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Septimus

<h2>[235]CHAPTER XVIII</h2> As soon as a woman knows what she wants she generally gets it. Some philosophers assert that her methods are circuitous; others, on the other hand, maintain that she rides in a bee line toward the desired object, galloping ruthlessly over conventions, susceptibilities, hearts, and such like obstacles. All, however, agree that she is unscrupulous, that the wish of the woman is the politely insincere wish of the Deity, and that she pursues her course with a serene sureness unknown to man. It is when a woman does not know what she wants that she baffles the philosopher just as the ant in her aimless discursiveness baffles the entomologist. Of course, if the philosopher has guessed her unformulated desire, then things are easy for him, and he can discourse with certitude on feminine vagaries, as Rattenden did on the journeyings of Zora Middlemist. He has the word of the enigma. But to the woman herself her state of mind is an exasperating puzzle, and to her friends, philosophic or otherwise, her consequent actions are disconcerting. Zora went to California, where she was hospitably entertained, and shown the sights of several vast neighborhoods. She peeped into the Chinese quarter at San Francisco, and visited the Yosemite Valley. Attentive young men strewed her path with flowers and candy. Young women vowed her eternal devotion. She came into touch with the intimate problems of the most wonderful social organism the world has ever seen, and was confronted with stupendous[236] works of nature and illimitable solitudes wherein the soul stands appalled. She also ate a great quantity of peaches. When her visit to the Callenders had come to an end she armed herself with introductions and started off by herself to see America. She traveled across the Continent, beheld the majesty of Niagara and the bewildering life of New York. She went to Washington and Boston. In fact, she learned many things about a great country which were very good for her to know, receiving impressions with the alertness of a sympathetic intellect, and pigeonholing them with feminine conscientiousness for future reference. It was all very pleasant, healthful, and instructive, but it no more helped her in her quest than gazing at the jewelers' windows in the Rue de la Paix. Snow-capped Sierras and crowded tram-cars were equally unsuggestive of a mission in life. In the rare moments which activity allowed her for depression she began to wonder whether she was not chasing the phantom of a wild goose. A damsel to whom in a moment of expansion she revealed the object of her journeying exclaimed: "What other mission in life has a woman than to spend money and look beautiful?" Zora laughed incredulously. "You've accomplished half already, for you do look beautiful," said the damsel. "The other half is easy." "But if you haven't much money to spend?" "Spend somebody else's. Lord! If I had your beauty I'd just walk down Wall Street and pick up a millionaire between my finger and thumb, and carry him off right away." When Zora suggested that life perhaps might have some deeper significance, the maiden answered: "Life is like the school child's idea of a parable—a[237] heavenly story (if you've lots of money) with no earthly meaning." "Don't you ever go down beneath the surface of things?" asked Zora. "If you dig down far enough into the earth," replied the damsel, "you come to water. If you bore down deep enough into life you come to tears. My dear, I'm going to dance on the surface and have a good time as long as I can. And I guess you're doing the same." "I suppose I am," said Zora. And she felt ashamed of herself. At Washington fate gave her an opportunity of attaining the other half of the damsel's idea. An elderly senator of enormous wealth proposed marriage, and offered her half a dozen motor-cars, a few palaces and most of the two hemispheres. She declined. "If I were young, would you marry me?" Zora's beautiful shoulders gave the tiniest shrug of uncertainty. Perhaps her young friend was right, and the command of the earth was worth the slight penalty of a husband. She was tired and disheartened at finding herself no nearer to the heart of things than when she had left Nunsmere. Her attitude toward the once unspeakable sex had imperceptibly changed. She no longer blazed with indignation when a man made love to her. She even found it more agreeable than looking at cataracts or lunching with ambassadors. Sometimes she wondered why. The senator she treated very tenderly. "I don't know. How can I tell?" she said a moment or two after the shrug. "My heart is young," said he. Zora met his eyes for the millionth part of a second and[238] turned her head away, deeply sorry for him. The woman's instinctive look dealt instantaneous death to his hopes. It was one more enactment of the tragedy of the bald head and the gray beard. He spoke with pathetic bitterness. Like Don Ruy Gomez da Silva in "Hernani," he gave her to understand that now, when a young fellow passed him in the street, he would give up all his motor-cars and all his colossal canned-salmon business for the young fellow's raven hair and bright eyes. "Then you would love me. I could make you." "What is love, after all?" asked Zora. The elderly senator looked wistfully through the years over an infinite welter of salmon-tins, seeing nothing else. "It's