Zuleika looked down at her skirt. "I don't know," she said. "I got it in Paris." "Well," said the Duke, "it is very ugly. The Dalbraith tartan is harmonious in comparison, and has, at least, the excuse of history. If you married me, you would have the right to wear it. You would have many strange and fascinating rights. You would go to Court. I admit that the Hanoverian Court is not much. Still, it is better than nothing. At your presentation, moreover, you would be given the entree. Is that nothing to you? You would be driven to Court in my statecoach. It is swung so high that the streetsters can hardly see its occupant. It is lined with rose-silk; and on its panels, and on its hammer-cloth, my arms are emblazoned—no one has ever been able to count the quarterings. You would be wearing the family-jewels, reluctantly surrendered to you by my aunt. They are many and marvellous, in their antique settings. I don't want to brag. It humiliates me to speak to you as I am speaking. But I am heart-set on you, and to win you there is not a precious stone I would leave unturned. Conceive a parure all of white stones—diamonds, white sapphires, white topazes, tourmalines. Another, of rubies and amethysts, set in gold filigree. Rings that once were poison-combs on Florentine fingers. Red roses for your hair—every petal a hollowed ruby. Amulets and ape-buckles, zones and fillets. Aye! know that you would be weeping for wonder before you had seen a tithe of these gauds. Know, too, Miss Dobson, that in the Peerage of France I am Duc d'Etretat et de la Roche Guillaume. Louis Napoleon gave the title to my father for not cutting him in the Bois. I have a house in the Champs Elysees. There is a Swiss in its courtyard. He stands six-foot-seven in his stockings, and the chasseurs are hardly less tall than he. Wherever I go, there are two chefs in my retinue. Both are masters in their art, and furiously jealous of each other. When I compliment either of them on some dish, the other challenges him. They fight with rapiers, next morning, in the garden of whatever house I am occupying. I do not know whether you are greedy? If so, it may interest you to learn that I have a third chef, who makes only souffles, and an Italian pastry-cook; to say nothing of a Spaniard for salads, an Englishwoman for roasts, and an Abyssinian for coffee. You found no trace of their handiwork in the meal you have just had with me? No; for in Oxford it is a whim of mine—I may say a point of honour—to lead the ordinary life of an undergraduate. What I eat in this room is cooked by the heavy and unaided hand of Mrs. Batch, my landlady. It is set before me by the unaided and—or are you in error?—loving hand of her daughter. Other ministers have I none here. I dispense with my private secretaries. I am unattended by a single valet. So simple a way of life repels you? You would never be called upon to share it. If you married me, I should take my name off the books of my College. I propose that we should spend our honeymoon at Baiae. I have a villa at Baiae. It is there that I keep my grandfather's collection of majolica. The sun shines there always. A long olive-grove secretes the garden from the sea. When you walk in the garden, you know the sea only in blue glimpses through the vacillating leaves. White-gleaming from the bosky shade of this grove are several goddesses. Do you care for Canova? I don't myself. If you do, these figures will appeal to you: they are in his best manner. Do you love the sea? This is not the only house of mine that looks out on it. On the coast of County Clare—am I not Earl of Enniskerry and Baron Shandrin in the Peerage of Ireland?—I have an ancient castle. Sheer from a rock stands it, and the sea has always raged up against its walls. Many ships lie wrecked under that loud implacable sea. But mine is a brave strong castle. No storm affrights it; and not the centuries, clustering houris, with their caresses can seduce it from its hard austerity. I have several titles which for the moment escape me. Baron Llffthwchl am I, and… and… but you can find them for yourself in Debrett. In me you behold a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, and a Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. Look well at me! I am Hereditary Comber of the Queen's Lap-Dogs. I am young. I am handsome. My temper is sweet, and my character without blemish. In fine, Miss Dobson, I am a most desirable parti." "But," said Zuleika, "I don't love you." The Duke stamped his foot. "I beg your pardon," he said hastily. "I ought not to have done that. But—you seem to have entirely missed the point of what I was saying." "No, I haven't," said Zuleika. "Then what," cried the Duke, standing over her, "what is your reply?" Said Zuleika, looking up at him, "My reply is that I think you are an awful snob." The Duke turned on his heel, and strode to the other end of the room.
There he stood for some moments, his back to Zuleika.
"I think," she resumed in a slow, meditative voice, "that you are, with the possible exception of a Mr. Edelweiss, THE most awful snob I have ever met." The Duke looked back over his shoulder. He gave Zuleika the stinging reprimand of silence. She was sorry, and showed it in her eyes. She felt she had gone too far. True, he was nothing to her now. But she had loved him once. She could not forget that. "Come!" she said. "Let us be good friends. Give me your hand!" He came to her, slowly. "There!" The Duke withdrew his fingers before she unclasped them. That twice-flung taunt rankled still. It was monstrous to have been called a snob. A snob!—he, whose readiness to form what would certainly be regarded as a shocking misalliance ought to have stifled the charge, not merely vindicated him from it! He had forgotten, in the blindness of his love, how shocking the misalliance would be. Perhaps she, unloving, had not been so forgetful? Perhaps her refusal had been made, generously, for his own sake. Nay, rather for her own. Evidently, she had felt that the high sphere from which he beckoned was no place for the likes of her. Evidently, she feared she would pine away among those strange splendours, never be acclimatised, always be unworthy. He had thought to overwhelm her, and he had done his work too thoroughly. Now he must try to lighten the load he had imposed. Seating himself opposite to her, "You remember," he said, "that there is a dairy at Tankerton?" "A dairy? Oh yes." "Do you remember what it is called?" Zuleika knit her brows. He helped her out. "It is called 'Her Grace's'." "Oh, of course!" said Zuleika. "Do you know WHY it is called so?" "Well, let's see… I know you told me." "Did I? I think not. I will tell you now… That cool out-house dates from the middle of the eighteenth century. My great-great-grandfather, when he was a very old man, married en troisiemes noces a dairy-maid on the Tankerton estate. Meg Speedwell was her name. He had seen her walking across a field, not many months after the interment of his second Duchess, Maria, that great and gifted lady. I know not whether it was that her bonny mien fanned in him some embers of his youth, or that he was loth to be outdone in gracious eccentricity by his crony the Duke of Dewlap, who himself had just taken a bride from a dairy. (You have read Meredith's account of that affair? No? You should.) Whether it was veritable love or mere modishness that formed my ancestor's resolve, presently the bells were ringing out, and the oldest elm in the park was being felled, in Meg Speedwell's honour, and the children were strewing daisies on which Meg Speedwell trod, a proud young hoyden of a bride, with her head in the air and her heart in the seventh heaven. The Duke had given her already a horde of fine gifts; but these, he had said, were nothing—trash in comparison with the gift that was to ensure for her a perdurable felicity. After the wedding-breakfast, when all the squires had ridden away on their cobs, and all the squires' ladies in their coaches, the Duke led his bride forth from the hall, leaning on her arm, till they came to a little edifice of new white stone, very spick and span, with two lattice-windows and a bright green door between. This he bade her enter. A-flutter with excitement, she turned the handle. In a moment she flounced back, red with shame and anger—flounced forth from the fairest, whitest, dapperest dairy, wherein was all of the best that the keenest dairy-maid might need. The Duke bade her dry her eyes, for that it ill befitted a great lady to be weeping on her wedding-day. 