THE MARVELS OF PHADRIG
The time, about an hour or so before tea, was occupied by the guests
according to their varying tastes--in tennis, croquet, more or less
good-natured gossip, and flirtations which may or may not have been
serious.
Nitocris saw with growing cause for self-gratulation that Lord Leighton
and Brenda were decidedly attracted towards each other. He, in spite of
having received his gracious, but, as he well knew, final _congé_ from
Nitocris, still felt that he was not quite playing the game with
himself; but for all that it was impossible for him not to see that the
emotion, which was even now stirring in his heart, awakened by the first
touch of Brenda's hand, and the first meeting of their eyes, was
something very different from the tenderly respectful admiration, the
real friendship, inevitably exalted by the magic of sex, which, as he
saw now, he had innocently mistaken for love.
He managed quite adroitly to separate Brenda from the circle, and to
lure her into a stroll about the outside grounds, during which he told
her the history and traditions of "The Wilderness" not, of course,
omitting the sad little tragedy of the Lady Alicia, all of which Miss
Brenda listened to with an interest which was not, perhaps, wholly
derived from the story itself. She had never yet met any one who was
quite like this learned, much-travelled, quiet-spoken young aristocrat.
On her father's side she was descended from one of the oldest
Knickerbocker families in the State of New York and her aristocracy
responded instinctively to his, and formed a first bond between them.
It need hardly be said that her beauty and her prospective wealth, to
say nothing of the bright, mental, and intellectual atmosphere in which
she seemed to live and move, had attracted to her many men whom she had
inspired with a very genuine desire to link their lives with hers. She
was only twenty-two, but she had already refused more than one coronet
of respectable dignity, and so far her heart had remained as virgin as
it was when she had admired herself in her first long skirt. But now,
for the first time in her life, she began to feel a strange disquietude
in the presence of a man, and a man, too, whom she had not known for an
hour. Nitocris had, happily, told her nothing of what had passed between
Lord Leighton and herself, and so the pleasant element in her
disquietude was entirely unalloyed.
Her father was already too deeply engrossed in learned converse with his
brother professors to take any notice of the great fact which was
beginning to get itself accomplished; but her mother's instinct
instantly noticed the subtle change that had come over her daughter,
and she saw it with anything but displeasure. All sensible mothers of
beautiful daughters are discreetly sanguine. She was far too wise in her
generation not to have agreed with Brenda's decision in certain former
cases. The idea of her daughter's beauty and her father's millions being
bartered for mere rank and social power, however splendid, was utterly
repugnant to her. She had married for love, and she wanted Brenda to do
the same, whoever the chosen man might be, provided always that he was a
man--and in this regard there could be no doubt about Lord Lester
Leighton; so as they walked away she said to Nitocris with a confidence
which was almost girlish:
"His Lordship is just delightful--now, isn't he, Miss Marmion? Just the
sort that you seem to raise over here, and nowhere else. Tells you that
you have to take him for a gentleman and nothing else in the first three
words he says to you--and Brenda seems to like him. I never saw her go
off with a man like that on such short notice, for Brenda's pretty proud
and cold with men, for all her nice ways and high spirits."
"You would have to search a long time, Mrs van Huysman," replied
Nitocris very demurely, "before you found a better type of the real
English gentleman than Lord Leighton. His family is one of the oldest in
the country, and, unlike too many of our noble families, the Kynestons
have no bar-sinister on their escutcheon."
"I guess you're getting a little beyond me there, Miss Marmion. I don't
think I ever heard of a--what is it?--a bar-sinister, before. What might
it be?"
Nitocris flushed very faintly as she replied:
"I think I can explain it best, Mrs van Huysman, by saying that it means
that Lord Leighton's ancestors have preserved their honour unstained
through many generations. Of course, you know that some of our so-called
noble families in England spring from anything but a noble origin. There
are not a few English dukes and earls who would find it rather awkward
to introduce their great-great-grandmothers to their present circle of
friends."
