CHAPTER VIII
MISS BRENDA ARRIVES, AND PHADRIG THE EGYPTIAN PROPHESIES
"Now, this is just too sweet of you, Niti, to come so soon after we gothere. In five minutes more I should have written you a note, asking youand the Professor to come and take lunch with us to-morrow, and hereyou've anticipated me, so we have the pleasure of seeing you all thesooner."
These were the words with which Miss Brenda van Huysman greeted Nitocrisas she entered the drawing-room of the suite of apartments which formedher home for the time being in London. I say her home advisedly,because, although her father and mother also occupied it, she wasvirtually, if not nominally, mistress undisputed of the splendidcamping-place.
She was an almost perfect type of the highly developed, highly educatedAmerican girl of to-day, a marvellous compound of intense energy andlanguorous grace. She had done as brilliantly at Vassar as Nitocris haddone at Girton and London, and she had also rowed stroke in the Ladies'Eight, and was champion fencer of the College. Yet as far as herphysical presence was concerned, she was just a "Gibson Girl" of thedaintiest type--fair-skinned, blue-eyed, golden-haired--her hair had adarker gleam of bronze in it in certain lights--exquisitely mouldedfeatures which seemed capable of every sort of expression within a fewchanging moments, and a poise of head and carriage of body which onlyperfect health and the most scientific physical training can produce. Ina word, she was one of those miraculous developments of femininity whichNature seems to have made a speciality for the particular benefit of theyounger branch of the Anglo-Saxon race. As for her dress--well, theshortest and best way to describe that is to say that it exactly suitedher.
As she spoke, and their hands met, Mrs van Huysman got up and cametowards them, saying:
"Good afternoon, Miss Marmion. We were real glad to get your 'phone, andit's good to see you again. How's the Professor? Too busy to come withyou, I suppose, as usual. We see he's going to lecture before the RoyalSociety on the tenth, and I reckon we shall all be there to listen tohim. I shouldn't wonder but there'll be trouble as usual between him andmy husband. It seems a pity that two such clever men should waste somuch time in scrapping over these scientific things, which don't seem tomatter half a cent, anyhow."
"Oh, I don't know," laughed Nitocris, as they shook hands. "You see, Mrsvan Huysman, _they_ do think it matters a great deal, and, besides, I'mquite sure that they both enjoy it very thoroughly. It's their way oftaking recreation, you see, just as a couple of pitmen will try andpound one another to pieces, just for the fun of the thing. It's only acase of intellectual fisticuffs, after all."
"Why, certainly," said Brenda, as she rang for tea; "I'm just sure thatPoppa never has such a good time as when he thinks he's tearing one ofProfessor Marmion's theories into little pieces and dancing on them, andI shouldn't wonder if Professor Marmion didn't feel about the same."
"I dare say he does," said Nitocris, remembering what had happened inthe morning; "it's only one of the thousand unexplained puzzles of humannature. As you know, my father hates fighting in the physical sense witha hatred which is almost fanatical, and yet, when it comes to a battleof wits, he's like a schoolboy in a football match."
"It's just another development of the same thing," said Brenda. "Man wasborn a fighting animal, and I guess he'll remain one till the end oftime; and with all our progress in civilisation and science, and allthat, the man who doesn't enjoy a fight of some sort isn't of very muchaccount. Now, here's tea, which is just now a more interesting subject.Sit down, and we'll talk about vanities. I'm just perishing to see whatRegent Street and Bond Street are like. I don't think I've spent tendollars in London yet. I'm twenty-two to-morrow, Niti, and mygrandfather, who is just about the best grandfather a girl ever had,cabled across to the Napier people, and they've sent round the dandiestsix-cylinder, thirty-horse landaulette that you ever saw, even inCentral Park, and a driver to match--only I shan't have much use forhim, except to look after the automobile. I'll run you round in herafter tea, and you can reintroduce me to the stores--I mean shops; Iforgot we were in London."
Mrs van Huysman, as usual, took a back seat while her daughter dispensedtea, and did most of the talking. She was a lady of moderateproportions, and, unlike a good many American women, she had kept hergood looks until very close on fifty. She was full of shrewd commonsense, but she had been born in a different generation and in adifferent grade of life, and therefore her attire inclined rather tomagnificence than to elegance, in spite of her daughter's restraininghand and frankly expressed counsel. She had a profound respect for herhusband's attainments without in the least understanding them, and shevery naturally held an unshakable belief that no quite ordinary woman,as she called herself, had ever been miraculously blessed with such adaughter as she had.