'As for gratitude,' he chuckled, 'zounds! that is a wine all the better for the keeping.' Duchess Meg soon forgot this unworthy wedding-gift, such was her rapture in the other, the so august, appurtenances of her new life. What with her fine silk gowns and farthingales, and her powder-closet, and the canopied bed she slept in—a bed bigger far than the room she had slept in with her sisters, and standing in a room far bigger than her father's cottage; and what with Betty, her maid, who had pinched and teased her at the village-school, but now waited on her so meekly and trembled so fearfully at a scolding; and what with the fine hot dishes that were set before her every day, and the gallant speeches and glances of the fine young gentlemen whom the Duke invited from London, Duchess Meg was quite the happiest Duchess in all England. For a while, she was like a child in a hay-rick. But anon, as the sheer delight of novelty wore away, she began to take a more serious view of her position. She began to realise her responsibilities. She was determined to do all that a great lady ought to do. Twice every day she assumed the vapours. She schooled herself in the mysteries of Ombre, of Macao. She spent hours over the tambour-frame. She rode out on horse-back, with a riding-master. She had a music-master to teach her the spinet; a dancing-master, too, to teach her the Minuet and the Triumph and the Gaudy. All these accomplishments she found mighty hard. She was afraid of her horse. All the morning, she dreaded the hour when it would be brought round from the stables. She dreaded her dancing-lesson. Try as she would, she could but stamp her feet flat on the parquet, as though it had been the village-green. She dreaded her music-lesson. Her fingers, disobedient to her ambition, clumsily thumped the keys of the spinet, and by the notes of the score propped up before her she was as cruelly perplexed as by the black and red pips of the cards she conned at the gaming-table, or by the red and gold threads that were always straying and snapping on her tambour-frame. Still she persevered. Day in, day out, sullenly, she worked hard to be a great lady. But skill came not to her, and hope dwindled; only the dull effort remained. One accomplishment she did master—to wit, the vapours: they became for her a dreadful reality. She lost her appetite for the fine hot dishes. All night long she lay awake, restless, tearful, under the fine silk canopy, till dawn stared her into slumber. She seldom scolded Betty. She who had been so lusty and so blooming saw in her mirror that she was pale and thin now; and the fine young gentlemen, seeing it too, paid more heed now to their wine and their dice than to her. And always, when she met him, the Duke smiled the same mocking smile. Duchess Meg was pining slowly and surely away… One morning, in Spring-time, she altogether vanished. Betty, bringing the cup of chocolate to the bedside, found the bed empty. She raised the alarm among her fellows. They searched high and low. Nowhere was their mistress. The news was broken to their master, who, without comment, rose, bade his man dress him, and presently walked out to the place where he knew he would find her. And there, to be sure, she was, churning, churning for dear life. Her sleeves were rolled above her elbows, and her skirt was kilted high; and, as she looked back over her shoulder and saw the Duke, there was the flush of roses in her cheeks, and the light of a thousand thanks in her eyes. 'Oh,' she cried, 'what a curtsey I would drop you, but that to let go the handle were to spoil all!' And every morning, ever after, she woke when the birds woke, rose when they rose, and went singing through the dawn to the dairy, there to practise for her pleasure that sweet and lowly handicraft which she had once practised for her need. And every evening, with her milking-stool under her arm, and her milk-pail in her hand, she went into the field and called the cows to her, as she had been wont to do. To those other, those so august, accomplishments she no more pretended. She gave them the go-by. And all the old zest and joyousness of her life came back to her. Soundlier than ever slept she, and sweetlier dreamed, under the fine silk canopy, till the birds called her to her work. Greater than ever was her love of the fine furbelows that were hers to flaunt in, and sharper her appetite for the fine hot dishes, and more tempestuous her scolding of Betty, poor maid. She was more than ever now the cynosure, the adored, of the fine young gentlemen. And as for her husband, she looked up to him as the wisest, kindest man in all the world." "And the fine young gentlemen," said Zuleika, "did she fall in love with any of them?" "You forget," said the Duke coldly, "she was married to a member of my family." "Oh, I beg your pardon. But tell me: did they ALL adore her?" "Yes. Every one of them, wildly, madly." "Ah," murmured Zuleika, with a smile of understanding. A shadow crossed her face, "Even so," she said, with some pique, "I don't suppose she had so very many adorers. She never went out into the world." "Tankerton," said the Duke drily, "is a large house, and my great-great-grandfather was the most hospitable of men. However," he added, marvelling that she had again missed the point so utterly, "my purpose was not to confront you with a past rival in conquest, but to set at rest a fear which I had, I think, roused in you by my somewhat full description of the high majestic life to which you, as my bride, would be translated." "A fear? What sort of a fear?" "That you would not breathe freely—that you would starve (if I may use a somewhat fantastic figure) among those strawberry-leaves. And so I told you the story of Meg Speedwell, and how she lived happily ever after. Nay, hear me out! The blood of Meg Speedwell's lord flows in my veins. I think I may boast that I have inherited something of his sagacity. In any case, I can profit by his example. Do not fear that I, if you were to wed me, should demand a metamorphosis of your present self. I should take you as you are, gladly. I should encourage you to be always exactly as you are—a radiant, irresistible member of the upper middle-class, with a certain freedom of manner acquired through a life of peculiar liberty. Can you guess what would be my principal wedding-gift to you? Meg Speedwell had her dairy. For you, would be built another outhouse—a neat hall wherein you would perform your conjuring-tricks, every evening except Sunday, before me and my tenants and my servants, and before such of my neighbours as might care to come. None would respect you the less, seeing that I approved. Thus in you would the pleasant history of Meg Speedwell repeat itself. You, practising for your pleasure—nay, hear me out!—that sweet and lowly handicraft which—" "I won't listen to another word!" cried Zuleika. "You are the most insolent person I have ever met. I happen to come of a particularly good family. I move in the best society. My manners are absolutely perfect. If I found myself in the shoes of twenty Duchesses simultaneously, I should know quite well how to behave. As for the one pair you can offer me, I kick them away—so. I kick them back at you. I tell you—" "Hush," said the Duke, "hush! You are over-excited. There will be a crowd under my window. There, there! I am sorry. I thought—" "Oh, I know what you thought," said Zuleika, in a quieter tone. "I am sure you meant well. I am sorry I lost my temper. Only, you might have given me credit for meaning what I said: that I would not marry you, because I did not love you. I daresay there would be great advantages in being your Duchess. But the fact is, I have no worldly wisdom. To me, marriage is a sacrament. I could no more marry a man about whom I could not make a fool of myself than I could marry one who made a fool of himself about me. Else had I long ceased to be a spinster. Oh my friend, do not imagine that I have not rejected, in my day, a score of suitors quite as eligible as you." "As eligible? Who were they?" frowned the Duke. "Oh, Archduke this, and Grand Duke that, and His Serene Highness the other. I have a wretched memory for names." "And my name, too, will soon escape you, perhaps?" "No. Oh, no. I shall always remember yours. You see, I was in love with you. You deceived me into loving you…" She sighed. "Oh, had you but been as strong as I thought you… Still, a swain the more. That is something." She leaned forward, smiling archly. "Those studs—show me them again." The Duke displayed them in the hollow of his hand. She touched them lightly, reverently, as a tourist touches a sacred relic in a church. At length, "Do give me them," she said. "I will keep them in a little secret partition of my jewel-case." The Duke had closed his fist. "Do!" she pleaded. "My other jewels—they have no separate meanings for me. I never remember who gave me this one or that. These would be quite different. I should always remember their history… Do!" "Ask me for anything else," said the Duke. "These are the one thing I could not part with—even to you, for whose sake they are hallowed." Zuleika pouted. On the verge of persisting, she changed her mind, and was silent. "Well!" she said abruptly, "how about these races? Are you going to take me to see them?" "Races? What races?" murmured the Duke. "Oh yes. I had forgotten. Do you really mean that you want to see them?" "Why, of course! They are great fun, aren't they?" "And you are in a mood for great fun? Well, there is plenty of time. The
Second Division is not rowed till half-past four."