"I should think they would, from what I have read of them, the shameless
creatures!" said Mrs van Huysman, with a sniff of real republican
virtue.
Then the Prince joined them, and the conversation was promptly switched
off on to another line of interest.
Tea was served on the Old Lawn under the shade of the great cedars,
which made its greatest adornment; and when everybody had had what he or
she wanted, and the men had lit their cigarettes--and the Professors, by
special permission, their pipes--Nitocris looked across a couple of
tables at Oscarovitch, whom she had so far managed most adroitly to keep
at an endurable distance, and said:
"Now, Prince, if your friend the Adept is in the mood to astonish us
with his wonders, perhaps you will be good enough to tell him that we
are all ready and willing to be startled--only I hope that he will be
merciful to our ignorance and not frighten us too much."
"I can assure you, Miss Marmion, that my good friend from Egypt will be
discretion itself," replied the Prince, with a look and a courtly
gesture that inspired Commander Merrill with an almost passionate
longing to take him down one of the quiet paths under the beeches for a
ten minutes' interlude. "I can promise that he will show you some
marvels which even your learned and distinguished father and his
_confrères_ may find difficult of explanation: but it shall all be white
magic. I understand that your real adept considers the black variety as
what you call bad form."
As the company rose and went in little groups towards the tennis-lawn,
where Phadrig had elected to display his powers, the three Professors
instinctively joined each other in a small phalanx of scepticism. If
there was any trick or deception to be discovered all looked to them to
do it, and they were almost gleefully aware of their responsibility.
Figuratively speaking, they each wore the scalps of many spiritualistic
mediums, and both Professor van Huysman and Professor Hartley sensed a
possible addition to their belts of scientific wampum which would not be
the least of their trophies. It had been agreed to by Phadrig, with a
quiet scorn, that they were to take any measures they liked to detect
him in any practice that would convict him of being merely a conjurer;
and they had accepted the permission with that whole-souled devotion to
truth which excludes all idea of pity from the really scientific mind.
Franklin Marmion was naturally in a very different frame of mind,
although, from reasons of high policy, he assumed a similar mask of
almost scornful scepticism; but for all that he was by far the most
anxious man in the company.
At the request of their hostess the guests arranged themselves sitting
and standing in a spacious circle on the tennis-lawn; and when this was,
formed, Phadrig, whose isolation so far from the rest of the company had
been satisfactorily explained by the Prince, walked slowly into the
middle of it, and, after a quick, keen glance round him--a glance which
rested for just a moment or so on Professor Marmion and his _confrères_,
and then on Nitocris, who was sitting beside Brenda attended by Lord
Leighton and Merrill--he said in a low but clear and far-reaching voice,
and in perfect English:
"Ladies and gentlemen, I have come to the house of the learned Professor
Marmion at the request of my very good friend and patron, His Highness
Prince Oscar Oscarovitch, to give you a little display of what I may
call white magic. But before I begin I must ask you to accept my word of
honour as a humble student of the mysteries of what, for want of a
better word, we call Nature, that I am not in any sense a conjurer, by
which I mean one who performs apparent marvels by merely deceiving your
senses.
"What I am going to show you, you really will see. My marvels, if you
please to think them such, will be realities, not illusions; and I shall
be pleased if you will take every means to satisfy yourselves that they
are so. I say this with all the more pleasure because I know that there
are present three gentlemen of great eminence in the world of science,
and if they are not able to detect me in anything approaching trickery,
I think you will take their word for it that I am not deceiving you.
"In order that there may not be the smallest possible chance of error, I
will ask Professors Marmion, Hartley, and Van Huysman to come and stand
near to me, so that they may be satisfied that I make use of none of the
mere conjurer's apparatus. I shall use nothing but the knowledge, and
therefore the power, to which it has been my privilege to attain."
Phadrig spoke with all the calm confidence of perfect self-reliance, and
therefore his words were not wanting in effect on his audience, critical
and sceptical as it was.
"I reckon that's a challenge we can't very well afford to let go," said
Professor van Huysman, with a keen look at his two brother scientists.
