Things happen slowly at Nunsmere--from the grasping of an idea to the pace
of the church choir over the hymns. Life there is no vulgar, tearing
two-step, as it is in Godalming, London, and other vortices of human
passions, but the stately measure of a minuet. Delights are deliberate and
have lingering ends. A hen would scorn to hatch a chicken with the indecent
haste of her sister in the next parish.
Six months passed, and Zora wondered what had become of them. Only a few
visits to London, where she had consorted somewhat gaily with Emmy's
acquaintances, had marked their flight, and the gentle fingers of Nunsmere
had graduated the reawakening of her nostalgia for the great world. She
spoke now and then of visiting Japan and America and South Africa, somewhat
to her mother's consternation; but no irresistible force drove her thither.
She found contentment in procrastination.
It had also been a mild amusement to settle Septimus Dix, after his
recovery, in a little house facing the common. He had to inhabit some
portion of this planet, and as he had no choice of spot save Hackney Downs,
which Wiggleswick suggested, Zora waved her hand to the tenantless house
and told him to take it. As there was an outhouse at the end of the garden
which he could use as a workshop, his principal desideratum in a residence,
he obeyed her readily. She then bought his furniture, plate, and linen,
and a complicated kitchen battery over whose uses Wiggleswick scratched a
bewildered head.
"A saucepan I know, and a frying-pan I know, but what you're to put in
those things with holes in them fairly licks me."
"Perhaps we might grow geraniums in them," said Septimus brightly, alter a
fit of musing.
"If you do," said Zora, "I'll put a female cook in charge of you both, and
wash my hands of you."
Whereupon she explained the uses of a cullender, and gave Wiggleswick to
understand that she was a woman of her word, and that an undrained cabbage
would be the signal for the execution of her threat. From the first she had
assumed despotic power over Wiggleswick, of whose influence with his master
she had been absurdly jealous. But Wiggleswick, bent, hoary, deaf, crabbed,
evil old ruffian that he was, like most ex-prisoners instinctively obeyed
the word of command, and meekly accepted Zora as his taskmistress.
For Septimus began happy days wherein the clock was disregarded. The vague
projects that had filled his head for the construction of a new type of
quick-firing gun took definite shape. Some queer corner of his brain had
assimilated a marvelous knowledge of field artillery, and Zora was amazed
at the extent of his technical library, which Wiggleswick had overlooked in
his statement of the salvage from the burned-down house at Shepherd's Bush.
Now and then he would creep from the shyness which enveloped the inventive
side of his nature, and would talk with her with unintelligible earnestness
of these dreadful engines; of radial and initial hoop pressures, of drift
angles, of ballistics, of longitudinal tensions, and would jot down
trigonometrical formulae illustrated by diagrams until her brain reeled;
or of his treatise on guns of large caliber just written and now in the
printers' hands, and of the revolution in warfare these astounding machines
would effect. His eyes would lose their dreamy haze and would become
luminous, his nervous fingers would become effectual, the man would become
transfigured; but as soon as the fervid fit passed off he would turn with
amiable aimlessness to his usual irrelevance. Sometimes he would work all
night, either in his room or his workshop, at his inventions. Sometimes he
would dream for days together. There was an old-fashioned pond in the
middle of the common, with rough benches placed here and there at the
brink. Septimus loved to sit on one of them and look at the ducks. He said
he was fascinated by the way they wagged their tails. It suggested an
invention: of what nature he could not yet determine. He also formed a
brotherly intimacy with a lame donkey belonging to the sexton, and used to
feed him with _pâté de foie gras_ sandwiches, specially prepared by
Wiggleswick, until he was authoritatively informed that raw carrots would
be more acceptable. To see the two of them side by side watching the ducks
in the pond wag their tails was a touching spectacle.
Another amenity in Septimus's peaceful existence was Emmy.
