Chapter II (2)

After dinner that evening Lady Surrey sent Gladys off to Miss Martindale's room on some small pretext, and then put Harry down on the sofa beside her to help in arranging those interminable ferns of hers. Evening dress suited the countess best, and she knew it. She was looking even more beautiful than before, with her hair prettily dressed, and the little simple turquoise necklet setting off her white neck; and she talked a great deal to Harry, and was really very charming. No more fascinating widow, he thought, to be found anywhere within a hundred miles. At last she stopped, leaning over the ferns, and sat back a little on the sofa, half fronting him. "Mr. Vardon," she said suddenly, "there is something I wish to speak to you about, privately."

"Certainly," said Harry, half expecting the topic.

"Do you know, I think you ought not to pay such marked attention to Lady Gladys. Two or three times I have fancied I noticed it, and have meant to mention it to you, but I thought it might be unnecessary. On many accounts, however, I think it is best not to let it pass any longer. The difference of station----"

"Excuse me," said Harry, "I'm sorry to differ from you, but I don't acknowledge differences of station."

"Well," said the countess, in a conciliatory tone, "under certain circumstances that may be perfectly correct. A young man in your position and with your talents has of course the whole world before him. He can make himself whatever he pleases. I don't think, Mr. Vardon, I have ever under-estimated the worth of brains. I do feel that knowledge and culture are much greater things after all than mere position. Now, in justice to me, don't you think I do?"

Harry looked at her--she was really a very beautiful woman--and then said, "Yes, I think you have certainly better and more rational tastes than most other people circumstanced as you are."

"I'm so glad you do," the countess answered, heartily. "I don't care for a life of perfect frivolity and fashion, such as one gets in London. If it were not for Gladys's sake I sometimes think I would give it up entirely. Do you know, I often wish my life had been cast very differently--cast among another set of people from the people I have always mixed among. Whenever I meet clever people--literary people and scholars--I always feel so sorry I haven't moved all my life in their world. From one point of view, I quite recognize what you said just now, that these artificial distinctions should not exist between people who are really equals in intellect and culture."

"Naturally not," said Harry, to whom this proposition sounded like a familiar truism.

"But in Lady Gladys's case, I feel I ought to guard her against seeing too much of anybody in particular just at present. She is only seventeen, and she is of course impressionable. Now, you know a great many mothers would not have spoken to you as I do; but I like you, Mr. Vardon, and I feel at home with you. You will promise me not to pay so much attention to Gladys in future, won't you?"

As she looked at him full in the face with her beautiful eyes, Harry felt he could just then have promised her anything. "Yes," he said, "I will promise."

"Thank you," said the countess, looking at him again; "I am very much obliged to you." And then for a moment there was an awkward pause, and they both looked full into one another's eyes without saying a word.

In a minute the countess began again, and said a good many things about what a dreadful waste of life people generally made; and what a privilege it was to know clever people; and what a reality and purpose there was in their lives. A great deal of this sort she said, and in a low pleasant voice. And then there was another awkward pause, and they looked at one another once more.

Harry certainly thought the countess very beautiful, and he liked her very much. She was really kind-hearted and friendly; she was interested in the subjects that pleased him; and she was after all a pretty woman, still young as men count youth, and very agreeable--nay, anxious to please. And then she had said what she said about the artificiality of class distinctions so markedly and pointedly, with such a commentary from her eyes, that Harry half fancied--well, I don't quite know what he fancied. As he sat there beside her on the sofa, with the ferns before him, looking straight into her eyes, and she into his, it must be clear to all my readers that if he had any special proposition to make to her on any abstract subject of human speculation, the time had obviously arrived to make it. But something or other inscrutable kept him back. "Lady Surrey----" he said, and the words stuck in his throat.

"Yes," she answered softly. "Shall ... shall we go on with the ferns?" Lady Surrey gave a little short breath, brought back her eyes from dreamland, and turned with a sudden smile back to the portfolio. For the rest of the evening, the candid historian must admit that they both felt like a pair of fools. Conversation lagged, and I don't think either of them was sorry when the time came for retiring.

It is useless for the clumsy male psychologist to pretend that he can see into the heart of a woman, especially when the normal action of said heart is complicated by such queer conventionalities as that of a countess who feels a distinct liking for her son's tutor: but if I may venture to attempt that impossible feat of clairvoyance without rebuke, I should be inclined to diagnose Lady Surrey's condition as she lay sleepless for an hour or so on her pillow that night somewhat as follows. She thought that Harry Vardon was really a very clever and a very pleasant fellow. She thought that men in society were generally dreadfully empty-headed and horribly vain. She thought that the importance of disparity in age had, as a rule, been immensely overrated. She thought that rank was after all much less valuable than she used to think it when first she married poor dear Surrey, who was really the kindest of men, and a thorough gentleman, but certainly not at all brilliant. She thought that a young man of Harry's talent might, if well connected, get into Parliament and rise, like Beaconsfield, to any position. She thought he was very frank, and open, and gentlemanly; and very handsome too. She thought he had half hesitated whether he should propose to her or not, and had then drawn back because he was not certain of the consequences. She thought that if he had proposed to her--well, perhaps--why, yes, she might even possibly have accepted him. She thought he would probably propose in earnest, before long, as soon as he saw that she was not wholly averse to his attentions. She thought in that case she might perhaps provisionally accept him, and get him to try what he could do in the way of obtaining some sort of position--she didn't exactly know what--where he could more easily marry her with the least possible shock to the feelings of society. And she thought that she really didn't know before for twenty years at least how great a goose she positively was.

