Zuleika Dobson Part 22

"If I do?"

"I shall send for a policeman."

She looked well at him. "Yes," she slowly said, "I think you would do that."

She took her things from him, and laid them by the mirror. With a high hand she quelled the excesses of her hair--some of the curls still agleam with water--and knowingly poised and pinned her hat. Then, after a few swift touches and pa.s.ses at neck and waist, she took her gloves and, wheeling round to him, "There!" she said, "I have been quick."

"Admirably," he allowed.

"Quick in more than meets the eye, John. Spiritually quick. You saw me putting on my hat; you did not see love taking on the crown of pity, and me bonneting her with it, tripping her up and trampling the life out of her. Oh, a most cold-blooded business, John! Had to be done, though. No other way out. So I just used my sense of proportion, as you rashly bade me, and then hardened my heart at sight of you as you are. One of a number? Yes, and a quite unlovable unit. So I am all right again. And now, where is Balliol? Far from here?"

"No," he answered, choking a little, as might a card-player who, having been dealt a splendid hand, and having played it with flawless skill, has yet--d.a.m.n it!--lost the odd trick. "Balliol is quite near. At the end of this street in fact. I can show it to you from the front-door."

Yes, he had controlled himself. But this, he furiously felt, did not make him look the less a fool. What ought he to have SAID? He prayed, as he followed the victorious young woman downstairs, that l'esprit de l'escalier might befall him. Alas, it did not.

"By the way," she said, when he had shown her where Balliol lay, "have you told anybody that you aren't dying just for me?"

"No," he answered, "I have preferred not to."

"Then officially, as it were, and in the eyes of the world, you die for me? Then all's well that ends well. Shall we say good-bye here? I shall be on the Judas Barge; but I suppose there will be a crush, as yesterday?"

"Sure to be. There always is on the last night of the Eights, you know.

Good-bye."

"Good-bye, little John--small John," she cried across her shoulder, having the last word.

XVII

He might not have grudged her the last word, had she properly needed it. Its utter superfluity--the perfection of her victory without it--was what galled him. Yes, she had outflanked him, taken him unawares, and he had fired not one shot. Esprit de l'escalier--it was as he went upstairs that he saw how he might yet have s.n.a.t.c.hed from her, if not the victory, the palm. Of course he ought to have laughed aloud--"Capital, capital!

You really do deserve to fool me. But ah, yours is a love that can't be dissembled. Never was man by maiden loved more ardently than I by you, my poor girl, at this moment."

And stay!--what if she really HAD been but pretending to have killed her love? He paused on the threshold of his room. The sudden doubt made his lost chance the more sickening. Yet was the doubt dear to him ... What likelier, after all, than that she had been pretending? She had already twitted him with his lack of intuition. He had not seen that she loved him when she certainly did love him. He had needed the pearls'

demonstration of that.--The pearls! THEY would betray her. He darted to the fender, and one of them he espied there instantly--white? A rather flushed white, certainly. For the other he had to peer down. There it lay, not very distinct on the hearth's black-leading.

He turned away. He blamed himself for not dismissing from his mind the hussy he had dismissed from his room. Oh for an ounce of civet and a few poppies! The water-jug stood as a reminder of the hateful visit and of... He took it hastily away into his bedroom. There he washed his hands. The fact that he had touched Zuleika gave to this ablution a symbolism that made it the more refreshing.

Civet, poppies? Was there not, at his call, a sweeter perfume, a stronger anodyne? He rang the bell, almost caressingly.

His heart beat at sound of the clinking and rattling of the tray borne up the stairs. She was coming, the girl who loved him, the girl whose heart would be broken when he died. Yet, when the tray appeared in the doorway, and she behind it, the tray took precedence of her in his soul not less than in his sight. Twice, after an arduous morning, had his luncheon been postponed, and the coming of it now made intolerable the pangs of his hunger.

