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 breathlessly. “Thank you. Make way
please. Thanks.” And with quick-pulsing heart he made his way down the
aisle to the front row. There awaited him a surprise that was like a
douche of cold water full in his face. Zuleika was not there! It had
never occurred to him that she herself might not be punctual.
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?”
“Oh no, I think not. She said something about changing the dress she
wore at dinner. She will come.” And the Warden thanked his young friend
for the great kindness he had shown to Zuleika. He hoped the Duke had
not let her worry him with her artless prattle. “She seems to be a good,
amiable girl,” he added, in his detached way.
Sitting beside him, the Duke looked curiously at the venerable profile,
as at a mummy’s. To think that this had once been a man! To think that
his blood flowed in the veins of Zuleika! Hitherto the Duke had seen
nothing grotesque in him--had regarded him always as a dignified
specimen of priest and scholar. Such a life as the Warden’s, year
following year in ornamental seclusion from the follies and fusses of
the world, had to the Duke seemed rather admirable and enviable. Often
he himself had (for a minute or so) meditated taking a fellowship at All
Souls and spending here in Oxford the greater part of his life. He had
never been young, and it never had occurred to him that the Warden had
been young once. To-night he saw the old man in a new light--saw that
he was mad. Here was a man who--for had he not married and begotten a
child?--must have known, in some degree, the emotion of love. How, after
that, could he have gone on thus, year by year, rusting among his
books, asking no favour of life, waiting for death without a sign of
impatience? Why had he not killed himself long ago? Why cumbered he the
earth?
On the dais an undergraduate was singing a song entitled “She Loves Not
Me.” Such plaints are apt to leave us unharrowed. Across the footlights
of an opera-house, the despair of some Italian tenor in red tights and
a yellow wig may be convincing enough. Not so, at a concert, the despair
of a shy British amateur in evening dress. The undergraduate on the
dais, fumbling with his sheet of music while he predicted that only when
he were “laid within the church-yard cold and grey” would his lady
begin to pity him, seemed to the Duke rather ridiculous; but not half so
ridiculous as the Warden. This fictitious love-affair was less nugatory
than the actual humdrum for which Dr. Dobson had sold his soul to the
devil. Also, little as one might suspect it, the warbler was perhaps
expressing a genuine sentiment. Zuleika herself, belike, was in his
thoughts.
As he began the second stanza, predicting that when his lady died too
the angels of heaven would bear her straight to him, the audience heard
a loud murmur, or subdued roar, outside the Hall. And after a few bars
the warbler suddenly ceased, staring straight in front of him as though
he saw a vision. Automatically, all heads veered in the direction of his
gaze. From the entrance, slowly along the aisle, came Zuleika, brilliant
in black.
To the Duke, who had rapturously risen, she nodded and smiled as
she swerved down on the chair beside him. She looked to him somehow
different. He had quite forgiven her for being late: her mere presence
was a perfect excuse. And the very change in her, though he could not
define it, was somehow pleasing to him. He was about to question
her, but she shook her head and held up to her lips a black-gloved
forefinger, enjoining silence for the singer, who, with dogged British
pluck, had harked back to the beginning of the second stanza. When his
task was done and he shuffled down from the dais, he received a great
ovation. Zuleika, in the way peculiar to persons who are in the habit of
appearing before the public, held her hands well above the level of
her brow, and clapped them with a vigour demonstrative not less of her
presence than of her delight.
“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!”
“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 covered 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,” 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 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 romantic
than you are, really. I wonder,” she said, glancing at his breast, “if
YOUR pink pearl would have turned black? And I wonder if YOU would have
taken the trouble to change that extraordinary coat you are wearing?”
In sooth, no costume could have been more beautifully Cimmerian than
Zuleika’s. And yet, thought the Duke, watching her as the concert
proceeded, the effect of her was not lugubrious. Her darkness shone.
The black satin gown she wore was a stream of shifting high-lights.
Big black diamonds were around her throat and wrists, and tiny black
diamonds starred the fan she wielded. In her hair gleamed a great
raven’s wing. And brighter, brighter than all these were her eyes.