Nitocris was just beginning her second cup of tea when the door openedand her father's foeman in the arena of Science came in. He was the veryantithesis of Professor Marmion; a trifle below middle height,square-shouldered and strongly built, with thick, iron-grey hair, andsomewhat heavy features which would have been almost commonplace but forthe broad, square forehead above them, and the brilliant steel-greyeyes which glittered restlessly under the thick brows, and also acertain sensitiveness about the nostrils and lips which seemed curiouslyout of keeping with the strength of the lower jaw. His whole beingsuggested a combination of restless energy and inflexible determination.If he had not been one of America's greatest scientists, he wouldprobably have been one of her most ruthless and despotic Dollar Lords.
"Ah, Miss Marmion, good afternoon! Pleased to see you," he saidheartily, as Nitocris got up and held out her hand. "Very kind of you tolook us up so soon. How's the Professor? Well, I hope. I see he'sscheduled for a lecture before the Royal Society. He's got somethingstartling to tell us about, I hope. It's some time since we had anythingof a scientific scrap between us."
"And therefore," said Nitocris, as she took his hand, "I suppose you arejust dying for another one."
"Well, not quite dying," laughed the Professor. "Don't look half dead,do I? Just curious, that's all. You can't give me any idea of thesubject, I suppose?"
"I could, Professor," she replied, with a malicious twinkle in her eye,because she had already had a talk with her father on the altered titleof the lecture, "but if I did, you know, I should only, as we say inEngland, be spoiling sport. However, I don't think I shall be playingtraitor if I tell you to prepare for a little surprise."
Professor van Huysman's manner changed instantly, and the warrior soulof the scientist was in arms.
"Oh yes! A surprise, eh?" he said, with something between a snort and asnarl in his voice. "Then I guess----"
"Poppa, sit down and have some tea," said his daughter, quietly butfirmly.
He sat down without a word, took his cup of tea and a slice of bread andbutter; listened in silence as long as he could bear the entirelyfeminine conversation on a subject in which he hadn't the remotestinterest, and then he put his cup down with a little jerk, got up with abigger one, and said, holding out his hand to Miss Nitocris:
"Well, Miss Marmion, I shall have to say good afternoon. You see we'veonly just reached this side, and I've got quite a lot of things toattend to. Bring your father along to dinner to-morrow night, if youcan; I shall be glad to meet him again. You needn't be afraid: we shan'tshoot."
When he had gone, Brenda rang and ordered the motor-car to be ready inhalf an hour. Then they finished their tea and talk, and Brenda andNitocris went and put on their wraps--not the imitation of the mediaevalarmour which is used for serious motor-driving, but just dust-cloaks andmushrooms, both of which Brenda lent to her friend. As they came backthrough the drawing-room, she said to her mother:
"Well, Mamma, the car's ready, I believe. Won't you join us in a littlerun round town?"
"When I want to take a run into the Other World in one of those infernalmachines of yours, Brenda," said her mother, with a mild touch ofsarcasm in her tone, "I'll ask you to let me come. This afternoon I fee
ljust a little bit too comfortable for a journey like that."
"It's a curious thing," said Brenda, as they were going down in thelift, "Mamma's as healthy a woman as ever lived, and she's American too,and yet I believe she'd as soon get on top of a broncho as into anautomobile."
The car was waiting for them in the courtyard under the glass awning. Asmart-looking young _chauffeur_ in orthodox costume touched his cap andset the engine going. The gold-laced porters handed them into the twofront seats, and the _chauffeur_ effaced himself in the _tonneau_. MissBrenda put one hand on the steering-wheel and the other on the firstspeed lever, and the car slid away, as though it had been running onice, towards the great arched entrance.
As they turned to the left on their way westward, a shabbily dressed manand woman stepped back from the roadway on to the pavement. For a momentthey stared at the car in mute astonishment; then the man gripped thewoman tightly by the arm and led her away out of the ever-passingthrong, whispering to her in Coptic:
"Did'st thou see her, Neb-Anat--the Queen--the Queen in the living fleshsitting there in the self-mover, the devil-machine? To what unholythings has she come--she, the daughter of the great Rameses! But it maybe that she is held in bondage under the spell of the evil powers thatcreated these devil-chariots which pant like souls in agony and breathewith the breath of Hell. She must be rescued, Neb-Anat."
"Rescued?" echoed the woman, in a tone that was half scorn and halffear. "Is it so long ago that thou hast forgotten how we tried to rescueher mummy from the hands of these infidels? Now, behold, she is aliveagain, living in the midst of this vast, foul city of the infidels,clothed after the fashion of their women, and yet still beautiful andsmiling. Pent-Ah, didst thou not even see her laugh as she rode past us?Alas! I tell thee that our Queen is laid under some awful spell,doubtless because she has in some way incurred the displeasure of theHigh Gods, and if that is so, not even the Master himself could rescueher. What, then, shall we do?"
"Thy saying is near akin to blasphemy, Neb-Anat," he murmured in reply,"and yet there may be a deep meaning in it. Nevertheless, to-night, nay,this hour, the Master must know of what we have seen."
