Part 8 (1/2)
”I'm afraid I'm shockingly ignorant,” said Zora.
”So am I,” said Septimus.
”Good heavens!” cried Sypher, bringing both hands down on the table, tragically. ”Don't you ever read your advertis.e.m.e.nts?”
”I'm afraid not,” said Zora.
”No,” said Septimus.
Before his look of mingled amazement and reproach they felt like Sunday-school children taken to task for having skipped the Kings of Israel.
”Well,” said Sypher, ”this is the reward we get for spending millions of pounds and the shrewdest brains in the country for the benefit of the public! Have you ever considered what anxious thought, what consummate knowledge of human nature, what dearly bought experience go to the making of an advertis.e.m.e.nt? You'll go miles out of your way to see a picture or a piece of sculpture that hasn't cost a man half the trouble and money to produce, and you'll not look at an advertis.e.m.e.nt of a thing vital to your life, though it is put before your eyes a dozen times a day. Here's my card, and here are some leaflets for you to read at your leisure. They will repay perusal.”
He drew an enormous pocketbook from his breast pocket and selected two cards and two pamphlets, which he laid on the table. Then he arose with an air of suave yet offended dignity. Zora, seeing that the man, in some strange way, was deeply hurt, looked up at him with a conciliatory smile.
”You mustn't bear me any malice, Mr. Sypher, because I'm so grateful to you for saving us from these swindling people.”
When Zora smiled into a man's eyes, she was irresistible. Sypher's pink face relaxed.
”Never mind,” he said. ”I'll send you all the advertis.e.m.e.nts I can lay my hands on in the morning. Au revoir.”
He raised his hat and went away. Zora laughed across the table.
”What an extraordinary person!”
”I feel as if I had been talking to a typhoon,” said Septimus.
They went to the theater that evening, and during the first entr'acte strolled into the rooms. Except the theater the Casino administration provides nothing that can allure the visitor from the only purpose of the establishment. Even the bar at the end of the atrium could tempt n.o.body not seriously parched with thirst. It is the most comfortless pleasure-house in Europe. You are driven, deliberately, in desperation into the rooms.
Zora and Septimus were standing by the decorous hush of a _trente et quarante_ table, when they were joined by Mr. Clem Sypher. He greeted them like old acquaintances.
”I reckoned I should meet you sometime to-night. Winning?”
”We never play,” said Zora.
Which was true. A woman either plunges feverishly into the vice of gambling or she is kept away from it by her inborn economic sense of the uses of money. She cannot regard it like a man, as a mere amus.e.m.e.nt. Light loves are somewhat in the same category. Hence many misunderstandings between the s.e.xes. Zora found the amus.e.m.e.nt profitless, the vice degraded. So, after her first evening, she played no more. Septimus did not count.
”We never play,” said Zora.
”Neither do I,” said Sypher.
”The real way to enjoy Monte Carlo is to regard these rooms as non-existent. I wish they were.”
”Oh, don't say that,” Sypher exclaimed quickly. ”They are most useful. They have a wisely ordained purpose. They are the meeting-place of the world. I come here every year and make more acquaintances in a day than I do elsewhere in a month. Soon I shall know everybody and everybody will know me, and they'll take away with them to Edinburgh and Stockholm and Uruguay and Tunbridge Wells--to all corners of the earth--a personal knowledge of the cure.”
”Oh--I see. From that point of view--” said Zora.
”Of course. What other could there be? You see the advantage? It makes the thing human. It surrounds it with personality. It shows that 'Friend of Humanity' isn't a cant phrase. They recommend the cure to their friends.
'Are you sure it's all right?' they are asked. 'Of course it is,' they can reply. _'I know the man, Clem Sypher himself.'_ And the friends are convinced and go about saying they know a man who knows Clem Sypher, and so the thing spreads like a s...o...b..ll. Have you read the pamphlet?”