Zuleika Dobson Or, An Oxford Love Story

  VI

  "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred withtheir bones." At any rate, the sinner has a better chance than the saintof being hereafter remembered. We, in whom original sin preponderates,find him easier to understand. He is near to us, clear to us. The saintis remote, dim. A very great saint may, of course, be remembered throughsome sheer force of originality in him; and then the very mystery thatinvolves him for us makes him the harder to forget: he haunts us themore surely because we shall never understand him. But the ordinarysaints grow faint to posterity; whilst quite ordinary sinners passvividly down the ages.

  Of the disciples of Jesus, which is he that is most often rememberedand cited by us? Not the disciple whom Jesus loved; neither of theBoanerges, nor any other of them who so steadfastly followed Him andserved Him; but the disciple who betrayed Him for thirty pieces ofsilver. Judas Iscariot it is who outstands, overshadowing thoseother fishermen. And perhaps it was by reason of this precedence thatChristopher Whitrid, Knight, in the reign of Henry VI., gave the name ofJudas to the College which he had founded. Or perhaps it was because hefelt that in a Christian community not even the meanest and basest ofmen should be accounted beneath contempt, beyond redemption.

  At any rate, thus he named his foundation. And, though for Oxford menthe savour of the name itself has long evaporated through its localconnexion, many things show that for the Founder himself it was no emptyvocable. In a niche above the gate stands a rudely carved statueof Judas, holding a money-bag in his right hand. Among the originalstatutes of the College is one by which the Bursar is enjoined todistribute in Passion Week thirty pieces of silver among the needierscholars "for saike of atonynge." The meadow adjoining the back of theCollege has been called from time immemorial "the Potter's Field." Andthe name of Salt Cellar is not less ancient and significant.

  Salt Cellar, that grey and green quadrangle visible from the roomassigned to Zuleika, is very beautiful, as I have said. So tranquil isit as to seem remote not merely from the world, but even from Oxford, sodeeply is it hidden away in the core of Oxford's heart. So tranquilis it, one would guess that nothing had ever happened in it. For fivecenturies these walls have stood, and during that time have beheld, onewould say, no sight less seemly than the good work of weeding, mowing,rolling, that has made, at length, so exemplary the lawn. Thesecloisters that grace the south and east sides--five centuries havepassed through them, leaving in them no echo, leaving on them nosign, of all that the outer world, for good or evil, has been doing sofiercely, so raucously.

  And yet, if you are versed in the antiquities of Oxford, you know thatthis small, still quadrangle has played its part in the rough-and-tumbleof history, and has been the background of high passions and strangefates. The sun-dial in its midst has told the hours to more than onebygone 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 andblood-stained messenger the news of Chalgrove Field. Sixty years later,James, his son, came hither, black with threats, and from one of thehind-windows of the Warden's house--maybe, from the very room where nowZuleika was changing her frock--addressed the Fellows, and presentedto them the Papist by him chosen to be their Warden, instead of theProtestant whom they had elected. They were not of so stern a stuff asthe Fellows of Magdalen, who, despite His Majesty's menaces, had justrejected Bishop Farmer. The Papist was elected, there and then, alfresco, without dissent. Cannot one see them, these Fellows of Judas,huddled together round the sun-dial, like so many sheep in a storm? TheKing's wrath, according to a contemporary record, was so appeased bytheir pliancy that he deigned to lie for two nights in Judas, and ata grand refection in Hall "was gracious and merrie." Perhaps it was inlingering gratitude for such patronage that Judas remained so pious tohis memory even after smug Herrenhausen had been dumped down on us forever. Certainly, of all the Colleges none was more ardent than Judas forJames Stuart. Thither it was that young Sir Harry Esson led, under coverof night, three-score recruits whom he had enlisted in the surroundingvillages. 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 awhole month Salt Cellar was a secret camp. But somehow, at length--woeto "lost causes and impossible loyalties"--Herrenhausen had wind ofit; and one night, when the soldiers of the white cockade lay snoringbeneath the stars, stealthily the white-faced Warden unbarred hispostern--that very postern through which now Zuleika had passed on theway 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 swordsclashed, 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 hadtime to snatch arms were too dazed to make good resistance. Sir HarryEsson himself was the only one who did not live to be hanged. He hadsprung up alert, sword in hand, at the first alarm, setting his back tothe cloisters. There he fought calmly, ferociously, till a bullet wentthrough his chest. "By God, this College is well-named!" were the wordshe uttered as he fell forward and died.

  Comparatively tame was the scene now being enacted in this place. TheDuke, with bowed head, was pacing the path between the lawn and thecloisters. Two other undergraduates stood watching him, whisperingto each other, under the archway that leads to the Front Quadrangle.Presently, in a sheepish way, they approached him. He halted and lookedup.

  "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 firstaddressed. Moreover, he was loth to be thus disturbed in his sombrereverie. 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 himyourself!"

  The Duke diverted his gaze to the other, who, with an angry look at theone, cleared his throat, and said "I was going to ask if you thoughtMiss Dobson would come and have luncheon with me to-morrow?"

  "A sister of mine will be there," explained the one, knowing the Duke tobe a precisian.

  "If you are acquainted with Miss Dobson, a direct invitation should besent 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 thedifficulty. I AM acquainted with her. But is she acquainted with ME? Imet 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 ofus. 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 askedus whether we took tea or coffee."

  "She put hot milk in my tea," volunteered the one, "and upset the cupover 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 theother that there had been not so much as a glance.

