MISS BRENDA ARRIVES, AND PHADRIG THE EGYPTIAN PROPHESIES
"Now, this is just too sweet of you, Niti, to come so soon after we got
here. In five minutes more I should have written you a note, asking you
and the Professor to come and take lunch with us to-morrow, and here
you've anticipated me, so we have the pleasure of seeing you all the
sooner."
These were the words with which Miss Brenda van Huysman greeted Nitocris
as she entered the drawing-room of the suite of apartments which formed
her home for the time being in London. I say her home advisedly,
because, although her father and mother also occupied it, she was
virtually, if not nominally, mistress undisputed of the splendid
camping-place.
She was an almost perfect type of the highly developed, highly educated
American girl of to-day, a marvellous compound of intense energy and
languorous grace. She had done as brilliantly at Vassar as Nitocris had
done 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 her
physical presence was concerned, she was just a "Gibson Girl" of the
daintiest type--fair-skinned, blue-eyed, golden-haired--her hair had a
darker gleam of bronze in it in certain lights--exquisitely moulded
features which seemed capable of every sort of expression within a few
changing moments, and a poise of head and carriage of body which only
perfect health and the most scientific physical training can produce. In
a word, she was one of those miraculous developments of femininity which
Nature seems to have made a speciality for the particular benefit of the
younger branch of the Anglo-Saxon race. As for her dress--well, the
shortest and best way to describe that is to say that it exactly suited
her.
As she spoke, and their hands met, Mrs van Huysman got up and came
towards them, saying:
"Good afternoon, Miss Marmion. We were real glad to get your 'phone, and
it's good to see you again. How's the Professor? Too busy to come with
you, I suppose, as usual. We see he's going to lecture before the Royal
Society on the tenth, and I reckon we shall all be there to listen to
him. I shouldn't wonder but there'll be trouble as usual between him and
my husband. It seems a pity that two such clever men should waste so
much time in scrapping over these scientific things, which don't seem to
matter half a cent, anyhow."
"Oh, I don't know," laughed Nitocris, as they shook hands. "You see, Mrs
van Huysman, _they_ do think it matters a great deal, and, besides, I'm
quite sure that they both enjoy it very thoroughly. It's their way of
taking recreation, you see, just as a couple of pitmen will try and
pound one another to pieces, just for the fun of the thing. It's only a
case of intellectual fisticuffs, after all."
"Why, certainly," said Brenda, as she rang for tea; "I'm just sure that
Poppa never has such a good time as when he thinks he's tearing one of
Professor Marmion's theories into little pieces and dancing on them, and
I shouldn't wonder if Professor Marmion didn't feel about the same."
"I dare say he does," said Nitocris, remembering what had happened in
the morning; "it's only one of the thousand unexplained puzzles of human
nature. As you know, my father hates fighting in the physical sense with
a hatred which is almost fanatical, and yet, when it comes to a battle
of wits, he's like a schoolboy in a football match."
"It's just another development of the same thing," said Brenda. "Man was
born a fighting animal, and I guess he'll remain one till the end of
time; and with all our progress in civilisation and science, and all
that, the man who doesn't enjoy a fight of some sort isn't of very much
account. 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 what
Regent Street and Bond Street are like. I don't think I've spent ten
dollars in London yet. I'm twenty-two to-morrow, Niti, and my
grandfather, who is just about the best grandfather a girl ever had,
cabled across to the Napier people, and they've sent round the dandiest
six-cylinder, thirty-horse landaulette that you ever saw, even in
Central Park, and a driver to match--only I shan't have much use for
him, except to look after the automobile. I'll run you round in her
after tea, and you can reintroduce me to the stores--I mean shops; I
forgot we were in London."
Mrs van Huysman, as usual, took a back seat while her daughter dispensed
tea, and did most of the talking. She was a lady of moderate
proportions, and, unlike a good many American women, she had kept her
good looks until very close on fifty. She was full of shrewd common
sense, but she had been born in a different generation and in a
different grade of life, and therefore her attire inclined rather to
magnificence than to elegance, in spite of her daughter's restraining
hand and frankly expressed counsel. She had a profound respect for her
husband's attainments without in the least understanding them, and she
very naturally held an unshakable belief that no quite ordinary woman,
as she called herself, had ever been miraculously blessed with such a
daughter as she had.
