THE LUST THAT WAS--AND IS
Nitocris kept her room until nearly seven the following evening.
Oscarovitch made frequent enquiries of Jenny as to her condition, and
always received the same reply. Her mistress was in a semi-unconscious
state, and she could only rouse her every now and then to take a little
nourishment. Unfortunately there was no doctor on board. He had had news
in Copenhagen that his mother was lying very ill at Hamburg, and, as the
cruise was then intended to be only a very short one, he had been given
leave to go to her.
The Prince wished to go back to Copenhagen, but this Nitocris absolutely
refused. She had determined to fight her sorrow alone, and when she had
conquered it, she would go back to England and her friends--which was
exactly what Oscarovitch had determined she should not do. She was
absolutely at his mercy now. He would be something worse than a fool to
let such a golden opportunity go by--and so the _Grashna's_ bowsprit was
kept pointing eastward, and the leagues between her and Oscarburg were
being flung behind her as fast as the whirling screws could devour them.
The only question that he had to ask himself was: How? and to that an
easy answer at once suggested itself: The Horus Stone.
When he went down to what he expected would be a lonely dinner, he was
more than agreeably surprised to find Nitocris dressed in a black
evening costume, which was the nearest approach to mourning that her
available wardrobe made possible, already in the saloon.
He bowed to her with a gesture of reverence, which meant far more than
mere formal politeness, and said in a low tone:
"Miss Marmion, I need not say how pleased I am to find that you are able
to leave your room. May I hope that you will be able to dine?"
"Yes, Prince," she replied, in the same cold, mechanical voice in which
she had answered the tidings of her father's death. "The worst is over
now, I hope. Some time and some way we must all leave the world and, at
least, there is the consolation that my father has left it perhaps a
little better and a little wiser than he found it. That, I think is as
much as the ordinary mortal may be permitted to hope for. We who hold
the Doctrine do not sorrow for the dead: we only sorrow for ourselves
who are left to wait until we may, perhaps, meet again."
"The Doctrine, Miss Marmion?" he asked, as he placed a chair for her at
his right hand. "May I ask what the Doctrine is?"
"Of re-incarnation," she replied, sitting down and looking at him across
the corner of the table.
"Really? I most sincerely wish that I could believe in it. Mr Amena,
whom I took the great liberty of bringing to your garden-party, a man
of very remarkable powers, as you saw, holds the Doctrine, as you call
it, and he has been trying for months to convert me to it; but, as I
said going to Elsinore, I'm afraid I am too hopelessly materialistic for
any conversion to be possible in my case, at least as far as my present
experiences have gone."
"As the belief so must be the faith," she said with a grave smile. "It
is no more possible to have true faith when you do not really believe
than it is to be hungry when you have not got an appetite. That is quite
a material simile; but I think it is true."
"Absolutely true!" he replied, looking at her again with a note of
interrogation in each eye. "But, really, these things are too deep for
me, a mere human animal. And now, talking about appetite, here comes the
soup."
The dinner _à deux_ was just what he had intended it to be, simple and
yet perfect in every detail. The subject of Franklin Marmion's departure
from the world was, as if by mutual consent, dropped. Oscarovitch
comforted such conscience as he had by trying to believe that what
Nitocris had said about her belief in the Doctrine was to her really
true. He also honestly believed that she had faced her great sorrow in
solitude, and overcome it in the strength of that belief. Their
conversation turned easily away to other topics, and by the time that
coffee was brought in and he had obtained her permission to light a
cigarette, his beautiful guest appeared to have left the recent past
behind her, for the time being at least, and was almost as she had been
during the run up to Elsinore.
Her manner was that of complete composure, and it is hardly necessary to
say that this mastery of her emotion forced him to a degree of
admiration, almost of worship, which the physical charm that appealed
only to his animal senses could never have inspired. Here, truly, was
the ideal Empress of the Russias and the East sitting almost beside him.
And now the psychological moment had come!
"Will you excuse me for a couple of minutes, Miss Marmion?" he asked, as
he finished his coffee and rose from his chair. "Going back to what you
were saying about re-incarnation: I have something in my room which I
hope may interest you. I got it from my friend, the miracle-worker. He
told me a long story about it that I don't want to trouble you with: but
the thing in itself is quite worth seeing. At least, I never saw
anything like it before."
"Then please let me see it," she replied, assenting with an inclination
of her head. "If that is so it must be, as you say, well worth seeing."
He went to his room and came back with a large square morocco case in
his hand. He gave it to her, and said:
"Do me the favour to open it, and tell me what you think of it."
She touched the spring and the cover flew up. She half-expected what she
saw. There, lying in a nest of soft black velvet, encircled by a triple
halo of whitely gleaming diamonds, was the Horus Stone. In an instant
she travelled back through fifty centuries to the scene of the
death-bridal of her other self, Nitocris the Queen, in the
banqueting-hall of the Palace of Pepi. Then it had lain gleaming on her
breast, and now she saw it again with the eyes of flesh, after nearly
five thousand years. Now, too, she grasped in all the fullness of its
evil meaning the reason why Oscarovitch had brought it to her in such an
hour as this. With utter contempt in her soul and a smile on her lips,
she leaned back in her chair and said in a voice which had a note of
ecstasy in it:
"Oh, Prince, how lovely! What a glorious gem! The diamonds are, of
course, splendid, but they are only a setting for the emerald. What a
magnificent stone! Rich as you are, you are very fortunate to be the
possessor of such a treasure--for treasure it surely must be."
