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 consomme, but ahead it stood thick, like a puree 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.

She looked at him very piteously, like a frightened child. Her pretty mouth was never strong, but when the corners drooped it was babyish. She slipped her hand in his.

"Don't leave me just yet. It's silly, I know—but this awful journey has taken everything out of me. Every bit of it has been worse than the last. Edith—that's my maid—will light a fire—you must get warm before you start—and she'll make some coffee. Oh, do come. You can keep the cab."

"But what will your maid think?" asked Septimus, who for all his vagueness had definite traditions as to the proprieties of life.

"What does it matter? What does anything in this ghastly world matter? I'm frightened, Septimus, horribly frightened. I daren't go up by myself. Oh! Come!"

Her voice broke on the last word. Saint Anthony would have yielded; also his pig. Septimus handed her out of the cab, and telling the cabman to wait, followed her through the already opened front door of the Mansions up to her flat. She let herself in with her latchkey and showed him into the drawing-room, turning on the electric light as he entered.

"I'll go and wake Edith," she said. "Then we can have some breakfast. The fire's laid. Do you mind putting a match to it?"

She disappeared and Septimus knelt down before the grate and lit the paper. In a second or two the flame caught the wood, and, the blower being down, it blazed fiercely. He spread his ice-cold hands out before it, incurious of the futile little room whose draperies and fripperies and inconsiderable flimsiness of furniture proclaimed its owner, intent only on the elemental need of warmth. He was disturbed by the tornadic entrance of Emmy.

"She's not here!" she exclaimed tragically. Her baby face was white and there were dark shadows under the eyes which stared at him with a touch of madness. "She's not here!"

"Perhaps she has gone out for a walk," Septimus suggested, as if London serving-maids were in the habit of taking the air at eight o'clock on a foggy morning.

But Emmy heard him not. The dismaying sense of utter loneliness smote her down. It was the last straw. Edith, on whom she had staked all her hopes of physical comfort, was not there. Overstrained in body, nerves, and mind, she sank helplessly in the chair which Septimus set out for her before the fire, too exhausted to cry. She began to speak in a queer, toneless voice:

"I don't know what to do. Edith could have helped me. I want to get away and hide. I can't stay here. It's the first place Zora will come to. She mustn't find me. Edith has been through it herself. She would have taken me somewhere abroad or in the country where I could have stayed in hiding till it was over. It was all so sudden—the news of his marriage. I was half crazy, I couldn't make plans. I thought Edith would help me. Now she has gone, goodness knows where. My God, what shall I do?"

She went on, looking at him haggardly, a creature driven beyond the reticence of sex, telling her inmost secret to a man as if it were a commonplace of trouble. It did not occur to her distraught mind that he was a man. She spoke to herself, without thought, uttering the cry for help that had been pent within her all that awful night.

The puzzledom of Septimus grew unbearable in its intensity; then suddenly it burst like a skyrocket and a blinding rain of fire enveloped him. He stood paralyzed with pain and horror.

The sullen morning light diffused itself through the room, mingling ironically with the pretty glow cast by the pink-shaded electric globes, while the two forlorn grotesques regarded each other, unconscious of each other's grotesqueness, the girl disheveled and haggard, the man with rough gray coat unbuttoned, showing the rumpled evening dress; her toque miserably awry, his black tie riding above his collar, the bow somewhere behind his ear. And the tragedy of tragedies of a young girl's life was unfolded.

"My God, what am I to do?"

Septimus stared at her, his hands in his trousers pockets. In one of them his fingers grasped a folded bit of paper. He drew it out unthinkingly—a very dirty bit of paper. In his absent-minded way he threw it towards the fire, but it fell on the tiled hearth. In moments of great strain the mind seizes with pitiful eagerness on the trivial. Emmy looked at the paper. Something familiar about its shape struck her. She leaned forward, picked it up and unfolded it.

"This is a check," she said in a matter-of-fact tone. "Did you mean to throw it away?"

He took it from her and, looking at it, realized that It was Clem Sypher's check for two hundred pounds.

"Thanks," said he, thrusting it into his overcoat pocket.

Then his queerly working brain focused associations.

"I know what we can do," said he. "We can go to Naples."

"What good would that be?" she asked, treating the preposterous question seriously.

He was taken aback by her directness, and passed his fingers through his hair.

"I don't know," said he.

"The first thing we must do," said Emmy—and her voice sounded in her own ears like someone else's—"is to get away from here. Zora will be down by the first train after my absence is discovered. You quite see that Zora mustn't find me, don't you?"

"Of course," said Septimus, blankly. Then he brightened. "You can go to an hotel. A Temperance Hotel in Bloomsbury. Wiggleswick was telling me about one the other day. A friend of his burgled it and got six years. A man called Barkus."

"But what was the name of the hotel?"

"Ah! that I forget," said Septimus. "It had something to do with Sir Walter Scott. Let me see. Lockhart—no, Lockhart's is a different place. It was either the Bride of Lammermoor or—yes," he cried triumphantly, "it was the Ravenswood, in Southampton Row."

Emmy rose. The switch off onto the trivial piece of paper had braced her unstrung nerves for a final effort: that, and the terror of meeting Zora.

"You'll take me there. I'll just put some things together."

He opened the door for her to pass out. On the threshold she turned.

"I believe God sent you to Nunsmere Common last night."

She left him, and he went back to the fire and filled and lit his pipe. Her words touched him. They also struck a chord of memory. His ever-wandering mind went back to a scene in undergraduate days. It was the Corn Exchange at Cambridge, where the most famous of all American evangelists was holding one of a series of revivalist meetings. The great bare hall was packed with youths, who came, some to scoff and others to pray. The coarse-figured, bald-headed, brown-bearded man in black on the platform, with his homely phrase and (to polite undergraduate ears) terrible Yankee twang, was talking vehemently of the trivial instruments the Almighty used to effect His purposes. Moses's rod, for instance. "You can imagine Pharaoh," said he—and the echo of the great voice came to Septimus through the years—"you can imagine Pharaoh walking down the street one day and seeing Moses with a great big stick in his hand. 'Hallo, Moses,' says he, 'where are you going?' 'Where am I going?' says Moses. 'I guess I'm going to deliver the Children of Israel out of the House of Bondage and conduct them to a land flowing with milk and honey.' 'And how are you going to do it, Moses?' 'With this rod, sir, with this rod!'"

Septimus remembered how this bit of unauthenticated history was greeted with derision by the general, and with a shocked sense of propriety by the cultivated—and young men at the university can be very cultivated indeed on occasion. But the truth the great preacher intended to convey had lingered at the back of his own mind and now came out into the light. Perhaps Emmy had spoken more truly than she thought. In his simple heart he realized himself to be the least effectual of men, apparently as unhelpful towards a great deliverance as the walking stick used by Moses. But if God had sent him to Nunsmere Common and destined him to be the mean instrument of Emmy's deliverance? He rubbed the warm pipe bowl against his cheek and excogitated the matter in deep humility. Yes, perhaps God had sent him. His religious belief was nebulous, but up to its degree of clarity it was sincere.

