“What do you mean?” inquired Muriel Chetwynd Lyle, simpering. “You really do say such funny things, Lord Fulkeward!”
“Do I?” and the young nobleman was so alarmed and embarrassed at the very idea of his ever saying funny things that he was rendered quite speechless for a moment. Anon he took heart and resumed: “Er — well — I mean that the society women would tear her to bits in no time. She’d get asked nowhere, but she’d get blackguarded everywhere; she couldn’t help herself with that face and those eyes.”
His mother laughed.
“Dear Fulke! You are such a naughty boy! You shouldn’t make such remarks before Lady Lyle. She never says anything against anyone!”
“Dear Fulke” stared. Had he given vent to his feelings he would have exclaimed: “Oh, Lord! — isn’t the old lady a deep one!” But as it was he attended to his young moustache anxiously and remained silent. Lady Chetwynd Lyle meanwhile flushed with annoyance; she felt that Lady Fulkeward’s remark was sarcastic, but she could not very well resent it, seeing that Lady Fulkeward was a peeress of the realm, and that she herself, by the strict laws of heraldry, was truly only “Dame” Chetwynd Lyle, as wife of an ordinary knight, and had no business to be called “her ladyship” at all.
“I should, indeed, be sorry,” she said, primly, “if I were mistaken in my private estimate of the Princess Ziska’s character, but I must believe my own eyes and the evidence of my own senses, and surely no one can condone the extremely fast way in which she behaved with that new man — that French artist, Armand Gervase — last night. Why, she danced six times with him! And she actually allowed him to walk home with her through the streets of Cairo! They went off together, in their fancy dresses, just as they were! I never heard of such a thing!”
“Oh, there was nothing remarkable at all in that,” said Lord Fulkeward. “Everybody went about the place in fancy costume last night. I went out in my Neapolitan dress with a girl, and I met Denzil Murray coming down a street just behind here — took him for a Florentine prince, upon my word! And I bet you Gervase never got beyond the door of the Princess’s palace; for that blessed old Nubian she keeps — the chap with a face like a mummy — bangs the gate in everybody’s face, and says in guttural French: ‘La Princesse ne voit per-r-r-sonne!’ I’ve tried it. I tell you it’s no go!”
“Well, we shall all get inside the mysterious palace next Wednesday evening,” said Lady Fulkeward, closing her eyes with a graceful air of languor, “It will be charming, I am sure, and I daresay we shall find that there is no mystery at all about it.”
“Two months ago,” suddenly said a smooth voice behind them, “the
Ziska’s house or palace was uninhabited.”
Lady Fulkeward gave a little scream and looked round.
“Good gracious, Dr. Dean! How you frightened me!”
The Doctor made an apologetic bow.
“I am very sorry. I forgot you were so sensitive; pray pardon me! As I was saying, two months ago the palace of the Princess Ziska was a deserted barrack. Formerly, so I hear, it used to be the house of some great personage; but it had been allowed to fall into decay, and nobody would rent it, even for the rush of the Cairene season, till it was secured by the Nubian you were speaking of just now — the interesting Nubian with the face like a mummy; he took it and furnished it, and when it was ready Madame la Princesse appeared on the scene and has resided there every since.”
“I wonder what that Nubian has to do with her?” said Lady Chetwynd
Lyle, severely.
“Nothing at all,” replied the Doctor, calmly. “He is the merest servant — the kind of person who is ‘told off’ to attend on the women of a harem.”
“Ah, I see you have been making inquiries concerning the princess,
Doctor,” said Lady Fulkeward, with a smile.
“I have.”
“And have you found out anything about her?”
“No; that is, nothing of social importance, except, perhaps, two items — first, that she is not a Russian; secondly, that she has never been married.”
“Never been married!” exclaimed Lady Chetwynd Lyle, then suddenly turning to her daughters she said blandly: “Muriel, Dolly, go into the house, my dears. It is getting rather warm for you on this terrace. I will join you in a few minutes.”
