/The/ next day broke with a bright, hot glare over the wide desert,
and the sky in its cloudless burning blue had more than its usual
appearance of limitless and awful immensity. The Sphinx and the
Pyramids alone gave a shadow and a substance to the dazzling and
transparent air,--all the rest of the visible landscape seemed naught
save a far-stretching ocean of glittering sand, scorched by the
blazing sun. Dr. Maxwell Dean rose early and went down to the hotel
breakfast in a somewhat depressed frame of mind; he had slept badly,
and his dreams had been unpleasant, when not actually ghastly, and he
was considerably relieved, though he could not have told why, when he
saw his young friend Denzil Murray, seated at the breakfast table,
apparently enjoying an excellent meal.
“Hullo, Denzil!” he exclaimed cheerily, “I hardly expected you down
yet. Are you better?”
“Thanks, I am perfectly well,” said Denzil, with a careless air. “I
thought I would breakfast early in order to drive into Cairo before
the day gets too sultry.”
“Into Cairo!” echoed the Doctor. “Why, aren’t you going to stay here a
few days?”
“No, not exactly,” answered Denzil, stirring his coffee quickly and
beginning to swallow it in large gulps. “I shall be back to-night,
though. I’m only going just to see my sister and tell her to prepare
for our journey home. I shan’t be absent more than a few hours.”
“I thought you might possibly like to go a little further up the
Nile?” suggested the Doctor.
“Oh, no, I’ve had enough of it! You see, when a man proposes to a
woman and gets refused, he can’t keep on dangling round that woman as
if he thought it possible she might change her mind.” And he forced a
smile. “I’ve got an appointment with Gervase to-morrow morning, and I
must come back to-night in order to keep it--but after that I’m off.”
“An appointment with Gervase?” repeated the Doctor, slowly. “What sort
of an appointment?”
Denzil avoided his keen look.
“Really, Doctor, you are getting awfully inquisitive!” he exclaimed
with a hard laugh. “You want to know altogether too much!”
“Yes, I always do; it is a habit of mine,” responded Dr. Dean, calmly.
“But in the present case, it doesn’t need much perspicuity to fathom
your mystery. The dullest clod-hopper will tell you he can see through
a millstone when there’s a hole in it. And I was always a good hand at
putting two and two together and making four out of them. You and
Gervase are in love with the same woman; the woman has rejected you
and is encouraging Gervase; Gervase, you think, will on this very
night be in the position of the accepted lover, for which successful
fortune attending him, you, the rejected one, propose to kill him
to-morrow morning if you can, unless he kills you. And you are going
to Cairo to get your pistols or whatever weapons you have arranged to
fight with, and also to say good-bye to your sister.”
Denzil kept his eyes fixed studiously on the table-cloth and made no
answer.
“However,” continued the Doctor complacently, “you can have it all
your own way as far as I am concerned. I never interfere in these sort
of matters. I should do no good if I attempted it. Besides, I haven’t
the slightest anxiety on your behalf--not the slightest. Waiter, some
more coffee, please?”
“Upon my word!” exclaimed Denzil, with a fretful laugh, “you are a
most extraordinary man, Doctor!”
“I hope I am!” retorted the Doctor. “To be merely ordinary would not
suit my line of ambition. This is very excellent coffee”--here he
peered into the fresh pot of the fragrant beverage just set before
him. “They make it better here than at the Gezireh Palace. Well,
Denzil, my boy, when you get into Cairo, give my love to Helen and
tell her we’ll all go home to the old country together; I, myself,
have got quite enough out of Egypt this time to satisfy my fondness
for new experiences. And let me assure you, my good fellow, that your
proposed duel with Gervase will not come off!”
“It will come off!” said Denzil, with sudden fierceness. “By Heaven,
it shall!--it must!”
“More wills than one have the working out of our destinies,” answered
Dr. Dean with some gravity. “Man is not by any means supreme. He
imagines he is, but that is only one of his many little delusions. You
think you will have your way; Gervase thinks he will have his way; I
think I will have my way; but as a matter of fact there is only one
person in this affair whose ‘way’ will be absolute, and that person is
the Princess Ziska. _Ce que femme veut Dieu veut._”
“She has nothing whatever to do with the matter,” declared Denzil.
