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The clock in the Warden's drawing-room had just struck eight, andalready the ducal feet were beautiful on the white bearskin hearthrug.So slim and long were they, of instep so nobly arched, that only witha pair of glazed ox-tongues on a breakfast-table were they comparable.Incomparable quite, the figure and face and vesture of him who ended inthem.
The Warden was talking to him, with all the deference of elderlycommoner to patrician boy. The other guests--an Oriel don and hiswife--were listening with earnest smile and submissive droop, at aslight distance. Now and again, to put themselves at their ease, theyexchanged in undertone a word or two about the weather.
"The young lady whom you may have noticed with me," the Warden wassaying, "is my orphaned grand-daughter." (The wife of the Oriel dondiscarded her smile, and sighed, with a glance at the Duke, who washimself an orphan.) "She has come to stay with me." (The Duke glancedquickly round the room.) "I cannot think why she is not down yet." (TheOriel don fixed his eyes on the clock, as though he suspected it ofbeing fast.) "I must ask you to forgive her. She appears to be a bright,pleasant young woman."
"Married?" asked the Duke.
"No," said the Warden; and a cloud of annoyance crossed the boy's face."No; she devotes her life entirely to good works."
"A hospital nurse?" the Duke murmured.
"No, Zuleika's appointed task is to induce delightful wonder rather thanto alleviate pain. She performs conjuring-tricks."
"Not--not Miss Zuleika Dobson?" cried the Duke.
"Ah yes. I forgot that she had achieved some fame in the outer world.Perhaps she has already met you?"
"Never," said the young man coldly. "But of course I have heard of MissDobson. I did not know she was related to you."
The Duke had an intense horror of unmarried girls. All his vacationswere spent in eluding them and their chaperons. That he should beconfronted with one of them--with such an one of them!--in Oxford,seemed to him sheer violation of sanctuary. The tone, therefore, inwhich he said "I shall be charmed," in answer to the Warden's requestthat he would take Zuleika into dinner, was very glacial. So was hisgaze when, a moment later, the young lady made her entry.
"She did not look like an orphan," said the wife of the Oriel don,subsequently, on the way home. The criticism was a just one. Zuleikawould have looked singular in one of those lowly double-files ofstraw-bonnets and drab cloaks which are so steadying a feature ofour social system. Tall and lissom, she was sheathed from the bosomdownwards in flamingo silk, and she was liberally festooned withemeralds. Her dark hair was not even strained back from her forehead andbehind her ears, as an orphan's should be. Parted somewhere at the side,it fell in an avalanche of curls upon one eyebrow. From her rightear drooped heavily a black pearl, from her left a pink; and theirdifference gave an odd, bewildering witchery to the little face between.
Was the young Duke bewitched? Instantly, utterly. But none couldhave guessed as much from his cold stare, his easy and impassive bow.Throughout dinner, none guessed that his shirt-front was but the screenof a fierce warfare waged between pride and passion. Zuleika, at thefoot of the table, fondly supposed him indifferent to her. Though hesat on her right, not one word or glance would he give her. All hisconversation was addressed to the unassuming lady who sat on his otherside, next to the Warden. Her he edified and flustered beyond measureby his insistent courtesy. Her husband, alone on the other side ofthe table, was mortified by his utter failure to engage Zuleika insmall-talk. Zuleika was sitting with her profile turned to him--theprofile with the pink pearl--and was gazing full at the young Duke. Shewas hardly more affable than a cameo. "Yes," "No," "I don't know,"were the only answers she would vouchsafe to his questions. A vague "Ohreally?" was all he got for his timid little offerings of information.In vain he started the topic of modern conjuring-tricks as compared withthe conjuring-tricks performed by the ancient Egyptians. Zuleika did noteven say "Oh really?" when he told her about the metamorphosis of thebulls in the Temple of Osiris. He primed himself with a glass of sherry,cleared his throat. "And what," he asked, with a note of firmness, "didyou think of our cousins across the water?" Zuleika said "Yes;" andthen he gave in. Nor was she conscious that he ceased talking to her. Atintervals throughout the rest of dinner, she murmured "Yes," and "No,"and "Oh really?" though the poor little don was now listening silentlyto the Duke and the Warden.
