Zuleika Dobson Or, An Oxford Love Story

  IV

  The breakfast-things were not yet cleared away. A plate streaked withfine strains of marmalade, an empty toast-rack, a broken roll--these andother things bore witness to a day inaugurated in the right spirit.

  Away from them, reclining along his window-seat, was the Duke. Bluespirals rose from his cigarette, nothing in the still air to troublethem. From their railing, across the road, the Emperors gazed at him.

  For a young man, sleep is a sure solvent of distress. There whirls notfor him in the night any so hideous a phantasmagoria as will not become,in the clarity of next morning, a spruce procession for him to lead.Brief the vague horror of his awakening; memory sweeps back to him,and he sees nothing dreadful after all. "Why not?" is the sun's brightmessage to him, and "Why not indeed?" his answer. After hours ofagony and doubt prolonged to cock-crow, sleep had stolen to the Duke'sbed-side. He awoke late, with a heavy sense of disaster; but lo! when heremembered, everything took on a new aspect. He was in love. "Why not?"He mocked himself for the morbid vigil he had spent in probing andvainly binding the wounds of his false pride. The old life was donewith. He laughed as he stepped into his bath. Why should the disseizinof his soul have seemed shameful to him? He had had no soul till itpassed out of his keeping. His body thrilled to the cold water, his soulas to a new sacrament. He was in love, and that was all he wished for...There, on the dressing-table, lay the two studs, visible symbols of hislove. Dear to him, now, the colours of them! He took them in his hand,one by one, fondling them. He wished he could wear them in the day-time;but this, of course, was impossible. His toilet finished, he droppedthem into the left pocket of his waistcoat.

  Therein, near to his heart, they were lying now, as he looked out atthe changed world--the world that had become Zuleika. "Zuleika!" hisrecurrent murmur, was really an apostrophe to the whole world.

  Piled against the wall were certain boxes of black japanned tin, whichhad just been sent to him from London. At any other time he wouldcertainly not have left them unopened. For they contained his robes ofthe Garter. Thursday, the day after to-morrow, was the date fixed forthe investiture of a foreign king who was now visiting England: and thefull chapter of Knights had been commanded to Windsor for the ceremony.Yesterday the Duke had looked keenly forward to his excursion. It wasonly in those too rarely required robes that he had the sense of beingfully dressed. But to-day not a thought had he of them.

  Some clock clove with silver the stillness of the morning. Ere came thesecond stroke, another and nearer clock was striking. And now there wereothers chiming in. The air was confused with the sweet babel of its manyspires, some of them booming deep, measured sequences, some tinklingimpatiently and outwitting others which had begun before them. And whenthis anthem of jealous antiphonies and uneven rhythms had dwindled quiteaway and fainted in one last solitary note of silver, there startedsomewhere another sequence; and this, almost at its last stroke, wasinterrupted by yet another, which went on to tell the hour of noon inits own way, quite slowly and significantly, as though none knew it.

  And now Oxford was astir with footsteps and laughter--the laughter andquick footsteps of youths released from lecture-rooms. The Duke shiftedfrom the window. Somehow, he did not care to be observed, though it wasusually at this hour that he showed himself for the setting of somenew fashion in costume. Many an undergraduate, looking up, missed thepicture in the window-frame.

  The Duke paced to and fro, smiling ecstatically. He took the two studsfrom his pocket and gazed at them. He looked in the glass, as oneseeking the sympathy of a familiar. For the first time in his life,he turned impatiently aside. It was a new kind of sympathy he neededto-day.

  The front door slammed, and the staircase creaked to the ascent of twoheavy boots. The Duke listened, waited irresolute. The boots passed hisdoor, were already clumping up the next flight. "Noaks!" he cried. Theboots paused, then clumped down again. The door opened and disclosedthat homely figure which Zuleika had seen on her way to Judas.

