Septimus Part 35

Sypher helped his guest to wine.

"I hope you like this Roederer," said he. "It's the only exquisite wine in the club, and unfortunately there are not more than a few bottles left. I had seven dozen of the same _cuvee_ in my cellar at Priory Park--if anything, in better condition. I had to sell it with the rest of the things when I gave up the house. It went to my heart. Champagne is the only wine I understand. There was a time when it stood as a symbol to me of the unattainable. Now that I can drink it when I will, I know that all the laws of philosophy forbid its having any attraction for me. Thank heaven I'm not dyspeptic enough in soul to be a philosopher and I'm grateful for my aspirations. I cultivated my taste for champagne out of sheer grat.i.tude."

"Any wise man," said Rattenden, "can realize his dreams. It takes something much higher than wisdom to enjoy the realization."

"What is that?"

"The heart of a child," said Rattenden. He smiled in his inscrutable way behind his thick lenses, and sipped his champagne. "Truly a delicious wine," said he.

Sypher said good-by to his guest on the steps of the club, and walked home to his new chambers in St. James's deep in thought. For the first time since his acquaintance with Rattenden, he was glad to part from him. He had a great need of solitude. It came to him almost as a shock to realize that things were happening in the world round about him quite as heroic, in the eyes of the High G.o.ds, as the battle between Sypher's Cure and Jebusa Jones's Cuticle Remedy. The curtain of life had been lifted, and a flash of its inner mysteries had been revealed. His eyes still were dazed. But he had received the gift of vision. He had seen beyond doubt or question the heart of Septimus Dix. He knew what he had done, why he had done it.

Zora Middlemist had pa.s.sed Septimus by with her magnificent head in the air. But he was not one of the little men.

"By G.o.d, he is not!" he cried aloud, and the cry came from his depths.

Zora Middlemist had pa.s.sed him, Clem Sypher, by with her magnificent head in the air.

He let himself into his chambers; they struck him as being chill and lonely, the casual, uncared-for hiding-place of one of the little men. He stirred the fire, almost afraid to disturb the cold silence by the rattle of the poker against the bars of the grate. His slippers were set in readiness on the hearth-rug, and the machine who valeted him had fitted them with boot-trees. He put them on, and unlocking his desk, took out the letter which he had received that morning from Zora.

"For you," she wrote, "I want victory all along the line--the apotheosis of Sypher's Cure on Earth. For myself, I don't know what I want. I wish you would tell me."

Clem Sypher sat in an arm-chair and looked into the fire until it went out.

For the first time in his life he did not know what he wanted.

CHAPTER XVII

The days that followed were darkened by overwhelming anxieties, so that he speculated little as to the Ultimately Desired. A chartered accountant sat in the office at Moorgate Street and shed around him the gloom of statistics. Unless a miracle happened the Cure was doomed.

It is all very well to seat a little n.i.g.g.e.r on the safety-valve if the end of the journey is in sight. The boiler may just last out the strain. But to suppose that he will sit there in permanent security to himself and the s.h.i.+p for an indefinite time is an optimism unwarranted by the general experience of this low world. Sypher's Cure could not stand the strain of the increased advertis.e.m.e.nt. Shuttleworth found a dismal pleasure in the fulfilment of his prophecy. A reduction in price had not materially affected the sales. The Jebusa Jones people had lowered the price of the Cuticle Remedy and still undersold the Cure. During the year the Bermondsey works had been heavily mortgaged. The money had all been wasted on a public that had eyes and saw not, that had ears and heard not the simple gospel of the Friend of Humanity--"Try Sypher's Cure." In the midst of the gloom Shuttleworth took the opportunity of deprecating the unnecessary expense of production, never having so greatly dared before. Only the best and purest materials had been possible for the divine ointment. By using second qualities, a great saving could be effected without impairing the efficacy of the Cure. Thus Shuttleworth. Sypher blazed into holy anger, as if he had been counseled to commit sacrilege.

Radical reforms were imperative, if the Cure was to be saved. He spent his nights over vast schemes only to find the fatal flaw in the cold light of the morning. This angered him. It seemed that the sureness of his vision had gone. Something strange, uncanny had happened within him, he knew not what. It had nothing to do with his intellectual force, his personal energy. It had nothing to do with his determination to win through and restore the Cure to its former position in the market. It was something subtle, spiritual.

The memory of the blistered heel lived with him. The slight doubt cast by Septimus on Zora's faith remained disturbingly at the back of his mind. Yet he clung pa.s.sionately to his belief. If it were not Heaven-sent, then was he of men most miserable.

Never had he welcomed the sight of Nunsmere more than the next Sat.u.r.day afternoon when the trap turned off the highroad and the common came into view. The pearls and faint blues of the sky, the tender mist softening the russet of the autumn trees, the gray tower of the little church, the red roofs of the cottages dreaming in their old-world gardens, the quiet green of the common with the children far off at play and the lame donkey watching them in philosophic content--all came like the gift of a very calm and restful G.o.d to the tired man's eyes.

