XV
Humphrey Greddon, in the Duke's place, would have taken a pinch ofsnuff. But he could not have made that gesture with a finer air than theDuke gave to its modern equivalent. In the art of taking and lightinga cigarette, there was one man who had no rival in Europe. This time heoutdid even himself.
"Ah," you say, "but 'pluck' is one thing, endurance another. A man whodoesn't reel on receipt of his death-warrant may yet break down when hehas had time to think it over. How did the Duke acquit himself when hecame to the end of his cigarette? And by the way, how was it that afterhe had read the telegram you didn't give him again an hour's grace?"
In a way, you have a perfect right to ask both those questions. Buttheir very pertinence shows that you think I might omit things thatmatter. Please don't interrupt me again. Am _I_ writing this history, orare you?
Though the news that he must die was a yet sharper douche, as you havesuggested, than the douche inflicted by Zuleika, it did at least leaveunscathed the Duke's pride. The gods can make a man ridiculous througha woman, but they cannot make him ridiculous when they deal him a blowdirect. The very greatness of their power makes them, in that respect,impotent. They had decreed that the Duke should die, and they had toldhim so. There was nothing to demean him in that. True, he had justmeasured himself against them. But there was no shame in beinggravelled. The peripety was according to the best rules of tragic art.The whole thing was in the grand manner.
Thus I felt that there were no indelicacy, this time, in watchinghim. Just as "pluck" comes of breeding, so is endurance especially anattribute of the artist. Because he can stand outside himself, and (ifthere be nothing ignoble in them) take a pleasure in his own sufferings,the artist has a huge advantage over you and me. The Duke, so soonas Zuleika's spell was broken, had become himself again--a highlyself-conscious artist in life. And now, standing pensive on thedoorstep, he was almost enviable in his great affliction.
Through the wreaths of smoke which, as they came from his lips, hung inthe sultry air as they would have hung in a closed room, he gazed up atthe steadfast thunder-clouds. How nobly they had been massed for him!One of them, a particularly large and dark one, might with advantage,he thought, have been placed a little further to the left. He made agesture to that effect. Instantly the cloud rolled into position.The gods were painfully anxious, now, to humour him in trifles. Hisbehaviour in the great emergency had so impressed them at a distancethat they rather dreaded meeting him anon at close quarters. They ratherwished they had not uncaged, last night, the two black owls. Too late.What they had done they had done.
That faint monotonous sound in the stillness of the night--the Dukeremembered it now. What he had thought to be only his fancy had beenhis death-knell, wafted to him along uncharted waves of ether, from thebattlements of Tankerton. It had ceased at daybreak. He wondered nowthat he had not guessed its meaning. And he was glad that he had not.He was thankful for the peace that had been granted to him, the joyousarrogance in which he had gone to bed and got up for breakfast. Hevalued these mercies the more for the great tragic irony that came ofthem. Aye, and he was inclined to blame the gods for not having kept himstill longer in the dark and so made the irony still more awful. Why hadthey not caused the telegram to be delayed in transmission? Theyought to have let him go and riddle Zuleika with his scorn and hisindifference. They ought to have let him hurl through her his defianceof them. Art aside, they need not have grudged him that excursion.
He could not, he told himself, face Zuleika now. As artist, he saw thatthere was irony enough left over to make the meeting a fine one. Astheologian, he did not hold her responsible for his destiny. But as aman, after what she had done to him last night, and before what he hadto do for her to-day, he would not go out of his way to meet her. Ofcourse, he would not actually avoid her. To seem to run away from herwere beneath his dignity. But, if he did meet her, what in heaven'sname should he say to her? He remembered his promise to lunch with TheMacQuern, and shuddered. She would be there. Death, as he had said,cancelled all engagements. A very simple way out of the difficulty wouldbe to go straight to the river. No, that would be like running away. Itcouldn't be done.
