“The race?” She laughed hysterically.
“Yes. ‘They’re off.’ ” He mingled his laughter with hers, gently seeking to disengage his arm. “And perhaps,” he said, “I, clinging to the weeds of the river’s bed, shall see dimly the boats and the oars pass over me, and shall be able to gurgle a cheer for Judas.”
“Don’t!” she shuddered, with a woman’s notion that a jest means levity. A tumult of thoughts surged in her, all confused. She only knew that he must not die—not yet! A moment ago, his death would have been beautiful. Not now! Her grip of his arm tightened. Only by breaking her wrist could he have freed himself. A moment ago, she had been in the seventh-heaven … Men were supposed to have died for love of her. It had never been proved. There had always been something—card-debts, ill-health, what not—to account for the tragedy. No man, to the best of her recollection, had ever hinted that he was going to die for her. Never, assuredly, had she seen the deed done. And then came he, the first man she had loved, going to die here, before her eyes, because she no longer loved him. But she knew now that he must not die—not yet!
All around her was the hush that falls on Oxford when the signal for the race has sounded. In the distance could be heard faintly the noise of cheering—a little singsong sound, drawing nearer.
Ah, how could she have thought of letting him die so soon? She gazed into his face—the face she might never have seen again. Even now, but for that gunshot, the waters would have closed over him, and his soul, maybe, have passed away. She had saved him, thank heaven! She had him still with her.
Gently, vainly, he still sought to unclasp her fingers from his arm.
“Not now!” she whispered. “Not yet!”
And the noise of the cheering, and of the trumpeting and rattling, as it drew near, was an accompaniment to her joy in having saved her lover. She would keep him with her—for a while! Let all be done in order. She would savour the full sweetness of his sacrifice. Tomorrow—tomorrow, yes, let him have his heart’s desire of death. Not now! Not yet!
“Tomorrow,” she whispered, “tomorrow, if you will. Not yet!”
The first boat came jerking past in midstream; and the towing-path, with its serried throng of runners, was like a live thing, keeping pace. As in a dream, Zuleika saw it. And the din was in her ears. No heroine of Wagner had ever a louder accompaniment than had ours to the surging soul within her bosom.
And the Duke, tightly held by her, vibrated as to a powerful electric current. He let her cling to him, and her magnetism range through him. Ah, it was good not to have died! Fool, he had meant to drain offhand, at one coarse draught, the delicate wine of death. He would let his lips caress the brim of the august goblet. He would dally with the aroma that was there.
“So be it!” he cried into Zuleika’s ear—cried loudly, for it seemed as though all the Wagnerian orchestras of Europe, with the Straussian ones thrown in, were here to clash in unison the full volume of right music for the glory of the reprieve.
The fact was that the Judas boat had just bumped Univ., exactly opposite the Judas barge. The oarsmen in either boat sat humped, panting, some of them rocking and writhing, after their wholesome exercise. But there was not one of them whose eyes were not upcast at Zuleika. And the vocalisation and instrumentation of the dancers and stampers on the towing-path had by this time ceased to mean aught of joy in the victors or of comfort for the vanquished, and had resolved itself into a wild wordless hymn to the glory of Miss Dobson. Behind her and all around her on the roof of the barge, young Judasians were venting in like manner their hearts through their lungs. She paid no heed. It was as if she stood alone with her lover on some silent pinnacle of the world. It was as if she were a little girl with a brand-new and very expensive doll which had banished all the little other old toys from her mind.
She simply could not, in her naive rapture, take her eyes off her companion. To the dancers and stampers of the towing-path, many of whom were now being ferried back across the river, and to the other youths on the roof of the barge, Zuleika’s air of absorption must have seemed a little strange. For already the news that the Duke loved Zuleika, and that she loved him not, and would stoop to no man who loved her, had spread like wildfire among the undergraduates. The two youths in whom the Duke had deigned to confide had not held their peace. And the effect that Zuleika had made as she came down to the river was intensified by the knowledge that not the great paragon himself did she deem worthy of her. The mere sight of her had captured young Oxford. The news of her supernal haughtiness had riveted the chains.
“Come!” said the Duke at length, staring around him with the eyes of one awakened from a dream. “Come! I must take you back to Judas.”
“But you won’t leave me there?” pleaded Zuleika. “You will stay to dinner? I am sure my grandfather would be delighted.”
“I am sure he would,” said the Duke, as he piloted her down the steps of the barge. “But alas, I have to dine at the Junta tonight.”
“The Junta? What is that?”
“A little dining-club. It meets every Tuesday.”
“But—you don’t mean you are going to refuse me for that?”
“To do so is misery. But I have no
