The Duke did not try to break the stony silence in which Zuleika walked.
Her displeasure was a luxury to him, for it was so soon to be dispelled.
A little while, and she would be hating herself for her pettiness. Here
was he, going to die for her; and here was she, blaming him for a breach
of manners. Decidedly, the slave had the whip-hand. He stole a sidelong
look at her, and could not repress a smile. His features quickly
composed themselves. The Triumph of Death must not be handled as a
cheap score. He wanted to die because he would thereby so poignantly
consummate his love, express it so completely, once and for all...
And she--who could say that she, knowing what he had done, might not,
illogically, come to love him? Perhaps she would devote her life to
mourning him. He saw her bending over his tomb, in beautiful humble
curves, under a starless sky, watering the violets with her tears.
Shades of Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel and other despicable
maunderers! He brushed them aside. He would be practical. The point was,
when and how to die? Time: the sooner the better. Manner:.. less easy to
determine. He must not die horribly, nor without dignity. The manner of
the Roman philosophers? But the only kind of bath which an undergraduate
can command is a hip-bath. Stay! there was the river. Drowning (he had
often heard) was a rather pleasant sensation. And to the river he was
even now on his way.
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.”
“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, “os oupot authis alla nyn
paunstaton.” Strange that to-night it would still be standing here,
in all its sober and solid beauty--still be gazing, over the roofs and
chimneys, at the tower of Magdalen, its rightful bride. Through untold
centuries of the future it would stand thus, gaze thus. He winced.
Oxford walls have a way of belittling us; and the Duke was loth to
regard his doom as trivial.
Aye, by all minerals we are mocked. Vegetables, yearly deciduous, are
far more sympathetic. The lilac and laburnum, making lovely now the
railed pathway to Christ Church meadow, were all a-swaying and a-nodding
to the Duke as he passed by. “Adieu, adieu, your Grace,” they were
whispering. “We are very sorry for you--very sorry indeed. We never
dared suppose you would predecease us. We think your death a very great
tragedy. Adieu! Perhaps we shall meet in another world--that is, if the
members of the animal kingdom have immortal souls, as we have.”
The Duke was little versed in their language; yet, as he passed between
these gently garrulous blooms, he caught at least the drift of their
salutation, and smiled a vague but courteous acknowledgment, to the
right and the left alternately, creating a very favourable impression.
No doubt, the young elms lining the straight way to the barges had seen
him coming; but any whispers of their leaves were lost in the murmur of
the crowd returning from the race. Here, at length, came the torrent
of which the Duke had spoken; and Zuleika’s heart rose at it. Here was
Oxford! From side to side the avenue was filled with a dense procession
of youths--youths interspersed with maidens whose parasols were as
flotsam and jetsam on a seething current of straw hats. Zuleika neither
quickened nor slackened her advance. But brightlier and brightlier shone
her eyes.
The vanguard of the procession was pausing now, swaying, breaking at
sight of her. She passed, imperial, through the way cloven for her. All
a-down the avenue, the throng parted as though some great invisible
comb were being drawn through it. The few youths who had already
seen Zuleika, and by whom her beauty had been bruited throughout the
University, were lost in a new wonder, so incomparably fairer was she
than the remembered vision. And the rest hardly recognised her from the
descriptions, so incomparably fairer was the reality than the hope.
She passed among them. None questioned the worthiness of her escort.
Could I give you better proof the awe in which our Duke was held? Any
man is glad to be seen escorting a very pretty woman. He thinks it adds
to his prestige. Whereas, in point of fact, his fellow-men are saying
merely “Who’s that appalling fellow with her?” or “Why does she go about
with that ass So-and-So?” Such cavil may in part be envy. But it is a
fact that no man, howsoever graced, can shine in juxtaposition to a very
pretty woman. The Duke himself cut a poor figure beside Zuleika. Yet not
one of all the undergraduates felt she could have made a wiser choice.
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. True, the place is no
longer one-sexed. There are the virguncules of Somerville and Lady
Margaret’s Hall; but beauty and the lust for learning have yet to be
allied. There are the innumerable wives and daughters around the Parks,
running in and out of their little red-brick villas; but the indignant
shade of celibacy seems to have called down on the dons a Nemesis which
precludes them from either marrying beauty or begetting it. (From the
Warden’s son, that unhappy curate, Zuleika inherited no tittle of
her charm. Some of it, there is no doubt, she did inherit from the
circus-rider who was her mother.)
But the casual feminine visitors? Well, the sisters and cousins of an
undergraduate seldom seem more passable to his comrades than to himself.
