Hégisippe 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.
Hégisippe, who was sitting next the door, twisted his head round and
shouted his order to those within. It was a very modest little café; in
fact it was not a café 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 _terrasse_. 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 fashion, 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
Hégisippe 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 hobnobbing 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 passing 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 Hôtel Godet. 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 Hégisippe Cruchot of the Zouaves--Monsieur
Cruchot--Monsieur Clem Sypher."
Hégisippe 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 ça?_" asked Hégisippe, turning to Septimus.
Septimus explained.
"Ah-h!" cried Hégisippe, 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-là_?"
"Yes; the Friend of Humanity. What have you used it for?"
"For my heels when they had blisters after a long day's march."
The effect of these words on Sypher was electrical. He brought both hands
down on the table, leaned back in his chair, and looked at Septimus.
"Good heavens!" he cried, changing color, "it never occurred to me."
"What?"
"Why--blistered heels--marching. Don't you see? It will cure the sore feet
of the Armies of the World. It's a revelation! It will be in the knapsack
of every soldier who goes to manoeuvers or to war! It will be a jolly sight
more useful than a marshal's baton! It will bring soothing comfort to
millions of brave men! Why did I never think of it? I must go round to all
the War Offices of the civilized globe. It's colossal. It makes your brain
reel. Friend of Humanity? I shall be the Benefactor of the Human Race."
"What will you have to drink?" asked Septimus.
"Anything. _Donnez-moi un bock_," he said impatiently, obsessed by his new
idea. "Tell me, Monsieur Cruchot, you who have used the _Cure Sypher_. It
is well known in the French army is it not? You had it served out from the
regimental medical stores?"
"Ah, no, Monsieur. It is my mother who rubbed it on my heels."
Sypher's face expressed disappointment, but he cheered up again
immediately.
"Never mind. It is the idea that you have given me. I am very grateful to
you, Monsieur Cruchot."
Hégisippe laughed. "It is to my mother you should be grateful, Monsieur."
"I should like to present her with a free order for the Cure for life--if I
knew where she lived."
"That is easy," said Hégisippe, "seeing that she is concierge in the house
where the _belle dame_ of Monsieur has her _appartement_."
"Her _appartement_?" Sypher turned sharply to Septimus. "What's that? I
thought you lived at the Hôtel Godet."
"Of course," said Septimus, feeling very uncomfortable. "I live in the
hotel, and Emmy lives in a flat. She couldn't very well stay in the Hôtel
Godet, because it isn't a nice place for ladies. There's a dog in the
courtyard that howls. I tried to throw him some cold ham the other morning
about six o'clock to stop him; but it hit a sort of dustman, who ate it and
looked up for more. It was very good ham, and I was going to have it for
supper."
"But, my dear man," said Sypher, laying his hand on his friend's shoulder,
and paying no heed to the dog, ham, and dustman story, "aren't you two
living together?"
"Oh, dear, not" said Septimus, in alarm, and then, catching at the first
explanation--"you see, our hours are different."
Sypher shook his head uncomprehendingly. The proprietor of the
establishment, in dingy shirt-sleeves, set down the beer before him.
Hégisippe, who had mixed his absinthe and was waiting politely until their
new friend should be served, raised his glass.
"Just before you came, Monsieur," said he, "I was about to drink to the
health--"
"Of _L'Armée-Française_," interrupted Septimus, reaching out his glass.
"But no," laughed Hégisippe. "It was to Monsieur, Madame, et Bébé."
"Bébé?" cried Sypher, and Septimus felt his clear, swift glance read his
soul.
They clinked glasses. Hégisippe, defying the laws governing the absorption
of alcohols, tossed off his absinthe in swashbuckler fashion, and rose.
"Now I leave you. You have many things to talk about. My respectful
compliments to Madame. Messieurs, au revoir."
He shook hands, saluted and swaggered off, his chechia at the very back of
his head, leaving half his shaven crown uncovered in front.
"A fine fellow, your friend, an intelligent fellow--" said Sypher, watching
him.
"He's going to be a waiter," said Septimus.
"Now that he has had his heels rubbed with the cure he may be more
ambitious. A valuable fellow, for having given me a stupendous idea--but a
bit indiscreet, eh? Never mind," he added, seeing the piteous look on
Septimus's face. "I'll have discretion for the two of us. I'll not breathe
a word of it to anybody."
"Thank you," said Septimus.
There was an awkward silence. Septimus traced a diagram on the table with
the spilled tea. Sypher lighted a cigar, which he smoked in the corner of
his mouth, American fashion.
"Well, I'm damned!" he muttered below his breath.
He looked hard at Septimus, intent on his tea drawing. Then he shifted his
cigar impatiently to the other side of his mouth. "No, I'm damned if I am.
