VII
The Duke did not try to break the stony silence in which Zuleika walked.Her displeasure was a luxury to him, for it was so soon to be dispelled.A little while, and she would be hating herself for her pettiness. Herewas he, going to die for her; and here was she, blaming him for a breachof manners. Decidedly, the slave had the whip-hand. He stole a sidelonglook at her, and could not repress a smile. His features quicklycomposed themselves. The Triumph of Death must not be handled as acheap score. He wanted to die because he would thereby so poignantlyconsummate his love, express it so completely, once and for all...And she--who could say that she, knowing what he had done, might not,illogically, come to love him? Perhaps she would devote her life tomourning him. He saw her bending over his tomb, in beautiful humblecurves, under a starless sky, watering the violets with her tears.
Shades of Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel and other despicablemaunderers! He brushed them aside. He would be practical. The point was,when and how to die? Time: the sooner the better. Manner:.. less easy todetermine. He must not die horribly, nor without dignity. The manner ofthe Roman philosophers? But the only kind of bath which an undergraduatecan command is a hip-bath. Stay! there was the river. Drowning (he hadoften heard) was a rather pleasant sensation. And to the river he waseven now on his way.
It troubled him that he could swim. Twice, indeed, from his yacht,he had swum the Hellespont. And how about the animal instinct ofself-preservation, strong even in despair? No matter! His soul's setpurpose would subdue that. The law of gravitation that brings one to thesurface? There his very skill in swimming would help him. He would swimunder water, along the river-bed, swim till he found weeds to cling to,weird strong weeds that he would coil round him, exulting faintly...
As they turned into Radcliffe Square, the Duke's ear caught the sound ofa far-distant gun. He started, and looked up at the clock of St. Mary's.Half-past four! The boats had started.
He had heard that whenever a woman was to blame for a disappointment,the best way to avoid a scene was to inculpate oneself. He did notwish Zuleika to store up yet more material for penitence. And so "I amsorry," he said. "That gun--did you hear it? It was the signal for therace. I shall never forgive myself."
"Then we shan't see the race at all?" cried Zuleika.
"It will be over, alas, before we are near the river. All the peoplewill be coming back through the meadows."
"Let us meet them."
"Meet a torrent? Let us have tea in my rooms and go down quietly for theother Division."
"Let us go straight on."
Through the square, across the High, down Grove Street, they passed.The Duke looked up at the tower of Merton, "os oupot authis alla nynpaunstaton." Strange that to-night it would still be standing here,in all its sober and solid beauty--still be gazing, over the roofs andchimneys, at the tower of Magdalen, its rightful bride. Through untoldcenturies of the future it would stand thus, gaze thus. He winced.Oxford walls have a way of belittling us; and the Duke was loth toregard his doom as trivial.
Aye, by all minerals we are mocked. Vegetables, yearly deciduous, arefar more sympathetic. The lilac and laburnum, making lovely now therailed pathway to Christ Church meadow, were all a-swaying and a-noddingto the Duke as he passed by. "Adieu, adieu, your Grace," they werewhispering. "We are very sorry for you--very sorry indeed. We neverdared suppose you would predecease us. We think your death a very greattragedy. Adieu! Perhaps we shall meet in another world--that is, if themembers of the animal kingdom have immortal souls, as we have."
The Duke was little versed in their language; yet, as he passed betweenthese gently garrulous blooms, he caught at least the drift of theirsalutation, and smiled a vague but courteous acknowledgment, to theright and the left alternately, creating a very favourable impression.
No doubt, the young elms lining the straight way to the barges had seenhim coming; but any whispers of their leaves were lost in the murmur ofthe crowd returning from the race. Here, at length, came the torrentof which the Duke had spoken; and Zuleika's heart rose at it. Here wasOxford! From side to side the avenue was filled with a dense processionof youths--youths interspersed with maidens whose parasols were asflotsam and jetsam on a seething current of straw hats. Zuleika neitherquickened nor slackened her advance. But brightlier and brightlier shoneher eyes.
