The breakfast-things were not yet cleared away. A plate streaked 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 become,
in the clarity of next morning, a spruce procession for him to lead.
Brief the vague horror of his awakening; memory sweeps back to him,
and he sees nothing dreadful after all. “Why not?” is the sun’s bright
message to him, and “Why not indeed?” his answer. After hours of
agony and doubt prolonged to cock-crow, sleep had stolen to the Duke’s
bed-side. He awoke late, with a heavy sense of disaster; but lo! when he
remembered, everything took on a new aspect. He was in love. “Why not?”
He mocked himself for the morbid vigil he had spent in probing and
vainly binding the wounds of his false pride. The old life was done
with. He laughed as he stepped into his bath. Why should the disseizin
of his soul have seemed shameful to him? He had had no soul till it
passed out of his keeping. His body thrilled to the cold water, his soul
as to a new sacrament. He was in love, and that was all he wished for...
There, on the dressing-table, lay the two studs, visible symbols of his
love. Dear to him, now, the colours of them! He took them in his hand,
one by one, fondling them. He wished he could wear them in the day-time;
but this, of course, was impossible. His toilet finished, he dropped
them into the left pocket of his waistcoat.
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 had been commanded to Windsor for the ceremony.
Yesterday the Duke had looked keenly forward to his excursion. It was
only in those too rarely required robes that he had the sense of being
fully dressed. But to-day not a thought had he of them.
Some clock clove with silver the stillness of the morning. Ere came the
second stroke, another and nearer clock was striking. And now there were
others chiming in. The air was confused with the sweet babel of its many
spires, some of them booming deep, measured sequences, some tinkling
impatiently and outwitting others which had begun before them. And when
this anthem of jealous antiphonies and uneven rhythms had dwindled quite
away and fainted in one last solitary note of silver, there started
somewhere another sequence; and this, almost at its last stroke, was
interrupted by yet another, which went on to tell the hour of noon in
its own way, quite slowly and significantly, as though none knew it.
And now Oxford was astir with footsteps and laughter--the laughter and
quick footsteps of youths released from lecture-rooms. The Duke shifted
from the window. Somehow, he did not care to be observed, though it was
usually at this hour that he showed himself for the setting of some
new fashion in costume. Many an undergraduate, looking up, missed the
picture in the window-frame.
The Duke paced to and fro, smiling ecstatically. He took the two studs
from his pocket and gazed at them. He looked in the glass, as one
seeking the sympathy of a familiar. For the first time in his life,
he turned impatiently aside. It was a new kind of sympathy he needed
to-day.
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 College, reading for the same
School; aye! and though the one had inherited half a score of noble and
castellated roofs, whose mere repairs cost him annually thousands and
thousands of pounds, and the other’s people had but one little mean
square of lead, from which the fireworks of the Crystal Palace were
clearly visible every Thursday evening, in Oxford one roof sheltered
both of them. Furthermore, there was even some measure of intimacy
between them. It was the Duke’s whim to condescend further in the
direction of Noaks than in any other. He saw in Noaks his own foil and
antithesis, and made a point of walking up the High with him at least
once in every term. Noaks, for his part, regarded the Duke with feelings
mingled of idolatry and disapproval. The Duke’s First in Mods oppressed
him (who, by dint of dogged industry, had scraped a Second) more than
all the other differences between them. But the dullard’s envy of
brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to
a bad end. Noaks may have regarded the Duke as a rather pathetic figure,
on the whole.
“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 another year. A few minutes can’t make a difference 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.”
“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 YOU. You’re too pleased with yourself,” growled
Noaks.
“Spur your imagination, Noaks,” said his friend. “I AM 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 unexpected answer.
“When did you meet her?” asked the Duke. “Where? What did you say to
her?”
“Yesterday. In the Corn. I didn’t SAY anything 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 carriage.”
Zuleika--Noaks! The Duke started, as at an affront, and glared. Next
moment, he saw the absurdity of the situation. He relapsed into his
chair, smiling. “She’s the Warden’s niece,” he said. “I dined at the
Warden’s last night.”