Altogether, the instinct of sex is not pandered to in Oxford. It is not,
however, as it may once have been, dormant. The modern importation of
samples of femininity serves to keep it alert, though not to gratify it.
A like result is achieved by another modern development--photography.
The undergraduate may, and usually does, surround himself with
photographs of pretty ladies known to the public. A phantom harem! Yet
the houris have an effect on their sultan. Surrounded both by plain
women of flesh and blood and by beauteous women on pasteboard, the
undergraduate is the easiest victim of living loveliness--is as a fire
ever well and truly laid, amenable to a spark. And if the spark be such
a flaring torch as Zuleika?--marvel not, reader, at the conflagration.
Not only was the whole throng of youths drawing asunder before her:
much of it, as she passed, was forming up in her wake. Thus, with the
confluence of two masses--one coming away from the river, the other
returning to it--chaos seethed around her and the Duke before they were
half-way along the avenue. Behind them, and on either side of them, the
people were crushed inextricably together, swaying and surging this way
and that. “Help!” cried many a shrill feminine voice. “Don’t push!” “Let
me out!” “You brute!” “Save me, save me!” Many ladies fainted, whilst
their escorts, supporting them and protecting them as best they could,
peered over the heads of their fellows for one glimpse of the divine
Miss Dobson. Yet for her and the Duke, in the midst of the terrific
compress, there was space enough. In front of them, as by a miracle
of deference, a way still cleared itself. They reached the end of the
avenue without a pause in their measured progress. Nor even when they
turned to the left, along the rather narrow path beside the barges, was
there any obstacle to their advance. Passing evenly forward, they alone
were cool, unhustled, undishevelled.
The Duke was so rapt in his private thoughts that he was hardly
conscious of the strange scene. And as for Zuleika, she, as well she
might be, was in the very best of good humours.
“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 alongside 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 vanguard were crushing their
shoulders against the row behind them, to stay the oncoming host. She
had half a mind to go back through the midst of them; but she really did
want her tea, and she followed the Duke on to the barge, and under his
auspices climbed the steps to the roof.
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 impetus that the vision for each man was but
a lightning-flash: he was whirled past, struggling, almost before his
brain took the message of his eyes.
Those who were Judas men made frantic efforts to board the barge, trying
to hurl themselves through the gate in the railings; but they were swept
vainly on.
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 agreeable career. I am not going to
trip them up for you.”
“I am not sure,” said Zuleika, “that you are very polite. Certainly you
are foolish. It is natural for boys to fall in love. If these two are
in love with me, why not let them talk to me? It were an experience on
which they would always look back with romantic pleasure. They may never
see me again. Why grudge them this little thing?” She sipped her tea.
“As for tripping them up on a threshold--that is all nonsense. What harm
has unrequited love ever done to anybody?” She laughed. “Look at ME!
When I came to your rooms this morning, thinking I loved in vain, did I
seem one jot the worse for it? Did I look different?”
“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 particular young woman. He very soon makes love to some other one.
If his be an ardent nature, the quicker his transition. All the most
ardent of my past adorers have married. Will you put my cup down,
please?”
“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 pastoral poets, nor sampled the
Elizabethan sonneteers?”
“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 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 Newdigate and Thomas Gaisford). And he felt he was
especially a dramatic poet. All the while that she had been sitting by
him here, talking so glibly, looking so straight into his eyes, flashing
at him so many pretty gestures, it was the sense of tragic irony
that prevailed in him--that sense which had stirred in him, and been
repressed, on the way from Judas. He knew that she was making her effect
consciously for the other young men by whom the roof of the barge was
now thronged. Him alone she seemed to observe. By her manner, she might
have seemed to be making love to him. He envied the men she was so
deliberately making envious--the men whom, in her undertone to him, she
was really addressing. But he did take comfort in the irony. Though she
used him as a stalking-horse, he, after all, was playing with her as a
cat plays with a mouse. While she chattered on, without an inkling that
he was no ordinary lover, and coaxing him to present two quite ordinary
young men to her, he held over her the revelation that he for love of
her was about to die.
And, while he drank in the radiance of her beauty, he heard her
chattering on. “So you see,” she was saying, “it couldn’t do those young
men any harm. Suppose unrequited love IS anguish: isn’t the discipline
wholesome? Suppose I AM a sort of furnace: shan’t I purge, refine,
temper? Those two boys are but scorched from here. That is horrid; and
what good will it do them?” She laid a hand on his arm. “Cast them into
the furnace for their own sake, dear Duke! Or cast one of them, or,” she
added, glancing round at the throng, “any one of these others!”
“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 petulance 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.