Nitocris was just beginning her second cup of tea when the door opened
and her father's foeman in the arena of Science came in. He was the very
antithesis of Professor Marmion; a trifle below middle height,
square-shouldered and strongly built, with thick, iron-grey hair, and
somewhat heavy features which would have been almost commonplace but for
the broad, square forehead above them, and the brilliant steel-grey
eyes which glittered restlessly under the thick brows, and also a
certain sensitiveness about the nostrils and lips which seemed curiously
out of keeping with the strength of the lower jaw. His whole being
suggested a combination of restless energy and inflexible determination.
If he had not been one of America's greatest scientists, he would
probably have been one of her most ruthless and despotic Dollar Lords.
"Ah, Miss Marmion, good afternoon! Pleased to see you," he said
heartily, as Nitocris got up and held out her hand. "Very kind of you to
look us up so soon. How's the Professor? Well, I hope. I see he's
scheduled for a lecture before the Royal Society. He's got something
startling to tell us about, I hope. It's some time since we had anything
of a scientific scrap between us."
"And therefore," said Nitocris, as she took his hand, "I suppose you are
just 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 the
subject, 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 title
of the lecture, "but if I did, you know, I should only, as we say in
England, be spoiling sport. However, I don't think I shall be playing
traitor if I tell you to prepare for a little surprise."
Professor van Huysman's manner changed instantly, and the warrior soul
of the scientist was in arms.
"Oh yes! A surprise, eh?" he said, with something between a snort and a
snarl in his voice. "Then I guess----"
"Poppa, sit down and have some tea," said his daughter, quietly but
firmly.
He sat down without a word, took his cup of tea and a slice of bread and
butter; listened in silence as long as he could bear the entirely
feminine conversation on a subject in which he hadn't the remotest
interest, and then he put his cup down with a little jerk, got up with a
bigger one, and said, holding out his hand to Miss Nitocris:
"Well, Miss Marmion, I shall have to say good afternoon. You see we've
only just reached this side, and I've got quite a lot of things to
attend to. Bring your father along to dinner to-morrow night, if you
can; I shall be glad to meet him again. You needn't be afraid: we shan't
shoot."
When he had gone, Brenda rang and ordered the motor-car to be ready in
half an hour. Then they finished their tea and talk, and Brenda and
Nitocris went and put on their wraps--not the imitation of the mediæval
armour which is used for serious motor-driving, but just dust-cloaks and
mushrooms, both of which Brenda lent to her friend. As they came back
through the drawing-room, she said to her mother:
"Well, Mamma, the car's ready, I believe. Won't you join us in a little
run round town?"
"When I want to take a run into the Other World in one of those infernal
machines of yours, Brenda," said her mother, with a mild touch of
sarcasm in her tone, "I'll ask you to let me come. This afternoon I feel
just a little bit too comfortable for a journey like that."
"It's a curious thing," said Brenda, as they were going down in the
lift, "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 an
automobile."
The car was waiting for them in the courtyard under the glass awning. A
smart-looking young _chauffeur_ in orthodox costume touched his cap and
set the engine going. The gold-laced porters handed them into the two
front seats, and the _chauffeur_ effaced himself in the _tonneau_. Miss
Brenda put one hand on the steering-wheel and the other on the first
speed lever, and the car slid away, as though it had been running on
ice, towards the great arched entrance.
As they turned to the left on their way westward, a shabbily dressed man
and woman stepped back from the roadway on to the pavement. For a moment
they stared at the car in mute astonishment; then the man gripped the
woman tightly by the arm and led her away out of the ever-passing
throng, whispering to her in Coptic:
"Did'st thou see her, Neb-Anat--the Queen--the Queen in the living flesh
sitting there in the self-mover, the devil-machine? To what unholy
things has she come--she, the daughter of the great Rameses! But it may
be that she is held in bondage under the spell of the evil powers that
created these devil-chariots which pant like souls in agony and breathe
with the breath of Hell. She must be rescued, Neb-Anat."
