Septimus — Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
Septimus had never seen a woman faint before.
At first he thought Emmy was dead, and rubbed agonized hands together like a fly.
When he realized what had happened, he produced a large jack-knife which he always carried in his trousers pocket--for the purpose, he explained, of sharpening pencils--and offered it to Zora with the vague idea that the first aid to fainting women consisted in cutting their stay-laces.
Zora rebuked him for futility, and bade him ring the bell for the maid.
It was all very sudden.
The scene had been one that of late had grown so familiar: Zora and Septimus poring over world itineraries, the latter full of ineffectual suggestion and irrelevant reminiscence, and Emmy reading by the fire.
On this occasion it was the _Globe_ newspaper which Septimus, who had spent the day in London on an unexecuted errand to his publisher, had brought back with him.
Evening papers being luxuries in Nunsmere, he had hidden it carefully from Wiggleswick, in order to present it to the ladies.
Suddenly there was a rustle and a slither by the fire-place, and Emmy, in a dead faint, hung over the arm of the chair.
In her hand she grasped the outer sheet of the paper.
The inner sheet, according to the untidy ways of women with newspapers, lay discarded on the floor.
With Septimus's help Zora and the maid carried her to the sofa; they opened the window and gave her smelling salts.
Septimus anxiously desired to be assured that she was not dying, and Zora thanked heaven that her mother had gone to bed.
Presently Emmy recovered consciousness.
"I must have fainted," she said in a whisper.
"Yes, dear," said Zora, kneeling by her side.
"Are you better?"
Emmy stared past Zora at something unseen and terrifying.
"It was foolish.
The heat, I suppose.
Mr. Sypher's burning board."
She turned an appealing glance to Septimus.
"Did I say anything silly?"
When he told her that she had slipped over the arm of the chair without a word, she looked relieved and closed her eyes.
As soon as she had revived sufficiently she allowed herself to be led up-stairs; but before going she pressed Septimus's hand with feverish significance.
Even to so inexperienced a mind as his the glance and the hand-shake conveyed a sense of trust, suggested dimly a reason for the fainting fit.
Once more he stood alone and perplexed in the little drawing-room.
Once more he passed his long fingers through his Struwel Peter hair and looked about the room for inspiration.
Finding none, he mechanically gathered up the two parts of the newspaper, with a man's instinct for tidiness in printed matter, and smoothed out the crumples that Emmy's hand had made on the outer sheet.
Whilst doing so, a paragraph met his eye, causing him to stare helplessly at the paper.
It was the announcement of the marriage of Mordaunt Prince at the British Consulate in Naples.
The unutterable perfidy of man!
For the first time in his guileless life Septimus met it face to face.
To read of human depravity in the police reports is one thing, to see it fall like a black shadow across one's life is another.
It horrified him.
Mordaunt Prince had committed the unforgivable sin.
He had stolen a girl's love, and basely, meanly, he had slunk off, deceiving her to the last.
To Septimus the lover who kissed and rode away had ever appeared a despicable figure of romance.
The fellow who did it in real life proclaimed himself an unconscionable scoundrel.
The memory of Emmy's forget-me-not blue eyes turning into sapphires as she sang the villain's praises smote him.
He clenched his fists and put to incoherent use his limited vocabulary of anathema.
Then fearing, in his excited state, to meet Zora, lest he should betray the miserable secret, he stuffed the newspaper into his pocket, and crept out of the house.
Before his own fire he puzzled over the problem.
Something must be done.
But what?
Hale Mordaunt Prince from his bride's arms and bring him penitent to Nunsmere?
What would be the good of that, seeing that polygamy is not openly sanctioned by Western civilization?
Proceed to Naples and chastise him?
That were better.
The monster deserved it.
But how are men chastised?
Septimus had no experience.
He reflected vaguely that people did this sort of thing with a horsewhip.
He speculated on the kind of horsewhip that would be necessary.
A hunting crop with no lash would not be more effective than an ordinary walking stick.
With a lash it would be cumbrous, unless he kept at an undignified distance and flicked at his victim as the ring-master in the circus flicks at the clown.
Perhaps horsewhips for this particular purpose could be obtained from the Army and Navy Stores.
It should be about three feet long, flexible and tapering to a point.
Unconsciously his inventive faculty began to work.
When he had devised an adequate instrument, made of fine steel wires ingeniously plaited, he awoke, somewhat shame-facedly, to the commonplaces of the original problem.
What was to be done?
He pondered for some hours, then he sighed and sought consolation in his bassoon; but after a few bars of "Annie Laurie" he put the unedifying instrument back in its corner and went out for a walk.
