Zuleika Dobson

by Max Beerbohm

  The Duke was so rapt in his private thoughts that he was hardly conscious of the strange scene. And as for Zuleika, she, as well she might be, was in the very best of good humours.

  “What a lot of house-boats!” she exclaimed. “Are you going to take me on to one of them?”

  The Duke started. Already they were alongside the Judas barge. “Here,” he said, “is our goal.”

  He stepped through the gate of the railings, out upon the plank, and offered her his hand.

  She looked back. The young men in the vanguard were crushing their shoulders against the row behind them, to stay the oncoming host. She had half a mind to go back through the midst of them; but she really did want her tea, and she followed the Duke on to the barge, and under his auspices climbed the steps to the roof.

  It looked very cool and gay, this roof, under its awning of red and white stripes. Nests of red and white flowers depended along either side of it. Zuleika moved to the side which commanded a view of the bank. She leaned her arms on the balustrade, and gazed down.

  The crowd stretched as far as she could see—a vista of faces upturned to her. Suddenly it hove forward. Its vanguard was swept irresistibly past the barge—swept by the desire of the rest to see her at closer quarters. Such was the impetus that the vision for each man was but a lightning-flash: he was whirled past, struggling, almost before his brain took the message of his eyes.

  Those who were Judas men made frantic efforts to board the barge, trying to hurl themselves through the gate in the railings; but they were swept vainly on.

  Presently the torrent began to slacken, became a mere river, a mere procession of youths staring up rather shyly.

  Before the last stragglers had marched by, Zuleika moved away to the other side of the roof, and, after a glance at the sunlit river, sank into one of the wicker chairs, and asked the Duke to look less disagreeable and to give her some tea.

  Among others hovering near the little buffet were the two youths whose parley with the Duke I have recorded.

  Zuleika was aware of the special persistence of their gaze. When the Duke came back with her cup, she asked him who they were. He replied, truthfully enough, that their names were unknown to him.

  “Then,” she said, “ask them their names, and introduce them to me.”

  “No,” said the Duke, sinking into the chair beside her. “That I shall not do. I am your victim: not your pander. Those two men stand on the threshold of a possibly useful and agreeable career. I am not going to trip them up for you.”

  “I am not sure,” said Zuleika, “that you are very polite. Certainly you are foolish. It is natural for boys to fall in love. If these two are in love with me, why not let them talk to me? It were an experience on which they would always look back with romantic pleasure. They may never see me again. Why grudge them this little thing?” She sipped her tea. “As for tripping them up on a threshold—that is all nonsense. What harm has unrequited love ever done to anybody?” She laughed. “Look at me! When I came to your rooms this morning, thinking I loved in vain, did I seem one jot the worse for it? Did I look different?”

  “You looked, I am bound to say, nobler, more spiritual.”

  “More spiritual?” she exclaimed. “Do you mean I looked tired or ill?”

  “No, you seemed quite fresh. But then, you are singular. You are no criterion.”

  “You mean you can’t judge those two young men by me? Well, I am only a woman, of course. I have heard of women, no longer young, wasting away because no man loved them. I have often heard of a young woman fretting because some particular young man didn’t love her. But I never heard of her wasting away. Certainly a young man doesn’t waste away for love of some particular young woman. He very soon makes love to some other one. If his be an ardent nature, the quicker his transition. All the most ardent of my past adorers have married. Will you put my cup down, please?”

  “Past?” echoed the Duke, as he placed her cup on the floor. “Have any of your lovers ceased to love you?”

  “Ah no, no; not in retrospect. I remain their ideal, and all that, of course. They cherish the thought of me. They see the world in terms of me. But I am an inspiration, not an obsession; a glow, not a blight.”

  “You don’t believe in the love that corrodes, the love that ruins?”

  “No,” laughed Zuleika.

  “You have never dipped into the Greek pastoral poets, nor sampled the Elizabethan sonneteers?”

  “No, never. You will think me lamentably crude: my experience of life has been drawn from life itself.”

  “Yet often you talk as though you had read rather much. Your way of speech has what is called ‘the literary flavour.’ ”

  “Ah, that is an unfortunate trick which I caught from a writer, a Mr. Beerbohm, who once sat next to me at dinner somewhere. I can’t break myself of it. I assure you I hardly ever open a book. Of life, though, my experience has been very wide. Brief? But I suppose the soul of man during the past two or three years has been much as it was in the reign of Queen Elizabeth and of—whoever it was that reigned over the Greek pastures. And I daresay the modern poets are making the same old silly distortions. But forgive me,” she added gently, “perhaps you yourself are a poet?”

  “Only since yesterday,” answered the Duke (not less unfairly to himself than to Roger Newdigate and Thomas Gaisford). And he felt he was especially a dramatic poet. All the while that she had been sitting by him here, talking so glibly, looking so straight into his eyes, flashing at him so many pretty gestures, it was the sense of tragic irony that prevailed in him—that sense which had stirred in him, and been repressed, on the way from Judas. He knew that she was making her effect consciously for the other young men by whom the roof of the barge was now thronged. Him alone she seemed to observe. By her manner, she might have seemed to be making love to him. He envied the men she was so deliberately making envious—the men whom, in her undertone to him, she was really addressing. But he did take comfort in the irony. Though she used him as a stalking-horse, he, after all, was playing with her as a cat plays with a mouse. While she chattered on, without an inkling that he was no ordinary lover, and coaxing him to present two quite ordinary young men to her, he held over her the revelation that he for love of her was about to die.

