"Ma-Rim[=o]n greets Nitocris, the Queen! What hath he done that he should be once more so highly honoured?"
At that moment a carriage came by along the road quite close to them.
Two of its occupants were looking straight towards them. They pa.s.sed without taking the slightest notice, as they must have done had they seen such a marvellous figure as that of the Queen. And then he remembered that, unless she willed it, no one in the world of N3 could see her, since it was for her, as it was for him now, to make herself visible or invisible as she chose to pa.s.s on to or beyond the lower Plane of Existence. These things were quickly becoming more plain to his comprehension, although, as will be readily understood, it was not a lesson to be learnt very easily.
"Welcome, Ma-Rim[=o]n," replied the Queen, in a voice which filled him with many distant and strange memories, "but let there be no talk between us of honour, for in this state there is neither honour nor dishonour, neither ruler nor subject, neither good nor evil, since all these are absorbed in the Perfect Knowledge. Yet it is the will of the High G.o.ds that I should help thee and guide thee in that new world whose threshold thou hast so lately crossed. It was my hand led thee from the path of Light to the path of Darkness, and for that I have paid the penalty as well as thou.
"For many ages, as time is counted in that other world, we have toiled, sometimes together, sometimes apart, sometimes in honour, sometimes in dishonour, yet ever struggling on to regain the heights which then we had so nearly won. The High G.o.ds permitted me to reach them first, and therefore it was my hand which was stretched out to lead thee across the Border.
"Now, my message to thee is this: Thou hast powers which no other man living in that lower state possesses; see to it that they be used rightly. Forget not that in that other world sin and shame, oppression and misery, are as rife as, within the limits of time, they have ever been. Make it thy concern that the forces of evil shall be weaker and not stronger for the use of these powers to which thou hast attained.
"We shall meet often in that other world, and that living other-self of mine, thy daughter in the flesh and bearer of my name, through every moment of her time-life, I shall watch and guard her, for she, too--although she knows it not--is approaching the light never seen by the Eye of Flesh, and, though strange things should befall her, it will be for thee in that other state, knowing what thou dost in the Higher Life, to help me in this task as in others. Now, farewell, Ma-Rim[=o]n,"
she said, holding out her hands again.
As he took them, they melted in his grasp, two l.u.s.trous eyes looked at him for a moment and grew dim, and he was once more alone on Wimbledon Common.
"I think I"ll be getting home," he said, looking at his watch, and he turned and walked slowly with bent head and hands clasped behind his back to the house.
CHAPTER VI
THE LAW OF SELECTION
In actual mundane time, to use a somewhat halting expression, Professor Marmion"s walk had occupied about a couple of hours. His strange experiences had, of course, occupied none, since they had taken place beyond the bounds of Time.
Meanwhile, Miss Nitocris had finished her digest of the morning papers, given the cook a few directions, and then gone out on the lawn at the back of the house to have a quiet read and enjoy the soft air and sunshine of that lovely May morning. She lay down in a hammock chair in the shade of a fine old cedar at the bottom of the lawn, and began to read, and soon she began to dream. The news in the papers, even the most responsible of them, had been very serious. The shadow of war was once more rising in the East--war which, if it came, England could scarcely escape, and if it did Someone would have to go and fight in that most perilous of all forms of battle, torpedo attack.
The book she had taken with her was one of exceedingly clever verse written years before by just such another as herself; a girl, beautiful, learned, and yet absolutely womanly, and endowed, moreover, with that gift so rare among learned women, the gift of humour. Long ago, this girl had taken the fever in Egypt, and died of it; but before she died she wrote a book of poems and verses, which, though long forgotten--if ever known--by the mult.i.tude, is still treasured and re-read by some, and of these Miss Nitocris was one. Just now the book was open at the hundred and forty-third page, on which there is a portion of a poem ent.i.tled _Natural Selection_.
Miss Nitocris" eyes alternately rested on the page for a few moments and then lifted and looked over the lawn towards the open French windows.
