Part 13

The original discovery was purely the result of accident, and his first researches had to be conducted in secrecy, without assistance, otherwise the _trouvaille_ would have become public property. His explorations led him to a building that he believed was a tomb; and having, by laborious efforts, gained an entrance, he had the satisfaction of proving that his surmise was correct, and also the reward of finding in the chamber a single sarcophagus, containing a mummified girl, or woman, in wonderful preservation. He knew the common superstition that disaster would befall any one who disturbed a mummy; but he thought little of the tale, and did not mean to be deterred from removing the body when he should have the means to do so. Meanwhile he had to be content with what he could carry, and that consisted of a few coins, and a necklace which he unfastened from the lady’s poor shrivelled neck, or rather from the cere-cloths in which it was swathed.

Perhaps you have never seen one of these mummy necklaces; they are rather curious, and, from my friend’s account of it, the one he found nearly resembled others which I have seen myself. The material seemed to be some kind of pottery, or opaque glass made into rough beads, and short lengths of small glazed piping, strung together in a quaint pattern. The prevailing colour was a sort of turquoise with an extra dash of green, and every bit of piping was so tinted; but, alternately with these blue lengths, were strung groups of round beads, in bunches of two to six or eight, or even more. By far the majority of the beads were turquoise-blue, but some were yellow, others brown, and a few almost black, and the arrangement was such that it could easily have been made to represent a string of words. The effect of the chain was _bizarre_ but attractive, and it somewhat resembled the rosaries worn by devout Arabs. The intrinsic worth of the thing was _nil_, but sometimes one has a friend who will accept and value _un rien_ like this, for the sake of the giver, when jewels would be declined. My Italian had such a friend, and the bauble found a new home on her neck.

Not long after she had begun to wear the quaint little chain which had lain for so many centuries round the throat of the dead Egyptian, its new owner was distressed and alarmed by a persistent form of nightmare, which gradually induced a feeling that she was haunted by the wraith of a dark-skinned girl, of a type of feature unlike any known to her, but clad in raiment such as she fancied had been worn by Egyptians in the days of the Pharaohs. The apparition was always clothed in the same manner, and though she wore a number of strangely fashioned ornaments, her neck was left completely bare. The girl seemed to be ever present in her dreams, and her face always wore a look of extreme distress, as of one who grieved for the loss of some dearly beloved friend or possession. The curious part of it was, that the dream-girl seemed always to come to the sleeper as to one from whom she could get relief; and while, in her earlier appearances, she had the expression and the manner of a supplicant, the dreamer fancied that latterly there had been a change, and the dark face looked both agonised and threatening.

These visitations, which could not be ascribed to any reasonable cause, had so got on the lady’s nerves that she had gone for change to a villa on the coast of Normandy. The change of scene brought no relief. The haunting form of the Egyptian girl, though not a nightly visitor, was so constantly present, that the dread of seeing her deprived sleep of all power of giving rest, and the poor lady was not only becoming seriously ill, but she was so affected by her uncanny infliction, that she even sometimes imagined she caught glimpses of her tormentor when she herself was wide awake.

One afternoon, the lady was lying in a darkened room, the _persiennes_ closed to keep out the hot and penetrating rays of a summer sun. She felt very weary and despondent, the result of many broken nights and the prolonged strain on her nerves, and, though she held a book in her hand she was all the time wondering how much longer she could bear this oppression, and what she had done to deserve such a weirdly horrible fate. In a dull sort of way she supposed she must be going mad, and felt with grim cynicism that the border-land between sanity and insanity was so narrow that she would hardly realise the moment when she crossed it. There was absolute silence everywhere, except for the faint soothing whisper of the sea, rippling over the sand beneath the wooded bluff on which the villa stood. The air was warm and heavy with summer perfumes; the room was darkening slowly as the sun dipped towards the placid waters of La Manche; the woman was deadly weary, and she slept.

