He had been right!
What this inexplicable discovery might mean to John Cumberland, to Danbazzar, to Professor Blackwell, he could only dimly foresee. But what did it mean to him?
This he could not foresee at all.
And then, as he began mechanically to climb down to the camp, the sound of a distant voice reached his ears. It was a laughing voice… and he knew that he had heard it before!
“I have reached a decision,” declared Professor Blackwell, “upon a point that has been worrying me.”
Dinner dispatched, they sat around the table in council, pipes and cigars going. Safîyeh had reported that her charge had found the soup, the fried chicken, the Château y’Quem—of which they had only three bottles—and the peaches entirely to her satisfaction.
“What point?” asked John Cumberland.
“Distinctly,” the Professor resumed, “distinctly she is the property of the Department of Antiquities.”
“What’s that!” cried Barry. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“He’s talking sense,” Danbazzar’s deep voice broke in. “There are no two ways about it. She is.”
“Are you all mad?” said Barry. “You behave as though the Department of Antiquities were an orphanage!”
“Or a harem agency,” prompted the Professor. “Yet the fact remains that they and no one else have a legal claim upon her person. We are no more entitled to remove her from the country, alive, than we should have been entitled to do so had we found her in what I may term a normal state. I mean dead. She is as much the property of the Department as the sarcophagus she lay in.”
“I must agree with you,” John Cumberland admitted. “Our difficulties are enormous. The more I think about them the bigger they get. For instance—since none of us dare testify that he was present at the discovery, how can we ever give an account of it to the world?”
“We can’t!” said the Professor. “Distinctly and definitely, I for one should not consent under any circumstances to lend my name to a statement on the subject. In the first place, assuming I were safely out of the country before the issue of such a report, criminal proceedings would undoubtedly be taken by the Egyptian government! This applies to all of us!”
Some moments of uncomfortable silence followed, then:
“The fact is,” Danbazzar stated, “the greatest find in Egyptology since the game began has got to blush unseen. I hadn’t thought of it. I’ll say so honestly. None of us had thought of it. But there it is all the same. The testimony of this bunch would carry a lot of weight in America. I don’t say we’d go unchallenged. But we’d be taken seriously. We’re not going to get the chance. We started working in the dark. We’ve got to go on that way.”
“I wish, now,” said John Cumberland regretfully, “that I had curbed my impatience and formally applied for a permit to excavate.”
“You’d never have got it!” Danbazzar assured him. “You might as well apply for a pass-out check to heaven! And once you’d applied and been turned down, to come here as we’ve done would have been to ask for trouble. No, sir, I’d worked on it from that angle before I put up my proposition.”
“Then where do we stand?” cried Barry in bewilderment. “What have we gained if our discoveries can’t be published?”
Danbazzar regarded him fixedly across the table.
“We have gained knowledge,” he replied, “that has been lost for thousands of years. With what we know, and what Zalithea can tell us when we teach her English, we’re going to revolutionize archæology, physiology, and psychology—to say nothing of chemistry!”
“It appears to me,” murmured Professor Blackwell, “that this tent contains the nucleus of a sort of New Rosicrucian order. We are bound together by a living secret which none of us dare divulge. Our present access of knowledge is very great. What we shall learn in the future from this phenomenal girl is also sure to be valuable. But of what use any of it is going to be to the world during our lifetime I confess I fail to see.”
Evidently nobody was very clear on the point, for not a suggestion was forthcoming; but:
“In one sense,” said John Cumberland, “our course is unavoidable. We are committed to go on. Until we have got clear and reclosed the tomb, we aren’t safe! Personally, I’m satisfied. Our very highest hopes have been realized. We have triumphed! That’s good enough for me. Let the future take care of itself. My present big worry is the girl.”
“Explain what you mean, Dad,” said Barry.
“I will,” his father agreed. “In the first place, as soon as we can make her understand how much the world has changed, we have got to get over to Luxor. Difficulty number one: How do we explain her to the folks in Luxor? Assuming we manage this and arrive in Cairo, how in the name of Mike do we get her a passport that will be accepted in New York?”
“Passport?” murmured the Professor. “Quite—quite. The point had not occurred to me. Of course, a certain difficulty is bound to arise in regard to a minor whose legal guardians have been dead for three thousand years.” He scratched his head furiously. “There are times when I doubt my own sanity,” he declared.
Danbazzar flicked a cone of ash from his cigar. In the lamplight a queer green spark moved on the face of the scarab in his ring.
“Leave the story to me,” he said. “The stuff, I can get away. It’s part of my business. The girl we’ll smuggle out nearly as easily. We’ve got to lie like bond salesmen, but we’ll get her away.”
“Fried chicken,” murmured the Professor.
“What’s that, Blackwell?” John Cumberland asked.
“I was reflecting,” the Professor explained, “upon the fact that a princess who doubtless has dined in the palace of the Pharaoh Seti I this evening partook of soup canned in Pittsburgh. I think I shall go to bed.”
He was as good as his word, departing almost immediately. Danbazzar set out to learn if the two guards posted in the valley were on the alert, and Barry and his father were left alone. Hassan es-Sugra, that unfathomable man, was sleeping in the entrance to the tomb to insure against pilfering.
As the sound of Danbazzar’s receding footsteps died away in the wâdi:
“You haven’t said much, Barry,” John Cumberland remarked, after an interval during which he had been closely watching his son; “but I think you have quite a lot to say all the same.”
Barry started, looking up. Then he began to knock out his pipe on the heel of his shoe.
“You mean, about—Zalithea?”
John Cumberland nodded.
“Well—I have!” Barry admitted. “She is the girl I saw twice in New Jersey and twice in New York!”
“I knew it!” said John Cumberland. “I didn’t speak, when I saw it first. I was waiting. Now that we have actually found her, alive, it’s a different matter. Barry—I think I can explain the whole thing.”
“Then go ahead, Dad!” Barry invited.
“We have proof—living proof—that the Ancient Egyptians knew more than we know. If they were wiser in one respect, it’s only reasonable to suppose they were wiser in others. Now, here’s what I believe: you didn’t see Zalithea in America. You had prevision of her! Danbazzar spoke of what we know, upsetting physiology and psychology. It’s going to upset religion as well. I believe you had an incarnation in Egypt at the time of Seti I, and I believe Zalithea remembers you!”
Barry started up excitedly.
“Why,” he exclaimed, “I had come to just that conclusion only to-night! It’s unavoidable, Dad! There’s no other explanation.”
They discussed the problem at some length, with the result that they agreed upon the main issue while differing about minor points.
“Poor humanity’s unanswerable question—the destiny of the soul—has been answered for us!” said John Cumberland. “I’m dazzled, Barry, by the magnificence of all these revelations. We have learned something, or are on the verge of learning it, which has taxed the greatest intellects in history.”
When finally John Cumberland turned in, Danbazzar had not come back from his tour of inspection. Barry, feverishly restless, lighted a fresh pipe and strolled out into the wâdi.
