The Mummy and Miss Nitocris | Page 6

of
Egyptian history came up in his mind, no longer as facts learned from
books and monuments, wall-paintings, and hieroglyphics, but as living
entities. He seemed to know, not by memory, but of immediate
knowledge. It was the difference between the reading of the story, say,
of a battle, and actually taking part in it. He got into bed, and turned
over on his right side, saying:
"Well, this is all very extraordinary. I wonder what it all means? Thank
goodness, I am sleepy enough, and sleep is the best of all medicines. I
should not wonder if I were to dream of Memphis again to-night. A
wonderfully beautiful mummy that, quite unique--and Nitocris, too.
Good-night, Nitocris, my royal mistress that might have been!
Good-night!"
CHAPTER II
BACK TO THE PAST
The City of a Hundred Kings, vast and sombre, stretched away into the
dim, soft distance of the moonlit night to right and left and far behind
him. In front lay the broad, smooth, silver-gleaming Nile, then
approaching its full flood-time, and looking like a wide, shining road
out of the shadows through the light and into the shadows
again--symbol of the visible present coming invisibly out of the
domains of the past, and fading away into the still more hazy domain of
the unknown future. Symbol, too, in its countless ripples under the
fresh north wind, of the generations of Man drifting endlessly down the
Stream of Time.
He was standing in the dark shadows of a huge pylon at one end of the
broad white terrace of the palace of Pepi in Memphis--he,
Ma-Rim[=o]n, Priest of Amen-Ra and Initiate of the Higher Mysteries.
Nitocris was standing beside him with her hands clasped behind her
and her head slightly thrown back, and as she gazed out over the river
the moonlight fell full on the white loveliness of her face and into the
dark depths of her eyes, where it seemed to lose itself in the dusk that

lay deep down in them, a dusk like the shadow of a soul in sorrow.
He looked upon her face, and saw in it a beauty and a mystery deeper
even than the beauty and the mystery of the Egyptian night as it was in
those old days--the face of a fair woman, a riddle of the gods which
men might go mad in seeking to read aright, and yet never learn the
true meaning of it.
The silence between them had been long and yet so solemn in its
wordless meaning that he had not dared to break it. Then at length she
spoke, moving only her lips, her body still motionless and her eyes still
gazing at the stars, or into the depths beyond them.
"Can it be true, Ma-Rim[=o]n? Can the gods indeed have permitted
such a thing to be? Can the All-Father have given His Chief Minister to
be the instrument of such a foul crime and monstrous impiety as this?"
And he replied, slowly and sadly:
"Yes, it is true, Nitocris, true that thou art now Queen in the land by the
will of the great Rameses; and true also it is that the shade of Nefer is
now waiting in the halls of Amenti till his murderers shall be sent by
the hand of a just vengeance into the presence of the Divine Assessors."
"Ah yes, vengeance," she replied, turning towards him with a gasp in
her voice, "that must come; but whose hand shall cast the spear or draw
the bow? We claim kinship with the gods, but we are not the gods, and
what mortal hand could avenge a crime like this?"
"A woman's hand is soft and a woman's lips are sweet, yet what so
cruel or so merciless in all the world as a woman? As there is nothing
liker Heaven than a woman's love, so there is nothing liker Hell than a
woman's hate. So saith the Ancient Wisdom, O Nitocris; and therefore,
as thou hast loved Nefer the Prince, so shalt thou also hate Menkau-Ra
and Anemen-Ha, his murderers and the destroyers of his promised
happiness."
She shivered as he spoke, not with cold, for the breath of that perfect

night was well nigh as soft as her touch and as warm as her own breath.
She turned swiftly and laid her hand on his shoulder. Her touch was as
light as the falling of the rose-leaves in the gardens of Sais, yet he
trembled under it, and his face, which had been as pale as her own
before, flushed darkly red as she looked into his eyes.
"You--yes, you, Ma-Rim[=o]n, you too love me, do you not--truly?
The stars are the eyes of the gods: they are looking on you. Tell me, do
you love me? Does your blood