Septimus Part 44

Zora looked round, and the cosiness and comfort made her gasp. Cobwebs hung from the old oak beams across the ceiling; a day or two's ashes defiled the grate; the windows were splashed with mud and rain. There were no curtains. Her finger drawn along the green baize table-cloth revealed the dust. A pair of silver candlesticks on the mantelpiece were stained an iridescent brown. The mirror was fly-blown. In the corner of the room a tray held the remains of the last meal, and a plate containing broken food had overflowed onto a neighboring chair. An odd, uncleaned boot lay, like a frowsy, drunken visitor, on the floor. The springs of the armchair on which she sat were broken.

"It's not fit for a pig to live in," she declared. "It's a crime to leave you to that worthless old scoundrel. I'll talk to him before I go. He won't like it. And then I'll write to Emmy. If that has no effect, I'll go over to Paris and bring her to her senses."

She had arrived royally indignant, having had a pitched battle with Cousin Jane, who took Emmy's side and alluded to Septimus in terms of withering contempt. Now she was furiously angry. The two men looked at her with wistful adoration, for when Zora was furious in a good cause she was very beautiful. And the adoration in each man's heart was intensified by the consciousness of the pathetic futility of her n.o.ble rage. It was for her own sake that the situation had arisen over which she made such a pother, and she was gloriously unconscious of it. Sypher could not speak lest he should betray his knowledge of Septimus's secret, and Septimus could only murmur incoherent ineffectualities concerning the perfection of Emmy, the worthlessness of himself, and the diamond soul that lodged in Wiggleswick's forbidding body. Zora would not listen to unreason. It was Emmy's duty to save her husband from the dust and ashes of his present cosiness, if she could do nothing else for him; and she, Zora, in her magnificence, was going to see that Emmy's duty was performed. Instead of writing she would start the next morning for Paris. It would be well if Septimus could accompany her.

"Mrs. Dix is coming to London, I believe," said Sypher.

Zora looked inquiringly at Septimus, who explained dis cursively. Zora renounced Paris. She would wait for Emmy. For the time being the incident was closed. Septimus, in his hospitality, offered tea.

"I'll get it for you," said Zora. "It will be a good opportunity to speak sweetly to Wiggleswick."

She swept out of the room; the two men lit cigarettes and smoked for a while in silence. At last Sypher asked:

"What made you send her the tail of the little dog?"

Septimus reddened, and ran two of the fingers of the hand holding the cigarette up his hair, and spilled half an inch of ash on his head.

"I broke the dog, you see," he explained luminously, "I knocked it off the mantelpiece. I'm always doing it. When Emmy has a decent house I'll invent something to keep dogs and things on mantelpieces."

Sypher said: "Do you know you've done me one of those services which one man rarely does for another. I'll never forget it to my dying day. By bringing her to me you've saved my reason. You've made me a different being. I'm Clem Sypher--but, by G.o.d you're the Friend of Humanity."

Septimus looked at him with the terrified expression of a mediaeval wrongdoer, writhing under an ecclesiastical curse. He made abject apology.

"It was the only thing I could do," said he.

"Of course it was. And that's why you did it. I never dreamed when you told me to wait until I saw her before going mad or breaking my heart that you meant to send for her. It has set me in front of a new universe."

He rose and stretched his large limbs and smiled confidently at the world out of his clear blue eyes. Two little words of Zora had inspired him with the old self-reliance and sense of predestination to great things. Out of her own mouth had come the words which, when they had come out of Rattenden's, had made his heart sink in despair. She had called him a "big man." Like many big men, he was superst.i.tious. He believed Rattenden's prophetic utterance concerning Zora. He was, indeed, set in front of a new universe, and Septimus had done it by means of the tail of a little china dog.

As he was stretching himself, Wiggleswick shambled in, with the fear of Zora written on his wrinkled brow, and removed the tray and the plate of broken victuals. What had pa.s.sed between them neither he nor Zora would afterwards relate; but Wiggleswick spent the whole of that night and the following days in unremitting industry, so that the house became spick and span as his own well-remembered prison cells. There also was a light of triumph in Zora's eyes when she entered a few moments afterwards with the tea-tray, which caused Sypher to smile and a wicked feeling of content to enter Septimus's mild bosom.

"I think it was high time I came home," she remarked, pouring out the tea.