"The Second Division? Why not take me to the First?" "That is not rowed till six." "Isn't this rather an odd arrangement?" "No doubt. But Oxford never pretended to be strong in mathematics." "Why, it's not yet three!" cried Zuleika, with a woebegone stare at the clock. "What is to be done in the meantime?" "Am not I sufficiently diverting?" asked the Duke bitterly. "Quite candidly, no. Have you any friend lodging with you here?" "One, overhead. A man named Noaks." "A small man, with spectacles?" "Very small, with very large spectacles." "He was pointed out to me yesterday, as I was driving from the Station … No, I don't think I want to meet him. What can you have in common with him?" "One frailty, at least: he, too, Miss Dobson, loves you." "But of course he does. He saw me drive past. Very few of the others," she said, rising and shaking herself, "have set eyes on me. Do let us go out and look at the Colleges. I do need change of scene. If you were a doctor, you would have prescribed that long ago. It is very bad for me to be here, a kind of Cinderella, moping over the ashes of my love for you. Where is your hat?" Looking round, she caught sight of herself in the glass. "Oh," she cried, "what a fright I do look! I must never be seen like this!" "You look very beautiful." "I don't. That is a lover's illusion. You yourself told me that this tartan was perfectly hideous. There was no need to tell me that. I came thus because I was coming to see you. I chose this frock in the deliberate fear that you, if I made myself presentable, might succumb at second sight of me. I would have sent out for a sack and dressed myself in that, I would have blacked my face all over with burnt cork, only I was afraid of being mobbed on the way to you." "Even so, you would but have been mobbed for your incorrigible beauty." "My beauty! How I hate it!" sighed Zuleika. "Still, here it is, and I must needs make the best of it. Come! Take me to Judas. I will change my things. Then I shall be fit for the races." As these two emerged, side by side, into the street, the Emperors exchanged stony sidelong glances. For they saw the more than normal pallor of the Duke's face, and something very like desperation in his eyes. They saw the tragedy progressing to its foreseen close. Unable to stay its course, they were grimly fascinated now. VI "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones." At any rate, the sinner has a better chance than the saint of being hereafter remembered. We, in whom original sin preponderates, find him easier to understand. He is near to us, clear to us. The saint is remote, dim. A very great saint may, of course, be remembered through some sheer force of originality in him; and then the very mystery that involves him for us makes him the harder to forget: he haunts us the more surely because we shall never understand him. But the ordinary saints grow faint to posterity; whilst quite ordinary sinners pass vividly down the ages. Of the disciples of Jesus, which is he that is most often remembered and cited by us? Not the disciple whom Jesus loved; neither of the Boanerges, nor any other of them who so steadfastly followed Him and served Him; but the disciple who betrayed Him for thirty pieces of silver. Judas Iscariot it is who outstands, overshadowing those other fishermen. And perhaps it was by reason of this precedence that Christopher Whitrid, Knight, in the reign of Henry VI., gave the name of Judas to the College which he had founded. Or perhaps it was because he felt that in a Christian community not even the meanest and basest of men should be accounted beneath contempt, beyond redemption. At any rate, thus he named his foundation. And, though for Oxford men the savour of the name itself has long evaporated through its local connexion, many things show that for the Founder himself it was no empty vocable. In a niche above the gate stands a rudely carved statue of Judas, holding a money-bag in his right hand. Among the original statutes of the College is one by which the Bursar is enjoined to distribute in Passion Week thirty pieces of silver among the needier scholars "for saike of atonynge." The meadow adjoining the back of the College has been called from time immemorial "the Potter's Field." And the name of Salt Cellar is not less ancient and significant. Salt Cellar, that grey and green quadrangle visible from the room assigned to Zuleika, is very beautiful, as I have said. So tranquil is it as to seem remote not merely from the world, but even from Oxford, so deeply is it hidden away in the core of Oxford's heart. So tranquil is it, one would guess that nothing had ever happened in it. For five centuries these walls have stood, and during that time have beheld, one would say, no sight less seemly than the good work of weeding, mowing, rolling, that has made, at length, so exemplary the lawn. These cloisters that grace the south and east sides—five centuries have passed through them, leaving in them no echo, leaving on them no sign, of all that the outer world, for good or evil, has been doing so fiercely, so raucously. And yet, if you are versed in the antiquities of Oxford, you know that this small, still quadrangle has played its part in the rough-and-tumble of history, and has been the background of high passions and strange fates. The sun-dial in its midst has told the hours to more than one bygone King. Charles I. lay for twelve nights in Judas; and it was here, in this very quadrangle, that he heard from the lips of a breathless and blood-stained messenger the news of Chalgrove Field. Sixty years later, James, his son, came hither, black with threats, and from one of the hind-windows of the Warden's house—maybe, from the very room where now Zuleika was changing her frock—addressed the Fellows, and presented to them the Papist by him chosen to be their Warden, instead of the Protestant whom they had elected. They were not of so stern a stuff as the Fellows of Magdalen, who, despite His Majesty's menaces, had just rejected Bishop Farmer. The Papist was elected, there and then, al fresco, without dissent. Cannot one see them, these Fellows of Judas, huddled together round the sun-dial, like so many sheep in a storm? The King's wrath, according to a contemporary record, was so appeased by their pliancy that he deigned to lie for two nights in Judas, and at a grand refection in Hall "was gracious and merrie." Perhaps it was in lingering gratitude for such patronage that Judas remained so pious to his memory even after smug Herrenhausen had been dumped down on us for ever. Certainly, of all the Colleges none was more ardent than Judas for James Stuart. Thither it was that young Sir Harry Esson led, under cover of night, three-score recruits whom he had enlisted in the surrounding villages. The cloisters of Salt Cellar were piled with arms and stores; and on its grass—its sacred grass!—the squad was incessantly drilled, against the good day when Ormond should land his men in Devon. For a whole month Salt Cellar was a secret camp. But somehow, at length—woe to "lost causes and impossible loyalties"—Herrenhausen had wind of it; and one night, when the soldiers of the white cockade lay snoring beneath the stars, stealthily the white-faced Warden unbarred his postern—that very postern through which now Zuleika had passed on the way to her bedroom—and stealthily through it, one by one on tip-toe, came the King's foot-guards. Not many shots rang out, nor many swords clashed, in the night air, before the trick was won for law and order. Most of the rebels were overpowered in their sleep; and those who had time to snatch arms were too dazed to make good resistance. Sir Harry Esson himself was the only one who did not live to be hanged. He had sprung up alert, sword in hand, at the first alarm, setting his back to the cloisters. There he fought calmly, ferociously, till a bullet went through his chest. "By God, this College is well-named!" were the words he uttered as he fell forward and died. Comparatively tame was the scene now being enacted in this place. The Duke, with bowed head, was pacing the path between the lawn and the cloisters. Two other undergraduates stood watching him, whispering to each other, under the archway that leads to the Front Quadrangle. Presently, in a sheepish way, they approached him. He halted and looked up. "I say," stammered the spokesman. "Well?" asked the Duke. Both youths were slightly acquainted with him; but he was not used to being spoken to by those whom he had not first addressed. Moreover, he was loth to be thus disturbed in his sombre reverie. His manner was not encouraging. "Isn't it a lovely day for the Eights?" faltered the spokesman. "I conceive," the Duke said, "that you hold back some other question." The spokesman smiled weakly. Nudged by the other, he muttered "Ask him yourself!" The Duke diverted his gaze to the other, who, with an angry look at the one, cleared his throat, and said "I was going to ask if you thought Miss Dobson would come and have luncheon with me to-morrow?" "A sister of mine will be there," explained the one, knowing the Duke to be a precisian. "If you are acquainted with Miss Dobson, a direct invitation should be sent to her," said the Duke. "If you are not—" The