Zuleika Dobson Part 17

At first I did not realise what was happening. I saw the Duke's eyes contract, and the muscles of his mouth drawn down, and, at the same time, a tense upward movement of his whole body. Then, suddenly, the strain undone: a downward dart of the head, a loud percussion. Thrice the Duke sneezed, with a sound that was as the bursting of the dams of body and soul together; then sneezed again.

Now was his will broken. He capitulated. In rushed shame and horror and hatred, pell-mell, to ravage him.

What care now, what use, for deportment? He walked coweringly round and round his room, with frantic gestures, with head bowed. He shuffled and slunk. His dressing-gown had the look of a gabardine.

Shame and horror and hatred went slashing and hewing throughout the fallen citadel. At length, exhausted, he flung himself down on the window-seat and leaned out into the night, panting. The air was full of thunder. He clutched at his throat. From the depths of the black caverns beneath their brows the eyes of the unsleeping Emperors watched him.

He had gone through much in the day that was past. He had loved and lost. He had striven to recapture, and had failed. In a strange resolve he had found serenity and joy. He had been at the point of death, and had been saved. He had seen that his beloved was worthless, and he had not cared. He had fought for her, and conquered; and had pled with her, and--all these memories were loathsome by reason of that final thing which had all the while lain in wait for him.

He looked back and saw himself as he had been at a score of crucial moments in the day--always in the shadow of that final thing. He saw himself as he had been on the playing-fields of Eton; aye! and in the arms of his nurse, to and fro on the terrace of Tankerton--always in the shadow of that final thing, always piteous and ludicrous, doomed. Thank heaven the future was unknowable? It wasn't, now. To-morrow--to-day--he must die for that accursed fiend of a woman--the woman with the hyena laugh.

What to do meanwhile? Impossible to sleep. He felt in his body the strain of his quick sequence of spiritual adventures. He was dog-tired.

But his brain was furiously out of hand: no stopping it. And the night was stifling. And all the while, in the dead silence, as though his soul had ears, there was a sound. It was a very faint, unearthly sound, and seemed to come from nowhere, yet to have a meaning. He feared he was rather over-wrought.

He must express himself. That would soothe him. Ever since childhood he had had, from time to time, the impulse to set down in writing his thoughts or his moods. In such exercises he had found for his self-consciousness the vent which natures less reserved than his find in casual talk with Tom, d.i.c.k and Harry, with Jane, Susan, and Liz. Aloof from either of these triads, he had in his first term at Eton taken to himself as confidant, and retained ever since, a great quarto volume, bound in red morocco and stamped with his coronet and cypher. It was herein, year by year, that his soul spread itself.

He wrote mostly in English prose; but other modes were not infrequent.

Whenever he was abroad, it was his courteous habit to write in the language of the country where he was residing--French, when he was in his house on the Champs Elysees; Italian, when he was in his villa at Baiae; and so on. When he was in his own country he felt himself free to deviate sometimes from the vernacular into whatever language were aptest to his frame of mind. In his sterner moods he gravitated to Latin, and wrought the n.o.ble iron of that language to effects that were, if anything, a trifle over-impressive. He found for his highest flights of contemplation a handy vehicle in Sanscrit. In hours of mere joy it was Greek poetry that flowed likeliest from his pen; and he had a special fondness for the metre of Alcaeus.

And now, too, in his darkest hour, it was Greek that surged in him--iambics of thunderous wrath such as those which are volleyed by Prometheus. But as he sat down to his writing-table, and unlocked the dear old alb.u.m, and dipped his pen in the ink, a great calm fell on him.

The iambics in him began to breathe such sweetness as is on the lips of Alcestis going to her doom. But, just as he set pen to paper, his hand faltered, and he sprang up, victim of another and yet more violent fit of sneezing.

Disbuskined, dangerous. The spirit of Juvenal woke in him. He would flay. He would make Woman (as he called Zuleika) writhe. Latin hexameters, of course. An epistle to his heir presumptive... "Vae tibi,"

he began,

"Vae tibi, vae misero, nisi circ.u.mspexeris artes Femineas, nam nulla salus quin femina possit Tradere, nulla fides quin"--

"Quin," he repeated. In writing soliloquies, his trouble was to curb inspiration. The thought that he was addressing his heir-presumptive--now heir-only-too-apparent--gave him pause. Nor, he reflected, was he addressing this brute only, but a huge posthumous audience. These hexameters would be sure to appear in the "authorised"

biography. "A melancholy interest attaches to the following lines, written, it would seem, on the very eve of"... He winced. Was it really possible, and no dream, that he was to die to-morrow--to-day?

Even you, una.s.suming reader, go about with a vague notion that in your case, somehow, the ultimate demand of nature will be waived. The Duke, until he conceived his sudden desire to die, had deemed himself certainly exempt. And now, as he sat staring at his window, he saw in the paling of the night the presage of the dawn of his own last day.

