They had awaited thousands and innumerable thousands of daybreaks in the Broad, these Emperors, counting the long slow hours till the night were over. It is in the night especially that their fallen greatness haunts them. Day brings some distraction1. They are not incurious of the lives around them—these little lives that succeed one another so quickly. To them, in their immemorial old age, youth is a constant wonder. And so is death, which to them comes not. Youth or death—which, they had often asked themselves, was the goodlier? But it was ill that these two things should be mated. It was ill-come, this day of days.
Long after the Duke was in bed and asleep, his peal2 of laughter echoed in the ears of the Emperors. Why had he laughed?
And they said to themselves “We are very old men, and broken, and in a land not our own. There are things that we do not understand.”
Brief was the freshness of the dawn. From all points of the compass, dark grey clouds mounted into the sky. There, taking their places as though in accordance to a strategic plan laid down for them, they ponderously3 massed themselves, and presently, as at a given signal, drew nearer to earth, and halted, an irresistible4 great army, awaiting orders.
Somewhere under cover of them the sun went his way, transmitting a sulphurous heat. The very birds in the trees of Trinity were oppressed and did not twitter. The very leaves did not whisper.
Out through the railings, and across the road, prowled a skimpy and dingy5 cat, trying to look like a tiger.
It was all very sinister6 and dismal7.
The hours passed. The Broad put forth8, one by one, its signs of waking.
Soon after eight o’clock, as usual, the front-door of the Duke’s lodgings9 was opened from within. The Emperors watched for the faint cloud of dust that presently emerged, and for her whom it preceded. To them, this first outcoming of the landlady’s daughter was a moment of daily interest. Katie!—they had known her as a toddling10 child; and later as a little girl scampering11 off to school, all legs and pinafore and streaming golden hair. And now she was sixteen years old. Her hair, tied back at the nape of her neck, would very soon be “up.” Her big blue eyes were as they had always been; but she had long passed out of pinafores into aprons13, had taken on a sedateness14 befitting her years and her duties, and was anxious to be regarded rather as an aunt than as a sister by her brother Clarence, aged15 twelve. The Emperors had always predicted that she would be pretty. And very pretty she was.
As she came slowly out, with eyes downcast to her broom, sweeping16 the dust so seriously over the doorstep and then across the pavement, and anon when she reappeared with pail and scrubbing-brush, and abased17 herself before the doorstep, and wrought18 so vehemently19 there, what filled her little soul was not the dignity of manual labour. The duties that Zuleika had envied her were dear to her exactly as they would have been, yesterday morning, to Zuleika. The Emperors had often noticed that during vacations their little favourite’s treatment of the doorstep was languid and perfunctory. They knew well her secret, and always (for who can be long in England without becoming sentimental20?) they cherished the hope of a romantic union between her and “a certain young gentleman,” as they archly called the Duke. His continued indifference21 to her they took almost as an affront22 to themselves. Where in all England was a prettier, sweeter girl than their Katie? The sudden irruption of Zuleika into Oxford23 was especially grievous to them because they could no longer hope against hope that Katie would be led by the Duke to the altar, and thence into the highest social circles, and live happily ever after. Luckily it was for Katie, however, that they had no power to fill her head with their foolish notions. It was well for her to have never doubted she loved in vain. She had soon grown used to her lot. Not until yesterday had there been any bitterness. Jealousy24 surged in Katie at the very moment when she beheld25 Zuleika on the threshold. A glance at the Duke’s face when she showed the visitor up was enough to acquaint her with the state of his heart. And she did not, for confirming her intuition, need the two or three opportunities she took of listening at the keyhole. What in the course of those informal audiences did surprise her—so much indeed that she could hardly believe her ear—was that it was possible for a woman not to love the Duke. Her jealousy of “that Miss Dobson” was for a while swallowed up in her pity for him. What she had borne so cheerfully for herself she could not bear for her hero. She wished she had not happened to listen.
And this morning, while she knelt swaying and spreading over “his” doorstep, her blue eyes added certain tears to be scrubbed away in the general moisture of the stone. Rising, she dried her hands in her apron12, and dried her eyes with her hands. Lest her mother should see that she had been crying, she loitered outside the door. Suddenly, her roving glance changed to a stare of acute hostility27. She knew well that the person wandering towards her was—no, not “that Miss Dobson,” as she had for the fraction of an instant supposed, but the next worst thing.
It has been said that Melisande indoors was an evidently French maid. Out of doors she was not less evidently Zuleika’s. Not that she aped her mistress. The resemblance had come by force of propinquity and devotion. Nature had laid no basis for it. Not one point of form or colour had the two women in common. It has been said that Zuleika was not strictly28 beautiful. Melisande, like most Frenchwomen, was strictly plain. But in expression and port, in her whole tournure, she had become, as every good maid does, her mistress’ replica29. The poise30 of her head, the boldness of her regard and brilliance31 of her smile, the leisurely32 and swinging way in which she walked, with a hand on the hip33—all these things of hers were Zuleika’s too. She was no conqueror34. None but the man to whom she was betrothed—a waiter at the Cafe Tourtel, named Pelleas—had ever paid court to her; nor was she covetous35 of other hearts. Yet she looked victorious36, and insatiable of victories, and “terrible as an army with banners.”
In the hand that was not on her hip she carried a letter. And on her shoulders she had to bear the full burden of the hatred37 that Zuleika had inspired in Katie. But this she did not know. She came glancing boldly, leisurely, at the numbers on the front-doors.
Katie stepped back on to the doorstep, lest the inferiority of her stature38 should mar39 the effect of her disdain40.
“Good-day. Is it here that Duke D’Orsay lives?” asked Melisande, as nearly accurate as a Gaul may be in such matters.
“The Duke of Dorset,” said Katie with a cold and insular41 emphasis, “lives here.” And “You,” she tried to convey with her eyes, “you, for all your smart black silk, are a hireling. I am Miss Batch42. I happen to have a hobby for housework. I have not been crying.”
“Then please mount this to him at once,” said Melisande, holding out the letter. “It is from Miss Dobson’s part. Very express. I wait response.”
“You are very ugly,” Katie signalled with her eyes. “I am very pretty. I have the Oxfordshire complexion43. And I play the piano.” With her lips she said merely, “His Grace is not called before nine o’clock.”
“But to-day you go wake him now—quick—is it not?”
“Quite out of the question,” said Katie. “If you care to leave that letter here, I will see that it is placed on his Grace’s breakfast-table, with the morning’s post.” “For the rest,” added her eyes, “Down with France!”
“I find you droll44, but droll, my little one!” cried Melisande.
Katie stepped back and shut the door in her face. “Like a little Empress,” the Emperors commented.
The Frenchwoman threw up her hands and apostrophised heaven. To this day she believes that all the bonnes of Oxford are mad, but mad, and of a madne............