A few minutes later they were again in the cab jogging wearily across London to Southampton Row; and the little empty drawing-room with all its vanities looked somewhat ghostly, lit as it was by the day and by the frivolously shaded electric light which they had forgotten to switch off.



CHAPTER X

When Septimus had seen Emmy admitted to the Ravenswood Hotel, he stood on the gloomy pavement outside wondering what he should do. Then it occurred to him that he belonged to a club—a grave, decorous place where the gay pop of a champagne cork had been known to produce a scandalized silence in the luncheon-room, and where serious-minded members congregated to scowl at one another's unworthiness from behind newspapers. A hansom conveyed him thither. In the hall he struggled over two telegrams which had caused him most complicated thought during his drive. The problem was to ease Zora's mind and to obtain a change of raiment without disclosing the whereabouts of either Emmy or himself. This he had found no easy matter, diplomacy being the art of speaking the truth with intent to deceive, and so finely separated from sheer lying as to cause grave distress to Septimus's candid soul. At last, after much wasting of telegraph forms, he decided on the following:

To Zora: "Emmy safe in London. So am I. Don't worry. Devotedly, Septimus."

To Wiggleswick: "Bring clothes and railway carriage diagrams secretly to Club."

Having dispatched these, he went into the coffee-room and ordered breakfast. The waiters served him in horrified silence. A gaunt member, breakfasting a few tables off, asked for the name of the debauchee, and resolved to write to the Committee. Never in the club's history had a member breakfasted in dress clothes—and in such disreputably disheveled dress clothes! Such dissolute mohocks were a stumbling-block and an offense, and the gaunt member, who had prided himself on going by clockwork all his life, felt his machinery in some way dislocated by the spectacle. But Septimus ate his food unconcernedly, and afterwards, mounting to the library, threw himself into a chair before the fire and slept the sleep of the depraved till Wiggleswick arrived with his clothes. Then, having effected an outward semblance of decency, he went to the Ravenswood Hotel. Wiggleswick he sent back to Nunsmere.

Emmy entered the prim drawing-room where he had been waiting for her, the picture of pretty flower-like misery, her delicate cheeks white, a hunted look in her baby eyes. A great pang of pity went through the man, hurting him physically. She gave him a limp hand, and sat down on a saddle-bag sofa, while he stood hesitatingly before her, balancing himself first on one leg and then on the other.

"Have you had anything to eat?"

Emmy nodded.

"Have you slept?"

"That's a thing I shall never do again," she said querulously. "How can you ask?"

"If you don't sleep, you'll get ill and die," said Septimus.

"So much the better," she replied.

"I wish I could help you. I do wish I could help you."

"No one can help me. Least of all you. What could a man do in any case? And, as for you, my poor Septimus, you want as much taking care of as I do."

The depreciatory tone did not sting him as it would have done another man, for he knew his incapacity. He had also gone through the memory of Moses's rod the night before.

"I wonder whether Wiggleswick could be of any use?" he said, more brightly.

Emmy laughed dismally. Wiggleswick! To no other mind but Septimus's could such a suggestion present itself.

"Then what's to be done?"

"I don't know," said Emmy.

They looked at each other blankly, two children face to face with one of the most terrible of modern social problems, aghast at their powerlessness to grapple with it. It is a situation which wrings the souls of the strong with an agony worse than death. It crushes the weak, or drives them mad, and often brings them, fragile wisps of human semblance, into the criminal dock. Shame, disgrace, social pariahdom; unutterable pain to dear ones; an ever-gaping wound in fierce family pride; a stain on two generations; an incurable malady of a once blithe spirit; woe, disaster, and ruin—such is the punishment awarded by men and women to her who disobeys the social law and, perhaps with equal lack of volition, obeys the law physiological. The latter is generally considered the greater crime.

These things passed through Septimus's mind. His ignorance of the ways of what is, after all, an indifferent, self-centered world exaggerated them.

"You know what it means?" he said tonelessly.

"If I didn't, should I be here?"

He made one last effort to persuade her to take Zora into her confidence. His nature abhorred deceit, to say nothing of the High Treason he was committing; a rudiment of common sense also told him that Zora was Emmy's natural helper and protector. But Emmy had the obstinacy of a weak nature. She would die rather than Zora should know. Zora would never understand, would never forgive her. The disgrace would kill her mother.

"If you love Zora, as you say you do, you would want to save her pain," said Emmy finally.

So Septimus was convinced. But once more, what was to be done?

"You had better go away, my poor Septimus," she said, bending forward listlessly, her hands in her lap. "You see you're not a bit of use now. If you had been a different sort of man—like anyone else—one who could have helped me—I shouldn't have told you anything about it. I'll send for my old dresser at the theater. I must have a woman, you see. So you had better go away."

Septimus walked up and down the room deep in thought. A spinster-looking lady in a cheap blouse and skirt, an inmate of the caravanserai, put her head through the door and, with a disapproving sniff at the occupants, retired. At length Septimus broke the silence:

"You said last night that you believed God sent me to you. I believe so too. So I'm not going to leave you."

"But what can you do?" asked Emmy, ending the sentence on a hysterical note which brought tears and a fit of sobbing. She buried her head in her arms on the sofa-end, and her young shoulders shook convulsively. She was an odd mixture of bravado and baby helplessness. To leave her to fight her terrible battle with the aid only of a theater dresser was an impossibility. Septimus looked at her with mournful eyes, hating his futility. Of what use was he to any God-created being? Another man, strong and capable, any vital, deep-chested fellow that was passing along Southampton Row at that moment, would have known how to take her cares on his broad shoulders and ordain, with kind imperiousness, a course of action. But he—he could only clutch his fingers nervously and shuffle with his feet, which of itself must irritate a woman with nerves on edge. He could do nothing. He could suggest nothing save that he should follow her about like a sympathetic spaniel. It was maddening. He walked to the window and looked out into the unexhilarating street, all that was man in him in revolt against his ineffectuality.

Suddenly came the flash of inspiration, swift, illuminating, such as happened sometimes when the idea of a world-upsetting invention burst upon him with bewildering clearness; but this time more radiant, more intense than he had ever known before; it was almost an ecstasy. He passed both hands feverishly through his hair till it could stand no higher.

"I have it!" he cried; and Archimedes could not have uttered his famous word with a greater thrill.

"Emmy, I have it!"

He stood before her gibbering with inspiration. At his cry she raised a tear-stained face and regarded him amazedly.

"You have what?"

"The solution. It is so simple, so easy. Why shouldn't we have run away together?"

"We did," said Emmy.

"But really—to get married."

"Married?"

She started bolt upright on the sofa, the feminine ever on the defensive.

"Yes," said Septimus quickly. "Don't you see? If you will go through the form of marriage with me—oh, just the form, you know—and we both disappear abroad somewhere for a year—I in one place and you in another, if you like—then we can come back to Zora, nominally married, and—and—"

"And what?" asked Emmy, stonily.

"And then you can say you can't live with me any longer. You couldn't stand me. I don't think any woman could. Only Wiggleswick could put up with my ways."