Noaks sat still, peering across at the Duke. For the first time in his
life, he was resentful of the Duke’s great elegance and average stature,
his high lineage and incomputable wealth. Hitherto, these things
had been too remote for envy. But now, suddenly, they seemed near to
him--nearer and more overpowering than the First in Mods had ever been.
“And of course she’s in love with you?” he snarled.
Really, this was for the Duke a new issue. So salient was his own
passion that he had not had time to wonder whether it were returned.
Zuleika’s behaviour during dinner... But that was how so many young
women had behaved. It was no sign of disinterested love. It might mean
merely... Yet no! Surely, looking into her eyes, he had seen there a
radiance finer than could have been lit by common ambition. Love, none
other, must have lit in those purple depths the torches whose clear
flames had leapt out to him. She loved him. She, the beautiful, the
wonderful, had not tried to conceal her love for him. She had shown him
all--had shown all, poor darling! only to be snubbed by a prig, driven
away by a boor, fled from by a fool. To the nethermost corner of his
soul, he cursed himself for what he had done, and for all he had left
undone. He would go to her on his knees. He would implore her to impose
on him insufferable penances. There was no penance, how bittersweet
soever, could make him a little worthy of her.
“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, vacantly. 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 landlady’s daughter was clearing away the breakfast-things.
Zuleika glanced comprehensively at the room, and the Duke gazed at the
hearthrug. The landlady’s daughter clattered out with her freight. They
were alone.
“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
spirituality most high, most simple. The Duke wondered where lay the
change in her. He could not understand. Suddenly she turned to him, and
he understood. No longer the black pearl and the pink, but two white
pearls!... He thrilled to his heart’s core.
“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 disappointment on Zuleika’s face to the coldness
of his tone. He would dispel that shade. He would avow himself. He would
leave her no longer in this false position. So soon as he had told them
about the meal, he would proclaim his passion.
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 well what happened. Though you,
too, cannot have forgotten, I won’t spare myself the recital. You were
my hostess, and I ignored you. Magnanimous, you paid me the prettiest
compliment woman ever paid to man, and I insulted you. I left the house
in order that I might not see you again. To the doorsteps down which
he should have kicked me, your grandfather followed me with words of
kindliest courtesy. If he had sped me with a kick so skilful that my
skull had been shattered on the kerb, neither would he have outstepped
those bounds set to the conduct of English gentlemen, nor would you have
garnered more than a trifle on account of your proper reckoning. I do
not say that you are the first person whom I have wantonly injured. But
it is a fact that I, in whom pride has ever been the topmost quality,
have never expressed sorrow to any one for anything. Thus, I might urge
that my present abjectness must be intolerably painful to me, and should
incline you to forgive. But such an argument were specious merely.
I will be quite frank with you. I will confess to you that, in this
humbling of myself before you, I take a pleasure as passionate as it is
strange. A confusion of feelings? Yet you, with a woman’s instinct, will
have already caught the clue to it. It needs no mirror to assure me
that the clue is here for you, in my eyes. It needs no dictionary of
quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul. And I
know that from two open windows my soul has been leaning and signalling
to you, in a code far more definitive and swifter than words of mine,
that I love you.”
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 emboldened me, compelled me. You DO love me. I
know it. And, knowing it, I do but ask you to give yourself to me, to
be my wife. Why should you cry? Why should you shrink from me? Dear,
if there were anything... any secret... if you had ever loved and been
deceived, do you think I should honour you the less deeply, should not
cherish you the more tenderly? Enough for me, that you are mine. Do you
think I should ever reproach you for anything that may have--”
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.
“LOVE you?” she retorted. “YOU?”
“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 suddenly. She groped for her
handkerchief, angrily dried her eyes, and straightened and smoothed
herself.
“Now I’m going,” she said.
“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 moment 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.”
“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_ am at all to be
pitied. No! you are blind with selfishness. You love me--I don’t love
you: that is all you can realise. Probably you think you are the first
man who has ever fallen on such a plight.”
