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Septimus

<h2>[204]CHAPTER XVI</h2> In the course of time Sypher returned to London to fight a losing battle against the Powers of Darkness and derive whatever inspiration he could from Zora's letters. He also called dutifully at "The Nook" during his week-end visits to Penton Court, where he found restfulness in the atmosphere of lavender. Mrs. Oldrieve continued to regard him as a most superior person. Cousin Jane, as became a gentlewoman of breeding, received him with courtesy—but a courtesy marked by that shade of reserve which is due from a lady of quality to the grandfatherless. If she had not striven against the unregeneracy of mortal flesh she would have disapproved of him offhand because she disapproved of Zora; but she was a conscientious woman, and took great pride in overcoming prejudices. She also collected pewter, the history of which Sypher, during his years of self-education, had once studied, in the confused notion that it was culture. All knowledge is good; from the theory of quaternions to the way to cut a ham-frill. It is sure to come in useful, somehow. An authority on Central African dialects has been known to find them invaluable in altercations with cabmen, and a converted burglar has, before now, become an admirable house-agent. What Sypher, therefore, had considered merely learned lumber in his head cemented his friendship with Cousin Jane—or rather, to speak by the book, soldered it with pewter. As for the Cure, however, she did not believe in it, and told him so, roundly. She had been brought up to believe in[205] doctors, the Catechism, the House of Lords, the inequality of the sexes, and the Oldrieve family, and in that faith she would live and die. Sypher bore her no malice. She did not call the Cure pestilential quackery. He was beginning not to despise the day of small things. "It may be very good in its way," she said, "just as Liberalism and Darwinism and eating in restaurants may be good things. But they are not for me." Cousin Jane's conversation provided him with much innocent entertainment. Mrs. Oldrieve was content to talk about the weather, and what Zora and Emmy used to like to eat when they were little girls: subjects interesting in themselves but not conducive to discussion. Cousin Jane was nothing if not argumentative. She held views, expounded them, and maintained them. Nothing short of a declaration from Jehovah bursting in glory through the sky could have convinced her of error. Even then she would have been annoyed. She profoundly disapproved of Emmy's marriage to Septimus, whom she characterized as a doddering idiot. Sypher defended his friend warmly. He also defended Wiggleswick at whose ways and habits the good lady expressed unrestrained indignation. She could not have spoken more disrespectfully of Antichrist. "You mark my words," she said, "he'll murder them both in their sleep." Concerning Zora, too, she was emphatic. "I am not one of those who think every woman ought to get married; but if she can't conduct herself decently without a husband, she ought to have one." "But surely Mrs. Middlemist's conduct is irreproachable," said Sypher. "[206]Irreproachable? Do you think trapesing about alone all over the earth—mixing with all sorts of people she doesn't know from Adam, and going goodness knows where and doing goodness knows what, and idling her life away, never putting a darn in her stockings even—is irreproachable conduct on the part of a young woman of Zora's birth and appearance? The way she dresses must attract attention, wherever she goes. It's supposed to be 'stylish' nowadays. In my time it was immodest. When a young woman was forced to journey alone she made herself as inconspicuous as possible. Zora ought to have a husband to look after her. Then she could do as she liked—or as he liked, which would be much the best thing for her." "I happen to be in Mrs. Middlemist's confidence," said Sypher. "She has told me many times that she would never marry again. Her marriage—" "Stuff and rubbish!" cried Cousin Jane. "You wait until the man comes along who has made up his mind to marry her. It must be a big strong man who won't stand any nonsense and will take her by the shoulders and shake her. She'll marry him fast enough. We'll see what happens to her in California." "I hope she won't marry one of those dreadful creatures with lassos," said Mrs. Oldrieve, whose hazy ideas of California were based on hazier memories of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show which she had seen many years ago in London. "I hope Mrs. Middlemist won't marry at all," said Sypher, in a tone of alarm. "Why?" asked Cousin Jane. She shot the question at him with almost a snarl. Sypher paused for a moment or two before replying. "[207]I should lose a friend," said he. "Humph!" said Cousin Jane. If the late Rev. Laurence Sterne had known Cousin Jane, "Tristram Shandy" would have been the richer by a chapter on "Humphs." He