Emmy passed her hands across her eyes. She was somewhat dazed.

"You would give me your name—and shield me—just like that!" Her voice quavered.

"It isn't much to give. It's so short," he remarked absently. "I've always thought it such a silly name."

"You would tie yourself for life to a girl who has disgraced herself, just for the sake of shielding her?"

"Why, it's done every day," said Septimus.

"Is it? Oh, God! You poor innocent!" and she broke down again.

"There, there," said Septimus kindly, patting her shoulder. "It's all settled, isn't it? We can get married by special license—quite soon. I've read of it in books. Perhaps the Hall Porter can tell me where to get one. Hall Porters know everything. Then we can write to Zora and tell her it was a runaway match. It's the easiest thing in the world. I'll go and see after it now."

He left her prostrate on the sofa, her heart stone cold, her body lapped in flame from feet to hair. It was not given to him to know her agony of humiliation, her agony of temptation. He had but followed the message which his simple faith took to be divine. The trivial name of Dix would be the instrument wherewith the deliverance of Emmy from the House of Bondage should be effected. He went out cheerily, stared for a moment at the Hall Porter, vaguely associating him with the matter in hand, but forgetting exactly why, and strode into the street, feeling greatly uplifted. The broad-shouldered men who jostled him as he pursued his absent-minded and therefore devious course no longer appeared potential champions to be greatly envied. He felt that he was one of them, and blessed them as they jostled him, taking their rough manners as a sign of kinship. The life of Holborn swallowed him. He felt glad who once hated the dismaying bustle. His heart sang for joy. Something had been given him to do for the sake of the woman he loved. What more can a man do than lay down his life for a friend? Perhaps he can do a little more for a loved woman: marry somebody else.

Deep down in his heart he loved Zora. Deep down in his heart, too, dwelt the idiot hope that the miracle of miracles might one day happen. He loved the hope with a mother's passionate love for a deformed and imbecile child, knowing it unfit to live among the other healthy hopes of his conceiving. At any rate, he was free to bring her his daily tale of worship, to glean a look of kindness from her clear eyes. This was his happiness. For her sake he would sacrifice it. For Zora's sake he would marry Emmy. The heart of Septimus was that of a Knight-Errant confident in the righteousness of his quest. The certainty had come all at once in the flash of inspiration. Besides, was he not carrying out Zora's wish? He remembered her words. It would be the greatest pleasure he could give her—to become her brother, her real brother. She would approve. And beyond all that, deep down also in his heart he knew it was the only way, the wise, simple, Heaven-directed way.

The practical, broad-shouldered, common-sense children of this world would have weighed many things one against the other. They would have taken into account sentimentally, morally, pharisaically, or cynically, according to their various attitudes towards life, the relations between Emmy and Mordaunt Prince which had led to this tragic situation. But for Septimus her sin scarcely existed. When a man is touched by an angel's feather he takes an angel's view of mortal frailties.

He danced his jostled way up Holborn till the City Temple loomed through the brown air. It struck a chord of association. He halted on the edge of the curb and regarded it across the road, with a forefinger held up before his nose as if to assist memory. It was a church. People were apt to be married in churches. Sometimes by special license. That was it! A special license. He had come out to get one. But where were they to be obtained? In a properly civilized country, doubtless they would be sold in shops, like boots and hair-brushes, or even in post-offices, like dog licenses. But Septimus, aware of the deficiencies of an incomplete social organization, could do no better than look wistfully up and down the stream of traffic, as it roared and flashed and lumbered past. A policeman stopped beside him. He appeared so lost, he met the man's eyes with a gaze so questioning, that the policeman paused.

"Want to go anywhere, sir?"

"Yes," said Septimus. "I want to go where I can get a special license to be married."

"Don't you know?"

"No. You see," said Septimus confidentially, "marriage has been out of my line. But perhaps you have been married, and might be able to tell me."

"Look here, sir," said the policeman, eyeing him kindly, but officially. "Take my advice, sir; don't think of getting married. You go home to your friends."

The policeman nodded knowingly and stalked away, leaving Septimus perplexed by his utterance. Was he a Socrates of a constable with a Xantippe at home, or did he regard him as a mild lunatic at large? Either solution was discouraging. He turned and walked back down Holborn somewhat dejected. Somewhere in London the air was thick with special licenses, but who would direct his steps to the desired spot? On passing Gray's Inn one of his brilliant ideas occurred to him. The Inn suggested law; the law, solicitors, who knew even more about licenses than Hall Porters and Policemen. A man he once knew had left him one day after lunch to consult his solicitors in Gray's Inn. He entered the low, gloomy gateway and accosted the porter.

"Are there any solicitors living in the Inn?"

"Not so many as there was. They're mostly architects. But still there's heaps."

"Will you kindly direct me to one?"

The man gave him two or three addresses, and he went comforted across the square to the east wing, whose Georgian mass merged without skyline into the fuliginous vapor which Londoners call the sky. The lights behind the blindless windows illuminated interiors and showed men bending over desks and drawing-boards, some near the windows with their faces sharply cut in profile. Septimus wondered vaguely whether any one of those visible would be his solicitor.

A member of the first firm he sought happened to be disengaged, a benevolent young man wearing gold spectacles, who received his request for guidance with sympathetic interest and unfolded to him the divers methods whereby British subjects could get married all over the world, including the High Seas on board one of His Majesty's ships of the Mercantile Marine. Solicitors are generally bursting with irrelevant information. When, however, he elicited the fact that one of the parties had a flat in London which would technically prove the fifteen days' residence, he opened his eyes.

"But, my dear sir, unless you are bent on a religious ceremony, why not get married at once before the registrar of the Chelsea district? There are two ways of getting married before the registrar—one by certificate and one by license. By license you can get married after the expiration of one whole day next after the day of the entry of the notice of marriage. That is to say, if you give notice to-morrow you can get married not the next day, but the day after. In this way you save the heavy special license fee. How does it strike you?"

It struck Septimus as a remarkable suggestion, and he admired the lawyer exceedingly.

"I suppose it's really a good and proper marriage?" he asked.

The benevolent young man reassured him; it would take all the majesty of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty division of the High Court of Justice to dissolve it. Septimus agreed that in these circumstances it must be a capital marriage. Then the solicitor offered to see the whole matter through and get him married in the course of a day or two. After which he dismissed him with a professional blessing which cheered Septimus all the way to the Ravenswood Hotel.



CHAPTER XI

"Good heavens, mother, they're married!" cried Zora, staring at a telegram she had just received.

Mrs. Oldrieve woke with a start from her after-luncheon nap.

"Who, dear?"

"Why, Emmy and Septimus Dix. Read it."

Mrs. Oldrieve put on her glasses with faltering fingers, and read aloud the words as if they had been in a foreign language: "Septimus and I were married this morning at the Chelsea Registrar's. We start for Paris by the 2.30. Will let you know our plans. Love to mother from us both. Emmy."

"What does this mean, dear?"

"It means, my dear mother, that they're married," said Zora; "but why they should have thought it necessary to run away to do it in this hole-and-corner fashion I can't imagine."

