Zuleika Dobson

by Max Beerbohm

  “Of course. And then I forgot that I had them. When I undressed, they must have rolled on to the carpet. Melisande found them this morning when she was making the room ready for me to dress. That was just after she came back from bringing you my first letter. I was bewildered. I doubted. Might not the pearls have gone back to their natural state simply through being yours no more? That is why I wrote again to you, my own darling—a frantic little questioning letter. When I heard how you had torn it up, I knew, I knew that the pearls had not mocked me. I telescoped my toilet and came rushing round to you. How many hours have I been waiting for you?”

  The Duke had drawn her ear-rings from his waistcoat pocket, and was contemplating them in the palm of his hand. Blanched, both of them, yes. He laid them on the table. “Take them,” he said.

  “No,” she shuddered. “I could never forget that once they were both black.” She flung them into the fender. “Oh John,” she cried, turning to him and falling again to her knees, “I do so want to forget what I have been. I want to atone. You think you can drive me out of your life. You cannot, darling—since you won’t kill me. Always I shall follow you on my knees, thus.”

  He looked down at her over his folded arms,

  “I am not going to back out of my promise,” he repeated.

  She stopped her ears.

  With a stern joy he unfolded his arms, took some papers from his breast-pocket, and, selecting one of them, handed it to her. It was the telegram sent by his steward.

  She read it. With a stern joy he watched her reading it.

  Wild-eyed, she looked up from it to him, tried to speak, and swerved down senseless.

  He had not foreseen this. “Help!” he vaguely cried—was she not a fellow-creature?—and rushed blindly out to his bedroom, whence he returned, a moment later, with the water-jug. He dipped his hand, and sprinkled the upturned face (Dew-drops on a white rose? But some other, sharper analogy hovered to him). He dipped and sprinkled. The water-beads broke, mingled—rivulets now. He dipped and flung, then caught the horrible analogy and rebounded.

  It was at this moment that Zuleika opened her eyes. “Where am I?” She weakly raised herself on one elbow; and the suspension of the Duke’s hatred would have been repealed simultaneously with that of her consciousness, had it not already been repealed by the analogy. She put a hand to her face, then looked at the wet palm wonderingly, looked at the Duke, saw the water-jug beside him. She, too, it seemed, had caught the analogy; for with a wan smile she said “We are quits now, John, aren’t we?”

  Her poor little jest drew to the Duke’s face no answering smile, did but make hotter the blush there. The wave of her returning memory swept on—swept up to her with a roar the instant past. “Oh,” she cried, staggering to her feet, “the owls, the owls!”

  Vengeance was his, and “Yes, there,” he said, “is the ineluctable hard fact you wake to. The owls have hooted. The gods have spoken. This day your wish is to be fulfilled.”

  “The owls have hooted. The gods have spoken. This day—oh, it must not be, John! Heaven have mercy on me!”

  “The unerring owls have hooted. The dispiteous and humorous gods have spoken. Miss Dobson, it has to be. And let me remind you,” he added, with a glance at his watch, “that you ought not to keep The MacQuern waiting for luncheon.”

  “That is unworthy of you,” she said. There was in her eyes a look that made the words sound as if they had been spoken by a dumb animal.

  “You have sent him an excuse?”

  “No, I have forgotten him.”

  “That is unworthy of you. After all, he is going to die for you, like the rest of us. I am but one of a number, you know. Use your sense of proportion.”

  “If I do that,” she said after a pause, “you may not be pleased by the issue. I may find that whereas yesterday I was great in my sinfulness, and to-day am great in my love, you, in your hate of me, are small. I may find that what I had taken to be a great indifference is nothing but a very small hate … Ah, I have wounded you? Forgive me, a weak woman, talking at random in her wretchedness. Oh John, John, if I thought you small, my love would but take on the crown of pity. Don’t forbid me to call you John. I looked you up in Debrett while I was waiting for you. That seemed to bring you nearer to me. So many other names you have, too. I remember you told me them all yesterday, here in this room—not twenty-four hours ago. Hours? Years!” She laughed hysterically. “John, don’t you see why I won’t stop talking? It’s because I dare not think.”

