The Way Of Stars E-Book

Lily Adams Beck

• Herausgeber: Lily Adams Beck
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Outside the sky rained down waves of quivering light from its metallic blue on the tawny desert. Every now and then, on a sudden puff of hot wind from nowhere, the sand danced in little whirls and dust-devils, and shimmered beneath it, and then subsided again into a goblin quiet. Some Arabs stood in a tense silence waiting, with their tools laid beside them—waiting—and for what?
The shaft, cutting the sand like a gash, shored up with beams and planks, led down to the mysteries below, and about the opening lay two painted coffin lids, with rings and pottery and many broken fragments, the relics of a dead ancientry. Men, burrowing like moles in the drift of time, had upheaved these things to the light of day and they lay there lamentably, their very use forgotten.
There were great heaps of sand and rocks where the work had gone on beneath the crags tumbled from the huge honeycombed cliffs above. It was a rubble of débris with neither end nor beginning, unsightly, repulsive.

Leseprobe

Lily Adams BECK

The Way Of Stars

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Table of contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER I

Outside the sky rained down waves of quivering light from its metallic blue on the tawny desert. Every now and then, on a sudden puff of hot wind from nowhere, the sand danced in little whirls and dust-devils, and shimmered beneath it, and then subsided again into a goblin quiet. Some Arabs stood in a tense silence waiting, with their tools laid beside them—waiting—and for what? The shaft, cutting the sand like a gash, shored up with beams and planks, led down to the mysteries below, and about the opening lay two painted coffin lids, with rings and pottery and many broken fragments, the relics of a dead ancientry. Men, burrowing like moles in the drift of time, had upheaved these things to the light of day and they lay there lamentably, their very use forgotten. There were great heaps of sand and rocks where the work had gone on beneath the crags tumbled from the huge honeycombed cliffs above. It was a rubble of débris with neither end nor beginning, unsightly, repulsive. In the passage at the bottom of the shaft the heat was frightful. It was as though the stored central heat of the world was escaping through it like a chimney. The silence of ages brooded there, dark, stagnant, repellent. Miles Seton wiped the sweat out of his blinded eyes with a dripping handkerchief and looked at Conway, leaning exhausted against a jut of rock before the sealed door of the unopened tomb chamber. The passage that they had already explored, with no hair-raising result, lay in two directions, empty, exploited. They had been at it for two long years. Those years, the money poured away into the sand, the hope deferred and disappointed time after time, all seemed to fall on them with a cumulative weight, and now that they stood before the last bar to their last hope, they were too played out to be eager any more. Honestly, at that moment, they did not give a damn for anything they might find inside that door. That mood would pass, of course. Mere physical strain. The human brain in each of us is keyed up to a certain pitch and beyond that it declines to respond. Outside, the Arabs broke out into a sudden jabbering and yelling, now the great moment had come—invocations for luck and protection from what the opened door might let loose upon them:— "We take refuge with Allah from the stoned fiend!" "In the name of Allah, and the blessings of the One be upon our lord Mohammed and his family and his companions one and all!" "Allah makes all things easy"—and at last subsided into the silence of expectation. Four trusty men kept them out of the shaft, doing sentry-go at the top. Masoud, the head-man, was down below with the two leaders. Not a sound in the depths. To them, it had been the most extraordinary business from beginning to end. Never a queerer. The two men, Conway and Seton, among their war experiences had run up against a Frenchman from Egypt—a liaison officer at Poperinghe. They got friendly, for French was a strong suit of Seton's and Conway's, and the other fellows got no further than a few nouns and expletives—and the man's English was truly French. They were sorry for the poor chap, and he often spent the evening in their dugout, talking nineteen to the dozen and picking up stray crumbs of comforts, for the British Army had enough and to spare, and the less said about French comforts the better. Looking back, they reckoned him a more unusual fellow than they had guessed at the beginning, for his neat dark head, finished little features and trimmed up moustache had something of thepetit maître about them—the kind of thing they used to guffaw at foolishly in the French comrade until they came to know the fire and the vim of him—and at first the two Englishmen were inclined to be a bit patronising. That soon wore off. There was nothing of the petit maître about him, not a bit of it. He went a long way outside his duty one rainy night when there was a poor devil with a smashed leg groaning out in No Man's Land, for when Conway and Seton got back from outpost duty, they found it was Alphonse who had brought him in. That was by no means the only time, either. The little man was a rapier in an ornamental sheath. His name was not Alphonse, of course. He was Monsieur le Capitaine Jules Geosfrin de Neuville, and equally, of course, that was frankly impossible, so he became Alphonse in the partnership of three. He never got anything from home—not so much as a letter—might not have had a friend or relation in the world, but he paid his way for all that, for he rewarded his pals with Romance—the best gift any man can take or give, the easer of toil, the draught of nepenthe, the Light that does not fail. Heavens, what romance! He had been everywhere, seen everything. He would sit in the light that invariably failed—a candle stuck in a bottle—with his glittering dark eyes fixed on distance and the nerves in his lean face working, and tell them of places they never heard of before. Of Cambodia and the King's dancing girls, the golden Buddha with the diamond eyes, the jade Buddha of the Lamas, set with priceless pearls. Of the vast forests where, sealed in the knotted jungle, sleep the dead treasures of Angkor Wat, and of the splendours farther in the unknown, which the dark men whisper of to each other, but never to the white stranger. That man had the gift of words, if ever man had it. One might rake in the shekels if one could set down the phrase, the incomparable manner—the pause before the dramatic moment, with the spiked forefinger to point it, the torrent that broke forth when rhetoric was needed. Seton told him once that he could have made his fortune as a professional story-teller in the Eastern bazaars, and he laughed quietly and cocked his eye at him. "I have done it, mon ami! I was a hanashika in Japan for a lean year or two. But I was born there. A man must know the language, for the East takes its jokes and its love full-flavoured. And there arenuances also. It is a poor living, but amusing," he said, and went on to the next story. It happened to be Egypt. He had been helping De Cartier, the great Egyptologist, on his excavations at Abu Tisht, and was present when the Osirian cave was opened up. Conway was not a person of particularly swift imagination, but Seton saw him transfixed as Alphonse gradually fired him with pictures of the close, airless passages they crept through on hands and knees, the final emergence into a shaft leading down, a velvet blackness, into the very bowels of the earth, the fall, as into a well, which nearly ended his earthly adventures, and then—then, the light, the frescoes, the stunned amazement, as the men looked