And now he had passed under the little arch between the eighth and the ninth Emperor, rounded the Sheldonian, and been lost to sight of Katie, whom, as he was equally glad and sorry he had kissed her, he was able to dismiss from his mind.
In the quadrangle of the Old Schools he glanced round at the familiar labels, blue and gold, over the iron-studded doors,—Schola Theologiae et Antiquae Philosophiae; Museum Arundelianum; Schola Musicae. And Bibliotheca Bodleiana—he paused there, to feel for the last time the vague thrill he had always felt at sight of the small and devious portal that had lured to itself, and would always lure, so many scholars from the ends of the earth, scholars famous and scholars obscure, scholars polyglot and of the most diverse bents, but none of them not stirred in heart somewhat on the found threshold of the treasure-house. “How deep, how perfect, the effect made here by refusal to make any effect whatsoever!” thought the Duke. Perhaps, after all... but no: one could lay down no general rule. He flung his mantle a little wider from his breast, and proceeded into Radcliffe Square.
Another farewell look he gave to the old vast horse-chestnut that is called Bishop Heber’s tree. Certainly, no: there was no general rule. With its towering and bulging masses of verdure tricked out all over in their annual finery of catkins, Bishop Heber’s tree stood for the very type of ingenuous ostentation. And who should dare cavil? who not be gladdened? Yet awful, more than gladdening, was the effect that the tree made to-day. Strangely pale was the verdure against the black sky; and the multitudinous catkins had a look almost ghostly. The Duke remembered the legend that every one of these fair white spires of blossom is the spirit of some dead man who, having loved Oxford much and well, is suffered thus to revisit her, for a brief while, year by year. And it pleased him to doubt not that on one of the topmost branches, next Spring, his own spirit would be.
“Oh, look!” cried a young lady emerging with her brother and her aunt through the gate of Brasenose.
“For heaven’s sake, Jessie, try to behave yourself,” hissed her brother. “Aunt Mabel, for heaven’s sake don’t stare.” He compelled the pair to walk on with him. “Jessie, if you look round over your shoulder... No, it is NOT the Vice-Chancellor. It’s Dorset, of Judas—the Duke of Dorset... Why on earth shouldn’t he?... No, it isn’t odd in the least... No, I’m NOT losing my temper. Only, don’t call me your dear boy... No, we will NOT walk slowly so as to let him pass us... Jessie, if you look round...”
Poor fellow! However fond an undergraduate be of his womenfolk, at Oxford they keep him in a painful state of tension: at any moment they may somehow disgrace him. And if throughout the long day he shall have had the added strain of guarding them from the knowledge that he is about to commit suicide, a certain measure of irritability must be condoned.
Poor Jessie and Aunt Mabel! They were destined to remember that Harold had been “very peculiar” all day. They had arrived in the morning, happy and eager despite the menace of the sky, and—well, they were destined to reproach themselves for having felt that Harold was “really rather impossible.” Oh, if he had only confided in them! They could have reasoned with him, saved him—surely they could have saved him! When he told them that the “First Division” of the races was always very dull, and that they had much better let him go to it alone,—when he told them that it was always very rowdy, and that ladies were not supposed to be there—oh, why had they not guessed and clung to him, and kept him away from the river?
Well, here they were, walking on Harold’s either side, blind to fate, and only longing to look back at the gorgeous personage behind them. Aunt Mabel had inwardly calculated that the velvet of the mantle alone could not have cost less than four guineas a yard. One good look back, and she would be able to calculate how many yards there were... She followed the example of Lot’s wife; and Jessie followed hers.
“Very well,” said Harold. “That settles it. I go alone.” And he was gone like an arrow, across the High, down Oriel Street.
The two women stood staring ruefully at each other.
“Pardon me,” said the Duke, with a sweep of his plumed hat. “I observe you are stranded; and, if I read your thoughts aright, you are impugning the courtesy of that young runagate. Neither of you, I am very sure, is as one of those ladies who in Imperial Rome took a saucy pleasure in the spectacle of death. Neither of you can have been warned by your escort that you were on the way to see him die, of his own accord, in company with many hundreds of other lads, myself included. Therefore, regard his flight from you as an act not of unkindness, but of tardy compunction. The hint you have had from him let me turn into a counsel. Go back, both of you, to the place whence you came.”
“Thank you SO much,” said Aunt Mabel, with what she took to be great presence of mind. “MOST kind of you. We’ll do JUST what you tell us. Come, Jessie dear,” and she hurried her niece away with her.
