*The Project Gutenberg Etext of Zuleika Dobson, by Max Beerbohm*
#5 in our series by Max Beerbohm
Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!!
Please take a look at the important information in this header.
We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
further information is included below. We need your donations.
Zuleika Dobson
by Max Beerbohm
August, 1999 [Etext #1845]
*The Project Gutenberg Etext of Zuleika Dobson, by Max Beerbohm*
******This file should be named zdbsn10.txt or zdbsn10.zip******
Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, zdbsn11.txt
VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, zdbsn10a.txt
This Etext prepared by Judy Boss, of Omaha, NE
Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
copyright notice is included. Therefore, we do NOT keep these books
in compliance with any particular paper edition, usually otherwise.
We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance
of the official release dates, for time for better editing.
Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till
midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A
preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
and editing by those who wish to do so. To be sure you have an
up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes
in the first week of the next month. Since our ftp program has
a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a
look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a
new copy has at least one byte more or less.
Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The
fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take
to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This
projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value
per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text
files per month, or 384 more Etexts in 1998 for a total of 1500+
If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the
total should reach over 150 billion Etexts given away.
The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
Files by the December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000=Trillion]
This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
which is only 10% of the present number of computer users. 2001
should have at least twice as many computer users as that, so it
will require us reaching less than 5% of the users in 2001.
We need your donations more than ever!
All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are
tax deductible to the extent allowable by law. (CMU = Carnegie-
Mellon University).
For these and other matters, please mail to:
Project Gutenberg
P. O. Box 2782
Champaign, IL 61825
When all other email fails try our Executive Director:
Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
We would prefer to send you this information by email
(Internet, Bitnet, Compuserve, ATTMAIL or MCImail).
******
If you have an FTP program (or emulator), please
FTP directly to the Project Gutenberg archives:
[Mac users, do NOT point and click. . .type]
ftp uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu
login: anonymous
password: your@login
cd etext/etext90 through /etext96
or cd etext/articles [get suggest gut for more information]
dir [to see files]
get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
GET INDEX?00.GUT
for a list of books
and
GET NEW GUT for general information
and
MGET GUT* for newsletters.
**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor**
(Three Pages)
***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical
medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-
tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor
Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at
Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project"). Among other
things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and
without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this
etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
time to the person you received it from. If you received it
on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
receive it electronically.
THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
may have other legal rights.
INDEMNITY
You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,
officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost
and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or
indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:
[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,
or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.
DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
or:
[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this
requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however,
if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
including any form resulting from conversion by word pro-
cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as
*EITHER*:
[*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
does *not* contain characters other than those
intended by the author of the work, although tilde
(~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
be used to convey punctuation intended by the
author, and additional characters may be used to
indicate hypertext links; OR
[*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
form by the program that displays the etext (as is
the case, for instance, with most word processors);
OR
[*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
or other equivalent proprietary form).
[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
"Small Print!" statement.
[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
net profits you derive calculated using the method you
already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you
don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are
payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon
University" within the 60 days following each
date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare)
your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time,
scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty
free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution
you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg
Association / Carnegie-Mellon University".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
This Etext prepared by Judy Boss, of Omaha, NE
Note: I have made the following changes to the text:
PAGE LINE ORIGINAL CHANGED TO
viii 20 characterteristic characteristic
ix 22 important, important;
ix 28 frailities frailties
76 30 her her.
133 22 Gredden Greddon
154 22 cast-black cast-back
275 28 enter enter-
277 5 hand hand.
340 23 robed. robbed.
354 13 Mais "Mais
I have also transcribed the Greek on pages 99 and 187.
ZULEIKA DOBSON
BY
MAX BEERBOHM
INTRODUCTION BY
FRANCIS HACKETT
ILLI
ALMAE MATRI
[page intentionally blank]
INTRODUCTION
THE promise of a full-length novel by the au-
thor of "The Happy Hypocrite" had an intense
effect on Beerbohm "addicts" in 1911. Those
who did not share in the excitement at the time
may be bored now by being told how keen it was,
yet it was indisputably keen, all the more so for
being narrow and literary. A first play by H. G.
Wells, a book of lyrics by Bernard Shaw, a
comedy by Theodore Roosevelt, a volume of lull-
abies by Herbert Asquith -- the announcement of
such unexpected works might whet the simple and
greedy curiosity of the large public, but the large
public would never have a titillation that would
exceed the Beerbohmites' titillation with "Zu-
leika Dobson." Only a few hundred in all the
Americas may have felt it, because only a few
hundred could have been reading his Works and
his <i>Saturday Review</i> criticisms. It was not the
less a delicious excitement, and it was one which
he amply gratified.
But not, I think, as we supposed he would. So
much of his criticism was admiration of sober
realism that we might easily have hoped for, or
v
vi INTRODUCTION
feared for, a realistic novel; or, if not that, a
tenuous analysis in the mode of Henry James.
What the Beerbohmite forgot when he heard that
his author had written a novel was his author's
eminence as a caricaturist.
How "great" is Max Beerbohm's eminence as
a caricaturist I do not know. Somewhere, I sup-
pose, there is an æsthetic Lloyds where the sure-
enough rating of all the poets, painters, archi-
tects, sculptors, novelists and interior decorators
is to be found, determined by spiritual insurance
agents; and there one may find written down the
exact percentage of importance to be given to
Max's cartoons. In ignorance of this rating it is
rash to call anyone eminent, but the memory of
Max's drawings is so persistent, the means he
employs so telling and the end so achieved, that
no Englishman of his day seems to come near
him. Is this because we who write about a cari-
cature are literary? Is it because Max Beerbohm
is caricaturing Yeats and Moore and Shaw and
Bennett and Tennyson, instead of the war cabi-
nets and the secret-treaty statesmen and the hu-
mors of Zionism? Perhaps. But no one who
has felt a sore spot respond to the caustic of his
pencil can be persuaded that it is familiarity of
subject-matter which makes him seem a genius in
caricature. There is something else, a precious
sense of human proportion as well as literary pro-
portion. This permits one to insist on him be-
INTRODUCTION vii
yond the literary reservation, to say that he stands
high and alone. The curious thing, however, is
to read the man who revealed for the eye the
discrepancy between Queen Victoria and her regal
furnitures. Curious, because you find in his verbal
domain precisely the same kind of inclination and
the same kind of power. "Zuleika Dobson" is
many sorts of a novel, but first and foremost it
is the emanation of a most subtle and deadly cari-
caturist, a "shrewd and knavish sprite" amongst
mortal men.
There is, according to the sagacious, a secret
excellence in "Zuleika Dobson." They see in it a
caricature of a specific classical theme. If one
have not the clue to this heroical story, they mur-
mur, the finer points of the novel are lost. This is
impressive, but it is consoling to discover how
such enjoyment is left for the ordinary open-
faced unclassical citizen. No one can deny to
"Zuleika Dobson" its consummate literary flavor.
Its literary flavor is one of its perfections. But
literary flavor is one of the most popular sources
of pleasure, and the strength of "Zuleika" is such
that no particular legend, no definite mythology,
is needed to give it edge. Classic as the Duke
of Dorset may be ("fourteenth Duke of Dorset,
Marquis of Dorset, Earl of Grove, Earl of Chas-
termaine, Viscount Brewsby, Baron Grove, Baron
Petstrap, and Baron Wolock, in the Peerage of
England") the charm of his portrayal, both as
viii INTRODUCTION
a personage by himself and as the desperate lover
of Zuleika, is the appreciation, the devilish ap-
preciation, Max Beerbohm exhibits of the eternal
verity, <i>noblesse oblige</i>. There may be sly rem-
iniscences of Homer in the heroics of the Duke
of Dorset, fittingly displayed at Oxford, yet
Homer is only a lamp to cast another silhouette
of the duke. By himself he is complete, a model
of such austere masculine nobility as only our
great receding civilization could have produced.
Zuleika, of course, is herself a romantic por-
trait of the first order, and it is perfectly easy to
believe that she turned the head of Oxford youth
("youth, youth!"), in the manner that Mr. Beer-
bohm patiently and scrupulously describes. But
while Zuleika has the imperishable attributes of a
sex enslaving or enslaved, illustrated with a cruel
disregard of undergraduate life at the beginning
of Chapter XXI, there is something even more
sexually characteristic in Dorset's male style
and posture, his nature lofty and nonpareil.
Without the noble Dorset to mark the abysms
of tragedy, Oxford would not be quite Oxford
nor Zuleika so Zuleika. And yet beyond Dorset
and Zuleika, Noaks and Oover and Mrs. Batch
and the Warden, it is Oxford, "that mysterious,
inenubilable spirit, spirit of Oxford," which gives
the novel its really deep intonation. A love such
as Mr. Beerbohm bears Oxford could alone have
steeped the book in sentiment as well as satire,
INTRODUCTION ix
beauty as well as mockery -- and beauty the book
possesses. The Rhodes scholar Oover may seem
to an American the best example of the author's
sunny malice, but that is probably because it is
the sententious Oover we know best, Oover for
whom Max Beerbohm has defied the English rule
of impercipience, to whose exact idiom he has
actually listened. One may be sure he has listened
just as faithfully to The MacQuern, and the
Junta ("a member of the Junta can do no
wrong") suggests a most sensitive accuracy in
this country of undergraduate shibboleths, Yale
Locks and Keys.
Only one thing "Zuleika Dobson" lacks that a
regular novel has, and that is dullness. It is a long
story taken at the pace of a sprint, its wit relent-
lessly sustained. But how varied, how ingenious
in incident, how full of funny gesture and dry dis-
crimination, is this undergraduate epic; with such
a gay gallopade of mortality and such decorative
archaism of expression, and such a solicitude for
words. This last may not seem important; it is
still an important constituent of its author. To
most writers words are public characters, to be
handled as the public is handled by thick-skinned
officials, a mob to be regimented and shoved on.
For Max Beerbohm words are persons with their
own physiognomies, with their own frailties and
proclivities, to be humored and made much of.
His delicacy with words, however, is not limp-
x INTRODUCTION
handed. It is part of that strong sensibility which
makes him what he is.
And that, I should say, is a spirit at one with
sweet Puck, "merry wanderer of the night."
Whether in "Zuleika" or his writings on another
scale, he is one of the few pure comedic spirits
of his country. He has the gilt of holding the
mirror up to self-portraiture, of proportioning the
heart and the head. To some it may seem that
Max Beerbohm is "precious" in the sense of man-
nered and artificial, and that the best he does is
to carve cherry stones. This is a misinterpretation
of the best foolery of our time. It is not for noth-
ing that the subtitle of "The Happy Hypocrite"
is "a fairy tale for tired men." Mr. Beerbohm
needs the license of labelled entertainment. But
the fate that attended one of his books issued in
the United States, burned in the end as not mer-
chantable, is a reproach to the public rather than
the author, a fantasy on popular taste. His
dandyism, his daintiness, his restraint and pre-
cision of gesture, have all such inward laughter in
them that they are irresistible, for the reader who
has pounded literary pavements and been jostled
along main traveled roads. To say this may be
clumsy when Max Beerbohm can be as full of
burlesque as follows:
"The very birds in the trees of Trinity were
oppressed and did not twitter. The very leaves
did not whisper.
INTRODUCTION xi
"Out through the railings, and across the road,
prowled a skimpy and dingy cat, trying to look
like a tiger.
"It was all very sinister and dismal."
There are people, in spite of everything, who
still cannot see that cat, or see Max Beerbohm.
That is why downright emphasis on his amusing-
ness, on any subtle man's amusingness, has claims
to be forgiven. But the test, the reward, is wait-
ing for the reader.
FRANCIS HACKETT.
[page intentionally blank]
<b>ZULEIKA DOBSON</b>
[page intentionally blank]
<b>ZULEIKA DOBSON</b>
I
THAT old bell, presage of a train, had just
sounded through Oxford station; and the under-
graduates 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 sun-
shine, they struck a sharp note of incongruity
with the worn boards they stood on, with the
fading signals and grey eternal walls of that an-
tique station, which, familiar to them and insig-
nificant, does yet whisper to the tourist the last
enchantments of the Middle Age.
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.
Came a whistle from the distance. The breast
of an engine was descried, and a long train curving
7
8 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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, un-
known 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.
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 espy-
ing, the nymph darted in his direction. The
throng made way for her. She was at his side.
"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.)
"My dear Zuleika," he said, "welcome to Ox-
ford! Have you no luggage?"
"Heaps!" she answered. "And a maid who
will find it."
"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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 9
eyes she passed through. All the youths, under
her spell, were now quite oblivious of the rela-
tives they had come to meet. Parents, sisters,
cousins, ran unclaimed about the platform. Un-
dutiful, all the youths were forming a serried
suite to their enchantress. In silence they fol-
lowed 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.
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 en-
circled with a riband of blue and white, and he
raised it to the Warden.
"That," said the Warden, "is the Duke of
Dorset, a member of my College. He dines at
my table to-night."
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.
As the landau rolled into "the Corn," another
10 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
"And who is that?" asked Zuleika.
A deep flush overspread the cheek of the War-
den. "That," he said, "is also a member of
Judas. His name, I believe, is Noaks."
"Is he dining with us to-night?" asked Zuleika.
"Certainly not," said the Warden. "Most de-
cidedly not."
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.
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 inter-
sperse 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.
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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 11
amazement, great beads of perspiration glisten-
ing on the brows of those Emperors. He trem-
bled, and hurried away. That evening, in Com-
mon 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.
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 in-
cline us to think more gently of them. In their
lives we know, they were infamous, some of them
-- "nihil non commiserunt stupri, saevitiae, im-
pietatis." But are they too little punished, after
all? Here in Oxford, exposed eternally and in-
exorably 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 ty-
rants, 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
12 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
II
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 oppor-
tunity of exploring the mahogany recesses. But
the carpet, which had faded under his imme-
morial visitations, was now almost <i>entirely</i> hid-
den from him, hidden under layers of fair fine
linen, layers of silk, brocade, satin, chiffon, mus-
lin. 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 band-
boxes. 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 es-
13
14 ZULEIKA DOBSON
caped 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.
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 mala-
chite, 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 be-
tween. Of gold were its twin sconces, and four
tall tapers stood in each of them.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 15
The door opened, and the Warden, with hos-
pitable words, left his grand-daughter at the
threshold.
Zuleika wandered to her mirror. "Undress
me, Mélisande," she said. Like all who are wont
to appear by night before the public, she had the
habit of resting towards sunset.
Presently Mélisande 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 think-
ing 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 some-
times pass between a bright mirror and the bright-
ness it reflects.
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 discred-
itable brow. For the rest, her features were not
at all original. They seemed to have been derived
16 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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-mar-
ble. Her hands and feet were of very mean pro-
portions. She had no waist to speak of.
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 hemi-
spheres. 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, how-
ever, prompted by curiosity or by remorse, he
had asked her to spend a week or so of his de-
clining years with him. And she, "resting" be-
tween two engagements -- one at Hammerstein's
Victoria, N.Y.C., the other at the Folies Bergères,
Paris -- and having never been in Oxford, had so
far let bygones be bygones as to come and gratify
the old man's whim.
It may be that she still resented his indifference
to those early struggles which, even now, she
ZULEIKA DOBSON 17
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.
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
18 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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
séance was at an end. But Miss Dobson, unac-
customed to any gaieties, sat fascinated by the
young man's sleight of hand, marvelling that a
top-hat could hold so many gold-fish, and a hand-
kerchief 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 whis-
pered, "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 compli-
mented her on her skill. "I could not do it more
neatly myself!" he said. "Oh, dear Miss Dob-
son, will you but accept my hand, all these things
shall be yours -- the cards, the canister, the gold-
fish, 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 19
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 slum-
bered, 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."
The Christmas holidays were at hand, and be-
fore 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 pret-
tiest 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.
20 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 per-
fectly 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 admira-
tion 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 with-
out 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 21
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 be-
neath 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.
Yet was there nothing Narcissine in her spirit.
Her love for her own image was not cold
æstheticism. She valued that image not for its
own sake, but for sake of the glory it always won
22 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 be-
tween 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. Hom-
age 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, <i>notanda candidissimo calculo!</i> when she
received certain guttural compliments which made
absolute her vogue and enabled her to command,
thenceforth, whatever terms she asked for.
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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 23
whole month, was howled up and down the cob-
bled alleys of Montmartre. And all the little
dandies were mad for "la Zuleika." The jewel-
lers 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 Elysée. 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 tri-
umphal nomady, from one capital to another.
In Berlin, every night, the students escorted her
home with torches. Prince Vierfünfsechs-Siebe-
nachtneun offered her his hand, and was con-
demned 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
24 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 con-
ducted 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 <i>coup-de-grâce</i>, 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 señorita. A prettier compliment had
never been paid her, and she was immensely
pleased with it. For that matter, she was im-
mensely pleased with everything. She moved
proudly to the incessant music of a pæan, aye! of
a pæan that was always <i>crescendo</i>.