Hardly had he rejected the notion when he had a glimpse of a femalefigure coming quickly round the corner--a glimpse that sent him walkingquickly away, across the road, towards Turl Street, blushing violently.Had she seen him? he asked himself. And had she seen that he saw her?He heard her running after him. He did not look round, he quickened hispace. She was gaining on him. Involuntarily, he ran--ran like a hare,and, at the corner of Turl Street, rose like a trout, saw the pavementrise at him, and fell, with a bang, prone.
Let it be said at once that in this matter the gods were absolutelyblameless. It is true they had decreed that a piece of orange-peelshould be thrown down this morning at the corner of Turl Street. Butthe Master of Balliol, not the Duke, was the person they had destinedto slip on it. You must not imagine that they think out and appointeverything that is to befall us, down to the smallest detail. Generally,they just draw a sort of broad outline, and leave us to fill it inaccording to our taste. Thus, in the matters of which this book isrecord, it was they who made the Warden invite his grand-daughter toOxford, and invite the Duke to meet her on the evening of her arrival.And it was they who prompted the Duke to die for her on the following(Tuesday) afternoon. They had intended that he should execute hisresolve after, or before, the boat-race of that evening. But anoversight upset this plan. They had forgotten on Monday night to uncagethe two black owls; and so it was necessary that the Duke's death shouldbe postponed. They accordingly prompted Zuleika to save him. For therest, they let the tragedy run its own course--merely putting in afelicitous touch here and there, or vetoing a superfluity, such as thatKatie should open Zuleika's letter. It was no part of their scheme thatthe Duke should mistake Melisande for her mistress, or that he shouldrun away from her, and they were genuinely sorry when he, instead of theMaster of Balliol, came to grief over the orange-peel.
Them, however, the Duke cursed as he fell; them again as he raisedhimself on one elbow, giddy and sore; and when he found that the womanbending over him was not she whom he dreaded, but her innocent maid, itwas against them that he almost foamed at the mouth.
"Monsieur le Duc has done himself harm--no?" panted Melisande. "Here isa letter from Miss Dobson's part. She say to me 'Give it him with yourown hand.'"
The Duke received the letter and, sitting upright, tore it to shreds,thus confirming a suspicion which Melisande had conceived at the momentwhen he took to his heels, that all English noblemen are mad, but mad,and of a madness.
"Nom de Dieu," she cried, wringing her hands, "what shall I tell toMademoiselle?"
"Tell her--" the Duke choked back a phrase of which the memory wouldhave shamed his last hours. "Tell her," he substituted, "that you haveseen Marius sitting among the ruins of Carthage," and limped quicklyaway down the Turl.
Both his hands had been abraded by the fall. He tended them angrilywith his handkerchief. Mr. Druce, the chemist, had anon the privilege ofbathing and plastering them, also of balming and binding the right kneeand the left shin. "Might have been a very nasty accident, your Grace,"he said. "It was," said the Duke. Mr. Druce concurred.
Nevertheless, Mr. Druce's remark sank deep. The Duke thought it quitelikely that the gods had intended the accident to be fatal, and thatonly by his own skill and lightness in falling had he escaped theignominy of dying in full flight from a lady's-maid. He had not, yousee, lost all sense of free-will. While Mr. Druce put the finishingtouches to his shin, "I am utterly purposed," he said to himself, "thatfor this death of mine I will choose my own manner and my own--well, not'time' exactly, but whatever moment within my brief span of life shallseem aptest to me. Unberufen," he added, lightly tapping Mr. Druce'scounter.
The sight of some bottles of Cold Mixture on that hospitable boardreminded him of a painful fact. In the clash of the morning'sexcitements, he had hardly felt the gross ailment that was o
n him.He became fully conscious of it now, and there leapt in him a hideousdoubt: had he escaped a violent death only to succumb to "naturalcauses"? He had never hitherto had anything the matter with him, andthus he belonged to the worst, the most apprehensive, class of patients.He knew that a cold, were it neglected, might turn malignant; and hehad a vision of himself gripped suddenly in the street by internalagonies--a sympathetic crowd, an ambulance, his darkened bedroom; localdoctor making hopelessly wrong diagnosis; eminent specialists served uphot by special train, commending local doctor's treatment, but shakingtheir heads and refusing to say more than "He has youth on his side"; aslight rally at sunset; the end. All this flashed through his mind. Hequailed. There was not a moment to lose. He frankly confessed to Mr.Druce that he had a cold.