Assuredly no, there was nothing morbid about her. Would one even
(wondered the Duke, for a disloyal instant) go so far as to say she was
heartless? Ah no, she was merely strong. She was one who could tread the
tragic plane without stumbling, and be resilient in the valley of the
shadow. What she had just said was no more than the truth: she would
have loved to die for him, had he not forfeited her heart. She would
have asked no tears. That she had none to shed for him now, that she did
but share his exhilaration, was the measure of her worthiness to have
the homage of his self-slaughter.
“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, throughout the Hall, the undergraduates craned their necks for
a glimpse. The Duke’s piano solo, which was the last item in the first
half of the programme, was eagerly awaited. Already, whispered first
from the lips of Oover and the others who had come on from the Junta,
the news of his resolve had gone from ear to ear among the men. He, for
his part, had forgotten the scene at the Junta, the baleful effect of
his example. For him the Hall was a cave of solitude--no one there but
Zuleika and himself. Yet almost, like the late Mr. John Bright, he heard
in the air the beating of the wings of the Angel of Death. Not awful
wings; little wings that sprouted from the shoulders of a rosy and
blindfold child. Love and Death--for him they were exquisitely one. And
it seemed to him, when his turn came to play, that he floated, rather
than walked, to the dais.
He had not considered what he would play tonight. Nor, maybe, was he
conscious now of choosing. His fingers caressed the keyboard vaguely;
and anon this ivory had voice and language; and for its master, and for
some of his hearers, arose a vision. And it was as though in delicate
procession, very slowly, listless with weeping, certain figures passed
by, hooded, and drooping forasmuch as by the loss of him whom they were
following to his grave their own hold on life had been loosened. He
had been so beautiful and young. Lo, he was but a burden to be carried
hence, dust to be hidden out of sight. Very slowly, very wretchedly they
went by. But, as they went, another feeling, faint at first, an all but
imperceptible current, seemed to flow through the procession; and now
one, now another of the mourners would look wanly up, with cast-back
hood, as though listening; and anon all were listening on their way,
first in wonder, then in rapture; for the soul of their friend was
singing to them: they heard his voice, but clearer and more blithe than
they had ever known it--a voice etherealised by a triumph of joy that
was not yet for them to share. But presently the voice receded, its
echoes dying away into the sphere whence it came. It ceased; and the
mourners were left alone again with their sorrow, and passed on all
unsolaced, and drooping, weeping.
Soon after the Duke had begun to play, an invisible figure came and
stood by and listened; a frail man, dressed in the fashion of 1840; the
shade of none other than Frederic Chopin. Behind whom, a moment later,
came a woman of somewhat masculine aspect and dominant demeanour,
mounting guard over him, and, as it were, ready to catch him if he fell.
He bowed his head lower and lower, he looked up with an ecstasy more
and more intense, according to the procedure of his Marche Funebre. And
among the audience, too, there was a bowing and uplifting of heads, just
as among the figures of the mourners evoked. Yet the head of the player
himself was all the while erect, and his face glad and serene. Nobly
sensitive as was his playing of the mournful passages, he smiled
brilliantly through them.
And Zuleika returned his gaze with a smile not less gay. She was not
sure what he was playing. But she assumed that it was for her, and that
the music had some reference to his impending death. She was one of the
people who say “I don’t know anything about music really, but I know
what I like.” And she liked this; and she beat time to it with her fan.
She thought her Duke looked very handsome. She was proud of him. Strange
that this time yesterday she had been wildly in love with him! Strange,
too, that this time to-morrow he would be dead! She was immensely glad
she had saved him this afternoon. To-morrow! There came back to her what
he had told her about the omen at Tankerton, that stately home: “On the
eve of the death of a Duke of Dorset, two black owls come always and
perch on the battlements. They remain there through the night, hooting.
At dawn they fly away, none knows whither.” Perhaps, thought she, at
this very moment these two birds were on the battlements.
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 coeur!” said George
Sand, gently but firmly.
“Laisse-moi 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
dais. Now was the interval between the two parts of the programme.
There was a general creaking and scraping of pushed-back chairs as the
audience rose and went forth into the night. The noise aroused from
sleep the good Warden, who, having peered at his programme, complimented
the Duke with old-world courtesy and went to sleep again. Zuleika,
thrusting her fan under one arm, shook the player by both hands. Also,
she told him that she knew nothing about music really, but that she
knew what she liked. As she passed with him up the aisle, she said this
again. People who say it are never tired of saying it.
