Zuleika Dobson Part 2

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 bright message to him, and "Why not indeed?" his answer. After hours of agony and doubt prolonged to c.o.c.k-crow, sleep had stolen to the Duke's bed-side. He awoke late, with a heavy sense of disaster; but lo! when he remembered, everything took on a new aspect. He was in love. "Why not?"

He mocked himself for the morbid vigil he had spent in probing and vainly binding the wounds of his false pride. The old life was done with. He laughed as he stepped into his bath. Why should the disseizin of his soul have seemed shameful to him? He had had no soul till it pa.s.sed out of his keeping. His body thrilled to the cold water, his soul as 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 his love. 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 dropped them into the left pocket of his waistcoat.

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

Piled against the wall were certain boxes of black j.a.panned tin, which had just been sent to him from London. At any other time he would certainly not have left them unopened. For they contained his robes of the Garter. Thursday, the day after to-morrow, was the date fixed for the invest.i.ture of a foreign king who was now visiting England: and the full chapter of Knights had been commanded to Windsor for the ceremony.

Yesterday the Duke had looked keenly forward to his excursion. It was only in those too rarely required robes that he had the sense of being fully dressed. But to-day not a thought had he of them.

Some clock clove with silver the stillness of the morning. Ere came the second stroke, another and nearer clock was striking. And now there were others chiming in. The air was confused with the sweet babel of its many spires, some of them booming deep, measured sequences, some tinkling impatiently and outwitting others which had begun before them. And when this anthem of jealous antiphonies and uneven rhythms had dwindled quite away and fainted in one last solitary note of silver, there started somewhere another sequence; and this, almost at its last stroke, was interrupted by yet another, which went on to tell the hour of noon in its own way, quite slowly and significantly, as though none knew it.

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

The Duke paced to and fro, smiling ecstatically. He took the two studs from his pocket and gazed at them. He looked in the gla.s.s, as one seeking the sympathy of a familiar. For the first time in his life, he turned impatiently aside. It was a new kind of sympathy he needed to-day.

The front door slammed, and the staircase creaked to the ascent of two heavy boots. The Duke listened, waited irresolute. The boots pa.s.sed his door, were already clumping up the next flight. "Noaks!" he cried. The boots paused, then clumped down again. The door opened and disclosed that homely figure which Zuleika had seen on her way to Judas.

Sensitive reader, start not at the apparition! Oxford is a plexus of anomalies. These two youths were (odd as it may seem to you) subject to the same Statutes, affiliated to the same College, reading for the same School; aye! and though the one had inherited half a score of n.o.ble and castellated roofs, whose mere repairs cost him annually thousands and thousands of pounds, and the other's people had but one little mean square of lead, from which the fireworks of the Crystal Palace were clearly visible every Thursday evening, in Oxford one roof sheltered both of them. Furthermore, there was even some measure of intimacy between them. It was the Duke's whim to condescend further in the direction of Noaks than in any other. He saw in Noaks his own foil and ant.i.thesis, and made a point of walking up the High with him at least once in every term. Noaks, for his part, regarded the Duke with feelings mingled of idolatry and disapproval. The Duke's First in Mods oppressed him (who, by dint of dogged industry, had sc.r.a.ped a Second) more than all the other differences between them. But the dullard's envy of brilliant men is always a.s.suaged by the suspicion that they will come to a 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 his love. But so little used was he to seeking sympathy that he could not unburden himself. He temporised. Noaks muttered something about getting back to work, and fumbled with the door-handle.

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

Noaks sat down on the edge of a chair. The Duke leaned against the mantel-piece, facing him. "I suppose, Noaks," he said, "you have never been 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," growled Noaks.

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

"So am I," was an unexpected answer, and the Duke (whose need of sympathy was too new to have taught him sympathy with others) laughed aloud. "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 to her?"

"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 of those 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. Next moment, he saw the absurdity of the situation. He relapsed into his chair, smiling. "She's the Warden's niece," he said. "I dined at the Warden's last night."

Noaks sat still, peering across at the Duke. For the first time in his life, he was resentful of the Duke's great elegance and average stature, his high lineage and incomputable wealth. Hitherto, these things had been too remote for envy. But now, suddenly, they seemed near to him--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 own pa.s.sion that he had not had time to wonder whether it were returned.

Zuleika's behaviour during dinner... But that was how so many young women had behaved. It was no sign of disinterested love. It might mean merely... Yet no! Surely, looking into her eyes, he had seen there a radiance finer than could have been lit by common ambition. Love, none other, must have lit in those purple depths the torches whose clear flames had leapt out to him. She loved him. She, the beautiful, the wonderful, had not tried to conceal her love for him. She had shown him all--had shown all, poor darling! only to be snubbed by a prig, driven away by a boor, fled from by a fool. To the nethermost corner of his soul, he cursed himself for what he had done, and for all he had left undone. He would go to her on his knees. He would implore her to impose on him insufferable penances. There was no penance, how bittersweet soever, 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'll step round again later if your Grace is busy."

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

"Miss Zuleika Dobson," p.r.o.nounced the girl.

He rose.

"Show Miss Dobson up," he said.

Noaks had darted to the looking-gla.s.s and was smoothing his hair with a tremulous, enormous hand.

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

The lovers met. There was an interchange of ordinary greetings: from the Duke, a comment on the weather; from Zuleika, a hope that he was well again--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 the hearthrug. The landlady's daughter clattered out with her freight. They were 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 beat violently within him. Why had he not asked her to take the star and keep it 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 by it. He watched her. She was even lovelier than he had remembered; or rather her loveliness had been, in some subtle way, trans.m.u.ted.

Something had given to her a graver, n.o.bler beauty. Last night's nymph had become the Madonna of this morning. Despite her dress, which was of a tremendous tartan, she diffused the pale authentic radiance of a spirituality most high, most simple. The Duke wondered where lay the change in her. He could not understand. Suddenly she turned to him, and he understood. No longer the black pearl and the pink, but two white pearls!... He thrilled to his heart's core.

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

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