Septimus — Chapter 23

CHAPTER XXIII

Zora went straight back to her hotel sitting-room.

There, without taking off her hat or furs, she wrote a swift, long letter to Clem Sypher, and summoning the waiter, ordered him to post it at once.

When he had gone she reflected for a few moments and sent off a telegram.

After a further brief period of reflection she went down-stairs and rang up Sypher's office on the telephone.

The mere man would have tried the telephone first, then sent the telegram, and after that the explanatory letter.

Woman has her own way of doing things.

Sypher was in.

He would have finished for the day in about twenty minutes.

Then he would come to her on the nearest approach to wings London locomotion provided.

"Remember, it's something most particular that I want to see you about," said Zora.

"Good-by."

She rang off, and went up-stairs again, removed the traces of tears from her face and changed her dress.

For a few moments she regarded her outward semblance somewhat anxiously in the glass, unconscious of a new coquetry.

Then she sat down before the sitting-room fire and looked at the inner Zora Middlemist.

There was never woman, since the world began, more cast down from her high estate.

Not a shred of magnificence remained.

She saw herself as the most useless, vaporing and purblind of mortals.

She had gone forth from the despised Nunsmere, where nothing ever happened, to travel the world over in search of realities, and had returned to find that Nunsmere had all the time been the center of the realities that most deeply concerned her life.

While she had been talking others had been living.

The three beings whom she had honored with her royal and somewhat condescending affection had all done great things, passed through flames and issued thence purified with love in their hearts.

Emmy, Septimus, Sypher, all in their respective ways, had grappled with essentials.

She alone had done nothing--she the strong, the sane, the capable, the magnificent.

She had been a tinsel failure.

So far out of touch had she been with the real warm things of life which mattered that she had not even gained her sister's confidence.

Had she done so from her girlhood up, the miserable tragedy might not have happened.

She had failed in a sister's elementary duty.

As a six weeks' wife, what had she done save shiver with a splendid disgust?

Another woman would have fought and perhaps have conquered.

She had made no attempt, and the poor wretch dead, she had trumpeted abroad her crude opinion of the sex to which he belonged.

At every turn she had seen it refuted.

For many months she had known it to be vain and false; and Nature, who with all her faults is at least not a liar, had spoken over and over again.

She had raised a fine storm of argument, but Nature had laughed.

So had the Literary Man from London.

She had a salutary vision of herself as the common geck and gull of the queerly assorted pair.

She recognized that in order to work out any problem of life one must accept life's postulates and axioms.

Even her mother, from whose gentle lips she rarely expected to hear wisdom, had said: "I don't see how you're going to 'live,' dear, without a man to take care of you."

Her mother was right, Nature was right, Rattenden was right.

She, Zora Middlemist, had been hopelessly wrong.

* * * * * When Sypher arrived she welcomed him with an unaccustomed heart-beat.

The masterful grip of his hands as they held hers gave her a new throb of pleasure.

She glanced into his eyes and saw there the steady love of a strong, clean soul.

She glanced away and hung her head, feeling unworthy.

"What's this most particular thing you have to say to me?"

he asked, with a smile.

"I can't tell it to you like this.

Let us sit down.

Draw up that chair to the fire."

When they were seated, she said: "I want first to ask you a question or two.

Do you know why Septimus married my sister?

Be quite frank, for I know everything."

"Yes," he said gravely, "I knew.

I found it out in one or two odd ways.

Septimus hasn't the faintest idea."

Zora picked up an illustrated weekly from the floor and used it as a screen, ostensibly from the fire, really from Sypher.

"Why did you refuse the Jebusa Jones offer this morning?"

"What would you have thought of me if I had accepted?

But Septimus shouldn't have told you."

"He didn't. He told Emmy, who told me.

You did it for my sake?"

"Everything I do is for your sake.

You know that well enough."

"Why did you send for Septimus?"

"Why are you putting me through this interrogatory?"

he laughed.

"You will learn soon," said Zora.

"I want to get everything clear in my mind.

I've had a great shock.

I feel as if I had been beaten all over.

For the first time I recognize the truth of the proverb about a woman, a dog, and a walnut tree.

Why did you send for Septimus?"

Sypher leaned back in his chair, and as the illustrated paper prevented him from seeing Zora's face, he looked reflectively at the fire.

"I've always told you that I am superstitious.

Septimus seems to be gifted with an unconscious sense of right in an infinitely higher degree than any man I have ever known.

His dealings with Emmy showed it.

His sending for you to help me showed it.

He has shown it in a thousand ways.

If it hadn't been for him and his influence on my mind I don't think I should have come to that decision.

When I had come to it, I just wanted him.