The vanguard of the procession was pausing now, swaying, breaking atsight of her. She passed, imperial, through the way cloven for her. Alla-down the avenue, the throng parted as though some great invisiblecomb were being drawn through it. The few youths who had alreadyseen Zuleika, and by whom her beauty had been bruited throughout theUniversity, were lost in a new wonder, so incomparably fairer was shethan the remembered vision. And the rest hardly recognised her from thedescriptions, so incomparably fairer was the reality than the hope.
She passed among them. None questioned the worthiness of her escort.Could I give you better proof the awe in which our Duke was held? Anyman is glad to be seen escorting a very pretty woman. He thinks it addsto his prestige. Whereas, in point of fact, his fellow-men are sayingmerely "Who's that appalling fellow with her?" or "Why does she go aboutwith that ass So-and-So?" Such cavil may in part be envy. But it is afact that no man, howsoever graced, can shine in juxtaposition to a verypretty woman. The Duke himself cut a poor figure beside Zuleika. Yet notone of all the undergraduates felt she could have made a wiser choice.
She swept among them. Her own intrinsic radiance was not all thatflashed from her. She was a moving reflector and refractor of all therays of all the eyes that mankind had turned on her. Her mien told thestory of her days. Bright eyes, light feet--she trod erect from a vistawhose glare was dazzling to all beholders. She swept among them, amiracle, overwhelming, breath-bereaving. Nothing at all like her hadever been seen in Oxford.
Mainly architectural, the beauties of Oxford. True, the place is nolonger one-sexed. There are the virguncules of Somerville and LadyMargaret's Hall; but beauty and the lust for learning have yet to beallied. There are the innumerable wives and daughters around the Parks,running in and out of their little red-brick villas; but the indignantshade of celibacy seems to have called down on the dons a Nemesis whichprecludes them from either marrying beauty or begetting it. (From theWarden's son, that unhappy curate, Zuleika inherited no tittle ofher charm. Some of it, there is no doubt, she did inherit from thecircus-rider who was her mother.)
But the casual feminine visitors? Well, the sisters and cousins of anundergraduate seldom seem more passable to his comrades than to himself.Altogether, the instinct of sex is not pandered to in Oxford. It is not,however, as it may once have been, dormant. The modern importation ofsamples of femininity serves to keep it alert, though not to gratify it.A like result is achieved by another modern development--photography.The undergraduate may, and usually does, surround himself withphotographs of pretty ladies known to the public. A phantom harem! Yetthe houris have an effect on their sultan. Surrounded both by plainwomen of flesh and blood and by beauteous women on pasteboard, theundergraduate is the easiest victim of living loveliness--is as a fireever well and truly laid, amenable to a spark. And if the spark be sucha flaring torch as Zuleika?--marvel not, reader, at the conflagration.
Not only was the whole throng of youths drawing asunder before her:much of it, as she passed, was forming up in her wake. Thus, with theconfluence of two masses--one coming away from the river, the otherreturning to it--chaos seethed around her and the Duke before they werehalf-way along the avenue. Behind them, and on either side of them, thepeople were crushed inextricably together, swaying and surging this wayand that. "Help!" cried many a shrill feminine voice. "Don't push!" "Letme out!" "You brute!" "Save me, save me!" Many ladies fainted, whilsttheir escorts, supporting them and protecting them as best they could,peered over the heads of their fellows for one glimpse of the divineMiss Dobson. Yet for her and the Duke, in the midst of the terrificcompress, there was space enough. In front of them, as by a miracleof deference, a way still cleared it
self. They reached the end of theavenue without a pause in their measured progress. Nor even when theyturned to the left, along the rather narrow path beside the barges, wasthere any obstacle to their advance. Passing evenly forward, they alonewere cool, unhustled, undishevelled.
The Duke was so rapt in his private thoughts that he was hardlyconscious of the strange scene. And as for Zuleika, she, as well shemight be, was in the very best of good humours.
"What a lot of house-boats!" she exclaimed. "Are you going to take me onto one of them?"
The Duke started. Already they were alongside the Judas barge. "Here,"he said, "is our goal."
He stepped through the gate of the railings, out upon the plank, andoffered her his hand.