  Sensitive reader, start not at the apparition! Oxford is a plexus ofanomalies. These two youths were (odd as it may seem to you) subject tothe same Statutes, affiliated to the same College, reading for the sameSchool; aye! and though the one had inherited half a score of noble andcastellated roofs, whose mere repairs cost him annually thousands andthousands of pounds, and the other's people had but one little meansquare of lead, from which the fireworks of the Crystal Palace wereclearly visible every Thursday evening, in Oxford one roof shelteredboth of them. Furthermore, there was even some measure of intimacybetween them. It was the Duke's whim to condescend further in thedirection of Noaks than in any other. He saw in Noaks his own foil andantithesis, and made a point of walking up the High with him at leastonce in every term. Noaks, for his part, regarded the Duke with feelingsmingled of idolatry and disapproval. The Duke's First in Mods oppressedhim (who, by dint of dogged industry, had scraped a Second) more thanall the other differences between them. But the dullard's envy ofbrilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come toa bad end. Noaks may have regarded the Duke as a rather pathetic figure,on the whole.

  "Come in, Noaks," said the Duke. "You have been to a lecture?"

  "Aristotle's Politics," nodded Noaks.

  "And what were they?" asked the Duke. He was eager for sympathy in hislove. But so little used was he to seeking sympathy that he could notunburden himself. He temporised. Noaks muttered something about gettingback to work, and fumbled with the door-handle.

  "Oh, my dear fellow, don't go," said the Duke. "Sit down. Our Schoolsdon't come on for another year. A few minutes can't make a difference inyour Class. I want to--to tell you something, Noaks. Do sit down."

  Noaks sat down on the edge of a chair. The Duke leaned against themantel-piece, facing him. "I suppose, Noaks," he said, "you have neverbeen in love."

  "Why shouldn't I have been in love?" asked the little man, angrily.

  "I can't imagine you in love," said the Duke, smiling.

  "And I can't imagine YOU. You're too pleased with yourself," growledNoaks.

  "Spur your imagination, Noaks," said his friend. "I AM in love."

  "So am I," was an unexpected answer, and the Duke (whose need ofsympathy was too new to have taught him sympathy with others) laughedaloud. "Whom do you love?" he asked, throwing himself into an arm-chair.

  "I don't know who she is," was another unexpected answer.

  "When did you meet her?" asked the Duke. "Where? What did you say toher?"

  "Yesterday. In the Corn. I didn't SAY anything to her."

  "Is she beautiful?"

  "Yes. What's that to you?"

  "Dark or fair?"

  "She's dark. She looks like a foreigner. She looks like--like one ofthose photographs in the shop-windows."

  "A rhapsody, Noaks! What became of her? Was she alone?"

  "She was with the old Warden, in his carriage."

  Zuleika--Noaks! The Duke started, as at an affront, and glared. Nextmoment, he saw the absurdity of the situation. He relapsed into hischair, smiling. "She's the Warden's niece," he said. "I dined at theWarden's last night."

  Noaks sat still, peering across at the Duke. For the first time in hislife, he was resentful of the Duke's great elegance and average stature,his high lineage and incomputable wealth. Hitherto, these thingshad been too remote for envy. But now, suddenly, they seemed near tohim--nearer and more overpowering than the First in Mods had ever been."And of course she's in love with you?" he snarled.

  Really, this was for the Duke a new issue. So salient was his ownpassion that he had not had time to wonder whether it were returned.Zuleika's behaviour during dinner... But that was how so many youngwomen had behaved. It was no sign of disinterested love. It might meanmerely... Yet no! Surely, looking into her eyes, he had seen there aradiance finer than could have been lit by common ambition. Love, noneother, must have lit in those purple depths the torches whose clearflames had leapt out to him. She loved him. She, the beautiful, thewonderful, had
not tried to conceal her love for him. She had shown himall--had shown all, poor darling! only to be snubbed by a prig, drivenaway by a boor, fled from by a fool. To the nethermost corner of hissoul, he cursed himself for what he had done, and for all he had leftundone. He would go to her on his knees. He would implore her to imposeon him insufferable penances. There was no penance, how bittersweetsoever, could make him a little worthy of her.

  "Come in!" he cried mechanically. Entered the landlady's daughter.

  "A lady downstairs," she said, "asking to see your Grace. Says she'llstep round again later if your Grace is busy."

  "What is her name?" asked the Duke, vacantly. He was gazing at the girlwith pain-shot eyes.

  "Miss Zuleika Dobson," pronounced the girl.

  He rose.

  "Show Miss Dobson up," he said.