"Of course he's just a trick-merchant, but they're so mighty clever
nowadays, especially these fellows from the gorgeous East, that you've
got to keep your eyes wide open all the time they've got the platform."
"Certainly," said Professor Hartley, as they moved out from the circle;
"it must be trickery of some sort, and we shall be doing a public
service by exposing it. What do you think, Marmion? I hope you won't
mind the exposure taking place in your own garden and among your own
guests?"
"Not a bit, my dear Hartley," replied Franklin Marmion with a smile,
which was quite lost upon his absolutely materialistic friends. "We
have, as Van Huysman says, received a direct challenge. We should be
most unworthy servants of our great Mistress if we did not take it up.
Personally, I mean to find out everything that I can."
"And, gentlemen," laughed the Prince, who had been standing with them
and now moved away towards Nitocris, "I sincerely hope that what you
find out will be worth the learning."
"He's a big man, that," said Professor van Huysman, when he was out of
earshot, "but he's not the sort I'd have much use for. I wonder why
those people who are on the war-path in his country ever let him out of
it alive?"
In accordance with Phadrig's request, they made a triangle of which he
was the central point. Without any formula of introduction, he said
rather abruptly:
"Professor van Huysman, will you oblige me by taking a croquet ball and
holding it in your hand as tightly as you can?"
Brenda ran out of the circle and gave him one. He took it and gripped it
in a fist that looked made to hold things. Phadrig glanced at the ball,
and said quietly:
"Follow me!"
Then he turned away, and, in spite of all the Professor's efforts to
hold it, the ball somehow slipped through his fingers and fell on to the
lawn. Then, to the utter amazement of every one, except Franklin
Marmion, it rolled towards the Adept and followed him at a distance of
about three yards as he walked round the circle of spectators. He did
not even look at it. When he had made the round, he took his place in
the Triangle of Science, and the ball stopped at his feet.
"It is now released, Professor," he said to Van Huysman. "You may take
it away, if you wish."
There was something in the saying of the last sentence that nettled him.
He had seen all, or nearly all, the physical laws, which were to him as
the Credo is to a Catholic or the Profession of Faith to a Moslem,
openly and shamelessly outraged, defied, and set at nought. To say he
was angry would be to give a very inadequate idea of his feelings,
because he, the greatest exposer of Spiritualism, Dowieism, and
Christian Scientism in the United States, was not only angry, but--for
the time being only, as he hoped--utterly bewildered. It was too much,
as he would have put it, to take lying down, and so, greatly daring, he
took a couple of strides towards Phadrig, and said with a snarl in his
voice:
"I guess you mean really if _you_ wish, Mr Miracle-Worker. It was mighty
clever, however you did it, but you haven't got me to believe that
physical laws are frauds yet. You want me to pick that ball up?"
"Certainly, Professor--if you can--now," replied Phadrig, with a little
twitch of his lips which might have been a smile, or something else.
Hoskins van Huysman was a strong man, and he knew it. Not very many
years before, he had been able to shoulder a sack of flour and take it
away at a run, and now he could bend a poker across his shoulders
without much trouble. He stooped down and gripped the ball, expecting,
of course, to lift it quite easily. It didn't move. He put more force
into his arms and tried again. For "all the move he got on it," as he
said afterwards, it might have weighed a ton. It was ridiculous, but it
was a fact. In spite of all his pulling and straining, the ball remained
where it was as though it had been rooted in the foundations of the
world. He was wise enough to know when he was beaten, so he let go, and
when he pulled himself up, somewhat flushed after his exertions, he
said:
"Well, Mister Phadrig, I don't know how you do it, but I've got to
confess that it lets me out. I'm beaten. If you can make the law of
gravitation do what you want, you're a lot bigger man in physics than I
am."
He turned and went back to his place, looking, as his daughter whispered
to Nitocris, "pretty well shaken up." The Prince caught Phadrig's eye
for an instant, and said:
"Miss Marmion, will you confound the wisdom of the wise and bring the
ball here?"
