SEPTIMUS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
IDOLS
JAFFERY
VIVIETTE
SEPTIMUS
DERELICTS
THE USURPER
STELLA MARIS
WHERE LOVE IS
THE ROUGH ROAD
THE MOUNTEBANK
THE RED PLANET
THE WHITE DOVE
FAR-AWAY STORIES
THE GREAT PANDOLFO
SIMON THE JESTER
THE COMING OF AMOS
THE TALE OF TRIONA
A STUDY IN SHADOWS
A CHRISTMAS MYSTERY
THE WONDERFUL YEAR
THE HOUSE OF BALTAZAR
THE FORTUNATE YOUTH
THE BELOVED VAGABOND
AT THE GATE OF SAMARIA
THE GLORY OF CLEMENTINA
THE MORALS OF MARCUS ORDEYNE
THE DEMAGOGUE AND LADY PHAYRE
THE JOYOUS ADVENTURES OF ARISTIDE PUJOL
SEPTIMUS
BY
WILLIAM J. LOCKE
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1931
Copyright, 1908
By The Phillips Publishing Company
Copyright, 1909
By Dodd, Mead & Company
Printed in U.S.A.
The Vail-Ballou Press
Binghamton and New York
RUTGER BLEECKER JEWETT
CARO SEPTIMI
AUCTORISQUE AMICO HIC LIBER
SEPTIMI INSCRIBITUR
SEPTIMUS
CHAPTER I
"I love Nunsmere," said the Literary Man from London. "It is a spot where
faded lives are laid away in lavender."
"I'm not a faded life, and I'm not going to be laid away in lavender,"
retorted Zora Middlemist.
She turned from him and handed cakes to the Vicar. She had no desire to pet
the Vicar, but he was less unbearable than the Literary Man from London
whom he had brought to call on his parishioners. Zora disliked to be called
a parishioner. She disliked many things in Nunsmere. Her mother, Mrs.
Oldrieve, however, loved Nunsmere, adored the Vicar, and found
awe-inspiring in his cleverness the Literary Man from London.
Nunsmere lies hidden among the oaks of Surrey, far from the busy ways of
men. It is heaven knows how many miles from a highroad. You have to drive
through lanes and climb right over a hill to get to it. Two old Georgian
houses covered with creepers, a modern Gothic church, two much more
venerable and pious-looking inns, and a few cottages settling peacefully
around a common form the village. Here and there a cottage lurks up a lane.
These cottages are mostly inhabited by the gentle classes. Some are really
old, with great oak beams across the low ceilings, and stone-flagged
kitchens furnished with great open fireplaces where you can sit and get
scorched and covered with smoke. Some are new, built in imitation of the
old, by a mute, inglorious Adam, the village carpenter. All have long
casement windows, front gardens in which grow stocks and phlox and
sunflowers and hollyhocks and roses; and a red-tiled path leads from the
front gate to the entrance porch. Nunsmere is very quiet and restful.
Should a roisterer cross the common singing a song at half-past nine at
night, all Nunsmere hears it and is shocked--if not frightened to the
extent of bolting doors and windows, lest the dreadful drunken man should
come in.
In a cottage on the common, an old one added to by the local architect,
with a front garden and a red-tiled path, dwelt Mrs. Oldrieve in entire
happiness, and her daughter in discontent. And this was through no peevish
or disagreeable traits in Zora's nature. If we hear Guy Fawkes was fretful
in the Little-Ease, we are not pained by Guy Fawkes's lack of Christian
resignation.
When the Vicar and the Literary Man from London had gone, Zora threw open
the window and let the soft autumn air flood the room. Mrs. Oldrieve drew
her woolen shawl around her lean shoulders.
"I'm afraid you quite snubbed Mr. Rattenden, just when he was saying one of
his cleverest things."
"He said it to the wrong person, mother. I'm neither a faded life nor am I
going to be laid away in lavender. Do I look like it?"
