text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/55

 absurdity of the situation. He relapsed into his chair, smiling. "She's the Warden's niece," he said. "I dined at the Warden's last night."

Noaks sat still, peering across at the Duke. For the first time in his life, he was resentful of the Duke's great elegance and average stature, his high lineage and incomputable wealth. Hitherto, these things had been too remote for envy. But now, suddenly, they seemed near to him—nearer and more overpowering than the First in Mods had ever been. "And of course she's in love with you?" he snarled.

Really, this was for the Duke a new issue. So salient was his own passion that he had not had time to wonder whether it were returned. Zuleika's behaviour during dinner But that was how so many young women had behaved. It was no sign of disinterested love. It might mean merely Yet no! Surely, looking into her eyes, he had seen there a radiance finer than could have been lit by common ambition. Love, none other, must have lit in those purple depths the torches whose clear flames had leapt out to him. She loved him. She, the beautiful, the wonderful, had not tried to conceal her love for him. She had shown him all—had shown all, poor darling! only to be snubbed by a prig, driven away by a boor, fled from by a fool. To the nethermost corner of his soul, he cursed himself for what he had done, and for all he had left undone. He would go to her on his

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/55


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/56

 knees. He would implore her to impose on him insufferable penances. There was no penance, how bittersweet soever, could make him a little worthy of her.

"Come in!" he cried mechanically. Entered the landlady's daughter.

"A lady downstairs," she said, "asking to see your Grace. Says she'll step round again later if your Grace is busy."

"What is her name?" asked the Duke, vacantly. He was gazing at the girl with pain-shot eyes.

"Miss Zuleika Dobson," pronounced the girl.

He rose.

"Show Miss Dobson up," he said.

Noaks had darted to the looking-glass and was smoothing his hair with a tremulous, enormous hand.

"Go!" said the Duke, pointing to the door. Noaks went, quickly. Echoes of his boots fell from the upper stairs and met the ascending susurrus of a silk skirt.

The lovers met. There was an interchange of ordinary greetings: from the Duke, a comment on the weather; from Zuleika, a hope that he was well again—they had been so sorry to lose him last night. Then came a pause. The landlady's daughter was clearing away the breakfast-things. Zuleika glanced comprehensively at the room, and the Duke gazed at the hearthrug. The landlady's daughter clattered out with her freight. They were alone.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/56


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/57

 "How pretty!" said Zuleika. She was looking at his star of the Garter, which sparkled from a litter of books and papers on a small side-table.

"Yes," he answered. "It is pretty, isn't it?"

"Awfully pretty!" she rejoined.

This dialogue led them to another hollow pause. The Duke's heart beat violently within him. Why had he not asked her to take the star and keep it as a gift? Too late now! Why could he not throw himself at her feet? Here were two beings, lovers of each other, with none by. And yet

She was examining a water-colour on the wall, seemed to be absorbed by it. He watched her. She was even lovelier than he had remembered; or rather her loveliness had been, in some subtle way, transmuted. Something had given to her a graver, nobler beauty. Last night's nymph had become the Madonna of this morning. Despite her dress, which was of a tremendous tartan, she diffused the pale authentic radiance of a spirituality most high, most simple. The Duke wondered where lay the change in her. He could not understand. Suddenly she turned to him, and he understood. No longer the black pearl and the pink, but two white pearls He thrilled to his heart's core.

"I hope," said Zuleika, "you aren't awfully vexed with me for coming like this?"

"Not at all," said the Duke. "I am delighted

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/57


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/58

 to see you." How inadequate the words sounded, how formal and stupid!

"The fact is," she continued, "I don't know a soul in Oxford. And I thought perhaps you'd give me luncheon, and take me to see the boat-races. Will you?"

"I shall be charmed," he said, pulling the bell-rope. Poor fool! he attributed the shade of disappointment on Zuleika's face to the coldness of his tone. He would dispel that shade. He would avow himself. He would leave her no longer in this false position. So soon as he had told them about the meal, he would proclaim his passion.

The bell was answered by the landlady's daughter.

"Miss Dobson will stay to luncheon," said the Duke. The girl withdrew. He wished he could have asked her not to.

He steeled himself. "Miss Dobson," he said, "I wish to apologise to you."

Zuleika looked at him eagerly. "You can't give me luncheon? You've got something better to do?"

"No. I wish to ask you to forgive me for my behaviour last night."

"There is nothing to forgive."

"There is. My manners were vile. I know well what happened. Though you, too, cannot have forgotten, I won't spare myself the recital. You were my hostess, and I ignored you. Magnani-

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/58


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/59

 mous, you paid me the prettiest compliment woman ever paid to man, and I insulted you. I left the house in order that I might not see you again. To the doorsteps down which he should have kicked me, your grandfather followed me with words of kindliest courtesy. If he had sped me with a kick so skilful that my skull had been shattered on the kerb, neither would he have outstepped those bounds set to the conduct of English gentlemen, nor would you have garnered more than a trifle on account of your proper reckoning. I do not say that you are the first person whom I have wantonly injured. But it is a fact that I, in whom pride has ever been the topmost quality, have never expressed sorrow to any one for anything. Thus, I might urge that my present abjectness must be intolerably painful to me, and should incline you to forgive. But such an argument were specious merely. I will be quite frank with you. I will confess to you that, in this humbling of myself before you, I take a pleasure as passionate as it is strange. A confusion of feelings? Yet you, with a woman's instinct, will have already caught the clue to it. It needs no mirror to assure me that the clue is here for you, in my eyes. It needs no dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul. And I know that from two open windows my soul has been leaning and signalling to you, in a code far more definitive

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/59


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/60

 and swifter than words of mine, that I love you."

Zuleika, listening to him, had grown gradually paler and paler. She had raised her hands and cowered as though he were about to strike her. And then, as he pronounced the last three words, she had clasped her hands to her face and with a wild sob darted away from him. She was leaning now against the window, her head bowed and her shoulders quivering.

The Duke came softly behind her. "Why should you cry? Why should you turn away from me? Did I frighten you with the suddenness of my words? I am not versed in the tricks of wooing. I should have been more patient. But I love you so much that I could hardly have waited. A secret hope that you loved me too emboldened me, compelled me. You do love me. I know it. And, knowing it, I do but ask you to give yourself to me, to be my wife. Why should you cry? Why should you shrink from me? Dear, if there were anything any secret  if you had ever loved and been deceived, do you think I should honour you the less deeply, should not cherish you the more tenderly? Enough for me, that you are mine. Do you think I should ever reproach you for anything that may have"

Zuleika turned on him. "How dare you?" she gasped. "How dare you speak to me like that?"

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/60


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/61

 The Duke reeled back. Horror had come into his eyes. "You do not love me!" he cried.

"Love you?" she retorted. "You?"

"You no longer love me. Why? Why?"

"What do you mean?"

"You loved me. Don't trifle with me. You came to me loving me with all your heart."

"How do you know?"

"Look in the glass." She went at his bidding. He followed her. "You see them?" he said, after a long pause. Zuleika nodded. The two pearls quivered to her nod.

"They were white when you came to me," he sighed. "They were white because you loved me. From them it was that I knew you loved me even as I loved you. But their old colours have come back to them. That is how I know that your love for me is dead."

Zuleika stood gazing pensively, twitching the two pearls between her fingers. Tears gathered in her eyes. She met the reflection of her lover's eyes, and her tears brimmed over. She buried her face in her hands, and sobbed like a child.

Like a child's, her sobbing ceased quite suddenly. She groped for her handkerchief, angrily dried her eyes, and straightened and smoothed herself.

"Now I'm going," she said.

"You came here of your own accord, because you loved me," said the Duke. And you shall

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/61


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/62

 not go till you have told me why you have left off loving me."

"How did you know I loved you?" she asked after a pause. "How did you know I hadn't simply put on another pair of ear-rings?"

The Duke, with a melancholy laugh, drew the two studs from his waistcoat-pocket. "These are the studs I wore last night," he said.

Zuleika gazed at them. "I see," she said; then, looking up, "When did they become like that?"

"It was when you left the dining-room that I saw the change in them."

"How strange! It was when I went into the drawing-room that I noticed mine. I was looking in the glass, and"— She started. "Then you were in love with me last night?"

"I began to be in love with you from the moment I saw you."

"Then how could you have behaved as you did?"

"Because I was a pedant. I tried to ignore you, as pedants always do try to ignore any fact they cannot fit into their pet system. The basis of my pet system was celibacy. I don't mean the mere state of being a bachelor. I mean celibacy of the soul—egoism, in fact. You have converted me from that. I am now a confirmed tuist."

"How dared you insult me?" she cried, with a stamp of her foot. "How dared you make a fool of me before those people? Oh, it is too infamous!"

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/62


text:
Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 03.djvu/250

224 interest in deceiving them, or who were themselves deceived. They were brought up in the knowledge of universal morality, and in the contempt of superstition.

They had banished from all their estates a senseless custom which had enervated and depopulated the southern countries. This was to bury alive in immense dungeons, infinite numbers of both sexes who were eternally separated from one another, and sworn to have no communication togther. This madness had contributed more than the most cruel wars to lay waste and depopulate the earth.

In opposing these barbarous institutions so inimical to the laws of nature and the best interests of society, the princes of the north had become the benefactors of their race. They had likewise exploded other errors equally absurd and pernicious. In short, men had at last ventured to make use of their reason in those immense regions; whereas it was still believed almost everywhere else that they could not be governed but in proportion to their ignorance.

From Germany, Amazan arrived at Batavia, where his perpetual chagrin was in a great measure alleviated by perceiving among the inhabitants a faint resemblance to his happy countrymen, the Gan-


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/63

 "I have already asked you to forgive me for that. You said there was nothing to forgive."

"I didn't dream that you were in love with me."

"What difference can that make?"

"All the difference! All the difference in life!"

"Sit down! You bewilder me," said the Duke. "Explain yourself!" he commanded.

"Isn't that rather much for a man to ask of a woman?"