Mr. Druce, trying to insinuate by his manner that this fact had not beenobvious, suggested the Mixture--a teaspoonful every two hours. "Give mesome now, please, at once," said the Duke.
He felt magically better for the draught. He handled the little glasslovingly, and eyed the bottle. "Why not two teaspoonfuls every hour?"he suggested, with an eagerness almost dipsomaniacal. But Mr. Druce wasrespectfully firm against that. The Duke yielded. He fancied, indeed,that the gods had meant him to die of an overdose.
Still, he had a craving for more. Few though his hours were, he hopedthe next two would pass quickly. And, though he knew Mr. Druce could betrusted to send the bottle round to his rooms immediately, he preferredto carry it away with him. He slipped it into the breast-pocket of hiscoat, almost heedless of the slight extrusion it made there.
Just as he was about to cross the High again, on his way home, abutcher's cart dashed down the slope, recklessly driven. He stepped wellback on the pavement, and smiled a sardonic smile. He looked to rightand to left, carefully gauging the traffic. Some time elapsed before hedeemed the road clear enough for transit.
Safely across, he encountered a figure that seemed to loom up out of thedim past. Oover! Was it but yesternight that Oover dined with him? Withthe sensation of a man groping among archives, he began to apologise tothe Rhodes Scholar for having left him so abruptly at the Junta. Then,presto!--as though those musty archives were changed to a crisp morningpaper agog with terrific head-lines--he remembered the awful resolve ofOover, and of all young Oxford.
"Of course," he asked, with a lightness that hardly hid his dread of theanswer, "you have dismissed the notion you were toying with when I leftyou?"
Oover's face, like his nature, was as sensitive as it was massive,and it instantly expressed his pain at the doubt cast on his highseriousness. "Duke," he asked, "d'you take me for a skunk?"
"Without pretending to be quite sure what a skunk is," said the Duke,"I take you to be all that it isn't. And the high esteem in which Ihold you is the measure for me of the loss that your death would be toAmerica and to Oxford."
Oover blushed. "Duke" he said "that's a bully testimonial. But don'tworry. America can turn out millions just like me, and Oxford can haveas many of them as she can hold. On the other hand, how many of YOUcan be turned out, as per sample, in England? Yet you choose to destroyyourself. You avail yourself of the Unwritten Law. And you're right,Sir. Love transcends all."
"But does it? What if I told you I had changed my mind?"
"Then, Duke," said Oover, slowly, "I should believe that all those yarnsI used to hear about the British aristocracy were true, after all. Ishould aver that you were not a white man. Leading us on like that, andthen--Say, Duke! Are you going to die to-day, or not?"
"As a matter of fact, I am, but--"
"Shake!"
"But--"
Oover wrung the Duke's hand, and was passing on. "Stay!" he was adjured.
"Sorry, unable. It's just turning eleven o'clock, and I've a lecture.While life lasts, I'm bound to respect Rhodes' intentions." Theconscientious Scholar hurried away.
The Duke wandered down the High, taking counsel with himself. He wasashamed of having so utterly forgotten the mischief he had wrought atlarge. At dawn he had vowed to undo it. Undo it he must. But the taskwas not a simple one now. If he could say "Behold, I take back my word.I spurn Miss Dobson, and embrace life," it was possible that his examplewould suffice. But now that he could only say "Behold, I spurn MissDobson, and will not die for her, but I am going to commit suicide, allthe same," it was clear that his words would carry very little force.Also, he saw with pain that they placed him in a somewhat ludicrousposition. His end, as designed yesterday, had a large and simplegrandeur. So had his recantation of it. But this new compromise betweenthe two things had a fumbled, a feeble, an ignoble look. It seemed tocombine all the disadvantages of both courses. It stained his honourwithout prolonging his life. Surely, this was a high price to pay forsnubbing Zuleika... Yes, he must revert without more ado to his firstscheme. He must die in the manner that he had blazoned forth. And hemust do it with a good grace, none knowing he was not glad; else theaction lost all dignity. True, this was no way to be a saviour. But onlyby not dying at all could he have set a really potent example.... Heremembered the look that had come into Oover's eyes just now at thenotion of his unfaith. Perhaps he would have been the mock, not thesaviour, of Oxford. Better dishonour than death, maybe. But, sincedie he must, he must die not belittling or tarnishing the name ofTanville-Tankerton.