"Rescued?" echoed the woman, in a tone that was half scorn and half
fear. "Is it so long ago that thou hast forgotten how we tried to rescue
her mummy from the hands of these infidels? Now, behold, she is alive
again, living in the midst of this vast, foul city of the infidels,
clothed after the fashion of their women, and yet still beautiful and
smiling. 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 the
High Gods, and if that is so, not even the Master himself could rescue
her. 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 the
Borough Road, and then turned off into a narrow, grimy street which
ended in a small court whose three sides were formed of wretched houses,
upon which many years of misery, poverty, and crime had set their
unmistakable stamp. They crossed the court diagonally and entered a
house in the right-hand corner. They went up the worn, carpetless stairs
with a rickety handrail on one side and the torn, peeling paper on the
other, and stopped before a door which opened on to a narrow landing on
the first floor. Pent-Ah knocked with his knuckles on the panel, first
three times quickly, and then twice slowly. Then came the sound of the
drawing of a bolt, and the door opened.
They went in with shuffling feet and crouching forms, and the woman
closed the door behind her. A tall, gaunt, yellow-skinned man, his head
perfectly bald and the lower part of his face covered with a heavy white
beard and moustache, faced them. His clothing was half Western, half
Oriental. A pair of thin, creased, grey tweed trousers met, or almost
met, a pair of Turkish slippers, showing an inch of bare, lean ankle in
between. His body was covered with a dirty yellow robe of fine woollen
stuff, whose ragged fringe reached to his knees, and a faded red scarf
was folded twice round his neck, one end hanging down his breast and the
other down his back. As Pent-Ah closed the door and bolted it, he said
to him in Coptic:
"So ye have returned! What news of the Queen? For without that surely ye
would not have dared to come before me."
He spoke the words as a Pharaoh might have spoken them to a slave, and
as though the bare, low-ceiled, shabby room, with its tawdry Oriental
curtains and ornaments, had been an audience-chamber in the palace of
Pepi in old Memphis, for this was he who had once been Anemen-Ha, High
Priest 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 a
devil-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 some
spell upon her."
"Spell or no spell, the mission which is ours is the same," was the
reply. "It is plain that a miracle has been worked. The Mummy which
we--I as well as you--were charged to recover and restore to its
resting-place, has vanished. The Queen has returned to live yet another
life in the flesh, but the command remains the same. Mummy or woman, she
shall be taken back to her ancient home to await the day when the Divine
Assessors shall determine the penalty of her guilt. The task will be
hard, yet nothing is impossible to those who serve the High Gods
faithfully. Ye have done well to bring me this news promptly. Here is
money to pay for your living and your work. Watch well and closely. Know
every movement that the Queen makes, and every day inform me by word or
in writing of all her actions. On the fourth day from now come here an
hour before midnight. Now go."
He counted out five sovereigns to Pent-Ah. Their glitter contrasted
strangely with the shabby squalor of the room and the poverty of his own
dress, but he gave them as though they had been coppers. Pent-Ah took
them with a low obeisance, and dropped them one by one into a pocket in
a canvas belt which he wore under his ragged waistcoat. Neb-Anat looked
at them greedily as they disappeared.
"The Master's commands shall be obeyed, and the High Gods shall be
faithfully 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, sinking
almost to her knees.
"It is enough," replied the Master, who was known to the few who knew
him as Phadrig Amena, a Coptic dealer in ancient Egyptian relics and
curios in a humble way of business. "Serve faithfully, both of you, and
your reward shall not be wanting. Farewell, and the peace of the High
Gods be on you."
When they had gone he sat down to the old bureau, took out a sheaf of
papers, some white and new, others yellow-grey with age, and yet others
which were sheets of the ancient papyrus. The writing on these was in
the old Hermetic character; of the rest some were in cursive Greek and
some in Coptic. A few only were in English, and about half a dozen in
Russian. He read them all with equal ease, and although he knew their
contents almost by heart, he pored over them for a good half-hour with
scarcely so much as a movement of his lips. Then he put them away and
locked the drawer with one of a small bunch of curiously shaped keys
which were fastened round his waist by a chain. When he had concealed
them in his girdle, he got up and began to pace the floor of the
miserable room with long, stately, silent steps as though the dirty,
cracked, uneven boards had been the gleaming squares of alternate black
and white marble of the floor of the Sanctuary in the now ruined Temple
of Ptah in old Memphis. Then, after a while, with head thrown proudly
back and hands clasped behind him, he began to speak in the Ancient
Tongue, as though he were addressing some invisible presence.