  "Doubtless," the disingenuous Duke said, "she had a headache... Was shepale?"

  "Very pale," answered the one.

  "A healthy pallor," qualified the other, who was a constant reader ofnovels.

  "Did she look," the Duke inquired, "as if she had spent a sleeplessnight?"

  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, see
m 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 hadsaid to him, "nothing that happened to me this morning till I foundmyself at your door." It was bitter-sweet to have that outline filled inby these artless pencils. No, it was only bitter, to be, at his time oflife, 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 evidentlydidn'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 thesefellow-lovers. He would fain preserve them from the anguish that besethimself. 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 affordingyou further traffic with that lady. To love and be scorned--does Fatehold for us a greater inconvenience? You think I beg the question? Letme 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 replywas obvious.

  Amazed, abashed, the two youths turned on their heels.

  "Stay!" said the Duke. "Let me, in justice to myself, correct aninference you may have drawn. It is not by reason of any defect inmyself, perceived or imagined, that Miss Dobson scorns me. She scorns mesimply because I love her. All who love her she scorns. To see her isto love her. Therefore shut your eyes to her. Strictly exclude her fromyour 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 goodadvice he had given them... Suppose he did take it! Suppose he wentto the Bursar, obtained an exeat, fled straight to London! What justhumiliation for Zuleika to come down and find her captive gone! Hepictured 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 aminute ago. He's going down this afternoon."

  Yet, even while his fancy luxuriated in this scheme, he well knew thathe would not accomplish anything of the kind--knew well that he wouldwait here humbly, eagerly, even though Zuleika lingered over her toilettill crack o' doom. He had no desire that was not centred in her. Takeaway his love for her, and what remained? Nothing--though only in thepast twenty-four hours had this love been added to him. Ah, why hadhe ever seen her? He thought of his past, its cold splendour andinsouciance. But he knew that for him there was no returning. His boatswere 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 wasstranded for ever. For ever stranded on the isle of an enchantress whowould have nothing to do with him! What, he wondered, should be done inso piteous a quandary? There seemed to be two courses. One was to pineslowly and painfully away. The other...

  Academically, the Duke had often reasoned that a man for whom life holdsno chance of happiness cannot too quickly shake life off. Now, of asudden, 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 hegiven ear to that cackle which is called Public Opinion. The judgmentof his peers--this, he had often told himself, was the sole arbitrage hecould submit to; but then, who was to be on the bench? Peerless, he wasirresponsible--the captain of his soul, the despot of his future. Noinjunction but from himself would he bow to; and his own injunctions--solittle Danish was he--had always been peremptory and lucid. Lucid andperemptory, now, the command he issued to himself.

  "So sorry to have been so long," carolled a voice from above. The Dukelooked up. "I'm all but ready," said Zuleika at her window.

  That brief apparition changed the colour of his resolve. He realisedthat to die for love of this lady would be no mere measure ofprecaution, or counsel of despair. It would be in itself a passionateindulgence--a fiery rapture, not to be foregone. What better couldhe ask than to die for his love? Poor indeed seemed to him nowthe sacrament of marriage beside the sacrament of death. Death wasincomparably the greater, the finer soul. Death was the one true bridal.

  He flung back his head, spread wide his arms, quickened his pace almostto running speed. Ah, he would win his bride before the setting of thesun. 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 heardhim 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, wildlyexpressing in his movement the thought within him, she appeared as hisawful bride. With a cry of joy, he bounded towards her, and would havecaught her in his arms, had she not stepped nimbly aside.

  "Forgive me!" he said, after a pause. "It was a mistake--an idioticmistake 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 notoccur again."

  She was very angry indeed. Of his penitence there could be no doubt. Butthere are outrages for which no penitence can atone. This seemed to beone of them. Her first impulse was to dismiss the Duke forthwith and forever. But she wanted to show herself at the races. And she could not goalone. And except the Duke there was no one to take her. True, there wasthe concert to-night; and she could show herself there to advantage; butshe wanted ALL Oxford to see her--see her NOW.

  "I am forgiven?" he asked. In her, I am afraid, self-respect outweighedcharity. "I will try," she said merely, "to forget what you have done."Motioning him to her side, she opened her parasol, and signified herreadiness to start.

  They passed together across the vast gravelled expanse of the FrontQuadrangle. In the porch of the College there were, as usual, somechained-up dogs, patiently awaiting their masters. Zuleika, of course,did not care for dogs. One has never known a good man to whom dogs werenot dear; but many of the best women have no such fondness. You willfind that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who hasfailed to inspire sympathy in men. For the attractive woman, dogs aremere dumb and restless brutes--possibly dangerous, certainly soulless.Yet will coquetry teach her to caress any dog in the presence of aman enslaved by her. Even Zuleika, it seems, was not above this ratherobvious device for awaking envy. Be sure she did not at all like thelook of the very big bulldog who was squatting outside the porter'slodge. Perhaps, but for her present anger, she would not have stoopedendearingly down to him, as she did, cooing over him and trying to pathis head. Alas, her pretty act was a failure. The bulldog cowered awayfrom her, horrifically grimacing. This was strange. Like the majorityof his breed, Corker (for such was his name) had ever been wistful tobe noticed by any one--effusively grateful for every word or pat, anever-ready wagger and nuzzler, to none ineffable. No beggar, no burglar,had ever been rebuffed by this catholic beast. But he drew the line atZuleika.

  Seldom is even a fierce bulldog heard to growl. Yet Corker growled atZuleika.