“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 interested in him. A suspicion of his meaning had
flashed through her soul.--But no! surely he could not mean THAT! It
must have been a metaphor merely. And yet, something in his eyes... She
leaned beside him. Her shoulder touched his. She gazed questioningly at
him. He did not turn his face to her. He gazed at the sunlit river.
The Judas Eight had just embarked for their voyage to the
starting-point. Standing on the edge of the raft that makes a floating
platform for the barge, William, the hoary bargee, was pushing them off
with his boat-hook, wishing them luck with deferential familiarity.
The raft was thronged with Old Judasians--mostly clergymen--who were
shouting hearty hortations, and evidently trying not to appear so old
as they felt--or rather, not to appear so startlingly old as their
contemporaries looked to them. It occurred to the Duke as a strange
thing, and a thing to be glad of, that he, in this world, would never be
an Old Judasian. Zuleika’s shoulder pressed his. He thrilled not at all.
To all intents, he was dead already.
The enormous eight young men in the thread-like skiff--the skiff that
would scarce have seemed an adequate vehicle for the tiny “cox” who sat
facing them--were staring up at Zuleika with that uniformity of impulse
which, in another direction, had enabled them to bump a boat on two of
the previous “nights.” If to-night they bumped the next boat, Univ.,
then would Judas be three places “up” on the river; and to-morrow Judas
would have a Bump Supper. Furthermore, if Univ. were bumped to-night,
Magdalen might be bumped to-morrow. Then would Judas, for the first
time in history, be head of the river. Oh tremulous hope! Yet, for
the moment, these eight young men seemed to have forgotten the awful
responsibility that rested on their over-developed shoulders. Their
hearts, already strained by rowing, had been transfixed this afternoon
by Eros’ darts. All of them had seen Zuleika as she came down to the
river; and now they sat gaping up at her, fumbling with their oars. The
tiny cox gaped too; but he it was who first recalled duty. With piping
adjurations he brought the giants back to their senses. The boat moved
away down stream, with a fairly steady stroke.
Not in a day can the traditions of Oxford be sent spinning. From all the
barges the usual punt-loads of young men were being ferried across
to the towing-path--young men naked of knee, armed with rattles,
post-horns, motor-hooters, gongs, and other instruments of clangour.
Though Zuleika filled their thoughts, they hurried along the
towing-path, as by custom, to the starting-point.
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 sympathy with mankind. It
was a fine thing to be a saviour. It was splendid to be human. He looked
quickly round to her who had wrought this change in him.
But the loveliest face in all the world will not please you if you see
it suddenly, eye to eye, at a distance of half an inch from your own.
It was thus that the Duke saw Zuleika’s: a monstrous deliquium a-glare.
Only for the fraction of an instant, though. Recoiling, he beheld the
loveliness that he knew--more adorably vivid now in its look of eager
questioning. And in his every fibre he thrilled to her. Even so had she
gazed at him last night, this morning. Aye, now as then, her soul was
full of him. He had recaptured, not her love, but his power to please
her. It was enough. He bowed his head; and “Moriturus te saluto” were
the words formed silently by his lips. He was glad that his death would
be a public service to the University. But the salutary lesson of
what the newspapers would call his “rash act” was, after all, only a
side-issue. The great thing, the prospect that flushed his cheek, was
the consummation of his own love, for its own sake, by his own death.
And, as he met her gaze, the question that had already flitted through
his brain found a faltering utterance; and “Shall you mourn me?” he
asked her.
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 ultimatum. 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 Dobson,
will your soul awaken? When I shall have sunk for ever beneath these
waters whose supposed purpose here this afternoon is but that they be
ploughed by the blades of these young oarsmen, will there be struck from
that flint, your heart, some late and momentary spark of pity for me?”
“Why of course, of COURSE!” babbled Zuleika, with clasped hands and
dazzling eyes. “But,” she curbed herself, “it is--it would--oh, you
mustn’t THINK of it! I couldn’t allow it! I--I should never forgive
myself!”
“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 between 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, commanded, with infinite
prettiness of ingenuity and of eloquence. Never was such a cascade of
dissuasion as hers. She only didn’t say she could love him. She never
hinted that. Indeed, throughout her pleading rang this recurrent motif:
that he must live to take to himself as mate some good, serious, clever
woman who would be a not unworthy mother of his children.
