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

is useless to bolt the stable door when the horse has been stolen. But what shall be said of the ostler who doesn’t know⁠—won’t even ‘inquire’ whether⁠—the horse has been stolen, grand-papa?”

“You speak in riddles, Zuleika.”

“I wish with all my heart I need not tell you the answers. I think I have a very real grievance against your staff⁠—or whatever it is you call your subordinates here. I go so far as to dub them dodderers. And I shall the better justify that term by not shirking the duty they have left undone. The reason why there were no undergraduates in your Hall tonight is that they were all dead.”

“Dead?” he gasped. “Dead? It is disgraceful that I was not told. What did they die of?”

“Of me.”

“Of you?”

“Yes. I am an epidemic, grand-papa, a scourge, such as the world has not known. Those young men drowned themselves for love of me.”

He came towards her. “Do you realise, girl, what this means to me? I am an old man. For more than half a century I have known this College. To it, when my wife died, I gave all that there was of heart left in me. For thirty years I have been Warden; and in that charge has been all my pride. I have had no thought but for this great College, its honour and prosperity. More than once lately have I asked myself whether my eyes were growing dim, my hand less steady. ‘No’ was my answer, and again ‘No.’ And thus it is that I have lingered on to let Judas be struck down from its high eminence, shamed in the eyes of England⁠—a College forever tainted, and of evil omen.” He raised his head. “The disgrace to myself is nothing. I care not how parents shall rage against me, and the Heads of other Colleges make merry over my decrepitude. It is because you have wrought the downfall of Judas that I am about to lay my undying curse on you.”

“You mustn’t do that!” she cried. “It would be a sort of sacrilege. I am going to be a nun. Besides, why should you? I can quite well understand your feeling for Judas. But how is Judas more disgraced than any other College? If it were only the Judas undergraduates who had⁠—”

“There were others?” cried the Warden. “How many?”

“All. All the boys from all the Colleges.”

The Warden heaved a deep sigh. “Of course,” he said, “this changes the aspect of the whole matter. I wish you had made it clear at once. You gave me a very great shock,” he said sinking into his armchair, “and I have not yet recovered. You must study the art of exposition.”

“That will depend on the rules of the convent.”

“Ah, I forgot that you were going into a convent. Anglican, I hope?”

Anglican, she supposed.

“As a young man,” he said, “I saw much of dear old Dr. Pusey. It might have somewhat reconciled him to my marriage if he had known that my granddaughter would take the veil.” He adjusted his glasses, and looked at her. “Are you sure you have a vocation?”

“Yes. I want to be out of the world. I want to do no more harm.”

He eyed her musingly. “That,” he said, “is rather a revulsion than a vocation. I remember that I ventured to point out to Dr. Pusey the difference between those two things, when he was almost persuading me to enter a Brotherhood founded by one of his friends. It may be that the world would be well rid of you, my dear child. But it is not the world only that we must consider. Would you grace the recesses of the Church?”

“I could but try,” said Zuleika.

“ ‘You could but try’ are the very words Dr. Pusey used to me. I ventured to say that in such a matter effort itself was a stigma of unfitness. For all my moods of revulsion, I knew that my place was in the world. I stayed there.”

“But suppose, grand-papa”⁠—and, seeing in fancy the vast agitated flotilla of crinolines, she could not forbear a smile⁠—“suppose all the young ladies of that period had drowned themselves for love of you?”

Her smile seemed to nettle the Warden. “I was greatly admired,” he said. “Greatly,” he repeated.

“And you liked that, grand-papa?”

“Yes, my dear. Yes, I am afraid I did. But I never encouraged it.”

“Your own heart was never touched?”

“Never, until I met Laura Frith.”

“Who was she?”

“She was my future wife.”

“And how was it you singled her out from the rest? Was she very beautiful?”

“No. It cannot be said that she was beautiful. Indeed, she was accounted plain. I think it was her great dignity that attracted me. She did not smile archly at me, nor shake her ringlets. In those days it was the fashion for young ladies to embroider slippers for such men in holy orders as best pleased their fancy. I received hundreds⁠—thousands⁠—of such slippers. But never a pair from Laura Frith.”

“She did not love you?” asked Zuleika, who had seated herself on the floor at her grandfather’s feet.

“I concluded that she did not. It interested me very greatly. It fired me.”

“Was she incapable of love?”

“No, it was notorious in her circle that she had loved often, but loved in vain.”

“Why did she marry you?”

“I think she was fatigued by my importunities. She was not very strong. But it may be that she married me out of pique. She never told me. I did not inquire.”

“Yet you were very happy with her?”

“While she lived, I was ideally happy.”

The young woman stretched out a hand, and laid it on the clasped hands of the old man. He sat gazing into the past. She was silent for a while; and in her eyes, still fixed intently on his face, there were tears.

“Grand-papa dear”⁠—but there were tears in her voice, too.

“My child, you don’t understand. If I had needed pity⁠—”

“I do understand⁠—so well. I wasn’t pitying you, dear, I was envying you a little.”

“Me?⁠—an old man with only