aposiopesis was icy. "Well, you see," said the other of the two, "that is just the difficulty. I AM acquainted with her. But is she acquainted with ME? I met her at breakfast this morning, at the Warden's." "So did I," added the one. "But she—well," continued the other, "she didn't take much notice of us. She seemed to be in a sort of dream." "Ah!" murmured the Duke, with melancholy interest. "The only time she opened her lips," said the other, "was when she asked us whether we took tea or coffee." "She put hot milk in my tea," volunteered the one, "and upset the cup over my hand, and smiled vaguely." "And smiled vaguely," sighed the Duke. "She left us long before the marmalade stage," said the one. "Without a word," said the other. "Without a glance?" asked the Duke. It was testified by the one and the other that there had been not so much as a glance. "Doubtless," the disingenuous Duke said, "she had a headache… Was she pale?" "Very pale," answered the one. "A healthy pallor," qualified the other, who was a constant reader of novels. "Did she look," the Duke inquired, "as if she had spent a sleepless night?" That was the impression made on both. "Yet she did not seem listless or unhappy?" No, they would not go so far as to say that. "Indeed, were her eyes of an almost unnatural brilliance?" "Quite unnatural," confessed the one. "Twin stars," interpolated the other. "Did she, in fact, seem to be consumed by some inward rapture?" Yes, now they came to think of it, this was exactly how she HAD seemed. It was sweet, it was bitter, for the Duke. "I remember," Zuleika had said to him, "nothing that happened to me this morning till I found myself at your door." It was bitter-sweet to have that outline filled in by these artless pencils. No, it was only bitter, to be, at his time of life, living in the past. "The purpose of your tattle?" he asked coldly. The two youths hurried to the point from which he had diverted them. "When she went by with you just now," said the one, "she evidently didn't know us from Adam." "And I had so hoped to ask her to luncheon," said the other. "Well?" "Well, we wondered if you would re-introduce us. And then perhaps…" There was a pause. The Duke was touched to kindness for these fellow-lovers. He would fain preserve them from the anguish that beset himself. So humanising is sorrow. "You are in love with Miss Dobson?" he asked. Both nodded. "Then," said he, "you will in time be thankful to me for not affording you further traffic with that lady. To love and be scorned—does Fate hold for us a greater inconvenience? You think I beg the question? Let me tell you that I, too, love Miss Dobson, and that she scorns me." To the implied question "What chance would there be for you?" the reply was obvious. Amazed, abashed, the two youths turned on their heels. "Stay!" said the Duke. "Let me, in justice to myself, correct an inference you may have drawn. It is not by reason of any defect in myself, perceived or imagined, that Miss Dobson scorns me. She scorns me simply because I love her. All who love her she scorns. To see her is to love her. Therefore shut your eyes to her. Strictly exclude her from your horizon. Ignore her. Will you do this?" "We will try," said the one, after a pause. "Thank you very much," added the other. The Duke watched them out of sight. He wished he could take the good advice he had given them… Suppose he did take it! Suppose he went to the Bursar, obtained an exeat, fled straight to London! What just humiliation for Zuleika to come down and find her captive gone! He pictured her staring around the quadrangle, ranging the cloisters, calling to him. He pictured her rustling to the gate of the College, inquiring at the porter's lodge. "His Grace, Miss, he passed through a minute ago. He's going down this afternoon." Yet, even while his fancy luxuriated in this scheme, he well knew that he would not accomplish anything of the kind—knew well that he would wait here humbly, eagerly, even though Zuleika lingered over her toilet till crack o' doom. He had no desire that was not centred in her. Take away his love for her, and what remained? Nothing—though only in the past twenty-four hours had this love been added to him. Ah, why had he ever seen her? He thought of his past, its cold splendour and insouciance. But he knew that for him there was no returning. His boats were burnt. The Cytherean babes had set their torches to that flotilla, and it had blazed like match-wood. On the isle of the enchantress he was stranded for ever. For ever stranded on the isle of an enchantress who would have nothing to do with him! What, he wondered, should be done in so piteous a quandary? There seemed to be two courses. One was to pine slowly and painfully away. The other… Academically, the Duke had often reasoned that a man for whom life holds no chance of happiness cannot too quickly shake life off. Now, of a sudden, there was for that theory a vivid application. "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer" was not a point by which he, "more an antique Roman than a Dane," was at all troubled. Never had he given ear to that cackle which is called Public Opinion. The judgment of his peers—this, he had often told himself, was the sole arbitrage he could submit to; but then, who was to be on the bench? Peerless, he was irresponsible—the captain of his soul, the despot of his future. No injunction but from himself would he bow to; and his own injunctions—so little Danish was he—had always been peremptory and lucid. Lucid and peremptory, now, the command he issued to himself. "So sorry to have been so long," carolled a voice from above. The Duke looked up. "I'm all but ready," said Zuleika at her window. That brief apparition changed the colour of his resolve. He realised that to die for love of this lady would be no mere measure of precaution, or counsel of despair. It would be in itself a passionate indulgence—a fiery rapture, not to be foregone. What better could he ask than to die for his love? Poor indeed seemed to him now the sacrament of marriage beside the sacrament of death. Death was incomparably the greater, the finer soul. Death was the one true bridal. He flung back his head, spread wide his arms, quickened his pace almost to running speed. Ah, he would win his bride before the setting of the sun. He knew not by what means he would win her. Enough that even now, full-hearted, fleet-footed, he was on his way to her, and that she heard him coming. When Zuleika, a vision in vaporous white, came out through the postern, she wondered why he was walking at so remarkable a pace. To him, wildly expressing in his movement the thought within him, she appeared as his awful bride. With a cry of joy, he bounded towards her, and would have caught her in his arms, had she not stepped nimbly aside. "Forgive me!" he said, after a pause. "It was a mistake—an idiotic mistake of identity. I thought you were…" Zuleika, rigid, asked "Have I many doubles?" "You know well that in all the world is none so blest as to be like you. I can only say that I was over-wrought. I can only say that it shall not occur again." She was very angry indeed. Of his penitence there could be no doubt. But there are outrages for which no penitence can atone. This seemed to be one of them. Her first impulse was to dismiss the Duke forthwith and for ever. But she wanted to show herself at the races. And she could not go alone. And except the Duke there was no one to take her. True, there was the concert to-night; and she could show herself there to advantage; but she wanted ALL Oxford to see her—see her NOW. "I am forgiven?" he asked. In her, I am afraid, self-respect outweighed charity. "I will try," she said merely, "to forget what you have done." Motioning him to her side, she opened her parasol, and signified her readiness to start. They passed together across the vast gravelled expanse of the Front Quadrangle. In the porch of the College there were, as usual, some chained-up dogs, patiently awaiting their masters. Zuleika, of course, did not care for dogs. One has never known a good man to whom dogs were not dear; but many of the best women have no such fondness. You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men. For the attractive woman, dogs are mere dumb and restless brutes—possibly dangerous, certainly soulless. Yet will coquetry teach her to caress any dog in the presence of a man enslaved by her. Even Zuleika, it seems, was not above this rather obvious device for awaking envy. Be sure she did not at all like the look of the very big bulldog who was squatting outside the porter's lodge. Perhaps, but for her present anger, she would not have stooped endearingly down to him, as she did, cooing over him and trying to pat his head. Alas, her pretty act was a failure. The bulldog cowered away from her, horrifically grimacing. This was strange. Like the majority of his breed, Corker (for such was his name) had ever been wistful to be noticed by any one—effusively grateful for every word or pat, an ever-ready wagger and nuzzler, to none ineffable. No beggar, no burglar, had ever been rebuffed by this catholic beast. But he drew the line at Zuleika. Seldom is even a fierce bulldog heard to growl. Yet Corker growled at Zuleika.
