Clem Sypher sat in an arm-chair and looked into the fire until it went out.  For the first time in his life he did not know what he wanted.

CHAPTER XVII

The days that followed were darkened by overwhelming anxieties, so that he speculated little as to the Ultimately Desired.  A chartered accountant sat in the office at Moorgate Street and shed around him the gloom of statistics.  Unless a miracle happened the Cure was doomed.

It is all very well to seat a little nigger on the safety-valve if the end of the journey is in sight.  The boiler may just last out the strain.  But to suppose that he will sit there in permanent security to himself and the ship for an indefinite time is an optimism unwarranted by the general experience of this low world.  Sypher’s Cure could not stand the strain of the increased advertisement.  Shuttleworth found a dismal pleasure in the fulfilment of his prophecy.  A reduction in price had not materially affected the sales.  The Jebusa Jones people had lowered the price of the Cuticle Remedy and still undersold the Cure.  During the year the Bermondsey works had been heavily mortgaged.  The money had all been wasted on a public that had eyes and saw not, that had ears and heard not the simple gospel of the Friend of Humanity—­“Try Sypher’s Cure.”  In the midst of the gloom Shuttleworth took the opportunity of deprecating the unnecessary expense of production, never having so greatly dared before.  Only the best and purest materials had been possible for the divine ointment.  By using second qualities, a great saving could be effected without impairing the efficacy of the Cure.  Thus Shuttleworth.  Sypher blazed into holy anger, as if he had been counseled to commit sacrilege.

Radical reforms were imperative, if the Cure was to be saved.  He spent his nights over vast schemes only to find the fatal flaw in the cold light of the morning.  This angered him.  It seemed that the sureness of his vision had gone.  Something strange, uncanny had happened within him, he knew not what.  It had nothing to do with his intellectual force, his personal energy.  It had nothing to do with his determination to win through and restore the Cure to its former position in the market.  It was something subtle, spiritual.

The memory of the blistered heel lived with him.  The slight doubt cast by Septimus on Zora’s faith remained disturbingly at the back of his mind.  Yet he clung passionately to his belief.  If it were not Heaven-sent, then was he of men most miserable.

Never had he welcomed the sight of Nunsmere more than the next Saturday afternoon when the trap turned off the highroad and the common came into view.  The pearls and faint blues of the sky, the tender mist softening the russet of the autumn trees, the gray tower of the little church, the red roofs of the cottages dreaming in their old-world gardens, the quiet green of the common with the children far off at play and the lame donkey watching them in philosophic content—­all came like the gift of a very calm and restful God to the tired man’s eyes.