She entered the carriage. He followed meekly and sat beside her. Where should they drive? The cabman suggested the coast road to Mentone. She agreed. On the point of starting she observed that her companion was bare-headed.
"You"ve forgotten your hat."
She spoke to him as she would have done to a child.
"Why bother about hats?"
"You"ll catch your death of cold. Go and get it at once."
He obeyed with a docility which sent a little tingle of exaltation through Mrs. Middlemist. A woman may have an inordinate antipathy to men, but she loves them to do her bidding. Zora was a woman; she was also young.
He returned. The cabman whipped up his strong pair of horses, and they started through the town towards Mentone.
Zora lay back on the cushions and drank in the sensuous loveliness of the night--the warm, scented air, the velvet and diamond sky, the fragrant orange groves--the dim, mysterious olive trees, the looming hills, the wine-colored, silken sea, with its faint edging of lace on the dusky sweep of the bay. The spirit of the South overspread her with its wings and took her amorously in its arms.
After a long, long silence she sighed, remembering her companion.
"Thank you for not talking," she said softly.
"Don"t," he replied. "I had nothing to say. I never talk. I"ve scarcely talked for a year."
She laughed idly.
"Why?"
"No one to talk to. Except my man," he added conscientiously. "His name is Wiggleswick."
"I hope he looks after you well," said Zora, with a touch of maternal instinct.
"He wants training. That"s what I am always telling him. But he can"t hear.
He"s seventy and stone-deaf. But he"s interesting. He tells me about jails and things."
"Jails?"
"Yes. He spent most of his time in prison. He was a professional burglar--but then he got on in years. Besides, the younger generation was knocking at the door."
"I thought that was the last thing a burglar would do," said Zora.
"They generally use jemmies," he said gravely. "Wiggleswick has given me his collection. They"re very useful."
"What for?" she asked.
"To kill moths with," he replied dreamily.
"But what made you take a superannuated burglar for a valet?"
"I don"t know. Perhaps it was Wiggleswick himself. He came up to me one day as I was sitting in Kensington Gardens, and somehow followed me home."
"But, good gracious," cried Zora--forgetful for the moment of stars and sea--"aren"t you afraid that he will rob you?"
"No. I asked him, and he explained. You see, it would be out of his line. A forger only forges, a pickpocket only s.n.a.t.c.hes chains and purses, and a burglar only burgles. Now, he couldn"t burgle the place in which he was living himself, so I am safe."
Zora gave him sage counsel.
"I"d get rid of him if I were you."
"If I were you, I would--but I can"t," he replied. "If I told him to go he wouldn"t. I go instead sometimes. That"s why I"m here."
"If you go on talking like that, you"ll make my brain reel," said Zora laughing. "Do tell me something about yourself. What is your name?"
"Septimus Dix. I"ve got another name--Ajax--Septimus Ajax Dix--but I never use it."
"That"s a pity," said Zora. "Ajax is a lovely name."
He dissented in his vague fashion. "Ajax suggests somebody who defies lightning and fools about with a spear. It"s a silly name. A maiden aunt persuaded my mother to give it to me. I think she mixed it up with Achilles. She admired the statue in Hyde Park. She got run over by a milkcart."
"When was that?" she inquired, more out of politeness than interest in the career of Mr. Dix"s maiden aunt.
"A minute before she died."
"Oh," said Zora, taken aback by the emotionless manner in which he mentioned the tragedy. Then, by way of continuing the conversation:--
"Why are you called Septimus?"
"I"m the seventh son. All the others died young. I never could make out why I didn"t."
"Perhaps," said Zora with a laugh, "you were thinking of something else at the time and lost the opportunity."
"It must have been that," said he. "I lose opportunities just as I always lose trains."
"How do you manage to get anywhere?"
"I wait for the next train. That"s easy. But there"s never another opportunity."
He drew a cigarette from his case, put it in his mouth, and fumbled in his pockets for matches. Finding none, he threw the cigarette into the road.
"That"s just like you," cried Zora. "Why didn"t you ask the cabman for a light?"
She laughed at him with an odd sense of intimacy, though she had known him for scarcely an hour. He seemed rather a stray child than a man. She longed to befriend him--to do something for him, motherwise--she knew not what.
Her adventure by now had failed to be adventurous. The spice of danger had vanished. She knew she could sit beside this helpless being till the day of doom without fear of molestation by word or act.
He obtained a light for his cigarette from the cabman and smoked in silence. Gradually the languor of the night again stole over her senses, and she forgot his existence. The carriage had turned homeward, and at a bend of the road, high up above the sea, Monte Carlo came into view, gleaming white far away below, like a group of fairy palaces lit by fairy lamps, sheltered by the great black promontory of Monaco. From the gorge on the left, the terraced rock on the right, came the smell of the wild thyme and rosemary and the perfume of pale flowers. The touch of the air on her cheek was a warm and scented kiss. The diamond stars drooped towards her like a Danae shower. Like Danae"s, her lips were parted. Her eyes strained far beyond the stars into an unknown glory, and her heart throbbed with a pa.s.sionate desire for unknown things. Of what nature they might be she did not dream. Not love. Zora Middlemist had forsworn it. Not the worship of a man. She had vowed by all the saints in her hierarchy that no man should ever again enter her life. Her soul revolted against the unutterable s.e.x.
As soon as one realizes the exquisite humbug of sublunary existence he must weep for the pity of it.
The warm and scented air was a kiss, too, on the cheek of Septimus Dix; and his senses, too, were enthralled by the witchery of the night. But for him stars and scented air and the magic beauty of the sea were incarnate in the woman by his side.
Zora, as I have said, had forgotten the poor devil"s existence.