Dobson

“ Dobson?” interrupted Harry.
“Josh. Mrs. Dobson and just Josh, that’s all. Queer, isn’t it, a woman and a dog? Mrs. Dobson won’t go away from here to live, either. This was her father’s house, and her mother lived in it, and all her brothers and sisters, too; and,” said Kate in a whisper, “her husband, Mr. Dobson, went away to sea the very morning they were married, and he’s never come back in all this time; nor anybody who went with him, either. Mother told Frank and me all about it ”

“ Where had Dobson gone? How horribly dark it seemed—and how cold and desolate! He stood undecided for a moment; then he heard a stealthy sound—and from the entrance to the Fifth he saw Elgert come. Ah, he had not been mistaken, then! He stepped back and peeped round the dormitory door. Elgert was stealing down the stairs, and—yes, there Dobson was awaiting him. The two glided on, noiseless as mice; and Charlton, his heart thumping so that it seemed as if the two in [Pg 256] front must hear it, creeping cautiously in the rear, determined to ascertain what they were going to do. ”

“ Mrs. Dobson always enjoyed the apple harvest, when there was an apple harvest to enjoy. She remembered gathering apples from that orchard for Captain Dobson to take away on the Snow, in the year before they were married.
The fingers knitted slower and slower, stumbling over the stitches at last; then they ceased from effort, and the gray sock was let fall across her dress. A 134shadow came over the slant sunlight. Mrs. Dobson caught up the sock, a half-guilty color suffusing face and throat.
“Did I frighten you, grandma?” questioned Harry. “I’m sorry.” ”

“ The king had a high opinion of his artistic ability, styled him the English Tintoretto, and appointed him serjeant-painter on the death of Van Dyck. After the fall of Charles, Dobson was reduced to great poverty, and fell into dissolute habits. He died at the early age of thirty-six. Excellent examples of Dobson’s portraits are to be seen at Blenheim, Chatsworth and several other country seats throughout England. ”

“ Dobson, with a little breath of eagerness. “I was afraid, when there was so much talk of Frank’s going off to the grand school, that my boy would grow discontented.”
135“Not a bit of it, grandma. I got grandeur enough at the circus to last me a lifetime. I’m sorry sometimes, though, because I see so much make-believe in ’most everything. I wonder if it is wicked to hate make-believe as much as I do.”
“Dear me! Harry Cornwall, what can I do if you begin to hate me?” exclaimed Mrs. Dobson, thrusting the knitting-needles into parallel lines through the sock and looking with severity at him. ”

“ Everyone knows Mr. Austin Dobson's dainty verse. In Eighteenth Century Vignettes (Chatto and Windus) everyone has an opportunity, which he will do well to seize, to enjoy his equally charming prose. Mr. Dobson is one of those enviable men who have time to read. He spends an appreciable portion of his days and nights not only with Addison, but with Steele, Prior, Johnson, Goldsmith, and others, whom a generation that read newspapers and subscribe to Mudie's, know only by name. ”

“ Your men in the meantime, can make an independent investigation.”
He made several hieroglyphics on a page torn from his memorandum book and handed it to the major. Dobson studied the characters for a moment, and then nodded.
“All right,” he said briskly. “I give you a free hand. Call headquarters when you want, and in the meantime let me know at the earliest possible moment, if you learn anything of importance. Allez-vous-en.”
“Remember—no arrests!” hissed Peret, and, clapping his hat on the back of his head, he fled from the house as if pursued by the devil himself. ”

“ But the violet of her eyes was all but hidden by the dilation of her pupils.
“Then,” whispered the Duke, “when I shall have died, deeming life a vain thing without you, will the gods give you tears for me? Miss Dobson, will your soul awaken? When I shall have sunk for ever beneath these waters whose supposed purpose here this afternoon is but that they be ploughed by the blades of these young oarsmen, will there be struck from that flint, your heart, some late and momentary spark of pity for me?”
“Why of course, of COURSE!” babbled Zuleika, with clasped hands and dazzling eyes. ”

“ Dobson has produced work that is absolutely classical in its exquisite beauty of form. Nothing more artistically perfect in its way than the Lines to a Greek Girl has been written in our time. This little poem will be remembered in literature as long as Thyrsis is remembered, and Thyrsis will never be forgotten. ”

