THE ADVANCEMENT OF NITOCRIS--THE RESOLVE OF OSCAROVITCH
Franklin Marmion and Hoskins van Huysman parted that evening in what may
be described as a state of armed neutrality, but with more cordiality
than Brenda, at any rate, had hoped for. Still, they were both
gentlemen, and, moreover, the American scientist was honestly looking
forward to the discovery of some fatal flaw in the reasoning of his
English rival which should leave the final triumph with him--and such a
triumph would be not only final but crushing.
Brenda whirled her father and Lord Leighton--who, of course, sat beside
her in front as she drove--off to supper; Merrill went to his club to
ruminate happily for an hour; and the hero of the evening and his
daughter drove home almost in silence, and it was a silence for which
there was a very sufficient reason. Such people do not talk about
trivialities when they are thinking about much more serious concerns.
After supper Nitocris followed her father into the study, as he quite
expected her to do, and when she had shut the door, she faced him and
said in a voice that was not quite her own:
"Dad, there seems to me to be only one explanation of what you did
to-night. I know enough mathematics to see that it is the only one. If
you tell me that I am wrong, of course I shall believe you--and then I
shall ask you how else you did it."
As she spoke he felt that his soul was asking itself a momentous
question. She had guessed--or did she already know?--the Great Secret.
And, if either, was she herself near enough to the dividing line between
the two worlds for him to tell her the truth?
He sat down in the chair before his writing-table and stared hard at his
plotting-pad for a few moments. Then he looked up at her and saw the
answer.
"Niti," he said slowly, and with a little halt between the words, "you
have asked me a question which I think some one else must answer, if it
can be answered at all. Look behind you!"
She turned swiftly, and there, almost beside her, stood--not the Mummy,
but the Queen, her living other-self, royal-robed and crowned as she had
been in the dim past, which was now again the present.
Would she flinch or faint, or cry out with fear? If her unconscious feet
had not advanced very near to the Border she would certainly do one or
the other. Indeed, it was with an inward quaking of fear for her that
her father had told her to turn. It might well have meant the difference
between sanity and insanity, knowing what she already did of the Mummy
and its mysterious disappearance. But no: there before his eyes was
worked again the miracle which had already been worked in his own case,
though now it was, if possible, even more marvellous than it had been
before. As Nitocris turned she uttered a low cry of wonder and
recognition, and held out both hands to her other twin-self. The Queen
took them, and said in the Ancient Tongue, which now she understood
again after many centuries:
"Welcome, thou who wast once myself, into this larger life to which the
Perfect Knowledge hath led thee: where Time is not, and that which was,
and is, and shall be are the same! Thou hast yet many days, as men call
them, to live in that limited life known as mortal, and so the mortal
lot, with its perils and sorrows and joys, shall yet be thine: yet,
although, if the High Gods will it so, that life shall end and begin and
end again many times, thou hast already won through the shadows which
bound that little life into the light of the Day which knows not dawn
nor noon nor night. I who was, and thou who art, are one again!"
Then came silence. Franklin Marmion saw the two kindred shapes merge
into each other. He closed his eyes for a moment, as he thought, and
when he opened them again he was alone. He looked at the clock, and saw
that it was after four.
"Dear me!" he said, getting up with a shake of his shoulders, "I must
have fallen asleep. Where's Niti? Why, of course, she has been in bed
for hours, and it's about time that I got there, too."
When they met before breakfast Nitocris said to him:
"I had a very strange experience last night, Dad. I either saw, or
dreamt I saw, the Mummy alive again, robed and crowned like a queen of
ancient Egypt; and then we seemed to become the same person, and I
remembered that I had been Queen Nitocris of Egypt once. Then I found
myself alone--so very much alone--in a new world which was still like
this one, only there wasn't any time. I had another sense which made me
able to see past, present, and future all at once, and here and there,
and up and down, and something else were all the same, and yet it did
not seem in the slightest strange to me, so I suppose it was a dream."
"It was no dream, Niti," said her father, looking at her with grave
eyes. "Last night, as we have to say in the state of Three Dimensions,
you had your first glimpse of the state of Four. I saw what you did."
"Ah!" she replied, without any sign of astonishment. "Then that is why I
was able to understand your demonstrations last night when all the rest
were puzzled. I didn't think I quite did then, however, but I see now
that I did. And so I and Her Majesty are really one and the same! It
ought to seem very wonderful, but somehow it doesn't in the slightest."
"I don't think that anything will seem wonderful to you now, Niti," was
the quiet response. "But as we are at present on the lower plane of
existence, it will be necessary for us to go to breakfast."
* * * * *
Oscarovitch and Phadrig went back after the lecture to the Prince's flat
in Royal Court Mansions, which, as a bachelor and a bird of passage, he
found much more convenient in many ways than a house. He ordered his
Russian servant to make coffee for his guest, and mixed a stiff
brandy-and-soda for himself. He wanted it, for the experiences of the
evening had shaken even his nerves not a little. He was essentially a
man of power, both physically and mentally, of boundless ambitions and
iron will, vast knowledge of the world, as he knew it, and of very high
intellectual attainments; but the cast of his mind was absolutely
material, and therefore he both hated and feared anything which appeared
to transcend the material plane to which his mental vision was at
present entirely confined.
