Zuleika Dobson - Max Beerbohm (good e books to read txt) 📗

contained his robes of the Garter. Thursday, the day after tomorrow, was the date fixed for the investiture of a foreign king who was now visiting England: and the full chapter of Knights had been commanded to Windsor for the ceremony. Yesterday the Duke had looked keenly forward to his excursion. It was only in those too rarely required robes that he had the sense of being fully dressed. But today not a thought had he of them.

Some clock clove with silver the stillness of the morning. Ere came the second stroke, another and nearer clock was striking. And now there were others chiming in. The air was confused with the sweet babel of its many spires, some of them booming deep, measured sequences, some tinkling impatiently and outwitting others which had begun before them. And when this anthem of jealous antiphonies and uneven rhythms had dwindled quite away and fainted in one last solitary note of silver, there started somewhere another sequence; and this, almost at its last stroke, was interrupted by yet another, which went on to tell the hour of noon in its own way, quite slowly and significantly, as though none knew it.

And now Oxford was astir with footsteps and laughter⁠—the laughter and quick footsteps of youths released from lecture-rooms. The Duke shifted from the window. Somehow, he did not care to be observed, though it was usually at this hour that he showed himself for the setting of some new fashion in costume. Many an undergraduate, looking up, missed the picture in the window-frame.

The Duke paced to and fro, smiling ecstatically. He took the two studs from his pocket and gazed at them. He looked in the glass, as one seeking the sympathy of a familiar. For the first time in his life, he turned impatiently aside. It was a new kind of sympathy he needed today.

The front door slammed, and the staircase creaked to the ascent of two heavy boots. The Duke listened, waited irresolute. The boots passed his door, were already clumping up the next flight. “Noaks!” he cried. The boots paused, then clumped down again. The door opened and disclosed that homely figure which Zuleika had seen on her way to Judas.

Sensitive reader, start not at the apparition! Oxford is a plexus of anomalies. These two youths were (odd as it may seem to you) subject to the same Statutes, affiliated to the same College, reading for the same School; aye! and though the one had inherited half a score of noble and castellated roofs, whose mere repairs cost him annually thousands and thousands of pounds, and the other’s people had but one little mean square of lead, from which the fireworks of the Crystal Palace were clearly visible every Thursday evening, in Oxford one roof sheltered both of them. Furthermore, there was even some measure of intimacy between them. It was the Duke’s whim to condescend further in the direction of Noaks than in any other. He saw in Noaks his own foil and antithesis, and made a point of walking up the High with him at least once in every term. Noaks, for his part, regarded the Duke with feelings mingled of idolatry and disapproval. The Duke’s First in Mods oppressed him (who, by dint of dogged industry, had scraped a Second) more than all the other differences between them. But the dullard’s envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end. Noaks may have regarded the Duke as a rather pathetic figure, on the whole.

“Come in, Noaks,” said the Duke. “You have been to a lecture?”

“Aristotle’s Politics,” nodded Noaks.

“And what were they?” asked the Duke. He was eager for sympathy in his love. But so little used was he to seeking sympathy that he could not unburden himself. He temporised. Noaks muttered something about getting back to work, and fumbled with the door-handle.

“Oh, my dear fellow, don’t go,” said the Duke. “Sit down. Our Schools don’t come on for another year. A few minutes can’t make a difference in your Class. I want to⁠—to tell you something, Noaks. Do sit down.”

Noaks sat down on the edge of a chair. The Duke leaned against the mantelpiece, facing him. “I suppose, Noaks,” he said, “you have never been in love.”

“Why shouldn’t I have been in love?” asked the little man, angrily.

“I can’t imagine you in love,” said the Duke, smiling.

“And I can’t imagine you. You’re too pleased with yourself,” growled Noaks.

“Spur your imagination, Noaks,” said his friend. “I am in love.”

“So am I,” was an unexpected answer, and the Duke (whose need of sympathy was too new to have taught him sympathy with others) laughed aloud. “Whom do you love?” he asked, throwing himself into an armchair.

“I don’t know who she is,” was another unexpected answer.

“When did you meet her?” asked the Duke. “Where? What did you say to her?”

“Yesterday. In the Corn. I didn’t say anything to her.”

“Is she beautiful?”

“Yes. What’s that to you?”

“Dark or fair?”

“She’s dark. She looks like a foreigner. She looks like⁠—like one of those photographs in the shopwindows.”

“A rhapsody, Noaks! What became of her? Was she alone?”

“She was with the old Warden, in his carriage.”

Zuleika⁠—Noaks! The Duke started, as at an affront, and glared. Next moment, he saw the 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