It was a starry night of frost.
Nunsmere lay silent as Bethlehem; and a star hung low in the east.
Far away across the common gleamed one solitary light in the vicarage windows; the Vicar, good gentleman, finishing his unruffled sermon while his parish slept.
Otherwise darkness spread over everything save the sky.
Not a creature on the road, not a creature on the common, not even the lame donkey.
Incredibly distant the faint sound of a railway whistle intensified the stillness.
Septimus's own footsteps on the crisp grass rang loud in his ears.
Yet both stillness and darkness felt companionable, in harmony with the starlit dimness of the man's mind.
His soul was having its adventure while mystery filled the outer air.
He walked on, wrapped in the nebulous fantasies which passed with him for thought, heedless, as he always was, of the flight of time.
Once he halted by the edge of the pond, and, sitting on a bench, lit and smoked his pipe until the cold forced him to rise.
With an instinctive desire to hear some earthly sound, he picked up a stone and threw it into the water.
He shivered at the ghostly splash and moved away, himself an ineffectual ghost wandering aimlessly in the night.
The Vicar's lamp had been extinguished long ago.
A faint breeze sprang up.
The star sank lower in the sky.
Suddenly, as he turned back from the road to cross the common for the hundredth time, he became aware that he was not alone.
Footsteps rather felt than heard were in front of him.
He pressed forward and peered through the darkness, and finally made out a dim form some thirty yards away.
Idly he followed and soon recognized the figure as that of a woman hurrying fast.
Why a woman should be crossing Nunsmere Common at four o'clock in the morning passed his power of conjecture.
She was going neither to nor from the doctor, whose house lay behind the vicarage on the right.
All at once her objective became clear to him.
He thought of the splash of the stone.
She was making straight for the pond.
He hastened his pace, came up within a few yards of her and then stopped dead.
It was Emmy.
He recognized the zibeline toque and coat edged with the same fur which she often wore.
She carried something in her hand, he could not tell what.
She went on, unconscious of his nearness.
He followed her, horror-stricken.
Emmy, a new Ophelia, was about to seek a watery grave for herself and her love sorrow.
Again came the problem which in moments of emergency Septimus had never learned to solve.
What should he do?
Across the agony of his mind shot a feeling of horrible indelicacy in thrusting himself upon a woman at such a moment.
He was half tempted to turn back and leave her to the sanctity of her grief.
But again the splash echoed in his ears and again he shivered.
The water was so black and cold.
And what could he say to Zora?
The thought lashed his pace to sudden swiftness and Emmy turned with a little scream of fear.
"Who are you?"
"It's I, Septimus," he stammered, taking hold of his cap.
"For God's sake, don't do it."
"I shall.
Go away.
How dare you spy on me?"
She stood and faced him, and her features were just discernible in the dim starlight.
Anger rang in her voice.
She stamped her foot.
"How dare you?"
"I haven't been spying on you," he explained.
"I only recognized you a couple of minutes ago.
I was walking about--taking a stroll before breakfast, you know."
"Oh!"
she said, stonily.
"I'm dreadfully sorry to have intruded upon you," he continued, twirling his cap nervously in his fingers while the breeze played through his upstanding hair.
"I didn't mean to--but I couldn't stand by and let you do it.
I couldn't, really."
"Do what?"
she asked, still angry.
Septimus did not know that beneath the fur-lined jacket her heart was thumping madly.
"Drown yourself," said Septimus.
"In the pond?"
she laughed hysterically.
"In three feet of water?
How do you think I was going to manage it?"
Septimus reflected.
He had not thought of the pond's inadequate depth.
"You might have lain down at the bottom until it was all over," he remarked in perfect seriousness.
"I once heard of a servant girl who drowned herself in a basin of water."
Emmy turned impatiently and, walking on, waved him away; but he accompanied her mechanically.
"Oh, don't follow me," she cried in a queer voice.
"Leave me alone, for God's sake.
I'm not going to commit suicide.
I wish to heaven I had the pluck."
"But if you're not going to do that, why on earth are you here?"
"I'm taking a stroll before breakfast--just like yourself.
Why am I here?
If you really want to know," she added defiantly, "I'm going to London--by the early train from Hensham--the milk train.
See, I'm respectable.
I have my luggage."
She swung something in the dark before him and he perceived that it was a handbag.
"Now are you satisfied?
Or do you think I was going to take a handkerchief and a powder puff into the other world with me?
I'm just simply going to London--nothing more."
"But it's a seven-mile walk to Hensham."
She made no reply, but quickened her pace.
Septimus, in a whirl of doubt and puzzledom, walked by her side, still holding his cap in his hand.
