A few minutes before half-past seven, the Duke, arrayed for dinner, passed leisurely2 up the High. The arresting feature of his costume was a mulberry-coloured coat, with brass3 buttons. This, to any one versed4 in Oxford5 lore6, betokened7 him a member of the Junta8. It is awful to think that a casual stranger might have mistaken him for a footman. It does not do to think of such things.
The tradesmen, at the doors of their shops, bowed low as he passed, rubbing their hands and smiling, hoping inwardly that they took no liberty in sharing the cool rosy9 air of the evening with his Grace. They noted10 that he wore in his shirt-front a black pearl and a pink. “Daring, but becoming,” they opined.
The rooms of the Junta were over a stationer’s shop, next door but one to the Mitre. They were small rooms; but as the Junta had now, besides the Duke, only two members, and as no member might introduce more than one guest, there was ample space.
The Duke had been elected in his second term. At that time there were four members; but these were all leaving Oxford at the end of the summer term, and there seemed to be in the ranks of the Bullingdon and the Loder no one quite eligible11 for the Junta, that holy of holies. Thus it was that the Duke inaugurated in solitude12 his second year of membership. From time to time, he proposed and seconded a few candidates, after “sounding” them as to whether they were willing to join. But always, when election evening—the last Tuesday of term—drew near, he began to have his doubts about these fellows. This one was “rowdy”; that one was over-dressed; another did not ride quite straight to hounds; in the pedigree of another a bar-sinister was more than suspected. Election evening was always a rather melancholy13 time. After dinner, when the two club servants had placed on the mahogany the time-worn Candidates’ Book and the ballot-box, and had noiselessly withdrawn14, the Duke, clearing his throat, read aloud to himself “Mr. So-and-So, of Such-and-Such College, proposed by the Duke of Dorset, seconded by the Duke of Dorset,” and, in every case, when he drew out the drawer of the ballot-box, found it was a black-ball that he had dropped into the urn16. Thus it was that at the end of the summer term the annual photographic “group” taken by Messrs. Hills and Saunders was a presentment of the Duke alone.
In the course of his third year he had become less exclusive. Not because there seemed to be any one really worthy17 of the Junta; but because the Junta, having thriven since the eighteenth century, must not die. Suppose—one never knew—he were struck by lightning, the Junta would be no more. So, not without reluctance18, but unanimously, he had elected The MacQuern, of Balliol, and Sir John Marraby, of Brasenose.
To-night, as he, a doomed19 man, went up into the familiar rooms, he was wholly glad that he had thus relented. As yet, he was spared the tragic21 knowledge that it would make no difference.*
* The Junta has been reconstituted. But the apostolic line was
broken, the thread was snapped; the old magic is fled.
The MacQuern and two other young men were already there.
“Mr. President,” said The MacQuern, “I present Mr. Trent-Garby, of Christ Church.”
“The Junta is honoured,” said the Duke, bowing.
Such was the ritual of the club.
The other young man, because his host, Sir John Marraby, was not yet on the scene, had no locus22 standi, and, though a friend of The MacQuern, and well known to the Duke, had to be ignored.
A moment later, Sir John arrived. “Mr. President,” he said, “I present Lord Sayes, of Magdalen.”
“The Junta is honoured,” said the Duke, bowing.
Both hosts and both guests, having been prominent in the throng23 that vociferated around Zuleika an hour earlier, were slightly abashed24 in the Duke’s presence. He, however, had not noticed any one in particular, and, even if he had, that fine tradition of the club—“A member of the Junta can do no wrong; a guest of the Junta cannot err”—would have prevented him from showing his displeasure.
A Herculean figure filled the doorway25.
“The Junta is honoured,” said the Duke, bowing to his guest.
“Duke,” said the newcomer quietly, “the honour is as much mine as that of the interesting and ancient institution which I am this night privileged to inspect.”
Turning to Sir John and The MacQuern, the Duke said “I present Mr. Abimelech V. Oover, of Trinity.”
“The Junta,” they replied, “is honoured.”
“Gentlemen,” said the Rhodes Scholar, “your good courtesy is just such as I would have anticipated from members of the ancient Junta. Like most of my countrymen, I am a man of few words. We are habituated out there to act rather than talk. Judged from the view-point of your beautiful old civilisation26, I am aware my curtness27 must seem crude. But, gentlemen, believe me, right here—”
“Dinner is served, your Grace.”
Thus interrupted, Mr. Oover, with the resourcefulness of a practised orator28, brought his thanks to a quick but not abrupt29 conclusion. The little company passed into the front room.