He thought to himself: "It only lacks one figure walking across the common to meet me." Then the thought again: "If she were there would I see anything else?"

At Penton Court the maid met him at the door.

"Mr. Dix is waiting to see you, sir."

"Mr. Dix! Where is he?"

"In the drawing-room. He has been waiting a couple of hours."

He threw off his hat and coat, delighted, and rushed in to welcome the unexpected guest. He found Septimus sitting in the twilight by the French window that opened on the lawn, and making elaborate calculations in a note-book.

"My dear Dix!" He shook him warmly by the hand and clapped him on the shoulder. "This is more than a pleasure. What have you been doing with yourself?"

Septimus said, holding up the note-book:

"I was just trying to work out the problem whether a boy's expenses from the time he begins feeding-bottles to the time he leaves the University increases by arithmetical or geometrical progression."

Sypher laughed. "It depends, doesn't it, on his taste for luxuries?"

"This one is going to be extravagant, I'm afraid," said Septimus. "He cuts his teeth on a fifteenth-century Italian ivory carving of St. John the Baptist--I went into a shop to buy a purse and they gave it to me instead--and turns up his nose at coral and bells. There isn't much of it to turn up. I've never seen a child with so little nose. I invented a machine for elongating it, but his mother won't let me use it."

Sypher expressed his sympathy with Mrs. Dix, and inquired after her health.

Septimus reported favorably. She had pa.s.sed a few weeks at Hottetot-sur-Mer, which had done her good. She was now in Paris under the mothering care of Madame Bolivard, where she would stay until she cared to take up her residence in her flat in Chelsea, which was now free from tenants.

"And you?" asked Sypher.

"I've just left the Hotel G.o.det and come back to Nunsmere. Perhaps I'll give up the house and take Wiggleswick to London when Emmy returns. She promised to look for a flat for me. I believe women are rather good at finding flats."

Sypher handed him a box of cigars. He lit one and held it awkwardly with the tips of his long, nervous fingers. He pa.s.sed the fingers of his other hand, with the familiar gesture, up his hair.

"I thought I'd come and see you," he said hesitatingly, "before going to 'The Nook.' There are explanations to be made. My wife and I are good friends, but we can't live together. It's all my fault. I make the house intolerable. I--I have an ungovernable temper, you know, and I'm harsh and unloving and disagreeable. And it's bad for the child. We quarrel dreadfully--at least, she doesn't."

"What about?" Sypher asked gravely.

"All sorts of things. You see, if I want breakfast an hour before dinner-time, it upsets the household. Then there was the nose machine--and other inventions for the baby, which perhaps might kill it. You can explain all this and tell them that the marriage has been a dreadful mistake on poor Emmy's side, and that we've decided to live apart. You will do this for me, won't you?"

"I can't say I'll do it with pleasure," said Sypher, "for I'm more than sorry to hear your news. I suspected as much when I met you in Paris. But I'll see Mrs. Oldrieve as soon as possible and explain."

"Thank you," said Septimus; "you don't know what a service you would be rendering me."

He uttered a sigh of relief and relit his cigar which had gone out during his appeal. Then there was a silence. Septimus looked dreamily out at the row of trees that marked the famous lawn reaching down to the railway line.

The mist had thickened with the fall of the day and hung heavy on the branches, and the sky was gray. Sypher watched him, greatly moved; tempted to cry out that he knew all, that he was not taken in by the simple legend of his ungovernable temper and unlovely disposition. His heart went out to him, as to a man who dwelt alone on lofty heights, inaccessible to common humanity. He was filled with pity and reverence for him. Perhaps he exaggerated. But Sypher was an idealist. Had he not set Sypher's Cure as the sun in his heaven and Zora as one of the fixed stars?

It grew dark. Sypher rang for the lamp and tea.

"Or would you like breakfast?" he asked laughingly.

"I've just had supper," said Septimus. "Wiggleswick found some cheese in a cupboard. I buried it in the front garden." A vague smile pa.s.sed on his face like a pale gleam of light over water on a cloudy day. "Wiggleswick is deaf. He couldn't hear it."

"He's a lazy scoundrel," said Sypher. "I wonder you don't sack him."

Septimus licked a hanging strip of cigar-end into position--he could never smoke a cigar properly--and lit it for the third time.

"Wiggleswick is good for me," said he. "He keeps me human. I am apt to become a machine. I live so much among them. I've been working hard on a new gun--or rather an old gun. It's field artillery, quick-firing. I got on to the idea again from a sighting apparatus I invented. I have the specification in my pocket. The model is at home. I brought it from Paris."

He fetched a parcel of ma.n.u.script from his pocket and unrolled it into flatness.