Septimus Part 18

They happened to be in the hall. At the farther end Septimus caught sight of a fluffy Persian kitten playing with a bit of paper, and guided by one of his queer intuitions he went and picked it up and laid its baby softness against the girl's cheek. Her mood changed magically.

"Oh, the darling!" she cried, and kissed its tiny, wet nose.

She was quite polite to Sypher during luncheon, and laughed when he told her that he called the kitten Jebusa Jones. She asked why.

"Because," said he, showing his hand covered with scratches, "she produces on the human epidermis the same effect as his poisonous cuticle remedy."

Whereupon Emmy decided that the man who could let a kitten scratch his hand in that fashion had elements of good in his nature.

"Now for the surprise," said Sypher, when Septimus and he joined the ladies after lunch. "Come."

They followed him outside, through the French windows of the drawing-room.

"Other people," said he, "want houses with lawns reaching down to the side of the river or the Menai Straits or Windermere. I'm the only person, I think, who has ever sought for a lawn running down to a main line of railway."

"That's why this house was untenanted so long," said Zora.

A row of trees separated the small garden from the lawn in question. When they pa.s.sed through this screen, the lawn and the line of railway and the dreamy, undulating Surrey country came into view. Also an enormous board.

Why hadn't he taken it down, Zora asked.

"That's the surprise!" exclaimed Sypher eagerly. "Come round to the front."

He led the way, striding some yards ahead. Presently he turned and struck a dramatic att.i.tude, as a man might do who had built himself a new wonder house. And then on three astonished pairs of eyes burst the following inscription in gigantic capitals which he who flew by in an express train could read:

SYPHER'S CURE!

Clem Sypher. Friend of Humanity!

I LIVE HERE!

"Isn't that great?" he cried. "I've had it in my mind for years. It's the personal note that's so valuable. This brings the whole pa.s.sing world into personal contact with me. It shows that Sypher's Cure isn't a quack thing run by a commercial company, but the possession of a man who has a house, who lives in the very house you can see through the trees. 'What kind of a man is he?' they ask. 'He must be a nice man to live in such a nice house.

I almost feel I know him. _I'll try his Cure_.' Don't you think it's a colossal idea?"

He looked questioningly into three embarra.s.sed faces. Emmy, in spite of her own preoccupation, suppressed a giggle. There was a moment's silence, which was broken by Septimus's mild voice:

"I think, by means of levers running down to the line and worked by the trains as they pa.s.sed, I could invent a machine for throwing little boxes of samples from the board into the railway carriage windows."

Emmy burst out laughing. "Come and show me how you would do it."

She linked her arm in his and dragged him down to the line, where she spoke with mirthful disrespect of Sypher's Cure. Meanwhile Zora said nothing to Sypher.

"Don't you like it?" he asked at last, disconcerted.

"Do you want me to be the polite lady you've asked to lunch or your friend?"

"My friend and my helper," said he.

"Then," she replied, touching his coat sleeve, "I must say that I don't like it. I hate it. I think it's everything that is most abominable."

The board was one pride of his heart, and Zora was another. He looked at them both alternately in a piteous, crestfallen way.

"But why?" he asked.

Zora's eyes filled with tears. She saw that her lack of appreciation had hurt him to the heart. She was a generous woman, and did not convict him, as she would have done another man, of blatant vulgarity. Yet she felt preposterously pained. Why could not this great, single-minded creature, with ideas as high as they were queer, perceive the board's rank abomination?

"It's unworthy of you," she said bravely. "I want everyone to respect you as I do. You see the Cure isn't everything. There's a man behind it."

"That's the object of the board," said Sypher. "To show the man."

"But it doesn't show the chivalrous gentleman that I think you are," she replied quickly. "It gives the impression of some one quite different--a horrid creature who would sell his self-respect for money. Oh, don't you understand? It's as bad as walking through the streets with 'Sypher's Cure'

painted on your hat."

"What can I do about it?" he asked.

"Take it down at once," said Zora.

"But to exhibit the board was my sole reason for buying the place."

"I'm very sorry," she said gently, "but I can't change my opinion."

He cast a lingering glance at the board, and then turned. "Let us go back to the house," he said.

They walked a little way in silence. As they pa.s.sed by the shrubbery at the side of the house, he gravely pushed aside a wet, hanging branch for her to proceed dry. Then he joined her again.

"You are angry with me for speaking so," said Zora.

He stopped and looked at her, his eyes bright and clear. "Do you think I'm a born fool? Do you think I can't tell loyalty when I see it, and am such an a.s.s as not to prize it above all things? It cost you a lot to say that to me. You're right. I suppose I've lost sense of myself in the Cure. When I think of it, I seem just to be the machine that is distributing it over the earth. And that, too, I suppose, is why I want you. The board is an abomination that cries to heaven. It shall be instantly removed. There!"

He held out his hand. She gave him hers and he pressed it warmly.

"Are you going to give up the house now that it's useless?" she asked.

"Do you wish me to?"

"What have I to do with it?"

"Zora Middlemist," said he, "I'm a superst.i.tious man in some things. You have everything to do with my success. Sooner than forfeit your respect I would set fire to every stick I possessed. I would give up everything I had in the world except my faith in the Cure."

"Wouldn't you give up that--if it were necessary so as to keep my respect?"

she asked, prompted by the insane devil that lurks in the heart of even the most sainted of women and does not like its gracious habitat to be reckoned lower than a quack ointment. It is the same little devil that makes a young wife ask her devoted husband which of the two he would save if she and his mother were drowning. It is the little devil that is responsible for infinite mendacity on the part of men. "Have you ever said that to another woman?" No; of course he hasn't; and the wretch is instantly, perjured.

"Would you sell your soul for me?" "My immortal soul," says the good fellow, instantaneously converted into an atrocious liar; and the little devil coos with satisfaction and curls himself up snugly to sleep.

But on this occasion the little devil had no success.

"I would give up my faith in the Cure for nothing in the wide world," said Sypher gravely.

"I'm very glad to hear it," said Zora, in her frankest tone. But the little devil asked her whether she was quite sure; whereupon she hit him smartly over the head and bade him lie down. Her respect, however, for Sypher increased.

They were joined by Emmy and Septimus.

"I think I could manage it," said the latter, "if I cut a hole a foot square in the board and fixed a magazine behind it."