I can't be."
"You can't be what?" asked Septimus, catching his last words.
"Damned."
"Why should you be?"
"Look here," said Sypher, "I've rushed in rather unceremoniously into your
private affairs. I'm sorry. But I couldn't help taking an interest in the
two of you, both for your own sake and that of Zora Middlemist."
"I suppose you would do anything for her."
"Yes."
"So would I," said Septimus, in a low voice. "There are some women one
lives for and others one dies for."
"She is one of the women for whom one would live."
Septimus shook his head. "No, she's the other kind. It's much higher. I've
had a lot of time to think the last few months," he continued after a
pause. "I've had no one but Emmy and Hégisippe Cruchot to talk to--and I've
thought a great deal about women. They usedn't to come my way, and I didn't
know anything at all about them."
"Do you now?" asked Sypher, with a smile.
"Oh, a great deal," replied Septimus seriously. "It's astonishing what a
lot of difference there is between them and between the ways men approach
different types. One woman a man wants to take by the hand and lead, and
another--he's quite content if she makes a carpet of his body and walks over
it to save her feet from sharp stones. It's odd, isn't it?"
"Not very," said Sypher, who took a more direct view of things than
Septimus. "It's merely because he has got a kindly feeling for one woman
and is desperately in love with the other."
"Perhaps that's it," said Septimus.
Sypher again looked at him sharply, as a man does who thinks he has caught
another man's soul secret. It was only under considerable stress of feeling
that such coherence of ideas could have been expressed by his irrelevant
friend. What he had learned the last few minutes had been a surprise, a
pain, and a puzzle to him. The runaway marriage held more elements than he
had imagined. He bent forward confidentially.
"You would make a carpet of your body for Zora Middlemist?"
"Why, of course," replied the other in perfect simplicity.
"Then, my friend, you're desperately in love with her."
There was kindness, help, sympathy in the big man's voice, and Septimus,
though the challenge caused him agonies of shyness, did not find it in his
heart to resent Sypher's logic.
"I suppose every man whom she befriends must feel the same towards her.
Don't you?"
"I? I'm different. I've got a great work to carry through. I couldn't lie
down for anybody to walk over me. My work would suffer--but in this mission
of mine Zora Middlemist is intimately involved. I said it when I first saw
her, and I said it just before she left for California. She is to stand by
my side and help me. How, God knows." He laughed, seeing the bewildered
face of Septimus, who had never heard of this transcendental connection of
Zora with the spread of Sypher's Cure. "You seem to think I'm crazy. I'm
not. I work everything on the most hard and fast common-sense lines. But
when a voice inside you tells you a thing day and night, you must believe
it."
Said Septimus: "If you had not met her, you wouldn't have met Hégisippe
Cruchot, and so you wouldn't have got the idea of Army blisters."
Sypher clapped him on the shoulder and extolled him as a miracle of
lucidity. He explained magniloquently. It was Zora's unseen influence
working magnetically from the other side of the world that had led his
footsteps towards the Hôtel Godet on that particular afternoon. She had
triumphantly vindicated her assertion that geographical location of her
bodily presence could make no difference.
"I asked her to stay in England, you know," he remarked more simply, seeing
that Septimus lagged behind him in his flight.
"What for?"
"Why, to help me. For what other reason?"
Septimus took off his hat and laid it on the chair vacated by Hégisippe,
and ran his fingers reflectively up his hair. Sypher lit another cigar.
Their side of the little street was deep in shade, but on half the road and
on the other side of the way the fierce afternoon sunlight blazed. The
merchant of wine, who had been lounging in his dingy shirt-sleeves against
the door-post, removed the glasses and wiped the table clear of the spilled
tea. Sypher ordered two more bocks for the good of the house, while
Septimus, still lost in thought, brought his hair to its highest pitch of
Struwel Peterdom. Passers-by turned round to look at them, for well-dressed
Englishmen do not often sit outside a _Marchand des vins_, especially one
with such hair. But passers-by are polite in France and do not salute the
unfamiliar with ribaldry.
"Well," said Sypher, at last.
"We've been speaking intimately," said Septimus. He paused, then proceeded
with his usual diffidence. "I've never spoken intimately to a man before,
and I don't quite know how to do it--it must be just like asking a woman to
marry you--but don't you think you were selfish?"
"Selfish? How?"
"In asking Zora Middlemist to give up her trip to California, just for the
sake of the Cure."
"It's worth the sacrifice," Sypher maintained.
"To you, yes; but it mayn't be so to her."
"But she believes in the thing as I do myself!" cried Sypher.
