Septimus Part 27

"That's like you," she said; "but George Eliot had never met a man like you, poor thing, so she had to stick the real thing down to dogs."

Septimus reddened. "Dogs bark and keep one from sleeping," he said. "My next-door neighbor at the Hotel G.o.det has two. An ugly man with a beard comes and takes them out in a motor car. Do you know, I'm thinking of growing a beard. I wonder how I should look in it?"

Emmy laughed and caught his sleeve. "Why won't you even let me tell you what I think of you?"

"Wait till I've grown the beard, and then you can," said Septimus.

"That will be never," she retorted; "for if you grow a beard, you'll look a horror, like a Prehistoric Man--and I sha'n't have anything to do with you.

So I'll never be able to tell you."

"It would be better so," said he.

They made many plans for settling down in some part of rural France or Switzerland--they had the map of Europe to choose from--but Septimus's vagueness and a disinclination for further adventure on the part of Emmy kept them in Paris. The winter brightened into spring, and Paris, gay in lilac and suns.h.i.+ne, held them in her charm. There were days when they almost forgot, and became the light-hearted companions of the lame donkey on Nunsmere Common.

A day on the Seine, for instance, in a steamboat, when the water was miraculously turned to sparkling wine and the great ma.s.ses of buildings were bathed in amber and the domes of the Pantheon and the Invalides and the cartouches and bosses of the Pont Alexandre III shone burnished gold.

There was Auteuil, with its little open-air restaurants, rustic trellis and creepers, and its _friture_ of gudgeon and dusty salt and cutlery and great yards of bread, which Emmy loved to break with Septimus, like Christmas crackers. Then, afterwards, there was the winding Seine again, Robinson Crusoe's Island in all its greenery, and St. Cloud with its terrace looking over the valley to Paris wrapped in an amethyst haze, with here and there a triumphant point of glory.

A day also in the woods of Bas Meudon, alone beneath the trees, when they talked like children, and laughed over the luncheon basket which Madame Bolivard had stuffed full of electrifying edibles; when they lay on their backs and looked dreamily at the sky through the leaves, and listened to the chirrup of insects awakening from winter and the strange cracklings and tiny voices of springtide, and gave themselves up to the general vibration of life which accompanies the working of the sap in the trees.

Days, too, in mid-Paris, in the Luxembourg Gardens, among the nursery maids and working folk; at cafes on the remoter boulevards, where the kindly life of Paris, still untouched by touristdom, pa.s.ses up and down, and the spring gets into the step of youth and sparkles in a girl's eyes. At the window even of the _appartement_ in the Boulevard Raspail, when the air was startlingly clear and scented and brought the message of spring from far lands, from the golden sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean, from the windy mountain tops of Auvergne, from the broad, tender green fields of Central France, from every heart and tree and flower, from Paris itself, quivering with life. At such times they would not talk, both interpreting the message in their own ways, yet both drawn together into a common mood in which they vaguely felt that the earth was still a Land of Romance, that the mystery of rebirth was repeating itself according to unchanging and perpetual law; that inconsiderable, forlorn human atoms though they were, the law would inevitably affect them too, and cause new hopes, new desires, and new happiness to bud and flower in their hearts.

During these spring days there began to dawn in the girl's soul a knowledge of the deeper meaning of things. When she first met Septimus and delightedly regarded him as a new toy, she was the fluffy, frivolous little animal of excellent breeding and half education, so common in English country residential towns, with the little refinements somewhat coa.r.s.ened, the little animalism somewhat developed, the little brain somewhat sharpened, by her career on the musical-comedy stage. Now there were signs of change. A glimmering notion of the duty of sacrifice entered her head.

She carried it out by appearing one day, when Septimus was taking her for a drive, in the monstrous nightmare of a hat. It is not given to breathing male to appreciate the effort it cost her. She said nothing; neither did he. She sat for two hours in the victoria, enduring the tortures of the uglified, watching him out of the tail of her eye and waiting for a sign of recognition. At last she could endure it no longer.

"I put this thing on to please you," she said.

"What thing?"

"The hat you gave me."

"Oh! Is that it?" he murmured in his absent way. "I'm so glad you like it."

He had never noticed it. He had scarcely recognized it. It had given him no pleasure. She had made of herself a sight for G.o.ds and men to no earthly purpose. All her sacrifice had been in vain. It was then that she really experienced the disciplinary irony of existence. She never wore the hat again; wherein she was blameless.

