>This was the more commendable because Oover's "aura" was even +more disturbing than that of the average Rhodes Scholar. +To-night, besides the usual conflicts in this young man's bosom, +raged a special one between his desire to behave well and his +jealousy of the man who had to-day been Miss Dobson's escort. In +theory he denied the Duke's right to that honour. In sentiment he +admitted it. Another conflict, you see. And another. He longed to +orate about the woman who had his heart; yet she was the one +topic that must be shirked.</p> + +<p>The MacQuern and Mr. Trent-Garby, Sir John Marraby and Lord +Sayes, they too--though they were no orators--would fain have +unpacked their hearts in words about Zuleika. They spoke of this +and that, automatically, none listening to another--each man +listening, wide- eyed, to his own heart's solo on the Zuleika +theme, and drinking rather more champagne than was good for him. +Maybe, these youths sowed in themselves, on this night, the seeds +of lifelong intemperance. We cannot tell. They did not live long +enough for us to know.</p> + +<p>While the six dined, a seventh, invisible to them, leaned +moodily against the mantel-piece, watching them. He was not of +their time. His long brown hair was knotted in a black riband +behind. He wore a pale brocaded coat and lace ruffles, silken +stockings, a sword. Privy to their doom, he watched them. He was +loth that his Junta must die. Yes, his. Could the diners have +seen him, they would have known him by his resemblance to the +mezzotint portrait that hung on the wall above him. They would +have risen to their feet in presence of Humphrey Greddon, founder +and first president of the club.</p> + +<p>His face was not so oval, nor were his eyes so big, nor his +lips so full, nor his hands so delicate, as they appeared in the +mezzotint. Yet (bating the conventions of eighteenth-century +portraiture) the likeness was a good one. Humphrey Greddon was +not less well-knit and graceful than the painter had made him, +and, hard though the lines of the face were, there was about him +a certain air of high romance that could not be explained away by +the fact that he was of a period not our own. You could +understand the great love that Nellie O'Mora had borne him.</p> + +<p>Under the mezzotint hung Hoppner's miniature of that lovely +and ill- starred girl, with her soft dark eyes, and her curls all +astray from beneath her little blue turban. And the Duke was +telling Mr. Oover her story--how she had left her home for +Humphrey Greddon when she was but sixteen, and he an +undergraduate at Christ Church; and had lived for him in a +cottage at Littlemore, whither he would ride, most days, to be +with her; and how he tired of her, broke his oath that he would +marry her, thereby broke her heart; and how she drowned herself +in a mill-pond; and how Greddon was killed in Venice, two years +later, duelling on the Riva Schiavoni with a Senator whose +daughter he had seduced.</p> + +<p>And he, Greddon, was not listening very attentively to the +tale. He had heard it told so often in this room, and he did not +understand the sentiments of the modern world. Nellie had been a +monstrous pretty creature. He had adored her, and had done with +her. It was right that she should always be toasted after dinner +by the Junta, as in the days when first he loved her--"Here's to +Nellie O'Mora, the fairest witch that ever was or will be!" He +would have resented the omission of that toast. But he was sick +of the pitying, melting looks that were always cast towards her +miniature. Nellie had been beautiful, but, by God! she was always +a dunce and a simpleton. How could he have spent his life with +her? She was a fool, by God! not to marry that fool Trailby, of +Merton, whom he took to see her.</p> + +<p>Mr. Oover's moral tone, and his sense of chivalry, were of the +American kind: far higher than ours, even, and far better +expressed. Whereas the English guests of the Junta, when they +heard the tale of Nellie O'Mora, would merely murmur "Poor girl!" +or "What a shame!" Mr. Oover said in a tone of quiet authority +that compelled Greddon's ear "Duke, I hope I am not incognisant +of the laws that govern the relations of guest and host. But, +Duke, I aver deliberately that the founder of this fine old club; +at which you are so splendidly entertaining me to-night, was an +unmitigated scoundrel. I say he was not a white man."</p> + +<p>At the word "scoundrel," Humphrey Greddon had sprung forward, +drawing his sword, and loudly, in a voice audible to himself +alone, challenged the American to make good his words. Then, as +this gentleman took no notice, with one clean straight thrust +Greddon ran him through the heart, shouting "Die, you damned +psalm-singer and traducer! And so die all rebels against King +George!"* Withdrawing the blade, he wiped it daintily on his +cambric handkerchief. There was no blood. Mr. Oover, with +unpunctured shirt-front, was repeating "I say he was not a white +man." And Greddon remembered himself--remembered he was only a +ghost, impalpable, impotent, of no account. "But I shall meet you +in Hell to-morrow," he hissed in Oover's face. And there he was +wrong. It is quite certain that Oover went to Heaven.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>* As Edward VII. was at this time on the throne, it must have +been to George III. that Mr. Greddon was referring.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Unable to avenge himself, Greddon had looked to the Duke to +act for him. When he saw that this young man did but smile at +Oover and make a vague deprecatory gesture, he again, in his +wrath, forgot his disabilities. Drawing himself to his full +height, he took with great deliberation a pinch of snuff, and, +bowing low to the Duke, said "I am vastly obleeged to your Grace +for the fine high Courage you have exhibited in the behalf of +your most Admiring, most Humble Servant." Then, having brushed +away a speck of snuff from his jabot, he turned on his heel; and +only in the doorway, where one of the club servants, carrying a +decanter in each hand, walked straight through him, did he +realise that he had not spoilt the Duke's evening. With a volley +of the most appalling eighteenth-century oaths, he passed back +into the nether world.</p> + +<p>To the Duke, Nellie O'Mora had never been a very vital figure. +He had often repeated the legend of her. But, having never known +what love was, he could not imagine her rapture or her anguish. +Himself the quarry of all Mayfair's wise virgins, he had +always--so far as he thought of the matter at all--suspected that +Nellie's death was due to thwarted ambition. But to-night, while +he told Oover about her, he could see into her soul. Nor did he +pity her. She had loved. She had known the one thing worth living +for--and dying for. She, as she went down to the mill-pond, had +felt just that ecstasy of self-sacrifice which he himself had +felt to-day and would feel to-morrow. And for a while, too--for a +full year--she had known the joy of being loved, had been for +Greddon "the fairest witch that ever was or will be." He could +not agree with Oover's long disquisition on her sufferings. And, +glancing at her well-remembered miniature, he wondered just what +it was in her that had captivated Greddon. He was in that blest +state when a man cannot believe the earth has been trodden by any +really beautiful or desirable lady save the lady of his own +heart.</p> + +<p>The moment had come for the removal of the table-cloth. The +mahogany of the Junta was laid bare--a clear dark lake, anon to +reflect in its still and ruddy depths the candelabras and the +fruit-cradles, the slender glasses and the stout old decanters, +the forfeit-box and the snuff-box, and other paraphernalia of the +dignity of dessert. Lucidly, and unwaveringly inverted in the +depths these good things stood; and, so soon as the wine had made +its circuit, the Duke rose and with uplifted glass proposed the +first of the two toasts traditional to the Junta. "Gentlemen, I +give you Church and State."</p> + +<p>The toast having been honoured by all--and by none with a +richer reverence than by Oover, despite his passionate mental +reservation in favour of Pittsburg-Anabaptism and the Republican +Ideal--the snuff-box was handed round, and fruit was eaten.</p> + +<p>Presently, when the wine had gone round again, the Duke rose +and with uplifted glass said "Gentlemen, I give you--" and there +halted. Silent, frowning, flushed, he stood for a few moments, +and then, with a deliberate gesture, tilted his glass and let +fall the wine to the carpet. "No," he said, looking round the +table, "I cannot give you Nellie O'Mora."</p> + +<p>"Why not?" gasped Sir John Marraby.</p> + +<p>"You have a right to ask that," said the Duke, still standing. +"I can only say that my conscience is stronger than my sense of +what is due to the customs of the club. Nellie O'Mora," he said, +passing his hand over his brow, "may have been in her day the +fairest witch that ever was--so fair that our founder had good +reason to suppose her the fairest witch that ever would be. But +his prediction was a false one. So at least it seems to me. Of +course I cannot both hold this view and remain President of this +club. MacQuern--Marraby--which of you is Vice-President?"</p> + +<p>"He is," said Marraby.</p> + +<p>"Then, MacQuern, you are hereby President, vice myself +resigned. Take the chair and propose the toast."</p> + +<p>"I would rather not," said The MacQuern after a pause.</p> + +<p>"Then, Marraby, YOU must."</p> + +<p>"Not I!" said Marraby.</p> + +<p>"Why is this?" asked the Duke, looking from one to the +other.</p> + +<p>The MacQuern, with Scotch caution, was silent. But the +impulsive Marraby--Madcap Marraby, as they called him in +B.N.C.--said "It's because I won't lie!" and, leaping up, raised +his glass aloft and cried "I give you Zuleika Dobson, the fairest +witch that ever was or will be!"</p> + +<p>Mr. Oover, Lord Sayes, Mr. Trent-Garby, sprang to their feet; +The MacQuern rose to his. "Zuleika Dobson!" they cried, and +drained their glasses.</p> + +<p>Then, when they had resumed their seats, came an awkward +pause. The Duke, still erect beside the chair he had vacated, +looked very grave and pale. Marraby had taken an outrageous +liberty. But "a member of the Junta can do no wrong," and the +liberty could not be resented. The Duke felt that the blame was +on himself, who had elected Marraby to the club.</p> + +<p>Mr. Oover, too, looked grave. All the antiquarian in him +deplored the sudden rupture of a fine old Oxford tradition. All +the chivalrous American in him resented the slight on that fair +victim of the feudal system, Miss O'Mora. And, at the same time, +all the Abimelech V. in him rejoiced at having honoured by word +and act the one woman in the world.</p> + +<p>Gazing around at the flushed faces and heaving shirt-fronts of +the diners, the Duke forgot Marraby's misdemeanour. What mattered +far more to him was that here were five young men deeply under +the spell of Zuleika. They must be saved, if possible. He knew +how strong his influence was in the University. He knew also how +strong was Zuleika's. He had not much hope of the issue. But his +new-born sense of duty to his fellows spurred him on. "Is there," +he asked with a bitter smile, "any one of you who doesn't with +his whole heart love Miss Dobson?"</p> + +<p>Nobody held up a hand.</p> + +<p>"As I feared," said the Duke, knowing not that if a hand had +been held up he would have taken it as a personal insult. No man +really in love can forgive another for not sharing his ardour. +His jealousy for himself when his beloved prefers another man is +hardly a stronger passion than his jealousy for her when she is +not preferred to all other women.</p> + +<p>"You know her only by sight--by repute?" asked the Duke. They +signified that this was so. "I wish you would introduce me to +her," said Marraby.</p> + +<p>"You are all coming to the Judas concert tonight?" the Duke +asked, ignoring Marraby. "You have all secured tickets?" They +nodded. "To hear me play, or to see Miss Dobson?" There was a +murmur of "Both-- both." "And you would all of you, like Marraby, +wish to be presented to this lady?" Their eyes dilated. "That way +happiness lies, think you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, happiness be hanged!" said Marraby.</p> + +<p>To the Duke this seemed a profoundly sane remark--an epitome +of his own sentiments. But what was right for himself was not +right for all. He believed in convention as the best way for +average mankind. And so, slowly, calmly, he told to his +fellow-diners just what he had told a few hours earlier to those +two young men in Salt Cellar. Not knowing that his words had +already been spread throughout Oxford, he was rather surprised +that they seemed to make no sensation. Quite flat, too, fell his +appeal that the syren be shunned by all.</p> + +<p>Mr. Oover, during his year of residence, had been sorely tried +by the quaint old English custom of not making public speeches +after private dinners. It was with a deep sigh of satisfaction +that he now rose to his feet.</p> + +<p>"Duke," he said in a low voice, which yet penetrated to every +corner of the room, "I guess I am voicing these gentlemen when I +say that your words show up your good heart, all the time. Your +mentality, too, is bully, as we all predicate. One may say +without exaggeration that your scholarly and social attainments +are a by-word throughout the solar system, and be-yond. We +rightly venerate you as our boss. Sir, we worship the ground you +walk on. But we owe a duty to our own free and independent +manhood. Sir, we worship the ground Miss Z. Dobson treads on. We +have pegged out a claim right there. And from that location we +aren't to be budged--not for bob-nuts. We asseverate we +squat--where--we--squat, come--what--will. You say we have no +chance to win Miss Z. Dobson. That--we--know. We aren't worthy. +We lie prone. Let her walk over us. You say her heart is cold. We +don't pro-fess we can take the chill off. But, Sir, we can't be +diverted out of loving her--not even by you, Sir. No, Sir! We +love her, and--shall, and-- will, Sir, with--our--latest +breath."</p> + +<p>This peroration evoked loud applause. "I love her, and shall, +and will," shouted each man. And again they honoured in wine her +image. Sir John Marraby uttered a cry familiar in the +hunting-field. The MacQuern contributed a few bars of a +sentimental ballad in the dialect of his country. "Hurrah, +hurrah!" shouted Mr. Trent-Garby. Lord Sayes hummed the latest +waltz, waving his arms to its rhythm, while the wine he had just +spilt on his shirt-front trickled unheeded to his waistcoat. Mr. +Oover gave the Yale cheer.</p> + +<p>The genial din was wafted down through the open window to the +passers- by. The wine-merchant across the way heard it, and +smiled pensively. "Youth, youth!" he murmured.</p> + +<p>The genial din grew louder.</p> + +<p>At any other time, the Duke would have been jarred by the +disgrace to the Junta. But now, as he stood with bent head, +covering his face with his hands, he thought only of the need to +rid these young men, here and now, of the influence that had +befallen them. To-morrow his tragic example might be too late, +the mischief have sunk too deep, the agony be life-long. His good +breeding forbade him to cast over a dinner- table the shadow of +his death. His conscience insisted that he must. He uncovered his +face, and held up one hand for silence.</p> + +<p>"We are all of us," he said, "old enough to remember vividly +the demonstrations made in the streets of London when war was +declared between us and the Transvaal Republic. You, Mr. Oover, +doubtless heard in America the echoes of those ebullitions. The +general idea was that the war was going to be a very brief and +simple affair--what was called 'a walk-over.' To me, though I was +only a small boy, it seemed that all this delirious pride in the +prospect of crushing a trumpery foe argued a defect in our sense +of proportion. Still, I was able to understand the demonstrators' +point of view. To 'the giddy vulgar' any sort of victory is +pleasant. But defeat? If, when that war was declared, every one +had been sure that not only should we fail to conquer the +Transvaal, but that IT would conquer US--that not only would it +make good its freedom and independence, but that we should +forfeit ours--how would the cits have felt then? Would they not +have pulled long faces, spoken in whispers, wept? You must +forgive me for saying that the noise you have just made around +this table was very like to the noise made on the verge of the +Boer War. And your procedure seems to me as unaccountable as +would have seemed the antics of those mobs if England had been +plainly doomed to disaster and to vassalage. My guest here +to-night, in the course of his very eloquent and racy speech, +spoke of the need that he and you should preserve your 'free and +independent manhood.' That seemed to me an irreproachable ideal. +But I confess I was somewhat taken aback by my friend's scheme +for realising it. He declared his intention of lying prone and +letting Miss Dobson 'walk over' him; and he advised you to follow +his example; and to this counsel you gave evident approval. +Gentlemen, suppose that on the verge of the aforesaid war, some +orator had said to the British people 'It is going to be a +walk-over for our enemy in the field. Mr. Kruger holds us in the +hollow of his hand. In subjection to him we shall find our +long-lost freedom and independence'--what would have been +Britannia's answer? What, on reflection, is yours to Mr. Oover? +What are Mr. Oover's own second thoughts?" The Duke paused, with +a smile to his guest.</p> + +<p>"Go right ahead, Duke," said Mr. Oover. "I'll re-ply when my +turn comes."</p> + +<p>"And not utterly demolish me, I hope," said the Duke. His was +the Oxford manner. "Gentlemen," he continued, "is it possible +that Britannia would have thrown her helmet in the air, shrieking +'Slavery for ever'? You, gentlemen, seem to think slavery a +pleasant and an honourable state. You have less experience of it +than I. I have been enslaved to Miss Dobson since yesterday +evening; you, only since this afternoon; I, at close quarters; +you, at a respectful distance. Your fetters have not galled you +yet. MY wrists, MY ankles, are excoriated. The iron has entered +into my soul. I droop. I stumble. Blood flows from me. I quiver +and curse. I writhe. The sun mocks me. The moon titters in my +face. I can stand it no longer. I will no more of it. Tomorrow I +die."</p> + +<p>The flushed faces of the diners grew gradually pale. Their +eyes lost lustre. Their tongues clove to the roofs of their +mouths.</p> + +<p>At length, almost inaudibly, The MacQuern asked "Do you mean +you are going to commit suicide?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said the Duke, "if you choose to put it in that way. +Yes. And it is only by a chance that I did not commit suicide +this afternoon."</p> + +<p>"You--don't--say," gasped Mr. Oover.</p> + +<p>"I do indeed," said the Duke. "And I ask you all to weigh well +my message."</p> + +<p>"But--but does Miss Dobson know?" asked Sir John.</p> + +<p>"Oh yes," was the reply. "Indeed, it was she who persuaded me +not to die till to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"But--but," faltered Lord Sayes, "I saw her saying good-bye to +you in Judas Street. And--and she looked quite--as if nothing had +happened."</p> + +<p>"Nothing HAD happened," said the Duke. "And she was very much +pleased to have me still with her. But she isn't so cruel as to +hinder me from dying for her to-morrow. I don't think she exactly +fixed the hour. It shall be just after the Eights have been +rowed. An earlier death would mark in me a lack of courtesy to +that contest . . . It seems strange to you that I should do this +thing? Take warning by me. Muster all your will-power, and forget +Miss Dobson. Tear up your tickets for the concert. Stay here and +play cards. Play high. Or rather, go back to your various +Colleges, and speed the news I have told you. Put all Oxford on +its guard against this woman who can love no lover. Let all +Oxford know that I, Dorset, who had so much reason to love +life--I, the nonpareil--am going to die for the love I bear this +woman. And let no man think I go unwilling. I am no lamb led to +the slaughter. I am priest as well as victim. I offer myself up +with a pious joy. But enough of this cold Hebraism! It is +ill-attuned to my soul's mood. Self-sacrifice--bah! Regard me as +a voluptuary. I am that. All my baffled ardour speeds me to the +bosom of Death. She is gentle and wanton. She knows I could never +have loved her for her own sake. She has no illusions about me. +She knows well I come to her because not otherwise may I quench +my passion."</p> + +<p>There was a long silence. The Duke, looking around at the bent +heads and drawn mouths of his auditors, saw that his words had +gone home. It was Marraby who revealed how powerfully home they +had gone.</p> + +<p>"Dorset," he said huskily, "I shall die too."</p> + +<p>The Duke flung up his hands, staring wildly.</p> + +<p>"I stand in with that," said Mr. Oover.</p> + +<p>"So do I!" said Lord Sayes. "And I!" said Mr. Trent-Garby; +"And I!" The MacQuern.</p> + +<p>The Duke found voice. "Are you mad?" he asked, clutching at +his throat. "Are you all mad?"</p> + +<p>"No, Duke," said Mr. Oover. "Or, if we are, you have no right +to be at large. You have shown us the way. We--take it."</p> + +<p>"Just so," said The MacQuern, stolidly.</p> + +<p>"Listen, you fools," cried the Duke. But through the open +window came the vibrant stroke of some clock. He wheeled round, +plucked out his watch--nine!--the concert!--his promise not to be +late!--Zuleika!</p> + +<p>All other thoughts vanished. In an instant he dodged beneath +the sash of the window. From the flower-box he sprang to the road +beneath. (The facade of the house is called, to this day, +Dorset's Leap.) Alighting with the legerity of a cat, he swerved +leftward in the recoil, and was off, like a streak of +mulberry-coloured lightning, down the High.</p> + +<p>The other men had rushed to the window, fearing the worst. +"No," cried Oover. "That's all right. Saves time!" and he raised +himself on to the window-box. It splintered under his weight. He +leapt heavily but well, followed by some uprooted geraniums. +Squaring his shoulders, he threw back his head, and doubled down +the slope.</p> + +<p>There was a violent jostle between the remaining men. The +MacQuern cannily got out of it, and rushed downstairs. He emerged +at the front- door just after Marraby touched ground. The +Baronet's left ankle had twisted under him. His face was drawn +with pain as he hopped down the High on his right foot, fingering +his ticket for the concert. Next leapt Lord Sayes. And last of +all leapt Mr. Trent-Garby, who, catching his foot in the ruined +flower-box, fell headlong, and was, I regret to say, killed. Lord +Sayes passed Sir John in a few paces. The MacQuern overtook Mr. +Oover at St. Mary's and outstripped him in Radcliffe Square. The +Duke came in an easy first.</p> + +<p>Youth, youth!</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>IX</h3> + +<p>Across the Front Quadrangle, heedless of the great crowd to +right and left, Dorset rushed. Up the stone steps to the Hall he +bounded, and only on the Hall's threshold was he brought to a +pause. The doorway was blocked by the backs of youths who had by +hook and crook secured standing-room. The whole scene was +surprisingly unlike that of the average College concert.</p> + +<p>"Let me pass," said the Duke, rather breathlessly. "Thank you. +Make way please. Thanks." And with quick-pulsing heart he made +his way down the aisle to the front row. There awaited him a +surprise that was like a douche of cold water full in his face. +Zuleika was not there! It had never occurred to him that she +herself might not be punctual.</p> + +<p>The Warden was there, reading his programme with an air of +great solemnity. "Where," asked the Duke, "is your +grand-daughter?" His tone was as of a man saying "If she is dead, +don't break it gently to me."</p> + +<p>"My grand-daughter?" said the Warden. "Ah, Duke, good +evening."</p> + +<p>"She's not ill?"</p> + +<p>"Oh no, I think not. She said something about changing the +dress she wore at dinner. She will come." And the Warden thanked +his young friend for the great kindness he had shown to Zuleika. +He hoped the Duke had not let her worry him with her artless +prattle. "She seems to be a good, amiable girl," he added, in his +detached way.</p> + +<p>Sitting beside him, the Duke looked curiously at the venerable +profile, as at a mummy's. To think that this had once been a man! +To think that his blood flowed in the veins of Zuleika! Hitherto +the Duke had seen nothing grotesque in him--had regarded him +always as a dignified specimen of priest and scholar. Such a life +as the Warden's, year following year in ornamental seclusion from +the follies and fusses of the world, had to the Duke seemed +rather admirable and enviable. Often he himself had (for a minute +or so) meditated taking a fellowship at All Souls and spending +here in Oxford the greater part of his life. He had never been +young, and it never had occurred to him that the Warden had been +young once. To-night he saw the old man in a new light--saw that +he was mad. Here was a man who--for had he not married and +begotten a child?--must have known, in some degree, the emotion +of love. How, after that, could he have gone on thus, year by +year, rusting among his books, asking no favour of life, waiting +for death without a sign of impatience? Why had he not killed +himself long ago? Why cumbered he the earth?</p> + +<p>On the dais an undergraduate was singing a song entitled "She +Loves Not Me." Such plaints are apt to leave us unharrowed. +Across the footlights of an opera-house, the despair of some +Italian tenor in red tights and a yellow wig may be convincing +enough. Not so, at a concert, the despair of a shy British +amateur in evening dress. The undergraduate on the dais, fumbling +with his sheet of music while he predicted that only when he were +"laid within the church-yard cold and grey" would his lady begin +to pity him, seemed to the Duke rather ridiculous; but not half +so ridiculous as the Warden. This fictitious love-affair was less +nugatory than the actual humdrum for which Dr. Dobson had sold +his soul to the devil. Also, little as one might suspect it, the +warbler was perhaps expressing a genuine sentiment. Zuleika +herself, belike, was in his thoughts.</p> + +<p>As he began the second stanza, predicting that when his lady +died too the angels of heaven would bear her straight to him, the +audience heard a loud murmur, or subdued roar, outside the Hall. +And after a few bars the warbler suddenly ceased, staring +straight in front of him as though he saw a vision. +Automatically, all heads veered in the direction of his gaze. +From the entrance, slowly along the aisle, came Zuleika, +brilliant in black.</p> + +<p>To the Duke, who had rapturously risen, she nodded and smiled +as she swerved down on the chair beside him. She looked to him +somehow different. He had quite forgiven her for being late: her +mere presence was a perfect excuse. And the very change in her, +though he could not define it, was somehow pleasing to him. He +was about to question her, but she shook her head and held up to +her lips a black-gloved forefinger, enjoining silence for the +singer, who, with dogged British pluck, had harked back to the +beginning of the second stanza. When his task was done and he +shuffled down from the dais, he received a great ovation. +Zuleika, in the way peculiar to persons who are in the habit of +appearing before the public, held her hands well above the level +of her brow, and clapped them with a vigour demonstrative not +less of her presence than of her delight.</p> + +<p>"And now," she asked, turning to the Duke, "do you see? do you +see?"</p> + +<p>"Something, yes. But what?"</p> + +<p>"Isn't it plain?" Lightly she touched the lobe of her left +ear. "Aren't you flattered?"</p> + +<p>He knew now what made the difference. It was that her little +face was flanked by two black pearls.</p> + +<p>"Think," said she, "how deeply I must have been brooding over +you since we parted!"</p> + +<p>"Is this really," he asked, pointing to the left ear-ring, +"the pearl you wore to-day?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Isn't it strange? A man ought to be pleased when a woman +goes quite unconsciously into mourning for him--goes just because +she really does mourn him."</p> + +<p>"I am more than pleased. I am touched. When did the change +come?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I only noticed it after dinner, when I saw +myself in the mirror. All through dinner I had been thinking of +you and of-- well, of to-morrow. And this dear sensitive pink +pearl had again expressed my soul. And there was I, in a yellow +gown with green embroideries, gay as a jacamar, jarring hideously +on myself. I covered my eyes and rushed upstairs, rang the bell +and tore my things off. My maid was very cross."</p> + +<p>Cross! The Duke was shot through with envy of one who was in a +position to be unkind to Zuleika. "Happy maid!" he murmured. +Zuleika replied that he was stealing her thunder: hadn't she +envied the girl at his lodgings? "But I," she said, "wanted only +to serve you in meekness. The idea of ever being pert to you +didn't enter into my head. You show a side of your character as +unpleasing as it was unforeseen."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps then," said the Duke, "it is as well that I am going +to die." She acknowledged his rebuke with a pretty gesture of +penitence. "You may have been faultless in love," he added; "but +you would not have laid down your life for me."</p> + +<p>"Oh," she answered, "wouldn't I though? You don't know me. +That is just the sort of thing I should have loved to do. I am +much more romantic than you are, really. I wonder," she said, +glancing at his breast, "if YOUR pink pearl would have turned +black? And I wonder if YOU would have taken the trouble to change +that extraordinary coat you are wearing?"</p> + +<p>In sooth, no costume could have been more beautifully +Cimmerian than Zuleika's. And yet, thought the Duke, watching her +as the concert proceeded, the effect of her was not lugubrious. +Her darkness shone. The black satin gown she wore was a stream of +shifting high-lights. Big black diamonds were around her throat +and wrists, and tiny black diamonds starred the fan she wielded. +In her hair gleamed a great raven's wing. And brighter, brighter +than all these were her eyes. Assuredly no, there was nothing +morbid about her. Would one even (wondered the Duke, for a +disloyal instant) go so far as to say she was heartless? Ah no, +she was merely strong. She was one who could tread the tragic +plane without stumbling, and be resilient in the valley of the +shadow. What she had just said was no more than the truth: she +would have loved to die for him, had he not forfeited her heart. +She would have asked no tears. That she had none to shed for him +now, that she did but share his exhilaration, was the measure of +her worthiness to have the homage of his self-slaughter.</p> + +<p>"By the way," she whispered, "I want to ask one little favour +of you. Will you, please, at the last moment to-morrow, call out +my name in a loud voice, so that every one around can hear?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I will."</p> + +<p>"So that no one shall ever be able to say it wasn't for me +that you died, you know."</p> + +<p>"May I use simply your Christian name?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I really don't see why you shouldn't--at such a +moment."</p> + +<p>"Thank you." His face glowed.</p> + +<p>Thus did they commune, these two, radiant without and within. +And behind them, throughout the Hall, the undergraduates craned +their necks for a glimpse. The Duke's piano solo, which was the +last item in the first half of the programme, was eagerly +awaited. Already, whispered first from the lips of Oover and the +others who had come on from the Junta, the news of his resolve +had gone from ear to ear among the men. He, for his part, had +forgotten the scene at the Junta, the baleful effect of his +example. For him the Hall was a cave of solitude --no one there +but Zuleika and himself. Yet almost, like the late Mr. John +Bright, he heard in the air the beating of the wings of the Angel +of Death. Not awful wings; little wings that sprouted from the +shoulders of a rosy and blindfold child. Love and Death--for him +they were exquisitely one. And it seemed to him, when his turn +came to play, that he floated, rather than walked, to the +dais.</p> + +<p>He had not considered what he would play tonight. Nor, maybe, +was he conscious now of choosing. His fingers caressed the +keyboard vaguely; and anon this ivory had voice and language; and +for its master, and for some of his hearers, arose a vision. And +it was as though in delicate procession, very slowly, listless +with weeping, certain figures passed by, hooded, and drooping +forasmuch as by the loss of him whom they were following to his +grave their own hold on life had been loosened. He had been so +beautiful and young. Lo, he was but a burden to be carried hence, +dust to be hidden out of sight. Very slowly, very wretchedly they +went by. But, as they went, another feeling, faint at first, an +all but imperceptible current, seemed to flow through the +procession; and now one, now another of the mourners would look +wanly up, with cast-back hood, as though listening; and anon all +were listening on their way, first in wonder, then in rapture; +for the soul of their friend was singing to them: they heard his +voice, but clearer and more blithe than they had ever known it--a +voice etherealised by a triumph of joy that was not yet for them +to share. But presently the voice receded, its echoes dying away +into the sphere whence it came. It ceased; and the mourners were +left alone again with their sorrow, and passed on all unsolaced, +and drooping, weeping.</p> + +<p>Soon after the Duke had begun to play, an invisible figure +came and stood by and listened; a frail man, dressed in the +fashion of 1840; the shade of none other than Frederic Chopin. +Behind whom, a moment later, came a woman of somewhat masculine +aspect and dominant demeanour, mounting guard over him, and, as +it were, ready to catch him if he fell. He bowed his head lower +and lower, he looked up with an ecstasy more and more intense, +according to the procedure of his Marche Funebre. And among the +audience, too, there was a bowing and uplifting of heads, just as +among the figures of the mourners evoked. Yet the head of the +player himself was all the while erect, and his face glad and +serene. Nobly sensitive as was his playing of the mournful +passages, he smiled brilliantly through them.</p> + +<p>And Zuleika returned his gaze with a smile not less gay. She +was not sure what he was playing. But she assumed that it was for +her, and that the music had some reference to his impending +death. She was one of the people who say "I don't know anything +about music really, but I know what I like." And she liked this; +and she beat time to it with her fan. She thought her Duke looked +very handsome. She was proud of him. Strange that this time +yesterday she had been wildly in love with him! Strange, too, +that this time to-morrow he would be dead! She was immensely glad +she had saved him this afternoon. To-morrow! There came back to +her what he had told her about the omen at Tankerton, that +stately home: "On the eve of the death of a Duke of Dorset, two +black owls come always and perch on the battlements. They remain +there through the night, hooting. At dawn they fly away, none +knows whither." Perhaps, thought she, at this very moment these +two birds were on the battlements.</p> + +<p>The music ceased. In the hush that followed it, her applause +rang sharp and notable. Not so Chopin's. Of him and his intense +excitement none but his companion was aware. "Plus fin que +Pachmann!" he reiterated, waving his arms wildly, and +dancing.</p> + +<p>"Tu auras une migraine affreuse. Rentrons, petit coeur!" said +George Sand, gently but firmly.</p> + +<p>"Laisse-moi le saluer," cried the composer, struggling in her +grasp.</p> + +<p>"Demain soir, oui. Il sera parmi nous," said the novelist, as +she hurried him away. "Moi aussi," she added to herself, "je me +promets un beau plaisir en faisant la connaissance de ce jeune +homme."</p> + +<p>Zuleika was the first to rise as "ce jeune homme" came down +from the dais. Now was the interval between the two parts of the +programme. There was a general creaking and scraping of +pushed-back chairs as the audience rose and went forth into the +night. The noise aroused from sleep the good Warden, who, having +peered at his programme, complimented the Duke with old-world +courtesy and went to sleep again. Zuleika, thrusting her fan +under one arm, shook the player by both hands. Also, she told him +that she knew nothing about music really, but that she knew what +she liked. As she passed with him up the aisle, she said this +again. People who say it are never tired of saying it.</p> + +<p>Outside, the crowd was greater than ever. All the +undergraduates from all the Colleges seemed now to be +concentrated in the great Front Quadrangle of Judas. Even in the +glow of the Japanese lanterns that hung around in honour of the +concert, the faces of the lads looked a little pale. For it was +known by all now that the Duke was to die. Even while the concert +was in progress, the news had spread out from the Hall, through +the thronged doorway, down the thronged steps, to the confines of +the crowd. Nor had Oover and the other men from the Junta made +any secret of their own determination. And now, as the rest saw +Zuleika yet again at close quarters, and verified their +remembrance of her, the half-formed desire in them to die too was +hardened to a vow.