Zuleika Dobson Or, An Oxford Love Story

  XVIII

  Her actual offspring does not suffice a very motherly woman. Such awoman was Mrs. Batch. Had she been blest with a dozen children, shemust yet have regarded herself as also a mother to whatever two younggentlemen were lodging under her roof. Childless but for Katie andClarence, she had for her successive pairs of tenants a truly vast fundof maternal feeling to draw on. Nor were the drafts made in secret. Toevery gentleman, from the outset, she proclaimed the relation in whichshe would stand to him. Moreover, always she needed a strong filialsense in return: this was only fair.

  Because the Duke was an orphan, even more than because he was a Duke,her heart had with a special rush gone out to him when he and Mr. Noaksbecame her tenants. But, perhaps because he had never known a mother,he was evidently quite incapable of conceiving either Mrs. Batch as hismother or himself as her son. Indeed, there was that in his manner,in his look, which made her falter, for once, in exposition of hertheory--made her postpone the matter to some more favourable time. Thattime never came, somehow. Still, her solicitude for him, her pride inhim, her sense that he was a great credit to her, rather waxed thanwaned. He was more to her (such are the vagaries of the maternalinstinct) than Katie or Mr. Noaks: he was as much as Clarence.

  It was, therefore, a deeply agitated woman who now came heaving up intothe Duke's presence. His Grace was "giving notice"? She was sure shebegged his pardon for coming up so sudden. But the news was thatsudden. Hadn't her girl made a mistake, maybe? Girls were so vague-likenowadays. She was sure it was most kind of him to give those handsomeear-rings. But the thought of him going off so unexpected--middle ofterm, too--with never a why or a but! Well!

  In some such welter of homely phrase (how foreign to these classicpages!) did Mrs. Batch utter her pain. The Duke answered her tersely butkindly. He apologised for going so abruptly, and said he would be veryhappy to write for her future use a testimonial to the excellence ofher rooms and of her cooking; and with it he would give her a cheque notonly for the full term's rent, and for his board since the beginning ofterm, but also for such board as he would have been likely to have inthe term's remainder. He asked her to present her accounts forthwith.

  He occupied the few minutes of her absence by writing the testimonial.It had shaped itself in his mind as a short ode in Doric Greek. But, forthe benefit of Mrs. Batch, he chose to do a rough equivalent in English.

  TO AN UNDERGRADUATE NEEDING ROOMS IN OXFORD

  (A Sonnet in Oxfordshire Dialect)

  Zeek w'ere thee will in t'Univursity, Lad, thee'll not vind nor bread nor bed that matches Them as thee'll vind, roight zure, at Mrs. Batch's...

  I do not quote the poem in extenso, because, frankly, I think it was oneof his least happily-inspired works. His was not a Muse that could witha good grace doff the grand manner. Also, his command of the Oxfordshiredialect seems to me based less on study than on conjecture. In fact, Ido not place the poem higher than among the curiosities of literature.It has extrinsic value, however, as illustrating the Duke'sthoughtfulness for others in the last hours of his life. And to Mrs.Batch the MS., framed and glazed in her hall, is an asset beyond price(witness her recent refusal of Mr. Pierpont Morgan's sensational bid forit).

  This MS. she received together with the Duke's cheque. The presentationwas made some twenty minutes after she had laid her accounts before him.

  Lavish in giving large sums of his own accord, he was apt to becircumspect in the matter of small payments. Such is ever the way ofopulent men. Nor do I see that we have a right to sneer at them for it.We cannot deny that their existence is a temptation to us. It is in ourfallen nature to want to get something out of them; and, as we think insmall sums (heaven knows), it is of small sums that they are careful.Absurd to suppose they really care about halfpence. It must, therefore,be about us that they care; and we ought to be grateful to them for thepains they are at to keep us guiltless. I do not suggest that Mrs. Batchhad at any point overcharged the Duke; but how was he to know that shehad not done so, except by checking the items, as was his wont? Thereductions that he made, here and there, did not in all amount tothree-and-sixpence. I do not say they were just. But I do say that hismotive for making them, and his satisfaction at having made them, wererather beautiful than otherwise.