The verses ran thus:
_"But there comes an idealless lad, With a strut, and a stare, and a smirk; And I watch, scientific though sad, The Law of Selection at work._
_"Of Science he hasn"t a trace, He seeks not the How and the Why, But he sings with an amateur"s grace And he dances much better than I._
_"And we know the more dandified males By dance and by song win their wives-- "Tis a law that with_ Aves _prevails, And even in_ h.o.m.o _survives."_
"Just my precious papa"s ideas!" she murmured, with a toss of her head, and something like a little sniff. "What a nuisance it all is!
Aristocracy of intellect, indeed! Just as if any of us, even my dear Dad, if he _is_ considered one of the cleverest and most learned men in Europe, were anything more than what Newton called himself--a little child picking up pebbles and grains of sand on the sh.o.r.e of a boundless and fathomless ocean, and calling them knowledge. I"m not quite sure that that"s correct, but it"s something like it. Still, that"s not the question. How on earth am I to tell poor Mark? Oh dear! he"ll have to be "Mr Merrill" now, I suppose. What a shame! I"ve half a mind to rebel, and vindicate the Law of Selection at any price. Ah, there he is. Well, I suppose I"ve got to get through it somehow."
As she spoke, one of the French windows under the verandah opened, and a man in a panama hat, Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, came out and raised his hat as he stepped off the verandah.
With a sigh and a frown she closed the book sharply, got up and tossed it into the chair. No daintier or more desirable incarnation of the eternal feminine could have been imagined than she presented as she walked slowly across the lawn to meet the man whom the Law of Selection had designated as her natural mate, and whom her father, for reasons presently to be made plain, had forbidden her to marry on pain of exile from his affections for ever.
The face he turned towards her as she approached was not exactly handsome as an artist or some women would have defined the word, but it was strong, honest, and open--just the sort of face, in short, to match the broad shoulders, the long, cleanly-shaped, athletic limbs, and the five feet eleven of young, healthy manhood with which Nature had a.s.sociated it.
A glance at his face and another one at him generally would, in spite of the costume, have convinced any one who knows the genus that Mark Merrill was a naval officer. He had that quiet air of restrained strength, of the instinctive habit of command which somehow or other does not distinguish any other fighting man in the world in quite the same degree. His name and t.i.tle were Lieutenant-Commander Mark Gwynne Merrill, of His Majesty"s Destroyer _Blazer_, one of the coolest-headed and yet most judiciously reckless officers in the Service.
There was a light in his wide-set, blue-grey eyes, and a smile on his strong, well-cut lips which were absolutely boyish in their antic.i.p.ation of sheer delight as she approached; and then, after one glance at her face, his own changed with a suddenness, which, to a disinterested observer, would have been almost comic.
"I"m awfully sorry, Mark," she began, in a tone which literally sent a shiver--a real physical shiver--through him, for he was very, very much in love with her.
"What on earth is the matter, Niti?" he said, looking at the fair face and downcast eyes which, for the first time since he had asked the eternal question and she had answered it according to his heart"s desire, had refused to meet his. "Let"s have it out at once. It"s a lot better to be shot through the heart than starved to death, you know. I suppose it"s something pretty bad, or you wouldn"t be looking down at the gra.s.s like that," he continued.
"Oh, it"s--it"s--it"s a _beastly_ shame, that"s what it is, so there!"
And as she said this Miss Nitocris Marmion, B.Sc., stamped her foot on the turf and felt inclined to burst out crying, just as a milkmaid might have done.
"Which means," said Mark, pulling himself up, as a man about to face a mortal enemy would do, "that the Professor has said "No." In other words, he has decided that his learned and lovely daughter shall not, as I suppose he would put it, mate with an animal of a lower order--a mere fighting-man. Well, Miss Marmion----"
"Oh, don"t; _please_ don"t!" she exclaimed, almost piteously, dropping into a big wicker armchair by the verandah and putting her hands over her eyes.