Something in her manner of fixing him with her eye had made the Duke suspect what was in her mind. Well, she would find out her mistake soon enough, poor woman. He desired, however, that her mistake should be made by no one else. He would give no more warnings.
Tragic it was for him, in Merton Street, to see among the crowd converging to the meadows so many women, young and old, all imprescient, troubled by nothing but the thunder that was in the air, that was on the brows of their escorts. He knew not whether it was for their escorts or for them that he felt the greater pity; and an added load for his heart was the sense of his partial responsibility for what impended. But his lips were sealed now. Why should he not enjoy the effect he was creating?
It was with a measured tread, as yesterday with Zuleika, that he entered the avenue of elms. The throng streamed past from behind him, parting wide, and marvelling as it streamed. Under the pall of this evil evening his splendour was the more inspiring. And, just as yesterday no man had questioned his right to be with Zuleika, so to-day there was none to deem him caparisoned too much. All the men felt at a glance that he, coming to meet death thus, did no more than the right homage to Zuleika—aye, and that he made them all partakers in his own glory, casting his great mantle over all commorients. Reverence forbade them to do more than glance. But the women with them were impelled by wonder to stare hard, uttering sharp little cries that mingled with the cawing of the rooks overhead. Thus did scores of men find themselves shamed like our friend Harold. But this, you say, was no more than a just return for their behaviour yesterday, when, in this very avenue, so many women were almost crushed to death by them in their insensate eagerness to see Miss Dobson.
To-day by scores of women it was calculated not only that the velvet of the Duke’s mantle could not have cost less than four guineas a yard, but also that there must be quite twenty-five yards of it. Some of the fair mathematicians had, in the course of the past fortnight, visited the Royal Academy and seen there Mr. Sargent’s portrait of the wearer, so that their estimate now was but the endorsement of an estimate already made. Yet their impression of the Duke was above all a spiritual one. The nobility of his face and bearing was what most thrilled them as they went by; and those of them who had heard the rumour that he was in love with that frightfully flashy-looking creature, Zuleika Dobson, were more than ever sure there wasn’t a word of truth in it.
As he neared the end of the avenue, the Duke was conscious of a thinning in the procession on either side of him, and anon he was aware that not one undergraduate was therein. And he knew at once—did not need to look back to know—why this was. SHE was coming.
Yes, she had come into the avenue, her magnetism speeding before her, insomuch that all along the way the men immediately ahead of her looked round, beheld her, stood aside for her. With her walked The MacQuern, and a little bodyguard of other blest acquaintances; and behind her swayed the dense mass of the disorganised procession. And now the last rank between her and the Duke was broken, and at the revealed vision of him she faltered midway in some raillery she was addressing to The MacQuern. Her eyes were fixed, her lips were parted, her tread had become stealthy. With a brusque gesture of dismissal to the men beside her, she darted forward, and lightly overtook the Duke just as he was turning towards the barges.
“May I?” she whispered, smiling round into his face.
His shoulder-knots just perceptibly rose.
“There isn’t a policeman in sight, John. You’re at my mercy. No, no; I’m at yours. Tolerate me. You really do look quite wonderful. There, I won’t be so impertinent as to praise you. Only let me be with you. Will you?”
The shoulder-knots repeated their answer.
“You needn’t listen to me; needn’t look at me—unless you care to use my eyes as mirrors. Only let me be seen with you. That’s what I want. Not that your society isn’t a boon in itself, John. Oh, I’ve been so bored since I left you. The MacQuern is too, too dull, and so are his friends. Oh, that meal with them in Balliol! As soon as I grew used to the thought that they were going to die for me, I simply couldn’t stand them. Poor boys! it was as much as I could do not to tell them I wished them dead already. Indeed, when they brought me down for the first races, I did suggest that they might as well die now as later. Only they looked very solemn and said it couldn’t possibly be done till after the final races. And oh, the tea with them! What have YOU been doing all the afternoon? Oh John, after THEM, I could almost love you again. Why can’t one fall in love with a man’s clothes? To think that all those splendid things you have on are going to be spoilt—all for me. Nominally for me, that is. It is very wonderful, John. I do appreciate it, really and truly, though I know you think I don’t. John, if it weren’t mere spite you feel for me—but it’s no good talking about that. Come, let us be as cheerful as we may be. Is this the Judas house-boat?”
“The Judas barge,” said the Duke, irritated by a mistake which but yesterday had rather charmed him.
As he followed his companion across the plank, there came dully from the hills the first low growl of the pent storm. The sound struck for him a strange contrast with the prattle he had perforce been listening to.