"It's very terrible," said Mrs. Oldrieve.

"It's worse than terrible. It's idiotic," said Zora.

She was mystified, and being a woman who hated mystification, was angry. Her mother began to cry. It was a disgraceful thing; before a registrar, too.

"As soon as I let her go on the stage, I knew something dreadful would happen to her," she wailed. "Of course Mr. Dix is foolish and eccentric, but I never thought he could do anything so irregular."

"I have no patience with him!" cried Zora. "I told him only a short while ago that both of us would be delighted if he married Emmy."

"They must come back, dear, and be married properly. Do make them," urged Mrs. Oldrieve. "The Vicar will be so shocked and hurt—and what Cousin Jane will say when she hears of it—"

She raised her mittened hands and let them fall into her lap. The awfulness of Cousin Jane's indignation transcended the poor lady's powers of description. Zora dismissed the Vicar and Cousin Jane as persons of no account. The silly pair were legally married, and she would see that there was a proper notice put in The Times. As for bringing them back—she looked at the clock.

"They are on their way now to Folkestone."

"It wouldn't be any good telegraphing them to come back and be properly married in church?"

"Not the slightest," said Zora; "but I'll do it if you like."

So the telegram was dispatched to "Septimus Dix, Boulogne Boat, Folkestone," and Mrs. Oldrieve took a brighter view of the situation.

"We have done what we can, at any rate," she said by way of self-consolation.

Now it so happened that Emmy, like many another person at their wits' end, had given herself an amazing amount of unnecessary trouble. Her flight had not been noticed till the maid had entered her room at half-past eight. She had obviously packed up some things in a handbag. Obviously again she had caught the eight-fifteen train from Ripstead, as she had done once or twice before when rehearsals or other theatrical business had required an early arrival in London. Septimus's telegram had not only allayed no apprehension, but it had aroused a mild curiosity. Septimus was master of his own actions. His going up to London was no one's concern. If he were starting for the Equator a telegram would have been a courtesy. But why announce his arrival in London? Why couple it with Emmy's? And why in the name of guns and musical comedies should Zora worry? But when she reflected that Septimus did nothing according to the orthodox ways of men, she attributed the superfluous message to his general infirmity of character, smiled indulgently, and dismissed the matter from her mind. Mrs. Oldrieve had nothing to dismiss, as she had been led to believe that Emmy had gone up to London by the morning train. She only bewailed the flighty inconsequence of modern young women, until she reflected that Emmy's father had gone and come with disconcerting unexpectedness from the day of their wedding to that of his death on the horns of a buffalo; whereupon she fatalistically attributed her daughter's ways to heredity. So while the two incapables were sedulously covering up their tracks, the most placid indifference as to their whereabouts reigned in Nunsmere.

The telegram, therefore, announcing their marriage found Zora entirely unprepared for the news it contained. What a pitiful tragedy lay behind the words she was a million miles from suspecting. She walked with her head above such clouds, her eyes on the stars, taking little heed of the happenings around her feet—and, if the truth is to be known, finding mighty little instruction or entertainment in the firmament. The elopement, for it was nothing more, brought her eyes, however, earthwards. "Why?" she asked, not realizing it to be the most futile of questions when applied to human actions. To every such "Why?" there are a myriad answers. When a mysterious murder is committed, everyone seeks the motive. Unless circumstance unquestionably provides the key of the enigma, who can tell? It may be revenge for the foulest of wrongs. It may be that the assassin objected to the wart on the other man's nose—and there are men to whom a wart is a Pelion of rank offense, and who believe themselves heaven-appointed to cut it off. It may be for worldly gain. It may be merely for amusement. There is nothing so outrageous, so grotesque, which, if the human brain has conceived it, the human hand has not done. Many a man has taken a cab, on a sudden shower, merely to avoid the trouble of unrolling his umbrella, and the sanest of women has been known to cheat a 'bus conductor of a penny, so as to wallow in the gratification of a crossing-sweeper's blessing. When the philosopher asks the Everlasting Why, he knows, if he be a sound philosopher—and a sound philosopher is he who is not led into the grievous error of taking his philosophy seriously—that the question is but the starting point of the entertaining game of Speculation.

To this effect spake the Literary Man from London, when next he met Zora. Nunsmere was in a swarm of excitement and the alien bee had, perforce, to buzz with the rest.

"The interesting thing is," said he, "that the thing has happened. That while the inhabitants of this smug village kept one dull eye on the decalogue and another on their neighbors, Romance on its rosy pinions was hovering over it. Two people have gone the right old way of man and maid. They have defied the paralyzing conventions of the engagement. Oh! the unutterable, humiliating, deadening period! When each young person has to pass the inspection of the other's relations. When simpering friends maddeningly leave them alone in drawing-rooms and conservatories so that they can hold each other's hands. When they are on probation coram publico. Our friends have defied all this. They have defied the orange blossoms, the rice, the wedding presents, the unpleasant public affidavits, the whole indecent paraphernalia of an orthodox wedding—the bridal veil—a survival from the barbaric days when a woman was bought and paid for and a man didn't know what he had got until he had married her and taken her home—the senseless new clothes which brand them immodestly wherever they go. Two people have had the courage to avoid all this, to treat marriage as if it really concerned themselves and not Tom, Dick, and Harry. They've done it. Why, doesn't matter. All honor to them."

He waved his stick in the air—they had met on the common—and the lame donkey, who had strayed companionably near them, took to his heels in fright.

"Even the donkey," said Zora, "Mr. Dix's most intimate friend, doesn't agree with you."

"The ass will agree with the sage only in the millennium," said Rattenden.

But Zora was not satisfied with the professional philosopher's presentation of the affair. She sought Wiggleswick, whom she found before a blazing fire in the sitting-room, his feet on the mantelpiece, smoking a Havana cigar. On her approach he wriggled to attention, and extinguishing the cigar by means of saliva and a horny thumb and forefinger, put the stump into his pocket.

"Good morning, Wiggleswick," said Zora cheerfully.

"Good morning, ma'am," said Wiggleswick.

"You seem to be having a good time."

Wiggleswick gave her to understand that, thanks to his master's angelic disposition and his own worthiness, he always had a good time.

"Now that he's married there will have to be a few changes in household arrangements," said Zora.

"What changes?"

"There will be a cook and parlor maid and regular hours, and a mistress to look after things."

Wiggleswick put his cunning gray head on one side.

"I'm sure they'll make me very comfortable, ma'am. If they do the work, I won't raise no manner of objection."

Zora, regarding the egoist with mingled admiration and vexedness, could only say, "Oh!"

"I never raised no objection to his marriage from the first," said Wiggleswick.

"Did he consult you about it?"

"Of course he did," he replied with an indulgent smile, while the light of sportive fancy gleamed behind his blear eyes. "He looks on me as a father, he does, ma'am. 'Wiggleswick,' says he, 'I'm going to be married.' 'I'm delighted to hear it, sir,' says I. 'A man needs a woman's 'and about him,' says I."

"When did he tell you this?"

Wiggleswick searched his inventive memory.

