CHAPTER XX
THROUGH THE CENTURIES
As they discovered that the sea journey to Copenhagen would be somewhattedious and uninteresting, and that the steamers were not exactlypalatial, Nitocris and her father decided at the last minute to cross toOstend, spend a day there and go on to Cologne, put in a couple of daysmore among its venerable and odorous purlieus, and two more at Hamburg,so that, while the present-day inhabitants were asleep, they might, asNitocris somewhat flippantly put it, take a trip back through thecenturies, and watch the great city grow from the little wooden villageof the Ubii and the Roman colony of Agrippina into the Hanse Town of thethirteenth century: watch the laying of the first stone of the mightyDom, the up-rising of the glorious fabric, and the crowning of the lasttower in 1880.
During the journey from Hamburg to Copenhagen, Nitocris, recliningcomfortably in a corner of their compartment in the long, easily-movingcar, entertained herself with a review of these extraordinaryexperiences from the point of view of her temporal life, and found themnot only extraordinary, but also very curious. She had already learntthat the connecting link between the two existences, when once theborder had been passed, was Will: but Will of a far more intense andexalted character than that which was necessary as an incentive toaction on the lower plane. There was naturally something that seemedextra-human in the mysterious force which was capable of bidding thepresent-day world vanish like a shadow into either the future or thepast, its solid-seeming substance melt away like "the airy fabric of avision," and summon in an instant, too brief to be measured, the pastfrom the grave where it lay buried beneath the dust of uncounted ages,or the future from the womb of unborn things.
But to her, at least at first, the strangest part of the new revelationwas this: When her will had carried her across the confines of thetri-dimensional world, and she saw the centuries marshalled andmotionless before her, she felt not the slightest sense of wonder orawe. She was simply a being apart, moving along their ranks and passingthem in review, herself unseen and unknown save by that other being who,in this state, was no longer her father or even her friend, but merely acompanion endowed with power and intelligence equal to her own. Herhuman hopes and fears and loves and passions had, as it were, been leftbehind. The men and things she saw were absolutely real to her, as theyhad been to the men of other days, or would be in days to come; but sheherself was a pure Intelligence which saw and acted and thought withperfect clearness, but with absolutely no feeling save that ofintellectual interest.
She saw armies meet in the shock of battle without a thrill of fear orhorror; towns and cities roared up to the unheeding heavens in flame andsmoke, and left her standing unmoved amidst their ruins; she heard thescreams of agony that rang through the torture chambers without aquiver, and watched the long, pale lines of the martyrs to what in theearth-life was called Religion pass to the stake without a quiver ofpity or a thrill of disgust. She stood face to face with the great onesof the earth who have graven their names deep upon the tablets of Timewithout reverence or admiration; and she witnessed the most heroic deedsand the most atrocious crimes with neither respect for the one norhatred for the other.
Human history was in her eyes merely a logical sequence of necessaryevents, neither good nor bad in themselves, but only as they were viewedfrom this standpoint or that, by the oppressor or the oppressed, theslayer or the slain, the robber or the robbed, the governor or thegoverned. She learned that human emotion is merely a matter of time andspace. One century does not feel the loves and hates of another, and thesorrows of Here have no real sympathy with the sufferings of There.Beyond the Border all these were merely matters of intense intellectualinterest.
But when she returned to the temporal life the memory of them wasmarvellous and terrible. Her heart throbbed with pity and burned withrighteous anger. Horror seemed to take hold of her soul and shake itwith earthquake shudders when she thought that what she had seen but afew time-moments ago had really come to pass; and she longed for thepower to show all this to the men and women of her own passing day, andbid them have done with the poor, shadowy images of themselves, which,had they really been gods, would have made of human life somethingbetter and happier and nobler than the ghastly tragedy which, as she hadseen with her own eyes, it had been. But she knew that such a power wasnot hers. She, like her father, had, through the toil and strife andstress of many lives of mingled good and evil, knowledge and ignorance,won her way to the Perfect Knowledge; and so she knew that all thesepoor kings and slaves, conquerors and conquered, torturers and tortured,were all doing the same thing, were all groping their way through theshadows and the night towards the dawn and the light, through the hellof ignorance to the heaven of knowledge.
And now, too, since the Wisdom of the Ages was hers, she saw that overall the vast, weltering swarm of struggling immortals, hung theinevitable decree of silent, impersonal destiny. "As ye live, so shallye die; as ye end, so shall ye begin again--in knowledge or ignorance,in good or evil, life after life, death after death, world withoutend."
It was clear to her now why "some are born to honour and some todishonour": some to happiness and some to misery, each in his or herdegree; why the liver of a good life was happy, no matter what his placein the earth-life might be: and why the evil liver, no matter how highhe might stand in his own or others' sight, carried the canker of pastmisdeeds in his heart. Standing, as she now did, in the midway of thepresent, looking with single gaze on past and future, she saw at oncethe honest striver after good in his yesterday-life rise to his rewardin the life of to-day, and the dishonest rich and powerful sitting inthe high places of to-day cast down into the gutterways of to-morrow.Life had ceased to be a riddle to her now.
