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_ Across the Front Quadrangle, heedless of the great crowd to right and
left, Dorset rushed. Up the stone steps to the Hall he bounded, and
only on the Hall's threshold was he brought to a pause. The doorway
was blocked by the backs of youths who had by hook and crook secured
standing-room. The whole scene was surprisingly unlike that of the
average College concert.
"Let me pass," said the Duke, rather breathlessly. "Thank you. Make
way please. Thanks." And with quick-pulsing heart he made his way down
the aisle to the front row. There awaited him a surprise that was like
a douche of cold water full in his face. Zuleika was not there! It had
never occurred to him that she herself might not be punctual.
The Warden was there, reading his programme with an air of great
solemnity. "Where," asked the Duke, "is your grand-daughter?" His tone
was as of a man saying "If she is dead, don't break it gently to me."
"My grand-daughter?" said the Warden. "Ah, Duke, good evening."
"She's not ill?"
"Oh no, I think not. She said something about changing the dress she
wore at dinner. She will come." And the Warden thanked his young
friend for the great kindness he had shown to Zuleika. He hoped the
Duke had not let her worry him with her artless prattle. "She seems to
be a good, amiable girl," he added, in his detached way.
Sitting beside him, the Duke looked curiously at the venerable
profile, as at a mummy's. To think that this had once been a man! To
think that his blood flowed in the veins of Zuleika! Hitherto the Duke
had seen nothing grotesque in him--had regarded him always as a
dignified specimen of priest and scholar. Such a life as the Warden's,
year following year in ornamental seclusion from the follies and
fusses of the world, had to the Duke seemed rather admirable and
enviable. Often he himself had (for a minute or so) meditated taking a
fellowship at All Souls and spending here in Oxford the greater part
of his life. He had never been young, and it never had occurred to him
that the Warden had been young once. To-night he saw the old man in a
new light--saw that he was mad. Here was a man who--for had he not
married and begotten a child?--must have known, in some degree, the
emotion of love. How, after that, could he have gone on thus, year by
year, rusting among his books, asking no favour of life, waiting for
death without a sign of impatience? Why had he not killed himself long
ago? Why cumbered he the earth?
On the dais an undergraduate was singing a song entitled "She Loves
Not Me." Such plaints are apt to leave us unharrowed. Across the
footlights of an opera-house, the despair of some Italian tenor in red
tights and a yellow wig may be convincing enough. Not so, at a
concert, the despair of a shy British amateur in evening dress. The
undergraduate on the dais, fumbling with his sheet of music while he
predicted that only when he were "laid within the church-yard cold and
grey" would his lady begin to pity him, seemed to the Duke rather
ridiculous; but not half so ridiculous as the Warden. This fictitious
love-affair was less nugatory than the actual humdrum for which Dr.
Dobson had sold his soul to the devil. Also, little as one might
suspect it, the warbler was perhaps expressing a genuine sentiment.
Zuleika herself, belike, was in his thoughts.
As he began the second stanza, predicting that when his lady died too
the angels of heaven would bear her straight to him, the audience
heard a loud murmur, or subdued roar, outside the Hall. And after a
few bars the warbler suddenly ceased, staring straight in front of him
as though he saw a vision. Automatically, all heads veered in the
direction of his gaze. From the entrance, slowly along the aisle, came
Zuleika, brilliant in black.
To the Duke, who had rapturously risen, she nodded and smiled as she
swerved down on the chair beside him. She looked to him somehow
different. He had quite forgiven her for being late: her mere presence
was a perfect excuse. And the very change in her, though he could not
define it, was somehow pleasing to him. He was about to question her,
but she shook her head and held up to her lips a black-gloved
forefinger, enjoining silence for the singer, who, with dogged British
pluck, had harked back to the beginning of the second stanza. When his
task was done and he shuffled down from the dais, he received a great
ovation. Zuleika, in the way peculiar to persons who are in the habit
of appearing before the public, held her hands well above the level of
her brow, and clapped them with a vigour demonstrative not less of her
presence than of her delight.
"And now," she asked, turning to the Duke, "do you see? do you see?"
"Something, yes. But what?"
"Isn't it plain?" Lightly she touched the lobe of her left ear.
"Aren't you flattered?"
He knew now what made the difference. It was that her little face was
flanked by two black pearls.
"Think," said she, "how deeply I must have been brooding over you
since we parted!"