Its echoes followed her when she crossed the
Atlantic, till they were lost in the louder, deeper,
more blatant pæan 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 25
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, meas-
uring herself back to back with the Statue of Lib-
erty; 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 dimin-
utive 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
26 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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."
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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 27
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.
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 <i>was</i> very innocent, really.
She was as pure as that young shepherdess Mar-
cella, who, all unguarded, roved the mountains
and was by all the shepherds adored. Like Mar-
cella, 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 shep-
herdess, 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 moun-
tains!" Nor do I think Ambrosio spoke too
strongly. Marcella cared nothing for men's ad-
28 ZULEIKA DOBSON
miration, 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 nun-
nery. "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 pas-
sionate fibre. She may not have had that con-
scious, 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.
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 pros-
trate 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 san-
ZULEIKA DOBSON 29
guine 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?
It was when she wondered thus, that the wist-
fulness 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 col-
ours he wore round his hat." And she gave a
30 ZULEIKA DOBSON
little laugh of coquetry. She laughed, and, long
after, her lips were still parted in a smile.
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.
III
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. In-
comparable quite, the figure and face and vesture
of him who ended in them.
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.
"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
31
32 ZULEIKA DOBSON
he suspected it of being fast.) "I must ask you
to forgive her. She appears to be a bright, pleas-
ant young woman."
"Married?" asked the Duke.
"No," said the Warden; and a cloud of an-
noyance crossed the boy's face. "No; she de-
votes her life entirely to good works."
"A hospital nurse?" the Duke murmured.
"No, Zuleika's appointed task is to induce de-
lightful wonder rather than to alleviate pain.
She performs conjuring-tricks."
"Not -- not Miss Zuleika Dobson?" cried the
Duke.
"Ah yes. I forgot that she had achieved some
fame in the outer world. Perhaps she has
already met you?"
"Never," said the young man coldly. "But of
course I have heard of Miss Dobson. I did not
know she was related to you."
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 vio-
lation 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.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 33
"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 fore-
head 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, be-
wildering witchery to the little face between.
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 indif-
ferent 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 War-
den. Her he edified and flustered beyond meas-
ure by his insistent courtesy. Her husband, alone
on the other side of the table, was mortified by
34 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 Egyp-
tians. Zuleika did not even say "Oh really?"
when he told her about the metamorphosis of the
bulls in the Temple of Osiris. He primed him-
self 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.
She was in a trance of sheer happiness. At
last, she thought, her hope was fulfilled -- that
hope which, although she had seldom remem-
bered 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 35
Giacopone di Todi, wore always in secret sub-
mission 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-col-
oured 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.
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 watch-
ing 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.
36 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 -- "<i>Pas si
bete</i>" -- would not be belied. And I daresay, in-
deed, that had he never met Zuleika, the irre-
sistible, 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 hith-
erto, 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 pea-
cock is a fool even among birds, the Duke had
already taken (besides a particularly brilliant
First in Mods) the Stanhope, the Newdigate, the
ZULEIKA DOBSON 37
Lothian, and the Gaisford Prize for Greek Verse.
And these things he had achieved <i>currente calamo</i>,
"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.
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
38 ZULEIKA DOBSON
illustrious young exile, who therein was driven
to the station, followed by a long, vociferous pro-
cession of undergraduates in cabs. Now, it hap-
pened 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 dron-
ing 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 scath-
ing, 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 39
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 scin-
tillating 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 em-
bullioned 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 set-
ting 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 as-
40 ZULEIKA DOBSON
sumed 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 celi-
bate, 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. Inexpellable
was her image.
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.
Suddenly, something fell, plump! into the dark
whirlpool of his thoughts. He started. The
ZULEIKA DOBSON 41
Warden was leaning forward, had just said some-
thing to him.
"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."
"Is it true, my dear Duke," the Warden re-
peated, "that you have been persuaded to play
to-morrow evening at the Judas concert?"
"Ah yes, I am going to play something."
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?"
He looked her full in the face. It was like see-
ing 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.
"You are very kind," he murmured, in a voice
which sounded to him quite far away. "But I
always play without notes."
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
42 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
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 agi-
tation 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 cos-
tume . . . a black pearl and a pink pearl in his
shirt-front!
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.
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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 43
beneath the moon. He went slowly, mechanically,
to his rooms.
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?
IV
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.
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.
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 be-
come, in the clarity of next morning, a spruce pro-
cession 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.
44
ZULEIKA DOBSON 45
He was in love. "Why not?" He mocked him-
self 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 fin-
ished, he dropped them into the left pocket of his
waist-coat.
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.
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
46 ZULEIKA DOBSON
had been commanded to Windsor for the cere-
mony. 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.
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 soli-
tary note of silver, there started somewhere an-
other 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.
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 under-
graduate, looking up, missed the picture in the
window-frame.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 47
The Duke paced to and fro, smiling ecstat-
ically. 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.
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.
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 Col-
lege, 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 Thurs-
day 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 direc-
tion of Noaks than in any other. He saw in
48 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 op-
pressed 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 sus-
picion that they will come to a bad end. Noaks
may have regarded the Duke as a rather pathetic
figure, on the whole.
"Come in, Noaks," said the Duke. "You have
been to a lecture?"
"Aristotle's Politics," nodded Noaks.
"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.
"Oh, my dear fellow, don't go," said the Duke.
"Sit down. Our Schools don't come on for an-
other year. A few minutes can't make a differ-
ence in your Class. I want to -- to tell you
something, Noaks. Do sit down."
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."
ZULEIKA DOBSON 49
"Why shouldn't I have been in love?" asked
the little man, angrily.
"I can't imagine you in love," said the Duke,
smiling.
"And I can't imagine <i>you</i>. You're too pleased
with yourself," growled Noaks.
"Spur your imagination, Noaks," said his
friend. "I <i>am</i> in love."
"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.
"I don't know who she is," was another un-
expected answer.
"When did you meet her?" asked the Duke.
"Where? What did you say to her?"
"Yesterday. In the Corn. I didn't <i>say</i> any-
thing to her."
"Is she beautiful?"
"Yes. What's that to you?"
"Dark or fair?"
"She's dark. She looks like a foreigner. She
looks like -- like one of those photographs in the
shop-windows."
"A rhapsody, Noaks! What became of her?
Was she alone?"
"She was with the old Warden, in his car-
riage."
Zuleika -- Noaks! The Duke started, as at an
50 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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."
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. Hith-
erto, 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.
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. Zulei-
ka'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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 51
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.
"Come in!" he cried mechanically. Entered
the landlady's daughter.
"A lady downstairs," she said, "asking to see
your Grace. Says she'll step round again later if
your Grace is busy."
"What is her name?" asked the Duke, va-
cantly. He was gazing at the girl with pain-shot
eyes.
"Miss Zuleika Dobson," pronounced the girl.
He rose.
"Show Miss Dobson up," he said.
Noaks had darted to the looking-glass and was
smoothing his hair with a tremulous, enormous
hand.
"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.
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 land-
lady's daughter was clearing away the breakfast-
things. Zuleika glanced comprehensively at the
52 ZULEIKA DOBSON
room, and the Duke gazed at the hearthrug. The
landlady's daughter clattered out with her freight.
They were alone.
"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.
"Yes," he answered. "It is pretty, isn't it?"
"Awfully pretty!" she rejoined.
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...
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 spiritu-
ality most high, most simple. The Duke won-
dered 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.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 53
"I hope," said Zuleika, "you aren't awfully
vexed with me for coming like this?"
"Not at all," said the Duke. "I am delighted
to see you." How inadequate the words sounded,
how formal and stupid!
"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?"
"I shall be charmed," he said, pulling the bell-
rope. Poor fool! he attributed the shade of dis-
appointment 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.
The bell was answered by the landlady's
daughter.
"Miss Dobson will stay to luncheon," said the
Duke. The girl withdrew. He wished he could
have asked her not to.
He steeled himself. "Miss Dobson," he said,
"I wish to apologise to you."
Zuleika looked at him eagerly. "You can't
give me luncheon? You've got something better
to do?"
"No. I wish to ask you to forgive me for my
behaviour last night."
"There is nothing to forgive."
"There is. My manners were vile. I know
54 ZULEIKA DOBSON
well what happened. Though you, too, cannot
have forgotten, I won't spare myself the recital.
You were my hostess, and I ignored you. Mag-
nanimous, 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 55
windows of the soul. And I know that from two
open windows my soul has been leaning and sig-
nalling to you, in a code far more definitive and
swifter than words of mine, that I love you."
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.
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 em-
boldened me, compelled me. You <i>do</i> 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 --"
56 ZULEIKA DOBSON
Zuleika turned on him. "How dare you?" she
gasped. "How dare you speak to me like that?"
The Duke reeled back. Horror had come into
his eyes. "You do not love me!" he cried.
"<i>Love</i> you?" she retorted. "<i>You?</i>"
"You no longer love me. Why? Why?"
"What do you mean?"
"You loved me. Don't trifle with me. You
came to me loving me with all your heart."
"How do you know?"
"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.
"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."
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.
Like a child's, her sobbing ceased quite sud-
denly. She groped for her handkerchief, angrily
dried her eyes, and straightened and smoothed
herself.
"Now I'm going," she said.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 57
"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."
"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?"
The Duke, with a melancholy laugh, drew the
two studs from his waistcoat-pocket. "These are
the studs I wore last night," he said.
Zuleika gazed at them. "I see," she said;
then, looking up, "When did they become like
that?"
"It was when you left the dining-room that I
saw the change in them."
"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?"
"I began to be in love with you from the mo-
ment I saw you."
"Then how could you have behaved as you
did?"
"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."
58 ZULEIKA DOBSON
"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!"
"I have already asked you to forgive me for
that. You said there was nothing to forgive."
"I didn't dream that you were in love with
me."
"What difference can that make?"
"All the difference! All the difference in life!"
"Sit down! You bewilder me," said the Duke.
"Explain yourself!" he commanded.
"Isn't that rather much for a man to ask of a
woman?"
"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."
"You are frightfully sorry for yourself," said
Zuleika, with a bitter laugh. "Of course it doesn't
occur to you that <i>I</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. Prob-
ably you think you are the first man who has ever
fallen on such a plight."
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."
ZULEIKA DOBSON 59
Zuleika blushed. "Yet," she said more gently,
"be sure they would all be not a little envious of
<i>you!</i> 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."
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."
"Oh," said Zuleika, "of course I like being
admired. Oh yes, I like all that very much in-
deed. In a way, I suppose, I'm even pleased that
<i>you</i> 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
60 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 morn-
ing before I found myself at your door."
"Why did you ring the bell? Why didn't you
walk away?"
"Why? I had come to see you, to be near
you, to be <i>with</i> you."
"To force yourself on me."
"Yes." I
"You know the meaning of the term 'effective
occupation'? Having marched in, how could you
have held your position, unless" --
"Oh, a man doesn't necessarily drive a woman
away because he isn't in love with her."
"Yet that was what you thought I had done to
you last night."
"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 sum-
mer, and then, when you had tired of me, would
cast me aside, forget me, break my heart. I de-
sired 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 61
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 <i>you</i> seen that?"
"I have never looked at her," said the Duke.
"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."
The Duke made a step towards her. "You
would do it still," he said in a low voice.
Zuleika raised her eyebrows. "I would not
offer her one garnet," she said, "now."
"You <i>shall</i> 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
62 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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."
"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 accord-
ing to logic; but they do, nevertheless, uncon-
sciously 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?"
The Duke groaned. There was a clatter of
plates outside, and she whom Zuleika had envied
came to lay the table for luncheon.
A smile flickered across Zuleika's lips; and
"Not one garnet!" she murmured.
V
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 classic-
ism of his face had been routed by the new ro-
mantic movement which had swept over his soul.
He looked two or three months older than when
first I showed him to my reader.
He drank his coffee at one draught, pushed
back his chair, threw away the cigarette he had
just lit. "Listen!" he said.
Zuleika folded her hands on her lap.
"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 re-
jected. 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,
63
64 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 accept-
ance 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 un-
guarded 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 con-
sider how great are its perils and hardships, its
fatigues and inconveniences. From all these evils
I offer you instant refuge. I offer you, Miss Dob-
son, 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.
*Pronounced as Tacton. †Pronounced as Tavvle-Tacton.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 65
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 step-
ping how stiffly! as though they had just been
unharnessed from Juno's chariot. Two flights of
shallow steps lead down to the flowers and foun-
tains. 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 porce-
lain which the Prince Regent -- peace be to his
ashes! -- presented to my great-grandfather.
There are many twisting paths, and sudden as-
pects, 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."
"Oh, I never go in motors," said Zuleika.
"They make one look like nothing on earth, and
like everybody else."
"I myself," said the Duke, "use them little for
that very reason. Are you interested in farm-
ing? At Tankerton there is a model farm which
66 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 por-
traits of my forefathers -- <i>in petto</i>, your fore-
fathers-in-law -- by many masters. Are you fond
of peasants? My tenantry are delightful creat-
ures, and there is not one of them who remem-
bers 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.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 67
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 re-
morse, the places wherein erst they suffered or
wrought evil. There is one who, every Hallow-
een, 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 paint-
ing, 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
68 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 tar-
tan of my clan. You seem to like tartan. What
tartan is it you are wearing?"
Zuleika looked down at her skirt. "I don't
know," she said. "I got it in Paris."
"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 <i>entrée<i>. Is that nothing to
you? You would be driven to Court in my state-
coach. 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 mar-
vellous, in their antique settings. I don't want
ZULEIKA DOBSON 69
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 <i>parure</i> all of white
stones -- diamonds, white sapphires, white to-
pazes, tourmalines. Another, of rubies and ame-
thysts, 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 Elysées. There is a Swiss in its
courtyard. He stands six-foot-seven in his stock-
ings, 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 furi-
ously 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 soufflés, and an Italian pastry-
cook; to say nothing of a Spaniard for salads, an
Englishwoman for roasts, and an Abyssinian for
70 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 71
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 aus-
terity. 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 Heredi-
tary 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 <i>parti</i>."
"But," said Zuleika, "I don't love you."
The Duke stamped his foot. "I beg your par-
don," he said hastily. "I ought not to have done
that. But -- you seem to have entirely missed the
point of what I was saying."
"No, I haven't," said Zuleika.
"Then what," cried the Duke, standing over
her, "what is your reply?"
Said Zuleika, looking up at him, "My reply is
that I think you are an awful snob."
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.
"I think," she resumed in a slow, meditative
voice, "that you are, with the possible exception
72 ZULEIKA DOBSON
of a Mr. Edelweiss, <i>the</i> most awful snob I have
ever met."
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.
"Come!" she said. "Let us be good friends.
Give me your hand!" He came to her, slowly.
"There!"
The Duke withdrew his fingers before she un-
clasped 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 forgot-
ten, 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 splen-
dours, 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.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 73
Seating himself opposite to her, "You remem-
ber," he said, "that there is a dairy at
Tankerton?"
"A dairy? Oh yes."
"Do you remember what it is called?"
Zuleika knit her brows.
He helped her out. "It is called 'Her
Grace's'."
"Oh, of course!" said Zuleika.
"Do you know <i>why</i> it is called so?"
"Well, let's see. . .I know you told me."
"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 <i>en troisièmes
noces<i> a dairy-maid on the Tankerton estate. Meg
Speedwell was her name. He had seen her walk-
ing across a field, not many months after the inter-
ment 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 gra-
cious eccentricity by his crony the Duke of Dew-
lap, 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
74 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 sev-
enth 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 fair-
est, 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 wed-
ding-day. 'As for gratitude,' he chuckled,
'zounds! that is a wine all the better for the keep-
ing.' 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 75
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 responsi-
bilities. 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 mys-
teries 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 am-
bition, clumsily thumped the keys of the spinet,
76 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 gam-
ing-table, or by the red and gold threads that
were always straying and snapping on her tam-
bour-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 accomplish-
ment 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 alto-
gether vanished. Betty, bringing the cup of choco-
late to the bedside, found the bed empty. She
raised the alarm among her fellows. They
searched high and low. Nowhere was their mis-
tress. 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 77
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. Sound-
lier 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."
78 ZULEIKA DOBSON
"And the fine young gentlemen," said Zuleika,
"did she fall in love with any of them?"
"You forget," said the Duke coldly, "she was
married to a member of my family."
"Oh, I beg your pardon. But tell me: did they
<i>all</i> adore her?"
"Yes. Every one of them, wildly, madly."
"Ah," murmured Zuleika, with a smile of un-
derstanding. 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."
"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."
"A fear? What sort of a fear?"
"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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 79
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 princi-
pal wedding-gift to you? Meg Speedwell had
her dairy. For you, would be built another out-
house -- a neat hall wherein you would perform
your conjuring-tricks, every evening except Sun-
day, 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 --"
"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 man-
ners 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 --"
80 ZULEIKA DOBSON
"Hush," said the Duke, "hush! You are over-
excited. There will be a crowd under my window.
