 CHAPTER XX Artistically there is a good deal to be said for that old Greek friend of ours, the messenger. When I dare say you blame me for having, as it were, made you an eyewitness of the death of the undergraduates, when I might so easily have brought some one in to tell you all about it after it was all over—someone? 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 there 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 Cleo's servant. I aim at truth. And so, as I by my Zeus-given incorporating 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 tablecloth for seven o'clock supper. Neither she nor her mother was clairvoyant. 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 Lord Greek friend, after a run of twenty miles, would always reel off around hundred of graphic verses unimpeachable in scantion. Clarence was of degenerate mould. He collapsed onto 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. "'Lave him alone, Mother Doe!' cried Katie, ringing her hands. "'The doke! 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 dooke'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 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 dullly. Katie, she said in the same voice, Get up this instant!' But Katie did not hear her. The mother was loath to have been outdone in sensibility by the daughter, and it was with some temper that she hastened to make the necessary administrations. "'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 bristly. "'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. "'Did I not tell either of you anything more?' Mrs. Batch threw her tears, called Katie a bad girl, and Clarence a bad boy. "'Where did you get them?' asked Clarence, pointing to the earrings worn by his sister. "'He got them, Tommy,' said Katie. Clarence curbed the brotherly intention of telling her she looked a sight in them. She stored staring into vacancy. "'He didn't love her,' she murmured. That was all over. Although he didn't love her.' "'What do you mean by her?' asked Clarence. "'That means Dobson that's been here. What's her other name?' "'Zoleika,' Katie enunciated, with bitterest of horrors. "'Well, then, he jolly well did love her. That's the name he called out just before he told himself in. Zoleika!' "'Like that,' added the boy, with the most infallicitous 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 the chair in the 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 consular. I hasten to add that this resolve was only subconscious 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 daffodillas and lovers-vows and smiles are so strangely interwoven 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 wracked. Soon after her daughter had moved away, Mrs. Batch dried her eyes, and bad Clarence tell just what had happened. She did not flinch. Modern Katie did. Search had ever been the Duke's magic in the household, that Clarence had at first forgotten to mention that anyone 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 a-head 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 harkened 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 doorstep she had made so white for him, day by day. The sound of the rain had long ceased, but was the noise of a gathering wind. Then he went to a lot of others. Clarence was saying, And they all shouted out, So le-ka, just like he did. Then a lot more went in. First I thought he was some sort of fan, nor he'd. And he told how, by inquiries further down the river, he had learnt the extent of the disaster. Hundreds and hundreds of them, all of them, he summed up, and all for the love of air, he added, as with a sulky solute to romance. Mrs. Batch had risen from her chair the better to cope with such magnitude. She stood with widespread arms, silent, gaping. She seemed, by sheer force of sympathy, to be expanding to the dimensions of a crowd. Intensive Katie wrecked little of all these other deaths. Only now, she said, that he hated her. Hundreds and hundreds, all, he told Mrs. Batch. Then gave a sudden start, as having remembered something. Mr. Nokes, 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. Nokes. 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 armchair. For some minutes she wept there. Then, having no more tears, she went out on tiptoe, 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. For, Mr. Nokes, he's gone, said the mother. As 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 lead in him, what have you been doing with that? Let me alone, mother, though, 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. CHAPTER XXI And Zulika? 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 ease, like a creature native and endued, unto that element tranquil Zulika 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. Elouffe, she lay. Steadily rising from the water was a thick vapour that turned to dew on the window-pane. The air was heavy with centre-violets. These are the flowers of mourning, but their scent here and now signified nothing, for Odoviolet was the bath-essence that Zulika always had. The bathroom was not of the white gleaming kind to which she was accustomed. The walls were papered, not tiled, and the bath itself was of Japan tin, framed in mahogany. These things, on the evening of her arrival at the wardens, had rather distressed her, but she was the better able to bear them, because of that well-remembered past, when a bathroom was itself a luxury pine for. Days when a not-large and not-full can of not-hot water slammed down at the bedroom door by a governess-resenting housemaid, were as much as the gods allowed her. And there was, to dulcify for her the bath of the evening, the yet sharper contrast with the plight she had just come home in, salt, 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 warm 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 want. 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 of yourself? Relieved, she was also a trifle-shocked. Was it possible that he, a responsible old man, could take things so lightly? Oh, Grandpa Park! she answered, hanging her head. What can I say? It is too, too dreadful. There, there, my dear, I was majestic. If you have had an agreeable time, you are forgiven for playing truth. 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 tonight? I don't know, Grandpa Park, that was so much happening. I will tell you all about it at dinner. Ah, but tonight, he said, indicating his gown, I cannot be with you. The bump supper, you know, I have to preside in hall. Zulika had forgotten that 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 tonight. But Grandpa Park, she began, my dear, I cannot disassociate 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, Grandpa Park, 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 upon the group of gowned fellows outside the hall. Most of them had only just been told the news, and such as the force of routine and university, were still sceptical of it. And in the 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. Nor was this an illusion, too. Men of thought, agile on the plain 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 Zuleka. 