"Is this really," he asked, pointing to the left ear-ring, "the pearl
you wore to-day?"
"Yes. Isn't it strange? A man ought to be pleased when a woman goes
quite unconsciously into mourning for him--goes just because she
really does mourn him."
"I am more than pleased. I am touched. When did the change come?"
"I don't know. I only noticed it after dinner, when I saw myself in
the mirror. All through dinner I had been thinking of you and of--
well, of to-morrow. And this dear sensitive pink pearl had again
expressed my soul. And there was I, in a yellow gown with green
embroideries, gay as a jacamar, jarring hideously on myself. I covered
my eyes and rushed upstairs, rang the bell and tore my things off. My
maid was very cross."
Cross! The Duke was shot through with envy of one who was in a
position to be unkind to Zuleika. "Happy maid!" he murmured. Zuleika
replied that he was stealing her thunder: hadn't she envied the girl
at his lodgings? "But I," she said, "wanted only to serve you in
meekness. The idea of ever being pert to you didn't enter into my
head. You show a side of your character as unpleasing as it was
unforeseen."
"Perhaps then," said the Duke, "it is as well that I am going to die."
She acknowledged his rebuke with a pretty gesture of penitence. "You
may have been faultless in love," he added; "but you would not have
laid down your life for me."
"Oh," she answered, "wouldn't I though? You don't know me. That is
just the sort of thing I should have loved to do. I am much more
romantic than you are, really. I wonder," she said, glancing at his
breast, "if YOUR pink pearl would have turned black? And I wonder if
YOU would have taken the trouble to change that extraordinary coat you
are wearing?"
In sooth, no costume could have been more beautifully Cimmerian than
Zuleika's. And yet, thought the Duke, watching her as the concert
proceeded, the effect of her was not lugubrious. Her darkness shone.
The black satin gown she wore was a stream of shifting high-lights.
Big black diamonds were around her throat and wrists, and tiny black
diamonds starred the fan she wielded. In her hair gleamed a great
raven's wing. And brighter, brighter than all these were her eyes.
Assuredly no, there was nothing morbid about her. Would one even
(wondered the Duke, for a disloyal instant) go so far as to say she
was heartless? Ah no, she was merely strong. She was one who could
tread the tragic plane without stumbling, and be resilient in the
valley of the shadow. What she had just said was no more than the
truth: she would have loved to die for him, had he not forfeited her
heart. She would have asked no tears. That she had none to shed for
him now, that she did but share his exhilaration, was the measure of
her worthiness to have the homage of his self-slaughter.
"By the way," she whispered, "I want to ask one little favour of you.
Will you, please, at the last moment to-morrow, call out my name in a
loud voice, so that every one around can hear?"
"Of course I will."
"So that no one shall ever be able to say it wasn't for me that you
died, you know."
"May I use simply your Christian name?"
"Yes, I really don't see why you shouldn't--at such a moment."
"Thank you." His face glowed.
Thus did they commune, these two, radiant without and within. And
behind them, throughout the Hall, the undergraduates craned their
necks for a glimpse. The Duke's piano solo, which was the last item in
the first half of the programme, was eagerly awaited. Already,
whispered first from the lips of Oover and the others who had come on
from the Junta, the news of his resolve had gone from ear to ear among
the men. He, for his part, had forgotten the scene at the Junta, the
baleful effect of his example. For him the Hall was a cave of solitude
--no one there but Zuleika and himself. Yet almost, like the late Mr.
John Bright, he heard in the air the beating of the wings of the
Angel of Death. Not awful wings; little wings that sprouted from the
shoulders of a rosy and blindfold child. Love and Death--for him they
were exquisitely one. And it seemed to him, when his turn came to
play, that he floated, rather than walked, to the dais.
He had not considered what he would play tonight. Nor, maybe, was he
conscious now of choosing. His fingers caressed the keyboard vaguely;
and anon this ivory had voice and language; and for its master, and
for some of his hearers, arose a vision. And it was as though in
delicate procession, very slowly, listless with weeping, certain
figures passed by, hooded, and drooping forasmuch as by the loss of
him whom they were following to his grave their own hold on life had
been loosened. He had been so beautiful and young. Lo, he was but a
burden to be carried hence, dust to be hidden out of sight. Very
slowly, very wretchedly they went by. But, as they went, another
feeling, faint at first, an all but imperceptible current, seemed to
flow through the procession; and now one, now another of the mourners
would look wanly up, with cast-back hood, as though listening; and
anon all were listening on their way, first in wonder, then in
rapture; for the soul of their friend was singing to them: they heard
his voice, but clearer and more blithe than they had ever known it--a
voice etherealised by a triumph of joy that was not yet for them to
share. But presently the voice receded, its echoes dying away into the
sphere whence it came. It ceased; and the mourners were left alone
again with their sorrow, and passed on all unsolaced, and drooping,
weeping.