It was not the words but the challenge in them that impelled her to
rise from her chair, aided by Merrill's hand, and not the one that the
Prince held out, and walk across the lawn towards Phadrig. She took no
notice of him. She just stooped and picked up the ball and carried it
back to her chair. She tossed it down on the grass, and sat down again
without a word, quaking with many inward emotions, but outwardly as calm
as ever. What Professor van Huysman said to himself when he saw this
will be better left to himself.
It might have been expected that the miracle, or at least the
extraordinary defiance of physical law which had been accomplished by
Phadrig, would have produced something like consternation among the bulk
of the spectators. It did nothing of the sort. They were, perhaps, above
the ordinary level of Society intellect in London; but they only saw
something wonderful in what had been done. Nothing would have persuaded
them that it was not the result of such skill as produced the marvels of
the Egyptian Hall, simply because they were not capable of grasping its
inner significance. Could they have done that, the panic which Professor
Marmion was beginning to fear would probably have broken the party up in
somewhat unpleasant fashion. As it was they contented themselves with
saying: "How exceedingly clever!" "He must be quite a remarkable man!"
"I wonder we've never heard of him before!" "He must make a great deal
of money!" "I wonder if I could persuade the dear Prince--what a
charming man he is!--to bring him to my next At Home day?" and so on,
perfectly ignorant, as it was well they should be, that they had
witnessed a real conquest of Knowledge over Force.
Phadrig, who seemed to be the least interested person on the lawn,
looked about him, and said as quietly as before:
"I should be very much obliged if the best tennis player in the company
will do me the honour to have a game with me."
Now, it so happened that Brenda, in addition to her other athletic
honours, had recently won the Ladies' Tennis Tournament at Washington,
which carried with it the Championship of the State for the year, and so
this challenge appealed both to her pride in the game and her spirit of
adventure. She looked round at Nitocris, and said:
"I've half a mind to try, Niti. I suppose he won't strike me with
lightning or send me down through the earth if I happen to beat him.
Shall I?"
"Yes, do," replied her hostess, with a suspicion of mischief in her
voice; "those dear Professors of ours are puzzling so delightfully over
the first miracle, or whatever it was, that I _do_ want to see them
worried a little more. It will be a wholesome chastening for the
overweening pride of knowledge."
"Very well," laughed Brenda, rising and dropping a light cloak from her
shoulders. "It's the first time I've had the honour of playing against a
magician, mind, so you mustn't be too hard on me if I lose."
Lord Leighton fetched her racquet and one for Phadrig, and they went
together towards the tennis-court in which he was standing. The three
Professors left their places and stood at one end of the net, Messrs
Hartley and Van Huysman indulging in audible growls of baffled
scepticism, and Franklin Marmion silently observant, divided between
interest and amusement. He could not help imagining what would happen if
he were to stand in the middle of the circle and remove himself to the
Higher Plane, and then go round shaking hands and saying, "Good
afternoon."
Brenda acknowledged Phadrig's bow with a gracious nod as she took her
place. Then Lord Leighton handed the other racquet to the Adept. To his
astonishment he declined it with another bow, saying:
"I thank you, my lord, but I do not need it."
"What!" exclaimed the other, with a frank stare of astonishment. "Excuse
me, but tennis without a racquet, you know--are you going to play with
your hands?"
"To some extent, yes, my lord," replied Phadrig, as he took his place.
"Will you ask Miss van Huysman if she will be kind enough to serve?"
Brenda would. Phadrig stood on the middle line between the two courts
with his hands folded in front of him. She certainly felt a little
nervous, but she knew her skill, and she sent a scorcher of an undercut
skimming across the net. The ball stopped dead. Phadrig gave a flick
with his right forefinger, and it hopped back over the net and ran
swiftly along the ground to Brenda's feet. She flushed as she picked it
up and changed courts. Then she raised her racquet and sent a really
vicious slasher into the opposite court. Phadrig, without moving, raised
his hand at the same moment. The ball, hard as it had been driven,
stopped in mid-air over the net, hung there for a moment, then dropped
on Brenda's side and rolled to her feet again. She picked it up, walked
to the net with it in her hand, and said quite good-humouredly:
"I think you're a bit too smart for me, Mr Phadrig. I can't pretend to
play against a gentleman who can suspend the law of gravitation just to
win a game of tennis."