Next morning, after breakfast, Lady Surrey sent for Gladys to come to her in her boudoir. Then she put her daughter in a chair by the window, drew her own close to it, laid her hand kindly on her shoulder--she was a nice little woman at heart, was the countess--and said to her gently, "My dear Gladys, there's a little matter I want to talk to you about. You are still very young, you know, dear; and I think you ought to be very careful about not letting your feelings be played upon in any way, however unconsciously. Now, you walk and talk a great deal too much, dear, with Mr. Vardon. In many ways, it would be well that you should. Mr. Vardon is very clever, and very well informed, and a very instructive companion. I like you to talk to intelligent people, and to hear intelligent people talk; it gives you something that mere books can never give. But you know, Gladys, you should always remember the disparity in your stations. I don't deny that there's a great deal in all that sort of thing that's very conventional and absurd, my dear; but still, girls are girls, and if they're thrown too much with any one young man"--Lady Surrey was going to add, "especially when he's handsome and agreeable," but she checked herself in time--"they're very apt to form an affection for him. Of course I'm not suggesting that you're likely to do anything of the sort with Mr. Vardon--I don't for a moment suppose you would--but a girl can never be too careful. I hope you know your position too well;" here Lady Surrey was conscious of certain internal qualms; "and indeed whether it was Mr. Vardon or anybody else, you are much too young to fill your head with such notions at your age. Of course, if some really good offer had been made to you even in your first season--say Lord St. Ives or Sir Montague--I don't say it might not have been prudent to accept it; but under ordinary circumstances, a girl does best to think as little as possible about such things until she is twenty at least. However, I hope in future you'll remember that I don't wish you to be quite so familiar in your intercourse with Mr. Vardon."

"Very well, mamma," said Gladys quietly, drawing herself up; "I have heard what you want to say, and I shall try to do as you wish. But I should like to say something in return, if you'll be so kind as to listen to me."

"Certainly, darling," Lady Surrey answered, with a vague foreboding of something wrong.

"I don't say I care any more for Mr. Vardon than for anybody else; I haven't seen enough of him to know whether I care for him or not. But if ever I _do_ care for anybody, it will be for somebody like him, and not for somebody like Lord St. Ives or Monty Fitzroy. I don't like the men I meet in town; they all talk to us as if we were dolls or babies. I don't want to marry a man who says to himself, as Surrey says already, 'Ah, I shall look out for some rich girl or other and make her a countess, if she's a good girl, and if she suits me.' I'd rather have a man like Mr. Vardon than any of the men we ever meet in London."

"But, my darling," said Lady Surrey, quite alarmed at Gladys' too serious tone, "surely there are gentlemen quite as clever and quite as intellectual as Mr. Vardon."

"Mamma!" cried Gladys, rising, "do you mean to say Mr. Vardon is not a gentleman?"

"Gladys, Gladys! sit down, dear. Don't get so excited. Of course he is. I trust I have as great a respect as anybody for talent and culture. But what I meant to say was this--can't you find as much talent and culture among people of our own station as--as among people of Mr. Vardon's?"

"No," said Gladys shortly.

"Really, my dear, you are too hard upon the peerage."

"Well, mamma, can you mention any one that we know who is?" asked the peremptory girl.

"Not exactly in our own set," said Lady Surrey hesitatingly; "but surely there must be _some_."

"I don't know them," Gladys replied quietly, "and till I _do_ know them, I shall remain of my own opinion still. If you wish me not to see so much of Mr. Vardon, I shall try to do as you say; but if I happen to like any particular person, whether he's a peer or a ploughboy, I can't help liking him, so there's an end of it." And Gladys kissed her mother demurely on the forehead, and walked with a stately sweep out of the room.

"It's perfectly clear," said Lady Surrey to herself, "that that girl's in love with Mr. Vardon, and what on earth I'm to do about it is to me a mystery." And indeed Lady Surrey's position was by no means an easy one. On the one hand, she felt that whatever she herself, who was a person of mature years, might happen to do, it would be positively wicked in her to allow a young girl like Gladys to throw herself away on a man in Harry Vardon's position. Without any shadow of an _arriere pensee_, that was her genuine feeling as a mother and a member of society. But then, on the other hand, how could she oppose it, if she really ever thought herself, even conditionally, of marrying Harry Vardon? Could she endure that her daughter should think she had acted as her rival? Could she press the point about Harry's conventional disadvantages, when she herself had some vague idea that if Harry offered himself as Gladys' step-father, she would not be wholly disinclined to consider his proposal? Could she set it down as a crime in her daughter to form the very self-same affection which she herself had well-nigh formed? Moreover, she couldn't help feeling in her heart that Gladys was right, after all; and that the daughter's defiance of conventionality was implicitly inherited from the mother. If she had met Harry Vardon twenty years ago, she would have thought and spoken much like Gladys; in fact, though she didn't speak, she thought so, very nearly, even now. I am sorry that I am obliged to write out these faint outlines of ideas in all the brutal plainness of the English language as spoken by men; I cannot give all those fine shades of unspoken reservations and womanly self-deceptive subterfuges by which the poor little countess half disguised her own meaning even from herself; but at least you will not be surprised to hear that in the end she lay down on the little couch in the corner, covered her face with chagrin and disappointment, and had a good cry. Then she got up an hour later, washed her eyes carefully to take off the redness, put on her pretty dove-coloured morning gown with the lace trimming--she looked charming in lace--and went down smiling to lunch, as pleasant and cheery a little widow of thirty-seven as ever you would wish to see. Upon my soul, Harry Vardon, I really almost think you will be a fool if you don't finally marry the countess!