Outside, the crowd was greater than ever. All the undergraduates from
all the Colleges seemed now to be concentrated in the great Front
Quadrangle of Judas. Even in the glow of the Japanese lanterns that hung
around in honour of the concert, the faces of the lads looked a little
pale. For it was known by all now that the Duke was to die. Even while
the concert was in progress, the news had spread out from the Hall,
through the thronged doorway, down the thronged steps, to the confines
of the crowd. Nor had Oover and the other men from the Junta made any
secret of their own determination. And now, as the rest saw Zuleika
yet again at close quarters, and verified their remembrance of her, the
half-formed desire in them to die too was hardened to a vow.
You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by
standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.
If man were not a gregarious animal, the world might have achieved, by
this time, some real progress towards civilisation. Segregate him, and
he is no fool. But let him loose among his fellows, and he is lost--he
becomes just an unit in unreason. If any one of the undergraduates had
met Miss Dobson in the desert of Sahara, he would have fallen in love
with her; but not one in a thousand of them would have wished to die
because she did not love him. The Duke’s was a peculiar case. For him to
fall in love was itself a violent peripety, bound to produce a violent
upheaval; and such was his pride that for his love to be unrequited
would naturally enamour him of death. These other, these quite ordinary,
young men were the victims less of Zuleika than of the Duke’s example,
and of one another. A crowd, proportionately to its size, magnifies all
that in its units pertains to the emotions, and diminishes all that in
them pertains to thought. It was because these undergraduates were a
crowd that their passion for Zuleika was so intense; and it was because
they were a crowd that they followed so blindly the lead given to them.
To die for Miss Dobson was “the thing to do.” The Duke was going to do
it. The Junta was going to do it. It is a hateful fact, but we must face
the fact, that snobbishness was one of the springs to the tragedy here
chronicled.
We may set to this crowd’s credit that it refrained now from following
Zuleika. Not one of the ladies present was deserted by her escort. All
the men recognised the Duke’s right to be alone with Zuleika now. We may
set also to their credit that they carefully guarded the ladies from all
knowledge of what was afoot.
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 encouragement. Still she wanly persisted. And this was the
more absurd in her because Salt Cellar offered very good scope for those
legitimate effects of hers which we one and all admire. Was it nothing
to her to have cut those black shadows across the cloisters? Was
it nothing to her that she so magically mingled her rays with the
candle-light shed forth from Zuleika’s bedroom? Nothing, that she
had cleansed the lawn of all its colour, and made of it a platform of
silver-grey, fit for fairies to dance on?
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 yesterday. “And you actually DID get them yesterday,” 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-Tankerton family. Had you accepted my offer of marriage,
you would have had the right to wear these two pearls during your
life-time. I am very happy to die for you. But tamper with the property
of my successor I cannot and will not. I am sorry,” he added.
“Sorry!” echoed Zuleika. “Yes, and you were ‘sorry’ you couldn’t dine
with me to-night. But any little niggling scruple is more to you than I
am. What old maids men are!” And viciously with her fan she struck one
of the cloister pillars.
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 MEANT 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 Duke’s, and in his hand he dangled a handkerchief.
He bowed awkwardly, and, holding out the handkerchief, said to her “I
beg your pardon, but I think you dropped this. I have just picked it
up.”
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 resolute, but a shy, race;
swift to act, when swiftness is needed, but seldom knowing quite what to
say. The MacQuern, with native reluctance to give something for nothing,
had determined to have the pleasure of knowing the young lady for whom
he was to lay down his life; and this purpose he had, by the simple
stratagem of his own handkerchief, achieved. Nevertheless, in answer to
Zuleika’s question, and with the pressure of her hand to inspire him,
the only word that rose to his lips was “Ay” (which may be roughly
translated as “Yes”).
“You will do nothing of the sort,” interposed the Duke.
“There,” said Zuleika, still retaining The MacQuern’s hand, “you see, it
is forbidden. You must not defy our dear little Duke. He is not used to
it. It is not done.”
“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 YOU want me not to die for you?” asked the young man.