"I did not do it to win the game, Miss van Huysman," he replied with a
gentle smile; "I only desired to amuse you and the other guests of
Professor Marmion. Now, it may be that some excellent but ignorant
people here may think that that ball is bewitched, as they would call
it, so if you will give it to me, I will send it out of reach."
She handed him the ball, wondering what was going to happen next. He
took it and put it on the thumb of his right hand as one does with a
coin when tossing. He flicked it into the air, and, to the amazement of
every one, saving always Franklin Marmion, it rose slowly up to the
cloudless sky, followed by the gaze of a hundred eyes, and vanished.
Then he bowed again to Brenda, and said in the most commonplace tone:
"It is out of harm's way now. Thank you once more for your
condescension."
"But how did it go up like that?" asked Brenda, looking him frankly and
somewhat defiantly in the eyes.
"That, Miss Huysman," he replied with perfect gravity, "was only a
demonstration of what Spiritualists and Theosophists are accustomed to
call levitation. It is only a matter of reversing the force of gravity."
"Is that all?" laughed Brenda, as she turned away. "You talk of it as
though it were a matter of turning a paper bag inside out."
"The one is as easy as the other," he smiled. "It is only a question of
knowing how to do it."
She walked back to her chair very much mystified, and, for the first
time in her so far triumphal journey through the interlude between the
eternities which we call life, a trifle humiliated: but that fact, of
course, she kept to herself. As she dropped back in her chair, she said
to Lord Leighton:
"That was pretty wonderful, wasn't it? I'm quite certain that there's no
trickery about it. What he did, he really did do."
"I don't pretend to be able to explain it," he replied, "but for all
that I've seen very much the same sort of thing done by the fakirs in
India, and I think it's generally admitted that that is either a matter
of trickery or hypnotism. They make you believe you see what you really
don't see at all."
"That's about it," said Merrill, with a short laugh, "Of course no one
who knows anything about the East will deny that hypnotism is a fact,
although I must say that these same fakirs have tried it with me more
than once and found me a quite hopeless subject."
Even as though he had heard him, Phadrig came towards them at the
moment, and said in his polite, impersonal tone:
"Commander Merrill, I am going to try one or two experiments now which I
should like to have very closely watched. I know that there is no keener
observer in the world than the skilled British naval officer. May I ask
for your assistance?"
There was something in his tone which made it quite impossible to
refuse, so he replied:
"You have shown us a good many wonders already, Mr Phadrig, and unless
you've hypnotised the whole of us, I haven't a notion how you have done
it; but if I can find you out I will."
"That is exactly what I wish, sir," said Phadrig, as he bowed to the
ladies and went back to the centre of the circle. Merrill followed him,
and, with the three Professors, formed a square about him.
Phadrig, turning slowly round so that his voice might reach all his
audience, said:
"Ladies and gentlemen, you have all heard of or seen the strange
performances of the Indian fakirs: the growing of the mango plant, the
so-called basket trick, and the throwing into the air of a rope up which
the performer climbs from view of the spectators. I am not going to say
whether those are tricks or not. Their knowledge may be different from
mine, therefore I do not question it. I only propose to show you the
same kind of performance without the use of any coverings or
concealment, and leave you and these four gentlemen to discover any
deception on my part if you can. I will begin by giving you a new
version of the mango trick, if trick it is, with variations. Professor
Marmion, would you have the goodness to ask one of the young ladies to
bring me one of those beautiful white roses of yours?"
Franklin Marmion was on the point of saying: "I'll bring you one myself,
and see what you can do with it," but he was a sportsman in his way,
and, seeing that his guests were so far not all inclined to be
frightened at what they had seen, he refrained from spoiling the
"entertainment," as they evidently took it to be, and so he asked his
daughter to go and get one of her nicest Marèchal Niels.