  Noaks had darted to the looking-glass and was smoothing his hair with atremulous, enormous hand.

  "Go!" said the Duke, pointing to the door. Noaks went, quickly. Echoesof his boots fell from the upper stairs and met the ascending susurrusof a silk skirt.

  The lovers met. There was an interchange of ordinary greetings: from theDuke, a comment on the weather; from Zuleika, a hope that he was wellagain--they had been so sorry to lose him last night. Then came a pause.The landlady's daughter was clearing away the breakfast-things.Zuleika glanced comprehensively at the room, and the Duke gazed at thehearthrug. The landlady's daughter clattered out with her freight. Theywere alone.

  "How pretty!" said Zuleika. She was looking at his star of the Garter,which sparkled from a litter of books and papers on a small side-table.

  "Yes," he answered. "It is pretty, isn't it?"

  "Awfully pretty!" she rejoined.

  This dialogue led them to another hollow pause. The Duke's heart beatviolently within him. Why had he not asked her to take the star and keepit as a gift? Too late now! Why could he not throw himself at her feet?Here were two beings, lovers of each other, with none by. And yet...

  She was examining a water-colour on the wall, seemed to be absorbed byit. He watched her. She was even lovelier than he had remembered;or rather her loveliness had been, in some subtle way, transmuted.Something had given to her a graver, nobler beauty. Last night's nymphhad become the Madonna of this morning. Despite her dress, which wasof a tremendous tartan, she diffused the pale authentic radiance of aspirituality most high, most simple. The Duke wondered where lay thechange in her. He could not understand. Suddenly she turned to him, andhe understood. No longer the black pearl and the pink, but two whitepearls!... He thrilled to his heart's core.

  "I hope," said Zuleika, "you aren't awfully vexed with me for cominglike this?"

  "Not at all," said the Duke. "I am delighted to see you." How inadequatethe words sounded, how formal and stupid!

  "The fact is," she continued, "I don't know a soul in Oxford. AndI thought perhaps you'd give me luncheon, and take me to see theboat-races. Will you?"

  "I shall be charmed," he said, pulling the bell-rope. Poor fool! heattributed the shade of disappointment on Zuleika's face to the coldnessof his tone. He would dispel that shade. He would avow himself. He wouldleave her no longer in this false position. So soon as he had told themabout the meal, he would proclaim his passion.

  The bell was answered by the landlady's daughter.

  "Miss Dobson will stay to luncheon," said the Duke. The girl withdrew.He wished he could have asked her not to.

  He steeled himself. "Miss Dobson," he said, "I wish to apologise toyou."

  Zuleika looked at him eagerly. "You can't give me luncheon? You've gotsomething better to do?"

  "No. I wish to ask you to forgive me for my behaviour last night."

  "There is nothing to forgive."

  "There is. My manners were vile. I know well what happened. Though you,too, cannot have forgotten, I won't spare myself the recital. You weremy hostess, and I ignored you. Magnanimous, you paid me the prettiestcompliment woman ever paid to man, and I insulted you. I left the housein order that I might not see you again. To the doorsteps down whichhe should have kicked me, your grandfather followed me with words ofkindliest courtesy. If he had sped me with a kick so skilful that myskull had been shattered on the kerb, neither would he have outsteppedthose bounds set to the conduct of English gentlemen, nor would you havegarnered more than a trifle on account of your proper reckoning. I donot say that you are the first person whom I have wantonly injured. Butit is a fact that I, in whom pride has ever been the topmost quality,have never expressed sorrow to any one for anything. Thus, I might urgethat my present abjectness must be intolerably painful to me, and shouldincline you to forgive. But such an argument were specious merely.I will be quite frank with you. I will confess to you that, in thishumbling of myself before you, I take a pleasure as passionate as it isstrange. A confusion of feelings? Yet you, with a woman's instinct, willhave already caught the clue to it. It needs no mirror to assure methat the clue is here for you, in my eyes. It needs no dictionary ofquotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul. And Iknow that from two open windows my soul has been leaning and signallingto you, in a code far more definitive and swifter than words of mine,that I love you."