would have analyzed this particular one with a minute delicacy beyond the powers of Clem Sypher through whose head rang the echo of the irritating vocable for some time afterwards. It meant something. It meant something uncomfortable. It was directly leveled at himself and yet it seemed to sum up her previous disparaging remarks about Zora. "What the dickens did she mean by it?" he asked himself. He came down to Nunsmere every week now, having given up his establishment at Kilburn Priory and sold the house—"The Kurhaus," as he had named it in his pride. A set of bachelor's chambers in St. James's sheltered him during his working days in London. He had also sold his motor-car; for retrenchment in personal expenses had become necessary, and the purchase-money of house and car were needed for the war of advertising which he was waging against his rivals. These were days black with anxiety and haunting doubt, illuminated now and then by Zora, who wrote gracious letters of encouragement. He carried them about with him like talismans. Sometimes he could not realize that the great business he had created could be on the brink of failure. The routine went on as usual. At the works at Bermondsey the same activity apparently prevailed as when the Cure had reached the hey-day of its fortune some five years before. In the sweet-smelling laboratory gleaming with white tiles and copper retorts, the white-aproned workmen sorted and weighed and treated according to the secret recipe the bun[208]dles of herbs that came in every day and were stacked in pigeon-holes along the walls. In the boiling-sheds, not so sweet-smelling, the great vats of fat bubbled and ran, giving out to the cooling-troughs the refined white cream of which the precious ointment was made. Beyond there was another laboratory vast and clean and busy, where the healing ichor of the herbs was mixed with the drugs and the cream. Then came the work-rooms where rows of girls filled the celluloid boxes, one dabbing in the well-judged quantity, another cutting it off clean to the level of the top with a swift stroke of the spatula, another fitting on the lid, and so on, in endless but fascinating monotony until the last girl placed on the trolley by her side, waiting to carry it to the packing-shed, the finished packet of Sypher's Cure as it would be delivered to the world. Then there were the packing-sheds full of deal cases for despatching the Cure to the four quarters of the globe, some empty, some being filled, others stacked in readiness for the carriers: a Babel of sounds, of hammering clamps, of creaking barrows, of horses by the open doors rattling their heavy harness and trampling the flagstones with their heavy hoofs; a ceaseless rushing of brawny men in sackcloth aprons, of dusty men with stumps of pencils and note-books and crumpled invoices, counting and checking and reporting to other men in narrow glass offices against the wall. Outside stood the great wagons laden with the white deal boxes bound with iron hoops and bearing in vermilion letters the inscription of Sypher's Cure. Every detail of this complicated hive was as familiar to him as his kitchen was to his cook. He had planned it all, organized it all. Every action of every human creature in the place from the skilled pharmaceutist responsible for the[209] preparation of the ointment to the grimy boy who did odd jobs about the sheds had been pre-conceived by him, had had its mainspring in his brain. Apart from idealistic aspirations concerned with the Cure itself, the perfecting of this machinery of human activity had been a matter of absorbing interest, its perfection a subject of honorable pride. He walked through the works day after day, noting the familiar sights and sounds, pausing here and there lovingly, as a man does in his garden to touch some cherished plant or to fill himself with the beauty of some rare flower. The place was inexpressibly dear to him. That those furnaces should ever grow cold, that those vats should ever be empty, that those two magic words should cease to blaze on the wooden boxes, should fade from the sight of man, that those gates should ever be shut, seemed to transcend imagination. The factory had taken its rank with eternal, unchanging things, like the solar system and the Bank of England. Yet he knew only too well that there had been change in the unchanging and in his soul dwelt a sickening certainty that the eternal would be the transient. Gradually the staff had been reduced, the output lessened. Already two of the long tables once filled with girls stood forlornly empty. His comfortably appointed office in Moorgate Street told the same story. Week after week the orders slackened and gradually the number of the clerks had shrunk. Gloom settled permanently on the manager's brow. He almost walked on tiptoe into Sypher's room and spoke to him in a hushed whisper, until rebuked for dismalness. "If you look like that, Shuttleworth, I shall cry." On another occasion Shuttleworth