  Having struck an average of Mrs. Batch's weekly charges, and a similaraverage of his own reductions, he had a basis on which to reckon hisboard for the rest of the term. This amount he added to Mrs. Batch'samended total, plus the full term's rent, and accordingly drew a chequeon the local bank where he had an account. Mrs. Batch said she wouldbring up a stamped receipt directly; but this the Duke waived,saying that the cashed cheque itself would be a sufficient receipt.Accordingly, he reduced by one penny the amount written on the cheque.Remembering to initial the correction, he remembered also, with amelancholy smile, that to-morrow the cheque would not be negotiable.Handing it, and the sonnet, to Mrs. Batch, he bade her cash it beforethe bank closed. "And," he said, with a glance at his watch, "you haveno time to lose. It is a quarter to four." Only two hours and a quarterbefore the final races! How quickly the sands were running out!

  Mrs. Batch paused on the threshold, wanted to know if she could "helpwith the packing." The Duke replied that he was taking nothing with him:his various things would be sent for, packed, and removed, within a fewdays. No, he did not want her to order a cab. He was going to walk. And"Good-bye, Mrs. Batch," he said. "For legal reasons with which I won'tburden you, you really must cash that cheque at once."

  He sat down in solitude; and there crept over him a mood of deepdepression... Almost two hours and a quarter before the final races!What on earth should he do in the meantime? He seemed to have done allthat there was for him to do. His executors would do the rest. He had nofarewell-letters to write. He had no friends with whom he was on termsof valediction. There was nothing at all for him to do. He staredblankly out of the window, at the greyness and blackness of the sky.What a day! What a climate! Why did any sane person live in England? Hefelt positively suicidal.

  His dully vagrant eye lighted on the bottle of Cold Mixture. He ought tohave dosed himself a full hour ago. Well, he didn't care.

  Had Zuleika noticed the bottle? he idly wondered. Probably not. Shewould have made some sprightly reference to it before she went.

  Since there was nothing to do but sit and think, he wished he couldrecapture that mood in which at luncheon he had been able to see Zuleikaas an object for pity. Never, till to-day, had he seen things otherwisethan they were. Nor had he ever needed to. Never, till last night, hadthere been in his life anything he needed to forget. That woman! Asif it really mattered what she thought of him. He despised himself forwishing to forget she despised him. But the wish was the measure of theneed. He eyed the chiffonier. Should he again solicit the grape?

  Reluctantly he uncorked the crusted bottle, and filled a glass. Was hecome to this? He sighed and sipped, quaffed and sighed. The spell of theold stored sunshine seemed not to work, this time. He could not ceasefrom plucking at the net of ignominies in which his soul lay enmeshed.Would that he had died yesterday, escaping how much!

