Septimus | Page 2

and curvilinear for
reputable good looks. She towered over Nunsmere. Her presence
disturbed the sedateness of the place. She was a wrong note in its
harmony.
Mrs. Oldrieve sighed. She was small and colorless. Her husband, a wild
explorer, a tornado of a man, had been killed by a buffalo. She was
afraid that Zora took after her father. Her younger daughter Emmy had
also inherited some of the Oldrieve restlessness and had gone on the
stage. She was playing now in musical comedy in London.
"I don't see why you should not be happy here, Zora," she remarked,
"but if you want to go, you must. I used to say the same to your poor,
dear father."

"I've been very good, haven't I?" said Zora. "I've been the model young
widow and lived as demurely as if my heart were breaking with sorrow.
But now, I can't stand it any longer. I'm going out to see the world."
"You'll soon marry again, dear, and that's one comfort."
Zora brought her hands down passionately to her sides.
"Never. Never--do you hear, mother? Never. I'm going out into the
world, to get to the heart of the life I've never known. I'm going to
live."
"I don't see how you are going to 'live,' dear, without a man to take care
of you," said Mrs. Oldrieve, on whom there occasionally flashed an
eternal verity.
"I hate men. I hate the touch of them--the very sight of them. I'm going
to have nothing more to do with them for the rest of my natural life. My
dear mother!" and her voice broke, "haven't I had enough to do with
men and marriage?"
"All men aren't like Edward Middlemist," Mrs. Oldrieve argued as she
counted the rows of her knitting.
"How am I to know that? How could anyone have told that he was what
he was? For heaven's sake don't talk of it. I had almost forgotten it all
in this place."
She shuddered and, turning to the window, stared into the sunset.
"Lavender has its uses," said Mrs. Oldrieve.
Here again it must be urged on Zora's behalf that she had reason for her
misanthropy. It is not cheerful for a girl to discover within twenty-four
hours of her wedding that her husband is a hopeless drunkard, and to
see him die of delirium tremens within six weeks. An experience so
vivid, like lightning must blast something in a woman's conception of
life. Because one man's kisses reeked of whisky the kisses of all male

humanity were anathema.
After a long spell of silence she came and laid her cheek against her
mother's.
"This is the very last time we'll speak of it, dear. I'll lock the skeleton in
its cupboard and throw away the key."
She went upstairs to dress and came down radiant. At dinner she spoke
exultingly of her approaching freedom. She would tear off her widow's
weeds and deck herself in the flower of youth. She would plunge into
the great swelling sea of Life. She would drink sunshine and fill her
soul with laughter. She would do a million hyperbolic things, the
mention of which mightily confused her mother. "I, my dear," said the
hen in the fairy tale, "never had the faintest desire to get into water." So,
more or less, said Mrs. Oldrieve.
"Will you miss me very dreadfully?" asked Zora.
"Of course," but her tone was so lacking in conviction that Zora
laughed.
"Mother, you know very well that Cousin Jane will be a more
sympathetic companion. You've been pining for her all this time."
Cousin Jane held distinct views on the cut of under-clothes for the
deserving poor, and as clouds disperse before the sun so did household
dust before her presence. Untidiness followed in Zora's steps, as it does
in those of the physically large, and Cousin Jane disapproved of her
thoroughly. But Mrs. Oldrieve often sighed for Cousin Jane as she had
never sighed for Zora, Emily, or her husband. She was more than
content with the prospect of her companionship.
"At any rate, my dear," she said that evening, as she paused, candle in
hand, by her bedroom door, "at any rate I hope you'll do nothing that is
unbecoming to a gentlewoman."
Such was her benison.

Zora bumped her head against the oak beam that ran across her
bedroom ceiling.
"It's quite true," she said to herself, "the place is too small for me, I
don't fit."
* * * * *
What she was going to do in this wide world into whose glories she
was about to enter she had but the vaguest notion. All to her was the
Beautiful Unknown. Narrow means had kept her at Cheltenham and
afterwards at Nunsmere, all her life. She had met her