The night was very dark. Leaving the door of the tent, he walked into a wall of shadow, until, around a natural buttress, he saw a patch of light upon the sand ahead. It came from the entrance of Zalithea’s tent. Danbazzar was just coming out. He wore the priest’s robe and linen skullcap. Barry paused: and in the next moment Danbazzar saw him.
“I was coming to get you,” he called.
“Why? Is there anything wrong?”
Danbazzar joined him.
“No,” he replied. “But old Safîyeh was hanging around to speak to me. She caught me on my way back. Come along and get into a robe.”
“What!” Barry exclaimed. “Why?”
“Because Princess Zalithea wants to see you!”
Barry pulled up dead in his tracks. His heart began thumping.
“How do you know?” he demanded. “I mean, how did she make you understand?”
“Largely by signs,” Danbazzar admitted. “My Egyptian is mighty limited. But I’m learning.”
That old sensation of unreality, phantasy, came to Barry again. Urged by Danbazzar, he attired himself in the strange dress that they had adopted with the idea that it would be more familiar to the awakened girl. Then, not entirely master of himself, he walked back along the wâdi. At Zalithea’s tent:
“Wait outside,” Danbazzar directed. “Safîyeh will call you when I have made her understand you are here. I’ll do my best as interpreter.”
He went in, leaving Barry alone in the darkness.
Vaguely, a sound of voices came to him where he waited. The deep, subdued tones of Danbazzar made a marked contrast to the silvery note of that other voice! How well he seemed to know it!
Barry wondered why he was so nervous.
Suddenly the flap was drawn open, and the old Arab woman looked out, beckoning. Barry stooped and went in.
He found himself in a sort of tiny antechamber or lobby constructed of hanging tent cloths. An antique lamp hung from above. There were carpets on the sandy floor, but no furniture.
Safîyeh held one of the tent cloths aside and intimated that he was to enter. He stepped forward. Some hazy impression he had of a silver lamp, of embroidered curtains, of cushions, queer-looking inlaid chests, but these were an indistinct background into which the tall robed figure of Danbazzar merged appropriately. He was standing behind a cushioned divan, or native mattress.
Upon it, her cheek resting in her upraised hand, lay Princess Zalithea.
She was dressed in a manner which perhaps represented a compromise between the ancient and the modern Egyptian style. Her beautiful arms were bare to the shoulders, and she wore no jewellery of any kind. A sort of tightly fitting tunic and some sort of gauzy dress disguised in a measure the delicate shape which Danbazzar’s scissors had so mercilessly revealed in the tomb. Her white ankles were bare, as also were her little feet. It was so that he remembered her.
Long, dark, heavily fringed eyes were raised to Barry as he entered. They were the deeply mysterious eyes that had watched him since memory began—the beckoning eyes of the women who lived upon the frescoes surrounding his father’s walls—the eyes that had smiled down upon him from a New Jersey balcony!
How beautiful she was! But how pale and fragile. He found himself unable to believe Safîyeh’s report that she had enjoyed the meal so carefully prepared for her. Those full red lips, though, spoke of health. He was hopelessly, speechlessly embarrassed, under the grave scrutiny of unreadable eyes. But how beautiful she was!
“Speak to her,” Danbazzar prompted.
Barry bowed awkwardly.
“Princess Zalithea,” he said, “I am deeply honoured.”
She watched him, unmoved, for several moments more. Then, a slow, delightful smile revealed her little gleaming teeth. She turned her head slightly, looking up at Danbazzar. She spoke in soft, queerly modulated syllables. One word which might have been “Zalithea,” but accented very differently from Barry’s rendering, gave him a clue to her question. Danbazzar replied, slowly, haltingly; then:
“I think,” he said, “she is curious about how you learned her name. She seems to have recognized it. I told her that you were a very learned priest. She wants to know what you are called. Tell her.”
Zalithea turned her disturbing glance upon him again, as:
“I am called Barry Cumberland,” he responded.
Zalithea considered the words, then:
“Bahree?” she said—and nodded interrogatively.
“Yes—Barry; Barry Cumberland.”
She smiled, shaking her head in bewilderment. She looked up at Danbazzar and addressed him again. He listened, interpolating hesitant questions, while Barry watched, fascinated. Presently:
“She understands that you are called Barry,” he explained. “Cumberland is too much for her. Now, she is going to tell you how to pronounce her name properly.”
Zalithea turned to Barry, and, laying one slender hand on her breast:
“Zal’ith-eeah,” she said distinctly, and beckoned to him to approach closer.
He did so, almost trembling: the mad wonder of it all had seized upon him anew. Zalithea, in a sweetly imperious way, intimated that he should kneel. He obeyed, and she laid her hand on his breast. His heart was thumping wildly. She looked fixedly into his eyes.
“Bahree,” she said, and smiled.
The sound of a distant shot came—from the direction of the Nile. Professor Blackwell looked up with a start. He was inclined to nervousness in these days. Breakfast was temporarily suspended.
“Mr. Tawwab has called for the rent!” said Danbazzar grimly. He raised his great voice, looking over his shoulder. “Mahmoud!” he boomed.
The grinning face of Mahmoud appeared in the opening of the tent. Danbazzar spoke rapidly in Arabic. Mahmoud saluted and departed.
“I’ve told him,” Danbazzar explained, “to warn Safîyeh that they must keep under cover and then to go up and tell the guards, in case they missed the signal.”
It was now Zalithea’s custom to take exercise, veiled like a Moslem woman, early each morning and again in the evening. In a manner reminiscent of that adopted (by request) during the historic ride of Lady Godiva, not a soul was visible about the camp on these occasions.
Hassan es-Sugra, at a respectful distance, acted as escort. And he had his instructions touching prohibited areas. After a time, Zalithea had seemed to recognize where she was. At the first coming of this recognition—realizing that she was in the Valley of the Dead—she had been seized with terror. Danbazzar’s linguistic resources had been taxed to the utmost to pacify her.
Ultimately he succeeded in making her understand that she had slept, magically, for a very long time; that Thebes (which she knew apparently as Amen) had altered beyond recognition; and that they wanted her to become accustomed to strange changes before taking her there.
Once having conquered her first natural terror, the girl accepted her situation with astonishing philosophy. A reaction came. Perhaps she had grasped the fact that a new lease of life had been granted to her—and that life was sweet. At any rate, she developed a strain of childish mischief at once delightful and disturbing. For Danbazzar’s orders she had little respect, apparently; but that diplomat was quick to learn that for Barry she would do anything.
“I trust,” said the Professor, nervously glancing at his watch, “that the young lady from Unu will subdue her high spirits while Mr. Tawwab is in camp.”
“I’m going to send Barry along to keep her quiet,” replied Danbazzar.
Whereupon Barry felt a hot flush rising to his cheeks and hastily stooped to load a pipe.