"Why should she, any more than I, or Hégisippe Cruchot? If she did, she
would have stayed. It would have been her duty. You couldn't expect a woman
like Zora Middlemist to fail in her duty, could you?"
Sypher rubbed his eyes, as if he saw things mistily. But they were quite
clear. It was really Septimus Dix who sat opposite, concentrating his
discursive mind on Sypher's Cure and implicitly denying Zora's faith. A
simple-minded man in many respects, he would not have scorned to learn
wisdom out of the mouths of babes and sucklings; but out of the mouth of
Septimus what wisdom could possibly proceed? He laughed his suggestion away
somewhat blusteringly and launched out again on his panegyric of the Cure.
But his faith felt a quiver all through its structure, just as a great
building does at the first faint shock of earthquake.
"What made you say that about Zora Middlemist?" he asked when he had
finished.
"I don't know," replied Septimus. "It seemed to be right to say it. I know
when I get things into my head there appears to be room for nothing else
in the world. One takes things for granted. When I was a child my father
took it for granted that I believed in predestination. I couldn't; but I
did not dare tell him so. So I went about with a load of somebody else's
faith on my shoulders. It became intolerable; and when my father found out
he beat me. He had a bit of rope tied up with twine at the end for the
purpose. I shouldn't like this to happen to Zora."
This ended the discussion. The landlord at his door-post drew them into
talk about the heat, the emptiness of Paris and the happy lot of those who
could go into villeggiatura in the country. The arrival of a perspiring
cabman in a red waistcoat and glazed hat caused him to retire within and
administer to the newcomer's needs.
"One of my reasons for looking you up," said Sypher, "was to make my
apologies."
"Apologies?"
"Yes. Haven't you thought about the book on guns and wondered at not
hearing from me?"
"No," said Septimus. "When I've invented a thing the interest has gone.
I've just invented a new sighting apparatus. I'll show you the model if
you'll come to the hotel."
Sypher looked at his watch and excused himself on the ground of business
engagements. Then he had to dine and start by the nine o'clock train.
"Anyhow," said he, "I'm ashamed at not having done anything with the guns.
I did show the proofs to a naval expert, but he made all sorts of
criticisms which didn't help. Experts know everything that is known and
don't want to know anything that isn't. So I laid it aside."
"It doesn't matter in the least," said Septimus eagerly, "and if you want
to break the contract you sent me, I can pay you back the two hundred
pounds." But Sypher assured him that he had never broken a contract in his
life, and they shook hands and went their respective ways, Septimus to the
_appartement_ in the Boulevard Raspail, and Sypher thoughtfully in the
direction of the Luxembourg.
He was sorry, very sorry for Septimus Dix. His kindness of heart had not
allowed him to tell the brutal truth about the guns. The naval expert had
scoffed in the free manner of those who follow the sea and declared the
great guns a mad inventor's dream. The Admiralty was overwhelmed with such
things. The proofs were so much waste paper. Sypher had come prepared to
break the news as gently as he could; but after all their talk it was not
in his heart to do so. And the two hundred pounds--he regarded it as money
given to a child to play with. He would never claim it. He was sorry, very
sorry for Septimus. He looked back along the past year and saw the man's
dog-like devotion to Zora Middlemist. But why did he marry Emmy, loving the
sister as he did? Why live apart from her, having married her? And the
child? It was all a mystery in which he did not see clear. He pitied the
ineffectuality of Septimus with the kind yet half-contemptuous pity of the
strong man with a fine nature. But as for his denial of Zora's faith, he
laughed it away. Egotistical, yes. Zora had posed the same question as
Septimus and he had answered it. But her faith in the Cure itself, his
mission to spread it far and wide over the earth, and to save the nations
from vulgar competitors who thought of nothing but sordid gain--that, he
felt sure, remained unshaken.
Yet as he walked along, in the alien though familiar city, he was smitten,
as with physical pain, by a craving for her presence, for the gleam of her
eyes, for the greatness of sympathy and comprehension that inhabited her
generous and beautiful frame. The need of her was imperious. He stopped at
a café on the Boulevard Saint-Michel, called for the wherewithal to write,
and like a poet in the fine frenzy of inspiration, poured out his soul to
her over the heels of the armies of the world.
He had walked a great deal during the day. When he stepped out of the cab
that evening at the Gare de Lyon, he felt an unfamiliar stinging in his
heel. During the process of looking after his luggage and seeking his train
he limped about the platform. When he undressed for the night in his
sleeping compartment, he found that a ruck in his sock had caused a large
blister. He regarded it with superstitious eyes, and thought of the armies
of the world. _In hoc signo vinces!_ The message had come from heaven.
He took a sample box of Sypher's Cure from his handbag, and, almost with
reverence, anointed his heel.