"Gladys," said little Lord Surrey to his sister that evening, when she came into his room on her way upstairs to bed--"Gladys, it's my opinion you're getting too sweet on this fellow Vardon."

"I shall be obliged, Surrey, if you'll mind your own business, and allow me to mind mine."

"Oh, it's no use coming the high and mighty over me, I can tell you, so don't you try it on. Besides, I have something I want to speak to you about particularly. It's my opinion also that my lady's doing the very same thing."

"What nonsense, Surrey!" cried Gladys, colouring up to her eyebrows in a second: "how dare you say such a thing about mamma?" But a light broke in upon her suddenly all the same, and a number of little unnoticed circumstances flashed back at once upon her memory with a fresh flood of meaning.

"Nonsense or not, it's true, I know; and what I want to say to you is this--If old Vardon's to marry either of you, it ought to be you, because that would save mamma at any rate from making a fool of herself. As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather neither of you did; for I don't see why either of you should want to marry a beggarly fellow of a tutor"--Gladys' eyes flashed fire--"though Vardon's a decent enough chap in his way, if that was all; but at any rate, as one or other of you's cock-sure to do it, I don't want him for a step-father. So you see, as far as that goes, I back the filly. Now, say no more about it, but go to bed like a good girl, and mind, whatever you do, you don't forget to say your prayers. Good night, old girl."

"I wouldn't marry a fellow like Surrey," said Gladys to herself, as she went upstairs, "no, not if he was the premier duke of England!"

For the next three weeks there was such a comedy of errors and cross-purposes at Colyford Abbey as was never seen before anywhere outside of one of Mr. Gilbert's clever extravaganzas. Lady Surrey tried to keep Gladys in every possible way out of Harry's sight; while her brother tried in every possible way to throw them together. Gladys on her part half avoided him, and yet grew somewhat more confidential than ever whenever she happened to talk with him. Harry did not feel quite so much at home as before with Lady Surrey; he had an uncomfortable sense that he had failed to acquit himself as he ought to have done; while Lady Surrey had a half suspicion that she had let him see her unfledged secret a little too early and too openly. The natural consequence of all this was that Harry was cast far more than before upon the society of Ethel Martindale, with whom he often strolled about the shrubbery till very close upon the dressing gong. Ethel did not come down to dinner--she dined with the little ones at the family luncheon; and that horrid galling distinction cut Harry to the quick every night when he left her to go in. Every day, too, it began to dawn upon him more clearly that the vague reason which had kept him back from proposing to Lady Surrey on that eventful night was just this--that Ethel Martindale had made herself a certain vacant niche in his unfurnished heart. She was a dear, quiet, unassuming little girl, but so very graceful, so very tender, so very womanly, that she crept into his affections unawares without possibility of resistance. The countess was a beautiful and accomplished woman of the world, with a real heart left in her still, but not quite the sort of tender, shrinking, girlish heart that Harry wanted. Gladys was a lovely girl with stately manners and a wonderfully formed character, but too great and too redolent of society for Harry. He admired them both, each in her own way, but he couldn't possibly have lived a lifetime with either. But Ethel, dear, meek, pretty, gentle little Ethel--well, there, I'm not going to repeat for you all the raptures that Harry went into over that perennial and ever rejuvenescent theme. For, to tell you the truth, about three weeks after the night when Harry did _not_ propose to the countess, he actually _did_ propose to Ethel Martindale. And Ethel, after many timid protests, after much demure self-depreciation and declaration of utter unworthiness for such a man--which made Harry wild with indignation--did finally let him put her little hand to his lips, and whispered a sort of broken and blushing "Yes."

What a fool he had been, he thought that evening, to suppose for half a second that Lady Surrey had ever meant to regard him in any other light than as her son's tutor. He hated himself for his own nonsensical vanity. Who was he that he should fancy all the women in England were in love with him?

Next morning's _Times_ contained that curious announcement about its being the intention of the Government to appoint an electrician to the Admiralty, and inviting applications from distinguished men of science. Now Harry, young as he was, had just perfected his great system of the double-revolving commutator and back-action rheostat (Patent Office, No. 18,237,504), and had sent in a paper on the subject which had been read with great success at the Royal Society. The famous Professor Brusegay himself had described it as a remarkable invention, likely to prove of immense practical importance to telegraphy and electrical science generally. So when Harry saw the announcement that morning, he made up his mind to apply for the appointment at once; and he thought that if he got it, as the salary was a good one, he might before long marry Ethel, and yet manage to keep Edith in the same comfort as before.