round and realised the presence of an antiquity that left them dumb, before which Europe became a mushroom impertinence and themselves the barbarians of yesterday. "For look you, my friends," said Alphonse one night, "these people were Egyptians, they had forgotten more than our wise men know. It is true they did not devote their research to steam, oil, electricity, flying and the like (a wild shriek, as a shell tore overhead, to settle, a bird of prey, one knows not where). The arrow and the sword were good enough for killing with. It was the secrets of life they wished to probe—of life that laughs at death. Therefore it was in the mind—in the soul—they made their triumphs. What we call magic, they had at their command. Marvels, miracles—and all the result of a science of which we know but the alphabet." "A trick of their priests!" Conway said contemptuously. "Priests are the same the world over." "Yes and no, my friend. So far as the priests made the gods responsible—a trick. But that these things were done—no trick. The mind of man. That was their kingdom. It was a secret lore, handed down, probably, from the lost Atlantis." They had swallowed as much from Alphonse as in a physical sense he had swallowed from them, but this was too much. He had drawn the line at fairy tales previously, and Conway picked up his three weeks' old Times, and Seton a grimy pack of cards, with which he played solitaire like a maiden aunt when he was bored unendurably. Alphonse repeated, undismayed. "What say you to this, when I tell you I have seen?" "What then? You aren't nearly as effective as usual, Alphonse." "Seen a papyrus that came from Sais and speaks of the Atlantis." "Go along with you!" "I have seen it in the Valley of Kafur, and very strange was the writing. My master deciphered some and would have done more but for the cholera. Cholera respects not learning. He died." He drew the well-thumbed notebook, which had been the text of many stories, from his pocket and read aloud. "The Burden of Isis (she also was a great goddess of Sais). Hearken to the beautiful words of my lament. Fallen, fallen is the land of the Great Ocean. Weep for her queens, her wise men, her captains, terrible in war. Weep for her maidens, the light of all the earth. For the sea has swallowed them, the fishes swim in their palaces and for joy there is weeping. Behold, they are gone, as a dream flitting through the night. For the anger of the gods was upon them, and they were broken by their fury. "Have mercy upon them, O Osiris! Be not angry for ever. Set the soul of them in a land they knew not. Restore their beauty and delight and let them live once more. "And Osiris answered Isis his wife, that entreated before them:— "'The Great White People shall put on again the garment of flesh, and their sinews shall be iron and their strength terrible. They shall dwell in the North and come out from it like locusts, and run over the earth with wings and wheels, and the nations shall abase themselves. And the sign of this shall be that Nefert, the Queen, Lady of Crowns, she whose body sits in the land of Egypt, shall return from the place of the dead. She shall glory in her beauty. She shall live and triumph.'" He clasped the book again. "I had a copy made of that when de Cartier died. I took it to Buisson, the greatest of our hieroglyphic readers. He read it attentively and pronounced it to be the oldest writing he had yet seen. 'As to the prophecy,' he said, 'I can say nothing. Superstition—poetry? Who knows? But the Egyptians could sensitise the human heart as we cannot, for we have bartered that domain of spiritual knowledge for commercial success, and it is difficult to run the two in harness. Still—if ever the body of this Queen Nefert is found, there may be strange happenings.' That was his verdict. But the body is not yet found." "Then was this Nefert a queen of Atlantis?" Seton asked. "That is not said, but one imagines it. She had an Egyptian lover, certainly. Buisson said another curious thing, which has remained in my memory. He said, 'It is a mistake to open these very ancient Egyptian tombs. They were sealed with solemn ceremonies, and for excellent reasons. And when they are torn open, strange things find their way into the world.'" "Diseases?" suggested Conway. "Certainly diseases, my friend; did not Buisson die mysteriously almost directly after? The first out break of the plague form of influenza was coincidental with the opening of the tomb of Atet. And if, like me, you have the curiosity to trace cause and effect, you will find plague, cholera, many other little pleasantries of nature, emerging into history with the disturbance of famous tombs. But that is not all." "What then?" "Difficult to explain—and you might laugh if I told you. Influences—more—much more, for those who have skill to read the occult. Those places were shut and should be respected. Have you not noticed, also, that good luck never attends the riflers of tombs?" He ran off a list of adventurers who had certainly met with inexplicable misfortunes. They listened, interested but unconvinced. He added:— "Yet this did not keep me—I who speak with you—from trying my luck. Learning the place from this document, I opened the tomb of Khar. And I had the devil's own misfortunes. Every one got the credit of my work except myself, and as I sit here now, my pay is the only thing between me and starvation, and my heart is racing me to death even if the guns spare me. All the same, I would do it again to-morrow if I could! I would go to Khar, and follow up the shaft of which I saw the traces during my own excavations. It leads, I dare swear, to a gallery in the rocks of Khar, and the finds there may astonish the world." "I say, let's make up a party of three after this blessed business is over, and go there together," said Conway eagerly. "Alas, I shall not be there to accompany you," sighed Alphonse, gently possessing himself of another cigarette. "In the curse sealed upon the tomb inscriptions, the robber of the Khar scarabs was promised a violent death. I robbed them. I shall take my punishment like a man. I shall not march into Berlin with you at the end of the war." "Where then?" asked Seton, stupidly enough. "Ah, my friend, if I could tell you that, the very guns, opening the gate to so many, would stop to hear me. Exploring the underworld, interviewing the august ghosts of the Atlantean queens (for there were none but queens among that ancient but gallant people, and the royal consort was a very small person compared with his wife), but dead in any case. Simply dead!" He laughed as they stared at him. Not that there was anything strange in an expectation common to all out there. But there was something weird, predestined, in his way of putting it. They liked Alphonse, too. Remember that. "But when I go, I bequeath you this notebook as the reward for many cigarettes and muchcamaraderie," he said, striking a dramatic hand upon his pocket. "It has copies of more than one document, and a later papyrus, and it will give you the clues. If you like excitement better than ease, to follow them up. But yet—pause! I counsel you not to let Queen Nefert loose upon a world which has troubles enough already. She is best where she is." A week after that Alphonse was killed. There were no friends to be informed, no sign of whom he had been. Many a dog might be blotted out with more compunction and observance than that very gallant and singular soldier of fortune. Conway and Seton were his only mourners, and they missed him amazingly. Of course they took the notebook. Of course they pored over it until every word was photographed on their brains, and that is why they found themselves in Egypt when the guns had spoken their last word and the statesmen's turn had come and the world had settled down to enjoy the peace (heaven save the mark!) which the soldiers had won for it.