"I don't know. I have no experience of women. In the abstract, it seems to me that every man has a right to some explanation from the woman who has ruined his life."

"You are frightfully sorry for yourself," said Zuleika, with a bitter laugh. "Of course it doesn't occur to you that I am at all to be pitied. No! you are blind with selfishness. You love me—I don't love you: that is all you can realise. Probably you think you are the first man who has ever fallen on such a plight."

Said the Duke, bowing over a deprecatory hand, "If there were to pass my window one tithe of them whose hearts have been lost to Miss Dobson, I should win no solace from that interminable parade."

Zuleika blushed. "Yet," she said more gently, "be sure they would all be not a little envious of you! Not one of them ever touched the surface of my heart. You stirred my heart to its very depths. Yes, you made me love you madly. The

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/63


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/64

 pearls told you no lie. You were my idol—the one thing in the wide world to me. You were so different from any man I had ever seen except in dreams. You did not make a fool of yourself. I admired you. I respected you. I was all afire with adoration of you. And now," she passed her hand across her eyes, "now it is all over. The idol has come sliding down its pedestal to fawn and grovel with all the other infatuates in the dust about my feet."

The Duke looked thoughtfully at her. "I thought," he said, "that you revelled in your power over men's hearts. I had always heard that you lived for admiration."

"Oh," said Zuleika, "of course I like being admired. Oh yes, I like all that very much indeed. In a way, I suppose, I'm even pleased that you admire me. But oh, what a little miserable pleasure that is in comparison with the rapture I have forfeited! I had never known the rapture of being in love. I had longed for it, but I had never guessed how wonderfully wonderful it was. It came to me. I shuddered and wavered like a fountain in the wind. I was more helpless and flew lightlier than a shred of thistledown among the stars. All night long, I could not sleep for love of you; nor had I any desire of sleep, save that it might take me to you in a dream. I remember nothing that happened to me this morning before I found myself at your door."

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/64


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/65

 "Why did you ring the bell? Why didn't you walk away?"

"Why? I had come to see you, to be near you, to be with you."

"To force yourself on me."

"Yes."

"You know the meaning of the term 'effective occupation'? Having marched in, how could you have held your position, unless"—

"Oh, a man doesn't necessarily drive a woman away because he isn't in love with her."

"Yet that was what you thought I had done to you last night."

"Yes, but I didn't suppose you would take the trouble to do it again. And if you had, I should have only loved you the more. I thought you would most likely be rather amused, rather touched, by my importunity. I thought you would take a listless advantage, make a plaything of me—the diversion of a few idle hours in summer, and then, when you had tired of me, would cast me aside, forget me, break my heart. I desired nothing better than that. That is what I must have been vaguely hoping for. But I had no definite scheme. I wanted to be with you and I came to you. It seems years ago, now! How my heart beat as I waited on the doorstep! 'Is his Grace at home?' 'I don't know. I'll inquire. What name shall I say?' I saw in the girl's eyes that she, too, loved you. Have you seen that?"

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/65


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/66

 "I have never looked at her," said the Duke.

"No wonder, then, that she loves you," sighed Zuleika. "She read my secret at a glance. Women who love the same man have a kind of bitter freemasonry. We resented each other. She envied me my beauty, my dress. I envied the little fool her privilege of being always near to you. Loving you, I could conceive no life sweeter than hers—to be always near you; to black your boots, carry up your coals, scrub your doorstep; always to be working for you, hard and humbly and without thanks. If you had refused to see me, I would have bribed that girl with all my jewels to cede me her position."

The Duke made a step towards her. "You would do it still," he said in a low voice.

Zuleika raised her eyebrows. "I would not offer her one garnet," she said, "now."

"You shall love me again," he cried. "I will force you to. You said just now that you had ceased to love me because I was just like other men. I am not. My heart is no tablet of mere wax, from which an instant's heat can dissolve whatever impress it may bear, leaving it blank and soft for another impress, and another, and another. My heart is a bright hard gem, proof against any die. Came Cupid, with one of his arrow-points for graver, and what he cut on the gem's surface never can be effaced. There, deeply and forever, your image is intagliated.

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/66


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/67

 No years, nor fires, nor cataclysm of total Nature, can efface from that great gem your image."

"My dear Duke," said Zuleika, "don't be so silly. Look at the matter sensibly. I know that lovers don't try to regulate their emotions according to logic; but they do, nevertheless, unconsciously conform with some sort of logical system. I left off loving you when I found that you loved me. There is the premiss. Very well! Is it likely that I shall begin to love you again because you can't leave off loving me?"

The Duke groaned. There was a clatter of plates outside, and she whom Zuleika had envied came to lay the table for luncheon.

A smile flickered across Zuleika's lips; and "Not one garnet!" she murmured.

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/67


text:
Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 03.djvu/251

Rh garids. There he saw liberty, security and equality, with toleration in religion; but the ladies were so indifferent that none made him any advances, an experience he had not met with before. It is true, however, that had he been inclined to address them they would not have been offended; though, at the same time, not one would have been the least in love; but he was far from any thoughts of making conquests.

Formosanta had nearly caught him in this insipid nation. He had set out but a moment before her arrival.

Amazan had heard so much among the Batavians in praise of a certain island called Albion that he was led by curiosity to embark with his unicorns on board a ship, which, with a favorable easterly wind, carried him in a few hours to that celebrated country, more famous than Tyre or Atlantis.

The beautiful Formosanta, who had followed him, as it were on the scent, to the banks of the Volga, the Vistula, the Elbe, and the Weser, and had never been above a day or two behind him, arrived soon after at the mouth of the Rhine, where it empties its waters into the German ocean.

Here she learned that her beloved Amazan had just set sail for Albion. She thought she saw the vessel on board of which he was, and could not help crying out for joy, at which the Batavian ladies were greatly surprised, not imagining that a young man could possibly occasion so violent a transport.

 * Vol. 3—15


text:
Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 03.djvu/252

226 They took, indeed, but little notice of the phœnix, as they reckoned his feathers would not fetch nearly so good a price as those of their own ducks and other water-fowl. The princess of Babylon hired two vessels to carry herself and her retinue to that happy island which was soon to possess the only object of her desires, the soul of her life, and the god of her idolatry.

An unpropitious wind from the west suddenly arose, just as the faithful and unhappy Amazan landed on Albion's sea-girt shore, and detained the ships of the Babylonian princess just as they were on the point of sailing. Seized with a deep melancholy, she went to her room, determined to remain there till the wind should change; but it blew for the space of eight days with an unremitting violence. The princess, during this tedious period, employed her maid of honor, Irla, in reading romances; which were not indeed written by the Batavians; but as they are the factors of the universe they traffic in the wit as well as commodities of other nations. The princess purchased of Mark Michael Rey, the book-seller, all the novels which had been written by the Ausonians and the Welsh, the sale of which had been wisely prohibited among those nations to enrich their neighbors, the Batavians. She expected to find in those histories some adventures similar to her own, which might alleviate her grief. The maid of honor read, the phœnix made comments, and the princess,


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/68

passed in almost unbroken silence. Both Zuleika and the Duke were ravenously hungry, as people always are after the stress of any great emotional crisis. Between them, they made very short work of a cold chicken, a salad, a gooseberry-tart and a Camembert. The Duke filled his glass again and again. The cold classicism of his face had been routed by the new romantic movement which had swept over his soul. He looked two or three months older than when first I showed him to my reader.

He drank his coffee at one draught, pushed back his chair, threw away the cigarette he had just lit. "Listen!" he said.

Zuleika folded her hands on her lap.

"You do not love me. I accept as final your hint that you never will love me. I need not say—could not, indeed, ever say—how deeply, deeply you have pained me. As lover, I am rejected. But that rejection," he continued, striking the table, "is no stopper to my suit. It does but drive me to the use of arguments. My pride shrinks from them. Love, however, is greater than pride; and

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/68


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/69

 I, John, Albert, Edward, Claude, Orde, Angus, Tankerton, Tanville-Tankerton, fourteenth Duke of Dorset, Marquis of Dorset, Earl of Grove, Earl of Chastermaine, Viscount Brewsby, Baron Grove, Baron Petstrap, and Baron Wolock, in the Peerage of England, offer you my hand. Do not interrupt me. Do not toss your head. Consider well what I am saying. Weigh the advantages you would gain by acceptance of my hand. Indeed, they are manifold and tremendous. They are also obvious: do not shut your eyes to them. You, Miss Dobson, what are you? A conjurer, and a vagrant; without means, save such as you can earn by the sleight of your hand; without position; without a home; all unguarded but by your own self-respect. That you follow an honourable calling, I do not for one moment deny. I do, however, ask you to consider how great are its perils and hardships, its fatigues and inconveniences. From all these evils I offer you instant refuge. I offer you, Miss Dobson, a refuge more glorious and more augustly gilded than you, in your airiest flights of fancy, can ever have hoped for or imagined. I own about 340,000 acres. My town-residence is in St. James's Square. Tankerton, of which you may have seen photographs, is the chief of my country-seats. It is a Tudor house, set on the ridge of a valley. The valley, its park, is halved by a stream so narrow that the deer leap across. The

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/69


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/70

 gardens are estraded upon the slope. Round the house runs a wide paven terrace. There are always two or three peacocks trailing their sheathed feathers along the balustrade, and stepping how stiffly! as though they had just been unharnessed from Juno's chariot. Two flights of shallow steps lead down to the flowers and fountains. Oh, the gardens are wonderful. There is a Jacobean garden of white roses. Between the ends of two pleached alleys, under a dome of branches, is a little lake, with a Triton of black marble, and with water-lilies. Hither and thither under the archipelago of water-lilies, dart gold-fish—tongues of flame in the dark water. There is also a long strait alley of clipped yew. It ends in an alcove for a pagoda of painted porcelain which the Prince Regent—peace be to his ashes!—presented to my great-grandfather. There are many twisting paths, and sudden aspects, and devious, fantastic arbours. Are you fond of horses? In my stables of pine-wood and plated-silver seventy are installed. Not all of them together could vie in power with one of the meanest of my motor-cars."

