Zuleika Dobson, Max Beerbohm [e ink ebook reader TXT] 📗

came down to the river; and now they sat gaping up at her, fumbling with their oars. The tiny cox gaped too; but he it was who first recalled duty. With piping adjurations he brought the giants back to their senses. The boat moved away down stream, with a fairly steady stroke.

Not in a day can the traditions of Oxford be sent spinning. From all the barges the usual punt-loads of young men were being ferried across to the towing-path⁠—young men naked of knee, armed with rattles, post-horns, motor-hooters, gongs, and other instruments of clangour. Though Zuleika filled their thoughts, they hurried along the towing-path, as by custom, to the starting-point.

She, meanwhile, had not taken her eyes off the Duke’s profile. Nor had she dared, for fear of disappointment, to ask him just what he had meant.

“All these men,” he repeated dreamily, “will be coy of your advances.” It seemed to him a good thing that his death, his awful example, would disinfatuate his fellow alumni. He had never been conscious of public spirit. He had lived for himself alone. Love had come to him yesternight, and today had waked in him a sympathy with mankind. It was a fine thing to be a saviour. It was splendid to be human. He looked quickly round to her who had wrought this change in him.

But the loveliest face in all the world will not please you if you see it suddenly, eye to eye, at a distance of half an inch from your own. It was thus that the Duke saw Zuleika’s: a monstrous deliquium a-glare. Only for the fraction of an instant, though. Recoiling, he beheld the loveliness that he knew⁠—more adorably vivid now in its look of eager questioning. And in his every fibre he thrilled to her. Even so had she gazed at him last night, this morning. Aye, now as then, her soul was full of him. He had recaptured, not her love, but his power to please her. It was enough. He bowed his head; and “Moriturus te saluto” were the words formed silently by his lips. He was glad that his death would be a public service to the University. But the salutary lesson of what the newspapers would call his “rash act” was, after all, only a side-issue. The great thing, the prospect that flushed his cheek, was the consummation of his own love, for its own sake, by his own death. And, as he met her gaze, the question that had already flitted through his brain found a faltering utterance; and “Shall you mourn me?” he asked her.

But she would have no ellipses. “What are you going to do?” she whispered.

“Do you not know?”

“Tell me.”

“Once and for all: you cannot love me?”

Slowly she shook her head. The black pearl and the pink, quivering, gave stress to her ultimatum. But the violet of her eyes was all but hidden by the dilation of her pupils.

“Then,” whispered the Duke, “when I shall have died, deeming life a vain thing without you, will the gods give you tears for me? Miss Dobson, will your soul awaken? When I shall have sunk forever beneath these waters whose supposed purpose here this afternoon is but that they be ploughed by the blades of these young oarsmen, will there be struck from that flint, your heart, some late and momentary spark of pity for me?”

“Why of course, of course!” babbled Zuleika, with clasped hands and dazzling eyes. “But,” she curbed herself, “it is⁠—it would⁠—oh, you mustn’t think of it! I couldn’t allow it! I⁠—I should never forgive myself!”

“In fact, you would mourn me always?”

“Why yes!⁠ ⁠… Y-es⁠—always.” What else could she say? But would his answer be that he dared not condemn her to lifelong torment?

“Then,” his answer was, “my joy in dying for you is made perfect.”

Her muscles relaxed. Her breath escaped between her teeth. “You are utterly resolved?” she asked. “Are you?”

“Utterly.”

“Nothing I might say could change your purpose?”

“Nothing.”

“No entreaty, howsoever piteous, could move you?”

“None.”

Forthwith she urged, entreated, cajoled, commanded, with infinite prettiness of ingenuity and of eloquence. Never was such a cascade of dissuasion as hers. She only didn’t say she could love him. She never hinted that. Indeed, throughout her pleading rang this recurrent motif: that he must live to take to himself as mate some good, serious, clever woman who would be a not unworthy mother of his children.

She laid stress on his youth, his great position, his brilliant attainments, the much he had already achieved, the splendid possibilities of his future. Though of course she spoke in undertones, not to be overheard by the throng on the barge, it was almost as though his health were being floridly proposed at some public banquet⁠—say, at a Tenants’ Dinner. Insomuch that, when she ceased, the Duke half expected Jellings, his steward, to bob up uttering, with lifted hands, a stentorian “For-or,” and all the company to take up the chant: “he’s⁠—a jolly good fellow.” His brief reply, on those occasions, seemed always to indicate that, whatever else he might be, a jolly good fellow he was not. But by Zuleika’s eulogy he really was touched. “Thank you⁠—thank you,” he gasped; and there were tears in his eyes. Dear the thought that she so revered him, so wished him not to die. But this was no more than a rush-light in the austere radiance of his joy in dying for her.

And the time was come. Now for the sacrament of his immersion in infinity.

“Goodbye,” he said simply, and was about to swing himself on to the ledge of the balustrade. Zuleika, divining his intention, made way for him. Her bosom heaved quickly, quickly. All colour had left her face; but her eyes shone as never before.

Already his foot was on the ledge, when hark! the sound of a distant gun. To Zuleika, with all the chords of her soul strung to the utmost tensity, the effect was as if she herself had been shot; and