CHAPTER II

I resume where the two of them, faint yet pursuing, leaned against the rock in the downward shaft of the chamber in the Khar Valley and faced the sealed door. And it was then a curious thing happened.

Masoud, their head-man, had a kind of fainting fit. Not surprising, for he was a big, bull-necked fellow, had been exerting himself to exhaustion, and the dull, stagnant heat in there nearly did for his masters as well as himself. He slid in a limp white heap to the ground, and Seton had to tilt a few drops of brandy down his throat before they could do anything with him. He began to talk, as if in sleep, the black agates of his eyes showing in a faint line under the half-shut lids. French! Seton stared at Conway and he at Seton over the man's head. Masoud did not know a word of French! Extremely rocky English—that was all his store, and little enough for his day's work. But this was French, with the true Parisian roll to it.

"The guns! the guns!" he said faintly, then was silent.

"Mon Dieu! That shell! It screamed like a woman! How can a man talk in such a devil's uproar?"

They were in a silence like the very heart of the tomb, the only sound the dull throbbing of the heart-beats in their ears. Seton saw Conway's eyes dilate and fix. They knew the voice, though it came weak like blown wind through leagues of distance.

"That which is sealed is sealed. So! Do not open the doors to the curse shut down with power. Let the dead bury their dead."

Another awful pause. Then, in a wild cry:—

"The Horror! the Horror! Turn, turn, while there is time!"

And whatever it was went out of him with that last rending cry, and the man crumpled up altogether. They thought for a moment he was dead. Conway emptied his water-bottle over his head, and that was all he could do. After that they waited, Seton kneeling beside him, feeling it to be a discouraging prelude to the great experience. Presently, and astonishingly, Masoud sat up and looked about him, and instead of the gradual and painful recovery they expected, the next thing he did was to stagger to his legs and apologise. In fact, never was a man more apologetic—he had twisted his ankle, but it was nothing—a flea-bite. Let them now go on.

Conway, winking at Seton, addressed him in French, to the effect that the delay was nothing and they scarcely supposed he would be up to any more work that day. Masoud, still a livid yellow, evidently thought the heat had affected Conway's brain, and stared at him in amazement, leaning on the pick-axe which had done such good service. Not one word did he understand. That was plain as mud in a wine glass. A pause, and Seton motioned to him to go on, and with a great heave he let drive at the barred door, now clear of rocks and earth.

"But, I say," whispered Conway, "did you hear that, Seton? Who did you think it was? Not Masoud, I'll swear. Of course, it's all bunk, but still—"

"Of course it's bunk. What else? It sounded like Alphonse—if you mean that. But who's to say Masoud didn't serve with De Cartier and Alphonse? Who's to say he hasn't his own reasons for trying to stop us? These fellows are as deep as this shaft, and deeper. You can never catch up with the Arab brain. They think in a different cycle."

"I know. Still—Can't say I liked it. Did you?"

"Not worth thinking of twice."

"That's true." Conway was relieved. "They're one and all born tomb-robbers, and he has his little game to play. Come on. I don't give a fig for all the ghosts and devils in Egypt!"

Nor did Seton. But yet—yet—

The enormous darkness, fold on fold, stirred only on the edge by the faintly flickering lanterns; the stagnant silence; the littered wall of rock; the door it had disclosed, with God knows what lurking behind it—these things caught at any braggart words and made them cheap. Sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, and nothing behind them.