The spring deepened into summer, and they stayed on in the Boulevard Raspail until they gave up making plans. Paris baked in the sun, and theaters perished, and riders disappeared from the Acacias, and Cook's brakes replaced the flas.h.i.+ng carriages in the grand Avenue des Champs Elysees, and the great Anglo-Saxon language resounded from the Place de la Bastille to the Bon Marche. The cab horses drooped as if drugged by the vapor of the melting asphalt beneath their noses. Men and women sat by doorways, in front of little shops, on the benches in wide thoroughfares.

The Latin Quarter blazed in silence and the gates of the great schools were shut. The merchants of lemonade wheeled their tin vessels through the streets and the bottles crowned with lemons looked pleasant to hot eyes.

For the dust lay thick upon the leaves of trees and the lips of men, and the air was heavy with the over-fulfilment of spring's promise.

Septimus was sitting with Hegisippe Cruchot outside the little cafe of the iron tables painted yellow where first they had consorted.

"_Mon ami_," said he, "you are one of the phenomena that make me believe in the _bon Dieu_. If you hadn't dragged me from under the wheels of the cab, I should have been killed, and if I had been killed you wouldn't have introduced me to your aunt who can cook, and what I should have done without your aunt heaven only knows. I owe you much."

"_Bah, mon vieux_," said Hegisippe, "what are you talking about? You owe me nothing."

"I owe you three lives," said Septimus.

CHAPTER XIII

Hegisippe Cruchot laughed and twirled his little brows mustache.

"If you think so much of it," said he, "you can acquit your debt in full by offering me another absinthe to drink the health of the three."

"Why, of course," said Septimus.

Hegisippe, who was sitting next the door, twisted his head round and shouted his order to those within. It was a very modest little cafe; in fact it was not a cafe at all, but a _Marchand des vins_ with a zinc counter inside, and a couple of iron tables outside on the pavement to convey the air of a _terra.s.se_. Septimus, with his genius for the inharmonious, drank tea; not as the elegant nowadays drink at Colombin's or Rumpelmayer's, but a dirty, gray liquid served with rum, according to the old French fas.h.i.+on, before _five-o'cloquer_ became a verb in the language.

When people ask for tea at a _Marchand des vins_, the teapot has to be hunted up from goodness knows where; and as for the tea...! Septimus, however, sipped the decoction of the dust of ages with his usual placidity.

He had poured himself out a second cup and was emptying into it the remainder of the carafe of rum, so as to be ready for the toast as soon as Hegisippe had prepared his absinthe, when a familiar voice behind him caused him to start and drop the carafe itself into the teacup.

"Well, I'm blessed!" said the voice.

It was Clem Sypher, large, commanding, pink, and smiling. The sight of Septimus hobn.o.bbing with a Zouave outside a humble wine merchant's had drawn from him the exclamation of surprise. Septimus jumped to his feet.

"My dear fellow, how glad I am to see you. Won't you sit down and join us?

Have a drink."

Sypher took off his gray Homburg hat for a moment, and wiped a damp forehead.

"Whew! How anybody can stay in Paris this weather unless they are obliged to is a mystery."

"Why do you stay?" asked Septimus.

"I'm not staying. I'm pa.s.sing through on my way to Switzerland to look after the Cure there. But I thought I'd look you up. I was on my way to you. I was in Nunsmere last week and took Wiggleswick by the throat and choked your address out of him. The Hotel G.o.det. It's somewhere about here, isn't it?"

"Over there," said Septimus, with a wave of the hand. He brought a chair from the other table. "Do sit down."

Sypher obeyed. "How's the wife?"

"The--what?" asked Septimus.

"The wife--Mrs. Dix."

"Oh, very well, thank you," he said hurriedly. "Let me introduce you to my good friend Monsieur Hegisippe Cruchot of the Zouaves--Monsieur Cruchot--Monsieur Clem Sypher."

Hegisippe saluted and declared his enchantment according to the manners of his country. Sypher raised his hat politely.

"Of Sypher's Cure--Friend of Humanity. Don't forget that," he said laughingly in French.

"_Qu'est ce que c'est que ca?_" asked Hegisippe, turning to Septimus.

Septimus explained.

"Ah-h!" cried Hegisippe, open-mouthed, the light of recognition in his eyes. "_La Cure Sypher_!" He made it rhyme with "prayer." "But I know that well. And it is Monsieur who fabricates _ce machin-la_?"

"Yes; the Friend of Humanity. What have you used it for?"