  Not for an instant did he flinch from the mere fact of dying to-day.Since he was not immortal, as he had supposed, it were as well he shoulddie now as fifty years hence. Better, indeed. To die "untimely," as mencalled it, was the timeliest of all deaths for one who had carved hisyouth to greatness. What perfection could he, Dorset, achieve beyondwhat was already his? Future years could but stale, if not actuallymar, that perfection. Yes, it was lucky to perish leaving much to theimagination of posterity. Dear posterity was of a sentimental, nota realistic, habit. She always imagined the dead young hero prancinggloriously up to the Psalmist's limit a young hero still; and it was thesense of her vast loss that kept his memory green. Byron!--he would beall forgotten to-day if he had lived to be a florid old gentleman withiron-grey whiskers, writing very long, very able letters to "The Times"about the Repeal of the Corn
Laws. Yes, Byron would have been that. Itwas indicated in him. He would have been an old gentleman exacerbated byQueen Victoria's invincible prejudice against him, her brusque refusalto "entertain" Lord John Russell's timid nomination of him for a postin the Government... Shelley would have been a poet to the last. But howdull, how very dull, would have been the poetry of his middle age!--agreat unreadable mass interposed between him and us... Did Byron, musedthe Duke, know what was to be at Missolonghi? Did he know that he wasto die in service of the Greeks whom he despised? Byron might not haveminded that. But what if the Greeks had told him, in so many words,that they despised HIM? How would he have felt then? Would he have beencontent with his potations of barley-water?... The Duke replenished hisglass, hoping the spell might work yet.... Perhaps, had Byron not been adandy--but ah, had he not been in his soul a dandy there would havebeen no Byron worth mentioning. And it was because he guarded not hisdandyism against this and that irrelevant passion, sexual or political,that he cut so annoyingly incomplete a figure. He was absurd in hispolitics, vulgar in his loves. Only in himself, at the times when hestood haughtily aloof, was he impressive. Nature, fashioning him, hadfashioned also a pedestal for him to stand and brood on, to pose andsing on. Off that pedestal he was lost.... "The idol has come slidingdown from its pedestal"--the Duke remembered these words spokenyesterday by Zuleika. Yes, at the moment when he slid down, he, too, waslost. For him, master-dandy, the common arena was no place. What had heto do with love? He was an utter fool at it. Byron had at least had somefun out of it. What fun had HE had? Last night, he had forgotten to kissZuleika when he held her by the wrists. To-day it had been as much as hecould do to let poor little Katie kiss his hand. Better be vulgarwith Byron than a noodle with Dorset! he bitterly reflected... Still,noodledom was nearer than vulgarity to dandyism. It was a less flagrantlapse. And he had over Byron this further advantage: his noodledom wasnot a matter of common knowledge; whereas Byron's vulgarity had everneeded to be in the glare of the footlights of Europe. The worldwould say of him that he laid down his life for a woman. Deplorablesomersault? But nothing evident save this in his whole life wasfaulty... The one other thing that might be carped at--the partisanspeech he made in the Lords--had exquisitely justified itself by itsresult. For it was as a Knight of the Garter that he had set the perfectseal on his dandyism. Yes, he reflected, it was on the day when firsthe donned the most grandiose of all costumes, and wore it grandlierthan ever yet in history had it been worn, than ever would it be wornhereafter, flaunting the robes with a grace unparalleled and inimitable,and lending, as it were, to the very insignia a glory beyond their own,that he once and for all fulfilled himself, doer of that which he hadbeen sent into the world to do.

  And there floated into his mind a desire, vague at first, soon definite,imperious, irresistible, to see himself once more, before he died,indued in the fulness of his glory and his might.

  Nothing hindered. There was yet a whole hour before he need start forthe river. His eyes dilated, somewhat as might those of a child about to"dress up" for a charade; and already, in his impatience, he had undonehis neck-tie.

  One after another, he unlocked and threw open the black tin boxes,snatching out greedily their great good splendours of crimson and whiteand royal blue and gold. You wonder he was not appalled by the task ofessaying unaided a toilet so extensive and so intricate? You wonderedeven when you heard that he was wont at Oxford to make without help histoilet of every day. Well, the true dandy is always capable of such highindependence. He is craftsman as well as artist. And, though any unaidedKnight but he with whom we are here concerned would belike have dodderedhopeless in that labyrinth of hooks and buckles which underlies thevisible glory of a Knight "arraied full and proper," Dorset threaded hisway featly and without pause. He had mastered his first excitement. Inhis swiftness was no haste. His procedure had the ease and inevitabilityof a natural phenomenon, and was most like to the coming of a rainbow.

  Crimson-doubleted, blue-ribanded, white-trunk-hosed, he stooped tounderstrap his left knee with that strap of velvet round whichsparkles the proud gay motto of the Order. He affixed to his breast theoctoradiant star, so much larger and more lustrous than any actual starin heaven. Round his neck he slung that long daedal chain wherefrom St.George, slaying the Dragon, dangles. He bowed his shoulders to assumethat vast mantle of blue velvet, so voluminous, so enveloping, that,despite the Cross of St. George blazing on it, and the shoulder-knotslike two great white tropical flowers planted on it, we seem to knowfrom it in what manner of mantle Elijah prophesied. Across his breasthe knotted this mantle's two cords of gleaming bullion, one tassel adue trifle higher than its fellow. All these things being done, he movedaway from the mirror, and drew on a pair of white kid gloves. Both ofthese being buttoned, he plucked up certain folds of his mantle into thehollow of his left arm, and with his right hand gave to his left handthat ostrich-plumed and heron-plumed hat of black velvet in which aKnight of the Garter is entitled to take his walks abroad. Then, withhead erect, and measured tread, he returned to the mirror.

