Part 20

There was a violent jostle between the remaining men. The MacQuern cannily got out of it, and rushed downstairs. He emerged at the front-door just after Marraby touched ground. The Baronet’s left ankle had twisted under him. His face was drawn with pain as he hopped down the High on his right foot, fingering his ticket for the concert. Next leapt Lord Sayes. And last of all leapt Mr. Trent-Garby, who, catching his foot in the ruined flower-box, fell headlong, and was, I regret to say, killed. Lord Sayes passed Sir John in a few paces. The MacQuern overtook Mr. Oover at St. Mary’s and outstripped him in Radcliffe Square. The Duke came in an easy first.

Youth, youth!

Across the Front Quadrangle, heedless of the great crowd to right and left, Dorset rushed. Up the stone steps to the Hall he bounded, and only on the Hall’s threshold was he brought to a pause. The doorway was blocked by the backs of youths who had by hook and crook secured standing-room. The whole scene was surprisingly unlike that of the average College concert.

“Let me pass,” said the Duke, rather breathlessly. “Thank you. Make way please. Thanks.” And with quick-pulsing heart he made his way down the aisle to the front row. There awaited him a surprise that was like a douche of cold water full in his face. Zuleika was not there! It had never occurred to him that she herself might not be punctual.

The Warden was there, reading his programme with an air of great solemnity. “Where,” asked the Duke, “is your grand-daughter?” His tone was as of a man saying “If she is dead, don’t break it gently to me.”

“My grand-daughter?” said the Warden. “Ah, Duke, good evening.”

“She’s not ill?”

“Oh no, I think not. She said something about changing the dress she wore at dinner. She will come.” And the Warden thanked his young friend for the great kindness he had shown to Zuleika. He hoped the Duke had not let her worry him with her artless prattle. “She seems to be a good, amiable girl,” he added, in his detached way.

Sitting beside him, the Duke looked curiously at the venerable profile, as at a mummy’s. To think that this had once been a man! To think that his blood flowed in the veins of Zuleika! Hitherto the Duke had seen nothing grotesque in him--had regarded him always as a dignified specimen of priest and scholar. Such a life as the Warden’s, year following year in ornamental seclusion from the follies and fusses of the world, had to the Duke seemed rather admirable and enviable. Often he himself had (for a minute or so) meditated taking a fellowship at All Souls and spending here in Oxford the greater part of his life. He had never been young, and it never had occurred to him that the Warden had been young once. To-night he saw the old man in a new light--saw that he was mad. Here was a man who--for had he not married and begotten a child?--must have known, in some degree, the emotion of love. How, after that, could he have gone on thus, year by year, rusting among his books, asking no favour of life, waiting for death without a sign of impatience? Why had he not killed himself long ago? Why cumbered he the earth?

On the dais an undergraduate was singing a song entitled “She Loves Not Me.” Such plaints are apt to leave us unharrowed. Across the footlights of an opera-house, the despair of some Italian tenor in red tights and a yellow wig may be convincing enough. Not so, at a concert, the despair of a shy British amateur in evening dress. The undergraduate on the dais, fumbling with his sheet of music while he predicted that only when he were “laid within the church-yard cold and grey” would his lady begin to pity him, seemed to the Duke rather ridiculous; but not half so ridiculous as the Warden. This fictitious love-affair was less nugatory than the actual humdrum for which Dr. Dobson had sold his soul to the devil. Also, little as one might suspect it, the warbler was perhaps expressing a genuine sentiment. Zuleika herself, belike, was in his thoughts.

As he began the second stanza, predicting that when his lady died too the angels of heaven would bear her straight to him, the audience heard a loud murmur, or subdued roar, outside the Hall. And after a few bars the warbler suddenly ceased, staring straight in front of him as though he saw a vision. Automatically, all heads veered in the direction of his gaze. From the entrance, slowly along the aisle, came Zuleika, brilliant in black.

To the Duke, who had rapturously risen, she nodded and smiled as she swerved down on the chair beside him. She looked to him somehow different. He had quite forgiven her for being late: her mere presence was a perfect excuse. And the very change in her, though he could not define it, was somehow pleasing to him. He was about to question her, but she shook her head and held up to her lips a black-gloved forefinger, enjoining silence for the singer, who, with dogged British pluck, had harked back to the beginning of the second stanza. When his task was done and he shuffled down from the dais, he received a great ovation. Zuleika, in the way peculiar to persons who are in the habit of appearing before the public, held her hands well above the level of her brow, and clapped them with a vigour demonstrative not less of her presence than of her delight.

“And now,” she asked, turning to the Duke, “do you see? do you see?”

“Something, yes. But what?”

“Isn’t it plain?” Lightly she touched the lobe of her left ear. “Aren’t you flattered?”

He knew now what made the difference. It was that her little face was flanked by two black pearls.

“Think,” said she, “how deeply I must have been brooding over you since we parted!”

“Is this really,” he asked, pointing to the left ear-ring, “the pearl you wore to-day?”

“Yes. Isn’t it strange? A man ought to be pleased when a woman goes quite unconsciously into mourning for him--goes just because she really does mourn him.”

“I am more than pleased. I am touched. When did the change come?”

“I don’t know. I only noticed it after dinner, when I saw myself in the mirror. All through dinner I had been thinking of you and of--well, of to-morrow. And this dear sensitive pink pearl had again expressed my soul. And there was I, in a yellow gown with green embroideries, gay as a jacamar, jarring hideously on myself. I covered my eyes and rushed upstairs, rang the bell and tore my things off. My maid was very cross.”

Cross! The Duke was shot through with envy of one who was in a position to be unkind to Zuleika. “Happy maid!” he murmured. Zuleika replied that he was stealing her thunder: hadn’t she envied the girl at his lodgings? “But I,” she said, “wanted only to serve you in meekness. The idea of ever being pert to you didn’t enter into my head. You show a side of your character as unpleasing as it was unforeseen.”

“Perhaps then,” said the Duke, “it is as well that I am going to die.” She acknowledged his rebuke with a pretty gesture of penitence. “You may have been faultless in love,” he added; “but you would not have laid down your life for me.”

“Oh,” she answered, “wouldn’t I though? You don’t know me. That is just the sort of thing I should have loved to do. I am much more romantic than you are, really. I wonder,” she said, glancing at his breast, “if YOUR pink pearl would have turned black? And I wonder if YOU would have taken the trouble to change that extraordinary coat you are wearing?”

In sooth, no costume could have been more beautifully Cimmerian than Zuleika’s. And yet, thought the Duke, watching her as the concert proceeded, the effect of her was not lugubrious. Her darkness shone. The black satin gown she wore was a stream of shifting high-lights. Big black diamonds were around her throat and wrists, and tiny black diamonds starred the fan she wielded. In her hair gleamed a great raven’s wing. And brighter, brighter than all these were her eyes. Assuredly no, there was nothing morbid about her. Would one even (wondered the Duke, for a disloyal instant) go so far as to say she was heartless? Ah no, she was merely strong. She was one who could tread the tragic plane without stumbling, and be resilient in the valley of the shadow. What she had just said was no more than the truth: she would have loved to die for him, had he not forfeited her heart. She would have asked no tears. That she had none to shed for him now, that she did but share his exhilaration, was the measure of her worthiness to have the homage of his self-slaughter.

“By the way,” she whispered, “I want to ask one little favour of you. Will you, please, at the last moment to-morrow, call out my name in a loud voice, so that every one around can hear?”

“Of course I will.”

“So that no one shall ever be able to say it wasn’t for me that you died, you know.”