"Oh, I never go in motors," said Zuleika. "They make one look like nothing on earth, and like everybody else."

"I myself," said the Duke, "use them little for that very reason. Are you interested in farming? At Tankerton there is a model farm which would at any rate amuse you, with its heifers and hens

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/70


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/71

 and pigs that are like so many big new toys. There is a tiny dairy, which is called 'Her Grace's.' You could make, therein, real butter with your own hands, and round it into little pats, and press every pat with a different device. The boudoir that would be yours is a blue room. Four Watteaus hang in it. In the dining-hall hang portraits of my forefathers—in petto, your forefathers-in-law—by many masters. Are you fond of peasants? My tenantry are delightful creatures, and there is not one of them who remembers the bringing of the news of the Battle of Waterloo. When a new Duchess is brought to Tankerton, the oldest elm in the park must be felled. That is one of many strange old customs. As she is driven through the village, the children of the tenantry must strew the road with daisies. The bridal chamber must be lighted with as many candles as years have elapsed since the creation of the Dukedom. If you came into it, there would be"—and the youth, closing his eyes, made a rapid calculation—"exactly three hundred and eighty-eight candles. On the eve of the death of a Duke of Dorset, two black owls come and perch on the battlements. They remain there through the night, hooting. At dawn they fly away, none knows whither. On the eve of the death of any other Tanville-Tankerton, comes (no matter what be the time of year) a cuckoo. It stays for an hour, cooing, then flies away, none knows whither.

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/71


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/72

 Whenever this portent occurs, my steward telegraphs to me, that I, as head of the family, be not unsteeled against the shock of a bereavement, and that my authority be sooner given for the unsealing and garnishing of the family-vault. Not every forefather of mine rests quiet beneath his escutcheoned marble. There are they who revisit, in their wrath or their remorse, the places wherein erst they suffered or wrought evil. There is one who, every Halloween, flits into the dining-hall, and hovers before the portrait which Hans Holbein made of him, and flings his diaphanous grey form against the canvas, hoping, maybe, to catch from it the fiery flesh-tints and the solid limbs that were his, and so to be re-incarnate. He flies against the painting, only to find himself t'other side of the wall it hangs on. There are five ghosts permanently residing in the right wing of the house, two in the left, and eleven in the park. But all are quite noiseless and quite harmless. My servants, when they meet them in the corridors or on the stairs, stand aside to let them pass, thus paying them the respect due to guests of mine; but not even the rawest housemaid ever screams or flees at sight of them. I, their host, often waylay them and try to commune with them; but always they glide past me. And how gracefully they glide, these ghosts! It is a pleasure to watch them. It is a lesson in deportment. May they never be laid! Of all my household-pets, they are the dearest to

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/72


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/73

 me. I am Duke of Strathsporran and Cairngorm, Marquis of Sorby, and Earl Cairngorm, in the Peerage of Scotland. In the glens of the hills about Strathsporran are many noble and nimble stags. But I have never set foot in my house there, for it is carpeted throughout with the tartan of my clan. You seem to like tartan. What tartan is it you are wearing?"

Zuleika looked down at her skirt. "I don't know," she said. "I got it in Paris."

"Well," said the Duke, "it is very ugly. The Dalbraith tartan is harmonious in comparison, and has, at least, the excuse of history. If you married me, you would have the right to wear it. You would have many strange and fascinating rights. You would go to Court. I admit that the Hanoverian Court is not much. Still, it is better than nothing. At your presentation, moreover, you would be given the entrée. Is that nothing to you? You would be driven to Court in my state-coach. It is swung so high that the streetsters can hardly see its occupant. It is lined with rose-silk; and on its panels, and on its hammer-cloth, my arms are emblazoned—no one has ever been able to count the quarterings. You would be wearing the family-jewels, reluctantly surrendered to you by my aunt. They are many and marvellous, in their antique settings. I don't want to brag. It humiliates me to speak to you as I am speaking. But I am heart-set on you, and to win you there

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/73


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/74

 is not a precious stone I would leave unturned. Conceive a parure all of white stones—diamonds, white sapphires, white topazes, tourmalines. Another, of rubies and amethysts, set in gold filigree. Rings that once were poison-combs on Florentine fingers. Red roses for your hair—every petal a hollowed ruby. Amulets and ape-buckles, zones and fillets. Aye! know that you would be weeping for wonder before you had seen a tithe of these gauds. Know, too, Miss Dobson, that in the Peerage of France I am Duc d'Etretat et de la Roche Guillaume. Louis Napoleon gave the title to my father for not cutting him in the Bois. I have a house in the Champs Elysées. There is a Swiss in its courtyard. He stands six-foot-seven in his stockings, and the chasseurs are hardly less tall than he. Wherever I go, there are two chefs in my retinue. Both are masters in their art, and furiously jealous of each other. When I compliment either of them on some dish, the other challenges him. They fight with rapiers, next morning, in the garden of whatever house I am occupying. I do not know whether you are greedy? If so, it may interest you to learn that I have a third chef, who makes only soufflés, and an Italian pastry-cook; to say nothing of a Spaniard for salads, an Englishwoman for roasts, and an Abyssinian for coffee. You found no trace of their handiwork in the meal you have just had with me? No; for in Oxford it is a whim of mine

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/74


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/75

 I may say a point of honour—to lead the ordinary life of an undergraduate. What I eat in this room is cooked by the heavy and unaided hand of Mrs. Batch, my landlady. It is set before me by the unaided and—or are you in error?—loving hand of her daughter. Other ministers have I none here. I dispense with my private secretaries. I am unattended by a single valet. So simple a way of life repels you? You would never be called upon to share it. If you married me, I should take my name off the books of my College. I propose that we should spend our honeymoon at Baiae. I have a villa at Baiae. It is there that I keep my grandfather's collection of majolica. The sun shines there always. A long olive-grove secretes the garden from the sea. When you walk in the garden, you know the sea only in blue glimpses through the vacillating leaves. White-gleaming from the bosky shade of this grove are several goddesses. Do you care for Canova? I don't myself. If you do, these figures will appeal to you: they are in his best manner. Do you love the sea? This is not the only house of mine that looks out on it. On the coast of County Clare—am I not Earl of Enniskerry and Baron Shandrin in the Peerage of Ireland?—I have an ancient castle. Sheer from a rock stands it, and the sea has always raged up against its walls. Many ships lie wrecked under that loud implacable sea. But mine is a brave strong castle. No storm affrights it; and

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/75


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/76

 not the centuries, clustering houris, with their caresses can seduce it from its hard austerity. I have several titles which for the moment escape me. Baron Llffthwchl am I, and and  but you can find them for yourself in Debrett. In me you behold a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, and a Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. Look well at me! I am Hereditary Comber of the Queen's Lap-Dogs. I am young. I am handsome. My temper is sweet, and my character without blemish. In fine, Miss Dobson, I am a most desirable parti."

"But," said Zuleika, "I don't love you."

The Duke stamped his foot. "I beg your pardon," he said hastily. "I ought not to have done that. But—you seem to have entirely missed the point of what I was saying."

"No, I haven't," said Zuleika.

"Then what," cried the Duke, standing over her, "what is your reply?"

Said Zuleika, looking up at him, "My reply is that I think you are an awful snob."

The Duke turned on his heel, and strode to the other end of the room. There he stood for some moments, his back to Zuleika.

"I think," she resumed in a slow, meditative voice, "that you are, with the possible exception of a Mr. Edelweiss, the most awful snob I have ever met."

The Duke looked back over his shoulder. He

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/76


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/77

 gave Zuleika the stinging reprimand of silence. She was sorry, and showed it in her eyes. She felt she had gone too far. True, he was nothing to her now. But she had loved him once. She could not forget that.

"Come!" she said. "Let us be good friends. Give me your hand!" He came to her, slowly. "There!"

The Duke withdrew his fingers before she unclasped them. That twice-flung taunt rankled still. It was monstrous to have been called a snob. A snob!—he, whose readiness to form what would certainly be regarded as a shocking misalliance ought to have stifled the charge, not merely vindicated him from it! He had forgotten, in the blindness of his love, how shocking the misalliance would be. Perhaps she, unloving, had not been so forgetful? Perhaps her refusal had been made, generously, for his own sake. Nay, rather for her own. Evidently, she had felt that the high sphere from which he beckoned was no place for the likes of her. Evidently, she feared she would pine away among those strange splendours, never be acclimatised, always be unworthy. He had thought to overwhelm her, and he had done his work too thoroughly. Now he must try to lighten the load he had imposed.

Seating himself opposite to her, "You remember," he said, "that there is a dairy at Tankerton?"

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/77


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/78

 "A dairy? Oh yes."

"Do you remember what it is called?"

Zuleika knit her brows.

He helped her out. "It is called 'Her Grace's'."

"Oh, of course!" said Zuleika.

"Do you know why it is called so?"

"Well, let's see I know you told me."