| | | Zuleika looked down at her skirt. "I don't know," she said. "I got it in Paris." "Well," said the Duke, "it is very ugly. The Dalbraith tartan is harmonious in comparison, and has, at least, the excuse of history. If you married me, you would have the right to wear it. You would have many strange and fascinating rights. You would go to Court. I admit that the Hanoverian Court is not much. Still, it is better than nothing. At your presentation, moreover, you would be given the entree. Is that nothing to you? You would be driven to Court in my statecoach. It is swung so high that the streetsters can hardly see its occupant. It is lined with rose-silk; and on its panels, and on its hammer-cloth, my arms are emblazoned—no one has ever been able to count the quarterings. You would be wearing the family-jewels, reluctantly surrendered to you by my aunt. They are many and marvellous, in their antique settings. I don't want to brag. It humiliates me to speak to you as I am speaking. But I am heart-set on you, and to win you there is not a precious stone I would leave unturned. Conceive a parure all of white stones—diamonds, white sapphires, white topazes, tourmalines. Another, of rubies and amethysts, set in gold filigree. Rings that once were poison-combs on Florentine fingers. Red roses for your hair—every petal a hollowed ruby. Amulets and ape-buckles, zones and fillets. Aye! know that you would be weeping for wonder before you had seen a tithe of these gauds. Know, too, Miss Dobson, that in the Peerage of France I am Duc d'Etretat et de la Roche Guillaume. Louis Napoleon gave the title to my father for not cutting him in the Bois. I have a house in the Champs Elysees. There is a Swiss in its courtyard. He stands six-foot-seven in his stockings, and the chasseurs are hardly less tall than he. Wherever I go, there are two chefs in my retinue. Both are masters in their art, and furiously jealous of each other. When I compliment either of them on some dish, the other challenges him. They fight with rapiers, next morning, in the garden of whatever house I am occupying. I do not know whether you are greedy? If so, it may interest you to learn that I have a third chef, who makes only souffles, and an Italian pastry-cook; to say nothing of a Spaniard for salads, an Englishwoman for roasts, and an Abyssinian for coffee. You found no trace of their handiwork in the meal you have just had with me? No; for in Oxford it is a whim of mine—I may say a point of honour—to lead the ordinary life of an undergraduate. What I eat in this room is cooked by the heavy and unaided hand of Mrs. Batch, my landlady. It is set before me by the unaided and—or are you in error?—loving hand of her daughter. Other ministers have I none here. I dispense with my private secretaries. I am unattended by a single valet. So simple a way of life repels you? You would never be called upon to share it. If you married me, I should take my name off the books of my College. I propose that we should spend our honeymoon at Baiae. I have a villa at Baiae. It is there that I keep my grandfather's collection of majolica. The sun shines there always. A long olive-grove secretes the garden from the sea. When you walk in the garden, you know the sea only in blue glimpses through the vacillating leaves. White-gleaming from the bosky shade of this grove are several goddesses. Do you care for Canova? I don't myself. If you do, these figures will appeal to you: they are in his best manner. Do you love the sea? This is not the only house of mine that looks out on it. On the coast of County Clare—am I not Earl of Enniskerry and Baron Shandrin in the Peerage of Ireland?—I have an ancient castle. Sheer from a rock stands it, and the sea has always raged up against its walls. Many ships lie wrecked under that loud implacable sea. But mine is a brave strong castle. No storm affrights it; and not the centuries, clustering houris, with their caresses can seduce it from its hard austerity. I have several titles which for the moment escape me. Baron Llffthwchl am I, and… and… but you can find them for yourself in Debrett. In me you behold a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, and a Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. Look well at me! I am Hereditary Comber of the Queen's Lap-Dogs. I am young. I am handsome. My temper is sweet, and my character without blemish. In fine, Miss Dobson, I am a most desirable parti." "But," said Zuleika, "I don't love you." The Duke stamped his foot. "I beg your pardon," he said hastily. "I ought not to have done that. But—you seem to have entirely missed the point of what I was saying." "No, I haven't," said Zuleika. "Then what," cried the Duke, standing over her, "what is your reply?" Said Zuleika, looking up at him, "My reply is that I think you are an awful snob." The Duke turned on his heel, and strode to the other end of the room.
There he stood for some moments, his back to Zuleika.
"I think," she resumed in a slow, meditative voice, "that you are, with the possible exception of a Mr. Edelweiss, THE most awful snob I have ever met." The Duke looked back over his shoulder. He gave Zuleika the stinging reprimand of silence. She was sorry, and showed it in her eyes. She felt she had gone too far. True, he was nothing to her now. But she had loved him once. She could not forget that. "Come!" she said. "Let us be good friends. Give me your hand!" He came to her, slowly. "There!" The Duke withdrew his fingers before she unclasped them. That twice-flung taunt rankled still. It was monstrous to have been called a snob. A snob!—he, whose readiness to form what would certainly be regarded as a shocking misalliance ought to have stifled the charge, not merely vindicated him from it! He had forgotten, in the blindness of his love, how shocking the misalliance would be. Perhaps she, unloving, had not been so forgetful? Perhaps her refusal had been made, generously, for his own sake. Nay, rather for her own. Evidently, she had felt that the high sphere from which he beckoned was no place for the likes of her. Evidently, she feared she would pine away among those strange splendours, never be acclimatised, always be unworthy. He had thought to overwhelm her, and he had done his work too thoroughly. Now he must try to lighten the load he had imposed. Seating himself opposite to her, "You remember," he said, "that there is a dairy at Tankerton?" "A dairy? Oh yes." "Do you remember what it is called?" Zuleika knit her brows. He helped her out. "It is called 'Her Grace's'." "Oh, of course!" said Zuleika. "Do you know WHY it is called so?" "Well, let's see… I know you told me." "Did I? I think not. I will tell you now… That cool out-house dates from the middle of the eighteenth century. My great-great-grandfather, when he was a very old man, married en troisiemes noces a dairy-maid on the Tankerton estate. Meg Speedwell was her name. He had seen her walking across a field, not many months after the interment of his second Duchess, Maria, that great and gifted lady. I know not whether it was that her bonny mien fanned in him some embers of his youth, or that he was loth to be outdone in gracious eccentricity by his crony the Duke of Dewlap, who himself had just taken a bride from a dairy. (You have read Meredith's account of that affair? No? You should.) Whether it was veritable love or mere modishness that formed my ancestor's resolve, presently the bells were ringing out, and the oldest elm in the park was being felled, in Meg Speedwell's honour, and the children were strewing daisies on which Meg Speedwell trod, a proud young hoyden of a bride, with her head in the air and her heart in the seventh heaven. The Duke had given her already a horde of fine gifts; but these, he had said, were nothing—trash in comparison with the gift that was to ensure for her a perdurable felicity. After the wedding-breakfast, when all the squires had ridden away on their cobs, and all the squires' ladies in their coaches, the Duke led his bride forth from the hall, leaning on her arm, till they came to a little edifice of new white stone, very spick and span, with two lattice-windows and a bright green door between. This he bade her enter. A-flutter with excitement, she turned the handle. In a moment she flounced back, red with shame and anger—flounced forth from the fairest, whitest, dapperest dairy, wherein was all of the best that the keenest dairy-maid might need. The Duke bade her dry her eyes, for that it ill befitted a great lady to be weeping on her wedding-day. 