“A duty by no means irksome,” the Professor murmured. “I confess that a woman of more than sixty is no longer attractive in the amorous sense. I had never imagined that one over three thousand could be. But I was mistaken. Indeed, all my life has been lived in error.”
“In another three days,” said Danbazzar, flashing a triumphant glance around the table, “we’ll be through! All the stuff is where Mr. Tawwab will never see it. The photographs are finished. My drawings I can complete when I like. It’s just a matter of building up the opening, now, and striking the screen.”
“My notes are fairly up to date, also,” John Cumberland added. “I have material for a book that publishers would fight to get.”
“Quite, quite,” remarked the Professor. “But except as a work of fiction you cannot publish it.”
“I shall write it, nevertheless,” the other assured him. “It will be in three volumes. The first volume will deal, exhaustively, with the history of the papyrus and the formula. It will bring the account up to the time of our arrival here. The second volume will be compiled from notes made on the spot. It will deal with the excavation and end with the discovery of Zalithea. The third volume will contain the story of her life during the reign of Seti.”
“Admirable,” the Professor agreed. “I shall be obligated, however, if you will refer to me in your magnum opus as Doctor X.”
And now, a slender, mysterious, black-robed figure, Hassan es-Sugra bowed in the tent opening.
“Your pardon, sirs,” he said in his gentle way, “but Mr. Tawwab comes. He will shortly be here.”
“I vote we all see him!” cried Barry. “Why should we study his feelings? He’s just a common grafter.”
“In studying the sensibilities of Mr. Tawwab,” remarked Professor Blackwell, “one would be studying the non-existent; a paradox. But our own position is not too secure.”
“We don’t have to jolt him,” Danbazzar agreed. “We’re not out of the wood. But Mr. Cumberland and I can talk business. It’s just as well that he should show his hand with a witness here. I guess, Professor, you’d rather not stay. And I’m taking Barry along to the Princess.”
“Why?” Barry demanded, laughing to hide his embarrassment.
“Because you may be able to keep her in order. Nobody else can.”
“But I can’t talk to her!”
“You’ve got to learn. Give her some elementary lessons in English.”
The masterful Danbazzar had his way; and Barry found himself, a few minutes later, in the little lobby of Zalithea’s tent. Danbazzar went in to announce him, and almost immediately Safîyeh appeared, holding the tent cloth aside and intimating that he should enter.
He found this wonder girl who was so distractingly human, this charming survival of a mystic past, stretched on the cushioned mattress, her head buried in her creamy arms rebelliously. Danbazzar stood looking down at her in an unfamiliar attitude of defeat.
“She’s a bit up-stage this morning,” he announced. “It’s so darned hard to remember that she’s a princess and probably used to a lot of ceremony. I thought I had her set about the robes. I tried to tell her that we only wore them on religious occasions, and that other times we dressed as we’re dressed now. I had to tell her something, because she caught me on Monday, you remember, coming back from the tomb?”
“I do remember,” said Barry. “But when I saw her, later, she seemed to be used to our queer costumes.”
Danbazzar looked down at his white breeches and speckless tan riding boots.
“It isn’t that,” he explained. “She’s got the idea that the robes are ceremonious and that we’re slighting her by not wearing them when we come to see her.”
Zalithea half raised her oval face, so that one dark eye peeped out over the rampart of her arm. A quick, disdainful glance she flashed over Barry, from his bare head to his dusty shoes; and hid her face again.
“That’s that,” sighed Danbazzar. “There’s no time to go back. But wait outside and I’ll have your robes brought down by Hassan.”
They turned to go, when:
“Dan-bazz-ah!” said a clear, imperious voice.
Barry and Danbazzar turned, together.
Princess Zalithea was sitting upright, her arms outstretched, her hands resting upon the cushions on either side of her. From her pale, beautiful features all expression had been effaced. They were like an exquisite ivory mask into which a magician has blown the breath of life.
She spoke a sentence rapidly, her long, half-closed eyes turned sideways upon Danbazzar. He bowed in his graceful manner and replied very hesitantly. No expression stirred the girl’s lovely face.
“I was right,” he explained. “She considers that we’ve insulted her! I took all the blame and told her you had just come back from a journey and asked to see her right away.”
Barry frowned, and:
“Is it necessary to tell her so many lies?” he asked.
“You bet it is!” Danbazzar assured him. “Look at her!”
Barry glanced, guiltily, toward the divan. He started. Zalithea was watching them with a stare of such murderous anger that his heart seemed to turn cold! He would never have conceived it possible that her youthful features could assume a look of such utter malignancy.
Watching her, fascinated against his will, he experienced again that awful tingling of the spine which he had known during his vigil in the valley on the night he had heard the strange voice. Definitely, he knew in this moment that it had been her voice… although she had lain buried deep in the heart of the rock! Yes, this girl-woman, this child-witch who had first seen the light in an island unknown to modern geography, was uncanny!
Danbazzar’s deep tones broke in upon the silence; he addressed Zalithea in the musical, oddly monotonous language which Barry was beginning to recognize as that which the Pharaohs spoke. Then:
“Come on!” he said abruptly. “I can hear Tawwab.”
He raised the tent cloth. Barry was about to follow him out, when:
“Bahree!” came softly.
He turned. Danbazzar had gone, dropping the curtain. He was alone with Zalithea!
Half fearfully, he looked at her.…
She was resting on her elbow, watching him, and her sweet lips were arched in a smile which revealed little gleaming teeth! Her eyes, widely opened now, were deep pools of contrition; her delicate nostrils quivered. She was on the verge of tears!
Barry experienced a dramatic revulsion of feeling. In his hard, modern, Western self-sufficiency, he had wounded the tender susceptibilities of this sheltered flower of the East. What did he, or Danbazzar, for that matter, know of courts and palaces? Much less they knew of the splendid ceremony of those old, dead days when Seti, from Thebes of the Hundred Gates, ruled a mighty empire!
He hated himself and hated Danbazzar. They had a princess among them, and they treated her like a chambermaid! They discussed her as though she were a marketable relic, to be bought and sold—this living, lovely revelation of the wonder that was Egypt!
Some remote ancestor who had known the meaning of homage came to life in Barry; seized him by the scruff of the neck and forced him onto his knees. Very near to Zalithea he knelt, his head bowed, waiting for pardon.
Instantly it was granted.
A little hesitant hand touched his hair; and he looked up. The girl’s long, curling lashes, the most perfect he had ever seen, were wet with tears.
“Forgive me!” he burst out, forgetting that she could not understand. “I—he—neither of us—meant to hurt you!”
She smiled through her tears and touched his hair again.
“Bahree,” she said, and made a quaint gesture which conveyed dismissal of the subject.
And then, very close together, in silence, these two remained for long moments, watching one another; the girl reclining on her cushions and the man kneeling beside her. In that odd hush, the suave tones of Mr. Tawwab were clearly audible as he entered the upper end of the wâdi in conversation with Danbazzar. A subdued booming was all that could be distinguished of the latter’s responses. Both voices presently ceased. The party had met in the tent above.