Conway picked up another axe and set to beside Masoud. They were by no means scientific explorers, only impatient men, running the show on their own and eager to get through the shortest way. Their blows resounded up the shaft to the burnished sunshine where the Arabs waited and jabbered. Suddenly the door splintered and yielded, and there was an outrush of imprisoned air, exactly as when a boy bangs an inflated paper bag against a wall, but foetid, sickly. They stood back and scrambled half-way up the shaft, and sat down to await events, staring down into the dark, both of them, and each thinking his own thoughts. Seton's were a mere confusion. After all, what was the use of getting the wind up? The place might be empty, rifled already. Empty? Yet the air went up beside them like the flitting of dry wings, and the silence of expectancy below was horrid. And Masoud's strange fit! The man sat, hugging his knees, below them, staring down into the dark also, with the lantern below him flinging its light upward and dilating his eyes and peaking his chin. It was easier to be nervy than normal as they sat there and said nothing.

They waited half an hour, then Masoud got down again and they followed. He lit a candle and fixed it on a stick, and held it at arm's length into the yawning jaws of the dark. At first it burnt a little blue and flickering, but presently a clear orange, revealing a few feet of emptiness about its small beam.

At that safety signal Conway trimmed and wiped the three lanterns and motioned to Seton to go first by right of seniority. There was a big raised ledge to the door, and he stepped over it and down, the others following.

The lanterns were good of their kind, and they strung them out to throw the light as far as possible.

A great chamber, roughed out from a cave, with overhanging juts of rock from the roof. It was a huge oblong, unexpected recesses caving in here and there, as far as the main surface went; entirely empty. There was no time then to explore the bays, as Conway called them. That must wait.

Suddenly he halted and flashed his light upward as gold and colours swam into sight. A fresco. The wall of rock was smoothed with the utmost care into a broad band, possibly four feet high and twelve in length, and thus prepared for the artist with a surface smooth as marble and then apparently gilded. In this the figures were deeply incised and filled with either coloured stones or pastes as hard as stone, level with the gilded surface and polished off like enamel—the colours fair and fresh as when they left the hands of the craftsmen ages ago. They were as hard as adamant, whatever the substance, and turned the edge of Conway's knife.

There is a passage in the Bible which describes exactly what met their astonished eyes:—

"There portrayed upon the wall the images of the Chaldeans, portrayed with vermilion, gilded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding, in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to."

Solemn lines of nobles, not a woman among them, converging to a throne supported on lions' legs and claws of gold and raised upon a high dais, so that the occupant towered above the heads of the hushed audience, as an idol to be worshipped. Wide rays of gold broke from the crown and conveyed an impression of divinity, and lo—this divine ruler was a queen.

It is difficult to convey the majesty of the seated figure. A solemn black river of hair descended on either side of her face, which was painted an ivory white, in contrast with the dark features of the surrounding Egyptians and Nubians. The eyes were closed, the full lips were dark vermilion. The head, supported by the high inlaid background of the throne, was crowned with a diadem so singular that they had never seen the like—golden snakes interwound, their three venomous heads darting outward above the brows.

Rows and rows of jewels encircled the throat, and fell in a flood of splendour to the knees, meeting a jewelled girdle above the loins, in plaques of jewels set in gold. The bare feet rested upon a couchant sphinx, dreaming its secrecies also, it seemed, for the eyes were dosed. Mystery of mysteries!

They stood before this great fresco, for great it must be called, from the sense it gave of an awe-stricken crowd, of waiting suspense, majesty.

Suddenly he started. A shout from Conway, more like a cry:—

"Seton, come here! Quick!"

He could not see them. They had stepped into a bay, but the dream shattered and was gone, and he sprang to join them.

Heavens! The bay was the low entrance to an inner chamber, and the others had gone on and in. He must stoop almost to the level of his knees to follow, and struck his head smartly in doing it, and all but fell into the lower level of the floor beneath. Then, recovering, he hurried on to join the other two, who stood like statues, flinging their lights far and upward.

What—what was it that dawned spectral through the gloom? They were not alone. A Fourth was added to their party. But a silent, a terrible one.

On a dais of black granite from Syene, polished like a mirror, an astonishing magnificence for such antiquity, was raised a throne: a throne with a curved seat and stately back of ivory, poised on lions' legs and claws of gold. A figure sat upon it, the bare feet resting on a sphinx of black granite dead white, reflected in the black water-like surface of the stone. The head was crowned. The hair—

They stared, dumb. The woman of the fresco, living but sleeping.

That was the first impression. Then—no, not living, not sleeping. No breath heaved the fair bosom, stirred the locked lips. There was no trembling in the stiff hand that had grasped the golden lotus for ages; the cross of life never wavered in the other. Dead. Death is always terrible. Ten thousand fold more in this petrified loveliness. In the picture outside she held her court amid hundreds of eyes that sought her as a divinity. Here, alone, and the more majestic, she sat with closed eyes, surveying some inward secret, unspeakable and dreadful.

The first impression passed. Conway, the earliest to recover, set his lantern on the ground, snatched out his pocket sketch-book, and began to draw feverishly.

"They won't believe it. They can't, unless we have a record. I don't believe we can photograph even with a flashlight—but get the camera down. Why, I'm not certain I'm not dreaming it myself! For God's sake, look at the jewels!"

But Seton stood lost—utterly abstracted. All the imagination Conway lacked was his in double portion, and, heaven knows, if there were ever anything to strike a man's imagination dumb, it was here.

He got out his notebook and began systematically cataloguing.