Being at this time out of an engagement, she paid various flying visits to
Nunsmere, bringing with her an echo of comic opera and an odor of _Peau
d'Espagne_. She dawned on Septimus's horizon like a mischievous and
impertinent planet, so different from Zora, the great fixed star of his
heaven, yet so pretty, so twinkling, so artlessly and so obviously
revolving round some twopenny-halfpenny sun of her own, that he took her,
with Wiggleswick, the ducks and the donkey, into his close comradeship. It
was she who had ordained the carrots. She had hair like golden thistledown,
and the dainty, blonde skin that betrays every motion of the blood. She
could blush like the pink tea-rose of an old-fashioned English garden. She
could blanch to the whiteness of alabaster. Her eyes were forget-me-nots
after rain. Her mouth was made for pretty slang and kisses. Neither her
features nor her most often photographed expression showed the tiniest
scrap of what the austere of her sex used to call character. When the world
smiled on her she laughed: when it frowned, she cried. When she met
Septimus Dix, she flew to him as a child does to a new toy, and spent
gorgeous hours in pulling him to pieces to see how he worked.
"Why aren't you married?" she asked him one day.
He looked up at the sky--they were on the common--an autumn stretch of
pearls and purples, with here and there a streak of wistful blue, as if
seeking the inspiration of a reason.
"Because no one has married me," he replied.
Emmy laughed. "That's just like you. You expect a woman to drag you out of
your house by the scruff of your neck and haul you to church without your
so much as asking her."
"I've heard that lots of women do," said Septimus.
Emmy looked at him sharply. Every woman resents a universal criticism of
her sex, but cannot help feeling a twinge of respect for the critic. She
took refuge in scorn.
"A real man goes out and looks for a wife."
"But suppose he doesn't want one?"
"He must want a woman to love. What can his life be without a woman in it?
What can anybody's life be without some one to care for? I really believe
you're made of sawdust. Why don't you fall in love?"
Septimus took off his hat, ran his fingers through his upstanding hair,
re-covered his head, and looked at her helplessly.
"Oh, no! I'm booked. It's no use your falling in love with me."
"I wouldn't--presume to do such a thing," he stammered, somewhat scared. "I
think love is serious. It's like an invention: sometimes it lies deep down
inside you, great and quiet--and at other times it racks you and keeps you
from sleeping."
"Oho!" cried Emmy. "So you know all about it. You _are_ in love. Now, tell
me, who is she?"
"It was many years ago," said Septimus. "She wore pigtails and I burned a
hole in her pinafore with a toy cannon and she slapped my face. Afterwards
she married a butcher."
He looked at her with his wan smile, and again raised his hat and ran his
hand through his hair. Emmy was not convinced.
"I believe," she said, "you have fallen in love with Zora."
He did not reply for a moment or two; then he touched her arm.
"Please don't say that," he said, in an altered tone.
Emmy edged up close to him, as they walked. It was her nature, even while
she teased, to be kind and caressing.
"Not even if it's true? Why not?"
"Things like that are not spoken of," he said soberly. "They're only felt."
This time it was she who put a hand on his arm, with a charming, sisterly
air.
"I hope you won't make yourself miserable over it. You see, Zora is
impossible. She'll never marry again. I do hope it's not serious. Is it?"
As he did not answer, she continued: "It would be such--such rot wasting
your life over a thing you haven't a chance of getting."
"Why?" said Septimus. "Isn't that the history of the best lives?"
This philosophic plane was too high for Emmy, who had her pleasant being in
a less rarified atmosphere. "To want, to get, to enjoy," was the guiding
motto of her existence. What was the use of wanting unless you got, and
what was the use of getting unless you enjoyed? She came to the conclusion
that Septimus was only sentimentally in love with Zora, and she regarded
his tepid passion as a matter of no importance. At the same time her easy
discovery delighted her. It invested Septimus with a fresh air of
comicality.
"You're just the sort of man to write poetry about her. Don't you?"
"Oh, no!" said Septimus.
"Then what do you do?"
"I play the bassoon," said he.
Emmy clapped her hands with joy, thereby scaring a hen that was straying on
the common.
"Another accomplishment? Why didn't you tell us? I'm sure Zora doesn't know
of it. Where did you learn?"
"Wiggleswick taught me," said he. "He was once in a band."
"You must bring it round," cried Emmy.
But when Septimus, prevailed on by her entreaties, did appear with the
instrument in Mrs. Oldrieve's drawing-room, he made such unearthly and
terrific noises that Mrs. Oldrieve grew pale and Zora politely but firmly
took it from his hands and deposited it in the umbrella-stand in the hall.
"I hope you don't mind," she said.
"Oh, dear, no," said Septimus mildly. "I could never make out why anybody
liked it."