the meaning of life," said he. "I've discovered it too late." He went away sorrowful, and Zora saw the vanity of great possessions. On the homeward steamer she had as a traveling companion a young Englishman whom she had met at Los Angeles, one Anthony Dasent, an engineer of some distinction. He was bronzed and healthy and lithe-limbed. She liked him because he had brains and looked her squarely in the face. On the first evening of the voyage a slight lurch of the vessel caused her to slip, and she would have fallen had he not caught her by the arms. For the first time she realized how strong a man could be. It was a new sensation, not unpleasurable, and in thanking him she blushed. He remained with her on deck, and talked of their California friends and the United States. The next day he established himself by her side, and discoursed on the sea and the sky, human aspirations, the discomforts of[239] his cabin, and a belief in eternal punishment. The day after that he told her of his ambitions, and showed her photographs of his mother and sisters. After that they exchanged views on the discipline of loneliness. His profession, he observed, took him to the waste places of the earth, where there was never a woman to cheer him, and when he came back to England he returned to a hearth equally unconsoled. Zora began to pity his forlorn condition. To build strong bridges and lay down railroads was a glorious thing for a man to do; to do it without sweetheart or wife was nothing less than heroic. In the course of time he told her that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever met. He expressed his admiration of the gold flecks in her brown eyes and the gleams of gold in her hair when it was caught by the sun. He also wished that his sisters could have their skirts cut like hers and could learn the art of tying a veil over a hat. Then he took to scowling on inoffensive young men who fetched her wraps and lent her their binoculars. He declared one of them to be an unmitigated ass to throw whom overboard would be to insult the Atlantic. And then Zora recognized that he was stolidly in love with her after the manner of his stolid kind. She felt frightened, and accused herself of coquetry. Her sympathy with his barren existence had perhaps overstepped the boundaries of polite interest. She had raised false hopes in a young and ingenuous bosom. She worked herself up to a virtuous pitch of self-reprobation and flagellated herself soundly, taking the precaution, however, of wadding the knots of the scourge with cotton-wool. After all, was it her fault that a wholesome young Briton should fall in love with her? She remembered Rattenden's uncomfortable words on the eve of her first pilgrimage:[240] "Beautiful women like yourself, radiating feminine magnetism, worry a man exceedingly. You don't let him go about in peace, so why should he let you?" So Zora came face to face with the eternal battle of the sexes. She stamped her foot in the privacy of her cabin, and declared the principle to be horrid and primeval and everything that was most revolting to a woman who had earnestly set forth to discover the highest things of life. For the remainder of the voyage she avoided Anthony Dasent's company as much as possible, and, lest he should add jealousy to the gloom in which he enveloped himself, sought unexciting joys in the society of a one-eyed geologist who discoursed playfully on the foraminifera of the Pacific slope. One day Dasent came on her alone, and burst out wrathfully: "Why are you treating me like this?" "Like what?" "You are making a fool of me. I'm not going to stand it." Then she realized that when the average man does not get what he wants exactly when he wants it he loses his temper. She soothed him according to the better instincts of her sex, but resolved to play no more with elementary young Britons. One-eyed geologists were safer companions. The former pitched their hearts into her lap; the latter, like Pawkins, the geologist of the Pacific slope, gave her boxes of fossils. She preferred the fossils. You could do what you liked with them: throw them overboard when the donor was not looking, or leave them behind in a railway carriage, or take them home and present them to the vicar who collected butterflies, beetles, ammonites, and[241] tobacco stoppers. But an odd assortment of hearts to a woman who does not want them is really a confounded nuisance. Zora was very much relieved when Dasent, after eating an enormous breakfast, bade her a tragic farewell at Gibraltar. <hr style='width: 45%;' /> It was a cloudless afternoon when she steamed into Marseilles. The barren rock islands on the east rose blue-gray from a blue sea. To the west lay the Isles of Frioul and the island of the Château d'If, with its prison lying grim and long on the crest; in front the busy port, the white noble city crowned by the church of Notre Dame de la Garde standing sentinel against the clear sky. Zora stood on the crowded deck watching the scene, touched as she always was by natural beauty, but sad at heart. Marseilles, within four-and-twenty hours of London, meant home. Although she intended to continue her wanderings to Naples and Alexandria, she felt that she had come to the end of her journey. It had been as profitless as the last. Pawkins, by her side, pointed out the geological feature of the rocks. She listened vaguely, and wondered whether she was