The “girls” rose obediently with a delightfully innocent and juvenile air, and fortunately for them did not notice the irreverent smile that played on young Lord Fulkeward’s face, which was immediately reflected on the artistically tinted countenance of his mother, at the manner of their dismissal.
“There is surely nothing improper in never having been married,” said Dr. Dean, with a mock serious air. “Consider, my dear Lady Lyle, is there not something very chaste and beautiful in the aspect of an old maid?”
Lady Lyle looked up sharply. She had an idea that both she and her daughters were being quizzed, and she had some difficulty to control her rising temper.
“Then do you call the Princess an old maid?” she demanded.
Lady Fulkeward looked amused; her son laughed outright. But the
Doctor’s face was perfectly composed.
“I don’t know what else I can call her,” he said, with a thoughtful air. “She is no longer in her teens, and she has too much voluptuous charm for an ingenue. Still, I admit, you would scarcely call her ‘old’ except in the parlance of the modern matrimonial market. Our present-day roues, you know, prefer their victims young, and I fancy the Princess Ziska would be too old and perhaps too clever for most of them. Personally speaking, she does not impress me as being of any particular age, but as she is not married, and is, so to speak, a maid fully developed, I am perforce obliged to call her an old maid.”
“She wouldn’t thank you for the compliment,” said Lady Lyle with a spiteful grin.
“I daresay not,” responded the Doctor blandly, “but I imagine she has very little personal vanity. Her mind is too preoccupied with something more important than the consideration of her own good looks.”
“And what is that?” inquired Lady Fulkeward, with some curiosity.
“Ah! there is the difficulty! What is it that engrosses our fair friend more than the looking-glass? I should like to know — but I cannot find out. It is an enigma as profound as that of the sphinx. Good-morning, Monsieur Gervase!” — and, turning round, he addressed the artist, who just then stepped out on the terrace carrying a paintbox and a large canvas strapped together in portable form. “Are you going to sketch some picturesque corner of the city?”
“No,” replied Gervase, listlessly raising his white sun-hat to the ladies present with a courteous, yet somewhat indifferent grace. “I’m going to the Princess Ziska’s. I shall probably get the whole outline of her features this morning.”
“A full-length portrait?” inquired the Doctor.
“I fancy not. Not the first attempt, at any rate — head and shoulders only.”
“Do you know where her house is?” asked Lord Fulkeward. “If you don’t,
I’ll walk with you and show you the way.”
“Thanks — you are very good. I shall be obliged to you.”
And raising his hat again he sauntered slowly off, young Fulkeward walking with him and chatting to him with more animation than that exhausted and somewhat vacant-minded aristocrat usually showed to anyone.
“It is exceedingly warm,” said Lady Lyle, rising then and putting away her cross-stitch apparatus, “I thought of driving to the Pyramids this afternoon, but really …”
“There is shade all the way,” suggested the Doctor, “I said as much to a young woman this morning who has been in the hotel for nearly two months, and hasn’t seen the Pyramids yet.”
“What has she been doing with herself?” asked Lady Fulkeward, smiling.
“Dancing with officers,” said Dr. Dean. “How can Cheops compare with a moustached noodle in military uniform! Good-bye for the present; I’m going to hunt for scarabei.”
“So I have. But the Princess had a remarkable one on last night, and I want to find another like it. It’s blue — very blue — almost like a rare turquoise, and it appears it is the sign-manual of the warrior Araxes, who was a kind of king in his way, or desert chief, which was about the same thing in those days. He fought for Amenhotep, and seemed from all accounts to be a greater man than Amenhotep himself. The Princess Ziska is a wonderful Egyptologist; I had a most interesting conversation with her last night in the supper-room.”
“Then she is really a woman of culture and intelligence?” queried Lady
Lyle.
The Doctor smiled.
“I should say she would be a great deal too much for the University of
Oxford, as far as Oriental learning goes,” he said. “She can read the
Egyptian papyri, she tells me, and she can decipher anything on any of
the monuments. I only wish I could persuade her to accompany me to
Thebes and Karnak.”
Lady Fulkeward unfurled her fan and swayed it to and fro with an elegant languor.