  Zuleika, listening to him, had grown gradually paler and paler. She hadraised her hands and cowered as though he were about to strike her. Andthen, as he pronounced the last three words, she had clasped her handsto her face and with a wild sob darted away from him. She was leaningnow against the window, her head bowed and her shoulders quivering.

  The Duke came softly behind her. "Why should you cry? Why should youturn away from me? Did I frighten you with the suddenness of my words? Iam not versed in the tricks of wooing. I should have been more patient.But I love you so much that I could hardly have waited. A secret hopethat you loved me too emboldened me, compelled me. You DO love me. Iknow it. And, knowing it, I do but ask you to give yourself to me, tobe my wife. Why should you cry? Why should you shrink from me? Dear,if there were anything... any secret... if you had ever loved and beendeceived, do you think I should honour you the less deeply, should notcherish you the more tenderly? Enough for me, that you are mine. Do youthink I should ever reproach you for anything that may have--"

  Zuleika turned on him. "How dare you?" she gasped. "How dare you speakto me like that?"

  The Duke reeled back. Horror had come into his eyes. "You do not loveme!" he cried.

  "LOVE you?" she retorted. "YOU?"

  "You no longer love me. Why? Why?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You loved me. Don't trifle with me. You came to me loving me with allyour heart."

  "How do you know?"

  "Look in the glass." She went at his bidding. He followed her. "Yousee them?" he said, after a long pause. Zuleika nodded. The two pearlsquivered to her nod.

  "They were white when you came to me," he sighed. "They were whitebecause you loved me. From them it was that I knew you loved me even asI loved you. But their old colours have come back to them. That is how Iknow that your love for me is dead."

  Zuleika stood gazing pensively, twitching the two pearls between herfingers. Tears gathered in her eyes. She met the reflection of herlover's eyes, and her tears brimmed over. She buried her face in herhands, and sobbed like a child.

  Like a child's, her sobbing ceased quite suddenly. She groped for herhandkerchief, angrily dried her eyes, and straightened and smoothedherself.

  "Now I'm going," she said.

  "You came here of your own accord, because you loved me," said the Duke."And you shall not go till you have told me why you have left off lovingme."

  "How did you know I loved you?" she asked after a pause. "How did youknow I hadn't simply put on another pair of ear-rings?"

  The Duke, with a melancholy laugh, drew the two studs from hiswaistcoat-pocket. "These are the studs I wore last night," he said.

  Zuleika gazed at them. "I see," she said; then, looking up, "When didthey become like that?"

  "It was when
you left the dining-room that I saw the change in them."

  "How strange! It was when I went into the drawing-room that I noticedmine. I was looking in the glass, and"--She started. "Then you were inlove with me last night?"

  "I began to be in love with you from the moment I saw you."

  "Then how could you have behaved as you did?"

  "Because I was a pedant. I tried to ignore you, as pedants always do tryto ignore any fact they cannot fit into their pet system. The basisof my pet system was celibacy. I don't mean the mere state of beinga bachelor. I mean celibacy of the soul--egoism, in fact. You haveconverted me from that. I am now a confirmed tuist."

  "How dared you insult me?" she cried, with a stamp of her foot."How dared you make a fool of me before those people? Oh, it is tooinfamous!"

  "I have already asked you to forgive me for that. You said there wasnothing to forgive."

  "I didn't dream that you were in love with me."

  "What difference can that make?"

  "All the difference! All the difference in life!"

  "Sit down! You bewilder me," said the Duke. "Explain yourself!" hecommanded.

  "Isn't that rather much for a man to ask of a woman?"

  "I don't know. I have no experience of women. In the abstract, it seemsto me that every man has a right to some explanation from the woman whohas ruined his life."

  "You are frightfully sorry for yourself," said Zuleika, with a bitterlaugh. "Of course it doesn't occur to you that _I_ am at all to bepitied. No! you are blind with selfishness. You love me--I don't loveyou: that is all you can realise. Probably you think you are the firstman who has ever fallen on such a plight."

  Said the Duke, bowing over a deprecatory hand, "If there were to pass mywindow one tithe of them whose hearts have been lost to Miss Dobson, Ishould win no solace from that interminable parade."

