I had on the way a horrible apprehension1. What if the Duke, in his agony, had taken the one means to forgetfulness? His room, I could see, was lit up; but a man does not necessarily choose to die in the dark. I hovered2, afraid, over the dome3 of the Sheldonian. I saw that the window of the room above the Duke’s was also lit up. And there was no reason at all to doubt the survival of Noaks. Perhaps the sight of him would hearten me.
I was wrong. The sight of Noaks in his room was as dismal4 a thing as could be. With his chin sunk on his breast, he sat there, on a rickety chair, staring up at the mantel-piece. This he had decked out as a sort of shrine5. In the centre, aloft on an inverted6 tin that had contained Abernethy biscuits, stood a blue plush frame, with an inner rim7 of brass8, several sizes too big for the picture-postcard installed in it. Zuleika’s image gazed forth9 with a smile that was obviously not intended for the humble10 worshipper at this execrable shrine. On either side of her stood a small vase, one holding some geraniums, the other some mignonette. And just beneath her was placed that iron ring which, rightly or wrongly, Noaks supposed to alleviate11 rheumatism—that same iron ring which, by her touch to-night, had been charged for him with a yet deeper magic, insomuch that he dared no longer wear it, and had set it before her as an oblation12.
Yet, for all his humility13, he was possessed14 by a spirit of egoism that repelled15 me. While he sat peering over his spectacles at the beauteous image, he said again and again to himself, in a hollow voice, “I am so young to die.” Every time he said this, two large, pear-shaped tears emerged from behind his spectacles, and found their way to his waistcoat. It did not seem to strike him that quite half of the undergraduates who contemplated16 death—and contemplated it in a fearless, wholesome17, manly18 fashion—were his juniors. It seemed to seem to him that his own death, even though all those other far brighter and more promising19 lives than his were to be sacrificed, was a thing to bother about. Well, if he did not want to die, why could he not have, at least, the courage of his cowardice20? The world would not cease to revolve21 because Noaks still clung to its surface. For me the whole tragedy was cheapened by his participation22 in it. I was fain to leave him. His squint23, his short legs dangling24 towards the floor, his tear-sodden waistcoat, and his refrain “I am so young to die,” were beyond measure exasperating25. Yet I hesitated to pass into the room beneath, for fear of what I might see there.
How long I might have paltered, had no sound come from that room, I know not. But a sound came, sharp and sudden in the night, instantly reassuring26. I swept down into the presence of the Duke.
He stood with his head flung back and his arms folded, gorgeous in a dressing-gown of crimson27 brocade. In animation28 of pride and pomp, he looked less like a mortal man than like a figure from some great biblical group by Paul Veronese.
And this was he whom I had presumed to pity! And this was he whom I had half expected to find dead.
His face, usually pale, was now red; and his hair, which no eye had ever yet seen disordered, stood up in a glistening29 shock. These two changes in him intensified30 the effect of vitality31. One of them, however, vanished as I watched it. The Duke’s face resumed its pallor. I realised then that he had but blushed; and I realised, simultaneously32, that what had called that blush to his cheek was what had also been the signal to me that he was alive. His blush had been a pendant to his sneeze. And his sneeze had been a pendant to that outrage33 which he had been striving to forget. He had caught cold.
He had caught cold. In the hour of his soul’s bitter need, his body had been suborned against him. Base! Had he not stripped his body of its wet vesture? Had he not vigorously dried his hair, and robed himself in crimson, and struck in solitude34 such attitudes as were most congruous with his high spirit and high rank? He had set himself to crush remembrance of that by which through his body his soul had been assailed35. And well had he known that in this conflict a giant demon36 was his antagonist37. But that his own body would play traitor—no, this he had not foreseen. This was too base a thing to be foreseen.
He stood quite still, a figure orgulous and splendent. And it seemed as though the hot night, too, stood still, to watch him, in awe38, through the open lattices of his window, breathlessly. But to me, equipped to see beneath the surface, he was piteous, piteous in ratio to the pretension39 of his aspect. Had he crouched40 down and sobbed41, I should have been as much relieved as he. But he stood seignorial and aquiline42.
Painless, by comparison with this conflict in him, seemed the conflict that had raged in him yesternight. Then, it had been his dandihood against his passion for Zuleika. What mattered the issue? Whichever won, the victory were sweet. And of this he had all the while been subconscious43, gallantly44 though he fought for his pride of dandihood. To-night in the battle between pride and memory, he knew from the outset that pride’s was but a forlorn hope, and that memory would be barbarous in her triumph. Not winning to oblivion, he must hate with a fathomless45 hatred46. Of all the emotions, hatred is the most excruciating. Of all the objects of hatred, a woman once loved is the most hateful. Of all deaths, the bitterest that can befall a man is that he lay down his life to flatter the woman he deems vilest47 of her sex.
Such was the death that the Duke of Dorset saw confronting him. Most men, when they are at war with the past, have the future as ally. Looking steadfastly48 forward, they can forget. The Duke’s future was openly in league with his past. For him, prospect49 was memory. All that there was for him of future was the death to which his honour was pledged. To envisage50 that was to... no, he would NOT envisage it! With a passionate51 effort he hypnotised himself to think of nothing at all. His brain, into which, by the power Zeus gave me, I was gazing, became a perfect vacuum, insulated by the will. It was the kind of experiment which scientists call “beautiful.” And yes, beautiful it was.
But not in the eyes of Nature. She abhors52 a vacuum. Seeing the enormous odds53 against which the Duke was fighting, she might well have stood aside. But she has no sense of sport whatsoever54. She stepped in.
At first I did not realise what was happening. I saw the Duke’s eyes contract, and the muscles of his mouth drawn55 down, and, at the same time, a tense upward movement of his whole body. Then, suddenly, the strain undone56: a downward dart57 of the head, a loud percussion58. Thrice the Duke sneezed, with a sound that was as the bursting of the dams of body and soul together; then sneezed again.
Now was his will broken. He capitulated. In rushed shame and horror and hatred, pell-mell, to ravage59 him.
What care now, what use, for deportment? He walked coweringly round and round his room, with frantic60 gestures, with head bowed. He shuffled61 and slunk. His dressing-gown had the look of a gabardine.
Shame and horror and hatred went slashing62 and hewing63 throughout the fallen citadel64. At length, exhausted65, he flung himself down on the window-seat and leaned out into the night, panting. The air was full of thunder. He clutched at his throat. From the depths of the black caverns66 beneath their brows the eyes of the unsleeping Emperors watched him.
He had gone through much in the day that was past. He had loved and lost. He had striven to r............