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

“Yes, sir.”

“I should think so!” was on the tip of Noaks’ tongue, but suddenly he ceased to see the pearls as trinkets finite and inapposite⁠—saw them, in a flash, as things transmutable by sale hereafter into desks, forms, blackboards, maps, lockers, cubicles, gravel soil, diet unlimited, and special attention to backward pupils. Simultaneously, he saw how mean had been his motive for repudiating the gift. What more despicable than jealousy of a man deceased? What sillier than to cast pearls before executors? Sped by nothing but the pulse of his hot youth, he had wooed and won this girl. Why flinch from her unsought dowry?

He told her his vision. Her eyes opened wide to it. “And oh,” she cried, “then we can be married as soon as you take your degree!”

He bade her not be so foolish. Who ever heard of a headmaster aged three-and-twenty? What parent or guardian would trust a stripling? The engagement must run its course. “And,” he said, fidgeting, “do you know that I have hardly done any reading today?”

“You want to read now⁠—tonight?”

“I must put in a good two hours. Where are the books that were on my table?”

Reverently⁠—he was indeed a king of men⁠—she took the books down from the shelf, and placed them where she had found them. And she knew not which thrilled her the more⁠—the kiss he gave her at parting, or the tone in which he told her that the one thing he could not and would not stand was having his books disturbed.

Still less than before attuned to the lugubrious session downstairs, she went straight up to her attic, and did a little dance there in the dark. She threw open the lattice of the dormer-window, and leaned out, smiling, throbbing.

The Emperors, gazing up, saw her happy, and wondered; saw Noaks’ ring on her finger, and would fain have shaken their grey heads.

Presently she was aware of a protrusion from the window beneath hers. The head of her beloved! Fondly she watched it, wished she could reach down to stroke it. She loved him for having, after all, left his books. It was sweet to be his excuse. Should she call softly to him? No, it might shame him to be caught truant. He had already chidden her for prying. So she did but gaze down on his head silently, wondering whether in eighteen years it would be bald, wondering whether her own hair would still have the fault of being golden. Most of all, she wondered whether he loved her half so much as she loved him.

This happened to be precisely what he himself was wondering. Not that he wished himself free. He was one of those in whom the will does not, except under very great pressure, oppose the conscience. What pressure here? Miss Batch was a superior girl; she would grace any station in life. He had always been rather in awe of her. It was a fine thing to be suddenly loved by her, to be in a position to overrule her every whim. Plighting his troth, he had feared she would be an encumbrance, only to find she was a lever. But⁠—was he deeply in love with her? How was it that he could not at this moment recall her features, or the tone of her voice, while of deplorable Miss Dobson, every lineament, every accent, so vividly haunted him? Try as he would to beat off these memories, he failed, and⁠—some very great pressure here!⁠—was glad he failed; glad though he found himself relapsing to the self-contempt from which Miss Batch had raised him. He scorned himself for being alive. And again, he scorned himself for his infidelity. Yet he was glad he could not forget that face, that voice⁠—that queen. She had smiled at him when she borrowed the ring. She had said “Thank you.” Oh, and now, at this very moment, sleeping or waking, actually she was somewhere⁠—she! herself! This was an incredible, an indubitable, an all-magical fact for the little fellow.

From the street below came a faint cry that was as the cry of his own heart, uttered by her own lips. Quaking, he peered down, and dimly saw, over the way, a cloaked woman.

She⁠—yes, it was she herself⁠—came gliding to the middle of the road, gazing up at him.

“At last!” he heard her say. His instinct was to hide himself from the queen he had not died for. Yet he could not move.

“Or,” she quavered, “are you a phantom sent to mock me? Speak!”

“Good evening,” he said huskily.

“I knew,” she murmured, “I knew the gods were not so cruel. Oh man of my need,” she cried, stretching out her arms to him, “oh heaven-sent, I see you only as a dark outline against the light of your room. But I know you. Your name is Noaks, isn’t it? Dobson is mine. I am your Warden’s granddaughter. I am faint and footsore. I have ranged this desert city in search of⁠—of you. Let me hear from your own lips that you love me. Tell me in your own words⁠—” She broke off with a little scream, and did not stand with forefinger pointed at him, gazing, gasping.

“Listen, Miss Dobson,” he stammered, writhing under what he took to be the lash of her irony. “Give me time to explain. You see me here⁠—”

“Hush,” she cried, “man of my greater, my deeper and nobler need! Oh hush, ideal which not consciously I was out for tonight⁠—ideal vouchsafed to me by a crowning mercy! I sought a lover, I find a master. I sought but a live youth, was blind to what his survival would betoken. Oh master, you think me light and wicked. You stare coldly down at me through your spectacles, whose glint I faintly discern now that the moon peeps forth. You would be readier to forgive me the havoc I have wrought if you could for the life of you