"Did I? I think not. I will tell you now That cool out-house dates from the middle of the eighteenth century. My great-great-grandfather, when he was a very old man, married en troisièmes noces a dairy-maid on the Tankerton estate. Meg Speedwell was her name. He had seen her walking across a field, not many months after the interment of his second Duchess, Maria, that great and gifted lady. I know not whether it was that her bonny mien fanned in him some embers of his youth, or that he was loth to be outdone in gracious eccentricity by his crony the Duke of Dewlap, who himself had just taken a bride from a dairy. (You have read Meredith's account of that affair? No? You should.) Whether it was veritable love or mere modishness that formed my ancestor's resolve, presently the bells were ringing out, and the oldest elm in the park was being felled, in Meg Speedwell's honour, and the children were strewing daisies on which Meg Speedwell trod, a proud young hoyden of a bride, with her head in the air and her heart in the seventh heaven. The

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/78


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/79

 Duke had given her already a horde of fine gifts; but these, he had said, were nothing—trash in comparison with the gift that was to ensure for her a perdurable felicity. After the wedding-breakfast, when all the squires had ridden away on their cobs, and all the squires' ladies in their coaches, the Duke led his bride forth from the hall, leaning on her arm, till they came to a little edifice of new white stone, very spick and span, with two lattice-windows and a bright green door between. This he bade her enter. A-flutter with excitement, she turned the handle. In a moment she flounced back, red with shame and anger—flounced forth from the fairest, whitest, dapperest dairy, wherein was all of the best that the keenest dairy-maid might need. The Duke bade her dry her eyes, for that it ill befitted a great lady to be weeping on her wedding-day. 'As for gratitude,' he chuckled, 'zounds! that is a wine all the better for the keeping.' Duchess Meg soon forgot this unworthy wedding-gift, such was her rapture in the other, the so august, appurtenances of her new life. What with her fine silk gowns and farthingales, and her powder-closet, and the canopied bed she slept in—a bed bigger far than the room she had slept in with her sisters, and standing in a room far bigger than her father's cottage; and what with Betty, her maid, who had pinched and teased her at the village-school, but now waited on her so meekly and trembled so

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/79


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/80

 fearfully at a scolding; and what with the fine hot dishes that were set before her every day, and the gallant speeches and glances of the fine young gentlemen whom the Duke invited from London, Duchess Meg was quite the happiest Duchess in all England. For a while, she was like a child in a hay-rick. But anon, as the sheer delight of novelty wore away, she began to take a more serious view of her position. She began to realise her responsibilities. She was determined to do all that a great lady ought to do. Twice every day she assumed the vapours. She schooled herself in the mysteries of Ombre, of Macao. She spent hours over the tambour-frame. She rode out on horse-back, with a riding-master. She had a music-master to teach her the spinet; a dancing-master, too, to teach her the Minuet and the Triumph and the Gaudy. All these accomplishments she found mighty hard. She was afraid of her horse. All the morning, she dreaded the hour when it would be brought round from the stables. She dreaded her dancing-lesson. Try as she would, she could but stamp her feet flat on the parquet, as though it had been the village-green. She dreaded her music-lesson. Her fingers, disobedient to her ambition, clumsily thumped the keys of the spinet, and by the notes of the score propped up before her she was as cruelly perplexed as by the black and red pips of the cards she conned at the gaming-table, or by the red and gold threads

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/80


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/81

 threads that were always straying and snapping on her tambour-frame. Still she persevered. Day in, day out, sullenly, she worked hard to be a great lady. But skill came not to her, and hope dwindled; only the dull effort remained. One accomplishment she did master—to wit, the vapours: they became for her a dreadful reality. She lost her appetite for the fine hot dishes. All night long she lay awake, restless, tearful, under the fine silk canopy, till dawn stared her into slumber. She seldom scolded Betty. She who had been so lusty and so blooming saw in her mirror that she was pale and thin now; and the fine young gentlemen, seeing it too, paid more heed now to their wine and their dice than to her. And always, when she met him, the Duke smiled the same mocking smile. Duchess Meg was pining slowly and surely away One morning, in Spring-time, she altogether vanished. Betty, bringing the cup of chocolate to the bedside, found the bed empty. She raised the alarm among her fellows. They searched high and low. Nowhere was their mistress. The news was broken to their master, who, without comment, rose, bade his man dress him, and presently walked out to the place where he knew he would find her. And there, to be sure, she was, churning, churning for dear life. Her sleeves were rolled above her elbows, and her skirt was kilted high; and, as she looked back over her shoulder and saw the Duke, there was the flush of roses in her cheeks, and the

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/81


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/82

 light of a thousand thanks in her eyes. 'Oh,' she cried, 'what a curtsey I would drop you, but that to let go the handle were to spoil all!' And every morning, ever after, she woke when the birds woke, rose when they rose, and went singing through the dawn to the dairy, there to practise for her pleasure that sweet and lowly handicraft which she had once practised for her need. And every evening, with her milking-stool under her arm, and her milk-pail in her hand, she went into the field and called the cows to her, as she had been wont to do. To those other, those so august, accomplishments she no more pretended. She gave them the go-by. And all the old zest and joyousness of her life came back to her. Soundlier than ever slept she, and sweether dreamed, under the fine silk canopy, till the birds called her to her work. Greater than ever was her love of the fine furbelows that were hers to flaunt in, and sharper her appetite for the fine hot dishes, and more tempestuous her scolding of Betty, poor maid. She was more than ever now the cynosure, the adored, of the fine young gentlemen. And as for her husband, she looked up to him as the wisest, kindest man in all the world."

"And the fine young gentlemen," said Zuleika, "did she fall in love with any of them?"

"You forget," said the Duke coldly, "she was married to a member of my family."

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/82


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/83

 "Oh, I beg your pardon. But tell me: did they all adore her?"

"Yes. Every one of them, wildly, madly."

"Ah," murmured Zuleika, with a smile of understanding. A shadow crossed her face, "Even so," she said, with some pique, "I don't suppose she had so very many adorers. She never went out into the world."

"Tankerton," said the Duke drily, "is a large house, and my great-great-grandfather was the most hospitable of men. However," he added, marvelling that she had again missed the point so utterly, "my purpose was not to confront you with a past rival in conquest, but to set at rest a fear which I had, I think, roused in you by my somewhat full description of the high majestic life to which you, as my bride, would be translated."

"A fear? What sort of a fear?"

"That you would not breathe freely—that you would starve (if I may use a somewhat fantastic figure) among those strawberry-leaves. And so I told you the story of Meg Speedwell, and how she lived happily ever after. Nay, hear me out! The blood of Meg Speedwell's lord flows in my veins. I think I may boast that I have inherited something of his sagacity. In any case, I can profit by his example. Do not fear that I, if you were to wed me, should demand a metamoryhosis of your present self. I should take you as you are,

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/83


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/84

 gladly. I should encourage you to be always exactly as you are—a radiant, irresistible member of the upper middle-class, with a certain freedom of manner acquired through a life of peculiar liberty. Can you guess what would be my principal wedding-gift to you? Meg Speedwell had her dairy. For you, would be built another out-house—a neat hall wherein you would perform your conjuring-tricks, every evening except Sunday, before me and my tenants and my servants, and before such of my neighbours as might care to come. None would respect you the less, seeing that I approved. Thus in you would the pleasant history of Meg Speedwell repeat itself. You, practising for your pleasure—nay, hear me out!—that sweet and lowly handicraft which"

"I won't listen to another word!" cried Zuleika. "You are the most insolent person I have ever met. I happen to come of a particularly good family. I move in the best society. My manners are absolutely perfect. If I found myself in the shoes of twenty Duchesses simultaneously, I should know quite well how to behave. As for the one pair you can offer me, I kick them away—so. I kick them back at you. I tell you"

"Hush," said the Duke, "hush! You are over-excited. There will be a crowd under my window. There, there! I am sorry. I thought"

"Oh, I know what you thought," said Zuleika, in a quieter tone. "I am sure you meant well.

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/84


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/85

 I am sorry I lost my temper. Only, you might have given me credit for meaning what I said: that I would not marry you, because I did not love you. I daresay there would be great advantages in being your Duchess. But the fact is, I have no worldly wisdom. To me, marriage is a sacrament. I could no more marry a man about whom I could not make a fool of myself than I could marry one who made a fool of himself about me. Else had I long ceased to be a spinster. Oh my friend, do not imagine that I have not rejected, in my day, a score of suitors quite as eligible as you."

"As eligible? Who were they?" frowned the Duke.

"Oh, Archduke this, and Grand Duke that, and His Serene Highness the other. I have a wretched memory for names."

"And my name, too, will soon escape you, perhaps?"

"No. Oh, no. I shall always remember yours. You see, I was in love with you. You deceived me into loving you She sighed. "Oh, had you but been as strong as I thought you  Still, a swain the more. That is something." She leaned forward, smiling archly. "Those studs—show me them again."

The Duke displayed them in the hollow of his hand. She touched them lightly, reverently, as a tourist touches a sacred relic in a church.

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/85


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/86

 At length, "Do give me them," she said. "I will keep them in a little secret partition of my jewel-case." The Duke had closed his fist. "Do!" she pleaded. "My other jewels—they have no separate meanings for me. I never remember who gave me this one or that. These would be quite different. I should always remember their history Do!"

Ask me for anything else," said the Duke. "These are the one thing I could not part with—even to you, for whose sake they are hallowed."

Zuleika pouted. On the verge of persisting, she changed her mind, and was silent.

"Well!" she said abruptly, "how about these races? Are you going to take me to see them?"

"Races? What races?" murmured the Duke. "Oh yes. I had forgotten. Do you really mean that you want to see them?"

"Why, of course! They are great fun, aren't they?"

"And you are in a mood for great fun? Well, there is plenty of time. The Second Division is not rowed till half-past four."

"The Second Division? Why not take me to the First?"

"That is not rowed till six."

"Isn't this rather an odd arrangement?"

"No doubt. But Oxford never pretended to be strong in mathematics."

"Why, it's not yet three!" cried Zuleika, with

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/86


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/87

 a woebegone stare at the clock. "What is to be done in the meantime?"

"Am not I sufficiently diverting?" asked the Duke bitterly.

"Quite candidly, no. Have you any friend lodging with you here?"

"One, overhead. A man named Noaks."

"A small man, with spectacles?"

"Very small, with very large spectacles."

"He was pointed out to me yesterday, as I was driving from the Station No, I don't think I want to meet him. What can you have in common with him?"

"One frailty, at least: he, too, Miss Dobson, loves you."

"But of course he does. He saw me drive past. Very few of the others," she said, rising and shaking herself, "have set eyes on me. Do let us go out and look at the Colleges. I do need change of scene. If you were a doctor, you would have prescribed that long ago. It is very bad for me to be here, a kind of Cinderella, moping over the ashes of my love for you. Where is your hat?"

Looking round, she caught sight of herself in the glass. "Oh," she cried, "what a fright I do look! I must never be seen like this!"

"You look very beautiful."

