Gervase laughed loudly.
“My good friend, you are an adept in the art of pleading the impossible! You must excuse me; I am a sceptic; and I hope I am also in possession of my sober reason, — therefore, you can hardly wonder at my entirely refusing to accept such preposterous theories as those you appear to believe in.”
Dr. Dean gave him a civil little bow.
“I do not ask you to accept them, my dear sir! I state my facts, and you can take them or leave them, just as you please. You yourself can offer no explanation of the singular way in which this picture has been produced; I offer one which is perfectly tenable with the discoveries of psychic science, — and you dismiss it as preposterous. That being the case, I should recommend you to cut up this canvas and try your hand again on the same subject.”
“Of course, I shall try again,” retorted Gervase. “But I do not think I shall destroy this first sketch. It is a curiosity in its way; and it has a peculiar fascination for me. Do you notice how thoroughly Egyptian the features are? They are the very contour of some of the faces on the recently-discovered frescoes.”
“Oh, I noticed that at once,” said the Doctor; “but that is not remarkable, seeing that you yourself are quite of an Egyptian type, though a Frenchman, — so much so, in fact, that many people in this hotel have commented on it.”
Gervase said nothing, but slowly turned the canvas round with its face to the wall.
“You have seen enough of it, I suppose?” he inquired of Denzil Murray.
“More than enough!”
Gervase smiled.
“It ought to disenchant you,” he said in a lower tone.
“But it is a libel on her beauty, — it is not in the least like her,” returned Murray coldly.
“Not in the very least? Are you sure? My dear Denzil, you know as well as I do that there IS a likeness, combined with a dreadful unlikeness; and it is that which troubles both of us. I assure you, my good boy, I am as sorry for you as I am for myself, — for I feel that this woman will be the death of one or both of us!”
Denzil made no reply, and presently they all strolled out in the garden and lit their cigars and cigarettes, with the exception of Dr. Dean who never smoked and never drank anything stronger than water.
“I am going to get up a party for the Nile,” he said as he turned his sharp, ferret-like eyes upwards to the clear heavens; “and I shall take the Princess into my confidence. In fact, I have written to her about it to-day. I hear she has a magnificent electric dahabeah, and if she will let us charter it. …”
“She won’t,” said Denzil hastily, “unless she goes with it herself.”
“You seem to know a great deal about her,” observed Dr. Dean indulgently, “and why should she not go herself? She is evidently well instructed in the ancient history of Egypt, and, as she reads the hieroglyphs, she will be a delightful guide and a most valuable assistant to me in my researches.”
“What researches are you engaged upon now?” inquired Courtney.
“I am hunting down a man called Araxes,” answered the Doctor. “He lived, so far as I can make out, some four or five thousand years ago, more or less; and I want to find out what he did and how he died, and when I know how he died, then I mean to discover where he is buried. If possible, I shall excavate him. I also want to find the remains of Ziska-Charmazel, the lady impersonated by our charming friend the Princess last night, — the dancer, who, it appears from a recently-discovered fresco, occupied most of her time in dancing before this same Araxes and making herself generally agreeable to him.”
“What an odd fancy!” exclaimed Denzil. “How can a man and woman dead five thousand years ago be of any interest to you?”
“What interest has Rameses?” demanded the Doctor politely, “or any of the Ptolemies? Araxes, like Rameses, may lead to fresh discoveries in Egypt, for all we know. One name is as good as another, — and each odoriferous mummy has its own mystery.”
They all came just then to a pause in their walk, Gervase stopping to light a fresh cigarette. The rays of the rising moon fell upon him as he stood, a tall and stately figure, against a background of palms, and shone on his dark features with a touch of grayish-green luminance that gave him for the moment an almost spectral appearance. Dr. Dean glanced at him with a smile.
“What a figure of an Egyptian, is he not!” he said to Courtney and Denzil Murray. “Look at him! What height and symmetry! What a world of ferocity in those black, slumbrous eyes! Yes, Monsieur Gervase, I am talking about you. I am admiring you!”
“Trop d’honneur!” murmured Gervase, carefully shielding with one hand the match with which he was kindling his cigarette.
“Yes,” continued the Doctor, “I am admiring you. Being a little man myself, I naturally like tall men, and as an investigator of psychic forms I am immensely interested when I see a finely-made body in which the soul lies torpid. That is why you unconsciously compose for me a wonderful subject of study. I wonder now, how long this torpidity in the psychic germ has lasted in you? It commenced, of course, originally in protoplasm; but it must have continued through various low forms and met with enormous difficulties in attaining to individual consciousness as man, — because even now it is scarcely conscious.”
Gervase laughed.
“Why, that beginning of the soul in protoplasm is part of a creed which the Princess Ziska was trying to teach me to-day,” he said lightly. “It’s all no use. I don’t believe in the soul; if I did, I should be a miserable man.”
“Why?” asked Murray.
“Why? Because, my dear fellow, I should be rather afraid of my future. I should not like to live again; I might have to remember certain incidents which I would rather forget. There is your charming sister, Mademoiselle Helen! I must go and talk to her, — her conversation always does me good; and after that picture which I have been unfortunate enough to produce, her presence will be as soothing as the freshness of morning after an unpleasant nightmare.”