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 blushed. “Yet,” she said more gently, “be sure they would all be
not a little envious of YOU! Not one of them ever touched the surface of
my heart. You stirred my heart to its very depths. Yes, you made me love
you madly. The pearls told you no lie. You were my idol--the one thing
in the wide world to me. You were so different from any man I had ever
seen except in dreams. You did not make a fool of yourself. I admired
you. I respected you. I was all afire with adoration of you. And now,”
she passed her hand across her eyes, “now it is all over. The idol has
come sliding down its pedestal to fawn and grovel with all the other
infatuates in the dust about my feet.”
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 indeed. In a way, I suppose, I’m even pleased that
YOU admire me. But oh, what a little miserable pleasure that is in
comparison with the rapture I have forfeited! I had never known the
rapture of being in love. I had longed for it, but I had never guessed
how wonderfully wonderful it was. It came to me. I shuddered and wavered
like a fountain in the wind. I was more helpless and flew lightlier
than a shred of thistledown among the stars. All night long, I could not
sleep for love of you; nor had I any desire of sleep, save that it might
take me to you in a dream. I remember nothing that happened to me this
morning before I found myself at your door.”
“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 WITH you.”
“To force yourself on me.”
“Yes.”
“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 summer, and then, when you had tired
of me, would cast me aside, forget me, break my heart. I desired nothing
better than that. That is what I must have been vaguely hoping for. But
I had no definite scheme. I wanted to be with you and I came to you. It
seems years ago, now! How my heart beat as I waited on the doorstep! ‘Is
his Grace at home?’ ‘I don’t know. I’ll inquire. What name shall I say?’
I saw in the girl’s eyes that she, too, loved you. Have YOU seen that?”
“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 SHALL love me again,” he cried. “I will force you to. You said just
now that you had ceased to love me because I was just like other men. I
am not. My heart is no tablet of mere wax, from which an instant’s heat
can dissolve whatever impress it may bear, leaving it blank and soft
for another impress, and another, and another. My heart is a bright hard
gem, proof against any die. Came Cupid, with one of his arrow-points
for graver, and what he cut on the gem’s surface never can be effaced.
There, deeply and forever, your image is intagliated. No years, nor
fires, nor cataclysm of total Nature, can efface from that great gem
your image.”
“My dear Duke,” said Zuleika, “don’t be so silly. Look at the matter
sensibly. I know that lovers don’t try to regulate their emotions
according to logic; but they do, nevertheless, unconsciously conform
with some sort of logical system. I left off loving you when I found
that you loved me. There is the premiss. Very well! Is it likely that I
shall begin to love you again because you can’t leave off loving me?”
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 classicism of his face had
been routed by the new romantic movement which had swept over his soul.
He looked two or three months older than when first I showed him to my
reader.
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 rejected. But that rejection,” he
continued, striking the table, “is no stopper to my suit. It does but
drive me to the use of arguments. My pride shrinks from them. Love,
however, is greater than pride; and I, John, Albert, Edward, Claude,
Orde, Angus, Tankerton,* Tanville-Tankerton,** fourteenth Duke of
Dorset, Marquis of Dorset, Earl of Grove, Earl of Chastermaine, Viscount
Brewsby, Baron Grove, Baron Petstrap, and Baron Wolock, in the Peerage
of England, offer you my hand. Do not interrupt me. Do not toss your
head. Consider well what I am saying. Weigh the advantages you would
gain by acceptance of my hand. Indeed, they are manifold and tremendous.
They are also obvious: do not shut your eyes to them. You, Miss Dobson,
what are you? A conjurer, and a vagrant; without means, save such as you
can earn by the sleight of your hand; without position; without a
home; all unguarded but by your own self-respect. That you follow an
honourable calling, I do not for one moment deny. I do, however, ask
you to consider how great are its perils and hardships, its fatigues and
inconveniences. From all these evils I offer you instant refuge. I offer
you, Miss Dobson, a refuge more glorious and more augustly gilded
than you, in your airiest flights of fancy, can ever have hoped for or
imagined. I own about 340,000 acres. My town-residence is in St. James’s
Square. Tankerton, of which you may have seen photographs, is the chief
of my country-seats. It is a Tudor house, set on the ridge of a valley.