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. Everyone 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, our warden, he said. 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 Maudlin, 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 O. U. B. C. decided the point in Judas's favour, and fixed the order of the votes for the following year accordingly. Thinking of that past sub-warden, whose fame was linked with the sundial, 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 don's duity 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 desk, 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 heal. In Judas, as in other colleges, grace before meat is read by the senior scholar. The Judas Grace, composed, they say, by Christopher Wittred himself, is noted for its length and for the excellence of its latinity. Who was to read it tonight? 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 crab-like 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 that he had 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 the highest destiny had fallen into their academic midst. The stock of common room talk had tonight been reinforced 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 all 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 turban 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. They therefore said 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 the down those empty other tables gleamed the undisturbed cutlery, and the flowers in the pots innocently bloomed. All the down either wall and needed but undisbanded, the scouts remained. Some of the older 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, Zulika lend over the rail of the gallery, just as she had lately lend 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? Oh, 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, at Araxy, a profound and ledgered 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 of their way to common room there to tackle with the fresh appetite, Pedby's Grace, they paused, as was their want, 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. CHAPTER XXI Stroke by stroke, the great familiar monody of that incomparable curfew, rose and fell in the stillness. Nothing of Oxford lingers more surely than it in the memory of Oxford men. And to one revisiting these groves, nothing is more eloquent of that scrupulous historic economy, whereby his own particular past is utilised as the general present and future. All's as it was, all's as it will be, says great Tom, and that is what he stubbornly said on the evening I hear record. Stroke by measured and leisure'd stroke, the old euphonious clanger pervaded Oxford, spreading out over the meadows, along the river, audible in ifly. But to the dim groups gathering and dispersing on either bank, and to the silent workers in the boats, the bell's message came softened, equivocal, came as a requiem for these dead. Over the closed gates of ifly lock, the water gushed down, eager for the sacrament of the sea. Among the supine in the field hard by, there was one whose breast bore a faint gleaming star, and bending over him, looking down at him with much love and pity in her eyes, was the shade of Nellio Mora, that fairest witch, to whose memory he had to-day atoned. And yonder, sitting upon the river-bank or groan, with questioning eyes, was another shade, more habituated to these haunts, the shade, known so well to bathers, in the abandoned lasher, and to dancers, around the five-field elm in May, at the bell's final stroke, the scholar Gypsy Rose, letting fall on the water his gathered wild flowers, and pass towards Cunna. And now, duly throughout Oxford, the gates of the colleges were closed, and closed were the doors of the lodging-houses. Every night, for many years at this hour precisely, Mrs. Batch had come out from her kitchen, to turn the key in the front door. The function had long ago become automatic. Tonight, however, it was the cue for further tears. These did not cease at her return to the kitchen, where she had gathered about her some sympathetic neighbours, women of her own age and kind, capacious of tragedy, women who might be relied on, founts of ejaculation, wells of some eyes, downpours of remembered premonitions. With his elbows on the kitchen table, and his knuckles to his brow, sat Clarence, intent on belated prep. Even an eyewitness of disaster may pause if he repeats his story too often. Clarence had noted in the last recital that he was losing his hold on his audience. So now he sat, committing to memory the names of the cantons of Switzerland, and waving aside with a harsh gesture such questions as were still put to him by the women. Katie had sought refuge in the need for putting the gentleman's room straight, against the arrival of the two families to-morrow. Duster in hand, and by the light of a single candle that barely survived the draught from the open window, she moved to and fro about the duke's room, a worn and listless figure, casting queerish shadows on the ceiling. There were other candles that she might have lit, but this ambiguous gloom suited her sullen humour. Yes, I'm sorry to say, Katie was sullen. She had not ceased to mourn the duke, but it was even more anger than grief that she felt at his dying. She was as sure as ever that he had not loved Miss Dobson, but this only made it the more outrageous that he had died because of her. What was there in this woman that men should so demean themselves for her? Katie, as you know, had at first been unaffected by the death of the undergraduates at large. But because they too had died for Zuleka, she was bitterly incensed against them now. What could they have admired in such a woman? She didn't even look like a lady. Katie caught the dim reflection of herself in the mirror. She took the candle from the table and examined the reflection closely. She was sure that she was just as pretty as Miss Dobson. It was only the clothes that made the difference. The clothes and the behaviour, Katie threw back her head and smiled brilliantly, hand on hip. She nodded reassuringly at herself, and the black pearl and pink dance to duet. She put the candle down and undid her hair, roughly parting it on one side, and letting it sweep down over the further eyebrow. She fixed it in that fashion, and posed accordingly now. But gradually her smile relaxed, and a mist came to her eyes, for she had to admit that, even so, after all, she hadn't just that something which somehow Miss Dobson had. She put away from her the hasty dream she had had of a whole future generation of undergraduates drowning themselves, every one, in honour of her. She went weirdly on with her work. Presently, after a last look round, she went up the creaking stairs to do Mr. Noakes' room. She found on the table that screed which her mother had recited so often this evening. She put it in the waste-paper basket. Also on the table were a lexicon, a few ciddies, and some notebooks. These she took and shelved without a tear for the closed labours they bore witness to. The next disorder that met her eye was one that gave her pause. Seemed