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

casket, The MacQuern assisting her. The Scots, as I have said, are a shy race, but a resolute and a self-seeking. This young chieftain had not yet recovered from what his heroine had let him in for. But he did not lose the opportunity of asking her to lunch with him tomorrow.

“Delighted,” she said, fitting the Demon Egg-Cup into its groove. Then, looking up at him, “Are you popular?” she asked. “Have you many friends?” He nodded. She said he must invite them all.

This was a blow to the young man, who, at once thrifty and infatuate, had planned a luncheon à deux. “I had hoped⁠—” he began.

“Vainly,” she cut him short.

There was a pause. “Whom shall I invite, then?”

“I don’t know any of them. How should I have preferences?” She remembered the Duke. She looked round and saw him still standing in the shadow of the wall. He came towards her. “Of course,” she said hastily to her host, “you must ask him.”

The MacQuern complied. He turned to the Duke and told him that Miss Dobson had very kindly promised to lunch with him tomorrow. “And,” said Zuleika, “I simply won’t unless you will.”

The Duke looked at her. Had it not been arranged that he and she should spend his last day together? Did it mean nothing that she had given him her earrings? Quickly drawing about him some remnants of his tattered pride, he hid his wound, and accepted the invitation.

“It seems a shame,” said Zuleika to The MacQuern, “to ask you to bring this great heavy box all the way back again. But⁠—”

Those last poor rags of pride fell away now. The Duke threw a prehensile hand on the casket, and, coldly glaring at The MacQuern, pointed with his other hand towards the College gate. He, and he alone, was going to see Zuleika home. It was his last night on earth, and he was not to be trifled with. Such was the message of his eyes. The Scotsman’s flashed back a precisely similar message.

Men had fought for Zuleika, but never in her presence. Her eyes dilated. She had not the slightest impulse to throw herself between the two antagonists. Indeed, she stepped back, so as not to be in the way. A short sharp fight⁠—how much better that is than bad blood! She hoped the better man would win; and (do not misjudge her) she rather hoped this man was the Duke. It occurred to her⁠—a vague memory of some play or picture⁠—that she ought to be holding aloft a candelabra of lit tapers; no, that was only done indoors, and in the eighteenth century. Ought she to hold a sponge? Idle, these speculations of hers, and based on complete ignorance of the manners and customs of undergraduates. The Duke and The MacQuern would never have come to blows in the presence of a lady. Their conflict was necessarily spiritual.

And it was the Scotsman, Scots though he was, who had to yield. Cowed by something demoniac in the willpower pitted against his, he found himself retreating in the direction indicated by the Duke’s forefinger.

As he disappeared into the porch, Zuleika turned to the Duke. “You were splendid,” she said softly. He knew that very well. Does the stag in his hour of victory need a diploma from the hind? Holding in his hands the malachite casket that was the symbol of his triumph, the Duke smiled dictatorially at his darling. He came near to thinking of her as a chattel. Then with a pang he remembered his abject devotion to her. Abject no longer though! The victory he had just won restored his manhood, his sense of supremacy among his fellows. He loved this woman on equal terms. She was transcendent? So was he, Dorset. Tonight the world had on its moonlit surface two great ornaments⁠—Zuleika and himself. Neither of the pair could be replaced. Was one of them to be shattered? Life and love were good. He had been mad to think of dying.

No word was spoken as they went together to Salt Cellar. She expected him to talk about her conjuring tricks. Could he have been disappointed? She dared not inquire; for she had the sensitiveness, though no other quality whatsoever, of the true artist. She felt herself aggrieved. She had half a mind to ask him to give her back her earrings. And by the way, he hadn’t yet thanked her for them! Well, she would make allowances for a condemned man. And again she remembered the omen of which he had told her. She looked at him, and then up into the sky. “This same moon,” she said to herself, “sees the battlements of Tankerton. Does she see two black owls there? Does she hear them hooting?”

They were in Salt Cellar now. “Mélisande!” she called up to her window.

“Hush!” said the Duke, “I have something to say to you.”

“Well, you can say it all the better without that great box in your hands. I want my maid to carry it up to my room for me.” And again she called out for Mélisande, and received no answer. “I suppose she’s in the housekeeper’s room or somewhere. You had better put the box down inside the door. She can bring it up later.”

She pushed open the postern; and the Duke, as he stepped across the threshold, thrilled with a romantic awe. Re-emerging a moment later into the moonlight, he felt that she had been right about the box: it was fatal to self-expression; and he was glad he had not tried to speak on the way from the Front Quad: the soul needs gesture; and the Duke’s first gesture now was to seize Zuleika’s hands in his.

She was too startled to move. “Zuleika!” he whispered. She was too angry to speak, but with a sudden twist she freed her wrists and darted back.

He laughed. “You are afraid of me. You are afraid to let me kiss you, because you are afraid