“Thunder,” said Zuleika over her shoulder.
“Evidently,” he answered.
Half-way up the stairs to the roof, she looked round. “Aren’t you coming?” she asked.
He shook his head, and pointed to the raft in front of the barge. She quickly descended.
“Forgive me,” he said, “my gesture was not a summons. The raft is for men.”
“What do you want to do on it?”
“To wait there till the races are over.”
“But—what do you mean? Aren’t you coming up on to the roof at all? Yesterday—”
“Oh, I see,” said the Duke, unable to repress a smile. “But to-day I am not dressed for a flying-leap.”
Zuleika put a finger to her lips. “Don’t talk so loud. Those women up there will hear you. No one must ever know I knew what was going to happen. What evidence should I have that I tried to prevent it? Only my own unsupported word—and the world is always against a woman. So do be careful. I’ve thought it all out. The whole thing must be SPRUNG on me. Don’t look so horribly cynical... What was I saying? Oh yes; well, it doesn’t really matter. I had it fixed in my mind that you—but no, of course, in that mantle you couldn’t. But why not come up on the roof with me meanwhile, and then afterwards make some excuse and—” The rest of her whisper was lost in another growl of thunder.
“I would rather make my excuses forthwith,” said the Duke. “And, as the races must be almost due now, I advise you to go straight up and secure a place against the railing.”
“It will look very odd, my going all alone into a crowd of people whom I don’t know. I’m an unmarried girl. I do think you might—”
“Good-bye,” said the Duke.
Again Zuleika raised a warning finger.
“Good-bye, John,” she whispered. “See, I am still wearing your studs. Good-bye. Don’t forget to call my name in a loud voice. You promised.”
“Yes.”
“And,” she added, after a pause, “remember this. I have loved but twice in my life; and none but you have I loved. This, too: if you hadn’t forced me to kill my love, I would have died with you. And you know it is true.”
“Yes.” It was true enough.
Courteously he watched her up the stairs.
As she reached the roof, she cried down to him from the throng, “Then you will wait down there to take me home afterwards?”
He bowed silently.
The raft was even more crowded than yesterday, but way was made for him by Judasians past and present. He took his place in the centre of the front row.
At his feet flowed the fateful river. From the various barges the last punt-loads had been ferried across to the towing-path, and the last of the men who were to follow the boats in their course had vanished towards the starting-point. There remained, however, a fringe of lesser enthusiasts. Their figures stood outlined sharply in that strange dark clearness which immediately precedes a storm.
The thunder rumbled around the hills, and now and again there was a faint glare on the horizon.
Would Judas bump Magdalen? Opinion on the raft seemed to be divided. But the sanguine spirits were in a majority.
“If I were making a book on the event,” said a middle-aged clergyman, with that air of breezy emancipation which is so distressing to the laity, “I’d bet two to one we bump.”
“You demean your cloth, sir,” the Duke would have said, “without cheating its disabilities,” had not his mouth been stopped by a loud and prolonged thunder-clap.
In the hush thereafter, came the puny sound of a gunshot. The boats were starting. Would Judas bump Magdalen? Would Judas be head of the river?
Strange, thought the Duke, that for him, standing as he did on the peak of dandyism, on the brink of eternity, this trivial question of boats could have importance. And yet, and yet, for this it was that his heart was beating. A few minutes hence, an end to victors and vanquished alike; and yet...
A sudden white vertical streak slid down the sky. Then there was a consonance to split the drums of the world’s ears, followed by a horrific rattling as of actual artillery—tens of thousands of gun-carriages simultaneously at the gallop, colliding, crashing, heeling over in the blackness.
Then, and yet more awful, silence; the little earth cowering voiceless under the heavens’ menace. And, audible in the hush now, a faint sound; the sound of the runners on the towing-path cheering the crews forward, forward.
And there was another faint sound that came to the Duke’s ears. It he understood when, a moment later, he saw the surface of the river alive with infinitesimal fountains.
Rain!
His very mantle was aspersed. In another minute he would stand sodden, inglorious, a mock. He didn’t hesitate.
“Zuleika!” he cried in a loud voice. Then he took a deep breath, and, burying his face in his mantle, plunged.
Full on the river lay the mantle outspread. Then it, too, went under. A great roll of water marked the spot. The plumed hat floated.
There was a confusion of shouts from the raft, of screams from the roof. Many youths—all the youths there—cried “Zuleika!” and leapt emulously headlong into the water. “Brave fellows!” shouted the elder men, supposing rescue-work. The rain pelted, the thunder pealed. Here and there was a glimpse of a young head above water—for an instant only.