She moved across the room, swiftly, and stood in the slanting light from
the window, offering herself for inspection. Nothing could be less like a
faded life than the magnificent, broad-hipped, full-bosomed woman that met
her mother's gaze. Her hair was auburn, her eyes brown with gold flecks,
her lips red, her cheeks clear and young. She was cast, physically, in
heroic mold, a creature of dancing blood and color and warmth. Disparaging
tea-parties called her an Amazon. The Vicar's wife regarded her as too
large and flaring and curvilinear for reputable good looks. She towered
over Nunsmere. Her presence disturbed the sedateness of the place. She was
a wrong note in its harmony.
Mrs. Oldrieve sighed. She was small and colorless. Her husband, a wild
explorer, a tornado of a man, had been killed by a buffalo. She was afraid
that Zora took after her father. Her younger daughter Emmy had also
inherited some of the Oldrieve restlessness and had gone on the stage. She
was playing now in musical comedy in London.
"I don't see why you should not be happy here, Zora," she remarked, "but if
you want to go, you must. I used to say the same to your poor, dear
father."
"I've been very good, haven't I?" said Zora. "I've been the model young
widow and lived as demurely as if my heart were breaking with sorrow. But
now, I can't stand it any longer. I'm going out to see the world."
"You'll soon marry again, dear, and that's one comfort."
Zora brought her hands down passionately to her sides.
"Never. Never--do you hear, mother? Never. I'm going out into the world, to
get to the heart of the life I've never known. I'm going to live."
"I don't see how you are going to 'live,' dear, without a man to take care
of you," said Mrs. Oldrieve, on whom there occasionally flashed an eternal
verity.
"I hate men. I hate the touch of them--the very sight of them. I'm going to
have nothing more to do with them for the rest of my natural life. My dear
mother!" and her voice broke, "haven't I had enough to do with men and
marriage?"
"All men aren't like Edward Middlemist," Mrs. Oldrieve argued as she
counted the rows of her knitting.
"How am I to know that? How could anyone have told that he was what he was?
For heaven's sake don't talk of it. I had almost forgotten it all in this
place."
She shuddered and, turning to the window, stared into the sunset.
"Lavender has its uses," said Mrs. Oldrieve.
Here again it must be urged on Zora's behalf that she had reason for her
misanthropy. It is not cheerful for a girl to discover within twenty-four
hours of her wedding that her husband is a hopeless drunkard, and to see
him die of delirium tremens within six weeks. An experience so vivid, like
lightning must blast something in a woman's conception of life. Because one
man's kisses reeked of whisky the kisses of all male humanity were
anathema.
After a long spell of silence she came and laid her cheek against her
mother's.
"This is the very last time we'll speak of it, dear. I'll lock the skeleton
in its cupboard and throw away the key."
She went upstairs to dress and came down radiant. At dinner she spoke
exultingly of her approaching freedom. She would tear off her widow's weeds
and deck herself in the flower of youth. She would plunge into the great
swelling sea of Life. She would drink sunshine and fill her soul with
laughter. She would do a million hyperbolic things, the mention of which
mightily confused her mother. "I, my dear," said the hen in the fairy tale,
"never had the faintest desire to get into water." So, more or less, said
Mrs. Oldrieve.
"Will you miss me very dreadfully?" asked Zora.
"Of course," but her tone was so lacking in conviction that Zora laughed.
"Mother, you know very well that Cousin Jane will be a more sympathetic
companion. You've been pining for her all this time."
Cousin Jane held distinct views on the cut of under-clothes for the
deserving poor, and as clouds disperse before the sun so did household dust
before her presence. Untidiness followed in Zora's steps, as it does in
those of the physically large, and Cousin Jane disapproved of her
thoroughly. But Mrs. Oldrieve often sighed for Cousin Jane as she had never
sighed for Zora, Emily, or her husband. She was more than content with the
prospect of her companionship.
"At any rate, my dear," she said that evening, as she paused, candle in
hand, by her bedroom door, "at any rate I hope you'll do nothing that is
unbecoming to a gentlewoman."