'As for gratitude,' he chuckled, 'zounds! that is a wine all the better for the keeping.' Duchess Meg soon forgot this unworthy wedding-gift, such was her rapture in the other, the so august, appurtenances of her new life. What with her fine silk gowns and farthingales, and her powder-closet, and the canopied bed she slept in—a bed bigger far than the room she had slept in with her sisters, and standing in a room far bigger than her father's cottage; and what with Betty, her maid, who had pinched and teased her at the village-school, but now waited on her so meekly and trembled so fearfully at a scolding; and what with the fine hot dishes that were set before her every day, and the gallant speeches and glances of the fine young gentlemen whom the Duke invited from London, Duchess Meg was quite the happiest Duchess in all England. For a while, she was like a child in a hay-rick. But anon, as the sheer delight of novelty wore away, she began to take a more serious view of her position. She began to realise her responsibilities. She was determined to do all that a great lady ought to do. Twice every day she assumed the vapours. She schooled herself in the mysteries of Ombre, of Macao. She spent hours over the tambour-frame. She rode out on horse-back, with a riding-master. She had a music-master to teach her the spinet; a dancing-master, too, to teach her the Minuet and the Triumph and the Gaudy. All these accomplishments she found mighty hard. She was afraid of her horse. All the morning, she dreaded the hour when it would be brought round from the stables. She dreaded her dancing-lesson. Try as she would, she could but stamp her feet flat on the parquet, as though it had been the village-green. She dreaded her music-lesson. Her fingers, disobedient to her ambition, clumsily thumped the keys of the spinet, and by the notes of the score propped up before her she was as cruelly perplexed as by the black and red pips of the cards she conned at the gaming-table, or by the red and gold threads that were always straying and snapping on her tambour-frame. Still she persevered. Day in, day out, sullenly, she worked hard to be a great lady. But skill came not to her, and hope dwindled; only the dull effort remained. One accomplishment she did master—to wit, the vapours: they became for her a dreadful reality. She lost her appetite for the fine hot dishes. All night long she lay awake, restless, tearful, under the fine silk canopy, till dawn stared her into slumber. She seldom scolded Betty. She who had been so lusty and so blooming saw in her mirror that she was pale and thin now; and the fine young gentlemen, seeing it too, paid more heed now to their wine and their dice than to her. And always, when she met him, the Duke smiled the same mocking smile. Duchess Meg was pining slowly and surely away… One morning, in Spring-time, she altogether vanished. Betty, bringing the cup of chocolate to the bedside, found the bed empty. She raised the alarm among her fellows. They searched high and low. Nowhere was their mistress. The news was broken to their master, who, without comment, rose, bade his man dress him, and presently walked out to the place where he knew he would find her. And there, to be sure, she was, churning, churning for dear life. Her sleeves were rolled above her elbows, and her skirt was kilted high; and, as she looked back over her shoulder and saw the Duke, there was the flush of roses in her cheeks, and the light of a thousand thanks in her eyes. 'Oh,' she cried, 'what a curtsey I would drop you, but that to let go the handle were to spoil all!' And every morning, ever after, she woke when the birds woke, rose when they rose, and went singing through the dawn to the dairy, there to practise for her pleasure that sweet and lowly handicraft which she had once practised for her need. And every evening, with her milking-stool under her arm, and her milk-pail in her hand, she went into the field and called the cows to her, as she had been wont to do. To those other, those so august, accomplishments she no more pretended. She gave them the go-by. And all the old zest and joyousness of her life came back to her. Soundlier than ever slept she, and sweetlier dreamed, under the fine silk canopy, till the birds called her to her work. Greater than ever was her love of the fine furbelows that were hers to flaunt in, and sharper her appetite for the fine hot dishes, and more tempestuous her scolding of Betty, poor maid. She was more than ever now the cynosure, the adored, of the fine young gentlemen. And as for her husband, she looked up to him as the wisest, kindest man in all the world." "And the fine young gentlemen," said Zuleika, "did she fall in love with any of them?" "You forget," said the Duke coldly, "she was married to a member of my family." "Oh, I beg your pardon. But tell me: did they ALL adore her?" "Yes. Every one of them, wildly, madly." "Ah," murmured Zuleika, with a smile of understanding. A shadow crossed her face, "Even so," she said, with some pique, "I don't suppose she had so very many adorers. She never went out into the world." "Tankerton," said the Duke drily, "is a large house, and my great-great-grandfather was the most hospitable of men. However," he added, marvelling that she had again missed the point so utterly, "my purpose was not to confront you with a past rival in conquest, but to set at rest a fear which I had, I think, roused in you by my somewhat full description of the high majestic life to which you, as my bride, would be translated." "A fear? What sort of a fear?" "That you would not breathe freely—that you would starve (if I may use a somewhat fantastic figure) among those strawberry-leaves. And so I told you the story of Meg Speedwell, and how she lived happily ever after. Nay, hear me out! The blood of Meg Speedwell's lord flows in my veins. I think I may boast that I have inherited something of his sagacity. In any case, I can profit by his example. Do not fear that I, if you were to wed me, should demand a metamorphosis of your present self. I should take you as you are, gladly. I should encourage you to be always exactly as you are—a radiant, irresistible member of the upper middle-class, with a certain freedom of manner acquired through a life of peculiar liberty. Can you guess what would be my principal wedding-gift to you? Meg Speedwell had her dairy. For you, would be built another outhouse—a neat hall wherein you would perform your conjuring-tricks, every evening except Sunday, before me and my tenants and my servants, and before such of my neighbours as might care to come. None would respect you the less, seeing that I approved. Thus in you would the pleasant history of Meg Speedwell repeat itself. You, practising for your pleasure—nay, hear me out!—that sweet and lowly handicraft which—" "I won't listen to another word!" cried Zuleika. "You are the most insolent person I have ever met. I happen to come of a particularly good family. I move in the best society. My manners are absolutely perfect. If I found myself in the shoes of twenty Duchesses simultaneously, I should know quite well how to behave. As for the one pair you can offer me, I kick them away—so. I kick them back at you. I tell you—" "Hush," said the Duke, "hush! You are over-excited. There will be a crowd under my window. There, there! I am sorry. I thought—" "Oh, I know what you thought," said Zuleika, in a quieter tone. "I am sure you meant well. I am sorry I lost my temper. Only, you might have given me credit for meaning what I said: that I would not marry you, because I did not love you. I daresay there would be great advantages in being your Duchess. But the fact is, I have no worldly wisdom. To me, marriage is a sacrament. I could no more marry a man about whom I could not make a fool of myself than I could marry one who made a fool of himself about me. Else had I long ceased to be a spinster. Oh my friend, do not imagine that I have not rejected, in my day, a score of suitors quite as eligible as you." "As eligible? Who were they?" frowned the Duke. "Oh, Archduke this, and Grand Duke that, and His Serene Highness the other. I have a wretched memory for names." "And my name, too, will soon escape you, perhaps?" "No. Oh, no. I shall always remember yours. You see, I was in love with you. You deceived me into loving you…" She sighed. "Oh, had you but been as strong as I thought you… Still, a swain the more. That is something." She leaned forward, smiling archly. "Those studs—show me them again." The Duke displayed them in the hollow of his hand. She touched them lightly, reverently, as a tourist touches a sacred relic in a church. At length, "Do give me them," she said. "I will keep them in a little secret partition of my jewel-case." The Duke had closed his fist. "Do!" she pleaded. "My other jewels—they have no separate meanings for me. I never remember who gave me this one or that. These would be quite different. I should always remember their history… Do!" "Ask me for anything else," said the Duke. "These are the one thing I could not part with—even to you, for whose sake they are hallowed." Zuleika pouted. On the verge of persisting, she changed her mind, and was silent. "Well!" she said abruptly, "how about these races? Are you going to take me to see them?" "Races? What races?" murmured the Duke. "Oh yes. I had forgotten. Do you really mean that you want to see them?" "Why, of course! They are great fun, aren't they?" "And you are in a mood for great fun? Well, there is plenty of time. The
Second Division is not rowed till half-past four."