“Pardon! She has everything to do with it. She is the cause of it and
she knows it. And as I have already told you, your proposed fight will
not come off.” And the little Doctor smiled serenely. “There is your
carriage at the door, I suppose. Off with you, my boy!--be off like a
whirlwind, and return here armed to the teeth if you like! You have
heard the expression ‘fighting the air’? That is what you will do
to-morrow morning!”
And apparently in the best of all possible humors, Dr. Dean
accompanied his young friend to the portico of the hotel and watched
him drive off down the stately avenue of palm-trees which now cast
their refreshing shade on the entire route from the Pyramids to Cairo.
When he had fairly gone, the thoughtful _savant_ surveyed the
different tourists who were preparing to ascend the Pyramids under the
escort of their Arab guides, regardless of the risks they ran of
dislocated arms and broken shoulder-bones,--and in the study of the
various odd types thus presented to him, he found himself fairly well
amused.
“Protoplasm--mere protoplasm!” he murmured. “The germ of soul has not
yet attained to individual consciousness in any one of these strange
bipeds. Their thoughts are as jelly,--their reasoning powers in
embryo,--their intellectual faculties barely perceptible. Yet they are
interesting, viewed in the same light and considered on the same scale
as fish or insects merely. As men and women of course they are
misnomers,--laughable impossibilities. Well, well!--in the space of
two or three thousand years, the protoplasm may start into form out of
the void, and the fibres of a conscious Intellectuality may
sprout,--but it will have to be in some other phase of
existence--certainly not in this one. And now to shut myself up and
write my memoranda--for I must not lose a single detail of this
singular Egyptian psychic problem. The whole thing I perceive is
rounding itself towards completion and catastrophe--but in what way?
How will it--how _can_ it end?”
And with a meditative frown puckering his brows, Dr. Dean folded his
hands behind his back and retired to his own room, from whence he did
not emerge all day.
Armand Gervase in the meanwhile was making himself the life and soul
of everything at the Mena House Hotel. He struck up an easy
acquaintance with several of the visitors staying there,--said pretty
things to young women and pleasant things to old,--and in the course
of a few hours succeeded in becoming the most popular personage in the
place. He accepted invitations to parties, and agreed to share in
various excursions, till he engaged himself for every day in the
coming week, and was so gay and gallant and fascinating in manner and
bearing that fair ladies lost their hearts to him at a glance, and
what amusement or pleasure there was at the Mena House seemed to be
doubly enhanced by the mere fact of his presence. In truth Gervase was
in a singular mood of elation and excitation; a strong inward triumph
possessed him and filled his soul with an imperious pride and sense of
conquest which, for the time being, made him feel as though he were a
very king of men. There was nothing in his nature of the noble
tenderness which makes the lover mentally exalt his beloved as a queen
before whom he is content to submit his whole soul in worship; what he
realized was merely this: that here was one of the most beautiful and
seductive women ever created, in the person of the Princess Ziska, and
that he, Gervase, meant to possess that loveliest of women, whatever
happened in the near or distant future. Of her, and of the influence
of his passion on her personally, he did not stop to think, except
with the curiously blind egotism which is the heritage of most men,
and which led him to judge that her happiness would in some way or
other be enhanced by his brief and fickle love. For, as a rule, men do
not understand love. They understand desire, amounting sometimes to
merciless covetousness for what they cannot get,--this is a leading
natural characteristic of the masculine nature--but Love--love that
endures silently and faithfully through the stress of trouble and the
passing of years--love which sacrifices everything to the beloved and
never changes or falters,--this is a divine passion which seldom or
never sanctifies and inspires the life of a man. Women are not made of
such base material; their love invariably springs first from the
Ideal, not the Sensual, and if afterwards it develops into the
sensual, it is through the rough and coarsening touch of man alone.
Throughout the entire day the Princess Ziska herself never left her
private apartments, and towards late afternoon Gervase began to feel
the hours drag along with unconscionable slowness and monotony. Never
did the sun seem so slow in sinking; never did the night appear so far
off. When at last dinner was served in the hotel, both Denzil Murray
and Dr. Dean sat next to him at table, and, judging from outward
appearances, the most friendly relations existed between all three of
them. At the close of the meal, however, Denzil made a sign to Gervase
to follow him, and when they had reached a quiet corner, said:
“I am aware of your victory; you have won where I have lost. But you
know my intention?”
