________________________________________________
_ 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 indued
Unto 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 will
remember the long controversy that raged as to whether Judas had
actually bumped Magdalen; and they will not need to be minded that
it was mainly through the evidence of Mr. E. T. A. Cook, who had
been on the towing-path at the time, that the 0. U. B. C. decided
the point in Judas' favour, and fixed the order of the boats for
the 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. _
Read next: CHAPTER 22
Read previous: CHAPTER 20
Table of content of Zuleika Dobson
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
