Septimus Part 41

"You? You?"

"They wouldn't let me in. I forced my way. I said I must see you."

He stared at her, open-mouthed. A s.h.i.+vering thrill pa.s.sed through him, such as shakes a man on the verge of a great discovery.

"You, Zora? You have come to me at this moment?"

He looked so strange and staring, so haggard and disheveled, that she moved quickly to him and laid both her hands on his.

"My dear friend, my dearest friend, is it as bad as that?"

A throb of pain underlay the commonplace words. The anguish on his face stirred the best and most womanly in her. She yearned to comfort him. But he drew a pace or two away, and held up both hands as if warding her off, and stared at her still, but with a new light in his clear eyes that drank in her beauty and the sorcery of her presence.

"My G.o.d!" he cried, in a strained voice. "My G.o.d! What a fool I've been!"

He swerved as if he had received a blow and sank into his office chair, and turned his eyes from her to the ground, and sat stunned with joy and wonder and misery. He put out a hand blindly, and she took it, standing by his side. He knew now what he wanted. He wanted her, the woman. He wanted her voice in his ears, her kiss on his lips, her dear self in his arms. He wanted her welcome as he entered his house, her heart, her soul, her mind, her body, everything that was hers. He loved her for herself, pa.s.sionately, overwhelmingly, after the simple way of men. He had raised his eyes from the deeps of h.e.l.l, and in a flash she was revealed to him--incarnate heaven.

He felt the touch of her gloved hand on his, and it sent a thrill through his veins which almost hurt, as the newly coursing blood hurts the man that has been revived from torpor. The mistiness that serves a strong man for tears clouded his sight. He had longed for her; she had come. From their first meeting he had recognized, with the visionary's glimpse of the spiritual, that she was the woman of women appointed unto him for help and comfort. But then the visionary had eclipsed the man. Destiny had naught to do with him but as the instrument for the universal spreading of the Cure.

The Cure was his life. The woman appointed unto him was appointed unto the Cure equally with himself. He had violently credited her with his insane faith. He had craved her presence as a mystical influence that in some way would paralyze the Jebusa Jones Dragon and give him supernatural strength to fight. He had striven with all his power to keep her radiant like a star, while his own faith lay dying.

He had been a fool. All the time it was the sheer woman that had held him, the sheer man. And yet had not destiny fulfilled itself with a splendid irony in sending her to him then, in that moment of his utter anguish, of the utter annihilation of the fantastic faith whereby he had lived for years? From the first he had been right, though with a magnificent lunacy.

It was she, in very truth, who had been destined to slay his dragon. It was dead now, a vulgar, slimy monster, incapable of hurt, slain by the lightning flash of love, when his eyes met hers, a moment or two ago. In a confused way he realized this. He repeated mechanically:

"What a fool I've been! What a fool I've been!"

"Why?" asked Zora, who did not understand.

"Because--" he began, and then he stopped, finding no words. "I wonder whether G.o.d sent you?"

"I'm afraid it was only Septimus," she said with a smile.

"Septimus?"

He was startled. What could Septimus have to do with her coming? He rose again, and focusing his whirling senses on conventional things, wheeled an armchair to the fire, and led her to it, and took his seat near her in his office chair.

"Forgive me," he said, "but your coming seemed supernatural. I was dazed by the wonderful sight of you. Perhaps it's not you, after all. I may be going mad and have hallucinations. Tell me that it's really you."

"It's me, in flesh and blood--you can touch for yourself--and my sudden appearance is the simplest thing in the world."

"But I thought you were going to winter in Egypt?"

"So did I, until I reached Ma.r.s.eilles. This is how it was."

She told him of the tail of the little china dog, and of her talk with Septimus the night before.

"So I came to you," she concluded, "as soon as I decently could, this morning."

"And I owe you to Septimus," he said.

"Ah, I know! You ought to have owed me to yourself," she cried, misunderstanding him. "If I had known things were so terrible with you I would have come. I would, really. But I was misled by your letters. They were so hopeful. Don't reproach me."

"Reproach you! You who have given this crazy fellow so much! You who come to me all sweetness and graciousness, with heaven in your eyes, after having been dragged across Europe and made to sacrifice your winter of suns.h.i.+ne, just for my sake! Ah, no! It's myself that I reproach."

"For what?" she asked.

"For being a fool, a crazy, blatant, self-centered fool My G.o.d!" he exclaimed, smiting the arm of his chair as a new view of things suddenly occurred to him. "How can you sit there--how have you suffered me these two years--without despising me? How is it that I haven't been the mock and byword of Europe? I must have been!"

He rose and walked about the room in great agitation.

"These things have all come crowding up together. One can't realize everything at once. 'Clem Sypher, Friend of Humanity!' How they must have jeered behind my back if they thought me sincere! How they must have despised me if they thought me nothing but an advertising quack! Zora Middlemist, for heaven's sake tell me what you have thought of me. What have you taken me for--a madman or a charlatan?"

"It is you that must tell me what has happened," said Zora earnestly. "I don't know. Septimus gave me to understand that the Cure had failed. He's never clear about anything in his own mind, and he's worse when he tries to explain it to others."

"Septimus," said Sypher, "is one of the children of G.o.d."

"But he's a little bit incoherent on earth," she rejoined, with a smile.

"What has really happened?"

Sypher drew a long breath and pulled himself up.

"I'm on the verge of a collapse. The Cure hasn't paid for the last two years. I hoped against hope. I flung thousands and thousands into the concern. The Jebusa Jones people and others out-advertised me, out-manoeuvered me at every turn. Now every bit of capital is gone, and I can't raise any more. I must go under."

Zora began, "I have a fairly large fortune--"

He checked her with a gesture, and looked at her clear and full.

"G.o.d bless you," he said. "My heart didn't lie to me at Monte Carlo when it told me that you were a great-souled woman. Tell me. Have you ever believed in the Cure in the sense that I believed in it?"

Zora returned his gaze. Here was no rhodomontading. The man was grappling with realities.

"No," she replied simply.

"Neither do I any longer," said Sypher. "There is no difference between it and any quack ointment you can buy at the first chemist's shop. That is why, even if I saw a chance of putting the concern on its legs again, I couldn't use your money. That is why I asked you, just now, what you have thought of me--a madman or a quack?"

"Doesn't the mere fact of my being here show you what I thought of you?"

"Forgive me," he said. "It's wrong to ask you such questions."

"It's worse than wrong. It's unnecessary."

He pa.s.sed his hands over his eyes, and sat down.

"I've gone through a lot to-day. I'm not quite myself, so you must forgive me if I say unnecessary things. G.o.d sent you to me this morning. Septimus was His messenger. If you hadn't appeared just now I think I should have gone into black madness."

"Tell me all about it," she said softly. "All that you care to tell. I am your nearest friend--I think."

"And dearest."