The Mummy and Miss Nitocris: A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension, Griffith [read with me .txt] 📗

Japan, and the ability to strike hard and instantly at sea, saved Europe, and perhaps the world, from something like a repetition of the Napoleonic wars."

"With Mister William Hohenzollern a Napoleon," added Professor van Huysman, with a half-suppressed snort. "It seems to me as though that gentleman had been spreading himself round Europe as German War-Lord so long that he's getting tired of playing at it, and 's just spoiling for a real fight."

"That is very possible," said Merrill; "but happily he has responsibilities, and even the German war party would not follow him as far as he would like to go, to say nothing of the Liberals and the Socialists. Personally, I must say that I think we have had a much more dangerous person, as far as the peace of the world is concerned, on the lawn of 'The Wilderness' this afternoon."

"Of course you mean that hateful Russian Prince who brought that equally hateful Adept, as he calls himself, with him," said Nitocris, with an unwonted harshness that made every one look up.

"Oh, Niti," exclaimed Brenda, "and I asked you to let me bring him!"

"I'm very sorry, dear," she replied quietly, but[Pg 146] with a smile of reassurance. "It was not your fault, of course. He may have been very nice to you, but I am obliged to say that the first moment I looked at him I was possessed by some inexplicable feeling of dislike, and even fear, although I certainly never hated or feared any one before. If I had met him before I got your note, I really think I should have asked you to spare us the honour. It seemed to me as though there was something uncanny about the man. It was very curious."

Her father looked up at her for a moment, wondering what would happen if he were to explain the mysterious antipathy there and then. The little theological discussion would look very small after such a revelation as that. But he, too, had had a revelation which the somewhat desultory conversation had done something to press home upon him. He had seen the advent of the Queen, and heard what she had said to Phadrig with other eyes and ears than his guests had done, for to them it had only been Nitocris who had gone to him and said a few inaudible words, which they had taken as a request for the conclusion of his "performance."

He had seen back through the mists of many centuries and recognised them as they had been, and he had learned that Oscarovitch the Russian had now entered the circle of the Queen's, and therefore his own, influence. A sudden anxiety for the safety of his darling Niti had awakened in his heart. He had seen the lust for possession flame in the man's eyes, and now that he knew[Pg 147] who he was—and had been—he determined that whatever other adventurer might set the world aflame, the Modern Skobeleff should not do it if he and his Royal ally on the Higher Plane could prevent it. His coming had been a curious coincidence, possibly a consequence of obscure causes; but, for some reason or other, he felt himself beginning to look with a more favourable eye on Commander Mark Merrill—perhaps because he was the impersonation of uncompromising hostility to everything that Oscarovitch represented.

Dinner had come to an end now, and so Nitocris took advantage of ending a conversation which bade fair to become somewhat awkward. She glanced round the table and rose, saying:

"Don't you think we've had polemics enough for one little dinner, Dad? There's a lovely moon, so we'll have our coffee on the verandah, and you and Mr van Huysman can settle the affairs of the universe comfortably over your pipes. Give Lord Leighton and Mr Merrill something to smoke, and we will join you when we have got some wraps."

When they got back from Nitocris's rooms Mrs van Huysman elected to take her coffee in a big, deep-seated armchair by the drawing-room window. She said that she had felt the sun a little, and might possibly indulge in forty winks—which she did within a few minutes of getting comfortably arranged in it. Then Nitocris took Brenda by the arm and walked her half-way down the lawn.[Pg 148]

"I want to take possession of Lord Leighton for about half an hour, dear, if you don't mind. I've got something very serious to say to him. Dad, with the characteristic cowardice of his sex, has left it to me to say. It's—well, it's about a mummy: a female mummy, or, at least, I suppose I ought to say a mummy that was once a female—about five thousand years ago."

"My dear Niti——"

"No, no, don't interrupt me, for goodness' sake. It's too serious. It is really. We've had something like a tragedy here in the last few days, and things seem to have been, as you would say, a good deal mixed up ever since. I don't understand it a bit; but they have been."

"But, my dear Niti, what on earth can you have to say to Lord Leighton about a—a female mummy? What possible interest can a five-thousand-year-old corpse have for him?"

"Don't, Brenda, don't—at least not just now! Wait till I've told you, and then you'll see," said Nitocris, pressing her arm closer to her side. "Lord Leighton is, as I think you know, an enthusiastic student of Egyptian antiquities. He was also, or thought he was, in love with my unworthy self. He found this mummy in a royal tomb at Memphis. He—well, I suppose, stole it—of course under the usual licence from the Khedive—and sent it home to Dad. Now comes the mystery. That was the mummy of Nitocris, the daughter of the great Rameses, and it was the dead image of my living self."[Pg 149]

"Oh, but, Niti—what do you mean?"

"I don't know, Brenda. I wish I did. All I do know is that it was stolen that very night out of Dad's study in the Old Wing, and that I've got to tell Lord Leighton all about it. I'm sure Dad could have told him much better, only somehow he seems afraid."

"Oh, is that all—just the stealing of what was perhaps a very valuable relic? They try to steal much fresher corpses than that in the States if there are dollars in the business."

