The Mummy and Miss Nitocris: A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension by Griffith (electronic reader TXT) 📕

On the evening of the fourth day they were just sitting down to their table by one of the[Pg 242] windows overlooking the Oestergade when Nitocris happened to look up towards the door through which the diners were trickling in an irregular stream of well-dressed men and women. For a moment her eyes became fixed. Then she bent her head over the table, and said:

"Dad, there is Prince Oscarovitch. I wonder what he is doing here? He is alone: please go and ask him to join us. I will tell you why afterwards."

They exchanged glances, and the Professor got up and went towards the door, while his daughter got through a considerable amount of hard thinking in a very short time. She was, of course, perfectly conversant with his share in the Zastrow affair, so far as her father had yet gone with it; but she determined that when Copenhagen had gone to sleep that night they would cross the Border and pay a visit to the Castle of Trelitz at the time of the tragedy, and follow it out as far as it had gone.

It has already been shown that on her first meeting with the Prince she conceived an aversion from him which was then inexplicable save by the ordinary theory of natural antipathy: but now she knew that she had been Nitocris, Queen of Egypt, when he was Menkau-Ra, the Lord of War, who would have forced her to wed him by the might and terror of the sword, and the will of a blind and blood-intoxicated populace. She had hated him then even to death, and now she hated him still in life; wherefore she[Pg 243] desired to make his closer acquaintance on the earth-plane on which they had met once more after many lives.

As he had been in those far-off days, so he was now, a splendid specimen of aristocratic humanity. Many eyes had followed her as she had walked to her table, but there were more people in the room now, and as the Prince walked towards her beside the famous Professor who had puzzled all the mathematicians of Europe, the whole crowd of guests was looking at nothing but these three.

"This is indeed good fortune, Miss Marmion, and as good as it is unexpected—which, perhaps makes it all the better! Who would have thought of finding you in Copenhagen?" he said, as he bowed low over her hand.

"If there is any reason at all for it, Prince, it is that my father and I always like to take our holidays at irregular times and in unexpected places: by which, I mean places where we do not expect to meet all our acquaintances," she replied, as she sat down. "I think we manage to bore each other quite enough in London, and we like each other all the better when we meet again."

"Is not that rather an ungracious speech, Niti, seeing that one of the said acquaintances has only just chanced to join us?" said the Professor mildly.

"You mean as regards the Prince?" she laughed. "Certainly not. His Highness is hardly an acquaintance—yet. You know we have only[Pg 244] had the pleasure of meeting him once: and then, of course, I said all our acquaintances. There might be exceptions."

These words, spoken with a quite indescribable charm, were, as he thought, quite the sweetest that Oscarovitch had heard for many a day. It had been perfectly easy for a man with his official influence to trace by telegraph every movement that the Marmions had made after he had guessed that they would travel by either Calais or Ostend. He had wired for his yacht, the Grashna, to meet him at Dover, run across to Ostend, found that they had left there for Cologne with through tickets for Copenhagen, again guessed rightly that they would spend a few days there and in Hamburg, and then steam away for the Sound.

The farther north he travelled, the farther he left Phadrig and his phantasies behind, and the nearer he came to the belief that, if he had only a fair chance and the field to himself, as he intended to have, he would not find very much difficulty in convincing Nitocris that there was no comparison at all between the humble naval officer she had left behind to do his work on his dirty little destroyer, and the millionaire Prince who could give her one of the noblest names in Europe and everything that the heart of woman could desire. And now these sweetly-spoken words and the glance which accompanied them, her undisguised pleasure at the chance meeting, and her father's very evident approval[Pg 245] of his presence, quickly but finally convinced him that he had come to a perfectly just conclusion.

Of course, there was the memory of another woman, only a little less fair than Nitocris, who had shut herself up yonder in the gloomy Castle of Trelitz, acting the farce of her official sorrow for love of him, and pining for the time when the finding of her betrayed husband's corpse should leave her free, after a decent interval of mock-mourning, to join her lot with his: but what did that matter? Was it not as easy to get rid of a woman as a man? Was not the fatal beauty of the Horus Stone at his command now that he was its possessor for good or evil? A well-arranged suicide might easily be taken by the world as the excusable, if deplorable, result of her mysterious bereavement.

The conversation during dinner naturally turned on ways and means of travelling, and, when the Professor had sketched out their plans, Oscarovitch said with an admirably simulated deference:

"My dear sir, I most sincerely hope that you and Miss Marmion will not think that I am presuming on an acquaintance which, if only a new one now, may perhaps one day be older, if I venture to suggest another way of making your tour. I am an old voyager in these waters, and I can assure you that the steamers, though vastly improved, have not quite reached the standard of the Atlantic liner."

"Oh, but you know, Prince, we didn't expect it," interrupted Nitocris. "Neither my father nor I[Pg 246] have the slightest objection to roughing it a little. In fact, that is half the fun of wandering."