Even the intelligence of the local policeman would have connected her astounding appearance on the common with the announcement in the _Globe_.
He took that for granted.
But if she were not about to destroy herself, why this untimely flight to London?
Why walk seven miles in wintry darkness when she could have caught a train at Ripstead (a mile away) a few hours later, in orthodox comfort?
It was a mystery, a tragic and perplexing mystery.
They passed by the pond in silence, crossed the common and reached the main road.
"I wish I knew what to do, Emmy," he said at last.
"I hate forcing my company upon you, and yet I feel I should be doing wrong to leave you unprotected.
You see, I should not be able to face Zora."
"You had better face her as late as possible," she replied quickly.
"Perhaps you had better walk to the station with me.
Would you?"
"It would ease my mind."
"All right.
Only, for God's sake, don't chatter.
I don't want you of all people to get on my nerves."
"Let me carry your bag," said Septimus, "and you had better have my stick."
The process of transference brought to his consciousness the fact of his bareheadedness.
He put on his cap and they trudged along the road like gipsy man and wife, saying not a word to each other.
For two miles they proceeded thus, sometimes in utter blackness when the road wound between thick oak plantations, sometimes in the lesser dimness of the open when it passed by the rolling fields; and not a sign of human life disturbed the country stillness.
Then they turned into the London road and passed through a village.
Lights were in the windows.
One cottage door stood open.
A shaft of light streamed across Emmy's face, and Septimus caught a glimpse of drawn and haggard misery.
They went on for another mile.
Now and then a laborer passed them with an unsurprised greeting.
A milkcart rattled by and then all was silence again.
Gradually the stars lost brilliance.
All of a sudden, at the foot of a rise crowned by a cottage looming black against the sky, Emmy broke down and cast herself on a heap of stones by the side of the road, a helpless bundle of sobs and incoherent lamentations.
She could bear it no longer.
Why had he not spoken to her?
She could go no further.
She wished she were dead.
What was going to become of her?
How could he walk by her side saying nothing, like a dumb jailer?
He had better go back to Nunsmere and leave her to die by the wayside.
It was all she asked of Heaven.
"Oh, God have pity on me," she moaned, and rocked herself to and fro.
Septimus stood for a time tongue-tied in acute distress.
This was his first adventure in knight-errantry and he had served before neither as page nor squire.
He would have given his head to say the unknown words that might comfort her.
All he could do was to pat her on the shoulder in a futile way and bid her not to cry, which, as all the world knows, is the greatest encouragement to further shedding of tears a weeping woman can have.
Emmy sobbed more bitterly than ever.
Once more on that night of agonizing dubiety, what was to be done?
He looked round desperately for guidance, and, as he looked, a light appeared in the window of the hilltop cottage.
"Perhaps," said he, "if I knock at the door up there, they can give you a glass of milk.
Or a cup of tea," he added, brightening with the glow of inspiration.
"Or they may be able to let you lie down for a while."
But Emmy shook her head miserably.
Milk, tea, recumbent luxury were as nothing to her.
Neither poppy nor mandragora (or words to that effect) could give her ease again.
And she couldn't walk four miles, and she must catch the morning train.
"If you'll tell me what I can do," said Septimus, "I'll do it."
A creaky rumble was heard in the distance and presently they made out a cart coming slowly down the hill.
Septimus had another brilliant idea.
"Let me put you into that and take you back to Nunsmere."
She sprang to her feet and clutched his arm.
"Never.
Never, do you hear?
I couldn't bear it.
Mother, Zora--I couldn't see them again.
Last night they nearly drove me into hysterics.
What do you suppose I came out for at this hour, if it wasn't to avoid meeting them?
Let us go on.
If I die on the road, so much the better."
"Perhaps," said Septimus, "I could carry you."
She softened, linked her arm in his, and almost laughed, as they started up the hill.
"What a good fellow you are, and I've been behaving like a beast.
Anyone but you would have worried me with questions--and small wonder.
But you haven't even asked me--" "Hush," said Septimus.
"I know.
I saw the paragraph in the newspaper.
Don't let's talk of it.
Let us talk of something else.
Do you like honey?
The Great Bear put me in mind.
Wiggleswick wants to keep bees.
I tell him, if he does, I'll keep a bear.
He could eat the honey, you see.
And then I could teach him to dance by playing the bassoon to him.
Perhaps he would like the bassoon," he continued, after a pause, in his wistful way.
"Nobody else does."
"If you had it with you now, I should love it for your sake," said Emmy with a sob.
"If you would take my advice and rest in the cottage, I could send for it," he replied unsmilingly.