She rose from her chair and went to her favourite tree; Merrill followed
her with a ready penknife. They came back with a fine half-blown rose on
a leafy twig about nine inches long. As she held it out to Phadrig he
declined it with a bow and a wave of his hand, saying:
"I thank you, Miss Marmion, but it will be better for me not to touch
it. Some one might think that I had bewitched it in some way; will you
be kind enough to give it to Commander Merrill and ask him to put the
stem into the turf: about two inches down, please."
She handed the rose to Merrill, and as he took it their eyes met for an
instant, and she flushed ever so slightly. He, with many unspoken
thoughts, knelt down, made a little hole in the turf with his knife, and
planted the rose. When he stood up again Phadrig went on in the same
quiet impersonal voice:
"Now, ladies and gentlemen, you know that this rose is of a pale cream
colour slightly tinted with red. It shall now grow into a tree bearing
both red and white roses. It will not be necessary for me to touch it."
This somehow appealed more closely to such imagination as the majority
of the spectators possessed. They had regarded the other marvels they
had seen merely as bewilderingly clever examples of legerdemain: but for
a man to make a single sprig of rose grow into a tree bearing both red
and white roses without even touching it meant something quite
unbelievable--until they had seen it. Instinctively the circle narrowed,
and Phadrig noting this, said:
"Pray, come as close as you like, ladies and gentlemen, as long as you
do not pass my guardians, for they have undertaken that you shall not be
deceived."
The result was that a smaller circle was formed round the square, at the
angles of which stood Merrill and the three men of science. Phadrig
stood at one side facing the east. Then he spread his hands out above
the rose, and said slowly:
"Earth feeds, sun warms, and air refreshes: wherefore grow, rose, that
the power of the Greater Knowledge may be manifested, and that those who
believed not before may now see and believe."
He raised his hands with a spreading movement and, to the utter
amazement of every one except Franklin Marmion, who now saw that this
man certainly had approached to within measurable distance of the
borderland which he had himself so lately crossed--wherefore in his eyes
there was nothing at all marvellous in anything he had done--the leaves
on the sprig grew rapidly out into branches as the main stem increased
in height and thickness, red and white buds appeared under the leaves
and swelled out into full blooms with a rapidity that would have been
quite incredible if a hundred keen eyes had not been watching the marvel
so closely; and within ten minutes a fine rose-bush, some three feet
high, loaded with red and white and creamy blossoms, stood where Merrill
had planted the sprig.
After the first gasps of astonishment there arose quite a chorus of
requests from the younger members of Phadrig's audience for a rose to
keep in memory of the marvel they had seen; but he shook his head, and
said with a smile of deprecation:
"I regret that it is not possible for me to grant what you ask. For your
own sakes I cannot do it. If I gave you those roses they would never
fade, and it might be that those who possessed them would never die. Far
be it from me to curse you with such a terrible gift as immortality on
earth."
The gravely, almost sadly spoken words fell upon his hearer's ears like
so many snowflakes. Instinctively they shrank back from the beautiful
bush as though it had been the fabled Upas. They had begun to fear now
for the first time. But there was one among them, a young fellow of
twenty-two, named Martin Caine, who was already known as one of the most
daring and far-sighted of the rising generation of chemical
investigators, to whom the prospect of an endless life devoted to his
darling science was anything but a curse. Intoxicated for the moment by
what he had seen, he sprang forward, exclaiming:
"I'll risk the curse if I can have the life!"
As his hand touched one of the roses, Phadrig's darted out and caught
his wrist. He was a powerful youth, but the instant Phadrig's hand
gripped him he stopped, as though he had been suddenly stricken by
paralysis. He turned a white, scared face with fear-dilated eyes upward,
and said in a half-choked voice:
"What's the matter? If what you say's true, give me eternal life, and
I'll give it to Science."