She was in a trance of sheer happiness. At last, she thought, her hopewas fulfilled--that hope which, although she had seldom remembered it inthe joy of her constant triumphs, had been always lurking in her, lyingnear to her heart and chafing her, like the shift of sackcloth whichthat young brilliant girl, loved and lost of Giacopone di Todi, worealways in secret submission to her own soul, under the fair soft robesand the rubies men saw on her. At last, here was the youth who would notbow down to her; whom, looking up to him, she could adore. She ate anddrank automatically, never taking her gaze from him. She felt not onetouch of pique at his behaviour. She was tremulous with a joy that wasnew to her, greater than any joy she had known. Her soul was as a flowerin its opetide. She was in love. Rapt, she studied every lineament ofthe pale and perfect face--the brow from which bronze-coloured hair rosein tiers of burnished ripples; the large steel-coloured eyes, with theircarven lids; the carven nose, and the plastic lips. She noted how longand slim were his fingers, and how slender his wrists. She noted theglint cast by the candles upon his shirt-front. The two large whitepearls there seemed to her symbols of his nature. They were like twomoons: cold, remote, radiant. Even when she gazed at the Duke's face,she was aware of them in her vision.
Nor was the Duke unconscious, as he seemed to be, of her scrutiny.Though he kept his head averse, he knew that always her eyes werewatching him. Obliquely, he saw them; saw, too, the contour of the face,and the black pearl and the pink; could not blind himself, try as hewould. And he knew that he was in love.
Like Zuleika herself, this young Duke was in love for the first time.Wooed though he had been by almost as many maidens as she by youths, hisheart, like hers, had remained cold. But he had never felt, as shehad, the desire to love. He was not now rejoicing, as she was, in thesensation of first love; nay, he was furiously mortified by it, andstruggled with all his might against it. He had always fancied himselfsecure against any so vulgar peril; always fancied that by him at least,the proud old motto of his family--"Pas si bete"--would not be belied.And I daresay, indeed, that had he never met Zuleika, the irresistible,he would have lived, and at a very ripe old age died, a dandy withoutreproach. For in him the dandiacal temper had been absolute hitherto,quite untainted and unruffled. He was too much concerned with hisown perfection ever to think of admiring any one else. Different fromZuleika, he cared for his wardrobe and his toilet-table not as a meansto making others admire him the more, but merely as a means throughwhich he could intensify, a ritual in which to express and realise, hisown idolatry. At Eton he had been called "Peacock," and this nick-namehad followed him up to Oxford. It was not wholly apposite, however. For,whereas the peacock is a fool even among birds, the Duke had alreadytaken (besides a particularly brilliant First in Mods) the Stanhope,the Newdigate, the Lothian, and the Gaisford Prize for Greek Verse. Andthese things he had achieved currente calamo, "wielding his pen," asScott said of Byron, "with the easy negligence of a nobleman." He wasnow in his third year of residence, and was reading, a little, forLiterae Humaniores. There is no doubt that but for his untimely death hewould have taken a particularly brilliant First in that school also.
For the rest, he had many accomplishments. He was adroit in the killingof all birds and fishes, stags and foxes. He played polo, cricket,racquets, chess, and billiards as well as such things can be played.He was fluent in all modern languages, had a very real talent inwater-colour, and was accounted, by those who had had the privilege ofhearing him, the best amateur pianist on this side of the Tweed. Littlewonder, then, that he was idolised by the undergraduates of his day.He did not, however, honour many of them with his friendsh
ip. He had atheoretic liking for them as a class, as the "young barbarians all atplay" in that little antique city; but individually they jarred on him,and he saw little of them. Yet he sympathised with them always, and, onoccasion, would actively take their part against the dons. In the middleof his second year, he had gone so far that a College Meeting had to beheld, and he was sent down for the rest of term. The Warden placed hisown landau at the disposal of the illustrious young exile, who thereinwas driven to the station, followed by a long, vociferous processionof undergraduates in cabs. Now, it happened that this was a time ofpolitical excitement in London. The Liberals, who were in power,had passed through the House of Commons a measure more than usuallysocialistic; and this measure was down for its second reading in theLords on the very day that the Duke left Oxford, an exile. It was but afew weeks since he had taken his seat in the Lords; and this afternoon,for the want of anything better to do, he strayed in. The Leader of theHouse was already droning his speech for the bill, and the Duke foundhimself on one of the opposite benches. There sat his compeers, sullenlywaiting to vote for a bill which every one of them detested. As thespeaker subsided, the Duke, for the fun of the thing, rose. He madea long speech against the bill. His gibes at the Government were soscathing, so utterly destructive his criticism of the bill itself, solofty and so irresistible the flights of his eloquence, that, when heresumed his seat, there was only one course left to the Leader of theHouse. He rose and, in a few husky phrases, moved that the bill "be readthis day six months." All England rang with the name of the young Duke.He himself seemed to be the one person unmoved by his exploit. He didnot re-appear in the Upper