He moved away; Denzil Murray with Courtney followed him. Dr. Dean remained behind, and presently sitting down in a retired corner of the garden alone, he took out a small pocket-book and stylographic pen and occupied himself for more than half an hour in busily writing till he had covered two or three pages with his small, neat caligraphy.
“It is the most interesting problem I ever had the chance of studying!” he murmured half aloud when he had finished, “Of course, if my researches into the psychic spheres of action are worth anything, it can only be one case out of thousands. Thousands? Aye, perhaps millions! Great heavens! Among what terrific unseen forces we live! And in exact proportion to every man’s arrogant denial of the ‘Divinity that shapes our ends, so will be measured out to him the revelation of the invisible. Strange that the human race has never entirely realized as yet the depth of meaning in the words describing hell: ‘Where the worm dieth not, and where the flame is never quenched. The ‘worm’ is Retribution, the ‘flame’ is the immortal Spirit, — and the two are forever striving to escape from the other. Horrible! And yet there are men who believe in neither one thing nor the other, and reject the Redemption that does away with both! God forgive us all our sins, — and especially the sins of pride and presumption!”
And with a shade of profound melancholy on his features, the little Doctor put by his note-book, and, avoiding all the hotel loungers on the terrace and elsewhere, retired to his own room and went to bed.
CHAPTER X.
The next day when Armand Gervase went to call on the Princess Ziska he was refused admittance. The Nubian attendant who kept watch and ward at her gates, hearing the door-bell ring, contented himself with thrusting his ugly head through an open upper window and shouting —
“Madame est sortie!”
“Ou donc?” called Gervase in answer.
“A la campagne — le desert — les pyramides!” returned the Nubian, at the same time banging the lattice to in order to prevent the possibility of any further conversation. A
nd Gervase, standing in the street irresolutely for a moment, fancied he heard a peal of malicious laughter in the distance.
“Beast!” he muttered, “I must try him with a money bribe next time I get hold of him. I wonder what I shall do with myself now? — haunted and brain-ridden as I am by this woman and her picture?”
The hot sun glared in his eyes and made them ache, — the rough stones of the narrow street were scorching to his feet. He began to move slowly away with a curious faint sensation of giddiness and sickness upon him, when the sound of music floating from the direction of the Princess Ziska’s palace brought him to a sudden standstill. It was a strange, wild melody, played on some instrument with seemingly muffled strings. A voice with a deep, throbbing thrill of sweetness in it began to sing:
Oh, for the passionless peace of the Lotus-Lily!
It floats in a waking dream on the waters chilly,
With its leaves unfurled
To the wondering world,
Knowing naught of the sorrow and restless pain
That burns and tortures the human brain;
Oh, for the passionless peace of the Lotus-Lily!
Oh, for the pure cold heart of the Lotus-Lily!
Bared to the moon on the waters dark and chilly.
A star above
Is its only love,
And one brief sigh of its scented breath
Is all it will ever know of Death;
Oh, for the pure cold heart of the Lotus-Lily!
When the song ceased, Gervase raised his eyes from the ground on which he had fixed them in a kind of brooding stupor, and stared at the burning blue of the sky as vaguely and wildly as a sick man in the delirium of fever.
“God! What ails me!” he muttered, supporting himself with one hand against the black and crumbling wall near which he stood. “Why should that melody steal away my strength and make me think of things with which I have surely no connection! What tricks my imagination plays me in this city of the Orient — I might as well be hypnotized! What have I to do with dreams of war and triumph and rapine and murder, and what is the name of Ziska-Charmazel to me?”
He shook himself with the action of a fine brute that has been stung by some teasing insect, and, mastering his emotions by an effort, walked away. But he was so absorbed in strange thoughts, that he stumbled up against Denzil Murray in a side street on the way to the Gezireh Palace Hotel without seeing him, and would have passed him altogether had not Denzil somewhat fiercely said:
“Stop!”
Gervase looked at him bewilderedly.
“Why, Denzil, is it you? My dear fellow, forgive me my brusquerie! I believe I have got a stroke of the sun, or something of the sort; I assure you I hardly know what I am doing or where I am going!”
“I believe it!” said Denzil, hoarsely. “You are as mad as I am — for love!”
Gervase smiled; a slight incredulous smile.
“You think so? I am not sure! If love makes a man as thoroughly unstrung and nervous as I am to-day, then love is a very bad illness.”
“It is the worst illness in the world,” said Denzil, speaking hurriedly and wildly. “The most cruel and torturing! And there is no cure for it save death. My God, Gervase! You were my friend but yesterday! I never should have thought it possible to hate you!”
“Yet you do hate me?” queried Gervase, still smiling a little.
“Hate you? I could kill you! You have been with HER!”
Quietly Gervase took his arm.
“My good Denzil, you are mistaken! I confess to you frankly I should have been with HER — you mean the Princess Ziska, of course — had it been possible. But she has fled the city for the moment — at least, according to the corpse-like Nubian who acts as porter.”