Sometimes (orphaned though he was in early childhood) he had even found it hard to believe there was no exemption for those to whom he stood in any personal relation. He remembered how, soon after he went to Eton, he had received almost with incredulity the news of the death of his G.o.d-father, Lord Stackley, an octogenarian.... He took from the table his alb.u.m, knowing that on one of the earliest pages was inscribed his boyish sense of that bereavement. Yes, here the pa.s.sage was, written in a large round hand:

"Death knocks, as we know, at the door of the cottage and of the castle.

He stalks up the front-garden and the steep steps of the semi-detached villa, and plies the ornamental knocker so imperiously that the panels of imitation stained gla.s.s quiver in the thin front-door. Even the family that occupies the topmost story of a building without a lift is on his ghastly visiting-list. He rattles his fleshless knuckles against the door of the gypsy's caravan. Into the savage's tent, wigwam, or wattled hut, he darts unbidden. Even on the hermit in the cave he forces his obnoxious presence. His is an universal beat, and he walks it with a grin. But be sure it is at the sombre portal of the n.o.bleman that he knocks with the greatest gusto. It is there, where haply his visit will be commemorated with a hatchment; it is then, when the m.u.f.fled thunder of the Dead March in 'Saul' will soon be rolling in cathedrals; it is then, it is there, that the pride of his unquestioned power comes grimliest home to him. Is there no withstanding him? Why should he be admitted always with awe, a cravenly-honoured guest? When next he calls, let the butler send him about his business, or tell him to step round to the servants' entrance. If it be made plain to him that his visits are an impertinence, he will soon be disemboldened. Once the aristocracy make a stand against him, there need be no more trouble about the exorbitant Duties named after him. And for the hereditary system--that system which both offends the common sense of the Radical, and wounds the Tory by its implied admission that n.o.blemen are mortal--a seemly subst.i.tute will have been found."

Artless and crude in expression, very boyish, it seemed now to its author. Yet, in its simple wistfulness, it had quality: it rang true.

The Duke wondered whether, with all that he had since mastered in the great art of English prose, he had not lost something, too.

"Is there no withstanding him?" To think that the boy who uttered that cry, and gave back so brave an answer, was within nine years to go seek death of his own accord! How the G.o.ds must be laughing! Yes, the exquisite point of the joke, for them, was that he CHOSE to die.

But--and, as the thought flashed through him, he started like a man shot--what if he chose not to? Stay, surely there was some reason why he MUST die. Else, why throughout the night had he taken his doom for granted?... Honour: yes, he had pledged himself. Better death than dishonour. Was it, though? was it? Ah, he, who had come so near to death, saw dishonour as a tiny trifle. Where was the sting of it? Not he would be ridiculous to-morrow--to-day. Every one would acclaim his splendid act of moral courage. She, she, the hyena woman, would be the fool. No one would have thought of dying for her, had he not set the example. Every one would follow his new example. Yes, he would save Oxford yet. That was his duty. Duty and darling vengeance! And life--life!

It was full dawn now. Gone was that faint, monotonous sound which had punctuated in his soul the horrors of his vigil. But, in reminder of those hours, his lamp was still burning. He extinguished it; and the going-out of that tarnished light made perfect his sense of release.

He threw wide his arms in welcome of the great adorable day, and of all the great adorable days that were to be his.

He leaned out from his window, drinking the dawn in. The G.o.ds had made merry over him, had they? And the cry of the hyena had made night hideous. Well, it was his turn now. He would laugh last and loudest.

And already, for what was to be, he laughed outright into the morning; insomuch that the birds in the trees of Trinity, and still more the Emperors over the way, marvelled greatly.

XIV

They had awaited thousands and innumerable thousands of daybreaks in the Broad, these Emperors, counting the long slow hours till the night were over. It is in the night especially that their fallen greatness haunts them. Day brings some distraction. They are not incurious of the lives around them--these little lives that succeed one another so quickly. To them, in their immemorial old age, youth is a constant wonder. And so is death, which to them comes not. Youth or death--which, they had often asked themselves, was the goodlier? But it was ill that these two things should be mated. It was ill-come, this day of days.

Long after the Duke was in bed and asleep, his peal of laughter echoed in the ears of the Emperors. Why had he laughed?

And they said to themselves "We are very old men, and broken, and in a land not our own. There are things that we do not understand."

Brief was the freshness of the dawn. From all points of the compa.s.s, dark grey clouds mounted into the sky. There, taking their places as though in accordance to a strategic plan laid down for them, they ponderously ma.s.sed themselves, and presently, as at a given signal, drew nearer to earth, and halted, an irresistible great army, awaiting orders.

Somewhere under cover of them the sun went his way, transmitting a sulphurous heat. The very birds in the trees of Trinity were oppressed and did not twitter. The very leaves did not whisper.

Out through the railings, and across the road, prowled a skimpy and dingy cat, trying to look like a tiger.

It was all very sinister and dismal.

The hours pa.s.sed. The Broad put forth, one by one, its signs of waking.