Through the window, from the High, fading daylight mingled30 with the candle-light. The mulberry coats of the hosts, interspersed31 by the black ones of the guests, made a fine pattern around the oval table a-gleam with the many curious pieces of gold and silver plate that had accrued32 to the Junta in course of years.
The President showed much deference33 to his guest. He seemed to listen with close attention to the humorous anecdote34 with which, in the American fashion, Mr. Oover inaugurated dinner.
To all Rhodes Scholars, indeed, his courtesy was invariable. He went out of his way to cultivate them. And this he did more as a favour to Lord Milner than of his own caprice. He found these Scholars, good fellows though they were, rather oppressive. They had not—how could they have?—the undergraduate’s virtue35 of taking Oxford as a matter of course. The Germans loved it too little, the Colonials too much. The Americans were, to a sensitive observer, the most troublesome—as being the most troubled—of the whole lot. The Duke was not one of those Englishmen who fling, or care to hear flung, cheap sneers36 at America. Whenever any one in his presence said that America was not large in area, he would firmly maintain that it was. He held, too, in his enlightened way, that Americans have a perfect right to exist. But he did often find himself wishing Mr. Rhodes had not enabled them to exercise that right in Oxford. They were so awfully37 afraid of having their strenuous38 native characters undermined by their delight in the place. They held that the future was theirs, a glorious asset, far more glorious than the past. But a theory, as the Duke saw, is one thing, an emotion another. It is so much easier to covet39 what one hasn’t than to revel40 in what one has. Also, it is so much easier to be enthusiastic about what exists than about what doesn’t. The future doesn’t exist. The past does. For, whereas all men can learn, the gift of prophecy has died out. A man cannot work up in his breast any real excitement about what possibly won’t happen. He cannot very well help being sentimentally42 interested in what he knows has happened. On the other hand, he owes a duty to his country. And, if his country be America, he ought to try to feel a vivid respect for the future, and a cold contempt for the past. Also, if he be selected by his country as a specimen43 of the best moral, physical, and intellectual type that she can produce for the astounding44 of the effete46 foreigner, and incidentally for the purpose of raising that foreigner’s tone, he must—mustn’t he?—do his best to astound45, to exalt47. But then comes in this difficulty. Young men don’t like to astound and exalt their fellows. And Americans, individually, are of all people the most anxious to please. That they talk overmuch is often taken as a sign of self-satisfaction. It is merely a mannerism48. Rhetoric49 is a thing inbred in them. They are quite unconscious of it. It is as natural to them as breathing. And, while they talk on, they really do believe that they are a quick, businesslike people, by whom things are “put through” with an almost brutal50 abruptness51. This notion of theirs is rather confusing to the patient English auditor52.
Altogether, the American Rhodes Scholars, with their splendid native gift of oratory53, and their modest desire to please, and their not less evident feeling that they ought merely to edify54, and their constant delight in all that of Oxford their English brethren don’t notice, and their constant fear that they are being corrupted55, are a noble, rather than a comfortable, element in the social life of the University. So, at least, they seemed to the Duke.
And to-night, but that he had invited Oover to dine with him, he could have been dining with Zuleika. And this was his last dinner on earth. Such thoughts made him the less able to take pleasure in his guest. Perfect, however, the amenity56 of his manner.
This was the more commendable57 because Oover’s “aura” was even more disturbing than that of the average Rhodes Scholar. To-night, besides the usual conflicts in this young man’s bosom59, raged a special one between his desire to behave well and his jealousy60 of the man who had to-day been Miss Dobson’s escort. In theory he denied the Duke’s right to that honour. In sentiment he admitted it. Another conflict, you see. And another. He longed to orate about the woman who had his heart; yet she was the one topic that must be shirked.
The MacQuern and Mr. Trent-Garby, Sir John Marraby and Lord Sayes, they too—though they were no orators—would fain have unpacked61 their hearts in words about Zuleika. They spoke62 of this and that, automatically, none listening to another—each man listening, wide-eyed, to his own heart’s solo on the Zuleika theme, and drinking rather more champagne63 than was good for him. Maybe, these youths sowed in themselves, on this night, the seeds of lifelong intemperance64. We cannot tell. They did not live long enough for us to know.
While the six dined, a seventh, invisible to them, leaned moodily65 against the mantel-piece, watching them. He was not of their time. His long brown hair was knotted in a black riband behind. He wore a pale brocaded coat and lace ruffles66, silken stockings, a sword. Privy67 to their doom20, he watched them. He was loth that his Junta must die. Yes, his. Could the diners have seen him, they would have known him by his resemblance to the mezzotint portrait that hung on the wall above him. They would have risen to their feet in presence of Humphrey Greddon, founder68 and first president of the club.