The valley, its park, is halved by a stream so narrow that the deer leap
across. The gardens are estraded upon the slope. Round the house runs
a wide paven terrace. There are always two or three peacocks trailing
their sheathed feathers along the balustrade, and stepping how stiffly!
as though they had just been unharnessed from Juno’s chariot. Two
flights of shallow steps lead down to the flowers and fountains. Oh,
the gardens are wonderful. There is a Jacobean garden of white roses.
Between the ends of two pleached alleys, under a dome of branches, is
a little lake, with a Triton of black marble, and with water-lilies.
Hither and thither under the archipelago of water-lilies, dart
gold-fish--tongues of flame in the dark water. There is also a long
strait alley of clipped yew. It ends in an alcove for a pagoda
of painted porcelain which the Prince Regent--peace be to his
ashes!--presented to my great-grandfather. There are many twisting
paths, and sudden aspects, and devious, fantastic arbours. Are you fond
of horses? In my stables of pine-wood and plated-silver seventy are
installed. Not all of them together could vie in power with one of the
meanest of my motor-cars.”
*Pronounced as Tacton.
**Pronounced as Tavvle-Tacton.
“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 farming? At Tankerton there is a model farm which
would at any rate amuse you, with its heifers and hens and pigs that are
like so many big new toys. There is a tiny dairy, which is called ‘Her
Grace’s.’ You could make, therein, real butter with your own hands, and
round it into little pats, and press every pat with a different device.
The boudoir that would be yours is a blue room. Four Watteaus hang in
it. In the dining-hall hang portraits of my forefathers--in petto,
your forefathers-in-law--by many masters. Are you fond of peasants?
My tenantry are delightful creatures, and there is not one of them who
remembers the bringing of the news of the Battle of Waterloo. When a
new Duchess is brought to Tankerton, the oldest elm in the park must
be felled. That is one of many strange old customs. As she is driven
through the village, the children of the tenantry must strew the road
with daisies. The bridal chamber must be lighted with as many candles as
years have elapsed since the creation of the Dukedom. If you came into
it, there would be”--and the youth, closing his eyes, made a rapid
calculation--“exactly three hundred and eighty-eight candles. On the eve
of the death of a Duke of Dorset, two black owls come and perch on the
battlements. They remain there through the night, hooting. At dawn
they fly away, none knows whither. On the eve of the death of any other
Tanville-Tankerton, comes (no matter what be the time of year) a cuckoo.
It stays for an hour, cooing, then flies away, none knows whither.
Whenever this portent occurs, my steward telegraphs to me, that I, as
head of the family, be not unsteeled against the shock of a bereavement,
and that my authority be sooner given for the unsealing and garnishing
of the family-vault. Not every forefather of mine rests quiet beneath
his escutcheoned marble. There are they who revisit, in their wrath or
their remorse, the places wherein erst they suffered or wrought evil.
There is one who, every Halloween, flits into the dining-hall, and
hovers before the portrait which Hans Holbein made of him, and flings
his diaphanous grey form against the canvas, hoping, maybe, to catch
from it the fiery flesh-tints and the solid limbs that were his, and so
to be re-incarnate. He flies against the painting, only to find himself
t’other side of the wall it hangs on. There are five ghosts permanently
residing in the right wing of the house, two in the left, and eleven in
the park. But all are quite noiseless and quite harmless. My servants,
when they meet them in the corridors or on the stairs, stand aside to
let them pass, thus paying them the respect due to guests of mine; but
not even the rawest housemaid ever screams or flees at sight of them. I,
their host, often waylay them and try to commune with them; but always
they glide past me. And how gracefully they glide, these ghosts! It is a
pleasure to watch them. It is a lesson in deportment. May they never be
laid! Of all my household-pets, they are the dearest to me. I am Duke
of Strathsporran and Cairngorm, Marquis of Sorby, and Earl Cairngorm, in
the Peerage of Scotland. In the glens of the hills about Strathsporran
are many noble and nimble stags. But I have never set foot in my house
there, for it is carpeted throughout with the tartan of my clan. You
seem to like tartan. What tartan is it you are wearing?”