  “Yonder in Balliol,” he suavely said, “you will find the matter of my death easier to forget than here.” He took her hat and gloves from the arm-chair, and held them carefully out to her; but she did not take them.

  “I give you three minutes,” he told her. “Two minutes, that is, in which to make yourself tidy before the mirror. A third in which to say good-bye and be outside the front-door.”

  “If I refuse?”

  “You will not.”

  “If I do?”

  “I shall send for a policeman.”

  She looked well at him. “Yes,” she slowly said, “I think you would do that.”

  She took her things from him, and laid them by the mirror. With a high hand she quelled the excesses of her hair—some of the curls still agleam with water—and knowingly poised and pinned her hat. Then, after a few swift touches and passes at neck and waist, she took her gloves and, wheeling round to him, “There!” she said, “I have been quick.”

  “Admirably,” he allowed.

  “Quick in more than meets the eye, John. Spiritually quick. You saw me putting on my hat; you did not see love taking on the crown of pity, and me bonneting her with it, tripping her up and trampling the life out of her. Oh, a most cold-blooded business, John! Had to be done, though. No other way out. So I just used my sense of proportion, as you rashly bade me, and then hardened my heart at sight of you as you are. One of a number? Yes, and a quite unlovable unit. So I am all right again. And now, where is Balliol? Far from here?”

  “No,” he answered, choking a little, as might a card-player who, having been dealt a splendid hand, and having played it with flawless skill, has yet—damn it!—lost the odd trick. “Balliol is quite near. At the end of this street in fact. I can show it to you from the front-door.”

  Yes, he had controlled himself. But this, he furiously felt, did not make him look the less a fool. What ought he to have said? He prayed, as he followed the victorious young woman downstairs, that esprit de l’escalier might befall him. Alas, it did not.

  “By the way,” she said, when he had shown her where Balliol lay, “have you told anybody that you aren’t dying just for me?”

  “No,” he answered, “I have preferred not to.”

  “Then officially, as it were, and in the eyes of the world, you die for me? Then all’s well that ends well. Shall we say good-bye here? I shall be on the Judas Barge; but I suppose there will be a crush, as yesterday?”

  “Sure to be. There always is on the last night of the Eights, you know. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye, little John—small John,” she cried across her shoulder, having the last word.

  XVII

  HE MIGHT NOT HAVE GRUDGED HER THE LAST word, had she properly needed it. Its utter superfluity—the perfection of her victory without it—was what galled him. Yes, she had outflanked him, taken him unawares, and he had fired not one shot. Esprit de l’escalier—it was as he went upstairs that he saw how he might yet have snatched from her, if not the victory, the palm. Of course he ought to have laughed aloud—“Capital, capital! You really do deserve to fool me. But ah, yours is a love that can’t be dissembled. Never was man by maiden loved more ardently than I by you, my poor girl, at this moment.”

  And stay!—what if she really HAD been but pretending to have killed her love? He paused on the threshold of his room. The sudden doubt made his lost chance the more sickening. Yet was the doubt dear to him … What likelier, after all, than that she had been pretending?
She had already twitted him with his lack of intuition. He had not seen that she loved him when she certainly did love him. He had needed the pearls’ demonstration of that.—The pearls! THEY would betray her. He darted to the fender, and one of them he espied there instantly—white? A rather flushed white, certainly. For the other he had to peer down. There it lay, not very distinct on the hearth’s black-leading.

  He turned away. He blamed himself for not dismissing from his mind the hussy he had dismissed from his room. Oh for an ounce of civet and a few poppies! The water-jug stood as a reminder of the hateful visit and of … He took it hastily away into his bedroom. There he washed his hands. The fact that he had touched Zuleika gave to this ablution a symbolism that made it the more refreshing.

  Civet, poppies? Was there not, at his call, a sweeter perfume, a stronger anodyne? He rang the bell, almost caressingly.