</p> + +<p>You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. +But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a +crowd of men. If man were not a gregarious animal, the world +might have achieved, by this time, some real progress towards +civilisation. Segregate him, and he is no fool. But let him loose +among his fellows, and he is lost--he becomes just an unit in +unreason. If any one of the undergraduates had met Miss Dobson in +the desert of Sahara, he would have fallen in love with her; but +not one in a thousand of them would have wished to die because +she did not love him. The Duke's was a peculiar case. For him to +fall in love was itself a violent peripety, bound to produce a +violent upheaval; and such was his pride that for his love to be +unrequited would naturally enamour him of death. These other, +these quite ordinary, young men were the victims less of Zuleika +than of the Duke's example, and of one another. A crowd, +proportionately to its size, magnifies all that in its units +pertains to the emotions, and diminishes all that in them +pertains to thought. It was because these undergraduates were a +crowd that their passion for Zuleika was so intense; and it was +because they were a crowd that they followed so blindly the lead +given to them. To die for Miss Dobson was "the thing to do." The +Duke was going to do it. The Junta was going to do it. It is a +hateful fact, but we must face the fact, that snobbishness was +one of the springs to the tragedy here chronicled.</p> + +<p>We may set to this crowd's credit that it refrained now from +following Zuleika. Not one of the ladies present was deserted by +her escort. All the men recognised the Duke's right to be alone +with Zuleika now. We may set also to their credit that they +carefully guarded the ladies from all knowledge of what was +afoot.</p> + +<p>Side by side, the great lover and his beloved wandered away, +beyond the light of the Japanese lanterns, and came to Salt +Cellar.</p> + +<p>The moon, like a gardenia in the night's button-hole--but no! +why should a writer never be able to mention the moon without +likening her to something else--usually something to which she +bears not the faintest resemblance? . . . The moon, looking like +nothing whatsoever but herself, was engaged in her old and futile +endeavour to mark the hours correctly on the sun-dial at the +centre of the lawn. Never, except once, late one night in the +eighteenth century, when the toper who was Sub-Warden had spent +an hour in trying to set his watch here, had she received the +slightest encouragement. Still she wanly persisted. And this was +the more absurd in her because Salt Cellar offered very good +scope for those legitimate effects of hers which we one and all +admire. Was it nothing to her to have cut those black shadows +across the cloisters? Was it nothing to her that she so magically +mingled her rays with the candle-light shed forth from Zuleika's +bedroom? Nothing, that she had cleansed the lawn of all its +colour, and made of it a platform of silver-grey, fit for fairies +to dance on?</p> + +<p>If Zuleika, as she paced the gravel path, had seen how +transfigured-- how nobly like the Tragic Muse--she was just now, +she could not have gone on bothering the Duke for a keepsake of +the tragedy that was to be.</p> + +<p>She was still set on having his two studs. He was still firm +in his refusal to misappropriate those heirlooms. In vain she +pointed out to him that the pearls he meant, the white ones, no +longer existed; that the pearls he was wearing were no more +"entailed" than if he had got them yesterday. "And you actually +DID get them yesterday," she said. "And from me. And I want them +back."</p> + +<p>"You are ingenious," he admitted. "I, in my simple way, am but +head of the Tanville-Tankerton family. Had you accepted my offer +of marriage, you would have had the right to wear these two +pearls during your life-time. I am very happy to die for you. But +tamper with the property of my successor I cannot and will not. I +am sorry," he added.</p> + +<p>"Sorry!" echoed Zuleika. "Yes, and you were 'sorry' you +couldn't dine with me to-night. But any little niggling scruple +is more to you than I am. What old maids men are!" And viciously +with her fan she struck one of the cloister pillars.</p> + +<p>Her outburst was lost on the Duke. At her taunt about his not +dining with her, he had stood still, clapping one hand to his +brow. The events of the early evening swept back to him--his +speech, its unforeseen and horrible reception. He saw again the +preternaturally solemn face of Oover, and the flushed faces of +the rest. He had thought, as he pointed down to the abyss over +which he stood, these fellows would recoil, and pull themselves +together. They had recoiled, and pulled themselves together, only +in the manner of athletes about to spring. He was responsible for +them. His own life was his to lose: others he must not squander. +Besides, he had reckoned to die alone, unique; aloft and apart . +. . "There is something--something I had forgotten," he said to +Zuleika, "something that will be a great shock to you"; and he +gave her an outline of what had passed at the Junta.</p> + +<p>"And you are sure they really MEANT it?" she asked in a voice +that trembled.</p> + +<p>"I fear so. But they were over-excited. They will recant their +folly. I shall force them to."</p> + +<p>"They are not children. You yourself have just been calling +them 'men.' Why should they obey you?"</p> + +<p>She turned at sound of a footstep, and saw a young man +approaching. He wore a coat like the Duke's, and in his hand he +dangled a handkerchief. He bowed awkwardly, and, holding out the +handkerchief, said to her "I beg your pardon, but I think you +dropped this. I have just picked it up."</p> + +<p>Zuleika looked at the handkerchief, which was obviously a +man's, and smilingly shook her head.</p> + +<p>"I don't think you know The MacQuern," said the Duke, with +sulky grace. "This," he said to the intruder, "is Miss +Dobson."</p> + +<p>"And is it really true," asked Zuleika, retaining The +MacQuern's hand, "that you want to die for me?"</p> + +<p>Well, the Scots are a self-seeking and a resolute, but a shy, +race; swift to act, when swiftness is needed, but seldom knowing +quite what to say. The MacQuern, with native reluctance to give +something for nothing, had determined to have the pleasure of +knowing the young lady for whom he was to lay down his life; and +this purpose he had, by the simple stratagem of his own +handkerchief, achieved. Nevertheless, in answer to Zuleika's +question, and with the pressure of her hand to inspire him, the +only word that rose to his lips was "Ay" (which may be roughly +translated as "Yes").</p> + +<p>"You will do nothing of the sort," interposed the Duke.</p> + +<p>"There," said Zuleika, still retaining The MacQuern's hand, +"you see, it is forbidden. You must not defy our dear little +Duke. He is not used to it. It is not done."</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said The MacQuern, with a stony glance at the +Duke, "that he has anything to do with the matter."</p> + +<p>"He is older and wiser than you. More a man of the world. +Regard him as your tutor."</p> + +<p>"Do YOU want me not to die for you?" asked the young man.</p> + +<p>"Ah, _I_ should not dare to impose my wishes on you," said +she, dropping his hand. "Even," she added, "if I knew what my +wishes were. And I don't. I know only that I think it is very, +very beautiful of you to think of dying for me."</p> + +<p>"Then that settles it," said The MacQuern.</p> + +<p>"No, no! You must not let yourself be influenced by ME. +Besides, I am not in a mood to influence anybody. I am +overwhelmed. Tell me," she said, heedless of the Duke, who stood +tapping his heel on the ground, with every manifestation of +disapproval and impatience, "tell me, is it true that some of the +other men love me too, and--feel as you do?"</p> + +<p>The MacQuern said cautiously that he could answer for no one +but himself. "But," he allowed, "I saw a good many men whom I +know, outside the Hall here, just now, and they seemed to have +made up their minds."</p> + +<p>"To die for me? To-morrow?"</p> + +<p>"To-morrow. After the Eights, I suppose; at the same time as +the Duke. It wouldn't do to leave the races undecided."</p> + +<p>"Of COURSE not. But the poor dears! It is too touching! I have +done nothing, nothing to deserve it."</p> + +<p>"Nothing whatsoever," said the Duke drily.</p> + +<p>"Oh HE," said Zuleika, "thinks me an unredeemed brute; just +because I don't love him. YOU, dear Mr. MacQuern--does one call +you 'Mr.'? 'The' would sound so odd in the vocative. And I can't +very well call you 'MacQuern'--YOU don't think me unkind, do you? +I simply can't bear to think of all these young lives cut short +without my having done a thing to brighten them. What can I +do?--what can I do to show my gratitude?"</p> + +<p>An idea struck her. She looked up to the lit window of her +room. "Melisande!" she called.</p> + +<p>A figure appeared at the window. "Mademoiselle desire?"</p> + +<p>"My tricks, Melisande! Bring down the box, quick!" She turned +excitedly to the two young men. "It is all I can do in return, +you see. If I could dance for them, I would. If I could sing, I +would sing to them. I do what I can. You," she said to the Duke, +"must go on to the platform and announce it."</p> + +<p>"Announce what?"</p> + +<p>"Why, that I am going to do my tricks! All you need say is +'Ladies and gentlemen, I have the pleasure to--' What is the +matter now?"</p> + +<p>"You make me feel slightly unwell," said the Duke.</p> + +<p>"And YOU are the most d-dis-disobliging and the unkindest and +the b-beastliest person I ever met," Zuleika sobbed at him +through her hands. The MacQuern glared reproaches at him. So did +Melisande, who had just appeared through the postern, holding in +her arms the great casket of malachite. A painful scene; and the +Duke gave in. He said he would do anything--anything. Peace was +restored.</p> + +<p>The MacQuern had relieved Melisande of her burden; and to him +was the privilege of bearing it, in procession with his adored +and her quelled mentor, towards the Hall.</p> + +<p>Zuleika babbled like a child going to a juvenile party. This +was the great night, as yet, in her life. Illustrious enough +already it had seemed to her, as eve of that ultimate flattery +vowed her by the Duke. So fine a thing had his doom seemed to +her--his doom alone--that it had sufficed to flood her pink pearl +with the right hue. And now not on him alone need she ponder. Now +he was but the centre of a group--a group that might grow and +grow--a group that might with a little encouragement be a +multitude . . . With such hopes dimly whirling in the recesses of +her soul, her beautiful red lips babbled.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>X</h3> + +<p>Sounds of a violin, drifting out through the open windows of +the Hall, suggested that the second part of the concert had +begun. All the undergraduates, however, except the few who +figured in the programme, had waited outside till their mistress +should re-appear. The sisters and cousins of the Judas men had +been escorted back to their places and hurriedly left there.</p> + +<p>It was a hushed, tense crowd.</p> + +<p>"The poor darlings!" murmured Zuleika, pausing to survey them. +"And oh," she exclaimed, "there won't be room for all of them in +there!"</p> + +<p>"You might give an 'overflow' performance out here +afterwards," suggested the Duke, grimly.</p> + +<p>This idea flashed on her a better. Why not give her +performance here and now?--now, so eager was she for contact, as +it were, with this crowd; here, by moonlight, in the pretty glow +of these paper lanterns. Yes, she said, let it be here and now; +and she bade the Duke make the announcement.</p> + +<p>"What shall I say?" he asked. "'Gentlemen, I have the pleasure +to announce that Miss Zuleika Dobson, the world-renowned +She-Wizard, will now oblige'? Or shall I call them 'Gents,' tout +court?"</p> + +<p>She could afford to laugh at his ill-humour. She had his +promise of obedience. She told him to say something graceful and +simple.</p> + +<p>The noise of the violin had ceased. There was not a breath of +wind. The crowd in the quadrangle was as still and as silent as +the night itself. Nowhere a tremour. And it was borne in on +Zuleika that this crowd had one mind as well as one heart--a +common resolve, calm and clear, as well as a common passion. No +need for her to strengthen the spell now. No waverers here. And +thus it came true that gratitude was the sole motive for her +display.</p> + +<p>She stood with eyes downcast and hands folded behind her, +moonlit in the glow of lanterns, modest to the point of pathos, +while the Duke gracefully and simply introduced her to the +multitude. He was, he said, empowered by the lady who stood +beside him to say that she would be pleased to give them an +exhibition of her skill in the art to which she had devoted her +life--an art which, more potently perhaps than any other, touched +in mankind the sense of mystery and stirred the faculty of +wonder; the most truly romantic of all the arts: he referred to +the art of conjuring. It was not too much to say that by her +mastery of this art, in which hitherto, it must be confessed, +women had made no very great mark, Miss Zuleika Dobson (for such +was the name of the lady who stood beside him) had earned the +esteem of the whole civilised world. And here in Oxford, and in +this College especially, she had a peculiar claim to--might he +say?--their affectionate regard, inasmuch as she was the +grand-daughter of their venerable and venerated Warden.</p> + +<p>As the Duke ceased, there came from his hearers a sound like +the rustling of leaves. In return for it, Zuleika performed that +graceful act of subsidence to the verge of collapse which is +usually kept for the delectation of some royal person. And +indeed, in the presence of this doomed congress, she did +experience humility; for she was not altogether without +imagination. But, as she arose from her "bob," she was her own +bold self again, bright mistress of the situation.</p> + +<p>It was impossible for her to give her entertainment in full. +Some of her tricks (notably the Secret Aquarium, and the Blazing +Ball of Worsted) needed special preparation, and a table fitted +with a "servante" or secret tray. The table for to-night's +performance was an ordinary one, brought out from the porter's +lodge. The MacQuern deposited on it the great casket. Zuleika, +retaining him as her assistant, picked nimbly out from their +places and put in array the curious appurtenances of her art--the +Magic Canister, the Demon Egg- Cup, and the sundry other vessels +which, lost property of young Edward Gibbs, had been by a +Romanoff transmuted from wood to gold, and were now by the moon +reduced temporarily to silver.</p> + +<p>In a great dense semicircle the young men disposed themselves +around her. Those who were in front squatted down on the gravel; +those who were behind knelt; the rest stood. Young Oxford! Here, +in this mass of boyish faces, all fused and obliterated, was the +realisation of that phrase. Two or three thousands of human +bodies, human souls? Yet the effect of them in the moonlight was +as of one great passive monster.</p> + +<p>So was it seen by the Duke, as he stood leaning against the +wall, behind Zuleika's table. He saw it as a monster couchant and +enchanted, a monster that was to die; and its death was in part +his own doing. But remorse in him gave place to hostility. +Zuleika had begun her performance. She was producing the Barber's +Pole from her mouth. And it was to her that the Duke's heart went +suddenly out in tenderness and pity. He forgot her levity and +vanity--her wickedness, as he had inwardly called it. He thrilled +with that intense anxiety which comes to a man when he sees his +beloved offering to the public an exhibition of her skill, be it +in singing, acting, dancing, or any other art. Would she acquit +herself well? The lover's trepidation is painful enough when the +beloved has genius--how should these clods appreciate her? and +who set them in judgment over her? It must be worse when the +beloved has mediocrity. And Zuleika, in conjuring, had rather +less than that. Though indeed she took herself quite seriously as +a conjurer, she brought to her art neither conscience nor +ambition, in any true sense of those words. Since her debut, she +had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. The stale and narrow +repertory which she had acquired from Edward Gibbs was all she +had to offer; and this, and her marked lack of skill, she eked +out with the self-same "patter" that had sufficed that impossible +young man. It was especially her jokes that now sent shudders up +the spine of her lover, and brought tears to his eyes, and kept +him in a state of terror as to what she would say next. "You +see," she had exclaimed lightly after the production of the +Barber's Pole, "how easy it is to set up business as a +hairdresser." Over the Demon Egg-Cup she said that the egg was +"as good as fresh." And her constantly reiterated +catch-phrase--"Well, this is rather queer!"--was the most +distressing thing of all.</p> + +<p>The Duke blushed to think what these men thought of her. Would +love were blind! These her lovers were doubtless judging her. +They forgave her--confound their impudence!--because of her +beauty. The banality of her performance was an added grace. It +made her piteous. Damn them, they were sorry for her. Little +Noaks was squatting in the front row, peering up at her through +his spectacles. Noaks was as sorry for her as the rest of them. +Why didn't the earth yawn and swallow them all up?</p> + +<p>Our hero's unreasoning rage was fed by a not unreasonable +jealousy. It was clear to him that Zuleika had forgotten his +existence. To-day, as soon as he had killed her love, she had +shown him how much less to her was his love than the crowd's. And +now again it was only the crowd she cared for. He followed with +his eyes her long slender figure as she threaded her way in and +out of the crowd, sinuously, confidingly, producing a penny from +one lad's elbow, a threepenny-bit from between another's neck and +collar, half a crown from another's hair, and always repeating in +that flute-like voice of hers "Well, this is rather queer!" +Hither and thither she fared, her neck and arms gleaming white +from the luminous blackness of her dress, in the luminous +blueness of the night. At a distance, she might have been a +wraith; or a breeze made visible; a vagrom breeze, warm and +delicate, and in league with death.</p> + +<p>Yes, that is how she might have seemed to a casual observer. +But to the Duke there was nothing weird about her: she was +radiantly a woman; a goddess; and his first and last love. Bitter +his heart was, but only against the mob she wooed, not against +her for wooing it. She was cruel? All goddesses are that. She was +demeaning herself? His soul welled up anew in pity, in +passion.</p> + +<p>Yonder, in the Hall, the concert ran its course, making a +feeble incidental music to the dark emotions of the quadrangle. +It ended somewhat before the close of Zuleika's rival show; and +then the steps from the Hall were thronged by ladies, who, with a +sprinkling of dons, stood in attitudes of refined displeasure and +vulgar curiosity. The Warden was just awake enough to notice the +sea of undergraduates. Suspecting some breach of College +discipline, he retired hastily to his own quarters, for fear his +dignity might be somehow compromised.</p> + +<p>Was there ever, I wonder, an historian so pure as not to have +wished just once to fob off on his readers just one bright fable +for effect? I find myself sorely tempted to tell you that on +Zuleika, as her entertainment drew to a close, the spirit of the +higher thaumaturgy descended like a flame and found in her a +worthy agent. Specious Apollyon whispers to me "Where would be +the harm? Tell your readers that she cast a seed on the ground, +and that therefrom presently arose a tamarind-tree which +blossomed and bore fruit and, withering, vanished. Or say she +conjured from an empty basket of osier a hissing and bridling +snake. Why not? Your readers would be excited, gratified. And you +would never be found out." But the grave eyes of Clio are bent on +me, her servant. Oh pardon, madam: I did but waver for an +instant. It is not too late to tell my readers that the climax of +Zuleika's entertainment was only that dismal affair, the Magic +Canister.</p> + +<p>It she took from the table, and, holding it aloft, cried "Now, +before I say good night, I want to see if I have your confidence. +But you mustn't think this is the confidence trick!" She handed +the vessel to The MacQuern, who, looking like an overgrown +acolyte, bore it after her as she went again among the audience. +Pausing before a man in the front row, she asked him if he would +trust her with his watch. He held it out to her. "Thank you," she +said, letting her fingers touch his for a moment before she +dropped it into the Magic Canister. From another man she borrowed +a cigarette-case, from another a neck-tie, from another a pair of +sleeve-links, from Noaks a ring--one of those iron rings which +are supposed, rightly or wrongly, to alleviate rheumatism. And +when she had made an ample selection, she began her +return-journey to the table.</p> + +<p>On her way she saw in the shadow of the wall the figure of her +forgotten Duke. She saw him, the one man she had ever loved, also +the first man who had wished definitely to die for her; and she +was touched by remorse. She had said she would remember him to +her dying day; and already . . . But had he not refused her the +wherewithal to remember him--the pearls she needed as the clou of +her dear collection, the great relic among relics?</p> + +<p>"Would you trust me with your studs?" she asked him, in a +voice that could be heard throughout the quadrangle, with a smile +that was for him alone.</p> + +<p>There was no help for it. He quickly extricated from his +shirt-front the black pearl and the pink. Her thanks had a +special emphasis.</p> + +<p>The MacQuern placed the Magic Canister before her on the +table. She pressed the outer sheath down on it. Then she inverted +it so that the contents fell into the false lid; then she opened +it, looked into it, and, exclaiming "Well, this is rather queer!" +held it up so that the audience whose intelligence she was +insulting might see there was nothing in it.</p> + +<p>"Accidents," she said, "will happen in the best-regulated +canisters! But I think there is just a chance that I shall be +able to restore your property. Excuse me for a moment." She then +shut the canister, released the false lid, made several passes +over it, opened it, looked into it and said with a flourish "Now +I can clear my character!" Again she went among the crowd, +attended by The MacQuern; and the loans-- priceless now because +she had touched them--were in due course severally restored. When +she took the canister from her acolyte, only the two studs +remained in it.</p> + +<p>Not since the night of her flitting from the Gibbs' humble +home had Zuleika thieved. Was she a back-slider? Would she rob +the Duke, and his heir-presumptive, and Tanville-Tankertons yet +unborn? Alas, yes. But what she now did was proof that she had +qualms. And her way of doing it showed that for legerdemain she +had after all a natural aptitude which, properly trained, might +have won for her an honourable place in at least the second rank +of contemporary prestidigitators. With a gesture of her +disengaged hand, so swift as to be scarcely visible, she unhooked +her ear-rings and "passed" them into the canister. This she did +as she turned away from the crowd, on her way to the Duke. At the +same moment, in a manner technically not less good, though +morally deplorable, she withdrew the studs and "vanished" them +into her bosom.</p> + +<p>Was it triumph, or shame, or of both a little that so flushed +her cheeks as she stood before the man she had robbed? Or was it +the excitement of giving a present to the man she had loved? +Certain it is that the nakedness of her ears gave a new look to +her face--a primitive look, open and sweetly wild. The Duke saw +the difference, without noticing the cause. She was more adorable +than ever. He blenched and swayed as in proximity to a loveliness +beyond endurance. His heart cried out within him. A sudden mist +came over his eyes.</p> + +<p>In the canister that she held out to him, the two pearls +rattled like dice.</p> + +<p>"Keep them!" he whispered.</p> + +<p>"I shall," she whispered back, almost shyly. "But these, these +are for you." And she took one of his hands, and, holding it +open, tilted the canister over it, and let drop into it the two +ear-rings, and went quickly away.</p> + +<p>As she re-appeared at the table, the crowd gave her a long +ovation of gratitude for her performance--an ovation all the more +impressive because it was solemn and subdued. She curtseyed again +and again, not indeed with the timid simplicity of her first +obeisance (so familiar already was she with the thought of the +crowd's doom), but rather in the manner of a prima donna--chin +up, eyelids down, all teeth manifest, and hands from the bosom +flung ecstatically wide asunder.</p> + +<p>You know how, at a concert, a prima donna who has just sung +insists on shaking hands with the accompanist, and dragging him +forward, to show how beautiful her nature is, into the applause +that is for herself alone. And your heart, like mine, has gone +out to the wretched victim. Even so would you have felt for The +MacQuern when Zuleika, on the implied assumption that half the +credit was his, grasped him by the wrist, and, continuing to +curtsey, would not release him till the last echoes of the +clapping had died away.</p> + +<p>The ladies on the steps of the Hall moved down into the +quadrangle, spreading their resentment like a miasma. The tragic +passion of the crowd was merged in mere awkwardness. There was a +general movement towards the College gate.</p> + +<p>Zuleika was putting her tricks back into the great casket, The +MacQuern assisting her. The Scots, as I have said, are a shy +race, but a resolute and a self-seeking. This young chieftain had +not yet recovered from what his heroine had let him in for. But +he did not lose the opportunity of asking her to lunch with him +to-morrow.</p> + +<p>"Delighted," she said, fitting the Demon Egg-Cup into its +groove. Then, looking up at him, "Are you popular?" she asked. +"Have you many friends?" He nodded. She said he must invite them +all.</p> + +<p>This was a blow to the young man, who, at once thrifty and +infatuate, had planned a luncheon a deux. "I had hoped--" he +began.</p> + +<p>"Vainly," she cut him short.</p> + +<p>There was a pause. "Whom shall I invite, then?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know any of them. How should I have preferences?" She +remembered the Duke. She looked round and saw him still standing +in the shadow of the wall. He came towards her. "Of course," she +said hastily to her host, "you must ask HIM."</p> + +<p>The MacQuern complied. He turned to the Duke and told him that +Miss Dobson had very kindly promised to lunch with him to-morrow. +"And," said Zuleika, "I simply WON'T unless you will."</p> + +<p>The Duke looked at her. Had it not been arranged that he and +she should spend his last day together? Did it mean nothing that +she had given him her ear-rings? Quickly drawing about him some +remnants of his tattered pride, he hid his wound, and accepted +the invitation.</p> + +<p>"It seems a shame," said Zuleika to The MacQuern, "to ask you +to bring this great heavy box all the way back again. But--"</p> + +<p>Those last poor rags of pride fell away now. The Duke threw a +prehensile hand on the casket, and, coldly glaring at The +MacQuern, pointed with his other hand towards the College gate. +He, and he alone, was going to see Zuleika home. It was his last +night on earth, and he was not to be trifled with. Such was the +message of his eyes. The Scotsman's flashed back a precisely +similar message.</p> + +<p>Men had fought for Zuleika, but never in her presence. Her +eyes dilated. She had not the slightest impulse to throw herself +between the two antagonists. Indeed, she stepped back, so as not +to be in the way. A short sharp fight--how much better that is +than bad blood! She hoped the better man would win; and (do not +misjudge her) she rather hoped this man was the Duke. It occurred +to her--a vague memory of some play or picture--that she ought to +be holding aloft a candelabra of lit tapers; no, that was only +done indoors, and in the eighteenth century. Ought she to hold a +sponge? Idle, these speculations of hers, and based on complete +ignorance of the manners and customs of undergraduates. The Duke +and The MacQuern would never have come to blows in the presence +of a lady. Their conflict was necessarily spiritual.</p> + +<p>And it was the Scotsman, Scots though he was, who had to +yield. Cowed by something demoniac in the will-power pitted +against his, he found himself retreating in the direction +indicated by the Duke's forefinger.</p> + +<p>As he disappeared into the porch, Zuleika turned to the Duke. +"You were splendid," she said softly. He knew that very well. +Does the stag in his hour of victory need a diploma from the +hind? Holding in his hands the malachite casket that was the +symbol of his triumph, the Duke smiled dictatorially at his +darling. He came near to thinking of her as a chattel. Then with +a pang he remembered his abject devotion to her. Abject no longer +though! The victory he had just won restored his manhood, his +sense of supremacy among his fellows. He loved this woman on +equal terms. She was transcendent? So was he, Dorset. To- night +the world had on its moonlit surface two great ornaments-- +Zuleika and himself. Neither of the pair could be replaced. Was +one of them to be shattered? Life and love were good. He had been +mad to think of dying.</p> + +<p>No word was spoken as they went together to Salt Cellar. She +expected him to talk about her conjuring tricks. Could he have +been disappointed? She dared not inquire; for she had the +sensitiveness, though no other quality whatsoever, of the true +artist. She felt herself aggrieved. She had half a mind to ask +him to give her back her ear-rings. And by the way, he hadn't yet +thanked her for them! Well, she would make allowances for a +condemned man. And again she remembered the omen of which he had +told her. She looked at him, and then up into the sky. "This same +moon," she said to herself, "sees the battlements of Tankerton. +Does she see two black owls there? Does she hear them +hooting?"</p> + +<p>They were in Salt Cellar now. "Melisande!" she called up to +her window.</p> + +<p>"Hush!" said the Duke, "I have something to say to you."</p> + +<p>"Well, you can say it all the better without that great box in +your hands. I want my maid to carry it up to my room for me." And +again she called out for Melisande, and received no answer. "I +suppose she's in the house-keeper's room or somewhere. You had +better put the box down inside the door. She can bring it up +later."</p> + +<p>She pushed open the postern; and the Duke, as he stepped +across the threshold, thrilled with a romantic awe. Re-emerging a +moment later into the moonlight, he felt that she had been right +about the box: it was fatal to self-expression; and he was glad +he had not tried to speak on the way from the Front Quad: the +soul needs gesture; and the Duke's first gesture now was to seize +Zuleika's hands in his.</p> + +<p>She was too startled to move. "Zuleika!" he whispered. She was +too angry to speak, but with a sudden twist she freed her wrists +and darted back.</p> + +<p>He laughed. "You are afraid of me. You are afraid to let me +kiss you, because you are afraid of loving me. This +afternoon--here--I all but kissed you. I mistook you for Death. I +was enamoured of Death. I was a fool. That is what YOU are, you +incomparable darling: you are a fool. You are afraid of life. I +am not. I love life. I am going to live for you, do you +hear?"</p> + +<p>She stood with her back to the postern. Anger in her eyes had +given place to scorn. "You mean," she said, "that you go back on +your promise?"</p> + +<p>"You will release me from it."</p> + +<p>"You mean you are afraid to die?"</p> + +<p>"You will not be guilty of my death. You love me."</p> + +<p>"Good night, you miserable coward." She stepped back through +the postern.</p> + +<p>"Don't, Zuleika! Miss Dobson, don't! Pull yourself together! +Reflect! I implore you . . . You will repent . . ."</p> + +<p>Slowly she closed the postern on him.</p> + +<p>"You will repent. I shall wait here, under your window . . +."</p> + +<p>He heard a bolt rasped into its socket. He heard the retreat +of a light tread on the paven hall.</p> + +<p>And he hadn't even kissed her! That was his first thought. He +ground his heel in the gravel.</p> + +<p>And he had hurt her wrists! This was Zuleika's first thought, +as she came into her bedroom. Yes, there were two red marks where +he had held her. No man had ever dared to lay hands on her. With +a sense of contamination, she proceeded to wash her hands +thoroughly with soap and water. From time to time such words as +"cad" and "beast" came through her teeth.</p> + +<p>She dried her hands and flung herself into a chair, arose and +went pacing the room. So this was the end of her great night! +What had she done to deserve it? How had he dared?</p> + +<p>There was a sound as of rain against the window. She was glad. +The night needed cleansing.</p> + +<p>He had told her she was afraid of life. Life!--to have herself +caressed by HIM; humbly to devote herself to being humbly doted +on; to be the slave of a slave; to swim in a private pond of +treacle--ugh! If the thought weren't so cloying and degrading, it +would be laughable.</p> + +<p>For a moment her hands hovered over those two golden and +gemmed volumes encasing Bradshaw and the A.B.C. Guide. To leave +Oxford by an early train, leave him to drown unthanked, unlooked +at . . . But this could not be done without slighting all those +hundreds of other men . . . And besides . . .</p> + +<p>Again that sound on the window-pane. This time it startled +her. There seemed to be no rain. Could it have been--little bits +of gravel? She darted noiselessly to the window, pushed it open, +and looked down. She saw the upturned face of the Duke. She +stepped back, trembling with fury, staring around her. +Inspiration came.</p> + +<p>She thrust her head out again. "Are you there?" she +whispered.</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes. I knew you would come."</p> + +<p>"Wait a moment, wait!"</p> + +<p>The water-jug stood where she had left it, on the floor by the +wash- stand. It was almost full, rather heavy. She bore it +steadily to the window, and looked out.</p> + +<p>"Come a little nearer!" she whispered.</p> + +<p>The upturned and moonlit face obeyed her. She saw its lips +forming the word "Zuleika." She took careful aim.</p> + +<p>Full on the face crashed the cascade of moonlit water, +shooting out on all sides like the petals of some great silver +anemone.</p> + +<p>She laughed shrilly as she leapt back, letting the empty jug +roll over on the carpet. Then she stood tense, crouching, her +hands to her mouth, her eyes askance, as much as to say "Now I've +done it!" She listened hard, holding her breath. In the stillness +of the night was a faint sound of dripping water, and presently +of footsteps going away. Then stillness unbroken.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>XI</h3> + +<p>I said that I was Clio's servant. And I felt, when I said it, +that you looked at me dubiously, and murmured among +yourselves.</p> + +<p>Not that you doubted I was somewhat connected with Clio's +household. The lady after whom I have named this book is alive, +and well known to some of you personally, to all of you by +repute. Nor had you finished my first page before you guessed my +theme to be that episode in her life which caused so great a +sensation among the newspaper-reading public a few years ago. (It +all seems but yesterday, does it not? They are still vivid to us, +those head-lines. We have hardly yet ceased to be edified by the +morals pointed in those leading articles.) And yet very soon you +found me behaving just like any novelist--reporting the exact +words that passed between the protagonists at private interviews +--aye, and the exact thoughts and emotions that were in their +breasts. Little wonder that you wondered! Let me make things +clear to you.</p> + +<p>I have my mistress' leave to do this. At first (for reasons +which you will presently understand) she demurred. But I pointed +out to her that I had been placed in a false position, and that +until this were rectified neither she nor I could reap the credit +due to us.