Why, I can't tell you."

"I suppose you knew that he was in love with me?"

said Zora in the same even tone.

"Yes," said Sypher.

"That's why he married your sister."

"Do you know why--in the depths of his heart--he sent me the tail of the little dog?"

"He knew somehow that it was right.

I believe it was.

I tell you I'm superstitious.

But in what absolute way it was right I can't imagine."

"I can," said Zora.

"He knew that my place was by your side.

He knew that I cared for you more than for any man alive."

She paused.

Then she said deliberately: "He knew that I loved you all the time."

Sypher plucked the illustrated paper from her hand and cast it across the room, and, bending over the arm of his chair, seized her wrist.

"Zora, do you mean that?"

She nodded, fluttered a glance at him, and put out her free hand to claim a few moments' grace.

"I left you to look for a mission in life.

I've come back and found it at the place I started from.

It's a big mission, for it means being a mate to a big man.

But if you will let me try, I'll do my best."

Sypher thrust away the protecting hand.

"You can talk afterwards," he said.

Thus did Zora come to the knowledge of things real.

When the gates were opened, she walked in with a tread not wanting in magnificence.

She made the great surrender, which is woman's greatest victory, very proudly, very humbly, very deliciously.

She had her greatnesses.

She freed herself, flushed and trembling, throbbing with a strange happiness that caught her breath.

This time she believed Nature, and laughed with her in her heart in close companionship.

She was mere woman after all, with no mission in life but the accomplishment of her womanhood, and she gloried in the knowledge.

This was exceedingly good for her.

Sypher regarded her with shining eyes as if she had been an immortal vesting herself in human clay for divine love of him; and this was exceedingly good for Sypher.

After much hyperbole they descended to kindly commonplace.

"But I don't see now," he cried, "how I can ask you to marry me.

I don't even know how I'm to earn my living."

"There are Septimus's inventions.

Have you lost your faith in them?"

He cried with sudden enthusiasm, as who should say, if an Immortal has faith in them, then indeed must they be divine: "Do you believe in them now?"

"Utterly.

I've grown superstitious, too.

Wherever we turn there is Septimus.

He has raised Emmy from hell to heaven.

He has brought us two together.

He is our guardian angel.

He'll never fail us.

Oh, Clem, thank heaven," she exclaimed fervently, "I've got something to believe in at last."

* * * * * Meanwhile the guardian angel, entirely unconscious of apotheosis, sat in the little flat in Chelsea blissfully eating crumpets over which Emmy had spread the preposterous amount of butter which proceeds from an overflowing heart.

She knelt on the hearth rug watching him adoringly as if he were a hierophant eating sacramental wafer.

They talked of the future.

He mentioned the nice houses he had seen in Berkeley Square.

"Berkeley Square would be very charming," said Emmy, "but it would mean carriages and motor-cars and powdered footmen and Ascot and balls and dinner parties and presentations at Court.

You would be just in your element, wouldn't you, dear?"

She laughed and laid her happy head on his knee.

"No, dear.

If we want to have a fling together, you and I, in London, let us keep on this flat as a _pied-à-terre_.

But let us live at Nunsmere.

The house is quite big enough, and if it isn't you can always add on a bit at the cost of a month's rent in Berkeley Square.

Wouldn't you prefer to live at Nunsmere?"

"You and the boy and my workshop are all I want in the world," said he.

"And not Wiggleswick?"

One of his rare smiles passed across his face.

"I think Wiggleswick will be upset."

Emmy laughed again.

"What a funny household it will be--Wiggleswick and Madame Bolivard!

It will be lovely!"

Septimus reflected for an anxious moment.

"Do you know, dear," he said diffidently, "I've dreamed of something all my life--I mean ever since I left home.

It has always seemed somehow beyond my reach.

I wonder whether it can come true now.

So many wonderful things have happened to me that perhaps this, too--" "What is it, dear?"

she asked, very softly.

"I seem to be so marked off from other men; but I've dreamed all my life of having in my house a neat, proper, real parlor maid in a pretty white cap and apron.

Do you think it can be managed?"

With her head on his knee she said in a queer voice: "Yes, I think it can."

He touched her cheek and suddenly drew his hand away.

"Why, you're crying!

What a selfish brute I am!

Of course we won't have her if she would be in your way."

Emmy lifted her face to him.

"Oh, you dear, beautiful, silly Septimus," she said, "don't you understand?

Isn't it just like you?

You give every one else the earth, and in return you ask for a parlor maid."

"Well, you see," he said in a tone of distressed apology, "she would come in so handy.

I could teach her to mind the guns."

"You dear!"

cried Emmy.

THE END

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