Seeing that Septimus had a sentimental side to his character, Emmy
gradually took him into her confidence, until Septimus knew things that
Zora did not dream of. Zora, who had been married, and had seen the world
from Nunsmere Pond to the crater of Mount Vesuvius, treated her sister with
matronly indulgence, as a child to whom Great Things were unrevealed. She
did not reckon with the rough-and-tumble experiences of life which a girl
must gain from a two years' battle on the stage. In fact, she did not
reckon with any of the circumstances of Emmy's position. She herself was
too ignorant, too much centered as yet in her own young impulses and
aspirations, and far too serene in her unquestioning faith in the
impeccability of the Oldrieve family. To her Emmy was still the
fluffy-haired little sister with caressing ways whom she could send
upstairs for her work-basket or could reprimand for a flirtation. Emmy knew
that Zora loved her dearly; but she was the least bit in the world afraid
of her, and felt that in affairs of the heart she would be unsympathetic.
So Emmy withheld her confidence from Zora, and gave it to Septimus.
Besides, it always pleases a woman more to tell her secrets to a man than
to another woman. There is more excitement in it, even though the man be as
unmoved as a stock-fish.
Thus it fell out that Septimus heard of Mordaunt Prince, whose constant
appearance in Emmy's London circle of friends Zora had viewed with
plentiful lack of interest. He was a paragon of men. He acted like a
Salvini and sang like an angel. He had been far too clever to take his
degree at Oxford. He had just bought a thousand-guinea motor car,
and--Septimus was not to whisper a word of it to Zora--she had recently
been on a three-days' excursion with him. Mordaunt Prince said this and
Mordaunt Prince said that. Mordaunt paid three guineas a pair for his brown
boots. He had lately divorced his wife, an unspeakable creature only too
anxious for freedom. Mordaunt came to see her every day in London, and
every day during their absence they corresponded. Her existence was wrapped
up in Mordaunt Prince. She traveled about with a suit-case (or so it
appeared to Septimus) full of his photographs. He had been the leading man
at the theater where she had her last engagement, and had fallen madly,
devotedly, passionately in love with her. As soon as the divorce was made
absolute they would be married. She had quarreled with her best friend, who
had tried to make mischief between them with a view to securing Mordaunt
for herself. Had Septimus ever heard of such a cat? Septimus hadn't.
He was greatly interested in as much of the story as he could follow--Emmy
was somewhat discursive--and as his interjectory remarks were unprovocative
of argument, he constituted himself a good listener. Besides, romance had
never come his way. It was new to him, even Emmy's commonplace little
romance, like a field of roses to a town-bred child, and it seemed sweet
and gracious, a thing to dream about. His own distant worship of Zora did
not strike him as romantic. It was a part of himself, like the hallowed
memory of his mother and the conception of his devastating guns. Had he
been more worldly-wise he would have seen possible danger in Emmy's
romance, and insisted on Zora being taken into their confidence. But
Septimus believed that the radiant beings of the earth, such as Emmy and
Mordaunt Prince, from whom a quaint destiny kept him aloof, could only lead
radiant lives, and the thought of harm did not cross his candid mind. Even
while keeping Emmy's secret from Zora, he regarded it as a romantic and
even dainty deceit.
Zora, seeing him happy with his guns and Wiggleswick and Emmy, applauded
herself mightily as a contriver of good. Her mother also put ideas into her
head.
From the drawing-room window they once saw Emmy and Septimus part at the
little front gate. They had evidently returned from a walk. She plucked a
great white chrysanthemum bloom from a bunch she was carrying, flicked it
laughingly in his face, and stuck it in his buttonhole.
"What a good thing it would be for Emmy," said Mrs. Oldrieve, with a sigh.
"To marry Septimus? Oh, mother!"
She laughed merrily; then all at once she became serious.
"Why not?" she cried, and kissed her mother.
Mrs. Oldrieve settled her cap. She was small and Zora was large, and Zora's
embraces were often disarranging.
"He is a gentleman and can afford to keep a wife."
"And steady?" said Zora, with a smile.
"I should think quite steady," said Mrs. Oldrieve, without one.
"And he would amuse Emmy all day long."
"I don't think it is part of a husband's duty, dear, to amuse his wife,"
said Mrs. Oldrieve.