“Perfectly!” responded Gervase, with a cool smile.
“By Heaven!” went on the younger man, in accents of suppressed fury,
“if I yielded to the temptation which besets me when I see you
standing there facing me, with your easy and self-satisfied
demeanor,--when I know that you mean dishonor where I meant
honor,--when you have had the effrontery to confess to me that you
only intend to make the Princess Ziska your mistress when I would have
made her my wife,--God! I could shoot you dead at this moment!”
Gervase looked at him steadily, still smiling slightly; then gradually
the smile died away, leaving his countenance shadowed by an intense
melancholy.
“I can quite enter into your feelings, my dear boy!” he said. “And do
you know, I’m not sure that it would not be a good thing if you were
to shoot me dead! My life is of no particular value to
anybody,--certainly not to myself; and I begin to think I’ve been
always more or less of a failure. I have won fame, but I have
missed--something--but upon my word, I don’t quite know what!”
He sighed heavily, then suddenly held out his hand.
“Denzil, the bitterest foes shake hands before fighting each other to
the death, as we propose to do to-morrow; it is a civil custom and
hurts no one. I should like to part kindly from you to-night!”
Denzil hesitated; then something stronger than himself made him yield
to the impulsive note of strong emotion in his former friend’s voice,
and the two men’s hands met in a momentary silent grasp. Then Denzil
turned quickly away.
“To-morrow morning at six,” he said, briefly; “close to the Sphinx.”
“Good!” responded Gervase. “The Sphinx shall second us both and see
fair play. Good-night, Denzil!”
“Good-night!” responded Denzil, coldly, as he moved on and
disappeared.
A slight shiver ran through Gervase’s blood as he watched him depart.
“Odd that I should imagine I have seen the last of him!” he murmured.
“There are strange portents in the air of the desert, I suppose! Is he
going to his death? Or am I going to mine?”
Again the cold tremor shook him, and combating with his uneasy
sensations, he went to his own apartment, there to await the expected
summons of the Princess. No triumph filled him now; no sense of joy
elated him; a vague fear and dull foreboding were all the emotions he
was conscious of. Even his impatient desire of love had cooled, and he
watched the darkening of night over the desert, and the stars shining
out one by one in the black azure of the heavens, with a gradually
deepening depression. A dreamy sense stole over him of remoteness or
detachment from all visible things, as though he were suddenly and
mysteriously separated from the rest of humankind by an invisible
force which he was powerless to resist. He was still lost in this
vague half-torpor or semi-conscious reverie, when a light tap startled
him back to the realization of earth and his earthly surroundings. In
response to his “_Entrez!_” the tall Nubian, whom he had seen in Cairo
as the guardian of the Princess’s household, appeared, his repulsive
features looking, if anything, more ghastly and hideous than ever.
“_Madame la Princesse demande votre présence!_” said this unlovely
attendant of one of the fairest of women. “_Suivez-moi!_”
Without a moment’s hesitation or loss of time, Gervase obeyed, and
allowing his guide to precede him at a little distance, followed him
through the corridors of the hotel, out at the hall door and beyond,
through the garden. A clock struck ten as they passed into the warm
evening air, and the mellow rays of the moon were beginning to whiten
the sides of the Great Pyramid. A few of the people staying in the
hotel were lounging about, but these paid no particular heed to
Gervase or his companion. At about two hundred yards from the entrance
of the Mena House, the Nubian stopped and waited till Gervase came up
with him.
“_Madame la Princesse vous aime, Monsieur Gervase!_” he said, with a
sarcastic grin. “_Mais,--elle veut que l’Amour soit toujours aveugle!
oui, toujours! C’est le destin qui vous appelle,--il faut soumettre!
L’Amour sans yeux! oui!--enfin,--comme ça!_”
And before Gervase could utter a word of protest, or demand the
meaning of this strange proceeding, his arms were suddenly seized and
pinioned behind his back, his mouth gagged, and his eyes blindfolded.