“Ah, _I_ should not dare to impose my wishes on you,” said she, dropping
his hand. “Even,” she added, “if I knew what my wishes were. And I
don’t. I know only that I think it is very, very beautiful of you to
think of dying for me.”
“Then that settles it,” said The MacQuern.
“No, no! You must not let yourself be influenced by ME. Besides, I am
not in a mood to influence anybody. I am overwhelmed. Tell me,” she
said, heedless of the Duke, who stood tapping his heel on the ground,
with every manifestation of disapproval and impatience, “tell me, is it
true that some of the other men love me too, and--feel as you do?”
The MacQuern said cautiously that he could answer for no one but
himself. “But,” he allowed, “I saw a good many men whom I know, outside
the Hall here, just now, and they seemed to have made up their minds.”
“To die for me? To-morrow?”
“To-morrow. After the Eights, I suppose; at the same time as the Duke.
It wouldn’t do to leave the races undecided.”
“Of COURSE not. But the poor dears! It is too touching! I have done
nothing, nothing to deserve it.”
“Nothing whatsoever,” said the Duke drily.
“Oh HE,” said Zuleika, “thinks me an unredeemed brute; just because I
don’t love him. YOU, dear Mr. MacQuern--does one call you ‘Mr.’? ‘The’
would sound so odd in the vocative. And I can’t very well call you
‘MacQuern’--YOU don’t think me unkind, do you? I simply can’t bear to
think of all these young lives cut short without my having done a thing
to brighten them. What can I do?--what can I do to show my gratitude?”
An idea struck her. She looked up to the lit window of her room.
“Melisande!” she called.
A figure appeared at the window. “Mademoiselle desire?”
“My tricks, Melisande! Bring down the box, quick!” She turned excitedly
to the two young men. “It is all I can do in return, you see. If I could
dance for them, I would. If I could sing, I would sing to them. I do
what I can. You,” she said to the Duke, “must go on to the platform and
announce it.”
“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?”
“You make me feel slightly unwell,” said the Duke.
“And YOU are the most d-dis-disobliging and the unkindest and the
b-beastliest person I ever met,” Zuleika sobbed at him through her
hands. The MacQuern glared reproaches at him. So did Melisande, who had
just appeared through the postern, holding in her arms the great casket
of malachite. A painful scene; and the Duke gave in. He said he would do
anything--anything. Peace was restored.
The MacQuern had relieved Melisande of her burden; and to him was the
privilege of bearing it, in procession with his adored and her quelled
mentor, towards the Hall.
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
undergraduates, however, except the few who figured in the programme,
had waited outside till their mistress should re-appear. The sisters
and cousins of the Judas men had been escorted back to their places and
hurriedly left there.
It was a hushed, tense crowd.
“The poor darlings!” murmured Zuleika, pausing 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
announcement.
“What shall I say?” he asked. “‘Gentlemen, I have the pleasure to
announce that Miss Zuleika Dobson, the world-renowned She-Wizard, will
now oblige’? Or shall I call them ‘Gents,’ tout court?”
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 quadrangle was as still and as silent as the night itself.
Nowhere a tremour. And it was borne in on Zuleika that this crowd had
one mind as well as one heart--a common resolve, calm and clear, as well
as a common passion. No need for her to strengthen the spell now. No
waverers here. And thus it came true that gratitude was the sole motive
for her display.
She stood with eyes downcast and hands folded behind her, moonlit in
the glow of lanterns, modest to the point of pathos, while the Duke
gracefully and simply introduced her to the multitude. He was, he said,
empowered by the lady who stood beside him to say that she would be
pleased to give them an exhibition of her skill in the art to which
she had devoted her life--an art which, more potently perhaps than any
other, touched in mankind the sense of mystery and stirred the faculty
of wonder; the most truly romantic of all the arts: he referred to the
art of conjuring. It was not too much to say that by her mastery of this
art, in which hitherto, it must be confessed, women had made no very
great mark, Miss Zuleika Dobson (for such was the name of the lady who
stood beside him) had earned the esteem of the whole civilised world.
And here in Oxford, and in this College especially, she had a peculiar
claim to--might he say?--their affectionate regard, inasmuch as she was
the grand-daughter of their venerable and venerated Warden.