The sudden entrance of Emmy, full of fresh air, laughter, and
chrysanthemums, put an end to the conversation; but thenceforward Zora
thought seriously of romantic possibilities. Like her mother, she did not
entirely approve of Emmy's London circle. It was characterized by too much
freedom, too great a lack of reticence. People said whatever came into
their minds, and did, apparently, whatever occurred to their bodies. She
could not quite escape from her mother's Puritan strain. For herself she
felt secure. She, Zora, could wander unattended over Europe, mixing without
spot or stain with whatever company she listed; that was because she was
Zora Middlemist, a young woman of exceptional personality and experience of
life. Ordinary young persons, for their own safe conduct, ought to obey the
conventions which were made with that end in view; and Emmy was an ordinary
young person. She should marry; it would conduce to her moral welfare, and
it would be an excellent thing for Septimus. The marriage was therefore
made in the unclouded heaven of Zora's mind. She shed all her graciousness
over the young couple. Never had Emmy felt herself enwrapped in more
sisterly affection. Never had Septimus dreamed of such tender solicitude.
Yet she sang Septimus's praises to Emmy and Emmy's praises to Septimus in
so natural a manner that neither of the two was puzzled.
"It is the natural instinct that makes every woman a matchmaker. She works
blindly towards the baby. If she cannot have one directly, she will have it
vicariously. The sourest of old maids is thus doomed to have a hand in the
perpetuation of the race."
Thus spake the Literary Man from London, discoursing generally--out of
earshot of the Vicar and his wife, to whom he was paying one of his
periodical visits--in a corner of their drawing-room. Zora, conscious of
matchmaking, declared him to be horrid and physiological.
"A woman is much more refined and delicate in her motives."
"The highly civilized woman," said Rattenden, "is delightfully refined in
her table manners, and eats cucumber sandwiches in the most delicate way in
the world; but she is obeying the same instinct that makes your lady
cannibal thrust raw gobbets of missionary into her mouth with her fingers."
"Your conversation is revolting," said Zora.
"Because I speak the truth? Truth is a Mokanna."
"What on earth is that?" asked Zora.
The Literary man sighed. "The Veiled Prophet of Khorasan, Lalla Rookh, Tom
Moore. Ichabod."
"It sounds like a cypher cablegram," said Zora flippantly. "But go on."
"I will. Truth, I say, is a Mokanna. So long as it's decently covered with
a silver veil, you all prostrate yourselves before it and pretend to
worship it. When anyone lifts the veil and reveals the revolting horror of
it, you run away screaming, with your hands before your eyes. Why do you
want truth to be pretty? Why can't you look its ghastliness bravely in the
face? How can you expect to learn anything if you don't? How can you expect
to form judgments on men and things? How can you expect to get to the
meaning of life on which you were so keen a year ago?"
"I want beauty, and not disgustfulness," said Zora.
"Should it happen, for the sake of argument, that I wanted two dear
friends to marry, it is only because I know how happy they would be
together. The ulterior motive you suggest is repulsive."
"But it's true," said Rattenden. "I wish I could talk to you more. I could
teach you a great deal. At any rate I know that you'll think about what
I've said to-day."
"I won't," she declared.
"You will," said he. And then he dropped a very buttery piece of buttered
toast on the carpet and, picking it up, said "damn" under his breath; and
then they both laughed, and Zora found him human.
"Why are you so bent on educating me?" she asked.
"Because," said he, "I am one of the few men of your acquaintance who
doesn't want to marry you."
"Indeed?" said Zora sarcastically, yet hating herself for feeling a little
pang of displeasure. "May I ask why?"
"Because," said he, "I've a wife and five children already."
* * * * *
On the top of her matchmaking and her reflections on Truth in the guise of
the Veiled Prophet of Khorasan, came Clem Sypher to take possession of his
new house. Since Zora had seen him in Monte Carlo he had been to New York,
Chicago, and San Francisco, fighting the Jebusa Jones dragon in its lair.
He had written Zora stout dispatches during the campaign. Here a victory.
There a defeat. Everywhere a Napoleonic will to conquer--but everywhere
also an implied admission of the almost invulnerable strength of his enemy.