Chamber, and was heard to speak in slightingterms of its architecture, as well as of its upholstery. Nevertheless,the Prime Minister became so nervous that he procured for him, a monthlater, the Sovereign's offer of a Garter which had just fallen vacant.The Duke accepted it. He was, I understand, the only undergraduate onwhom this Order had ever been conferred. He was very much pleased withthe insignia, and when, on great occasions, he wore them, no one daredsay that the Prime Minister's choice was not fully justified. But youmust not imagine that he cared for them as symbols of achievement andpower. The dark blue riband, and the star scintillating to eightpoints, the heavy mantle of blue velvet, with its lining of taffetaand shoulder-knots of white satin, the crimson surcoat, the greatembullioned tassels, and the chain of linked gold, and the plumes ofostrich and heron uprising from the black velvet hat--these things hadfor him little significance save as a fine setting, a finer setting thanthe most elaborate smoking-suit, for that perfection of aspect whichthe gods had given him. This was indeed the gift he valued beyondall others. He knew well, however, that women care little for a man'sappearance, and that what they seek in a man is strength of character,and rank, and wealth. These three gifts the Duke had in a high degree,and he was by women much courted because of them. Conscious that everymaiden he met was eager to be his Duchess, he had assumed always amanner of high austerity among maidens, and even if he had wished toflirt with Zuleika he would hardly have known how to do it. But he didnot wish to flirt with her. That she had bewitched him did but makeit the more needful that he should shun all converse with her. It wasimperative that he should banish her from his mind, quickly. He must notdilute his own soul's essence. He must not surrender to any passion hisdandihood. The dandy must be celibate, cloistral; is, indeed, but a monkwith a mirror for beads and breviary--an anchorite, mortifying his soulthat his body may be perfect. Till he met Zuleika, the Duke had notknown the meaning of temptation. He fought now, a St. Anthony, againstthe apparition. He would not look at her, and he hated her. He lovedher, and he could not help seeing her. The black pearl and the pinkseemed to dangle ever nearer and clearer to him, mocking him andbeguiling. Inexpellible was her image.
So fierce was the conflict in him that his outward nonchalance graduallygave way. As dinner drew to its close, his conversation with the wifeof the Oriel don flagged and halted. He sank, at length, into a deepsilence. He sat with downcast eyes, utterly distracted.
Suddenly, something fell, plump! into the dark whirlpool of histhoughts. He started. The Warden was leaning forward, had just saidsomething to him.
"I beg your pardon?" asked the Duke. Dessert, he noticed, was on thetable, and he was paring an apple. The Oriel don was looking at him withsympathy, as at one who had swooned and was just "coming to."
"Is it true, my dear Duke," the Warden repeated, "that you have beenpersuaded to play to-morrow evening at the Judas concert?"
"Ah yes, I am going to play something."
Zuleika bent suddenly forward, addressed him. "Oh," she cried, claspingher hands beneath her chin, "will you let me come and turn over theleaves for you?"
He looked her full in the face. It was like seeing suddenly at closequarters some great bright monument that one has long known only as asun-caught speck in the distance. He saw the large violet eyes open tohim, and their lashes curling to him; the vivid parted lips; and theblack pearl, and the pink.
"You are very kind," he murmured, in a voice which sounded to him quitefar away. "But I always play without notes."
Zuleika blushed. Not with shame, but with delirious pleasure. For thatsnub she would just then have bartered all the homage she had hoarded.This, she felt, was the climax. She would not outstay it. She rose,smiling to the wife of the Oriel don. Every one rose. The Oriel don heldopen the door, and the two ladies passed out of the room.
The Duke drew out his cigarette case. As he looked down at thecigarettes, he was vaguely conscious of some strange phenomenonsomewhere between them and his eyes. Foredone by the agitation of thepast hour, he did not at once realise what it was that he saw. Hisimpression was of something in bad taste, some discord in his costume... a black pearl and a pink pearl in his shirt-front!
Just for a moment, absurdly over-estimating poor Zuleika's skill, hesupposed himself a victim of legerdemain. Another moment, and the importof the studs revealed itself. He staggered up from his chair, coveringhis breast with one arm, and murmured that he was faint. As he hurriedfrom the room, the Oriel don was pouring out a tumbler of water andsuggesting burnt feathers. The Warden, solicitous, followed him intothe hall. He snatched up his hat, gasping that he had spent a delightfulevening--was very sorry--was subject to these attacks. Once outside, hetook frankly to his heels.
At the corner of the Broad, he looked back over his shoulder. He hadhalf expected a scarlet figure skimming in pursuit. There was nothing.He halted. Before him, the Broad lay empty beneath the moon. He wentslowly, mechanically, to his rooms.
The high grim busts of the Emperors stared down at him, their faces morethan ever tragically cavernous and distorted. They saw and read inthat moonlight the symbols on his breast. As he stood on his doorstep,waiting for the door to be opened, he must have seemed to them a thingfor infinite compassion. For were they not privy to the doom that themorrow, or the morrow's morrow, held for him--held not indeed for himalone, yet for him especially, as it were, and for him most lamentably?
Zuleika Dobson Or, An Oxford Love Story Page 3