What with their halts at Ostend, Cologne, and Hamburg, thethirty-three-hour journey lengthened itself out very pleasantly into aweek; and so, when the famous city on the Sound was reached, they wereas fresh and unfatigued as they were on the morning that they left "TheWilderness." Of course, they put up at the Hotel d'Angleterre, and herethey enjoyed themselves quietly for four days, for of all Europeancapitals, Copenhagen is one of the pleasantest in which to idle a fewfine summer days away.
On the evening of the fourth day they were just sitting down to theirtable by one of the windows overlooking the Oestergade when Nitocrishappened to look up towards the door through which the diners weretrickling in an irregular stream of well-dressed men and women. For amoment her eyes became fixed. Then she bent her head over the table, andsaid:
"Dad, there is Prince Oscarovitch. I wonder what he is doing here? He isalone: please go and ask him to join us. I will tell you whyafterwards."
They exchanged glances, and the Professor got up and went towards thedoor, while his daughter got through a considerable amount of hardthinking in a very short time. She was, of course, perfectly conversantwith his share in the Zastrow affair, so far as her father had yet gonewith it; but she determined that when Copenhagen had gone to sleep thatnight they would cross the Border and pay a visit to the Castle ofTrelitz at the time of the tragedy, and follow it out as far as it hadgone.
It has already been shown that on her first meeting with the Prince sheconceived an aversion from him which was then inexplicable save by theordinary theory of natural antipathy: but now she knew that she had beenNitocris, Queen of Egypt, when he was Menkau-Ra, the Lord of War, whowould 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 hatedhim then even to death, and now she hated him still in life; whereforeshe desired to make his closer acquaintance on the earth-plane on whichthey had met once more after many lives.
As he had been in those far-off days, so he was now, a splendid specimenof aristocratic humanity. Many eyes had followed her as she had walkedto her table, but there were more people in the room now, and as thePrince walked towards her beside the famous Professor who had puzzledall the mathematicians of Europe, the whole crowd of guests was lookingat nothing but these t
hree.
"This is indeed good fortune, Miss Marmion, and as good as it isunexpected--which, perhaps makes it all the better! Who would havethought of finding you in Copenhagen?" he said, as he bowed low over herhand.
"If there is any reason at all for it, Prince, it is that my father andI always like to take our holidays at irregular times and in unexpectedplaces: by which, I mean places where we do not expect to meet all ouracquaintances," she replied, as she sat down. "I think we manage to boreeach other quite enough in London, and we like each other all the betterwhen we meet again."
"Is not that rather an ungracious speech, Niti, seeing that one of thesaid acquaintances has only just chanced to join us?" said the Professormildly.
"You mean as regards the Prince?" she laughed. "Certainly not. HisHighness is hardly an acquaintance--yet. You know we have only had thepleasure of meeting him once: and then, of course, I said _all_ ouracquaintances. There might be exceptions."
These words, spoken with a quite indescribable charm, were, as hethought, quite the sweetest that Oscarovitch had heard for many a day.It had been perfectly easy for a man with his official influence totrace by telegraph every movement that the Marmions had made after hehad guessed that they would travel by either Calais or Ostend. He hadwired for his yacht, the _Grashna_, to meet him at Dover, run across toOstend, found that they had left there for Cologne with through ticketsfor Copenhagen, again guessed rightly that they would spend a few daysthere and in Hamburg, and then steam away for the Sound.
The farther north he travelled, the farther he left Phadrig and hisphantasies behind, and the nearer he came to the belief that, if he hadonly a fair chance and the field to himself, as he intended to have, hewould not find very much difficulty in convincing Nitocris that therewas no comparison at all between the humble naval officer she had leftbehind to do his work on his dirty little destroyer, and the millionairePrince who could give her one of the noblest names in Europe andeverything that the heart of woman could desire. And now thesesweetly-spoken words and the glance which accompanied them, herundisguised pleasure at the chance meeting, and her father's veryevident approval of his presence, quickly but finally convinced himthat he had come to a perfectly just conclusion.
Of course, there was the memory of another woman, only a little lessfair than Nitocris, who had shut herself up yonder in the gloomy Castleof Trelitz, acting the farce of her official sorrow for love of him, andpining for the time when the finding of her betrayed husband's corpseshould leave her free, after a decent interval of mock-mourning, to joinher lot with his: but what did that matter? Was it not as easy to getrid of a woman as a man? Was not the fatal beauty of the Horus Stone athis command now that he was its possessor for good or evil? Awell-arranged suicide might easily be taken by the world as theexcusable, if deplorable, result of her mysterious bereavement.
The conversation during dinner naturally turned on ways and means oftravelling, 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 notthink that I am presuming on an acquaintance which, if only a new onenow, may perhaps one day be older, if I venture to suggest another wayof making your tour. I am an old voyager in these waters, and I canassure you that the steamers, though vastly improved, have not quitereached the standard of the Atlantic liner."
"Oh, but you know, Prince, we didn't expect it," interrupted Nitocris."Neither my father nor I have the slightest objection to roughing it alittle. In fact, that is half the fun of wandering."