She looked back. The young men in the vanguard were crushing theirshoulders against the row behind them, to stay the oncoming host. Shehad half a mind to go back through the midst of them; but she really didwant her tea, and she followed the Duke on to the barge, and under hisauspices climbed the steps to the roof.
It looked very cool and gay, this roof, under its awning of red andwhite stripes. Nests of red and white flowers depended along either sideof it. Zuleika moved to the side which commanded a view of the bank. Sheleaned her arms on the balustrade, and gazed down.
The crowd stretched as far as she could see--a vista of faces upturnedto her. Suddenly it hove forward. Its vanguard was swept irresistiblypast the barge--swept by the desire of the rest to see her at closerquarters. Such was the impetus that the vision for each man was buta lightning-flash: he was whirled past, struggling, almost before hisbrain took the message of his eyes.
Those who were Judas men made frantic efforts to board the barge, tryingto hurl themselves through the gate in the railings; but they were sweptvainly on.
Presently the torrent began to slacken, became a mere river, a mereprocession of youths staring up rather shyly.
Before the last stragglers had marched by, Zuleika moved away to theother side of the roof, and, after a glance at the sunlit river,sank into one of the wicker chairs, and asked the Duke to look lessdisagreeable and to give her some tea.
Among others hovering near the little buffet were the two youths whoseparley with the Duke I have recorded.
Zuleika was aware of the special persistence of their gaze. When theDuke came back with her cup, she asked him who they were. He replied,truthfully enough, that their names were unknown to him.
"Then," she said, "ask them their names, and introduce them to me."
"No," said the Duke, sinking into the chair beside her. "That I shallnot do. I am your victim: not your pander. Those two men stand on thethreshold of a possibly useful and agreeable career. I am not going totrip them up for you."
"I am not sure," said Zuleika, "that you are very polite. Certainly youare foolish. It is natural for boys to fall in love. If these two arein love with me, why not let them talk to me? It were an experience onwhich they would always look back with romantic pleasure. They may neversee me again. Why grudge them this little thing?" She sipped her tea."As for tripping them up on a threshold--that is all nonsense. What harmhas unrequited love ever done to anybody?" She laughed. "Look at ME!When I came to your rooms this morning, thinking I loved in vain, did Iseem one jot the worse for it? Did I look different?"
"You looked, I am bound to say, nobler, more spiritual."
"More spiritual?" she exclaimed. "Do you mean I looked tired or ill?"
"No, you seemed quite fresh. But then, you are singular. You are nocriterion."
"You mean you can't judge those two young men by me? Well, I am only awoman, of course. I have heard of women, no longer young, wasting awaybecause no man loved them. I have often heard of a young woman frettingbecause some particular young man didn't love her. But I never heard ofher wasting away. Certainly a young man doesn't waste away for love ofsome particular young woman. He very soon makes love to some other one.If his be an ardent nature, the quicker his transition. All the mostardent of my past adorers have married. Will you put my cup down,please?"
"Past?" echoed the Duke, as he placed her cup on the floor. "Have any ofyour lovers ceased to love you?"
"Ah no, no; not in retrospect. I remain their ideal, and all that, ofcourse. They cherish the thought of me. They see the world in terms ofme. But I am an inspiration, not an obsession a glow, not a blight."
"You don't believe in the love that corrodes, the love that ruins?"
"No," laughed Zuleika.
"You have never dipped into the Greek pastoral poets, nor sampled theElizabethan sonneteers?"
"No, never. You will think me lamentably crude: my experience of lifehas been drawn from life itself."
"Yet often you talk as though you had read rather much. Your way ofspeech has what is called 'the literary flavour'."
"Ah, that is an unfortunate trick which I caught from a writer, a Mr.Beerbohm, who once sat next to me at dinner somewhere. I can't breakmyself of it. I assure you I hardly ever open a book. Of life, though,my experience has been very wide. Brief? But I suppose the soul of manduring the past two or three years has been much as it was in the reignof Queen Elizabeth and of--whoever it was that reigned over the Greekpastures. And I daresay the modern poets are making the same old sillydistortions. But forgive me," she added gently, "perhaps you yourselfare a poet?"