"It is, as you say, a magnificent stone," he replied, looking steadily
into her questioning eyes. "But if what Amena told me was true, it is
something more than a unique gem. There is an inscription on it, some
characters carved in the stone which are, as he said, the history of it,
but to me they are as unintelligible as the Assyrian cuneiform would be.
Possibly you may know something of them. If you do, here is a lens that
will help your sight."
She took the glass from him and bent down over the gem. She read the
sacred symbol of the Trinity as she had read it and known it ages
before. But while she was gazing at it, she also read the intent of the
man who had given it into her hands. She put the lens aside, and,
laying her palms on her temples, she looked deep down into the luminous
depths of the great emerald in a silence which Oscarovitch interpreted
into such meaning as he was able to make for himself.
Minute after minute passed in silence, and still her eyes were fixed
upon the Stone. Her face became like that of a beautiful masterpiece of
Phidias: pure, cold, and true. A feeling of something like awe crept
over him as he watched her, and he found himself asking whether, after
all, Phadrig's story might have been true. But, true or not, there was
the fascination which, as Phadrig had told him, had lured Isaac Josephus
to his self-inflicted doom. Her eyes were chained to the gem: her face
was no longer that of a living woman dominated by her own will. After
all his disbelief, there _was_ an enchantment in the Stone, for here,
even she, Nitocris, had succumbed to it.
He sat and waited for a few minutes longer. If there is magic in the
Stone, let it work, he thought; and so he sat and watched her until he
saw that the fixed stare of her eyes and the rigidity of her now
perfectly statuesque face convinced him that the magic of the Stone had,
as Phadrig had told him, made him the possessor of it, absolute master
of the man or woman who had gazed upon its fatal beauty.
Then he got up and, reaching over her shoulders, took up the diamond
chain, glistening under the soft light of the starry dome of the saloon,
shook it out into a flood of white radiance, lifted it above her head,
and let it fall very gently round her neck. The Horus Stone, as though
endowed with sentience, fell and rested where it had rested five
thousand years before. As it touched her flesh Nitocris felt a tremor of
indescribable emotion, not only of the body but of the soul, pass
through her. She leaned back in her chair again, and whispered:
"Is it really mine now, Prince? But no! How could I take it from you--I
who can give nothing in exchange for such a treasure? No, no, you must
take it back. I am not worthy to wear it."
He laid his hands gently on her arms, and said in a soft, murmuring tone
which sounded like the purring of a tiger-cat:
"Nitocris, if all the choicest gems in all the world could be put into a
crucible and fused into one, all its splendour would still be unworthy
to lie on that white breast of yours. Give me your love, Nitocris. I am
hungering and thirsting for it. Come with me to Oscarburg, and you shall
be crowned Princess--and after that Empress--Empress of the Russias and
the East. I will give you a dominion such as the great Catherine never
dared to dream of. Say yes, and in a month you shall be seated on her
throne. It is only a little word, dearest, only a little word--will you
not say it, and be my Princess, my Queen, my Empress?"
"I am tired now, Oscar," she said wearily, "so much has happened in so
short a time. Yes, I will, if it is possible: but let me go now. No, you
must not kiss me yet. Remember that Russian saying, 'Take thy thoughts
to bed with thee, for the morning is wiser than the evening.'
Good-night, Oscar, I am very tired. You shall have your answer in the
morning. May I take this with me?"
"Yes," he replied, giving her his hand as she rose from her chair, and
bowing over hers until his lips touched it. "Take it, unworthy as it is,
as an earnest of the realisation of the happy dreams that will come to
me to-night. Au revoir, pas adieu!"
"Auf viedersehn, mein Oscar!" she replied as she passed him, leaving the
sensation of a gentle flutter of her hand in his. "We shall understand
each other better still before long--I hope."
"It is my dearest wish. Good-night, Nitocris, and when the dawn comes
may it find nothing but sunshine in that sweet soul of yours!"
Nitocris went to her room and found her maid waiting, white-faced and
anxious. She was frightened and nearly worn out with caring for her
mistress. She would have been very glad to have been back that very
night at "The Wilderness," even if it had lost its master.
"Go to bed at once, Jenny; you look like a ghost, as you may well do
after all the trouble I've given you. No, I don't really want you, and
you want sleep rather badly. Go to bed, like a good girl. It will not be
the first time that I have undressed myself."
And when Jenny had gone and she had locked the door, Nitocris stripped
herself, save for the collar of diamonds and the pendant Horus Stone.
She took a long veil of Indian muslin out of her dress-box and wound it
round her after the fashion of old Egypt, leaving her left breast bare.
Only the Ureaus Crown was wanting to make her, in the flesh, Nitocris
the Queen: but here on her bosom flashed and flamed the Horus
Stone--hers once again, as it had been in the far-off past, symbol of
her sovereignty, and proof of her faith in the one true Doctrine.
She looked at the lovely reflection in the long mirror behind her
dressing-table, and said to herself in a low, whispering laugh:
"This for you, Oscar Oscarovitch that is, Menkau-Ra who was! Yes, you
may dream your pleasant dreams to-night; you may take me to your lonely
castle in Viborg Bay; you may make me marry you, as you think I
shall--and here is my wedding gift--mine again after all these
ages--blessed be for ever the Holy Trinity, Osiris, Isis, and Horus. May
the Most High Gods help and protect me!"
She raised the Sacred Stone to her lips as she spoke, turned off the
light, and lay down in her bed to dream dreams of forgotten ages.