"The Second Division? Why not take me to the First?" "That is not rowed till six." "Isn't this rather an odd arrangement?" "No doubt. But Oxford never pretended to be strong in mathematics." "Why, it's not yet three!" cried Zuleika, with a woebegone stare at the clock. "What is to be done in the meantime?" "Am not I sufficiently diverting?" asked the Duke bitterly. "Quite candidly, no. Have you any friend lodging with you here?" "One, overhead. A man named Noaks." "A small man, with spectacles?" "Very small, with very large spectacles." "He was pointed out to me yesterday, as I was driving from the Station … No, I don't think I want to meet him. What can you have in common with him?" "One frailty, at least: he, too, Miss Dobson, loves you." "But of course he does. He saw me drive past. Very few of the others," she said, rising and shaking herself, "have set eyes on me. Do let us go out and look at the Colleges. I do need change of scene. If you were a doctor, you would have prescribed that long ago. It is very bad for me to be here, a kind of Cinderella, moping over the ashes of my love for you. Where is your hat?" Looking round, she caught sight of herself in the glass. "Oh," she cried, "what a fright I do look! I must never be seen like this!" "You look very beautiful." "I don't. That is a lover's illusion. You yourself told me that this tartan was perfectly hideous. There was no need to tell me that. I came thus because I was coming to see you. I chose this frock in the deliberate fear that you, if I made myself presentable, might succumb at second sight of me. I would have sent out for a sack and dressed myself in that, I would have blacked my face all over with burnt cork, only I was afraid of being mobbed on the way to you." "Even so, you would but have been mobbed for your incorrigible beauty." "My beauty! How I hate it!" sighed Zuleika. "Still, here it is, and I must needs make the best of it. Come! Take me to Judas. I will change my things. Then I shall be fit for the races." As these two emerged, side by side, into the street, the Emperors exchanged stony sidelong glances. For they saw the more than normal pallor of the Duke's face, and something very like desperation in his eyes. They saw the tragedy progressing to its foreseen close. Unable to stay its course, they were grimly fascinated now. VI "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones." At any rate, the sinner has a better chance than the saint of being hereafter remembered. We, in whom original sin preponderates, find him easier to understand. He is near to us, clear to us. The saint is remote, dim. A very great saint may, of course, be remembered through some sheer force of originality in him; and then the very mystery that involves him for us makes him the harder to forget: he haunts us the more surely because we shall never understand him. But the ordinary saints grow faint to posterity; whilst quite ordinary sinners pass vividly down the ages. Of the disciples of Jesus, which is he that is most often remembered and cited by us? Not the disciple whom Jesus loved; neither of the Boanerges, nor any other of them who so steadfastly followed Him and served Him; but the disciple who betrayed Him for thirty pieces of silver. Judas Iscariot it is who outstands, overshadowing those other fishermen. And perhaps it was by reason of this precedence that Christopher Whitrid, Knight, in the reign of Henry VI., gave the name of Judas to the College which he had founded. Or perhaps it was because he felt that in a Christian community not even the meanest and basest of men should be accounted beneath contempt, beyond redemption. At any rate, thus he named his foundation. And, though for Oxford men the savour of the name itself has long evaporated through its local connexion, many things show that for the Founder himself it was no empty vocable. In a niche above the gate stands a rudely carved statue of Judas, holding a money-bag in his right hand. Among the original statutes of the College is one by which the Bursar is enjoined to distribute in Passion Week thirty pieces of silver among the needier scholars "for saike of atonynge." The meadow adjoining the back of the College has been called from time immemorial "the Potter's Field." And the name of Salt Cellar is not less ancient and significant. Salt Cellar, that grey and green quadrangle visible from the room assigned to Zuleika, is very beautiful, as I have said. So tranquil is it as to seem remote not merely from the world, but even from Oxford, so deeply is it hidden away in the core of Oxford's heart. So tranquil is it, one would guess that nothing had ever happened in it. For five centuries these walls have stood, and during that time have beheld, one would say, no sight less seemly than the good work of weeding, mowing, rolling, that has made, at length, so exemplary the lawn. These cloisters that grace the south and east sides—five centuries have passed through them, leaving in them no echo, leaving on them no sign, of all that the outer world, for good or evil, has been doing so fiercely, so raucously. And yet, if you are versed in the antiquities of Oxford, you know that this small, still quadrangle has played its part in the rough-and-tumble of history, and has been the background of high passions and strange fates. The sun-dial in its midst has told the hours to more than one bygone King. Charles I. lay for twelve nights in Judas; and it was here, in this very quadrangle, that he heard from the lips of a breathless and blood-stained messenger the news of Chalgrove Field. Sixty years later, James, his son, came hither, black with threats, and from one of the hind-windows of the Warden's house—maybe, from the very room where now Zuleika was changing her frock—addressed the Fellows, and presented to them the Papist by him chosen to be their Warden, instead of the Protestant whom they had elected. They were not of so stern a stuff as the Fellows of Magdalen, who, despite His Majesty's menaces, had just rejected Bishop Farmer. The Papist was elected, there and then, al fresco, without dissent. Cannot one see them, these Fellows of Judas, huddled together round the sun-dial, like so many sheep in a storm? The King's wrath, according to a contemporary record, was so appeased by their pliancy that he deigned to lie for two nights in Judas, and at a grand refection in Hall "was gracious and merrie." Perhaps it was in lingering gratitude for such patronage that Judas remained so pious to his memory even after smug Herrenhausen had been dumped down on us for ever. Certainly, of all the Colleges none was more ardent than Judas for James Stuart. Thither it was that young Sir Harry Esson led, under cover of night, three-score recruits whom he had enlisted in the surrounding villages. The cloisters of Salt Cellar were piled with arms and stores; and on its grass—its sacred grass!—the squad was incessantly drilled, against the good day when Ormond should land his men in Devon. For a whole month Salt Cellar was a secret camp. But somehow, at length—woe to "lost causes and impossible loyalties"—Herrenhausen had wind of it; and one night, when the soldiers of the white cockade lay snoring beneath the stars, stealthily the white-faced Warden unbarred his postern—that very postern through which now Zuleika had passed on the way to her bedroom—and stealthily through it, one by one on tip-toe, came the King's foot-guards. Not many shots rang out, nor many swords clashed, in the night air, before the trick was won for law and order. Most of the rebels were overpowered in their sleep; and those who had time to snatch arms were too dazed to make good resistance. Sir Harry Esson himself was the only one who did not live to be hanged. He had sprung up alert, sword in hand, at the first alarm, setting his back to the cloisters. There he fought calmly, ferociously, till a bullet went through his chest. "By God, this College is well-named!" were the words he uttered as he fell forward and died. Comparatively tame was the scene now being enacted in this place. The Duke, with bowed head, was pacing the path between the lawn and the cloisters. Two other undergraduates stood watching him, whispering to each other, under the archway that leads to the Front Quadrangle. Presently, in a sheepish way, they approached him. He halted and looked up. "I say," stammered the spokesman. "Well?" asked the Duke. Both youths were slightly acquainted with him; but he was not used to being spoken to by those whom he had not first addressed. Moreover, he was loth to be thus disturbed in his sombre reverie. His manner was not encouraging. "Isn't it a lovely day for the Eights?" faltered the spokesman. "I conceive," the Duke said, "that you hold back some other question." The spokesman smiled weakly. Nudged by the other, he muttered "Ask him yourself!" The Duke diverted his gaze to the other, who, with an angry look at the one, cleared his throat, and said "I was going to ask if you thought Miss Dobson would come and have luncheon with me to-morrow?" "A sister of mine will be there," explained the one, knowing the Duke to be a precisian. "If you are acquainted with Miss Dobson, a direct invitation should be sent to her," said the Duke. "If you are not—" The aposiopesis was icy. "Well, you