There, there! I am sorry. I thought --"
"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 advan-
tages 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 spin-
ster. Oh my friend, do not imagine that I have
not rejected, in my day, a score of suitors quite as
eligible as you."
"As eligible? Who were they?" frowned the
Duke.
"Oh, Archduke this, and Grand Duke that, and
His Serene Highness the other. I have a wretched
memory for names."
"And my name, too, will soon escape you,
perhaps?"
"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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 81
leaned forward, smiling archly. "Those studs --
show me them again."
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.
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!"
"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."
Zuleika pouted. On the verge of persisting,
she changed her mind, and was silent.
"Well!" she said abruptly, "how about these
races? Are you going to take me to see them?"
"Races? What races?" murmured the Duke.
"Oh yes. I had forgotten. Do you really mean
that you want to see them?"
"Why, of course! They are great fun, aren't
they?"
"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."
"The Second Division? Why not take me to
the First?"
82 ZULEIKA DOBSON
"That is not rowed till six."
"Isn't this rather an odd arrangement?"
"No doubt. But Oxford never pretended to
be strong in mathematics."
"Why, it's not yet three!" cried Zuleika, with
a woebegone stare at the clock. "What is to be
done in the meantime?"
"Am not I sufficiently diverting?" asked the
Duke bitterly.
"Quite candidly, no. Have you any friend
lodging with you here?"
"One, overhead. A man named Noaks."
"A small man, with spectacles?"
"Very small, with very large spectacles."
"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 com-
mon with him?"
"One frailty, at least: he, too, Miss Dobson,
loves you."
"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?"
Looking round, she caught sight of herself in
ZULEIKA DOBSON 83
the glass. "Oh," she cried, "what a fright I do
look! I must never be seen like this!"
"You look very beautiful."
"I don't. That is a lover's illusion. You your-
self 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."
"Even so, you would but have been mobbed
for your incorrigible beauty."
"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."
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.
VI
"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 ordi-
nary sinners pass vividly down the ages.
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 stead-
fastly followed Him and served Him; but the
disciple who betrayed Him for thirty pieces of
silver. Judas Iscariot it is who outstands, over-
shadowing those other fishermen. And perhaps it
was by reason of this precedence that Christopher
Whitrid, Knight, in the reign of Henry VI., gave
84
ZULEIKA DOBSON 85
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.
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 Pas-
sion Week thirty pieces of silver among the need-
ier 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.
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 dur-
ing that time have beheld, one would say, no sight
less seemly than the good work of weeding, mow-
86 ZULEIKA DOBSON
ing, rolling, that has made, at length, so exem-
plary 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.
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,
<i>al fresco</i>, without dissent. Cannot one see them,
these Fellows of Judas, huddled together round
the sun-dial, like so many sheep in a storm? The
ZULEIKA DOBSON 87
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 sur-
rounding 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 loyal-
ties" -- 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
88 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
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.
"I say," stammered the spokesman.
"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.
"Isn't it a lovely day for the Eights?" faltered
the spokesman.
"I conceive," the Duke said, "that you hold
back some other question."
The spokesman smiled weakly. Nudged by the
other, he muttered "Ask him yourself!"
ZULEIKA DOBSON 89
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?"
"A sister of mine will be there," explained the
one, knowing the Duke to be a precisian.
"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.
"Well, you see," said the other of the two,
"that is just the difficulty. I <i>am</i> acquainted with
her. But is she acquainted with <i>me?</i> I met her
at breakfast this morning, at the Warden's."
"So did I," added the one.
"But she -- well," continued the other, "she
didn't take much notice of us. She seemed to be
in a sort of dream."
"Ah!" murmured the Duke, with melancholy
interest.
"The only time she opened her lips," said the
other, "was when she asked us whether we took
tea or coffee."
"She put hot milk in my tea," volunteered the
one, "and upset the cup over my hand, and smiled
vaguely."
"And smiled vaguely," sighed the Duke.
"She left us long before the marmalade stage,"
said the one.
90 ZULEIKA DOBSON
"Without a word," said the other.
"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.
"Doubtless," the disingenuous Duke said, "she
had a headache. . . Was she pale?"
"Very pale," answered the one.
"A healthy pallor," qualified the other, who
was a constant reader of novels.
"Did she look," the Duke inquired, "as if she
had spent a sleepless night?"
That was the impression made on both.
"Yet she did not seem listless or unhappy?"
No, they would not go so far as to say that.
"Indeed, were her eyes of an almost unnatural
brilliance?"
"Quite unnatural," confessed the one. I
"Twin stars," interpolated the other.
"Did she, in fact, seem to be consumed by
some inward rapture?"
Yes, now they came to think of it, this was
exactly how she <i>had</i> seemed.
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.
"The purpose of your tattle?" he asked coldly.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 91
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."
"And I had so hoped to ask her to luncheon,"
said the other.
"Well?"
"Well, we wondered if you would re-introduce
us. And then perhaps. . ."
There was a pause. The Duke was touched to
kindness for these fellow-lovers. He would fain
preserve them from the anguish that beset him-
self. So humanising is sorrow.
"You are in love with Miss Dobson?" he asked.
Both nodded.
"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."
To the implied question "What chance would
there be for you?" the reply was obvious.
Amazed, abashed, the two youths turned on
their heels.
"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 my-
self, perceived or imagined, that Miss Dobson
scorns me. She scorns me simply because I love
92 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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?"
"We will try," said the one, after a pause.
"Thank you very much," added the other.
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."
Yet, even while his fancy luxuriated in this
scheme, he well knew that he would not accom-
plish 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 93
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 pain-
fully away. The other. . .
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.
"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 cap-
tain 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.
"So sorry to have been so long," carolled a
voice from above. The Duke looked up. "I'm
94 ZULEIKA DOBSON
all but ready," said Zuleika at her window.
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 pas-
sionate 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 sacra-
ment of death. Death was incomparably the
greater, the finer soul. Death was the one true
bridal.
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.
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.
"Forgive me!" he said, after a pause. "It was
a mistake -- an idiotic mistake of identity. I
thought you were. . ."
ZULEIKA DOBSON 95
Zuleika, rigid, asked "Have I many doubles?"
"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."
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 dis-
miss 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 con-
cert to-night; and she could show herself there to
advantage; but she wanted <i>all</i> Oxford to see her
-- see her <i>now</i>.
"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.
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 fond-
ness. You will find that the woman who is really
kind to dogs is always one who has failed to
96 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 pres-
ence 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 en-
dearingly 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.
Seldom is even a fierce bulldog heard to growl.
Yet Corker growled at Zuleika.
VII
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 com-
posed themselves. The Triumph of Death must
not be handled as a cheap score. He wanted to
die because he would thereby so poignantly con-
summate 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 star-
less sky, watering the violets with her tears.
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
97
98 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
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. . .
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.
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."
ZULEIKA DOBSON 99
"Then we shan't see the race at all?" cried
Zuleika.
"It will be over, alas, before we are near the
river. All the people will be coming back through
the meadows."
"Let us meet them."
"Meet a torrent? Let us have tea in my rooms
and go down quietly for the other Division."
"Let us go straight on."
Through the square, across the High, down
Grove Street, they passed. The Duke looked up
at the tower of Merton, <i>os oupot authis alla
nyn paunstaton</i>. Strange that to-night it would
still be standing here, in all its sober and solid
beauty -- still be gazing, over the roofs and chim-
neys, 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.
Aye, by all minerals we are mocked. Vegeta-
bles, 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
100 ZULEIKA DOBSON
another world -- that is, if the members of the
animal kingdom have immortal souls, as we
have."
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 salu-
tation, and smiled a vague but courteous acknowl-
edgment, to the right and the left alternately,
creating a very favourable impression.
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 inter-
spersed 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.
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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 101
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.
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 say-
ing 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 Zu-
leika. Yet not one of all the undergraduates felt
she could have made a wiser choice.
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.
Mainly architectural, the beauties of Oxford.
102 ZULEIKA DOBSON
True, the place is no longer one-sexed. There
are the virguncules of Somerville and Lady Mar-
garet'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.)
But the casual feminine visitors? Well, the
sisters and cousins of an undergraduate seldom
seem more passable to his comrades than to him-
self. Altogether, the instinct of sex is not pan-
dered 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, sur-
round 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 undergradu-
ate is the easiest victim of living loveliness -- is as
a fire ever well and truly laid, amenable to a
ZULEIKA DOBSON 103
spark. And if the spark be such a flaring
torch as Zuleika? -- marvel not, reader, at the
conflagration.
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 surg-
ing 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, support-
ing 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 com-
press, 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 with-
out a pause in their measured progress. Nor even
when they turned to the left, along the rather nar-
row path beside the barges, was there any ob-
stacle to their advance. Passing evenly forward,
they alone were cool, unhustled, undishevelled.
The Duke was so rapt in his private thoughts
that he was hardly conscious of the strange scene.
104 ZULEIKA DOBSON
And as for Zuleika, she, as well she might be,
was in the very best of good humours.
"What a lot of house-boats!" she exclaimed.
"Are you going to take me on to one of them?"
The Duke started. Already they were along-
side the Judas barge. "Here," he said, "is our
goal."
He stepped through the gate of the railings,
out upon the plank, and offered her his hand.
She looked back. The young men in the van-
guard 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.
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.
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 im-
petus that the vision for each man was but a
lightning-flash: he was whirled past, struggling,
ZULEIKA DOBSON 105
almost before his brain took the message of his
eyes.
Those who were Judas men made frantic ef-
forts to board the barge, trying to hurl them-
selves through the gate in the railings; but they
were swept vainly on.
Presently the torrent began to slacken, became
a mere river, a mere procession of youths staring
up rather shyly.
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.
Among others hovering near the little buffet
were the two youths whose parley with the Duke
I have recorded.
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.
"Then," she said, "ask them their names, and
introduce them to me."
"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 agree-
able career. I am not going to trip them up for
you."
106 ZULEIKA DOBSON
"I am not sure," said Zuleika, "that you are
very polite. Certainly you are foolish. It is nat-
ural 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 any-
body?" She laughed. "Look at <i>me!</i> 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?"
"You looked, I am bound to say, nobler, more
spiritual."
"More spiritual?" she exclaimed. "Do you
mean I looked tired or ill?"
"No, you seemed quite fresh. But then, you
are singular. You are no criterion."
"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 partic-
ular young woman. He very soon makes love
to some other one. If his be an ardent nature,
ZULEIKA DOBSON 107
the quicker his transition. All the most ardent of
my past adorers have married. Will you put my
cup down, please?"
"Past?" echoed the Duke, as he placed her cup
on the floor. "Have any of your lovers ceased to
love you?"
"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."
"You don't believe in the love that corrodes,
the love that ruins?"
"No," laughed Zuleika.
"You have never dipped into the Greek pas-
toral poets, nor sampled the Elizabethan son-
neteers?"
"No, never. You will think me lamentably
crude: my experience of life has been drawn from
life itself."
"Yet often you talk as though you had read
rather much. Your way of speech has what is
called 'the literary flavour'."
"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
108 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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?"
"Only since yesterday," answered the Duke
(not less unfairly to himself than to Roger New-
digate 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 mak-
ing 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 de-
liberately 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 pre-
sent two quite ordinary young men to her, he held
ZULEIKA DOBSON 109
over her the revelation that he for love of her
was about to die.
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 <i>is</i> anguish:
isn't the discipline wholesome? Suppose I <i>am</i>
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 fur-
nace for their own sake, dear Duke! Or cast one
of them, or," she added, glancing round at the
throng, "any one of these others!"
"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."
"I hate you," said Zuleika, with an ugly petu-
lance that crowned the irony.
"So long as I live," uttered the Duke, in a
level voice, "you will address no man but me."
"If your prophecy is to be fulfilled," laughed
Zuleika, rising from her chair, "your last moment
is at hand."
"It is," he answered, rising too.
110 ZULEIKA DOBSON
"What do you mean?" she asked, awed by
something in his tone.
"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."
For the first time since his avowal of his love
for her, Zuleika found herself genuinely inter-
ested in him. A suspicion of his meaning had
flashed through her soul. -- But no! surely he could
not mean <i>that!</i> 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.
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 evi-
dently 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 111
an Old Judasian. Zuleika's shoulder pressed his
He thrilled not at all. To all intents, he was
dead already.
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 after-
noon by Eros' darts. All of them had seen Zu-
leika 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.
Not in a day can the traditions of Oxford be
112 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
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.
"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 sym-
pathy 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.
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 loveli-
ness that he knew -- more adorably vivid now in
ZULEIKA DOBSON 113
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 <i>Moriturus te
saluto</i> 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 con-
summation 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.
But she would have no ellipses. "What are
you going to do?" she whispered.
"Do you not know?"
"Tell me."
"Once and for all: you cannot love me?"
Slowly she shook her head. The black pearl
and the pink, quivering, gave stress to her ulti-
matum. But the violet of her eyes was all but
hidden by the dilation of her pupils.
"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 Dob-
son, will your soul awaken? When I shall have
114 ZULEIKA DOBSON
sunk for ever beneath these waters whose sup-
posed purpose here this afternoon is but that they
be ploughed by the blades of these young oars-
men, will there be struck from that flint, your
heart, some late and momentary spark of pity
for me?"
"Why of course, of <i>course!</i>" babbled Zuleika,
with clasped hands and dazzling eyes. "But,"
she curbed herself, "it is -- it would -- oh, you
mustn't <i>think</i> of it! I couldn't allow it! I -- I
should never forgive myself!"
"In fact, you would mourn me always?"
"Why yes!. . Y-es-always." What else
could she say? But would his answer be that he
dared not condemn her to lifelong torment?
"Then," his answer was, "my joy in dying for
you is made perfect."
Her muscles relaxed. Her breath escaped be-
tween her teeth. "You are utterly resolved?" she
asked. "Are you?"
"Utterly."
"Nothing I might say could change your
purpose?"
"Nothing."
"No entreaty, howsoever piteous, could move
you?"
"None."
Forthwith she urged, entreated, cajoled, com-
manded, with infinite prettiness of ingenuity and
of eloquence. Never was such a cascade of dis-
ZULEIKA DOBSON 115
suasion as hers. She only didn't say she could
love him. She never hinted that. Indeed,
throughout her pleading rang this recurrent
<i>motif</i>: 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.
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 flor-
idly 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: "<i>he's -- a jolly good fellow</i>."
His brief reply, on those occasions, seemed al-
ways 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.
And the time was come. Now for the sacra-
ment of his immersion in infinity.
"Good-bye," he said simply, and was about to
116 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
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.
"The race?" She laughed hysterically.
"Yes. 'They're off'." He mingled his laugh-
ter 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."
"Don't!" she shuddered, with a woman's no-
tion 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 117
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!
All around her was the hush that falls on Ox-
ford 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.
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.
Gently, vainly, he still sought to unclasp her
fingers from his arm.
"Not now!" she whispered. "Not yet!"
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
118 ZULEIKA DOBSON
savour the full sweetness of his sacrifice. To-
morrow -- to-morrow, yes, let him have his heart's
desire of death. Not now! Not yet!
"To-morrow," she whispered, "to-morrow, if
you will. Not yet!"
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 surg-
ing soul within her bosom.
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.
"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.
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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 119
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 Ju-
dasians 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 ex-
pensive doll which had banished all the little other
old toys from her mind.
She simply could not, in her naïve 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, Zu-
leika'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
120 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
"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."
"But you won't leave me there?" pleaded Zu-
leika. "You will stay to dinner? I am sure my
grandfather would be delighted."
"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."
"The Junta? What is that?"
"A little dining-club. It meets every Tuesday."
"But -- you don't mean you are going to refuse
me for that?"
"To do so is misery. But I have no choice.
I have asked a guest."
"Then ask another: ask me!" Zuleika's no-
tions 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 mem-
ZULEIKA DOBSON 121
bers 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 <i>noblesse
oblige</i>, 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.
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 <i>not</i> see the
point of view.
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!"
"I did not forget him," answered the Duke,
smiling at her casuistry. "Nor had I any scruple
in disappointing him. Death cancels all engage-
ments."
And Zuleika, worsted, resumed her sulking.
But presently, as they neared Judas, she re-
lented. It was paltry to be cross with him who
had resolved to die for her and was going to die
122 ZULEIKA DOBSON
so on the morrow. And after all, she would see
him at the concert to-night. They would sit to-
gether. And all to-morrow they would be together,
till the time came for parting. Hers was a nat-
urally sunny disposition. And the evening was
such a lovely one, all bathed in gold. She was
ashamed of her ill-humour.
"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.
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.
"I am never late," he smiled.
"Ah, you're so beautifully brought up!"
The door was opened.
"And -- oh, you're beautiful besides!" she
whispered; and waved her hand to him as she
vanished into the hall.
VIII
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 mul-
berry-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.
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.
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.
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
123
124 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 125
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.
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 dif-
ference.*
The MacQuern and two other young men were
already there.