Within these bounds, however, he must put forth his full might to avertthe general catastrophe--and to punish Zuleika nearly well enough, afterall, by intercepting that vast nosegay from her outstretched handsand her distended nostrils. There was no time to be lost, then. But hewondered, as he paced the grand curve between St. Mary's and MagdalenBridge, just how was he to begin?
Down the flight of steps from Queen's came lounging an averageundergraduate.
"Mr. Smith," said the Duke, "a word with you."
"But my name is not Smith," said the young man.
"Generically it is," replied the Duke. "You are Smith to all intentsand purposes. That, indeed, is why I address you. In making youracquaintance, I make a thousand acquaintances. You are a short cut toknowledge. Tell me, do you seriously think of drowning yourself thisafternoon?"
"Rather," said the undergraduate.
"A meiosis in common use, equivalent to 'Yes, assuredly,'" murmured theDuke. "And why," he then asked, "do you mean to do this?"
"Why? How can you ask? Why are YOU going to do it?"
"The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play. Please answermy question, to the best of your ability."
"Well, because I can't live without her. Because I want to prove my lovefor her. Because--"
"One reason at a time please," said the Duke, holding up his hand. "Youcan't live without her? Then I am to assume that you look forward todying?"
"Rather."
"You are truly happy in that prospect?"
"Yes. Rather."
"Now, suppose I showed you two pieces of equally fine amber--a big oneand a little one. Which of these would you rather possess?"
"The big one, I suppose."
"And this because it is better to have more than to have less of a goodthing?"
"Just so."
"Do you consider happiness a good thing or a bad one?"
"A good one."
"So that a man would rather have more than less of happiness?"
"Undoubtedly."
"Then does it not seem to you that you would do well to postpone yoursuicide indefinitely?"
"But I have just said I can't live without her."
"You have still more recently declared yourself truly happy."
"Yes, but--"
"Now, be careful, Mr. Smith. Remember, this is a matter of life anddeath. Try to do yourself justice. I have asked you--"
But the undergraduate was walking away, not without a certain dignity.
The Duke felt that he had not handled his man skilfully. He rememberedthat even Socrates, for all the popular charm of his mock-modesty andhis true geniality, had ceased after a while to be tolerable. Withoutsuc
h a manner to grace his method, Socrates would have had a very brieftime indeed. The Duke recoiled from what he took to be another pitfall.He almost smelt hemlock.
A party of four undergraduates abreast was approaching. How should headdress them? His choice wavered between the evangelic wistfulness of"Are you saved?" and the breeziness of the recruiting sergeant's "Come,you're fine upstanding young fellows. Isn't it a pity," etc. Meanwhile,the quartet had passed by.
Two other undergraduates approached. The Duke asked them simply as apersonal favour to himself not to throw away their lives. They saidthey were very sorry, but in this particular matter they must pleasethemselves. In vain he pled. They admitted that but for his example theywould never have thought of dying. They wished they could show him theirgratitude in any way but the one which would rob them of it.
The Duke drifted further down the High, bespeaking every undergraduatehe met, leaving untried no argument, no inducement. For one man, whosename he happened to know, he invented an urgent personal message fromMiss Dobson imploring him not to die on her account. On another man heoffered to settle by hasty codicil a sum of money sufficient to yieldan annual income of two thousand pounds--three thousand--any sum withinreason. With another he offered to walk, arm in arm, to Carfax and backagain. All to no avail.