Shouts and screams now from the infected barges on either side. A score of fresh plunges. “Splendid fellows!”
Meanwhile, what of the Duke? I am glad to say that he was alive and (but for the cold he had caught last night) well. Indeed, his mind had never worked more clearly than in this swift dim underworld. His mantle, the cords of it having come untied, had drifted off him, leaving his arms free. With breath well-pent, he steadily swam, scarcely less amused than annoyed that the gods had, after all, dictated the exact time at which he should seek death.
I am loth to interrupt my narrative at this rather exciting moment—a moment when the quick, tense style, exemplified in the last paragraph but one, is so very desirable. But in justice to the gods I must pause to put in a word of excuse for them. They had imagined that it was in mere irony that the Duke had said he could not die till after the bumping-races; and not until it seemed that he stood ready to make an end of himself had the signal been given by Zeus for the rain to fall. One is taught to refrain from irony, because mankind does tend to take it literally. In the hearing of the gods, who hear all, it is conversely unsafe to make a simple and direct statement. So what is one to do? The dilemma needs a whole volume to itself.
But to return to the Duke. He had now been under water for a full minute, swimming down stream; and he calculated that he had yet another full minute of consciousness. Already the whole of his past life had vividly presented itself to him—myriads of tiny incidents, long forgotten, now standing out sharply in their due sequence. He had mastered this conspectus in a flash of time, and was already tired of it. How smooth and yielding were the weeds against his face! He wondered if Mrs. Batch had been in time to cash the cheque. If not, of course his executors would pay the amount, but there would be delays, long delays, Mrs. Batch in meshes of red tape. Red tape for her, green weeds for him—he smiled at this poor conceit, classifying it as a fair sample of merman’s wit. He swam on through the quiet cool darkness, less quickly now. Not many more strokes now, he told himself; a few, only a few; then sleep. How was he come here? Some woman had sent him. Ever so many years ago, some woman. He forgave her. There was nothing to forgive her. It was the gods who had sent him—too soon, too soon. He let his arms rise in the water, and he floated up. There was air in that over-world, and something he needed to know there before he came down again to sleep.
He gasped the air into his lungs, and he remembered what it was that he needed to know.
Had he risen in mid-stream, the keel of the Magdalen boat might have killed him. The oars of Magdalen did all but graze his face. The eyes of the Magdalen cox met his. The cords of the Magdalen rudder slipped from the hands that held them; whereupon the Magdalen man who rowed “bow” missed his stroke.
An instant later, just where the line of barges begins, Judas had bumped Magdalen.
A crash of thunder deadened the din of the stamping and dancing crowd on the towing-path. The rain was a deluge making land and water as one.
And the conquered crew, and the conquering, both now had seen the face of the Duke. A white smiling face, anon it was gone. Dorset was gone down to his last sleep.
Victory and defeat alike forgotten, the crews staggered erect and flung themselves into the river, the slender boats capsizing and spinning futile around in a melley of oars.
From the towing-path—no more din there now, but great single cries of “Zuleika!”—leapt figures innumerable through rain to river. The arrested boats of the other crews drifted zigzag hither and thither. The dropped oars rocked and clashed, sank and rebounded, as the men plunged across them into the swirling stream.
And over all this confusion and concussion of men and man-made things crashed the vaster discords of the heavens; and the waters of the heavens fell ever denser and denser, as though to the aid of waters that could not in themselves envelop so many hundreds of struggling human forms.
All along the soaked towing-path lay strewn the horns, the rattles, the motor-hooters, that the youths had flung aside before they leapt. Here and there among these relics stood dazed elder men, staring through the storm. There was one of them—a grey-beard—who stripped off his blazer, plunged, grabbed at some live man, grappled him, was dragged under. He came up again further along stream, swam choking to the bank, clung to the grasses. He whimpered as he sought foot-hold in the slime. It was ill to be down in that abominable sink of death.
Abominable, yes, to them who discerned there death only; but sacramental and sweet enough to the men who were dying there for love. Any face that rose was smiling.
The thunder receded; the rain was less vehement: the boats and the oars had drifted against the banks. And always the patient river bore its awful burden towards Iffley.
As on the towing-path, so on the youth-bereft rafts of the barges, yonder, stood many stupefied elders, staring at the river, staring back from the river into one another’s faces.