"Mr. President," said The MacQuern, "I pre-
sent Mr. Trent-Garby, of Christ Church."
"The Junta is honoured," said the Duke,
bowing.
Such was the ritual of the club.
The other young man, because his host, Sir
John Marraby, was not yet on the scene, had no
<i>locus standi</i>, and, though a friend of The Mac-
Quern, and well known to the Duke, had to be
ignored.
A moment later, Sir John arrived. "Mr. Pres-
ident," he said, "I present Lord Sayes, of Mag-
dalen."
"The Junta is honoured," said the Duke,
bowing.
* The Junta has been reconstituted. But the apostolic line
was broken, the thread was snapped; the old magic is fled.
126 ZULEIKA DOBSON
Both hosts and both guests, having been promi-
nent 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 can-
not err" -- would have prevented him from show-
ing his displeasure.
A Herculean figure filled the doorway.
"The Junta is honoured," said the Duke,
bowing to his guest.
"Duke," said the newcomer quietly, "the hon-
our is as much mine as that of the interesting and
ancient institution which I am this night privileged
to inspect."
Turning to Sir John and The MacQuern, the
Duke said "I present Mr. Abimelech V. Oover,
of Trinity."
"The Junta," they replied, "is honoured."
"Gentlemen," said the Rhodes Scholar, "your
good courtesy is just such as I would have antici-
pated 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 --"
"Dinner is served, your Grace."
ZULEIKA DOBSON 127
Thus interrupted, Mr. Oover, with the re-
sourcefulness of a practised orator, brought his
thanks to a quick but not abrupt conclusion. The
little company passed into the front room.
Through the window, from the High, fading
daylight mingled with the candle-light. The mul-
berry 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.
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.
To all Rhodes Scholars, indeed, his courtesy
was invariable. He went out of his way to culti-
vate 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 Ox-
ford as a matter of course. The Germans loved
it too little, the Colonials too much. The Ameri-
cans were, to a sensitive observer, the most
troublesome -- as being the most troubled -- of the
whole lot. The Duke was not one of those Eng-
lishmen 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,
128 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 him-
self 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 ex-
citement about what possibly won't happen. He
cannot very well help being sentimentally inter-
ested 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 129
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 over-
much is often taken as a sign of self-satisfaction.
It is merely a mannerism. Rhetoric is a thing in-
bred 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.
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 con-
stant 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.
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.
This was the more commendable because
Oover's "aura" was even more disturbing than
130 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
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 an-
other -- 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.
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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 131
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.
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.
Under the mezzotint hung Hoppner's minia-
ture of that lovely and ill-starred girl, with her
soft dark eyes, and her curls all astray from be-
neath 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
132 ZULEIKA DOBSON
years later, duelling on the Riva Schiavoni with
a Senator whose daughter he had seduced.
And he, Greddon, was not listening very atten-
tively 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 beauti-
ful, 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.
Mr. Oover's moral tone, and his sense of chiv-
alry, 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 incog-
nisant 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 133
you are so splendidly entertaining me to-night,
was an unmitigated scoundrel. I say he was not
a white man."
At the word "scoundrel," Humphrey Greddon
had sprung forward, drawing his sword, and
loudly, in a voice audible to himself alone, chal-
lenged 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 unpunc-
tured shirt-front, was repeating "I say he was not
a white man." And Greddon remembered him-
self -- remembered he was only a ghost, impalpa-
ble, 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.
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,
* As Edward VII. was at this time on the throne, it must
have been to George III, that Mr. Greddon was referring,
134 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 <i>jabot</i>, 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 ap-
palling eighteenth-century oaths, he passed back
into the nether world.
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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 135
at her well-remembered miniature, he wondered
just what it was in her that had captivated Gred-
don. He was in that blest state when a man can-
not believe the earth has been trodden by any
really beautiful or desirable lady save the lady
of his own heart.
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 de-
canters, 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 up-
lifted glass proposed the first of the two toasts
traditional to the Junta. "Gentlemen, I give you
Church and State."
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.
Presently, when the wine had gone round again,
the Duke rose and with uplifted glass said "Gen-
tlemen, I give you -- " and there halted. Silent,
frowning, flushed, he stood for a few moments,
and then, with a deliberate gesture, tilted his
136 ZULEIKA DOBSON
glass and let fall the wine to the carpet. "No,"
he said, looking round the table, "I cannot give
you Nellie O'Mora."
"Why not?" gasped Sir John Marraby.
"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 -- Mar-
raby -- which of you is Vice-President?"
"He is," said Marraby.
"Then, MacQuern, you are hereby President,
<i>vice</i> myself resigned. Take the chair and propose
the toast."
"I would rather not," said The MacQuern after
a pause.
"Then, Marraby, <i>you</i> must."
"Not I!" said Marraby.
"Why is this?" asked the Duke, looking from
one to the other.
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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 137
and cried "I give you Zuleika Dobson, the fairest
witch that ever was or will be!"
Mr. Oover, Lord Sayes, Mr. Trent-Garby,
sprang to their feet; The MacQuern rose to his.
"Zuleika Dobson!" they cried, and drained their
glasses.
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.
Mr. Oover, too, looked grave. All the an-
tiquarian 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 re-
joiced at having honoured by word and act the
one woman in the world.
Gazing around at the flushed faces and heaving
shirt-fronts of the diners, the Duke forgot Mar-
raby'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
138 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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?"
Nobody held up a hand.
"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 an-
other man is hardly a stronger passion than his
jealousy for her when she is not preferred to all
other women.
"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.
"You are all coming to the Judas concert to-
night?" 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 hap-
piness lies, think you?"
"Oh, happiness be hanged!" said Marraby.
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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 139
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.
Mr. Oover, during his year of residence, had
been sorely tried by the quaint old English cus-
tom of not making public speeches after private
dinners. It was with a deep sigh of satisfaction
that he now rose to his feet.
"Duke," he said in a low voice, which yet pene-
trated 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 --
140 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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."
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.
The genial din was wafted down through the
open window to the passers-by. The wine-mer-
chant across the way heard it, and smiled pen-
sively. "Youth, youth!" he murmured.
The genial din grew louder.
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 ex-
ample might be too late, the mischief have sunk
too deep, the agony be life-long. His good breed-
ZULEIKA DOBSON 141
ing 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.
"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 de-
lirious pride in the prospect of crushing a trump-
ery 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 <i>it</i> would conquer <i>us</i> -- 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 for-
give 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
142 ZULEIKA DOBSON
had been plainly doomed to disaster and to vas-
salage. 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. Gen-
tlemen, 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.
"Go right ahead, Duke," said Mr. Oover. "I'll
re-ply when my turn comes."
"And not utterly demolish me, I hope," said
the Duke. His was the Oxford manner. "Gen-
tlemen," he continued, "is it possible that Britan-
nia would have thrown her helmet in the air,
shrieking 'Slavery for ever'? You, gentlemen,
seem to think slavery a pleasant and an honour-
able state. You have less experience of it than I.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 143
I have been enslaved to Miss Dobson since yes-
terday evening; you, only since this afternoon; I,
at close quarters; you, at a respectful distance.
Your fetters have not galled you yet. <i>My</i> wrists,
<i>my</i> 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. To-
morrow I die."
The flushed faces of the diners grew gradually
pale. Their eyes lost lustre. Their tongues clove
to the roofs of their mouths.
At length, almost inaudibly, The MacQuern
asked "Do you mean you are going to commit
suicide?"
"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."
"You -- don't -- say," gasped Mr. Oover.
"I do indeed," said the Duke. "And I ask you
all to weigh well my message."
"But -- but does Miss Dobson know?" asked
Sir John.
"Oh yes," was the reply. "Indeed, it was she
who persuaded me not to die till to-morrow."
"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 hap-
pened."
144 ZULEIKA DOBSON
"Nothing <i>had</i> 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 ex-
actly 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."
There was a long silence. The Duke, looking
ZULEIKA DOBSON 145
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.
"Dorset," he said huskily, "I shall die too."
The Duke flung up his hands, staring wildly.
"I stand in with that," said Mr. Oover.
"So do I!" said Lord Sayes. "And I!" said
Mr. Trent-Garby; "And I!" The MacQuern.
The Duke found voice. "Are you mad?" he
asked, clutching at his throat. "Are you all
mad?"
"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."
"Just so," said The MacQuern, stolidly.
"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!
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 façade 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.
The other men had rushed to the window, fear-
146 ZULEIKA DOBSON
ing 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 up-
rooted geraniums. Squaring his shoulders, he
threw back his head, and doubled down the slope.
There was a violent jostle between the remain-
ing 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.
Youth, youth!
IX
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.
"Let me pass," said the Duke, rather breath-
lessly. "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.
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."
"My grand-daughter?" said the Warden. "Ah,
Duke, good evening."
"She's not ill?"
147
148 ZULEIKA DOBSON
"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 de-
tached way.
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 se-
clusion 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 149
without a sign of impatience? Why had he not
killed himself long ago? Why cumbered he the
earth?
On the daïs an undergraduate was singing a
song entitled "She Loves Not Me." Such plaints
are apt to leave us unharrowed. Across the foot-
lights 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.
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
150 ZULEIKA DOBSON
along the aisle, came Zuleika, brilliant in black.
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 de-
fine 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, en-
joining 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 daïs, 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 dem-
onstrative not less of her presence than of her
delight.
"And now," she asked, turning to the Duke,
"do you see? do you see?"
"Something, yes. But what?"
"Isn't it plain?" Lightly she touched the lobe
of her left ear. "Aren't you flattered?"
He knew now what made the difference. It was
that her little face was flanked by two black
pearls.
"Think," said she, "how deeply I must have
been brooding over you since we parted!"
ZULEIKA DOBSON 151
"Is this really," he asked, pointing to the left
ear-ring, "the pearl you wore to-day?"
"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."
"I am more than pleased. I am touched. When
did the change come?"
"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 cov-
ered my eyes and rushed upstairs, rang the bell
and tore my things off. My maid was very cross."
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>I</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."
"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
152 ZULEIKA DOBSON
you would not have laid down your life for me."
"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 ro-
mantic than you are, really. I wonder," she said,
glancing at his breast, "if <i>your</i> pink pearl would
have turned black? And I wonder if <i>you</i> would
have taken the trouble to change that extraor-
dinary coat you are wearing?"
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 exhilara-
ZULEIKA DOBSON 153
tion, was the measure of her worthiness to have
the homage of his self-slaughter.
"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?"
"Of course I will."
"So that no one shall ever be able to say it
wasn't for me that you died, you know."
"May I use simply your Christian name?"
"Yes, I really don't see why you shouldn't- -
at such a moment."
"Thank you." His face glowed.
Thus did they commune, these two, radiant
without and within. And behind them, through-
out 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, whis-
pered 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
154 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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
daïs.
He had not considered what he would play to-
night. Nor, maybe, was he conscious now of
choosing. His fingers caressed the keyboard
vaguely; and anon this ivory had voice and lan-
guage; 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 weep-
ing, certain figures passed by, hooded, and droop-
ing 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 re-
ceded, its echoes dying away into the sphere
ZULEIKA DOBSON 155
whence it came. It ceased; and the mourners
were left alone again with their sorrow, and
passed on all unsolaced, and drooping, weeping.
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. Be-
hind whom, a moment later, came a woman of
somewhat masculine aspect and dominant de-
meanour, 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 Funèbre. And among
the audience, too, there was a bowing and up-
lifting 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.
And Zuleika returned his gaze with a smile
not less gay. She was not sure what he was play-
ing. But she assumed that it was for her, and
that the music had some reference to his impend-
ing 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
156 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
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.
"Tu auras une migraine affreuse. Rentrons,
petit cœur!" said George Sand, gently but firmly.
"Laisse-rnoi le saluer," cried the composer,
struggling in her grasp.
"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."
Zuleika was the first to rise as "ce jeune
homme" came down from the daïs. Now was the
ZULEIKA DOBSON 157
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.
Outside, the crowd was greater than ever. All
the undergraduates from all the Colleges seemed
now to be concentrated in the great Front Quad-
rangle of Judas. Even in the glow of the Japa-
nese 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 se-
cret 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.
158 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 pro-
gress 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 un-
reason. 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 up-.
heaval; 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 be-
cause 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,
ZULEIKA DOBSON 159
that snobbishness was one of the springs to the
tragedy here chronicled.
We may set to this crowd's credit that it re-
frained 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.
Side by side, the great lover and his beloved
wandered away, beyond the light of the Japanese
lanterns, and came to Salt Cellar.
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 en-
couragement. 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
160 ZULEIKA DOBSON
she so magically mingled her rays with the candle-
light shed forth from Zuleika's bedroom? Noth-
ing, that she had cleansed the lawn of all its col-
our, and made of it a platform of silver-grey, fit
for fairies to dance on?
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.
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 yester-
day. "And you actually <i>did</i> get them yester-
day," she said. "And from me. And I want
them back."
"You are ingenious," he admitted. "I, in my
simple way, am but head of the Tanville-Tanker-
ton family. Had you accepted my offer of mar-
riage, 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 prop-
erty of my successor I cannot and will not. I am
sorry," he added.
"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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 161
am. What old maids men are!" And viciously
with her fan she struck one of the cloister pillars.
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.
"And you are sure they really <i>meant</i> it?" she
asked in a voice that trembled.
"I fear so. But they were over-excited. They
will recant their folly. I shall force them to."
"They are not children. You yourself have
just been calling them 'men.' Why should they
obey you?"
She turned at sound of a footstep, and saw a
young man approaching. He wore a coat like the
162 ZULEIKA DOBSON
Duke's, and in his hand he dangled a handker-
chief. 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."
Zuleika looked at the handkerchief, which was
obviously a man's, and smilingly shook her head.
"I don't think you know The MacQuern," said
the Duke, with sulky grace. "This," he said to
the intruder, "is Miss Dobson."
"And is it really true," asked Zuleika, retaining
The MacQuern's hand, "that you want to die
for me?"
Well, the Scots are a self-seeking and a reso-
lute, 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 hand-
kerchief, 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 trans-
lated as "Yes").
"You will do nothing of the sort," interposed
the Duke.
"There," said Zuleika, still retaining The Mac-
Quern's hand, "you see, it is forbidden. You
ZULEIKA DOBSON 163
must not defy our dear little Duke. He is not
used to it. It is not done."
"I don't know," said The MacQuern, with a
stony glance at the Duke, "that he has anything
to do with the matter."
"He is older and wiser than you. More a man
of the world. Regard him as your tutor."
"Do <i>you</i> want me not to die for you?" asked
the young man.
"Ah, <i>I</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."
"Then that settles it," said The MacQuern.
"No, no! You must not let yourself be influ-
enced by <i>me</i>. 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?"
The MacQuern said cautiously that he could
answer for no one but himself. "But," he al-
lowed, "I saw a good many men whom I know,
outside the Hall here, just now, and they seemed
to have made up their minds."
"To die for me? To-morrow?"
"To-morrow. After the Eights, I suppose; at
164 ZULEIKA DOBSON
the same time as the Duke. It wouldn't do to
leave the races undecided."
"Of <i>course</i> not. But the poor dears! It is too
touching! I have done nothing, nothing to de-
serve it."
"Nothing whatsoever," said the Duke drily.
"Oh <i>he</i>," said Zuleika, "thinks me an unre-
deemed brute; just because I don't love him. <i>You</i>,
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' -- <i>you</i> 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?"
An idea struck her. She looked up to the lit
window of her room. "Mélisande!" she called.
A figure appeared at the window. "Mademoi-
selle désire?"
"My tricks, Mélisande! 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."
"Announce what?"
"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?"
ZULEIKA DOBSON 165
"You make me feel slightly unwell," said the
Duke.
"And <i>you</i> 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
Mélisande, 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.
The MacQuern had relieved Mélisande of her
burden; and to him was the privilege of bearing
it, in procession with his adored and her quelled
mentor, towards the Hall.
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.
X
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 under-
graduates, however, except the few who figured
in the programme, had waited outside till their
mistress should re-appear. The sisters and cous-
ins of the Judas men had been escorted back to
their places and hurriedly left there.
It was a hushed, tense crowd.
"The poor darlings!" murmured Zuleika, paus-
ing to survey them. "And oh," she exclaimed,
"there won't be room for all of them in there!"
"You might give an 'overflow' performance out
here afterwards," suggested the Duke, grimly.
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 an-
nouncement.
"What shall I say?" he asked. "'Gentlemen,
I have the pleasure to announce that Miss Zuleika
Dobson, the world-renowned She-Wizard, will
166
ZULEIKA DOBSON 167
now oblige'? Or shall I call them 'Gents,' <i>tout
court</i>?"
She could afford to laugh at his ill-humour.
She had his promise of obedience. She told him
to say something graceful and simple.
The noise of the violin had ceased. There was
not a breath of wind. The crowd in the quad-
rangle 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.
