Septimus Part 10

She spoke earnestly, just a bit pa.s.sionately. In the silence that followed she realized with sudden amazement that she had opened her heart to this prime apostle of quackery. As he made no immediate reply, the silence grew tense and she clasped her hands tight, and wondered, as her s.e.x has done from time immemorial, why on earth she had spoken. When he answered it was kindly.

"You've done me a great honor in telling me this. I understand. You want the earth, or as much of it as you can get, and when you've got it and found out what it means, you'll make a great use of it. Have you many friends?"

"No," said Zora. He had an uncanny way of throwing her back on to essentials. "None stronger than myself."

"Will you take me as a friend? I'm strong enough," said Sypher.

"Willingly," she said, dominated by his earnestness.

"That's good. I may be able to help you when you've found your vocation. I can tell you, at any rate, how to get to what you want. You've just got to keep a thing in view and go for it and never let your eyes wander to right or left or up or down. And looking back is fatal--the truest thing in Scripture is about Lot's wife. She looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt."

He paused, his face a.s.sumed an air of profound reflection, and he added with gravity:

"And the Clem Sypher of the period when he came by, made use of her, and plastered her over with posters of his cure."

The day she had appointed as the end of her Monte Carlo visit arrived. She would first go to Paris, where some Americans whom she had met in Florence and with whom she had exchanged occasional postcards pressed her to join them. Then London; and then a spell of rest in the lavender of Nunsmere.

That was her programme. Septimus Dix was to escort her as far as Paris, in defiance of the proprieties as interpreted by Turner. What was to become of him afterwards neither conjectured; least of all Septimus himself. He said nothing about getting back to Shepherd's Bush. Many brilliant ideas had occurred to him during his absence which needed careful working out.

Wherefore Zora concluded that he proposed to accompany her to London.

A couple of hours before the train started she dispatched Turner to Septimus's hotel to remind him of the journey. Turner, a strong-minded woman of forty--like the oyster she had been crossed in love and like her mistress she held men in high contempt--returned with an indignant tale.

After a series of parleyings with Mr. Dix through the medium of the hotel _cha.s.seur_, who had a confused comprehension of voluble English, she had mounted at Mr. Dix's entreaty to his room. There she found him, half clad and in his dressing-gown, staring helplessly at a wilderness of clothing and toilet articles for which there was no s.p.a.ce in his suit cases and bag, already piled mountain high.

"I can never do it, Turner," he said as she entered. "What's to be done?"

Turner replied that she did not know; her mistress's instructions were that he should catch the train.

"I'll have to leave behind what I can't get in," he said despondently. "I generally have to do so. I tell the hotel people to give it to widows and orphans. But that's one of the things that make traveling so expensive."

"But you brought everything, sir, in this luggage?"

"I suppose so. Wiggleswick packed. It's his professional training, Turner.

I think they call it 'stowing the swag.'"

As Turner had not heard of Wiggleswick's profession, she did not catch the allusion. Nor did Zora enlighten her when she reported the conversation.

"If they went in once they'll go in again," said Turner.

"They won't. They never do," said Septimus.

His plight was so hopeless, he seemed so immeasurably her s.e.x's inferior, that he awoke her contemptuous pity. Besides, her trained woman's hands itched to restore order out of masculine chaos.

"Turn everything out and I'll pack for you," she said resolutely, regardless of the proprieties. On further investigation she held out horrified hands.

He had mixed up s.h.i.+rts with shoes. His clothes were rolled in bundles, his collars embraced his sponge, his trees, divorced from boots, lay on the top of an unprotected bottle of hair-wash; he had tried to fit his brushes against a box of tooth-powder and the top had already come off. Turner shook out his dress suit and discovered a couple of hotel towels which had got mysteriously hidden in the folds. She held them up severely.

"No wonder you can't get your things in if you take away half the hotel linen," and she threw them to the other side of the room.

In twenty minutes she had worked the magic of Wiggleswick. Septimus was humbly grateful.

"If I were you, sir," she said, "I'd go to the station at once and sit on my boxes till my mistress arrives."

"I think I'll do it, Turner," said Septimus.

Turner went back to Zora flushed, triumphant, and indignant.

"If you think, ma'am," said she, "that Mr. Dix is going to help us on our journey, you're very much mistaken. He'll lose his ticket and he'll lose his luggage and he'll lose himself, and we'll have to go and find them."

"You must take Mr. Dix humorously," said Zora.

"I've no desire to take him at all, ma'am." And Turner snorted virtuously, as became her station.

Zora found him humbly awaiting her on the platform in company with Clem Sypher, who presented her with a great bunch of roses and a bundle of ill.u.s.trated papers. Septimus had received as a parting guerdon an enormous package of the cure, which he embraced somewhat dejectedly. It was Sypher who looked after the luggage of the party. His terrific accent filled the station. Septimus regarded him with envy. He wondered how a man dared order foreign railway officials about like that.

"If I tried to do it they would lock me up. I once interfered in a street row."

Zora did not hear the dire results of the interference. Sypher claimed her attention until the train was on the point of starting.

"Your address in England? You haven't given it."

"The Nook, Nunsmere, Surrey, will always find me."

"Nunsmere?" He paused, pencil in hand, and looked up at her as she stood framed in the railway carriage window. "I nearly bought a house there last year. I was looking out for one with a lawn reaching down to a main railway track. This one had it."

"Penton Court?"

"Yes. That was the name."

"It's still unsold," laughed Zora idly.

"I'll buy it at once," said he.

_"En voiture_," cried the guard.

Sypher put out his masterful hand.

"Au revoir. Remember. We are friends. I never say what I don't mean."

The train moved out of the station. Zora took her seat opposite Septimus.

"I really believe he'll do it," she said.

"What?"

"Oh, something crazy," said Zora. "Tell me about the street row."