Such was her benison.
Zora bumped her head against the oak beam that ran across her bedroom
ceiling.
"It's quite true," she said to herself, "the place is too small for me, I
don't fit."
* * * * *
What she was going to do in this wide world into whose glories she was
about to enter she had but the vaguest notion. All to her was the Beautiful
Unknown. Narrow means had kept her at Cheltenham and afterwards at
Nunsmere, all her life. She had met her husband in Ipswich while she was
paying a polite visit to some distant cousins. She had married him offhand,
in a whirl of the senses. He was a handsome blackguard, of independent
means, and she had spent her nightmare of a honeymoon at Brighton. On three
occasions, during her five-and-twenty years of existence, she had spent a
golden week in London. That was all she knew of the wide world. It was not
very much. Reading had given her a second-hand acquaintance with the doings
of various classes of mankind, and such pictures as she had seen had filled
her head with dreams of strange and wonderful places. But otherwise she was
ignorant, beautifully, childishly ignorant--and undismayed.
What was she going to do? Sensitive and responsive to beauty, filled with
artistic impulses, she could neither paint, act, sing, nor write pretty
little stories for the magazines. She had no special gift to develop. To
earn her living in a humdrum way she had no need. She had no high Ibsenite
notions of working out her own individuality. She had no consuming passion
for reforming any section of the universe. She had no mission--that she
knew of--to accomplish. Unlike so many of her sex who yearn to be as men
and go out into the world she had no inner mandate to do anything, no
ambition to be anything. She was simply a great, rich flower, struggling
through the shade to the sunlight, plenty of sunlight, as much sunlight as
the heavens could give her.
The Literary Man from London happened to be returning to town by the train
that carried Zora on the first stage of her pilgrimage. He obtained her
consent to travel up in the same carriage. He asked her to what branch of
human activity she intended to devote herself. She answered that she was
going to lie, anyhow, among the leaves. He rebuked her.
"We ought," said he, "to justify our existence."
She drew herself up and flashed an indignant glance at him.
"I beg your pardon," he apologized. "You do justify yours."
"How?"
"You decorate the world. I was wrong. That is the true function of a
beautiful woman, and you fulfill it."
"I have in my bag," replied Zora slowly, and looking at him steady-eyed, "a
preventive against sea-sickness; I have a waterproof to shelter me from
rain; but what can I do to shield myself against silly compliments?"
"Adopt the costume of the ladies of the Orient," said the Literary Man from
London, unabashed.
She laughed, although she detested him. He bent forward with humorous
earnestness. He had written some novels, and now edited a weekly of
precious tendencies and cynical flavor.
"I am a battered old man of thirty-five," said he, "and I know what I am
talking about. If you think you are going to wander at a loose end about
Europe without men paying you compliments and falling in love with you and
making themselves generally delightful, you're traveling under a grievous
hallucination."
"What you say," retorted Zora, "confirms me in my opinion that men are an
abominable nuisance. Why can't they let a poor woman go about in peace?"
The train happened to be waiting at Clapham Junction. A spruce young man,
passing by on the platform, made a perceptible pause by the window, his
eyes full on her. She turned her head impatiently. Rattenden laughed.
"Dear lady," said he, "I must impart to you the elements of wisdom. Miss
Keziah Skaffles, with brain cordage for hair, and monoliths for teeth, and
a box of dominoes for a body, can fool about unmolested among the tribes
of Crim Tartary. She doesn't worry the Tartars. But, permit me to say it,
as you are for the moment my disciple, a beautiful woman like yourself,
radiating feminine magnetism, worries a man exceedingly. You don't let him
go about in peace, so why should he let you?"
"I think," said Zora, as the train moved on, "that Miss Keziah Skaffles is
very much to be envied, and that this is a very horrid conversation."
She was offended in her provincial-bred delicacy. It was enough to make her
regard herself with repulsion. She took up the fashion paper she had bought
at the station--was she not intending to run delicious riot among the
dressmakers and milliners of London?--and regarding blankly the ungodly
waisted ladies in the illustrations, determined to wear a wig and paint her
face yellow, and black out one of her front teeth, so that she should not
worry the Tartars.
