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

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.

“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 bittersweet 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.

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 reintroduce 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. 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 were burnt. The Cytherean babes had set their torches to that flotilla, and it had blazed like matchwood. On the isle of the enchantress he was stranded forever. Forever 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