to bring him home tied to her chariot as she had brought Septimus Dix and Clem Sypher. The thought of Sypher drew her heart to Marseilles. "I wish I were landing here like you, and going straight home," she said, interrupting the flow of scientific information. "I've already been to Naples, and I shall find nothing I want at Alexandria." "Geologically, it's not very interesting," said Pawkins. "I'm afraid prehistoric antiquity doesn't make my pulses beat faster." "That's the advantage of it." "[242]One might just as well be a fossil oneself." "Much better," said Pawkins, who had read Schopenhauer. "You are not exhilarating to a depressed woman," said Zora with a laugh. "I am sorry," he replied stiffly. "I was trying to entertain you." He regarded her severely out of his one eye and edged away, as if he repented having wasted his time over so futile an organism as a woman. But her feminine magnetism drew him back. "I'm rather glad you are going on to Alexandria," he remarked in a tone of displeasure, and before she could reply he marched off to look after his luggage. Zora's eyes followed him until he disappeared, then she shrugged her shoulders. Apparently one-eyed geologists were as unsafe as elementary young Britons and opulent senators. She felt unfairly treated by Providence. It was maddening to realize herself as of no use in the universe except to attract the attention of the opposite sex. She clenched her hands in impotent anger. There was no mission on earth which she could fulfil. She thought enviously of Cousin Jane. The steamer entered the harbor; the passengers for Marseilles landed, and the mail was brought aboard. There was only one letter for Mrs. Middlemist. It bore the Nunsmere postmark. She opened it and found the tail of the little china dog. She looked at it for a moment wonderingly as it lay absurdly curled in the palm of her hand, and then she burst into tears. The thing was so grotesquely trivial. It meant so much. It was a sign and a token falling, as it were,[243] from the sky into the midst of her despairing mood, rebuking her, summoning her, declaring an unknown mission which she was bound to execute. It lay in her hand like a bit of destiny, inexorable, unquestionable, silently compelling her forthwith to the human soul that stood in great need of her. Fate had granted the wish she had expressed to the one-eyed geologist. She landed at Marseilles, and sped homeward by the night train, her heart torn with anxiety for Septimus. All night long the rhythmic clatter of the train shaped itself into the burden of her words to him: "If ever you want me badly, send me the tail, and I'll come to you from any distance." She had spoken then half jestingly, all tenderly. That evening she had loved him "in a sort of way," and now that he had sent for her, the love returned. The vivid experiences of the past months which had blinded her to the quieter light of home faded away into darkness. Septimus in urgent need, Emmy and Clem Sypher filled her thoughts. She felt thankful that Sypher, strong and self-reliant, was there to be her ally, should her course with Septimus be difficult. Between them they could surely rescue the ineffectual being from whatever dangers assailed him. But what could they be? The question racked her. Did it concern Emmy? A child, she knew, had just been born. A chill fear crept on her lest some tragedy had occurred through Septimus's folly. From him any outrageous senselessness might be expected, and Emmy herself was scarcely less irresponsible than her babe. She reproached herself for having suggested his marriage with Emmy. Perhaps in his vacant way he had acted entirely on her prompting. The marriage was wrong. Two helpless children should never have taken on themselves the[244] graver duties of life toward each other and, future generations. If it were a case in which a man's aid were necessary, there stood Sypher, a great pillar of comfort. Unconsciously she compared him with the man with whom she had come in contact during her travels—and she had met many of great charm and strength and knowledge. For some strange reason which she could not analyze, he towered above them all, though in each separate quality of character others whom she could name surpassed him far. She knew his faults, and in her lofty way smiled at them. Her character as goddess or guardian angel or fairy patroness of the Cure she had assumed with the graciousness of a grown-up lady playing charades at a children's party. His occasional lapses from the traditions of her class jarred on her fine susceptibilities. Yet there, in spite of all, he stood rooted in her life, a fact, a puzzle, a pride and a consolation. The other men paled into unimportant ghosts before him, and strayed shadowy through the limbo of her mind. Till now she had not realized it. Septimus, however, had always dwelt in her heart like a stray dog whom she had rescued from vagrancy. He did not count as a man. Sypher did. Thus during the long, tedious hours of the journey home the two were curiously mingled in her anxious conjectures, and she had no doubt that Sypher and herself, the strong and masterful, would come to the deliverance of the weak. <hr style='width: 45%;' /> Septimus, who had received a telegram from Marseilles, waited for her train at Victoria. In order to insure being in time he had arrived a couple of hours too soon, and patiently wandered about the station. Now