"About a fortnight ago. 'If I may be so bold, sir, who is the young lady?' I asks. 'It's Miss Emily Oldrieve,' says he, and I said, 'A nicer, brighter, prettier bit of goods'—I beg your pardon, ma'am—'young lady, you couldn't pick up between here and Houndsditch.' I did say that, ma'am, I tell you straight." He looked at her keenly to see whether this expression of loyal admiration of his new mistress had taken effect, and then continued. "And then he says to me, 'Wiggleswick, there ain't going to be no grand wedding. You know me.'—And I does, ma'am. The outlandish things he does, ma'am, would shock an alligator.—'I should forget the day,' says he. 'I should lose the ring. I should marry the wrong party. I should forget to kiss the bridesmaids. Lord knows what I shouldn't do. So we're going up to London to be married on the Q.T., and don't you say nothing to nobody."

"So you've been in this conspiracy for a fortnight," said Zora severely, "and you never thought it your duty to stop him doing so foolish a thing?"

"As getting married, ma'am?"

"No. Such a silly thing as running away."

"Of course I did, ma'am," said Wiggleswick, who went on mendaciously to explain that he had used every means in his power to prevail on his master to submit to the orthodox ceremony for the sake of the family.

"Then you might have given me a hint as to what was going on."

Wiggleswick assumed a shocked expression. "And disobey my master? Orders is orders, ma'am. I once wore the Queen's uniform."

Zora, sitting on the arm of a chair, half steadying herself with her umbrella, regarded the old man standing respectfully at attention before her with a smile whose quizzicality she could not restrain. The old villain drew himself up in a dignified way.

"I don't mean the government uniform, ma'am. I've had my misfortunes like anyone else. I was once in the army—in the band."

"Mr. Dix told me that you had been in the band," said Zora with all her graciousness, so as to atone for the smile. "You played that instrument in the corner."

"I did, ma'am," said Wiggleswick.

Zora looked down at the point of her umbrella on the floor. Having no reason to disbelieve Wiggleswick's circumstantial though entirely fictitious story, and having by the smile put herself at a disadvantage, she felt uncomfortably routed.

"Your master never told you where he was going or how long he was likely to be away?" she asked.

"My master, ma'am," replied Wiggleswick, "never knows where he is going. That's why he wants a wife who can tell him."

Zora rose and looked around her. Then, with a sweep of her umbrella indicating the general dustiness and untidiness of the room:

"The best thing you can do," said she, "is to have the house thoroughly cleaned and put in order. They may be back any day. I'll send in a charwoman to help you."

"Thank you, ma'am," said Wiggleswick, somewhat glumly. Although he had lied volubly to her for his own ends, he stood in awe of her commanding personality, and never dreamed of disregarding her high behests. But he had a moral disapproval of work. He could see no nobility in it, having done so much enforced labour in his time.

"Do you think we need begin now, ma'am?" he asked anxiously.

"At once," said Zora. "It will take you a month to clean the place. And it will give you something to do."

She went away femininely consoled by her exercise of authority—a minor victory covering a retreat. But she still felt very angry with Septimus.

When Clem Sypher came down to Penton Court for the week-end, he treated the matter lightly.

"He knew that he was acceptable to your mother and yourself, so he has done nothing dishonorable. All he wanted was your sister and the absence of fuss. I think it sporting of him. I do, truly."

"And I think you're detestable!" cried Zora. "There's not a single man that can understand."

"What do you want me to understand?"

"I don't know," said Zora, "but you ought to understand it."

A day or two later, meeting Rattenden again, she found that he comprehended her too fully.

"What would have pleased you," said he, "would have been to play the soeur noble, to have gathered the young couple in your embrace, and magnanimously given them to each other, and smiled on the happiness of which you had been the bounteous dispenser. They've cheated you. They've cut your part clean out of the comedy, and you don't like it. If I'm not right will you kindly order me out of the room? Well?" he asked, after a pause, during which she hung her head.

"Oh, you can stay," she said with a half-laugh. "You're the kind of man that always bets on a certainty."

Rattenden was right. She was jealous of Emmy for having unceremoniously stolen her slave from her service—that Emmy had planned the whole conspiracy she had not the slightest doubt—and she was angry with Septimus for having been weak enough to lend himself to such duplicity. Even when he wrote her a dutiful letter from Paris—to the telegram he had merely replied, "Sorry; impossible"—full of everything save Emmy and their plans for the future, she did not forgive him. How dared he consider himself fit to travel by himself? His own servant qualified his doings as outlandish.

"They'll make a terrible mess of their honeymoon," she said to Clem Sypher. "They'll start for Rome and find themselves in St. Petersburg."

"They'll be just as happy," said Sypher. "If I was on my honeymoon, do you think I'd care where I went?"

"Well, I wash my hands of them," said Zora with a sigh, as if bereft of dear responsibilities. "No doubt they're happy in their own way."

And that, for a long time, was the end of the matter. The house, cleaned and polished, glittered like the instrument room of a man-of-war, and no master or mistress came to bestow on Wiggleswick's toil the meed of their approbation. The old man settled down again to well-earned repose, and the house grew dusty and dingy again, and dustier and dingier as the weeks went on.

It has been before stated that things happen slowly in Nunsmere, even the reawakening of Zora's nostalgia for the Great World and Life and the Secrets of the Earth. But things do happen there eventually, and the time came when Zora found herself once again too big for the little house. She missed Emmy's periodical visits. She missed the regulation of Septimus. She missed her little motor expeditions with Sypher, who had sold his car and was about to sell "The Kurhaus, Kilburn Priory." The Cure seemed to have transformed itself from his heart to his nerves. He talked of it—or so it appeared to her—with more braggadocio than enthusiasm. He could converse of little else. It was going to smash Jebusa Jones's Cuticle Remedy to the shreds of its ointment boxes. The deepening vertical line between the man's brows she did not notice, nor did she interpret the wistful look in his eyes when he claimed her help. She was tired of the Cure and the Remedy and Sypher's fantastic need of her as ally. She wanted Life, real, quivering human Life. It was certainly not to be found in Nunsmere, where faded lives were laid away in lavender. For sheer sensations she began to tolerate the cynical analysis of the Literary Man from London. She must go forth on her journeyings again. She had already toyed with the idea when, with Septimus's aid, she had mapped out voyages round the world. Now she must follow it in strenuous earnest. The Callenders had cabled her an invitation to come out at once to Los Angeles. She cabled back an acceptance.

"So you're going away from me?" said Sypher, when she announced her departure.

There was a hint of reproach in his voice which she resented.

"You told me in Monte Carlo that I ought to have a mission in life. I can't find it here, so I'm going to seek one in California. What happens in this Sleepy Hollow of a place that a live woman can concern herself with?"

"There's Sypher's Cure—"

"My dear Mr. Sypher!" she laughed protestingly.

"Oh," said he, "you are helping it on more than you imagine. I'm going through a rough time, but with you behind me, as I told you before, I know I shall win. If I turn my head round, when I'm sitting at my desk, I have a kind of fleeting vision of you hovering over my chair. It puts heart and soul into me, and gives me courage to make desperate ventures."