He found himself in the precincts of Magdalen, preaching from the littleopen-air pulpit there an impassioned sermon on the sacredness of humanlife, and referring to Zuleika in terms which John Knox would havehesitated to utter. As he piled up the invective, he noticed an ominousrestiveness in the congregation--murmurs, clenching of hands, darklooks. He saw the pulpit as yet another trap laid for him by the gods.He had walked straight into it: another moment, and he might be draggeddown, overwhelmed by numbers, torn limb from limb. All that was inhim of quelling power he put hastily into his eyes, and manoeuvred histongue to gentler discourse, deprecating his right to judge "this lady,"and merely pointing the marvel, the awful though noble folly, of hisresolve. He ended on a note of quiet pathos. "To-night I shall be amongthe shades. There be not you, my brothers."
Good though the sermon was in style and sentiment, the flaw in itsreasoning was too patent for any converts to be made. As he walked outof the quadrangle, the Duke felt the hopelessness of his cause. Stillhe battled bravely for it up the High, waylaying, cajoling, commanding,offering vast bribes. He carried his crusade into the Loder, andthence into Vincent's, and out into the street again, eager, untiring,unavailing: everywhere he found his precept checkmated by his example.
The sight of The MacQuern coming out top-speed from the Market, witha large but inexpensive bunch of flowers, reminded him of the luncheonthat was to be. Never to throw over an engagement was for him, as wehave seen, a point of honour. But this particular engagement--hateful,when he accepted it, by reason of his love--was now impossible forthe reason which had made him take so ignominiously to his heels thismorning. He curtly told the Scot not to expect him.
"Is SHE not coming?" gasped the Scot, with quick suspicion.
"Oh," said the Duke, turning on his heel, "she doesn't know that Ishan't be there. You may count on her." This he took to be the verytruth, and he was glad to have made of it a thrust at the man who hadso uncouthly asserted himself last night. He could not help smiling,though, at this little resentment erect after the cataclysm that hadswept away all else. Then he smiled to think how uneasy Zuleika wouldbe at his absence. What agonies of suspense she must have had all thismorning! He imagined her silent at the luncheon, with a vacant gaze atthe door, eating nothing at all. And he became aware that he was ratherhungry. He had done all he could to save young Oxford. Now for somesandwiches! He went into the Junta.
As he rang the dining-room bell, his eyes rested on the miniature ofNellie O'Mora. And the eyes of Nellie O'Mora seemed to meet his inreproach. Just as she may have gazed at Greddon when he cast her off,so now did she gaze at him who a few hours ago had refused to honour hermemory.
Yes, and many other eyes than hers rebuked him. It was around the wallsof this room that hung those presentments of the Junta as focussed,year after year, in a certain corner of Tom Quad, by Messrs. Hills andSaunders. All around, the members of the little hierarchy, a hierarchyever changing in all but youth and a certain sternness of aspect thatcomes at the moment of being immortalised, were gazing forth now with asternness beyond their wont. Not one of them but had in his day handedon loyally the praise of Nellie O'Mora, in the form their Founder hadordained. And the Duke's revolt last night had so incensed them thatthey would, if they could, have come down from their frames and walkedstraight out of the club, in chronological order--first, the men ofthe 'sixties, almost as near in time to Greddon as to the Duke, allso gloriously be-whiskered and cravated, but how faded now, alas, byexposure; and last of all in the procession and angrier perhaps than anyof them, the Duke himself--the Duke of a year ago, President and soleMember.
But, as he gazed into the eyes of Nellie O'Mora now, Dorset needed notfor penitence the reproaches of his past self or of his forerunners."Sweet girl," he murmured, "forgive me. I was mad. I was under thesway of a deplorable infatuation. It is past. See," he murmured with adelicacy of feeling that justified the untruth, "I am come here for theexpress purpose of undoing my impiety." And, turning to the club-waiterwho at this moment answered the bell, he said "Bring me a glass of port,please, Barrett." Of sandwiches he said nothing.