"Don't be brutal, Brenda! I know you don't mean it, and it isn't like you. Now, listen. Before he went to Egypt this time Lord Leighton asked me to marry him. I said 'No,' and for two reasons. I knew that he liked me very much—he always has done—and poor Dad took his liking for love and encouraged him: but I'm a woman and, I know, that liking isn't love—and then I love some one else. And now he, I mean Lord Leighton—loves some one else. Turn your face to the moon. Yes, you know who the some one else is. I'm so glad, for I do think you——"

"Niti, you're talking arrant nonsense for an educated young woman. I've only known His Lordship for a day, and how can you——"

"Because female Bachelors of Science and graduates of Vassar, whatever stupid people may say, have hearts as well as intellects, dear, and so they know. I seem to have had a kind of sixth sense given to me to-day, and, when you met Lord Leighton, I saw it, and I believe you felt it.[Pg 150] I saw your eyes brighten and your face flush—only a little, but it did, and so did his. You know my belief in the Doctrine. You may have been lovers—perhaps wedded lovers—once upon a time, as they say in the fairy tales."

"How awful—no, I mean how wonderful—if it could only be true! And now, as you've told me all this, you might as well tell me who your some one else is."

"Really, Brenda, I thought you had more perception. He's there on the verandah smoking with your Lord Leighton."

"Oh! Then, of course, you're going to marry him?"

"I'm sorry to say Dad doesn't want me to. With all his genius and learning he is a perfect child in that sort of thing. He has no idea of Natural Selection. Now listen again, Brenda.. When I had to tell Mark that Dad wouldn't let me marry him, he picked me up out of a chair in the verandah there, where your father and mine are sitting, and kissed me three times."

"And I'll gamble ten cents that you kissed him back. That's Natural Selection, if I know anything about it. Niti, if that man—and he is a man—doesn't get killed in a fight, he'll marry you in spite of all the misguided scientific Dads on earth. Don't you worry. You've made me just happy. I'm not emotional that way, but I'd like to kiss you if the moon wasn't so bright. Suppose we go back and try to assist the kindly Fates a little bit?"[Pg 151]

The Fates which, in some dimly-perceived fashion, seem to shape our little successive phases of existence, were certainly in a kindly mood that "lovely night in June." The two Professors had retired to Franklin Marmion's sanctum for the discussion of whisky and soda and the possibilities of physical manifestations of the Occult. Mrs van Huysman was frankly and comfortably sleeping in the deep, amply-cushioned armchair, and the two young men were almost as frankly pining for sweeter companionship than their own.

But the pairing off, which was so deftly managed by Nitocris, did not at first appear entirely satisfactory to them, yet a very few minutes' conversation sufficed to convince them of the wisdom of the arrangement. Brenda, with all the delicate tact which makes every highly-trained woman a skilled diplomatist, managed, not only to completely charm Merrill as a man who is in love with another woman likes to be charmed, but also to make him understand even more clearly than he had done how greatly the Fates had blessed him by giving him the love of such a girl as Nitocris; and then, by a few very deftly conveyed suggestions, she further gave him to understand that, so far as Lord Leighton had ever been an unconscious obstacle in his path, he was even now engaged in removing himself. Wherefore Commander Merrill enjoyed his smoke and stroll under the beeches a good deal more than he had anticipated.

More difficultly ambiguous, certainly, was the position in which Lord Leighton found him[Pg 152]self with Nitocris, but here also her tact and perfect candour helped his own innate chivalry to accomplish all that was desirable with the slightest possible friction. She began by telling him, as she had told Brenda, of the mysterious stealing of the Mummy, and made a sort of apology for her father having deputed the telling of it to her—of course, in perfect innocence of the real reason for his doing so. He deplored with her the loss of what they both believed to be a priceless relic of the Golden Age of Egypt, but he passed it over lightly, chiefly for the reason that there was something in his mind just now that was much more serious than even the loss of the mummy of her long-dead namesake.

There had been a little silence between them after he had made his condolences, and then he said, with a hesitation which told quite plainly what was coming:

"Miss Marmion, I have a rather awkward confession to make to you—I have got to tell you, in fact, I think it is my duty to—well, honestly I really don't quite know how to put it properly, but—but—er, something has happened to me to-day that is a good deal more important to me, at least, than the disappearance of half a dozen royal mummies."

"Indeed?" said Nitocris, with a demurely perfect assumption of ignorance. "A good many things seem somehow to have happened to-day. It is something connected with that wonderful Adept's marvels, perhaps? They have certainly astonished most of us, I think."[Pg 153]

"No," he replied, still a trifle hesitatingly, "it is nothing connected with him or his miracles, as far as I know, except that there was certainly something decidedly queer about the man and the impression he made upon one. Of course I have seen something like the same thing in Egypt and the Farther East; but he seemed quite what I might call uncanny. Still, that's not the point, although possibly it may have had something to do with it."

He hesitated again. She looked at him with a sideway glance, and said, almost in a whisper: "Yes?"

The moonlight was bright enough for him to see the notes of interrogation in her eyes, and he took the plunge.

"Miss Marmion, I once told