"As I'm only there in the spirit, it doesn't matter whether the bodily I is in Nunsmere or Los Angeles."

"How can I tell?" said he, with one of his swift, clear glances. "I meet you in the body every week and carry back your spirit with me. Zora Middlemist," he added abruptly, after a pause, "I implore you not to leave me."

He leaned his arm on the mantelpiece from which Septimus had knocked the little china dog, and looked down earnestly at her, as she sat on the chintz-covered sofa behind the tea-table. At her back was the long casement window, and the last gleams of the wintry sun caught her hair. To the man's visionary fancy they formed an aureole.

"Don't go, Zora."

She was silent for a long, long time, as if held by the spell of the man's pleading. Her face softened adorably and a tenderness came into the eyes which he could not see. A mysterious power seemed to be lifting her towards him. It was a new sensation, pleasurable, like floating down a stream with the water murmuring in her ears. Then, suddenly, as if startled to vivid consciousness out of a dream, she awakened, furiously indignant.

"Why shouldn't I go? Tell me once and for all, why?"

She expected what any woman alive might have expected save the chosen few who have the great gift of reading the souls of the poet and the visionary; and Clem Sypher, in his way, was both. She braced her nerves to hear the expected. But the poet and the visionary spoke.

It was the old story of the Cure, his divine mission to spread the healing unguent over the suffering earth. Voices had come to him as they had come to the girl at Domremy, and they had told him that through Zora Middlemist, and no other, was his life's mission to be accomplished.

To her it was anticlimax. Reaction forced a laugh against her will. She leaned back among the sofa cushions.

"Is that all?" she said, and Sypher did not catch the significance of the words. "You seem to forget that the role of Mascotte is not a particularly active one. It's all very well for you, but I have to sit at home and twirl my thumbs. Have you ever tried that by way of soul-satisfying occupation? Don't you think you're just a bit—egotistical?"

He relaxed the tension of his attitude with a sigh, thrust his hands into his pockets and sat down.

"I suppose I am. When a man wants something with all the strength of his being and thinks of nothing else day or night, he develops a colossal selfishness. It's a form of madness, I suppose. There was a man called Bernard Palissy who had it, and made everybody sacrifice themselves to his idea. I've no right to ask you to sacrifice yourself to mine."

"You have the right of friendship," said Zora, "to claim my interest in your hopes and fears, and that I've given you and shall always give you. But beyond that, as you say, you have no right."

He rose, with a laugh. "I know. It's as logical as a proposition of Euclid. But all the same I feel I have a higher right, beyond any logic. There are all kinds of phenomena in life which have nothing whatsoever to do with reason. You have convinced my reason that I'm an egotistical dreamer. But nothing you can do or say will ever remove the craving for you that I have here "—and he thumped his big chest—"like hunger."

When he had gone Zora thought over the scene with more disturbance of mind than she appreciated. She laughed to herself at Sypher's fantastic claim. To give up the great things of the world, Life itself, for the sake of a quack ointment! It was preposterous. Sypher was as crazy as Septimus; perhaps crazier, for the latter did not thump his chest and inform her that his guns or his patent convertible bed-razor-strop had need of her "here." Decidedly, the results of her first excursion into the big world had not turned out satisfactorily. Her delicate nose sniffed at them in disdain. The sniff, however, was disappointingly unconvincing. The voices of contemptible people could not sound in a woman's ears like the drowsy murmuring of waters. The insane little devil that had visited her in Clem Sypher's garden whispered her to stay.

But had not Zora, in the magnificence of her strong womanhood, in the hunger of her great soul, to find somewhere in the world a Mission in Life, a fulness of existence which would accomplish her destiny? Down with the insane little devil and all his potential works! Zora laughed and recovered her serenity. Cousin Jane, who had had much to write concerning the elopement, was summoned, and Zora, with infinite baggage in the care of Turner, set sail for California.

The New World lay before her with its chances of real, quivering, human Life. Nunsmere, where nothing ever happened, lay behind her. She smiled graciously at Sypher, who saw her off at Waterloo, and said nice things to him about the Cure, but before her eyes danced a mirage in which Clem Sypher and his Cure were not visible. The train steamed out of the station. Sypher stood on the edge of the platform and watched the end buffers until they were out of sight; then he turned and strode away, and his face was that of a man stricken with great loneliness.



CHAPTER XII

It never occurred to Septimus that he had done a quixotic thing in marrying Emmy, any more than to pat himself on the back for a monstrously clever fellow when he had completed a new invention. At the door of the Registry Office he took off his hat, held out his hand, and said good-by.

"But where are you going?" Emmy asked in dismay.

Septimus didn't know. He waved his hand vaguely over London, and said, "Anywhere."

Emmy began to cry. She had passed most of the morning in tears. She felt doubly guilty now that she had accepted the sacrifice of his life; an awful sense of loneliness also overwhelmed her.

"I didn't know that you hated me like that," she said.

"Good heavens!" he cried in horror. "I don't hate you. I only thought you had no further use for me."

"And I'm to be left alone in the street?"

"I'll drive you anywhere you like," said he.

"And then get rid of me as soon as possible? Oh! I know what you must be feeling."

Septimus put his hand under her arm, and led her away, in great distress.

"I thought you wouldn't be able to bear the sight of me."

"Oh, don't be silly!" said Emmy.

Her adjuration was on a higher plane of sentiment than expression. It comforted Septimus.

"What would you like me to do?"

"Anything except leave me to myself—at any rate for the present. Don't you see, I've only you in the world to look to."

"God bless my soul," said he, "I suppose that's so. It's very alarming. No one has ever looked to me in all my life. I'd wander barefoot for you all over the earth. But couldn't you find somebody else who's more used to looking after people? It's for your own sake entirely," he hastened to assure her.

"I know," she said. "But you see it's impossible for me to go to any of my friends, especially after what has happened." She held out her ungloved left hand. "How could I explain?"

"You must never explain," he agreed, sagely. "It would undo everything. I suppose things are easy, after all, when you've set your mind on them—or get some chap that knows everything to tell you how to do them—and there's lots of fellows about that know everything—solicitors and so forth. There's the man who told me about a Registrar. See how easy it was. Where would you like to go?"

"Anywhere out of England." She shuddered. "Take me to Paris first. We can go on from there anywhere we like."

"Certainly," said Septimus, and he hailed a hansom.

* * * * *

Thus it fell out that the strangely married pair kept together during the long months that followed. Emmy's flat in London had been rented furnished. The maid Edith had vanished, after the manner of many of her kind, into ancillary space. The theater and all it signified to Emmy became a past dream. Her inner world was tragical enough, poor child. Her outer world was Septimus. In Paris, as she shrank from meeting possible acquaintances, he found her a furnished appartement in the Boulevard Raspail, while he perched in a little hotel close by. The finding of the appartement was an illustration of his newly invented, optimistic theory of getting things done.

He came back to the hotel where he had provisionally lodged her and informed her of his discovery. She naturally asked him how he had found it.

"A soldier told me," he said.

"A soldier?"