indeed to transfix her. Mr. Noakes had never, since he came to lodge here, possessed more than one pair of boots. This fact had been for her a lasting source of annoyance, for it meant that she had to polish Mr. Noakes' boots always in the early morning, when there were so many other things to be done, instead of choosing her own time. Her annoyance had been all the keener, because Mr. Noakes' boots more than made up in size for what they lacked in number. Either of them singly took more time and polish than any other pair imaginable. She would have recognised them at a glance anywhere. Even so, now, it was at a glance that she recognised the toes of them protruding from beneath the window-curtain. She dismissed the theory that Mr. Noakes might have gone utterly unshod to the river. She scouted the hypothesis that his ghost could be shod thus. By process of elimination she arrived at the truth. Mr. Noakes, she said quietly, come out of there. There was a certain quiver of the curtain. No more. Katie repeated her words. There was a pause. Then a convulsion of the curtain. Noakes stood forth. Always in polishing his boots, Katie had found herself thinking of him as a man of prodigious stature, well though she knew him to be quite tiny. Even so, now, at recognition of his boots, she had fixed her eyes to meet his when he should emerge to full yard too high. With a sharp drop she focused him. By what right, he asked, do you come prying about my room? This was a stroke so unexpected that it left Katie mute. It equally surprised Noakes, who had been about to throw himself on his knees and implore this girl not to betray him. He was quick though to clinch his advantage. This, he said, is the first time I have caught you? Let it be the last. Was this the little man she had so long despised and so superciliously served? His very smallness gave him an air of concentrated force. She remembered having read that all the greatest men in history had been of less than middle height. And oh, her heart let! Here was the one man who had scorned to die for Miss Dobson. He alone had held out against the folly of his fellows. Soul and splendid survivor he stood rock-footed before her. And impulsively she abased herself, kneeling at his feet, as at the great double altar of some dark new faith. You are great, sir. You're wonderful! she cried, gazing up to him, wrapped. It was the first time she had ever called him sir. It is easier, as Michelet suggested, for a woman to change her opinion of a man, than for him to change his opinion of himself. Noakes, despite the presence of mind he had shown a few moments ago, still saw himself as he had seen himself during the past hours. That is, as an errant little coward, one who, by his fear to die, had put himself outside the pale of decent manhood. He had meant to escape from the house at dead of night, and, under an assumed name, work his passage out to Australia, a land which had always made strong appeal to his imagination. No one, he had reflected, would suppose, because his body was not received from the water, that he had not perished with the rest. And he had looked to Australia to make a man of him yet. In Encounter Bay, perhaps, or the Gulf of Carpentaria, he might yet end nobly. Thus Kate's behaviour was as much an embarrassment as a relief, and he asked her in what way he was great and wonderful. Modest, like all heroes, she cried, and still kneeling, proceeded to sing his praises, with the so infectious fervour that Noakes did begin to feel he had done a fine thing in not dying. After all, was it not moral cowardice as much as love that had tempted him to die? He had wrestled with it, thrown it. Yes, said he when her rhapsody was over, perhaps I am modest. And that is why you eat yourself just now. Yes, he gladly said, I eat myself for the same reason, he added, when I heard your mother's footsteps. But, she faltered, with a sudden doubt, that bit of writing which mother found on the table. That, oh, there was only a general reflection copied out of a book. Oh, won't poor mother be glad when she knows? Oh, I don't want her to know, said Noakes, with a return of nervousness. You mustn't tell anyone, I. The fact is— Oh, that is so like you, the girl said tenderly. I suppose it was your modesty that all this while blinded me. Please, sir, I have a confession to make to you. Never till to-night have I loved you. Exquisite was the shock of those words to one who, not without reason, had always assumed that no woman would ever love him. Before he knew what he was doing, he had bent down and kissed that sweet upturned face. It was the first kiss he had ever given outside his family circle. It was an artless and resounding kiss. He started back, dazed. What manner of man, he wondered, was he? A coward piling profligacy on paltunary, or a hero claiming exemption from moral law? What was done could not be undone. But it could be righted. He drew off from the little finger of his left hand that iron ring which, after a twinge of rheumatism, he had today resumed. We had it, he said. The main—she leapt to her feet. That we are engaged. I hope you don't think we have any choice. She clapped her hand, like the child she was, and adjusted the ring. Very pretty, she said. It is very simple, he answered likely, but he added, with a change of tone, it is very durable, and that is the important thing. For I shall not be in a position to marry before I am forty. A shadow of disappointment hovered over Katie's clear young brow, but was instantly chased away by the thought that to be engaged was almost as splendid as to be married. Recently, said her lover, I meditated leaving Oxford for Australia, but now that you have come into my life I am compelled to drop that notion and to carve out the career I had first set for myself. A year hence, if I get a second in grades and I shall, he said, with the first look that entranced her, I shall have a very good chance of an assistant mastership in a good private school. In eighteen years, if I am careful, and with you waiting for me I shall be careful, my savings will enable me to start a small school of my own and to take a wife. Even then it would be more prudent to wait another five years, no doubt. But there was always a streak of madness in the noxies. I say, prudent to the winds. Oh, don't say that, exclaimed Katie, laying a hand on his sleeve. You are right, never hesitate to curd me. And, he said, touching the ring, an idea has just occurred to me. When the time comes, let this be the wedding ring. Gold is gaudy, not at all the thing for a schoolmaster's bride. It is a pity, he muttered, examining her through his spectacles, that your hair is so golden. A schoolmaster's bride should, called heavens, those earrings. Where did you get them? I were given me today, Katie faltered. The duke gave them me. Indeed, please, he gave them me as a momento. And that momento shall immediately be handed over to his executors. Yes, sir. I should think so, was on the tip of noxies tongue. But suddenly he ceased to see the pearls as trinkets, finite and inapposite, saw them in a flash, as things transmutable by sail, hereafter, into