"Only since yesterday," answered the Duke (not less unfairly to himselfthan to Roger Newdigate and Thomas Gaisford). And he felt he wasespecially a dramatic poet. All the while that she had been sitting byhim here, talking so glibly, looking so straight into his eyes, flashingat him so many pretty gestures, it was the sense of tragic ironythat prevailed in him--that sense which had stirred in him, and beenrepressed, on the way from Judas. He knew that she was making her effectconsciously for the other young men by whom the roof of the barge wasnow thronged. Him alone she seemed to observe. By her manner, she mighthave seemed to be making love to him. He envied the men she was sodeliberately making envious--the men whom, in her undertone to him, shewas really addressing. But he did take comfort in the irony. Though sheused him as a stalking-horse, he, after all, was playing with her as acat plays with a mouse. While she chattered on, without an inkling thathe was no ordinary lover, and coaxing him to present two quite ordinaryyoung men to her, he held over her the revelation that he for love ofher was about to die.
And, while he drank in the radiance of her beauty, he heard herchattering on. "So you see," she was saying, "it couldn't do those youngmen any harm. Suppose unrequited love IS anguish: isn't the disciplinewholesome? Suppose I AM a sort of furnace: shan't I purge, refine,temper? Those two boys are but scorched from here. That is horrid; andwhat good will it do them?" She laid a hand on his arm. "Cast them intothe furnace for their own sake, dear Duke! Or cast one of them, or," sheadded, glancing round at the throng, "any one of these others!"
"For their own sake?" he echoed, withdrawing his arm. "If you were not,as the whole world knows you to be, perfectly respectable, there mightbe something in what you say. But as it is, you can but be an engine formischief; and your sophistries leave me unmoved. I shall certainly keepyou to myself."
"I hate you," said Zuleika, with an ugly petulance that crowned theirony.
"So long as I live," uttered the Duke, in a level voice, "you willaddress no man but me."
"If your prophecy is to be fulfilled," laughed Zuleika, rising from herchair, "your last moment is at hand."
"It is," he answered, rising too.
"What do you mean?" she asked, awed by something in his tone.
"I mean what I say: that my last moment is at hand." He withdrewhis eyes from hers, and, leaning his elbows on the balustrade, gazedthoughtfully at the river. "When I am dead," he added, over hisshoulder, "you will find these fellows rather coy of your advances."
For the first time since his avowal of his love for her, Zuleika foundherself genuinely interested in him. A suspicion of his meaning hadflashed through her soul.--But no! surely he could not mean THAT! Itmust h
ave been a metaphor merely. And yet, something in his eyes... Sheleaned beside him. Her shoulder touched his. She gazed questioningly athim. He did not turn his face to her. He gazed at the sunlit river.
The Judas Eight had just embarked for their voyage to thestarting-point. Standing on the edge of the raft that makes a floatingplatform for the barge, William, the hoary bargee, was pushing them offwith his boat-hook, wishing them luck with deferential familiarity.The raft was thronged with Old Judasians--mostly clergymen--who wereshouting hearty hortations, and evidently trying not to appear so oldas they felt--or rather, not to appear so startlingly old as theircontemporaries looked to them. It occurred to the Duke as a strangething, and a thing to be glad of, that he, in this world, would never bean Old Judasian. Zuleika's shoulder pressed his. He thrilled not at all.To all intents, he was dead already.
The enormous eight young men in the thread-like skiff--the skiff thatwould scarce have seemed an adequate vehicle for the tiny "cox" who satfacing them--were staring up at Zuleika with that uniformity of impulsewhich, in another direction, had enabled them to bump a boat on two ofthe previous "nights." If to-night they bumped the next boat, Univ.,then would Judas be three places "up" on the river; and to-morrow Judaswould have a Bump Supper. Furthermore, if Univ. were bumped to-night,Magdalen might be bumped to-morrow. Then would Judas, for the firsttime in history, be head of the river. Oh tremulous hope! Yet, forthe moment, these eight young men seemed to have forgotten the awfulresponsibility that rested on their over-developed shoulders. Theirhearts, already strained by rowing, had been transfixed this afternoonby Eros' darts. All of them had seen Zuleika as she came down to theriver; and now they sat gaping up at her, fumbling with their oars. Thetiny cox gaped too; but he it was who first recalled duty. With pipingadjurations he brought the giants back to their senses. The boat movedaway down stream, with a fairly steady stroke.
Not in a day can the traditions of Oxford be sent spinning. From all thebarges the usual punt-loads of young men were being ferried acrossto the towing-path--young men naked of knee, armed with rattles,post-horns, motor-hooters, gongs, and other instruments of clangour.Though Zuleika filled their thoughts, they hurried along thetowing-path, as by custom, to the starting-point.
She, meanwhile, had not taken her eyes off the Duke's profile. Norhad she dared, for fear of disappointment, to ask him just what he hadmeant.
"All these men," he repeated dreamily, "will be coy of your advances."It seemed to him a good thing that his death, his awful example, woulddisinfatuate his fellow alumni. He had never been conscious ofpublic spirit. He had lived for himself alone. Love had come to himyesternight, and to-day had waked in him a sympathy with mankind. Itwas a fine thing to be a saviour. It was splendid to be human. He lookedquickly round to her who had wrought this change in him.
But the loveliest face in all the world will not please you if you seeit suddenly, eye to eye, at a distance of half an inch from your own.It was thus that the Duke saw Zuleika's: a monstrous deliquium a-glare.Only for the fraction of an instant, though. Recoiling, he beheld theloveliness that he knew--more adorably vivid now in its look of eagerquestioning. And in his every fibre he thrilled to her. Even so had shegazed at him last night, this morning. Aye, now as then, her soul wasfull of him. He had recaptured, not her love, but his power to pleaseher. It was enough. He bowed his head; and "Moriturus te saluto" werethe words formed silently by his lips. He was glad that his death wouldbe a public service to the University. But the salutary lesson ofwhat the newspapers would call his "rash act" was, after all, only aside-issue. The great thing, the prospect that flushed his cheek, wasthe consummation of his own love, for its own sake, by his own death.And, as he met her gaze, the question that had already flitted throughhis brain found a faltering utterance; and "Shall you mourn me?" heasked her.
But she would have no ellipses. "What are you going to do?" shewhispered.
"Do you not know?"
"Tell me."
"Once and for all: you cannot love me?"
Slowly she shook her head. The black pearl and the pink, quivering, gavestress to her ultimatum. But the violet of her eyes was all but hiddenby the dilation of her pupils.
"Then," whispered the Duke, "when I shall have died, deeming life a vainthing without you, will the gods give you tears for me? Miss Dobson,will your soul awaken? When I shall have sunk for ever beneath thesewaters whose supposed purpose here this afternoon is but that they beploughed by the blades of these young oarsmen, will there be struck fromthat flint, your heart, some late and momentary spark of pity for me?"
"Why of course, of COURSE!" babbled Zuleika, with clasped hands anddazzling eyes. "But," she curbed herself, "it is--it would--oh, youmustn't THINK of it! I couldn't allow it! I--I should never forgivemyself!"
"In fact, you would mourn me always?"
"Why yes!.. Y-es-always." What else could she say? But would his answerbe that he dared not condemn her to lifelong torment?
"Then," his answer was, "my joy in dying for you is made perfect."
Her muscles relaxed. Her breath escaped between her teeth. "You areutterly resolved?" she asked. "Are you?"
"Utterly."
"Nothing I might say could change your purpose?"
"Nothing."
"No entreaty, howsoever piteous, could move you?"
"None."
Forthwith she urged, entreated, cajoled, commanded, with infiniteprettiness of ingenuity and of eloquence. Never was such a cascade ofdissuasion as hers. She only didn't say she could love him. She neverhinted that. Indeed, throughout her pleading rang this recurrent motif:that he must live to take to himself as mate some good, serious, cleverwoman who would be a not unworthy mother of his children.
She laid stress on his youth, his great position, his brilliantattainments, the much he had already achieved, the splendidpossibilities of his future. Though of course she spoke in undertones,not to be overheard by the throng on the barge, it was almost as thoughhis health were being floridly proposed at some public banquet--say,at a Tenants' Dinner. Insomuch that, when she ceased, the Duke halfexpected Jellings, his steward, to bob up uttering, with lifted hands, astentorian "For-or," and all the company to take up the chant: "he's--ajolly good fellow." His brief reply, on those occasions, seemed alwaysto indicate that, whatever else he might be, a jolly good fellow he wasnot. But by Zuleika's eulogy he really was touched. "Thank you--thankyou," he gasped; and there were tears in his eyes. Dear the thought thatshe so revered him, so wished him not to die. But this was no more thana rush-light in the austere radiance of his joy in dying for her.
And the time was come. Now for the sacrament of his immersion ininfinity.
"Good-bye," he said simply, and was about to swing himself on to theledge of the balustrade. Zuleika, divining his intention, made way forhim. Her bosom heaved quickly, quickly. All colour had left her face;but her eyes shone as never before.
Already his foot was on the ledge, when hark! the sound of a distantgun. To Zuleika, with all the chords of her soul strung to the utmosttensity, the effect was as if she herself had been shot; and sheclutched at the Duke's arm, like a frightened child. He laughed. "It wasthe signal for the race," he said, and laughed again, rather bitterly,at the crude and trivial interruption of high matters.
"The race?" She laughed hysterically.
"Yes. 'They're off'." He mingled his laughter with hers, gently seekingto disengage his arm. "And perhaps," he said, "I, clinging to the weedsof the river's bed, shall see dimly the boats and the oars pass over me,and shall be able to gurgle a cheer for Judas."
"Don't!" she shuddered, with a woman's notion that a jest means levity.A tumult of thoughts surged in her, all confused. She only knew thathe must not die--not yet! A moment ago, his death would have beenbeautiful. Not now! Her grip of his arm tightened. Only by breaking herwrist could he have freed himself. A moment ago, she had been in theseventh-heaven... Men were supposed to have died for love of her. Ithad never been proved. There had always been some
thing--card-debts,ill-health, what not--to account for the tragedy. No man, to the bestof her recollection, had ever hinted that he was going to die for her.Never, assuredly, had she seen the deed done. And then came he, thefirst man she had loved, going to die here, before her eyes, because sheno longer loved him. But she knew now that he must not die--not yet!
All around her was the hush that falls on Oxford when the signal for therace has sounded. In the distance could be heard faintly the noise ofcheering--a little sing-song sound, drawing nearer.
Ah, how could she have thought of letting him die so soon? She gazedinto his face--the face she might never have seen again. Even now, butfor that gun-shot, the waters would have closed over him, and his soul,maybe, have passed away. She had saved him, thank heaven! She had himstill with her.
Gently, vainly, he still sought to unclasp her fingers from his arm.
"Not now!" she whispered. "Not yet!"
And the noise of the cheering, and of the trumpeting and rattling, asit drew near, was an accompaniment to her joy in having saved her lover.She would keep him with her--for a while! Let all be done in order. Shewould savour the full sweetness of his sacrifice. Tomorrow--to-morrow,yes, let him have his heart's desire of death. Not now! Not yet!
"To-morrow," she whispered, "to-morrow, if you will. Not yet!"
The first boat came jerking past in mid-stream; and the towing-path,with its serried throng of runners, was like a live thing, keeping pace.As in a dream, Zuleika saw it. And the din was in her ears. No heroineof Wagner had ever a louder accompaniment than had ours to the surgingsoul within her bosom.
And the Duke, tightly held by her, vibrated as to a powerful electriccurrent. He let her cling to him, and her magnetism range through him.Ah, it was good not to have died! Fool, he had meant to drain off-hand,at one coarse draught, the delicate wine of death. He would let his lipscaress the brim of the august goblet. He would dally with the aroma thatwas there.
"So be it!" he cried into Zuleika's ear--cried loudly, for it seemed asthough all the Wagnerian orchestras of Europe, with the Straussian onesthrown in, were here to clash in unison the full volume of right musicfor the glory of the reprieve.