"Yes. He had great baggy red trousers and a sash around his waist and a short blue jacket braided with red and a fez with a tassel and a shaven head. He saved me from being run over by a cab."

Emmy shivered. "Oh, don't talk of it in that calm way—suppose you had been killed!"

"I suppose the Zouave would have buried me—he's such a helpful creature, you know. He's been in Algiers. He says I ought to go there. His name is Hegisippe Cruchot."

"But what about the flat?" asked Emmy.

"Oh, you see, I fell down in front of the cab and he dragged me away and brushed me down with a waiter's napkin—there was a cafe within a yard or two. And then I asked him to have a drink and gave him a cigarette. He drank absinthe, without water, and then I began to explain to him an idea for an invention which occurred to me to prevent people from being run over by cabs, and he was quite interested. I'll show you—"

"You won't," said Emmy, with a laugh. She had her lighter moments. "You'll do no such thing—not until you've told me about the flat."

"Oh! the flat," said Septimus in a disappointed tone, as if it were a secondary matter altogether. "I gave him another absinthe and we became so friendly that I told him that I wanted a flat and didn't in the least know how to set about finding one. It turned out that there was an appartement vacant in the house of which his mother is concierge. He took me along to see it, and introduced me to Madame, his mother. He has also got an aunt who can cook."

"I should like to have seen you talking to the Zouave," said Emmy. "It would have made a pretty picture—the two of you hobnobbing over a little marble table."

"It was iron, painted yellow," said Septimus. "It wasn't a resplendent cafe."

"I wonder what he thought of you."

"Well, he introduced me to his mother," replied Septimus gravely, whereat Emmy broke into merry laughter, for the first time for many days.

"I've taken the appartement for a month and the aunt who can cook," he remarked.

"What!" cried Emmy, who had not paid very serious regard to the narrative. "Without knowing anything at all about it?"

She put on her hat and insisted on driving there incontinently, full of misgivings. But she found a well-appointed house, a deep-bosomed, broad-beamed concierge, who looked as if she might be the mother of twenty helpful Zouaves, and an equally matronly and kindly-faced sister, a Madame Bolivard, the aunt aforesaid who could cook.

Thus, as the ravens fed Elijah, so did Zouaves and other casual fowl aid Septimus on his way. Madame Bolivard in particular took them both under her ample wing, to the girl's unspeakable comfort. A brav' femme, Madame Bolivard, who not only could cook, but could darn stockings and mend linen, which Emmy's frivolous fingers had never learned to accomplish. She could also prescribe miraculous tisanes for trivial ailments, could tell the cards, and could converse volubly on any subject under heaven; the less she knew about it, the more she had to say, which is a great gift. It spared the girl many desolate and despairing hours.

It was a lonely, monotonous life. Septimus she saw daily. Now and then, if Septimus were known to be upstairs, Hegisippe Cruchot, coming to pay his filial respects to his mother and his mother's bouillabaisse (she was from Marseilles) and her matelote of eels, luxuries which his halfpenny a day could not provide, would mount to inquire dutifully after his aunt and incidentally after the belle dame du troisieme. He was their only visitor from the outside world, and as he found a welcome and an ambrosial form of alcohol compounded of Scotch whiskey and Maraschino (whose subtlety Emmy had learned from an eminent London actor-manager at a far-away supper party), he came as often as his respectful ideas of propriety allowed.

They were quaint gatherings, these, in the stiffly furnished little salon: Emmy, fluffy-haired, sea-shell-cheeked, and softly raimented, lying indolently on the sofa amid a pile of cushions—she had sent Septimus out to "La Samaritaine" to buy some (in French furnished rooms they stuff the cushions with cement), and he had brought back a dozen in a cab, so that the whole room heaved and swelled with them; Septimus, with his mild blue eyes and upstanding hair, looking like the conventional picture of one who sees a ghost; Hegisippe Cruchot, the outrageousness of whose piratical kit contrasted with his suavity of manner, sitting with military precision on a straight-backed chair; and Madame Bolivard standing in a far corner of the room; her bare arms crossed above her blue apron, and watching the scene with an air of kindly proprietorship. They spoke in French, for only one word of English had Hegisippe and his aunt between them, and that being "Howdodogoddam" was the exclusive possession of the former. Emmy gave utterance now and then to peculiar vocables which she had learned at school, and which Hegisippe declared to be the purest Parisian he had ever heard an Englishwoman use, while Septimus spoke very fair French indeed. Hegisippe would twirl his little brown mustache—he was all brown, skin and eyes and close-cropped hair, and even the skull under the hair—and tell of his military service and of the beautiful sunshine of Algiers and, when his aunt was out of the room, of his Arcadian love affairs. She served in a wine shop in the Rue des Francs-Bouchers. When was he going to get married? At Emmy's question he laughed, with a wave of his cigarette, and a clank of his bayonet against the leg of the chair. On a sou a day? Time enough for that when he had made his fortune. His mother then would doubtless find him a suitable wife with a dowry. When his military service was over he was going to be a waiter. When he volunteered this bit of information Emmy gave a cry of surprise. This dashing, swaggering desperado of a fellow a waiter!

"I shall never understand this country!" she cried.

"When one has good introductions and knows how to comport oneself, one makes much"—and he rubbed his thumb and fingers together, according to the national code of pantomime.

And then his hosts would tell him about England and the fogs, wherein he was greatly interested; or Septimus would discourse to him of inventions, the weak spot in which his shrewd intelligence generally managed to strike, and then Septimus would run his fingers through this hair and say, "God bless my soul, I never thought of that," and Emmy would laugh; or else they talked politics. Hegisippe, being a Radical, fiche'd himself absolutely of the Pope and the priests. To be kind to one's neighbors and act as a good citizen summed up his ethical code. He was as moral as any devout Catholic.

"What about the girl in the Rue des Francs-Bouchers?" asked Emmy.

"If I were a good Catholic, I would have two, for then I could get absolution," he cried gaily, and laughed immoderately at his jest.

The days of his visits were marked red in Emmy's calendar.

"I wish I were a funny beggar, and had lots of conversation like our friend Cruchot, and could make you laugh," said Septimus one day, when the taedium vitae lay heavy on her.

"If you had a sense of humor you wouldn't be here," she replied, with some bitterness.

Septimus rubbed his thin hands together thoughtfully.

"I don't know why you should say that," said he. "I never heard a joke I didn't see the point of. I'm rather good at it."

"If you don't see the point of this joke, I can't explain it, my dear. It has a point the size of a pyramid."

He nodded and looked dreamily out of the window at the opposite houses. Sometimes her sharp sayings hurt him. But he understood all, in his dim way, and pardoned all. He never allowed her to see him wince. He stood so long silent that Emmy looked up anxiously at his face, dreading the effect of her words. His hand hung by his side—he was near the sofa where she lay. She took it gently, in a revulsion of feeling, kissed it, and, as he turned, flung it from her.

"Go, my dear; go. I'm not fit to talk to you. Yes, go. You oughtn't to be here; you ought to be in England in your comfortable home with Wiggleswick and your books and inventions. You're too good for me, and I'm hateful. I know it, and it drives me mad."