She stood with eyes downcast and hands folded
behind her, moonlit in the glow of lanterns, mod-
est to the point of pathos, while the Duke grace-
fully 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 fac-
ulty 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 Dob-
168 ZULEIKA DOBSON
son (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, inas-
much as she was the grand-daughter of their ven-
erable and venerated Warden.
As the Duke ceased, there came from his hear-
ers 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 per-
son. 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.
It was impossible for her to give her entertain-
ment in full. Some of her tricks (notably the
Secret Aquarium, and the Blazing Ball of Wor-
sted) 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 Mac-
Quern 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 169
been by a Romanoff transmuted from wood to
gold, and were now by the moon reduced tempor-
arily to silver.
In a great dense semicircle the young men dis-
posed themselves around her. Those who were
in front squatted down on the gravel; those who
were behind knelt; the rest stood. Young Ox-
ford! Here, in this mass of boyish faces, all
fused and obliterated, was the realisation of that
phrase. Two or three thousands of human bod-
ies, human souls? Yet the effect of them in the
moonlight was as of one great passive monster.
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 exhibi-
tion 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
170 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 début, she
had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. The
stale and narrow repertory which she had ac-
quired 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 espe-
cially 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 hair-
dresser." 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.
The Duke blushed to think what these men
thought of her. Would love were blind! These
her lovers were doubtless judging her. They for-
gave 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 171
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?
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, pro-
ducing a penny from one lad's elbow, a three-
penny-bit from between another's neck and collar,
half a crown from another's hair, and always re-
peating 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 lumi-
nous blackness of her dress, in the luminous blue-
ness 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.
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
172 ZULEIKA DOBSON
was cruel? All goddesses are that. She was
demeaning herself? His soul welled up anew in
pity, in passion.
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.
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 blossorned 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 173
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 en-
tertainment was only that dismal affair, the Magic
Canister.
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 bor-
rowed 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 sup-
posed, rightly or wrongly, to alleviate rheuma-
tism. And when she had made an ample selection,
she began her return-journey to the table.
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 al-
174 ZULEIKA DOBSON
ready. . . But had he not refused her the where-
withal to remember him -- the pearls she needed
as the <i>clou</i> of her dear collection, the great relic
among relics?
"Would you trust me with your studs?" she
asked him, in a voice that could be heard through-
out the quadrangle, with a smile that was for him
alone.
There was no help for it. He quickly extri-
cated from his shirt-front the black pearl and the
pink. Her thanks had a special emphasis.
The MacQuern placed the Magic Canister be-
fore 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.
"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 prop-
erty. 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 175
from her acolyte, only the two studs remained
in it.
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 "van-
ished" them into her bosom.
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 adora-
ble than ever. He blenched and swayed as in
proximity to a loveliness beyond endurance. His
176 ZULEIKA DOBSON
heart cried out within him. A sudden mist came
over his eyes.
In the canister that she held out to him, the
two pearls rattled like dice.
"Keep them!" he whispered.
"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.
As she re-appeared at the table, the crowd
gave her a long ovation of gratitude for her per-
formance -- an ovation all the more impressive be-
cause it was solemn and subdued. She curtseyed
again and again, not indeed with the timid sim-
plicity 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.
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 ap-
plause 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 177
the last echoes of the clapping had died away.
The ladies on the steps of the Hall moved
down into the quadrangle, spreading their resent-
ment like a miasma. The tragic passion of the
crowd was merged in mere awkwardness. There
was a general movement towards the College
gate.
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.
"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.
This was a blow to the young man, who, at
once thrifty and infatuate, had planned a lun-
cheon <i>à deux</i>. "I had hoped --" he began.
"Vainly," she cut him short.
There was a pause. "Whom shall I invite,
then?"
"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.
178 ZULEIKA DOBSON
"Of course," she said hastily to her host, "you
must ask <i>him</i>."
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 <i>won't</i> unless you
will."
The Duke looked at her. Had it not been ar-
ranged 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.
"It seems a shame," said Zuleika to The Mac-
Quern, "to ask you to bring this great heavy box
all the way back again. But --"
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.
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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 179
much better that is than bad blood! She hoped
the better man would win; and (do not mis-
judge 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 hold-
ing 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 specula-
tions 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 con-
flict was necessarily spiritual.
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.
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
180 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 re-
placed. Was one of them to be shattered? Life
and love were good. He had been mad to think
of dying.
No word was spoken as they went together to
Salt Cellar. She expected him to talk about her
conjuring tricks. Could he have been disap-
pointed? 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?"
They were in Salt Cellar now. "Mélisande!"
she called up to her window.
"Hush!" said the Duke, "I have something to
say to you."
"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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 181
called out for Mélisande, 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."
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-expres-
sion; 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.
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.
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 <i>you</i> 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?"
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?"
"You will release me from it."
182 ZULEIKA DOBSON
"You mean you are afraid to die?"
"You will not be guilty of my death. You love
me."
"Good night, you miserable coward." She
stepped back through the postern.
"Don't, Zuleika! Miss Dobson, don't! Pull
yourself together! Reflect! I implore you. . .
You will repent. . ."
Slowly she closed the postern on him.
"You will repent. I shall wait here, under your
window. . ."
He heard a bolt rasped into its socket. He
heard the retreat of a light tread on the paven
hall.
And he hadn't even kissed her! That was his
first thought. He ground his heel in the gravel.
And he had hurt her wrists! This was Zu-
leika's first thought, as she came into her bed-
room. 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.
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?
There was a sound as of rain against the win-
dow. She was glad. The night needed cleansing.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 183
He had told her she was afraid of life. Life!
-- to have herself caressed by <i>him;</i> 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 cloy-
ing and degrading, it would be laughable.
For a moment her hands hovered over those
two golden and gemmed volumes encasing Brad-
shaw 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 with-
out slighting all those hundreds of other men. . .
And besides. . .
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.
She thrust her head out again. "Are you
there?" she whispered.
"Yes, yes. I knew you would come."
"Wait a moment, wait!"
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.
"Come a little nearer!" she whispered.
The upturned and moonlit face obeyed her.
184 ZULEIKA DOBSON
She saw its lips forming the word "Zuleika." She
took careful aim.
Full on the face crashed the cascade of moonlit
water, shooting out on all sides like the petals of
some great silver anemone.
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.
XI
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.
Not that you doubted I was somewhat con-
nected 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 be-
fore 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.
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
185
186 ZULEIKA DOBSON
had been placed in a false position, and that until
this were rectified neither she nor I could reap
the credit due to us.
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 op-
erations -- things to which she, being a woman,
was somewhat indifferent. She was jealous of
Melpomene. It seemed to her that her own ser-
vants worked from without at a mass of dry
details which might as well be forgotten. Melpo-
mene'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 <i>more
philosophic</i> than history, inasmuch as it concerned
itself with what might be, while history was con-
cerned 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 de-
ZULEIKA DOBSON 187
partment 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 inter-
fere. 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 mediæval 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
<i>ostis toia echei en edone echei en edone toia</i> (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
188 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 ele-
ment forced itself into her peaceful life. Zeus
fell in love with her.
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-confi-
dence enough to appear in his own person to the
lady of his choice, and is still at pains to trans-
form himself into whatever object he deems like-
liest 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 dis-
guise 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 Re-
view," the note-book of Professor Carl Vört-
schlaffen. . . One day, all-prying Hermes told
him of Clio's secret addiction to novel-reading.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 189
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.
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. Sup-
pose 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. . .
While the Muse was thus musing, Zeus (dis-
guised 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 thun-
190 ZULEIKA DOBSON
der, which made quake the slopes of Parnassus,
he gave his answer. He admitted the disabilities
under which historians laboured. But the novel-
ists -- 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 invisi-
bility, inevitability, and psychic penetration, with
a flawless memory thrown in.
On the following afternoon, Clio's roving eye
saw Zuleika stepping from the Paddington plat-
form 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,
ZULEIKA DOBSON 191
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 plat-
form of Oxford station. The train was not due
for another hour. But the time passed pleasantly
enough.
It was fun to float all unseen, to float all un-
hampered by any corporeal nonsense, up and
down the platform. It was fun to watch the in-
most thoughts of the station-master, of the por-
ters, 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 Corke, 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.
192 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 mo-
ments when I was so sorry for him that I deemed
myself a brute for shadowing him.
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 peo-
ple hold that the qualities connoted by it are
primarily moral -- a kind heart, honourable con-
duct, and so forth. On Clio's mission, I found
honour and kindness tugging me in precisely op-
posite 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.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 193
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 com-
mission 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.
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 lan-
guage 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.
XII
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.
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 ad-
mission.
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. Crad-
dock -- and went in.
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
194
ZULEIKA DOBSON 195
that of the man whom, from the Judas barge this
afternoon, I had seen rowing "stroke" in my
College Eight.
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."
He gnawed his pen, and presently altered the
"hereby leave" to "hereby and herewith leave."
Fool!
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 re-
minded 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. . .'"
196 ZULEIKA DOBSON
"'Terrible as an army with banners,'" supplied
his host -- rather testily, for he was writing a let-
ter. It began "My dear Father. By the time you
receive this I shall have taken a step which. . ."
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' mois-
ture is the scent of Oxford. Even in hottest noon,
one feels that the sun has not dried <i>them</i>. 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 exasper-
ating 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 resi-
dence, 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 tra-
ditions keep astir in his mind whatsoever is gra-
cious; the climate, enfolding and enfeebling him,
ZULEIKA DOBSON 197
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 mo-
bility 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, im-
possible appeals to the god of retrogression, ut-
tered for their own sake and ritual, rather than
with any intent that they should be heard. Ox-
ford, 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 hey-
day. 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. <i>Egomet</i>, I would liefer have
the rest of England subside into the sea than have
Oxford set on a salubrious level. For there is
198 ZULEIKA DOBSON
nothing in England to be matched with what lurks
in the vapours of these meadows, and in the shad-
ows 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.
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.
I floated up into the higher, drier air, that I
might, for once, see the total body of that spirit.
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 in-
ZULEIKA DOBSON 199
finity. 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 un-
assailable 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.
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.
XIII
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 sur-
vival of Noaks. Perhaps the sight of him would
hearten me.
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 Aber-
nethy 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 ex-
ecrable shrine. On either side of her stood a
small vase, one holding some geraniums, the other
200
ZULEIKA DOBSON 201
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.
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 con-
templated death -- and contemplated it in a fear-
less, 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 exasperat-
202 ZULEIKA DOBSON
ing. Yet I hesitated to pass into the room be-
neath, for fear of what I might see there.
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.
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.
And this was he whom I had presumed to pity!
And this was he whom I had half expected to
find dead.
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, simul-
taneously, 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.
He had caught cold. In the hour of his soul's
bitter need, his body had been suborned against
ZULEIKA DOBSON 203
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.
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, breath-
lessly. 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.
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 be-
tween pride and memory, he knew from the out-
set that pride's was but a forlorn hope, and that
204 ZULEIKA DOBSON
memory would be barbarous in her triumph. Not
winning to oblivion, he must hate with a fathom-
less 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.
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 <i>not</i> 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 "beau-
tiful." And yes, beautiful it was.
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.
At first I did not realise what was happening.
I saw the Duke's eyes contract, and the muscles
ZULEIKA DOBSON 205
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.
Now was his will broken. He capitulated. In
rushed shame and horror and hatred, pell-mell, to
ravage him.
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.
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, pant-
ing. 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 un-
sleeping Emperors watched him.
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 con-
206 ZULEIKA DOBSON
quered; 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.
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 unknow-
able? It wasn't, now. To-morrow -- to-day -- he
must die for that accursed fiend of a woman --
the woman with the hyena laugh.
What to do meanwhile? Impossible to sleep.
He felt in his body the strain of his quick se-
quence of spiritual adventures. He was dog-tired.
But his brain was furiously out of hand: no stop-
ping 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, un-
earthly sound, and seemed to come from nowhere,
yet to have a meaning. He feared he was rather
over-wrought.
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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 207
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.
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
Elysées; 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 grav-
itated 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 San-
scrit. 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.
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 un-
locked the dear old album, and dipped his pen
in the ink, a great calm fell on him. The iambics
208 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
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 pre-
sumptive. . . "Vae tibi," he began,
"Vae tibi, vae misero, nisi circumspexeris artes
Femineas, nam nulla salus quin femina possit
Tradere, nulla fides quin" --
"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" bi-
ography. "A melancholy interest attaches to the
following lines, written, it would seem, on the
very eve of". . . He winced. Was it really pos-
sible, and no dream, that he was to die to-morrow
-- to-day?
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,
ZULEIKA DOBSON 209
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 bereave-
ment. Yes, here the passage was, written in a
large round hand:
"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 imperi-
ously 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, wig-
wam, 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
210 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 unques-
tioned 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 Rad-
ical, and wounds the Tory by its implied admission
that noblemen are mortal -- a seemly substitute
will have been found."
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.
"Is there no withstanding him?" To think
that the boy who uttered that cry, and gave back
ZULEIKA DOBSON 211
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 <i>chose</i> 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 <i>must</i>
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!
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 ex-
tinguished it; and the going-out of that tarnished
light made perfect his sense of release.
He threw wide his arms in welcome of the great
adorable day, and of all the great adorable days
that were to be his.
212 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
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 Em-
perors over the way, marvelled greatly.
XIV
THEY had awaited thousands and innumerable
thousands of daybreaks in the Broad, these Em-
perors, 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.
Long after the Duke was in bed and asleep, his
peal of laughter echoed in the ears of the Em-
perors. Why had he laughed?
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."
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
213
214 ZULEIKA DOBSON
them, they ponderously massed themselves, and
presently, as at a given signal, drew nearer to
earth, and halted, an irresistible great army,
awaiting orders.
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.
Out through the railings, and across the road,
prowled a skimpy and dingy cat, trying to look
like a tiger.
It was all very sinister and dismal.
The hours passed. The Broad put forth, one
by one, its signs of waking.
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 tod-
dling 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 215
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.
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 scrub-
bing-brush, and abased herself before the door-
step, and wrought so vehemently there, what filled
her little soul was not the dignity of manual la-
bour. 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 Eng-
land 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
216 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 217
Dobson," as she had for the fraction of an instant
supposed, but the next worst thing.
It has been said that Mélisande 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. Mélisande,
like most Frenchwomen, was strictly plain. But in
expression and port, in her whole <i>tournure</i>, she
had become, as every good maid does, her mis-
tress' replica. The poise of her head, the bold-
ness 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 Café Tourtel, named Pelléas --
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."
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 num-
bers on the front-doors.
218 ZULEIKA DOBSON
Katie stepped back on to the doorstep, lest the
inferiority of her stature should mar the effect of
her disdain.
"Good-day. Is it here that Duke D'Orsay
lives?" asked Mélisande, as nearly accurate as a
Gaul may be in such matters.
"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."
"Then please mount this to him at once," said
Mélisande, holding out the letter. "It is from
Miss Dobson's part. Very express. I wait
response."
"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 be-
fore nine o'clock."
"But to-day you go wake him now -- quick --
is it not?"
"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!"
"I find you droll, but droll, my little one!"
cried Mélisande.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 219
Katie stepped back and shut the door in her
face. "Like a little Empress," the Emperors
commented.
The Frenchwoman threw up her hands and
apostrophised heaven. To this day she believes
that all the <i>bonnes</i> of Oxford are mad, but mad,
and of a madness.
She stared at the door, at the pail and scrub-
bing-brush that had been shut out with her, at the
letter in her hand. She decided that she had bet-
ter drop the letter into the slit in the door and
make report to Miss Dobson.
As the envelope fell through the slit to the
door-mat, Katie made at Mélisande 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.
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
220 ZULEIKA DOBSON
to-day in a strictly artistic mood) prompted her
to mind her own business.
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.
And he, when he saw the letter, allowed him-
self the luxury of leaving it unopened awhile.
Whatever its purport, he knew it could but min-
ister 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.
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 --!
He opened Zuleika's letter. It did not disap-
point him.
"DEAR DUKE, -- <i>Do, do</i> forgive me. I am be-
yond 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 <i>may</i>
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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 221
joke against myself, though I thought it was
rather too bad of you. And then, as a sort of re-
venge, but almost before I knew what I was doing,
I played that <i>idiotic</i> practical joke on you. I have
been <i>miserable</i> ever since. <i>Do</i> 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
<i>very</i> 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."
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 rea-
son 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
222 ZULEIKA DOBSON
whom her insult might have angered without giv-
ing love its death-blow, and one who could be
frightened out of not keeping his word -- this let-
ter would have been capital.
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.
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 ex-
planation of it.
Officially, then, he acquitted her of anything
worse than tomboyishness. But this verdict for
his own convenience implied no mercy to the cul-
prit. The sole point for him was how to ad-
minister her punishment the most poignantly.
Just how should he word his letter?
He rose from his chair, and "Dear Miss Dob-
son -- no, <i>My</i> 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 Mac-
Quern'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. Mean-
ZULEIKA DOBSON 223
while, 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 for-
giveness of you. One thing especially," he mur-
mured, 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 re-
appear". . . Or words to that effect. . . Stay!
why not add to the joy of contriving that effect
the greater joy of watching it? Why send Zu-
leika a letter? He would obey her summons.