  And, while he drank in the radiance of her beauty, he heard her chattering on. “So you see,” she was saying, “it couldn’t do those young men any harm. Suppose unrequited love is anguish: isn’t the discipline wholesome? Suppose I am a sort of furnace: shan’t I purge, refine, temper? Those two boys are but scorched from here. That is horrid; and what good will it do them?” She laid a hand on his arm. “Cast them into the furnace for their own sake, dear Duke! Or cast one of them, or,” she added, glancing round at the throng, “any one of these others!”

  “For their own sake?” he echoed, withdrawing his arm. “If you were not, as the whole world knows you to be, perfectly respectable, there might be something in what you say. But as it is, you can but be an engine for mischief; and your sophistries leave me unmoved. I shall certainly keep you to myself.”

  “I hate you,” said Zuleika, with an ugly petulance that crowned the irony.

  “So long as I live,” uttered the Duke, in a level voice, “you will address no man but me.”

  “If your prophecy is to be fulfilled,” laughed Zuleika, rising from her chair, “your last moment is at hand.”

  “It is,” he answered, rising too.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, awed by something in his tone.

  “I mean what I say: that my last moment is at hand.” He withdrew his eyes from hers, and, leaning his elbows on the balustrade, gazed thoughtfully at the river. “When I am dead,” he added, over his shoulder, “you will find these fellows rather coy of your advances.”

  For the first time since his avowal of his love for her, Zuleika found herself genuinely interested in him. A suspicion of his meaning had flashed through her soul.—But no! surely he could not
mean that! It must have been a metaphor merely. And yet, something in his eyes … She leaned beside him. Her shoulder touched his. She gazed questioningly at him. He did not turn his face to her. He gazed at the sunlit river.

  The Judas Eight had just embarked for their voyage to the starting-point. Standing on the edge of the raft that makes a floating platform for the barge, William, the hoary bargee, was pushing them off with his boat-hook, wishing them luck with deferential familiarity. The raft was thronged with Old Judasians—mostly clergymen—who were shouting hearty hortations, and evidently trying not to appear so old as they felt—or rather, not to appear so startlingly old as their contemporaries looked to them. It occurred to the Duke as a strange thing, and a thing to be glad of, that he, in this world, would never be an Old Judasian. Zuleika’s shoulder pressed his. He thrilled not at all. To all intents, he was dead already.

  The enormous eight young men in the thread-like skiff—the skiff that would scarce have seemed an adequate vehicle for the tiny “cox” who sat facing them—were staring up at Zuleika with that uniformity of impulse which, in another direction, had enabled them to bump a boat on two of the previous “nights.” If to-night they bumped the next boat, Univ., then would Judas be three places “up” on the river; and to-morrow Judas would have a Bump Supper. Furthermore, if Univ. were bumped to-night, Magdalen might be bumped to-morrow. Then would Judas, for the first time in history, be head of the river. Oh tremulous hope! Yet, for the moment, these eight young men seemed to have forgotten the awful responsibility that rested on their over-developed shoulders. Their hearts, already strained by rowing, had been transfixed this afternoon by Eros’ darts. All of them had seen Zuleika as she came down to the river; and now they sat gaping up at her, fumbling with their oars. The tiny cox gaped too; but he it was who first recalled duty. With piping adjurations he brought the giants back to their senses. The boat moved away down stream, with a fairly steady stroke.

  Not in a day can the traditions of Oxford be sent spinning. From all the barges the usual punt-loads of young men were being ferried across to the towing-path—young men naked of knee, armed with rattles, post-horns, motor-hooters, gongs, and other instruments of clangour. Though Zuleika filled their thoughts, they hurried along the towing-path, as by custom, to the starting-point.

  She, meanwhile, had not taken her eyes off the Duke’s profile. Nor had she dared, for fear of disappointment, to ask him just what he had meant.

  “All these men,” he repeated dreamily, “will be coy of your advances.” It seemed to him a good thing that his death, his awful example, would disinfatuate his fellow alumni. He had never been conscious of public spirit. He had lived for himself alone. Love had come to him yesternight, and to-day had waked in him a sympathy with mankind. It was a fine thing to be a saviour. It was splendid to be human. He looked quickly round to her who had wrought this change in him.

  But the loveliest face in all the world will not please you if you see it suddenly, eye to eye, at a distance of half an inch from your own. It was thus that the Duke saw Zuleika’s: a monstrous deliquium a-glare. Only for the fraction of an instant, though. Recoiling, he beheld the loveliness that he knew—more adorably vivid now in its look of eager questioning. And in his every fibre he thrilled to her. Even so had she gazed at him last night, this morning. Aye, now as then, her soul was full of him. He had recaptured, not her love, but his power to please her. It was enough. He bowed his head; and “Moriturus te saluto” were the words formed silently by his lips. He was glad that his death would be a public service to the University. But the salutary lesson of what the newspapers would call his “rash act” was, after all, only a side-issue. The great thing, the prospect that flushed his cheek, was the consummation of his own love, for its own sake, by his own death. And, as he met her gaze, the question that had already flitted through his brain found a faltering utterance; and “Shall you mourn me?” he asked her.

  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 gods 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 balustrade. 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 pass 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 t
hat 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, assuredly, 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 passed 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. To-morrow—to-morrow, yes, let him have his heart’s desire of death. Not now! Not yet!