As the Duke ceased, there came from his hearers a sound like the
rustling of leaves. In return for it, Zuleika performed that graceful
act of subsidence to the verge of collapse which is usually kept for the
delectation of some royal person. And indeed, in the presence of this
doomed congress, she did experience humility; for she was not altogether
without imagination. But, as she arose from her “bob,” she was her own
bold self again, bright mistress of the situation.
It was impossible for her to give her entertainment in full. Some of her
tricks (notably the Secret Aquarium, and the Blazing Ball of Worsted)
needed special preparation, and a table fitted with a “servante” or
secret tray. The table for to-night’s performance was an ordinary one,
brought out from the porter’s lodge. The MacQuern deposited on it the
great casket. Zuleika, retaining him as her assistant, picked nimbly
out from their places and put in array the curious appurtenances of her
art--the Magic Canister, the Demon Egg-Cup, and the sundry other vessels
which, lost property of young Edward Gibbs, had been by a Romanoff
transmuted from wood to gold, and were now by the moon reduced
temporarily to silver.
In a great dense semicircle the young men disposed themselves around
her. Those who were in front squatted down on the gravel; those who were
behind knelt; the rest stood. Young Oxford! Here, in this mass of boyish
faces, all fused and obliterated, was the realisation of that phrase.
Two or three thousands of human bodies, human souls? Yet the effect of
them in the moonlight was as of one great passive monster.
So was it seen by the Duke, as he stood leaning against the wall,
behind Zuleika’s table. He saw it as a monster couchant and enchanted,
a monster that was to die; and its death was in part his own doing.
But remorse in him gave place to hostility. Zuleika had begun her
performance. She was producing the Barber’s Pole from her mouth. And
it was to her that the Duke’s heart went suddenly out in tenderness
and pity. He forgot her levity and vanity--her wickedness, as he had
inwardly called it. He thrilled with that intense anxiety which comes to
a man when he sees his beloved offering to the public an exhibition of
her skill, be it in singing, acting, dancing, or any other art. Would
she acquit herself well? The lover’s trepidation is painful enough when
the beloved has genius--how should these clods appreciate her? and who
set them in judgment over her? It must be worse when the beloved has
mediocrity. And Zuleika, in conjuring, had rather less than that. Though
indeed she took herself quite seriously as a conjurer, she brought to
her art neither conscience nor ambition, in any true sense of those
words. Since her debut, she had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
The stale and narrow repertory which she had acquired from Edward Gibbs
was all she had to offer; and this, and her marked lack of skill, she
eked out with the self-same “patter” that had sufficed that impossible
young man. It was especially her jokes that now sent shudders up the
spine of her lover, and brought tears to his eyes, and kept him in
a state of terror as to what she would say next. “You see,” she had
exclaimed lightly after the production of the Barber’s Pole, “how easy
it is to set up business as a hairdresser.” Over the Demon Egg-Cup she
said that the egg was “as good as fresh.” And her constantly reiterated
catch-phrase--“Well, this is rather queer!”--was the most distressing
thing of all.
The Duke blushed to think what these men thought of her. Would love
were blind! These her lovers were doubtless judging her. They forgave
her--confound their impudence!--because of her beauty. The banality of
her performance was an added grace. It made her piteous. Damn them, they
were sorry for her. Little Noaks was squatting in the front row, peering
up at her through his spectacles. Noaks was as sorry for her as the rest
of them. Why didn’t the earth yawn and swallow them all up?
Our hero’s unreasoning rage was fed by a not unreasonable jealousy. It
was clear to him that Zuleika had forgotten his existence. To-day, as
soon as he had killed her love, she had shown him how much less to her
was his love than the crowd’s. And now again it was only the crowd she
cared for. He followed with his eyes her long slender figure as she
threaded her way in and out of the crowd, sinuously, confidingly,
producing a penny from one lad’s elbow, a threepenny-bit from between
another’s neck and collar, half a crown from another’s hair, and always
repeating in that flute-like voice of hers “Well, this is rather queer!”
Hither and thither she fared, her neck and arms gleaming white from the
luminous blackness of her dress, in the luminous blueness of the night.
At a distance, she might have been a wraith; or a breeze made visible; a
vagrom breeze, warm and delicate, and in league with death.
