"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 mult.i.tudes welcoming them home from victory are buried under the drifting desert sands; in the ruins of thy holy temples the statues of the G.o.ds lie p.r.o.ne 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 G.o.ds 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.ses 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 G.o.ds! 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 pa.s.sed the threshold and taken a place only a little lower than the seats of the G.o.ds, 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 G.o.ds 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.
CHAPTER IX
"THE WILDERNESS," WIMBLEDON COMMON
The little estate on Wimbledon Common, which had been in Professor Marmion"s family for three generations, was called "The Wilderness." The house was of distinctly composite structure. Tradition said that it had been a royal hunting lodge in the days when Barnes and Putney and Wimbledon were tiny hamlets and the Thames flowed silver-clear through a vast, wild region of forest and gorse and heather, and the ancestors of the deer in Richmond Park browsed in the shade of ancient oaks and elms and beeches, and antler-crowned monarchs sent their hoa.r.s.e challenges bellowing across the open s.p.a.ces which separated their jealously guarded domains.
Generation by generation it had grown with the wealth and importance of its owners, as befits a house that is really a home and not merely a place to live in, until it had become a quaint medley of various styles of architecture from the Elizabethan to the later Georgian. Thus it had come to possess a charm that was all its own, a charm that can never belong to a house that has only been built, and has not grown. Its interior was an embodiment in stone and oak and plaster of cosy comfort and dignified repose, and, though it contained every "modern improvement," all was in such perfect taste and harmony that even the electric light might have been installed in the days of the first James.
The Professor inhabited the northern wing, reputed to have been the original lodge in which kings and queens and great soldiers and statesmen had held revel after the chase, and tradition had endowed it with a quite authentic ghost: which was that of a fair maiden who had been decoyed thither to become the victim of royal pa.s.sion, and who, strangely enough, poisoned herself in her despair, instead of getting herself made a d.u.c.h.ess and founding the honours of a n.o.ble family on her own dishonour.
Although, as I have said, quite authentic, for the Professor had seen her so often that he had come to regard her with respectful friendship, the Lady Alicia was not quite an orthodox ghost. She did not come at midnight and wail in distressing fashion over the scene of her sad and shameful death. She seemed to come when and where she listed, whether in the glimpses of the moon or the full sunlight of mid-day. She never pa.s.sed beyond the limits of the old lodge, and never broke the silence of her coming and goings. None of the present inhabitants of "The Wilderness" had seen her save the Professor, but Nitocris had often shivered with a sudden chill when she chanced to be in her invisible presence, and at such times she would often say to her father:
"There is something cold in the room, Dad. I suppose your friend the Lady Alicia is paying you a visit. I _do_ wish she would allow me to make her acquaintance."
And to this he would sometimes reply with perfect gravity:
"Yes, she has just come in: she is standing by the window yonder." And this had happened so often that Nitocris, like her father, had come to regard the wraith, or astral body, as the Professor deemed it, of the unhappy lady almost as a member of the family. Of course, after he had pa.s.sed the border into the realm of N4, Franklin Marmion speedily came to look upon her visits as the merest commonplaces.
But as the unhappy Lady Alicia will have no part to play in the action of this narrative, her little story must be accepted as a perhaps excusable digression.
There were about four acres of comfortably wooded land about the house, of which nearly an acre had formed the pleasaunce of the old lodge. This was now a beautifully-kept modern garden, with a broad, gently-sloping lawn, whose turf had been growing more and more velvety year by year for over three centuries, and divided from it by a low box-hedge was another, levelled up and devoted to tennis and new-style croquet. The Old Lawn, as it was called, sloped away from a broad verandah which ran the whole length of the central wing and formed the approach to the big drawing-room and dining-room, and a cosy breakfast-room of early Georgian style, and these, with her study and "snuggery" and bedroom on the next floor, formed the peculiar domain of Miss Nitocris.
She and the Professor were just sitting down to an early breakfast on the morning of the garden-party, which had been arranged for the day but one after the arrival of the Huysmans, when the post came in. There were a good many letters for both, for each had many interests in life. The Professor only ran his eye over the envelopes and then put the bundle aside for consideration in the solitude of his own den. Nitocris did the same, picked one out and left the others for similar treatment after she had interviewed the cook about lunch and refreshments for the afternoon, and the butler on the subject of cooling drinks, for it promised to be a perfect English day in June--which is, of course, the most delicious day that you may find under any skies between the Poles.
She opened the one she had selected and skimmed its contents. Then her eyelids lifted, and she said:
"Oh!"
"What is the matter, Niti?" asked her father, looking up from his cutlet. "Nothing gone wrong with your arrangements, I hope."
"Oh dear, no," she replied, with something like exultation in her voice, "quite the reverse, Dad. This is from Brenda, and Brenda is an angel disguised in petticoats and picture hats. Listen."
