Zuleika Dobson · Chapter 22 (2/2)

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 but 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 understand what charm your friends found in me. You marvel, as at the skull of Helen of Troy. No, you don’t think me hideous: you simply think me plain. There was a time when I thought you plain⁠—you whose face, now that the moon shines full on it, is seen to be of a beauty that is flawless without being insipid. Oh that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek! You shudder at the notion of such contact. My voice grates on you. You try to silence me with frantic though exquisite gestures, and with noises inarticulate but divine. I bow to your will, master. Chasten me with your tongue.”

“I am not what you think me,” gibbered Noaks. “I was not afraid to die for you. I love you. I was on my way to the river this afternoon, but I⁠—I tripped and sprained my ankle, and⁠—and jarred my spine. They carried me back here. I am still very weak. I can’t put my foot to the ground. As soon as I can⁠—”

Just then Zuleika heard a little sharp sound which, for the fraction of an instant, before she knew it to be a clink of metal on the pavement, she thought was the breaking of the heart within her. Looking quickly down, she heard a shrill girlish laugh aloft. Looking quickly up, she descried at the unlit window above her lover’s a face which she remembered as that of the landlady’s daughter.

“Find it, Miss Dobson,” laughed the girl. “Crawl for it. It can’t have rolled far, and it’s the only engagement-ring you’ll get from him,” she said, pointing to the livid face twisted painfully up at her from the lower window. “Grovel for it, Miss Dobson. Ask him to step down and help you. Oh, he can! That was all lies about his spine and ankle. Afraid, that’s what he was⁠—I see it all now⁠—afraid of the water. I wish you’d found him as I did⁠—skulking behind the curtain. Oh, you’re welcome to him.”

“Don’t listen,” Noaks cried down. “Don’t listen to that person. I admit I have trifled with her affections. This is her revenge⁠—these wicked untruths⁠—these⁠—these⁠—”

Zuleika silenced him with a gesture. “Your tone to me,” she said up to Katie, “is not without offence; but the stamp of truth is on what you tell me. We have both been deceived in this man, and are, in some sort, sisters.”

“Sisters?” cried Katie. “Your sisters are the snake and the spider, though neither of them wishes it known. I loathe you. And the Duke loathed you, too.”

“What’s that?” gasped Zuleika.

“Didn’t he tell you? He told me. And I warrant he told you, too.”

“He died for love of me: d’you hear?”

“Ah, you’d like people to think so, wouldn’t you? Does a man who loves a woman give away the keepsake she gave him? Look!” Katie leaned forward, pointing to her earrings. “He loved me,” she cried. “He put them in with his own hands⁠—told me to wear them always. And he kissed me⁠—kissed me goodbye in the street, where everyone could see. He kissed me,” she sobbed. “No other man shall ever do that.”

“Ah, that he did!” said a voice level with Zuleika. It was the voice of Mrs. Batch, who a few moments ago had opened the door for her departing guests.

“Ah, that he did!” echoed the guests.

“Never mind them, Miss Dobson,” cried Noaks, and at the sound of his voice Mrs. Batch rushed into the middle of the road, to gaze up. “I love you. Think what you will of me. I⁠—”

“You!” flashed Zuleika. “As for you, little Sir Lily Liver, leaning out there, and, I frankly tell you, looking like nothing so much as a gargoyle hewn by a drunken stonemason for the adornment of a Methodist Chapel in one of the vilest suburbs of Leeds or Wigan, I do but felicitate the river-god and his nymphs that their water was saved today by your cowardice from the contamination of your plunge.”

“Shame on you, Mr. Noaks,” said Mrs. Batch, “making believe you were dead⁠—”

“Shame!” screamed Clarence, who had darted out into the fray.

“I found him hiding behind the curtain,” chimed in Katie.

“And I a mother to him!” said Mrs. Batch, shaking her fist. “ ‘What is life without love?’ indeed! Oh, the cowardly, underhand⁠—”

“Wretch,” prompted her cronies.

“Let’s kick him out of the house!” suggested Clarence, dancing for joy.

Zuleika, smiling brilliantly down at the boy, said, “Just you run up and fight him!”

“Right you are,” he answered, with a look of knightly devotion, and darted back into the house.

“No escape!” she cried up to Noaks. “You’ve got to fight him now. He and you are just about evenly matched, I fancy.”

But, grimly enough, Zuleika’s estimate was never put to the test. Is it harder for a coward to fight with his fists than to kill himself? Or again, is it easier for him to die than to endure a prolonged crossfire of women’s wrath and scorn? This I know: that in the life of even the least and meanest of us there is somewhere one fine moment⁠—one high chance not missed. I like to think it was by operation of this law that Noaks had now clambered out upon the windowsill, silencing, sickening, scattering like chaff the women beneath him.

He was already not there when Clarence bounded into the room. “Come on!” yelled the boy, first thrusting his head behind the door, then diving beneath the table, then plucking aside either window-curtain, vowing vengeance.

Vengeance was not his. Down on the road without, not yet looked at but by the steadfast eyes of the Emperors, the last of the undergraduates lay dead; and fleet-footed Zuleika, with her fingers still pressed to her ears, had taken full toll now.