</p> + +<p>Know, then, that for a long time Clio had been thoroughly +discontented. She was happy enough, she says, when first she left +the home of Pierus, her father, to become a Muse. On those humble +beginnings she looks back with affection. She kept only one +servant, Herodotus. The romantic element in him appealed to her. +He died, and she had about her a large staff of able and faithful +servants, whose way of doing their work irritated and depressed +her. To them, apparently, life consisted of nothing but politics +and military operations--things to which she, being a woman, was +somewhat indifferent. She was jealous of Melpomene. It seemed to +her that her own servants worked from without at a mass of dry +details which might as well be forgotten. Melpomene's worked on +material that was eternally interesting--the souls of men and +women; and not from without, either; but rather casting +themselves into those souls and showing to us the essence of +them. She was particularly struck by a remark of Aristotle's, +that tragedy was "more philosophic" than history, inasmuch as it +concerned itself with what might be, while history was concerned +with merely what had been. This summed up for her what she had +often felt, but could not have exactly formulated. She saw that +the department over which she presided was at best an inferior +one. She saw that just what she had liked--and rightly liked --in +poor dear Herodotus was just what prevented him from being a good +historian. It was wrong to mix up facts and fancies. But why +should her present servants deal with only one little special set +of the variegated facts of life? It was not in her power to +interfere. The Nine, by the terms of the charter that Zeus had +granted to them, were bound to leave their servants an absolutely +free hand. But Clio could at least refrain from reading the works +which, by a legal fiction, she was supposed to inspire. Once or +twice in the course of a century, she would glance into this or +that new history book, only to lay it down with a shrug of her +shoulders. Some of the mediaeval chronicles she rather liked. But +when, one day, Pallas asked her what she thought of "The Decline +and Fall of the Roman Empire" her only answer was "ostis toia +echei en edone echei en edone toia" (For people who like that +kind of thing, that is the kind of thing they like). This she did +let slip. Generally, throughout all the centuries, she kept up a +pretence of thinking history the greatest of all the arts. She +always held her head high among her Sisters. It was only on the +sly that she was an omnivorous reader of dramatic and lyric +poetry. She watched with keen interest the earliest developments +of the prose romance in southern Europe; and after the +publication of "Clarissa Harlowe" she spent practically all her +time in reading novels. It was not until the Spring of the year +1863 that an entirely new element forced itself into her peaceful +life. Zeus fell in love with her.</p> + +<p>To us, for whom so quickly "time doth transfix the flourish +set on youth," there is something strange, even a trifle +ludicrous, in the thought that Zeus, after all these years, is +still at the beck and call of his passions. And it seems anyhow +lamentable that he has not yet gained self-confidence enough to +appear in his own person to the lady of his choice, and is still +at pains to transform himself into whatever object he deems +likeliest to please her. To Clio, suddenly from Olympus, he +flashed down in the semblance of Kinglake's "Invasion of the +Crimea" (four vols., large 8vo, half-calf). She saw through his +disguise immediately, and, with great courage and independence, +bade him begone. Rebuffed, he was not deflected. Indeed it would +seem that Clio's high spirit did but sharpen his desire. Hardly a +day passed but he appeared in what he hoped would be the +irresistible form--a recently discovered fragment of Polybius, an +advance copy of the forthcoming issue of "The Historical Review," +the note-book of Professor Carl Voertschlaffen . . . One day, +all-prying Hermes told him of Clio's secret addiction to +novel-reading. Thenceforth, year in, year out, it was in the form +of fiction that Zeus wooed her. The sole result was that she grew +sick of the sight of novels, and found a perverse pleasure in +reading history. These dry details of what had actually happened +were a relief, she told herself, from all that make-believe.</p> + +<p>One Sunday afternoon--the day before that very Monday on which +this narrative opens--it occurred to her how fine a thing history +might be if the historian had the novelist's privileges. Suppose +he could be present at every scene which he was going to +describe, a presence invisible and inevitable, and equipped with +power to see into the breasts of all the persons whose actions he +set himself to watch . . .</p> + +<p>While the Muse was thus musing, Zeus (disguised as Miss Annie +S. Swan's latest work) paid his usual visit. She let her eyes +rest on him. Hither and thither she divided her swift mind, and +addressed him in winged words. "Zeus, father of gods and men, +cloud-compeller, what wouldst thou of me? But first will I say +what I would of thee"; and she besought him to extend to the +writers of history such privileges as are granted to novelists. +His whole manner had changed. He listened to her with the massive +gravity of a ruler who never yet has allowed private influence to +obscure his judgment. He was silent for some time after her +appeal. Then, in a voice of thunder, which made quake the slopes +of Parnassus, he gave his answer. He admitted the disabilities +under which historians laboured. But the novelists--were they not +equally handicapped? They had to treat of persons who never +existed, events which never were. Only by the privilege of being +in the thick of those events, and in the very bowels of those +persons, could they hope to hold the reader's attention. If +similar privileges were granted to the historian, the demand for +novels would cease forthwith, and many thousand of hard-working, +deserving men and women would be thrown out of employment. In +fact, Clio had asked him an impossible favour. But he might--he +said he conceivably might--be induced to let her have her way +just once. In that event, all she would have to do was to keep +her eye on the world's surface, and then, so soon as she had +reason to think that somewhere was impending something of great +import, to choose an historian. On him, straightway, Zeus would +confer invisibility, inevitability, and psychic penetration, with +a flawless memory thrown in.</p> + +<p>On the following afternoon, Clio's roving eye saw Zuleika +stepping from the Paddington platform into the Oxford train. A +few moments later I found myself suddenly on Parnassus. In +hurried words Clio told me how I came there, and what I had to +do. She said she had selected me because she knew me to be +honest, sober, and capable, and no stranger to Oxford. Another +moment, and I was at the throne of Zeus. With a majesty of +gesture which I shall never forget, he stretched his hand over +me, and I was indued with the promised gifts. And then, lo! I was +on the platform of Oxford station. The train was not due for +another hour. But the time passed pleasantly enough.</p> + +<p>It was fun to float all unseen, to float all unhampered by any +corporeal nonsense, up and down the platform. It was fun to watch +the inmost thoughts of the station-master, of the porters, of the +young person at the buffet. But of course I did not let the +holiday- mood master me. I realised the seriousness of my +mission. I must concentrate myself on the matter in hand: Miss +Dobson's visit. What was going to happen? Prescience was no part +of my outfit. From what I knew about Miss Dobson, I deduced that +she would be a great success. That was all. Had I had the +instinct that was given to those Emperors in stone, and even to +the dog Corker, I should have begged Clio to send in my stead +some man of stronger nerve. She had charged me to be calmly +vigilant, scrupulously fair. I could have been neither, had I +from the outset foreseen all. Only because the immediate future +was broken to me by degrees, first as a set of possibilities, +then as a set of probabilities that yet might not come off, was I +able to fulfil the trust imposed in me. Even so, it was hard. I +had always accepted the doctrine that to understand all is to +forgive all. Thanks to Zeus, I understood all about Miss Dobson, +and yet there were moments when she repelled me--moments when I +wished to see her neither from without nor from within. So soon +as the Duke of Dorset met her on the Monday night, I felt I was +in duty bound to keep him under constant surveillance. Yet there +were moments when I was so sorry for him that I deemed myself a +brute for shadowing him.</p> + +<p>Ever since I can remember, I have been beset by a recurring +doubt as to whether I be or be not quite a gentleman. I have +never attempted to define that term: I have but feverishly +wondered whether in its usual acceptation (whatever that is) it +be strictly applicable to myself. Many people hold that the +qualities connoted by it are primarily moral--a kind heart, +honourable conduct, and so forth. On Clio's mission, I found +honour and kindness tugging me in precisely opposite directions. +In so far as honour tugged the harder, was I the more or the less +gentlemanly? But the test is not a fair one. Curiosity tugged on +the side of honour. This goes to prove me a cad? Oh, set against +it the fact that I did at one point betray Clio's trust. When +Miss Dobson had done the deed recorded at the close of the +foregoing chapter, I gave the Duke of Dorset an hour's grace.</p> + +<p>I could have done no less. In the lives of most of us is some +one thing that we would not after the lapse of how many years +soever confess to our most understanding friend; the thing that +does not bear thinking of; the one thing to be forgotten; the +unforgettable thing. Not the commission of some great crime: this +can be atoned for by great penances; and the very enormity of it +has a dark grandeur. Maybe, some little deadly act of meanness, +some hole-and-corner treachery? But what a man has once willed to +do, his will helps him to forget. The unforgettable thing in his +life is usually not a thing he has done or left undone, but a +thing done to him--some insolence or cruelty for which he could +not, or did not, avenge himself. This it is that often comes back +to him, years after, in his dreams, and thrusts itself suddenly +into his waking thoughts, so that he clenches his hands, and +shakes his head, and hums a tune loudly--anything to beat it off. +In the very hour when first befell him that odious humiliation, +would you have spied on him? I gave the Duke of Dorset an hour's +grace.</p> + +<p>What were his thoughts in that interval, what words, if any, +he uttered to the night, never will be known. For this, Clio has +abused me in language less befitting a Muse than a fishwife. I do +not care. I would rather be chidden by Clio than by my own sense +of delicacy, any day.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>XII</h3> + +<p>Not less averse than from dogging the Duke was I from +remaining another instant in the presence of Miss Dobson. There +seemed to be no possible excuse for her. This time she had gone +too far. She was outrageous. As soon as the Duke had had time to +get clear away, I floated out into the night.</p> + +<p>I may have consciously reasoned that the best way to forget +the present was in the revival of memories. Or I may have been +driven by a mere homing instinct. Anyhow, it was in the direction +of my old College that I went. Midnight was tolling as I floated +in through the shut grim gate at which I had so often stood +knocking for admission.</p> + +<p>The man who now occupied my room had sported his oak--my oak. +I read the name on the visiting-card attached thereto--E. J. +Craddock--and went in.</p> + +<p>E. J. Craddock, interloper, was sitting at my table, with +elbows squared and head on one side, in the act of literary +composition. The oars and caps on my walls betokened him a +rowing-man. Indeed, I recognised his somewhat heavy face as that +of the man whom, from the Judas barge this afternoon, I had seen +rowing "stroke" in my College Eight.</p> + +<p>He ought, therefore, to have been in bed and asleep two hours +ago. And the offence of his vigil was aggravated by a large +tumbler that stood in front of him, containing whisky and soda. +From this he took a deep draught. Then he read over what he had +written. I did not care to peer over his shoulder at MS. which, +though written in my room, was not intended for my eyes. But the +writer's brain was open to me; and he had written "I, the +undersigned Edward Joseph Craddock, do hereby leave and bequeath +all my personal and other property to Zuleika Dobson, spinster. +This is my last will and testament."</p> + +<p>He gnawed his pen, and presently altered the "hereby leave" to +"hereby and herewith leave." Fool!</p> + +<p>I thereby and therewith left him. As I emerged through the +floor of the room above--through the very carpet that had so +often been steeped in wine, and encrusted with smithereens of +glass, in the brave old days of a well-remembered occupant--I +found two men, both of them evidently reading-men. One of them +was pacing round the room. "Do you know," he was saying, "what +she reminded me of, all the time? Those words--aren't they in the +Song of Solomon?--'fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and . . . +and . . .'"</p> + +<p>"'Terrible as an army with banners,'" supplied his +host--rather testily, for he was writing a letter. It began "My +dear Father. By the time you receive this I shall have taken a +step which . . ."</p> + +<p>Clearly it was vain to seek distraction in my old College. I +floated out into the untenanted meadows. Over them was the usual +coverlet of white vapour, trailed from the Isis right up to +Merton Wall. The scent of these meadows' moisture is the scent of +Oxford. Even in hottest noon, one feels that the sun has not +dried THEM. Always there is moisture drifting across them, +drifting into the Colleges. It, one suspects, must have had much +to do with the evocation of what is called the Oxford +spirit--that gentlest spirit, so lingering and searching, so dear +to them who as youths were brought into ken of it, so +exasperating to them who were not. Yes, certainly, it is this +mild, miasmal air, not less than the grey beauty and gravity of +the buildings, that has helped Oxford to produce, and foster +eternally, her peculiar race of artist-scholars, scholar-artists. +The undergraduate, in his brief periods of residence, is too +buoyant to be mastered by the spirit of the place. He does but +salute it, and catch the manner. It is on him who stays to spend +his maturity here that the spirit will in its fulness gradually +descend. The buildings and their traditions keep astir in his +mind whatsoever is gracious; the climate, enfolding and +enfeebling him, lulling him, keeps him careless of the sharp, +harsh, exigent realities of the outer world. Careless? Not +utterly. These realities may be seen by him. He may study them, +be amused or touched by them. But they cannot fire him. Oxford is +too damp for that. The "movements" made there have been no more +than protests against the mobility of others. They have been +without the dynamic quality implied in their name. They have been +no more than the sighs of men gazing at what other men had left +behind them; faint, impossible appeals to the god of +retrogression, uttered for their own sake and ritual, rather than +with any intent that they should be heard. Oxford, that +lotus-land, saps the will-power, the power of action. But, in +doing so, it clarifies the mind, makes larger the vision, gives, +above all, that playful and caressing suavity of manner which +comes of a conviction that nothing matters, except ideas, and +that not even ideas are worth dying for, inasmuch as the ghosts +of them slain seem worthy of yet more piously elaborate homage +than can be given to them in their heyday. If the Colleges could +be transferred to the dry and bracing top of some hill, doubtless +they would be more evidently useful to the nation. But let us be +glad there is no engineer or enchanter to compass that task. +Egomet, I would liefer have the rest of England subside into the +sea than have Oxford set on a salubrious level. For there is +nothing in England to be matched with what lurks in the vapours +of these meadows, and in the shadows of these spires--that +mysterious, inenubilable spirit, spirit of Oxford. Oxford! The +very sight of the word printed, or sound of it spoken, is fraught +for me with most actual magic.</p> + +<p>And on that moonlit night when I floated among the vapours of +these meadows, myself less than a vapour, I knew and loved Oxford +as never before, as never since. Yonder, in the Colleges, was the +fume and fret of tragedy--Love as Death's decoy, and Youth +following her. What then? Not Oxford was menaced. Come what +might, not a stone of Oxford's walls would be loosened, nor a +wreath of her vapours be undone, nor lost a breath of her sacred +spirit.</p> + +<p>I floated up into the higher, drier air, that I might, for +once, see the total body of that spirit.</p> + +<p>There lay Oxford far beneath me, like a map in grey and black +and silver. All that I had known only as great single things I +saw now outspread in apposition, and tiny; tiny symbols, as it +were, of themselves, greatly symbolising their oneness. There +they lay, these multitudinous and disparate quadrangles, all +their rivalries merged in the making of a great catholic pattern. +And the roofs of the buildings around them seemed level with +their lawns. No higher the roofs of the very towers. Up from +their tiny segment of the earth's spinning surface they stood +negligible beneath infinity. And new, too, quite new, in +eternity; transient upstarts. I saw Oxford as a place that had no +more past and no more future than a mining-camp. I smiled down. O +hoary and unassailable mushroom! . . . But if a man carry his +sense of proportion far enough, lo! he is back at the point from +which he started. He knows that eternity, as conceived by him, is +but an instant in eternity, and infinity but a speck in infinity. +How should they belittle the things near to him? . . . Oxford was +venerable and magical, after all, and enduring. Aye, and not +because she would endure was it the less lamentable that the +young lives within her walls were like to be taken. My equanimity +was gone; and a tear fell on Oxford.</p> + +<p>And then, as though Oxford herself were speaking up to me, the +air vibrated with a sweet noise of music. It was the hour of one; +the end of the Duke's hour of grace. Through the silvery tangle +of sounds from other clocks I floated quickly down to the +Broad.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>XIII</h3> + +<p>I had on the way a horrible apprehension. What if the Duke, in +his agony, had taken the one means to forgetfulness? His room, I +could see, was lit up; but a man does not necessarily choose to +die in the dark. I hovered, afraid, over the dome of the +Sheldonian. I saw that the window of the room above the Duke's +was also lit up. And there was no reason at all to doubt the +survival of Noaks. Perhaps the sight of him would hearten me.</p> + +<p>I was wrong. The sight of Noaks in his room was as dismal a +thing as could be. With his chin sunk on his breast, he sat +there, on a rickety chair, staring up at the mantel-piece. This +he had decked out as a sort of shrine. In the centre, aloft on an +inverted tin that had contained Abernethy biscuits, stood a blue +plush frame, with an inner rim of brass, several sizes too big +for the picture-postcard installed in it. Zuleika's image gazed +forth with a smile that was obviously not intended for the humble +worshipper at this execrable shrine. On either side of her stood +a small vase, one holding some geraniums, the other some +mignonette. And just beneath her was placed that iron ring which, +rightly or wrongly, Noaks supposed to alleviate rheumatism--that +same iron ring which, by her touch to-night, had been charged for +him with a yet deeper magic, insomuch that he dared no longer +wear it, and had set it before her as an oblation.</p> + +<p>Yet, for all his humility, he was possessed by a spirit of +egoism that repelled me. While he sat peering over his spectacles +at the beauteous image, he said again and again to himself, in a +hollow voice, "I am so young to die." Every time he said this, +two large, pear-shaped tears emerged from behind his spectacles, +and found their way to his waistcoat. It did not seem to strike +him that quite half of the undergraduates who contemplated +death--and contemplated it in a fearless, wholesome, manly +fashion--were his juniors. It seemed to seem to him that his own +death, even though all those other far brighter and more +promising lives than his were to be sacrificed, was a thing to +bother about. Well, if he did not want to die, why could he not +have, at least, the courage of his cowardice? The world would not +cease to revolve because Noaks still clung to its surface. For me +the whole tragedy was cheapened by his participation in it. I was +fain to leave him. His squint, his short legs dangling towards +the floor, his tear-sodden waistcoat, and his refrain "I am so +young to die," were beyond measure exasperating. Yet I hesitated +to pass into the room beneath, for fear of what I might see +there.</p> + +<p>How long I might have paltered, had no sound come from that +room, I know not. But a sound came, sharp and sudden in the +night, instantly reassuring. I swept down into the presence of +the Duke.</p> + +<p>He stood with his head flung back and his arms folded, +gorgeous in a dressing-gown of crimson brocade. In animation of +pride and pomp, he looked less like a mortal man than like a +figure from some great biblical group by Paul Veronese.</p> + +<p>And this was he whom I had presumed to pity! And this was he +whom I had half expected to find dead.</p> + +<p>His face, usually pale, was now red; and his hair, which no +eye had ever yet seen disordered, stood up in a glistening shock. +These two changes in him intensified the effect of vitality. One +of them, however, vanished as I watched it. The Duke's face +resumed its pallor. I realised then that he had but blushed; and +I realised, simultaneously, that what had called that blush to +his cheek was what had also been the signal to me that he was +alive. His blush had been a pendant to his sneeze. And his sneeze +had been a pendant to that outrage which he had been striving to +forget. He had caught cold.</p> + +<p>He had caught cold. In the hour of his soul's bitter need, his +body had been suborned against him. Base! Had he not stripped his +body of its wet vesture? Had he not vigorously dried his hair, +and robed himself in crimson, and struck in solitude such +attitudes as were most congruous with his high spirit and high +rank? He had set himself to crush remembrance of that by which +through his body his soul had been assailed. And well had he +known that in this conflict a giant demon was his antagonist. But +that his own body would play traitor--no, this he had not +foreseen. This was too base a thing to be foreseen.</p> + +<p>He stood quite still, a figure orgulous and splendent. And it +seemed as though the hot night, too, stood still, to watch him, +in awe, through the open lattices of his window, breathlessly. +But to me, equipped to see beneath the surface, he was piteous, +piteous in ratio to the pretension of his aspect. Had he crouched +down and sobbed, I should have been as much relieved as he. But +he stood seignorial and aquiline.</p> + +<p>Painless, by comparison with this conflict in him, seemed the +conflict that had raged in him yesternight. Then, it had been his +dandihood against his passion for Zuleika. What mattered the +issue? Whichever won, the victory were sweet. And of this he had +all the while been subconscious, gallantly though he fought for +his pride of dandihood. To-night in the battle between pride and +memory, he knew from the outset that pride's was but a forlorn +hope, and that memory would be barbarous in her triumph. Not +winning to oblivion, he must hate with a fathomless hatred. Of +all the emotions, hatred is the most excruciating. Of all the +objects of hatred, a woman once loved is the most hateful. Of all +deaths, the bitterest that can befall a man is that he lay down +his life to flatter the woman he deems vilest of her sex.</p> + +<p>Such was the death that the Duke of Dorset saw confronting +him. Most men, when they are at war with the past, have the +future as ally. Looking steadfastly forward, they can forget. The +Duke's future was openly in league with his past. For him, +prospect was memory. All that there was for him of future was the +death to which his honour was pledged. To envisage that was to . +. . no, he would NOT envisage it! With a passionate effort he +hypnotised himself to think of nothing at all. His brain, into +which, by the power Zeus gave me, I was gazing, became a perfect +vacuum, insulated by the will. It was the kind of experiment +which scientists call "beautiful." And yes, beautiful it was.</p> + +<p>But not in the eyes of Nature. She abhors a vacuum. Seeing the +enormous odds against which the Duke was fighting, she might well +have stood aside. But she has no sense of sport whatsoever. She +stepped in.</p> + +<p>At first I did not realise what was happening. I saw the +Duke's eyes contract, and the muscles of his mouth drawn down, +and, at the same time, a tense upward movement of his whole body. +Then, suddenly, the strain undone: a downward dart of the head, a +loud percussion. Thrice the Duke sneezed, with a sound that was +as the bursting of the dams of body and soul together; then +sneezed again.</p> + +<p>Now was his will broken. He capitulated. In rushed shame and +horror and hatred, pell-mell, to ravage him.</p> + +<p>What care now, what use, for deportment? He walked coweringly +round and round his room, with frantic gestures, with head bowed. +He shuffled and slunk. His dressing-gown had the look of a +gabardine.</p> + +<p>Shame and horror and hatred went slashing and hewing +throughout the fallen citadel. At length, exhausted, he flung +himself down on the window-seat and leaned out into the night, +panting. The air was full of thunder. He clutched at his throat. +From the depths of the black caverns beneath their brows the eyes +of the unsleeping Emperors watched him.</p> + +<p>He had gone through much in the day that was past. He had +loved and lost. He had striven to recapture, and had failed. In a +strange resolve he had found serenity and joy. He had been at the +point of death, and had been saved. He had seen that his beloved +was worthless, and he had not cared. He had fought for her, and +conquered; and had pled with her, and--all these memories were +loathsome by reason of that final thing which had all the while +lain in wait for him.</p> + +<p>He looked back and saw himself as he had been at a score of +crucial moments in the day--always in the shadow of that final +thing. He saw himself as he had been on the playing-fields of +Eton; aye! and in the arms of his nurse, to and fro on the +terrace of Tankerton--always in the shadow of that final thing, +always piteous and ludicrous, doomed. Thank heaven the future was +unknowable? It wasn't, now. To-morrow-- to-day--he must die for +that accursed fiend of a woman--the woman with the hyena +laugh.</p> + +<p>What to do meanwhile? Impossible to sleep. He felt in his body +the strain of his quick sequence of spiritual adventures. He was +dog- tired. But his brain was furiously out of hand: no stopping +it. And the night was stifling. And all the while, in the dead +silence, as though his soul had ears, there was a sound. It was a +very faint, unearthly sound, and seemed to come from nowhere, yet +to have a meaning. He feared he was rather over-wrought.</p> + +<p>He must express himself. That would soothe him. Ever since +childhood he had had, from time to time, the impulse to set down +in writing his thoughts or his moods. In such exercises he had +found for his self- consciousness the vent which natures less +reserved than his find in casual talk with Tom, Dick and Harry, +with Jane, Susan, and Liz. Aloof from either of these triads, he +had in his first term at Eton taken to himself as confidant, and +retained ever since, a great quarto volume, bound in red morocco +and stamped with his coronet and cypher. It was herein, year by +year, that his soul spread itself.</p> + +<p>He wrote mostly in English prose; but other modes were not +infrequent. Whenever he was abroad, it was his courteous habit to +write in the language of the country where he was +residing--French, when he was in his house on the Champs Elysees; +Italian, when he was in his villa at Baiae; and so on. When he +was in his own country he felt himself free to deviate sometimes +from the vernacular into whatever language were aptest to his +frame of mind. In his sterner moods he gravitated to Latin, and +wrought the noble iron of that language to effects that were, if +anything, a trifle over-impressive. He found for his highest +flights of contemplation a handy vehicle in Sanscrit. In hours of +mere joy it was Greek poetry that flowed likeliest from his pen; +and he had a special fondness for the metre of Alcaeus.</p> + +<p>And now, too, in his darkest hour, it was Greek that surged in +him-- iambics of thunderous wrath such as those which are +volleyed by Prometheus. But as he sat down to his writing-table, +and unlocked the dear old album, and dipped his pen in the ink, a +great calm fell on him. The iambics in him began to breathe such +sweetness as is on the lips of Alcestis going to her doom. But, +just as he set pen to paper, his hand faltered, and he sprang up, +victim of another and yet more violent fit of sneezing.</p> + +<p>Disbuskined, dangerous. The spirit of Juvenal woke in him. He +would flay. He would make Woman (as he called Zuleika) writhe. +Latin hexameters, of course. An epistle to his heir presumptive . +. . "Vae tibi," he began,</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>"Vae tibi, vae misero, nisi circumspexeris artes</p> + +<p>Femineas, nam nulla salus quin femina possit</p> + +<p>Tradere, nulla fides quin"--</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>"Quin," he repeated. In writing soliloquies, his trouble was +to curb inspiration. The thought that he was addressing his +heir-presumptive-- now heir-only-too-apparent--gave him pause. +Nor, he reflected, was he addressing this brute only, but a huge +posthumous audience. These hexameters would be sure to appear in +the "authorised" biography. "A melancholy interest attaches to +the following lines, written, it would seem, on the very eve of" +. . . He winced. Was it really possible, and no dream, that he +was to die to-morrow--to-day?</p> + +<p>Even you, unassuming reader, go about with a vague notion that +in your case, somehow, the ultimate demand of nature will be +waived. The Duke, until he conceived his sudden desire to die, +had deemed himself certainly exempt. And now, as he sat staring +at his window, he saw in the paling of the night the presage of +the dawn of his own last day. Sometimes (orphaned though he was +in early childhood) he had even found it hard to believe there +was no exemption for those to whom he stood in any personal +relation. He remembered how, soon after he went to Eton, he had +received almost with incredulity the news of the death of his +god-father, Lord Stackley, an octogenarian. . . . He took from +the table his album, knowing that on one of the earliest pages +was inscribed his boyish sense of that bereavement. Yes, here the +passage was, written in a large round hand:</p> + +<p>"Death knocks, as we know, at the door of the cottage and of +the castle. He stalks up the front-garden and the steep steps of +the semi-detached villa, and plies the ornamental knocker so +imperiously that the panels of imitation stained glass quiver in +the thin front- door. Even the family that occupies the topmost +story of a building without a lift is on his ghastly +visiting-list. He rattles his fleshless knuckles against the door +of the gypsy's caravan. Into the savage's tent, wigwam, or +wattled hut, he darts unbidden. Even on the hermit in the cave he +forces his obnoxious presence. His is an universal beat, and he +walks it with a grin. But be sure it is at the sombre portal of +the nobleman that he knocks with the greatest gusto. It is there, +where haply his visit will be commemorated with a hatchment; it +is then, when the muffled thunder of the Dead March in 'Saul' +will soon be rolling in cathedrals; it is then, it is there, that +the pride of his unquestioned power comes grimliest home to him. +Is there no withstanding him? Why should he be admitted always +with awe, a cravenly-honoured guest? When next he calls, let the +butler send him about his business, or tell him to step round to +the servants' entrance. If it be made plain to him that his +visits are an impertinence, he will soon be disemboldened. Once +the aristocracy make a stand against him, there need be no more +trouble about the exorbitant Duties named after him. And for the +hereditary system--that system which both offends the common +sense of the Radical, and wounds the Tory by its implied +admission that noblemen are mortal--a seemly substitute will have +been found."</p> + +<p>Artless and crude in expression, very boyish, it seemed now to +its author. Yet, in its simple wistfulness, it had quality: it +rang true. The Duke wondered whether, with all that he had since +mastered in the great art of English prose, he had not lost +something, too.</p> + +<p>"Is there no withstanding him?" To think that the boy who +uttered that cry, and gave back so brave an answer, was within +nine years to go seek death of his own accord! How the gods must +be laughing! Yes, the exquisite point of the joke, for them, was +that he CHOSE to die. But--and, as the thought flashed through +him, he started like a man shot--what if he chose not to? Stay, +surely there was some reason why he MUST die. Else, why +throughout the night had he taken his doom for granted? . . . +Honour: yes, he had pledged himself. Better death than dishonour. +Was it, though? was it? Ah, he, who had come so near to death, +saw dishonour as a tiny trifle. Where was the sting of it? Not he +would be ridiculous to-morrow--to-day. Every one would acclaim +his splendid act of moral courage. She, she, the hyena woman, +would be the fool. No one would have thought of dying for her, +had he not set the example. Every one would follow his new +example. Yes, he would save Oxford yet. That was his duty. Duty +and darling vengeance! And life-- life!</p> + +<p>It was full dawn now. Gone was that faint, monotonous sound +which had punctuated in his soul the horrors of his vigil. But, +in reminder of those hours, his lamp was still burning. He +extinguished it; and the going-out of that tarnished light made +perfect his sense of release.</p> + +<p>He threw wide his arms in welcome of the great adorable day, +and of all the great adorable days that were to be his.</p> + +<p>He leaned out from his window, drinking the dawn in. The gods +had made merry over him, had they? And the cry of the hyena had +made night hideous. Well, it was his turn now. He would laugh +last and loudest.</p> + +<p>And already, for what was to be, he laughed outright into the +morning; insomuch that the birds in the trees of Trinity, and +still more the Emperors over the way, marvelled greatly.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>XIV</h3> + +<p>They had awaited thousands and innumerable thousands of +daybreaks in the Broad, these Emperors, counting the long slow +hours till the night were over. It is in the night especially +that their fallen greatness haunts them. Day brings some +distraction. They are not incurious of the lives around +them--these little lives that succeed one another so quickly. To +them, in their immemorial old age, youth is a constant wonder. +And so is death, which to them comes not. Youth or death-- which, +they had often asked themselves, was the goodlier? But it was ill +that these two things should be mated. It was ill-come, this day +of days.</p> + +<p>Long after the Duke was in bed and asleep, his peal of +laughter echoed in the ears of the Emperors. Why had he +laughed?</p> + +<p>And they said to themselves "We are very old men, and broken, +and in a land not our own. There are things that we do not +understand."</p> + +<p>Brief was the freshness of the dawn. From all points of the +compass, dark grey clouds mounted into the sky. There, taking +their places as though in accordance to a strategic plan laid +down for them, they ponderously massed themselves, and presently, +as at a given signal, drew nearer to earth, and halted, an +irresistible great army, awaiting orders.</p> + +<p>Somewhere under cover of them the sun went his way, +transmitting a sulphurous heat. The very birds in the trees of +Trinity were oppressed and did not twitter. The very leaves did +not whisper.</p> + +<p>Out through the railings, and across the road, prowled a +skimpy and dingy cat, trying to look like a tiger.</p> + +<p>It was all very sinister and dismal.</p> + +<p>The hours passed. The Broad put forth, one by one, its signs +of waking.</p> + +<p>Soon after eight o'clock, as usual, the front-door of the +Duke's lodgings was opened from within. The Emperors watched for +the faint cloud of dust that presently emerged, and for her whom +it preceded. To them, this first outcoming of the landlady's +daughter was a moment of daily interest. Katie!--they had known +her as a toddling child; and later as a little girl scampering +off to school, all legs and pinafore and streaming golden hair. +And now she was sixteen years old. Her hair, tied back at the +nape of her neck, would very soon be "up." Her big blue eyes were +as they had always been; but she had long passed out of pinafores +into aprons, had taken on a sedateness befitting her years and +her duties, and was anxious to be regarded rather as an aunt than +as a sister by her brother Clarence, aged twelve. The Emperors +had always predicted that she would be pretty. And very pretty +she was.