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

roar the instant past. “Oh,” she cried, staggering to her feet, “the owls, the owls!”

Vengeance was his, and “Yes, there,” he said, “is the ineluctable hard fact you wake to. The owls have hooted. The gods have spoken. This day your wish is to be fulfilled.”

“The owls have hooted. The gods have spoken. This day⁠—oh, it must not be, John! Heaven have mercy on me!”

“The unerring owls have hooted. The dispiteous and humorous gods have spoken. Miss Dobson, it has to be. And let me remind you,” he added, with a glance at his watch, “that you ought not to keep The MacQuern waiting for luncheon.”

“That is unworthy of you,” she said. There was in her eyes a look that made the words sound as if they had been spoken by a dumb animal.

“You have sent him an excuse?”

“No, I have forgotten him.”

“That is unworthy of you. After all, he is going to die for you, like the rest of us. I am but one of a number, you know. Use your sense of proportion.”

“If I do that,” she said after a pause, “you may not be pleased by the issue. I may find that whereas yesterday I was great in my sinfulness, and today am great in my love, you, in your hate of me, are small. I may find that what I had taken to be a great indifference is nothing but a very small hate⁠ ⁠… Ah, I have wounded you? Forgive me, a weak woman, talking at random in her wretchedness. Oh John, John, if I thought you small, my love would but take on the crown of pity. Don’t forbid me to call you John. I looked you up in Debrett while I was waiting for you. That seemed to bring you nearer to me. So many other names you have, too. I remember you told me them all yesterday, here in this room⁠—not twenty-four hours ago. Hours? Years!” She laughed hysterically. “John, don’t you see why I won’t stop talking? It’s because I dare not think.”

“Yonder in Balliol,” he suavely said, “you will find the matter of my death easier to forget than here.” He took her hat and gloves from the armchair, and held them carefully out to her; but she did not take them.

“I give you three minutes,” he told her. “Two minutes, that is, in which to make yourself tidy before the mirror. A third in which to say goodbye and be outside the front-door.”

“If I refuse?”

“You will not.”

“If I do?”

“I shall send for a policeman.”

She looked well at him. “Yes,” she slowly said, “I think you would do that.”

She took her things from him, and laid them by the mirror. With a high hand she quelled the excesses of her hair⁠—some of the curls still agleam with water⁠—and knowingly poised and pinned her hat. Then, after a few swift touches and passes at neck and waist, she took her gloves and, wheeling round to him, “There!” she said, “I have been quick.”

“Admirably,” he allowed.

“Quick in more than meets the eye, John. Spiritually quick. You saw me putting on my hat; you did not see love taking on the crown of pity, and me bonneting her with it, tripping her up and trampling the life out of her. Oh, a most cold-blooded business, John! Had to be done, though. No other way out. So I just used my sense of proportion, as you rashly bade me, and then hardened my heart at sight of you as you are. One of a number? Yes, and a quite unlovable unit. So I am all right again. And now, where is Balliol? Far from here?”

“No,” he answered, choking a little, as might a card-player who, having been dealt a splendid hand, and having played it with flawless skill, has yet⁠—damn it!⁠—lost the odd trick. “Balliol is quite near. At the end of this street in fact. I can show it to you from the front-door.”

Yes, he had controlled himself. But this, he furiously felt, did not make him look the less a fool. What ought he to have said? He prayed, as he followed the victorious young woman downstairs, that l’esprit de l’escalier might befall him. Alas, it did not.

“By the way,” she said, when he had shown her where Balliol lay, “have you told anybody that you aren’t dying just for me?”

“No,” he answered, “I have preferred not to.”

“Then officially, as it were, and in the eyes of the world, you die for me? Then all’s well that ends well. Shall we say goodbye here? I shall be on the Judas Barge; but I suppose there will be a crush, as yesterday?”

“Sure to be. There always is on the last night of the Eights, you know. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, little John⁠—small John,” she cried across her shoulder, having the last word.

XVII

He might not have grudged her the last word, had she properly needed it. Its utter superfluity⁠—the perfection of her victory without it⁠—was what galled him. Yes, she had outflanked him, taken him unawares, and he had fired not one shot. Esprit de l’escalier⁠—it was as he went upstairs that he saw how he might yet have snatched from her, if not the victory, the palm. Of course he ought to have laughed aloud⁠—“Capital, capital! You really do deserve to fool me. But ah, yours is a love that can’t be dissembled. Never was man by maiden loved more ardently than I by you, my poor girl, at this moment.”

And stay!⁠—what if she really had been but pretending to have killed her love? He paused on the threshold of his room. The sudden doubt made his lost chance the more sickening. Yet was the doubt dear to him⁠ ⁠… What likelier, after all, than that she had been pretending? She had already twitted him with his lack of intuition. He had not seen that she loved him when she certainly did love him. He had needed the