"And slow travelling between stated points, not always of the greatestor any interest, together with the enforced company of a promiscuouscrowd of tourists and commercial travellers, who, by the way, are mostlyGerman, and therefore of nature and necessity disagreeable, would aboutmake up the other half," said Oscarovitch, leaning back in his chairwith a low laugh. "No, no, my dear Miss Marmion, I am afraid you wouldnot find that the reality quite squared with the anticipation. Now, mayI risk the suspicion of presumption and offer an alternativeproposition?"
"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 poorlittle attempt to get away for a while from the madding crowd who aredoing the round of the same stale, weary pleasures that they try so hardto enjoy year after year, and then come back _so_ tired, after all."
"Then," he replied, looking at them alternately, "as I have yourpermission, I would suggest that, instead of rushing from fixed point tofixed point in crowded steamers and the shackles of Company orGovernment regulations, you should take possession of a fairlycomfortable steam yacht of a little over a thousand tons which will beentirely at your disposal, and will run you from anywhere to anywhereyou choose at any speed you like, from five to thirty-five knots anhour, with properly trained servants to attend to you, and, as theadvertisements say, 'every possible comfort and convenience.'"
"Which, of course, means that you have got your yacht here, and are sovery kind as to ask us to become your guests for a time," said theProfessor, with a suspicion of stiffness. "It is more than generous ofyou, Prince, but really----"
"But really, my dear sir," Oscarovitch interrupted, with a gesture ofdeprecation, "I can assure you that, so far as I am concerned, there isno kindness, to say nothing of generosity. It is pure selfishness. Thisis my position. I have managed to escape for a time from the toils ofofficial work and worry, and the almost equally irksome bonds of thatform of penal servitude which is called Society. Like you, I have fledoverseas, but, unlike you, I have no company but my own, and I have hada great deal too much of that already, though I have only been threedays and nights at sea. I have no plans, I have got nothing to do andnowhere to go; and so, if you and Miss Marmion would take pity on myloneliness all the generosity would be on your side. Of course, I cannotpresume to ask you to change your plans all at once, but if you willsleep on my proposition and come and lunch with me to-morrow on boardthe _Grashna_ and take a run up the Sound, say, to Elsinore, you may beable to come to a decision."
It was a lovely night, and so they took their coffee and liqueurs, andthe two men their smokes on the balcony overlooking the Oestergade,which might be called the Rue de la Paix of Copenhagen, and watched thewell-dressed crowds sauntering to and fro past the brilliantly lightedshops; and Nitocris, who seemed to her father to be in singularly highspirits, sent the conversation rippling over all manner of subjects withthe exception of politics and the Fourth Dimension. Oscarovitch wasbecoming 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 daughterhated the Prince with a thorough cordiality, and yet he had never seenher make herself so entirely charming to any man, not even exceptingMerrill himself, as she was to this man, her enemy of the Ages. He couldhave solved the problem instantly by crossing the Border, but then thesudden vanishing of a famous scientist from the midst of the brilliantcompany on the balcony would have set all the newspapers in Europechattering, with consequences which would have been the reverse ofpleasant both to his daughter and himself.
However, he had not long to wait, for Nitocris soon rose, saying thatshe must go to Jenny, her maid, to see about packing arrangements forto-morrow; and the Prince, after another cigarette and liqueur, took hisleave and went on board the yacht to give orders for her to be put intoher best trim, and then to have a luxurious half-hour with the HorusStone, and indulge in fond imaginings as to how it would look hangingfrom a chain of diamonds on the white breast of Miss Nitocris.
When the Professor went to his own sitting-room he found his daughterwaiting to say good-night.
"Niti," he said, as he closed the door, "I don't want to seeminquisitive, but, frankly, I was astounded at the gracious way in whichyou treated that scoundrel Oscarovitch."
&n
bsp; "Dad," she replied, with apparent irrelevance, "do you believe in theforgiveness of sins?"
"Of course not! How could any one who holds the Doctrine do that? Weknow that every moral debit must be worked off and turned into a creditby the sinner, however many lives of suffering it takes to do it. Why doyou ask?"
"So that you might answer as you have done!" she said, with a littlelaugh. "Now this Oscarovitch has sinned grievously, not only in thislife but in many others, and I am going to see that he works off atleast some of his debit as you put it somewhat commercially. He loved mein 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 totake me by force--and I am going to let him do it."
"Niti!"
"Yes, he shall take me; he shall think he had got me safe away from youand Mark--and when he has got me he shall taste what the hot-and-strongsort of Christian preachers call the torments of the damned. No, I shallnot kill him. He shall live till he prays to all his gods, if he hasany, that he may die. He shall hunger without eating, thirst withoutdrinking, lie down without sleeping, have wealth that he cannot spend,and palaces so hideously haunted that he dare not live in them, until,when men wish to illustrate the uttermost extreme of human misery, theyshall point to Prince Oscarovitch. I, the Queen, have said it!"
Then, with a swift change of voice and manner, she laid her hands on herfather's shoulders, kissed him, and murmured:
"Good-night, Dad--at least as far as this world is concerned."
The Mummy and Miss Nitocris: A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension Page 21