Lady Surrey saw the paragraph too, and had her own ideas about what it might be made to do. It was the very opening that Harry wanted, and if he got it, why then no doubt he might make the proposal which he evidently felt afraid to make, poor fellow, in his present position. So she went into her boudoir immediately after breakfast, and wrote two careful and cautiously worded little notes. One was to Dr. Brusegay, whom she knew well, mentioning to him that her son's tutor was the author of that remarkable paper on commutators, and that she thought he would probably be admirably fitted for the post, but that on that point the Professor himself was the best judge; the other was to her cousin, Lord Ardenleigh, who was a great man in the government of the day, suggesting casually that he should look into the claims of her friend, Mr. Vardon, for this new place at the Admiralty. Two nicer little notes, written with better tact and judgment, it would be difficult to find.

At that very moment Harry was also sitting down in his own room, after five minutes' consultation with Ethel, to make formal application for the new post. And after lunch the same day he spoke to Lady Surrey upon the subject.

"There is one special reason," he said, "why I should like to get this post, and I think I ought to let you know it now." Poor little Lady Surrey's heart fluttered like a girl's. "The fact is, I am anxious to obtain a position which would enable me to marry." ("How very bluntly he puts it," said the countess to herself.) "I ought to tell you, I think, that I have proposed to Miss Martindale, and she has accepted me."

Miss Martindale! Great heavens, how the room reeled round the poor little woman, as she stood with her hand on the table, trying to balance herself, trying to conceal her shame and mortification, trying to look as if the announcement did not concern her in any way. Poor, dear, good little countess; from my heart I pity you. Miss Martindale! why, she had never even thought of _her_. A mere governess, a nobody; and Harry Vardon, with his magnificent intellect and splendid prospects, was going to throw himself away on that girl! She could hardly control herself to answer him, but with a great effort she gulped down her feelings, and remarked that Ethel Martindale was a very good girl, and would doubtless make an admirable wife. And then she walked quietly out of the room, stepped up the stairs somewhat faster, rushed into her boudoir, double-locked the door, and burst into a perfect flood of hot scalding tears. At that moment she began to realize the fact that she had in truth liked Harry Vardon much more than a little.

By-and-by she got up, went over to her desk, took out the two unposted notes, tore them into fragments, and then carefully burnt them up piece by piece, in a perfect holocaust of white paper. What a wicked vindictive little countess! Was she going to spoil these two young people's lives, to throw every possible obstacle in the way of their marriage? Not a bit of it. As soon as her eyes allowed her, she sat down and wrote two more notes, a great deal stronger and better than before; for this time she need not fear the possibility of after reflections from an unkind world. She said a great deal in a casual half-hinting fashion about Harry's merits, and remarked upon the loss that she should sustain in the removal of such a tutor from Lord Surrey; but she felt that sooner or later his talents must get him a higher recognition, and she hoped Dr. Brusegay and her cousin would use their influence to obtain him the appointment. Then she went downstairs feeling like a Christian martyr, kissed and congratulated Ethel, talked gaily about Bartolozzi to Harry, and tried to make believe that she took the engagement as a matter of course. Nothing in fact, as she remarked to Gladys, could possibly be more suitable. Gladys bit her tongue, and answered shortly that she didn't herself perceive any special natural congruity about the match, but perhaps her mother was better informed on the subject.

Now, we all know that in the matter of public appointment anything like backstairs influence or indirect canvassing is positively fatal to the success of a candidate. Accordingly, it may surprise you to learn that when Professor Brusegay (who held the appointment virtually in his hands) opened his letters next morning he said to his wife, "Why, Maria, that young fellow Vardon who wrote that astonishingly clever paper on commutators, you know, is tutor at Lady Surrey's, and she wants him to get this place at the Admiralty. We must really see what we can do about it. Lady Surrey is such a very useful person to know, and besides it's so important to keep on good terms with her, for the Paulsons would be absolutely intolerable if we hadn't its acquaintance in the peerage to play off against their Lord Poodlebury." And when the Professor shortly afterwards mentioned Harry's name to Lord Ardenleigh, his lordship remarked immediately, "Why, bless my soul, that's the very man Amelia wrote to me about. He shall have the place, by all means." And they both wrote back nice little notes to Lady Surrey, to say that she might consider the matter settled, but that she mustn't mention it to Harry until the appointment was regularly announced. Anything so remarkable in this age of purity I for my part have seldom heard of.