She laid stress on his youth, his great position, his brilliant
attainments, the much he had already achieved, the splendid
possibilities of his future. Though of course she spoke in undertones,
not to be overheard by the throng on the barge, it was almost as though
his health were being floridly proposed at some public banquet--say,
at a Tenants’ Dinner. Insomuch that, when she ceased, the Duke half
expected Jellings, his steward, to bob up uttering, with lifted hands, a
stentorian “For-or,” and all the company to take up the chant: “he’s--a
jolly good fellow.” His brief reply, on those occasions, seemed always
to indicate that, whatever else he might be, a jolly good fellow he was
not. But by Zuleika’s eulogy he really was touched. “Thank you--thank
you,” he gasped; and there were tears in his eyes. Dear the thought that
she so revered him, so wished him not to die. But this was no more than
a rush-light in the austere radiance of his joy in dying for her.
And the time was come. Now for the sacrament of his immersion in
infinity.
“Good-bye,” he said simply, and was about to swing himself on to the
ledge of the balustrade. Zuleika, divining his intention, made way for
him. Her bosom heaved quickly, quickly. All colour had left her face;
but her eyes shone as never before.
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 laughter with hers, gently seeking
to disengage his arm. “And perhaps,” he said, “I, clinging to the weeds
of the river’s bed, shall see dimly the boats and the oars pass over me,
and shall be able to gurgle a cheer for Judas.”
“Don’t!” she shuddered, with a woman’s notion that a jest means levity.
A tumult of thoughts surged in her, all confused. She only knew that
he must not die--not yet! A moment ago, his death would have been
beautiful. Not now! Her grip of his arm tightened. Only by breaking her
wrist could he have freed himself. A moment ago, she had been in the
seventh-heaven... Men were supposed to have died for love of her. It
had never been proved. There had always been something--card-debts,
ill-health, what not--to account for the tragedy. No man, to the best
of her recollection, had ever hinted that he was going to die for her.
Never, assuredly, had she seen the deed done. And then came he, the
first man she had loved, going to die here, before her eyes, because she
no longer loved him. But she knew now that he must not die--not yet!
All around her was the hush that falls on Oxford when the signal for the
race has sounded. In the distance could be heard faintly the noise of
cheering--a little sing-song sound, drawing nearer.
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 savour the full sweetness of his sacrifice. Tomorrow--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 surging
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 wholesome exercise. But there
was not one of them whose eyes were not upcast at Zuleika. And the
vocalisation and instrumentation of the dancers and stampers on the
towing-path had by this time ceased to mean aught of joy in the victors
or of comfort for the vanquished, and had resolved itself into a wild
wordless hymn to the glory of Miss Dobson. Behind her and all around her
on the roof of the barge, young Judasians were venting in like manner
their hearts through their lungs. She paid no heed. It was as if she
stood alone with her lover on some silent pinnacle of the world. It was
as if she were a little girl with a brand-new and very expensive doll
which had banished all the little other old toys from her mind.
She simply could not, in her naive rapture, take her eyes off her
companion. To the dancers and stampers of the towing-path, many of whom
were now being ferried back across the river, and to the other youths
on the roof of the barge, Zuleika’s air of absorption must have seemed
a little strange. For already the news that the Duke loved Zuleika, and
that she loved him not, and would stoop to no man who loved her, had
spread like wild-fire among the undergraduates. The two youths in whom
the Duke had deigned to confide had not held their peace. And the effect
that Zuleika had made as she came down to the river was intensified by
the knowledge that not the great paragon himself did she deem worthy of
her. The mere sight of her had captured young Oxford. The news of her
supernal haughtiness had riveted the chains.
“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 Zuleika. “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 notions of Oxford life were rather
hazy. It was with difficulty that the Duke made her realise that he
could not--not even if, as she suggested, she dressed herself up as a
man--invite her to the Junta. She then fell back on the impossibility
that he would not dine with her to-night, his last night in this world.
She could not understand that admirable fidelity to social engagements
which is one of the virtues implanted in the members of our aristocracy.
Bohemian by training and by career, she construed the Duke’s refusal as
either a cruel slight to herself or an act of imbecility. The thought of
being parted from her for one moment was torture to him; but “noblesse
oblige,” and it was quite impossible for him to break an engagement
merely because a more charming one offered itself: he would as soon have
cheated at cards.
And so, as they went side by side up the avenue, in the mellow light
of the westering sun, preceded in their course, and pursued, and
surrounded, by the mob of hoarse infatuate youths, Zuleika’s face was
as that of a little girl sulking. Vainly the Duke reasoned with her. She
could NOT see the point of view.
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
engagements.”
And Zuleika, worsted, resumed her sulking. But presently, as they neared
Judas, she relented. It was paltry to be cross with him who had resolved
to die for her and was going to die so on the morrow. And after all, she
would see him at the concert to-night. They would sit together. And all
to-morrow they would be together, till the time came for parting. Hers
was a naturally sunny disposition. And the evening was such a lovely
one, all bathed in gold. She was ashamed of her ill-humour.
“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.