Septimus Part 38

One day Dasent came on her alone, and burst out wrathfully:

"Why are you treating me like this?"

"Like what?"

"You are making a fool of me. I'm not going to stand it."

Then she realized that when the average man does not get what he wants exactly when he wants it he loses his temper. She soothed him according to the better instincts of her s.e.x, but resolved to play no more with elementary young Britons. One-eyed geologists were safer companions. The former pitched their hearts into her lap; the latter, like Pawkins, the geologist of the Pacific slope, gave her boxes of fossils. She preferred the fossils. You could do what you liked with them: throw them overboard when the donor was not looking, or leave them behind in a railway carriage, or take them home and present them to the vicar who collected b.u.t.terflies, beetles, ammonites, and tobacco stoppers. But an odd a.s.sortment of hearts to a woman who does not want them is really a confounded nuisance. Zora was very much relieved when Dasent, after eating an enormous breakfast, bade her a tragic farewell at Gibraltar.

It was a cloudless afternoon when she steamed into Ma.r.s.eilles. The barren rock islands on the east rose blue-gray from a blue sea. To the west lay the Isles of Frioul and the island of the Chateau d'If, with its prison lying grim and long on the crest; in front the busy port, the white n.o.ble city crowned by the church of Notre Dame de la Garde standing sentinel against the clear sky.

Zora stood on the crowded deck watching the scene, touched as she always was by natural beauty, but sad at heart. Ma.r.s.eilles, within four-and-twenty hours of London, meant home. Although she intended to continue her wanderings to Naples and Alexandria, she felt that she had come to the end of her journey. It had been as profitless as the last. Pawkins, by her side, pointed out the geological feature of the rocks. She listened vaguely, and wondered whether she was to bring him home tied to her chariot as she had brought Septimus Dix and Clem Sypher. The thought of Sypher drew her heart to Ma.r.s.eilles.

"I wish I were landing here like you, and going straight home," she said, interrupting the flow of scientific information. "I've already been to Naples, and I shall find nothing I want at Alexandria."

"Geologically, it's not very interesting," said Pawkins. "I'm afraid prehistoric antiquity doesn't make my pulses beat faster."

"That's the advantage of it."

"One might just as well be a fossil oneself."

"Much better," said Pawkins, who had read Schopenhauer.

"You are not exhilarating to a depressed woman," said Zora with a laugh.

"I am sorry," he replied stiffly. "I was trying to entertain you."

He regarded her severely out of his one eye and edged away, as if he repented having wasted his time over so futile an organism as a woman. But her feminine magnetism drew him back.

"I'm rather glad you are going on to Alexandria," he remarked in a tone of displeasure, and before she could reply he marched off to look after his luggage.

Zora's eyes followed him until he disappeared, then she shrugged her shoulders. Apparently one-eyed geologists were as unsafe as elementary young Britons and opulent senators. She felt unfairly treated by Providence. It was maddening to realize herself as of no use in the universe except to attract the attention of the opposite s.e.x. She clenched her hands in impotent anger. There was no mission on earth which she could fulfil. She thought enviously of Cousin Jane.

The steamer entered the harbor; the pa.s.sengers for Ma.r.s.eilles landed, and the mail was brought aboard. There was only one letter for Mrs. Middlemist.

It bore the Nunsmere postmark. She opened it and found the tail of the little china dog.

She looked at it for a moment wonderingly as it lay absurdly curled in the palm of her hand, and then she burst into tears. The thing was so grotesquely trivial. It meant so much. It was a sign and a token falling, as it were, from the sky into the midst of her despairing mood, rebuking her, summoning her, declaring an unknown mission which she was bound to execute. It lay in her hand like a bit of destiny, inexorable, unquestionable, silently compelling her forthwith to the human soul that stood in great need of her. Fate had granted the wish she had expressed to the one-eyed geologist. She landed at Ma.r.s.eilles, and sped homeward by the night train, her heart torn with anxiety for Septimus.

All night long the rhythmic clatter of the train shaped itself into the burden of her words to him: "If ever you want me badly, send me the tail, and I'll come to you from any distance." She had spoken then half jestingly, all tenderly. That evening she had loved him "in a sort of way,"

and now that he had sent for her, the love returned. The vivid experiences of the past months which had blinded her to the quieter light of home faded away into darkness. Septimus in urgent need, Emmy and Clem Sypher filled her thoughts. She felt thankful that Sypher, strong and self-reliant, was there to be her ally, should her course with Septimus be difficult. Between them they could surely rescue the ineffectual being from whatever dangers a.s.sailed him. But what could they be? The question racked her. Did it concern Emmy? A child, she knew, had just been born. A chill fear crept on her lest some tragedy had occurred through Septimus's folly. From him any outrageous senselessness might be expected, and Emmy herself was scarcely less irresponsible than her babe. She reproached herself for having suggested his marriage with Emmy. Perhaps in his vacant way he had acted entirely on her prompting. The marriage was wrong. Two helpless children should never have taken on themselves the graver duties of life toward each other and, future generations.