He would speed to her side. He snatched up a
hat.
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 in-
vited 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
224 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
Shaking with laughter, the gods leaned over
the thunder-clouds to watch him.
He went forth.
On the well-whitened doorstep he was con-
fronted by a small boy in uniform bearing a tele-
gram.
"Duke of Dorset?" asked the small boy.
Opening the envelope, the Duke saw that the
message, with which was a prepaid form for re-
ply, had been handed in at the Tankerton post-
office. It ran thus:
<i>Deeply regret inform your grace last night
two black owls came and perched on battle-
ments remained there through night hooting
at dawn flew away none knows whither
awaiting instructions Jellings</i>
ZULEIKA DOBSON 225
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:
<i>Jellings Tankerton Hall
Prepare vault for funeral Monday
Dorset</i>
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."
"Thank you, my Lord," said the boy, and went
his way, as happy as a postman.
XV
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.
"Ah," you say, "but 'pluck' is one thing, en-
durance 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?"
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>I</i> writing
this history, or are you?
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
226
ZULEIKA DOBSON 227
a man ridiculous through a woman, but they can-
not 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.
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 him-
self, 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.
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 par-
ticularly large and dark one, might with advan-
tage, he thought, have been placed a little further
228 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 quar-
ters. They rather wished they had not uncaged,
last night, the two black owls. Too late. What
they had done they had done.
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 de-
layed 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.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 229
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 re-
membered his promise to lunch with The Mac-
Quern, 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.
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.
Let it be said at once that in this matter the
230 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 (Tues-
day) afternoon. They had intended that he
should execute his resolve after, or before, the
boat-race of that evening. But an oversight up-
set 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 post-
poned. 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 Mélisande for her mistress, or
that he should run away from her, and they were
genuinely sorry when he, instead of the Master
ZULEIKA DOBSON 231
of Balliol, came to grief over the orange-peel.
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.
"Monsieur le Due has done himself harm --
no?" panted Mélisande. "Here is a letter from
Miss Dobson's part. She say to me 'Give it him
with your own hand.'"
The Duke received the letter and, sitting up-
right, tore it to shreds, thus confirming a sus-
picion which Mélisande had conceived at the
moment when he took to his heels, that all Eng-
lish noblemen are mad, but mad, and of a mad-
ness.
"Nom de Dieu," she cried, wringing her hands,
"what shall I tell to Mademoiselle?"
"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.
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
232 ZULEIKA DOBSON
said. "It was," said the Duke. Mr. Druce con-
curred.
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 fin-
ishing touches to his shin, "I am utterly pur-
posed," 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. <i>Unberufen</i>," he added, lightly tapping Mr.
Druce's counter.
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 es-
caped 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 sym-
pathetic crowd, an ambulance, his darkened bed-
ZULEIKA DOBSON 233
room; local doctor making hopelessly wrong
diagnosis; eminent specialists served up hot by
special train, commending local doctor's treat-
ment, 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.
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.
He felt magically better for the draught. He
handled the little glass lovingly, and eyed the bot-
tle. "Why not two teaspoonfuls every hour?" he
suggested, with an eagerness almost dipsomani-
acal. 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.
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.
Just as he was about to cross the High again,
on his way home, a butcher's cart dashed down
234 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
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 remem-
bered the awful resolve of Oover, and of all
young Oxford.
"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?"
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?"
"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."
Oover blushed. "Duke" he said "that's a
ZULEIKA DOBSON 235
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 <i>you</i> can be turned out,
as per sample, in England? Yet you choose to
destroy yourself. You avail yourself of the Un-
written Law. And you're right, Sir. Love
transcends all."
"But does it? What if I told you I had changed
my mind?"
"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. Lead-
ing us on like that, and then -- Say, Duke! Are
you going to die to-day, or not?"
"As a matter of fact, I am, but --"
"Shake!"
"But --"
Oover wrung the Duke's hand, and was passing
on. "Stay!" he was adjured.
"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.
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
236 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 man-
ner 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 ex-
ample. . . . 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 dis-
honour than death, maybe. But, since die he
must, he must die not belittling or tarnishing the
name of Tanville-Tankerton.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 237
Within these bounds, however, he must put
forth his full might to avert the general catas-
trophe -- 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 won-
dered, as he paced the grand curve between St.
Mary's and Magdalen Bridge, just how was he
to begin?
Down the flight of steps from Queen's came
lounging an average undergraduate.
"Mr. Smith," said the Duke, "a word with
you."
"But my name is not Smith,"said the young man.
"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?"
"Rather," said the undergraduate.
"A meiosis in common use, equivalent to 'Yes,
assuredly,'" murmured the Duke. "And why,"
he then asked, "do you mean to do this?"
"Why? How can you ask? Why are <i>you</i>
going to do it?"
"The Socratic manner is not a game at which
two can play. Please answer my question, to the
best of your ability."
238 ZULEIKA DOBSON
"Well, because I can't live without her. Be-
cause I want to prove my love for her. Be-
cause --"
"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?"
"Rather."
"You are truly happy in that prospect?"
"Yes. Rather."
"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?"
"The big one, I suppose."
"And this because it is better to have more
than to have less of a good thing?"
"Just so."
"Do you consider happiness a good thing or a
bad one?"
"A good one."
"So that a man would rather have more than
less of happiness?"
"Undoubtedly."
"Then does it not seem to you that you would
do well to postpone your suicide indefinitely?"
"But I have just said I can't live without her."
"You have still more recently declared yourself
truly happy."
"Yes, but --"
"Now, be careful, Mr. Smith. Remember, this
ZULEIKA DOBSON 239
is a matter of life and death. Try to do yourself
justice. I have asked you --"
But the undergraduate was walking away, not
without a certain dignity.
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.
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 upstand-
ing young fellows. Isn't it a pity," etc. Mean-
while, the quartet had passed by.
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.
The Duke drifted further down the High, be-
240 ZULEIKA DOBSON
speaking every undergraduate he met, leaving un-
tried 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 in-
come 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.
He found himself in the precincts of Mag-
dalen, 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 omi-
nous restiveness in the congregation -- murmurs,
clenching of hands, dark looks. He saw the pul-
pit 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 manœuvred 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."
ZULEIKA DOBSON 241
Good though the sermon was in style and senti-
ment, 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: every-
where he found his precept checkmated by his
example.
The sight of The MacQuern coming out top-
speed from the Market, with a large but inex-
pensive 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.
"Is <i>she</i> not coming?" gasped the Scot, with
quick suspicion.
"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,
242 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
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 re-
proach. 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.
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 fo-
cussed, 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 mo-
ment 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 243
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 chrono-
logical 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.
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 fore-
runners. "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 justi-
fied 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.
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, wonder-
ing 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
244 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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!"
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 him-
self 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." Vio-
lently, insistently, he rang the bell.
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.
He was glad to be able to face Nellie with a
clear conscience. Her eyes were not less sad now,
ZULEIKA DOBSON 245
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. Yes-
terday, 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 with-
out 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!
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.
246 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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?
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.
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 woebe-
gone 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 mor-
rows. 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 land-
lady's daughter. He wondered what she was like,
and whether she really loved him.
As he threw open the door of his sitting-room,
he was aware of a rustle, a rush, a cry. In an-
other instant, he was aware of Zuleika Dobson
at his feet, at his knees, clasping him to her, sob-
bing, laughing, sobbing.
XVI
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.
Her hat, gauzily basking with a pair of long
white gloves on one of his arm-chairs, proclaimed
that she had come to stay.
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.
He asked: "To what am I indebted for this
visit?"
"Ah, say that again!" she murmured. "Your
voice is music."
He repeated his question.
247
248 ZULEIKA DOBSON
"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."
"Had you not better get up from the floor?"
he said. "The door is open, and any one who
passed might see you."
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!"
Just after she had risen, a figure appeared in
the doorway.
"I beg pardon, your Grace; Mother wants to
know, will you be lunching in?"
"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.
"Will --" she hesitated, "will Miss Dobson
be --"
"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 ac-
cursed visitor.
"You want to be rid of me?" asked Zuleika,
when the girl was gone.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 249
"I have no wish to be rude; but -- since you
force me to say it -- yes."
"Then take me," she cried, throwing back her
arms, "and throw me out of the window."
He smiled coldly.
"You think I don't mean it? You think I would
struggle? Try me." She let herself droop side-
ways, in an attitude limp and portable. "Try
me," she repeated.
"All this is very well conceived, no doubt,"
said he, "and well executed. But it happens to
he otiose."
What do you mean?"
"I mean you may set your mind at rest. I am
not going to back out of my promise."
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!"
The Duke looked searchingly at her. "You
mean that you now wish to release me from my
promise?"
"Release you? As if you were ever bound!
Don't torture me!"
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?"
"With all my soul."
His heart leapt. If she spoke truth, then in-
250 ZULEIKA DOBSON
deed vengeance was his! But "What proof have
I?" he asked her.
"Proof? Have men absolutely <i>no</i> intuition?
If you need proof, produce it. Where are my
ear-rings?"
"Your ear-rings? Why?"
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."
"Black and pink, were they not, when you took
them?"
"Of course. And then I forgot that I had
them. When I undressed, they must have rolled
on to the carpet. Mélisande 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?"
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,
ZULEIKA DOBSON 251
yes. He laid them on the table. "Take them,"
he said.
"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."
He looked down at her over his folded arms,
"I am not going to back out of my promise," he
repeated.
She stopped her ears.
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.
She read it. With a stern joy he watched her
reading it.
Wild-eyed, she looked up from it to him, tried
to speak, and swerved down senseless.
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
252 ZULEIKA DOBSON
-- rivulets now. He dipped and flung, then caught
the horrible analogy and rebounded.
It was at this moment that Zuleika opened her
eyes. "Where am I?" She weakly raised her-
self on one elbow; and the suspension of the
Duke's hatred would have been repealed simul-
taneously 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?"
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!"
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."
"The owls have hooted. The gods have
spoken. This day -- oh, it must not be, John!
Heaven have mercy on me!"
"The unerring owls have hooted. The dis-
piteous 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 253
ought not to keep The MacQuern waiting for
luncheon."
"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.
"You have sent him an excuse?"
"No, I have forgotten him."
"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."
"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."
254 ZULEIKA DOBSON
"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.
"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."
"If I refuse?"
"You will not."
"If I do?"
"I shall send for a policeman."
She looked well at him. "Yes," she slowly
said, "I think you would do that."
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."
"Admirably," he allowed.
"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,
ZULEIKA DOBSON 255
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 un-
lovable unit. So I am all right again. And now,
where is Balliol? Far from here?"
"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."
Yes, he had controlled himself. But this, he
furiously felt, did not make him look the less a
fool. What ought he to have <i>said?</i> He prayed,
as he followed the victorious young woman down-
stairs, that <i>l'esprit de l'escalier</i> might befall him.
Alas, it did not.
"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?"
"No," he answered, "I have preferred not to."
"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?"
"Sure to be. There always is on the last night
of the Eights, you know. Good-bye."
"Good-bye, little John -- small John," she cried
across her shoulder, having the last word.
XVII
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. <i>Esprit de l'escalier</i> -- it was as he went up-
stairs 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."
And stay! -- what if she really <i>had</i> 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! <i>They</i>
would betray her. He darted to the fender, and
256
ZULEIKA DOBSON 257
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 dis-
tinct on the hearth's black-leading.
He turned away. He blamed himself for not
dismissing from his mind the hussy he had dis-
missed 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.
Civet, poppies? Was there not, at his call, a
sweeter perfume, a stronger anodyne? He rang
the bell, almost caressingly.
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.
Also, while the girl laid the table-cloth, it oc-
curred to him how flimsy, after all, was the evi-
dence that she loved him. Suppose she did noth-
ing of the kind! At the Junta, he had foreseen
258 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
"There's a pigeon-pie, your Grace."
"Cold? Then please ask your mother to heat
it in the oven -- quickly. Anything after that?"
"A custard pudding, your Grace."
"Cold? Let this, too, be heated. And bring
up a bottle of champagne, please; and -- and a
bottle of port."
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 suf-
fered, 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.
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 dis-
ZULEIKA DOBSON 259
commode him. He was able to smile at the im-
pertinences 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 bru-
tality in his nature. Poor Zuleika! He was glad
for her that she had contrived to master her in-
fatuation . . . 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 sun-
shine 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?
"Prius insolentem
Serva Briseis niveo colore
Movit Achillem."
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 pre-
260 ZULEIKA DOBSON
tend 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!
He plucked the pink pearl and the black from
where they lay, and rang the bell.
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.
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.
"Stay!" he uttered. "I have something to say
to you." The girl turned to him.
He forced his eyes to meet hers. "I under-
stand," he said in a constrained voice, "that you
ZULEIKA DOBSON 261
regard me with sentiments of something more
than esteem. -- Is this so?"
The girl had stepped quickly back, and her
face was scarlet.
"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?"
She tried to speak, could not. But she nodded
her head.
The Duke, much relieved, came nearer to her.
"What is your name?" he asked gently.
"Katie," she was able to gasp.
"Well, Katie, how long have you loved me?"
"Ever since," she faltered, "ever since you came
to engage the rooms."
"You are not, of course, given to idolising any
tenant of your mother's?"
"No."
"May I boast myself the first possessor of your
heart?"
"Yes." She had become very pale now, and
was trembling painfully.
"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 an-
other way. In loving me, you never supposed me
likely to return your love?"
The girl looked up at him quickly, but at once
her eyelids fluttered down again.
262 ZULEIKA DOBSON
"Come, come!" said the Duke. "My question
is a plain one. Did you ever for an instant sup-
pose, Katie, that I might come to love you?"
"No," she said in a whisper; "I never dared
to hope that."
"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?"
"Oh your Grace!" cried the girl. "Why no!
I never dared --"
"Enough!" he said. "The catechism is ended.
I have something which I should like to give you.
Are your ears pierced?"
"Yes, your Grace."
"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.
"I hope you will wear them always for my
sake," said the Duke.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 263
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 <i>him</i>, though but
yesterday he had loved another. It was all so sud-
den, 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.
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.
"No," said he, misinterpreting the question in
her eyes, "they are real pearls."
"It isn't that," she quavered, "it is -- it is --"
"That they were given to me by Miss Dob-
son?"
"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."
"So do I," said the Duke, in a burst of confi-
dence. "No, I don't," he added hastily. "Please
forget that I said that."
It occurred to Katie that Miss Dobson would
be ill-pleased that the pearls should pass to her.
She picked them up.
"Only -- only --" again her doubts beset her
and she looked from the pearls to the Duke.
"Speak on," he said.
264 ZULEIKA DOBSON
"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 --"
"It is the privilege of nobility to condescend."
"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 sharp-
est 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 inter-
rupted by the ringing of the Duke's bell and a
polite request that it should cease.
"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."
"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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 265
won't be so able to say you've been and thrown
yourself away."
"Thrown myself away? What do you mean?"
"Oh, they'll make all sorts of objections, I
know. They'll all be against me, and --"
"For heaven's sake, explain yourself."
"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."
"Love you? I? Are you mad?"
Each stared at the other, utterly bewildered.
The girl was the first to break the silence. Her
voice came in a whisper. "You've not been play-
ing a joke on me? You meant what you said,
didn't you?"
"What have I said?"
"You said you loved me."
"You must be dreaming."
"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!"
"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 --"
266 ZULEIKA DOBSON
The girl had flung the ear-rings at his face.
She had missed her mark. But this did not ex-
tenuate the outrageous gesture. He pointed to
the door. "Go!" he said.
"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 neigh-
bours. I'll tell them all what you've done, and --"
But defiance melted in the hot shame of humilia-
tion. "Oh, you coward!" she gasped. "You
coward!" She caught her apron to her face and,
swaying against the wall, sobbed piteously.
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.
"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 --
ZULEIKA DOBSON 267
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."
The girl had ceased from crying, and her anger
had spent itself in sobs. She was gazing at him
woebegone but composed.
"Where are you going?"
"You must not ask that," said he. "Enough
that my wings are spread."
"Are you going because of <i>me</i>?"
"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."
"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?"
"No," said the Duke, "the attendance has al-
ways been quite satisfactory. I have never felt
that so keenly as I do to-day."
"Then why are you leaving? Why are you
breaking my heart?"
"Suffice it that I cannot do otherwise. Hence-
forth 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!
268 ZULEIKA DOBSON
here are the ear-rings. If you like, I will put them
in with my own hands."
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 im-
pulse, 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.
XVIII
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 pro-
claimed the relation in which she would stand to
him. Moreover, always she needed a strong filial
sense in return: this was only fair.
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
269
270 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 in-
stinct) than Katie or Mr. Noaks: he was as much
as Clarence.
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!
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.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 271
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.
