Part 22 (1/2)

”Have you had anything to eat?”

Emmy nodded.

”Have you slept?”

”That's a thing I shall never do again,” she said querulously. ”How can you ask?”

”If you don't sleep, you'll get ill and die,” said Septimus.

”So much the better,” she replied.

”I wish I could help you. I do wish I could help you.”

”No one can help me. Least of all you. What could a man do in any case?

And, as for you, my poor Septimus, you want as much taking care of as I do.”

The depreciatory tone did not sting him as it would have done another man, for he knew his incapacity. He had also gone through the memory of Moses's rod the night before.

”I wonder whether Wiggleswick could be of any use?” he said, more brightly.

Emmy laughed dismally. Wiggleswick! To no other mind but Septimus's could such a suggestion present itself.

”Then what's to be done?”

”I don't know,” said Emmy.

They looked at each other blankly, two children face to face with one of the most terrible of modern social problems, aghast at their powerlessness to grapple with it. It is a situation which wrings the souls of the strong with an agony worse than death. It crushes the weak, or drives them mad, and often brings them, fragile wisps of human semblance, into the criminal dock. Shame, disgrace, social pariahdom; unutterable pain to dear ones; an ever-gaping wound in fierce family pride; a stain on two generations; an incurable malady of a once blithe spirit; woe, disaster, and ruin--such is the punishment awarded by men and women to her who disobeys the social law and, perhaps with equal lack of volition, obeys the law physiological. The latter is generally considered the greater crime.

These things pa.s.sed through Septimus's mind. His ignorance of the ways of what is, after all, an indifferent, self-centered world exaggerated them.

”You know what it means?” he said tonelessly.

”If I didn't, should I be here?”

He made one last effort to persuade her to take Zora into her confidence.

His nature abhorred deceit, to say nothing of the High Treason he was committing; a rudiment of common sense also told him that Zora was Emmy's natural helper and protector. But Emmy had the obstinacy of a weak nature.

She would die rather than Zora should know. Zora would never understand, would never forgive her. The disgrace would kill her mother.

”If you love Zora, as you say you do, you would want to save her pain,”

said Emmy finally.

So Septimus was convinced. But once more, what was to be done?

”You had better go away, my poor Septimus,” she said, bending forward listlessly, her hands in her lap. ”You see you're not a bit of use now. If you had been a different sort of man--like anyone else--one who could have helped me--I shouldn't have told you anything about it. I'll send for my old dresser at the theater. I must have a woman, you see. So you had better go away.”

Septimus walked up and down the room deep in thought. A spinster-looking lady in a cheap blouse and skirt, an inmate of the caravanserai, put her head through the door and, with a disapproving sniff at the occupants, retired. At length Septimus broke the silence:

”You said last night that you believed G.o.d sent me to you. I believe so too. So I'm not going to leave you.”

”But what can you do?” asked Emmy, ending the sentence on a hysterical note which brought tears and a fit of sobbing. She buried her head in her arms on the sofa-end, and her young shoulders shook convulsively. She was an odd mixture of bravado and baby helplessness. To leave her to fight her terrible battle with the aid only of a theater dresser was an impossibility. Septimus looked at her with mournful eyes, hating his futility. Of what use was he to any G.o.d-created being? Another man, strong and capable, any vital, deep-chested fellow that was pa.s.sing along Southampton Row at that moment, would have known how to take her cares on his broad shoulders and ordain, with kind imperiousness, a course of action. But he--he could only clutch his fingers nervously and shuffle with his feet, which of itself must irritate a woman with nerves on edge. He could do nothing. He could suggest nothing save that he should follow her about like a sympathetic spaniel. It was maddening. He walked to the window and looked out into the unexhilarating street, all that was man in him in revolt against his ineffectuality.