Barry suddenly grew self-conscious. He was kneeling beside Zalithea and studying her raptly. It had occurred to him that this was the height of rudeness. True, she had suffered his scrutiny without complaint, but this did not excuse his bad form.
In a nervous endeavour to break the tension, and recalling Danbazzar’s instructions, he touched a symbol embroidered upon one of the tent cloths draped beside the divan. It was the crux ansata, symbol of life; and:
“This,” he said, “means Life.”
Zalithea looked at it, then turned to him. She seemed to be trying hard to grasp what he had in mind; and finally:
“Ankh,” she said.
“You call it ankh?” he asked eagerly; for he knew this to be the Ancient Egyptian term for the figure.
Zalithea, listening and watching, smiled.
“Ankh,” she repeated.
“Life,” said Barry.
“Lie-ef,” Zalithea whispered doubtfully.
“Life!”
She shook her head. And Barry realized how, tempted by the fact that he chanced to know its Egyptian name, he had chosen an object impossible to explain in pantomime. Zalithea, laughing now, stretched out a finger and laid it gently upon his eyelid.
“Eye,” he said eagerly.
“Eye,” she repeated.
She touched his ear.
“Ear.”
“Ee-ah!”
So the first lesson began—a lesson in a science that was old even in Seti’s days. Master and pupil forgot the passing of the hours in that enthralling study. Old Safîyeh, squatting patiently on her mat beyond the curtain, nodded as the sun climbed a blue highway toward the dome of noon. Innumerable cups of coffee had been drunk by Danbazzar, John Cumberland, and Mr. Tawwab, and entire boxes of cigarettes consumed. But still Barry said, touching Zalithea:
“Arm!”
And Zalithea, watching him, replied:
“Aah-em!”
When, at last, a substantial check having changed hands, Mr. Tawwab rose to take his departure, he showed a marked preference for a route through the lower end of the wâdi. Mr. Tawwab was an observant man.
Suddenly, raised voices disturbed the English lesson. Zalithea sat very upright, listening.
“If you don’t mind, yes!” Mr. Tawwab was saying. “Your camp is so interesting. I should love to see your kitchen.”
Placing a finger on her lips, Zalithea stood up. In her simple native dress Barry thought she was the sweetest thing he had ever looked upon.
“Zalithea,” he murmured, “you are adorable!”
She paused, glancing down at him.
“Zal’ith-eeah!” she corrected; then: “You-ah-addorahble!” she added.
Before he realized what she intended to do, she had glided to the tent cloth, raised it, and gone out. He jumped up and followed her. He had recalled, tardily, the real purpose of the interview. His duty was to see that Zalithea did not make her presence known to Mr. Tawwab!
In the tiny lobby, old Safîyeh had scrambled hastily to her feet. Beside her mat was a bowl in which were some peaches which Zalithea had evidently rejected as overripe. Some of them, presumably, Safîyeh had consumed. The less desirable remained.
Mr. Tawwab’s voice came from immediately outside. He had paused on his way down the wâdi.
“Surely a new tent?” he inquired smoothly.
“Sure!” boomed Danbazzar. “An English Bell tent, sir!”
“You have guests?”
“No, sir! We’re hoping for guests—distinguished guests—and we’re all ready. If ever you feel like spending a night with the boys, say the word!”
“I am deeply indebted,” Mr. Tawwab assured him. “It would be delightful. But my duties do not allow.”
“That’s a pity,” said Danbazzar.
They moved on, slowly—and Zalithea, ignoring Barry’s restraining hand, pulled the flap aside and peered out. Over her shoulder, he could see Danbazzar, a great, towering figure, moving down the wâdi beside the slight, red-capped form of Mr. Tawwab.
Then, in a moment, it had happened.
Displaying a deadly aim, Zalithea hurled an imperfect peach at the retreating Mr. Tawwab!
It struck him on the back of the head, squashed liberally, and dislodged his tarbûsh! With a cry of mingled fear and anger, he turned. Barry dropped the flap and sank back, aghast.…
Zalithea, both hands held over her mouth, fled beyond the tent cloth. Safîyeh, horror-stricken, followed.
“Hell’s bells!” roared Danbazzar. “Mr. Tawwab, I can’t say what I think! It’s that half-wit Said! Wait here, sir! Take my handkerchief! By God! I’ll——”
He ran back and burst into the tent in an apparent fury. Barry faced him.
“Zalithea?” Danbazzar whispered.
Barry nodded.
“Howl like fury!” Danbazzar directed—“not in English!”
Thereupon he broke into a flood of Arabic, and clapped his hands, simulating smacks. Barry yelled obediently.
“You son of a mange!” Danbazzar concluded—and went out. “He’s crazy, Mr. Tawwab,” he called. “Don’t blame me. Blame the people that hired him to me.…”
Work in the valley was ended. The tomb, stripped of its contents, had been reclosed so that even Mr. Howard Carter could not have found it. The workmen, well paid and happy, had dispersed to their homes. Most of them were men of the Fayyum.
Danbazzar and Hassan es-Sugra had contrived the transport of Zalithea from the camp in the wâdi to a carefully chosen suite at a Luxor hotel without provoking comment. John Cumberland’s bank account had silenced any criticisms regarding the nature of his interest in the heavily veiled Moslem lady for whose accommodation he had arranged. The thing had run on oiled wheels, dollars being the lubricant; but since there is more grit in the world than there are dollars, this smooth running inevitably couldn’t last.
Barry, whose dream woman had miraculously come to life, found himself in a frame of mind which he was sane enough to recognize as unique. The Zalithea he knew, the adorable, winning, childish, petulant, sometimes frightening girl, he was learning to worship. The Zalithea of the papyrus, the princess of unknown origin who had been captured by the troops of Seti in an unimaginable past, he fought to forget.
Advance guards of the Thomas Cook army had already established themselves in Luxor. A German party, some days earlier, and on the eve of striking camp, had penetrated to the wâdi. Their insatiable Teutonic curiosity was their only guide; Danbazzar’s lurid profanity their only reward. Even the donkey boys had blushed.
But the incident had gone to prove that they had achieved their purpose only just in time. It was the tourist invasion which had checked Danbazzar a year before.
That remarkable man, whose resourcefulness knew no bounds, had long since set out, accompanied by Hassan es-Sugra, two camel drivers and a large sum of ready money, for the Great Oasis. Here he had arranged to meet a certain sheik of the Shorbagis from Dakhla and to obtain from him a document, suitably witnessed, authorizing John Cumberland to escort the sheik’s daughter, Zalithea, to America for neuropathic treatment prescribed by Professor Blackwell.