"I am only warning you against possible dangers," said Rattenden stiffly.
He did not like his conversation to be called horrid.
"To the race of men?"
"No, to yourself."
She laughed scornfully. "No fear of that. Why does every man think himself
irresistible?"
"Because he generally is--if he wants to be," said the Literary Man from
London.
Zora caught her breath. "Well of all--" she began.
"Yes, I know what you're going to say. Millions of women have said it and
eaten their words. Why should you--beautiful as you are--be an exception to
the law of life? You're going out to suck the honey of the world, and
men's hearts will be your flowers. Instinct will drive you. You won't be
able to get away from it. You think you're going to be thrilled into
passionate raptures by cathedrals and expensive restaurants and the set
pieces of fashionable scenery. You're not. Your store of honey will consist
of emotional experiences of a primitive order. If not, I know nothing at
all about women."
"Do you know anything about them?" she asked sweetly.
"More than would be becoming of me to tell," he replied. "Anyhow," he
added, "that doesn't matter. I've made my prophecy. You'll tell me
afterwards, if I have the pleasure of seeing you again, whether it has come
true."
"It won't come true," said Zora.
"We shall see," said the wise man.
She dashed, that afternoon, into her sister's tiny flat in Chelsea. Emily,
taken by surprise, hastily stuffed to the bottom of her work-basket a man's
silk tie which she was knitting, and then greeted Zora affectionately.
She was shorter, slimmer, paler than her sister: of a certain babyish
prettiness. She had Mrs. Oldrieve's weak mouth and gentle ways.
"Why, Zora, who would have thought of seeing you? What are you doing in
town?"
"Getting hats and frocks--a trousseau of freedom. I've left Nunsmere. I'm
on my own."
Her eyes sparkled, her cheeks were flushed. She caught Emily to her bosom.
"Oh, darling! I'm so happy--a bird let out of a cage."
"An awful big bird," laughed Emily.
"Yes, let out of an awful small cage. I'm going to see the world, for the
first time in my life. I'm going to get out of the cold and wet--going
South--to Italy--Sicily--Egypt--anywhere."
"All by yourself?"
"There'll be Turner."
"Turner?"
"Ah, you don't know her. My new maid. But isn't it glorious? Why shouldn't
you come with me, darling? Do. Come."
"And throw up my engagement? I couldn't. I should love it, but you don't
know how hard engagements are to get."
"Never mind. I'll pay for everything."
But Emily shook her fluffy head. She had a good part, a few lines to speak
and a bit of a song to sing in a successful musical comedy. She looked back
on the two years' price she had paid for that little bit of a song. It was
dearer to her than anything--save one thing--in life.
"I can't. Besides, don't you think a couple of girls fooling about alone
look rather silly? It wouldn't really be very funny without a man."
Zora rose in protest. "The whole human race is man-mad! Even mother. I
think everybody is detestable!"
The maid announced "Mr. Mordaunt Prince," and a handsome man with finely
cut, dark features and black hair parted in the middle and brushed tightly
back over the head, entered the room. Emmy presented him to Zora, who
recognized him as the leading man at the theater where Emmy was playing.
Zora exchanged a few polite commonplaces with the visitor and then took her
leave. Emmy accompanied her to the front door of the flat.
"Isn't he charming?"
"That creature?" asked Zora.
Emmy laughed. "In your present mood you would find fault with an
archangel. Good-bye, darling, and take care of yourself."
She bore no malice, having a kind heart and being foolishly happy. When she
returned to the drawing-room the man took both her hands.
"Well, sweetheart?"
"My sister wanted to carry me off to Italy."
"What did you say?"
"Guess," said the girl, lifting starry eyes.
The man guessed, after the manner of men, and for a moment Emmy forgot
Zora, who went her own way in pursuit of happiness, heedless of the wisdom
of the wise and of the foolish.