</p> + +<p>As she came slowly out, with eyes downcast to her broom, +sweeping the dust so seriously over the doorstep and then across +the pavement, and anon when she reappeared with pail and +scrubbing-brush, and abased herself before the doorstep, and +wrought so vehemently there, what filled her little soul was not +the dignity of manual labour. The duties that Zuleika had envied +her were dear to her exactly as they would have been, yesterday +morning, to Zuleika. The Emperors had often noticed that during +vacations their little favourite's treatment of the doorstep was +languid and perfunctory. They knew well her secret, and always +(for who can be long in England without becoming sentimental?) +they cherished the hope of a romantic union between her and "a +certain young gentleman," as they archly called the Duke. His +continued indifference to her they took almost as an affront to +themselves. Where in all England was a prettier, sweeter girl +than their Katie? The sudden irruption of Zuleika into Oxford was +especially grievous to them because they could no longer hope +against hope that Katie would be led by the Duke to the altar, +and thence into the highest social circles, and live happily ever +after. Luckily it was for Katie, however, that they had no power +to fill her head with their foolish notions. It was well for her +to have never doubted she loved in vain. She had soon grown used +to her lot. Not until yesterday had there been any bitterness. +Jealousy surged in Katie at the very moment when she beheld +Zuleika on the threshold. A glance at the Duke's face when she +showed the visitor up was enough to acquaint her with the state +of his heart. And she did not, for confirming her intuition, need +the two or three opportunities she took of listening at the +keyhole. What in the course of those informal audiences did +surprise her--so much indeed that she could hardly believe her +ear--was that it was possible for a woman not to love the Duke. +Her jealousy of "that Miss Dobson" was for a while swallowed up +in her pity for him. What she had borne so cheerfully for herself +she could not bear for her hero. She wished she had not happened +to listen.</p> + +<p>And this morning, while she knelt swaying and spreading over +"his" doorstep, her blue eyes added certain tears to be scrubbed +away in the general moisture of the stone. Rising, she dried her +hands in her apron, and dried her eyes with her hands. Lest her +mother should see that she had been crying, she loitered outside +the door. Suddenly, her roving glance changed to a stare of acute +hostility. She knew well that the person wandering towards her +was--no, not "that Miss Dobson," as she had for the fraction of +an instant supposed, but the next worst thing.</p> + +<p>It has been said that Melisande indoors was an evidently +French maid. Out of doors she was not less evidently Zuleika's. +Not that she aped her mistress. The resemblance had come by force +of propinquity and devotion. Nature had laid no basis for it. Not +one point of form or colour had the two women in common. It has +been said that Zuleika was not strictly beautiful. Melisande, +like most Frenchwomen, was strictly plain. But in expression and +port, in her whole tournure, she had become, as every good maid +does, her mistress' replica. The poise of her head, the boldness +of her regard and brilliance of her smile, the leisurely and +swinging way in which she walked, with a hand on the hip--all +these things of hers were Zuleika's too. She was no conqueror. +None but the man to whom she was betrothed--a waiter at the Cafe +Tourtel, named Pelleas--had ever paid court to her; nor was she +covetous of other hearts. Yet she looked victorious, and +insatiable of victories, and "terrible as an army with +banners."</p> + +<p>In the hand that was not on her hip she carried a letter. And +on her shoulders she had to bear the full burden of the hatred +that Zuleika had inspired in Katie. But this she did not know. +She came glancing boldly, leisurely, at the numbers on the +front-doors.</p> + +<p>Katie stepped back on to the doorstep, lest the inferiority of +her stature should mar the effect of her disdain.</p> + +<p>"Good-day. Is it here that Duke D'Orsay lives?" asked +Melisande, as nearly accurate as a Gaul may be in such +matters.</p> + +<p>"The Duke of Dorset," said Katie with a cold and insular +emphasis, "lives here." And "You," she tried to convey with her +eyes, "you, for all your smart black silk, are a hireling. I am +Miss Batch. I happen to have a hobby for housework. I have not +been crying."</p> + +<p>"Then please mount this to him at once," said Melisande, +holding out the letter. "It is from Miss Dobson's part. Very +express. I wait response."</p> + +<p>"You are very ugly," Katie signalled with her eyes. "I am very +pretty. I have the Oxfordshire complexion. And I play the piano." +With her lips she said merely, "His Grace is not called before +nine o'clock."</p> + +<p>"But to-day you go wake him now--quick--is it not?"</p> + +<p>"Quite out of the question," said Katie. "If you care to leave +that letter here, I will see that it is placed on his Grace's +breakfast- table, with the morning's post." "For the rest," added +her eyes, "Down with France!"</p> + +<p>"I find you droll, but droll, my little one!" cried +Melisande.</p> + +<p>Katie stepped back and shut the door in her face. "Like a +little Empress," the Emperors commented.</p> + +<p>The Frenchwoman threw up her hands and apostrophised heaven. +To this day she believes that all the bonnes of Oxford are mad, +but mad, and of a madness.</p> + +<p>She stared at the door, at the pail and scrubbing-brush that +had been shut out with her, at the letter in her hand. She +decided that she had better drop the letter into the slit in the +door and make report to Miss Dobson.</p> + +<p>As the envelope fell through the slit to the door-mat, Katie +made at Melisande a grimace which, had not the panels been +opaque, would have astonished the Emperors. Resuming her dignity, +she picked the thing up, and, at arm's length, examined it. It +was inscribed in pencil. Katie's lips curled at sight of the +large, audacious handwriting. But it is probable that whatever +kind of handwriting Zuleika might have had would have been just +the kind that Katie would have expected.</p> + +<p>Fingering the envelope, she wondered what the wretched woman +had to say. It occurred to her that the kettle was simmering on +the hob in the kitchen, and that she might easily steam open the +envelope and master its contents. However, her doing this would +have in no way affected the course of the tragedy. And so the +gods (being to-day in a strictly artistic mood) prompted her to +mind her own business.</p> + +<p>Laying the Duke's table for breakfast, she made as usual a +neat rectangular pile of the letters that had come for him by +post. Zuleika's letter she threw down askew. That luxury she +allowed herself.</p> + +<p>And he, when he saw the letter, allowed himself the luxury of +leaving it unopened awhile. Whatever its purport, he knew it +could but minister to his happy malice. A few hours ago, with +what shame and dread it would have stricken him! Now it was a +dainty to be dallied with.</p> + +<p>His eyes rested on the black tin boxes that contained his +robes of the Garter. Hateful had been the sight of them in the +watches of the night, when he thought he had worn those robes for +the last time. But now--!</p> + +<p>He opened Zuleika's letter. It did not disappoint him.</p> + +<p>"DEAR DUKE,--DO, DO forgive me. I am beyond words ashamed of +the silly tomboyish thing I did last night. Of course it was no +worse than that, but an awful fear haunts me that you MAY have +thought I acted in anger at the idea of your breaking your +promise to me. Well, it is quite true I had been hurt and angry +when you hinted at doing that, but the moment I left you I saw +that you had been only in fun, and I enjoyed the joke against +myself, though I thought it was rather too bad of you. And then, +as a sort of revenge, but almost before I knew what I was doing, +I played that IDIOTIC practical joke on you. I have been +MISERABLE ever since. DO come round as early as possible and tell +me I am forgiven. But before you tell me that, please lecture me +till I cry--though indeed I have been crying half through the +night. And then if you want to be VERY horrid you may tease me +for being so slow to see a joke. And then you might take me to +see some of the Colleges and things before we go on to lunch at +The MacQuern's? Forgive pencil and scrawl. Am sitting up in bed +to write.-- Your sincere friend, "Z. D. "P.S.--Please burn +this."</p> + +<p>At that final injunction, the Duke abandoned himself to his +mirth. "Please burn this." Poor dear young woman, how modest she +was in the glare of her diplomacy! Why there was nothing, not one +phrase, to compromise her in the eyes of a coroner's jury! . . . +Seriously, she had good reason to be proud of her letter. For the +purpose in view it couldn't have been better done. That was what +made it so touchingly absurd. He put himself in her position. He +pictured himself as her, "sitting up in bed," pencil in hand, to +explain away, to soothe, to clinch and bind . . . Yes, if he had +happened to be some other man-- one whom her insult might have +angered without giving love its death-blow, and one who could be +frightened out of not keeping his word--this letter would have +been capital.</p> + +<p>He helped himself to some more marmalade, and poured out +another cup of coffee. Nothing is more thrilling, thought he, +than to be treated as a cully by the person you hold in the +hollow of your hand.</p> + +<p>But within this great irony lay (to be glided over) another +irony. He knew well in what mood Zuleika had done what she had +done to him last night; yet he preferred to accept her +explanation of it.</p> + +<p>Officially, then, he acquitted her of anything worse than +tomboyishness. But this verdict for his own convenience implied +no mercy to the culprit. The sole point for him was how to +administer her punishment the most poignantly. Just how should he +word his letter?</p> + +<p>He rose from his chair, and "Dear Miss Dobson--no, MY dear +Miss Dobson," he murmured, pacing the room, "I am so very sorry I +cannot come to see you: I have to attend two lectures this +morning. By contrast with this weariness, it will be the more +delightful to meet you at The MacQuern's. I want to see as much +as I can of you to-day, because to-night there is the Bump +Supper, and to-morrow morning, alas! I must motor to Windsor for +this wretched Investiture. Meanwhile, how can you ask to be +forgiven when there is nothing whatever to forgive? It seems to +me that mine, not yours, is the form of humour that needs +explanation. My proposal to die for you was made in as playful a +spirit as my proposal to marry you. And it is really for me to +ask forgiveness of you. One thing especially," he murmured, +fingering in his waistcoat-pocket the ear-rings she had given +him, "pricks my conscience. I do feel that I ought not to have +let you give me these two pearls--at any rate, not the one which +went into premature mourning for me. As I have no means of +deciding which of the two this one is, I enclose them both, with +the hope that the pretty difference between them will in time +reappear" . . . Or words to that effect . . . Stay! why not add +to the joy of contriving that effect the greater joy of watching +it? Why send Zuleika a letter? He would obey her summons. He +would speed to her side. He snatched up a hat.</p> + +<p>In this haste, however, he detected a certain lack of dignity. +He steadied himself, and went slowly to the mirror. There he +adjusted his hat with care, and regarded himself very seriously, +very sternly, from various angles, like a man invited to paint +his own portrait for the Uffizi. He must be worthy of himself. It +was well that Zuleika should be chastened. Great was her sin. Out +of life and death she had fashioned toys for her vanity. But his +joy must be in vindication of what was noble, not in making +suffer what was vile. Yesterday he had been her puppet, her +Jumping-Jack; to-day it was as avenging angel that he would +appear before her. The gods had mocked him who was now their +minister. Their minister? Their master, as being once more master +of himself. It was they who had plotted his undoing. Because they +loved him they were fain that he should die young. The Dobson +woman was but their agent, their cat's-paw. By her they had all +but got him. Not quite! And now, to teach them, through her, a +lesson they would not soon forget, he would go forth.</p> + +<p>Shaking with laughter, the gods leaned over the thunder-clouds +to watch him.</p> + +<p>He went forth.</p> + +<p>On the well-whitened doorstep he was confronted by a small boy +in uniform bearing a telegram.</p> + +<p>"Duke of Dorset?" asked the small boy.</p> + +<p>Opening the envelope, the Duke saw that the message, with +which was a prepaid form for reply, had been handed in at the +Tankerton post- office. It ran thus:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>Deeply regret inform your grace last night two black owls came +and perched on battlements remained there through night hooting +at dawn flew away none knows whither awaiting instructions</p> + +<p>Jellings</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>The Duke's face, though it grew white, moved not one muscle. +Somewhat shamed now, the gods ceased from laughing. The Duke +looked from the telegram to the boy. "Have you a pencil?" he +asked. "Yes, my Lord," said the boy, producing a stump of pencil. +Holding the prepaid form against the door, the Duke wrote:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>Jellings Tankerton Hall</p> + +<p>Prepare vault for funeral Monday</p> + +<p>Dorset</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>His handwriting was as firmly and minutely beautiful as ever. +Only in that he forgot there was nothing to pay did he belie his +calm. "Here," he said to the boy, "is a shilling; and you may +keep the change."</p> + +<p>"Thank you, my Lord," said the boy, and went his way, as happy +as a postman.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>XV</h3> + +<p>Humphrey Greddon, in the Duke's place, would have taken a +pinch of snuff. But he could not have made that gesture with a +finer air than the Duke gave to its modern equivalent. In the art +of taking and lighting a cigarette, there was one man who had no +rival in Europe. This time he outdid even himself.</p> + +<p>"Ah," you say, "but 'pluck' is one thing, endurance another. A +man who doesn't reel on receipt of his death-warrant may yet +break down when he has had time to think it over. How did the +Duke acquit himself when he came to the end of his cigarette? And +by the way, how was it that after he had read the telegram you +didn't give him again an hour's grace?"</p> + +<p>In a way, you have a perfect right to ask both those +questions. But their very pertinence shows that you think I might +omit things that matter. Please don't interrupt me again. Am _I_ +writing this history, or are you?</p> + +<p>Though the news that he must die was a yet sharper douche, as +you have suggested, than the douche inflicted by Zuleika, it did +at least leave unscathed the Duke's pride. The gods can make a +man ridiculous through a woman, but they cannot make him +ridiculous when they deal him a blow direct. The very greatness +of their power makes them, in that respect, impotent. They had +decreed that the Duke should die, and they had told him so. There +was nothing to demean him in that. True, he had just measured +himself against them. But there was no shame in being gravelled. +The peripety was according to the best rules of tragic art. The +whole thing was in the grand manner.</p> + +<p>Thus I felt that there were no indelicacy, this time, in +watching him. Just as "pluck" comes of breeding, so is endurance +especially an attribute of the artist. Because he can stand +outside himself, and (if there be nothing ignoble in them) take a +pleasure in his own sufferings, the artist has a huge advantage +over you and me. The Duke, so soon as Zuleika's spell was broken, +had become himself again--a highly self-conscious artist in life. +And now, standing pensive on the doorstep, he was almost enviable +in his great affliction.</p> + +<p>Through the wreaths of smoke which, as they came from his +lips, hung in the sultry air as they would have hung in a closed +room, he gazed up at the steadfast thunder-clouds. How nobly they +had been massed for him! One of them, a particularly large and +dark one, might with advantage, he thought, have been placed a +little further to the left. He made a gesture to that effect. +Instantly the cloud rolled into position. The gods were painfully +anxious, now, to humour him in trifles. His behaviour in the +great emergency had so impressed them at a distance that they +rather dreaded meeting him anon at close quarters. They rather +wished they had not uncaged, last night, the two black owls. Too +late. What they had done they had done.</p> + +<p>That faint monotonous sound in the stillness of the night--the +Duke remembered it now. What he had thought to be only his fancy +had been his death-knell, wafted to him along uncharted waves of +ether, from the battlements of Tankerton. It had ceased at +daybreak. He wondered now that he had not guessed its meaning. +And he was glad that he had not. He was thankful for the peace +that had been granted to him, the joyous arrogance in which he +had gone to bed and got up for breakfast. He valued these mercies +the more for the great tragic irony that came of them. Aye, and +he was inclined to blame the gods for not having kept him still +longer in the dark and so made the irony still more awful. Why +had they not caused the telegram to be delayed in transmission? +They ought to have let him go and riddle Zuleika with his scorn +and his indifference. They ought to have let him hurl through her +his defiance of them. Art aside, they need not have grudged him +that excursion.</p> + +<p>He could not, he told himself, face Zuleika now. As artist, he +saw that there was irony enough left over to make the meeting a +fine one. As theologian, he did not hold her responsible for his +destiny. But as a man, after what she had done to him last night, +and before what he had to do for her to-day, he would not go out +of his way to meet her. Of course, he would not actually avoid +her. To seem to run away from her were beneath his dignity. But, +if he did meet her, what in heaven's name should he say to her? +He remembered his promise to lunch with The MacQuern, and +shuddered. She would be there. Death, as he had said, cancelled +all engagements. A very simple way out of the difficulty would be +to go straight to the river. No, that would be like running away. +It couldn't be done.</p> + +<p>Hardly had he rejected the notion when he had a glimpse of a +female figure coming quickly round the corner--a glimpse that +sent him walking quickly away, across the road, towards Turl +Street, blushing violently. Had she seen him? he asked himself. +And had she seen that he saw her? He heard her running after him. +He did not look round, he quickened his pace. She was gaining on +him. Involuntarily, he ran--ran like a hare, and, at the corner +of Turl Street, rose like a trout, saw the pavement rise at him, +and fell, with a bang, prone.</p> + +<p>Let it be said at once that in this matter the gods were +absolutely blameless. It is true they had decreed that a piece of +orange-peel should be thrown down this morning at the corner of +Turl Street. But the Master of Balliol, not the Duke, was the +person they had destined to slip on it. You must not imagine that +they think out and appoint everything that is to befall us, down +to the smallest detail. Generally, they just draw a sort of broad +outline, and leave us to fill it in according to our taste. Thus, +in the matters of which this book is record, it was they who made +the Warden invite his grand- daughter to Oxford, and invite the +Duke to meet her on the evening of her arrival. And it was they +who prompted the Duke to die for her on the following (Tuesday) +afternoon. They had intended that he should execute his resolve +after, or before, the boat-race of that evening. But an oversight +upset this plan. They had forgotten on Monday night to uncage the +two black owls; and so it was necessary that the Duke's death +should be postponed. They accordingly prompted Zuleika to save +him. For the rest, they let the tragedy run its own +course--merely putting in a felicitous touch here and there, or +vetoing a superfluity, such as that Katie should open Zuleika's +letter. It was no part of their scheme that the Duke should +mistake Melisande for her mistress, or that he should run away +from her, and they were genuinely sorry when he, instead of the +Master of Balliol, came to grief over the orange-peel.</p> + +<p>Them, however, the Duke cursed as he fell; them again as he +raised himself on one elbow, giddy and sore; and when he found +that the woman bending over him was not she whom he dreaded, but +her innocent maid, it was against them that he almost foamed at +the mouth.</p> + +<p>"Monsieur le Duc has done himself harm--no?" panted Melisande. +"Here is a letter from Miss Dobson's part. She say to me 'Give it +him with your own hand.'"</p> + +<p>The Duke received the letter and, sitting upright, tore it to +shreds, thus confirming a suspicion which Melisande had conceived +at the moment when he took to his heels, that all English +noblemen are mad, but mad, and of a madness.</p> + +<p>"Nom de Dieu," she cried, wringing her hands, "what shall I +tell to Mademoiselle?"</p> + +<p>"Tell her--" the Duke choked back a phrase of which the memory +would have shamed his last hours. "Tell her," he substituted, +"that you have seen Marius sitting among the ruins of Carthage," +and limped quickly away down the Turl.</p> + +<p>Both his hands had been abraded by the fall. He tended them +angrily with his handkerchief. Mr. Druce, the chemist, had anon +the privilege of bathing and plastering them, also of balming and +binding the right knee and the left shin. "Might have been a very +nasty accident, your Grace," he said. "It was," said the Duke. +Mr. Druce concurred.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, Mr. Druce's remark sank deep. The Duke thought +it quite likely that the gods had intended the accident to be +fatal, and that only by his own skill and lightness in falling +had he escaped the ignominy of dying in full flight from a +lady's-maid. He had not, you see, lost all sense of free-will. +While Mr. Druce put the finishing touches to his shin, "I am +utterly purposed," he said to himself, "that for this death of +mine I will choose my own manner and my own --well, not 'time' +exactly, but whatever moment within my brief span of life shall +seem aptest to me. Unberufen," he added, lightly tapping Mr. +Druce's counter.</p> + +<p>The sight of some bottles of Cold Mixture on that hospitable +board reminded him of a painful fact. In the clash of the +morning's excitements, he had hardly felt the gross ailment that +was on him. He became fully conscious of it now, and there leapt +in him a hideous doubt: had he escaped a violent death only to +succumb to "natural causes"? He had never hitherto had anything +the matter with him, and thus he belonged to the worst, the most +apprehensive, class of patients. He knew that a cold, were it +neglected, might turn malignant; and he had a vision of himself +gripped suddenly in the street by internal agonies--a sympathetic +crowd, an ambulance, his darkened bedroom; local doctor making +hopelessly wrong diagnosis; eminent specialists served up hot by +special train, commending local doctor's treatment, but shaking +their heads and refusing to say more than "He has youth on his +side"; a slight rally at sunset; the end. All this flashed +through his mind. He quailed. There was not a moment to lose. He +frankly confessed to Mr. Druce that he had a cold.</p> + +<p>Mr. Druce, trying to insinuate by his manner that this fact +had not been obvious, suggested the Mixture--a teaspoonful every +two hours. "Give me some now, please, at once," said the +Duke.</p> + +<p>He felt magically better for the draught. He handled the +little glass lovingly, and eyed the bottle. "Why not two +teaspoonfuls every hour?" he suggested, with an eagerness almost +dipsomaniacal. But Mr. Druce was respectfully firm against that. +The Duke yielded. He fancied, indeed, that the gods had meant him +to die of an overdose.</p> + +<p>Still, he had a craving for more. Few though his hours were, +he hoped the next two would pass quickly. And, though he knew Mr. +Druce could be trusted to send the bottle round to his rooms +immediately, he preferred to carry it away with him. He slipped +it into the breast- pocket of his coat, almost heedless of the +slight extrusion it made there.</p> + +<p>Just as he was about to cross the High again, on his way home, +a butcher's cart dashed down the slope, recklessly driven. He +stepped well back on the pavement, and smiled a sardonic smile. +He looked to right and to left, carefully gauging the traffic. +Some time elapsed before he deemed the road clear enough for +transit.</p> + +<p>Safely across, he encountered a figure that seemed to loom up +out of the dim past. Oover! Was it but yesternight that Oover +dined with him? With the sensation of a man groping among +archives, he began to apologise to the Rhodes Scholar for having +left him so abruptly at the Junta. Then, presto!--as though those +musty archives were changed to a crisp morning paper agog with +terrific head-lines--he remembered the awful resolve of Oover, +and of all young Oxford.</p> + +<p>"Of course," he asked, with a lightness that hardly hid his +dread of the answer, "you have dismissed the notion you were +toying with when I left you?"</p> + +<p>Oover's face, like his nature, was as sensitive as it was +massive, and it instantly expressed his pain at the doubt cast on +his high seriousness. "Duke," he asked, "d'you take me for a +skunk?"</p> + +<p>"Without pretending to be quite sure what a skunk is," said +the Duke, "I take you to be all that it isn't. And the high +esteem in which I hold you is the measure for me of the loss that +your death would be to America and to Oxford."</p> + +<p>Oover blushed. "Duke" he said "that's a bully testimonial. But +don't worry. America can turn out millions just like me, and +Oxford can have as many of them as she can hold. On the other +hand, how many of YOU can be turned out, as per sample, in +England? Yet you choose to destroy yourself. You avail yourself +of the Unwritten Law. And you're right, Sir. Love transcends +all."</p> + +<p>"But does it? What if I told you I had changed my mind?"</p> + +<p>"Then, Duke," said Oover, slowly, "I should believe that all +those yarns I used to hear about the British aristocracy were +true, after all. I should aver that you were not a white man. +Leading us on like that, and then--Say, Duke! Are you going to +die to-day, or not?"</p> + +<p>"As a matter of fact, I am, but--"</p> + +<p>"Shake!"</p> + +<p>"But--"</p> + +<p>Oover wrung the Duke's hand, and was passing on. "Stay!" he +was adjured.</p> + +<p>"Sorry, unable. It's just turning eleven o'clock, and I've a +lecture. While life lasts, I'm bound to respect Rhodes' +intentions." The conscientious Scholar hurried away.</p> + +<p>The Duke wandered down the High, taking counsel with himself. +He was ashamed of having so utterly forgotten the mischief he had +wrought at large. At dawn he had vowed to undo it. Undo it he +must. But the task was not a simple one now. If he could say +"Behold, I take back my word. I spurn Miss Dobson, and embrace +life," it was possible that his example would suffice. But now +that he could only say "Behold, I spurn Miss Dobson, and will not +die for her, but I am going to commit suicide, all the same," it +was clear that his words would carry very little force. Also, he +saw with pain that they placed him in a somewhat ludicrous +position. His end, as designed yesterday, had a large and simple +grandeur. So had his recantation of it. But this new compromise +between the two things had a fumbled, a feeble, an ignoble look. +It seemed to combine all the disadvantages of both courses. It +stained his honour without prolonging his life. Surely, this was +a high price to pay for snubbing Zuleika . . . Yes, he must +revert without more ado to his first scheme. He must die in the +manner that he had blazoned forth. And he must do it with a good +grace, none knowing he was not glad; else the action lost all +dignity. True, this was no way to be a saviour. But only by not +dying at all could he have set a really potent example. . . . He +remembered the look that had come into Oover's eyes just now at +the notion of his unfaith. Perhaps he would have been the mock, +not the saviour, of Oxford. Better dishonour than death, maybe. +But, since die he must, he must die not belittling or tarnishing +the name of Tanville-Tankerton.</p> + +<p>Within these bounds, however, he must put forth his full might +to avert the general catastrophe--and to punish Zuleika nearly +well enough, after all, by intercepting that vast nosegay from +her outstretched hands and her distended nostrils. There was no +time to be lost, then. But he wondered, as he paced the grand +curve between St. Mary's and Magdalen Bridge, just how was he to +begin?</p> + +<p>Down the flight of steps from Queen's came lounging an average +undergraduate.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Smith," said the Duke, "a word with you."</p> + +<p>"But my name is not Smith," said the young man.</p> + +<p>"Generically it is," replied the Duke. "You are Smith to all +intents and purposes. That, indeed, is why I address you. In +making your acquaintance, I make a thousand acquaintances. You +are a short cut to knowledge. Tell me, do you seriously think of +drowning yourself this afternoon?"</p> + +<p>"Rather," said the undergraduate.</p> + +<p>"A meiosis in common use, equivalent to 'Yes, assuredly,'" +murmured the Duke. "And why," he then asked, "do you mean to do +this?"</p> + +<p>"Why? How can you ask? Why are YOU going to do it?"</p> + +<p>"The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play. +Please answer my question, to the best of your ability."</p> + +<p>"Well, because I can't live without her. Because I want to +prove my love for her. Because--"</p> + +<p>"One reason at a time please," said the Duke, holding up his +hand. "You can't live without her? Then I am to assume that you +look forward to dying?"</p> + +<p>"Rather."</p> + +<p>"You are truly happy in that prospect?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Rather."</p> + +<p>"Now, suppose I showed you two pieces of equally fine amber--a +big one and a little one. Which of these would you rather +possess?"</p> + +<p>"The big one, I suppose."</p> + +<p>"And this because it is better to have more than to have less +of a good thing?"</p> + +<p>"Just so."</p> + +<p>"Do you consider happiness a good thing or a bad one?"</p> + +<p>"A good one."</p> + +<p>"So that a man would rather have more than less of +happiness?"</p> + +<p>"Undoubtedly."</p> + +<p>"Then does it not seem to you that you would do well to +postpone your suicide indefinitely?"</p> + +<p>"But I have just said I can't live without her."</p> + +<p>"You have still more recently declared yourself truly +happy."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but--"</p> + +<p>"Now, be careful, Mr. Smith. Remember, this is a matter of +life and death. Try to do yourself justice. I have asked +you--"</p> + +<p>But the undergraduate was walking away, not without a certain +dignity.</p> + +<p>The Duke felt that he had not handled his man skilfully. He +remembered that even Socrates, for all the popular charm of his +mock-modesty and his true geniality, had ceased after a while to +be tolerable. Without such a manner to grace his method, Socrates +would have had a very brief time indeed. The Duke recoiled from +what he took to be another pitfall. He almost smelt hemlock.</p> + +<p>A party of four undergraduates abreast was approaching. How +should he address them? His choice wavered between the evangelic +wistfulness of "Are you saved?" and the breeziness of the +recruiting sergeant's "Come, you're fine upstanding young +fellows. Isn't it a pity," etc. Meanwhile, the quartet had passed +by.</p> + +<p>Two other undergraduates approached. The Duke asked them +simply as a personal favour to himself not to throw away their +lives. They said they were very sorry, but in this particular +matter they must please themselves. In vain he pled. They +admitted that but for his example they would never have thought +of dying. They wished they could show him their gratitude in any +way but the one which would rob them of it.</p> + +<p>The Duke drifted further down the High, bespeaking every +undergraduate he met, leaving untried no argument, no inducement. +For one man, whose name he happened to know, he invented an +urgent personal message from Miss Dobson imploring him not to die +on her account. On another man he offered to settle by hasty +codicil a sum of money sufficient to yield an annual income of +two thousand pounds--three thousand--any sum within reason. With +another he offered to walk, arm in arm, to Carfax and back again. +All to no avail.</p> + +<p>He found himself in the precincts of Magdalen, preaching from +the little open-air pulpit there an impassioned sermon on the +sacredness of human life, and referring to Zuleika in terms which +John Knox would have hesitated to utter. As he piled up the +invective, he noticed an ominous restiveness in the +congregation--murmurs, clenching of hands, dark looks. He saw the +pulpit as yet another trap laid for him by the gods. He had +walked straight into it: another moment, and he might be dragged +down, overwhelmed by numbers, torn limb from limb. All that was +in him of quelling power he put hastily into his eyes, and +manoeuvred his tongue to gentler discourse, deprecating his right +to judge "this lady," and merely pointing the marvel, the awful +though noble folly, of his resolve. He ended on a note of quiet +pathos. "To- night I shall be among the shades. There be not you, +my brothers."</p> + +<p>Good though the sermon was in style and sentiment, the flaw in +its reasoning was too patent for any converts to be made. As he +walked out of the quadrangle, the Duke felt the hopelessness of +his cause. Still he battled bravely for it up the High, +waylaying, cajoling, commanding, offering vast bribes. He carried +his crusade into the Loder, and thence into Vincent's, and out +into the street again, eager, untiring, unavailing: everywhere he +found his precept checkmated by his example.</p> + +<p>The sight of The MacQuern coming out top-speed from the +Market, with a large but inexpensive bunch of flowers, reminded +him of the luncheon that was to be. Never to throw over an +engagement was for him, as we have seen, a point of honour. But +this particular engagement--hateful, when he accepted it, by +reason of his love--was now impossible for the reason which had +made him take so ignominiously to his heels this morning. He +curtly told the Scot not to expect him.</p> + +<p>"Is SHE not coming?" gasped the Scot, with quick +suspicion.</p> + +<p>"Oh," said the Duke, turning on his heel, "she doesn't know +that I shan't be there. You may count on her." This he took to be +the very truth, and he was glad to have made of it a thrust at +the man who had so uncouthly asserted himself last night. He +could not help smiling, though, at this little resentment erect +after the cataclysm that had swept away all else. Then he smiled +to think how uneasy Zuleika would be at his absence. What agonies +of suspense she must have had all this morning! He imagined her +silent at the luncheon, with a vacant gaze at the door, eating +nothing at all. And he became aware that he was rather hungry. He +had done all he could to save young Oxford. Now for some +sandwiches! He went into the Junta.</p> + +<p>As he rang the dining-room bell, his eyes rested on the +miniature of Nellie O'Mora. And the eyes of Nellie O'Mora seemed +to meet his in reproach. Just as she may have gazed at Greddon +when he cast her off, so now did she gaze at him who a few hours +ago had refused to honour her memory.</p> + +<p>Yes, and many other eyes than hers rebuked him. It was around +the walls of this room that hung those presentments of the Junta +as focussed, year after year, in a certain corner of Tom Quad, by +Messrs. Hills and Saunders. All around, the members of the little +hierarchy, a hierarchy ever changing in all but youth and a +certain sternness of aspect that comes at the moment of being +immortalised, were gazing forth now with a sternness beyond their +wont. Not one of them but had in his day handed on loyally the +praise of Nellie O'Mora, in the form their Founder had ordained. +And the Duke's revolt last night had so incensed them that they +would, if they could, have come down from their frames and walked +straight out of the club, in chronological order--first, the men +of the 'sixties, almost as near in time to Greddon as to the +Duke, all so gloriously be-whiskered and cravated, but how faded +now, alas, by exposure; and last of all in the procession and +angrier perhaps than any of them, the Duke himself --the Duke of +a year ago, President and sole Member.</p> + +<p>But, as he gazed into the eyes of Nellie O'Mora now, Dorset +needed not for penitence the reproaches of his past self or of +his forerunners. "Sweet girl," he murmured, "forgive me. I was +mad. I was under the sway of a deplorable infatuation. It is +past. See," he murmured with a delicacy of feeling that justified +the untruth, "I am come here for the express purpose of undoing +my impiety." And, turning to the club- waiter who at this moment +answered the bell, he said "Bring me a glass of port, please, +Barrett." Of sandwiches he said nothing.