“The Senussi,” Danbazzar had admitted, “are the most dangerous fanatics in Africa. One of that bunch would be about as likely to send his daughter to America as to burn his whiskers for firewood. But nobody here will be any wiser, never having been to those parts, and the American consul, who is a Greek from Alexandria, doesn’t know an Arab from an onion. We’ll get her passport without any trouble.”
Zalithea’s balcony overlooked the Nile. Here she spent many hours every day, watching the varied life of the river front. Her bewilderment Barry found at once pathetic and delicious. The dragomans, who were now beginning to put in an appearance, she mistook for priests. The strangely garbed tourists she assumed to be foreign captives!
The advent of the first steamer from Cairo aroused such terror that Barry grew alarmed. He found himself utterly incapable of explaining this mystery, handicapped as he was. Automobiles, for some reason, frightened her but little. Indeed, she managed to make him understand at last that she wished to ride in one!
That once vexed question of dress had been settled. Zalithea understood that no slight was intended by the wearing of a lounge suit. She seemed to think that the Winter Palace was the palace of Pharaoh, and she tried to ask if the reigning monarch was absent at war.
She was extraordinarily observant. In the cool of the evening, with Safîyeh in attendance, and escorted by Barry or John Cumberland, Zalithea would walk along the bank as far as the old shadûf. The really fashionable crowd was not yet in evidence, but, nevertheless, she quickly noticed—since wealthy Moslem women rarely appear in public—that except among the lower classes veils were nowhere to be seen.
This problem was quite beyond Barry’s power of explanation. But John Cumberland, in his practical way, set to work to solve it.
From Cairo one day stacks of boxes arrived and were duly carried up to Zalithea’s apartment. Barry had just bought her a bundle of illustrated magazines and was watching her, fascinatedly, as she pored over pages of photographs showing society groups in various sun traps from Mentone to Miami.
What an exquisite profile she had! He wondered, was eternally wondering, where the island of Unu had been. Zalithea’s long, narrow dark eyes were of a kind he had never seen among the modern Egyptians, but they were typical of the women depicted on the ancient wall paintings. Her profile, too, was purely aristocratic and bore a remarkable resemblance to that of the beautiful queen Ameniritis. His rapt study of the girl was interrupted by the delivery of the boxes.
Zalithea ran in from the balcony immediately, filled with childish interest. As box after box was laid on the carpet, her excitement grew intense. Stooping, she touched a label, looked at Barry interrogatively and then indicated herself.
“Yes,” he said, “for you! All for you.”
“Fo-ah you?”
“No—you! you are me! I don’t know how to explain!” He rested his hand on her shoulder. “Me,” he said.
Zalithea, watching him eagerly, touched her own breast, and:
“Me,” she echoed.
“Yes!” Barry nodded. “For me.”
“Fo-ah me.”
She clapped her hands excitedly and indicated that he should cut the fastenings. Happy because Zalithea was happy, he obeyed.… and out from this box and from that, with a vast rustling of tissue paper, came frocks, stockings, hats, flaky, delicate underwear—priceless loot of Paris.
Never had he seen Zalithea so excited. Taking up piece after piece, she literally danced in her joy!
Then, crying, “Safîyeh! Safîyeh!” she gathered up a great armful of assorted garments and ran into her bedroom. She had apparently forgotten Barry’s existence. But he walked out onto the balcony to await her reappearance. Knowing his father’s thoroughness, he didn’t doubt that John Cumberland would have found some way to obtain things to fit. Zalithea had been early introduced to shoes; so that this part of her equipment was comparatively simple. As for the other items, perhaps he had enlisted Safîyeh’s aid.
Barry looked out across the Nile to where the Libyan Desert baked under the merciless sun. He could hear Zalithea’s delicious, childish laughter and the harsher tones of Safîyeh. The miracle of it all crashed down suddenly upon his mind like a palpable weight.
This gay, light-hearted girl, whose laughter rang out clear as a bell, happily as a child’s, had lain for three thousand years over yonder in the Valley of the Dead!
He picked up a magazine at random from the little table set upon the balcony. There were things he couldn’t face—yet. He wondered if he ever would be capable of facing them. He dropped into a cane chair and began to scan the pictured pages.
In a section devoted to the doings of New York Society, he came across photographs of two or three people he knew. He stared at them as at the pictures of strangers. He felt that a great gulf had opened between himself and the empty life he had known. Upon one side of it were the old set, Aunt Micky, Jim and the rest; upon the other he stood, alone—with Zalithea.
Beneath, beside the river, moved men and women to whom Thebes meant sightseeing and sunshine—no more. He watched them as through a haze or as in a glass, darkly. Then, from a minaret at the back of the town, distantly, sweetly, came the voice of the muezzin raised in the adan, or noonday call to prayer:
“Alla-hu akbar.… La illa-ha illa Allah! …”
“God is most great.… There is no God but God!” He listened to those words, which he knew, with a fresh wonder. For some reason they soothed his troubled mind. The passive attitude of Islam toward life was very wise, after all. He found himself thinking of Hassan es-Sugra, that grave, graceful philosopher, when:
“Bahree!” came a cry from the room behind him.
He turned. His eyes, dazzled by the blazing sunlight, at first could see little in the darkened room. Then, standing just within the doorway communicating with her bedroom, he saw Zalithea.
She wore a very up-to-date dance frock which displayed more of her creamy skin than Barry had seen since that unforgettable hour in the tomb when Danbazzar’s scissors had stripped off the wrappings. With unfailing instinct she had selected shoes to harmonize with the frock, which was very short.
Manlike, he thought she looked exquisite—and showed that he thought so. The admiring, grinning face of old Safîyeh appeared in the doorway, as Zalithea, almost timidly, came forward into the room. The girl’s wonderful, black-fringed eyes were set upon Barry with an expression of childish eagerness.
Something very unusual there was in her appearance, not due to her wholly different style of beauty, but to some irregularity in her attire which for a moment he failed to place.
Then, all at once, he saw what it was.
Zalithea’s shapely creamy legs were bare! She had forgotten to put stockings on! Watching him anxiously, she spoke.
“Zal’ith-eeah!” she said. “You-ah-addorahble!”
On the eve of Danbazzar’s return, Barry ran into his acquaintance, the irrigation specialist, in the lounge of the hotel.
“Hullo!” said that chronically bored person, dropping into a neighbouring armchair. “I’ve only just come in from Assouan, but I heard you were back. How’s the oasis lookin’?”
“Splendid,” Barry returned hastily, hoping that the other had forgotten about the dates. “Dry Martini?”
“Thanks,” was the reply. “Rumour has it that a charmin’ stranger has joined your party.”
“Oh!” said Barry. “With which of her many tongues did Rumour whisper this news?”
“Tawwab,” drawled the tired voice. “Nasty bit of work. Know him?”
Barry nodded.
“I have that misfortune.”
He experienced a vague uneasiness. To the best of his knowledge, Mr. Tawwab’s hold upon them was no more. But the man’s insatiable appetite for bakhshish on a grand scale might inspire him to some new piece of interference. He wished Danbazzar were back.