Soon after the Duke had begun to play, an invisible figure came and
stood by and listened; a frail man, dressed in the fashion of 1840;
the shade of none other than Frederic Chopin. Behind whom, a moment
later, came a woman of somewhat masculine aspect and dominant
demeanour, mounting guard over him, and, as it were, ready to catch
him if he fell. He bowed his head lower and lower, he looked up with
an ecstasy more and more intense, according to the procedure of his
Marche Funebre. And among the audience, too, there was a bowing and
uplifting of heads, just as among the figures of the mourners evoked.
Yet the head of the player himself was all the while erect, and his
face glad and serene. Nobly sensitive as was his playing of the
mournful passages, he smiled brilliantly through them.
And Zuleika returned his gaze with a smile not less gay. She was not
sure what he was playing. But she assumed that it was for her, and
that the music had some reference to his impending death. She was one
of the people who say "I don't know anything about music really, but I
know what I like." And she liked this; and she beat time to it with
her fan. She thought her Duke looked very handsome. She was proud of
him. Strange that this time yesterday she had been wildly in love with
him! Strange, too, that this time to-morrow he would be dead! She was
immensely glad she had saved him this afternoon. To-morrow! There came
back to her what he had told her about the omen at Tankerton, that
stately home: "On the eve of the death of a Duke of Dorset, two black
owls come always and perch on the battlements. They remain there
through the night, hooting. At dawn they fly away, none knows
whither." Perhaps, thought she, at this very moment these two birds
were on the battlements.
The music ceased. In the hush that followed it, her applause rang
sharp and notable. Not so Chopin's. Of him and his intense excitement
none but his companion was aware. "Plus fin que Pachmann!" he
reiterated, waving his arms wildly, and dancing.
"Tu auras une migraine affreuse. Rentrons, petit coeur!" said George
Sand, gently but firmly.
"Laisse-moi le saluer," cried the composer, struggling in her grasp.
"Demain soir, oui. Il sera parmi nous," said the novelist, as she
hurried him away. "Moi aussi," she added to herself, "je me promets un
beau plaisir en faisant la connaissance de ce jeune homme."
Zuleika was the first to rise as "ce jeune homme" came down from
the dais. Now was the interval between the two parts of the
programme. There was a general creaking and scraping of pushed-back
chairs as the audience rose and went forth into the night. The noise
aroused from sleep the good Warden, who, having peered at his
programme, complimented the Duke with old-world courtesy and went to
sleep again. Zuleika, thrusting her fan under one arm, shook the
player by both hands. Also, she told him that she knew nothing about
music really, but that she knew what she liked. As she passed with him
up the aisle, she said this again. People who say it are never tired
of saying it.
Outside, the crowd was greater than ever. All the undergraduates from
all the Colleges seemed now to be concentrated in the great Front
Quadrangle of Judas. Even in the glow of the Japanese lanterns that
hung around in honour of the concert, the faces of the lads looked a
little pale. For it was known by all now that the Duke was to die.
Even while the concert was in progress, the news had spread out from
the Hall, through the thronged doorway, down the thronged steps, to
the confines of the crowd. Nor had Oover and the other men from the
Junta made any secret of their own determination. And now, as the
rest saw Zuleika yet again at close quarters, and verified their
remembrance of her, the half-formed desire in them to die too was
hardened to a vow.
You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by
standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of
men. If man were not a gregarious animal, the world might have
achieved, by this time, some real progress towards civilisation.
Segregate him, and he is no fool. But let him loose among his fellows,
and he is lost--he becomes just an unit in unreason. If any one of the
undergraduates had met Miss Dobson in the desert of Sahara, he would
have fallen in love with her; but not one in a thousand of them would
have wished to die because she did not love him. The Duke's was a
peculiar case. For him to fall in love was itself a violent peripety,
bound to produce a violent upheaval; and such was his pride that for
his love to be unrequited would naturally enamour him of death. These
other, these quite ordinary, young men were the victims less of
Zuleika than of the Duke's example, and of one another. A crowd,
proportionately to its size, magnifies all that in its units pertains
to the emotions, and diminishes all that in them pertains to thought.
