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

was even more disturbing than that of the average Rhodes Scholar. Tonight, besides the usual conflicts in this young man’s bosom, raged a special one between his desire to behave well and his jealousy of the man who had today been Miss Dobson’s escort. In theory he denied the Duke’s right to that honour. In sentiment he admitted it. Another conflict, you see. And another. He longed to orate about the woman who had his heart; yet she was the one topic that must be shirked.

The MacQuern and Mr. Trent-Garby, Sir John Marraby and Lord Sayes, they too⁠—though they were no orators⁠—would fain have unpacked their hearts in words about Zuleika. They spoke of this and that, automatically, none listening to another⁠—each man listening, wide-eyed, to his own heart’s solo on the Zuleika theme, and drinking rather more champagne than was good for him. Maybe, these youths sowed in themselves, on this night, the seeds of lifelong intemperance. We cannot tell. They did not live long enough for us to know.

While the six dined, a seventh, invisible to them, leaned moodily against the mantelpiece, watching them. He was not of their time. His long brown hair was knotted in a black riband behind. He wore a pale brocaded coat and lace ruffles, silken stockings, a sword. Privy to their doom, he watched them. He was loth that his Junta must die. Yes, his. Could the diners have seen him, they would have known him by his resemblance to the mezzotint portrait that hung on the wall above him. They would have risen to their feet in presence of Humphrey Greddon, founder and first president of the club.

His face was not so oval, nor were his eyes so big, nor his lips so full, nor his hands so delicate, as they appeared in the mezzotint. Yet (bating the conventions of eighteenth-century portraiture) the likeness was a good one. Humphrey Greddon was not less well-knit and graceful than the painter had made him, and, hard though the lines of the face were, there was about him a certain air of high romance that could not be explained away by the fact that he was of a period not our own. You could understand the great love that Nellie O’Mora had borne him.

Under the mezzotint hung Hoppner’s miniature of that lovely and ill-starred girl, with her soft dark eyes, and her curls all astray from beneath her little blue turban. And the Duke was telling Mr. Oover her story⁠—how she had left her home for Humphrey Greddon when she was but sixteen, and he an undergraduate at Christ Church; and had lived for him in a cottage at Littlemore, whither he would ride, most days, to be with her; and how he tired of her, broke his oath that he would marry her, thereby broke her heart; and how she drowned herself in a millpond; and how Greddon was killed in Venice, two years later, duelling on the Riva Schiavoni with a Senator whose daughter he had seduced.

And he, Greddon, was not listening very attentively to the tale. He had heard it told so often in this room, and he did not understand the sentiments of the modern world. Nellie had been a monstrous pretty creature. He had adored her, and had done with her. It was right that she should always be toasted after dinner by the Junta, as in the days when first he loved her⁠—“Here’s to Nellie O’Mora, the fairest witch that ever was or will be!” He would have resented the omission of that toast. But he was sick of the pitying, melting looks that were always cast towards her miniature. Nellie had been beautiful, but, by God! she was always a dunce and a simpleton. How could he have spent his life with her? She was a fool, by God! not to marry that fool Trailby, of Merton, whom he took to see her.

Mr. Oover’s moral tone, and his sense of chivalry, were of the American kind: far higher than ours, even, and far better expressed. Whereas the English guests of the Junta, when they heard the tale of Nellie O’Mora, would merely murmur “Poor girl!” or “What a shame!” Mr. Oover said in a tone of quiet authority that compelled Greddon’s ear, “Duke, I hope I am not incognisant of the laws that govern the relations of guest and host. But, Duke, I aver deliberately that the founder of this fine old club, at which you are so splendidly entertaining me tonight, was an unmitigated scoundrel. I say he was not a white man.”

At the word “scoundrel,” Humphrey Greddon had sprung forward, drawing his sword, and loudly, in a voice audible to himself alone, challenged the American to make good his words. Then, as this gentleman took no notice, with one clean straight thrust Greddon ran him through the heart, shouting “Die, you damned psalm-singer and traducer! And so die all rebels against King George!”4 Withdrawing the blade, he wiped it daintily on his cambric handkerchief. There was no blood. Mr. Oover, with unpunctured shirtfront, was repeating “I say he was not a white man.” And Greddon remembered himself⁠—remembered he was only a ghost, impalpable, impotent, of no account. “But I shall meet you in Hell tomorrow,” he hissed in Oover’s face. And there he was wrong. It is quite certain that Oover went to Heaven.

Unable to avenge himself, Greddon had looked to the Duke to act for him. When he saw that this young man did but smile at Oover and make a vague deprecatory gesture, he again, in his wrath, forgot his disabilities. Drawing himself to his full height, he took with great deliberation a pinch of snuff, and, bowing low to the Duke, said, “I am vastly obleeged to your Grace for the fine high Courage you have exhibited in the behalf of your most Admiring, most Humble Servant.” Then, having brushed away a speck of snuff from his jabot, he turned on his heel; and