He took her hand in his turn and held it for a second or two in both of his and patted it kindly.

"I'll go out and buy something," he said.

When he returned she was penitent and glad to see him; and although he brought her as a present a hat—a thing of purple feathers and green velvet and roses, in which no self-respecting woman would be seen mummified a thousand years hence—she neither laughed at it nor upbraided him, but tried the horror on before the glass and smiled sweetly while the cold shivers ran down her back.

"I don't want you to say funny things, Septimus," she said, reverting to the starting point of the scene, "so long as you bring me such presents as this."

"It's a nice hat," he admitted modestly. "The woman in the shop said that very few people could wear it."

"I'm so glad you think I'm an exceptional woman," she said. "It's the first compliment you have ever paid me."

She shed tears, though, over the feathers of the hat, before she went to bed, good tears, such as bring great comfort and cleanse the heart. She slept happier that night; and afterwards, whenever the devils entered her soul and the pains of hell got hold upon her, she recalled the tears, and they became the holy water of an exorcism.

Septimus, unconscious of this landmark in their curious wedded life, passed tranquil though muddled days in his room at the Hotel Godet. A gleam of sunlight on the glazed hat of an omnibus driver, the stick of the whip and the horse's ear, as he was coming home one day on the imperiale, put him on the track of a new sighting apparatus for a field gun which he had half invented some years before. The working out of this, and the superintendence of the making of the model at some works near Vincennes, occupied much of his time and thought. In matters appertaining to his passion he had practical notions of procedure; he would be at a loss to know where to buy a tooth-brush, and be dependent on the ministrations of a postman or an old woman in a charcoal shop, but to the place where delicate instruments could be made he went straight, as instinctively and surely as a buffalo heads for water. Many of his books and papers had been sent him from time to time by Wiggleswick, who began to dread the post, the labor of searching and packing and dispatching becoming too severe a tax on the old villain's leisure. These lay in promiscuous heaps about the floor of his bedroom, stepping-stones amid a river of minor objects, such as collars and bits of india rubber and the day before yesterday's Petit Journal. The femme de chambre and the dirty, indeterminate man in a green baize apron, who went about raising casual dust with a great feather broom, at first stowed the litter away daily, with jackdaw ingenuity of concealment, until Septimus gave them five francs each to desist; whereupon they desisted with alacrity, and the books became the stepping-stones aforesaid, stepping-stones to higher things. His only concern was the impossibility of repacking them when the time should come for him to leave the Hotel Godet, and sometimes the more academic speculation as to what Zora would say should some miracle of levitation transport her to the untidy chamber. He could see her, radiant and commanding, dispelling chaos with the sweep of her parasol.

There were few moments in the day when he did not crave her presence. It had been warmth and sunshine and color to him for so long that now the sun seemed to have disappeared from the sky, leaving the earth a chill monochrome. Life was very difficult without her. She had even withdrawn from him the love "in a sort of way" to which she had confessed. The goddess was angry at the slight cast on her by his secret marriage. And she was in California, a myriad of miles away. She could not have been more remote had she been in Saturn. When Emmy asked him whether he did not long for Wiggleswick and the studious calm of Nunsmere, he said, "No." And he spoke truly; for wherein lay the advantage of one spot on the earth's surface over another, if Zora were not the light thereof? But he kept his reason in his heart. They rarely spoke of Zora.

Of the things that concerned Emmy herself so deeply, they never spoke at all. Of her hopes and fears for the future he knew nothing. For all that was said between them, Mordaunt Prince might have been the figure of a dream that had vanished into the impenetrable mists of dreamland. To the girl he was a ghastly memory which she strove to hide in the depths of her soul. Septimus saw that she suffered, and went many quaint and irrelevant ways to alleviate her misery. Sometimes they got on her nerves; more often they made the good tears come. Once she was reading a tattered volume of George Eliot which she had picked up during a stroll on the quays, and calling him over to her side pointed out a sentence: "Dogs are the best friends, they are always ready with their sympathy and they ask no questions."

"That's like you," she said; "but George Eliot had never met a man like you, poor thing, so she had to stick the real thing down to dogs."

Septimus reddened. "Dogs bark and keep one from sleeping," he said. "My next-door neighbor at the Hotel Godet has two. An ugly man with a beard comes and takes them out in a motor car. Do you know, I'm thinking of growing a beard. I wonder how I should look in it?"

Emmy laughed and caught his sleeve. "Why won't you even let me tell you what I think of you?"

"Wait till I've grown the beard, and then you can," said Septimus.

"That will be never," she retorted; "for if you grow a beard, you'll look a horror, like a Prehistoric Man—and I sha'n't have anything to do with you. So I'll never be able to tell you."

"It would be better so," said he.

They made many plans for settling down in some part of rural France or Switzerland—they had the map of Europe to choose from—but Septimus's vagueness and a disinclination for further adventure on the part of Emmy kept them in Paris. The winter brightened into spring, and Paris, gay in lilac and sunshine, held them in her charm. There were days when they almost forgot, and became the light-hearted companions of the lame donkey on Nunsmere Common.

A day on the Seine, for instance, in a steamboat, when the water was miraculously turned to sparkling wine and the great masses of buildings were bathed in amber and the domes of the Pantheon and the Invalides and the cartouches and bosses of the Pont Alexandre III shone burnished gold. There was Auteuil, with its little open-air restaurants, rustic trellis and creepers, and its friture of gudgeon and dusty salt and cutlery and great yards of bread, which Emmy loved to break with Septimus, like Christmas crackers. Then, afterwards, there was the winding Seine again, Robinson Crusoe's Island in all its greenery, and St. Cloud with its terrace looking over the valley to Paris wrapped in an amethyst haze, with here and there a triumphant point of glory.

A day also in the woods of Bas Meudon, alone beneath the trees, when they talked like children, and laughed over the luncheon basket which Madame Bolivard had stuffed full of electrifying edibles; when they lay on their backs and looked dreamily at the sky through the leaves, and listened to the chirrup of insects awakening from winter and the strange cracklings and tiny voices of springtide, and gave themselves up to the general vibration of life which accompanies the working of the sap in the trees.

Days, too, in mid-Paris, in the Luxembourg Gardens, among the nursery maids and working folk; at cafes on the remoter boulevards, where the kindly life of Paris, still untouched by touristdom, passes up and down, and the spring gets into the step of youth and sparkles in a girl's eyes. At the window even of the appartement in the Boulevard Raspail, when the air was startlingly clear and scented and brought the message of spring from far lands, from the golden shores of the Mediterranean, from the windy mountain tops of Auvergne, from the broad, tender green fields of Central France, from every heart and tree and flower, from Paris itself, quivering with life. At such times they would not talk, both interpreting the message in their own ways, yet both drawn together into a common mood in which they vaguely felt that the earth was still a Land of Romance, that the mystery of rebirth was repeating itself according to unchanging and perpetual law; that inconsiderable, forlorn human atoms though they were, the law would inevitably affect them too, and cause new hopes, new desires, and new happiness to bud and flower in their hearts.