“How delightful that would be!” she sighed. “So romantic and solemn — all those dear old cities with those marvellous figures of the Egyptians carved and painted on the stones! And Rameses — dear Rameses! He really has good legs everywhere! Haven’t you noticed that? So many of these ancient sculptures represent the Egyptians with such angular bodies and such frightfully thin legs, but Rameses always has good legs wherever you find him. It’s so refreshing! DO make up a party, Dr. Dean! — we’ll all go with you; and I’m sure the Princess Ziska will be the most charming companion possible. Let us have a dahabeah! I’m good for half the expenses, if you will only arrange everything.”
The Doctor stroked his chin and looked dubious, but he was evidently attracted by the idea.
“I’ll see about it,” he said at last. “Meanwhile I’ll go and have a hunt for some traces of Amenhotep and Araxes.”
He strolled down the terrace, and Lady Chetwynd Lyle, turning her back on “old” Lady Fulkeward, went after her “girls,” while the fascinating Fulkeward herself continued to recline comfortably in her chair, and presently smiled a welcome on a youngish-looking man with a fair moustache who came forward and sat down beside her, talking to her in low, tender and confidential tones. He was the very impecunious colonel of one of the regiments then stationed in Cairo, and as he never wasted time on sentiment, he had been lately thinking that a marriage with a widowed peeress who had twenty thousand pounds a year in her own right might not be a “half bad” arrangement for him. So he determined to do the agreeable, and as he was a perfect adept in the art of making love without feeling it, he got on very well, and his prospects brightened steadily hour by hour.
Meanwhile young Fulkeward was escorting Armand Gervase through several narrow by-streets, talking to him as well as he knew how and trying in his feeble way to “draw him out,” in which task he met with but indifferent success.
“It must be awfully jolly and — er — all that sort of thing to be so famous,” he observed, glancing up at the strong, dark, brooding face above him. “They had a picture of yours over in London once; I went to see it with my mother. It was called ‘Le Poignard,’ do you remember it?”
Gervase shrugged his shoulders carelessly.
“Yes, I remember. A poor thing at its best. It was a woman with a dagger in her hand.”
“Yes, awfully fine, don’cher know! She was a very dark woman — too dark for my taste, — and she’d got a poignard clasped in in her right hand. Of course, she was going to murder somebody with it; that was plain enough. You meant it so, didn’t you?”
“I suppose I did.”
“She was in a sort of Eastern get-up,” pursued Fulkeward, “one of your former studies in Egypt, perhaps.”
Gervase started, and passed his hand across his forehead with a bewildered air.
“No, no! Not a former study, by any means. How could it be? This is my first visit to Egypt. I have never been here before.”
“Haven’t you? Really! Well, you’ll find it awfully interesting and all that sort of thing. I don’t see half as much of it as I should like. I’m a weak chap — got something wrong with my lungs, — awful bother, but can’t be helped. My mother won’t let me do too much. Here we are; this is the Princess Ziska’s.”
They were standing in a narrow street ending in a cul-de-sac, with tall houses on each side which cast long, black, melancholy shadows on the rough pavement below. A vague sense of gloom and oppression stole over Gervase as he surveyed the outside of the particular dwelling Fulkeward pointed out to him — a square, palatial building, which had no doubt once been magnificent in its exterior adornment, but which now, owing to long neglect, had fallen into somewhat melancholy decay. The sombre portal, fantastically ornamented with designs copied from some of the Egyptian monuments, rather resembled the gateway of a tomb than an entrance to the private residence of a beautiful living woman, and Fulkeward, noting his companion’s silence, added:
“Not a very cheerful corner, is it? Some of these places are regular holes, don’cher know; but I daresay it’s all right inside.”
“You have never been inside?”
“Never.” And Fulkeward lowered his voice: “Look up there; there’s the beast that keeps everybody out!”
Gervase followed his glance, and perceived behind the projecting carved lattice-work of one of the windows a dark, wrinkled face and two gleaming eyes which, even at that distance, had, or appeared to have, a somewhat sinister expression.