desks, forms, blackboards, maps, lockers, cubicles, gravels, oil, diet, unlimited, and special attention to backward pupils. Simultaneously, he saw how mean had been his motive for repudiating the gift. What more despicable than jealousy of a man deceased! What sillier than to cast pearls before executors! Spared by nothing but the pulse of his hot youth, he had wooed and won this girl. Why flinch from her unsought dowry? He told her his vision. Her eyes opened wide to it. And oh! she cried, then we can be married as soon as you take your degree. He bade her not to be so foolish. Who ever heard of a headmaster aged three and twenty? What parent or guardian would trust a stripling? The engagement must run its course. And he said, fidgeting, do you know that I have hardly done any reading to-day? You want to read now? Tonight! I must put in a good two hours. Where are the books that were on my table? Reverently. He was indeed a king of men. She took the books down from the shelf and placed them where she had found them. And she knew not which thrilled her the more. The kiss he gave her at parting, or the tone in which he told her that the one thing he could not and would not stand was having his books disturbed. Still less than before attuned to the lugubrious session downstairs, she went straight up to her attic and did a little dance there in the dark. She threw open the lattice of the dormer window and lent out, smiling, throbbing. The emperors, gazing up, saw her happy and wondered, saw Nox's ring on her finger and would fain have shaken their grey heads. Presently she was aware of a protrusion from the window beneath hers. The head of her beloved. fondly she watched it, wished she could reach down to stroke it. She loved him for having, after all, left his books. It was sweet to be his excuse. Should she call softly to him? No, it might shame him to be caught truant. He had already tried on her for prying. So she did but gazed down on his head silently, wondering whether in eighteen years it would be bald. Wondering whether her own hair would still have the fault of being golden. Most of all she wondered whether he loved her, half so much as she loved him. This happened to be precisely what he himself was wondering. Not that he wished himself free. He was one of those in whom the world does not, except under very great pressure, oppose the conscience. What pressure here? Miss Batch was a superior girl. She would grace any station in life. He had always been rather in awe of her. It was a fine thing to be suddenly loved by her, to be in a position to overrule her every whim. Plighting his truth, he had feared she would be an encumbrance, only to find she was a lever. But was he deeply in love with her? How was it that he could not at this moment recall her features, or the tone of her voice, while of deplorable Miss Dobson, every lineum and every accent so vividly haunted him, try as he would to beat off these memories he failed, and some very great pressure here was glad he failed, glad though he found himself relapsing to the self-contempt from which Miss Batch had raised him. He scorned himself for being alive, and again he scorned himself for his infidelity. Yet he was glad he could not forget that face, that voice, that queen. She had smiled at him when she borrowed the ring. She had said, Thank you. Oh, and now at this very moment, sleeping or waking, actually she was somewhere, she herself. This was an incredible and indubitable and all magical fact for the little fellow. From the street below came a faint cry that was as the cry of his own heart, uttered by his own lips. Quaking, he peered down and dimly saw, over the way, a cloaked woman. She, yes, it was she herself, came gliding to the middle of the road, gazing up at him. At last, he heard her say, his instinct was to hide himself from the queen he had not died for, yet he could not move. Oh, she quavered, Oh, you a phantom sent to mock me! Speak! Good evening! he said, huskily. I knew, she murmured, I knew the gods were not so cruel. Oh, man of my need! she cried, stretching out her arms to him. Oh, heaven sent, I see you only as a dark outline against the light of your room. But I know you, your name is nox, isn't it? Dobbson is mine. I am your warden's granddaughter. I am faint and foot sore. I have ranged this desert city in search of you. Let me hear from your own lips that you love me. Tell me in your own words. She broke off with a little scream, and did not stand with forefinger pointed at him, gazing, gasping. Listen, Miss Dobbson, he stammered, writhing under what he took with the lash of her irony. Give me time to explain that you see me here. Hush! she cried. Man of my greater, my deeper and no-blood need! Oh, hush! ideal, which not consciously I was out for to-night. Ideal vouchsafe to me by a crowning mercy. I sought a lover. I find a master. I sought but a live youth. Was blind to what his survival would be token. Oh, master, you think me light and wicked. You stare coldly down at me through your spectacles, whose glint I faintly discern now that the moon beeps forth. You would be ready to forgive me the havoc I have wrought, if you could for the life of you understand what charms your friend found in me. You marvel, as at the skull of Helen of Troy. No, you don't think me hideous. You simply think me plain. There was a time when I thought you plain. You, whose face, now that the moon shines full on it, is seen to be of a beauty that is flawless without being insipid. Oh, that I would have gloved upon that hand that I might touch that cheek. You shudder at the notion of such contact. My voice grates on you. You try to silence me with frantic, though exquisite, gestious, and with noises in articulate, but divine. I bow to your will, master. Chasing me with your tongue. I am not what you think of me. Jim and Noakes, I was not afraid to die for you. I love you. I was on my way to the river this afternoon, but I tripped, and sprained my ankle, and jarred my spine. They carried me back here. I am still very weak. I can't put my foot to the ground as soon as I can. Just then, Zunika heard a little sharp sound, which for the fraction of an instant, before she knew it to be a clink of metal on the pavement, she thought was the breaking of the heart within her. Looking quickly down, she heard a shrill, girlish laugh aloft. Looking quickly up, she described at the unlit window above her lover's face, which she remembered as that of the landlady's daughter. Find it, Miss Dobson. Laugh the girl. Crawl for it. He can't have rolled far, and he's the only engagement ring you'll get from him. She said, pointing to the livid face, twisted painfully up at her from the lower window. Crawl for it, Miss Dobson. Ask him to step down and help you. Oh, he can. That was all lies about his spine and ankle. Afraid. That's what he was. I see it all now. Frayed at the water. I wish you'd found him as I did, skulking behind the curtain. Oh, you're welcome to him. Don't listen, nooks cried down. Don't listen to that person. I admit I have trifled with her affections. This is her revenge of those wicked