It was because these undergraduates were a crowd that their passion
for Zuleika was so intense; and it was because they were a crowd that
they followed so blindly the lead given to them. To die for Miss
Dobson was "the thing to do." The Duke was going to do it. The Junta
was going to do it. It is a hateful fact, but we must face the fact,
that snobbishness was one of the springs to the tragedy here
chronicled.
We may set to this crowd's credit that it refrained now from following
Zuleika. Not one of the ladies present was deserted by her escort. All
the men recognised the Duke's right to be alone with Zuleika now. We
may set also to their credit that they carefully guarded the ladies
from all knowledge of what was afoot.
Side by side, the great lover and his beloved wandered away, beyond
the light of the Japanese lanterns, and came to Salt Cellar.
The moon, like a gardenia in the night's button-hole--but no! why
should a writer never be able to mention the moon without likening her
to something else--usually something to which she bears not the
faintest resemblance? . . . The moon, looking like nothing whatsoever
but herself, was engaged in her old and futile endeavour to mark the
hours correctly on the sun-dial at the centre of the lawn. Never,
except once, late one night in the eighteenth century, when the toper
who was Sub-Warden had spent an hour in trying to set his watch here,
had she received the slightest encouragement. Still she wanly
persisted. And this was the more absurd in her because Salt Cellar
offered very good scope for those legitimate effects of hers which we
one and all admire. Was it nothing to her to have cut those black
shadows across the cloisters? Was it nothing to her that she so
magically mingled her rays with the candle-light shed forth from
Zuleika's bedroom? Nothing, that she had cleansed the lawn of all its
colour, and made of it a platform of silver-grey, fit for fairies to
dance on?
If Zuleika, as she paced the gravel path, had seen how transfigured--
how nobly like the Tragic Muse--she was just now, she could not have
gone on bothering the Duke for a keepsake of the tragedy that was to
be.
She was still set on having his two studs. He was still firm in his
refusal to misappropriate those heirlooms. In vain she pointed out to
him that the pearls he meant, the white ones, no longer existed; that
the pearls he was wearing were no more "entailed" than if he had got
them yesterday. "And you actually DID get them yesterday," she said.
"And from me. And I want them back."
"You are ingenious," he admitted. "I, in my simple way, am but head of
the Tanville-Tankerton family. Had you accepted my offer of marriage,
you would have had the right to wear these two pearls during your
life-time. I am very happy to die for you. But tamper with the
property of my successor I cannot and will not. I am sorry," he added.
"Sorry!" echoed Zuleika. "Yes, and you were 'sorry' you couldn't dine
with me to-night. But any little niggling scruple is more to you than
I am. What old maids men are!" And viciously with her fan she struck
one of the cloister pillars.
Her outburst was lost on the Duke. At her taunt about his not dining
with her, he had stood still, clapping one hand to his brow. The
events of the early evening swept back to him--his speech, its
unforeseen and horrible reception. He saw again the preternaturally
solemn face of Oover, and the flushed faces of the rest. He had
thought, as he pointed down to the abyss over which he stood, these
fellows would recoil, and pull themselves together. They had recoiled,
and pulled themselves together, only in the manner of athletes about
to spring. He was responsible for them. His own life was his to lose:
others he must not squander. Besides, he had reckoned to die alone,
unique; aloft and apart . . . "There is something--something I had
forgotten," he said to Zuleika, "something that will be a great shock
to you"; and he gave her an outline of what had passed at the Junta.
"And you are sure they really MEANT it?" she asked in a voice that
trembled.
"I fear so. But they were over-excited. They will recant their folly.
I shall force them to."
"They are not children. You yourself have just been calling them
'men.' Why should they obey you?"
She turned at sound of a footstep, and saw a young man approaching.
He wore a coat like the Duke's, and in his hand he dangled a
handkerchief. He bowed awkwardly, and, holding out the handkerchief,
said to her "I beg your pardon, but I think you dropped this. I have
just picked it up."
Zuleika looked at the handkerchief, which was obviously a man's, and
smilingly shook her head.