He had an awful fear that she was going to cry, and, as the Easterns say, he felt his heart turning to water within him. But her highly trained intellect came to her aid. She swallowed the sob, and looked up at him with clear, dry eyes.
"It isn"t quite that, Mark," she continued. "You know I wouldn"t stand anything like that even from the dear old Dad. Much as I love him, and even, as you know, in some senses almost worship him, it isn"t that.
It"s this theory of heredity of his--this scientific faith--bigotry, I call it, for it is just the same to him as Catholicism was to the Spaniards in the sixteenth century. In fact, I told him the other night that he reminded me of the Spanish grandee whose daughters were convicted of heresy by the Inquisition, and who showed his devotion to the Church by lighting the f.a.ggots which burned them with his own hands."
"And what did he say to that?" said the sailor, not because he wanted to know, but because there was an awkward pause that needed filling.
"I would rather not tell you, Mark, if you don"t mind," she said slowly and looking very straightly and steadily at him. "You know--well, I needn"t tell you again what I"ve told you already. You know I care for you, and I always shall, but I cannot--I dare not--disobey my father. I owe all that I ever had to him. He has been father, mother, teacher, friend, companion--everything to me. We are absolutely alone in the world. If I could leave him for anybody, I"d leave him for you, but I won"t disobey him and break his heart, as I believe I should, even for you."
"You"re perfectly right, Niti, perfectly," said Commander Merrill, in a tone of steady conviction which inspired her with an almost irresistible impulse to get up and kiss him. "You couldn"t honestly do anything else, and I know the shortest way to make you hate me would be to ask you to do that something else. But still," he went on, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his Norfolk jacket, "I do think I have a sort of right to have some sort of explanation, and with your permission I shall just ask him for one."
"For goodness" sake, don"t do that, Mark--don"t!" she pleaded. "You might as well go and ask a Jewish Rabbi why he wouldn"t let his daughter marry a Christian. Wise and clever as he is in other things, poor Dad is simply a fanatic in this, and--well, if he did condescend to explain, I"m afraid you might mistake what he would think the correct scientific way of putting it, for an insult, and I couldn"t bear to think of you quarrelling. You know you"re the only two people in the world I--I--Oh dear, what _shall_ I do!"
It was at this point that the Law of Natural Selection stepped in.
Natural laws of any sort have very little respect for the refinements of what mortals are pleased to call their philosophy. Professor Marmion was a very great man--some men said he was the greatest scientist of his age--but at this moment he was but as a grain of sand among the wheels of the mighty machine which grinds out human and other destinies.
Commander Merrill took a couple of long, swift strides towards the chair in which Nitocris was leaning back with her hands pressed to her eyes.
He picked her up bodily, as he might have picked a child of seven up, put her protesting hands aside, and slowly and deliberately kissed her three times squarely on the lips as if he meant it; and the third time her lips moved too. Then he whispered:
"Good-bye, dear, for the present, at any rate!"
After which he deposited her tenderly in the chair again, and, with just one last look, turned and walked with quick, angry strides across the lawn and round the semi-circular carriage-drive, saying some things to himself between his clenched teeth, and thinking many more.
A few yards outside the gate he came face to face with the Professor.
"Good-morning, sir," said Merrill, with a motion of his hand towards his hat.
"Oh, good-morning, Mr Merrill," replied the Professor a little stiffly, for relations between them had been strained for some considerable time now. "I presume you have been to the house. I am sorry that you did not find me at home, but if it is anything urgent and you have half an hour to spare----"
He stopped in his speech, silenced by a shock of something like shame.
He was prevaricating. He knew perfectly well that "it" was the most urgent errand a man could have, next to his duty to his country, that had brought the young sailor to his house. Twenty-four hours ago he would not have noticed such a trifle: but it was no trifle now; for to his clearer vision it was a sin, an evasion of the immutable laws of Truth, utterly unworthy of the companion of Nitocris the Queen in that other existence which he had just left.
"You have seen Niti, I suppose?" he continued, with singular directness.