see," said the other of the two, "that is just the difficulty. I AM acquainted with her. But is she acquainted with ME? I met her at breakfast this morning, at the Warden's." "So did I," added the one. "But she—well," continued the other, "she didn't take much notice of us. She seemed to be in a sort of dream." "Ah!" murmured the Duke, with melancholy interest. "The only time she opened her lips," said the other, "was when she asked us whether we took tea or coffee." "She put hot milk in my tea," volunteered the one, "and upset the cup over my hand, and smiled vaguely." "And smiled vaguely," sighed the Duke. "She left us long before the marmalade stage," said the one. "Without a word," said the other. "Without a glance?" asked the Duke. It was testified by the one and the other that there had been not so much as a glance. "Doubtless," the disingenuous Duke said, "she had a headache… Was she pale?" "Very pale," answered the one. "A healthy pallor," qualified the other, who was a constant reader of novels. "Did she look," the Duke inquired, "as if she had spent a sleepless night?" That was the impression made on both. "Yet she did not seem listless or unhappy?" No, they would not go so far as to say that. "Indeed, were her eyes of an almost unnatural brilliance?" "Quite unnatural," confessed the one. "Twin stars," interpolated the other. "Did she, in fact, seem to be consumed by some inward rapture?" Yes, now they came to think of it, this was exactly how she HAD seemed. It was sweet, it was bitter, for the Duke. "I remember," Zuleika had said to him, "nothing that happened to me this morning till I found myself at your door." It was bitter-sweet to have that outline filled in by these artless pencils. No, it was only bitter, to be, at his time of life, living in the past. "The purpose of your tattle?" he asked coldly. The two youths hurried to the point from which he had diverted them. "When she went by with you just now," said the one, "she evidently didn't know us from Adam." "And I had so hoped to ask her to luncheon," said the other. "Well?" "Well, we wondered if you would re-introduce us. And then perhaps…" There was a pause. The Duke was touched to kindness for these fellow-lovers. He would fain preserve them from the anguish that beset himself. So humanising is sorrow. "You are in love with Miss Dobson?" he asked. Both nodded. "Then," said he, "you will in time be thankful to me for not affording you further traffic with that lady. To love and be scorned—does Fate hold for us a greater inconvenience? You think I beg the question? Let me tell you that I, too, love Miss Dobson, and that she scorns me." To the implied question "What chance would there be for you?" the reply was obvious. Amazed, abashed, the two youths turned on their heels. "Stay!" said the Duke. "Let me, in justice to myself, correct an inference you may have drawn. It is not by reason of any defect in myself, perceived or imagined, that Miss Dobson scorns me. She scorns me simply because I love her. All who love her she scorns. To see her is to love her. Therefore shut your eyes to her. Strictly exclude her from your horizon. Ignore her. Will you do this?" "We will try," said the one, after a pause. "Thank you very much," added the other. The Duke watched them out of sight. He wished he could take the good advice he had given them… Suppose he did take it! Suppose he went to the Bursar, obtained an exeat, fled straight to London! What just humiliation for Zuleika to come down and find her captive gone! He pictured her staring around the quadrangle, ranging the cloisters, calling to him. He pictured her rustling to the gate of the College, inquiring at the porter's lodge. "His Grace, Miss, he passed through a minute ago. He's going down this afternoon." Yet, even while his fancy luxuriated in this scheme, he well knew that he would not accomplish anything of the kind—knew well that he would wait here humbly, eagerly, even though Zuleika lingered over her toilet till crack o' doom. He had no desire that was not centred in her. Take away his love for her, and what remained? Nothing—though only in the past twenty-four hours had this love been added to him. Ah, why had he ever seen her? He thought of his past, its cold splendour and insouciance. But he knew that for him there was no returning. His boats were burnt. The Cytherean babes had set their torches to that flotilla, and it had blazed like match-wood. On the isle of the enchantress he was stranded for ever. For ever stranded on the isle of an enchantress who would have nothing to do with him! What, he wondered, should be done in so piteous a quandary? There seemed to be two courses. One was to pine slowly and painfully away. The other… Academically, the Duke had often reasoned that a man for whom life holds no chance of happiness cannot too quickly shake life off. Now, of a sudden, there was for that theory a vivid application. "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer" was not a point by which he, "more an antique Roman than a Dane," was at all troubled. Never had he given ear to that cackle which is called Public Opinion. The judgment of his peers—this, he had often told himself, was the sole arbitrage he could submit to; but then, who was to be on the bench? Peerless, he was irresponsible—the captain of his soul, the despot of his future. No injunction but from himself would he bow to; and his own injunctions—so little Danish was he—had always been peremptory and lucid. Lucid and peremptory, now, the command he issued to himself. "So sorry to have been so long," carolled a voice from above. The Duke looked up. "I'm all but ready," said Zuleika at her window. That brief apparition changed the colour of his resolve. He realised that to die for love of this lady would be no mere measure of precaution, or counsel of despair. It would be in itself a passionate indulgence—a fiery rapture, not to be foregone. What better could he ask than to die for his love? Poor indeed seemed to him now the sacrament of marriage beside the sacrament of death. Death was incomparably the greater, the finer soul. Death was the one true bridal. He flung back his head, spread wide his arms, quickened his pace almost to running speed. Ah, he would win his bride before the setting of the sun. He knew not by what means he would win her. Enough that even now, full-hearted, fleet-footed, he was on his way to her, and that she heard him coming. When Zuleika, a vision in vaporous white, came out through the postern, she wondered why he was walking at so remarkable a pace. To him, wildly expressing in his movement the thought within him, she appeared as his awful bride. With a cry of joy, he bounded towards her, and would have caught her in his arms, had she not stepped nimbly aside. "Forgive me!" he said, after a pause. "It was a mistake—an idiotic mistake of identity. I thought you were…" Zuleika, rigid, asked "Have I many doubles?" "You know well that in all the world is none so blest as to be like you. I can only say that I was over-wrought. I can only say that it shall not occur again." She was very angry indeed. Of his penitence there could be no doubt. But there are outrages for which no penitence can atone. This seemed to be one of them. Her first impulse was to dismiss the Duke forthwith and for ever. But she wanted to show herself at the races. And she could not go alone. And except the Duke there was no one to take her. True, there was the concert to-night; and she could show herself there to advantage; but she wanted ALL Oxford to see her—see her NOW. "I am forgiven?" he asked. In her, I am afraid, self-respect outweighed charity. "I will try," she said merely, "to forget what you have done." Motioning him to her side, she opened her parasol, and signified her readiness to start. They passed together across the vast gravelled expanse of the Front Quadrangle. In the porch of the College there were, as usual, some chained-up dogs, patiently awaiting their masters. Zuleika, of course, did not care for dogs. One has never known a good man to whom dogs were not dear; but many of the best women have no such fondness. You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men. For the attractive woman, dogs are mere dumb and restless brutes—possibly dangerous, certainly soulless. Yet will coquetry teach her to caress any dog in the presence of a man enslaved by her. Even Zuleika, it seems, was not above this rather obvious device for awaking envy. Be sure she did not at all like the look of the very big bulldog who was squatting outside the porter's lodge. Perhaps, but for her present anger, she would not have stooped endearingly down to him, as she did, cooing over him and trying to pat his head. Alas, her pretty act was a failure. The bulldog cowered away from her, horrifically grimacing. This was strange. Like the majority of his breed, Corker (for such was his name) had ever been wistful to be noticed by any one—effusively grateful for every word or pat, an ever-ready wagger and nuzzler, to none ineffable. No beggar, no burglar, had ever been rebuffed by this catholic beast. But he drew the line at Zuleika. Seldom is even a fierce bulldog heard to growl. Yet Corker growled at Zuleika.
| | | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment