Zuleika Dobson Part 15

"Vainly," she cut him short.

There was a pause. "Whom shall I invite, then?"

"I don't know any of them. How should I have preferences?" She remembered the Duke. She looked round and saw him still standing in the shadow of the wall. He came towards her. "Of course," she said hastily to her host, "you must ask HIM."

The MacQuern complied. He turned to the Duke and told him that Miss Dobson had very kindly promised to lunch with him to-morrow. "And," said Zuleika, "I simply WON'T unless you will."

The Duke looked at her. Had it not been arranged that he and she should spend his last day together? Did it mean nothing that she had given him her ear-rings? Quickly drawing about him some remnants of his tattered pride, he hid his wound, and accepted the invitation.

"It seems a shame," said Zuleika to The MacQuern, "to ask you to bring this great heavy box all the way back again. But--"

Those last poor rags of pride fell away now. The Duke threw a prehensile hand on the casket, and, coldly glaring at The MacQuern, pointed with his other hand towards the College gate. He, and he alone, was going to see Zuleika home. It was his last night on earth, and he was not to be trifled with. Such was the message of his eyes. The Scotsman's flashed back a precisely similar message.

Men had fought for Zuleika, but never in her presence. Her eyes dilated.

She had not the slightest impulse to throw herself between the two antagonists. Indeed, she stepped back, so as not to be in the way. A short sharp fight--how much better that is than bad blood! She hoped the better man would win; and (do not misjudge her) she rather hoped this man was the Duke. It occurred to her--a vague memory of some play or picture--that she ought to be holding aloft a candelabra of lit tapers; no, that was only done indoors, and in the eighteenth century. Ought she to hold a sponge? Idle, these speculations of hers, and based on complete ignorance of the manners and customs of undergraduates. The Duke and The MacQuern would never have come to blows in the presence of a lady. Their conflict was necessarily spiritual.

And it was the Scotsman, Scots though he was, who had to yield. Cowed by something demoniac in the will-power pitted against his, he found himself retreating in the direction indicated by the Duke's forefinger.

As he disappeared into the porch, Zuleika turned to the Duke. "You were splendid," she said softly. He knew that very well. Does the stag in his hour of victory need a diploma from the hind? Holding in his hands the malachite casket that was the symbol of his triumph, the Duke smiled dictatorially at his darling. He came near to thinking of her as a chattel. Then with a pang he remembered his abject devotion to her.

Abject no longer though! The victory he had just won restored his manhood, his sense of supremacy among his fellows. He loved this woman on equal terms. She was transcendent? So was he, Dorset. To-night the world had on its moonlit surface two great ornaments--Zuleika and himself. Neither of the pair could be replaced. Was one of them to be shattered? Life and love were good. He had been mad to think of dying.

No word was spoken as they went together to Salt Cellar. She expected him to talk about her conjuring tricks. Could he have been disappointed?

She dared not inquire; for she had the sensitiveness, though no other quality whatsoever, of the true artist. She felt herself aggrieved. She had half a mind to ask him to give her back her ear-rings. And by the way, he hadn't yet thanked her for them! Well, she would make allowances for a condemned man. And again she remembered the omen of which he had told her. She looked at him, and then up into the sky. "This same moon,"

she said to herself, "sees the battlements of Tankerton. Does she see two black owls there? Does she hear them hooting?"

They were in Salt Cellar now. "Melisande!" she called up to her window.

"Hus.h.!.+" said the Duke, "I have something to say to you."

"Well, you can say it all the better without that great box in your hands. I want my maid to carry it up to my room for me." And again she called out for Melisande, and received no answer. "I suppose she's in the house-keeper's room or somewhere. You had better put the box down inside the door. She can bring it up later."

She pushed open the postern; and the Duke, as he stepped across the threshold, thrilled with a romantic awe. Re-emerging a moment later into the moonlight, he felt that she had been right about the box: it was fatal to self-expression; and he was glad he had not tried to speak on the way from the Front Quad: the soul needs gesture; and the Duke's first gesture now was to seize Zuleika's hands in his.

She was too startled to move. "Zuleika!" he whispered. She was too angry to speak, but with a sudden twist she freed her wrists and darted back.

He laughed. "You are afraid of me. You are afraid to let me kiss you, because you are afraid of loving me. This afternoon--here--I all but kissed you. I mistook you for Death. I was enamoured of Death. I was a fool. That is what YOU are, you incomparable darling: you are a fool.

You are afraid of life. I am not. I love life. I am going to live for you, do you hear?"

She stood with her back to the postern. Anger in her eyes had given place to scorn. "You mean," she said, "that you go back on your promise?"

"You will release me from it."

"You mean you are afraid to die?"

"You will not be guilty of my death. You love me."

"Good night, you miserable coward." She stepped back through the postern.

"Don't, Zuleika! Miss Dobson, don't! Pull yourself together! Reflect! I implore you... You will repent..."

Slowly she closed the postern on him.

"You will repent. I shall wait here, under your window..."

He heard a bolt rasped into its socket. He heard the retreat of a light tread on the paven hall.

And he hadn't even kissed her! That was his first thought. He ground his heel in the gravel.

And he had hurt her wrists! This was Zuleika's first thought, as she came into her bedroom. Yes, there were two red marks where he had held her. No man had ever dared to lay hands on her. With a sense of contamination, she proceeded to wash her hands thoroughly with soap and water. From time to time such words as "cad" and "beast" came through her teeth.

She dried her hands and flung herself into a chair, arose and went pacing the room. So this was the end of her great night! What had she done to deserve it? How had he dared?

There was a sound as of rain against the window. She was glad. The night needed cleansing.

He had told her she was afraid of life. Life!--to have herself caressed by HIM; humbly to devote herself to being humbly doted on; to be the slave of a slave; to swim in a private pond of treacle--ugh! If the thought weren't so cloying and degrading, it would be laughable.

For a moment her hands hovered over those two golden and gemmed volumes encasing Bradshaw and the A.B.C. Guide. To leave Oxford by an early train, leave him to drown unthanked, unlooked at... But this could not be done without slighting all those hundreds of other men ... And besides...

Again that sound on the window-pane. This time it startled her. There seemed to be no rain. Could it have been--little bits of gravel? She darted noiselessly to the window, pushed it open, and looked down. She saw the upturned face of the Duke. She stepped back, trembling with fury, staring around her. Inspiration came.

She thrust her head out again. "Are you there?" she whispered.

"Yes, yes. I knew you would come."

"Wait a moment, wait!"

The water-jug stood where she had left it, on the floor by the wash-stand. It was almost full, rather heavy. She bore it steadily to the window, and looked out.

"Come a little nearer!" she whispered.

The upturned and moonlit face obeyed her. She saw its lips forming the word "Zuleika." She took careful aim.

Full on the face crashed the cascade of moonlit water, shooting out on all sides like the petals of some great silver anemone.

She laughed shrilly as she leapt back, letting the empty jug roll over on the carpet. Then she stood tense, crouching, her hands to her mouth, her eyes askance, as much as to say "Now I've done it!" She listened hard, holding her breath. In the stillness of the night was a faint sound of dripping water, and presently of footsteps going away. Then stillness unbroken.

XI

I said that I was Clio's servant. And I felt, when I said it, that you looked at me dubiously, and murmured among yourselves.

Not that you doubted I was somewhat connected with Clio's household. The lady after whom I have named this book is alive, and well known to some of you personally, to all of you by repute. Nor had you finished my first page before you guessed my theme to be that episode in her life which caused so great a sensation among the newspaper-reading public a few years ago. (It all seems but yesterday, does it not? They are still vivid to us, those head-lines. We have hardly yet ceased to be edified by the morals pointed in those leading articles.) And yet very soon you found me behaving just like any novelist--reporting the exact words that pa.s.sed between the protagonists at private interviews--aye, and the exact thoughts and emotions that were in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Little wonder that you wondered! Let me make things clear to you.

I have my mistress' leave to do this. At first (for reasons which you will presently understand) she demurred. But I pointed out to her that I had been placed in a false position, and that until this were rectified neither she nor I could reap the credit due to us.

Know, then, that for a long time Clio had been thoroughly discontented.