Zalithea was dining downstairs to-night. It would be the first time she had appeared in public unveiled. Barry had reserved a discreet table, and when he had left Zalithea to dress, she had been wild with excitement. A French chambermaid had been detailed to assist. Inexplicably, the hotel seemed to have become filled up. The lounge was crowded. A number of visitors had arrived during the afternoon. He hoped Mr. Tawwab was not present.
“Our guest is the daughter of a friend of Danbazzar’s,” he explained. “Professor Blackwell is treating her for nerve trouble.”
“I see,” murmured the irrigator, sipping his drink and lighting a cigarette. “Danbazzar is the sportsman like a Moorish pirate?”
“Yes!” said Barry, laughing.
“Saw him when you were here before. Extraordinary lookin’ bird. Do you grow ’em like that in America?”
“Not in large quantities.”
“Rara avis, eh? Tawwab was tellin’ me your girl friend only speaks Kabyle. As I don’t know whether Kabyle is a vegetable or an ointment I ain’t any wiser.”
“It would be quite a good thing if Tawwab attended to his own business, don’t you think?”
“Rather. It’d choke him—which would be toppin’.”
John Cumberland and Professor Blackwell came down shortly afterward, and the bored young man went off to join a friend who was dining with him. While they waited for Zalithea, Barry related what he had heard.
“Mr. Tawwab is a subject who was born to be poisoned,” said the Professor. “I shall feel altogether more at ease when I find myself outside his sphere of influence.”
“It’s disturbing,” muttered John Cumberland. “I fear he’s up to fresh mischief. He hadn’t counted on our slipping away so soon and covering our tracks. He probably considers we have bested him.” He broke of, staring. “By Jove!” he exclaimed. “Barry! Did we dream it all? Look at her!”
Zalithea had just come into the lounge, cynosure of many eyes. She was a radiant vision in a zephyr-like Paris model. Whom John Cumberland had commissioned to buy it and what he had paid for it only John Cumberland knew. But he was satisfied. Marie, the chambermaid, had done her work well. As they made their way to the table, soft music of an orchestra stole through the hubbub. Barry thought that the lovely girl beside him whose eyes were lighted up happily must have heard other music and witnessed stranger banquets on this very spot… three thousand years ago!
That uncomfortable sense of unreality, a sort of veil through which he saw and heard imperfectly, descended upon Barry during the early stages of dinner. The irrigation man and his friend sat quite near and were at no pains to hide their admiration of Zalithea.
In fact, it gradually became apparent that the beautiful unknown was being widely discussed. Barry wondered if the story of the sheik’s daughter had spread farther than they supposed. He began to cast off the Old Man of the Sea astride his shoulders—to disregard the inner voice which whispered—whispered: “Yes, she looks young and lovely. But you saw her in the tomb. You know she is the oldest woman who has ever lived.”
He was fully and finally aroused by a waiter who handed him a folded note. It was from the young man at the near-by table, and it read:
“Where can I take lessons in Kabyle?”
The smiling impudence of his acquaintance appealed to Barry’s sense of humour. He showed the note to John Cumberland and the Professor. Zalithea, while they read it, touched Barry’s arm, and:
“Fo-ah me?” she said.
He laughed outright.
“Yes!” he nodded.
Zalithea held out her hand for the note. Professor Blackwell passed it to her. And she studied it gravely. It was at this moment that a high-pitched feminine voice made itself audible above the other voices.
“I really must just say how d’you do!”
John Cumberland started and looked over his shoulder. A very smart, hard-faced woman was making for their table. She seemed to be possessed of volcanic energy, and:
“Holy Mike!” said he. “Mrs. Uffington!”
“What!” Barry muttered, and glanced in the same direction. “Good Lord! All New York will have the story now!”
Indeed, it was the famous Mrs. Uffington, most intrepid of lion hunters: according to Jim Sakers, “The pride of Pierre’s and uncrowned Pope of Park Avenue.”
She swooped down upon them. Zalithea, dropping the note, fixed a stare of cold hostility upon the face of the newcomer.
“My dear John Cumberland!” she cried; “and if it isn’t our very own Professor and Barry!”
They rose to greet her—without enthusiasm.
“I know all about you!” she ran on vivaciously. “John Cumberland, I know all about you! What will Micky Colonna say? But, my dear—she’s lovely! I can’t believe she’s a coloured girl—can’t believe it!”
“Princess Zalithea is a member of a very old and distinguished family,” said Barry coldly. “Allow me to present you.” He bowed to the girl. “Mrs. Dudley Uffington.”
Zalithea did not move. Her unwavering stare never left Mrs. Uffington’s face. It had an oddly quelling effect.
“She’s rather queer, isn’t she?” asked the lady, in a lower tone.
“She doesn’t speak English,” Professor Blackwell explained.
“No! I was forgetting. But of course I have heard all about it. Do you know who told me? Mr. Ahmed Tawwab—such a charming man, for an Egyptian. He is looking in later, and I must really insist that you and your delightful—protégée—join us for coffee. I shall expect you!”
And she was off.
“Phew!” said John Cumberland. “Here’s a mess!”
“Since she finds Tawwab so charming,” murmured the Professor, “I sincerely wish she would marry him—and settle here.”
Zalithea, through half-closed eyes, watched the retreating figure.
“Hafee!” she hissed—or that was how it sounded.
Barry began to laugh.
“I find I am learning Ancient Egyptian!” he said. “You may be amused to know that, to the best of my knowledge, hafee means ‘snake’!”
“Really!” said Professor Blackwell, glancing uneasily at the malignant face of Zalithea. “It occurs to me that our foster child can be definitely unpleasant. She should prove a revelation to the drawing rooms of New York. Dear me, it’s all very extraordinary.”
Any plans they may have had to evade the subsequent meeting were frustrated by the energetic Mrs. Uffington. She had a table waiting, with coffee, liqueurs, and cigarettes, outside, after dinner. She swept them to it. And as they entered the palm-screened alcove in which it was situated, Mr. Tawwab rose to greet them, bowing deeply. He was accompanied by a lean, square-jawed man having small, fierce eyes, a bristling moustache, and very large prominent teeth. He resembled a mad horse.
He was presented as Captain Quick.
Zalithea, trailing a light wrap, seated herself disdainfully on the very edge of a tall chair, staring straight into the eyes of the two men in turn as they were introduced, but giving not the slightest sign of acknowledgment. Mr. Tawwab appraised her, critically and ravenously. Captain Quick burst at once into a shouted conversation.
“This is amazing!” he cried. “Positively! Never would have believed you come from the Senussi country! Never! Was down there in ’nineteen. What’s your part?”
Mr. Tawwab exchanged a swift, malicious glance with Mrs. Uffington. John Cumberland looked helplessly at Barry. Zalithea stared at the speaker as though she had not heard him. It was Professor Blackwell, husky in his embarrassment, who explained:
“Our friend does not speak English, sir.”