  You are thinking, I know, of Mr. Sargent's famous portrait of him.Forget it. Tankerton Hall is open to the public on Wednesdays. Gothere, and in the dining-hall stand to study well Sir Thomas Lawrence'sportrait of the eleventh Duke. Imagine a man some twenty years youngerthan he whom you there behold, but having some such features and somesuch bearing, and clad in just such robes. Sublimate the dignity ofthat bearing and of those features, and you will then have seen thefourteenth Duke somewhat as he stood reflected in the mirror of hisroom. Resist your impulse to pass on to the painting which hangs nextbut two to Lawrence's. It deserves, I know, all that you said about itwhen (at the very time of the events in this chronicle) it was hangingin Burlington House. Marvellous, I grant you, are those passes of theswirling brush by which the velvet of the mantle is rendered--passes solight and seemingly so fortuitous, yet, seen at the right distance,so absolute in their power to create an illusion of the actual velvet.Sheen of white satin and silk, glint of gold, glitter of diamonds--neverwere such things caught by surer hand obedient to more voracious eye.Yes, all the splendid surface of everything is there. Yet must you notlook. The soul is not there. An expensive, very new costume is there,but no evocation of the high antique things it stands for; whereas bythe Duke it was just these things that were evoked to make an aura roundhim, a warm symbolic glow sharpening the outlines of his ownparticular magnificence. Reflecting him, the mirror reflected, in duesubordination, the history of England. There is nothing of that on Mr.Sargent's canvas. Obtruded instead is the astounding slickness of Mr.Sargent's technique: not the sitter, but the painter, is master here.Nay, though I hate to say it, there is in the portrayal of the Duke'sattitude and expression a hint of something like mockery--unintentional,I am sure, but to a sensitive eye discernible. And--but it is clumsy ofme to be reminding you of the very picture I would have you forget.

  Long stood the Duke gazing, immobile. One thing alone ruffled his deepinward calm. This was the thought that he must presently put off fromhim all his splendour, and be his normal self.

  The shadow passed from his brow. He would go forth as he was. He wouldbe true to the motto he wore, and true to himself. A dandy he had lived.In the full pomp and radiance of his dandyism he would die.

  His soul rose from calm to triumph. A smile lit his face, and he heldhis head higher than ever. He had brought nothing into this world andcould take nothing out of it? Well, what he loved best he could carrywith him to the very end; and in death they would not be divided.

  The smile was still on his face as he passed out from his room. Downthe stairs he passed, and "Oh," every stair creaked faintly, "I ought tohave been marble!"

  And it did indeed seem that Mrs. Batch and Katie, who had hurriedout into the hall, were turned to some kind of stone at sight of thedescending apparition. A moment ago, Mrs. Batch had been hoping shemight yet at the last speak motherly words. A hopeless mute now! Amoment ago, Katie's eyelids had been red with much we
eping. Even fromthem the colour suddenly ebbed now. Dead-white her face was between theblack pearl and the pink. "And this is the man of whom I dared once foran instant hope that he loved me!"--it was thus that the Duke, quitecorrectly, interpreted her gaze.

  To her and to her mother he gave an inclusive bow as he swept slowly by.Stone was the matron, and stone the maid.

  Stone, too, the Emperors over the way; and the more poignantly therebywas the Duke a sight to anguish them, being the very incarnation of whatthemselves had erst been, or tried to be. But in this bitterness theydid not forget their sorrow at his doom. They were in a mood to forgivehim the one fault they had ever found in him--his indifference to theirKatie. And now--o mirum mirorum--even this one fault was wiped out.

  For, stung by memory of a gibe lately cast at him by himself, the Dukehad paused and, impulsively looking back into the hall, had beckonedKatie to him; and she had come (she knew not how) to him; and there,standing on the doorstep whose whiteness was the symbol of her love,he--very lightly, it is true, and on the upmost confines of the brow,but quite perceptibly--had kissed her.