</p> + +<p>At the word "See" he had stretched one hand towards Nellie; +the other he had laid on his heart, where it seemed to encounter +some sort of hard obstruction. This he vaguely fingered, +wondering what it might be, while he gave his order to Barrett. +With a sudden cry he dipped his hand into his breast-pocket and +drew forth the bottle he had borne away from Mr. Druce's. He +snatched out his watch: one o'clock!-- fifteen minutes overdue. +Wildly he called the waiter back. "A tea- spoon, quick! No port. +A wine-glass and a tea-spoon. And--for I don't mind telling you, +Barrett, that your mission is of an urgency beyond +conjecture--take lightning for your model. Go!"</p> + +<p>Agitation mastered him. He tried vainly to feel his pulse, +well knowing that if he found it he could deduce nothing from its +action. He saw himself haggard in the looking-glass. Would +Barrett never come? "Every two hours"--the directions were +explicit. Had he delivered himself into the gods' hands? The eyes +of Nellie O'Mora were on him compassionately; and all the eyes of +his forerunners were on him in austere scorn: "See," they seemed +to be saying, "the chastisement of last night's blasphemy." +Violently, insistently, he rang the bell.</p> + +<p>In rushed Barrett at last. From the tea-spoon into the +wine-glass the Duke poured the draught of salvation, and then, +raising it aloft, he looked around at his fore-runners and in a +firm voice cried "Gentlemen, I give you Nellie O'Mora, the +fairest witch that ever was or will be." He drained his glass, +heaved the deep sigh of a double satisfaction, dismissed with a +glance the wondering Barrett, and sat down.</p> + +<p>He was glad to be able to face Nellie with a clear conscience. +Her eyes were not less sad now, but it seemed to him that their +sadness came of a knowledge that she would never see him again. +She seemed to be saying to him "Had you lived in my day, it is +you that I would have loved, not Greddon." And he made silent +answer, "Had you lived in my day, I should have been +Dobson-proof." He realised, however, that to Zuleika he owed the +tenderness he now felt for Miss O'Mora. It was Zuleika that had +cured him of his aseity. She it was that had made his heart a +warm and negotiable thing. Yes, and that was the final cruelty. +To love and be loved--this, he had come to know, was all that +mattered. Yesterday, to love and die had seemed felicity enough. +Now he knew that the secret, the open secret, of happiness was in +mutual love--a state that needed not the fillip of death. And he +had to die without having ever lived. Admiration, homage, fear, +he had sown broadcast. The one woman who had loved him had turned +to stone because he loved her. Death would lose much of its sting +for him if there were somewhere in the world just one woman, +however lowly, whose heart would be broken by his dying. What a +pity Nellie O'Mora was not really extant!</p> + +<p>Suddenly he recalled certain words lightly spoken yesterday by +Zuleika. She had told him he was loved by the girl who waited on +him--the daughter of his landlady. Was this so? He had seen no +sign of it, had received no token of it. But, after all, how +should he have seen a sign of anything in one whom he had never +consciously visualised? That she had never thrust herself on his +notice might mean merely that she had been well brought-up. What +likelier than that the daughter of Mrs. Batch, that worthy soul, +had been well brought up?</p> + +<p>Here, at any rate, was the chance of a new element in his +life, or rather in his death. Here, possibly, was a maiden to +mourn him. He would lunch in his rooms.</p> + +<p>With a farewell look at Nellie's miniature, he took the +medicine- bottle from the table, and went quickly out. The +heavens had grown steadily darker and darker, the air more +sulphurous and baleful. And the High had a strangely woebegone +look, being all forsaken by youth, in this hour of luncheon. Even +so would its look be all to-morrow, thought the Duke, and for +many morrows. Well he had done what he could. He was free now to +brighten a little his own last hours. He hastened on, eager to +see the landlady's daughter. He wondered what she was like, and +whether she really loved him.</p> + +<p>As he threw open the door of his sitting-room, he was aware of +a rustle, a rush, a cry. In another instant, he was aware of +Zuleika Dobson at his feet, at his knees, clasping him to her, +sobbing, laughing, sobbing.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>XVI</h3> + +<p>For what happened a few moments later you must not blame him. +Some measure of force was the only way out of an impossible +situation. It was in vain that he commanded the young lady to let +go: she did but cling the closer. It was in vain that he tried to +disentangle himself of her by standing first on one foot, then on +the other, and veering sharply on his heel: she did but sway as +though hinged to him. He had no choice but to grasp her by the +wrists, cast her aside, and step clear of her into the room.</p> + +<p>Her hat, gauzily basking with a pair of long white gloves on +one of his arm-chairs, proclaimed that she had come to stay.</p> + +<p>Nor did she rise. Propped on one elbow, with heaving bosom and +parted lips, she seemed to be trying to realise what had been +done to her. Through her undried tears her eyes shone up to +him.</p> + +<p>He asked: "To what am I indebted for this visit?"</p> + +<p>"Ah, say that again!" she murmured. "Your voice is music."</p> + +<p>He repeated his question.</p> + +<p>"Music!" she said dreamily; and such is the force of habit +that "I don't," she added, "know anything about music, really. +But I know what I like."</p> + +<p>"Had you not better get up from the floor?" he said. "The door +is open, and any one who passed might see you."</p> + +<p>Softly she stroked the carpet with the palms of her hands. +"Happy carpet!" she crooned. "Aye, happy the very women that wove +the threads that are trod by the feet of my beloved master. But +hark! he bids his slave rise and stand before him!"</p> + +<p>Just after she had risen, a figure appeared in the +doorway.</p> + +<p>"I beg pardon, your Grace; Mother wants to know, will you be +lunching in?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said the Duke. "I will ring when I am ready." And it +dawned on him that this girl, who perhaps loved him, was, +according to all known standards, extraordinarily pretty.</p> + +<p>"Will--" she hesitated, "will Miss Dobson be--"</p> + +<p>"No," he said. "I shall be alone." And there was in the girl's +parting half-glance at Zuleika that which told him he was truly +loved, and made him the more impatient of his offensive and +accursed visitor.</p> + +<p>"You want to be rid of me?" asked Zuleika, when the girl was +gone.</p> + +<p>"I have no wish to be rude; but--since you force me to say +it--yes."</p> + +<p>"Then take me," she cried, throwing back her arms, "and throw +me out of the window."</p> + +<p>He smiled coldly.</p> + +<p>"You think I don't mean it? You think I would struggle? Try +me." She let herself droop sideways, in an attitude limp and +portable. "Try me," she repeated.</p> + +<p>"All this is very well conceived, no doubt," said he, "and +well executed. But it happens to be otiose."</p> + +<p>What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"I mean you may set your mind at rest. I am not going to back +out of my promise."</p> + +<p>Zuleika flushed. "You are cruel. I would give the world and +all not to have written you that hateful letter. Forget it, +forget it, for pity's sake!"</p> + +<p>The Duke looked searchingly at her. "You mean that you now +wish to release me from my promise?"</p> + +<p>"Release you? As if you were ever bound! Don't torture +me!"</p> + +<p>He wondered what deep game she was playing. Very real, though, +her anguish seemed; and, if real it was, then--he stared, he +gasped--there could be but one explanation. He put it to her. +"You love me?"</p> + +<p>"With all my soul."</p> + +<p>His heart leapt. If she spoke truth, then indeed vengeance was +his! But "What proof have I?" he asked her.</p> + +<p>"Proof? Have men absolutely NO intuition? If you need proof, +produce it. Where are my ear-rings?"</p> + +<p>"Your ear-rings? Why?"</p> + +<p>Impatiently she pointed to two white pearls that fastened the +front of her blouse. "These are your studs. It was from them I +had the great first hint this morning."</p> + +<p>"Black and pink, were they not, when you took them?"</p> + +<p>"Of course. And then I forgot that I had them. When I +undressed, they must have rolled on to the carpet. Melisande +found them this morning when she was making the room ready for me +to dress. That was just after she came back from bringing you my +first letter. I was bewildered. I doubted. Might not the pearls +have gone back to their natural state simply through being yours +no more? That is why I wrote again to you, my own darling--a +frantic little questioning letter. When I heard how you had torn +it up, I knew, I knew that the pearls had not mocked me. I +telescoped my toilet and came rushing round to you. How many +hours have I been waiting for you?"</p> + +<p>The Duke had drawn her ear-rings from his waistcoat pocket, +and was contemplating them in the palm of his hand. Blanched, +both of them, yes. He laid them on the table. "Take them," he +said.</p> + +<p>"No," she shuddered. "I could never forget that once they were +both black." She flung them into the fender. "Oh John," she +cried, turning to him and falling again to her knees, "I do so +want to forget what I have been. I want to atone. You think you +can drive me out of your life. You cannot, darling--since you +won't kill me. Always I shall follow you on my knees, thus."</p> + +<p>He looked down at her over his folded arms,</p> + +<p>"I am not going to back out of my promise," he repeated.</p> + +<p>She stopped her ears.</p> + +<p>With a stern joy he unfolded his arms, took some papers from +his breast-pocket, and, selecting one of them, handed it to her. +It was the telegram sent by his steward.</p> + +<p>She read it. With a stern joy he watched her reading it.</p> + +<p>Wild-eyed, she looked up from it to him, tried to speak, and +swerved down senseless.</p> + +<p>He had not foreseen this. "Help!" he vaguely cried--was she +not a fellow-creature?--and rushed blindly out to his bedroom, +whence he returned, a moment later, with the water-jug. He dipped +his hand, and sprinkled the upturned face (Dew-drops on a white +rose? But some other, sharper analogy hovered to him). He dipped +and sprinkled. The water-beads broke, mingled--rivulets now. He +dipped and flung, then caught the horrible analogy and +rebounded.</p> + +<p>It was at this moment that Zuleika opened her eyes. "Where am +I?" She weakly raised herself on one elbow; and the suspension of +the Duke's hatred would have been repealed simultaneously with +that of her consciousness, had it not already been repealed by +the analogy. She put a hand to her face, then looked at the wet +palm wonderingly, looked at the Duke, saw the water-jug beside +him. She, too, it seemed, had caught the analogy; for with a wan +smile she said "We are quits now, John, aren't we?"</p> + +<p>Her poor little jest drew to the Duke's face no answering +smile, did but make hotter the blush there. The wave of her +returning memory swept on--swept up to her with a roar the +instant past. "Oh," she cried, staggering to her feet, "the owls, +the owls!"</p> + +<p>Vengeance was his, and "Yes, there," he said, "is the +ineluctable hard fact you wake to. The owls have hooted. The gods +have spoken. This day your wish is to be fulfilled."</p> + +<p>"The owls have hooted. The gods have spoken. This day--oh, it +must not be, John! Heaven have mercy on me!"</p> + +<p>"The unerring owls have hooted. The dispiteous and humorous +gods have spoken. Miss Dobson, it has to be. And let me remind +you," he added, with a glance at his watch, "that you ought not +to keep The MacQuern waiting for luncheon."</p> + +<p>"That is unworthy of you," she said. There was in her eyes a +look that made the words sound as if they had been spoken by a +dumb animal.</p> + +<p>"You have sent him an excuse?"</p> + +<p>"No, I have forgotten him."</p> + +<p>"That is unworthy of you. After all, he is going to die for +you, like the rest of us. I am but one of a number, you know. Use +your sense of proportion."</p> + +<p>"If I do that," she said after a pause, "you may not be +pleased by the issue. I may find that whereas yesterday I was +great in my sinfulness, and to-day am great in my love, you, in +your hate of me, are small. I may find that what I had taken to +be a great indifference is nothing but a very small hate . . . +Ah, I have wounded you? Forgive me, a weak woman, talking at +random in her wretchedness. Oh John, John, if I thought you +small, my love would but take on the crown of pity. Don't forbid +me to call you John. I looked you up in Debrett while I was +waiting for you. That seemed to bring you nearer to me. So many +other names you have, too. I remember you told me them all +yesterday, here in this room--not twenty-four hours ago. Hours? +Years!" She laughed hysterically. "John, don't you see why I +won't stop talking? It's because I dare not think."</p> + +<p>"Yonder in Balliol," he suavely said, "you will find the +matter of my death easier to forget than here." He took her hat +and gloves from the arm-chair, and held them carefully out to +her; but she did not take them.</p> + +<p>"I give you three minutes," he told her. "Two minutes, that +is, in which to make yourself tidy before the mirror. A third in +which to say good-bye and be outside the front-door."</p> + +<p>"If I refuse?"</p> + +<p>"You will not."</p> + +<p>"If I do?"</p> + +<p>"I shall send for a policeman."</p> + +<p>She looked well at him. "Yes," she slowly said, "I think you +would do that."</p> + +<p>She took her things from him, and laid them by the mirror. +With a high hand she quelled the excesses of her hair--some of +the curls still agleam with water--and knowingly poised and +pinned her hat. Then, after a few swift touches and passes at +neck and waist, she took her gloves and, wheeling round to him, +"There!" she said, "I have been quick."</p> + +<p>"Admirably," he allowed.</p> + +<p>"Quick in more than meets the eye, John. Spiritually quick. +You saw me putting on my hat; you did not see love taking on the +crown of pity, and me bonneting her with it, tripping her up and +trampling the life out of her. Oh, a most cold-blooded business, +John! Had to be done, though. No other way out. So I just used my +sense of proportion, as you rashly bade me, and then hardened my +heart at sight of you as you are. One of a number? Yes, and a +quite unlovable unit. So I am all right again. And now, where is +Balliol? Far from here?"</p> + +<p>"No," he answered, choking a little, as might a card-player +who, having been dealt a splendid hand, and having played it with +flawless skill, has yet--damn it!--lost the odd trick. "Balliol +is quite near. At the end of this street in fact. I can show it +to you from the front-door."</p> + +<p>Yes, he had controlled himself. But this, he furiously felt, +did not make him look the less a fool. What ought he to have +SAID? He prayed, as he followed the victorious young woman +downstairs, that l'esprit de l'escalier might befall him. Alas, +it did not.</p> + +<p>"By the way," she said, when he had shown her where Balliol +lay, "have you told anybody that you aren't dying just for +me?"</p> + +<p>"No," he answered, "I have preferred not to."</p> + +<p>"Then officially, as it were, and in the eyes of the world, +you die for me? Then all's well that ends well. Shall we say +good-bye here? I shall be on the Judas Barge; but I suppose there +will be a crush, as yesterday?"</p> + +<p>"Sure to be. There always is on the last night of the Eights, +you know. Good-bye."</p> + +<p>"Good-bye, little John--small John," she cried across her +shoulder, having the last word.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>XVII</h3> + +<p>He might not have grudged her the last word, had she properly +needed it. Its utter superfluity--the perfection of her victory +without it-- was what galled him. Yes, she had outflanked him, +taken him unawares, and he had fired not one shot. Esprit de +l'escalier--it was as he went upstairs that he saw how he might +yet have snatched from her, if not the victory, the palm. Of +course he ought to have laughed aloud-- "Capital, capital! You +really do deserve to fool me. But ah, yours is a love that can't +be dissembled. Never was man by maiden loved more ardently than I +by you, my poor girl, at this moment."</p> + +<p>And stay!--what if she really HAD been but pretending to have +killed her love? He paused on the threshold of his room. The +sudden doubt made his lost chance the more sickening. Yet was the +doubt dear to him . . . What likelier, after all, than that she +had been pretending? She had already twitted him with his lack of +intuition. He had not seen that she loved him when she certainly +did love him. He had needed the pearls' demonstration of +that.--The pearls! THEY would betray her. He darted to the +fender, and one of them he espied there instantly-- white? A +rather flushed white, certainly. For the other he had to peer +down. There it lay, not very distinct on the hearth's +black-leading.</p> + +<p>He turned away. He blamed himself for not dismissing from his +mind the hussy he had dismissed from his room. Oh for an ounce of +civet and a few poppies! The water-jug stood as a reminder of the +hateful visit and of . . . He took it hastily away into his +bedroom. There he washed his hands. The fact that he had touched +Zuleika gave to this ablution a symbolism that made it the more +refreshing.</p> + +<p>Civet, poppies? Was there not, at his call, a sweeter perfume, +a stronger anodyne? He rang the bell, almost caressingly.</p> + +<p>His heart beat at sound of the clinking and rattling of the +tray borne up the stairs. She was coming, the girl who loved him, +the girl whose heart would be broken when he died. Yet, when the +tray appeared in the doorway, and she behind it, the tray took +precedence of her in his soul not less than in his sight. Twice, +after an arduous morning, had his luncheon been postponed, and +the coming of it now made intolerable the pangs of his +hunger.</p> + +<p>Also, while the girl laid the table-cloth, it occurred to him +how flimsy, after all, was the evidence that she loved him. +Suppose she did nothing of the kind! At the Junta, he had +foreseen no difficulty in asking her. Now he found himself a prey +to embarrassment. He wondered why. He had not failed in flow of +gracious words to Nellie O'Mora. Well, a miniature by Hoppner was +one thing, a landlady's live daughter was another. At any rate, +he must prime himself with food. He wished Mrs. Batch had sent up +something more calorific than cold salmon. He asked her daughter +what was to follow.</p> + +<p>"There's a pigeon-pie, your Grace."</p> + +<p>"Cold? Then please ask your mother to heat it in the +oven--quickly. Anything after that?"</p> + +<p>"A custard pudding, your Grace."</p> + +<p>"Cold? Let this, too, be heated. And bring up a bottle of +champagne, please; and--and a bottle of port."</p> + +<p>His was a head that had always hitherto defied the grape. But +he thought that to-day, by all he had gone through, by all the +shocks he had suffered, and the strains he had steeled himself to +bear, as well as by the actual malady that gripped him, he might +perchance have been sapped enough to experience by reaction that +cordial glow of which he had now and again seen symptoms in his +fellows.</p> + +<p>Nor was he altogether disappointed of this hope. As the meal +progressed, and the last of the champagne sparkled in his glass, +certain things said to him by Zuleika--certain implied criticisms +that had rankled, yes--lost their power to discommode him. He was +able to smile at the impertinences of an angry woman, the +tantrums of a tenth-rate conjurer told to go away. He felt he had +perhaps acted harshly. With all her faults, she had adored him. +Yes, he had been arbitrary. There seemed to be a strain of +brutality in his nature. Poor Zuleika! He was glad for her that +she had contrived to master her infatuation . . . Enough for him +that he was loved by this exquisite meek girl who had served him +at the feast. Anon, when he summoned her to clear the things +away, he would bid her tell him the tale of her lowly passion. He +poured a second glass of port, sipped it, quaffed it, poured a +third. The grey gloom of the weather did but, as he eyed the +bottle, heighten his sense of the rich sunshine so long ago +imprisoned by the vintner and now released to make glad his soul. +Even so to be released was the love pent for him in the heart of +this sweet girl. Would that he loved her in return! . . . Why +not?</p> + +<p align="center">"Prius insolentem</p> + +<p align="center">Serva Briseis niveo colore</p> + +<p align="center">Movit Achillem."</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>Nor were it gracious to invite an avowal of love and offer +none in return. Yet, yet, expansive though his mood was, he could +not pretend to himself that he was about to feel in this girl's +presence anything but gratitude. He might pretend to her? +Deception were a very poor return indeed for all her kindness. +Besides, it might turn her head. Some small token of his +gratitude--some trinket by which to remember him--was all that he +could allow himself to offer . . . What trinket? Would she like +to have one of his scarf-pins? Studs? Still more abs-- Ah! he had +it, he literally and most providentially had it, there, in the +fender: a pair of ear-rings!</p> + +<p>He plucked the pink pearl and the black from where they lay, +and rang the bell.</p> + +<p>His sense of dramatic propriety needed that the girl should, +before he addressed her, perform her task of clearing the table. +If she had it to perform after telling her love, and after +receiving his gift and his farewell, the bathos would be +distressing for them both.</p> + +<p>But, while he watched her at her task, he did wish she would +be a little quicker. For the glow in him seemed to be cooling +momently. He wished he had had more than three glasses from the +crusted bottle which she was putting away into the chiffonier. +Down, doubt! Down, sense of disparity! The moment was at hand. +Would he let it slip? Now she was folding up the table-cloth, now +she was going.</p> + +<p>"Stay!" he uttered. "I have something to say to you." The girl +turned to him.</p> + +<p>He forced his eyes to meet hers. "I understand," he said in a +constrained voice, "that you regard me with sentiments of +something more than esteem.--Is this so?"</p> + +<p>The girl had stepped quickly back, and her face was +scarlet.</p> + +<p>"Nay," he said, having to go through with it now, "there is no +cause for embarrassment. And I am sure you will acquit me of +wanton curiosity. Is it a fact that you--love me?"</p> + +<p>She tried to speak, could not. But she nodded her head.</p> + +<p>The Duke, much relieved, came nearer to her.</p> + +<p>"What is your name?" he asked gently.</p> + +<p>"Katie," she was able to gasp.</p> + +<p>"Well, Katie, how long have you loved me?"</p> + +<p>"Ever since," she faltered, "ever since you came to engage the +rooms."</p> + +<p>"You are not, of course, given to idolising any tenant of your +mother's?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"May I boast myself the first possessor of your heart?"</p> + +<p>"Yes." She had become very pale now, and was trembling +painfully.</p> + +<p>"And may I assume that your love for me has been entirely +disinterested? . . . You do not catch my meaning? I will put my +question in another way. In loving me, you never supposed me +likely to return your love?"</p> + +<p>The girl looked up at him quickly, but at once her eyelids +fluttered down again.</p> + +<p>"Come, come!" said the Duke. "My question is a plain one. Did +you ever for an instant suppose, Katie, that I might come to love +you?"</p> + +<p>"No," she said in a whisper; "I never dared to hope that."</p> + +<p>"Precisely," said he. "You never imagined that you had +anything to gain by your affection. You were not contriving a +trap for me. You were upheld by no hope of becoming a young +Duchess, with more frocks than you could wear and more dross than +you could scatter. I am glad. I am touched. You are the first +woman that has loved me in that way. Or rather," he muttered, +"the first but one. And she . . . Answer me," he said, standing +over the girl, and speaking with a great intensity. "If I were to +tell you that I loved you, would you cease to love me?"</p> + +<p>"Oh your Grace!" cried the girl. "Why no! I never dared--"</p> + +<p>"Enough!" he said. "The catechism is ended. I have something +which I should like to give you. Are your ears pierced?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, your Grace."</p> + +<p>"Then, Katie, honour me by accepting this present." So saying, +he placed in the girl's hand the black pearl and the pink. The +sight of them banished for a moment all other emotions in their +recipient. She forgot herself. "Lor!" she said.</p> + +<p>"I hope you will wear them always for my sake," said the +Duke.</p> + +<p>She had expressed herself in the monosyllable. No words came +to her lips, but to her eyes many tears, through which the pearls +were visible. They whirled in her bewildered brain as a token +that she was loved--loved by HIM, though but yesterday he had +loved another. It was all so sudden, so beautiful. You might have +knocked her down (she says so to this day) with a feather. Seeing +her agitation, the Duke pointed to a chair, bade her be +seated.</p> + +<p>Her mind was cleared by the new posture. Suspicion crept into +it, followed by alarm. She looked at the ear-rings, then up at +the Duke.</p> + +<p>"No," said he, misinterpreting the question in her eyes, "they +are real pearls."</p> + +<p>"It isn't that," she quavered, "it is--it is--"</p> + +<p>"That they were given to me by Miss Dobson?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, they were, were they? Then"--Katie rose, throwing the +pearls on the floor--"I'll have nothing to do with them. I hate +her."</p> + +<p>"So do I," said the Duke, in a burst of confidence. "No, I +don't," he added hastily. "Please forget that I said that."</p> + +<p>It occurred to Katie that Miss Dobson would be ill-pleased +that the pearls should pass to her. She picked them up.</p> + +<p>"Only--only--" again her doubts beset her and she looked from +the pearls to the Duke.</p> + +<p>"Speak on," he said.</p> + +<p>"Oh you aren't playing with me, are you? You don't mean me +harm, do you? I have been well brought up. I have been warned +against things. And it seems so strange, what you have said to +me. You are a Duke, and I--I am only--"</p> + +<p>"It is the privilege of nobility to condescend."</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes," she cried. "I see. Oh I was wicked to doubt you. +And love levels all, doesn't it? love and the Board school. Our +stations are far apart, but I've been educated far above mine. +I've learnt more than most real ladies have. I passed the Seventh +Standard when I was only just fourteen. I was considered one of +the sharpest girls in the school. And I've gone on learning since +then," she continued eagerly. "I utilise all my spare moments. +I've read twenty-seven of the Hundred Best Books. I collect +ferns. I play the piano, whenever . . ." She broke off, for she +remembered that her music was always interrupted by the ringing +of the Duke's bell and a polite request that it should cease.</p> + +<p>"I am glad to hear of these accomplishments. They do you great +credit, I am sure. But--well, I do not quite see why you +enumerate them just now."</p> + +<p>"It isn't that I am vain," she pleaded. "I only mentioned them +because . . . oh, don't you see? If I'm not ignorant, I shan't +disgrace you. People won't be so able to say you've been and +thrown yourself away."</p> + +<p>"Thrown myself away? What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, they'll make all sorts of objections, I know. They'll all +be against me, and--"</p> + +<p>"For heaven's sake, explain yourself."</p> + +<p>"Your aunt, she looked a very proud lady--very high and hard. +I thought so when she came here last term. But you're of age. +You're your own master. Oh, I trust you; you'll stand by me. If +you love me really you won't listen to them."</p> + +<p>"Love you? I? Are you mad?"</p> + +<p>Each stared at the other, utterly bewildered.</p> + +<p>The girl was the first to break the silence. Her voice came in +a whisper. "You've not been playing a joke on me? You meant what +you said, didn't you?"</p> + +<p>"What have I said?"</p> + +<p>"You said you loved me."</p> + +<p>"You must be dreaming."</p> + +<p>"I'm not. Here are the ear-rings you gave me." She pinched +them as material proof. "You said you loved me just before you +gave me them. You know you did. And if I thought you'd been +laughing at me all the time--I'd--I'd"--a sob choked her +voice--"I'd throw them in your face!"</p> + +<p>"You must not speak to me in that manner," said the Duke +coldly. "And let me warn you that this attempt to trap me and +intimidate me--"</p> + +<p>The girl had flung the ear-rings at his face. She had missed +her mark. But this did not extenuate the outrageous gesture. He +pointed to the door. "Go!" he said.</p> + +<p>"Don't try that on!" she laughed. "I shan't go--not unless you +drag me out. And if you do that, I'll raise the house. I'll have +in the neighbours. I'll tell them all what you've done, and--" +But defiance melted in the hot shame of humiliation. "Oh, you +coward!" she gasped. "You coward!" She caught her apron to her +face and, swaying against the wall, sobbed piteously.</p> + +<p>Unaccustomed to love-affairs, the Duke could not sail lightly +over a flood of woman's tears. He was filled with pity for the +poor quivering figure against the wall. How should he soothe her? +Mechanically he picked up the two pearls from the carpet, and +crossed to her side. He touched her on the shoulder. She +shuddered away from him.</p> + +<p>"Don't," he said gently. "Don't cry. I can't bear it. I have +been stupid and thoughtless. What did you say your name was? +'Katie,' to be sure. Well, Katie, I want to beg your pardon. I +expressed myself badly. I was unhappy and lonely, and I saw in +you a means of comfort. I snatched at you, Katie, as at a straw. +And then, I suppose, I must have said something which made you +think I loved you. I almost wish I did. I don't wonder you threw +the ear-rings at me. I--I almost wish they had hit me . . . You +see, I have quite forgiven you. Now do you forgive me. You will +not refuse now to wear the ear-rings. I gave them to you as a +keepsake. Wear them always in memory of me. For you will never +see me again."</p> + +<p>The girl had ceased from crying, and her anger had spent +itself in sobs. She was gazing at him woebegone but composed.</p> + +<p>"Where are you going?"</p> + +<p>"You must not ask that," said he. "Enough that my wings are +spread."</p> + +<p>"Are you going because of ME?"</p> + +<p>"Not in the least. Indeed, your devotion is one of the things +which make bitter my departure. And yet--I am glad you love +me."</p> + +<p>"Don't go," she faltered. He came nearer to her, and this time +she did not shrink from him. "Don't you find the rooms +comfortable?" she asked, gazing up at him. "Have you ever had any +complaint to make about the attendance?"</p> + +<p>"No," said the Duke, "the attendance has always been quite +satisfactory. I have never felt that so keenly as I do +to-day."</p> + +<p>"Then why are you leaving? Why are you breaking my heart?"</p> + +<p>"Suffice it that I cannot do otherwise. Henceforth you will +see me no more. But I doubt not that in the cultivation of my +memory you will find some sort of lugubrious satisfaction. See! +here are the ear- rings. If you like, I will put them in with my +own hands."</p> + +<p>She held up her face side-ways. Into the lobe of her left ear +he insinuated the hook of the black pearl. On the cheek upturned +to him there were still traces of tears; the eyelashes were still +spangled. For all her blondness, they were quite dark, these +glistening eyelashes. He had an impulse, which he put from him. +"Now the other ear," he said. The girl turned her head. Soon the +pink pearl was in its place. Yet the girl did not move. She +seemed to be waiting. Nor did the Duke himself seem to be quite +satisfied. He let his fingers dally with the pearl. Anon, with a +sigh, he withdrew them. The girl looked up. Their eyes met. He +looked away from her. He turned away from her. "You may kiss my +hand," he murmured, extending it towards her. After a pause, the +warm pressure of her lips was laid on it. He sighed, but did not +look round. Another pause, a longer pause, and then the clatter +and clink of the outgoing tray.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>XVIII</h3> + +<p>Her actual offspring does not suffice a very motherly woman. +Such a woman was Mrs. Batch. Had she been blest with a dozen +children, she must yet have regarded herself as also a mother to +whatever two young gentlemen were lodging under her roof. +Childless but for Katie and Clarence, she had for her successive +pairs of tenants a truly vast fund of maternal feeling to draw +on. Nor were the drafts made in secret. To every gentleman, from +the outset, she proclaimed the relation in which she would stand +to him. Moreover, always she needed a strong filial sense in +return: this was only fair.</p> + +<p>Because the Duke was an orphan, even more than because he was +a Duke, her heart had with a special rush gone out to him when he +and Mr. Noaks became her tenants. But, perhaps because he had +never known a mother, he was evidently quite incapable of +conceiving either Mrs. Batch as his mother or himself as her son. +Indeed, there was that in his manner, in his look, which made her +falter, for once, in exposition of her theory--made her postpone +the matter to some more favourable time. That time never came, +somehow. Still, her solicitude for him, her pride in him, her +sense that he was a great credit to her, rather waxed than waned. +He was more to her (such are the vagaries of the maternal +instinct) than Katie or Mr. Noaks: he was as much as +Clarence.</p> + +<p>It was, therefore, a deeply agitated woman who now came +heaving up into the Duke's presence. His Grace was "giving +notice"? She was sure she begged his pardon for coming up so +sudden. But the news was that sudden. Hadn't her girl made a +mistake, maybe? Girls were so vague- like nowadays. She was sure +it was most kind of him to give those handsome ear-rings. But the +thought of him going off so unexpected-- middle of term, +too--with never a why or a but! Well!</p> + +<p>In some such welter of homely phrase (how foreign to these +classic pages!) did Mrs. Batch utter her pain. The Duke answered +her tersely but kindly. He apologised for going so abruptly, and +said he would be very happy to write for her future use a +testimonial to the excellence of her rooms and of her cooking; +and with it he would give her a cheque not only for the full +term's rent, and for his board since the beginning of term, but +also for such board as he would have been likely to have in the +term's remainder. He asked her to present her accounts +forthwith.</p> + +<p>He occupied the few minutes of her absence by writing the +testimonial. It had shaped itself in his mind as a short ode in +Doric Greek. But, for the benefit of Mrs. Batch, he chose to do a +rough equivalent in English.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>TO AN UNDERGRADUATE NEEDING</p> + +<p>ROOMS IN OXFORD</p> + +<p>(A Sonnet in Oxfordshire Dialect)</p> + +<p>Zeek w'ere thee will in t'Univursity,</p> + +<p>Lad, thee'll not vind nor bread nor bed that matches</p> + +<p>Them as thee'll vind, roight zure, at Mrs. Batch's . . .</p> +</blockquote> + +<p> </p> + +<p>I do not quote the poem in extenso, because, frankly, I think +it was one of his least happily-inspired works. His was not a +Muse that could with a good grace doff the grand manner. Also, +his command of the Oxfordshire dialect seems to me based less on +study than on conjecture. In fact, I do not place the poem higher +than among the curiosities of literature. It has extrinsic value, +however, as illustrating the Duke's thoughtfulness for others in +the last hours of his life. And to Mrs. Batch the MS., framed and +glazed in her hall, is an asset beyond price (witness her recent +refusal of Mr. Pierpont Morgan's sensational bid for it).</p> + +<p>This MS. she received together with the Duke's cheque. The +presentation was made some twenty minutes after she had laid her +accounts before him.</p> + +<p>Lavish in giving large sums of his own accord, he was apt to +be circumspect in the matter of small payments. Such is ever the +way of opulent men. Nor do I see that we have a right to sneer at +them for it. We cannot deny that their existence is a temptation +to us. It is in our fallen nature to want to get something out of +them; and, as we think in small sums (heaven knows), it is of +small sums that they are careful. Absurd to suppose they really +care about halfpence. It must, therefore, be about us that they +care; and we ought to be grateful to them for the pains they are +at to keep us guiltless. I do not suggest that Mrs. Batch had at +any point overcharged the Duke; but how was he to know that she +had not done so, except by checking the items, as was his wont? +The reductions that he made, here and there, did not in all +amount to three-and-sixpence. I do not say they were just. But I +do say that his motive for making them, and his satisfaction at +having made them, were rather beautiful than otherwise.