If it were a case in which a man's aid were necessary, there stood Sypher, a great pillar of comfort. Unconsciously she compared him with the man with whom she had come in contact during her travels--and she had met many of great charm and strength and knowledge. For some strange reason which she could not a.n.a.lyze, he towered above them all, though in each separate quality of character others whom she could name surpa.s.sed him far. She knew his faults, and in her lofty way smiled at them. Her character as G.o.ddess or guardian angel or fairy patroness of the Cure she had a.s.sumed with the graciousness of a grown-up lady playing charades at a children's party. His occasional lapses from the traditions of her cla.s.s jarred on her fine susceptibilities. Yet there, in spite of all, he stood rooted in her life, a fact, a puzzle, a pride and a consolation. The other men paled into unimportant ghosts before him, and strayed shadowy through the limbo of her mind. Till now she had not realized it. Septimus, however, had always dwelt in her heart like a stray dog whom she had rescued from vagrancy. He did not count as a man. Sypher did. Thus during the long, tedious hours of the journey home the two were curiously mingled in her anxious conjectures, and she had no doubt that Sypher and herself, the strong and masterful, would come to the deliverance of the weak.

Septimus, who had received a telegram from Ma.r.s.eilles, waited for her train at Victoria. In order to insure being in time he had arrived a couple of hours too soon, and patiently wandered about the station. Now and then he stopped before the engines of trains at rest, fascinated, as he always was, by perfect mechanism. A driver, dismounting from the cab, and seeing him lost in admiration of the engine, pa.s.sed him a civil word, to which Septimus, always courteous, replied. They talked further.

"I see you're an engineer, sir," said the driver, who found himself in conversation with an appreciative expert.

"My father was," said Septimus. "But I could never get up in time for my examinations. Examinations seem so silly. Why should you tell a set of men what they know already?"

The grimy driver expressed the opinion that examinations were necessary. He who spoke had pa.s.sed them.

"I suppose you can get up at any time," Septimus remarked enviously.

"Somebody ought to invent a machine for those who can't."

"You only want an alarm-clock," said the driver.

Septimus shook his head. "They're no good. I tried one once, but it made such a dreadful noise that I threw a boot at it."

"Did that stop it?"

"No," murmured Septimus. "The boot hit another clock on the mantelpiece, a Louis Quinze clock, and spoiled it. I did get up, but I found the method too expensive, so I never tried it again."

The engine of an outgoing train blew off steam, and the resounding din deafened the station. Septimus held his hands to his ears. The driver grinned.

"I can't stand that noise," Septimus explained when it was over. "Once I tried to work out an invention for modifying it. It was a kind of combination between a gramaphone and an orchestrion. You stuck it inside somewhere, and instead of the awful screech a piece of music would come out of the funnel. In fact, it might have gone on playing all the time the train was in motion. It would have been so cheery for the drivers, wouldn't it?"

The unimaginative mechanic whose wits were scattered by this fantastic proposition used his bit of cotton waste as a handkerchief, and remarked with vague politeness that it was a pity the gentleman was not an engineer.

But Septimus deprecated the compliment. He looked wistfully up at the girders of the gla.s.s roof and spoke in his gentle, tired voice.

"You see," he concluded, "if I had been in practice as an engineer I should never have designed machinery in the orthodox way. I should have always put in little things of my own--and then G.o.d knows what would have happened."

He brought his eyes to earth with a wan smile, but his companion had vanished. A crowd had filled the suburban platform at the end of which he stood, and in a few moments the train clattered off. Then, remembering that he was hungry, he went to the refreshment-room, where, at the suggestion of the barmaid, he regaled himself on two hard-boiled eggs and a gla.s.s of sherry. The meal over, he loitered palely about the busy station, jostled by frantic gentlemen in silk hats rus.h.i.+ng to catch suburban trains, and watched grimly by a policeman who suspected a pocket-picking soul beneath his guileless exterior.

At last, by especial grace of heaven, he found himself on the platform where the custom-house barrier and the long line of waiting porters heralded the approach of the continental train. Now that only a few moments separated him from Zora, his heart grew cold with suspense. He had not seen her since the night of Emmy's fainting fit. Her letters, though kind, had made clear to him her royal displeasure at his unceremonious marriage. For the first time he would look into her gold-flecked eyes out of a disingenuous soul. Would she surprise his guilty secret? It was the only thing he feared in a bewildering world.

The train came in, and as her carriage flashed by Zora saw him on the platform with his hat off, pa.s.sing his fingers nervously through his Struwel Peter hair. The touch of the familiar welcoming her brought moisture to her eyes. As soon as the train stopped she alighted, and leaving Turner (who had accompanied her on the pilgrimage, and from Dover had breathed fervent thanks to Heaven that at last she was back in the land of her fathers) to look after her luggage, she walked down the platform to meet him.

He was just asking a porter at frantic grapple with the hand baggage of a large family whether he had seen a tall and extraordinarily beautiful lady in the train, when she came up to him with outstretched hands and beaming eyes. He took the hands and looked long at her, unable to speak. Never had she appeared to him more beautiful, more gracious. The royal waves of her hair beneath a fur traveling-toque invested her with queenliness. The full youth of her figure not hidden by a fur jacket brought to him the generous woman. A bunch of violets at her bosom suggested the fragrant essence of her.

"Oh, it's good to see you, Septimus. It's good!" she cried. "The sight of you makes me feel as if nothing mattered in the world except the people one cares for. How are you?"

"I'm very well indeed," said Septimus. "Full of inventions."

She laughed and guided him up the platform through the cross-traffic of porters carrying luggage from train to cabs.

"Is mother all right?" she asked anxiously.

"Oh, yes," said Septimus.

"And Emmy and the baby?"

"Remarkably well. Emmy has had him christened. I wanted him to be called after you. Zoroaster was the only man's name I could think of, but she did not like it, and so she called it Octavius after me. Also Oldrieve after the family, and William."

"Why William?"