Dispeopled now were the roofs of the barges. Under the first drops of the rain most of the women had come huddling down for shelter inside; panic had presently driven down the rest. Yet on one roof one woman still was. A strange, drenched figure, she stood bright-eyed in the dimness; alone, as it was well she should be in her great hour; draining the lees of such homage as had come to no woman in history recorded.
Artistically, there is a good deal to be said for that old Greek friend of ours, the Messenger; and I dare say you blame me for having, as it were, made you an eye-witness of the death of the undergraduates, when I might so easily have brought some one in to tell you about it after it was all over... Some one? Whom? Are you not begging the question? I admit there were, that evening in Oxford, many people who, when they went home from the river, gave vivid reports of what they had seen. But among them was none who had seen more than a small portion of the whole affair. Certainly, I might have pieced together a dozen of the various accounts, and put them all into the mouth of one person. But credibility is not enough for Clio’s servant. I aim at truth. And so, as I by my Zeus-given incorporeity was the one person who had a good view of the scene at large, you must pardon me for having withheld the veil of indirect narration.
“Too late,” you will say if I offer you a Messenger now. But it was not thus that Mrs. Batch and Katie greeted Clarence when, lamentably soaked with rain, that Messenger appeared on the threshold of the kitchen. Katie was laying the table-cloth for seven o’clock supper. Neither she nor her mother was clairvoyante. Neither of them knew what had been happening. But, as Clarence had not come home since afternoon-school, they had assumed that he was at the river; and they now assumed from the look of him that something very unusual had been happening there. As to what this was, they were not quickly enlightened. Our old Greek friend, after a run of twenty miles, would always reel off a round hundred of graphic verses unimpeachable in scansion. Clarence was of degenerate mould. He collapsed on to a chair, and sat there gasping; and his recovery was rather delayed than hastened by his mother, who, in her solicitude, patted him vigorously between the shoulders.
“Let him alone, mother, do,” cried Katie, wringing her hands.
“The Duke, he’s drowned himself,” presently gasped the Messenger.
Blank verse, yes, so far as it went; but delivered without the slightest regard for rhythm, and composed in stark defiance of those laws which should regulate the breaking of bad news. You, please remember, were carefully prepared by me against the shock of the Duke’s death; and yet I hear you still mumbling that I didn’t let the actual fact be told you by a Messenger. Come, do you really think your grievance against me is for a moment comparable with that of Mrs. and Miss Batch against Clarence? Did you feel faint at any moment in the foregoing chapter? No. But Katie, at Clarence’s first words, fainted outright. Think a little more about this poor girl senseless on the floor, and a little less about your own paltry discomfort.
Mrs. Batch herself did not faint, but she was too much overwhelmed to notice that her daughter had done so.
“No! Mercy on us! Speak, boy, can’t you?”
“The river,” gasped Clarence. “Threw himself in. On purpose. I was on the towing-path. Saw him do it.”
Mrs. Batch gave a low moan.
“Katie’s fainted,” added the Messenger, not without a touch of personal pride.
“Saw him do it,” Mrs. Batch repeated dully. “Katie,” she said, in the same voice, “get up this instant.” But Katie did not hear her.
The mother was loth to have been outdone in sensibility by the daughter, and it was with some temper that she hastened to make the necessary ministrations.
“Where am I?” asked Katie, at length, echoing the words used in this very house, at a similar juncture, on this very day, by another lover of the Duke.
“Ah, you may well ask that,” said Mrs. Batch, with more force than reason. “A mother’s support indeed! Well! And as for you,” she cried, turning on Clarence, “sending her off like that with your—” She was face to face again with the tragic news. Katie, remembering it simultaneously, uttered a loud sob. Mrs. Batch capped this with a much louder one. Clarence stood before the fire, slowly revolving on one heel. His clothes steamed briskly.
“It isn’t true,” said Katie. She rose and came uncertainly towards her brother, half threatening, half imploring.
“All right,” said he, strong in his advantage. “Then I shan’t tell either of you anything more.”
Mrs. Batch through her tears called Katie a bad girl, and Clarence a bad boy.
“Where did you get THEM?” asked Clarence, pointing to the ear-rings worn by his sister.
“HE gave me them,” said Katie. Clarence curbed the brotherly intention of telling her she looked “a sight” in them.
She stood staring into vacancy. “He didn’t love HER,” she murmured. “That was all over. I’ll vow he didn’t love HER.”
“Who d’you mean by her?” asked Clarence.
“That Miss Dobson that’s been here.”
“What’s her other name?”
“Zuleika,” Katie enunciated with bitterest abhorrence.