"Yes, truly the Powers of Evil and Darkness have conquered through many
generations of men, but the days of the High Gods are unending, and the
climax of Fate is not yet. Not yet, O Nitocris, is the murderous crime
of thy death-bridal forgotten. The souls of those who died by thy hand
in the banqueting chamber of Pepi still call for vengeance out of the
glooms of Amenti. The thirst of hate and the hunger of love are still
unslaked and unsatisfied. I, Phadrig, the poor trader, who was once
Anemen-Ha, hate thee still, and the Russian warrior-prince, who was once
Menkau-Ra, shall love thee yet again with a love as fierce as that of
old, and so, if the High Gods permit, between love and hate shalt thou
pass to the doom that thou hast earned."
He paused in his walk and stood staring blankly out of the grimy little
window with eyes which seemed to see through and beyond the
smoke-blackened walls of the wretched houses opposite, and away through
the mists of Time to where a vast city of temples and palaces lay under
a cloudless sky beside a mighty slow-flowing river, and his lips began
to 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 is
thy grandeur humbled and thy glory departed! Thy streets and broad
places which once rang with the tramp of mighty hosts and echoed with
the songs of jubilant multitudes welcoming them home from victory are
buried under the drifting desert sands; in the ruins of thy holy temples
the statues of the gods lie prone in the dust, and the owl rears her
brood on thy crumbling altars, and hoots to the moon where once rose the
solemn chant of priests and the sweet hymns of the Sacred Virgins; the
jackal barks where once the mightiest monarchs of earth gave judgment
and received tribute; thy tombs are desecrated, and the mummies of kings
and queens and holy men have been ravished from them to adorn the
unconsecrated halls of the museums of ignorant infidels; the heel of the
heathen oppressor has stamped the fair flower of thy beauty into the
deep dust of defilement. Alas, what great evil have the sons and
daughters of Khem wrought that the High Gods should have visited them
with so sore a judgment! How long shall thy bright wings lie folded and
idle, O Necheb, Bringer of Victory?"
A deep sigh came from his heaving breast as he turned away and began his
walk again. Soon he spoke again, but now in a changed voice from which
the note of exaltation had passed away:
"But it is of little use to brood over the lost glories of the past. Our
concern is with that which is and that which may--nay, shall be. Who is
this Franklin Marmion, this wise man of the infidels? Who is he, and who
was he--since, by the changeless law of life and death, each man and
woman is a deathless soul which passes into the shadows only to return
re-garbed in the flesh to live and work through the interlocked cycles
of Eternal Destiny? Was he--ah Gods! was _he_ once Ma-Rim[=o]n, whose
footsteps in the days that are dead approached so nearly to the
threshold of the Perfect Knowledge, while mine, doubtless for the sin of
my longing for mere earthly power and greatness, were caught and held
back in a web of my own weaving? And, if so, has he attained while I
have lost?
"What if that strange tale which Pent-Ah and Neb-Anat told me of their
visit to his house--told, as I thought, to hide their failure under a
veil of lies--was true? If so, then he has passed the threshold and
taken a place only a little lower than the seats of the gods, a place
that I may not approach, barred by the penalty of my accursed folly and
pride! Ah well, be it so or be it not, are not the fates of all men in
the hands of the High Gods who see all things? We see but a little, and
that little, with their help, we must do according to the faith and the
hope 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 room
holding out a letter in her hard, grimy, claw-like hand.
"'Ere's somethin' as has just come for you, Mister Phadrig. Muvver told
me ter bring it up, and wot'll yer want for supper, and will yer give me
the money?" she said in a piping monotone, still holding out her hand
after 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 in
awe of this dark-faced foreign man from mysterious regions beyond her
ken, who was doubtless a magician of some sort, and could kill her or
change her into a rat by just breathing on her, if he wanted to.
Meantime Nitocris and Brenda were having what the latter called "a
perfectly lovely time" in Regent Street and Bond Street and other
purlieus of that London paradise which the genius of commerce has
created for the delight of his richest and most lavish-handed votaries.
Brenda spent her ten dollars and a few thousands more, and then, as it
was getting on to dinner-time and Nitocris absolutely refused to let her
father eat his meal alone, she ran her out to Wimbledon at a speed for
which a mere man would have inevitably been fined, asked herself to
dinner, and made herself entirely delightful to the Professor.
But in spite of all her cunning wiles and winning ways she left in
absolute ignorance of the subject of the forthcoming lecture.