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 entree. Is that nothing
to you? You would be driven to Court in my statecoach. It is swung so
high that the streetsters can hardly see its occupant. It is lined
with rose-silk; and on its panels, and on its hammer-cloth, my arms
are emblazoned--no one has ever been able to count the quarterings. You
would be wearing the family-jewels, reluctantly surrendered to you by my
aunt. They are many and marvellous, in their antique settings. I don’t
want to brag. It humiliates me to speak to you as I am speaking. But
I am heart-set on you, and to win you there is not a precious stone I
would leave unturned. Conceive a parure all of white stones--diamonds,
white sapphires, white topazes, tourmalines. Another, of rubies and
amethysts, set in gold filigree. Rings that once were poison-combs on
Florentine fingers. Red roses for your hair--every petal a hollowed
ruby. Amulets and ape-buckles, zones and fillets. Aye! know that you
would be weeping for wonder before you had seen a tithe of these gauds.
Know, too, Miss Dobson, that in the Peerage of France I am Duc d’Etretat
et de la Roche Guillaume. Louis Napoleon gave the title to my father for
not cutting him in the Bois. I have a house in the Champs Elysees. There
is a Swiss in its courtyard. He stands six-foot-seven in his stockings,
and the chasseurs are hardly less tall than he. Wherever I go, there are
two chefs in my retinue. Both are masters in their art, and furiously
jealous of each other. When I compliment either of them on some dish,
the other challenges him. They fight with rapiers, next morning, in the
garden of whatever house I am occupying. I do not know whether you are
greedy? If so, it may interest you to learn that I have a third chef,
who makes only souffles, and an Italian pastry-cook; to say nothing of
a Spaniard for salads, an Englishwoman for roasts, and an Abyssinian for
coffee. You found no trace of their handiwork in the meal you have just
had with me? No; for in Oxford it is a whim of mine--I may say a point
of honour--to lead the ordinary life of an undergraduate. What I eat
in this room is cooked by the heavy and unaided hand of Mrs. Batch,
my landlady. It is set before me by the unaided and--or are you in
error?--loving hand of her daughter. Other ministers have I none here. I
dispense with my private secretaries. I am unattended by a single valet.
So simple a way of life repels you? You would never be called upon to
share it. If you married me, I should take my name off the books of my
College. I propose that we should spend our honeymoon at Baiae. I have
a villa at Baiae. It is there that I keep my grandfather’s collection of
majolica. The sun shines there always. A long olive-grove secretes the
garden from the sea. When you walk in the garden, you know the sea only
in blue glimpses through the vacillating leaves. White-gleaming from the
bosky shade of this grove are several goddesses. Do you care for Canova?
I don’t myself. If you do, these figures will appeal to you: they are in
his best manner. Do you love the sea? This is not the only house of mine
that looks out on it. On the coast of County Clare--am I not Earl of
Enniskerry and Baron Shandrin in the Peerage of Ireland?--I have an
ancient castle. Sheer from a rock stands it, and the sea has always
raged up against its walls. Many ships lie wrecked under that loud
implacable sea. But mine is a brave strong castle. No storm affrights
it; and not the centuries, clustering houris, with their caresses can
seduce it from its hard austerity. I have several titles which for the
moment escape me. Baron Llffthwchl am I, and... and... but you can
find them for yourself in Debrett. In me you behold a Prince of the Holy
Roman Empire, and a Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. Look
well at me! I am Hereditary Comber of the Queen’s Lap-Dogs. I am young.
I am handsome. My temper is sweet, and my character without blemish. In
fine, Miss Dobson, I am a most desirable parti.”
“But,” said Zuleika, “I don’t love you.”
The Duke stamped his foot. “I beg your pardon,” he said hastily. “I
ought not to have done that. But--you seem to have entirely missed the
point of what I was saying.”
“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 of a Mr. Edelweiss, THE most awful snob I have
ever met.”
The 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 unclasped them. That
twice-flung taunt rankled still. It was monstrous to have been called
a snob. A snob!--he, whose readiness to form what would certainly be
regarded as a shocking misalliance ought to have stifled the charge, not
merely vindicated him from it! He had forgotten, in the blindness of his
love, how shocking the misalliance would be. Perhaps she, unloving, had
not been so forgetful? Perhaps her refusal had been made, generously,
for his own sake. Nay, rather for her own. Evidently, she had felt that
the high sphere from which he beckoned was no place for the likes of
her. Evidently, she feared she would pine away among those strange
splendours, never be acclimatised, always be unworthy. He had thought to
overwhelm her, and he had done his work too thoroughly. Now he must try
to lighten the load he had imposed.