  Zuleika blushed. "Yet," she said more gently, "be sure they would all benot a little envious of YOU! Not one of them ever touched the surface ofmy heart. You stirred my heart to its very depths. Yes, you made me loveyou madly. The pearls told you no lie. You were my idol--the one thingin the wide world to me. You were so different from any man I had everseen except in dreams. You did not make a fool of yourself. I admiredyou. I respected you. I was all afire with adoration of you. And now,"she passed her hand across her eyes, "now it is all over. The idol hascome sliding down its pedestal to fawn and grovel with all the otherinfatuates in the dust about my feet."

  The Duke looked thoughtfully at her. "I thought," he said, "that yourevelled in your power over men's hearts. I had always heard that youlived for admiration."

  "Oh," said Zuleika, "of course I like being admired. Oh yes, I like allthat very much indeed. In a way, I suppose, I'm even pleased thatYOU admire me. But oh, what a little miserable pleasure that is incomparison with the rapture I have forfeited! I had never known therapture of being in love. I had longed for it, but I had never guessedhow wonderfully wonderful it was. It came to me. I shuddered and waveredlike a fountain in the wind. I was more helpless and flew lightlierthan a shred of thistledown among the stars. All night long, I could notsleep for love of you; nor had I any desire of sleep, save that it mighttake me to you in a dream. I remember nothing that happened to me thismorning before I found myself at your door."

  "Why did you ring the bell? Why didn't you walk away?"

  "Why? I had come to see you, to be near you, to be WITH you."

  "To force yourself on me."

  "Yes."

  "You know the meaning of the term 'effective occupation'? Having marchedin, how could you have held your position, unless"--

  "Oh, a man doesn't necessarily drive a woman away because he isn't inlove with her."

  "Yet that was what you thought I had done to you last night."

  "Yes, but I didn't suppose you would take the trouble to do it again.And if you had, I should have only loved you the more. I thought youwould most likely be rather amused, rather touched, by my importunity. Ithought you would take a listless advantage, make a plaything of me--thediversion of a few idle hours in summer, and then, when you had tiredof me, would cast me aside, forget me, break my heart. I desired nothingbetter than that. That is what I must have been vaguely hoping for. ButI had no definite scheme. I wanted to be with you and I came to you. Itseems years ago, now! How my heart beat as I waited on the doorstep! 'Ishis Grace at home?' 'I don't know. I'll inquire. What name shall I say?'I saw in the girl's eyes that she, too, loved you. Have YOU seen that?"

  "I have never looked at her," said the Duke.

  "No wonder, then, that she loves you," sighed Zuleika. "She read mysecret at a glance. Women who love the same man have a kind of bitterfreemasonry. We resented each other. She envied me my beauty, my dress.I envied the little fool her privilege of being always near to you.Loving you, I could conceive no life sweeter than hers--to be alwaysnear you; to black your boots, carry up your coals, scrub your doorstep;always to be working for you, hard and humbly and without thanks. If youhad refused to see me, I would have bribed that girl with all my jewelsto cede me her position."

  The Duke made a step towards her. "You would do it still," he said in alow voice.

  Zuleika raised her eyebrows. "I would not offer her one garnet," shesaid, "now."

  "You SHALL love me again," he cried. "I will force you to. You said justnow that you had ceased to love me because I was just like other men. Iam not. My heart is no tablet of mere wax, from which an instant's heatcan dissolve whatever impress it may bear, leaving it blank and softfor another impress, and another, and another. My heart is a bright hardgem, proof against any die. Came Cupid, with one of his arrow-pointsfor graver, and what he cut on the gem's surface never can be effaced.There, deeply and forever, your image is intagliated. No years, norfires, nor cataclysm of total Nature, can efface from that great gemyour image."

  "My dear Duke," said Zuleika, "don't be so silly. Look at the mattersensibly. I know that lovers don't try to regulate their emotionsaccording to logic; but they do, nevertheless, unconsciously conformwith some sort of logical system. I left off loving you when I foundthat you loved me. There is the premiss. Very well! Is it likely that Ishall begin to love you again because you can't leave off loving me?"

  The Duke groaned. There was a clatter of plates outside, and she whomZuleika had envied came to lay the table for luncheon.

  A smile flickered across Zuleika's lips; and "Not one garnet!" shemurmured.