“Oh, damn it! What a fool I am!” yelled Captain Quick. “Wait a minute! Wait a minute! I know the lingo.…”
Zalithea stood up, leaving her wrap on the arm of the chair.
“Bahree!” she said—and pointed to it.
Then, without so much as a glance at any of the party, she walked slowly, languidly, out of the alcove.
“Excuse me!” Barry mumbled.
He had flushed to the roots of his hair. Grabbing the wrap, he ran after the girl.
Zalithea, moving with an unfamiliar, swaying movement of the hips which he had always imagined characteristic of the women figured on the ancient wall paintings, was making for the entrance.
He came up with her, but she did not pause or glance aside. The night was perfect, and there were groups assembled before the hotel: visitors, residents, vendors of many wares, and guides clamouring to conduct somebody, anybody, to the Great Temple by moonlight.
Barry was longing to walk through those mighty halls with Zalithea, but—incredible thought!—they had feared the memories which sight of that stately ruin might arouse in the girl. Karnak she had seen. And Barry could never forget her expression, in which sorrow, stupefaction, and horror had mingled. She had retired to her apartment, refusing to see anybody for a whole day afterward.
How he longed to be able to talk to her! If his own brain became so tumultuous when he thought of the history of this lovely, wayward, yielding, imperious girl, what deathly terrors must she know when realization of the truth was borne home to her?
Side by side they walked on through the scented night. He placed the wrap over her shoulders. She was following her favourite route—that to the ancient shadûf.
And so, presently, in silence, they were alone beside the Nile. Zalithea paused, resting against a crumbling wall and staring out over the whispering water. A boatman began to play a reed pipe. He played that age-old melody which surely the boatmen of Seti knew. Barry glanced at Zalithea. She was listening—intently.
Her lips were slightly parted, her lashes drooped. She looked beautiful. But—perhaps because of the Egyptian night and the music of the reed—she seemed unearthly.
A cold hand clutched his heart. Princess Zalithea! He was alone with a ghost!
She knew that music! What was she thinking? Whom was she remembering? Did it bring dreams of happiness—of love? Or did it magically cast her spirit back over the ages to the coming of that unnatural sleep?
Zalithea sighed, shudderingly. Turning, she put her hand in his.
Her hand was warm. The little slender fingers clung tremulously. At their touch, his ghostly imaginings fled. She was real, a girl of flesh and blood; not a phantom, but a living, lovely testimony to the wisdom of a past science. If only he could get used to that idea!
In silence, as they had come, they walked back; like two children, hand in hand. And standing in the entrance to the hotel were Mr. Tawwab and Danbazzar.
“I am most indebted to His Excellency,” boomed the latter’s great voice, “for this offer of his service. But the lady has been entrusted to me by her father, and I have just left the American Consul——”
“H’m,” murmured Mr. Tawwab, his sly eyes lighting up as he saw the slender, approaching figure; “you have seen him to-night?”
“Sure,” said Danbazzar. “All’s clear. A few formalities in the morning, that’s all.”
“But,” Mr. Tawwab interpolated gently, “as the young lady belongs to El-Kasr, you tell me, this matter does not concern your consul. El-Kasr is in the mudiriya of Minia!”
“I’ve seen the Mudîr of Minia, sir!” Danbazzar replied. “I arrived in Minia last night. That’s where I’ve come from. Believe me, I know the ropes of your country, Mr. Tawwab, although I’m greatly obliged to you. Our consul has got to give me a visé for the United States, that’s all. I’ve arranged the rest.”
“The Mudîr of Minia is very obliging.”
“Most obliging man in Egypt, bar none!” boomed Danbazzar. “Always was an obliging man.”
Zalithea passed in to the hotel, Barry following. From a hidden bench a slim, black-robed figure arose, bowing low.
“Lêltak sa’îda, effendim,” said a soft voice.
Barry started, peering into the shadows; then:
“Lêltak sa’îda, Hassan es-Sugra!” he replied.
A month later, to a day, Barry from the boat deck of the Berengaria pointed out Ambrose Light to Zalithea. She clutched his arm to steady herself in the high wind, nestling, furry, very close to him. As he looked down at her he found himself thinking not of the camp in the wâdi, nor even of the tomb; not of the ancient wonders of Egypt; nor even of those few delightful days in Paris and the later joy of taking Zalithea around London.
He found himself thinking of Hassan es-Sugra.
Hassan had seen the party off at Luxor, bringing a great bundle of flowers for Zalithea. Where everyone else was hurrying and bustling, Hassan had walked calmly up and down the platform with Barry. His eyes, which were so like the eyes of a gazelle, had been sad. But his words, softly intoned yet laden with some deep significance, had remained with Barry like the haunting memory of a song:
“One day, sir, you will come again to Egypt. Some of your friends, now, will not be your friends then. You will learn to forgive me if I have failed you in anything and come and tell me so. For in the end understanding will be. There is one thing, sir, I have to say to you: they tell me the lady is of El-Kasr. It is not so. I cannot say where she is of. But this I know—she is not of Egypt. She is very sad at heart. If, one day, she tells you why, be not angry with her.”
Then the train had moved out. Barry’s last impression of Luxor was that of the graceful, black-robed figure of Hassan es-Sugra, his hand raised to his forehead in a parting salute.
“Be not angry with her.…”
He looked down at the bewitching face half hidden in fur. Sea breezes had whipped a delicious colour into the soft cheeks—down which big tears were falling!
“Zalithea!” he cried. “My dear! what is it?”
She looked up at him quickly, blinking tears away; then:
“Sorree,” she whispered.
This word, “sorry,” she had acquired in London, but he knew that she employed it in the sense of “sad.” He squeezed her arm reassuringly. He had long since decided that her courage was miraculous—unfaltering. Now, he tried to imagine what supreme dread—what rankling doubt—what sorrow for some long lost one had broken it.
It was always so with him. In the most perfect moments of understanding it would come—that inscrutable curtain; the veil of an unimaginable past.
Once, and once only, he had tried to ask her what he longed so ardently to know: if she remembered ever having met him before. By some unsuspected law of preordination alone could he hope to explain those visions. Had he not seen her as he was destined later to see her—in the dress of Ancient Egypt? Had he not seen her as she looked during the early days in Luxor—veiled like the women of Islam?
He thought he had made her understand. But instead of answering she had turned her back and walked away!
Did the question transgress some strange law, known to her but unknown to him?
There were times when his brain reeled. And now, with the American coast in sight, she was weeping; she was “sorree.” He wondered hopelessly what her thoughts were at this hour. “She is very sad at heart,” Hassan had said. How clearly he recalled the words of that extraordinary man.…
And then, before Barry realized the passage of time, they were in sight of the familiar skyscrapers.
Zalithea’s mood had changed. The child had come uppermost again. She clapped her hands gleefully, grasping Barry’s arm and pointing to the skyline of New York.
