Part 44

“Like a creature native and indued Unto that element,” tranquil Zuleika lay.

Gently to and fro her tresses drifted on the water, or under the water went ever ravelling and unravelling. Nothing else of her stirred.

What to her now the loves that she had inspired and played on? the lives lost for her? Little thought had she now of them. Aloof she lay.

Steadily rising from the water was a thick vapour that turned to dew on the window-pane. The air was heavy with scent of violets. These are the flowers of mourning; but their scent here and now signified nothing; for Eau de Violettes was the bath-essence that Zuleika always had.

The bath-room was not of the white-gleaming kind to which she was accustomed. The walls were papered, not tiled, and the bath itself was of japanned tin, framed in mahogany. These things, on the evening of her arrival at the Warden’s, had rather distressed her. But she was the better able to bear them because of that well-remembered past when a bath-room was in itself a luxury pined for--days when a not-large and not-full can of not-hot water, slammed down at her bedroom door by a governess-resenting housemaid, was as much as the gods allowed her. And there was, to dulcify for her the bath of this evening, the yet sharper contrast with the plight she had just come home in, sopped, shivering, clung to by her clothes. Because this bath was not a mere luxury, but a necessary precaution, a sure means of salvation from chill, she did the more gratefully bask in it, till Melisande came back to her, laden with warmed towels.

A few minutes before eight o’clock she was fully ready to go down to dinner, with even more than the usual glow of health, and hungry beyond her wont.

Yet, as she went down, her heart somewhat misgave her. Indeed, by force of the wide experience she had had as a governess, she never did feel quite at her ease when she was staying in a private house: the fear of not giving satisfaction haunted her; she was always on her guard; the shadow of dismissal absurdly hovered. And to-night she could not tell herself, as she usually did, not to be so silly. If her grandfather knew already the motive by which those young men had been actuated, dinner with him might be a rather strained affair. He might tell her, in so many words, that he wished he had not invited her to Oxford.

Through the open door of the drawing room she saw him, standing majestic, draped in a voluminous black gown. Her instinct was to run away; but this she conquered. She went straight in, remembering not to smile.

“Ah, ah,” said the Warden, shaking a forefinger at her with old-world playfulness. “And what have you to say for yourself?”

Relieved, she was also a trifle shocked. Was it possible that he, a responsible old man, could take things so lightly?

“Oh, grand-papa,” she answered, hanging her head, “what CAN I say? It is--it is too, too, dreadful.”

“There, there, my dear. I was but jesting. If you have had an agreeable time, you are forgiven for playing truant. Where have you been all day?”

She saw that she had misjudged him. “I have just come from the river,” she said gravely.

“Yes? And did the College make its fourth bump to-night?”

“I--I don’t know, grand-papa. There was so much happening. It--I will tell you all about it at dinner.”

“Ah, but to-night,” he said, indicating his gown, “I cannot be with you. The bump-supper, you know. I have to preside in Hall.”

Zuleika had forgotten there was to be a bump-supper, and, though she was not very sure what a bump-supper was, she felt it would be a mockery to-night.

“But grand-papa--” she began.

“My dear, I cannot dissociate myself from the life of the College. And, alas,” he said, looking at the clock, “I must leave you now. As soon as you have finished dinner, you might, if you would care to, come and peep down at us from the gallery. There is apt to be some measure of noise and racket, but all of it good-humoured and--boys will be boys--pardonable. Will you come?”

“Perhaps, grand-papa,” she said awkwardly. Left alone, she hardly knew whether to laugh or cry. In a moment, the butler came to her rescue, telling her that dinner was served.

As the figure of the Warden emerged from Salt Cellar into the Front Quadrangle, a hush fell on the group of gowned Fellows outside the Hall. Most of them had only just been told the news, and (such is the force of routine in an University) were still sceptical of it. And in face of these doubts the three or four dons who had been down at the river were now half ready to believe that there must, after all, be some mistake, and that in this world of illusions they had to-night been specially tricked. To rebut this theory, there was the notable absence of undergraduates. Or was this an illusion, too? Men of thought, agile on the plane of ideas, devils of fellows among books, they groped feebly in this matter of actual life and death. The sight of their Warden heartened them. After all, he was the responsible person. He was father of the flock that had strayed, and grandfather of the beautiful Miss Zuleika.

Like her, they remembered not to smile in greeting him.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said. “The storm seems to have passed.”

There was a murmur of “Yes, Warden.”

“And how did our boat acquit itself?”

There was a shuffling pause. Every one looked at the Sub-Warden: it was manifestly for him to break the news, or to report the hallucination. He was nudged forward--a large man, with a large beard at which he plucked nervously.

“Well, really, Warden,” he said, “we--we hardly know,” * and he ended with what can only be described as a giggle. He fell low in the esteem of his fellows.

*Those of my readers who are interested in athletic sports will remember the long controversy that raged as to whether Judas had actually bumped Magdalen; and they will not need to be minded that it was mainly through the evidence of Mr. E. T. A. Cook, who had been on the towing-path at the time, that the O. U. B. C. decided the point in Judas’ favour, and fixed the order of the boats for the following year accordingly.