“_Maintenant_,” continued the Nubian. “_Nous irons ensemble!_”
Choked and mad with rage, Gervase for a few moments struggled
furiously as well as he was able with his powerful captor. All sorts
of ideas surged in his brain: the Princess Ziska might, with all her
beauty and fascination, be nothing but the ruler of a band of robbers
and murderers--who could tell? Yet reason did not wholly desert him in
extremity, for even while he tried to fight for his liberty he
remembered that there was no good to be gained out of taking him
prisoner; he had neither money nor valuables--nothing which could
excite the cupidity of even a starving Bedouin. As this thought
crossed his brain, he ceased his struggles abruptly, and stood still,
panting for breath, when suddenly a sound of singing floated towards
him:
“Oh, for the pure cold heart of the Lotus-Lily!
A star above
Is its only love,
And one brief sigh of its scented breath
Is all it will ever know of Death!
Oh, for the passionless heart of the Lotus-Lily!”
He listened, and all power of resistance ebbed slowly away from him;
he became perfectly passive--almost apathetic--and yielding to the
somewhat rough handling of his guide, allowed himself to be urged with
silent rapidity onward over the thick sand, till he presently became
conscious that he was leaving the fresh open air and entering a
building of some sort, for his feet pressed hard earth and stone
instead of sand. All at once he was forcibly brought to a standstill,
and a heavy rolling noise and clang, like distant muttered thunder,
resounded in his ears, followed by dead silence. Then his arm was
closely grasped again, and he was led on, on and on, along what seemed
to be an interminable distance, for not a glimmer of light could be
seen under the tight folds of the bandage across his eyes. Presently
the earth shook under him,--some heavy substance was moved, and there
was another booming thunderous noise, accompanied by the falling of
chains.
“_C’est l’escalier de Madame la Princesse!_” said the Nubian. “_Prés
de la chambre nuptiale! Descendez! Vite!_”
Down--down! Resistance was useless, even had he cared to resist, for
he felt as though twenty pairs of hands instead of one were pushing
him violently on all sides; down, still down he went, dumb, blind and
helpless, till at last he was allowed to stop and breathe. His arms
were released, the bandage was taken from his eyes, the gag from his
mouth--he was free! Free--yes! but where? Thick darkness encompassed
him; he stretched out his hands in the murky atmosphere and felt
nothing.
“Ziska!” he cried.
The name sprang up against the silence and struck out numberless
echoes, and with the echoes came a shuddering sigh, that was not of
them, whispering:
“Charmazel!”
Gervase heard it, and a deadly fear, born of the supernatural,
possessed him.
“Ziska! Ziska!” he called again wildly.
“Charmazel!” answered the penetrating unknown voice; and as it
thrilled upon the air like a sob of pain, a dim light began to shine
through the gloom, waveringly at first, then more steadily, till it
gradually spread wide, illuminating with a pale and spectral light the
place in which he found himself,--a place more weird and wondrous than
any mystic scene in dream-land. He stumbled forward giddily, utterly
bewildered, staring about him like a man in delirium, and speechless
with mingled horror and amazement. He was alone--utterly alone in a
vast square chamber, the walls and roof of which were thickly
patterned and glistening with gold. Squares of gold were set in the
very pavement on which he trod, and at the furthest end of the
chamber, a magnificent sarcophagus of solid gold, encrusted with
thousands upon thousands of jewels, which were set upon it in
marvellous and fantastic devices, glittered and flashed with the hues
of living fire. Golden cups, golden vases, a golden suit of armor,
bracelets and chains of gold intermixed with gems, were heaped up
against the walls and scattered on the floor; and a round shield of
ivory inlaid with gold, together with a sword in a jewelled sheath,
were placed in an upright position against the head of the
sarcophagus, from whence all the spectral and mysterious light seemed
to emerge. With thickly beating heart and faltering pulses Gervase
still advanced, gazing half entranced, half terrified at the
extraordinary and sumptuous splendor surrounding him, muttering almost
unconsciously as he moved along:
“A king’s sepulchre,--a warrior’s tomb! How came I here?--and why? Is
this a trysting-place for love as well as death?--and will she come to
me? …”
He recoiled suddenly with a violent start, for there, like a strange
Spirit of Evil risen from the ground, leaning against the great gold
sarcophagus, her exquisite form scarcely concealed by the misty white
of her draperies, her dark hair hanging like a cloud over her
shoulders, and her black eyes aflame with wrath, menace and passion,
stood the mysterious Ziska!