His face was not so oval, nor were his eyes so big, nor his lips so full, nor his hands so delicate, as they appeared in the mezzotint. Yet (bating the conventions of eighteenth-century portraiture) the likeness69 was a good one. Humphrey Greddon was not less well-knit and graceful70 than the painter had made him, and, hard though the lines of the face were, there was about him a certain air of high romance that could not be explained away by the fact that he was of a period not our own. You could understand the great love that Nellie O’Mora had borne him.
Under the mezzotint hung Hoppner’s miniature of that lovely and ill-starred girl, with her soft dark eyes, and her curls all astray from beneath her little blue turban. And the Duke was telling Mr. Oover her story—how she had left her home for Humphrey Greddon when she was but sixteen, and he an undergraduate at Christ Church; and had lived for him in a cottage at Littlemore, whither he would ride, most days, to be with her; and how he tired of her, broke his oath that he would marry her, thereby71 broke her heart; and how she drowned herself in a mill-pond; and how Greddon was killed in Venice, two years later, duelling on the Riva Schiavoni with a Senator whose daughter he had seduced72.
And he, Greddon, was not listening very attentively73 to the tale. He had heard it told so often in this room, and he did not understand the sentiments of the modern world. Nellie had been a monstrous74 pretty creature. He had adored her, and had done with her. It was right that she should always be toasted after dinner by the Junta, as in the days when first he loved her—“Here’s to Nellie O’Mora, the fairest witch that ever was or will be!” He would have resented the omission75 of that toast. But he was sick of the pitying, melting looks that were always cast towards her miniature. Nellie had been beautiful, but, by God! she was always a dunce and a simpleton. How could he have spent his life with her? She was a fool, by God! not to marry that fool Trailby, of Merton, whom he took to see her.
Mr. Oover’s moral tone, and his sense of chivalry76, were of the American kind: far higher than ours, even, and far better expressed. Whereas the English guests of the Junta, when they heard the tale of Nellie O’Mora, would merely murmur77 “Poor girl!” or “What a shame!” Mr. Oover said in a tone of quiet authority that compelled Greddon’s ear “Duke, I hope I am not incognisant of the laws that govern the relations of guest and host. But, Duke, I aver58 deliberately78 that the founder of this fine old club; at which you are so splendidly entertaining me to-night, was an unmitigated scoundrel. I say he was not a white man.”
At the word “scoundrel,” Humphrey Greddon had sprung forward, drawing his sword, and loudly, in a voice audible to himself alone, challenged the American to make good his words. Then, as this gentleman took no notice, with one clean straight thrust Greddon ran him through the heart, shouting “Die, you damned psalm-singer and traducer79! And so die all rebels against King George!”* Withdrawing the blade, he wiped it daintily on his cambric handkerchief. There was no blood. Mr. Oover, with unpunctured shirt-front, was repeating “I say he was not a white man.” And Greddon remembered himself—remembered he was only a ghost, impalpable, impotent, of no account. “But I shall meet you in Hell to-morrow,” he hissed80 in Oover’s face. And there he was wrong. It is quite certain that Oover went to Heaven.
* As Edward VII. was at this time on the throne, it must have been
to George III. that Mr. Greddon was referring.
Unable to avenge81 himself, Greddon had looked to the Duke to act for him. When he saw that this young man did but smile at Oover and make a vague deprecatory gesture, he again, in his wrath82, forgot his disabilities. Drawing himself to his full height, he took with great deliberation a pinch of snuff, and, bowing low to the Duke, said “I am vastly obleeged to your Grace for the fine high Courage you have exhibited in the behalf of your most Admiring, most Humble83 Servant.” Then, having brushed away a speck84 of snuff from his jabot, he turned on his heel; and only in the doorway, where one of the club servants, carrying a decanter in each hand, walked straight through him, did he realise that he had not spoilt the Duke’s evening. With a volley of the most appalling85 eighteenth-century oaths, he passed back into the nether86 world.
To the Duke, Nellie O’Mora had never been a very vital figure. He had often repeated the legend of her. But, having never known what love was, he could not imagine her rapture87 or her anguish88. Himself the quarry89 of all Mayfair’s wise virgins90, he had always—so far as he thought of the matter at all—suspected that Nellie’s death was due to thwarted91 ambition. But to-night, while he told Oover about her, he could see into her soul. Nor did he pity her. She had loved. She had known the one thing worth living for—and dying for. She, as she went down to the mill-pond, had felt just that ecstasy92 of self-sacrifice which he himself had felt to-day and would feel to-morrow. And for a while, too—for a full year—she had known the joy of being loved, had been for Greddon “the fairest witch that ever was or will be.” He could not agree with Oover’s long disquisition on her sufferings. And, glancing at her well-remembered miniature, he wondered ju............