Seating himself opposite to her, “You remember,” 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 WHY 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 en troisiemes noces a dairy-maid
on the Tankerton estate. Meg Speedwell was her name. He had seen her
walking across a field, not many months after the interment of his
second Duchess, Maria, that great and gifted lady. I know not whether it
was that her bonny mien fanned in him some embers of his youth, or that
he was loth to be outdone in gracious eccentricity by his crony the Duke
of Dewlap, who himself had just taken a bride from a dairy. (You have
read Meredith’s account of that affair? No? You should.) Whether it was
veritable love or mere modishness that formed my ancestor’s resolve,
presently the bells were ringing out, and the oldest elm in the park was
being felled, in Meg Speedwell’s honour, and the children were strewing
daisies on which Meg Speedwell trod, a proud young hoyden of a bride,
with her head in the air and her heart in the seventh heaven. The Duke
had given her already a horde of fine gifts; but these, he had said,
were nothing--trash in comparison with the gift that was to ensure for
her a perdurable felicity. After the wedding-breakfast, when all the
squires had ridden away on their cobs, and all the squires’ ladies in
their coaches, the Duke led his bride forth from the hall, leaning on
her arm, till they came to a little edifice of new white stone, very
spick and span, with two lattice-windows and a bright green door
between. This he bade her enter. A-flutter with excitement, she
turned the handle. In a moment she flounced back, red with shame and
anger--flounced forth from the fairest, whitest, dapperest dairy,
wherein was all of the best that the keenest dairy-maid might need. The
Duke bade her dry her eyes, for that it ill befitted a great lady to be
weeping on her wedding-day. ‘As for gratitude,’ he chuckled, ‘zounds!
that is a wine all the better for the keeping.’ Duchess Meg soon forgot
this unworthy wedding-gift, such was her rapture in the other, the so
august, appurtenances of her new life. What with her fine silk gowns
and farthingales, and her powder-closet, and the canopied bed she slept
in--a bed bigger far than the room she had slept in with her sisters,
and standing in a room far bigger than her father’s cottage; and
what with Betty, her maid, who had pinched and teased her at the
village-school, but now waited on her so meekly and trembled so
fearfully at a scolding; and what with the fine hot dishes that were set
before her every day, and the gallant speeches and glances of the fine
young gentlemen whom the Duke invited from London, Duchess Meg was quite
the happiest Duchess in all England. For a while, she was like a child
in a hay-rick. But anon, as the sheer delight of novelty wore away, she
began to take a more serious view of her position. She began to realise
her responsibilities. She was determined to do all that a great lady
ought to do. Twice every day she assumed the vapours. She schooled
herself in the mysteries of Ombre, of Macao. She spent hours over the
tambour-frame. She rode out on horse-back, with a riding-master. She had
a music-master to teach her the spinet; a dancing-master, too, to teach
her the Minuet and the Triumph and the Gaudy. All these accomplishments
she found mighty hard. She was afraid of her horse. All the morning, she
dreaded the hour when it would be brought round from the stables. She
dreaded her dancing-lesson. Try as she would, she could but stamp her
feet flat on the parquet, as though it had been the village-green. She
dreaded her music-lesson. Her fingers, disobedient to her ambition,
clumsily thumped the keys of the spinet, and by the notes of the score
propped up before her she was as cruelly perplexed as by the black and
red pips of the cards she conned at the gaming-table, or by the red
and gold threads that were always straying and snapping on her
tambour-frame. Still she persevered. Day in, day out, sullenly, she
worked hard to be a great lady. But skill came not to her, and hope
dwindled; only the dull effort remained. One accomplishment she did
master--to wit, the vapours: they became for her a dreadful reality. She
lost her appetite for the fine hot dishes. All night long she lay awake,
restless, tearful, under the fine silk canopy, till dawn stared her
into slumber. She seldom scolded Betty. She who had been so lusty and so
blooming saw in her mirror that she was pale and thin now; and the fine
young gentlemen, seeing it too, paid more heed now to their wine and
their dice than to her. And always, when she met him, the Duke smiled
the same mocking smile. Duchess Meg was pining slowly and surely away...
