Zuleika Dobson Part 9

But she would have no ellipses. "What are you going to do?" she whispered.

"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, gave stress to her ultimatum. But the violet of her eyes was all but hidden by the dilation of her pupils.

"Then," whispered the Duke, "when I shall have died, deeming life a vain thing without you, will the G.o.ds give you tears for me? Miss Dobson, will your soul awaken? When I shall have sunk for ever beneath these waters whose supposed purpose here this afternoon is but that they be ploughed by the blades of these young oarsmen, will there be struck from that flint, your heart, some late and momentary spark of pity for me?"

"Why of course, of COURSE!" babbled Zuleika, with clasped hands and dazzling eyes. "But," she curbed herself, "it is--it would--oh, you mustn't THINK of it! I couldn't allow it! I--I should never forgive myself!"

"In fact, you would mourn me always?"

"Why yes!.. Y-es-always." What else could she say? But would his answer be 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 are utterly 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 infinite prettiness of ingenuity and of eloquence. Never was such a cascade of dissuasion as hers. She only didn't say she could love him. She never hinted that. Indeed, throughout her pleading rang this recurrent motif: that he must live to take to himself as mate some good, serious, clever woman who would be a not unworthy mother of his children.

She laid stress on his youth, his great position, his brilliant attainments, the much he had already achieved, the splendid possibilities of his future. Though of course she spoke in undertones, not to be overheard by the throng on the barge, it was almost as though his health were being floridly proposed at some public banquet--say, at a Tenants' Dinner. Insomuch that, when she ceased, the Duke half expected Jellings, his steward, to bob up uttering, with lifted hands, a stentorian "For-or," and all the company to take up the chant: "he's--a jolly good fellow." His brief reply, on those occasions, seemed always to indicate that, whatever else he might be, a jolly good fellow he was not. But by Zuleika's eulogy he really was touched. "Thank you--thank you," he gasped; and there were tears in his eyes. Dear the thought that she so revered him, so wished him not to die. But this was no more than a 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 in infinity.

"Good-bye," he said simply, and was about to swing himself on to the ledge of the bal.u.s.trade. Zuleika, divining his intention, made way for him. 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 distant gun. To Zuleika, with all the chords of her soul strung to the utmost tensity, the effect was as if she herself had been shot; and she clutched at the Duke's arm, like a frightened child. He laughed. "It was the 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 seeking to disengage his arm. "And perhaps," he said, "I, clinging to the weeds of the river's bed, shall see dimly the boats and the oars pa.s.s 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 that he must not die--not yet! A moment ago, his death would have been beautiful. Not now! Her grip of his arm tightened. Only by breaking her wrist could he have freed himself. A moment ago, she had been in the seventh-heaven... Men were supposed to have died for love of her. It had never been proved. There had always been something--card-debts, ill-health, what not--to account for the tragedy. No man, to the best of her recollection, had ever hinted that he was going to die for her.

Never, a.s.suredly, had she seen the deed done. And then came he, the first man she had loved, going to die here, before her eyes, because she no 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 the race has sounded. In the distance could be heard faintly the noise of cheering--a little sing-song sound, drawing nearer.

Ah, how could she have thought of letting him die so soon? She gazed into his face--the face she might never have seen again. Even now, but for that gun-shot, the waters would have closed over him, and his soul, maybe, have pa.s.sed away. She had saved him, thank heaven! She had him still 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, as it 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. She would 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 heroine of Wagner had ever a louder accompaniment than had ours to the surging soul within her bosom.

And the Duke, tightly held by her, vibrated as to a powerful electric current. 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 coa.r.s.e draught, the delicate wine of death. He would let his lips caress the brim of the august goblet. He would dally with the aroma that was there.

"So be it!" he cried into Zuleika's ear--cried loudly, for it seemed as though all the Wagnerian orchestras of Europe, with the Straussian ones thrown in, were here to clash in unison the full volume of right music for the glory of the reprieve.

The fact was that the Judas boat had just b.u.mped Univ., exactly opposite the Judas barge. The oarsmen in either boat sat humped, panting, some of them rocking and writhing, after their wholesome exercise. But there was not one of them whose eyes were not upcast at Zuleika. And the vocalisation and instrumentation of the dancers and stampers on the towing-path had by this time ceased to mean aught of joy in the victors or of comfort for the vanquished, and had resolved itself into a wild wordless hymn to the glory of Miss Dobson. Behind her and all around her on the roof of the barge, young Judasians were venting in like manner their hearts through their lungs. She paid no heed. It was as if she stood alone with her lover on some silent pinnacle of the world. It was as if she were a little girl with a brand-new and very expensive doll which had banished all the little other old toys from her mind.

She simply could not, in her naive rapture, take her eyes off her companion. To the dancers and stampers of the towing-path, many of whom were now being ferried back across the river, and to the other youths on the roof of the barge, Zuleika's air of absorption must have seemed a little strange. For already the news that the Duke loved Zuleika, and that she loved him not, and would stoop to no man who loved her, had spread like wild-fire among the undergraduates. The two youths in whom the Duke had deigned to confide had not held their peace. And the effect that Zuleika had made as she came down to the river was intensified by the knowledge that not the great paragon himself did she deem worthy of her. The mere sight of her had captured young Oxford. The news of her supernal haughtiness had riveted the chains.

"Come!" said the Duke at length, staring around him with the eyes of one awakened from a dream. "Come! I must take you back to Judas."

"But you won't leave me there?" pleaded Zuleika. "You will stay to dinner? I am sure my grandfather would be delighted."

"I am sure he would," said the Duke, as he piloted her down the steps of the 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 rather hazy. It was with difficulty that the Duke made her realise that he could not--not even if, as she suggested, she dressed herself up as a man--invite her to the Junta. She then fell back on the impossibility that he would not dine with her to-night, his last night in this world.

She could not understand that admirable fidelity to social engagements which is one of the virtues implanted in the members of our aristocracy.

Bohemian by training and by career, she construed the Duke's refusal as either a cruel slight to herself or an act of imbecility. The thought of being parted from her for one moment was torture to him; but "n.o.blesse oblige," and it was quite impossible for him to break an engagement merely because a more charming one offered itself: he would as soon have cheated at cards.

And so, as they went side by side up the avenue, in the mellow light of the westering sun, preceded in their course, and pursued, and surrounded, by the mob of hoa.r.s.e infatuate youths, Zuleika's face was as that of a little girl sulking. Vainly the Duke reasoned with her. She could NOT see the point of view.

With that sudden softening that comes to the face of an angry woman who has. .h.i.t on a good argument, she turned to him and asked "How if I hadn't saved your life just now? Much you thought about your guest when you were 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 all engagements."