"I don't think you know The MacQuern," said the Duke, with sulky
grace. "This," he said to the intruder, "is Miss Dobson."
"And is it really true," asked Zuleika, retaining The MacQuern's hand,
"that you want to die for me?"
Well, the Scots are a self-seeking and a resolute, but a shy, race;
swift to act, when swiftness is needed, but seldom knowing quite what
to say. The MacQuern, with native reluctance to give something for
nothing, had determined to have the pleasure of knowing the young lady
for whom he was to lay down his life; and this purpose he had, by the
simple stratagem of his own handkerchief, achieved. Nevertheless, in
answer to Zuleika's question, and with the pressure of her hand to
inspire him, the only word that rose to his lips was "Ay" (which may
be roughly translated as "Yes").
"You will do nothing of the sort," interposed the Duke.
"There," said Zuleika, still retaining The MacQuern's hand, "you see,
it is forbidden. You must not defy our dear little Duke. He is not
used to it. It is not done."
"I don't know," said The MacQuern, with a stony glance at the Duke,
"that he has anything to do with the matter."
"He is older and wiser than you. More a man of the world. Regard him
as your tutor."
"Do YOU want me not to die for you?" asked the young man.
"Ah, _I_ should not dare to impose my wishes on you," said she,
dropping his hand. "Even," she added, "if I knew what my wishes were.
And I don't. I know only that I think it is very, very beautiful of
you to think of dying for me."
"Then that settles it," said The MacQuern.
"No, no! You must not let yourself be influenced by ME. Besides, I am
not in a mood to influence anybody. I am overwhelmed. Tell me," she
said, heedless of the Duke, who stood tapping his heel on the ground,
with every manifestation of disapproval and impatience, "tell me, is
it true that some of the other men love me too, and--feel as you do?"
The MacQuern said cautiously that he could answer for no one but
himself. "But," he allowed, "I saw a good many men whom I know,
outside the Hall here, just now, and they seemed to have made up their
minds."
"To die for me? To-morrow?"
"To-morrow. After the Eights, I suppose; at the same time as the Duke.
It wouldn't do to leave the races undecided."
"Of COURSE not. But the poor dears! It is too touching! I have done
nothing, nothing to deserve it."
"Nothing whatsoever," said the Duke drily.
"Oh HE," said Zuleika, "thinks me an unredeemed brute; just because I
don't love him. YOU, dear Mr. MacQuern--does one call you 'Mr.'? 'The'
would sound so odd in the vocative. And I can't very well call you
'MacQuern'--YOU don't think me unkind, do you? I simply can't bear to
think of all these young lives cut short without my having done a
thing to brighten them. What can I do?--what can I do to show my
gratitude?"
An idea struck her. She looked up to the lit window of her room.
"Melisande!" she called.
A figure appeared at the window. "Mademoiselle desire?"
"My tricks, Melisande! Bring down the box, quick!" She turned
excitedly to the two young men. "It is all I can do in return, you
see. If I could dance for them, I would. If I could sing, I would
sing to them. I do what I can. You," she said to the Duke, "must
go on to the platform and announce it."
"Announce what?"
"Why, that I am going to do my tricks! All you need say is 'Ladies and
gentlemen, I have the pleasure to--' What is the matter now?"
"You make me feel slightly unwell," said the Duke.
"And YOU are the most d-dis-disobliging and the unkindest and the
b-beastliest person I ever met," Zuleika sobbed at him through her
hands. The MacQuern glared reproaches at him. So did Melisande, who
had just appeared through the postern, holding in her arms the great
casket of malachite. A painful scene; and the Duke gave in. He said he
would do anything--anything. Peace was restored.
The MacQuern had relieved Melisande of her burden; and to him was the
privilege of bearing it, in procession with his adored and her quelled
mentor, towards the Hall.
Zuleika babbled like a child going to a juvenile party. This was the
great night, as yet, in her life. Illustrious enough already it had
seemed to her, as eve of that ultimate flattery vowed her by the Duke.
So fine a thing had his doom seemed to her--his doom alone--that it
had sufficed to flood her pink pearl with the right hue. And now not
on him alone need she ponder. Now he was but the centre of a group--a
group that might grow and grow--a group that might with a little
encouragement be a multitude . . . With such hopes dimly whirling in
the recesses of her soul, her beautiful red lips babbled. _
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