And Zuleika? She had done a wise thing, and was where it was best that
she should be.
Her face lay upturned on the water’s surface, and round it were the
masses of her dark hair, half floating, half submerged. Her eyes were
closed, and her lips were parted. Not Ophelia in the brook could have
seemed more at peace.
“Like a creature native and indued
Unto that element,”
tranquil Zuleika lay.
Gently to and fro her tresses drifted on the water, or under the water
went ever ravelling and unravelling. Nothing else of her stirred.
What to her now the loves that she had inspired and played on? the lives
lost for her? Little thought had she now of them. Aloof she lay.
Steadily rising from the water was a thick vapour that turned to dew on
the window-pane. The air was heavy with scent of violets. These are the
flowers of mourning; but their scent here and now signified nothing; for
Eau de Violettes was the bath-essence that Zuleika always had.
The bath-room was not of the white-gleaming kind to which she was
accustomed. The walls were papered, not tiled, and the bath itself was
of japanned tin, framed in mahogany. These things, on the evening of
her arrival at the Warden’s, had rather distressed her. But she was the
better able to bear them because of that well-remembered past when a
bath-room was in itself a luxury pined for--days when a not-large and
not-full can of not-hot water, slammed down at her bedroom door by a
governess-resenting housemaid, was as much as the gods allowed her. And
there was, to dulcify for her the bath of this evening, the yet sharper
contrast with the plight she had just come home in, sopped, shivering,
clung to by her clothes. Because this bath was not a mere luxury, but a
necessary precaution, a sure means of salvation from chill, she did the
more gratefully bask in it, till Melisande came back to her, laden with
warmed towels.
A few minutes before eight o’clock she was fully ready to go down to
dinner, with even more than the usual glow of health, and hungry beyond
her wont.
Yet, as she went down, her heart somewhat misgave her. Indeed, by force
of the wide experience she had had as a governess, she never did feel
quite at her ease when she was staying in a private house: the fear of
not giving satisfaction haunted her; she was always on her guard; the
shadow of dismissal absurdly hovered. And to-night she could not tell
herself, as she usually did, not to be so silly. If her grandfather knew
already the motive by which those young men had been actuated, dinner
with him might be a rather strained affair. He might tell her, in so
many words, that he wished he had not invited her to Oxford.
Through the open door of the drawing room she saw him, standing
majestic, draped in a voluminous black gown. Her instinct was to run
away; but this she conquered. She went straight in, remembering not to
smile.
“Ah, ah,” said the Warden, shaking a forefinger at her with old-world
playfulness. “And what have you to say for yourself?”
Relieved, she was also a trifle shocked. Was it possible that he, a
responsible old man, could take things so lightly?
“Oh, grand-papa,” she answered, hanging her head, “what CAN I say? It
is--it is too, too, dreadful.”
“There, there, my dear. I was but jesting. If you have had an agreeable
time, you are forgiven for playing truant. Where have you been all day?”
She saw that she had misjudged him. “I have just come from the river,”
she said gravely.
“Yes? And did the College make its fourth bump to-night?”
“I--I don’t know, grand-papa. There was so much happening. It--I will
tell you all about it at dinner.”
“Ah, but to-night,” he said, indicating his gown, “I cannot be with you.
The bump-supper, you know. I have to preside in Hall.”
Zuleika had forgotten there was to be a bump-supper, and, though she
was not very sure what a bump-supper was, she felt it would be a mockery
to-night.
“But grand-papa--” she began.
“My dear, I cannot dissociate myself from the life of the College. And,
alas,” he said, looking at the clock, “I must leave you now. As soon as
you have finished dinner, you might, if you would care to, come and peep
down at us from the gallery. There is apt to be some measure of
noise and racket, but all of it good-humoured and--boys will be
boys--pardonable. Will you come?”
“Perhaps, grand-papa,” she said awkwardly. Left alone, she hardly knew
whether to laugh or cry. In a moment, the butler came to her rescue,
telling her that dinner was served.
As the figure of the Warden emerged from Salt Cellar into the Front
Quadrangle, a hush fell on the group of gowned Fellows outside the Hall.
Most of them had only just been told the news, and (such is the force
of routine in an University) were still sceptical of it. And in face of
these doubts the three or four dons who had been down at the river were
now half ready to believe that there must, after all, be some mistake,
and that in this world of illusions they had to-night been specially
tricked. To rebut this theory, there was the notable absence of
undergraduates. Or was this an illusion, too? Men of thought, agile on
the plane of ideas, devils of fellows among books, they groped feebly
in this matter of actual life and death. The sight of their Warden
heartened them. After all, he was the responsible person. He was father
of the flock that had strayed, and grandfather of the beautiful Miss
Zuleika.
Like her, they remembered not to smile in greeting him.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said. “The storm seems to have passed.”
There was a murmur of “Yes, Warden.”
“And how did our boat acquit itself?”
There was a shuffling pause. Every one looked at the Sub-Warden: it was
manifestly for him to break the news, or to report the hallucination. He
was nudged forward--a large man, with a large beard at which he plucked
nervously.
“Well, really, Warden,” he said, “we--we hardly know,” * and he ended
with what can only be described as a giggle. He fell low in the esteem
of his fellows.
*Those of my readers who are interested in athletic sports will
remember the long controversy that raged as to whether Judas had
actually bumped Magdalen; and they will not need to be minded that
it was mainly through the evidence of Mr. E. T. A. Cook, who had
been on the towing-path at the time, that the O. U. B. C. decided
the point in Judas’ favour, and fixed the order of the boats for
the following year accordingly.
Thinking of that past Sub-Warden whose fame was linked with the
sun-dial, the Warden eyed this one keenly.