“Fo-ah me?” she asked.
Barry nodded, laughing.
“I trust,” murmured Professor Blackwell, “she is not labouring under the delusion that you are the king of this country!”
They speedily had evidence of Mrs. Uffington’s activity. She was not prepared to lose the credit of discovering a beautiful Oriental princess who had been adopted by an American millionaire! Every ship reporter in the city was primed; camera men were there in flocks.
And Zalithea imperiously declined to see any of them!
She retired to her cabin, with old Safîyeh on guard in the alleyway; and all remonstrances were in vain.
For a considerable time she banned Aunt Micky, as well, until Danbazzar made it clear to her that Aunt Micky was John Cumberland’s sister. She received her, then, very graciously. Aunt Micky was stupefied.
“She’s a beauty, young Cumberland,” she confided to Barry. “But who the devil is she?”
“The daughter of one of the minor rulers out there, Micky!”
“But she’s not black! She’s whiter than I am!”
“It isn’t my fault,” said Barry humbly. “Cleopatra wasn’t black, according to all accounts.”
“But this girl isn’t an Egyptian.”
“Neither was Cleopatra!”
“Young Cumberland—you have a secret eye! It’s the right. I’ll get the truth out of John!”
Out on the deck, Jim Sakers and pretty Jack Lorrimer were consoling each other. When, presently, Barry reappeared:
“This is the blackest hour of my life!” Jim declared plaintively. “I am despised—cast out—rejected. I feel like a falling stock. As though it isn’t bad enough to be told that the coveted bottle of unchanging desert has been forgotten! No man with a heart could have overlooked my quart of eternal sand. Now, with my eyes bulging out of my head and my temperature at a hundred and four in the shade, I’m told, ‘No fairy princess. Pass along, please. Stand clear of the gangway!’ ”
“Be patient, Jim,” said Barry. “She feels very strange.”
“She feels very strange!” cried Jim. “I feel completely extraordinary! Here are we—poor little sleepy Jack, who didn’t go to bed until three o’clock, and tired-eyed Jim who had to get home after seeing her home—here are we, lured from our slumbers at an unearthly hour by false promises! … Sand and sorrow!”
When Zalithea finally went ashore she was so heavily veiled that not a glimpse of her features could be obtained.
As a result, the most conflicting accounts were published. For a ship reporter whose imagination cannot penetrate a few yards of drapery is not worthy of his hire. “Veiled Princess for Cumberland Collection,” was one good headline. “Daughter of Persian Pasha Says New York Like Paradise,” another declared. “Harem Beauty Brought by Berengaria,” was the line which appealed to Jim. But Barry’s indignation was aroused by “Cumberland Cleopatra Here!”
A suite of rooms had been prepared, by John Cumberland’s orders, in the furnishing of which, while a definite Egyptian note had been struck, the total leaned to modernity. For Zalithea he had conceived an affection which, when he tried to analyze it, seemed to be compounded of the paternal, the scientific, and—he could not otherwise define it—the maternal! She was his child in a sense not hitherto comprehended in human relations; and she was the embodiment of that second great passion of his life—Egyptology.
Lovingly he had studied her. He had noted her early acceptance of those mechanical things which at first had appalled her; her easy, youthful adaptability to wildly strange environment. A certain shrinking from her—involuntary, superstitious—of which for a time he had been conscious, left him utterly in the sunshine of her warm humanity.
Barry’s attitude occasioned him many anxious hours. That the boy should lose his heart to this beautiful mystery was no matter for wonder. He had eyes, ears, imagination. And Zalithea would have inflamed any man of his age not made of wood or stone with whom she was thrown into contact.
Furthermore, that the meeting of these two was preordained, John Cumberland found it hard to doubt. He knew that Barry thought so; and he did not blame him. For what other explanation could there be of those strange pre-glimpses which he had had of her? He had never doubted his son’s word. But he had found something phenomenal in the story which had led him to look upon it as the product of an excited imagination. How little he had known, in those days, of the wonderful! How sceptical he had been!
From the big armchair in which he was seated in the library, he looked up at a wall painting from Medinet Habu. Quite clearly he recalled that he had been seated here, looking at this very painting, on the night that Danbazzar arrived, on the night that he had first set eyes upon the papyrus!
Somehow, the values of his possessions seemed to have changed, subtly, during his absence. That wall painting, for instance, no longer struck him as a priceless treasure, although he had often thought of it as such. The enamelled casket of Nitocris; the exquisite painted wooden figure of the priestess, Thent-Kheta; even the great inlaid throne of Osorkon from Bubastis—in some queer fashion they had lost colour in his eyes.
Almost as the fact dawned upon him, its explanation came, too. As those ancient priests had foreseen, a living testimony to the grandeur of the Pharaohs would outshine all others!
The library door opened, although there had been no knock; and Zalithea stole in.
John Cumberland jumped up and placed an armchair for her. Jim and Jack were coming on after a theatre, Danbazzar and Aunt Micky having joined them there.
Zalithea was wearing a frock which had been bought for her in Paris. She wore it exquisitely. It was a semi-Oriental creation, simple enough; but it set off her dark, lithe beauty to perfection. She rested one slender hand on the chair back for a moment, smiling inscrutably at John Cumberland.
Then she crossed to the Bubastite throne and seated herself.
“Yes?” she asked naïvely, her head tilted aside.
And John Cumberland knew that it would be quite useless to say No, therefore:
“Yes, Zalithea,” he agreed, “if you’re comfortable.”
She listened in her intent fashion, then:
“Zal’ith-eeah you-ah-addorahble!” she corrected.
John Cumberland sat down. Apparently Zalithea thought that this was the name by which she was known nowadays. He strongly suspected the identity of the tutor who had led her into this error.
“Barry!” he muttered, reaching for the cigar box.
“Bahree-I-love-you,” Zalithea corrected again. “Geeve-me-er-kiss.”
“You’re learning the wrong things too quickly, young lady!” said John Cumberland. “Do you know where you are, yet?”
“Ah-addorahble!”
“I mean where you live. I tried to teach you yesterday. Your home?”
Zalithea wrinkled her smooth forehead.
“Darling,” she replied.
“I know you’re a darling,” John Cumberland admitted; “but I think I shall have to take your education in hand myself. I’m afraid I have been neglecting you.”
Zalithea, from the throne of the Bubastite king, smiled regally.
A considerable disturbance in the lobby now proclaimed the return of the theatre party. Barry opened the library door, and:
“Hullo!” he cried. “You’re in there! I’ve been hunting all over for you. Here’s the gang.”
Headed by the Countess Colonna, the party entered. Jack Lorrimer was frankly nervous—an unusual condition—but highly curious. She had not yet met the mysterious Cumberland guest. Jim followed in with Danbazzar, an imposing figure distinguished from the rest alike by his great height and by the slight eccentricity of dress which he affected. His Egyptian tan suited his oddly Moorish type.