At first her sleep must have been sound; but, after a time, her eyes opened to that other consciousness which is of the world of dreams, and once again she saw her now dreaded companion, the dark-eyed, dark-skinned girl from the land of the Pharaohs. The girl seemed to plead in impassioned terms for something, but the dreamer could not understand the strange words, and racked her brain, as dreamers will, to try to imagine their meaning. The girl burst into a storm of tears, sinking to the ground in her grief and despair, and burying her face on a pile of cushions. Still the dreamer, suffering torture herself, was helpless to relieve the other. Then suddenly the girl sprang up, and, dashing the tears from her eyes, which now seemed to blaze with murderous resolve, she sprang upon the white woman, enlaced her throat with supple brown fingers, pressed and pressed, tighter and tighter--ah, God! the horror and the suffocating pain of it--and all the while the sleeper’s hands seemed tied to her side. Then with a scream the dreamer awoke. She felt her eyes must be starting from her head, and instinctively raised her hands to her throat, only to realise that her vivid sensation of strangulation was merely a nightmare, but that the chain--the string of turquoise beads which she had never unfastened from the day she first put it on--was gone.

There was now little light in the room, only enough to see things vaguely, yet the lady declares that in that first moment of waking she distinctly saw a figure, exactly like that of the girl of her dreams, glide swiftly away from her and pass out through a _portière_ into the verandah. For some time she was too frightened and unnerved to move, but when at last she summoned her people they had seen no one.

The only thing that was real was that she had lost the necklace, and never saw it again. As some compensation she also lost for ever the society of her dream-visitor, and completely recovered her own health.

Now who took my stephanotis?

XXX

SCANDAL AND BANGLES

For years I have not been so angry as I am at this minute; I have very nearly lost my temper, and the reason is really ridiculous. Why I should choose this as a favourable opportunity for writing to you I cannot tell, but my tormentor had no sooner left the room than I seized the pen, which is nearly always ready to my hand, and you are the victim. The cause of this unusual and unseemly frame of mind is a girl, quite a pretty girl, who walked in here, _sans cérémonie_, and, after a few minutes’ desultory conversation, told me a preposterous piece of gossip about myself, a fantastic story in which there was not a grain of truth.

“Who says that?” I asked.

“Everybody says so.”

“Then everybody is mistaken.”

“Of course you deny it; but it is true, all the same.”

“It is not in the least true, and I am prepared to swear that in any form of oath.”

“I dare say you are, but no one will believe you.”

“Very well. Now what does your story rest upon?”

“The evidence of people’s senses. Every one has seen you.”

“I cannot deal with ‘every one,’ it is too indefinite. You say I went to some one’s house,--not that it would matter the least if I did,--but who saw me?”

“I did.”

“You did! I never was in the house in my life.”

“Try to remember. I have seen you go in and also seen you come out of it.”

“If it were not so stupid, one might almost get angry. I repeat that I have never been in the house, nor spoken to the owner.”

“And I, having seen with my own eyes, maintain that you have.”

“You have mistaken some one else for me, or drawn on your imagination, for what you say is absolutely untrue. But, as you seem to have constructed a fantastic story on that insecure foundation, I have a good mind to charge you with defaming me.”

“By all means, and I will go into court and say what I know and you know to be true.”

Now, what can you do with a person like that? If I were the judge, trying my own cause and knowing there is not a semblance of a particle of truth in this absurd tale, I believe that if a witness appeared and gave evidence against me with this sublime assurance, I would decide the case against myself.

The wasp has still a sting left; she says, “You sent your carriage to a lady, that she might drive in it?”

“I did.”

“And she sent it back.”

“She did.”

“She would not use it because of what I have told you, and she does not want to see or speak to you again!”

I said I should not die of the affront, nor commit any rash act if the lady adhered to her determination; but I admit that, though I laughed, I was beginning to lose my temper, and I told my tormentor that if I could whip her it would be a satisfaction! She also laughed, but as I had seen that she was brimful of merriment all along, that was nothing. By-and-by she disclosed that she wanted me to do something for her, and, when I had heaped coals of fire on her head by doing what she wished, she went away asking me if I had any message for the lady who had refused my carriage! I heard her laughing all the way downstairs, and, as she insisted on walking through the grounds to her carriage, I fancy I can hear her giggling still.

