CONTROVERSY AND CONFIDENCES
After this incident, the guests melted away, singly and by pairs and
families, thanking Nitocris and her father with much _empressement_ for
"the delightful afternoon," and "the extraordinary entertainment which
they had so much enjoyed," and many regrets that "the poor Adept, who
really was so very clever and had mystified them all so delightfully,"
had overdone himself and got ill, and so on, and so on, through the
endless repetitions and variations usual on such occasions.
A small party, including the Hartleys, the Van Huysmans, Merrill, and
Lord Leighton, had been asked to stay to dinner, but it happened that
they had a conversazione already included in the day's programme, and so
they took their departure soon after the others, the Professor, it must
be confessed, in a somewhat morose frame of mind. Like all men of
similar mental constitution, he hated to be mystified, and now, for the
first time in his long career of investigation into apparently abstruse
phenomena, he had been absolutely stumped by this perfect-mannered,
quiet-spoken gentleman from the East who performed wonders in broad
daylight, on a plot of grass amidst a crowd of people, and did not
deign to even touch the things he worked his miracles with. If he had
only used some sort of apparatus, or condescended to some concealment,
after the manner of others of this kind, there might have been a chance
of finding a means of exposure; but the whole performance had been so
transparently open and aboveboard that Professor Marcus Hartley, D.Sc.,
M.A., F.R.S., etc., etc., felt that, as a consistent materialist, he had
not been given a fair chance. Still, he did not despair; and by the time
he got back into his own den he had resolved that when it did come, as
of course it must do sooner or later, the exposure of Phadrig the Adept
and the vindication of Natural Law should be complete and final.
A discussion of the same marvels naturally bulked largely in the
conversation during dinner at "The Wilderness." Mrs van Huysman did not
contribute much wisdom to it beyond the assertion of her conviction that
such things were wicked and should be stopped by law, at which her
daughter was sufficiently unfilial to draw a diverting picture of a
stalwart policeman trying to arrest an elusive adept who could probably
make himself invisible at will, or call to his aid fire-breathing
dragons, just as easily as he could make a tennis ball evaporate into
thin air, or grow lovely witch-roses and wither them to ashes with a
breath.
"I do think it was a bit mean of him not to let that poor young man have
one of them, if he was willing to take the risk. Especially as he just
wanted to go on working for Science for ever. Fancy what a single man
might do if he could just keep right on with his life-work for, say, a
thousand years without having to stop it to die and be born again,
according to Niti's pet theory. What couldn't a man like that do for
human knowledge!"
"Would you have had one of those roses, Brenda, if the Prince's
miracle-worker had offered you one?" asked Nitocris, smiling, but still
with a decided note of seriousness in her tone.
"I?" laughed Brenda, leaning back in her chair. "Sakes, no, child! I've
had a pretty good time so far, and I hope it won't be over just yet;
but, after all, there must be a limit even to the combinations of human
life, and a time would have to come when you'd just be doing the same
old things over and over again. And, besides that, think of the horror
of living on and on and seeing every one you loved--husband and wife,
and children and grandchildren--grow old and die, and leave you alone in
a world of strangers. No; life's a good thing if you only have fair play
in the world; but so is death when you've lived your life. It's only
like going to bed, after all. Eternal life would be like a day with no
night to it, and that, I guess, would get a bit monotonous after a
century or two. What do you think, Professor?"
"My dear Miss van Huysman," replied her host with one of his rare but
eloquent smiles, "since I began to study the question with anything
like enlightenment, I have not been able to look upon what we call life,
by which I mean existence in this or some other world, as anything but
eternal. In its manifestations to our senses it is, I admit, merely
transitory, a brief span of time between two other states which, for
want of a better word, we may call two eternities; but I must confess
that, to me, a human existence beginning with the cradle and ending with
the grave is merely a more or less tragic riddle without an answer: in
other words, a meaningless absurdity. I find it quite impossible to
conceive any deity or presiding genius of the universe who could be
guilty of such a colossally useless tragedy as human life would be under
those circumstances."