Yes, that is how she might have seemed to a casual observer. But to the
Duke there was nothing weird about her: she was radiantly a woman; a
goddess; and his first and last love. Bitter his heart was, but only
against the mob she wooed, not against her for wooing it. She was cruel?
All goddesses are that. She was demeaning herself? His soul welled up
anew in pity, in passion.
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 blossomed and bore fruit and, withering, vanished.
Or say she conjured from an empty basket of osier a hissing and bridling
snake. Why not? Your readers would be excited, gratified. And you would
never be found out.” But the grave eyes of Clio are bent on me, her
servant. Oh pardon, madam: I did but waver for an instant. It is not too
late to tell my readers that the climax of Zuleika’s entertainment was
only that dismal affair, the Magic Canister.
It she took from the table, and, holding it aloft, cried “Now, before I
say good night, I want to see if I have your confidence. But you mustn’t
think this is the confidence trick!” She handed the vessel to The
MacQuern, who, looking like an overgrown acolyte, bore it after her as
she went again among the audience. Pausing before a man in the front
row, she asked him if he would trust her with his watch. He held it
out to her. “Thank you,” she said, letting her fingers touch his for a
moment before she dropped it into the Magic Canister. From another man
she borrowed a cigarette-case, from another a neck-tie, from another a
pair of sleeve-links, from Noaks a ring--one of those iron rings which
are supposed, rightly or wrongly, to alleviate rheumatism. And when she
had made an ample selection, she began her return-journey to the table.
On her way she saw in the shadow of the wall the figure of her forgotten
Duke. She saw him, the one man she had ever loved, also the first
man who had wished definitely to die for her; and she was touched by
remorse. She had said she would remember him to her dying day; and
already... But had he not refused her the wherewithal to remember
him--the pearls she needed as the clou of her dear collection, the great
relic among relics?
“Would you trust me with your studs?” she asked him, in a voice that
could be heard throughout the quadrangle, with a smile that was for him
alone.
There was no help for it. He quickly extricated from his shirt-front the
black pearl and the pink. Her thanks had a special emphasis.
The MacQuern placed the Magic Canister before her on the table. She
pressed the outer sheath down on it. Then she inverted it so that the
contents fell into the false lid; then she opened it, looked into it,
and, exclaiming “Well, this is rather queer!” held it up so that the
audience whose intelligence she was insulting might see there was
nothing in it.
“Accidents,” she said, “will happen in the best-regulated canisters!
But I think there is just a chance that I shall be able to restore your
property. Excuse me for a moment.” She then shut the canister, released
the false lid, made several passes over it, opened it, looked into it
and said with a flourish “Now I can clear my character!” Again she went
among the crowd, attended by The MacQuern; and the loans--priceless now
because she had touched them--were in due course severally restored.
When she took the canister from her acolyte, only the two studs remained
in it.
Not since the night of her flitting from the Gibbs’ humble home had
Zuleika thieved. Was she a back-slider? Would she rob the Duke, and his
heir-presumptive, and Tanville-Tankertons yet unborn? Alas, yes. But
what she now did was proof that she had qualms. And her way of doing it
showed that for legerdemain she had after all a natural aptitude which,
properly trained, might have won for her an honourable place in at least
the second rank of contemporary prestidigitators. With a gesture of her
disengaged hand, so swift as to be scarcely visible, she unhooked her
ear-rings and “passed” them into the canister. This she did as she
turned away from the crowd, on her way to the Duke. At the same moment,
in a manner technically not less good, though morally deplorable, she
withdrew the studs and “vanished” them into her bosom.
Was it triumph, or shame, or of both a little that so flushed her cheeks
as she stood before the man she had robbed? Or was it the excitement
of giving a present to the man she had loved? Certain it is that the
nakedness of her ears gave a new look to her face--a primitive look,
open and sweetly wild. The Duke saw the difference, without noticing
the cause. She was more adorable than ever. He blenched and swayed as in
proximity to a loveliness beyond endurance. His heart cried out within
him. A sudden mist came over his eyes.
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 performance--an ovation all the more impressive
because it was solemn and subdued. She curtseyed again and again, not
indeed with the timid simplicity of her first obeisance (so familiar
already was she with the thought of the crowd’s doom), but rather in the
manner of a prima donna--chin up, eyelids down, all teeth manifest, and
hands from the bosom flung ecstatically wide asunder.