The two men supported the proposition. The western hemisphere, where she had tarried so long, could get on very well by itself. In the meantime the old eastern hemisphere had been going to pieces. They had a gay little meal. Now that Zora had settled Wiggleswick, arranged her plan of campaign against Emmy, and established very agreeable and subtle relations between Sypher and herself, she could afford to shed all her charm and gaiety and graciousness on her subjects. She was infinitely glad to be with them again. Nunsmere had unaccountably expanded; she breathed freely and no longer knocked her head against beams in bedroom ceilings.

She rallied Septimus on his new gun.

"He's afraid of it," said Sypher.

"What! Afraid of its going off?" she laughed.

"Oh, no," said Septimus. "I've heard lots of them go off."

"When?" asked Zora.

Septimus reddened, and for once was at a loss for one of the curiously evasive answers in which his timidity took refuge. He fidgeted in his chair. Zora repeated her jesting question. "Was it when they were firing royal salutes in St. James's Park?"

"No," said Septimus.

His back being against the fading light she could not perceive the discomfiture on his face. She longed to elicit some fantastic irrelevance.

"Well, where was it? Why this mystery?"

"I'll tell you two," said Septimus. "I've never told you before. In fact, I've never told any one--not even Wiggleswick. I don't like to think of it.

It hurts. You may have wondered how I ever got any practical acquaintance with gunnery. I once held a commission in the Militia Garrison Artillery.

That's how I came to love guns."

"By why should that pain you, my dear Septimus?" asked Zora.

"They said I was incompetent," he murmured, brokenly, "and took away my commission. The colonel said I was a disgrace to the service."

Clem Sypher smote the arm of his chair and started up in his wrath.

"By heavens! I'll make the blundering idiot eat his words. I'll ram them down his throat with the cleaner of the new gun. I'll make you the biggest ornament the service ever possessed. I'll devote my existence to it! The Dix gun shall wipe humanity off the face of the earth!"

"I don't want it to do that," said Septimus, meekly.

Zora begged his forgiveness very sweetly for her indiscretion, and having comforted him with glowing prophecies of fame and domestic happiness, went home with a full heart. She loved Sypher for his generous outburst. She was deeply touched by Septimus's tragic story, but having a sense of humor she could not repress a smile at the thought of Septimus in uniform, handling a battery of artillery.

CHAPTER XXI

Cousin Jane was for packing her boxes and departing, but Zora bade her remain until her own plans were settled. As soon as Emmy arrived she would have to go to London and play fairy G.o.dmother, a proceeding which might take up considerable time. Mrs. Oldrieve commended her beneficent intention, and besought her to bring the irreligiously wedded pair to the Vicar, and have them wedded in a respectable, Anglican way. She was firmly convinced that if this were done, nothing more could possibly be heard of separate lives. Zora promised to do her best, but Cousin Jane continued to sniff. It would be far better, she declared, to shut the man up in an idiot asylum and bring Emmy to Nunsmere, where the child could have a decent upbringing. Zora dissented loftily, but declined to be led into a profitless argument.

"All I ask of you, my dear Jane," said she, "is to take care of mother a little longer while I do what I consider my duty."

She did not inform Cousin Jane that a certain freedom of movements was also rendered desirable by what she considered her duty to Clem Sypher. Cousin Jane lacked the finer threads of apprehension, and her comments might have been crude. When Zora announced her intention to Sypher of leading a migratory existence between London and Nunsmere for the sakes of Emmy and himself, he burst into a panegyric on her angelic nature. Her presence would irradiate these last dark days of disaster, for the time was quickly approaching when the Bermondsey factory would be closed down, and Sypher's Cure would fade away from the knowledge of men.

"Have you thought of the future--of what you are going to do?" she asked.

"No," said he, "but I have faith in my destiny."

Zora felt this to be magnificent, but scarcely practical.

"You'll be without resources?"

"I never realized how full empty pockets could be," he declared.

They were walking across the common, Sypher having lunched at "The Nook."

Presently they came across Septimus sitting by the pond. He rose and greeted them. He wore an overcoat b.u.t.toned up to the throat and a cloth cap. Zora's quick eyes noted an absence of detail in his attire.

"Why, you're not dressed! Oh, you do want a wife to look after you."

"I've only just got up," he explained, "and Wiggleswick wanted to do out my bedroom, so I hadn't time to find my studs. I was thinking all night, you see, and one can't think and sleep at the same time."

"A new invention?" laughed Zora.