Septimus Part 34

"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 n.o.bler 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.

"You juggle with ideas as the fellows on the stage do with gilt b.a.l.l.s."

"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 b.u.t.ter 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 b.u.t.ter!"

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 ama.s.sed 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 p.r.i.c.ked many reputations. As 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 inst.i.tution 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 beneath, 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 s.e.x principle within her, although he need not show them in his work, any more than the painter shows the anatomy. a.n.a.lyzing thus the imaginary woman, one forms a habit of a.n.a.lyzing 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 pa.s.ses 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, 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 pa.s.sed 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 character--the s.e.x 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 circ.u.mstances 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 mult.i.tude 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, who has pensioned him off, and now he is drinking himself to death in Naples."

"Emmy Oldrieve! Good G.o.d, 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.