"I can't see it, my dear Marmion," said Brenda's father a trifle
gruffly, for he had not yet quite recovered from the disquieting
experiences of the afternoon. "What does it matter whether we live again
or not as long as we live cleanly and do our work honestly while we are
alive? Surely if we leave this world a little bit better, a little bit
richer in knowledge, than we find it, these poor little lives of ours,
such as they are, and that's not much--will not have been lived in vain.
Of course, as you know, I'm just a common, low-down materialist who
can't rise to the poetry of things as you can with this gorgeous theory
of re-incarnation of yours.
"I should very much like to believe it if I could, as I once said to an
eminent revivalist on the war-path in the States; but the trouble with a
man who is honest with himself is that he can no more make himself
believe what doesn't seem true to him than he can make himself hungry
when he isn't. All the horrible history of religious persecution is just
the story of a lot of bigots in power trying to force helpless people to
do what they couldn't do honestly. The awful part of the business is
that they were most likely all wrong, and didn't know it."
"But, at least, Professor, I hope you are able to give them credit for
honest intentions, however mistaken they might have been?" interposed
Merrill, who was the son of a country parson and had so far preserved
his simple faith intact. It may be remarked here, that Nitocris was well
aware of this, and loved her strong-souled sailor all the better for it.
Franklin Marmion did not, but then he thought any creed good enough for
"a mere fighting man."
"There were schemers and scoundrels among them on both sides, sir,"
replied the American quietly. "The temptation was too big; but I am
quite willing to allow that the majority of them, even the Inquisitors,
were honest zealots who really did think it right to produce any amount
of suffering and misery here on earth in order to get matters
straightened out, as they thought, hereafter. Charles V. was the most
enlightened monarch of his age and the worst persecutor, and Torquemada,
away from his religion, was as kind-hearted a man as ever lived. Calvin
was a good man, but he watched Servetus burn, and our own Pilgrim
Fathers on the other side were just about as hard men as any when it
came to arguing out a religious question with whips and pillories and
thumbscrews, and the like. I don't want to offend any one's sentiment or
question any one's faith. To each man the belief that satisfies him, but
personally I have no use for a religion that can't get itself believed
without persecution."
"I quite agree with you there, Professor," replied Merrill, who felt a
little chilled by the perfect aloofness with which the other spoke, and
was wondering what his dear old father, living his quiet, saintly life
among the Derbyshire dales, would have thought of such cold-blooded
heresy. "I have always looked upon that sort of brutal intolerance as a
form of religious mania--sincere, but still mania, and the story of it
is the most awful chapter in human history----"
"Except, perhaps, the story of war," interrupted Professor Marmion, with
a snap in his voice. Monomania, more or less harmless, is a not
infrequent affliction of very high intelligences, and a quite
unreasoning hatred of war was his, although within the last few days he
had come to suspect disquieting misgivings on the subject, possibly in
consequence of the higher knowledge to which he was attaining.
"My dear sir," replied Merrill quite good-humouredly, and not at all
sorry for the diversion, "I am glad to say that I agree with you also.
No man who has not actually fought can have any just idea of the
appalling abominations of war, and I am sure that no men hate it more
devotedly than those who have to fight. But we have to take the world as
it is, and not as we would like it to be; and as long as we have people
in it who want to set it on fire for their own brutally selfish
purposes, we shall have to keep the fire-extinguishers in good order."
In obedience to an appealing glance from his daughter, the Professor did
not reply. His opponent in the bloodless arena of Science saved him by
interrupting:
"Yes, sir. I differ from my friend Marmion on a good many points, and
that's one of them. You have the honour to serve in the biggest
fire-extinguishing institution on earth. It was the British Navy that
put out Napoleon's bonfire that he was making of the world: you kept the
ring round us and Spain, and round Russia and Japan, and you've saved
more conflagrations than half a dozen Noah's floods would put out.
That's why the Kaiser and his tin-hatted firebrands have such a healthy
dislike for you. They'd have had the world on fire years ago if they
hadn't had to worry about you."
"I think you must admit, Professor Marmion," said Lord Leighton, who had
so far been busy with his own new thoughts and the contemplation of the
inspirer of them, "that it is people like these on whom the real guilt
of the crime of war rests. Now that the pressure of the bear's paw is
removed, Germany is the danger-spot of the world. The Maroocan business
proved that pretty clearly; and nothing but our friendship with America
and France and 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 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 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.