"And slow travelling between stated points, not always of the greatest or any interest, together with the enforced company of a promiscuous crowd of tourists and commercial travellers, who, by the way, are mostly German, and therefore of nature and necessity disagreeable, would about make up the other half," said Oscarovitch, leaning back in his chair with a low laugh. "No, no, my dear Miss Marmion, I am afraid you would not find that the reality quite squared with the anticipation. Now, may I risk the suspicion of presumption and offer an alternative proposition?"

"Why not?" said Nitocris with a smile, and a glance which dazzled him. "I'm sure it is very kind of you to take so much interest in our poor little attempt to get away for a while from the madding crowd who are doing the round of the same stale, weary pleasures that they try so hard to enjoy year after year, and then come back so tired, after all."

"Then," he replied, looking at them alternately, "as I have your permission, I would suggest that, instead of rushing from fixed point to fixed point in crowded steamers and the shackles of Company or Government regulations, you should take possession of a fairly comfortable steam yacht of a little over a thousand tons which will be entirely at your disposal, and will run you from anywhere to anywhere you choose at any speed you like, from five to thirty-five knots an[Pg 247] hour, with properly trained servants to attend to you, and, as the advertisements say, 'every possible comfort and convenience.'"

"Which, of course, means that you have got your yacht here, and are so very kind as to ask us to become your guests for a time," said the Professor, with a suspicion of stiffness. "It is more than generous of you, Prince, but really——"

"But really, my dear sir," Oscarovitch interrupted, with a gesture of deprecation, "I can assure you that, so far as I am concerned, there is no kindness, to say nothing of generosity. It is pure selfishness. This is my position. I have managed to escape for a time from the toils of official work and worry, and the almost equally irksome bonds of that form of penal servitude which is called Society. Like you, I have fled overseas, but, unlike you, I have no company but my own, and I have had a great deal too much of that already, though I have only been three days and nights at sea. I have no plans, I have got nothing to do and nowhere to go; and so, if you and Miss Marmion would take pity on my loneliness all the generosity would be on your side. Of course, I cannot presume to ask you to change your plans all at once, but if you will sleep on my proposition and come and lunch with me to-morrow on board the Grashna and take a run up the Sound, say, to Elsinore, you may be able to come to a decision."

It was a lovely night, and so they took their coffee and liqueurs, and the two men their smokes[Pg 248] on the balcony overlooking the Oestergade, which might be called the Rue de la Paix of Copenhagen, and watched the well-dressed crowds sauntering to and fro past the brilliantly lighted shops; and Nitocris, who seemed to her father to be in singularly high spirits, sent the conversation rippling over all manner of subjects with the exception of politics and the Fourth Dimension. Oscarovitch was becoming more and more fascinated as the light-winged minutes sped by, and he took but little pains to conceal the fact. Nitocris, of course, saw this, and simulated a delightful unconsciousness. The Professor was, for the time being, completely mystified. He knew that his daughter hated the Prince with a thorough cordiality, and yet he had never seen her make herself so entirely charming to any man, not even excepting Merrill himself, as she was to this man, her enemy of the Ages. He could have solved the problem instantly by crossing the Border, but then the sudden vanishing of a famous scientist from the midst of the brilliant company on the balcony would have set all the newspapers in Europe chattering, with consequences which would have been the reverse of pleasant both to his daughter and himself.

However, he had not long to wait, for Nitocris soon rose, saying that she must go to Jenny, her maid, to see about packing arrangements for to-morrow; and the Prince, after another cigarette and liqueur, took his leave and went on board the yacht to give orders for her to be put into[Pg 249] her best trim, and then to have a luxurious half-hour with the Horus Stone, and indulge in fond imaginings as to how it would look hanging from a chain of diamonds on the white breast of Miss Nitocris.

When the Professor went to his own sitting-room he found his daughter waiting to say good-night.

"Niti," he said, as he closed the door, "I don't want to seem inquisitive, but, frankly, I was astounded at the gracious way in which you treated that scoundrel Oscarovitch."

"Dad," she replied, with apparent irrelevance, "do you believe in the forgiveness of sins?"

"Of course not! How could any one who holds the Doctrine do that? We know that every moral debit must be worked off and turned into a credit by the sinner, however many lives of suffering it takes to do it. Why do you ask?"

"So that you might answer as you have done!" she said, with a little laugh. "Now this Oscarovitch has sinned grievously, not only in this life but in many others, and I am going to see that he works off at least some of his debit as you put it somewhat commercially. He loved me in the old days in Memphis, and he loves me still in the same brutal, animal way. I know that if he cannot get me by fair means he will try to take me by force—and I am going to let him do it."

"Niti!"

"Yes, he shall take me; he shall think he had[Pg 250] got me safe away from you and Mark—and when he has got me he shall taste what the hot-and-strong sort of Christian preachers call the torments of the damned. No, I shall not kill him. He shall live