"We must catch the train," said Emmy.
In Wirley, half a mile further, folks were stirring.
A cart laden with market produce waited by a cottage door for the driver who stood swallowing his final cup of tea.
A bare-headed child clung round his leg, an attendant Hebe.
The wanderers halted.
"If the other cart could have taken us back to Nunsmere," said Septimus, with the air of a man who has arrived at Truth, "this one can carry us to the station."
And so it fell out.
The men made Emmy as comfortable as could be among the cabbages, with some sacks for rugs, and there she lay drowsy with pain and weariness until they came to the end of their journey.
A gas-light or two accentuated the murky dismalness of the little station.
Emmy sank exhausted on a bench in the booking hail, numb with cold, and too woebegone to think of her hair, which straggled limply from beneath the zibeline toque.
Septimus went to the booking office and asked for two first-class tickets to London.
When he joined her again she was crying softly.
"You're coming with me?
It is good of you."
"I'm responsible for you to Zora."
A shaft of jealousy shot through her tears.
"You always think of Zora."
"To think of her," replied Septimus, vaguely allusive, "is a liberal education."
Emmy shrugged her shoulders.
She was not of the type that makes paragons out of her own sex, and she had also a sisterly knowledge of Zora unharmonious with Septimus's poetic conception.
But she felt too miserable to argue.
She asked him the time.
At last the train came in.
There was a great rattling of milk-cans on the gloomy platform, and various slouching shapes entered third-class carriages.
The wanderers had the only first-class compartment to themselves.
It struck cold and noisome, like a peculiarly unaired charnel-house.
A feeble lamp, whose effect was dimmed by the swishing dirty oil in the bottom of the globe, gave a pretense at illumination.
The guard passing by the window turned his lantern on them and paused for a wondering moment.
Were they a runaway couple?
If so, thought he, they had arrived at quick repentance.
As they looked too dismal for tips, he concerned himself with them no more.
The train started.
Emmy shook with cold, in spite of her fur-lined jacket.
Septimus took off his overcoat and spread it over their two bodies as they huddled together for warmth.
After a while her head drooped on his shoulder and she slept, while Septimus sucked his empty pipe, not daring to light it lest he should disturb her slumbers.
For the same reason he forbore to change his original awkward attitude, and in consequence suffered agonies of pins and needles.
To have a solid young woman asleep in your arms is not the romantic pleasure the poets make out;
for comfort, she might just as well stand on your head.
Also, as Emmy unconsciously drew the overcoat away from him, one side of his body perished with cold; and a dinner suit is not warm enough for traveling on a frosty morning.
The thought of his dinner jacket reminded him of his puzzledom.
What were Emmy and himself doing in that galley of a railway carriage when they might have been so much more comfortable in their own beds in Nunsmere?
It was an impenetrable mystery to which the sleeping girl who was causing him such acute though cheerfully borne discomfort alone had the key.
In vain did he propound to himself the theory that such speculation betokened an indelicate mind; in vain did he ask himself with unwonted severity what business it was of his; in vain did he try to hitch his thoughts to Patent Safety Railway Carriages, which were giving him a great deal of trouble; in vain did he try to sleep.
The question haunted him.
So much so that when Emmy awoke and rubbed her eyes, and in some confusion apologized for the use to which she had put his shoulder, he was almost ashamed to look her in the face.
"What are you going to do when you get to Victoria?"
Emmy asked.
Septimus had not thought of it.
"Go back to Nunsmere, I suppose, by the next train--unless you want me?"
"No, I don't want you," said Emmy absently.
"Why should I?"
And she gazed stonily at the suburban murk of the great city until they reached Victoria.
There, a dejected four-wheeled cab with a drooping horse stood solitary on the rank--a depressing object.
Emmy shivered at the sight.
"I can't stand it.
Drive me to my door.
I know I'm a beast, Septimus dear, but I am grateful.
I am, really."
The cab received them into its musty interior and drove them through the foggy brown of a London winter dawn.
Unimaginable cheerlessness enveloped them.
The world wore an air of disgust at having to get up on such a morning.
The atmosphere for thirty yards around them was clear enough, with the clearness of yellow consommé, but ahead it stood thick, like a purée of bad vegetables.
They passed through Belgravia, and the white-blinded houses gave an impression of universal death, and the empty streets seemed waiting for the doors to open and the mourners to issue forth.
The cab, too, had something of the sinister, in that it was haunted by the ghosts of a fourpenny cigar and a sixpenny bottle of scent which continued a lugubrious flirtation; and the windows rattled a _danse macabre_.
At last it pulled up at the door of Emmy's Mansions in Chelsea.
