XXI
And Zuleika? She had done a wise thing, and was where it was best thatshe should be.
Her face lay upturned on the water's surface, and round it were themasses of her dark hair, half floating, half submerged. Her eyes wereclosed, and her lips were parted. Not Ophelia in the brook could haveseemed more at peace.
"Like a creature native and indued Unto that element,"tranquil Zuleika lay.
Gently to and fro her tresses drifted on the water, or under the waterwent ever ravelling and unravelling. Nothing else of her stirred.
What to her now the loves that she had inspired and played on? the liveslost for her? Little thought had she now of them. Aloof she lay.
Steadily rising from the water was a thick vapour that turned to dew onthe window-pane. The air was heavy with scent of violets. These are theflowers of mourning; but their scent here and now signified nothing; forEau de Violettes was the bath-essence that Zuleika always had.
The bath-room was not of the white-gleaming kind to which she wasaccustomed. The walls were papered, not tiled, and the bath itself wasof japanned tin, framed in mahogany. These things, on the evening ofher arrival at the Warden's, had rather distressed her. But she was thebetter able to bear them because of that well-remembered past when abath-room was in itself a luxury pined for--days when a not-large andnot-full can of not-hot water, slammed down at her bedroom door by agoverness-resenting housemaid, was as much as the gods allowed her. Andthere was, to dulcify for her the bath of this evening, the yet sharpercontrast with the plight she had just come home in, sopped, shivering,clung to by her clothes. Because this bath was not a mere luxury, but anecessary precaution, a sure means of salvation from chill, she did themore gratefully bask in it, till Melisande came back to her, laden withwarmed towels.
A few minutes before eight o'clock she was fully ready to go down todinner, with even more than the usual glow of health, and hungry beyondher wont.
Yet, as she went down, her heart somewhat misgave her. Indeed, by forceof the wide experience she had had as a governess, she never did feelquite at her ease when she was staying in a private house: the fear ofnot giving satisfaction haunted her; she was always on her guard; theshadow of dismissal absurdly hovered. And to-night she could not tellherself, as she usually did, not to be so silly. If her grandfather knewalready the motive by which those young men had been actuated, dinnerwith him might be a rather strained affair. He might tell her, in somany words, that he wished he had not invited her to Oxford.
Through the open door of the drawing room she saw him, standingmajestic, draped in a voluminous black gown. Her instinct was to runaway; but this she conquered. She went straight in, remembering not tosmile.
"Ah, ah," said the Warden, shaking a forefinger at her with old-worldplayfulness. "And what have you to say for yourself?"
Relieved, she was also a trifle shocked. Was it possible that he, aresponsible old man, could take things so lightly?
"Oh, grand-papa," she answered, hanging her head, "what CAN I say? Itis--it is too, too, dreadful."
"There, there, my dear. I was but jesting. If you have had an agreeabletime, you are forgiven for playing truant. Where have you been all day?"
She saw that she had misjudged him. "I have just come from the river,"she said gravely.
"Yes? And did the College make its fourth bump to-night?"
"I--I don't know, grand-papa. There was so much happening. It--I willtell you all about it at dinner."
"Ah, but to-night," he said, indicating his gown, "I cannot be with you.The bump-supper, you know. I have to preside in Hall."
Zuleika had forgotten there was to be a bump-supper, and, though shewas not very sure what a bump-supper was, she felt it would be a mockeryto-night.
"But grand-papa--" she began.
"My dear, I cannot dissociate myself from the life of the College. And,alas," he said, looking at the clock, "I must leave you now. As soon asyou have finished dinner, you might, if you would care to, come and peepdown at us from the gallery. There is apt to be some measure ofnoise and racket, but all of it good-humoured and--boys will beboys--pardonable. Will you come?"
"Perhaps, grand-papa," she said awkwardly. Left alone, she hardly knewwhether to laugh or cry. In a moment, the butler came to her rescue,telling her that dinner was served.
As the figure of the Warden emerged from Salt Cellar into the FrontQuadrangle, a hush fell on the group of gowned Fellows outside the Hall.Most of them had only just been told the news, and (such is the forceof routine in an University) were still sceptical of it. And in face ofthese doubts the three or four dons who had been down at the river werenow half ready to believe that there must, after all, be some mistake,and that in this world of illusions they had to-night been speciallytricked. To rebut this theory, there was the notable absence ofundergraduates. Or was this an illusion, too? Men of thought, agile onthe plane of ideas, devils of fellows among books, they groped feeblyin this matter of actual life and death. The sight of their Wardenheartened them. After all, he was the responsible person. He was fatherof the flock that had strayed, and grandfather of the beautiful MissZuleika.
Like her, they remembered not to smile in greeting him.
"Good evening, gentlemen," he said. "The storm seems to have passed."
There was a murmur of "Yes, Warden."
"And how did our boat acquit itself?"
There was a shuffling pause. Every one looked at the Sub-Warden: it wasmanifestly for him to break the news, or to report the hallucination. Hewas nudged forward--a large man, with a large beard at which he pluckednervously.
"Well, really, Warden," he said, "we--we hardly know,"* and he endedwith what can only be described as a giggle. He fell low in the esteemof his fellows.
*Those of my readers who are interested in athletic sports will remember the long controversy that raged as to whether Judas had actually bumped Magdalen; and they will not need to be minded that it was mainly through the evidence of Mr. E. T. A. Cook, who had been on the towing-path at the time, that the O. U. B. C. decided the point in Judas' favour, and fixed the order of the boats for the following year accordingly.
Thinking of that past Sub-Warden whose fame was linked with thesun-dial, the Warden eyed this one keenly.