TO AN UNDERGRADUATE NEEDING
ROOMS IN OXFORD
<i>(A Sonnet in Oxfordshire Dialect)</i>
Zeek w'ere thee will in t'Univürsity,
Lad, thee'll not vind nôr bread nôr bed that
matches
Them as thee'll vind, roight züre, at Mrs.
Batch's . . .
I do not quote the poem <i>in extenso</i>, 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 thoughtful-
ness 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).
272 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
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 exist-
ence is a temptation to us. It is in our fallen na-
ture 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.
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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 273
added to Mrs. Batch's amended total, <i>plus</i> 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 re-
ceipt. 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 quar-
ter before the final races! How quickly the
sands were running out!
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."
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
274 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 cli-
mate! Why did any sane person live in England?
He felt positively suicidal.
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.
Had Zuleika noticed the bottle? he idly won-
dered. Probably not. She would have made
some sprightly reference to it before she went.
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?
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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 275
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!
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 preju-
dice against him, her brusque refusal to "enter-
tain" Lord John Russell's timid nomination of
him for a post in the Government . . . Shelley
276 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 <i>him</i>?
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 pas-
sion, sexual or political, that he cut so annoyingly
incomplete a figure. He was absurd in his poli-
tics, vulgar in his loves. Only in himself, at the
times when he stood haughtily aloof, was he im-
pressive. 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 mo-
ment 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 277
an utter fool at it. Byron had at least had some
fun out of it. What fun had <i>he</i> 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 mat-
ter of common knowledge; whereas Byron's vul-
garity 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. De-
plorable 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 him-
self, doer of that which he had been sent into the
world to do.
278 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
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.
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 swift-
ness was no haste. His procedure had the ease
and inevitability of a natural phenomenon, and
was most like to the coming of a rainbow.
Crimson-doubleted, blue-ribanded, white-trunk-
ZULEIKA DOBSON 279
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, dan-
gles. He bowed his shoulders to assume that
vast mantle of blue velvet, so voluminous, so en-
veloping, 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 cer-
tain 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.
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
280 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 hang-
ing 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 mir-
ror reflected, in due subordination, the history of
ZULEIKA DOBSON 28l
England. There is nothing of that on Mr. Sar-
gent's canvas. Obtruded instead is the astounding
slickness of Mr. Sargent's technique: not the sit-
ter, 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 some-
thing 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.
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.
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.
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.
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!"
282 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 sud-
denly ebbed now. Dead-white her face was be-
tween 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.
To her and to her mother he gave an inclusive
bow as he swept slowly by. Stone was the matron,
and stone the maid.
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 --
<i>o mirum mirorum</i> -- even this one fault was wiped
out.
For, stung by memory of a gibe lately cast at
him by himself, the Duke had paused and, impul-
sively looking back into the hall, had beckoned
Katie to him; and she had come (she knew not
ZULEIKA DOBSON 283
how) to him; and there, standing on the door-
step 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.
XIX
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.
In the quadrangle of the Old Schools he glanced
round at the familiar labels, blue and gold, over
the iron-studded doors, -- Schola Theologiæ et
Antiquæ Philosophiæ; Museum Arundelianum;
Schola Musicæ. 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 pro-
ceeded into Radcliffe Square.
284
ZULEIKA DOBSON 285
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 suf-
fered 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.
"Oh, look!" cried a young lady emerging with
her brother and her aunt through the gate of
Brasenose.
"For heaven's sake, Jessie, try to behave your-
self," 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 <i>not</i> 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 <i>not</i>
286 ZULEIKA DOBSON
losing my temper. Only, don't call me your dear
boy. . . No, we will <i>not</i> walk slowly so as to let
him pass us. . . Jessie, if you look round. . ."
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.
Poor Jessie and Aunt Mabel! They were des-
tined to remember that Harold had been "very
peculiar" all day. They had arrived in the morn-
ing, 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 Divi-
sion" 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?
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.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 287
Aunt Mabel had inwardly calculated that the vel-
vet 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.
"Very well," said Harold. "That settles it.
I go alone." And he was gone like an arrow,
across the High, down Oriel Street.
The two women stood staring ruefully at each
other.
"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 pleas-
ure 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 com-
pany with many hundreds of other lads, myself
included. Therefore, regard his flight from you
as an act not of unkindness, but of tardy com-
punction. The hint you have had from him let
me turn into a counsel. Go back, both of you,
to the place whence you came."
"Thank you <i>so</i> much," said Aunt Mabel, with
what she took to be great presence of mind.
"<i>Most</i> kind of you. We'll do <i>just</i> what you tell
288 ZULEIKA DOBSON
us. Come, Jessie dear," and she hurried her
niece away with her.
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.
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?
It was with a measured tread, as yesterday
with Zuleika, that he entered the avenue of elms.
The throng streamed past from behind him, part-
ing 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 289
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.
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.
As he neared the end of the avenue, the Duke
was conscious of a thinning in the procession on
290 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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. <i>She</i> was coming.
Yes, she had come into the avenue, her magne-
tism 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 ad-
dressing 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.
"May I?" she whispered, smiling round into
his face.
His shoulder-knots just perceptibly rose.
"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?"
The shoulder-knots repeated their answer.
"You needn't listen to me; needn't look at me
ZULEIKA DOBSON 291
-- 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 <i>you</i> been
doing all the afternoon? Oh John, after <i>them</i>,
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?"
"The Judas barge," said the Duke, irritated
by a mistake which but yesterday had rather
charmed him.
As he followed his companion across the plank,
292 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
"Thunder," said Zuleika over her shoulder.
"Evidently," he answered.
Half-way up the stairs to the roof, she looked
round. "Aren't you coming?" she asked.
He shook his head, and pointed to the raft in
front of the barge. She quickly descended.
"Forgive me," he said, "my gesture was not a
summons. The raft is for men."
"What do you want to do on it?"
"To wait there till the races are over."
"But -- what do you mean? Aren't you coming
up on to the roof at all? Yesterday --"
"Oh, I see," said the Duke, unable to repress
a smile. "But to-day I am not dressed for a
flying-leap."
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 <i>sprung</i> 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 293
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.
"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."
"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 --"
"Good-bye," said the Duke.
Again Zuleika raised a warning finger.
"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."
"Yes."
"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."
"Yes." It was true enough.
Courteously he watched her up the stairs.
As she reached the roof, she cried down to him
from the throng, "Then you will wait down there
to take me home afterwards?"
He bowed silently.
The raft was even more crowded than yester-
day, but way was made for him by Judasians past
294 ZULEIKA DOBSON
and present. He took his place in the centre of
the front row.
At his feet flowed the fateful river. From the
various barges the last punt-loads had been fer-
ried 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.
The thunder rumbled around the hills, and now
and again there was a faint glare on the horizon.
Would Judas bump Magdalen? Opinion on
the raft seemed to be divided. But the sanguine
spirits were in a majority.
"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."
"You demean your cloth, sir," the Duke would
have said, "without cheating its disabilities," had
not his mouth been stopped by a loud and pro-
longed thunder-clap.
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?
Strange, thought the Duke, that for him, stand-
ing as he did on the peak of dandyism, on the
ZULEIKA DOBSON 295
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. . .
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, col-
liding, crashing, heeling over in the blackness.
Then, and yet more awful, silence; the little
earth cowering voiceless under the heavens' men-
ace. And, audible in the hush now, a faint sound;
the sound of the runners on the towing-path cheer-
ing the crews forward, forward.
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.
Rain!
His very mantle was aspersed. In another
minute he would stand sodden, inglorious, a mock.
He didn't hesitate.
"Zuleika!" he cried in a loud voice. Then he
took a deep breath, and, burying his face in his
mantle, plunged.
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.
296 ZULEIKA DOBSON
There was a confusion of shouts from the raft,
of screams from the roof. Many youths -- all the
youths there -- cried "Zuleika!" and leapt emu-
lously 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.
Shouts and screams now from the infected
barges on either side. A score of fresh plunges.
"Splendid fellows!"
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.
I am loth to interrupt my narrative at this
rather exciting moment -- a moment when the
quick, tense style, exemplified in the last para-
graph but one, is so very desirable. But in justice
to the gods I must pause to put in a word of ex-
cuse 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 297
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.
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 noth-
ing to forgive her. It was the gods who had
298 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
He gasped the air into his lungs, and he remem-
bered what it was that he needed to know.
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.
An instant later, just where the line of barges
begins, Judas had bumped Magdalen.
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.
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.
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.
From the towing-path -- no more din there now,
but great single cries of "Zuleika!" -- leapt figures
ZULEIKA DOBSON 299
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.
And over all this confusion and concussion of
men and man-made things crashed the vaster dis-
cords 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.
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, grap-
pled 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.
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.
The thunder receded; the rain was less vehe-
ment: the boats and the oars had drifted against
300 ZULEIKA DOBSON
the banks. And always the patient river bore its
awful burden towards Iffley.
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.
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 in-
side; 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 dim-
ness; 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.
XX
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 to-
gether a dozen of the various accounts, and put
them all into the mouth of one person. But cred-
ibility 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.
"Too late," you will say if I offer you a Mes-
senger now. But it was not thus that Mrs. Batch
and Katie greeted Clarence when, lamentably
soaked with rain, that Messenger appeared on
301
302 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 en-
lightened. Our old Greek friend, after a run of
twenty miles, would always reel off a round hun-
dred of graphic verses unimpeachable in scansion.
Clarence was of degenerate mould. He collapsed
on to a chair, and sat there gasping; and his re-
covery was rather delayed than hastened by his
mother, who, in her solicitude, patted him vigor-
ously between the shoulders.
"Let him alone, mother, do," cried Katie,
wringing her hands.
"The Duke, he's drowned himself," presently
gasped the Messenger.
Blank verse, yes, so far as it went; but delivered
without the slightest regard for rhythm, and com-
posed 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 303
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.
Mrs. Batch herself did not faint, but she was
too much overwhelmed to notice that her daugh-
ter had done so.
"No! Mercy on us! Speak, boy, can't you?"
"The river," gasped Clarence. "Threw him-
self in. On purpose. I was on the towing-path.
Saw him do it."
Mrs. Batch gave a low moan.
"Katie's fainted," added the Messenger, not
without a touch of personal pride.
"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.
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.
"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.
"Ah, you may well ask that," said Mrs. Batch,
with more force than reason. "A mother's sup-
304 ZULEIKA DOBSON
port 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 simultane-
ously, 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.
"It isn't true," said Katie. She rose and came
uncertainly towards her brother, half threatening,
half imploring.
"All right," said he, strong in his advantage.
"Then I shan't tell either of you anything more."
Mrs. Batch through her tears called Katie a
bad girl, and Clarence a bad boy.
"Where did you get <i>them</i>?" asked Clarence,
pointing to the ear-rings worn by his sister.
"<i>He</i> gave me them," said Katie. Clarence
curbed the brotherly intention of telling her she
looked "a sight" in them.
She stood staring into vacancy. "He didn't
love <i>her</i>," she murmured. "That was all over.
I'll vow he didn't love <i>her</i>."
"Who d'you mean by her?" asked Clarence.
"That Miss Dobson that's been here."
"What's her other name?"
"Zuleika," Katie enunciated with bitterest ab-
horrence.
"Well, then, he jolly well did love her. That's
the name he called out just before he threw him-
ZULEIKA DOBSON 305
self in. 'Zuleika!' -- like that," added the boy,
with a most infelicitous attempt to reproduce the
Duke's manner.
Katie had shut her eyes, and clenched her
hands.
"He hated her. He told me so," she said.
"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?"
"He kissed me," said Katie, as in a trance.
"No other man shall ever do that."
"He did?" exclaimed Clarence. "And you let
him?"
"You wretched little whipper-snapper!" flashed
Katie.
"Oh, I am, am I?" shouted Clarence, squaring
up to his sister. "Say that again, will you?"
There is no doubt that Katie would have said
it again, had not her mother closed the scene
with a prolonged wail of censure.
"You ought to be thinking of <i>me</i>, 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 Clar-
ence, 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-con-
306 ZULEIKA DOBSON
scious in the good woman. Her grief was per-
fectly 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 in-
woven with tombs and ghosts, with murders and
all manner of grim things. She had not had edu-
cation 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.
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.
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 fam-
ily" would all be here to-morrow, the Duke's own
room must be "put straight" to-night, "I was
ZULEIKA DOBSON 307
always a mother to him, my Lady, in a manner
of speaking". . .
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. . .
The sound of the rain had long ceased. There
was the noise of a gathering wind.
"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. "Hun-
dreds and hundreds of them -- <i>all</i> of them," he
summed up. "And all for the love of <i>her</i>," he
added, as with a sulky salute to Romance.
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.
Intensive Katie recked little of all these other
deaths. "I only know," she said, "that he hated
her."
"Hundreds and hundreds -- <i>all</i>," intoned Mrs.
Batch, then gave a sudden start, as having remem-
bered something. Mr. Noaks! He, too! She
staggered to the door, leaving her actual offspring
308 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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". . .
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 <i>What
is Life without Love?</i> 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.
As she descended the last flight of stairs, her
daughter had just shut the front-door, and was
coming along the hall.
"Poor Mr. Noaks -- he's gone," said the
mother.
"Has he?" said Katie listlessly.
"Yes he has, you heartless girl. What's that
ZULEIKA DOBSON 309
you've got in your hand? Why, if it isn't the
black-leading! And what have you been doing
with that?"
"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.
XXI
AND Zuleika? She had done a wise thing, and
was where it was best that she should be.
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.
"Like a creature native and indued
Unto that element,"
tranquil Zuleika lay.
Gently to and fro her tresses drifted on the
water, or under the water went ever ravelling and
unravelling. Nothing else of her stirred.
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.
Steadily rising from the water was a thick va-
pour 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.
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
310
ZULEIKA DOBSON 311
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 lux-
ury, but a necessary precaution, a sure means of
salvation from chill, she did the more gratefully
bask in it, till Mélisande came back to her, laden
with warmed towels.
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.
Yet, as she went down, her heart somewhat
misgave her. Indeed, by force of the wide ex-
perience 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 satisfac-
tion 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
312 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
Through the open door of the drawing room
she saw him, standing majestic, draped in a volum-
inous black gown. Her instinct was to run away;
but this she conquered. She went straight in, re-
membering not to smile.
"Ah, ah," said the Warden, shaking a fore-
finger at her with old-world playfulness. "And
what have you to say for yourself?"
Relieved, she was also a trifle shocked. Was
it possible that he, a responsible old man, could
take things so lightly?
"Oh, grand-papa," she answered, hanging her
head, "what <i>can</i> I say? It is -- it is too, too,
dreadful."
"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?"
She saw that she had misjudged him. "I have
just come from the river," she said gravely.
"Yes? And did the College make its fourth
bump to-night?"
"I -- I don't know, grand-papa. There was so
much happening. It -- I will tell you all about it
at dinner."
ZULEIKA DOBSON 313
"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."
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.
"But grand-papa-" she began.
"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?"
"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.
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
314 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 heart-
ened them. After all, he was the responsible
person. He was father of the flock that had
strayed, and grandfather of the beautiful Miss
Zuleika.
Like her, they remembered not to smile in
greeting him.
"Good evening, gentlemen," he said. "The
storm seems to have passed."
There was a murmur of "Yes, Warden."
"And how did our boat acquit itself?"
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.
"Well, really, Warden," he said, "we -- we
hardly know,"* and he ended with what can only
*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.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 315
be described as a giggle. He fell low in the
esteem of his fellows.
Thinking of that past Sub-Warden whose fame
was linked with the sun-dial, the Warden eyed
this one keenly.
"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.
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.
It became clear to the Warden that some organ-
ised prank or protest was afoot. Dignity required
that he should take no heed whatsoever. Look-
ing neither to the right nor to the left, stately he
approached the dais, his Fellows to heel.
In Judas, as in other Colleges, grace before
meat is read by the Senior Scholar. The Judas
grace (composed, they say, by Christopher Whit-
rid 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.
316 ZULEIKA DOBSON
"The Junior Fellow," he said, "will read
grace."
Blushing to the roots of his hair, and with crab-
like 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 mathemati-
cian. 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 ex-
cruciating 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.
In every breast around the high table, behind
every shirtfront or black silk waistcoat, glowed
the recognition of a new birth. Suddenly, un-
heralded, a thing of highest destiny had fallen
into their academic midst. The stock of Common
Room talk had to-night been re-inforced and en-
riched 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 genera-
ZULEIKA DOBSON 317
tions 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.
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, watch-
ing the tradition of Pedby's grace as it rolled
brighter and ever brighter down to eternity.
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-War-
den 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.
All adown those empty other tables gleamed
the undisturbed cutlery, and the flowers in the pots
innocently bloomed. And all adown either wall,
318 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
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. . .
ZULEIKA DOBSON 319
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 unro-
mantic 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 tire-
some 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 still-
ness. No lectures to deliver to-morrow; no "es-
says" to hear and criticise; time for the unvexed
pursuit of pure learning. . .
