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

of loving me. This afternoon⁠—here⁠—I all but kissed you. I mistook you for Death. I was enamoured of Death. I was a fool. That is what you are, you incomparable darling: you are a fool. You are afraid of life. I am not. I love life. I am going to live for you, do you hear?”

She stood with her back to the postern. Anger in her eyes had given place to scorn. “You mean,” she said, “that you go back on your promise?”

“You will release me from it.”

“You mean you are afraid to die?”

“You will not be guilty of my death. You love me.”

“Good night, you miserable coward.” She stepped back through the postern.

“Don’t, Zuleika! Miss Dobson, don’t! Pull yourself together! Reflect! I implore you⁠ ⁠… You will repent⁠ ⁠…”

Slowly she closed the postern on him.

“You will repent. I shall wait here, under your window⁠ ⁠…”

He heard a bolt rasped into its socket. He heard the retreat of a light tread on the paven hall.

And he hadn’t even kissed her! That was his first thought. He ground his heel in the gravel.

And he had hurt her wrists! This was Zuleika’s first thought, as she came into her bedroom. Yes, there were two red marks where he had held her. No man had ever dared to lay hands on her. With a sense of contamination, she proceeded to wash her hands thoroughly with soap and water. From time to time such words as “cad” and “beast” came through her teeth.

She dried her hands and flung herself into a chair, arose and went pacing the room. So this was the end of her great night! What had she done to deserve it? How had he dared?

There was a sound as of rain against the window. She was glad. The night needed cleansing.

He had told her she was afraid of life. Life!⁠—to have herself caressed by him; humbly to devote herself to being humbly doted on; to be the slave of a slave; to swim in a private pond of treacle⁠—ugh! If the thought weren’t so cloying and degrading, it would be laughable.

For a moment her hands hovered over those two golden and gemmed volumes encasing Bradshaw and the A.B.C. Guide. To leave Oxford by an early train, leave him to drown unthanked, unlooked at⁠ ⁠… But this could not be done without slighting all those hundreds of other men⁠ ⁠… And besides⁠ ⁠…

Again that sound on the windowpane. This time it startled her. There seemed to be no rain. Could it have been⁠—little bits of gravel? She darted noiselessly to the window, pushed it open, and looked down. She saw the upturned face of the Duke. She stepped back, trembling with fury, staring around her. Inspiration came.

She thrust her head out again. “Are you there?” she whispered.

“Yes, yes. I knew you would come.”

“Wait a moment, wait!”

The water-jug stood where she had left it, on the floor by the washstand. It was almost full, rather heavy. She bore it steadily to the window, and looked out.

“Come a little nearer!” she whispered.

The upturned and moonlit face obeyed her. She saw its lips forming the word “Zuleika.” She took careful aim.

Full on the face crashed the cascade of moonlit water, shooting out on all sides like the petals of some great silver anemone.

She laughed shrilly as she leapt back, letting the empty jug roll over on the carpet. Then she stood tense, crouching, her hands to her mouth, her eyes askance, as much as to say “Now I’ve done it!” She listened hard, holding her breath. In the stillness of the night was a faint sound of dripping water, and presently of footsteps going away. Then stillness unbroken.

XI

I said that I was Clio’s servant. And I felt, when I said it, that you looked at me dubiously, and murmured among yourselves.

Not that you doubted I was somewhat connected with Clio’s household. The lady after whom I have named this book is alive, and well known to some of you personally, to all of you by repute. Nor had you finished my first page before you guessed my theme to be that episode in her life which caused so great a sensation among the newspaper-reading public a few years ago. (It all seems but yesterday, does it not? They are still vivid to us, those headlines. We have hardly yet ceased to be edified by the morals pointed in those leading articles.) And yet very soon you found me behaving just like any novelist⁠—reporting the exact words that passed between the protagonists at private interviews⁠—aye, and the exact thoughts and emotions that were in their breasts. Little wonder that you wondered! Let me make things clear to you.

I have my mistress’ leave to do this. At first (for reasons which you will presently understand) she demurred. But I pointed out to her that I had been placed in a false position, and that until this were rectified neither she nor I could reap the credit due to us.

Know, then, that for a long time Clio had been thoroughly discontented. She was happy enough, she says, when first she left the home of Pierus, her father, to become a Muse. On those humble beginnings she looks back with affection. She kept only one servant, Herodotus. The romantic element in him appealed to her. He died, and she had about her a large staff of able and faithful servants, whose way of doing their work irritated and depressed her. To them, apparently, life consisted of nothing but politics and military operations⁠—things to which she, being a woman, was somewhat indifferent. She was jealous of Melpomene. It seemed to her that her own servants worked from without at a mass of dry details which might as well be forgotten. Melpomene’s worked on material that was eternally interesting⁠—the souls of men and women; and not from without, either; but rather casting themselves into those souls and showing to us the essence of them. She was particularly struck