said: "[210]We are throwing money away on advertisements. The concern can't stand it." Sypher turned, blue pencil in hand, from the wall where draft proofs of advertisements were pinned for his correction and master's touch. This was a part of the business that he loved. It appealed to the flamboyant in his nature. It particularly pleased him to see omnibuses pass by bearing the famous "Sypher's Cure," an enlargement of his own handwriting, in streaming letters of blood. "We're going to double them," said he; and his air was that of the racing Mississippi captains of old days who in response to the expostulation of their engineers sent a little nigger boy to sit on the safety-valve. The dismal manager turned up his eyes to heaven with the air of the family steward in Hogarth's "Mariage à la Mode." He had not his chief's Napoleonic mind; but he had a wife and a large family. Clem Sypher also thought of that—not only of Shuttleworth's wife and family, but also of the wives and families of the many men in his employ. It kept him awake at nights. In the soothing air of Nunsmere, however, he slept, in long dead stretches, as a tired man sleeps, in spite of trains which screeched past the bottom of his lawn. Their furious unrest enhanced the peace of village things. He began to love the little backwater of the earth whose stillness calmed the fever of life. As soon as he stepped out on to the platform at Ripstead a cool hand seemed to touch his forehead, and charm away the cares that made his temples throb. At Nunsmere he gave himself up to the simplicities of the place. He took to strolling, like Septimus, about the common and made friends with the lame donkey. On Sunday mornings he went to church. He had first found[211] himself there out of curiosity, for, though not an irreligious man, he was not given to pious practices; but afterwards he had gone on account of the restfulness of the rural service. His mind essentially reverend took it very seriously, just as it took seriously the works of a great poet which he could not understand or any alien form of human aspiration; even the parish notices and the publication of banns he received with earnest attention. His intensity of interest as he listened to the sermon sometimes flattered the mild vicar, and at other times—when thinness of argument pricked his conscience—alarmed him considerably. But Sypher would not have dared enter into theological disputation. He took the sermon as he took the hymns, in which he joined lustily. Cousin Jane, whom he invariably met with Mrs. Oldrieve after the service and escorted home, had no such scruples. She tore the vicar's theology into fragments and scattered them behind her as she walked, like a hare in a paper chase. Said the Literary Man from London, who had strolled with them on one of these occasions: "The good lady's one of those women who speak as if they had a relation who had married a high official in the Kingdom of Heaven and now and then gave them confidential information." Sypher liked Rattenden because he could often put into a phrase his own unformulated ideas. He also belonged to a world to which he himself was a stranger, the world of books and plays and personalities and theories of art. Sypher thought that its denizens lived on a lofty plane. "The atmosphere," said Rattenden, "is so rarified that the kettle refuses to boil properly. That is why we always have cold tea at literary gatherings. My dear fellow, it's a[212] damned world. It talks all day and does nothing all night. The ragged Italian in front of the fresco in his village church or at the back of the gallery at the opera of his town knows more essentials of painting and music than any of us. It's a hollow sham of a world filled with empty words. I love it." "Then why abuse it?" laughed Sypher. "Because it's a wanton and the wanton angers you and fascinates you at the same time. You never know how to take her. You are aware she hasn't got a heart, but her lips are red. She is unreal. She holds views in defiance of common sense. Which is the nobler thing to do—to dig potatoes or paint a man digging potatoes? She swears to you that the digger is a clod of earth and the painter a handful of heaven. She is talking rot. You know it. Yet you believe her." Sypher was not convinced by the airy paradoxician. He had a childish idea that painters and novelists and actors were superior beings. Rattenden found this Arcadian and cultivated Sypher's society. They took long walks together on Sunday afternoons. "After all," said Rattenden, "I can speak freely. I am a pariah among my kind." Sypher asked why. "Because I don't play golf. In London it is impossible to be seriously regarded as a literary man unless you play golf." He found Sypher a good listener. He loved to catch a theory of life, hold it in his hand like a struggling bird while he discoursed about it, and let it go free into the sunshine again. Sypher admired his nimbleness of mind. "[213]You juggle with ideas