They walked along, conversing in murmurs, as far as Waterloo Bridge,then they turned and crossed it and walked down Waterloo Road into theBorough Road, and then turned off into a narrow, grimy street whichended in a small court whose three sides were formed of wretched houses,upon which many years of misery, poverty, and crime had set theirunmistakable stamp. They crossed the court diagonally and entered ahouse in the right-hand corner. They went up the worn, carpetless stairswith a rickety handrail on one side and the torn, peeling paper on theother, and stopped before a door which opened on to a narrow landing onthe first floor. Pent-Ah knocked with his knuckles on the panel, firstthree times quickly, and then twice slowly. Then came the sound of thedrawing of a bolt, and the door opened.
They went in with shuffling feet and crouching forms, and the womanclosed the door behind her. A tall, gaunt, yellow-skinned man, his headperfectly bald and the lower part of his face covered with a heavy whitebeard and moustache, faced them. His clothing was half Western, halfOriental. A pair of thin, creased, grey tweed trousers met, or almostmet, a pair of Turkish slippers, showing an inch of bare, lean ankle inbetween. His body was covered with a dirty yellow robe of fine woollenstuff, whose ragged fringe reached to his knees, and a faded red scarfwas folded twice round his neck, one end hanging down his breast and theother down his back. As Pent-Ah closed the door and bolted it, he saidto him in Coptic:
"So ye have returned! What news of the Queen? For without that surely yewould not have dared to come before me."
He spoke the words as a Pharaoh might have spoken them to a slave, andas though the bare, low-ceiled, shabby room, with its tawdry Orientalcurtains and ornaments, had been an audience-chamber in the palace ofPepi in old Memphis, for this was he who had once been Anemen-Ha, HighPriest of Ptah, in the days when Nitocris was Queen of the Two Kingdoms.
"We have seen her once more, Lord," said Pent-Ah, "scarce an hour ago,dressed after the fashion of these heathen English, and seated in adevil-chariot beside another woman, as fair almost as she. It is true,Lord, even as we said, that our Lady the Queen is in the flesh again,and yet she knows us not. It may be that the High Gods have laid somespell upon her."
"Spell or no spell, the mission which is ours is the same," was thereply. "It is plain that a miracle has been worked. The Mummy whichwe--I as well as you--were charged to recover and restore to itsresting-place, has vanished. The Queen has returned to live yet anotherlife in the flesh, but the command remains the same. Mummy or woman, sheshall be taken back to her ancient home to await the day when the DivineAssessors shall determine the penalty of her guilt. The task will behard, yet nothing is impossible to those who serve the High Godsfaithfully. Ye have done well to bring me this news promptly. Here ismoney to pay for your living and your work. Watch well and closely. Knowevery movement that the Queen makes, and every day inform me by word orin writing of all her actions. On the fourth day from now come here anhour before midnight. Now go."
He counted out five sovereigns to Pent-Ah. Their glitter contrastedstrangely with the shabby squalor of the room and the poverty of his owndress, but he gave them as though they had been coppers. Pent-Ah tookthem with a low obeisance, and dropped them one by one into a pocket ina canvas belt which he wore under his ragged waistcoat. Neb-Anat lookedat them greedily as they disappeared.
"The Master's commands shall be obeyed, and the High Gods shall befaithfully served," said Pent-Ah, as he straightened himself up again."From door to door the Queen shall be watched, and, if it be permitted,Neb-Anat shall become her slave, and so the watch shall be made closer.Is not that so, Neb-Anat?"
"The will of the Master is the law of his slave," she replied, sinkingalmost to her knees.
"It is enough," replied the Master, who was known to the few who knewhim as Phadrig Amena, a Coptic dealer in ancient Egyptian relics andcurios in a humble way of business. "Serve faithfully, both of you, andyour reward shall not be wanting. Farewell, and the peace of the HighGods be on you."
When they had gone he sat down to the old bureau, took out a sheaf ofpapers, some white and new, others yellow-grey with age, and yet otherswhich were sheets of the ancient papyrus. The writing on these was inthe old Hermetic character; of the rest some were in cursive Greek andsome in Coptic. A few only were in English, and about half a dozen inRussian. He read them all with equal ease, and although he knew theircontents almost by heart, he pored over them for a good half-hour withscarcely so much as a movement of his lips. Then he put them away andlocked the drawer with one of a small bunch of curiously shaped keyswhich were fastened round his waist by a chain. When he had concealedthem in his girdle, he got up and began to pace the floor of themiserable room with long, stately, silent steps as though the dirty,cracked, uneven boards had been the gleaming squares of alternate blackand white marble of the floor of the Sanctuary in the now ruined Templeof Ptah in old Memphis. Then, after a while, with head thrown proudlyback and hands clasped behind him, he began to speak in the AncientTongue, as though he were addressing some invisible presence.