"My young friend," said Phadrig, with a slow shake of his head, "you are
grievously mistaken. You have eternal life already. You may kill your
body, or it may die of age or disease, but the life of your soul is not
yours to take or keep. Only the High Gods can dispose of that. Who am I
that I should abet you in defying their decrees? Here is my refusal of
your mad request."
He plucked the rose which Caine had touched, held it to his lips and
breathed on it. The next instant the withered leaves fell to the
ground, and lay there dry and shrivelled. The stalk was brown and dry.
As he released Caine's wrist he dropped the stalk in the middle of the
bush, and said in a loud tone:
"As thou hast lived, die--as all things must which shall live again."
As quickly as the rose-bush had grown and flowered so quickly, it
withered and died. In a few moments there was nothing left of it but a
few dry sticks lying in a little heap of dust.
The circle suddenly widened out as the people shrank back, every face
showing, not only wonder now, but actual fear; and now Franklin Marmion
felt that Phadrig had been allowed to go as far as a due consideration
for the sanity of his guests would permit. The other two Professors were
disputing in low, anxious tones, as if even their scepticism was shaken
at last: Martin Caine had drifted away through the opening press to hide
his terror and chagrin. The Adept stood impassively triumphant beside
the poor relics of the rose-bush, but obviously enjoying the
consternation that he had produced--for now the lust of power which ever
attends upon imperfect knowledge had taken hold of him, and he was
devising yet another marvel for their bewilderment. But before he had
arrived at his decision, something else happened which was quite outside
his programme.
The Prince broke the chilly silence by saying to Nitocris in a tone loud
enough for every one to hear:
"I hope, Miss Marmion, that I have justified my intrusion by the skill
which my friend Phadrig has displayed for the entertainment of your
guests?"
She turned and looked at him, and, as their glances met, he saw a change
come over her. Her eyes grew darker: her features acquired an almost
stony rigidity utterly strange to her. His eyelids lifted quickly, and
he shrank back from her as a man might do who had seen the wraith of one
long dead, but once well known.
"Nitocris!" he murmured in Russian. "Phadrig was right: it is the
Queen!"
She swept past him--Oscar Oscarovitch, the man who aspired to the throne
of the Eastern Empire of Europe--as though he had been one of his own
slaves in the old days, and faced Phadrig.
"It is enough, Anemen-Ha that was. Hast thou not learned wisdom yet,
after so many lives? Is the inmost chamber of thy soul still closed in
rebellion against the precepts of the High Gods? No more of thy poor
little mummeries for the deception of the ignorant! Go, and without
further display of the weakness which thou hast presumptuously mistaken
for strength. The Queen commands--go!"
Only Phadrig and Franklin Marmion saw that it was not Nitocris, the
daughter of the English man of science, but the daughter of the great
Rameses who stood there crowned and robed as Queen of the Two Kingdoms.
Phadrig raised the palms of his hands to his forehead, bowed before her,
and murmured:
"The Queen has but to speak to be obeyed! It is even as I feared. But the
Prince----"
"I who was and am, know what thou wouldst say. Go, or----"
"Royal Egypt, I go! But as thou art mighty, have mercy, and make the
manner of my going easy."
Nitocris turned away with a gesture of utter contempt, walked slowly
towards her father, and said in English:
"Dad, I think our friend the Adept is a little tired after his
wonder-working. I dare say most of us would be if we could do what he
has been doing. He seems quite exhausted. I think you had better ask the
Prince to let his coachman take him home."
Oscar Oscarovitch's soul was in a tumult of bewilderment, but his almost
perfect training made it possible for him to say as quietly as though he
had been taking leave of his hostess at a reception in London:
"Miss Marmion, we must thank you for your great consideration. As you
say, our friend is undoubtedly fatigued, and, as I have an appointment
at the Embassy this evening, I will ask you to allow me to take my leave
as well."
With a comprehensive bow of farewell to the company, and a somewhat limp
handshake with Professor Marmion and his daughter, he put his arm
through that of his defeated and humiliated accomplice, and led him away
through an opening which the still dazed spectators instinctively made
for them.