“He’s the nastiest type of Nubian I have ever seen,” pursued Fulkeward.
“Looks just like a galvanized corpse.”
Gervase smiled, and perceiving a long bell-handle at the gateway, pulled it sharply. In another moment the Nubian appeared, his aspect fully justifying Lord Fulkeward’s description of him. The parchment-like skin on his face was yellowish-black, and wrinkled in a thousand places; his lips were of a livid blue, and were drawn up and down above and below the teeth in a kind of fixed grin, while the dense brilliance of his eyes was so fierce and fiery as to suggest those of some savage beast athirst for prey.
“Madame la Princesse Ziska” began Gervase, addressing his unfascinating object with apparent indifference to his hideousness.
The Nubian’s grinning lips stretched themselves wider apart as, in a thick, snarling voice he demanded:
“Votre nom?”
“Armand Gervase.”
“Entrez!”
“Et moi?” queried Fulkeward, with a conciliatory smile.
“Non! Pas vous. Monsieur Armand Gervase, seul!”
Fulkeward gave a resigned shrug of his shoulders; Gervase looked round at him ere he crossed the threshold of the mysterious habitation.
“I’m sorry you have to walk back alone.”
“Don’t mention it,” said Fulkeward affably. “You see, you have come on business. You’re going to paint the Princess’s picture; and I daresay this blessed old rascal knows that I want nothing except to look at his mistress and wonder what she’s made of.”
“What she’s made of?” echoed Gervase in surprise. “Don’t you think she’s made like other women?”
“No; can’t say I do. She seems all fire and vapor and eyes in the middle, don’cher know. Oh, I’m an ass — always was — but that’s the feeling she gives me. Ta-ta! Wish you a pleasant morning!”
He nodded and strolled away, and Gervase hesitated yet another moment, looking full at the Nubian, who returned him stare for stare.
“Maintenant?” he began.
“Oui, maintenant,” echoed the Nubian.
“La Princesse, ou est elle?”
“La!” and the Nubian pointed down a long, dark passage beyond which there seemed to be the glimmer of green palms and other foliage. “Elle vous attend, Monsieur Armand Gervase! Entrez! Suivez!”
Slowly Gervase passed in, and the great tomb-like door closed upon him with a heavy clang. The whole long, bright day passed, and he did not reappear; not a human foot crossed the lonely street and nothing was seen there all through the warm sunshiny hours save the long, black shadows on the pavement, which grew longer and darker as the evening fell.
CHAPTER VII.
Within the palace of the Princess Ziska a strange silence reigned. In whatever way the business of her household was carried on, it was evidently with the most absolute noiselessness, for not a sound disturbed the utter stillness environing her. She herself, clad in white garments that clung about her closely, displaying the perfect outlines of her form, stood waiting for her guest in a room that was fairly dazzling to the eye in its profusion of exquisitely assorted and harmonized colors, as well as impressive to the mind in its suggestions of the past rather than of the present. Quaint musical instruments of the fashion of thousands of years ago hung on the walls or lay on brackets and tables, but no books such as our modern time produces were to be seen; only tied-up bundles of papyri and curious little tablets of clay inscribed with mysterious hieroglyphs. Flowers adorned every corner — many of them strange blossoms which a connoisseur would have declared to be unknown in Egypt, — palms and ferns and foliage of every description were banked up against the walls in graceful profusion, and from the latticed windows the light filtered through colored squares, giving a kind of rainbow-effect to the room, as though it were a scene in a dream rather than a reality. And even more dream-like than her surroundings was the woman who awaited the approach of her visitor, her eyes turned towards the door — fiery eyes filled with such ardent watchfulness as seemed to burn the very air. The eyes of a hawk gleaming on its prey, — the eyes of a famished tiger in the dark, were less fraught with terrific meaning than the eyes of Ziska as she listened attentively to the on-coming footsteps through the outside corridor which told her that Gervase was near.
“At last!” she whispered, “at last!” The next moment the Nubian flung the door wide open and announced “Monsieur Armand Gervase!”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 417