untruths. These, they, his... Zulika silenced him with a gesture. Your tone to me, she said, up to Katie, is not without offence. But the stamp of truth is on what you have told me. We have both been deceived in this man and are in some sort sisters. Sisters, cried Katie, your sisters are the snake and the spider. They neither of them wishes it known. I loathe you, and the duke loathe you, too. What's that? Gasp, Zulika. Didn't he tell you? He told me. And I warrant he told you, too. He died for the love of me. Do you hear? Ah, you'd like people to think so, wouldn't you? Does a man who loves a woman give away the keepsake she gave him? Look. Katie lent forward, pointing to her earrings. He loved me, she cried. He put them in with his own hands, told me to wear them always. And he kissed me. Kissed me goodbye in the street, where everyone could see. He kissed me, she sobbed. No, and the man shall ever do that. No, that he did, said the voice leveled with Zulika. It was the voice of Mrs. Batch, who a few moments ago had opened the door for her departing guests. Ah, that he did, echoed the guests. Never mind them, Miss Dobson, cried Noakes. And at the sound of his voice, Mrs. Batch rushed into the middle of the road to gaze up. Ah, I love you. Think what you will of me, I— You, flashed Zulika, as were you, little Sir Lily Lever, leaning out there. And I frankly tell you, looking like nothing so much as a gargoyle, cuined by a drunken stone-mason, for the adornment of a Methodist chapel in one of the valest suburbs of Leedsor Wigan, I do but felicitate the Revogod and his nymphs that their water was saved to-day by your cowardice from the contamination of your plunge. Shime on you, Mr. Noakes, said Mrs. Batch. My king, believe you were dead. Shine! screamed Clarence, who had darted out into the fray. I found him hiding behind the curtain, chimed in Katie. And I, a mother to him, said Mrs. Batch, shaking her fist. What is life without love, indeed? Oh, the cowardly underhand! Reg, prompted her cronies. Let's kick him out of the house, suggested Clarence, dancing for joy. Zulika, smiling brilliantly down at the boy, said, Just you run up and fight him. Roger, he answered, with a look of nightly devotion, and darted back into the house. No escape, she cried up to Noakes. You've got to fight him now. He and you are just about evenly matched, I fancy. But grimly enough, Zulika's estimate was never put to the test. Is it harder for a coward to fight with his fists than to kill himself? Or again is it easier for him to die than to endure a prolonged crossfire of women's wrath and scorn? This I know, that in the life of even the least and meanest of us, there is somewhere, one fine moment, one high chance, not missed. I like to think it was by operation of this law, that Noakes had now clambered out upon the window-cell, silencing, sickening, scattering like chaff, the women beneath him. He was already not there when Clarence bounded into the room. Come on! yelled the boy, first thrusting his head behind the door, and then diving behind the table, then plucking aside either window-curtain vowing vengeance. Vengeance was not his, down on the road without, not yet looked at, but by the steadfast eyes of the emperors, the last of the undergraduates lay dead, and fleet-footed Zulika, with her fingers still pressed to her ears, had taken full toll now. Twisting and turning in her flight, with wild eyes that fearfully retained the image of that small man gathering himself to spring, Zulika found herself suddenly where she could no further go. She was in that grim ravine by which she approached New College. At sight of the great shut gate before her, she halted and swerved to the wall. She set her brow and the palms of her hands against the cold stones. She threw back her head and beat the stones with her fists. It was not only what she had seen, it was what she had barely saved herself from seeing, and what she had not quite saved herself from hearing, that she strove so piteously to forget. She was sorrier for herself, angrier than she had been last night when the duke laid hands on her. Why should every day have a horrible ending? Last night she had avenged herself. Tonight's outrage was all the more foul and mean because of its certain immunity, and the fact that she had in some measure brought it on herself did but whip her rage. What a fool she had been to taunt the man. Yet, no, how could she have foreseen that he would do that? How could she have guessed that he, who had not dared seemly death for her in the gentle river, would dare that? She shuddered the more as she now remembered that this very day in that very house she had invited for her very self a similar fate. What if the duke had taken her word? Strange! She wouldn't have flinched then. She had felt no horror at the notion of such a death, and thus she now saw nox's conduct in a new light, saw that he had but wished to prove his love, not at all to affront her. This understanding quickly steadied her nerves. She did not need now to forget what she had seen, and not needing to forget it, thus on our brains fashioned, she was able to forget it. But by removal of one load her soul was but bared for a more grievous other. Her memory harked back to what had preceded the crisis. She recalled those moments of doomed rapture in which her heart had soared up to the apocalyptic window. Recalled how, all the while she was speaking to the man there, she had been chafed by the inadequacy of language. Oh! how much more she had meant than she could express! Oh! the ecstasy of that self-surrender! And the brevity of it! A sudden odious awakening! Thrice in this oxwood she had been duped. Thrice, all that was fine and sweet in her, had let forth, only to be scourged back into hiding. Poor heart inhibited. She gazed about her. The stone alley she had come into, the terrible shut gate, were, for her, a visible symbol of the destiny she had to put up with. Ringing her hands, she hastened along the way she had come. She vowed she would never again set foot in Oxford. She wished herself out of the hateful little city to-night. She even wished herself dead. She deserved to suffer, you say? Maybe I merely state that she did suffer. Emerging into Catherine Street, she knew whereabouts she was, and made straight for Judas, turning away her eyes as she skirted the broad, that place of mocked hopes and shattered ideals. Coming into Judas Street, she remembered the scene of yesterday. The happy man with her, the noise of the vast happy crowd. She suffered in a worse form what she had suffered in the gallery of the hall. For now, did I not say she was not without imagination. Her self-pity was sharpened by remorse for the hundreds of homes robbed. She realised the truth of what the poor Duke had once said to her. She was a danger in the world. And all the more dire now. What if the youth of all Europe were moved by Oxford's example? That was a horribly possible thing. It must be reckoned with. It must be averted. She must not show herself to men. She must find some hiding-place, and there abide. Were this a hardship, she asked herself? Was she not sick and for ever of