You know how, at a concert, a prima donna who has just sung insists on
shaking hands with the accompanist, and dragging him forward, to show
how beautiful her nature is, into the applause that is for herself
alone. And your heart, like mine, has gone out to the wretched victim.
Even so would you have felt for The MacQuern when Zuleika, on the
implied assumption that half the credit was his, grasped him by the
wrist, and, continuing to curtsey, would not release him till the last
echoes of the clapping had died away.
The ladies on the steps of the Hall moved down into the quadrangle,
spreading their resentment like a miasma. The tragic passion of the
crowd was merged in mere awkwardness. There was a general movement
towards the College gate.
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 luncheon a deux. “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. “Of course,” she said hastily
to her host, “you must ask HIM.”
The MacQuern complied. He turned to the Duke and told him that Miss
Dobson had very kindly promised to lunch with him to-morrow. “And,” said
Zuleika, “I simply WON’T unless you will.”
The Duke looked at her. Had it not been arranged that he and she should
spend his last day together? Did it mean nothing that she had given him
her ear-rings? Quickly drawing about him some remnants of his tattered
pride, he hid his wound, and accepted the invitation.
“It seems a shame,” said Zuleika to The MacQuern, “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 much better that is than bad blood! She hoped the
better man would win; and (do not misjudge her) she rather hoped this
man was the Duke. It occurred to her--a vague memory of some play or
picture--that she ought to be holding aloft a candelabra of lit tapers;
no, that was only done indoors, and in the eighteenth century. Ought
she to hold a sponge? Idle, these speculations of hers, and based on
complete ignorance of the manners and customs of undergraduates. The
Duke and The MacQuern would never have come to blows in the presence of
a lady. Their conflict was necessarily spiritual.
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 woman
on equal terms. She was transcendent? So was he, Dorset. To-night
the world had on its moonlit surface two great ornaments--Zuleika and
himself. Neither of the pair could be replaced. Was one of them to be
shattered? Life and love were good. He had been mad to think of dying.
No word was spoken as they went together to Salt Cellar. She expected
him to talk about her conjuring tricks. Could he have been disappointed?
She dared not inquire; for she had the sensitiveness, though no other
quality whatsoever, of the true artist. She felt herself aggrieved. She
had half a mind to ask him to give her back her ear-rings. And by the
way, he hadn’t yet thanked her for them! Well, she would make allowances
for a condemned man. And again she remembered the omen of which he had
told her. She looked at him, and then up into the sky. “This same moon,”
she said to herself, “sees the battlements of Tankerton. Does she see
two black owls there? Does she hear them hooting?”
They were in Salt Cellar now. “Melisande!” 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
called out for Melisande, and received no answer. “I suppose she’s in
the house-keeper’s room or somewhere. You had better put the box down
inside the door. She can bring it up later.”
She pushed open the postern; and the Duke, as he stepped across the
threshold, thrilled with a romantic awe. Re-emerging a moment later into
the moonlight, he felt that she had been right about the box: it was
fatal to self-expression; and he was glad he had not tried to speak
on the way from the Front Quad: the soul needs gesture; and the Duke’s
first gesture now was to seize Zuleika’s hands in his.
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 YOU are, you incomparable darling: you are a fool.
You are afraid of life. I am not. I love life. I am going to live for
you, do you hear?”
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.”
“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 Zuleika’s first thought, as she
came into her bedroom. Yes, there were two red marks where he had
held her. No man had ever dared to lay hands on her. With a sense of
contamination, she proceeded to wash her hands thoroughly with soap and
water. From time to time such words as “cad” and “beast” came through
her teeth.
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 window. She was glad. The night
needed cleansing.
He had told her she was afraid of life. Life!--to have herself caressed
by HIM; humbly to devote herself to being humbly doted on; to be the
slave of a slave; to swim in a private pond of treacle--ugh! If the
thought weren’t so cloying and degrading, it would be laughable.
For a moment her hands hovered over those two golden and gemmed volumes
encasing Bradshaw and the A.B.C. Guide. To leave Oxford by an early
train, leave him to drown unthanked, unlooked at... But this could
not be done without slighting all those hundreds of other men ... And
besides...
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. 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.