Then she began to read:
"MY DEAREST NITI,--I am going to take what I"m afraid English people would think a great liberty. The trouble is this: When the Professor (mine, I mean) was making his tour of the Russian Universities two years ago, he received a great deal of courtesy and help from no less a person than the celebrated Prince Oscar Oscarovitch--the modern Skobeleff, you know--who was very interested in Poppa"s work, and took a lot of trouble to smooth things out for him. Well, the Prince, as of course you know, is in London now. He called yesterday, and when I mentioned your party, he said he was very sorry he had not the honour of your father"s acquaintance as well as mine. The grammar"s a bit wrong there, but you know what I mean. That, of course, meant that he wants to come; and, to be candid, I should like to bring him, for even an American girl here doesn"t always get a Prince, and a famous man as well, to take around, so, as the time is so short, may we include him in our party? If you have forgiven me and are going to say "yes," I must tell you that the Prince would like to compensate for his intrusion--that"s the way he puts it--by helping entertain your guests. It seems that he has met with a man who can work miracles, an Egyptian----"
At this point Professor Marmion looked up again suddenly with an almost imperceptible start, and, for the first time, took an interest in Miss Huysman"s letter.
"----named Phadrig. The Prince a.s.sures me that he is not a conjurer in the professional sense, and would be deeply insulted to be called one; also that no amount of money would induce him to give a display of his powers just _for_ money. He will come to-day, if you like, and do wonderful things, which, from what the Prince says, will astonish and perhaps frighten us a bit, but only because the Prince once saved his life and got him out of a very bad place he had got into with a Turkish Pascha. Now, that is my little story. Please "phone me as soon as you can so that I can let the Prince know. It will be just too sweet of you and the Professor to say "yes."
--Your devoted chum, BRENDA."
"Well, Dad," she asked, as she put the letter down, "what do you say?"
"Just what you want to say, my dear Niti," he replied, carefully spreading some marmalade on a triangle of toast "Personally, I must confess that I should rather like to see some of this so-called magician"s alleged magic. I know that some of these fellows are extraordinarily clever, and I have no doubt that he will show us something interesting, if you care to see it."
"Then that settles it," said Nitocris, rising; "I will go and ring up the Savoy at once. Perhaps the Egyptian gentleman might be able to help you with that Forty-Seventh Proposition problem of Professor Hartley"s."
"Perhaps," answered Franklin Marmion drily, and went on with his breakfast.
CHAPTER X
THE STAGE FILLS
The party which gradually a.s.sembled on the lawn about four was somewhat small, but very select. Nitocris had too much common sense and too much real consideration for her friends and acquaintances to get together a mere mob of well-dressed people of probably incompatible tastes and temperament, and call it a party. She disliked an elbowing crowd and a clatter of fashionably shrill tongues with all the aversion of a delicately developed sensibility. No consideration of rank or social power or wealth had the slightest weight with her when she was distributing cards of invitation, wherefore the said cards were all the more eagerly awaited by those who did, and did not, get them. The result of this in the present case was that, although every one accepted and came, rather less than fifty people had the run of the broad lawns and the leafy wilderness about them on that momentous afternoon.
The first of the arrivals was Professor Hartley, reputed to be the greatest mathematician in England. He was a large man with rather heavy features, lit up by alert grey eyes, a big, dome-like cranium, and a manner that was modest almost to diffidence. He brought his wife, a slim and somewhat stern-featured lady, who, in the domestic sense, kept him in his place with inflexible decision, and worshipped him in his professional capacity, and two pretty, well-dressed, and obviously well-bred daughters. Their carriage drew up, turned into the drive precisely at four. Punctuality was the Professor"s one and only social vice.
Next came Commander Merrill in a hansom. This would be one of the very few meetings that he could hope for with his lost beloved--as he now sadly thought of her--before he put H.M.S. _Blazer_ into commission, and so punctuality on his part was both natural and excusable. Then came a few more carriages containing very nice people with whom we have here but little concern; and then Miss Brenda, deeply regretting her beautiful Napier, with her father and mother in a very smart Savoy turn-out followed by a coronetted brougham drawn by a splendid pair of black Orloffs. This was followed by an equally smart dog-cart driven by a rather slightly-built but well set-up young man with a light moustache, bronzed skin, and brilliant blue eyes. He was good-looking, but if his features had been absolutely plain he could never have looked commonplace, for this was Lord Lester Leighton, son of the Earl of Kyneston, and twenty generations of unblemished descent had made him the aristocrat that he was.
Nitocris did not like pompous announcements by servants, and so she received her guests, who were all acquaintances or friends, in the great porch through which many a brilliant presence had pa.s.sed, and had two maids waiting inside to see to the wants of the ladies, and their own coachman and a couple of grooms to attend to matters outside.
Merrill was made as happy as possible by a bright smile, a real hand-clasp instead of the usual Society paw-waggle, and instructions to go and make himself agreeable and useful. Brenda also received a hearty "shake"--Nitocris did not believe in kissing in public--and when the Professor and Mrs Huysman had gone in, she whispered:
"I suppose that"s the Prince"s brougham. You must wait here, dear, and do the introductions. You"re responsible, you know."
Brenda a.s.sented with a nod and a smile, as the brougham drew up and the smart tiger jumped down and opened the door. The Prince got out, and was followed by Phadrig the Adept. As she looked at the two men, Nitocris felt as though a wave of cold air had suddenly enveloped her whole being--body and soul.
"Niti, this is our friend, Prince Oscar Oscarovitch, whom you have been kind enough to let me invite by proxy. Prince, this is Miss Nitocris Marmion."