men's homage? And was it not clear now that the absorbing need in her soul, the need to love, would never, except for a brief while now and then, and by an unfortunate misunderstanding, be fulfilled? So long ago that you may not remember, I compared her favourably with the shepherdess Marcella. And pleaded her capacity for passion as an excuse for her remaining at large. I hope you will now, despite your rather evident animus against her, set this to her credit, that she did, so soon as she realised the hopelessness of her case. Make just that decision which I blamed Marcella for not making at the outset. It was, as she stood on the warden's doorstep, that she decided to take the veil. With something of a conventional hush in her voice, she said to the butler, Please tell my maid that we are leaving by a very early train to-morrow, and that she must pack my things to-night. Very well, miss, said the butler. The warden, he added, is in the study, miss, and was asking for you. She could face her grandfather without a tremor now. She would hear meekly whatever reproaches he might have for her, but their sting was already drawn by the surprise she had in store for him. It was he who seemed a trifle nervous. In his, well, did you come and peep down from the gallery? There was a distinct tremor. Throwing aside her cloak, she went quickly to him, and laid a hand on the lapel of his coat. Poor grandpa, she said. Nonsense, my dear child! He replied, disengaging himself. I didn't give it a thought. If the young men chose to be so silly as to stay away, I am—I— Grandpa Pa, haven't you been told yet? Told? I am a gallio for such follies I didn't inquire. But forgive me, Grandpa, if I seem to you for the moment, Pert, you are warden here. It is your duty, even your privilege, to guard, is it not? Well, I grant you the adage that it is useless to bolt the stable door when the horse has been stolen, but what shall be said of the osla, who doesn't know, won't even inquire whether the horse has been stolen, Grandpa Pa? You speak in riddles, Zuleka. I wish with all my heart I need not tell you the answers. I think I have a very real grievance against your staff, or whatever it is you call your subordinates here. I go so far as to dub them dodderers, and I shall better justify that term by not shirking the duty they have left undone. The reason why there were no undergraduates in your hall tonight is that they were all dead. Dead? he gasped. Dead? It is disgraceful that I was not told. What did they die of? Of me. Of you? Yes, I am an epidemic, Grandpa Pa, a scourge such as the world had not known. These young men drowned themselves for love of me. He came towards her. Do you realise, girl, what this means to me? I am an old man. For more than half a century I have known this college. To it, when my wife died, I gave all that there was of heart left in me. For thirty years I have been warden, and in that charge has been all my pride. I have had no thought but for this great college, its honour and prosperity. More than once lately have I asked myself whether my eyes were growing dim, my hand less steady. No was my answer, and again no. And thus it is that I have lingered on to let Judas be struck down from its high eminence, shamed in the eyes of England, a college for ever tainted and of evil omen. He raised his head. The disgrace to myself is nothing. I care not how parents shall rage against me, and the heads of the other colleges make merry over my decrepitude. It is because you have wrought the downfall of Judas that I am about to lay my undying curse on you. You mustn't do that, she cried. It would be a sort of sacrilege. I am going to be a nun. Besides, why should you? I can quite well understand your feeling for Judas. But how is Judas more disgraced than any other college? If it were only the Judas undergraduate who had… There were others, cried the warden. How many? All, all the boys from all the colleges. The warden heaved a deep sigh. Of course, he said, this changes the aspect of the whole matter. I wish you had made it clear at once. You gave me a very great shock, he said, sinking into his armchair, and I have not yet recovered. You must study the art of exposition. That will depend on the rules of the convent. Ah, I forgot that you were going into a convent, Anglican, I hope. Anglican, she supposed. As a young man, he said, I saw much of dear old Dr. Pusy. It might have somewhat reconciled him to my marriage if he had known that my granddaughter would take the veil. He adjusted his glasses and looked at her. Are you sure you have a vocation? Yes, I want to be out of the world. I want to do no more harm. He eyed her musingly. That, he said, is rather a revulsion than a vocation. I remember that I ventured to point out to Dr. Pusy the difference between those two things when he was almost persuading me to enter a brotherhood founded by one of his friends. It may be that the world would be well rid of you, my dear child, but it is not the world only that we must consider. Would you grace the recesses of the church? I could not try, said Zuleka. You could not try are the very words Dr. Pusy used to me. I ventured to say that in such a matter effort itself was a stigma of unfitness. For all my moods of revulsion I knew that my place was in the world. I stayed there. But suppose, Grandpa Parr, and seeing infancy the vast agitated flacilla of crinolines, she could not forbear a smile. Suppose all the young ladies of that period had drowned themselves for love of you. Her smile seemed to nettle the warden. I was greatly admired, he said. Greatly, he repeated. And you liked that, Grandpa Parr? Yes, my dear, yes, I'm afraid I did, but I never encouraged it. Your own heart was never touched? Never, until I met Laura Frith. Who was she? She was my future wife. And how was it you singled her out from the rest? Was she very beautiful? No, it cannot be said that she was beautiful. Indeed, she was a counted plain. I think it was her great dignity that attracted me. She did not smile archly at me, nor shake her ringlets. Well, in those days it was the fashion for young ladies to embroider slippers for such men in holy orders as best pleased their fancy. I received hundreds, thousands of such slippers, but never a pair from Laura Frith. She did not love you, asked Zuleka, who had seated herself on the floor at her grandfather's feet. I concluded that she did not. It interested me very greatly. It fired me. Was she incapable of love? No, it was notorious in her circle that she had loved often, but loved in vain. Why did she marry you? I think she was fatigued by my importunities. She was not very strong. But it may be that she married me out of peak. She never told me. I did not inquire. Yet you were very happy with her. While she lived I was ideally happy. The young woman stretched out a hand and laid it on the clasped hands of the old man. He sat gazing into the past. She was silent for a while, and in her eyes still fixed intently on his face there were tears. Grandpa, dear, but there were tears in her voice too. My child, you don't understand if I had needed pity. I do understand so well. I