The Mummy and Miss Nitocris | Page 2

Of course, you
don't know what colour her eyes are--just fancy, Dad! they have been
shut for nearly five thousand years, perhaps a little more--because I
think they counted by dynasties then--and yet look at the features! Just
imagine me dead!"
"Just imagine yourself shutting the door on the other side, my dear
Niti," said the Professor, who had risen from the chair, and was facing
his daughter and the Mummy. "I don't want to banish you too
unceremoniously, but I really have a lot of work to do to-night, and, as
you might know, Bachelor of Science of London as you are, I have got
to worry out as best I can, if I can do it at all, this problem that Hartley
sent me about the Forty-seventh Proposition of the first book of
Euclid."
"Oh yes," she said, going to his side and putting her hand on to his
shoulder as he stood facing the Mummy; "I have reason enough to
remember that. And what does Professor Hartley say about it?"
"He says, my dear Niti," said the Professor, in a voice which had
something like a note of awe in it, "that when Pythagoras thought out
that problem--which, of course, is not Euclid's at all--he almost saw
across the horizon of the world that we live in."
"But that," she interrupted, "would be something like looking across the
edge of time into eternity, and that--well, of course, that is quite
impossible, even to you, Dad, or Mr Hartley. What does he mean?"

"He doesn't quite mean that, dear," replied the Professor, still staring
straight at the motionless Mummy as though he half expected the lips
which had not spoken for fifty centuries to answer the question that was
shaping itself in his mind. "What Hartley means, dear, is this--that
when Pythagoras thought out that proposition he had almost reached
the border which divides the world of three dimensions from the world
of four."
"Which, as our dear old friend Euclid would say, is impossible; because
you know, Dad, if that were possible, everything else would be. Come,
now, Annie is bringing up your whisky and soda. Put away your
problems and take your night-cap, and do get to bed in something like
respectable time. Don't worry your dear old head about forty-seventh
propositions and fourth dimensions and mummies and that sort of thing,
even if this Mummy does happen to look a bit like me. Now, good
night, and remember that the night-cap is to be a night-cap, and when
you've put it on you really must go to bed. You've been thinking a great
deal too much this week. Good-night, Dad."
"Good-night, Niti, dear. Don't trouble your head about my thinking.
Sufficient unto the brain are the thoughts thereof. Sometimes they are
more than sufficient. Good-night. Sleep well and don't dream, if you
can help it."
"And don't you dream, Dad, especially about that wretched proposition.
Just have another pipe, and drink your whisky and go to bed. There's
something in your eyes that says you want a long night's rest.
Good-night now, and sleep well."
She pulled his head down and kissed him twice on his grey, thin cheek,
and then, with a wave of her hand and a laughing nod towards the
Mummy, vanished through the closing study door to go and dream her
dreams, which were not very likely to be of mummies and fourth
dimensional problems, and left her father to dream his.
Then a couple of lines from one of "B.V.'s" poems, which had been
running in his head all the evening, came back to him, and he
murmured half-unconsciously:

"'Was it hundreds of years ago, my love, Was it thousands of miles
away...?'"
"And why should it not be? Why should you, who were once
Ma-Rim[=o]n, priest of Amen-Ra, in the City of Memphis--you who
almost stood upon the threshold of the Inmost Sanctuary of Knowledge:
you who, if your footsteps had not turned aside into the way of
temptation and trodden the black path of Sin, might even now be
dwelling on the Shores of Everlasting Peace in the Land of
Amenti--dost thou dare to ask such a question?"
The sudden change of the pronoun seemed to him to put the Clock of
Time back indefinitely.
He was standing by his desk still facing the Mummy just as his
daughter had left him after saying "good-night." He was not a man to
be easily astonished. Not only was he one of the best-read amateur
Egyptologists in Europe, but he was also an ex-President of the Royal
Society, a Member of the Psychical Research Society, and, moreover,
Chairman of a recently appointed Commission on Comparative
Insanity, the object of whose labours was to determine, if possible,
what proportion of people outside asylums