The fact was that the Judas boat had just bumped Univ., exactly oppositethe Judas barge. The oarsmen in either boat sat humped, panting, some ofthem rocking and writhing, after their wholesome exercise. But therewas not one of them whose eyes were not upcast at Zuleika. And thevocalisation and instrumentation of the dancers and stampers on thetowing-path had by this time ceased to mean aught of joy in the victorsor of comfort for the vanquished, and had resolved itself into a wildwordless hymn to the glory of Miss Dobson. Behind her and all around heron the roof of the barge, young Judasians were venting in like mannertheir hearts through their lungs. She paid no heed. It was as if shestood alone with her lover on some silent pinnacle of the world. It wasas if she were a little girl with a brand-new and very expensive dollwhich had banished all the little other old toys from her mind.
She simply could not, in her naive rapture, take her eyes off hercompanion. To the dancers and stampers of the towing-path, many of whomwere now being ferried back across the river, and to the other youthson the roof of the barge, Zuleika's air of absorption must have seemeda little strange. For already the news that the Duke loved Zuleika, andthat she loved him not, and would stoop to no man who loved her, hadspread like wild-fire among the undergraduates. The two youths in whomthe Duke had deigned to confide had not held their peace. And the effectthat Zuleika had made as she came down to the river was intensified bythe knowledge that not the great paragon himself did she deem worthy ofher. The mere sight of her had captured young Oxford. The news of hersupernal haughtiness had riveted the chains.
"Come!" said the Duke at length, staring around him with the eyes of oneawakened from a dream. "Come! I must take you back to Judas."
"But you won't leave me there?" pleaded Zuleika. "You will stay todinner? I am sure my grandfather would be delighted."
"I am sure he would," said the Duke, as he piloted her down the steps ofthe barge. "But alas, I have to dine at the Junta to-night."
"The Junta? What is that?"
"A little dining-club. It meets every Tuesday."
"But--you don't mean you are going to refuse me for that?"
"To do so is misery. But I have no choice. I have asked a guest."
"Then ask another: ask me!" Zuleika's notions of Oxford life were ratherhazy. It was with difficulty that the Duke made her realise that hecould not--not even if, as she suggested, she dressed herself up as aman--invite her to the Junta. She then fell back on the impossibilitythat he would not dine with her to-night, his last night in this world.She could not understand that admirable fidelity to social engagementswhich is one of the virtues implanted in the members of our aristocracy.Bohemian by training and by career, she construed the Duke's refusal aseither a cruel slight to herself or an act of imbecility. The thought ofbeing parted from her for one moment was torture to him; but "noblesseoblige," and it was quite impossible for him to break an engagementmerely because a more charming one offered itself: he would as soon havecheated at cards.
And so, as they went side by side up the avenue, in the mellow lightof the westering sun, preceded in their course, and pursued, andsurrounded, by the mob of hoarse infatuate youths, Zuleika's face wasas that of a little girl sulking. Vainly the Duke reasoned with her. Shecould NOT see the point of view.
With that sudden softening that comes to the face of an angry woman whohas hit on a good argument, she turned to him and asked "How if I hadn'tsaved your life just now? Much you thought about your guest when youwere going to dive and die!"
"I did not forget him," answered the Duke, smiling at her casuistry."Nor had I any scruple in disappointing him. Death cancels allengagements."
And Zuleika, worsted, resumed her sulking. But presently, as they nearedJudas, she relented. It was paltry to be cross with him who had resolvedto die for her and was going to die so on the morrow. And after all, shewould see him at the concert to-night. They would sit together. And allto-morrow they would be together, till the time came for parting. Herswas a naturally sunny disposition. And the evening was such a lovelyone, all bathed in gold. She was ashamed of her ill-humour.
"Forgive me," she said, touching his arm. "Forgive me for being horrid."And forgiven she promptly was. "And promise you will spend all to-morrowwith me." And of course he promised.
As they stood together on the steps of the Warden's front-door, exaltedabove the level of the flushed and swaying crowd that filled the wholelength and breadth of Judas Street, she implored him not to be late forthe concert.
"I am never late," he smiled.
"Ah, you're so beautifully brought up!"
The door was opened.
"And--oh, you're beautiful besides!" she whispered; and waved her handto him as she vanished into the hall.