Zuleika Dobson

During Eights Week, the annual rowing competition at the University of Oxford, Zuleika Dobson arrives at the train station, where her grandfather, the Warden of Judas College, waits to receive her. Every undergraduate on the platform is instantly captivated. As the Warden's carriage carries them toward the College, the stone busts of Roman Emperors lining the Sheldonian Theatre begin to sweat: a supernatural omen of the disaster Zuleika will bring upon Oxford.

Zuleika is a professional conjurer of modest talent but extraordinary beauty. Orphaned in her late teens, she failed as a governess, learned magic tricks from the eldest son of one of her employers, stole his apparatus, and launched a stage career that rose from children's parties to international fame. She craves men's adoration yet can only love a man who does not bow down to her. Since every man she meets does exactly that, she has never loved anyone in return.

On the ride to Judas, the Duke of Dorset, a splendid young aristocrat and member of the College, rides past on a polo pony, saluting the Warden but ignoring Zuleika entirely. She notices his indifference and smiles. That evening at dinner, the two meet. The Duke is the fourteenth holder of his title, a brilliant scholar, a Knight of the Garter (the highest order of English chivalry), and a committed dandy whose supreme self-regard has kept him emotionally detached. He is instantly bewitched by Zuleika but refuses to show it, directing all conversation away from her. She gazes at him with open fascination, falling in love for the first time precisely because he ignores her. After dinner, the Duke discovers that his white pearl studs have transformed, one to black and one to pink, mirroring Zuleika's mismatched pearl earrings: a supernatural sign of his love. Horrified, he flees.

The next morning, the Duke accepts his feelings. Zuleika arrives at his rooms; her own earrings turned white the previous night, proving she loves him. But the moment he declares his love, she recoils. His declaration has made him just like every other prostrate admirer. Her love dies instantly, her earrings reverting to black and pink. She tells him that his indifference was what she loved, and now "the idol has come sliding down its pedestal" (Ch. 4).

The Duke proposes marriage, cataloguing his vast estates, ancestral traditions, and multiple peerages, even promising to build Zuleika a hall for her conjuring tricks. She calls him a snob and refuses. They set out for the boat races. Walking to the river, the Duke begins to contemplate suicide as the only dignified response to unrequited love. On the Judas barge, he announces cryptically that he will die. Zuleika is thrilled but physically restrains him from leaping, begging him to wait until tomorrow so she can savor the sweetness of his sacrifice. He agrees. News of his resolve spreads throughout Oxford, and the undergraduates, already infatuated, silently harden their own vows to follow his example.

That evening at the Junta, a tiny exclusive dining club, the Duke reveals his plan. Rather than being deterred, every member vows to die as well. The Duke is horrified: His example has proved more powerful than any argument against it. At the Judas concert, the Duke plays Chopin's Marche Funèbre with transcendent skill. During the interval, Zuleika asks him to call out her name at the moment of death so no one can doubt it was for her. She then performs her conjuring tricks in the moonlit quadrangle, and during the final trick, she deftly palms the Duke's pearl studs, replacing them with her own earrings.

Walking home afterward, the Duke experiences a surge of restored vitality and tells Zuleika he has changed his mind and wants to live. Furious, she calls him a coward and pours a full water jug onto his face from her window. He endures a wretched night, catching cold from the drenching. At dawn, he resolves to live, defying both Zuleika and the gods. But on his doorstep, a telegram arrives from his steward at Tankerton Hall, the family estate: Two black owls perched on the battlements last night, the ancient omen that a Duke of Dorset is about to die. His face turns white, but he does not flinch. He telegrams back: "PREPARE VAULT FOR FUNERAL MONDAY" (Ch. 14).

Accepting his fated death, the Duke spends the morning trying to save others, attempting every argument from Socratic questioning to offers of money. Nothing works; he himself is still going to die, and no one will back down. Zuleika finds him at his rooms and claims to love him again, but he shows her the telegram, and she faints. When she revives and he refuses to defy the omen, she abruptly announces she has killed her renewed love and departs with a parting taunt.

The Duke lunches alone and discovers that Katie Batch, his landlady's daughter, truly loves him. He gives her Zuleika's discarded earrings and bids her a tender farewell. Seized by the desire to die as he lived, he dons his full Garter robes and walks to the river in magnificent splendor.

On the barge, a thunderstorm breaks. The Duke cries "Zuleika!" buries his face in his velvet mantle, and plunges into the river. From the barges and the towing path, hundreds of young men cry "Zuleika!" and leap in after him. The Duke surfaces once, just as the Judas boat bumps Magdalen, making Judas head of the river. Then he sinks for the last time. On the barge roof, Zuleika stands alone in the downpour, "draining the lees of such homage as had come to no woman in history recorded" (Ch. 19).

That evening, the Warden presides over a bump-supper, the traditional celebratory dinner for the winning college, in a Hall empty of undergraduates. He is unaware of the catastrophe. At the Duke's lodgings, Katie discovers Noaks, a fellow Judas undergraduate who had been infatuated with Zuleika since her first day, hiding behind a window curtain, too afraid to die. She kneels before him, seeing him as the one man who resisted the collective madness, and he kisses her and gives her his ring. Later that night, Zuleika wanders Oxford and sees Noaks at his lit window. Not knowing who he is, she falls into rapturous love, calling him the one superior man who survived. Katie interrupts from above, exposing Noaks as a coward who hid in terror. Shamed beyond endurance, Noaks climbs onto the windowsill and jumps to his death.

Zuleika returns to the Warden's house and announces she will take the veil. Her grandfather gently persuades her that her temperament is ordinary, not unique, and the convent is not her calling. She abandons the idea. Before her mirror, she reflects that the men's sacrifice was real and sufficient. Then she instructs her maid Mélisande to order a special train to Cambridge for ten o'clock the next morning. She slips into bed and falls asleep, her lips parting in a smile: the cycle poised to begin again.