“ He knew how strong his influence was in the University. He knew also how strong was Zuleika's. He had not much hope of the issue. But his new-born sense of duty to his fellows spurred him on. "Is there," he asked with a bitter smile, "any one of you who doesn't with his whole heart love Miss Dobson?"
Nobody held up a hand.
"As I feared," said the Duke, knowing not that if a hand had been held up he would have taken it as a personal insult. No man really in love can forgive another for not sharing his ardour. ”

“ Vengeance was his, and “Yes, there,” he said, “is the ineluctable hard fact you wake to. The owls have hooted. The gods have spoken. This day your wish is to be fulfilled.”
“The owls have hooted. The gods have spoken. This day—oh, it must not be, John! Heaven have mercy on me!”
“The unerring owls have hooted. The dispiteous and humorous gods have spoken. Miss Dobson, it has to be. And let me remind you,” he added, with a glance at his watch, “that you ought not to keep The MacQuern waiting for luncheon.” ”

“ Molteno purloined his figures and curtailed his nines and his sixes;
And all this to show that the rotten old shank bone abounded in maggots.
Dobson returned unsuspecting, to visit the scene of past glory,—
Oh! how the poor neddies brayed when they fancied the trick had succeeded,
Oh! what an asinine chorus greeted the hero’s returning!
What wonder that Dobson retreated disgusted, nauseated, and bilious?
The stomach, accustomed to good Christian beef and orthodox cabbage,
Will turn against infidel snork, and rice is its abomination. ”

“ You were afraid to, that is the fact."
"Afraid yourself!" retorted Dobson angrily. "As if I should be afraid of him! You know that if I had done anything I should have had Rexworth and all his set about me, and a fellow can't take the lot of them. You don't care to meet Rexworth yourself, and you know it."
A dark frown gathered upon Horace Elgert's handsome face. Ah, how that frown spoilt all his good looks!
"Perhaps I don't, Dobson," he said grimly. "But there are better ways of getting even with Rexworth [Pg 224] than fighting; and I mean to try them all. Have you seen Brown again?" ”

“ You love me—I don’t love you: that is all you can realise. Probably you think you are the first man who has ever fallen on such a plight.”
Said the Duke, bowing over a deprecatory hand, “If there were to pass my window one tithe of them whose hearts have been lost to Miss Dobson, I should win no solace from that interminable parade.”
Zuleika blushed. “Yet,” she said more gently, “be sure they would all be not a little envious of YOU! Not one of them ever touched the surface of my heart. You stirred my heart to its very depths. Yes, you made me love you madly. The pearls told you no lie. ”

“ Dobson, Austin, poet and prose writer, born at Plymouth, is in a department of the Civil Service; wrote "Vignettes in Rhyme," "Proverbs in Porcelain," "Old World Idylls," in verse, and in prose Lives of Fielding, Hogarth, Steele, and Goldsmith; contributed extensively to the magazines; b. 1840.
Dobson, William, portrait-painter, born in London; succeeded Vandyck as king's serjeant-painter to Charles I.; painted the king and members of his family and court; supreme in his art prior to Sir Joshua Reynolds; died in poverty (1610-1646) . ”

“ Zuleika looked at the handkerchief, which was obviously a man’s, and smilingly shook her head.
“I don’t think you know The MacQuern,” said the Duke, with sulky grace. “This,” he said to the intruder, “is Miss Dobson.”
“And is it really true,” asked Zuleika, retaining The MacQuern’s hand, “that you want to die for me?”
Well, the Scots are a self-seeking and a resolute, but a shy, race; swift to act, when swiftness is needed, but seldom knowing quite what to say. ”

“ Still Elgert did not answer. He felt hot and cold by turns. He did not know where to turn his eyes. It was no use denying in the face of such proof.
"You cannot answer!" the Head went on. "You, Dobson, what do you know of this?"
"Oh—oh—oh!" yelled Dobson, clasping his hands, and falling upon his knees. "Oh, forgive me, sir! Oh, I will own up, sir! It was all Elgert's fault. He made me do it, sir! I never wanted to do it, sir! It is all true, every bit of it, sir! Oh——"
"Silence!" cried the Head, in ill-disguised contempt. "No one can force another to do evil. ”