“Well, gentlemen,” he presently said, “our young men seem to be already
at table. Shall we follow their example?” And he led the way up the
steps.
Already at table? The dons’ dubiety toyed with this hypothesis. But the
aspect of the Hall’s interior was hard to explain away. Here were the
three long tables, stretching white towards the dais, and laden with the
usual crockery and cutlery, and with pots of flowers in honour of the
occasion. And here, ranged along either wall, was the usual array of
scouts, motionless, with napkins across their arms. But that was all.
It became clear to the Warden that some organised prank or protest was
afoot. Dignity required that he should take no heed whatsoever. Looking
neither to the right nor to the left, stately he approached the dais,
his Fellows to heel.
In Judas, as in other Colleges, grace before meat is read by the Senior
Scholar. The Judas grace (composed, they say, by Christopher Whitrid
himself) is noted for its length and for the excellence of its Latinity.
Who was to read it to-night? The Warden, having searched his mind vainly
for a precedent, was driven to create one.
“The Junior Fellow,” he said, “will read grace.”
Blushing to the roots of his hair, and with crablike gait, Mr. Pedby,
the Junior Fellow, went and unhooked from the wall that little shield
of wood on which the words of the grace are carven. Mr. Pedby was--Mr.
Pedby is--a mathematician. His treatise on the Higher Theory of Short
Division by Decimals had already won for him an European reputation.
Judas was--Judas is--proud of Pedby. Nor is it denied that in
undertaking the duty thrust on him he quickly controlled his nerves and
read the Latin out in ringing accents. Better for him had he not done
so. The false quantities he made were so excruciating and so many that,
while the very scouts exchanged glances, the dons at the high table lost
all command of their features, and made horrible noises in the effort to
contain themselves. The very Warden dared not look from his plate.
In every breast around the high table, behind every shirt-front or
black silk waistcoat, glowed the recognition of a new birth. Suddenly,
unheralded, a thing of highest destiny had fallen into their academic
midst. The stock of Common Room talk had to-night been re-inforced and
enriched for all time. Summers and winters would come and go, old faces
would vanish, giving place to new, but the story of Pedby’s grace would
be told always. Here was a tradition that generations of dons yet unborn
would cherish and chuckle over. Something akin to awe mingled itself
with the subsiding merriment. And the dons, having finished their soup,
sipped in silence the dry brown sherry.
Those who sat opposite to the Warden, with their backs to the void,
were oblivious of the matter that had so recently teased them. They
were conscious only of an agreeable hush, in which they peered down
the vistas of the future, watching the tradition of Pedby’s grace as it
rolled brighter and ever brighter down to eternity.
The pop of a champagne cork startled them to remembrance that this was a
bump-supper, and a bump-supper of a peculiar kind. The turbot that
came after the soup, the champagne that succeeded the sherry, helped to
quicken in these men of thought the power to grapple with a reality. The
aforesaid three or four who had been down at the river recovered their
lost belief in the evidence of their eyes and ears. In the rest was a
spirit of receptivity which, as the meal went on, mounted to conviction.
The Sub-Warden made a second and more determined attempt to enlighten
the Warden; but the Warden’s eye met his with a suspicion so cruelly
pointed that he again floundered and gave in.
All adown those empty other tables gleamed the undisturbed cutlery, and
the flowers in the pots innocently bloomed. And all adown either wall,
unneeded but undisbanded, the scouts remained. Some of the elder ones
stood with closed eyes and heads sunk forward, now and again jerking
themselves erect, and blinking around, wondering, remembering.
And for a while this scene was looked down on by a not disinterested
stranger. For a while, her chin propped on her hands, Zuleika leaned
over the rail of the gallery, just as she had lately leaned over the
barge’s rail, staring down and along. But there was no spark of triumph
now in her eyes; only a deep melancholy; and in her mouth a taste as of
dust and ashes. She thought of last night, and of all the buoyant life
that this Hall had held. Of the Duke she thought, and of the whole vivid
and eager throng of his fellows in love. Her will, their will, had been
done. But, there rose to her lips the old, old question that withers
victory--“To what end?” Her eyes ranged along the tables, and an
appalling sense of loneliness swept over her. She turned away, wrapping
the folds of her cloak closer across her breast. Not in this College
only, but through and through Oxford, there was no heart that beat for
her--no, not one, she told herself, with that instinct for self-torture
which comes to souls in torment. She was utterly alone to-night in the
midst of a vast indifference. She! She! Was it possible? Were the gods
so merciless? Ah no, surely...
Down at the high table the feast drew to its close, and very different
was the mood of the feasters from that of the young woman whose glance
had for a moment rested on their unromantic heads. Generations of
undergraduates had said that Oxford would be all very well but for the
dons. Do you suppose that the dons had had no answering sentiment? Youth
is a very good thing to possess, no doubt; but it is a tiresome setting
for maturity. Youth all around prancing, vociferating, mocking; callow
and alien youth, having to be looked after and studied and taught,
as though nothing but it mattered, term after term--and now, all of a
sudden, in mid-term, peace, ataraxy, a profound and leisured stillness.
No lectures to deliver to-morrow; no “essays” to hear and criticise;
time for the unvexed pursuit of pure learning...
As the Fellows passed out on their way to Common Room, there to tackle
with a fresh appetite Pedby’s grace, they paused, as was their wont, on
the steps of the Hall, looking up at the sky, envisaging the weather.
The wind had dropped. There was even a glimpse of the moon riding behind
the clouds. And now, a solemn and plangent token of Oxford’s perpetuity,
the first stroke of Great Tom sounded.