Also, while the girl laid the table-cloth, it occurred to him how flimsy, after all, was the evidence that she loved him. Suppose she did nothing of the kind! At the Junta, he had foreseen no difficulty in asking her. Now he found himself a prey to embarra.s.sment. He wondered why. He had not failed in flow of gracious words to Nellie O'Mora. Well, a miniature by Hoppner was one thing, a landlady's live daughter was another. At any rate, he must prime himself with food. He wished Mrs.

Batch had sent up something more calorific than cold salmon. He asked her daughter what was to follow.

"There's a pigeon-pie, your Grace."

"Cold? Then please ask your mother to heat it in the oven--quickly.

Anything after that?"

"A custard pudding, your Grace."

"Cold? Let this, too, be heated. And bring up a bottle of champagne, please; and--and a bottle of port."

His was a head that had always. .h.i.therto defied the grape. But he thought that to-day, by all he had gone through, by all the shocks he had suffered, and the strains he had steeled himself to bear, as well as by the actual malady that gripped him, he might perchance have been sapped enough to experience by reaction that cordial glow of which he had now and again seen symptoms in his fellows.

Nor was he altogether disappointed of this hope. As the meal progressed, and the last of the champagne sparkled in his gla.s.s, certain things said to him by Zuleika--certain implied criticisms that had rankled, yes--lost their power to discommode him. He was able to smile at the impertinences of an angry woman, the tantrums of a tenth-rate conjurer told to go away. He felt he had perhaps acted harshly. With all her faults, she had adored him. Yes, he had been arbitrary. There seemed to be a strain of brutality in his nature. Poor Zuleika! He was glad for her that she had contrived to master her infatuation... Enough for him that he was loved by this exquisite meek girl who had served him at the feast. Anon, when he summoned her to clear the things away, he would bid her tell him the tale of her lowly pa.s.sion. He poured a second gla.s.s of port, sipped it, quaffed it, poured a third. The grey gloom of the weather did but, as he eyed the bottle, heighten his sense of the rich sunshine so long ago imprisoned by the vintner and now released to make glad his soul. Even so to be released was the love pent for him in the heart of this sweet girl. Would that he loved her in return!... Why not?

"Prius insolentem Serva Briseis niveo colore Movit Achillem."

Nor were it gracious to invite an avowal of love and offer none in return. Yet, yet, expansive though his mood was, he could not pretend to himself that he was about to feel in this girl's presence anything but grat.i.tude. He might pretend to her? Deception were a very poor return indeed for all her kindness. Besides, it might turn her head. Some small token of his grat.i.tude--some trinket by which to remember him--was all that he could allow himself to offer... What trinket? Would she like to have one of his scarf-pins? Studs? Still more abs--Ah! he had it, he literally and most providentially had it, there, in the fender: a pair of ear-rings!

He plucked the pink pearl and the black from where they lay, and rang the bell.

His sense of dramatic propriety needed that the girl should, before he addressed her, perform her task of clearing the table. If she had it to perform after telling her love, and after receiving his gift and his farewell, the bathos would be distressing for them both.

But, while he watched her at her task, he did wish she would be a little quicker. For the glow in him seemed to be cooling momently. He wished he had had more than three gla.s.ses from the crusted bottle which she was putting away into the chiffonier. Down, doubt! Down, sense of disparity!

The moment was at hand. Would he let it slip? Now she was folding up the table-cloth, now she was going.

"Stay!" he uttered. "I have something to say to you." The girl turned to him.

He forced his eyes to meet hers. "I understand," he said in a constrained voice, "that you regard me with sentiments of something more than esteem.--Is this so?"

The girl had stepped quickly back, and her face was scarlet.

"Nay," he said, having to go through with it now, "there is no cause for embarra.s.sment. And I am sure you will acquit me of wanton curiosity. Is it a fact that you--love me?"

She tried to speak, could not. But she nodded her head.

The Duke, much relieved, came nearer to her.

"What is your name?" he asked gently.

"Katie," she was able to gasp.

"Well, Katie, how long have you loved me?"

"Ever since," she faltered, "ever since you came to engage the rooms."

"You are not, of course, given to idolising any tenant of your mother's?"

"No."

"May I boast myself the first possessor of your heart?"

"Yes." She had become very pale now, and was trembling painfully.