"I don't. That is a lover's illusion. You yourself told me that this tartan was perfectly hideous. There was no need to tell me that. I came thus

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/87


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/88

 because I was coming to see you. I chose this frock in the deliberate fear that you, if I made myself presentable, might succumb at second sight of me. I would have sent out for a sack and dressed myself in that, I would have blacked my face all over with burnt cork, only I was afraid of being mobbed on the way to you."

"Even so, you would but have been mobbed for your incorrigible beauty."

"My beauty! How I hate it!" sighed Zuleika. "Still, here it is, and I must needs make the best of it. Come! Take me to Judas. I will change my things. Then I shall be fit for the races."

As these two emerged, side by side, into the street, the Emperors exchanged stony sidelong glances. For they saw the more than normal pallor of the Duke's face, and something very like desperation in his eyes. They saw the tragedy progressing to its foreseen close. Unable to stay its course, they were grimly fascinated now.

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/88


text:
Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 03.djvu/253

Rh finding nothing in the "Fortunate Country Maid," in "Tansai," or in the "Sopha," that had the least resemblance to her own affairs, interrupted the reader every moment by asking how the wind stood.

In the meantime Amazan was on the road to the capital of Albion in his coach and six unicorns, all his thoughts employed on his dear princess. At a small distance he perceived a carriage overturned in a ditch. The servants had gone in different directions in quest of assistance, but the owner kept his seat, smoking his pipe with great tranquillity, without manifesting the smallest impatience. His name was my lord What-then, in the language from which I translate these memoirs.

Amazan made all the haste possible to help him, and without assistance set the carriage to rights, so much was his strength superior to that of other men. My lord What-then took no other notice of him than saying, "A stout fellow, by Jove!" In the meantime the neighboring people, having arrived, flew into a great passion at being called out to no purpose, and fell upon the stranger. They abused him, called him an outlandish dog, and challenged him to strip and box.


text:
Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 03.djvu/254

228 Amazan seized a brace of them in each hand and threw them twenty paces from him; the rest, seeing this, pulled off their hats, and bowing with great respect, asked his honor for something to drink. His honor gave them more money than they had ever seen in their lives before. My lord What-then now expressed great esteem for him, and asked him to dinner at his country house, about three miles off. His invitation being accepted, he went into Amazan's coach, his own being out of order from the accident.

After a quarter of an hour's silence, my lord What-then, looking upon Amazan for a moment, said: "How d'ye do?" which, by the way, is a phrase without any meaning; adding, "You have got six fine unicorns there." After which he continued smoking as usual.

The traveller told him his unicorns were at his service, and that he had brought them from the country of the Gangarids. Then he took occasion to inform him of his affair with the princess of Babylon, and the unlucky kiss she had given the king of Egypt; to which the other made no reply, being very indifferent whether there were any such people in the world as a king of Egypt or a princess of Babylon.

He remained dumb for another quarter of an hour, after which he asked his companion a second time how he did, and whether they had any good roast beef among the Gangarids.

Amazan answered with his wonted politeness


text:
Page:An American Tragedy Vol 1.pdf/50

36 never knowed a t'ing about it up to dat time. All you gotta do is to watch de udders an' see how dey do, see. Yu get dat, do you?”

Clyde, whose education was not a little superior to that of his guide, commented quite sharply in his own mind on the use of such words as “knowed,” and “gotta”—also upon “t'ing,” “dat,” “udders,” and so on, but so grateful was he for any courtesy at this time that he was inclined to forgive his obviously kindly mentor anything for his geniality.

“Watch whoever's doin' anyt'ing, at first, see, till you git to know, see. Dat's de way. When de bell rings, if you're at de head of de bench, it's your turn, see, an' you jump up and go quick. Dey like you to be quick around here, see. An' whenever you see any one come in de door or out of an elevator wit a bag, an' you're at de head of de bench, you jump, wedder de captain rings de bell or calls ‘front’ or not. Sometimes he's busy or ain't lookin' an' he wants you to do dat, see. Look sharp, cause if you don't get no bags, you don't get no tips, see. Everybody dat has a bag or anyt'ing has to have it carried for 'em, unless dey won't let you have it, see.

“But be sure and wait somewhere near de desk for whoever comes in until dey sign up for a room,” he rattled on as they ascended in the elevator. “Most every one takes a room. Den de clerk'll give you de key an' after dat all you gotta do is to carry up de bags to de room. Den all you gotta do is to turn on de lights in de batroom and closet, if dere is one, so dey'll know where dey are, see. An' see if dere's towels in de room, so you can tell de maid if dere ain't, and den if dey don't give you no tip, you gotta go, only most times, unless you draw a stiff, all you gotta do is hang back a little—make a stall, see—fumble wit de door-key or try de transom, see. Den, if dey're any good, dey'll hand you a tip. If dey don't, you're out, dat's all, see. You can't even look as dough you was sore, dough—nottin' like dat, see. Den you come down an' unless dey wants ice-water or somepin, you're troo, see. It's back to de bench, quick. Dere ain't much to it. Only you gotta be quick all de time, see, and not let any one get by you comin' or goin'—dat's de main t'ing.

“An' after dey give you your uniform, an' you go to work, don't forgit to give de captain a dollar after every watch before you leave, see—two dollars on de day you has two watches, and a dollar on de day you has one, see? Dat's de way it is here. We work togedder like dat, here, an' you gotta do dat if you

title: Page:An American Tragedy Vol 1.pdf/50


text:
Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 03.djvu/255

Rh that they did not eat their brethren on the banks of the Ganges. He then explained to him that system which many ages afterward was surnamed the Pythagorean philosophy. But my lord fell asleep in the meantime, and made but one nap of it till he came to his own house.

He was married to a young and charming woman, on whom nature had bestowed a soul as lively and sensible as that of her husband was dull and stupid. A few gentlemen of Albion had that day come to dine with her, among whom there were characters of all sorts; for that country having been almost always under the government of foreigners, the families that had come over with these princes had imported their different manners. There were in this company some persons of an amiable disposition, others of superior genius, and a few of profound learning.

The mistress of the house had none of that awkward stiffness, that false modesty, with which the young ladies of Albion were then reproached. She did not conceal by a scornful look and an affected taciturnity her deficiency of ideas and the embarrassing humility of having nothing to say. Never was a woman more engaging. She received Amazan with a grace and politeness that were quite natural to her. The extreme beauty of this young stranger, and the involuntary comparison she could not help making between him and her prosaic husband, did not increase her happiness or content.

Dinner being served, she placed Amazan at her


text:
Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 03.djvu/256

230 side, and helped him to a variety of puddings, he having informed her that the Gangarids never dined upon anything which had received from the gods the celestial gift of life. The events of his early life, the manners of the Gangarids, the progress of arts, religion, and government were the subjects of a conversation equally agreeable and instructive all the time of the entertainment, which lasted till night, during which my lord What-then did nothing but push the bottle about, and call for the toast.

After dinner, while my lady was pouring out the tea, still feeding her eyes on the young stranger, he entered into a long conversation with a member of parliament; for every one knows that there was even then a parliament called "Wittenagemot," or the assembly of wise men. Amazan inquired into the constitution, laws, manners, customs, forces, and arts which made this country so respectable; and the member answered him in the following manner:

"For a long time we went stark naked, though our climate is none of the hottest. We were likewise for a long time enslaved by a people who came from the ancient country of Saturn, watered by the Tiber. But the mischief we have done one another has greatly exceeded all that we ever suffered from our first conquerors. One of our princes carried his superstition to such a pitch as to declare himself the subject of a priest, who dwells also on the banks of the Tiber, and is called the Old Man of the Seven Mountains. It has been the fate of the seven moun-


text:
Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 03.djvu/257

Rh tains to domineer over the greatest part of Europe, then inhabited by brutes in human shape.

"To those times of infamy and debasement succeeded the ages of barbarity and confusion. Our country, more tempestuous than the surrounding ocean, has been ravaged and drenched in blood by our civil discords. Many of our crowned heads have perished by a violent death. Above a hundred princes of the royal blood have ended their days on the scaffold, whilst the hearts of their adherents have been torn from their breasts and thrown in their faces. In short, it is the province of the hangman to write the history of our island, seeing that this personage has finally determined all our affairs of moment.

"But to crown these horrors, it is not very long since some fellows wearing black mantles, and others who cast white shirts over their jackets, having become aggressive and intolerant, succeeded in communicating their madness to the whole nation. Our country was then divided into two parties, the murderers and the murdered, the executioners and the sufferers, plunderers and slaves; and all in the name of God, and while they were seeking the Lord.

"Who would have imagined that from this horrible abyss, this chaos of dissension, cruelty, ignorance, and fanaticism, a government should at last spring up, the most perfect, it may be said, now in the world? yet such has been the event. A prince, honored and wealthy, all-powerful to do good, but


text:
Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 03.djvu/258

232 without power to do evil, is at the head of a free, warlike, commercial and enlightened nation. The nobles on one hand and the representatives of the people on the other, share the legislature with the monarch.

"We have seen, by a singular fatality of events, disorder, civil wars, anarchy and wretchedness lay waste the country, when our kings aimed at arbitrary power: whereas tranquillity, riches, and universal happiness have only reigned among us when the prince has remained satisfied with a limited authority. All order had been subverted while we were disputing about mysteries, but was re-established the moment we grew wise enough to despise them. Our victorious fleets carry our flag on every ocean; our laws place our lives and fortunes in security; no judge can explain them in an arbitrary manner, and no decision is ever given without the reasons assigned for it. We should punish a judge as an assassin who should condemn a citizen to death without declaring the evidence which accused him, and the law upon which he was convicted.

"It is true, there are always two parties among us who are continually writing and intriguing against each other; but they constantly reunite whenever it is needful to arm in defence of liberty and our country. These two parties watch over each other, and mutually prevent the violation of the sacred of the laws. They hate one another, but they


text:
Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 03.djvu/259

Rh love the state. They are like those jealous lovers who pay court to the same mistress with a spirit of emulation.