</p> + +<p>Having struck an average of Mrs. Batch's weekly charges, and a +similar average of his own reductions, he had a basis on which to +reckon his board for the rest of the term. This amount he added +to Mrs. Batch's amended total, plus the full term's rent, and +accordingly drew a cheque on the local bank where he had an +account. Mrs. Batch said she would bring up a stamped receipt +directly; but this the Duke waived, saying that the cashed cheque +itself would be a sufficient receipt. Accordingly, he reduced by +one penny the amount written on the cheque. Remembering to +initial the correction, he remembered also, with a melancholy +smile, that to-morrow the cheque would not be negotiable. Handing +it, and the sonnet, to Mrs. Batch, he bade her cash it before the +bank closed. "And," he said, "with a glance at his watch, "you +have no time to lose. It is a quarter to four." Only two hours +and a quarter before the final races! How quickly the sands were +running out!</p> + +<p>Mrs. Batch paused on the threshold, wanted to know if she +could "help with the packing." The Duke replied that he was +taking nothing with him: his various things would be sent for, +packed, and removed, within a few days. No, he did not want her +to order a cab. He was going to walk. And "Good-bye, Mrs. Batch," +he said. "For legal reasons with which I won't burden you, you +really must cash that cheque at once."</p> + +<p>He sat down in solitude; and there crept over him a mood of +deep depression . . . Almost two hours and a quarter before the +final races! What on earth should he do in the meantime? He +seemed to have done all that there was for him to do. His +executors would do the rest. He had no farewell-letters to write. +He had no friends with whom he was on terms of valediction. There +was nothing at all for him to do. He stared blankly out of the +window, at the greyness and blackness of the sky. What a day! +What a climate! Why did any sane person live in England? He felt +positively suicidal.</p> + +<p>His dully vagrant eye lighted on the bottle of Cold Mixture. +He ought to have dosed himself a full hour ago. Well, he didn't +care.</p> + +<p>Had Zuleika noticed the bottle? he idly wondered. Probably +not. She would have made some sprightly reference to it before +she went.</p> + +<p>Since there was nothing to do but sit and think, he wished he +could recapture that mood in which at luncheon he had been able +to see Zuleika as an object for pity. Never, till to-day, had he +seen things otherwise than they were. Nor had he ever needed to. +Never, till last night, had there been in his life anything he +needed to forget. That woman! As if it really mattered what she +thought of him. He despised himself for wishing to forget she +despised him. But the wish was the measure of the need. He eyed +the chiffonier. Should he again solicit the grape?</p> + +<p>Reluctantly he uncorked the crusted bottle, and filled a +glass. Was he come to this? He sighed and sipped, quaffed and +sighed. The spell of the old stored sunshine seemed not to work, +this time. He could not cease from plucking at the net of +ignominies in which his soul lay enmeshed. Would that he had died +yesterday, escaping how much!</p> + +<p>Not for an instant did he flinch from the mere fact of dying +to-day. Since he was not immortal, as he had supposed, it were as +well he should die now as fifty years hence. Better, indeed. To +die "untimely," as men called it, was the timeliest of all deaths +for one who had carved his youth to greatness. What perfection +could he, Dorset, achieve beyond what was already his? Future +years could but stale, if not actually mar, that perfection. Yes, +it was lucky to perish leaving much to the imagination of +posterity. Dear posterity was of a sentimental, not a realistic, +habit. She always imagined the dead young hero prancing +gloriously up to the Psalmist's limit a young hero still; and it +was the sense of her vast loss that kept his memory green. +Byron!--he would be all forgotten to-day if he had lived to be a +florid old gentleman with iron-grey whiskers, writing very long, +very able letters to "The Times" about the Repeal of the Corn +Laws. Yes, Byron would have been that. It was indicated in him. +He would have been an old gentleman exacerbated by Queen +Victoria's invincible prejudice against him, her brusque refusal +to "entertain" Lord John Russell's timid nomination of him for a +post in the Government . . . Shelley would have been a poet to +the last. But how dull, how very dull, would have been the poetry +of his middle age!--a great unreadable mass interposed between +him and us . . . Did Byron, mused the Duke, know what was to be +at Missolonghi? Did he know that he was to die in service of the +Greeks whom he despised? Byron might not have minded that. But +what if the Greeks had told him, in so many words, that they +despised HIM? How would he have felt then? Would he have been +content with his potations of barley-water? . . . The Duke +replenished his glass, hoping the spell might work yet. . . . +Perhaps, had Byron not been a dandy--but ah, had he not been in +his soul a dandy there would have been no Byron worth mentioning. +And it was because he guarded not his dandyism against this and +that irrelevant passion, sexual or political, that he cut so +annoyingly incomplete a figure. He was absurd in his politics, +vulgar in his loves. Only in himself, at the times when he stood +haughtily aloof, was he impressive. Nature, fashioning him, had +fashioned also a pedestal for him to stand and brood on, to pose +and sing on. Off that pedestal he was lost. . . . "The idol has +come sliding down from its pedestal" --the Duke remembered these +words spoken yesterday by Zuleika. Yes, at the moment when he +slid down, he, too, was lost. For him, master- dandy, the common +arena was no place. What had he to do with love? He was an utter +fool at it. Byron had at least had some fun out of it. What fun +had HE had? Last night, he had forgotten to kiss Zuleika when he +held her by the wrists. To-day it had been as much as he could do +to let poor little Katie kiss his hand. Better be vulgar with +Byron than a noodle with Dorset! he bitterly reflected . . . +Still, noodledom was nearer than vulgarity to dandyism. It was a +less flagrant lapse. And he had over Byron this further +advantage: his noodledom was not a matter of common knowledge; +whereas Byron's vulgarity had ever needed to be in the glare of +the footlights of Europe. The world would say of him that he laid +down his life for a woman. Deplorable somersault? But nothing +evident save this in his whole life was faulty . . . The one +other thing that might be carped at--the partisan speech he made +in the Lords--had exquisitely justified itself by its result. For +it was as a Knight of the Garter that he had set the perfect seal +on his dandyism. Yes, he reflected, it was on the day when first +he donned the most grandiose of all costumes, and wore it +grandlier than ever yet in history had it been worn, than ever +would it be worn hereafter, flaunting the robes with a grace +unparalleled and inimitable, and lending, as it were, to the very +insignia a glory beyond their own, that he once and for all +fulfilled himself, doer of that which he had been sent into the +world to do.</p> + +<p>And there floated into his mind a desire, vague at first, soon +definite, imperious, irresistible, to see himself once more, +before he died, indued in the fulness of his glory and his +might.</p> + +<p>Nothing hindered. There was yet a whole hour before he need +start for the river. His eyes dilated, somewhat as might those of +a child about to "dress up" for a charade; and already, in his +impatience, he had undone his neck-tie.</p> + +<p>One after another, he unlocked and threw open the black tin +boxes, snatching out greedily their great good splendours of +crimson and white and royal blue and gold. You wonder he was not +appalled by the task of essaying unaided a toilet so extensive +and so intricate? You wondered even when you heard that he was +wont at Oxford to make without help his toilet of every day. +Well, the true dandy is always capable of such high independence. +He is craftsman as well as artist. And, though any unaided Knight +but he with whom we are here concerned would belike have doddered +hopeless in that labyrinth of hooks and buckles which underlies +the visible glory of a Knight "arraied full and proper," Dorset +threaded his way featly and without pause. He had mastered his +first excitement. In his swiftness was no haste. His procedure +had the ease and inevitability of a natural phenomenon, and was +most like to the coming of a rainbow.</p> + +<p>Crimson-doubleted, blue-ribanded, white-trunk-hosed, he +stooped to understrap his left knee with that strap of velvet +round which sparkles the proud gay motto of the Order. He affixed +to his breast the octoradiant star, so much larger and more +lustrous than any actual star in heaven. Round his neck he slung +that long daedal chain wherefrom St. George, slaying the Dragon, +dangles. He bowed his shoulders to assume that vast mantle of +blue velvet, so voluminous, so enveloping, that, despite the +Cross of St. George blazing on it, and the shoulder-knots like +two great white tropical flowers planted on it, we seem to know +from it in what manner of mantle Elijah prophesied. Across his +breast he knotted this mantle's two cords of gleaming bullion, +one tassel a due trifle higher than its fellow. All these things +being done, he moved away from the mirror, and drew on a pair of +white kid gloves. Both of these being buttoned, he plucked up +certain folds of his mantle into the hollow of his left arm, and +with his right hand gave to his left hand that ostrich-plumed and +heron-plumed hat of black velvet in which a Knight of the Garter +is entitled to take his walks abroad. Then, with head erect, and +measured tread, he returned to the mirror.</p> + +<p>You are thinking, I know, of Mr. Sargent's famous portrait of +him. Forget it. Tankerton Hall is open to the public on +Wednesdays. Go there, and in the dining-hall stand to study well +Sir Thomas Lawrence's portrait of the eleventh Duke. Imagine a +man some twenty years younger than he whom you there behold, but +having some such features and some such bearing, and clad in just +such robes. Sublimate the dignity of that bearing and of those +features, and you will then have seen the fourteenth Duke +somewhat as he stood reflected in the mirror of his room. Resist +your impulse to pass on to the painting which hangs next but two +to Lawrence's. It deserves, I know, all that you said about it +when (at the very time of the events in this chronicle) it was +hanging in Burlington House. Marvellous, I grant you, are those +passes of the swirling brush by which the velvet of the mantle is +rendered--passes so light and seemingly so fortuitous, yet, seen +at the right distance, so absolute in their power to create an +illusion of the actual velvet. Sheen of white satin and silk, +glint of gold, glitter of diamonds--never were such things caught +by surer hand obedient to more voracious eye. Yes, all the +splendid surface of everything is there. Yet must you not look. +The soul is not there. An expensive, very new costume is there, +but no evocation of the high antique things it stands for; +whereas by the Duke it was just these things that were evoked to +make an aura round him, a warm symbolic glow sharpening the +outlines of his own particular magnificence. Reflecting him, the +mirror reflected, in due subordination, the history of England. +There is nothing of that on Mr. Sargent's canvas. Obtruded +instead is the astounding slickness of Mr. Sargent's technique: +not the sitter, but the painter, is master here. Nay, though I +hate to say it, there is in the portrayal of the Duke's attitude +and expression a hint of something like mockery-- unintentional, +I am sure, but to a sensitive eye discernible. And--but it is +clumsy of me to be reminding you of the very picture I would have +you forget.</p> + +<p>Long stood the Duke gazing, immobile. One thing alone ruffled +his deep inward calm. This was the thought that he must presently +put off from him all his splendour, and be his normal self.</p> + +<p>The shadow passed from his brow. He would go forth as he was. +He would be true to the motto he wore, and true to himself. A +dandy he had lived. In the full pomp and radiance of his dandyism +he would die.</p> + +<p>His soul rose from calm to triumph. A smile lit his face, and +he held his head higher than ever. He had brought nothing into +this world and could take nothing out of it? Well, what he loved +best he could carry with him to the very end; and in death they +would not be divided.</p> + +<p>The smile was still on his face as he passed out from his +room. Down the stairs he passed, and "Oh," every stair creaked +faintly, "I ought to have been marble!"</p> + +<p>And it did indeed seem that Mrs. Batch and Katie, who had +hurried out into the hall, were turned to some kind of stone at +sight of the descending apparition. A moment ago, Mrs. Batch had +been hoping she might yet at the last speak motherly words. A +hopeless mute now! A moment ago, Katie's eyelids had been red +with much weeping. Even from them the colour suddenly ebbed now. +Dead-white her face was between the black pearl and the pink. +"And this is the man of whom I dared once for an instant hope +that he loved me!"--it was thus that the Duke, quite correctly, +interpreted her gaze.</p> + +<p>To her and to her mother he gave an inclusive bow as he swept +slowly by. Stone was the matron, and stone the maid.</p> + +<p>Stone, too, the Emperors over the way; and the more poignantly +thereby was the Duke a sight to anguish them, being the very +incarnation of what themselves had erst been, or tried to be. But +in this bitterness they did not forget their sorrow at his doom. +They were in a mood to forgive him the one fault they had ever +found in him--his indifference to their Katie. And now--o mirum +mirorum--even this one fault was wiped out.</p> + +<p>For, stung by memory of a gibe lately cast at him by himself, +the Duke had paused and, impulsively looking back into the hall, +had beckoned Katie to him; and she had come (she knew not how) to +him; and there, standing on the doorstep whose whiteness was the +symbol of her love, he--very lightly, it is true, and on the +upmost confines of the brow, but quite perceptibly--had kissed +her.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>XIX</h3> + +<p>And now he had passed under the little arch between the eighth +and the ninth Emperor, rounded the Sheldonian, and been lost to +sight of Katie, whom, as he was equally glad and sorry he had +kissed her, he was able to dismiss from his mind.</p> + +<p>In the quadrangle of the Old Schools he glanced round at the +familiar labels, blue and gold, over the iron-studded +doors,--Schola Theologiae et Antiquae Philosophiae; Museum +Arundelianum; Schola Musicae. And Bibliotheca Bodleiana--he +paused there, to feel for the last time the vague thrill he had +always felt at sight of the small and devious portal that had +lured to itself, and would always lure, so many scholars from the +ends of the earth, scholars famous and scholars obscure, scholars +polyglot and of the most diverse bents, but none of them not +stirred in heart somewhat on the found threshold of the +treasure-house. "How deep, how perfect, the effect made here by +refusal to make any effect whatsoever!" thought the Duke. +Perhaps, after all . . . but no: one could lay down no general +rule. He flung his mantle a little wider from his breast, and +proceeded into Radcliffe Square.</p> + +<p>Another farewell look he gave to the old vast horse-chestnut +that is called Bishop Heber's tree. Certainly, no: there was no +general rule. With its towering and bulging masses of verdure +tricked out all over in their annual finery of catkins, Bishop +Heber's tree stood for the very type of ingenuous ostentation. +And who should dare cavil? who not be gladdened? Yet awful, more +than gladdening, was the effect that the tree made to-day. +Strangely pale was the verdure against the black sky; and the +multitudinous catkins had a look almost ghostly. The Duke +remembered the legend that every one of these fair white spires +of blossom is the spirit of some dead man who, having loved +Oxford much and well, is suffered thus to revisit her, for a +brief while, year by year. And it pleased him to doubt not that +on one of the topmost branches, next Spring, his own spirit would +be.</p> + +<p>"Oh, look!" cried a young lady emerging with her brother and +her aunt through the gate of Brasenose.</p> + +<p>"For heaven's sake, Jessie, try to behave yourself," hissed +her brother. "Aunt Mabel, for heaven's sake don't stare." He +compelled the pair to walk on with him. "Jessie, if you look +round over your shoulder . . . No, it is NOT the Vice-Chancellor. +It's Dorset, of Judas--the Duke of Dorset . . . Why on earth +shouldn't he? . . . No, it isn't odd in the least . . . No, I'm +NOT losing my temper. Only, don't call me your dear boy . . . No, +we will NOT walk slowly so as to let him pass us . . . Jessie, if +you look round . . ."</p> + +<p>Poor fellow! However fond an undergraduate be of his +womenfolk, at Oxford they keep him in a painful state of tension: +at any moment they may somehow disgrace him. And if throughout +the long day he shall have had the added strain of guarding them +from the knowledge that he is about to commit suicide, a certain +measure of irritability must be condoned.</p> + +<p>Poor Jessie and Aunt Mabel! They were destined to remember +that Harold had been "very peculiar" all day. They had arrived in +the morning, happy and eager despite the menace of the sky, +and--well, they were destined to reproach themselves for having +felt that Harold was "really rather impossible." Oh, if he had +only confided in them! They could have reasoned with him, saved +him--surely they could have saved him! When he told them that the +"First Division" of the races was always very dull, and that they +had much better let him go to it alone,--when he told them that +it was always very rowdy, and that ladies were not supposed to be +there--oh, why had they not guessed and clung to him, and kept +him away from the river?</p> + +<p>Well, here they were, walking on Harold's either side, blind +to fate, and only longing to look back at the gorgeous personage +behind them. Aunt Mabel had inwardly calculated that the velvet +of the mantle alone could not have cost less than four guineas a +yard. One good look back, and she would be able to calculate how +many yards there were . . . She followed the example of Lot's +wife; and Jessie followed hers.</p> + +<p>"Very well," said Harold. "That settles it. I go alone." And +he was gone like an arrow, across the High, down Oriel +Street.</p> + +<p>The two women stood staring ruefully at each other.</p> + +<p>"Pardon me," said the Duke, with a sweep of his plumed hat. "I +observe you are stranded; and, if I read your thoughts aright, +you are impugning the courtesy of that young runagate. Neither of +you, I am very sure, is as one of those ladies who in Imperial +Rome took a saucy pleasure in the spectacle of death. Neither of +you can have been warned by your escort that you were on the way +to see him die, of his own accord, in company with many hundreds +of other lads, myself included. Therefore, regard his flight from +you as an act not of unkindness, but of tardy compunction. The +hint you have had from him let me turn into a counsel. Go back, +both of you, to the place whence you came."</p> + +<p>"Thank you SO much," said Aunt Mabel, with what she took to be +great presence of mind. "MOST kind of you. We'll do JUST what you +tell us. Come, Jessie dear," and she hurried her niece away with +her.</p> + +<p>Something in her manner of fixing him with her eye had made +the Duke suspect what was in her mind. Well, she would find out +her mistake soon enough, poor woman. He desired, however, that +her mistake should be made by no one else. He would give no more +warnings.</p> + +<p>Tragic it was for him, in Merton Street, to see among the +crowd converging to the meadows so many women, young and old, all +imprescient, troubled by nothing but the thunder that was in the +air, that was on the brows of their escorts. He knew not whether +it was for their escorts or for them that he felt the greater +pity; and an added load for his heart was the sense of his +partial responsibility for what impended. But his lips were +sealed now. Why should he not enjoy the effect he was +creating?</p> + +<p>It was with a measured tread, as yesterday with Zuleika, that +he entered the avenue of elms. The throng streamed past from +behind him, parting wide, and marvelling as it streamed. Under +the pall of this evil evening his splendour was the more +inspiring. And, just as yesterday no man had questioned his right +to be with Zuleika, so to-day there was none to deem him +caparisoned too much. All the men felt at a glance that he, +coming to meet death thus, did no more than the right homage to +Zuleika--aye, and that he made them all partakers in his own +glory, casting his great mantle over all commorients. Reverence +forbade them to do more than glance. But the women with them were +impelled by wonder to stare hard, uttering sharp little cries +that mingled with the cawing of the rooks overhead. Thus did +scores of men find themselves shamed like our friend Harold. But +this, you say, was no more than a just return for their behaviour +yesterday, when, in this very avenue, so many women were almost +crushed to death by them in their insensate eagerness to see Miss +Dobson.</p> + +<p>To-day by scores of women it was calculated not only that the +velvet of the Duke's mantle could not have cost less than four +guineas a yard, but also that there must be quite twenty-five +yards of it. Some of the fair mathematicians had, in the course +of the past fortnight, visited the Royal Academy and seen there +Mr. Sargent's portrait of the wearer, so that their estimate now +was but the endorsement of an estimate already made. Yet their +impression of the Duke was above all a spiritual one. The +nobility of his face and bearing was what most thrilled them as +they went by; and those of them who had heard the rumour that he +was in love with that frightfully flashy-looking creature, +Zuleika Dobson, were more than ever sure there wasn't a word of +truth in it.</p> + +<p>As he neared the end of the avenue, the Duke was conscious of +a thinning in the procession on either side of him, and anon he +was aware that not one undergraduate was therein. And he knew at +once-- did not need to look back to know--why this was. SHE was +coming.</p> + +<p>Yes, she had come into the avenue, her magnetism speeding +before her, insomuch that all along the way the men immediately +ahead of her looked round, beheld her, stood aside for her. With +her walked The MacQuern, and a little bodyguard of other blest +acquaintances; and behind her swayed the dense mass of the +disorganised procession. And now the last rank between her and +the Duke was broken, and at the revealed vision of him she +faltered midway in some raillery she was addressing to The +MacQuern. Her eyes were fixed, her lips were parted, her tread +had become stealthy. With a brusque gesture of dismissal to the +men beside her, she darted forward, and lightly overtook the Duke +just as he was turning towards the barges.</p> + +<p>"May I?" she whispered, smiling round into his face.</p> + +<p>His shoulder-knots just perceptibly rose.</p> + +<p>"There isn't a policeman in sight, John. You're at my mercy. +No, no; I'm at yours. Tolerate me. You really do look quite +wonderful. There, I won't be so impertinent as to praise you. +Only let me be with you. Will you?"</p> + +<p>The shoulder-knots repeated their answer.</p> + +<p>"You needn't listen to me; needn't look at me--unless you care +to use my eyes as mirrors. Only let me be seen with you. That's +what I want. Not that your society isn't a boon in itself, John. +Oh, I've been so bored since I left you. The MacQuern is too, too +dull, and so are his friends. Oh, that meal with them in Balliol! +As soon as I grew used to the thought that they were going to die +for me, I simply couldn't stand them. Poor boys! it was as much +as I could do not to tell them I wished them dead already. +Indeed, when they brought me down for the first races, I did +suggest that they might as well die now as later. Only they +looked very solemn and said it couldn't possibly be done till +after the final races. And oh, the tea with them! What have YOU +been doing all the afternoon? Oh John, after THEM, I could almost +love you again. Why can't one fall in love with a man's clothes? +To think that all those splendid things you have on are going to +be spoilt--all for me. Nominally for me, that is. It is very +wonderful, John. I do appreciate it, really and truly, though I +know you think I don't. John, if it weren't mere spite you feel +for me--but it's no good talking about that. Come, let us be as +cheerful as we may be. Is this the Judas house-boat?"</p> + +<p>"The Judas barge," said the Duke, irritated by a mistake which +but yesterday had rather charmed him.</p> + +<p>As he followed his companion across the plank, there came +dully from the hills the first low growl of the pent storm. The +sound struck for him a strange contrast with the prattle he had +perforce been listening to.</p> + +<p>"Thunder," said Zuleika over her shoulder.</p> + +<p>"Evidently," he answered.</p> + +<p>Half-way up the stairs to the roof, she looked round. "Aren't +you coming?" she asked.</p> + +<p>He shook his head, and pointed to the raft in front of the +barge. She quickly descended.</p> + +<p>"Forgive me," he said, "my gesture was not a summons. The raft +is for men."</p> + +<p>"What do you want to do on it?"</p> + +<p>"To wait there till the races are over."</p> + +<p>"But--what do you mean? Aren't you coming up on to the roof at +all? Yesterday--"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I see," said the Duke, unable to repress a smile. "But +to-day I am not dressed for a flying-leap."</p> + +<p>Zuleika put a finger to her lips. "Don't talk so loud. Those +women up there will hear you. No one must ever know I knew what +was going to happen. What evidence should I have that I tried to +prevent it? Only my own unsupported word--and the world is always +against a woman. So do be careful. I've thought it all out. The +whole thing must be SPRUNG on me. Don't look so horribly cynical +. . . What was I saying? Oh yes; well, it doesn't really matter. +I had it fixed in my mind that you-- but no, of course, in that +mantle you couldn't. But why not come up on the roof with me +meanwhile, and then afterwards make some excuse and--" The rest +of her whisper was lost in another growl of thunder.</p> + +<p>"I would rather make my excuses forthwith," said the Duke. +"And, as the races must be almost due now, I advise you to go +straight up and secure a place against the railing."</p> + +<p>"It will look very odd, my going all alone into a crowd of +people whom I don't know. I'm an unmarried girl. I do think you +might--"</p> + +<p>"Good-bye," said the Duke.</p> + +<p>Again Zuleika raised a warning finger.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye, John," she whispered. "See, I am still wearing your +studs. Good-bye. Don't forget to call my name in a loud voice. +You promised."</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"And," she added, after a pause, "remember this. I have loved +but twice in my life; and none but you have I loved. This, too: +if you hadn't forced me to kill my love, I would have died with +you. And you know it is true."</p> + +<p>"Yes." It was true enough.</p> + +<p>Courteously he watched her up the stairs.</p> + +<p>As she reached the roof, she cried down to him from the +throng, "Then you will wait down there to take me home +afterwards?"</p> + +<p>He bowed silently.</p> + +<p>The raft was even more crowded than yesterday, but way was +made for him by Judasians past and present. He took his place in +the centre of the front row.</p> + +<p>At his feet flowed the fateful river. From the various barges +the last punt-loads had been ferried across to the towing-path, +and the last of the men who were to follow the boats in their +course had vanished towards the starting-point. There remained, +however, a fringe of lesser enthusiasts. Their figures stood +outlined sharply in that strange dark clearness which immediately +precedes a storm.</p> + +<p>The thunder rumbled around the hills, and now and again there +was a faint glare on the horizon.</p> + +<p>Would Judas bump Magdalen? Opinion on the raft seemed to be +divided. But the sanguine spirits were in a majority.</p> + +<p>"If I were making a book on the event," said a middle-aged +clergyman, with that air of breezy emancipation which is so +distressing to the laity, "I'd bet two to one we bump."</p> + +<p>"You demean your cloth, sir," the Duke would have said, +"without cheating its disabilities," had not his mouth been +stopped by a loud and prolonged thunder-clap.</p> + +<p>In the hush thereafter, came the puny sound of a gunshot. The +boats were starting. Would Judas bump Magdalen? Would Judas be +head of the river?</p> + +<p>Strange, thought the Duke, that for him, standing as he did on +the peak of dandyism, on the brink of eternity, this trivial +question of boats could have importance. And yet, and yet, for +this it was that his heart was beating. A few minutes hence, an +end to victors and vanquished alike; and yet . . .</p> + +<p>A sudden white vertical streak slid down the sky. Then there +was a consonance to split the drums of the world's ears, followed +by a horrific rattling as of actual artillery--tens of thousands +of gun-carriages simultaneously at the gallop, colliding, +crashing, heeling over in the blackness.</p> + +<p>Then, and yet more awful, silence; the little earth cowering +voiceless under the heavens' menace. And, audible in the hush +now, a faint sound; the sound of the runners on the towing-path +cheering the crews forward, forward.</p> + +<p>And there was another faint sound that came to the Duke's +ears. It he understood when, a moment later, he saw the surface +of the river alive with infinitesimal fountains.</p> + +<p>Rain!</p> + +<p>His very mantle was aspersed. In another minute he would stand +sodden, inglorious, a mock. He didn't hesitate.</p> + +<p>"Zuleika!" he cried in a loud voice. Then he took a deep +breath, and, burying his face in his mantle, plunged.</p> + +<p>Full on the river lay the mantle outspread. Then it, too, went +under. A great roll of water marked the spot. The plumed hat +floated.</p> + +<p>There was a confusion of shouts from the raft, of screams from +the roof. Many youths--all the youths there--cried "Zuleika!" and +leapt emulously headlong into the water. "Brave fellows!" shouted +the elder men, supposing rescue-work. The rain pelted, the +thunder pealed. Here and there was a glimpse of a young head +above water--for an instant only.</p> + +<p>Shouts and screams now from the infected barges on either +side. A score of fresh plunges. "Splendid fellows!"</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, what of the Duke? I am glad to say that he was +alive and (but for the cold he had caught last night) well. +Indeed, his mind had never worked more clearly than in this swift +dim underworld. His mantle, the cords of it having come untied, +had drifted off him, leaving his arms free. With breath +well-pent, he steadily swam, scarcely less amused than annoyed +that the gods had, after all, dictated the exact time at which he +should seek death.</p> + +<p>I am loth to interrupt my narrative at this rather exciting +moment--a moment when the quick, tense style, exemplified in the +last paragraph but one, is so very desirable. But in justice to +the gods I must pause to put in a word of excuse for them. They +had imagined that it was in mere irony that the Duke had said he +could not die till after the bumping-races; and not until it +seemed that he stood ready to make an end of himself had the +signal been given by Zeus for the rain to fall. One is taught to +refrain from irony, because mankind does tend to take it +literally. In the hearing of the gods, who hear all, it is +conversely unsafe to make a simple and direct statement. So what +is one to do? The dilemma needs a whole volume to itself.</p> + +<p>But to return to the Duke. He had now been under water for a +full minute, swimming down stream; and he calculated that he had +yet another full minute of consciousness. Already the whole of +his past life had vividly presented itself to him--myriads of +tiny incidents, long forgotten, now standing out sharply in their +due sequence. He had mastered this conspectus in a flash of time, +and was already tired of it. How smooth and yielding were the +weeds against his face! He wondered if Mrs. Batch had been in +time to cash the cheque. If not, of course his executors would +pay the amount, but there would be delays, long delays, Mrs. +Batch in meshes of red tape. Red tape for her, green weeds for +him--he smiled at this poor conceit, classifying it as a fair +sample of merman's wit. He swam on through the quiet cool +darkness, less quickly now. Not many more strokes now, he told +himself; a few, only a few; then sleep. How was he come here? +Some woman had sent him. Ever so many years ago, some woman. He +forgave her. There was nothing to forgive her. It was the gods +who had sent him--too soon, too soon. He let his arms rise in the +water, and he floated up. There was air in that over-world, and +something he needed to know there before he came down again to +sleep.</p> + +<p>He gasped the air into his lungs, and he remembered what it +was that he needed to know.</p> + +<p>Had he risen in mid-stream, the keel of the Magdalen boat +might have killed him. The oars of Magdalen did all but graze his +face. The eyes of the Magdalen cox met his. The cords of the +Magdalen rudder slipped from the hands that held them; whereupon +the Magdalen man who rowed "bow" missed his stroke.</p> + +<p>An instant later, just where the line of barges begins, Judas +had bumped Magdalen.</p> + +<p>A crash of thunder deadened the din of the stamping and +dancing crowd on the towing-path. The rain was a deluge making +land and water as one.</p> + +<p>And the conquered crew, and the conquering, both now had seen +the face of the Duke. A white smiling face, anon it was gone. +Dorset was gone down to his last sleep.</p> + +<p>Victory and defeat alike forgotten, the crews staggered erect +and flung themselves into the river, the slender boats capsizing +and spinning futile around in a melley of oars.</p> + +<p>From the towing-path--no more din there now, but great single +cries of "Zuleika!"--leapt figures innumerable through rain to +river. The arrested boats of the other crews drifted zigzag +hither and thither. The dropped oars rocked and clashed, sank and +rebounded, as the men plunged across them into the swirling +stream.</p> + +<p>And over all this confusion and concussion of men and man-made +things crashed the vaster discords of the heavens; and the waters +of the heavens fell ever denser and denser, as though to the aid +of waters that could not in themselves envelop so many hundreds +of struggling human forms.</p> + +<p>All along the soaked towing-path lay strewn the horns, the +rattles, the motor-hooters, that the youths had flung aside +before they leapt. Here and there among these relics stood dazed +elder men, staring through the storm. There was one of them--a +grey-beard--who stripped off his blazer, plunged, grabbed at some +live man, grappled him, was dragged under. He came up again +further along stream, swam choking to the bank, clung to the +grasses. He whimpered as he sought foot-hold in the slime. It was +ill to be down in that abominable sink of death.</p> + +<p>Abominable, yes, to them who discerned there death only; but +sacramental and sweet enough to the men who were dying there for +love. Any face that rose was smiling.</p> + +<p>The thunder receded; the rain was less vehement: the boats and +the oars had drifted against the banks. And always the patient +river bore its awful burden towards Iffley.</p> + +<p>As on the towing-path, so on the youth-bereft rafts of the +barges, yonder, stood many stupefied elders, staring at the +river, staring back from the river into one another's faces.</p> + +<p>Dispeopled now were the roofs of the barges. Under the first +drops of the rain most of the women had come huddling down for +shelter inside; panic had presently driven down the rest. Yet on +one roof one woman still was. A strange, drenched figure, she +stood bright-eyed in the dimness; alone, as it was well she +should be in her great hour; draining the lees of such homage as +had come to no woman in history recorded.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>XX</h3> + +<p>Artistically, there is a good deal to be said for that old +Greek friend of ours, the Messenger; and I dare say you blame me +for having, as it were, made you an eye-witness of the death of +the undergraduates, when I might so easily have brought some one +in to tell you about it after it was all over . . . Some one? +Whom? Are you not begging the question? I admit there were, that +evening in Oxford, many people who, when they went home from the +river, gave vivid reports of what they had seen. But among them +was none who had seen more than a small portion of the whole +affair. Certainly, I might have pieced together a dozen of the +various accounts, and put them all into the mouth of one person. +But credibility is not enough for Clio's servant. I aim at truth. +And so, as I by my Zeus-given incorporeity was the one person who +had a good view of the scene at large, you must pardon me for +having withheld the veil of indirect narration.