and then he stopped before the engines of trains at rest, fascinated, as[245] he always was, by perfect mechanism. A driver, dismounting from the cab, and seeing him lost in admiration of the engine, passed him a civil word, to which Septimus, always courteous, replied. They talked further. "I see you're an engineer, sir," said the driver, who found himself in conversation with an appreciative expert. "My father was," said Septimus. "But I could never get up in time for my examinations. Examinations seem so silly. Why should you tell a set of men what they know already?" The grimy driver expressed the opinion that examinations were necessary. He who spoke had passed them. "I suppose you can get up at any time," Septimus remarked enviously. "Somebody ought to invent a machine for those who can't." "You only want an alarm-clock," said the driver. Septimus shook his head. "They're no good. I tried one once, but it made such a dreadful noise that I threw a boot at it." "Did that stop it?" "No," murmured Septimus. "The boot hit another clock on the mantelpiece, a Louis Quinze clock, and spoiled it. I did get up, but I found the method too expensive, so I never tried it again." The engine of an outgoing train blew off steam, and the resounding din deafened the station. Septimus held his hands to his ears. The driver grinned. "I can't stand that noise," Septimus explained when it was over. "Once I tried to work out an invention for modifying it. It was a kind of combination between a gramaphone and an orchestrion. You stuck it inside somewhere, and instead of the awful screech a piece of music[246] would come out of the funnel. In fact, it might have gone on playing all the time the train was in motion. It would have been so cheery for the drivers, wouldn't it?" The unimaginative mechanic whose wits were scattered by this fantastic proposition used his bit of cotton waste as a handkerchief, and remarked with vague politeness that it was a pity the gentleman was not an engineer. But Septimus deprecated the compliment. He looked wistfully up at the girders of the glass roof and spoke in his gentle, tired voice. "You see," he concluded, "if I had been in practice as an engineer I should never have designed machinery in the orthodox way. I should have always put in little things of my own—and then God knows what would have happened." He brought his eyes to earth with a wan smile, but his companion had vanished. A crowd had filled the suburban platform at the end of which he stood, and in a few moments the train clattered off. Then, remembering that he was hungry, he went to the refreshment-room, where, at the suggestion of the barmaid, he regaled himself on two hard-boiled eggs and a glass of sherry. The meal over, he loitered palely about the busy station, jostled by frantic gentlemen in silk hats rushing to catch suburban trains, and watched grimly by a policeman who suspected a pocket-picking soul beneath his guileless exterior. At last, by especial grace of heaven, he found himself on the platform where the custom-house barrier and the long line of waiting porters heralded the approach of the continental train. Now that only a few moments separated him from Zora, his heart grew cold with suspense. He had not seen her since the night of Emmy's fainting fit. Her letters, though kind, had made clear to him her royal dis[247]pleasure at his unceremonious marriage. For the first time he would look into her gold-flecked eyes out of a disingenuous soul. Would she surprise his guilty secret? It was the only thing he feared in a bewildering world. The train came in, and as her carriage flashed by Zora saw him on the platform with his hat off, passing his fingers nervously through his Struwel Peter hair. The touch of the familiar welcoming her brought moisture to her eyes. As soon as the train stopped she alighted, and leaving Turner (who had accompanied her on the pilgrimage, and from Dover had breathed fervent thanks to Heaven that at last she was back in the land of her fathers) to look after her luggage, she walked down the platform to meet him. He was just asking a porter at frantic grapple with the hand baggage of a large family whether he had seen a tall and extraordinarily beautiful lady in the train, when she came up to him with outstretched hands and beaming eyes. He took the hands and looked long at her, unable to speak. Never had she appeared to him more beautiful, more gracious. The royal waves of her hair beneath a fur traveling-toque invested her with queenliness. The full youth of her figure not hidden by a fur jacket brought to him the generous woman. A bunch of violets at her bosom suggested the fragrant essence of her. "Oh, it's good to see you, Septimus. It's good!" she cried. "The sight of you makes me feel as if nothing mattered in the world except the people one cares for. How are you?" "I'm very well indeed," said Septimus. "Full of inventions." She laughed and guided him up the platform through[248] the cross-traffic of porters carrying luggage from train to cabs. "Is mother all right?" she asked anxiously. "Oh, yes," said Septimus. "And Emmy and the baby?" "Remarkably well. Emmy has had him christened. I wanted him to be called after you. Zoroaster was the only man's name I could think of, but she did not like it, and so she called it Octavius after me. Also Oldrieve after the family, and William." "Why William?" "After Pitt," said Septimus