Septimus | Page 3

husband in
Ipswich while she was paying a polite visit to some distant cousins. She
had married him offhand, in a whirl of the senses. He was a handsome
blackguard, of independent means, and she had spent her nightmare of
a honeymoon at Brighton. On three occasions, during her
five-and-twenty years of existence, she had spent a golden week in
London. That was all she knew of the wide world. It was not very much.
Reading had given her a second-hand acquaintance with the doings of
various classes of mankind, and such pictures as she had seen had filled
her head with dreams of strange and wonderful places. But otherwise
she was ignorant, beautifully, childishly ignorant--and undismayed.
What was she going to do? Sensitive and responsive to beauty, filled
with artistic impulses, she could neither paint, act, sing, nor write pretty
little stories for the magazines. She had no special gift to develop. To
earn her living in a humdrum way she had no need. She had no high
Ibsenite notions of working out her own individuality. She had no
consuming passion for reforming any section of the universe. She had
no mission--that she knew of--to accomplish. Unlike so many of her
sex who yearn to be as men and go out into the world she had no inner
mandate to do anything, no ambition to be anything. She was simply a
great, rich flower, struggling through the shade to the sunlight, plenty
of sunlight, as much sunlight as the heavens could give her.
The Literary Man from London happened to be returning to town by
the train that carried Zora on the first stage of her pilgrimage. He
obtained her consent to travel up in the same carriage. He asked her to

what branch of human activity she intended to devote herself. She
answered that she was going to lie, anyhow, among the leaves. He
rebuked her.
"We ought," said he, "to justify our existence."
She drew herself up and flashed an indignant glance at him.
"I beg your pardon," he apologized. "You do justify yours."
"How?"
"You decorate the world. I was wrong. That is the true function of a
beautiful woman, and you fulfill it."
"I have in my bag," replied Zora slowly, and looking at him
steady-eyed, "a preventive against sea-sickness; I have a waterproof to
shelter me from rain; but what can I do to shield myself against silly
compliments?"
"Adopt the costume of the ladies of the Orient," said the Literary Man
from London, unabashed.
She laughed, although she detested him. He bent forward with
humorous earnestness. He had written some novels, and now edited a
weekly of precious tendencies and cynical flavor.
"I am a battered old man of thirty-five," said he, "and I know what I am
talking about. If you think you are going to wander at a loose end about
Europe without men paying you compliments and falling in love with
you and making themselves generally delightful, you're traveling under
a grievous hallucination."
"What you say," retorted Zora, "confirms me in my opinion that men
are an abominable nuisance. Why can't they let a poor woman go about
in peace?"
The train happened to be waiting at Clapham Junction. A spruce young
man, passing by on the platform, made a perceptible pause by the

window, his eyes full on her. She turned her head impatiently.
Rattenden laughed.
"Dear lady," said he, "I must impart to you the elements of wisdom.
Miss Keziah Skaffles, with brain cordage for hair, and monoliths for
teeth, and a box of dominoes for a body, can fool about unmolested
among the tribes of Crim Tartary. She doesn't worry the Tartars. But,
permit me to say it, as you are for the moment my disciple, a beautiful
woman like yourself, radiating feminine magnetism, worries a man
exceedingly. You don't let him go about in peace, so why should he let
you?"
"I think," said Zora, as the train moved on, "that Miss Keziah Skaffles
is very much to be envied, and that this is a very horrid conversation."
She was offended in her provincial-bred delicacy. It was enough to
make her regard herself with repulsion. She took up the fashion paper
she had bought at the station--was she not intending to run delicious
riot among the dressmakers and milliners of London?--and regarding
blankly the ungodly waisted ladies in the illustrations, determined to
wear a wig and paint her face yellow, and black out one of her front
teeth, so that she should not worry the Tartars.
"I am only warning you against possible dangers," said Rattenden
stiffly. He did not like his conversation to be called horrid.
"To the race of men?"
"No, to yourself."
She laughed scornfully. "No fear of that. Why does every man think
himself