"Necklace: flat emeralds set in square plaques of gold, with golden lions and vultures interposed. Diadem: three twisted snakes, heads projecting above forehead. Girdle of gold fringes and jewels, so long as to be a garment to the knees. Armlets and anklets of gold, crystal and emeralds. Feet supported on granite sphinx. Golden lotus in right hand. In left—"

He stopped suddenly, seeing a small object beside the throne—a ring of dull beaten gold with a large carbuncle cut deeply with figures. It lay upon the sand as if it had fallen from the lovely hand that held the lotus. Then it had been hers! In life she had worn it. Now it had passed to him.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Conway was hard at work on his sketch; Masoud had turned to the entrance. Seton stooped quickly, and retrieving the ring, slipped it on the third finger of his left hand. A pledge—a token? What? It had evidently been a thumb-ring, for it fitted him well. He went on with his list, reading aloud for Conway's benefit, but with his heart throbbing like a girl's.

"In the left, ivory ankh, or Cross of Life. On steps of throne at each side ivory and crystal vases. Hieroglyphics on back of throne and on each step."

He stopped. Again the weird sense of memory captured him. What was the use of making lists when Beauty, incarnate Beauty, sat before him and called on some sealed chamber of his brain until it echoed responsive? Could he catalogue her charm—that faint, maddening smile that set her apart, though with his hand he could have touched the white foot that rested on the sphinx? He dared not touch it. An insane longing to drive his companions out of the cave, to end the profanation that disturbed her dream, to sit down there alone and worship—these were the thoughts which narcotised his reason. Was it the hot, close air, or some miasma imprisoned for ages in the heart of the tomb-cave, or was it her ring that clasped his finger?

"I'd give something to know how they preserved her in this life-like way," said Conway from behind.

"She might be asleep. Nothing of the mummy about that! But the chemists will get at the secret. She must have been a handsome woman."

Unbearable! Hateful! He felt he could stand it no longer. Must she be lifted from her throne and set down in some museum for cold and curious eyes to stare at? Was he to see rough hands profaning her lovely limbs—and he himself the cause of what he felt would torture her?

Better shovel the sand over the whole thing and blot out all memory of it to the Day of Judgment. But no, it was too late already! Masoud had carried the news to the men above and they were shouting themselves hoarse with delight and excitement. For good or evil, the thing was done.

He came to his senses. Conway had finished, Masoud was bringing down the camera. They took several flashlight photographs, hoping for the best. They took rubbings of the hieroglyphics. They closed and barred the door and set a guard, and, climbing up the shaft, despatched the great news by camel to the Egyptian authorities, and then dined, too excited almost to eat, and lay down, exhausted, to sleep in their huts. And the ancient night, crest-jewelled with the moon of Hathor and the stars of Isis, brooded over the outrage to the majesty of forgotten kings, the gash and wound in the smooth golden sands of the desert.

Conway slept soundly that night. Seton not at all. The darkness was full of voices that answered no questions, but mourned and mourned. Who was she? Could she be the lost Nefert of Alphonse's story? Why had the manner of her burial differed from that of every other royalty known in the long history of tomb-exploration? Why had she died so young? True—

"Queens have died young and fair,Dust hath closed Helen's eye."

Surely there must be some wild and terrible romance behind it all. How could he breathe in peace until the hieroglyphics were deciphered and the truth known? He pressed the ring to his lips and felt the sharp-cut inscription against them. It was sickening to feel it a mystery.

All night he lay and stared out at the dim glimmer of light in the opening of the tent.

CHAPTER III

The next day brought with it Walworth, a skilled hieroglyphist, who happened to be working up at the neck of the valley, fourteen miles away, on a little problem of his own. They had sent him word the afternoon before, and he came, eager as a boy, though a man of sixty, a picturesque figure, with his long white beard, perched on the swiftly moving camel, and attended by his faithful retainer, Ali Agha, known also to all Egyptologists, and himself nearly as learned in antiquities as his master.

Seton and Conway almost dragged Walworth off his beast in the excitement of seeing knowledge at hand. They fed him, they put the sketches of the fresco and their notes before him (by agreement holding the secret of the dead queen as yet); they tried to wile or drag opinions from him which he was too wary to give until he could see for himself; and finally the three descended to the shaft with Masoud and Ali Agha in attendance.

No need to recapitulate his astonishment at the inlaid fresco. It very much surpassed their own, for he had knowledge to back his, and when he assured them that the earliest known example hitherto discovered was at least eight centuries later, his expression of awe and wonder quieted all Conway's jubilations.

"It will revolutionise our knowledge of Egyptian history and set hack Egyptian art to eight thousand years B.C.—if not earlier."

He stood before it like a worshipper at the shrine of his devotion, and they could hardly persuade him to have it for the inner chamber.

"There can be nothing more amazing than this," he repeated again and again, "for there are many points of interest which you fellows are too young in Egyptology to appreciate. The dress, the ornaments, the features, all point to a most astonishing antiquity. And the woman hasn't the appearance of an Egyptian. I take her to be a goddess, not a queen. It is evidently an act of worship."

He turned to Ali Agha, who broke into rapid Arabic, pointing, waving, almost dancing in excitement.

"Queer! He persists that it's a woman, a stranger queen. Well, we shall know presently. I have my papers here. No, boys, don't show me anything else! I must digest this marvel first. Strange it should have come to you two with so little time and experience, whereas I've been at it all my life and seen nothing like it! Well, luck's luck!"

Seton was waiting silently. The dominant thought in his heart was that he would see her again. It was like a man standing at the door of a royal audience chamber.

But Conway could endure the waiting no longer. He almost dragged Walworth into the inner chamber. He must see the marvel of marvels, and without preparation. She should break upon him, a light sundering in darkness—he too must worship at the altar of the loveliness of the Eternal Sleep.

A trembling took Seton as he followed mechanically. Was it some strange quality in the air, some miasma which affected him only? He could hear their cheerful voices hollow from within, then a kind of cry, and dead silence. He leaped after them, wild with anxiety.

