Emmy sat on the fender stool, as she had done when Septimus had told her the story, and repeated it for Zora"s benefit.
"You say he sent for Septimus this morning?" said Zora in a low voice. "Do you think he knows--about you two?"
"It is possible that he guesses," replied Emmy, to whom Hegisippe Cruchot"s indiscretion had been reported. "Septimus has not told him."
"I ask," said Zora, "because, since my return, he has seemed to look on Septimus as a sort of inspired creature. I begin to see things I never saw before."
There was silence. Emmy gripped the mantelpiece and, head on arm, looked into the fire. Zora sat lost in her expanding vision. Presently Emmy said without turning round:
"You mustn"t turn away from me now--for Septimus"s sake. He loves the boy as if he were his own. Whatever wrong I"ve done I"ve suffered for it. Once I was a frivolous, unbalanced, unprincipled little fool. I"m a woman now--and a good woman, thanks to him. To live in the same atmosphere as that exquisite delicacy of soul is enough to make one good. No other man on earth could have done what he has done and in the way he has done it. I can"t help loving him. I can"t help eating my heart out for him. That"s my punishment."
This time the succeeding silence was broken by a half-checked sob. Emmy started round, and beheld Zora crying silently to herself among the sofa cushions. Emmy was amazed. Zora, the magnificent, had broken down, and was weeping like any silly fool of a girl. It was real crying; not the shedding of the tears of sensibility which often stood in her generous eyes. Emmy moved gently across the room--she was a soft-hearted, affectionate woman--and knelt by the sofa.
"Zora, dear."
Zora, with an immense longing for love, caught her sister in her arms, and the two women wept very happily together. It was thus that Septimus, returning for tea, as he was bidden, found them some while afterwards.
Zora rose, her lashes still wet, and whipped up her furs.
"But you"re not going?"
"Yes. I"ll leave you two together. I"ll do what I can. Septimus--" She caught him by the arm and drew him a step or two towards the door. "Emmy has told me everything. Oh, you needn"t look frightened, dear. I"m not going to thank you--" Her voice broke on the laugh. "I should only make a fool of myself. Some other time. I only want to say, don"t you think you would be more--more cosy and comfortable if you let her take care of you altogether? She"s breaking her heart for love of you, Septimus, and she would make you happy."
She rushed out of the room, and before the pair could recover from their confusion they heard the flat door slam behind her.
Emmy looked at Septimus with a great scare in her blue eyes. She said something about taking no notice of what Zora said.
"But is it true?" he asked.
She said with her back against the wall:
"Do you think it very amazing that I should care for you?"
Septimus ran his hands vehemently up his hair till it reached the climax of Struwel Peterdom. The most wonderful thing in his life had happened. A woman loved him. It upset all his preconceived notions of his place in the universe.
"Yes, I do," he answered. "It makes my head spin round." He found himself close to her. "Do you mean that you love me"--his voice grew tremulous--"as if I were an ordinary man?"
"No," she cried, with a half laugh. "Of course I don"t. How could I love an ordinary man as I love you?"
Neither could tell afterwards how it happened. Emmy called the walls to witness that she did not throw herself into his arms, and Septimus"s natural timidity precluded the possibility of his having seized her in his; but she stood for a long, throbbing time in his embrace, while he kissed her on the lips and gave all his heart into her keeping.
They sat down together on the fender seat.
"When a man does that," said Septimus, as if struck by a luminous idea, "I suppose he asks the girl to marry him."
"But we are married already," she cried joyously.
"Dear me," said Septimus, "so we are. I forgot. It"s very puzzling, isn"t it? I think, if you don"t mind, I"ll kiss you again."
CHAPTER XXIII
Zora went straight back to her hotel sitting-room. There, without taking off her hat or furs, she wrote a swift, long letter to Clem Sypher, and summoning the waiter, ordered him to post it at once. When he had gone she reflected for a few moments and sent off a telegram. After a further brief period of reflection she went down-stairs and rang up Sypher"s office on the telephone.
The mere man would have tried the telephone first, then sent the telegram, and after that the explanatory letter. Woman has her own way of doing things.
Sypher was in. He would have finished for the day in about twenty minutes.
Then he would come to her on the nearest approach to wings London locomotion provided.
"Remember, it"s something most particular that I want to see you about,"
said Zora. "Good-by."
She rang off, and went up-stairs again, removed the traces of tears from her face and changed her dress. For a few moments she regarded her outward semblance somewhat anxiously in the gla.s.s, unconscious of a new coquetry.
Then she sat down before the sitting-room fire and looked at the inner Zora Middlemist.
There was never woman, since the world began, more cast down from her high estate. Not a shred of magnificence remained. She saw herself as the most useless, vaporing and purblind of mortals. She had gone forth from the despised Nunsmere, where nothing ever happened, to travel the world over in search of realities, and had returned to find that Nunsmere had all the time been the center of the realities that most deeply concerned her life.
While she had been talking others had been living. The three beings whom she had honored with her royal and somewhat condescending affection had all done great things, pa.s.sed through flames and issued thence purified with love in their hearts. Emmy, Septimus, Sypher, all in their respective ways, had grappled with essentials. She alone had done nothing--she the strong, the sane, the capable, the magnificent. She had been a tinsel failure. So far out of touch had she been with the real warm things of life which mattered that she had not even gained her sister"s confidence. Had she done so from her girlhood up, the miserable tragedy might not have happened. She had failed in a sister"s elementary duty.
As a six weeks" wife, what had she done save shiver with a splendid disgust? Another woman would have fought and perhaps have conquered. She had made no attempt, and the poor wretch dead, she had trumpeted abroad her crude opinion of the s.e.x to which he belonged. At every turn she had seen it refuted. For many months she had known it to be vain and false; and Nature, who with all her faults is at least not a liar, had spoken over and over again. She had raised a fine storm of argument, but Nature had laughed. So had the Literary Man from London. She had a salutary vision of herself as the common geck and gull of the queerly a.s.sorted pair. She recognized that in order to work out any problem of life one must accept life"s postulates and axioms. Even her mother, from whose gentle lips she rarely expected to hear wisdom, had said: "I don"t see how you"re going to "live," dear, without a man to take care of you." Her mother was right, Nature was right, Rattenden was right. She, Zora Middlemist, had been hopelessly wrong.
When Sypher arrived she welcomed him with an unaccustomed heart-beat. The masterful grip of his hands as they held hers gave her a new throb of pleasure. She glanced into his eyes and saw there the steady love of a strong, clean soul. She glanced away and hung her head, feeling unworthy.
"What"s this most particular thing you have to say to me?" he asked, with a smile.
"I can"t tell it to you like this. Let us sit down. Draw up that chair to the fire."
When they were seated, she said:
"I want first to ask you a question or two. Do you know why Septimus married my sister? Be quite frank, for I know everything."
"Yes," he said gravely, "I knew. I found it out in one or two odd ways.
Septimus hasn"t the faintest idea."
Zora picked up an ill.u.s.trated weekly from the floor and used it as a screen, ostensibly from the fire, really from Sypher.
"Why did you refuse the Jebusa Jones offer this morning?"
"What would you have thought of me if I had accepted? But Septimus shouldn"t have told you."
"He didn"t. He told Emmy, who told me. You did it for my sake?"
"Everything I do is for your sake. You know that well enough."