“ Sufficient is it to observe that at night the Dobsons met each other face to face.
"I have been grossly insulted by four people," said Mrs. Dobson, who looked very much the worse for wear. "By a saleswoman in a department store, my milliner, my shoemaker, and my glovemaker. I offered them all cash, and it will take years to reinstate myself with them again."
"I got in wrong with my haberdasher and my hatter," said Dobson, "and then quit for the day. I didn't have the courage to attempt to buy anything more. Your people, by the way, sent collectors to collect last month's bills. ”

“ Mr. Oover, Lord Sayes, Mr. Trent-Garby, sprang to their feet; The MacQuern rose to his. “Zuleika Dobson!” they cried, and drained their glasses.
Then, when they had resumed their seats, came an awkward pause. The Duke, still erect beside the chair he had vacated, looked very grave and pale. Marraby had taken an outrageous liberty. But “a member of the Junta can do no wrong,” and the liberty could not be resented. The Duke felt that the blame was on himself, who had elected Marraby to the club. ”

“ If he could have seen the steel flash under the drooping eyelashes, he would not have gone on to impress her with the value of such an offer, nor told its advantages in half so complacent a tone.
As usual, Dawn had control of herself in this unpleasant crisis, and while his words filled her with dismay and repulsion her tone was cool, low, deliberate:
"I have no doubt you mean to be kind, Mr. Dobson——" she began. ”

“ I'm as loyal a man as any in England, but there's no getting away from that."
"Nobody wants to get away from it, Master Dobson," replied Sir Ralph. "Any body of men with arms in their hands and the knack of using them, can march much farther than the Highlanders have come, if no other body of armed men stands in their way. ”

“ What danger is there, if we are only careful not to make a noise? What a miserable coward you are, Dobson!"
So said Horace Elgert. He and Dobson were together, and morning school was over. They had met that Elgert might unfold his plan for preventing Ralph Rexworth having any chance of gaining the Newlet medal, and also for getting him into disgrace by making it appear that he had been cribbing; and apparently Dobson did not much like the plan, and had been making objections which had called forth Elgert's angry remonstrance. ”

“ He putteth green spectacles fast on the nose of poor Western neddies,—
The poor mokes believe his chaff grass, and devour it all with much gusto.
Figures are all topsy-turvable; may be read backwards or forwards;
Sixes inverted are nines, and nines with their tails off are ciphers,—
All Western donkeys are curtailed, thus there is no end of asses.
Dobson went forth from the East with his cranium crammed full of figures,
Figures which made the inflated Westerns to let off their gas{264}
And collapse like mere bubbles of error when pierced by the arrows of truth. ”

“ At the Grey, Dobson found John Rochfort who had built a hut there, and stayed with him over the weekend, thus obtaining a much required rest. A most methodical man, particular to a degree as to food supplies, and having boats or canoes built for all river work, Dobson was the one surveyor of Old Westland who took no chances, and in consequence had few difficulties, and no serious ones.
After some six years’ service, during which many important works were carried out, he was in April, 1869, appointed District Engineer on the Nelson-West Coast Goldfields, with headquarters at Westport. ”

“ We asseverate we squat—where—we—squat, come—what—will. You say we have no chance to win Miss Z. Dobson. That—we—know. We aren't worthy. We lie prone. Let her walk over us. You say her heart is cold. We don't pro-fess we can take the chill off. But, Sir, we can't be diverted out of loving her—not even by you, Sir. No, Sir! We love her, and—shall, and— will, Sir, with—our—latest breath."
This peroration evoked loud applause. "I love her, and shall, and will," shouted each man. And again they honoured in wine her image. Sir John Marraby uttered a cry familiar in the hunting-field. ”

“ Oh, set against it the fact that I did at one point betray Clio's trust. When Miss Dobson had done the deed recorded at the close of the foregoing chapter, I gave the Duke of Dorset an hour's grace.
I could have done no less. In the lives of most of us is some one thing that we would not after the lapse of how many years soever confess to our most understanding friend; the thing that does not bear thinking of; the one thing to be forgotten ”

“ The Duke drifted further down the High, bespeaking every undergraduate he met, leaving untried no argument, no inducement. For one man, whose name he happened to know, he invented an urgent personal message from Miss Dobson imploring him not to die on her account. On another man he offered to settle by hasty codicil a sum of money sufficient to yield an annual income of two thousand pounds—three thousand—any sum within reason. ”