The lanterns flashed on emptiness. She was gone! The throne still stood there, the sphinx, the vases, all, all, but the one jewel, the central splendour. The gracious figure was gone. Who had stolen her? Or had she stepped through the guarded door? Only one thing was certain. The world would never now look upon that fair face shining like a star in the darkness of the tomb. She had escaped them. He sprang up the steps of the dais, unheeding Walworth's cry of warning. A heap of dust lay before the throne—the necklace, the girdle, half buried in dust, lay there, the anklets and armlets had fallen on the steps as if they had slipped softly from smooth limbs overpowered with their gorgeous weight. He heard Conway gasping, almost sobbing, with the cruel disappointment. He heard Walworth's calm, incurious voice.

"Sure you saw it? Sure it wasn't another fresco, or a reflex image of the one outside thrown on the dark? Oh—ah! all three of you saw it? Curious. Sketch—photographs? I hope they'll come out. She's crumbled into dust. It has happened with the bodies of ibises and some of the sacred cats at Bubastis. Sad pity! Yes, indeed! What a loss to the world. Lucky the jewellery survives."

Thus they meandered on, while Seton stood dead silent, raging inwardly.

So she was snatched from him. How had he been presumptuous enough to think a queen of Egypt would stay for his poor worship? No—she had fled to her royal kindred in their strange secret paradise. The barbarians had broken into her solitude, they had sought to commercialise her beauty and majesty. She refused the outrage.

It almost terrified him that she had been so real a presence to him—a dead woman, long dead—what bond could there be between them? But it had left his heart empty. How should he face it? That was the problem. If he had been alone—but no!—how could he even think with Walworth rambling on.

"It was the outer air. No, my boy, you couldn't have averted, it. Opening to the outer air was fatal. You never could have moved her. Never mind. You have the sketch, and the photos may be better than you think. That's always something. Now let me sit down to the hieroglyphics."

That roused Seton at last. He came heavily down the granite steps and stood behind Walworth, while Ali Agha set his camp stool, and got his papers, and brought two fresh lanterns and set them to best advantage.

Conway, in a bitter bad temper, occupied himself in photographing the fresco as best he could in the cave outside.

"There's an inscription on each step in characters I never saw before," was the great man's final verdict. "Ali Agha says the same, and he has seen everything there is to see. It rather suggests the cuneiform character, but is not that. The hieroglyphics that run underneath, I believe to be a translation. If so, we're in luck."

After four hours of steady work, they all returned to the light of day for food and rest, and, that over, Walworth gave them his results so far.

"The Queen of the Great Land. The Queen Nefert, beloved of Hat-hor. Companion of Isis. Lady of jewels. She who treads on the necks of her foes. Before whom the Kings are abased.

"But where's the document that he spoke of? De Cartier is dead. So is Buisson; but if Buisson had seen such a thing, the news of it should have reached every Egyptologist within a week."

"But we've the copy, sir—Alphonse's copy. It's not worth a rap to the scientists, for, of course, they'll say he forged it, but to us and to you—"

"Yesterday I should have said without hesitation that he had forged it. To-day—I don't know. Fetch it out and let us have a look. The internal evidence may damn it in the first few characters."

In the late afternoon Walworth laid before them what he had achieved. Better give it as he completed it later.

It repeated Alphonse's prophecy of the reincarnation of the lost people, and proceeded:—

"The burden of Nefert, the Queen. She went down to the grave with scorn and loathing. With scorn and loathing shall she arise. Break not the door. Cast not down the stone, lest she arise and come very terrible. In the same form shall she come, and her sign is war and blood."

There was more, but it read like a kind of wailing repetition of the above, with invocations to strange gods and secret ceremonies to propitiate them. It ended with a cry:—

"The curse of a rent heart and a desolate home be on him who breaks the seal I, Zezar, have set upon the door."

Walworth laid down the parchment and blinked serenely on them through moony spectacles.

"If this is authentic—mind you, if, for it is a most singular document—there was evidently some grievance against the lady, and they sealed her down for keeps. She may have been one of the firebrands of antiquity, a sort of nearly antediluvian Cleopatra. Why I think the document may be authentic is that there are so few ideographs. You don't understand? Well, a hieroglyph is a picture more or less of an actual object seen. An ideograph is an attempt at rendering an idea, such as love, hope, etc. Naturally these came much later. Now this document is nearly all hieroglyph. I don't suppose that would have occurred to a forger."

They listened with breathless interest. Conway's cigarette had dropped from his fingers as he leaned forward.

"Ali Agha tells me—what I knew before—that there's a superstition here that when the door is opened for them, these buried royalties—and indeed the lesser fry also—reincarnate and give trouble. They will have it the Kaiser was born just after the tomb of Rameses the Twelfth was opened. He brought ruin on his own dynasty and on Egypt, and for a time she was enslaved. The characters of the two men being alike, probably worked up the story, but the people believe these things, and they infect others."

CHAPTER IV

Six weeks later Miles Seton, white and drained of strength and almost of memory, was convalescing at Abuksa, and Conway was in Cairo up to his eyes in business, doing two men's work, and tasting all the pleasures and displeasures of being a celebrity in a small way. The strange story of their find had stirred Europe and Asia with a thrill of supernatural romance, and, had it not been for the ticklish condition of the snarling little Balkan States, nothing else would have been talked of for at least a week. That was the credit side of the account. On the debit, the authorities were driving him into daily furies with their claims and prohibitions. And there was no Seton to calm him with the assurance that it would all be the same a hundred years hence, and to shed the oil of a perfect serenity on the billows of impatience. Perhaps that would have maddened him the more—Conway was an impatient man—and he made the most of all his grievances, including the fact that Seton had crocked up and left him to face the music alone.