as the fellows on the stage do with gilt balls." "It's a game I learned," said Rattenden. "It's very useful. It takes one's mind off the dull question of earning bread and butter for a wife and five children." "I wish you'd teach it to me," said Sypher. "I've many wives and many children dependent on me for bread and butter!" Rattenden was quick to note the tone of depression. He laughed kindly. "Looking on is just as good. When you're worried in London why don't you look me up? My wife and I will play the game for you. She's an amusing body. Heaven knows how I should have got through without her. She also swears by Sypher's Cure." So they became friends. Sypher, since the blistered heel episode, had lost his fearless way of trumpeting the Cure far and wide, having a nervous dread of seeing the p and q of the hateful words form themselves on the lips of a companion. He became subdued, and spoke only of travel and men and things, of anything but the Cure. He preferred to listen and, as Rattenden preferred to talk, he found conversation a simple matter. Rattenden was an amusing anecdotist and had amassed a prodigious amount of raw material for his craft. To the collector, by some unknown law of attraction, come the objects which he collects. Everywhere he goes he finds them to his hand, as Septimus's friend found the Toby jugs. Wherever Rattenden turned, a bit of gossip met his ear. Very few things, therefore, happened in literary and theatrical London which did not come inevitably to his knowledge. He could have wrecked many homes and pricked many reputations. As[214] a man of the world, however, he used his knowledge with discretion, and as an artist in anecdote he selected fastidiously. He seldom retailed a bit of gossip for its own sake; when he did so he had a purpose. One evening they dined together at Sypher's club, a great semi-political institution with many thousand members. He had secured, however, a quiet table in a corner of the dining-room which was adorned with full-length portraits of self-conscious statesmen. Sypher unfolded his napkin with an air of satisfaction. "I've had good news to-day. Mrs. Middlemist is on her way home." "You have the privilege of her friendship," said Rattenden. "You're to be envied. O fortunate nimium." He preserved some of the Oxford tradition in tone and manner. He had brown hair turning gray, a drooping mustache and wore pince-nez secured by a broad black cord. Being very short-sighted his eyes seen through the thick lenses were almost expressionless. "Zora Middlemist," said he, squeezing lemon over his oysters, "is a grand and splendid creature whom I admire vastly. As I never lose an opportunity of telling her that she is doing nothing with her grand and splendid qualities, I suffer under the ban of her displeasure." "What do you think she ought to do with them?" asked Sypher. "It's a difficult and delicate matter to discuss a woman with another man; especially—" he waved a significant hand. "But I, in my little way, have written a novel or two—studies of women. I speak therefore as an expert. Now, just as a painter can't correctly draw the draped figure unless he has an anatomical knowledge of the limbs be[215]neath, so is a novelist unable to present the character of a woman with sincerity and verisimilitude unless he has taken into account all the hidden physiological workings of that woman's nature. He must be familiar with the workings of the sex principle within her, although he need not show them in his work, any more than the painter shows the anatomy. Analyzing thus the imaginary woman, one forms a habit of analyzing the real woman in whom one takes an interest—or rather one does it unconsciously." He paused. "I told you it was rather delicate. You see what I'm trying to get at? Zora Middlemist is driven round the earth like Io by the gadfly of her temperament. She's seeking the Beauty or Meaning or Fulfilment, or whatever she chooses to call it, of Life. What she's really looking for is Love." "I don't believe it," said Sypher. Rattenden shrugged his shoulders. "It's true all the same. But in her case it's the great love—the big thing for the big man—the gorgeous tropical sunshine in which all the splendor of her can develop. No little man will move her. She draws them all round her—that type has an irresistible atmosphere—but she passes them by with her magnificent head in the air. She is looking all the time for the big man. The pathetic comedy of it is that she is as innocent and as unconscious of the object of her search as the flower that opens its heart to the bee bearing the pollen on its wings. I'm not infallible as a general rule. In this case I am." He hastened to consume his soup which had got cold during his harangue. "You've mixed much with women and studied them," said Sypher. "I haven't. I was engaged to a girl once,[216] but it was a tepid affair. She broke it off because it was much more vital to me to work in my laboratory than to hold her hand in