“Well, then, he jolly well did love her. That’s the name he called out just before he threw himself in. ‘Zuleika!’—like that,” added the boy, with a most infelicitous attempt to reproduce the Duke’s manner.
Katie had shut her eyes, and clenched her hands.
“He hated her. He told me so,” she said.
“I was always a mother to him,” sobbed Mrs. Batch, rocking to and fro on a chair in a corner. “Why didn’t he come to me in his trouble?”
“He kissed me,” said Katie, as in a trance. “No other man shall ever do that.”
“He did?” exclaimed Clarence. “And you let him?”
“You wretched little whipper-snapper!” flashed Katie.
“Oh, I am, am I?” shouted Clarence, squaring up to his sister. “Say that again, will you?”
There is no doubt that Katie would have said it again, had not her mother closed the scene with a prolonged wail of censure.
“You ought to be thinking of ME, you wicked girl,” said Mrs. Batch. Katie went across, and laid a gentle hand on her mother’s shoulder. This, however, did but evoke a fresh flood of tears. Mrs. Batch had a keen sense of the deportment owed to tragedy. Katie, by bickering with Clarence, had thrown away the advantage she had gained by fainting. Mrs. Batch was not going to let her retrieve it by shining as a consoler. I hasten to add that this resolve was only sub-conscious in the good woman. Her grief was perfectly sincere. And it was not the less so because with it was mingled a certain joy in the greatness of the calamity. She came of good sound peasant stock. Abiding in her was the spirit of those old songs and ballads in which daisies and daffodillies and lovers’ vows and smiles are so strangely inwoven with tombs and ghosts, with murders and all manner of grim things. She had not had education enough to spoil her nerve. She was able to take the rough with the smooth. She was able to take all life for her province, and death too.
The Duke was dead. This was the stupendous outline she had grasped: now let it be filled in. She had been stricken: now let her be racked. Soon after her daughter had moved away, Mrs. Batch dried her eyes, and bade Clarence tell just what had happened. She did not flinch. Modern Katie did.
Such had ever been the Duke’s magic in the household that Clarence had at first forgotten to mention that any one else was dead. Of this omission he was glad. It promised him a new lease of importance. Meanwhile, he described in greater detail the Duke’s plunge. Mrs. Batch’s mind, while she listened, ran ahead, dog-like, into the immediate future, ranging around: “the family” would all be here to-morrow, the Duke’s own room must be “put straight” to-night, “I was of speaking”...
Katie’s mind harked back to the immediate past—to the tone of that voice, to that hand which she had kissed, to the touch of those lips on her brow, to the door-step she had made so white for him, day by day...
The sound of the rain had long ceased. There was the noise of a gathering wind.
“Then in went a lot of others,” Clarence was saying. “And they all shouted out ‘Zuleika!’ just like he did. Then a lot more went in. First I thought it was some sort of fun. Not it!” And he told how, by inquiries further down the river, he had learned the extent of the disaster. “Hundreds and hundreds of them—ALL of them,” he summed up. “And all for the love of HER,” he added, as with a sulky salute to Romance.
Mrs. Batch had risen from her chair, the better to cope with such magnitude. She stood with wide-spread arms, silent, gaping. She seemed, by sheer force of sympathy, to be expanding to the dimensions of a crowd.
Intensive Katie recked little of all these other deaths. “I only know,” she said, “that he hated her.”
“Hundreds and hundreds—ALL,” intoned Mrs. Batch, then gave a sudden start, as having remembered something. Mr. Noaks! He, too! She staggered to the door, leaving her actual offspring to their own devices, and went heavily up the stairs, her mind scampering again before her.... If he was safe and sound, dear young gentleman, heaven be praised! and she would break the awful news to him, very gradually. If not, there was another “family” to be solaced; “I’m a mother myself, Mrs. Noaks”...
The sitting-room door was closed. Twice did Mrs. Batch tap on the panel, receiving no answer. She went in, gazed around in the dimness, sighed deeply, and struck a match. Conspicuous on the table lay a piece of paper. She bent to examine it. A piece of lined paper, torn from an exercise book, it was neatly inscribed with the words “What is Life without Love?” The final word and the note of interrogation were somewhat blurred, as by a tear. The match had burnt itself out. The landlady lit another, and read the legend a second time, that she might take in the full pathos of it. Then she sat down in the arm-chair. For some minutes she wept there. Then, having no more, tears, she went out on tip-toe, closing the door very quietly.
As she descended the last flight of stairs, her daughter had just shut the front-door, and was coming along the hall.