He had been in Cairo a fortnight, and more, and Seton, at Abuksa, was beginning to get about a little and to feel a spark of awakening interest in success, in the things that seemed to matter once, ages ago, in another life, as it seemed. There were curious changes, however. He had gone through experiences in that illness which no mortal man but himself would ever know. How her face had haunted him, the closed eyes that must dream so sweetly under the black lashes lying like midnight upon the pale cheek, the divine tranquillity, moon-like in the gloom. She possessed him. Sometimes, a living woman, she looked at him with eyes so lovely that all the beauty of life and death commingled in them to drive him wild with longing. He pursued her down avenues of hopeless quest, where she dipped and vanished like a star below the sea-rim when ever he seemed nearest to achievement. She was enchantment, fugitive and torturing, and fled before him with a backward look that forbade pursuit—and ensured it. Madness, indeed, to die for a beauty entombed for ages, but then, what magic had preserved it to madden unborn ages? Surely Death himself must have been her lover, to use her so tenderly that decay's effacing finger had never brushed the marvel in his sheltering arms.

But always the dreams ended in horror. Within his very arms she would crumble, a torrid wind sweeping away a handful of gray ash, or, worse still, she would shrink cowering from him, the dreadful eyes staring at him from a death's head of bleached bone. And then he awoke, shuddering from head to foot, the clammy sweat standing on his forehead, exhausted, done for.

Gradually he began to observe the other guests at the little hotel with a languid curiosity. It was filling up for October, though the rooms were still empty enough. Two women caught his wandering eyes first and intrigued him by a doubt about their relationship. They could scarcely be mother and daughter, and, if not, were difficult to place, one was so much the elder.

He heard the younger calling one day outside his window:—

"Sara, Sara, do hurry up. Have you gone to sleep again?" and liked the voice, gay and sweet, with a kind of suppressed laughter. The answer came from the window above:—

"Don't wait, Venetia—do you hear? Go on with the Greys. I can't come yet."

Seton went back to his long chair in the cool colonnade and dismissed them from his mind. But they returned. There was so little else to look at, for one thing. Sometimes he heard them talking to each other in a language entirely unknown to him; more than once he heard the same voice reading aloud behind the pillar that hid them. He listened. It was a romance of India, and she read it with a sense of beauty and the value of words which gave it the charm of a soft, grave music. His thought was, "I could listen to that for ever. It rests me."

He heard quite plainly when no one else happened to be talking or passing. This story was not modern, not the facile amours of the hills and the racket of life in garrisons, but an old story, of veiled women, of conquerors sweeping down the Afghan passes, of empire, of wild and stirring romance, with the exquisiteness of beautiful words, the perfect phrase, the perfume of the hidden spiritual mysteries underlying the golden and coloured veil of visible life in India. There must be something more than common in the woman who cared to read that book and linger over it.

"That does me good," he thought. "It makes life worth while. A man wants to mount and ride when he hears that kind of thing."

This went on for two or three days more, and now he began to wish he had the courage to speak to the elder one. She looked about forty-six—a clear, open face, with brown eyes set widely apart, a healthy colour in the cheeks, and dark hair touched with gray. The younger he had scarcely visualised as yet under the brim of her sun hat—he thought of her as a delicious voice, no more.

Next day he was walking up and down the colonnaded verandah, when the elder came in with a book in her hand. Suddenly she stopped beside him, her colour rising like a girl's.

"We've just finished this book, and I wondered whether it would amuse you. We have been so sorry for you—all alone. And evidently not strong. Do forgive me if I intrude. I have been rather ashamed of saying and doing nothing for so long."

Seton knew in an instant how he had needed the sympathy of a woman's voice. It soothed him inexpressibly, seconded by the kind, uplifted eyes.

"If you knew how I wanted you to speak to me I shouldn't have to tell you how grateful I am," he said eagerly. "I've been ill, and it's been a long pull up."

"Yes—and without your wife!" she said kindly. "They told me at the office she was to join you later."

"My wife? I don't possess such a blessing! Why this wild romance?" Seton said laughing, and the circumstantial tale, patched together from heaven knows what misunderstandings, made them friends at once.

"Perhaps I deserved this show-up for having had the curiosity to go and ask who you were," she confessed. "A pretty cool proceeding, wasn't it? And when they told me you were the celebrated finder of the dead queen—"

He winced a little at that, and deflected the talk.

"Well, as I went myself to ask about you—And did that villain set me as much adrift as he did you? He said you were two ladies from London, sisters, and that your name was Grant?"

"No, that's quite right, except that we're half sisters. My sister is young enough to be my daughter. I know we're a perplexing pair."

She sat down in a wicker chair beside him and took out her knitting. The soft evening breeze blew gently down the colonnade and the divine boat of Ra, the Sun, was nearing its western haven. The shadows in the sands were of a floating ocean blue, like deep water, and against the sky a line of palms stood out scribbled in black on gold. He felt better than he had felt yet, and the prospect of a talk was delightful.

"Surely, it was a great pity your friend had to leave you alone. His name is Conway, isn't it? We have talked of your wonderful finds almost night and day for the last month."

She was so eager, so keenly desirous to hear, that Seton launched out a bit, his own interest lighting up as he saw hers. After a while she laid down the knitting, her hands clasped on her knee as she listened entranced.

"Then it was all true? You really did find the queen like that? Wonderful! If only my sister were here! I shouldn't have this treat all to myself. May I call her. Oh, here she comes!"