"From the same fund of genius by which we discovered and supported the natural rights of mankind, we have carried the sciences to the highest pitch to which they can attain among men. Your Egyptians, who pass for such great mechanics; your Indians, who are believed to be such great philosophers; your Babylonians, who boast of having observed the stars for the course of four hundred and thirty thousand years; the Greeks, who have written so much, and said so little, know in reality nothing in comparison to our inferior scholars, who have studied the discoveries of our great masters. We have ravished more secrets from nature in the space of a hundred years than the human species had been able to discover in as many ages.

"This is a true account of our present state. I have concealed from you neither the good nor the bad; neither our shame nor our glory; and I have exaggerated nothing."

At this discourse Amazan felt a strong desire to be instructed in those sublime sciences his friend had spoken of; and if his passion for the princess of Babylon, his filial duty to his mother whom he had quitted, and his love for his native country, had not made strong remonstrances to his distempered heart, he would willingly have spent the remainder of his


text:
Page:An American Tragedy Vol 1.pdf/51

 wanta hold your job. But dat's all. After dat all de rest is yours.”

Clyde saw.

A part of his twenty-four or thirty-two dollars as he figured it was going glimmering, apparently—eleven or twelve all told—but what of it! Would there not be twelve or fifteen or even more left? And there were his meals and his uniform. Kind Heaven! What a realization of paradise! What a consummation of luxury!

Mr. Hegglund of Jersey City escorted him to the twelfth floor and into a room where they found on guard a wizened and grizzled little old man of doubtful age and temperament, who forthwith outfitted Clyde with a suit that was so near a fit that, without further orders, it was not deemed necessary to alter it. And trying on various caps, there was one that fitted him—a thing that sat most rakishly over one ear—only, as Hegglund informed him, “You'll have to get dat hair of yours cut. Better get it clipped behind. It's too long.” And with that Clyde himself had been in mental agreement before he spoke. His hair certainly did not look right in the new cap. He hated it now. And going downstairs, and reporting to Mr. Whipple, Mr. Squires' assistant, the latter had said: “Very well. It fits all right, does it? Well, then, you go on here at six. Report at five-thirty and be here in your uniform at five-forty-five for inspection.”

Whereupon Clyde, being advised by Hegglund to go then and there to get his uniform and take it to the dressing-room in the basement, and get his locker from the locker-man, he did so, and then hurried most nervously out—first to get a hair-cut and afterwards to report to his family on his great luck.

He was to be a bell-boy in the great Hotel Green-Davidson. He was to wear a uniform and a handsome one. He was to make—but he did not tell his mother at first what he was to make, truly—but more than eleven or twelve at first, anyhow, he guessed—he could not be sure. For now, all at once, he saw economic independence ahead for himself, if not for his family, and he did not care to complicate it with any claims which a confession as to his real salary would most certainly inspire. But he did say that he was to have his meals free—because that meant eating away from home, which was what he wished. And in addition he was to live and move always in the glorious atmosphere of this hotel—not to have to go home ever before twelve, if he did not wish—to have good clothes—interesting company, maybe—a good time, gee!

title: Page:An American Tragedy Vol 1.pdf/51


text:
Page:An American Tragedy Vol 1.pdf/52

 And as he hurried on about his various errands now, it occurred to him as a final and shrewd and delicious thought that he need not go home on such nights as he wished to go to a theater or anything like that. He could just stay down-town and say he had to work. And that with free meals and good clothes—think of that!

The mere thought of all this was so astonishing and entrancing that he could not bring himself to think of it too much. He must wait and see. He must wait and see just how much he would make here in this perfectly marvelous-marvelous realm.

title: Page:An American Tragedy Vol 1.pdf/52


text:
Page:Chemical Weapons Act 1996.pdf/1

CHAPTER 6

title: Page:Chemical Weapons Act 1996.pdf/1


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/89

" evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones." At any rate, the sinner has a better chance than the saint of being hereafter remembered. We, in whom original sin preponderates, find him easier to understand. He is near to us, clear to us. The saint is remote, dim. A very great saint may, of course, be remembered through some sheer force or originality in him; and then the very mystery that involves him for us makes him the harder to forget: he haunts us the more surely because we shall never understand him. But the ordinary saints grow faint to posterity; whilst quite ordinary sinners pass vividly down the ages.

Of the disciples of Jesus, which is he that is most often remembered and cited by us? Not the disciple whom Jesus loved; neither of the Boanerges, nor any other of them who so steadfastly followed Him and served Him; but the disciple who betrayed Him for thirty pieces of silver. Judas Iscariot it is who outstands, overshadowing those other fishermen. And perhaps it was by reason of this precedence that Christopher

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/89


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/90

 Whitrid, Knight, in the reign of Henry VI., gave the name of Judas to the College which he had founded. Or perhaps it was because he felt that in a Christian community not even the meanest and basest of men should be accounted beneath contempt, beyond redemption.

At any rate, thus he named his foundation. And, though for Oxford men the savour of the name itself has long evaporated through its local connexion, many things show that for the Founder himself it was no empty vocable. In a niche above the gate stands a rudely carved statue of Judas, holding a money-bag in his right hand. Among the original statutes of the College is one by which the Bursar is enjoined to distribute in Passion Week thirty pieces of silver among the needier scholars "for saike of atonynge." The meadow adjoining the back of the College has been called from time immemorial "the Potter's Field." And the name of Salt Cellar is not less ancient and significant.

Salt Cellar, that grey and green quadrangle visible from the room assigned to Zuleika, is very beautiful, as I have said. So tranquil is it as to seem remote not merely from the world, but even from Oxford, so deeply is it hidden away in the core of Oxford's heart. So tranquil is it, one would guess that nothing had ever happened in it. For five centuries these walls have stood, and during that time have beheld, one would say, no sight

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/90


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/91

 less seemly than the good work of weeding, mowing, rolling, that has made, at length, so exemplary the lawn. These cloisters that grace the south and east sides—five centuries have passed through them, leaving in them no echo, leaving on them no sign, of all that the outer world, for good or evil, has been doing so fiercely, so raucously.

And yet, if you are versed in the antiquities of Oxford, you know that this small, still quadrangle has played its part in the rough-and-tumble of history, and has been the background of high passions and strange fates. The sun-dial in its midst has told the hours to more than one bygone King. Charles I. lay for twelve nights in Judas; and it was here, in this very quadrangle, that he heard from the lips of a breathless and blood-stained messenger the news of Chalgrove Field. Sixty years later, James, his son, came hither, black with threats, and from one of the hind-windows of the Warden's house—maybe, from the very room where now Zuleika was changing her frock—addressed the Fellows, and presented to them the Papist by him chosen to be their Warden, instead of the Protestant whom they had elected. They were not of so stern a stuff as the Fellows of Magdalen, who, despite His Majesty's menaces, had just rejected Bishop Farmer. The Papist was elected, there and then, al fresco, without dissent. Cannot one see them, these Fellows of Judas, huddled together round the sun-dial,

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/91


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/92

 like so many sheep in a storm? The King's wrath, according to a contemporary record, was so appeased by their pliancy that he deigned to lie for two nights in Judas, and at a grand refection in Hall "was gracious and merrie." Perhaps it was in lingering gratitude for such patronage that Judas remained so pious to his memory even after smug Herrenhausen had been dumped down on us for ever. Certainly, of all the Colleges none was more ardent than Judas for James Stuart. Thither it was that young Sir Harry Esson led, under cover of night, three-score recruits whom he had enlisted in the surrounding villages. The cloisters of Salt Cellar were piled with arms and stores; and on its grass—its sacred grass!—the squad was incessantly drilled, against the good day when Ormond should land his men in Devon. For a whole month Salt Cellar was a secret camp. But somehow, at length—woe to "lost causes and impossible loyalties"—Herrenhausen had wind of it; and one night, when the soldiers of the white cockade lay snoring beneath the stars, stealthily the white-faced Warden unbarred his postern—that very postern through which now Zuleika had passed on the way to her bedroom—and stealthily through it, one by one on tip-toe, came the King's foot-guards. Not many shots rang out, nor many swords clashed, in the night air, before the trick was won for law and order. Most of the rebels were overpowered in their sleep; and those who

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/92


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/93

 had time to snatch arms were too dazed to make good resistance. Sir Harry Esson himself was the only one who did not live to be hanged. He had sprung up alert, sword in hand, at the first alarm, setting his back to the cloisters. There he fought calmly, ferociously, till a bullet went through his chest. "By God, this College is well-named!" were the words he uttered as he fell forward and died.

Comparatively tame was the scene now being enacted in this place. The Duke, with bowed head, was pacing the path between the lawn and the cloisters. Two other undergraduates stood watching him, whispering to each other, under the archway that leads to the Front Quadrangle. Presently, in a sheepish way, they approached him. He halted and looked up.

"I say," stammered the spokesman.

"Well?" asked the Duke. Both youths were slightly acquainted with him; but he was not used to being spoken to by those whom he had not first addressed. Moreover, he was loth to be thus disturbed in his sombre reverie. His manner was not encouraging.

"Isn't it a lovely day for the Eights?" faltered the spokesman.

"I conceive," the Duke said, "that you hold back some other question."

The spokesman smiled weakly. Nudged by the other, he muttered "Ask him yourself!"

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/93


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/94

 The Duke diverted his gaze to the other, who, with an angry look at the one, cleared his throat, and said "I was going to ask if you thought Miss Dobson would come and have luncheon with me to-morrow?"

"A sister of mine will be there," explained the one, knowing the Duke to be a precisian.

"If you are acquainted with Miss Dobson, a direct invitation should be sent to her," said the Duke. "If you are not" The aposiopesis was icy.

"Well, you see," said the other of the two, "that is just the difficulty. I am acquainted with her. But is she acquainted with me? I met her at breakfast this morning, at the Warden's."

"So did I," added the one.

"But she—well," continued the other, "she didn't take much notice of us. She seemed to be in a sort of dream."

"Ah!" murmured the Duke, with melancholy interest.

"The only time she opened her lips," said the other, "was when she asked us whether we took tea or coffee."

