"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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d-created being? Another man, strong and capable, any vital, deep-chested fellow that was pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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, G.o.d! 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 a.s.sociating 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 pa.s.sionate 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.