When the servant had left the room after bringing the coffee, he gave
Phadrig a cigar, lit one himself, and said through the first puffs of
smoke:
"Phadrig, you know, or pretend to know, more about these things than I
do, or want to do: but, still, just now I want you to tell me honestly
if you believe that Professor Marmion did really solve those problems
to-night. I ask you because I admit that the solutions went beyond the
range of my mathematics."
"Highness," replied the Egyptian, speaking slowly and almost reverently,
"he did. There is not, I think, another man on earth now who could have
done so; but for those who had eyes to see there could be no doubt, and
you will find that, though he has many rivals and will have countless
critics, not one will be able either to explain his solutions or find a
flaw in them."
"You did a few things that I should not have thought possible the other
day, which you claimed to be really miracles. Now, if they were, I
suppose you can explain Professor Marmion's?"
"There are no miracles, Highness: only the results of higher knowledge
than that which they who see them possess. That is why what I did seemed
like miracles to those who watched. But this Franklin Marmion, as he is
called in this life, has attained to a higher knowledge than mine,
wherefore I am able only to understand imperfectly, but not myself to
do, that which he does. Yet, as the High Gods live, he did this thing;
and to do it he must have passed to the higher life through the gate of
the Perfect Knowledge."
"In other words," said the Prince, after a big gulp of his
brandy-and-soda, "that he has solved that infernal problem of the fourth
dimension you have had so much to say about. Now, granted that he has
done so, what does it amount to as regards our world--the world of
practical thought and real action, I mean?"
"All thought is practical, Highness," replied Phadrig, "since there can
be no action which is intelligent without thought. Wherefore, the higher
the thought the more potent the action, and so he who has the Perfect
Knowledge has also the Perfect Power."
"Then, do you mean to tell me seriously--and I can hardly think that you
would trifle with me--that this man is now practically omnipotent, as
far as we lower beings, as you seem to call us, are concerned?"
"Only the High Gods are omnipotent, Your Excellency; but, if I have seen
rightly, he is as a god to us of the lower life, and therefore I would
pray you again to utterly relinquish your lately and, as I have dared
for your sake to say, rashly-formed designs to make the Queen who was,
and his daughter that is, the sharer of your future throne. Is not the
Princess Hermia noble and fair enough?"
"No, by all your gods, no!" exclaimed the Prince passionately. "Since I
have seen the woman who, as you say, was once Queen of Egypt, there is,
and shall be, no other consort for me. And who are you to advise me
thus? Are you still the same man who made the condition that, if you
used your arts, whatever they may be, to place her in my power, she
should be, not only my Empress, but also Queen of Egypt? What has
changed you? What has made you faithless to the promise that you gave
me in exchange for mine? If you have forgotten that, do not also forget
that we Russians have a short way with traitors."
"What has changed me, Highness," replied Phadrig, ignoring the threat,
"is the knowledge that I have gained to-night. Though you believe me or
not, the debt which I owe you makes it my duty to warn you. The matter
stands thus: Nitocris, the daughter of Franklin Marmion, was the Queen.
For all I know, she also may have attained to the higher life, and is
therefore the Queen still, though that is a mystery beyond my
comprehension; but I do know now that her father has attained to it, and
that for this reason, unless you put this new-found love out of your
heart, you will bring yourself within the sphere of this man's power--a
power mighty enough to wreck every scheme you have ever shaped, and to
doom you to a fate more horrible than mortal brain could conceive. You
would be as a man who strove against a god."
"You may believe what you are saying, Phadrig, and I dare say you do,"
exclaimed the Prince again. "I don't, because I can't; but even if I
did, I would claim your promise. I love this Nitocris, Queen or woman,
and neither man nor god shall keep her from me, willing or unwilling. As
for the Princess Hermia--well, her husband is not dead yet."
"Better he dead and his widow your wife, as was planned, Highness, than
that you should dare the power of one who has attained to the Perfect
Knowledge," said the Egyptian, with all the earnestness of absolute
conviction. "But my duty is done. I have warned you of that which you
cannot see for yourself. I have done it to my own sorrow and the
destroying of my own dream; but my promise is given, and I will keep it,
even to a fate that may be worse than death."
The Prince drained his glass and laughed.
"Well said, my ages-old adept, as you think you are! You shall follow
me, for I will go on now even to death, or what there may be worse
behind it, if I can only take my beautiful Queen with me. Yes, I swear I
will, by God--if there is one!"
So by his ignorant blasphemy Oscar Oscarovitch, who once was Lord of War
in Egypt, for the love of the same woman, fixed his fate for this life,
and for many that were to come after it.