"I'm physically tired," said he, on the first day of his arrival, spreading
his large frame luxuriously among the cushions of Mrs. Oldrieve's
chintz-covered Chesterfield. "I'm tired for the only time in my life. I
wanted you," he added, with one of his quick, piercing looks. "It's a
curious thing, but I've kept saying to myself for the last month, 'If I
could only come into Zora Middlemist's presence and drink in some of her
vitality, I should be a new man.' I've never wanted a human being before.
It's strange, isn't it?"
Zora came up to him, tea in hand, a pleasant smile on her face.
"The Nunsmere air will rest you," she said demurely.
"I don't think much of the air if you're not in it. It's like whiskey-less
soda water." He drew a long breath. "My God! It's good to see you again.
You're the one creature on this earth who believes in the Cure as I do
myself."
Zora glanced at him guiltily. Her enthusiasm for the Cure as a religion was
tepid. In her heart she did not believe in it. She had tried it a few weeks
before on the sore head of a village baby, with disastrous results; then
the mother had called in the doctor, who wrote out a simple prescription
which healed the child immediately. The only real evidence of its powers
she had seen was on Septimus's brown boots. Humanity, however, forbade her
to deny the faith with which Clem Sypher credited her; also a genuine
feeling of admiration mingled with pity for the man.
"Do you find much scepticism about?" she asked.
"It's lack of enthusiasm I complain of," he replied. "Instead of accepting
it as the one heaven-sent remedy, people will use any other puffed and
advertised stuff. Chemists are even lukewarm. A grain of mustard seed of
faith among them would save me thousands of pounds a year. Not that I want
to roll in money, Mrs. Middlemist. I'm not an avaricious man. But a great
business requires capital--and to spend money merely in flogging the
invertebrate is waste--desperate waste."
It was the first time that Zora had heard the note of depression.
"Now that you are here, you must stay for a breathing space," she said
kindly. "You must forget it, put it out of your mind, take a holiday.
Strong as you are, you are not cast iron, and if you broke down, think what
a disaster it would be for the Cure."
"Will you help me to have a holiday?"
She laughed. "To the best of my ability--and provided you don't want to
make me shock Nunsmere too much."
He waved his hand in the direction of the village and said, Napoleonically:
"I'll look after Nunsmere. I have the motor here. We can go all over the
country. Will you come?"
"On one condition."
"And that?"
"That you won't spread the Cure among our Surrey villages, and that you'll
talk of something else all the time."
He rose and put out his hand. "I accept," he cried frankly. "I'm not a
fool. I know you're right. When are you coming to see Penton Court? I will
give a housewarming You say that Dix has settled down here. I'll look him
up. I'll be glad to see the muddle-headed seraph again. I'll ask him to
come, too, so there will be you and he--and perhaps your sister will honor
me, and your mother, Mrs. Oldrieve?"
"Mother doesn't go out much nowadays," said Zora. "But Emmy will no doubt
be delighted to come."
"I have a surprise for you," said Sypher. "It's a brilliant idea--have had
it in my head for months--you must tell me what you think of it."
The entrance of Mrs. Oldrieve and Emmy put an end to further talk of an
intimate nature, and as Mrs. Oldrieve preferred the simple graces of
stereotyped conversation, the remainder of Sypher's visit was uneventful.
When he had taken his leave she remarked that he seemed to be a most
superior person.
"I'm so glad he has made a good impression on mother," said Zora
afterwards.
"Why?" asked Emmy.
"It's only natural that I should be glad."
"Oho!" said Emmy.
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing, dear."
"Look here, Emmy," said Zora, half laughing, half angry. "If you say or
think such a thing I'll--I'll slap you. Mr. Sypher and I are friends. He
hasn't the remotest idea of our being anything else. If he had, I would
never speak to him again as long as I live."
Emmy whistled a comedy air, and drummed on the window-pane.
"He's a very remarkable man," said Zora.
"A most superior person," mimicked Emmy.
"And I don't think it's very good taste in us to discuss him in this
manner."
"But, my dear," said Emmy, "it's you that are discussing him. I'm not. The
only remark I made about him was a quotation from mother."
"I'm going up to dress for dinner," said Zora.
She was just a little indignant. Only into Emmy's fluffy head could so
preposterous an idea have entered. Clem Sypher in love with her? If so, why
not Septimus Dix? The thing thus reduced itself to an absurdity. She
laughed to herself, half ashamed of having allowed Emmy to see that she
took her child's foolishness seriously, and came down to dinner serene and
indulgent.