"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."
"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.
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?"
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 himself 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."
"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 you that I loved you and wanted you for my
wife, and--and the real fact is that it--I mean I know now that it
wasn't true--and so I thought I ought to tell you. You know, of course,
that the Professor----"
"My dear Lord Leighton," she answered, with an air of quite superior
wisdom, "my learned father is a very clever man in his own subjects: but
I think I know a great deal more about this particular one than he does.
You are quite right. You did not love me. You liked me very much, I have
no doubt----"
"Yes, and so I do still, and always shall do, but----"
"But your liking was great enough to make you mistake it for love.
Women's instincts are quicker and keener in these relations than men's
are, and I saw that you did not love me as a real woman has to be loved,
and, to be quite frank with you, some one else did. I like you very
much, Lord Leighton, and I am going to go on liking you; but, you see, I
could not give you what I had already given away. Now, you have told me
so much that you ought to tell me a little more. How did your sudden
enlightenment on that interesting subject come about?"
He was infinitely relieved by the absolutely frank and friendly way in
which she had treated the whole subject, and so he had courage to reply
with a laugh:
"In short, Miss Marmion, you ask me who the other girl is. Well, you
certainly have a right to know, because, curiously enough, I might never
have got to know her but for you----"
"Is it Brenda?"
The question was whispered, and he replied in a whisper:
"Yes; do you think I have any chance?"
A cohort of wild cats would not have torn Brenda's secret out of her
friend's soul, and so she replied in a tone that was almost judicious in
its evenness:
"That, my friend, is a question that you can only get answered by asking
another--and you must ask her, not me."
"Oh yes, of course I must," he said rather limply. "But she's so
splendid--so beautiful, so exquisite--and--I do wish she wasn't so very
rich. You see, even if I had the great good fortune to--to get her to
marry me, I have lots for both; and, you know, the moment an Englishman
with a title gets engaged to an American millionairess everybody says
that he is simply dollar-hunting."
"That, unfortunately, is usually too well justified by the facts," she
replied seriously. "But only the most idiotic and ignorant of gossips
could possibly say that of you. Every one who is any one knows that the
Kyneston coronet does not want re-gilding."
And then she went on, glancing sideways at him again:
"Still, as you know perfectly well, in matters of this kind, these very
delicate diplomatic considerations, I do not care whether it is a
question of fifty shillings a week or fifty thousand a year. You once
paid me the very great compliment of offering me rank, position, and
almost everything that a girl, from the merely material point of view
could ask for. I refused, because I felt certain that you and I did not
love each other--however much we may have liked and respected each
other--as a man and woman ought to do, unless they become guilty of a
great sin against each other. To put it in a very hackneyed way, we were
not each other's affinities. I had already found mine--and I think, and
hope, that you have found yours--and I wish you all the good fortune
that you may, and, perhaps, can win."
"If is very, very good of you, Miss Marmion; but do you think you
could--well, help me a little? I know I don't deserve it."
"No, sir, you do not," she laughed softly, because the other two were
coming back on to the lawn. "I wonder that you have--I have half a mind
to say the impudence--to ask such a thing. You have confessed your
fickleness in an almost shameless way; and now you ask me to help you
with the other girl! No, my lord: if I know anything of Brenda van
Huysman's nature, there is no one who can help you except yourself. Of
course she might----"
"Do you really think she might--I mean in that way?"
"Who am I that I should know the secrets of another woman's soul?" she
replied, with unhesitating prevarication. "There she is. Go and ask her,
and take my best wishes with you. Now I am going to talk to _my_
affinity for a few minutes."
"So it was Merrill, after all!" he said to himself, as they joined the
others. "Well, I'm glad. He's a splendid fellow; and she--of course,
she's worth the love of the best man on earth--and I'm afraid that's
not--anyhow, I'll have Miss Brenda's opinion on the subject before I go
home to-night."
It now need hardly be added that the said opinion was not only entirely
satisfactory, but also very sweetly expressed.