“He lies!” exclaimed Denzil, hotly. “I saw her this morning.”
“I hope you improved your opportunity,” said Gervase, imperturbably.
“Anyway, at the present moment she is not visible.”
A silence fell between them for some minutes; then Denzil spoke again.
“Gervase, it is no use, I cannot stand this sort of thing. We must have it out. What does it all mean?”
“It is difficult to explain, my dear boy,” answered Gervase, half seriously, half mockingly. “It means, I presume, that we are both in love with the same woman, and that we both intend to try our chances with her. But, as I told you the other night, I do not see why we should quarrel about it. Your intentions towards the Princess are honorable — mine are dishonorable, and I shall make no secret of them. If you win her, I shall …”
He paused, and there was a sudden look in his eyes which gave them a sombre darkness, darker than their own natural color.
“You shall — what?” asked Denzil.
“Do something desperate,” replied Gervase. “What the something will be depends on the humor of the moment. A tiger balked of his prey is not an agreeable beast; a strong man deprived of the woman he passionately desires is a little less agreeable even than the tiger. But let us adopt the policy of laissez-faire. Nothing is decided; the fair one cares for neither of us; let us be friends until she makes her choice.”
“We cannot be friends,” said Denzil, sternly.
“Good! Let us be foes then, but courteous, even in our quarrel, dear boy. If we must kill each other, let us do it civilly. To fly at each other’s throats would be purely barbaric. We owe a certain duty to civilization; things have progressed since the days of Araxes.”
Denzil stared at him gloomily.
“Araxes is Dr. Dean’s fad,” he said. “I don’t know anything about Egyptian mummies, and don’t want to know. My matter is with the present, and not with the past.”
They had reached the hotel by this time, and turned into the gardens side by side.
“You understand?” repeated Denzil. “We cannot be friends!”
Gervase gave him a profoundly courteous salute, and the two separated.
Later on in the afternoon, about an hour before dinner-time, Gervase, strolling on the terrace of the hotel alone, saw Helen Murray seated at a little distance under some trees, with a book in her hand which she was not reading. There were tears in her eyes, but as he approached her she furtively dashed them away and greeted him with a poor attempt at a smile.
“You have a moment to spare me?” he asked, sitting down beside her.
She bent her head in acquiescence.
“I am a very unhappy man, Mademoiselle Helen,” he began, looking at her with a certain compassionate tenderness as he spoke. “I want your sympathy, but I know I do not deserve it.”
Helen remained silent. A faint flush crimsoned her cheeks, but her eyes were veiled under the long lashes — she thought he could not see them.
“You remember,” he went on, “our pleasant times in Scotland? Ah, it is a restful place, your Highland home, with the beautiful purple hills rolling away in the distance, and the glorious moors covered with fragrant heather, and the gurgling of the river that runs between birch and fir and willow, making music all day long for those who have the ears to listen, and the hearts to understand the pretty love tune it sings! You know Frenchmen always have more or less sympathy with the Scotch — some old association, perhaps, with the romantic times of Mary Queen of Scots, when the light and changeful fancies of Chastelard and his brother poets and lutists made havoc in the hearts of many a Highland maiden. What is that bright drop on your hand, Helen? — are you crying?” He waited a moment, and his voice was softer and more tremulous. “Dear girl, I am not worthy of tears. I am not good enough for you.”
He gave her time to recover her momentary emotion and then went on, still softly and tenderly:
“Listen, Helen. I want you to believe me and forgive me, if you can. I know — I remember those moonlight evenings in Scotland — holy and happy evenings, as sweet as flower-scented pages in a young girl’s missal; yes, and I did not mean to play with you, Helen, or wound your gentle heart. I almost loved you!” He sp
oke the words passionately, and for a moment she raised her eyes and looked at him in something of fear as well as sorrow. “‘Yes,’ I said to my self, ‘this woman, so true and pure and fair, is a bride for a king; and if I can win her — if!’ Ah, there my musings stopped. But I came to Egypt chiefly to meet you again, knowing that you and your brother were in Cairo. How was I to know, how was I to guess that this horrible thing would happen?”
Helen gazed at him wonderingly.
“What horrible thing?” she asked, falteringly, the rich color coming and going on her face, and her heart beating violently as she put the question.
His eyes flashed.
“This,” he answered. “The close and pernicious enthralment of a woman I never met till the night before last; a woman whose face haunts me; a woman who drags me to her side with the force of a magnet, there to grovel like a brain-sick fool and plead with her for a love which I already know is poison to my soul! Helen, Helen! You do not understand — you will never understand! Here, in the very air I breathe, I fancy I can trace the perfume she shakes from her garments as she moves; something indescribably fascinating yet terrible attracts me to her; it is an evil attraction, I know, but I cannot resist it. There is something wicked in every man’s nature; I am conscious enough that there is something detestably wicked in mine, and I have not sufficient goodness to overbalance it. And this woman, — this silent, gliding, glittering-eyed creature that has suddenly taken possession of my fancy — she overcomes me in spite of myself; she makes havoc of all the good intentions of my life. I admit it — I confess it!”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 420