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Zuleika Dobson; Or, An Oxford Love Story
·
Sir Max Beerbohm
258
And
yonder,
“sitting
upon
the
river-bank
o’ergrown,”
with
questioning
eyes,
was
another
shade,
more
habituated
to
these
haunts--the
shade
known
so
well
to
bathers
“in
the
abandoned
lasher,”
and
to
dancers
“around
the
Fyfield
elm
in
May.”
At
the
bell’s
final
stroke,
the
Scholar
Gipsy
rose,
letting
fall
on
the
water
his
gathered
wild-flowers,
and
passed
towards
Cumnor.
And
now,
duly,
throughout
Oxford,
the
gates
of
the
Colleges
were
closed,
and
closed
were
the
doors
of
the
lodging-houses.
Every
night,
for
many
years,
at
this
hour
precisely,
Mrs.
Batch
had
come
out
from
her
kitchen,
to
turn
the
key
in
the
front-door.
The
function
had
long
ago
become
automatic.
To-night,
however,
it
was
the
cue
for
further
tears.
These
did
not
cease
at
her
return
to
the
kitchen,
where
she
had
gathered
about
her
some
sympathetic
neighbours--women
of
her
own
age
and
kind,
capacious
of
tragedy;
women
who
might
be
relied
on;
founts
of
ejaculation,
wells
of
surmise,
downpours
of
remembered
premonitions.
With
his
elbows
on
the
kitchen
table,
and
his
knuckles
to
his
brow,
sat
Clarence,
intent
on
belated
“prep.”
Even
an
eye-witness
of
disaster
may
pall
if
he
repeat
his
story
too
often.
Clarence
had
noted
in
the
last
recital
that
he
was
losing
his
hold
on
his
audience.
So
now
he
sat
committing
to
memory
the
names
of
the
cantons
of
Switzerland,
and
waving
aside
with
a
harsh
gesture
such
questions
as
were
still
put
to
him
by
the
women.
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