her mother's parlor. No doubt she was right. This was in the early days when I was experimenting with the Cure. Since then I've been a man of one idea. It has absorbed all my soul and energies, so that I've had none to spare for women. Here and there, of course—" "I know. The trifling things. They are part of the banquet of life. One eats and forgets." Sypher glanced at him and nodded his appreciation of the Literary Man's neat way of putting things. But he did not reply. He ate his fish in silence, hardly tasting it, his mind far away following Zora Middlemist across the seas. A horrible, jealous hatred of the big man for whom she sought sprang up in his heart. His pink face flushed red. "This sole bonne femme is excellent," said Rattenden. Sypher started in confusion, and praised the chef, and talked gastronomy while his thoughts were with Zora. He remembered the confession of Septimus Dix in Paris. Septimus had been caught in the irresistible atmosphere. He loved her, but he was one of the little men and she had passed him by with her magnificent head in the air. The gastronomic talk languished. Presently Rattenden said: "One of the feminine phenomena that has puzzled me most of late has been the marriage of her sister to Septimus Dix." Sypher laid down his knife and fork. "How extraordinary that you should mention it! He was in my mind as you spoke." "I was thinking of the sister," said Rattenden. "She has Mrs. Middlemist's temperament without her force of[217] character—the sex without the splendor. I heard a very curious thing about her only yesterday." "What was it?" "It was one of those things that are not told." "Tell me," said Sypher, earnestly. "I have reasons for asking. I am convinced there are circumstances of which neither Mrs. Dix's mother nor sister know anything. I'm a loyal man. You may trust me." "Very well," said Rattenden. "Have you ever heard of a man called Mordaunt Prince? Yes—a well-known actor—about the biggest blackguard that disgraces the stage. He was leading man at the theater where she last played. They were doing 'The Widow of Ware.' They were about a great deal together. It was common gossip at the time." "Gossip is notoriously uncharitable," said Sypher. "If charity covers a multitude of sins, uncharitableness has the advantage of uncovering them. The pudor britannicus, however, is responsible for uncovering the one I am going to tell you of. About two or three months before the marriage, Emmy Oldrieve and Mordaunt Prince were staying together at an hotel in Tunbridge Wells. There was no mistake about it. There they were. They had a motor with them. A week before the Dix marriage was announced Mordaunt Prince married a Mrs. Morris—old Sol Morris, the money-lender's widow." Sypher stared at him. "It's one of the least amazing of human phenomena," said Rattenden, cynically. "I'm only puzzled at Calypso being so soon able to console herself for the departure of Ulysses, and taking up with such a dreamy-headed shadow of a man as our friend Dix. The end of the Mordaunt Prince story is that he soon grew too much for the widow,[218] who has pensioned him off, and now he is drinking himself to death in Naples." "Emmy Oldrieve! Good God, is it possible?" cried Sypher, absently pushing aside the dish the waiter handed him. Rattenden carefully helped himself to partridge and orange salad. "It's not only possible, but unquestionable fact. You see," he added complacently, "nothing can happen without its coming sooner or later to me. My informant was staying at the hotel all the time. You will allow me to vouch absolutely for her veracity." Sypher did not speak for some moments. The large dining-room with its portraits of self-conscious statesmen faded away and became a little street in Paris, one side in shade and the other baking in the sun; and at a little iron table sat a brown and indiscreet Zouave and Septimus Dix, pale, indecisive, with a wistful appeal in his washed-out blue eyes. Suddenly he regained consciousness, and, more for the sake of covering his loss of self-possession than for that of eating, he recalled the waiter and put some partridge on his plate. Then he looked across the table at his guest and said very sternly: "I look to you to prevent this story going any further." "I've already made it my duty to do so," said Rattenden. 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 cuvée 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. Cham[219]pagne 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 gratitude." "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 Gods, 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 passed Septimus by with her magnificent head in the air. But he was not one of the little men. "By God, he is not!" he cried aloud, and the cry came from his depths. [220]Zora Middlemist had passed 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. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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