</p> + +<p>"Too late," you will say if I offer you a Messenger now. But +it was not thus that Mrs. Batch and Katie greeted Clarence when, +lamentably soaked with rain, that Messenger appeared on the +threshold of the kitchen. Katie was laying the table-cloth for +seven o'clock supper. Neither she nor her mother was +clairvoyante. Neither of them knew what had been happening. But, +as Clarence had not come home since afternoon-school, they had +assumed that he was at the river; and they now assumed from the +look of him that something very unusual had been happening there. +As to what this was, they were not quickly enlightened. Our old +Greek friend, after a run of twenty miles, would always reel off +a round hundred of graphic verses unimpeachable in scansion. +Clarence was of degenerate mould. He collapsed on to a chair, and +sat there gasping; and his recovery was rather delayed than +hastened by his mother, who, in her solicitude, patted him +vigorously between the shoulders.</p> + +<p>"Let him alone, mother, do," cried Katie, wringing her +hands.</p> + +<p>"The Duke, he's drowned himself," presently gasped the +Messenger.</p> + +<p>Blank verse, yes, so far as it went; but delivered without the +slightest regard for rhythm, and composed in stark defiance of +those laws which should regulate the breaking of bad news. You, +please remember, were carefully prepared by me against the shock +of the Duke's death; and yet I hear you still mumbling that I +didn't let the actual fact be told you by a Messenger. Come, do +you really think your grievance against me is for a moment +comparable with that of Mrs. and Miss Batch against Clarence? Did +you feel faint at any moment in the foregoing chapter? No. But +Katie, at Clarence's first words, fainted outright. Think a +little more about this poor girl senseless on the floor, and a +little less about your own paltry discomfort.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Batch herself did not faint, but she was too much +overwhelmed to notice that her daughter had done so.</p> + +<p>"No! Mercy on us! Speak, boy, can't you?"</p> + +<p>"The river," gasped Clarence. "Threw himself in. On purpose. I +was on the towing-path. Saw him do it."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Batch gave a low moan.</p> + +<p>"Katie's fainted," added the Messenger, not without a touch of +personal pride.</p> + +<p>"Saw him do it," Mrs. Batch repeated dully. "Katie," she said, +in the same voice, "get up this instant." But Katie did not hear +her.</p> + +<p>The mother was loth to have been outdone in sensibility by the +daughter, and it was with some temper that she hastened to make +the necessary ministrations.</p> + +<p>"Where am I?" asked Katie, at length, echoing the words used +in this very house, at a similar juncture, on this very day, by +another lover of the Duke.</p> + +<p>"Ah, you may well ask that," said Mrs. Batch, with more force +than reason. "A mother's support indeed! Well! And as for you," +she cried, turning on Clarence, "sending her off like that with +your--" She was face to face again with the tragic news. Katie, +remembering it simultaneously, uttered a loud sob. Mrs. Batch +capped this with a much louder one. Clarence stood before the +fire, slowly revolving on one heel. His clothes steamed +briskly.</p> + +<p>"It isn't true," said Katie. She rose and came uncertainly +towards her brother, half threatening, half imploring.</p> + +<p>"All right," said he, strong in his advantage. "Then I shan't +tell either of you anything more."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Batch through her tears called Katie a bad girl, and +Clarence a bad boy.</p> + +<p>"Where did you get THEM?" asked Clarence, pointing to the +ear-rings worn by his sister.</p> + +<p>"HE gave me them," said Katie. Clarence curbed the brotherly +intention of telling her she looked "a sight" in them.</p> + +<p>She stood staring into vacancy. "He didn't love HER," she +murmured. "That was all over. I'll vow he didn't love HER."</p> + +<p>"Who d'you mean by her?" asked Clarence.</p> + +<p>"That Miss Dobson that's been here."</p> + +<p>"What's her other name?"</p> + +<p>"Zuleika," Katie enunciated with bitterest abhorrence.</p> + +<p>"Well, then, he jolly well did love her. That's the name he +called out just before he threw himself in. 'Zuleika!'--like +that," added the boy, with a most infelicitous attempt to +reproduce the Duke's manner.</p> + +<p>Katie had shut her eyes, and clenched her hands.</p> + +<p>"He hated her. He told me so," she said.</p> + +<p>"I was always a mother to him," sobbed Mrs. Batch, rocking to +and fro on a chair in a corner. "Why didn't he come to me in his +trouble?"</p> + +<p>"He kissed me," said Katie, as in a trance. "No other man +shall ever do that."</p> + +<p>"He did?" exclaimed Clarence. "And you let him?"</p> + +<p>"You wretched little whipper-snapper!" flashed Katie.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I am, am I?" shouted Clarence, squaring up to his sister. +"Say that again, will you?"</p> + +<p>There is no doubt that Katie would have said it again, had not +her mother closed the scene with a prolonged wail of censure.</p> + +<p>"You ought to be thinking of ME, you wicked girl," said Mrs. +Batch. Katie went across, and laid a gentle hand on her mother's +shoulder. This, however, did but evoke a fresh flood of tears. +Mrs. Batch had a keen sense of the deportment owed to tragedy. +Katie, by bickering with Clarence, had thrown away the advantage +she had gained by fainting. Mrs. Batch was not going to let her +retrieve it by shining as a consoler. I hasten to add that this +resolve was only sub-conscious in the good woman. Her grief was +perfectly sincere. And it was not the less so because with it was +mingled a certain joy in the greatness of the calamity. She came +of good sound peasant stock. Abiding in her was the spirit of +those old songs and ballads in which daisies and daffodillies and +lovers' vows and smiles are so strangely inwoven with tombs and +ghosts, with murders and all manner of grim things. She had not +had education enough to spoil her nerve. She was able to take the +rough with the smooth. She was able to take all life for her +province, and death too.</p> + +<p>The Duke was dead. This was the stupendous outline she had +grasped: now let it be filled in. She had been stricken: now let +her be racked. Soon after her daughter had moved away, Mrs. Batch +dried her eyes, and bade Clarence tell just what had happened. +She did not flinch. Modern Katie did.</p> + +<p>Such had ever been the Duke's magic in the household that +Clarence had at first forgotten to mention that any one else was +dead. Of this omission he was glad. It promised him a new lease +of importance. Meanwhile, he described in greater detail the +Duke's plunge. Mrs. Batch's mind, while she listened, ran ahead, +dog-like, into the immediate future, ranging around: "the family" +would all be here to-morrow, the Duke's own room must be "put +straight" to-night, "I was of speaking" . . .</p> + +<p>Katie's mind harked back to the immediate past--to the tone of +that voice, to that hand which she had kissed, to the touch of +those lips on her brow, to the door-step she had made so white +for him, day by day . . .</p> + +<p>The sound of the rain had long ceased. There was the noise of +a gathering wind.</p> + +<p>"Then in went a lot of others," Clarence was saying. "And they +all shouted out 'Zuleika!' just like he did. Then a lot more went +in. First I thought it was some sort of fun. Not it!" And he told +how, by inquiries further down the river, he had learned the +extent of the disaster. "Hundreds and hundreds of them--ALL of +them," he summed up. "And all for the love of HER," he added, as +with a sulky salute to Romance.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Batch had risen from her chair, the better to cope with +such magnitude. She stood with wide-spread arms, silent, gaping. +She seemed, by sheer force of sympathy, to be expanding to the +dimensions of a crowd.</p> + +<p>Intensive Katie recked little of all these other deaths. "I +only know," she said, "that he hated her."</p> + +<p>"Hundreds and hundreds--ALL," intoned Mrs. Batch, then gave a +sudden start, as having remembered something. Mr. Noaks! He, too! +She staggered to the door, leaving her actual offspring to their +own devices, and went heavily up the stairs, her mind scampering +again before her. . . . If he was safe and sound, dear young +gentleman, heaven be praised! and she would break the awful news +to him, very gradually. If not, there was another "family" to be +solaced; "I'm a mother myself, Mrs. Noaks" . . .</p> + +<p>The sitting-room door was closed. Twice did Mrs. Batch tap on +the panel, receiving no answer. She went in, gazed around in the +dimness, sighed deeply, and struck a match. Conspicuous on the +table lay a piece of paper. She bent to examine it. A piece of +lined paper, torn from an exercise book, it was neatly inscribed +with the words "What is Life without Love?" The final word and +the note of interrogation were somewhat blurred, as by a tear. +The match had burnt itself out. The landlady lit another, and +read the legend a second time, that she might take in the full +pathos of it. Then she sat down in the arm- chair. For some +minutes she wept there. Then, having no more, tears, she went out +on tip-toe, closing the door very quietly.</p> + +<p>As she descended the last flight of stairs, her daughter had +just shut the front-door, and was coming along the hall.</p> + +<p>"Poor Mr. Noaks--he's gone," said the mother.</p> + +<p>"Has he?" said Katie listlessly.</p> + +<p>"Yes he has, you heartless girl. What's that you've got in +your hand? Why, if it isn't the black-leading! And what have you +been doing with that?"</p> + +<p>"Let me alone, mother, do," said poor Katie. She had done her +lowly task. She had expressed her mourning, as best she could, +there where she had been wont to express her love.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>XXI</h3> + +<p>And Zuleika? She had done a wise thing, and was where it was +best that she should be.</p> + +<p>Her face lay upturned on the water's surface, and round it +were the masses of her dark hair, half floating, half submerged. +Her eyes were closed, and her lips were parted. Not Ophelia in +the brook could have seemed more at peace.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>"Like a creature native and indued</p> + +<p>Unto that element,"</p> + +<p>tranquil Zuleika lay.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Gently to and fro her tresses drifted on the water, or under +the water went ever ravelling and unravelling. Nothing else of +her stirred.</p> + +<p>What to her now the loves that she had inspired and played on? +the lives lost for her? Little thought had she now of them. Aloof +she lay.</p> + +<p>Steadily rising from the water was a thick vapour that turned +to dew on the window-pane. The air was heavy with scent of +violets. These are the flowers of mourning; but their scent here +and now signified nothing; for Eau de Violettes was the +bath-essence that Zuleika always had.</p> + +<p>The bath-room was not of the white-gleaming kind to which she +was accustomed. The walls were papered, not tiled, and the bath +itself was of japanned tin, framed in mahogany. These things, on +the evening of her arrival at the Warden's, had rather distressed +her. But she was the better able to bear them because of that +well-remembered past when a bath-room was in itself a luxury +pined for--days when a not-large and not-full can of not-hot +water, slammed down at her bedroom door by a governess-resenting +housemaid, was as much as the gods allowed her. And there was, to +dulcify for her the bath of this evening, the yet sharper +contrast with the plight she had just come home in, sopped, +shivering, clung to by her clothes. Because this bath was not a +mere luxury, but a necessary precaution, a sure means of +salvation from chill, she did the more gratefully bask in it, +till Melisande came back to her, laden with warmed towels.</p> + +<p>A few minutes before eight o'clock she was fully ready to go +down to dinner, with even more than the usual glow of health, and +hungry beyond her wont.</p> + +<p>Yet, as she went down, her heart somewhat misgave her. Indeed, +by force of the wide experience she had had as a governess, she +never did feel quite at her ease when she was staying in a +private house: the fear of not giving satisfaction haunted her; +she was always on her guard; the shadow of dismissal absurdly +hovered. And to-night she could not tell herself, as she usually +did, not to be so silly. If her grandfather knew already the +motive by which those young men had been actuated, dinner with +him might be a rather strained affair. He might tell her, in so +many words, that he wished he had not invited her to Oxford.</p> + +<p>Through the open door of the drawing room she saw him, +standing majestic, draped in a voluminous black gown. Her +instinct was to run away; but this she conquered. She went +straight in, remembering not to smile.</p> + +<p>"Ah, ah," said the Warden, shaking a forefinger at her with +old-world playfulness. "And what have you to say for +yourself?"</p> + +<p>Relieved, she was also a trifle shocked. Was it possible that +he, a responsible old man, could take things so lightly?</p> + +<p>"Oh, grand-papa," she answered, hanging her head, "what CAN I +say? It is--it is too, too, dreadful."</p> + +<p>"There, there, my dear. I was but jesting. If you have had an +agreeable time, you are forgiven for playing truant. Where have +you been all day?"</p> + +<p>She saw that she had misjudged him. "I have just come from the +river," she said gravely.</p> + +<p>"Yes? And did the College make its fourth bump to-night?"</p> + +<p>"I--I don't know, grand-papa. There was so much happening. +It--I will tell you all about it at dinner."</p> + +<p>"Ah, but to-night," he said, indicating his gown, "I cannot be +with you. The bump-supper, you know. I have to preside in +Hall."</p> + +<p>Zuleika had forgotten there was to be a bump-supper, and, +though she was not very sure what a bump-supper was, she felt it +would be a mockery to-night.</p> + +<p>"But grand-papa--" she began.</p> + +<p>"My dear, I cannot dissociate myself from the life of the +College. And, alas," he said, looking at the clock, "I must leave +you now. As soon as you have finished dinner, you might, if you +would care to, come and peep down at us from the gallery. There +is apt to be some measure of noise and racket, but all of it +good-humoured and--boys will be boys--pardonable. Will you +come?"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps, grand-papa," she said awkwardly. Left alone, she +hardly knew whether to laugh or cry. In a moment, the butler came +to her rescue, telling her that dinner was served.</p> + +<p>As the figure of the Warden emerged from Salt Cellar into the +Front Quadrangle, a hush fell on the group of gowned Fellows +outside the Hall. Most of them had only just been told the news, +and (such is the force of routine in an University) were still +sceptical of it. And in face of these doubts the three or four +dons who had been down at the river were now half ready to +believe that there must, after all, be some mistake, and that in +this world of illusions they had to-night been specially tricked. +To rebut this theory, there was the notable absence of +undergraduates. Or was this an illusion, too? Men of thought, +agile on the plane of ideas, devils of fellows among books, they +groped feebly in this matter of actual life and death. The sight +of their Warden heartened them. After all, he was the responsible +person. He was father of the flock that had strayed, and +grandfather of the beautiful Miss Zuleika.</p> + +<p>Like her, they remembered not to smile in greeting him.</p> + +<p>"Good evening, gentlemen," he said. "The storm seems to have +passed."</p> + +<p>There was a murmur of "Yes, Warden."</p> + +<p>"And how did our boat acquit itself?"</p> + +<p>There was a shuffling pause. Every one looked at the +Sub-Warden: it was manifestly for him to break the news, or to +report the hallucination. He was nudged forward--a large man, +with a large beard at which he plucked nervously.</p> + +<p>"Well, really, Warden," he said, "we--we hardly know,"* and he +ended with what can only be described as a giggle. He fell low in +the esteem of his fellows.</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>*Those of my readers who are interested in athletic sports +will remember the long controversy that raged as to whether Judas +had actually bumped Magdalen; and they will not need to be minded +that it was mainly through the evidence of Mr. E. T. A. Cook, who +had been on the towing-path at the time, that the 0. U. B. C. +decided the point in Judas' favour, and fixed the order of the +boats for the following year accordingly.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Thinking of that past Sub-Warden whose fame was linked with +the sun-dial, the Warden eyed this one keenly.</p> + +<p>"Well, gentlemen," he presently said, "our young men seem to +be already at table. Shall we follow their example?" And he led +the way up the steps.</p> + +<p>Already at table? The dons' dubiety toyed with this +hypothesis. But the aspect of the Hall's interior was hard to +explain away. Here were the three long tables, stretching white +towards the dais, and laden with the usual crockery and cutlery, +and with pots of flowers in honour of the occasion. And here, +ranged along either wall, was the usual array of scouts, +motionless, with napkins across their arms. But that was all.</p> + +<p>It became clear to the Warden that some organised prank or +protest was afoot. Dignity required that he should take no heed +whatsoever. Looking neither to the right nor to the left, stately +he approached the dais, his Fellows to heel.</p> + +<p>In Judas, as in other Colleges, grace before meat is read by +the Senior Scholar. The Judas grace (composed, they say, by +Christopher Whitrid himself) is noted for its length and for the +excellence of its Latinity. Who was to read it to-night? The +Warden, having searched his mind vainly for a precedent, was +driven to create one.</p> + +<p>"The Junior Fellow," he said, "will read grace."</p> + +<p>Blushing to the roots of his hair, and with crablike gait, Mr. +Pedby, the Junior Fellow, went and unhooked from the wall that +little shield of wood on which the words of the grace are carven. +Mr. Pedby was--Mr. Pedby is--a mathematician. His treatise on the +Higher Theory of Short Division by Decimals had already won for +him an European reputation. Judas was--Judas is--proud of Pedby. +Nor is it denied that in undertaking the duty thrust on him he +quickly controlled his nerves and read the Latin out in ringing +accents. Better for him had he not done so. The false quantities +he made were so excruciating and so many that, while the very +scouts exchanged glances, the dons at the high table lost all +command of their features, and made horrible noises in the effort +to contain themselves. The very Warden dared not look from his +plate.</p> + +<p>In every breast around the high table, behind every +shirt-front or black silk waistcoat, glowed the recognition of a +new birth. Suddenly, unheralded, a thing of highest destiny had +fallen into their academic midst. The stock of Common Room talk +had to-night been re-inforced and enriched for all time. Summers +and winters would come and go, old faces would vanish, giving +place to new, but the story of Pedby's grace would be told +always. Here was a tradition that generations of dons yet unborn +would cherish and chuckle over. Something akin to awe mingled +itself with the subsiding merriment. And the dons, having +finished their soup, sipped in silence the dry brown sherry.</p> + +<p>Those who sat opposite to the Warden, with their backs to the +void, were oblivious of the matter that had so recently teased +them. They were conscious only of an agreeable hush, in which +they peered down the vistas of the future, watching the tradition +of Pedby's grace as it rolled brighter and ever brighter down to +eternity.</p> + +<p>The pop of a champagne cork startled them to remembrance that +this was a bump-supper, and a bump-supper of a peculiar kind. The +turbot that came after the soup, the champagne that succeeded the +sherry, helped to quicken in these men of thought the power to +grapple with a reality. The aforesaid three or four who had been +down at the river recovered their lost belief in the evidence of +their eyes and ears. In the rest was a spirit of receptivity +which, as the meal went on, mounted to conviction. The Sub-Warden +made a second and more determined attempt to enlighten the +Warden; but the Warden's eye met his with a suspicion so cruelly +pointed that he again floundered and gave in.</p> + +<p>All adown those empty other tables gleamed the undisturbed +cutlery, and the flowers in the pots innocently bloomed. And all +adown either wall, unneeded but undisbanded, the scouts remained. +Some of the elder ones stood with closed eyes and heads sunk +forward, now and again jerking themselves erect, and blinking +around, wondering, remembering.</p> + +<p>And for a while this scene was looked down on by a not +disinterested stranger. For a while, her chin propped on her +hands, Zuleika leaned over the rail of the gallery, just as she +had lately leaned over the barge's rail, staring down and along. +But there was no spark of triumph now in her eyes; only a deep +melancholy; and in her mouth a taste as of dust and ashes. She +thought of last night, and of all the buoyant life that this Hall +had held. Of the Duke she thought, and of the whole vivid and +eager throng of his fellows in love. Her will, their will, had +been done. But. there rose to her lips the old, old question that +withers victory--"To what end?" Her eyes ranged along the tables, +and an appalling sense of loneliness swept over her. She turned +away, wrapping the folds of her cloak closer across her breast. +Not in this College only, but through and through Oxford, there +was no heart that beat for her--no, not one, she told herself, +with that instinct for self-torture which comes to souls in +torment. She was utterly alone to-night in the midst of a vast +indifference. She! She! Was it possible? Were the gods so +merciless? Ah no, surely . . .</p> + +<p>Down at the high table the feast drew to its close, and very +different was the mood of the feasters from that of the young +woman whose glance had for a moment rested on their unromantic +heads. Generations of undergraduates had said that Oxford would +be all very well but for the dons. Do you suppose that the dons +had had no answering sentiment? Youth is a very good thing to +possess, no doubt; but it is a tiresome setting for maturity. +Youth all around prancing, vociferating, mocking; callow and +alien youth, having to be looked after and studied and taught, as +though nothing but it mattered, term after term--and now, all of +a sudden, in mid-term, peace, ataraxy, a profound and leisured +stillness. No lectures to deliver to-morrow; no "essays" to hear +and criticise; time for the unvexed pursuit of pure learning . . +.</p> + +<p>As the Fellows passed out on their way to Common Room, there +to tackle with a fresh appetite Pedby's grace, they paused, as +was their wont, on the steps of the Hall, looking up at the sky, +envisaging the weather. The wind had dropped. There was even a +glimpse of the moon riding behind the clouds. And now, a solemn +and plangent token of Oxford's perpetuity, the first stroke of +Great Tom sounded.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>XXII</h3> + +<p>Stroke by stroke, the great familiar monody of that +incomparable curfew rose and fell in the stillness.</p> + +<p>Nothing of Oxford lingers more surely than it in the memory of +Oxford men; and to one revisiting these groves nothing is more +eloquent of that scrupulous historic economy whereby his own +particular past is utilised as the general present and future. +"All's as it was, all's as it will be," says Great Tom; and that +is what he stubbornly said on the evening I here record.</p> + +<p>Stroke by measured and leisured stroke, the old euphonious +clangour pervaded Oxford, spreading out over the meadows, along +the river, audible in Iffley. But to the dim groups gathering and +dispersing on either bank, and to the silent workers in the +boats, the bell's message came softened, equivocal; came as a +requiem for these dead.</p> + +<p>Over the closed gates of Iffley lock, the water gushed down, +eager for the sacrament of the sea. Among the supine in the field +hard by, there was one whose breast bore a faint-gleaming star. +And bending over him, looking down at him with much love and pity +in her eyes, was the shade of Nellie O'Mora, that "fairest +witch," to whose memory he had to-day atoned.</p> + +<p>And yonder, "sitting upon the river-bank o'ergrown," with +questioning eyes, was another shade, more habituated to these +haunts--the shade known so well to bathers "in the abandoned +lasher," and to dancers "around the Fyfield elm in May." At the +bell's final stroke, the Scholar Gipsy rose, letting fall on the +water his gathered wild- flowers, and passed towards Cumnor.</p> + +<p>And now, duly, throughout Oxford, the gates of the Colleges +were closed, and closed were the doors of the lodging-houses. +Every night, for many years, at this hour precisely, Mrs. Batch +had come out from her kitchen, to turn the key in the front-door. +The function had long ago become automatic. To-night, however, it +was the cue for further tears. These did not cease at her return +to the kitchen, where she had gathered about her some sympathetic +neighbours--women of her own age and kind, capacious of tragedy; +women who might be relied on; founts of ejaculation, wells of +surmise, downpours of remembered premonitions.</p> + +<p>With his elbows on the kitchen table, and his knuckles to his +brow, sat Clarence, intent on belated "prep." Even an eye-witness +of disaster may pall if he repeat his story too often. Clarence +had noted in the last recital that he was losing his hold on his +audience. So now he sat committing to memory the names of the +cantons of Switzerland, and waving aside with a harsh gesture +such questions as were still put to him by the women.</p> + +<p>Katie had sought refuge in the need for "putting the +gentlemen's rooms straight," against the arrival of the two +families to-morrow. Duster in hand, and by the light of a single +candle that barely survived the draught from the open window, she +moved to and fro about the Duke's room, a wan and listless +figure, casting queerest shadows on the ceiling. There were other +candles that she might have lit, but this ambiguous gloom suited +her sullen humour. Yes, I am sorry to say, Katie was sullen. She +had not ceased to mourn the Duke; but it was even more anger than +grief that she felt at his dying. She was as sure as ever that he +had not loved Miss Dobson; but this only made it the more +outrageous that he had died because of her. What was there in +this woman that men should so demean themselves for her? Katie, +as you know, had at first been unaffected by the death of the +undergraduates at large. But, because they too had died for +Zuleika, she was bitterly incensed against them now. What could +they have admired in such a woman? She didn't even look like a +lady. Katie caught the dim reflection of herself in the mirror. +She took the candle from the table, and examined the reflection +closely. She was sure she was just as pretty as Miss Dobson. It +was only the clothes that made the difference--the clothes and +the behaviour. Katie threw back her head, and smiled brilliantly, +hand on hip. She nodded reassuringly at herself; and the black +pearl and the pink danced a duet. She put the candle down, and +undid her hair, roughly parting it on one side, and letting it +sweep down over the further eyebrow. She fixed it in that +fashion, and posed accordingly. Now! But gradually her smile +relaxed, and a mist came to her eyes. For she had to admit that +even so, after all, she hadn't just that something which somehow +Miss Dobson had. She put away from her the hasty dream she had +had of a whole future generation of undergraduates drowning +themselves, every one, in honour of her. She went wearily on with +her work.</p> + +<p>Presently, after a last look round, she went up the creaking +stairs, to do Mr. Noaks' room.</p> + +<p>She found on the table that screed which her mother had +recited so often this evening. She put it in the waste-paper +basket.</p> + +<p>Also on the table were a lexicon, a Thucydides, and some +note-books. These she took and shelved without a tear for the +closed labours they bore witness to.</p> + +<p>The next disorder that met her eye was one that gave her +pause--seemed, indeed, to transfix her.</p> + +<p>Mr. Noaks had never, since he came to lodge here, possessed +more than one pair of boots. This fact had been for her a lasting +source of annoyance; for it meant that she had to polish Mr. +Noaks' boots always in the early morning, when there were so many +other things to be done, instead of choosing her own time. Her +annoyance had been all the keener because Mr. Noaks' boots more +than made up in size for what they lacked in number. Either of +them singly took more time and polish than any other pair +imaginable. She would have recognised them, at a glance, +anywhere. Even so now, it was at a glance that she recognised the +toes of them protruding from beneath the window-curtain. She +dismissed the theory that Mr. Noaks might have gone utterly +unshod to the river. She scouted the hypothesis that his ghost +could be shod thus. By process of elimination she arrived at the +truth. "Mr. Noaks," she said quietly, "come out of there."</p> + +<p>There was a slight quiver of the curtain; no more. Katie +repeated her words. There was a pause, then a convulsion of the +curtain. Noaks stood forth.</p> + +<p>Always, in polishing his boots, Katie had found herself +thinking of him as a man of prodigious stature, well though she +knew him to be quite tiny. Even so now, at recognition of his +boots, she had fixed her eyes to meet his, when he should emerge, +a full yard too high. With a sharp drop she focussed him.</p> + +<p>"By what right," he asked, "do you come prying about my +room?"</p> + +<p>This was a stroke so unexpected that it left Katie mute. It +equally surprised Noaks, who had been about to throw himself on +his knees and implore this girl not to betray him. He was quick, +though, to clinch his advantage.</p> + +<p>"This," he said, "is the first time I have caught you. Let it +be the last."</p> + +<p>Was this the little man she had so long despised, and so +superciliously served? His very smallness gave him an air of +concentrated force. She remembered having read that all the +greatest men in history had been of less than the middle height. +And--oh, her heart leapt--here was the one man who had scorned to +die for Miss Dobson. He alone had held out against the folly of +his fellows. Sole and splendid survivor he stood, rock-footed, +before her. And impulsively she abased herself, kneeling at his +feet as at the great double altar of some dark new faith.</p> + +<p>"You are great, sir, you are wonderful," she said, gazing up +to him, rapt. It was the first time she had ever called him +"sir."</p> + +<p>It is easier, as Michelet suggested, for a woman to change her +opinion of a man than for him to change his opinion of himself. +Noaks, despite the presence of mind he had shown a few moments +ago, still saw himself as he had seen himself during the past +hours: that is, as an arrant little coward--one who by his fear +to die had put himself outside the pale of decent manhood. He had +meant to escape from the house at dead of night and, under an +assumed name, work his passage out to Australia --a land which +had always made strong appeal to his imagination. No one, he had +reflected, would suppose because his body was not retrieved from +the water that he had not perished with the rest. And he had +looked to Australia to make a man of him yet: in Encounter Bay, +perhaps, or in the Gulf of Carpentaria, he might yet end +nobly.</p> + +<p>Thus Katie's behaviour was as much an embarrassment as a +relief; and he asked her in what way he was great and +wonderful.</p> + +<p>"Modest, like all heroes!" she cried, and, still kneeling, +proceeded to sing his praises with a so infectious fervour that +Noaks did begin to feel he had done a fine thing in not dying. +After all, was it not moral cowardice as much as love that had +tempted him to die? He had wrestled with it, thrown it. "Yes," +said he, when her rhapsody was over, "perhaps I am modest."</p> + +<p>"And that is why you hid yourself just now?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," he gladly said. "I hid myself for the same reason," he +added, "when I heard your mother's footstep."</p> + +<p>"But," she faltered, with a sudden doubt, "that bit of writing +which Mother found on the table--"</p> + +<p>"That? Oh, that was only a general reflection, copied out of a +book."</p> + +<p>"Oh, won't poor Mother be glad when she knows!"</p> + +<p>"I don't want her to know," said Noaks, with a return of +nervousness. "You mustn't tell any one. I--the fact is--"</p> + +<p>"Ah, that is so like you!" the girl said tenderly. "I suppose +it was your modesty that all this while blinded me. Please, sir, +I have a confession to make to you. Never till to-night have I +loved you."</p> + +<p>Exquisite was the shock of these words to one who, not without +reason, had always assumed that no woman would ever love him. +Before he knew what he was doing, he had bent down and kissed the +sweet upturned face. It was the first kiss he had ever given +outside his family circle. It was an artless and a resounding +kiss.</p> + +<p>He started back, dazed. What manner of man, he wondered, was +he? A coward, piling profligacy on poltroonery? Or a hero, +claiming exemption from moral law? What was done could not be +undone; but it could be righted. He drew off from the little +finger of his left hand that iron ring which, after a twinge of +rheumatism, he had to-day resumed.</p> + +<p>"Wear it," he said.</p> + +<p>"You mean--?" She leapt to her feet.</p> + +<p>"That we are engaged. I hope you don't think we have any +choice?"</p> + +<p>She clapped her hands, like the child she was, and adjusted +the ring.</p> + +<p>"It is very pretty," she said.</p> + +<p>"It is very simple," he answered lightly. "But," he added, +with a change of tone, "it is very durable. And that is the +important thing. For I shall not be in a position to marry before +I am forty."</p> + +<p>A shadow of disappointment hovered over Katie's clear young +brow, but was instantly chased away by the thought that to be +engaged was almost as splendid as to be married.</p> + +<p>"Recently," said her lover, "I meditated leaving Oxford for +Australia. But now that you have come into my life, I am +compelled to drop that notion, and to carve out the career I had +first set for myself. A year hence, if I get a Second in +Greats--and I SHALL" he said, with a fierce look that entranced +her--"I shall have a very good chance of an assistant-mastership +in a good private school. In eighteen years, if I am +careful--and, with you waiting for me, I SHALL be careful--my +savings will enable me to start a small school of my own, and to +take a wife. Even then it would be more prudent to wait another +five years, no doubt. But there was always a streak of madness in +the Noakses. I say 'Prudence to the winds!'"</p> + +<p>"Ah, don't say that!" exclaimed Katie, laying a hand on his +sleeve.</p> + +<p>"You are right. Never hesitate to curb me. And," he said, +touching the ring, "an idea has just occurred to me. When the +time comes, let this be the wedding-ring. Gold is gaudy--not at +all the thing for a schoolmaster's bride. It is a pity," he +muttered, examining her through his spectacles, "that your hair +is so golden. A schoolmaster's bride should--Good heavens! Those +ear-rings! Where did you get THEM?"</p> + +<p>"They were given to me to-day," Katie faltered. "The Duke gave +me them."</p> + +<p>"Indeed?"</p> + +<p>"Please, sir, he gave me them as a memento."</p> + +<p>"And that memento shall immediately be handed over to his +executors."</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir."</p> + +<p>"I should think so!" was on the tip of Noaks' tongue, but +suddenly he ceased to see the pearls as trinkets finite and +inapposite--saw them, in a flash, as things transmutable by sale +hereafter into desks, forms, black-boards, maps, lockers, +cubicles, gravel soil, diet unlimited, and special attention to +backward pupils. Simultaneously, he saw how mean had been his +motive for repudiating the gift. What more despicable than +jealousy of a man deceased? What sillier than to cast pearls +before executors? Sped by nothing but the pulse of his hot youth, +he had wooed and won this girl. Why flinch from her unsought +dowry?</p> + +<p>He told her his vision. Her eyes opened wide to it. "And oh," +she cried, "then we can be married as soon as you take your +degree!"</p> + +<p>He bade her not be so foolish. Who ever heard of a head-master +aged three-and-twenty? What parent or guardian would trust a +stripling? The engagement must run its course. "And," he said, +fidgeting, "do you know that I have hardly done any reading +to-day?"</p> + +<p>"You want to read NOW--TO-NIGHT?"</p> + +<p>"I must put in a good two hours. Where are the books that were +on my table?"