  His heart beat at sound of the clinking and rattling of the tray borne up the stairs. She was coming, the girl who loved him, the girl whose heart would be broken when he died. Yet, when the tray appeared in the doorway, and she behind it, the tray took precedence of her in his soul not less than in his sight. Twice, after an arduous morning, had his luncheon been postponed, and the coming of it now made intolerable the pangs of his hunger.

  Also, while the girl laid the table-cloth, it occurred to him how flimsy, after all, was the evidence that she loved him. Suppose she did nothing of the kind! At the Junta, he had foreseen no difficulty in asking her. Now he found himself a prey to embarrassment. He wondered why. He had not failed in flow of gracious words to Nellie O’Mora. Well, a miniature by Hoppner was one thing, a land-lady’s live daughter was another. At any rate, he must prime himself with food. He wished Mrs. Batch had sent up something more calorific than cold salmon. He asked her daughter what was to follow.

  “There’s a pigeon-pie, your Grace.”

  “Cold? Then please ask your mother to heat it in the oven—quickly. Anything after that?”

  “A custard pudding, your Grace.”

  “Cold? Let this, too, be heated. And bring up a bottle of champagne, please; and—and a bottle of port.”

  His was a head that had always hitherto defied the grape. But he thought that to-day, by all he had gone through, by all the shocks he had suffered, and the strains he had steeled himself to bear, as well as by the actual malady that gripped him, he might perchance have been sapped enough to experience by reaction that cordial glow of which he had now and again seen symptoms in his fellows.

  Nor was he altogether disappointed of this hope. As the meal progressed, and the last of the champagne sparkled in his glass, certain things said to him by Zuleika—certain implied criticisms that had rankled, yes—lost their power to discommode him. He was able to smile at the impertinences of an angry woman, the tantrums of a tenth-rate conjurer told to go away. He felt he had perhaps acted harshly. With all her faults, she had adored him. Yes, he had been arbitrary. There seemed to be a strain of brutality in his nature. Poor Zuleika! He was glad for her that she had contrived to master her infatuation … Enough for him that he was loved by this exquisite meek girl who had served him at the feast. Anon, when he summoned her to clear the things away, he would bid her tell him the tale of her lowly passion. He poured a second glass of port, sipped it, quaffed it, poured a third. The grey gloom of the weather did but, as he eyed the bottle, heighten his sense of the rich sunshine so long ago imprisoned by the vintner and now released to make glad his soul. Even so to be released was the love pent for him in the heart of this sweet girl. Would that he loved her in return!… Why not?

  “Prius insolentem

  Serva Briseis niveo colore

  Movit Achillem.”

  Nor were it gracious to invite an avowal of love and offer none in return. Yet, yet, expansive though his mood was, he could not pretend to himself that he was about to feel in this girl’s presence anything but gratitude. He might pretend to her? Deception were a very poor return indeed for all her kindness. Besides, it might turn her head. Some small token of his gratitude—some trinket by which to remember him—was all that he could allow himself to offer … What trinket? Would she like to have one of his scarf-pins? Studs? Still more abs—Ah! he had it, he literally and most providentially had it, there, in the fender: a pair of ear-rings!

  He plucked the pink pearl and the black from where they lay, and rang the bell.

  His sense of dramatic propriety needed that the girl should, before he addressed her, perform her task of clearing the table. If she had it to perform after telling her love, and after receiving his gift and his farewell, the bathos would be distressing for them both.

  But, while he watched her at her task, he did wish she would be a little quicker. For the glow in him seemed to be cooling momently. He wished he had had more than three glasses from the crusted bottle which she was putting away into the chiffonier. Down, doubt! Down, sense of disparity! The moment was at hand. Would he let it slip? Now she was folding up the table-cloth, now she was going.

  “Stay!” he uttered. “I have something to say to you.” The girl turned to him.

  He forced his eyes to meet hers. “I understand,” he said in a constrained voice, “that you regard me with sentiments of something more than esteem.—Is this so?”

  The girl had stepped quickly back, and her face was scarlet.

  “Nay,” he said, having to go through with it now, “there is no cause for embarrassment. And I am sure you will acquit me of wanton curiosity. Is it a fact that you—love me?”