Lady Surrey never did mention the matter to Harry from that day to this; and Sir Henry Vardon, K.C.B., does not for a moment imagine even now that he owes his advancement to anything but his own native merits. He married Ethel shortly after, and a prettier or more blushing bride you never saw. Lady Surrey has been their best friend in society, and still sighs occasionally when she sees Harry a great magnate in his way, and thinks of the narrow escape he had that night at Colyford. As to Gladys, she consistently refused several promising heirs, at least twenty younger sons, and a score or so of wealthy young men whose papas were something in the City, her first five seasons; and then, to Lord Surrey's horror, she married a young Scotchman from Glasgow, who was merely a writer for some London paper, and had nothing on earth but a head on his shoulders to bless himself with. His lordship himself "bagged an heiress" as he expressively puts it, with several thousands a year of her own, and is now one of the most respected members of his party, who may be counted upon always to vote straight, and never to have any opinions of his own upon any subject except the improvement of the British racehorse. He often wishes Gladys had taken his advice and married Vardon, who is at least in respectable society, instead of that shock-headed Scotch fellow--but there, the girl was always full of fancies, and never would behave like other people.

For myself, I am a horrid radical, and republican, and all that sort of thing, and have a perfectly rabid hatred of titles and so forth, don't you know?--but still, on the first day when Ethel went to call on the countess dowager after Harry was knighted, I happened to be present (purely on business), and heard her duly announced as "Lady Vardon:" and I give you my word of honour I could not find it in my heart to grudge the dear little woman the flush of pride that rose upon her cheek as she entered the room for the first time in her new position. It was a pleasure to me (who know the whole story) to see Lady Surrey kiss the little ex-governess warmly on her cheek and say to her, "My dear Lady Vardon, I am so glad, so very very glad." And I really believe she meant it. After all, in spite of her little weakness, there is a great deal of human nature left in the countess.

_MY NEW YEARS EVE AMONG THE MUMMIES._

I have been a wanderer and a vagabond on the face of the earth for a good many years now, and I have certainly had some odd adventures in my time; but I can assure you, I never spent twenty-four queerer hours than those which I passed some twelve months since in the great unopened Pyramid of Abu Yilla.

The way I got there was itself a very strange one. I had come to Egypt for a winter tour with the Fitz-Simkinses, to whose daughter Editha I was at that precise moment engaged. You will probably remember that old Fitz-Simkins belonged originally to the wealthy firm of Simkinson and Stokoe, worshipful vintners; but when the senior partner retired from the business and got his knighthood, the College of Heralds opportunely discovered that his ancestors had changed their fine old Norman name for its English equivalent some time about the reign of King Richard I.; and they immediately authorized the old gentleman to resume the patronymic and the armorial bearings of his distinguished forefathers. It's really quite astonishing how often these curious coincidences crop up at the College of Heralds.

Of course it was a great catch for a landless and briefless barrister like myself--dependent on a small fortune in South American securities, and my precarious earnings as a writer of burlesque--to secure such a valuable prospective property as Editha Fitz-Simkins. To be sure, the girl was undeniably plain; but I have known plainer girls than she was, whom forty thousand pounds converted into My Ladies: and if Editha hadn't really fallen over head and ears in love with me, I suppose old Fitz-Simkins would never have consented to such a match. As it was, however, we had flirted so openly and so desperately during the Scarborough season, that it would have been difficult for Sir Peter to break it off: and so I had come to Egypt on a tour of insurance to secure my prize, following in the wake of my future mother-in-law, whose lungs were supposed to require a genial climate--though in my private opinion they were really as creditable a pair of pulmonary appendages as ever drew breath.

Nevertheless, the course of our true love did not run so smoothly as might have been expected. Editha found me less ardent than a devoted squire should be; and on the very last night of the old year she got up a regulation lovers' quarrel, because I had sneaked away from the boat that afternoon, under the guidance of our dragoman, to witness the seductive performances of some fair Ghawazi, the dancing girls of a neighbouring town. How she found it out heaven only knows, for I gave that rascal Dimitri five piastres to hold his tongue: but she did find it out somehow, and chose to regard it as an offence of the first magnitude: a mortal sin only to be expiated by three days of penance and humiliation.

I went to bed that night, in my hammock on deck, with feelings far from satisfactory. We were moored against the bank at Abu Yilla, the most pestiferous hole between the cataracts and the Delta. The mosquitoes were worse than the ordinary mosquitoes of Egypt, and that is saying a great deal. The heat was oppressive even at night, and the malaria from the lotus beds rose like a palpable mist before my eyes. Above all, I was getting doubtful whether Editha Fitz-Simkins might not after all slip between my fingers. I felt wretched and feverish: and yet I had delightful interlusive recollections, in between, of that lovely little Ghaziyah, who danced that exquisite, marvellous, entrancing, delicious, and awfully oriental dance that I saw in the afternoon.

By Jove, she _was_ a beautiful creature. Eyes like two full moons; hair like Milton's Penseroso; movements like a poem of Swinburne's set to action. If Editha was only a faint picture of that girl now! Upon my word, I was falling in love with a Ghaziyah!

Then the mosquitoes came again. Buzz--buzz--buzz. I make a lunge at the loudest and biggest, a sort of prima donna in their infernal opera. I kill the prima donna, but ten more shrill performers come in its place. The frogs croak dismally in the reedy shallows. The night grows hotter and hotter still. At last, I can stand it no longer. I rise up, dress myself lightly, and jump ashore to find some way of passing the time.