in the tone of a man who gives the obvious answer. She halted for a moment, perplexed. "Pitt?" "Yes; the great statesman. He's going to be a member of Parliament, you know." "Oh," said Zora, moving slowly on. "His mother says it's after the lame donkey on the common. We used to call it William. He hasn't changed a bit since you left." "So the baby's full name is—" said Zora, ignoring the donkey. "William Octavius Oldrieve Dix. It's so helpful to a child to have a good name." "I long to see him," said Zora. "He's in Paris just now." "Paris?" she echoed. "Oh, he's not by himself, you know," Septimus hastened to reassure her, lest she might think that the babe was alone among the temptations and dissipations of the gay city. "His mother's there, too." [249]She shook him by the coat-sleeve. "What an exasperating thing you are! Why didn't you tell me? I could have broken my journey or at least asked them to meet me at the Gare du Nord. But why aren't they in England?" "I didn't bring them with me." She laughed again at his tone, suspecting nothing. "You speak as if you had accidentally left them behind, like umbrellas. Did you?" Turner came up, attended by a porter with the hand baggage. "Are you going on to Nunsmere to-night, ma'am?" "Why should you?" asked Septimus. "I had intended to do so. But if mother is quite well, and Emmy and the baby are in Paris, and you yourself are here, I don't quite see the necessity." "It would be much nicer if you remained in London," said he. "Very well," said Zora, "we shall. We can put up at the Grosvenor Hotel here for the night. Where are you staying?" Septimus murmured the name of his sedate club, where his dissolute morning appearance was still remembered against him. "Go and change and come back and dine with me in an hour's time." He obeyed the command with his usual meekness, and Zora followed the porter through the subway to the hotel. "We haven't dined together like this," she said, unfolding her napkin an hour afterwards, "since Monte Carlo. Then it was hopelessly unconventional. Now we can dine[250] in the strictest propriety. Do you understand that you're my brother-in-law?" She laughed, radiant, curiously happy at being with him. She realized, with a little shock of discovery, the restfulness that was the essential quality of his companionship. He was a quiet haven after stormy seas; he represented something intimate and tender in her life. They spoke for a while of common things: her train journey, the crossing, the wonders she had seen. He murmured incoherent sketches of his life in Paris, the new gun, and Hégisippe Cruchot. But of the reason for his summons he said nothing. At last she leaned across the table and said gently: "Why am I here, Septimus? You haven't told me." "Haven't I?" "No. You see, the little dog's tail brought me post-haste to you, but it gave me no inkling why you wanted me so badly." He looked at her in his scared manner. "Oh, I don't want you at all; at least, I do—most tremendously—but not for myself." "For whom, then?" "Clem Sypher," said Septimus. She paled slightly, and looked down at her plate and crumbled bread. For a long time she did not speak. The announcement did not surprise her. In an inexplicable way it seemed natural. Septimus and Sypher had shared her thoughts so oddly during her journey. An unaccountable shyness had checked her impulse to inquire after his welfare. Indeed, now that the name was spoken she could scarcely believe that she had not expected to hear it. "What is the matter?" she asked at length. "[251]The Cure has failed." "Failed?" She looked up at him half incredulously. The very last letter she had received from Sypher had been full of the lust of battle. Septimus nodded gloomily. "It was only a silly patent ointment like a hundred others, but it was Sypher's religion. Now his gods have gone, and he's lost. It's not good for a man to have no gods. I didn't have any once, and the devils came in. They drove me to try haschisch. But it must have been very bad haschisch, for it made me sick, and so I was saved." "What made you send for me so urgently? The dog's tail—you knew I had to come." "Sypher wanted you—to give him some new gods." "He could have sent for me himself. Why did he ask you?" "He didn't," cried Septimus. "He doesn't know anything about it. He hasn't the faintest idea that you're in London to-night. Was I wrong in bringing you back?" To Zora the incomprehensible aspect of the situation was her own attitude. She did not know whether Septimus was wrong or not. She told herself that she ought to resent the summons which had caused her such needless anxiety as to his welfare, but she could feel no resentment. Sypher had failed. The mighty had fallen. She pictured a broken-hearted man, and her own heart ached for him. "You did right, Septimus," she said very gently. "But of what use can I be to him?" Septimus said: "He's the one to tell you that." "But do you think he knows? He didn't before. He wanted me to stay as a kind of Mascotte for the Cure—sim[252]ply sit still while he drew influence out of me or something. It was absurd." It was on this occasion that Septimus made his one contribution to pessimistic philosophy. "When you analyze anything in life," said he, "don't you think that you always come down to a reductio ad absurdum?" <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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