At the word "See" he had stretched one hand towards Nellie; the otherhe had laid on his heart, where it seemed to encounter some sort of hardobstruction. This he vaguely fingered, wondering what it might be, whilehe gave his order to Barrett. With a sudden cry he dipped his hand intohis breast-pocket and drew forth the bottle he had borne away fromMr. Druce's. He snatched out his watch: one o'clock!--fifteen minutesoverdue. Wildly he called the waiter back. "A tea-spoon, quick! Noport. A wine-glass and a tea-spoon. And--for I don't mind telling you,Barrett, that your mission is of an urgency beyond conjecture--takelightning for your model. Go!"
Agitation mastered him. He tried vainly to feel his pulse, well knowingthat if he found it he could deduce nothing from its action. He sawhimself haggard in the looking-glass. Would Barrett never come? "Everytwo hours"--the directions were explicit. Had he delivered himself intothe gods' hands? The eyes of Nellie O'Mora were on him compassionately;and all the eyes of his forerunners were on him in austere scorn: "See,"they seemed to be saying, "the chastisement of last night's blasphemy."Violently, insistently, he rang the bell.
In rushed Barrett at last. From the tea-spoon into the wine-glass theDuke poured the draught of salvation, and then, raising it aloft, helooked around at his fore-runners and in a firm voice cried "Gentlemen,I give you Nellie O'Mora, the fairest witch that ever was or will be."He drained his glass, heaved the deep sigh of a double satisfaction,dismissed with a glance the wondering Barrett, and sat down.
He was glad to be able to face Nellie with a clear conscience. Her eyeswere not less sad now, but it seemed to him that their sadness came of aknowledge that she would never see him again. She seemed to be sayingto him "Had you lived in my day, it is you that I would have loved, notGreddon." And he made silent answer, "Had you lived in my day, I shouldhave been Dobson-proof." He realised, however, that to Zuleika he owedthe tenderness he now felt for Miss O'Mora. It was Zuleika that hadcured him of his aseity. She it was that had made his heart a warm andnegotiable thing. Yes, and that was the final cruelty. To love and beloved--this, he had come to know, was all that mattered. Yesterday, tolove and die had seemed felicity enough. Now he knew that the secret,the open secret, of happiness was in mutual love--a state that needednot the fillip of death. And he had to die without having ever lived.Admiration, homage, fear, he had sown broadcast. The one woman who hadloved him had turned to stone because he loved her. Death would losemuch of its sting for him if there were somewhere in the world just onewoman, however lowly, whose heart would be broken by his dying. What apity Nellie O'Mora was not really extant!
Suddenly he
recalled certain words lightly spoken yesterday by Zuleika.She had told him he was loved by the girl who waited on him--thedaughter of his landlady. Was this so? He had seen no sign of it, hadreceived no token of it. But, after all, how should he have seen a signof anything in one whom he had never consciously visualised? That shehad never thrust herself on his notice might mean merely that she hadbeen well brought-up. What likelier than that the daughter of Mrs.Batch, that worthy soul, had been well brought up?
Here, at any rate, was the chance of a new element in his life, orrather in his death. Here, possibly, was a maiden to mourn him. He wouldlunch in his rooms.
With a farewell look at Nellie's miniature, he took the medicine-bottlefrom the table, and went quickly out. The heavens had grown steadilydarker and darker, the air more sulphurous and baleful. And the High hada strangely woebegone look, being all forsaken by youth, in this hour ofluncheon. Even so would its look be all to-morrow, thought the Duke,and for many morrows. Well he had done what he could. He was free now tobrighten a little his own last hours. He hastened on, eager to see thelandlady's daughter. He wondered what she was like, and whether shereally loved him.
As he threw open the door of his sitting-room, he was aware of a rustle,a rush, a cry. In another instant, he was aware of Zuleika Dobson at hisfeet, at his knees, clasping him to her, sobbing, laughing, sobbing.
Zuleika Dobson Or, An Oxford Love Story Page 15