As the Fellows passed out on their way to Com-
mon 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 be-
hind the clouds. And now, a solemn and plangent
token of Oxford's perpetuity, the first stroke of
Great Tom sounded.
XXII
STROKE by stroke, the great familiar monody of
that incomparable curfew rose and fell in the
stillness.
Nothing of Oxford lingers more surely than it
in the memory of Oxford men; and to one revisit-
ing these groves nothing is more eloquent of that
scrupulous historic economy whereby his own par-
ticular 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.
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 gather-
ing 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.
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
320
ZULEIKA DOBSON 321
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.
And yonder, "sitting upon the river-bank o'er-
grown," 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.
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 be-
come 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 ejacula-
tion, wells of surmise, downpours of remembered
premonitions.
With his elbows on the kitchen table, and his
knuckles to his brow, sat Clarence, intent on be-
lated "prep." Even an eye-witness of disaster
may pall if he repeat his story too often. Clar-
ence had noted in the last recital that he was
322 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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.
Katie had sought refuge in the need for "put-
ting 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 win-
dow, she moved to and fro about the Duke's
room, a wan and listless figure, casting queerest
shadows on the ceiling. There were other can-
dles 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 Zu-
leika, 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 323
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 be-
haviour. 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 un-
did 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.
Presently, after a last look round, she went
up the creaking stairs, to do Mr. Noaks' room.
She found on the table that screed which her
mother had recited so often this evening. She
put it in the waste-paper basket.
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.
The next disorder that met her eye was one
that gave her pause -- seemed, indeed, to transfix
her.
324 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 annoy-
ance; 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, in-
stead 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, any-
where. Even so now, it was at a glance that she
recognised the toes of them protruding from be-
neath 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."
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.
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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 325
emerge, a full yard too high. With a sharp drop
she focussed him.
"By what right," he asked, "do you come pry-
ing about my room?"
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.
"This," he said, "is the first time I have caught
you. Let it be the last."
Was this the little man she had so long de-
spised, 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 Dob-
son. 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.
"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."
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
326 ZULEIKA DOBSON
ago, still saw himself as he had seen himself dur-
ing the past hours: that is, as an arrant little
coward -- one who by his fear to die had put him-
self 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.
Thus Katie's behaviour was as much an embar-
rassment as a relief; and he asked her in what
way he was great and wonderful.
"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."
"And that is why you hid yourself just now?"
"Yes," he gladly said. "I hid myself for the
same reason," he added, "when I heard your
mother's footstep."
"But," she faltered, with a sudden doubt,
ZULEIKA DOBSON 327
"that bit of writing which Mother found on the
table --"
"That? Oh, that was only a general reflection,
copied out of a book."
"Oh, won't poor Mother be glad when she
knows!"
"I don't want her to know," said Noaks, with
a return of nervousness. "You mustn't tell any
one. I -- the fact is --"
"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."
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.
He started back, dazed. What manner of man,
he wondered, was he? A coward, piling pro-
fligacy on poltroonery? Or a hero, claiming ex-
emption 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.
"Wear it," he said.
328 ZULEIKA DOBSON
"You mean --?" She leapt to her feet.
"That we are engaged. I hope you don't think
we have any choice?"
She clapped her hands, like the child she was,
and adjusted the ring.
"It is very pretty," she said.
"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."
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.
"Recently," said her lover, "I meditated leav-
ing 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 <i>shall</i>" he said, with a fierce look
that entranced her -- "I shall have a very good
chance of an assistant-mastership in a good pri-
vate school. In eighteen years, if I am careful --
and, with you waiting for me, I <i>shall</i> 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 mad-
ZULEIKA DOBSON 329
ness in the Noakses. I say 'Prudence to the
winds!'"
"Ah, don't say that!" exclaimed Katie, laying
a hand on his sleeve.
"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 school-
master's bride should -- Good heavens! Those
ear-rings! Where did you get <i>them</i>?"
"They were given to me to-day," Katie fal-
tered. "The Duke gave me them."
"Indeed?"
"Please, sir, he gave me them as a memento."
"And that memento shall immediately be
handed over to his executors."
"Yes, sir."
"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 repu-
diating the gift. What more despicable than
jealousy of a man deceased? What sillier than to
330 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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?
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!"
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?"
"You want to read <i>now -- to-night?</i>"
"I must put in a good two hours. Where are
the books that were on my table?"
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.
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.
The Emperors, gazing up, saw her happy, and
wondered; saw Noaks' ring on her finger, and
would fain have shaken their grey heads.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 331
Presently she was aware of a protrusion from
the window beneath hers. The head of her be-
loved! Fondly she watched it, wished she could
reach down to stroke it. She loved him for hav-
ing, 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.
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 con-
science. 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 fea-
tures, 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
332 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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! her-
self! This was an incredible, an indubitable, an
all-magical fact for the little fellow.
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.
She -- yes, it was she herself -- came gliding to
the middle of the road, gazing up at him.
"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.
"Or," she quavered, "are you a phantom sent
to mock me? Speak!"
"Good evening," he said huskily.
"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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 333
Warden's grand-daughter. I am faint and foot-
sore. I have ranged this desert city in search
of -- of <i>you</i>. 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, gasp-
ing.
"Listen, Miss Dobson," he stammered, writh-
ing under what he took to be the lash of her irony.
"Give me time to explain. You see me here --"
"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 <i>you</i> 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
334 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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."
"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 --"
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.
"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 <i>him</i>,"
she said, pointing to the livid face twisted pain-
fully 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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 335
wish you'd found him as I did -- skulking behind
the curtain. Oh, you're welcome to him."
"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 --"
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."
"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."
"What's that?" gasped Zuleika.
"Didn't he tell you? He told me. And I war-
rant he told you, too."
"He died for love of me: d'you hear?"
"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 <i>me</i>," 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."
"Ah, that he did!" said a voice level with
Zuleika. It was the voice of Mrs. Batch, who
336 ZULEIKA DOBSON
a few moments ago had opened the door for her
departing guests.
"Ah, that he did!" echoed the guests.
"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>I</i> love you. Think what you will of me. I --"
"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 gar-
goyle 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 felici-
tate the river-god and his nymphs that their water
was saved to-day by your cowardice from the con-
tamination of your plunge."
"Shame on you, Mr. Noaks," said Mrs. Batch,
"making believe you were dead --"
"Shame!" screamed Clarence, who had darted
out into the fray.
"I found him hiding behind the curtain,"
chimed in Katie.
"And I a mother to him!" said Mrs. Batch,
shaking her fist. "'What is life without love?'
indeed! Oh, the cowardly, underhand --"
"Wretch," prompted her cronies.
"Let's kick him out of the house!" suggested
Clarence, dancing for joy.
Zuleika, smiling brilliantly down at the boy,
said "Just you run up and fight him!"
ZULEIKA DOBSON 337
"Right you are," he answered, with a look of
knightly devotion, and darted back into the house.
"No escape!" she cried up to Noaks. "You've
got to fight him now. He and you are just about
evenly matched, I fancy."
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.
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.
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 undergradu-
ates lay dead; and fleet-footed Zuleika, with her
fingers still pressed to her ears, had taken full toll
now.
XXIII
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.
She was in that grim ravine by which you ap-
proach 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.
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 hear-
ing, 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 out-
rage 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 <i>that?</i> How could she have
338
ZULEIKA DOBSON 339
guessed that he, who had not dared seemly death
for her in the gentle river, would dare --
<i>that?</i>
She shuddered the more as she now remem-
bered 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.
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 apoca-
lyptic 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
340 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 her-
self out of the hateful little city to-night. She
even wished herself dead.
She deserved to suffer, you say? Maybe. I
merely state that she did suffer.
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.
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.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 341
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 unfor-
tunate misunderstanding -- be fulfilled?
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 Mar-
cella for not making at the outset. It was as she
stood on the Warden's door-step that she decided
to take the veil.
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-mor-
row, and that she must pack my things to-night."
"Very well, Miss," said the butler. "The
Warden," he added, "is in the study, Miss, and
was asking for you."
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.
It was he who seemed a trifle nervous. In his
342 ZULEIKA DOBSON
"Well, did you come and peep down from the
gallery?" there was a distinct tremour.
Throwing aside her cloak, she went quickly to
him, and laid a hand on the lapel of his coat.
"Poor grand-papa!" she said.
"Nonsense, my dear child," he replied, disen-
gaging himself. "I didn't give it a thought. If
the young men chose to be so silly as to stay away,
I -- I --"
"Grand-papa, haven't you been told <i>yet</i>?"
"Told? I am a Gallio for such follies. I
didn't inquire."
"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 <i>guard</i>. 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 <i>has</i> been stolen, grand-papa?"
"You speak in riddles, Zuleika."
"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 un-
done. The reason why there were no under-
graduates in your Hall to-night is that they were
all dead."
ZULEIKA DOBSON 343
"Dead?" he gasped. "Dead? It is disgrace-
ful that I was not told. What did they die of?"
"Of me."
"Of you?"
"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."
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 Col-
lege. 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 decrepi-
tude. It is because you have wrought the down-
fall of Judas that I am about to lay my undying
curse on you."
"You mustn't do that!" she cried. "It would
be a sort of sacrilege. I am going to be a nun.
344 ZULEIKA DOBSON
Besides, why should you? I can quite well under-
stand your feeling for Judas. But how is Judas
more disgraced than any other College? If it
were only the Judas undergraduates who
had --"
"There were others?" cried the Warden. "How
many?"
"All. All the boys from all the Colleges."
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."
"That will depend on the rules of the convent."
"Ah, I forgot that you were going into a con-
vent. Anglican, I hope?"
Anglican, she supposed.
"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?"
"Yes. I want to be out of the world. I want
to do no more harm."
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
ZULEIKA DOBSON 345
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 con-
sider. Would you grace the recesses of the
Church?"
"I could but try," said Zuleika.
"'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 revultion, I knew that my
place was in the world. I stayed there."
"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?"
Her smile seemed to nettle the Warden. "I
was greatly admired," he said. "Greatly," he
repeated.
"And you liked that, grand-papa?"
"Yes, my dear. Yes, I am afraid I did. But I
never encouraged it."
"Your own heart was never touched?"
"Never, until I met Laura Frith."
"Who was she?"
"She was my future wife."
"And how was it you singled her out from the
rest? Was she very beautiful?"
"No. It cannot be said that she was beautiful.
346 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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."
"She did not love you?" asked Zuleika, who
had seated herself on the floor at her grand-
father's feet.
I concluded that she did not. It interested
me very greatly. It fired me."
"Was she incapable of love?"
"No, it was notorious in her circle that she had
loved often, but loved in vain."
"Why did she marry you?"
"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."
"Yet you were very happy with her?"
"While she lived, I was ideally happy."
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.
"Grand-papa dear" -- but there were tears in
her voice, too.
ZULEIKA DOBSON 347
"My child, you don't understand. If I had
needed pity --"
"I do understand -- so well. I wasn't pitying
you, dear, I was envying you a little."
"Me? -- an old man with only the remembrance
of happiness?"
"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 won-
derfully alike! I had always thought of myself
as a creature utterly apart."
"Ah, that is how all young people think of
themselves. It wears off. Tell me about this
wonderful resemblance of ours."
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.
"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
348 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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."
"Oh grand-papa, do you really mean that?"
she cried eagerly.
"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 thous-
ands. 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.
"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 at-
tractiveness that <i>I</i> have. <i>I</i> am irresistible."
"A daring statement, my child -- very hard to
prove."
"Hasn't it been proved up to the hilt to-day?"
"To-day? . . Ah, and so they did really all
drown themselves for you? . . Dear, dear! . .
The Duke -- he, too?"
"He set the example."
"No! You don't say so! He was a greatly-
gifted young man -- a true ornament to the Col-
ZULEIKA DOBSON 349
lege. 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?"
"Quite," said Zuleika, marvelling at the lie --
or fib, rather: he had been <i>going</i> to die for her.
But why not have told the truth? Was it possible,
she wondered, that her wretched vanity had sur-
vived 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?
"Well, my dear," said the Warden, "I confess
that I am amazed -- astounded." Again he ad-
justed his glasses, and looked at her.
She found herself moving slowly around the
study, with the gait of a <i>mannequin</i> 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.
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.
"Well? and what is there so -- so ridiculous
350 ZULEIKA DOBSON
in" -- but the rest was lost in trill after trill of
laughter; and these were then lost in sobs.
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 --"
"I do," moaned Zuleika.
"Then perhaps --"
"But I don't," she wailed.
"Of course, you don't, my dear."
"Why, of course?"
"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 --"
"I do believe you're a little proud of me."
"Heaven forgive me, I believe I am. A grand-
father's heart -- But there, good night, my
dear. Let me light your candle."
She took her cloak, and followed him out to
the hall table. There she mentioned that she
was going away early to-morrow.
"To the convent?" he slyly asked.
"Ah, don't tease me, grand-papa."
"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.
"No," she echoed, "not in term-time."
XXIV
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 heart-
ening transition. She stood awhile on the thres-
hold, watching Mélisande 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 some-
thing better. And yet -- well, at least, good-bye
to Oxford!
She envied Mélisande, so nimbly and cheerfully
laborious till the day should come when her be-
351
352 ZULEIKA DOBSON
trothed had saved enough to start a little café
of his own and make her his bride and <i>dame de
comptoir</i>. Oh, to have a purpose, a prospect, a
stake in the world, as this faithful soul had!
"Can I help you at all, Mélisande?" she asked,
picking her way across the strewn floor.
Mélisande, patting down a pile of chiffon,
seemed to be amused at such a notion. "Made-
moiselle has her own art. Do I mix myself in
that?" she cried, waving one hand towards the
great malachite casket.
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
<i>knew</i> 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 mag-
netism 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 en-
gagement at the Folies Bergères! What if -- no,
she must not think of that! But the thought in-
sisted. What if she essayed for Paris that which
again and again she had meant to graft on to her
repertory -- the Provoking Thimble?
ZULEIKA DOBSON 353
She flushed at the possibility. What if her
whole present repertory were but a passing phase
in her art -- a mere beginning -- an earlier man-
ner? 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.
For her, when she fled the Broad, Noaks' win-
dow 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 --
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.
"Mélisande!"
"Mademoiselle?"
354 ZULEIKA DOBSON
"When we go to Paris, would you like to make
a little present to your fiancé?"
"Je voudrais bien, mademoiselle."
"Then you shall give him these," said Zuleika,
holding out the two studs.
"Mais jamais de la vie! Chez Tourtel tout
le monde le dirait millionaire. Un garçon de café
qui porte au plastron des perles pareilles --
merci!"
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."
"Mais --" The protest died on Mélisande'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 sec, vermouths cassis . . .
"Mademoiselle is too amiable," she said, tak-
ing the pearls.
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." <i>Her</i> ear-rings!
"He kissed me in the public street. He loved
me". . . Well, he had called out "Zuleika!"
ZULEIKA DOBSON 355
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 <i>her</i>. 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 Mac-
Quern'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. . .
"Mélisande, that crackling of tissue paper is
driving me mad! Do leave off! Can't you see
that I am waiting to be undressed?"
356 ZULEIKA DOBSON
The maid hastened to her side, and with quick
light fingers began to undress her. "Made-
moiselle va bien dormir -- ca se voit," she purred.
"I shan't," said Zuleika.
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, Mélisande
brushed her hair.
After all, it didn't so much matter what the
world thought. Let the world whisper and insinu-
ate 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 them-
selves alone. It had sufficed them. Should it
not suffice her? It did, oh it did. She was a
wretch to have repined.
At a gesture from her, Mélisande brought to a
close the rhythmical ministrations, and -- using
no tissue paper this time -- did what was yet to
be done among the trunks.
"<i>We</i> know, you and I," Zuleika whispered to
the adorable creature in the mirror; and the
adorable creature gave back her nod and smile.
<i>They</i> knew, these two.
Yet, in their happiness, rose and floated a
shadow between them. It was the ghost of that
ZULEIKA DOBSON 357
one man who -- <i>they</i> knew -- had died irrelevantly,
with a cold heart.
Came also the horrid little ghost of one who
had died late and unseemly.
And now, thick and fast, swept a whole multi-
tude 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.
No more? Was it not enough? The lady in
the mirror gazed at the lady in the room, re-
proachfully at first, then -- for were they not sis-
ters? -- relentingly, then pityingly. Each of the
two covered her face with her hands.
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 . . .
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.
We always intervene between Bradshaw and
any one whom we see consulting him. "Made-
moiselle will permit me to find that which she
seeks?" asked Mélisande.
"Be quiet," said Zuleika. We always repulse,
at first, any one who intervenes between us and
Bradshaw.
358 ZULEIKA DOBSON
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 one <i>does</i> get
there."
We never have any confidence in the intervener.
Nor is the intervener, when it comes to the point,
sanguine. With mistrust mounting to exasper-
ation Zuleika sat watching the faint and frantic
researches of her maid.
"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."
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.
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Zuleika Dobson, by Max Beerbohm*