Yonder, across the flat, lies the great unopened Pyramid of Abu Yilla. We are going to-morrow to climb to the top; but I will take a turn to reconnoitre in that direction now. I walk across the moonlit fields, my soul still divided between Editha and the Ghaziyah, and approach the solemn mass of huge, antiquated granite-blocks standing out so grimly against the pale horizon. I feel half awake, half asleep, and altogether feverish: but I poke about the base in an aimless sort of way, with a vague idea that I may perhaps discover by chance the secret of its sealed entrance, which has ere now baffled so many pertinacious explorers and learned Egyptologists.

As I walk along the base, I remember old Herodotus's story, like a page from the "Arabian Nights," of how King Rhampsinitus built himself a treasury, wherein one stone turned on a pivot like a door; and how the builder availed himself of this his cunning device to steal gold from the king's storehouse. Suppose the entrance to the unopened Pyramid should be by such a door. It would be curious if I should chance to light upon the very spot.

I stood in the broad moonlight, near the north-east angle of the great pile, at the twelfth stone from the corner. A random fancy struck me, that I might turn this stone by pushing it inward on the left side. I leant against it with all my weight, and tried to move it on the imaginary pivot. Did it give way a fraction of an inch? No, it must have been mere fancy. Let me try again. Surely it is yielding! Gracious Osiris, it has moved an inch or more! My heart beats fast, either with fever or excitement, and I try a third time. The rust of centuries on the pivot wears slowly off, and the stone turns ponderously round, giving access to a low dark passage.

It must have been madness which led me to enter the forgotten corridor, alone, without torch or match, at that hour of the evening; but at any rate I entered. The passage was tall enough for a man to walk erect, and I could feel, as I groped slowly along, that the wall was composed of smooth polished granite, while the floor sloped away downward with a slight but regular descent. I walked with trembling heart and faltering feet for some forty or fifty yards down the mysterious vestibule: and then I felt myself brought suddenly to a standstill by a block of stone placed right across the pathway. I had had nearly enough for one evening, and I was preparing to return to the boat, agog with my new discovery, when my attention was suddenly arrested by an incredible, a perfectly miraculous fact.

The block of stone which barred the passage was faintly visible as a square, by means of a struggling belt of light streaming through the seams. There must be a lamp or other flame burning within. What if this were a door like the outer one, leading into a chamber perhaps inhabited by some dangerous band of outcasts? The light was a sure evidence of human occupation: and yet the outer door swung rustily on its pivot as though it had never been opened for ages. I paused a moment in fear before I ventured to try the stone: and then, urged on once more by some insane impulse, I turned the massive block with all my might to the left. It gave way slowly like its neighbour, and finally opened into the central hall.

Never as long as I live shall I forget the ecstasy of terror, astonishment, and blank dismay which seized upon me when I stepped into that seemingly enchanted chamber. A blaze of light first burst upon my eyes, from jets of gas arranged in regular rows tier above tier, upon the columns and walls of the vast apartment. Huge pillars, richly painted with red, yellow, blue, and green decorations, stretched in endless succession down the dazzling aisles. A floor of polished syenite reflected the splendour of the lamps, and afforded a base for red granite sphinxes and dark purple images in porphyry of the cat-faced goddess Pasht, whose form I knew so well at the Louvre and the British Museum. But I had no eyes for any of these lesser marvels, being wholly absorbed in the greatest marvel of all: for there, in royal state and with mitred head, a living Egyptian king, surrounded by his coiffured court, was banqueting in the flesh upon a real throne, before a table laden with Memphian delicacies!

I stood transfixed with awe and amazement, my tongue and my feet alike forgetting their office, and my brain whirling round and round, as I remember it used to whirl when my health broke down utterly at Cambridge after the Classical Tripos. I gazed fixedly at the strange picture before me, taking in all its details in a confused way, yet quite incapable of understanding or realizing any part of its true import. I saw the king in the centre of the hall, raised on a throne of granite inlaid with gold and ivory; his head crowned with the peaked cap of Rameses, and his curled hair flowing down his shoulders in a set and formal frizz. I saw priests and warriors on either side, dressed in the costumes which I had often carefully noted in our great collections; while bronze-skinned maids, with light garments round their waists, and limbs displayed in graceful picturesqueness, waited upon them, half nude, as in the wall paintings which we had lately examined at Karnak and Syene. I saw the ladies, clothed from head to foot in dyed linen garments, sitting apart in the background, banqueting by themselves at a separate table; while dancing girls, like older representatives of my yesternoon friends, the Ghawazi, tumbled before them in strange attitudes, to the music of four-stringed harps and long straight pipes. In short, I beheld as in a dream the whole drama of everyday Egyptian royal life, playing itself out anew under my eyes, in its real original properties and personages.

Gradually, as I looked, I became aware that my hosts were no less surprised at the appearance of their anachronistic guest than was the guest himself at the strange living panorama which met his eyes. In a moment music and dancing ceased; the banquet paused in its course, and the king and his nobles stood up in undisguised astonishment to survey the strange intruder.

Some minutes passed before any one moved forward on either side. At last a young girl of royal appearance, yet strangely resembling the Ghaziyah of Abu Yilla, and recalling in part the laughing maiden in the foreground of Mr. Long's great canvas at the previous Academy, stepped out before the throng.

"May I ask you," she said in Ancient Egyptian, "who you are, and why you come hither to disturb us?"

