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

The girl had flung the earrings at his face. She had missed her mark. But this did not extenuate the outrageous gesture. He pointed to the door. “Go!” he said.

“Don’t try that on!” she laughed. “I shan’t go⁠—not unless you drag me out. And if you do that, I’ll raise the house. I’ll have in the neighbours. I’ll tell them all what you’ve done, and⁠—” But defiance melted in the hot shame of humiliation. “Oh, you coward!” she gasped. “You coward!” She caught her apron to her face and, swaying against the wall, sobbed piteously.

Unaccustomed to love-affairs, the Duke could not sail lightly over a flood of woman’s tears. He was filled with pity for the poor quivering figure against the wall. How should he soothe her? Mechanically he picked up the two pearls from the carpet, and crossed to her side. He touched her on the shoulder. She shuddered away from him.

“Don’t,” he said gently. “Don’t cry. I can’t bear it. I have been stupid and thoughtless. What did you say your name was? ‘Katie,’ to be sure. Well, Katie, I want to beg your pardon. I expressed myself badly. I was unhappy and lonely, and I saw in you a means of comfort. I snatched at you, Katie, as at a straw. And then, I suppose, I must have said something which made you think I loved you. I almost wish I did. I don’t wonder you threw the earrings at me. I⁠—I almost wish they had hit me⁠ ⁠… You see, I have quite forgiven you. Now do you forgive me. You will not refuse now to wear the earrings. I gave them to you as a keepsake. Wear them always in memory of me. For you will never see me again.”

The girl had ceased from crying, and her anger had spent itself in sobs. She was gazing at him woebegone but composed.

“Where are you going?”

“You must not ask that,” said he. “Enough that my wings are spread.”

“Are you going because of me?”

“Not in the least. Indeed, your devotion is one of the things which make bitter my departure. And yet⁠—I am glad you love me.”

“Don’t go,” she faltered. He came nearer to her, and this time she did not shrink from him. “Don’t you find the rooms comfortable?” she asked, gazing up at him. “Have you ever had any complaint to make about the attendance?”

“No,” said the Duke, “the attendance has always been quite satisfactory. I have never felt that so keenly as I do today.”

“Then why are you leaving? Why are you breaking my heart?”

“Suffice it that I cannot do otherwise. Henceforth you will see me no more. But I doubt not that in the cultivation of my memory you will find some sort of lugubrious satisfaction. See! here are the earrings. If you like, I will put them in with my own hands.”

She held up her face sideways. Into the lobe of her left ear he insinuated the hook of the black pearl. On the cheek upturned to him there were still traces of tears; the eyelashes were still spangled. For all her blondness, they were quite dark, these glistening eyelashes. He had an impulse, which he put from him. “Now the other ear,” he said. The girl turned her head. Soon the pink pearl was in its place. Yet the girl did not move. She seemed to be waiting. Nor did the Duke himself seem to be quite satisfied. He let his fingers dally with the pearl. Anon, with a sigh, he withdrew them. The girl looked up. Their eyes met. He looked away from her. He turned away from her. “You may kiss my hand,” he murmured, extending it towards her. After a pause, the warm pressure of her lips was laid on it. He sighed, but did not look round. Another pause, a longer pause, and then the clatter and clink of the outgoing tray.

Her actual offspring does not suffice a very motherly woman. Such a woman was Mrs. Batch. Had she been blest with a dozen children, she must yet have regarded herself as also a mother to whatever two young gentlemen were lodging under her roof. Childless but for Katie and Clarence, she had for her successive pairs of tenants a truly vast fund of maternal feeling to draw on. Nor were the drafts made in secret. To every gentleman, from the outset, she proclaimed the relation in which she would stand to him. Moreover, always she needed a strong filial sense in return: this was only fair.

Because the Duke was an orphan, even more than because he was a Duke, her heart had with a special rush gone out to him when he and Mr. Noaks became her tenants. But, perhaps because he had never known a mother, he was evidently quite incapable of conceiving either Mrs. Batch as his mother or himself as her son. Indeed, there was that in his manner, in his look, which made her falter, for once, in exposition of her theory⁠—made her postpone the matter to some more favourable time. That time never came, somehow. Still, her solicitude for him, her pride in him, her sense that he was a great credit to her, rather waxed than waned. He was more to her (such are the vagaries of the maternal instinct) than Katie or Mr. Noaks: he was as much as Clarence.

It was, therefore, a deeply agitated woman who now came heaving up into the Duke’s presence. His Grace was “giving notice”? She was sure she begged his pardon for coming up so sudden. But the news was that sudden. Hadn’t her girl made a mistake, maybe? Girls were so vague-like nowadays. She was sure it was most kind of him to give those handsome earrings. But the thought of him going off so unexpected⁠—middle of term, too⁠—with never a why or a but! Well!

In some such welter of homely phrase (how foreign to these