"Well, gentlemen," he presently said, "our young men seem to be alreadyat table. Shall we follow their example?" And he led the way up thesteps.
Already at table? The dons' dubiety toyed with this hypothesis. But theaspect of the Hall's interior was hard to explain away. Here were thethree long tables, stretching white towards the dais, and laden with theusual crockery and cutlery, and with pots of flowers in honour of theoccasion. And here, ranged along either wall, was the usual array ofscouts, motionless, with napkins across their arms. But that was all.
It became clear to the Warden that some organised prank or protest wasafoot. Dignity required that he should take no heed whatsoever. Lookingneither to the right nor to the left, stately he approached the dais,his Fellows to heel.
In Judas, as in other Colleges, grace before meat is read by the SeniorScholar. The Judas grace (composed, they say, by Christopher Whitridhimself) is noted for its length and for the excellence of its Latinity.Who was to read it to-night? The Warden, having searched his mind vainlyfor a precedent, was driven to create one.
"The Junior Fellow," he said, "will read grace."
Blushing to the roots of his hair, and with crablike gait, Mr. Pedby,the Junior Fellow, went and unhooked from the wall that little shieldof wood on which the words of the grace are carven. Mr. Pedby was--Mr.Pedby is--a mathematician. His treatise on the Higher Theory of ShortDivision by Decimals had already won for him an European reputation.Judas was--Judas is--proud of Pedby. Nor is it denied that inundertaking the duty thrust on him he quickly controlled his nerves andread the Latin out in ringing accents. Better for him had he not doneso. The false quantities he made were so excruciating and so many that,while the very s
couts exchanged glances, the dons at the high table lostall command of their features, and made horrible noises in the effort tocontain themselves. The very Warden dared not look from his plate.
In every breast around the high table, behind every shirt-front orblack silk waistcoat, glowed the recognition of a new birth. Suddenly,unheralded, a thing of highest destiny had fallen into their academicmidst. The stock of Common Room talk had to-night been re-inforced andenriched for all time. Summers and winters would come and go, old faceswould vanish, giving place to new, but the story of Pedby's grace wouldbe told always. Here was a tradition that generations of dons yet unbornwould cherish and chuckle over. Something akin to awe mingled itselfwith the subsiding merriment. And the dons, having finished their soup,sipped in silence the dry brown sherry.
Those who sat opposite to the Warden, with their backs to the void,were oblivious of the matter that had so recently teased them. Theywere conscious only of an agreeable hush, in which they peered downthe vistas of the future, watching the tradition of Pedby's grace as itrolled brighter and ever brighter down to eternity.
The pop of a champagne cork startled them to remembrance that this was abump-supper, and a bump-supper of a peculiar kind. The turbot thatcame after the soup, the champagne that succeeded the sherry, helped toquicken in these men of thought the power to grapple with a reality. Theaforesaid three or four who had been down at the river recovered theirlost belief in the evidence of their eyes and ears. In the rest was aspirit of receptivity which, as the meal went on, mounted to conviction.The Sub-Warden made a second and more determined attempt to enlightenthe Warden; but the Warden's eye met his with a suspicion so cruellypointed that he again floundered and gave in.
All adown those empty other tables gleamed the undisturbed cutlery, andthe flowers in the pots innocently bloomed. And all adown either wall,unneeded but undisbanded, the scouts remained. Some of the elder onesstood with closed eyes and heads sunk forward, now and again jerkingthemselves erect, and blinking around, wondering, remembering.
And for a while this scene was looked down on by a not disinterestedstranger. For a while, her chin propped on her hands, Zuleika leanedover the rail of the gallery, just as she had lately leaned over thebarge's rail, staring down and along. But there was no spark of triumphnow in her eyes; only a deep melancholy; and in her mouth a taste as ofdust and ashes. She thought of last night, and of all the buoyant lifethat this Hall had held. Of the Duke she thought, and of the whole vividand eager throng of his fellows in love. Her will, their will, had beendone. But, there rose to her lips the old, old question that withersvictory--"To what end?" Her eyes ranged along the tables, and anappalling sense of loneliness swept over her. She turned away, wrappingthe folds of her cloak closer across her breast. Not in this Collegeonly, but through and through Oxford, there was no heart that beat forher--no, not one, she told herself, with that instinct for self-torturewhich comes to souls in torment. She was utterly alone to-night in themidst of a vast indifference. She! She! Was it possible? Were the godsso merciless? Ah no, surely...
Down at the high table the feast drew to its close, and very differentwas the mood of the feasters from that of the young woman whose glancehad for a moment rested on their unromantic heads. Generations ofundergraduates had said that Oxford would be all very well but for thedons. Do you suppose that the dons had had no answering sentiment? Youthis a very good thing to possess, no doubt; but it is a tiresome settingfor maturity. Youth all around prancing, vociferating, mocking; callowand alien youth, having to be looked after and studied and taught,as though nothing but it mattered, term after term--and now, all of asudden, in mid-term, peace, ataraxy, a profound and leisured stillness.No lectures to deliver to-morrow; no "essays" to hear and criticise;time for the unvexed pursuit of pure learning...
As the Fellows passed out on their way to Common Room, there to tacklewith a fresh appetite Pedby's grace, they paused, as was their wont, onthe steps of the Hall, looking up at the sky, envisaging the weather.The wind had dropped. There was even a glimpse of the moon riding behindthe clouds. And now, a solemn and plangent token of Oxford's perpetuity,the first stroke of Great Tom sounded.
Zuleika Dobson Or, An Oxford Love Story Page 21