"She put hot milk in my tea," volunteered the one, "and upset the cup over my hand, and smiled vaguely."

"And smiled vaguely," sighed the Duke.

"She left us long before the marmalade stage," said the one.

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/94


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/95

 "Without a word," said the other.

"Without a glance?" asked the Duke. It was testified by the one and the other that there had been not so much as a glance.

"Doubtless," the disingenuous Duke said, "she had a headache Was she pale?"

"Very pale," answered the one.

"A healthy pallor," qualified the other, who was a constant reader of novels.

"Did she look," the Duke inquired, "as if she had spent a sleepless night?"

That was the impression made on both.

"Yet she did not seem listless or unhappy?"

No, they would not go so far as to say that.

"Indeed, were her eyes of an almost unnatural brilliance?

"Quite unnatural," confessed the one.

"Twin stars," interpolated the other.

"Did she, in fact, seem to be consumed by some inward rapture?"

Yes, now they came to think of it, this was exactly how she had seemed.

It was sweet, it was bitter, for the Duke. "I remember," Zuleika had said to him, "nothing that happened to me this morning till I found myself at your door." It was bitter-sweet to have that outline filled in by these artless pencils. No, it was only bitter, to be, at his time of life, living in the past.

"The purpose of your tattle?" he asked coldly.

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/95


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/96

 The two youths hurried to the point from which he had diverted them. "When she went by with you just now," said the one, "she evidently didn't know us from Adam."

"And I had so hoped to ask her to luncheon," said the other.

"Well?"

"Well, we wondered if you would re-introduce us. And then perhaps "

There was a pause. The Duke was touched to kindness for these fellow-lovers. He would fain preserve them from the anguish that beset himself. So humanising is sorrow.

"You are in love with Miss Dobson?" he asked.

Both nodded.

"Then," said he, "you will in time be thankful to me for not affording you further traffic with that lady. To love and be scorned—does Fate hold for us a greater inconvenience? You think I beg the question? Let me tell you that I, too, love Miss Dobson, and that she scorns me."

To the implied question "What chance would there be for you?" the reply was obvious.

Amazed, abashed, the two youths turned on their heels.

"Stay!" said the Duke. "Let me, in justice to myself, correct an inference you may have drawn. It is not by reason of any defect in myself, perceived or imagined, that Miss Dobson scorns me. She scorns me simply because I love her.

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/96


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/97

 All who love her she scorns. To see her is to love her. Therefore shut your eyes to her. Strictly exclude her from your horizon. Ignore her. Will you do this?"

"We will try," said the one, after a pause.

"Thank you very much," added the other.

The Duke watched them out of sight. He wished he could take the good advice he had given them Suppose he did take it! Suppose he went to the Bursar, obtained an exeat, fled straight to London! What just humiliation for Zuleika to come down and find her captive gone! He pictured her staring around the quadrangle, ranging the cloisters, calling to him. He pictured her rustling to the gate of the College, inquiring at the porter's lodge. "His Grace, Miss, he passed through a minute ago. He's going down this afternoon."

Yet, even while his fancy luxuriated in this scheme, he well knew that he would not accomplish anything of the kind—knew well that he would wait here humbly, eagerly, even though Zuleika lingered over her toilet till crack o' doom. He had no desire that was not centred in her. Take away his love for her, and what remained? Nothing—though only in the past twenty-four hours had this love been added to him. Ah, why had he ever seen her? He thought of his past, its cold splendour and insouciance. But he knew that for him there was no returning. His boats

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/97


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/98

 were burnt. The Cytherean babes had set their torches to that flotilla, and it had blazed like match-wood. On the isle of the enchantress he was stranded for ever. For ever stranded on the isle of an enchantress who would have nothing to do with him! What, he wondered, should be done in so piteous a quandary? There seemed to be two courses. One was to pine slowly and painfully away. The other

Academically, the Duke had often reasoned that a man for whom life holds no chance of happiness cannot too quickly shake life off. Now, of a sudden, there was for that theory a vivid application.

"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer" was not a point by which he, "more an antique Roman than a Dane," was at all troubled. Never had he given ear to that cackle which is called Public Opinion. The judgment of his peers—this, he had often told himself, was the sole arbitrage he could submit to; but then, who was to be on the bench? Peerless, he was irresponsible—the captain of his soul, the despot of his future. No injunction but from himself would he bow to; and his own injunctions—so little Danish was he—had always been peremptory and lucid. Lucid and peremptory, now, the command he issued to himself.

"So sorry to have been so long," carolled a voice from above. The Duke looked up. "I'm all but ready," said Zuleika at her window.

That brief apparition changed the colour of his

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/98


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/99

 resolve. He realised that to die for love of this lady would be no mere measure of precaution, or counsel of despair. It would be in itself a passionate indulgence—a fiery rapture, not to be foregone. What better could he ask than to die for his love? Poor indeed seemed to him now the sacrament of marriage beside the sacrament of death. Death was incomparably the greater, the finer seal. Death was the one true bridal.

He flung back his head, spread wide his arms, quickened his pace almost to running speed. Ah, he would win his bride before the setting of the sun. He knew not by what means he would win her. Enough that even now, full-hearted, fleet-footed, he was on his way to her, and that she heard him coming.

When Zuleika, a vision in vaporous white, came out through the postern, she wondered why he was walking at so remarkable a pace. To him, wildly expressing in his movement the thought within him, she appeared as his awful bride. With a cry of joy, he bounded towards her, and would have caught her in his arms, had she not stepped nimbly aside.

"Forgive me!" he said, after a pause. "It was a mistake—an idiotic mistake of identity. I thought you were

Zuleika, rigid, asked "Have I many doubles?"

"You know well that in all the world is none so blest as to be like you. I can only say that

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/99


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/100

 I was over-wrought. I can only say that it shall not occur again."

She was very angry indeed. Of his penitence there could be no doubt. But there are outrages for which no penitence can atone. This seemed to be one of them. Her first impulse was to dismiss the Duke forthwith and for ever. But she wanted to show herself at the races. And she could not go alone. And except the Duke there was no one to take her. True, there was the concert to-night; and she could show herself there to advantage; but she wanted all Oxford to see her—see her now.

"I am forgiven?" he asked. In her, I am afraid, self-respect outweighed charity. "I will try," she said merely, "to forget what you have done." Motioning him to her side, she opened her parasol, and signified her readiness to start.

They passed together across the vast gravelled expanse of the Front Quadrangle. In the porch of the College there were, as usual, some chained-up dogs, patiently awaiting their masters. Zuleika, of course, did not care for dogs. One has never known a good man to whom dogs were not dear; but many of the best women have no such fondness. You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men. For the attractive woman, dogs are mere dumb and restless brutes—possibly dangerous, certainly soulless. Yet will coquetry

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/100


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/101

 teach her to caress any dog in the presence of a man enslaved by her. Even Zuleika, it seems, was not above this rather obvious device for awaking envy. Be sure she did not at all like the look of the very big bulldog who was squatting outside the porter's lodge. Perhaps, but for her present anger, she would not have stooped endearingly down to him, as she did, cooing over him and trying to pat his head. Alas, her pretty act was a failure. The bulldog cowered away from her, horrifically grimacing. This was strange. Like the majority of his breed, Corker (for such was his name) had ever been wistful to be noticed by any one—effusively grateful for every word or pat, an ever-ready wagger and nuzzler, to none ineffable. No beggar, no burglar, had ever been rebuffed by this catholic beast. But he drew the line at Zuleika.

Seldom is even a fierce bulldog heard to growl. Yet Corker growled at Zuleika.

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/101


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/102

Duke did not try to break the stony silence in which Zuleika walked. Her displeasure was a luxury to him, for it was so soon to be dispelled. A little while, and she would be hating herself for her pettiness. Here was he, going to die for her; and here was she, blaming him for a breach of manners. Decidedly, the slave had the whip-hand. He stole a sidelong look at her, and could not repress a smile. His features quickly composed themselves. The Triumph of Death must not be handled as a cheap score. He wanted to die because he would thereby so poignantly consummate his love, express it so completely, once and for all And she—who could say that she, knowing what he had done, might not, illogically, come to love him? Perhaps she would devote her life to mourning him. He saw her bending over his tomb, in beautiful humble curves, under a starless sky, watering the violets with her tears.

Shades of Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel and other despicable maunderers! He brushed them aside. He would be practical. The point was, when and how to die? Time: the sooner the

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/102


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/103

 better. Manner less easy to determine. He must not die horribly, nor without dignity. The manner of the Roman philosophers? But the only kind of bath which an undergraduate can command is a hip-bath. Stay! there was the river. Drowning (he had often heard) was a rather pleasant sensation. And to the river he was even now on his way.

It troubled him that he could swim. Twice, indeed, from his yacht, he had swum the Hellespont. And how about the animal instinct of self-preservation, strong even in despair? No matter! His soul's set purpose would subdue that. The law of gravitation that brings one to the surface? There his very skill in swimming would help him. He would swim under water, along the river-bed, swim till he found weeds to cling to, weird strong weeds that he would coil round him, exulting faintly

As they turned into Radcliffe Square, the Duke's ear caught the sound of a far-distant gun. He started, and looked up at the clock of St. Mary's. Half-past four! The boats had started.

He had heard that whenever a woman was to blame for a disappointment, the best way to avoid a scene was to inculpate oneself. He did not wish Zuleika to store up yet more material for penitence. And so "I am sorry," he said. "That gun—did you hear it? It was the signal for the race. I shall never forgive myself."

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/103


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/104

 "Then we shan't see the race at all?" cried Zuleika.

"It will be over, alas, before we are near the river. All the people will be coming back through the meadows."

"Let us meet them."

"Meet a torrent? Let us have tea in my rooms and go down quietly for the other Division."

"Let us go straight on."

Through the square, across the High, down Grove Street, they passed. The Duke looked up at the tower of Merton,. Strange that to-night it would still be standing here, in all its sober and solid beauty—still be gazing, over the roofs and chimneys, at the tower of Magdalen, its rightful bride. Through untold centuries of the future it would stand thus, gaze thus. He winced. Oxford walls have a way of belittling us; and the Duke was loth to regard his doom as trivial.