  She tried to speak, could not. But she nodded her head.

  The Duke, much relieved, came nearer to her.

  “What is your name?” he asked gently.

  “Katie,” she was able to gasp.

  “Well, Katie, how long have you loved me?”

  “Ever since,” she faltered, “ever since you came to engage the rooms.”

  “You are not, of course, given to idolising any tenant of your mother’s?”

  “No.”

  “May I boast myself the first possessor of your heart?”

  “Yes.” She had become very pale now, and was trembling painfully.

  “And may I assume that your love for me has been entirely disinterested?… You do not catch my meaning? I will put my question in another way. In loving me, you never supposed me likely to return your love?”

  The girl looked up at him quickly, but at once her eyelids fluttered down again.

  “Come, come!” said the Duke. “My question is a plain one. Did you ever for an instant suppose, Katie, that I might come to love you?”

  “No,” she said in a whisper; “I never dared to hope that.”

  “Precisely,” said he. “You never imagined that you had anything to gain by your affection. You were not contriving a trap for me. You were upheld by no hope of becoming a young Duchess, with more frocks than you could wear and more dross than you could scatter. I am glad. I am touched. You are the first woman that has loved me in that way. Or rather,” he muttered, “the first but one. And she … Answer me,” he said, standing over the girl, and speaking with a great intensity. “If I were to tell you that I loved you, would you cease to love me?”

  “Oh your Grace!” cried the girl. “Why no! I never dared—”

  “Enough!” he said. “The catechism is ended. I have something which I should like to give you. Are your ears pierced?”

  “Yes, your Grace.”

  “Then, Katie, honour me by accepting this present.” So saying, he placed in the girl’s hand the black pearl and the pink. The sight of them banished for a moment all other emotions in their recipient. She forgot herself. “Lor!” she said.

  “I hope you will wear them always for my sake,” said the Duke.

  She had expressed herself in the monosyllable. No words came to her lips, but to her eyes many tears, through which the pearls were visible. They whirled in her bewildered brain as a token that she was loved—loved by him, though but yesterday h
e had loved another. It was all so sudden, so beautiful. You might have knocked her down (she says so to this day) with a feather. Seeing her agitation, the Duke pointed to a chair, bade her be seated.

  Her mind was cleared by the new posture. Suspicion crept into it, followed by alarm. She looked at the ear-rings, then up at the Duke.

  “No,” said he, misinterpreting the question in her eyes, “they are real pearls.”

  “It isn’t that,” she quavered, “it is—it is—”

  “That they were given to me by Miss Dobson?”

  “Oh, they were, were they? Then”—Katie rose, throwing the pearls on the floor—“I’ll have nothing to do with them. I hate her.”

  “So do I,” said the Duke, in a burst of confidence. “No, I don’t,” he added hastily. “Please forget that I said that.”

  It occurred to Katie that Miss Dobson would be ill-pleased that the pearls should pass to her. She picked them up.

  “Only—only—” again her doubts beset her and she looked from the pearls to the Duke.

  “Speak on,” he said.

  “Oh you aren’t playing with me, are you? You don’t mean me harm, do you? I have been well brought up. I have been warned against things. And it seems so strange, what you have said to me. You are a Duke, and I—I am only—”

  “It is the privilege of nobility to condescend.”

  “Yes, yes,” she cried. “I see. Oh I was wicked to doubt you. And love levels all, doesn’t it? love and the Board school. Our stations are far apart, but I’ve been educated far above mine. I’ve learnt more than most real ladies have. I passed the Seventh Standard when I was only just fourteen. I was considered one of the sharpest girls in the school. And I’ve gone on learning since then,” she continued eagerly. “I utilise all my spare moments. I’ve read twenty-seven of the Hundred Best Books. I collect ferns. I play the piano, whenever …” She broke off, for she remembered that her music was always interrupted by the ringing of the Duke’s bell and a polite request that it should cease.

  “I am glad to hear of these accomplishments. They do you great credit, I am sure. But—well, I do not quite see why you enumerate them just now.”