“Poor Mr. Noaks—he’s gone,” said the mother.
“Has he?” said Katie listlessly.
“Yes he has, you heartless girl. What’s that you’ve got in your hand? Why, if it isn’t the black-leading! And what have you been doing with that?”
“Let me alone, mother, do,” said poor Katie. She had done her lowly task. She had expressed her mourning, as best she could, there where she had been wont to express her love.
And Zuleika? She had done a wise thing, and was where it was best that she should be.
Her face lay upturned on the water’s surface, and round it were the masses of her dark hair, half floating, half submerged. Her eyes were closed, and her lips were parted. Not Ophelia in the brook could have seemed more at peace.
“Like a creature native and induedUnto that element,”tranquil Zuleika lay.
Gently to and fro her tresses drifted on the water, or under the water went ever ravelling and unravelling. Nothing else of her stirred.
What to her now the loves that she had inspired and played on? the lives lost 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 on the window-pane. The air was heavy with scent of violets. These are the flowers of mourning; but their scent here and now signified nothing; for Eau de Violettes was the bath-essence that Zuleika always had.
The bath-room was not of the white-gleaming kind to which she was accustomed. The walls were papered, not tiled, and the bath itself was of japanned tin, framed in mahogany. These things, on the evening of her arrival at the Warden’s, had rather distressed her. But she was the better able to bear them because of that well-remembered past when a bath-room was in itself a luxury pined for—days when a not-large and not-full can of not-hot water, slammed down at her bedroom door by a governess-resenting housemaid, was as much as the gods allowed her. And there was, to dulcify for her the bath of this evening, the yet sharper contrast 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 a necessary precaution, a sure means of salvation from chill, she did the more gratefully bask in it, till Melisande came back to her, laden with warmed towels.
A few minutes before eight o’clock she was fully ready to go down to dinner, with even more than the usual glow of health, and hungry beyond her wont.
Yet, as she went down, her heart somewhat misgave her. Indeed, by force of the wide experience she had had as a governess, she never did feel quite at her ease when she was staying in a private house: the fear of not giving satisfaction haunted her; she was always on her guard; the shadow of dismissal absurdly hovered. And to-night she could not tell herself, as she usually did, not to be so silly. If her grandfather knew already the motive by which those young men had been actuated, dinner with him might be a rather strained affair. He might tell her, in so many words, that he wished he had not invited her to Oxford.
Through the open door of the drawing room she saw him, standing majestic, draped in a voluminous black gown. Her instinct was to run away; but this she conquered. She went straight in, remembering not to smile.
“Ah, ah,” said the Warden, shaking a forefinger at her with old-world playfulness. “And what have you to say for yourself?”
Relieved, she was also a trifle shocked. Was it possible that he, a responsible old man, could take things so lightly?
“Oh, grand-papa,” she answered, hanging her head, “what CAN I say? It is—it is too, too, dreadful.”
“There, there, my dear. I was but jesting. If you have had an agreeable time, 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 will tell 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 she was not very sure what a bump-supper was, she felt it would be a mockery to-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 as you have finished dinner, you might, if you would care to, come and peep down at us from the gallery. There is apt to be some measure of noise and racket, but all of it good-humoured and—boys will be boys—pardonable. Will you come?”
“Perhaps, grand-papa,” she said awkwardly. Left alone, she hardly knew whether 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 Front Quadrangle, 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 force of routine in an University) were still sceptical of it. And in face of these doubts the three or four dons who had been down at the river were now half ready to believe that there must, after all, be some mistake, and that in this world of illusions they had to-night been specially tricked. To rebut this theory, there was the notable absence of undergraduates. Or was this an illusion, too? Men of thought, agile on the plane of ideas, devils of fellows among books, they groped feebly in this matter of actual life and death. The sight of their Warden heartened them. After all, he was the responsible person. He was father of the flock that had strayed, and grandfather of the beautiful Miss Zuleika.
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 was manifestly for him to break the news, or to report the hallucination. He was nudged forward—a large man, with a large beard at which he plucked nervously.
“Well, really, Warden,” he said, “we—we hardly know,” * and he ended with what can only be described as a giggle. He fell low in the esteem of his fellows.
*Those of my readers who are interested in athletic sports willremember the long controversy that raged as to whether Judas hadactually bumped Magdalen; and they will not need to be minded thatit was mainly through the evidence of Mr. E. T. A. Cook, who hadbeen on the towing-path at the time, that the O. U. B. C. decidedthe point in Judas’ favour, and fixed the order of the boats forthe following year accordingly.
