Part 25 (1/2)

”Well, I wash my hands of them,” said Zora with a sigh, as if bereft of dear responsibilities. ”No doubt they're happy in their own way.”

And that, for a long time, was the end of the matter. The house, cleaned and polished, glittered like the instrument room of a man-of-war, and no master or mistress came to bestow on Wiggleswick's toil the meed of their approbation. The old man settled down again to well-earned repose, and the house grew dusty and dingy again, and dustier and dingier as the weeks went on.

It has been before stated that things happen slowly in Nunsmere, even the reawakening of Zora's nostalgia for the Great World and Life and the Secrets of the Earth. But things do happen there eventually, and the time came when Zora found herself once again too big for the little house. She missed Emmy's periodical visits. She missed the regulation of Septimus. She missed her little motor expeditions with Sypher, who had sold his car and was about to sell ”The Kurhaus, Kilburn Priory.” The Cure seemed to have transformed itself from his heart to his nerves. He talked of it--or so it appeared to her--with more braggadocio than enthusiasm. He could converse of little else. It was going to smash Jebusa Jones's Cuticle Remedy to the shreds of its ointment boxes. The deepening vertical line between the man's brows she did not notice, nor did she interpret the wistful look in his eyes when he claimed her help. She was tired of the Cure and the Remedy and Sypher's fantastic need of her as ally. She wanted Life, real, quivering human Life. It was certainly not to be found in Nunsmere, where faded lives were laid away in lavender. For sheer sensations she began to tolerate the cynical a.n.a.lysis of the Literary Man from London. She must go forth on her journeyings again. She had already toyed with the idea when, with Septimus's aid, she had mapped out voyages round the world. Now she must follow it in strenuous earnest. The Callenders had cabled her an invitation to come out at once to Los Angeles. She cabled back an acceptance.

”So you're going away from me?” said Sypher, when she announced her departure.

There was a hint of reproach in his voice which she resented.

”You told me in Monte Carlo that I ought to have a mission in life. I can't find it here, so I'm going to seek one in California. What happens in this Sleepy Hollow of a place that a live woman can concern herself with?”

”There's Sypher's Cure--”

”My dear Mr. Sypher!” she laughed protestingly.

”Oh,” said he, ”you are helping it on more than you imagine. I'm going through a rough time, but with you behind me, as I told you before, I know I shall win. If I turn my head round, when I'm sitting at my desk, I have a kind of fleeting vision of you hovering over my chair. It puts heart and soul into me, and gives me courage to make desperate ventures.”

”As I'm only there in the spirit, it doesn't matter whether the bodily I is in Nunsmere or Los Angeles.”

”How can I tell?” said he, with one of his swift, clear glances. ”I meet you in the body every week and carry back your spirit with me. Zora Middlemist,” he added abruptly, after a pause, ”I implore you not to leave me.”

He leaned his arm on the mantelpiece from which Septimus had knocked the little china dog, and looked down earnestly at her, as she sat on the chintz-covered sofa behind the tea-table. At her back was the long cas.e.m.e.nt window, and the last gleams of the wintry sun caught her hair. To the man's visionary fancy they formed an aureole.

”Don't go, Zora.”

She was silent for a long, long time, as if held by the spell of the man's pleading. Her face softened adorably and a tenderness came into the eyes which he could not see. A mysterious power seemed to be lifting her towards him. It was a new sensation, pleasurable, like floating down a stream with the water murmuring in her ears. Then, suddenly, as if startled to vivid consciousness out of a dream, she awakened, furiously indignant.

”Why shouldn't I go? Tell me once and for all, why?”

She expected what any woman alive might have expected save the chosen few who have the great gift of reading the souls of the poet and the visionary; and Clem Sypher, in his way, was both. She braced her nerves to hear the expected. But the poet and the visionary spoke.

It was the old story of the Cure, his divine mission to spread the healing unguent over the suffering earth. Voices had come to him as they had come to the girl at Domremy, and they had told him that through Zora Middlemist, and no other, was his life's mission to be accomplished.

To her it was anticlimax. Reaction forced a laugh against her will. She leaned back among the sofa cus.h.i.+ons.

”Is that all?” she said, and Sypher did not catch the significance of the words. ”You seem to forget that the role of Mascotte is not a particularly active one. It's all very well for you, but I have to sit at home and twirl my thumbs. Have you ever tried that by way of soul-satisfying occupation?

Don't you think you're just a bit--egotistical?”

He relaxed the tension of his att.i.tude with a sigh, thrust his hands into his pockets and sat down.

”I suppose I am. When a man wants something with all the strength of his being and thinks of nothing else day or night, he develops a colossal selfishness. It's a form of madness, I suppose. There was a man called Bernard Palissy who had it, and made everybody sacrifice themselves to his idea. I've no right to ask you to sacrifice yourself to mine.”

”You have the right of friends.h.i.+p,” said Zora, ”to claim my interest in your hopes and fears, and that I've given you and shall always give you.

But beyond that, as you say, you have no right.”

He rose, with a laugh. ”I know. It's as logical as a proposition of Euclid.

But all the same I feel I have a higher right, beyond any logic. There are all kinds of phenomena in life which have nothing whatsoever to do with reason. You have convinced my reason that I'm an egotistical dreamer. But nothing you can do or say will ever remove the craving for you that I have here ”--and he thumped his big chest--”like hunger.”

When he had gone Zora thought over the scene with more disturbance of mind than she appreciated. She laughed to herself at Sypher's fantastic claim.