Aye, by all minerals we are mocked. Vegetables, yearly deciduous, are far more sympathetic. The lilac and laburnum, making lovely now the railed pathway to Christ Church meadow, were all a-swaying and a-nodding to the Duke as he passed by. "Adieu, adieu, your Grace," they were whispering. "We are very sorry for you—very sorry indeed. We never dared suppose you would predecease us. We think your death a very great tragedy. Adieu! Perhaps we shall meet in

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/104


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/105

 another world—that is, if the members of the animal kingdom have immortal souls, as we have."

The Duke was little versed in their language; yet, as he passed between these gently garrulous blooms, he caught at least the drift of their salutation, and smiled a vague but courteous acknowledgment, to the right and the left alternately, creating a very favourable impression.

No doubt, the young elms lining the straight way to the barges had seen him coming; but any whispers of their leaves were lost in the murmur of the crowd returning from the race. Here, at length, came the torrent of which the Duke had spoken; and Zuleika's heart rose at it. Here was Oxford! From side to side the avenue was filled with a dense procession of youths—youths interspersed with maidens whose parasols were as flotsam and jetsam on a seething current of straw hats. Zuleika neither quickened nor slackened her advance. But brighther and brighther shone her eyes.

The vanguard of the procession was pausing now, swaying, breaking at sight of her. She passed, imperial, through the way cloven for her. All a-down the avenue, the throng parted as though some great invisible comb were being drawn through it. The few youths who had already seen Zuleika, and by whom her beauty had been bruited throughout the University, were lost in a new wonder, so incomparably fairer was she than the

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/105


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/106

 remembered vision. And the rest hardly recognised her from the descriptions, so incomparably fairer was the reality than the hope.

She passed among them. None questioned the worthiness of her escort. Could I give you better proof of the awe in which our Duke was held? Any man is glad to be seen escorting a very pretty woman. He thinks it adds to his prestige. Whereas, in point of fact, his fellow-men are saying merely "Who's that appalling fellow with her?" or Why does she go about with that ass So-and-So?" Such cavil may in part be envy. But it is a fact that no man, howsoever graced, can shine in juxtaposition to a very pretty woman. The Duke himself cut a poor figure beside Zuleika. Yet not one of all the undergraduates felt she could have made a wiser choice.

She swept among them. Her own intrinsic radiance was not all that flashed from her. She was a moving reflector and refractor of all the rays of all the eyes that mankind had turned on her. Her mien told the story of her days. Bright eyes, light feet—she trod erect from a vista whose glare was dazzling to all beholders. She swept among them, a miracle, overwhelming, breath-bereaving. Nothing at all like her had ever been seen in Oxford.

Mainly architectural, the beauties of Oxford. True, the place is no longer one-sexed. There are the virguncules of Somerville and Lady Margaret's

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/106


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/107

 Hall; but beauty and the lust for learning have yet to be allied. There are the innumerable wives and daughters around the Parks, running in and out of their little red-brick villas; but the indignant shade of celibacy seems to have called down on the dons a Nemesis which precludes them from either marrying beauty or begetting it. (From the Warden's son, that unhappy curate, Zuleika inherited no tittle of her charm. Some of it, there is no doubt, she did inherit from the circus-rider who was her mother.)

But the casual feminine visitors? Well, the sisters and cousins of an undergraduate seldom seem more passable to his comrades than to himself. Altogether, the instinct of sex is not pandered to in Oxford. It is not, however, as it may once have been, dormant. The modern importation of samples of femininity serves to keep it alert, though not to gratify it. A like result is achieved by another modern development—photography. The undergraduate may, and usually does, surround himself with photographs of pretty ladies known to the public. A phantom harem! Yet the houris have an effect on their sultan. Surrounded both by plain women of flesh and blood and by beauteous women on pasteboard, the undergraduate is the easiest victim of living loveliness—is as a fire ever well and truly laid, amenable to a spark. And if the spark be such a flaring torch as Zuleika?—marvel not, reader, at the conflagration.

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/107


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/108

 Not only was the whole throng of youths drawing asunder before her: much of it, as she passed, was forming up in her wake. Thus, with the confluence of two masses—one coming away from the river, the other returning to it—chaos seethed around her and the Duke before they were half-way along the avenue. Behind them, and on either side of them, the people were crushed inextricably together, swaying and surging this way and that. "Help!" cried many a shrill feminine voice. "Don't push!" "Let me out!" "You brute!" "Save me, save me!" Many ladies fainted, whilst their escorts, supporting them and protecting them as best they could, peered over the heads of their fellows for one glimpse of the divine Miss Dobson. Yet for her and the Duke, in the midst of the terrific compress, there was space enough. In front of them, as by a miracle of deference, a way still cleared itself. They reached the end of the avenue without a pause in their measured progress. Nor even when they turned to the left, along the rather narrow path beside the barges, was there any obstacle to their advance. Passing evenly forward, they alone were cool, unhustled, undishevelled.

The Duke was so rapt in his private thoughts that he was hardly conscious of the strange scene. And as for Zuleika, she, as well she might be, was in the very best of good humours.

"What a lot of house-boats!" she exclaimed. "Are you going to take me on to one of them?"

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/108


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/109

 The Duke started. Already they were alongside the Judas barge. "Here," he said, "is our goal."

He stepped through the gate of the railings, out upon the plank, and offered her his hand.

She looked back. The young men in the vanguard were crushing their shoulders against the row behind them, to stay the oncoming host. She had half a mind to go back through the midst of them; but she really did want her tea, and she followed the Duke on to the barge, and under his auspices climbed the steps to the roof.

It looked very cool and gay, this roof, under its awning of red and white stripes. Nests of red and white flowers depended along either side of it. Zuleika moved to the side which commanded a view of the bank. She leaned her arms on the balustrade, and gazed down.

The crowd stretched as far as she could see—a vista of faces upturned to her. Suddenly it hove forward. Its vanguard was swept irresistibly past the barge—swept by the desire of the rest to see her at closer quarters. Such was the impetus that the vision for each man was but a lightning-flash: he was whirled past, struggling, almost before his brain took the message of his eyes.

Those who were Judas men made frantic efforts to board the barge, trying to hurl themselves through the gate in the railings; but they were swept vainly on.

Presently the torrent began to slacken, became

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/109


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/110

 a mere river, a mere procession of youths staring up rather shyly.

Before the last stragglers had marched by, Zuleika moved away to the other side of the roof, and, after a glance at the sunlit river, sank into one of the wicker chairs, and asked the Duke to look less disagreeable and to give her some tea.

Among others hovering near the little buffet were the two youths whose parley with the Duke I have recorded.

Zuleika was aware of the special persistency of their gaze. When the Duke came back with her cup, she asked him who they were. He replied, truthfully enough, that their names were unknown to him.

"Then," she said, "ask them their names, and introduce them to me."

"No," said the Duke, sinking into the chair beside her. "That I shall not do. I am your victim: not your pander. Those two men stand on the threshold of a possibly useful and agreeable career. I am not going to trip them up for you."

"I am not sure," said Zuleika, "that you are very polite. Certainly you are foolish. It is natural for boys to fall in love. If these two are in love with me, why not let them talk to me? It were an experience on which they would always look back with romantic pleasure. They may never

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/110


text:
Page:Diary of a Pilgrimage (1891).pdf/311

Rh

By MAY CROMMELIN.

By A. E. WILTON.

Edited by GEORGE FLEMING.

By KATHARINE S. MACQUOID.

or, An Unexplainable Phenomenon.

By LORIN LATHROP and ANNIE WAKEMAN.

A Novel. By Mrs. COMPTON-READE.

By EDGAR LEE.


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/111

 see me again. Why grudge them this little thing?" She sipped her tea. "As for tripping them up on a threshold—that is all nonsense. What harm has unrequited love ever done to anybody?" She laughed. "Look at me! When I came to your rooms this morning, thinking I loved in vain, did I seem one jot the worse for it? Did I look different?"

"You looked, I am bound to say, nobler, more spiritual."

"More spiritual?" she exclaimed. "Do you mean I looked tired or ill?"

"No, you seemed quite fresh. But then, you are singular. You are no criterion."

"You mean you can't judge those two young men by me? Well, I am only a woman, of course. I have heard of women, no longer young, wasting away because no man loved them. I have often heard of a young woman fretting because some particular young man didn't love her. But I never heard of her wasting away. Certainly a young man doesn't waste away for love of some particular young woman. He very soon makes love to some other one. If his be an ardent nature, the quicker his transition. All the most ardent of my past adorers have married. Will you put my cup down, please?"

"Past?" echoed the Duke, as he placed her cup on the floor. "Have any of your lovers ceased to love you?"

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/111


text:
Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/112

 "Ah no, no; not in retrospect. I remain their ideal, and all that, of course. They cherish the thought of me. They see the world in terms of me. But I am an inspiration, not an obsession; a glow, not a blight."

"You don't believe in the love that corrodes, the love that ruins?"

"No," laughed Zuleika.

"You have never dipped into the Greek pastoral poets, nor sampled the Elizabethan sonneteers?"

"No, never. You will think me lamentably crude: my experience of life has been drawn from life itself."

"Yet often you talk as though you had read rather much. Your way of speech has what is called 'the literary flavour'."

"Ah, that is an unfortunate trick which I caught from a writer, a Mr. Beerbohm, who once sat next to me at dinner somewhere. I can't break myself of it. I assure you I hardly ever open a book. Of life, though, my experience has been very wide. Brief? But I suppose the soul of man during the past two or three years has been much as it was in the reign of Queen Elizabeth and of—whoever it was that reigned over the Greek pastures. And I daresay the modern poets are making the same old silly distortions. But forgive me," she added gently, "perhaps you yourself are a poet?"

"Only since yesterday," answered the Duke (not

title: Page:Zuleika Dobson.djvu/112