"Yes, truly the Powers of Evil and Darkness have conquered through manygenerations of men, but the days of the High Gods are unending, and theclimax of Fate is not yet. Not yet, O Nitocris, is the murderous crimeof thy death-bridal forgotten. The souls of those who died by thy handin the banqueting chamber of Pepi still call for vengeance out of theglooms of Amenti. The thirst of hate and the hunger of love are stillunslaked and unsatisfied. I, Phadrig, the poor trader, who was onceAnemen-Ha, hate thee still, and the Russian warrior-prince, who was onceMenkau-Ra, shall love thee yet again with a love as fierce as that ofold, and so, if the High Gods permit, between love and hate shalt thoupass to the doom that thou hast earned."
He paused in his walk and stood staring blankly out of the grimy littlewindow with eyes which seemed to see through and beyond thesmoke-blackened
walls of the wretched houses opposite, and away throughthe mists of Time to where a vast city of temples and palaces lay undera cloudless sky beside a mighty slow-flowing river, and his lips beganto move again as those of a man speaking in a dream:
"O Memphis, gem of the Ancient Land and home of a hundred kings, how isthy grandeur humbled and thy glory departed! Thy streets and broadplaces which once rang with the tramp of mighty hosts and echoed withthe songs of jubilant multitudes welcoming them home from victory areburied under the drifting desert sands; in the ruins of thy holy templesthe statues of the gods lie prone in the dust, and the owl rears herbrood on thy crumbling altars, and hoots to the moon where once rose thesolemn chant of priests and the sweet hymns of the Sacred Virgins; thejackal barks where once the mightiest monarchs of earth gave judgmentand received tribute; thy tombs are desecrated, and the mummies of kingsand queens and holy men have been ravished from them to adorn theunconsecrated halls of the museums of ignorant infidels; the heel of theheathen oppressor has stamped the fair flower of thy beauty into thedeep dust of defilement. Alas, what great evil have the sons anddaughters of Khem wrought that the High Gods should have visited themwith so sore a judgment! How long shall thy bright wings lie folded andidle, O Necheb, Bringer of Victory?"
A deep sigh came from his heaving breast as he turned away and began hiswalk again. Soon he spoke again, but now in a changed voice from whichthe note of exaltation had passed away:
"But it is of little use to brood over the lost glories of the past. Ourconcern is with that which is and that which may--nay, shall be. Who isthis Franklin Marmion, this wise man of the infidels? Who is he, and whowas he--since, by the changeless law of life and death, each man andwoman is a deathless soul which passes into the shadows only to returnre-garbed in the flesh to live and work through the interlocked cyclesof Eternal Destiny? Was he--ah Gods! was _he_ once Ma-Rim[=o]n, whosefootsteps in the days that are dead approached so nearly to thethreshold of the Perfect Knowledge, while mine, doubtless for the sin ofmy longing for mere earthly power and greatness, were caught and heldback in a web of my own weaving? And, if so, has he attained while Ihave lost?
"What if that strange tale which Pent-Ah and Neb-Anat told me of theirvisit to his house--told, as I thought, to hide their failure under aveil of lies--was true? If so, then he has passed the threshold andtaken a place only a little lower than the seats of the gods, a placethat I may not approach, barred by the penalty of my accursed folly andpride! Ah well, be it so or be it not, are not the fates of all men inthe hands of the High Gods who see all things? We see but a little, andthat little, with their help, we must do according to the faith and thehope that is in us."
At this moment there came a knock at the door. It opened at his bidding,and a dirty-faced, ragged-frocked little girl shuffled into the roomholding out a letter in her hard, grimy, claw-like hand.
"'Ere's somethin' as has just come for you, Mister Phadrig. Muvver toldme ter bring it up, and wot'll yer want for supper, and will yer give methe money?" she said in a piping monotone, still holding out her handafter he had taken the letter. He gave her sixpence, saying:
"Two eggs and some bread. I will make my coffee myself."
She took the coin and shuffled out quickly, for she went not a little inawe of this dark-faced foreign man from mysterious regions beyond herken, who was doubtless a magician of some sort, and could kill her orchange her into a rat by just breathing on her, if he wanted to.
Meantime Nitocris and Brenda were having what the latter called "aperfectly lovely time" in Regent Street and Bond Street and otherpurlieus of that London paradise which the genius of commerce hascreated for the delight of his richest and most lavish-handed votaries.Brenda spent her ten dollars and a few thousands more, and then, as itwas getting on to dinner-time and Nitocris absolutely refused to let herfather eat his meal alone, she ran her out to Wimbledon at a speed forwhich a mere man would have inevitably been fined, asked herself todinner, and made herself entirely delightful to the Professor.
But in spite of all her cunning wiles and winning ways she left inabsolute ignorance of the subject of the forthcoming lecture.