Part 48

Zuleika silenced him with a gesture. “Your tone to me,” she said up to Katie, “is not without offence; but the stamp of truth is on what you tell me. We have both been deceived in this man, and are, in some sort, sisters.”

“Sisters?” cried Katie. “Your sisters are the snake and the spider, though neither of them wishes it known. I loathe you. And the Duke loathed you, too.”

“What’s that?” gasped Zuleika.

“Didn’t he tell you? He told me. And I warrant he told you, too.”

“He died for love of me: d’you hear?”

“Ah, you’d like people to think so, wouldn’t you? Does a man who loves a woman give away the keepsake she gave him? Look!” Katie leaned forward, pointing to her ear-rings. “He loved ME,” she cried. “He put them in with his own hands--told me to wear them always. And he kissed me--kissed me good-bye in the street, where every one could see. He kissed me,” she sobbed. “No other man shall ever do that.”

“Ah, that he did!” said a voice level with Zuleika. It was the voice of Mrs. Batch, who a few moments ago had opened the door for her departing guests.

“Ah, that he did!” echoed the guests.

“Never mind them, Miss Dobson,” cried Noaks, and at the sound of his voice Mrs. Batch rushed into the middle of the road, to gaze up. “I love you. Think what you will of me. I--”

“You!” flashed Zuleika. “As for you, little Sir Lily Liver, leaning out there, and, I frankly tell you, looking like nothing so much as a gargoyle hewn by a drunken stone-mason for the adornment of a Methodist Chapel in one of the vilest suburbs of Leeds or Wigan, I do but felicitate the river-god and his nymphs that their water was saved to-day by your cowardice from the contamination of your plunge.”

“Shame on you, Mr. Noaks,” said Mrs. Batch, “making believe you were dead--”

“Shame!” screamed Clarence, who had darted out into the fray.

“I found him hiding behind the curtain,” chimed in Katie.

“And I a mother to him!” said Mrs. Batch, shaking her fist. “‘What is life without love?’ indeed! Oh, the cowardly, underhand--”

“Wretch,” prompted her cronies.

“Let’s kick him out of the house!” suggested Clarence, dancing for joy.

Zuleika, smiling brilliantly down at the boy, said “Just you run up and fight him!”

“Right you are,” he answered, with a look of knightly devotion, and darted back into the house.

“No escape!” she cried up to Noaks. “You’ve got to fight him now. He and you are just about evenly matched, I fancy.”

But, grimly enough, Zuleika’s estimate was never put to the test. Is it harder for a coward to fight with his fists than to kill himself? Or again, is it easier for him to die than to endure a prolonged cross-fire of women’s wrath and scorn? This I know: that in the life of even the least and meanest of us there is somewhere one fine moment--one high chance not missed. I like to think it was by operation of this law that Noaks had now clambered out upon the window-sill, silencing, sickening, scattering like chaff the women beneath him.

He was already not there when Clarence bounded into the room. “Come on!” yelled the boy, first thrusting his head behind the door, then diving beneath the table, then plucking aside either window-curtain, vowing vengeance.

Vengeance was not his. Down on the road without, not yet looked at but by the steadfast eyes of the Emperors, the last of the undergraduates lay dead; and fleet-footed Zuleika, with her fingers still pressed to her ears, had taken full toll now.

XXIII

Twisting and turning in her flight, with wild eyes that fearfully retained the image of that small man gathering himself to spring, Zuleika found herself suddenly where she could no further go.

She was in that grim ravine by which you approach New College. At sight of the great shut gate before her, she halted, and swerved to the wall. She set her brow and the palms of her hands against the cold stones. She threw back her head, and beat the stones with her fists.

It was not only what she had seen, it was what she had barely saved herself from seeing, and what she had not quite saved herself from hearing, that she strove so piteously to forget. She was sorrier for herself, angrier, than she had been last night when the Duke laid hands on her. Why should every day have a horrible ending? Last night she had avenged herself. To-night’s outrage was all the more foul and mean because of its certain immunity. And the fact that she had in some measure brought it on herself did but whip her rage. What a fool she had been to taunt the man! Yet no, how could she have foreseen that he would--do THAT? How could she have guessed that he, who had not dared seemly death for her in the gentle river, would dare--THAT?

She shuddered the more as she now remembered that this very day, in that very house, she had invited for her very self a similar fate. What if the Duke had taken her word? Strange! she wouldn’t have flinched then. She had felt no horror at the notion of such a death. And thus she now saw Noaks’ conduct in a new light--saw that he had but wished to prove his love, not at all to affront her. This understanding quickly steadied her nerves. She did not need now to forget what she had seen; and, not needing to forget it--thus are our brains fashioned--she was able to forget it.

But by removal of one load her soul was but bared for a more grievous other. Her memory harked back to what had preceded the crisis. She recalled those moments of doomed rapture in which her heart had soared up to the apocalyptic window--recalled how, all the while she was speaking to the man there, she had been chafed by the inadequacy of language. Oh, how much more she had meant than she could express! Oh, the ecstasy of that self-surrender! And the brevity of it! the sudden odious awakening! Thrice in this Oxford she had been duped. Thrice all that was fine and sweet in her had leapt forth, only to be scourged back into hiding. Poor heart inhibited! She gazed about her. The stone alley she had come into, the terrible shut gate, were for her a visible symbol of the destiny she had to put up with. Wringing her hands, she hastened along the way she had come. She vowed she would never again set foot in Oxford. She wished herself out of the hateful little city to-night. She even wished herself dead.