One morning, in Spring-time, she altogether vanished. Betty, bringing
the cup of chocolate to the bedside, found the bed empty. She raised the
alarm among her fellows. They searched high and low. Nowhere was their
mistress. The news was broken to their master, who, without comment,
rose, bade his man dress him, and presently walked out to the place
where he knew he would find her. And there, to be sure, she was,
churning, churning for dear life. Her sleeves were rolled above her
elbows, and her skirt was kilted high; and, as she looked back over her
shoulder and saw the Duke, there was the flush of roses in her cheeks,
and the light of a thousand thanks in her eyes. ‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘what
a curtsey I would drop you, but that to let go the handle were to spoil
all!’ And every morning, ever after, she woke when the birds woke, rose
when they rose, and went singing through the dawn to the dairy, there to
practise for her pleasure that sweet and lowly handicraft which she had
once practised for her need. And every evening, with her milking-stool
under her arm, and her milk-pail in her hand, she went into the field
and called the cows to her, as she had been wont to do. To those other,
those so august, accomplishments she no more pretended. She gave them
the go-by. And all the old zest and joyousness of her life came back
to her. Soundlier than ever slept she, and sweetlier dreamed, under the
fine silk canopy, till the birds called her to her work. Greater than
ever was her love of the fine furbelows that were hers to flaunt in, and
sharper her appetite for the fine hot dishes, and more tempestuous her
scolding of Betty, poor maid. She was more than ever now the cynosure,
the adored, of the fine young gentlemen. And as for her husband, she
looked up to him as the wisest, kindest man in all the world.”
“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 ALL adore her?”
“Yes. Every one of them, wildly, madly.”
“Ah,” murmured Zuleika, with a smile of understanding. A shadow crossed
her face, “Even so,” she said, with some pique, “I don’t suppose she had
so very many adorers. She never went out into the world.”
“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 something of his
sagacity. In any case, I can profit by his example. Do not fear that
I, if you were to wed me, should demand a metamorphosis of your present
self. I should take you as you are, gladly. I should encourage you to be
always exactly as you are--a radiant, irresistible member of the upper
middle-class, with a certain freedom of manner acquired through a
life of peculiar liberty. Can you guess what would be my principal
wedding-gift to you? Meg Speedwell had her dairy. For you, would be
built another outhouse--a neat hall wherein you would perform your
conjuring-tricks, every evening except Sunday, before me and my tenants
and my servants, and before such of my neighbours as might care to come.
None would respect you the less, seeing that I approved. Thus in
you would the pleasant history of Meg Speedwell repeat itself. You,
practising for your pleasure--nay, hear me out!--that sweet and lowly
handicraft which--”
“I won’t listen to another word!” cried Zuleika. “You are the most
insolent person I have ever met. I happen to come of a particularly good
family. I move in the best society. My manners are absolutely perfect.
If I found myself in the shoes of twenty Duchesses simultaneously, I
should know quite well how to behave. As for the one pair you can offer
me, I kick them away--so. I kick them back at you. I tell you--”
“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 advantages
in being your Duchess. But the fact is, I have no worldly wisdom. To me,
marriage is a sacrament. I could no more marry a man about whom I could
not make a fool of myself than I could marry one who made a fool of
himself about me. Else had I long ceased to be a spinster. Oh my friend,
do not imagine that I have not rejected, in my day, a score of suitors
quite as eligible as you.”
“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 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?”
“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 common
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 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 yourself told me that this
tartan was perfectly hideous. There was no need to tell me that. I
came thus because I was coming to see you. I chose this frock in the
deliberate fear that you, if I made myself presentable, might succumb at
second sight of me. I would have sent out for a sack and dressed myself
in that, I would have blacked my face all over with burnt cork, only I
was afraid of being mobbed on the way to you.”
“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.