I was never aware before that I spoke or understood the language of the hieroglyphics: yet I found I had not the slightest difficulty in comprehending or answering her question. To say the truth, Ancient Egyptian, though an extremely tough tongue to decipher in its written form, becomes as easy as love-making when spoken by a pair of lips like that Pharaonic princess's. It is really very much the same as English, pronounced in a rapid and somewhat indefinite whisper, and with all the vowels left out.

"I beg ten thousand pardons for my intrusion," I answered apologetically; "but I did not know that this Pyramid was inhabited, or I should not have entered your residence so rudely. As for the points you wish to know, I am an English tourist, and you will find my name upon this card;" saying which I handed her one from the case which I had fortunately put into my pocket, with conciliatory politeness. The princess examined it closely, but evidently did not understand its import.

"In return," I continued, "may I ask you in what august presence I now find myself by accident?"

A court official stood forth from the throng, and answered in a set heraldic tone: "In the presence of the illustrious monarch, Brother of the Sun, Thothmes the Twenty-seventh, king of the Eighteenth Dynasty."

"Salute the Lord of the World," put in another official in the same regulation drone.

I bowed low to his Majesty, and stepped out into the hall. Apparently my obeisance did not come up to Egyptian standards of courtesy, for a suppressed titter broke audibly from the ranks of bronze-skinned waiting-women. But the king graciously smiled at my attempt, and turning to the nearest nobleman, observed in a voice of great sweetness and self-contained majesty: "This stranger, Ombos, is certainly a very curious person. His appearance does not at all resemble that of an Ethiopian or other savage, nor does he look like the pale-faced sailors who come to us from the Achaian land beyond the sea. His features, to be sure, are not very different from theirs; but his extraordinary and singularly inartistic dress shows him to belong to some other barbaric race."

I glanced down at my waistcoat, and saw that I was wearing my tourist's check suit, of grey and mud colour, with which a Bond Street tailor had supplied me just before leaving town, as the latest thing out in fancy tweeds. Evidently these Egyptians must have a very curious standard of taste not to admire our pretty and graceful style of male attire.

"If the dust beneath your Majesty's feet may venture upon a suggestion," put in the officer whom the king had addressed, "I would hint that this young man is probably a stray visitor from the utterly uncivilized lands of the North. The head-gear which he carries in his hand obviously betrays an Arctic habitat."

I had instinctively taken off my round felt hat in the first moment of surprise, when I found myself in the midst of this strange throng, and I was standing now in a somewhat embarrassed posture, holding it awkwardly before me like a shield to protect my chest.

"Let the stranger cover himself," said the king.

"Barbarian intruder, cover yourself," cried the herald. I noticed throughout that the king never directly addressed anybody save the higher officials around him.

I put on my hat as desired. "A most uncomfortable and silly form of tiara indeed," said the great Thothmes.

"Very unlike your noble and awe-spiring mitre, Lion of Egypt," answered Ombos.

"Ask the stranger his name," the king continued.

It was useless to offer another card, so I mentioned it in a clear voice.

"An uncouth and almost unpronounceable designation truly," commented his Majesty to the Grand Chamberlain beside him. "These savages speak strange languages, widely different from the flowing tongue of Memnon and Sesostris."

The chamberlain bowed his assent with three low genuflexions. I began to feel a little abashed at these personal remarks, and I _almost_ think (though I shouldn't like it to be mentioned in the Temple) that a blush rose to my cheek.

The beautiful princess, who had been standing near me meanwhile in an attitude of statuesque repose, now appeared anxious to change the current of the conversation. "Dear father," she said with a respectful inclination, "surely the stranger, barbarian though he be, cannot relish such pointed allusions to his person and costume. We must let him feel the grace and delicacy of Egyptian refinement. Then he may perhaps carry back with him some faint echo of its cultured beauty to his northern wilds."

"Nonsense, Hatasou," replied Thothmes XXVII. testily. "Savages have no feelings, and they are as incapable of appreciating Egyptian sensibility as the chattering crow is incapable of attaining the dignified reserve of the sacred crocodile."

"Your Majesty is mistaken," I said, recovering my self-possession gradually and realizing my position as a free-born Englishman before the court of a foreign despot--though I must allow that I felt rather less confident than usual, owing to the fact that we were not represented in the Pyramid by a British Consul--"I am an English tourist, a visitor from a modern land whose civilization far surpasses the rude culture of early Egypt; and I am accustomed to respectful treatment from all other nationalities, as becomes a citizen of the First Naval Power in the World."

My answer created a profound impression. "He has spoken to the Brother of the Sun," cried Ombos in evident perturbation. "He must be of the Blood Royal in his own tribe, or he would never have dared to do so!"

"Otherwise," added a person whose dress I recognized as that of a priest, "he must be offered up in expiation to Amon-Ra immediately."

As a rule I am a decently truthful person, but under these alarming circumstances I ventured to tell a slight fib with an air of nonchalant boldness. "I am a younger brother of our reigning king," I said without a moment's hesitation; for there was nobody present to gainsay me, and I tried to salve my conscience by reflecting that at any rate I was only claiming consanguinity with an imaginary personage.