Light feet were running up the steps and a light figure stood against the sky for a minute. A waking moon showing like a young goddess floating in rosy clouds above the fringe of palms, made the coming night lovely, and the silence of the desert drowned all in tranquillity. So he saw her for the first time.

She came up to him with the same well-bred frankness as the other. An introduction was scarcely needed. She sat down at once and slid into the talk.

There are some people, Seton reflected, in whose presence everything pleasant and easy seems to flower. They say exactly the right thing to prompt you. You talk better with them than with any one else, in the happy certainty that they can understand and sympathise. It never struck him that a girl of two or three and twenty might prefer a lighter subject for talk than Egyptian antiquities. Her eyes were so sparkling as he described the great fresco that he never doubted she was as keen as he was himself. No attention could be more flattering. It led him to the entrance to the inner chamber, and there for a minute he paused. Could he speak openly of that strange experience? Was it possible? Her eyes encouraged him. He went on. It grew easier when he was once launched.

"One pities her like a living human being," cried Sara Grant. "There's something terrible to me in thinking of a young girl sitting there in the dead dark all those ages. I can't help feeling she must have known it and been thankful when you let the light in at last."

"But it ended her," Seton said, with darkling eyes. "She might have been there, eternally beautiful, but for that. I felt next day as if we had killed her."

"I think of her as a prisoner chained to her dead body. You set her free," Venetia Grant said in the low voice that redeemed her every word from common place. But Seton started. It recalled other words to his mind. Buisson's, quoted by Alphonse:—

"I counsel you not to let Queen Nefert loose upon a world which has troubles enough already."

That also was freedom, and the first harvest from the furrow of the open grave had not been joy. Eight Arabs dead, and he himself escaped by such a miracle of constitution that the doctors told him he bid fair for a hundred years unless he came across another Egyptian tomb. His face was troubled and she read it swiftly.

"Have you any superstition about opening these tombs, Mr. Seton? I read a book of Buisson's after we came here, where he hints of something of the sort. Only a hint."

"Not the least," he assured her. Could it be called a superstition when all one's reason denied it—when it was only a dark, shapeless cloud hovering in the back of one's being—a relic, no doubt, of primitive savage beliefs long relegated to the scrap heap? "There have been one or two coincidences," he added, "and of course they're remembered and the rest forgotten, and so the story grows. But we've talked of nothing but my adventures! Mayn't I know a little about you and where you're going?"

They were here to see a little of Egypt, on their way to India. They liked travelling, were keenly interested in Oriental life, had been in China, Burma, Java—everywhere.

"India, we know best of all, and love it best," Sara Grant concluded. Venetia took up the tale.

"We're going to pay a most interesting visit there. We are going to the native state of Mianpur to visit the old Begam—the queen. We have known her all my life and a great deal of my sister's, for our uncle, Lord Cheriton, was English Commissioner there, and my sister kept house for him. The Begam is the mother of Mahmud Mirza, the Amir of Mianpur, and we used to be with her constantly. The most wonderful old woman. You can imagine how interesting it was to have the run of the zenana in that way. We know the younger Begam, his wife, very well indeed too. The loveliest girl—like a princess in the Arabian Nights."

"Now, that's fascinating," said Seton. "You should write a book about it. Is he one of the powerful princes? Surely the title Amir is very unusual in India?"

"Yes, and it has a history. His ancestor came down over the passes with the first Mogul emperor of India, and he was granted the State of Mianpur and the title of Amir. He was descended from one of their uncles and had the rank of Mirza, which, after the name, always means royal blood. They have married Mogul and Persian princesses from time to time."

"Of course, I have heard of them. Then he is really a very big man among the princes?"

"About the grandest in India, and utterly loyal to the British Raj. His grandfather did splendid service in the Mutiny in sheltering English women and children, and since then—and before—Mianpur has been the right hand of the Government in India. They are the kindest people, and really fond of my sister and me. Mahmud Mirza thought great things of my uncle."

"Do you stay in the palace?"

"Oh no. The differences of custom would make that rather a gêne for us all. There is the most delightful royal guest house overlooking the lake. They turn that over to us. You should just see the beauty of the place! We never are so happy as there."

"Any one who could adequately describe the Begam in a book should make their fortune," Sara put in. "A perfect old character, and yet a great lady in her way—a very great lady. Mianpur is a most beautiful city and quite a bit of ancient India. Hardly any tourists get in and Mahmud Mirza doesn't welcome them. We have been three times there since my uncle died."

"I envy you!" said Seton emphatically. "If only I could see India from the inside like that, I'd go to morrow."

When they parted later, they were strangers no longer. They knew some of the same people in Sussex, they had done the same things, shared the same tradition, and a great content filled his mind as he looked out over the mysterious sands, quiet as a sea beneath the moon. The ease and friendliness of that intercourse—how he liked it! Women so well-bred that they were certain of themselves and of the deference of every man they spoke to.

And now he began to remember and consider Venetia's face. Her personality had been too engrossing for him to study it in her presence.

Her figure—that was charming, light as a flower swaying in the wind, or the delicate sweeping of grass when a light-foot breeze runs over it. Her eyes—yes, they were dark blue, hyacinth blue, with a haze of gold-touched lashes about them matching her darkly auburn hair, pressed close to the head in waved abundance, beautiful hair, and growing beautifully, springing in strong curves from the low brow and temples, massive as the bronze ivy-leaves of a Greek nymph. Was she a beautiful woman, he asked himself—one that all male hearts must sway to from their orbits? Not a bit of it! Until she smiled—and then—no, not beautiful, but lovable, infinitely kind, gracious, sweet.

"A [...]