wasn't pitying you, dear. I was envying you a little. Me, an old man with only the remembrance of happiness? You, who have had happiness granted to you. That isn't what made me cry, though I cried because I was glad. You and I, with all this great span of years between us, and yet so wonderfully alike, I had always thought of myself as a creature utterly apart. Ah, that is how all young people think of themselves. It wears off. Tell me about this wonderful resemblance of ours. He sat attentive while she described her heart to him. But when, at the close of her confidences, she said, So you see it is a case of sheer heredity, Grandpa Parr. The word fiddlesticks would out. Forgive me, my dear, he said patting her hand. I was very much interested, but I do believe young people are even more staggered by themselves than they were in my day. And then all these grand theories they fall back on heredity, as if there were something to baffle us in the fact of a young woman liking to be admired. And as if it were passing strange of her to reserve her heart for a man she can respect, and look up too. And as if a man's indifference to her were not of all things the lackliest to give her a sense of inferiority to him. You and I, my dear, may in some respects be very queer people, but in the matter of the affections we are ordinary enough. Oh, Grandpa Parr, do you really mean that? She cried eagerly. At my age a man husbands his resources. He says nothing that he does not really mean. The difference between you and other young women is that which lay also between me and other young men a special attractiveness. Thousands of slippers, did I say? Tens of thousands. I had hoarded them with a fatuous pride. On the evening of my betrothal I made a bonfire of them, visible from three counties. I danced around it all night. And from his old eyes darted even now the reflection of those flames. Glorious! whispered Zuleka. But, ah, she said, rising to her feet. Tell me no more of it. Poor me. You see, it isn't a mere special attractiveness that I have. I am irresistible. A daring statement, my child, very hard to prove. Hasn't it been proved up to the hillt today? Today, ah, and so they did, really, all drowned themselves for you. Dear, dear, the duke, he too. He set the example. No, you don't say so. He was a greatly gifted young man, a true ornament to the college. But he always seemed to me rather, what shall I say, inhuman. I remember now that he did seem rather excited when he came to the concert last night, and you weren't there. You're quite sure you were the course of his death. Quite, said Zuleka, marvelling at the lie, or fair brother. He had been going to die for her. But why not have told the truth? Was it possible, she wondered, that her wretched vanity had survived her renunciation of the world? Why had she so resented just now the doubt cast on that irresistibility, which had blighted and cranked her whole life? Well, my dear, said the warden, I confess that I am amazed, the stounded. Again he adjusted his glasses and looked at her. She found herself moving slowly around the study, with the gate of a mannequin in a dressmaker's showroom. She tried to stop this, but her body seemed to be quite beyond control of her mind. It had the insolence to go ambling on its own account. Little space you'll have in a convent cell, snarled her mind vindictively. Her body paid no heed whatever. Her grandfather, leaning back in his chair, gazed at the ceiling, and meditatively tapped the fingertips of one hand against those of the other. Sister Zulika, he presently said to the ceiling. Well, and what is there so ridiculous in? But the rest was lost in trail after trail of laughter, and these were then left in sobs. The warden had risen from his chair. My dear, he said, I wasn't laughing. I was only trying to imagine if you really want to retire from— I do, moaned Zulika, then perhaps. But I don't, she wailed. Of course you don't, my dear. Well, of course. Come, you are tired, my poor child. That is very natural after this wonderful, this historic day. Come, dry your eyes. There, that's better. Tomorrow? I do believe you're a little proud of me. Heaven forgive me, I believe I am. A grandfather's heart? But there. Good night, my dear. Let me light your candle. She took her cloak and followed him out to the hall table. There she mentioned that she was going away early to-morrow. To the convent? He slyly asked. Ah, don't tease me, Grandpa Pa. Well, I'm sorry you're going away, my dear, perhaps in the circumstances it is best. You must come and stay here again, later on," he said, handing her the lit candle. Not in term time, though, he added. No, she echoed. Not in term time. End of Chapter 23, Chapter 24 of Zulika Dobson. This LibriBox recording is in the public domain. Reading by Termin Dayan. Zulika Dobson by Max Birbone Chapter 24 From the shifting gloom of the staircase to the soft radiance cast through the open door of her bedroom was, for poor Zulika, an almost heartening transition. She stood a while on the threshold, watching Melisand dart to and fro like a shuttle across a loom. Already the main part of the packing seemed to have been accomplished. The wardrobe was a yawning void, the carpet was here and there, visible. Many of the trunks were already brimming and foaming over, once more on the road. Somewhat as, when beneath the stars the great tent had been struck and the lions were growling in their vans and the horses were pouring the stamped grass and whinnying and the elephants trumpeting, Zulika's mother may often have felt within her a one exhilaration, so now did the heart of that mother's child rise and flutter amidst the familiar bustle of being off. Weary she was of the world, and angry she was at not being, after all, good enough for something better, and yet, well, at least good-bye to Oxford. She envied Melisand so nimbly and cheerfully laborious, till the day should come when her betrothed had saved enough to start a little cafe of his own and make her his bride and dame de comptoir. Oh, to have a purpose, a prospect, a stake in the world, as this faithful soul had. Can I help your tour, Melisand? She asked, picking her way across the strewn floor. Melisand, batting down a pile of chiffon, seemed to be amused at such a notion. Oh, Mamboiselle has her own art! Do I mix myself in that? She cried, waving one hand towards the great Malachite casket. Zulika looked at the casket, and then very gratefully at the maid. Her art, how had she forgotten that? Here was solace, purpose. She would work as she had never worked yet. She knew that she had it in her to do better than she had ever done. She confessed to herself that she had too often been slack in the matter of practice and rehearsal, trusting her personal magnetism to carry her through. Only last night she had badly fumbled more than once. Her purveyora business with the demon egg-cup had been simply vile. The audience hadn't noticed it perhaps, but she had. Now she would perfect herself. Barely a fortnight now before her engagement at the polybergiaire. What if—? No, she must not think of that. But the thought insisted. What