Thinking of that past Sub-Warden whose fame was linked with the sun-dial, the Warden eyed this one keenly.
“Well, gentlemen,” he presently said, “our young men seem to be already at table. Shall we follow their example?” And he led the way up the steps.
Already at table? The dons’ dubiety toyed with this hypothesis. But the aspect of the Hall’s interior was hard to explain away. Here were the three long tables, stretching white towards the dais, and laden with the usual crockery and cutlery, and with pots of flowers in honour of the occasion. And here, ranged along either wall, was the usual array of scouts, motionless, with napkins across their arms. But that was all.
It became clear to the Warden that some organised prank or protest was afoot. Dignity required that he should take no heed whatsoever. Looking neither 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 Senior Scholar. The Judas grace (composed, they say, by Christopher Whitrid himself) 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 vainly for 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 shield of 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 Short Division by Decimals had already won for him an European reputation. Judas was—Judas is—proud of Pedby. Nor is it denied that in undertaking the duty thrust on him he quickly controlled his nerves and read the Latin out in ringing accents. Better for him had he not done so. The false quantities he made were so excruciating and so many that, while the very scouts exchanged glances, the dons at the high table lost all command of their features, and made horrible noises in the effort to contain themselves. The very Warden dared not look from his plate.
In every breast around the high table, behind every shirt-front or black silk waistcoat, glowed the recognition of a new birth. Suddenly, unheralded, a thing of highest destiny had fallen into their academic midst. The stock of Common Room talk had to-night been re-inforced and enriched for all time. Summers and winters would come and go, old faces would vanish, giving place to new, but the story of Pedby’s grace would be told always. Here was a tradition that generations of dons yet unborn would cherish and chuckle over. Something akin to awe mingled itself with 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. They were conscious only of an agreeable hush, in which they peered down the vistas of the future, watching the tradition of Pedby’s grace as it rolled brighter and ever brighter down to eternity.
The pop of a champagne cork startled them to remembrance that this was a bump-supper, and a bump-supper of a peculiar kind. The turbot that came after the soup, the champagne that succeeded the sherry, helped to quicken in these men of thought the power to grapple with a reality. The aforesaid three or four who had been down at the river recovered their lost belief in the evidence of their eyes and ears. In the rest was a spirit of receptivity which, as the meal went on, mounted to conviction. The Sub-Warden made a second and more determined attempt to enlighten the Warden; but the Warden’s eye met his with a suspicion so cruelly pointed that he again floundered and gave in.
All adown those empty other tables gleamed the undisturbed cutlery, and the flowers in the pots innocently bloomed. And all adown either wall, unneeded but undisbanded, the scouts remained. Some of the elder ones stood with closed eyes and heads sunk forward, now and again jerking themselves erect, and blinking around, wondering, remembering.
And for a while this scene was looked down on by a not disinterested stranger. For a while, her chin propped on her hands, Zuleika leaned over the rail of the gallery, just as she had lately leaned over the barge’s rail, staring down and along. But there was no spark of triumph now in her eyes; only a deep melancholy; and in her mouth a taste as of dust and ashes. She thought of last night, and of all the buoyant life that this Hall had held. Of the Duke she thought, and of the whole vivid and eager throng of his fellows in love. Her will, their will, had been done. But, there rose to her lips the old, old question that withers victory—“To what end?” Her eyes ranged along the tables, and an appalling sense of loneliness swept over her. She turned away, wrapping the folds of her cloak closer across her breast. Not in this College only, but through and through Oxford, there was no heart that beat for her—no, not one, she told herself, with that instinct for self-torture which comes to souls in torment. She was utterly alone to-night in the midst of a vast indifference. She! She! Was it possible? Were the gods so merciless? Ah no, surely...
Down at the high table the feast drew to its close, and very different was the mood of the feasters from that of the young woman whose glance had for a moment rested on their unromantic heads. Generations of undergraduates had said that Oxford would be all very well but for the dons. Do you suppose that the dons had had no answering sentiment? Youth is a very good thing to possess, no doubt; but it is a tiresome setting for maturity. Youth all around prancing, vociferating, mocking; callow and alien youth, having to be looked after and studied and taught, as though nothing but it mattered, term after term—and now, all of a sudden, 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 tackle with a fresh appetite Pedby’s grace, they paused, as was their wont, on the 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 behind the clouds. And now, a solemn and plangent token of Oxford’s perpetuity, the first stroke of Great Tom sounded.