</p> + +<p>Reverently--he was indeed a king of men--she took the books +down from the shelf, and placed them where she had found them. +And she knew not which thrilled her the more--the kiss he gave +her at parting, or the tone in which he told her that the one +thing he could not and would not stand was having his books +disturbed.</p> + +<p>Still less than before attuned to the lugubrious session +downstairs, she went straight up to her attic, and did a little +dance there in the dark. She threw open the lattice of the +dormer-window, and leaned out, smiling, throbbing.</p> + +<p>The Emperors, gazing up, saw her happy, and wondered; saw +Noaks' ring on her finger, and would fain have shaken their grey +heads.</p> + +<p>Presently she was aware of a protrusion from the window +beneath hers. The head of her beloved! Fondly she watched it, +wished she could reach down to stroke it. She loved him for +having, after all, left his books. It was sweet to be his excuse. +Should she call softly to him? No, it might shame him to be +caught truant. He had already chidden her for prying. So she did +but gaze down on his head silently, wondering whether in eighteen +years it would be bald, wondering whether her own hair would +still have the fault of being golden. Most of all, she wondered +whether he loved her half so much as she loved him.</p> + +<p>This happened to be precisely what he himself was wondering. +Not that he wished himself free. He was one of those in whom the +will does not, except under very great pressure, oppose the +conscience. What pressure here? Miss Batch was a superior girl; +she would grace any station in life. He had always been rather in +awe of her. It was a fine thing to be suddenly loved by her, to +be in a position to over-rule her every whim. Plighting his +troth, he had feared she would be an encumbrance, only to find +she was a lever. But--was he deeply in love with her? How was it +that he could not at this moment recall her features, or the tone +of her voice, while of deplorable Miss Dobson, every lineament, +every accent, so vividly haunted him? Try as he would to beat off +these memories, he failed, and--some very great pressure +here!--was glad he failed; glad though he found himself relapsing +to the self-contempt from which Miss Batch had raised him. He +scorned himself for being alive. And again, he scorned himself +for his infidelity. Yet he was glad he could not forget that +face, that voice--that queen. She had smiled at him when she +borrowed the ring. She had said "Thank you." Oh, and now, at this +very moment, sleeping or waking, actually she was somewhere--she! +herself! This was an incredible, an indubitable, an all-magical +fact for the little fellow.</p> + +<p>From the street below came a faint cry that was as the cry of +his own heart, uttered by her own lips. Quaking, he peered down, +and dimly saw, over the way, a cloaked woman.</p> + +<p>She--yes, it was she herself--came gliding to the middle of +the road, gazing up at him.</p> + +<p>"At last!" he heard her say. His instinct was to hide himself +from the queen he had not died for. Yet he could not move.</p> + +<p>"Or," she quavered, "are you a phantom sent to mock me? +Speak!"</p> + +<p>"Good evening," he said huskily.</p> + +<p>"I knew," she murmured, "I knew the gods were not so cruel. Oh +man of my need," she cried, stretching out her arms to him, "oh +heaven-sent, I see you only as a dark outline against the light +of your room. But I know you. Your name is Noaks, isn't it? +Dobson is mine. I am your Warden's grand-daughter. I am faint and +foot-sore. I have ranged this desert city in search of--of YOU. +Let me hear from your own lips that you love me. Tell me in your +own words--" She broke off with a little scream, and did not +stand with forefinger pointed at him, gazing, gasping.</p> + +<p>"Listen, Miss Dobson," he stammered, writhing under what he +took to be the lash of her irony. "Give me time to explain. You +see me here--"</p> + +<p>"Hush," she cried, "man of my greater, my deeper and nobler +need! Oh hush, ideal which not consciously I was out for +to-night--ideal vouchsafed to me by a crowning mercy! I sought a +lover, I find a master. I sought but a live youth, was blind to +what his survival would betoken. Oh master, you think me light +and wicked. You stare coldly down at me through your spectacles, +whose glint I faintly discern now that the moon peeps forth. You +would be readier to forgive me the havoc I have wrought if you +could for the life of you understand what charm your friends +found in me. You marvel, as at the skull of Helen of Troy. No, +you don't think me hideous: you simply think me plain. There was +a time when I thought YOU plain--you whose face, now that the +moon shines full on it, is seen to be of a beauty that is +flawless without being insipid. Oh that I were a glove upon that +hand, that I might touch that cheek! You shudder at the notion of +such contact. My voice grates on you. You try to silence me with +frantic though exquisite gestures, and with noises inarticulate +but divine. I bow to your will, master. Chasten me with your +tongue."</p> + +<p>"I am not what you think me," gibbered Noaks. "I was not +afraid to die for you. I love you. I was on my way to the river +this afternoon, but I--I tripped and sprained my ankle, and--and +jarred my spine. They carried me back here. I am still very weak. +I can't put my foot to the ground. As soon as I can--"</p> + +<p>Just then Zuleika heard a little sharp sound which, for the +fraction of an instant, before she knew it to be a clink of metal +on the pavement, she thought was the breaking of the heart within +her. Looking quickly down, she heard a shrill girlish laugh +aloft. Looking quickly up, she descried at the unlit window above +her lover's a face which she remembered as that of the +land-lady's daughter.</p> + +<p>"Find it, Miss Dobson," laughed the girl. "Crawl for it. It +can't have rolled far, and it's the only engagement-ring you'll +get from HIM," she said, pointing to the livid face twisted +painfully up at her from the lower window. "Grovel for it, Miss +Dobson. Ask him to step down and help you. Oh, he can! That was +all lies about his spine and ankle. Afraid, that's what he was--I +see it all now--afraid of the water. I wish you'd found him as I +did--skulking behind the curtain. Oh, you're welcome to him."</p> + +<p>"Don't listen," Noaks cried down. "Don't listen to that +person. I admit I have trifled with her affections. This is her +revenge--these wicked untruths--these--these--"</p> + +<p>Zuleika silenced him with a gesture. "Your tone to me," she +said up to Katie, "is not without offence; but the stamp of truth +is on what you tell me. We have both been deceived in this man, +and are, in some sort, sisters."</p> + +<p>"Sisters?" cried Katie. "Your sisters are the snake and the +spider, though neither of them wishes it known. I loathe you. And +the Duke loathed you, too."</p> + +<p>"What's that?" gasped Zuleika.</p> + +<p>"Didn't he tell you? He told me. And I warrant he told you, +too."</p> + +<p>"He died for love of me: d'you hear?"</p> + +<p>"Ah, you'd like people to think so, wouldn't you? Does a man +who loves a woman give away the keepsake she gave him? Look!" +Katie leaned forward, pointing to her ear-rings. "He loved ME," +she cried. He put them in with his own hands--told me to wear +them always. And he kissed me--kissed me good-bye in the street, +where every one could see. He kissed me," she sobbed. "No other +man shall ever do that."</p> + +<p>"Ah, that he did!" said a voice level with Zuleika. It was the +voice of Mrs. Batch, who a few moments ago had opened the door +for her departing guests.</p> + +<p>"Ah, that he did!" echoed the guests.</p> + +<p>"Never mind them, Miss Dobson," cried Noaks, and at the sound +of his voice Mrs. Batch rushed into the middle of the road, to +gaze up. "_I_ love you. Think what you will of me. I--"</p> + +<p>"You!" flashed Zuleika. "As for you, little Sir Lily Liver, +leaning out there, and, I frankly tell you, looking like nothing +so much as a gargoyle hewn by a drunken stone-mason for the +adornment of a Methodist Chapel in one of the vilest suburbs of +Leeds or Wigan, I do but felicitate the river-god and his nymphs +that their water was saved to-day by your cowardice from the +contamination of your plunge."</p> + +<p>"Shame on you, Mr. Noaks," said Mrs. Batch, "making believe +you were dead--"</p> + +<p>"Shame!" screamed Clarence, who had darted out into the +fray.</p> + +<p>"I found him hiding behind the curtain," chimed in Katie.</p> + +<p>"And I a mother to him!" said Mrs. Batch, shaking her fist. +"'What is life without love?' indeed! Oh, the cowardly, +underhand--"</p> + +<p>"Wretch," prompted her cronies.</p> + +<p>"Let's kick him out of the house!" suggested Clarence, dancing +for joy.</p> + +<p>Zuleika, smiling brilliantly down at the boy, said "Just you +run up and fight him!"</p> + +<p>"Right you are," he answered, with a look of knightly +devotion, and darted back into the house.</p> + +<p>"No escape!" she cried up to Noaks. "You've got to fight him +now. He and you are just about evenly matched, I fancy."</p> + +<p>But, grimly enough, Zuleika's estimate was never put to the +test. Is it harder for a coward to fight with his fists than to +kill himself? Or again, is it easier for him to die than to +endure a prolonged cross-fire of women's wrath and scorn? This I +know: that in the life of even the least and meanest of us there +is somewhere one fine moment--one high chance not missed. I like +to think it was by operation of this law that Noaks had now +clambered out upon the window-sill, silencing, sickening, +scattering like chaff the women beneath him.</p> + +<p>He was already not there when Clarence bounded into the room. +"Come on!" yelled the boy, first thrusting his head behind the +door, then diving beneath the table, then plucking aside either +window-curtain, vowing vengeance.</p> + +<p>Vengeance was not his. Down on the road without, not yet +looked at but by the steadfast eyes of the Emperors, the last of +the undergraduates lay dead; and fleet-footed Zuleika, with her +fingers still pressed to her ears, had taken full toll now.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>XXIII</h3> + +<p>Twisting and turning in her flight, with wild eyes that +fearfully retained the image of that small man gathering himself +to spring, Zuleika found herself suddenly where she could no +further go.</p> + +<p>She was in that grim ravine by which you approach New College. +At sight of the great shut gate before her, she halted, and +swerved to the wall. She set her brow and the palms of her hands +against the cold stones. She threw back her head, and beat the +stones with her fists.</p> + +<p>It was not only what she had seen, it was what she had barely +saved herself from seeing, and what she had not quite saved +herself from hearing, that she strove so piteously to forget. She +was sorrier for herself, angrier, than she had been last night +when the Duke laid hands on her. Why should every day have a +horrible ending? Last night she had avenged herself. To-night's +outrage was all the more foul and mean because of its certain +immunity. And the fact that she had in some measure brought it on +herself did but whip her rage. What a fool she had been to taunt +the man! Yet no, how could she have foreseen that he would--do +THAT? How could she have guessed that he, who had not dared +seemly death for her in the gentle river, would dare--THAT?</p> + +<p>She shuddered the more as she now remembered that this very +day, in that very house, she had invited for her very self a +similar fate. What if the Duke had taken her word? Strange! she +wouldn't have flinched then. She had felt no horror at the notion +of such a death. And thus she now saw Noaks' conduct in a new +light--saw that he had but wished to prove his love, not at all +to affront her. This understanding quickly steadied her nerves. +She did not need now to forget what she had seen; and, not +needing to forget it--thus are our brains fashioned--she was able +to forget it.</p> + +<p>But by removal of one load her soul was but bared for a more +grievous other. Her memory harked back to what had preceded the +crisis. She recalled those moments of doomed rapture in which her +heart had soared up to the apocalyptic window--recalled how, all +the while she was speaking to the man there, she had been chafed +by the inadequacy of language. Oh, how much more she had meant +than she could express! Oh, the ecstasy of that self-surrender! +And the brevity of it! the sudden odious awakening! Thrice in +this Oxford she had been duped. Thrice all that was fine and +sweet in her had leapt forth, only to be scourged back into +hiding. Poor heart inhibited! She gazed about her. The stone +alley she had come into, the terrible shut gate, were for her a +visible symbol of the destiny she had to put up with. Wringing +her hands, she hastened along the way she had come. She vowed she +would never again set foot in Oxford. She wished herself out of +the hateful little city to-night. She even wished herself +dead.</p> + +<p>She deserved to suffer, you say? Maybe. I merely state that +she did suffer.</p> + +<p>Emerging into Catherine Street, she knew whereabouts she was, +and made straight for Judas, turning away her eyes as she skirted +the Broad, that place of mocked hopes and shattered ideals.</p> + +<p>Coming into Judas Street, she remembered the scene of +yesterday--the happy man with her, the noise of the vast happy +crowd. She suffered in a worse form what she had suffered in the +gallery of the Hall. For now--did I not say she was not without +imagination?--her self-pity was sharpened by remorse for the +hundreds of homes robbed. She realised the truth of what the poor +Duke had once said to her: she was a danger in the world . . . +Aye, and all the more dire now. What if the youth of all Europe +were moved by Oxford's example? That was a horribly possible +thing. It must be reckoned with. It must be averted. She must not +show herself to men. She must find some hiding-place, and there +abide. Were this a hardship? she asked herself. Was she not +sickened for ever of men's homage? And was it not clear now that +the absorbing need in her soul, the need to love, would +never--except for a brief while, now and then, and by an +unfortunate misunderstanding--be fulfilled?</p> + +<p>So long ago that you may not remember, I compared her +favourably with the shepherdess Marcella, and pleaded her +capacity for passion as an excuse for her remaining at large. I +hope you will now, despite your rather evident animus against +her, set this to her credit: that she did, so soon as she +realised the hopelessness of her case, make just that decision +which I blamed Marcella for not making at the outset. It was as +she stood on the Warden's door-step that she decided to take the +veil.</p> + +<p>With something of a conventual hush in her voice, she said to +the butler, "Please tell my maid that we are leaving by a very +early train to-morrow, and that she must pack my things +to-night."</p> + +<p>"Very well, Miss," said the butler. "The Warden," he added, +"is in the study, Miss, and was asking for you."</p> + +<p>She could face her grandfather without a tremour--now. She +would hear meekly whatever reproaches he might have for her, but +their sting was already drawn by the surprise she had in store +for him.</p> + +<p>It was he who seemed a trifle nervous. In his</p> + +<p>"Well, did you come and peep down from the gallery?" there was +a distinct tremour.</p> + +<p>Throwing aside her cloak, she went quickly to him, and laid a +hand on the lapel of his coat. "Poor grand-papa!" she said.</p> + +<p>"Nonsense, my dear child," he replied, disengaging himself. "I +didn't give it a thought. If the young men chose to be so silly +as to stay away, I--I--"</p> + +<p>"Grand-papa, haven't you been told YET?"</p> + +<p>"Told? I am a Gallio for such follies. I didn't inquire."</p> + +<p>"But (forgive me, grand-papa, if I seem to you, for the +moment, pert) you are Warden here. It is your duty, even your +privilege, to GUARD. Is it not? Well, I grant you the adage that +it is useless to bolt the stable door when the horse has been +stolen. But what shall be said of the ostler who doesn't +know--won't even 'inquire' whether--the horse HAS been stolen, +grand-papa?"</p> + +<p>"You speak in riddles, Zuleika."</p> + +<p>"I wish with all my heart I need not tell you the answers. I +think I have a very real grievance against your staff--or +whatever it is you call your subordinates here. I go so far as to +dub them dodderers. And I shall the better justify that term by +not shirking the duty they have left undone. The reason why there +were no undergraduates in your Hall to-night is that they were +all dead."</p> + +<p>"Dead?" he gasped. "Dead? It is disgraceful that I was not +told. What did they die of?"</p> + +<p>"Of me."</p> + +<p>"Of you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I am an epidemic, grand-papa, a scourge, such as the +world has not known. Those young men drowned themselves for love +of me."</p> + +<p>He came towards her. "Do you realise, girl, what this means to +me? I am an old man. For more than half a century I have known +this College. To it, when my wife died, I gave all that there was +of heart left in me. For thirty years I have been Warden; and in +that charge has been all my pride. I have had no thought but for +this great College, its honour and prosperity. More than once +lately have I asked myself whether my eyes were growing dim, my +hand less steady. 'No' was my answer, and again 'No.' And thus it +is that I have lingered on to let Judas be struck down from its +high eminence, shamed in the eyes of England--a College for ever +tainted, and of evil omen." He raised his head. "The disgrace to +myself is nothing. I care not how parents shall rage against me, +and the Heads of other Colleges make merry over my decrepitude. +It is because you have wrought the downfall of Judas that I am +about to lay my undying curse on you."</p> + +<p>"You mustn't do that!" she cried. "It would be a sort of +sacrilege. I am going to be a nun. Besides, why should you? I can +quite well understand your feeling for Judas. But how is Judas +more disgraced than any other College? If it were only the Judas +undergraduates who had--"</p> + +<p>"There were others?" cried the Warden. "How many?"</p> + +<p>"All. All the boys from all the Colleges."</p> + +<p>The Warden heaved a deep sigh. "Of course," he said, "this +changes the aspect of the whole matter. I wish you had made it +clear at once. You gave me a very great shock," he said sinking +into his arm-chair, "and I have not yet recovered. You must study +the art of exposition."</p> + +<p>"That will depend on the rules of the convent."</p> + +<p>"Ah, I forgot that you were going into a convent. Anglican, I +hope?"</p> + +<p>Anglican, she supposed.</p> + +<p>"As a young man," he said, "I saw much of dear old Dr. Pusey. +It might have somewhat reconciled him to my marriage if he had +known that my grand-daughter would take the veil." He adjusted +his glasses, and looked at her. "Are you sure you have a +vocation?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I want to be out of the world. I want to do no more +harm."</p> + +<p>He eyed her musingly. "That," he said, "is rather a revulsion +than a vocation. I remember that I ventured to point out to Dr. +Pusey the difference between those two things, when he was almost +persuading me to enter a Brotherhood founded by one of his +friends. It may be that the world would be well rid of you, my +dear child. But it is not the world only that we must consider. +Would you grace the recesses of the Church?"</p> + +<p>"I could but try," said Zuleika.</p> + +<p>"'You could but try' are the very words Dr. Pusey used to me. +I ventured to say that in such a matter effort itself was a +stigma of unfitness. For all my moods of revulsion, I knew that +my place was in the world. I stayed there."</p> + +<p>"But suppose, grand-papa"--and, seeing in fancy the vast +agitated flotilla of crinolines, she could not forbear a +smile--"suppose all the young ladies of that period had drowned +themselves for love of you?"</p> + +<p>Her smile seemed to nettle the Warden. "I was greatly +admired," he said. "Greatly," he repeated.</p> + +<p>"And you liked that, grand-papa?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, my dear. Yes, I am afraid I did. But I never encouraged +it."</p> + +<p>"Your own heart was never touched?"</p> + +<p>"Never, until I met Laura Frith."</p> + +<p>"Who was she?"</p> + +<p>"She was my future wife."</p> + +<p>"And how was it you singled her out from the rest? Was she +very beautiful?"</p> + +<p>"No. It cannot be said that she was beautiful. Indeed, she was +accounted plain. I think it was her great dignity that attracted +me. She did not smile archly at me, nor shake her ringlets. In +those days it was the fashion for young ladies to embroider +slippers for such men in holy orders as best pleased their fancy. +I received hundreds-- thousands--of such slippers. But never a +pair from Laura Frith."</p> + +<p>"She did not love you?" asked Zuleika, who had seated herself +on the floor at her grandfather's feet.</p> + +<p>I concluded that she did not. It interested me very greatly. +It fired me."</p> + +<p>"Was she incapable of love?"</p> + +<p>"No, it was notorious in her circle that she had loved often, +but loved in vain."</p> + +<p>"Why did she marry you?"</p> + +<p>"I think she was fatigued by my importunities. She was not +very strong. But it may be that she married me out of pique. She +never told me. I did not inquire."</p> + +<p>"Yet you were very happy with her?"</p> + +<p>"While she lived, I was ideally happy."</p> + +<p>The young woman stretched out a hand, and laid it on the +clasped hands of the old man. He sat gazing into the past. She +was silent for a while; and in her eyes, still fixed intently on +his face, there were tears.</p> + +<p>"Grand-papa dear"--but there were tears in her voice, too.</p> + +<p>"My child, you don't understand. If I had needed pity--"</p> + +<p>"I do understand--so well. I wasn't pitying you, dear, I was +envying you a little."</p> + +<p>"Me?--an old man with only the remembrance of happiness?"</p> + +<p>"You, who have had happiness granted to you. That isn't what +made me cry, though. I cried because I was glad. You and I, with +all this great span of years between us, and yet--so wonderfully +alike! I had always thought of myself as a creature utterly +apart."</p> + +<p>"Ah, that is how all young people think of themselves. It +wears off. Tell me about this wonderful resemblance of ours."</p> + +<p>He sat attentive while she described her heart to him. But +when, at the close of her confidences, she said, "So you see it's +a case of sheer heredity, grand-papa," the word "Fiddlesticks!" +would out.</p> + +<p>"Forgive me, my dear," he said, patting her hand. "I was very +much interested. But I do believe young people are even more +staggered by themselves than they were in my day. And then, all +these grand theories they fall back on! Heredity . . . as if +there were something to baffle us in the fact of a young woman +liking to be admired! And as if it were passing strange of her to +reserve her heart for a man she can respect and look up to! And +as if a man's indifference to her were not of all things the +likeliest to give her a sense of inferiority to him! You and I, +my dear, may in some respects be very queer people, but in the +matter of the affections we are ordinary enough."</p> + +<p>"Oh grand-papa, do you really mean that?" she cried +eagerly.</p> + +<p>"At my age, a man husbands his resources. He says nothing that +he does not really mean. The indifference between you and other +young women is that which lay also between me and other young +men: a special attractiveness . . . Thousands of slippers, did I +say? Tens of thousands. I had hoarded them with a fatuous pride. +On the evening of my betrothal I made a bonfire of them, visible +from three counties. I danced round it all night." And from his +old eyes darted even now the reflections of those flames.</p> + +<p>"Glorious!" whispered Zuleika. "But ah," she said, rising to +her feet, "tell me no more of it--poor me! You see, it isn't a +mere special attractiveness that _I_ have. _I_ am +irresistible."</p> + +<p>"A daring statement, my child--very hard to prove."</p> + +<p>"Hasn't it been proved up to the hilt to-day?"</p> + +<p>"To-day? . . Ah, and so they did really all drown themselves +for you? . . Dear, dear! . . The Duke--he, too?"</p> + +<p>"He set the example."</p> + +<p>"No! You don't say so! He was a greatly-gifted young man--a +true ornament to the College. But he always seemed to me +rather--what shall I say?--inhuman . . . I remember now that he +did seem rather excited when he came to the concert last night +and you weren't yet there . . . You are quite sure you were the +cause of his death?"</p> + +<p>"Quite," said Zuleika, marvelling at the lie--or fib, rather: +he had been GOING to die for her. But why not have told the +truth? Was it possible, she wondered, that her wretched vanity +had survived her renunciation of the world? Why had she so +resented just now the doubt cast on that irresistibility which +had blighted and cranked her whole life?</p> + +<p>"Well, my dear," said the Warden, "I confess that I am +amazed-- astounded." Again he adjusted his glasses, and looked at +her.</p> + +<p>She found herself moving slowly around the study, with the +gait of a mannequin in a dress-maker's show-room. She tried to +stop this; but her body seemed to be quite beyond control of her +mind. It had the insolence to go ambling on its own account. +"Little space you'll have in a convent cell," snarled her mind +vindictively. Her body paid no heed whatever.</p> + +<p>Her grandfather, leaning back in his chair, gazed at the +ceiling, and meditatively tapped the finger-tips of one hand +against those of the other. "Sister Zuleika," he presently said +to the ceiling.</p> + +<p>"Well? and what is there so--so ridiculous in"--but the rest +was lost in trill after trill of laughter; and these were then +lost in sobs.</p> + +<p>The Warden had risen from his chair. "My dear," he said, "I +wasn't laughing. I was only--trying to imagine. If you really +want to retire from--"</p> + +<p>"I do," moaned Zuleika.</p> + +<p>"Then perhaps--"</p> + +<p>"But I don't," she wailed.</p> + +<p>"Of course, you don't, my dear."</p> + +<p>"Why, of course?"</p> + +<p>"Come, you are tired, my poor child. That is very natural +after this wonderful, this historic day. Come dry your eyes. +There, that's better. To-morrow--"</p> + +<p>"I do believe you're a little proud of me."</p> + +<p>"Heaven forgive me, I believe I am. A grandfather's heart-- +But there, good night, my dear. Let me light your candle."</p> + +<p>She took her cloak, and followed him out to the hall table. +There she mentioned that she was going away early to-morrow.</p> + +<p>"To the convent?" he slyly asked.</p> + +<p>"Ah, don't tease me, grand-papa."</p> + +<p>"Well, I am sorry you are going away, my dear. But perhaps, in +the circumstances, it is best. You must come and stay here again, +later on," he said, handing her the lit candle. "Not in +term-time, though," he added.</p> + +<p>"No," she echoed, "not in term-time."</p> + +<p> </p> + +<h3>XXIV</h3> + +<p>From the shifting gloom of the stair-case to the soft radiance +cast through the open door of her bedroom was for poor Zuleika an +almost heartening transition. She stood awhile on the threshold, +watching Melisande dart to and fro like a shuttle across a loom. +Already the main part of the packing seemed to have been +accomplished. The wardrobe was a yawning void, the carpet was +here and there visible, many of the trunks were already brimming +and foaming over . . . Once more on the road! Somewhat as, when +beneath the stars the great tent had been struck, and the lions +were growling in their vans, and the horses were pawing the +stamped grass and whinnying, and the elephants trumpeting, +Zuleika's mother may often have felt within her a wan +exhilaration, so now did the heart of that mother's child rise +and flutter amidst the familiar bustle of "being off." Weary she +was of the world, and angry she was at not being, after all, good +enough for something better. And yet--well, at least, good-bye to +Oxford!</p> + +<p>She envied Melisande, so nimbly and cheerfully laborious till +the day should come when her betrothed had saved enough to start +a little cafe of his own and make her his bride and dame de +comptoir. Oh, to have a purpose, a prospect, a stake in the +world, as this faithful soul had!</p> + +<p>"Can I help you at all, Melisande?" she asked, picking her way +across the strewn floor.</p> + +<p>Melisande, patting down a pile of chiffon, seemed to be amused +at such a notion. "Mademoiselle has her own art. Do I mix myself +in that?" she cried, waving one hand towards the great malachite +casket.</p> + +<p>Zuleika looked at the casket, and then very gratefully at the +maid. Her art--how had she forgotten that? Here was solace, +purpose. She would work as she had never worked yet. She KNEW +that she had it in her to do better than she had ever done. She +confessed to herself that she had too often been slack in the +matter of practice and rehearsal, trusting her personal magnetism +to carry her through. Only last night she had badly fumbled, more +than once. Her bravura business with the Demon Egg-Cup had been +simply vile. The audience hadn't noticed it, perhaps, but she +had. Now she would perfect herself. Barely a fortnight now before +her engagement at the Folies Bergeres! What if--no, she must not +think of that! But the thought insisted. What if she essayed for +Paris that which again and again she had meant to graft on to her +repertory--the Provoking Thimble?</p> + +<p>She flushed at the possibility. What if her whole present +repertory were but a passing phase in her art--a mere +beginning--an earlier manner? She remembered how marvellously +last night she had manipulated the ear-rings and the studs. Then +lo! the light died out of her eyes, and her face grew rigid. That +memory had brought other memories in its wake.</p> + +<p>For her, when she fled the Broad, Noaks' window had blotted +out all else. Now she saw again that higher window, saw that girl +flaunting her ear-rings, gibing down at her. "He put them in with +his own hands!"--the words rang again in her ears, making her +cheeks tingle. Oh, he had thought it a very clever thing to do, +no doubt--a splendid little revenge, something after his own +heart! "And he kissed me in the open street"--excellent, +excellent! She ground her teeth. And these doings must have been +fresh in his mind when she overtook him and walked with him to +the house-boat! Infamous! And she had then been wearing his +studs! She drew his attention to them when--</p> + +<p>Her jewel-box stood open, to receive the jewels she wore +to-night. She went very calmly to it. There, in a corner of the +topmost tray, rested the two great white pearls--the pearls +which, in one way and another, had meant so much to her.</p> + +<p>"Melisande!"</p> + +<p>"Mademoiselle?"</p> + +<p>"When we go to Paris, would you like to make a little present +to your fiance?"</p> + +<p>"Je voudrais bien, mademoiselle."</p> + +<p>"Then you shall give him these," said Zuleika, holding out the +two studs.</p> + +<p>"Mais jamais de la vie! Chez Tourtel tout le monde le dirait +millionaire. Un garcon de cafe qui porte au plastron des perles +pareilles--merci!"</p> + +<p>Tell him he may tell every one that they were given to me by +the late Duke of Dorset, and given by me to you, and by you to +him."</p> + +<p>"Mais--" The protest died on Melisande's lips. Suddenly she +had ceased to see the pearls as trinkets finite and +inapposite--saw them as things presently transmutable into little +marble tables, bocks, dominos, absinthes au sucre, shiny black +portfolios with weekly journals in them, yellow staves with daily +journals flapping from them, vermouths secs, vermouths cassis . . +.</p> + +<p>"Mademoiselle is too amiable," she said, taking the +pearls.</p> + +<p>And certainly, just then, Zuleika was looking very amiable +indeed. The look was transient. Nothing, she reflected, could +undo what the Duke had done. That hateful, impudent girl would +take good care that every one should know. "He put them in with +his own hands." HER ear-rings! "He kissed me in the public +street. He loved me" . . . Well, he had called out "Zuleika!" and +every one around had heard him. That was something. But how glad +all the old women in the world would be to shake their heads and +say "Oh, no, my dear, believe me! It wasn't anything to do with +HER. I'm told on the very best authority," and so forth, and so +on. She knew he had told any number of undergraduates he was +going to die for her. But they, poor fellows, could not bear +witness. And good heavens! If there were a doubt as to the Duke's +motive, why not doubts as to theirs? . . But many of them had +called out "Zuleika!" too. And of course any really impartial +person who knew anything at all about the matter at first hand +would be sure in his own mind that it was perfectly absurd to +pretend that the whole thing wasn't entirely and absolutely for +her . . . And of course some of the men must have left written +evidence of their intention. She remembered that at The +MacQuern's to-day was a Mr. Craddock, who had made a will in her +favour and wanted to read it aloud to her in the middle of +luncheon. Oh, there would be proof positive as to many of the +men. But of the others it would be said that they died in trying +to rescue their comrades. There would be all sorts of silly +far-fetched theories, and downright lies that couldn't be +disproved . . .</p> + +<p>"Melisande, that crackling of tissue paper is driving me mad! +Do leave off! Can't you see that I am waiting to be +undressed?"</p> + +<p>The maid hastened to her side, and with quick light fingers +began to undress her. "Mademoiselle va bien dormir--ca se voit," +she purred.</p> + +<p>"I shan't," said Zuleika.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, it was soothing to be undressed, and yet more +soothing anon to sit merely night-gowned before the mirror, +while, slowly and gently, strongly and strand by strand, +Melisande brushed her hair.</p> + +<p>After all, it didn't so much matter what the world thought. +Let the world whisper and insinuate what it would. To slur and +sully, to belittle and drag down--that was what the world always +tried to do. But great things were still great, and fair things +still fair. With no thought for the world's opinion had these men +gone down to the water to-day. Their deed was for her and +themselves alone. It had sufficed them. Should it not suffice +her? It did, oh it did. She was a wretch to have repined.</p> + +<p>At a gesture from her, Melisande brought to a close the +rhythmical ministrations, and--using no tissue paper this +time--did what was yet to be done among the trunks.</p> + +<p>"WE know, you and I," Zuleika whispered to the adorable +creature in the mirror; and the adorable creature gave back her +nod and smile.</p> + +<p>THEY knew, these two.</p> + +<p>Yet, in their happiness, rose and floated a shadow between +them. It was the ghost of that one man who--THEY knew--had died +irrelevantly, with a cold heart.</p> + +<p>Came also the horrid little ghost of one who had died late and +unseemly.</p> + +<p>And now, thick and fast, swept a whole multitude of other +ghosts, the ghosts of all them who, being dead, could not die +again; the poor ghosts of them who had done what they could, and +could do no more.</p> + +<p>No more? Was it not enough? The lady in the mirror gazed at +the lady in the room, reproachfully at first, then--for were they +not sisters? --relentingly, then pityingly. Each of the two +covered her face with her hands.</p> + +<p>And there recurred, as by stealth, to the lady in the room a +thought that had assailed her not long ago in Judas Street . . . +a thought about the power of example . . .</p> + +<p>And now, with pent breath and fast-beating heart, she stood +staring at the lady of the mirror, without seeing her; and now +she wheeled round and swiftly glided to that little table on +which stood her two books. She snatched Bradshaw.</p> + +<p>We always intervene between Bradshaw and any one whom we see +consulting him. "Mademoiselle will permit me to find that which +she seeks?" asked Melisande.</p> + +<p>"Be quiet," said Zuleika. We always repulse, at first, any one +who intervenes between us and Bradshaw.</p> + +<p>We always end by accepting the intervention. "See if it is +possible to go direct from here to Cambridge," said Zuleika, +handing the book on. "If it isn't, then--well, see how to get +there."</p> + +<p>We never have any confidence in the intervener. Nor is the +intervener, when it comes to the point, sanguine. With mistrust +mounting to exasperation Zuleika sat watching the faint and +frantic researches of her maid.</p> + +<p>"Stop!" she said suddenly. "I have a much better idea. Go down +very early to the station. See the station-master. Order me a +special train. For ten o'clock, say."</p> + +<p>Rising, she stretched her arms above her head. Her lips parted +in a yawn, met in a smile. With both hands she pushed back her +hair from her shoulders, and twisted it into a loose knot. Very +lightly she slipped up into bed, and very soon she was +asleep.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<pre> +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ZULEIKA DOBSON *** + +This file should be named zdbsn11h.htm or zdbsn11h.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, zdbsn12h.htm +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, zdbsn11ah.htm + + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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