if she assayed for Paris that which again and again she had meant to graft onto her repertory? The provoking thimble. She flushed at the possibility. What if her whole present repertory were but a passing phase in her art? A mere beginning, an earlier manner. She remembered how marvellously last night she had manipulated the earrings and the studs. Then, lo, the light died out of her eyes, and her face grew rigid. That memory had brought other memories in its wake. For her, when she fled the broad, Nox's window had blotted out all else. Now she saw again that higher window, saw that girl flaunting her earrings, gybing down at her. He put them in with his own hands. The words rang again in her ears, making her cheeks tingle. Oh, he had thought it a very clever thing to do, no doubt, a splendid little revenge, something after his own heart. And he kissed me in the open street. Excellent, excellent! She ground her teeth. And these doings must have been fresh in his mind when she overtook him and walked with him to the houseboat. Infamous! And she had been wearing his studs. She drew his attention to them when— Her jewel-box stood open to receive the jewels she wore tonight. She went very calmly to it. There, in a corner of the topmost tray, rested the two great white pearls. The pearls which, in one way and another, had meant so much to her. Mélisande, ma mouselle, when we go to Paris, would you like to make a little present to your fiancée? Then you shall give him these, said Zuleika, holding out the two studs. Mais jamais de la vie! Che tutelle, tout le monde le dirait millionaire! Tell him, he may tell everyone, that they were given to me by the late Duke of Dorset, and given by me to you, and by you to him. The protest died on Mélisande's lips. Suddenly she had ceased to see the pearls as trinkets, finite and inapposite. Saw them as things presently transmutable into little marble tables, box, dominoes, absences, shiny black portfolios with weekly journals in them, yellow staves with daily journals flapping from them. Mouselle is too amiable, she said, taking the pearls. And certainly just then Zuleika was looking very amiable indeed. The look was transient. Nothing, she reflected, could undo what the Duke had done. That hateful, impudent girl would take good care that everyone should know. He put them in with his own hands. Her earrings! He kissed me in the public street. He loved me. Well, he had called out Zuleika, and everyone around had hurt him. That was something. But how glad all the old women in the world would be to shake their heads and say, No, no, my dear, believe me, it wasn't anything to do with her. I'm told on the very best authority. And so forth, and so on. She knew he had told any number of undergraduates he was going to die for her. But they poor fellows could not bear witness. And good heavens, if there were a doubt as to the Duke's motive, why not doubts as to theirs? But many of them had called out Zuleika, too. And, of course, any really impartial person who knew anything at all about the matter at first hand would be sure in his own mind that it was perfectly absurd to pretend that the whole thing wasn't entirely and absolutely for her. And, of course, some of the men must have left written evidence of their intention. She remembered that at the Macquerns today was a Mr. Craddock who had made a will in her favour and wanted to read it aloud to her in the middle of luncheon. Oh, there would be proof positive as to many of the men. But of the others, it would be said that they had died in trying to rescue their comrades. There would be all sorts of silly far-fetched theories and downright lies that couldn't be disproved. Melyson, that crackling of tissue paper is driving me mad. I do leave off. Can't you see that I'm waiting to be undressed? The maid hastened to her side, and with quick light fingers began to undress her. M'emoiselle va bien d'en mire, c'est au revoir. She purred. I shan't, said Zuleika. Nevertheless, it was soothing to be undressed, and yet more soothing anon to sit merely nightgown before the mirror, while slowly and gently, strongly and strand by strand, Melyson brushed her hair. After all, it didn't so much matter what the world thought. Let the world whisper and insinuate what it would. To slur and sully, to belittle and drag down. That was what the world always tried to do. But great things were still great, and fair things still fair. With no thought for the world's opinion had these men gone down to the water today. Their deed was for her and themselves alone. It had sufficed them. Should it not suffice her? It did. Oh, it did. She was a wretch to have repined. At a gesture from her, Melyson brought to a close the rhythmical administrations, and, using no tissue paper this time, did what was yet to be done among the trunks. We know, you and I, Zulika whispered to the adorable creature in the mirror, and the adorable creature gave back her nod and smile. They knew these two. Yet in their happiness rose and floated a shadow between them. It was the ghost of that one man who, they knew, had died irrelevant with a cold heart. Came also the horrid little ghost of one who had died late and unseemly. And now, thick and fast, swept a whole multitude of other ghosts. The ghosts of all of them, who, being dead, could not die again. The poor ghosts of them who had done what they could, and could do no more. No more. Was it not enough? The lady in the mirror gazed at the lady in the room, reproachfully at first, for, then, for were they not sisters relentingly, then pityingly? Each of the two covered her face with her hands. And there occurred, as by stealth, to the lady in the room a thought that had assailed her not long ago in Judas Street. A thought about the power of example. And now, with pent breath and fast-beating heart, she stood staring at the lady of the mirror without seeing her. And now she wheeled round and swiftly glided to that little table on which stood her two books. She snatched Bradshaw. We always intervene between Bradshaw and anyone whom we seek consulting him. Memoirs there will permit me to find what she seeks. Asked Melysand. Be quiet, said Zuleka. We always repulse at first anyone who intervenes between us and Bradshaw. We always end by accepting the intervention. See if it is possible to go direct from here to Cambridge, said Zuleka, handing the book on. If it isn't, then, well, we'll see how to get there. We never have any confidence in the intervener. Nor is the intervener, when it comes to the point Sanguine, with mistrust amounting to exasperation, Zuleka sat watching the faint and frantic researches of her maid. Stop! she said suddenly. I have a much better idea. Go down very early to the station. See the station master. Order me a special train for ten o'clock, say. Rising she stretched her arms above her head. Her lips parted in a yawn, met in a smile. With both hands she pushed back her hair from her shoulders and twisted it into a loose knot. Very lightly she slipped up into bed, and very soon she was asleep. End of Chapter 24 and of Zuleka Dobson by Max Beerbone. Read for LibriVox by Termin Diane.