"In that case," said King Thothmes, with more geniality in his tone, "there can be no impropriety in my addressing you personally. Will you take a place at our table next to myself, and we can converse together without interrupting a banquet which must be brief enough in any circumstances? Hatasou, my dear, you may seat yourself next to the barbarian prince."

I felt a visible swelling to the proper dimensions of a Royal Highness as I sat down by the king's right hand. The nobles resumed their places, the bronze-skinned waitresses left off standing like soldiers in a row and staring straight at my humble self, the goblets went round once more, and a comely maid soon brought me meat, bread, fruits, and date wine.

All this time I was naturally burning with curiosity to inquire who my strange hosts might be, and how they had preserved their existence for so many centuries in this undiscovered hall; but I was obliged to wait until I had satisfied his Majesty of my own nationality, the means by which I had entered the Pyramid, the general state of affairs throughout the world at the present moment, and fifty thousand other matters of a similar sort. Thothmes utterly refused to believe my reiterated assertion that our existing civilization was far superior to the Egyptian; "because," said he, "I see from your dress that your nation is utterly devoid of taste or invention;" but he listened with great interest to my account of modern society, the steam-engine, the Permissive Prohibitory Bill, the telegraph, the House of Commons, Home Rule, and the other blessings of our advanced era, as well as to a brief _resume_ of European history from the rise of the Greek culture to the Russo-Turkish war. At last his questions were nearly exhausted, and I got a chance of making a few counter inquiries on my own account.

"And now," I said, turning to the charming Hatasou, whom I thought a more pleasing informant than her august papa, "I should like to know who _you_ are."

"What, don't you know?" she cried with unaffected surprise. "Why, we're mummies."

She made this astounding statement with just the same quiet unconsciousness as if she had said, "we're French," or "we're Americans." I glanced round the walls, and observed behind the columns, what I had not noticed till then--a large number of empty mummy-cases, with their lids placed carelessly by their sides.

"But what are you doing here?" I asked in a bewildered way.

"Is it possible," said Hatasou, "that you don't really know the object of embalming? Though your manners show you to be an agreeable and well-bred young man, you must excuse my saying that you are shockingly ignorant. We are made into mummies in order to preserve our immortality. Once in every thousand years we wake up for twenty-four hours, recover our flesh and blood, and banquet once more upon the mummied dishes and other good things laid by for us in the Pyramid. To-day is the first day of a millennium, and so we have waked up for the sixth time since we were first embalmed."

"The _sixth_ time?" I inquired incredulously. "Then you must have been dead six thousand years."

"Exactly so."

"But the world has not yet existed so long," I cried, in a fervour of orthodox horror.

"Excuse me, barbarian prince. This is the first day of the three hundred and twenty-seven thousandth millennium."

My orthodoxy received a severe shock. However, I had been accustomed to geological calculations, and was somewhat inclined to accept the antiquity of man; so I swallowed the statement without more ado. Besides, if such a charming girl as Hatasou had asked me at that moment to turn Mohammedan, or to worship Osiris, I believe I should incontinently have done so.

"You wake up only for a single day and night, then?" I said.

"Only for a single day and night. After that, we go to sleep for another millennium."

"Unless you are meanwhile burned as fuel on the Cairo Railway," I added mentally. "But how," I continued aloud, "do you get these lights?"

"The Pyramid is built above a spring of inflammable gas. We have a reservoir in one of the side chambers in which it collects during the thousand years. As soon as we awake, we turn it on at once from the tap, and light it with a lucifer match."

"Upon my word," I interposed, "I had no notion you Ancient Egyptians were acquainted with the use of matches."

"Very likely not. 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Cephrenes, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,' as the bard of Philae puts it."

Further inquiries brought out all the secrets of that strange tomb-house, and kept me fully interested till the close of the banquet. Then the chief priest solemnly rose, offered a small fragment of meat to a deified crocodile, who sat in a meditative manner by the side of his deserted mummy-case, and declared the feast concluded for the night. All rose from their places, wandered away into the long corridors or side-aisles, and formed little groups of talkers under the brilliant gas-lamps.

For my part, I scrolled off with Hatasou down the least illuminated of the colonnades, and took my seat beside a marble fountain, where several fish (gods of great sanctity, Hatasou assured me) were disporting themselves in a porphyry basin. How long we sat there I cannot tell, but I know that we talked a good deal about fish, and gods, and Egyptian habits, and Egyptian philosophy, and, above all, Egyptian love-making. The last-named subject we found very interesting, and when once we got fully started upon it, no diversion afterwards occurred to break the even tenour of the conversation. Hatasou was a lovely figure, tall, queenly, with smooth dark arms and neck of polished bronze: her big black eyes full of tenderness, and her long hair bound up into a bright Egyptian headdress, that harmonized to a tone with her complexion and her robe. The more we talked, the more desperately did I fall in love, and the more utterly oblivious did I become of my duty to Editha Fitz-Simkins. The mere ugly daughter of a rich and vulgar brand-new knight, forsooth, to show off her airs before me, when here was a Princess of the Blood Royal of Egypt, obviously sensible to the attentions which I was paying her, and not unwilling to receive them with a coy and modest grace.