Soon after eight o'clock, as usual, the front-door of the Duke's lodgings was opened from within. The Emperors watched for the faint cloud of dust that presently emerged, and for her whom it preceded. To them, this first outcoming of the landlady's daughter was a moment of daily interest. Katie!--they had known her as a toddling child; and later as a little girl scampering off to school, all legs and pinafore and streaming golden hair. And now she was sixteen years old. Her hair, tied back at the nape of her neck, would very soon be "up." Her big blue eyes were as they had always been; but she had long pa.s.sed out of pinafores into ap.r.o.ns, had taken on a sedateness befitting her years and her duties, and was anxious to be regarded rather as an aunt than as a sister by her brother Clarence, aged twelve. The Emperors had always predicted that she would be pretty. And very pretty she was.

As she came slowly out, with eyes downcast to her broom, sweeping the dust so seriously over the doorstep and then across the pavement, and anon when she reappeared with pail and scrubbing-brush, and abased herself before the doorstep, and wrought so vehemently there, what filled her little soul was not the dignity of manual labour. The duties that Zuleika had envied her were dear to her exactly as they would have been, yesterday morning, to Zuleika. The Emperors had often noticed that during vacations their little favourite's treatment of the doorstep was languid and perfunctory. They knew well her secret, and always (for who can be long in England without becoming sentimental?) they cherished the hope of a romantic union between her and "a certain young gentleman," as they archly called the Duke. His continued indifference to her they took almost as an affront to themselves. Where in all England was a prettier, sweeter girl than their Katie? The sudden irruption of Zuleika into Oxford was especially grievous to them because they could no longer hope against hope that Katie would be led by the Duke to the altar, and thence into the highest social circles, and live happily ever after.

Luckily it was for Katie, however, that they had no power to fill her head with their foolish notions. It was well for her to have never doubted she loved in vain. She had soon grown used to her lot. Not until yesterday had there been any bitterness. Jealousy surged in Katie at the very moment when she beheld Zuleika on the threshold. A glance at the Duke's face when she showed the visitor up was enough to acquaint her with the state of his heart. And she did not, for confirming her intuition, need the two or three opportunities she took of listening at the keyhole. What in the course of those informal audiences did surprise her--so much indeed that she could hardly believe her ear--was that it was possible for a woman not to love the Duke. Her jealousy of "that Miss Dobson" was for a while swallowed up in her pity for him. What she had borne so cheerfully for herself she could not bear for her hero. She wished she had not happened to listen.

And this morning, while she knelt swaying and spreading over "his"

doorstep, her blue eyes added certain tears to be scrubbed away in the general moisture of the stone. Rising, she dried her hands in her ap.r.o.n, and dried her eyes with her hands. Lest her mother should see that she had been crying, she loitered outside the door. Suddenly, her roving glance changed to a stare of acute hostility. She knew well that the person wandering towards her was--no, not "that Miss Dobson," as she had for the fraction of an instant supposed, but the next worst thing.

It has been said that Melisande indoors was an evidently French maid.

Out of doors she was not less evidently Zuleika's. Not that she aped her mistress. The resemblance had come by force of propinquity and devotion.

Nature had laid no basis for it. Not one point of form or colour had the two women in common. It has been said that Zuleika was not strictly beautiful. Melisande, like most Frenchwomen, was strictly plain. But in expression and port, in her whole tournure, she had become, as every good maid does, her mistress' replica. The poise of her head, the boldness of her regard and brilliance of her smile, the leisurely and swinging way in which she walked, with a hand on the hip--all these things of hers were Zuleika's too. She was no conqueror. None but the man to whom she was betrothed--a waiter at the Cafe Tourtel, named Pelleas--had ever paid court to her; nor was she covetous of other hearts. Yet she looked victorious, and insatiable of victories, and "terrible as an army with banners."

In the hand that was not on her hip she carried a letter. And on her shoulders she had to bear the full burden of the hatred that Zuleika had inspired in Katie. But this she did not know. She came glancing boldly, leisurely, at the numbers on the front-doors.

Katie stepped back on to the doorstep, lest the inferiority of her stature should mar the effect of her disdain.

"Good-day. Is it here that Duke D'Orsay lives?" asked Melisande, as nearly accurate as a Gaul may be in such matters.

"The Duke of Dorset," said Katie with a cold and insular emphasis, "lives here." And "You," she tried to convey with her eyes, "you, for all your smart black silk, are a hireling. I am Miss Batch. I happen to have a hobby for housework. I have not been crying."

"Then please mount this to him at once," said Melisande, holding out the letter. "It is from Miss Dobson's part. Very express. I wait response."

"You are very ugly," Katie signalled with her eyes. "I am very pretty.

I have the Oxfordshire complexion. And I play the piano." With her lips she said merely, "His Grace is not called before nine o'clock."

"But to-day you go wake him now--quick--is it not?"

"Quite out of the question," said Katie. "If you care to leave that letter here, I will see that it is placed on his Grace's breakfast-table, with the morning's post." "For the rest," added her eyes, "Down with France!"