I think I remarked once before that the train of another’s thoughts are not easy to divine, but explanations are boring, so I leave you to supply the connection between what I have just written and what now occurs to me to tell you. It is not only fowls and curses that come home to roost.

Once upon a time there was a very beautiful and attractive lady, the wife of a high official in India. She was of those who have but one admirer at a time, and that one very devoted. Women of her type cannot share with any one else the attentions of their cavaliers; they insist upon a service that is complete and unquestioning, dog-like in devotion and obedience; and they do not seem to care if it is also dog-like in its inability to do more than gaze in rapture at the face of its mistress. I have known cases of the kind myself, and marvelled to see how the lady and her slave can stand, and sit, and walk together, with no one to disturb their confidences, and yet they never seem to speak. As far as I can understand, that was the case with the heroine of my tale and her _cavaliere servente_. They were on the hills or in the plains--it does not matter where--when a native Prince appeared upon the scene. He was a delightful and fascinating person, but wicked beyond the dreams of wickedness. He stayed several months in the station, and when about to return to his own native state, he called upon an English friend of his and said, “I am going away; I speak English very indifferently; I wish to say good-bye to some of my friends: will you come with me?” The Englishman at once said he would be delighted, and they set out on a round of calls, the Prince saying where he wished to go. Amongst other houses they visited that of the engaging lady, and after a few words explaining his early departure and regret, the Prince produced a number of beautiful gold bangles, and said he trusted the lady would accept them as a token of his respectful admiration. This was duly interpreted, and the lady replied that as her husband held a Government post she could not accept any present. The Prince said he trusted that she would not persist in this determination, because he was merely a visitor, and as the lady’s husband had no authority or influence in his territory, he could not believe that the ordinary rules would apply to a gift of such small value, which was merely an expression of his esteem and thanks for the kindness he had received. Meanwhile the bangles had been tendered to the lady; they had lain in her hand, and she appreciated their curious design and artistic excellence.

“What shall I do?” said the lady, appealing to the Englishman.

“What you please,” he replied.

It is possible that it was out of consideration for the feelings of the donor that she then said--

“My husband would never let me accept the bangles, but I should like to keep them if I knew that you would say nothing.”

“Pray do not think of me,” said the friend; “I am an accident in the interview, and, when I leave the house, I shall have forgotten all about it.”

“Then I shall keep them.”

One evening, about a fortnight or three weeks later, the lady was dancing with the man who had interpreted, and he said, “Will you allow me to admire your bangles: they are not only beautiful in themselves but exceedingly becoming.”

“Yes,” she replied, “but the unfortunate part of it is that my husband thinks they have been given to me by some one else, and I can’t enlighten him, for I dare not tell the truth!”

_P.S._--The lady who refused to use my carriage has just sent me an invitation to dinner!

XXXI

THE REPREHENSIBLE HABIT OF MAKING COMPARISONS

I am not given to the use of postscripts, but I indulged myself with one in the last letter I wrote to you. It reminds me of the only _bon mot_ to which I can lay claim. When I was about six years old, my mother and I were visiting an aunt of mine, and, one evening, my mother read aloud to my aunt a letter she had just received. It was lengthy, and no doubt interesting to the two ladies, while the contents were probably beyond my comprehension. “Little pigs have long ears,” and I noticed that, at the conclusion of the letter, my mother read “_P.S._,” and then some final sentences. Immediately afterwards I was ordered to bed, and, once there, my mother came to see me. My small mind was full of this new idea, and I was thirsting for information as to the meaning of these mysterious letters. Therefore, when my mother had bid me good night and was going away, I said, “Mother, what does _P.S._ mean; is it Parting Subject?” She smiled and said, “No, the letters stand for _post scriptum_, but the meaning is not very different.” She afterwards helped me to wrestle with the Latin grammar, and in time I arrived at the exact translation of _post scriptum_, but my childish rendering of _P.S._ would do just as well. I was made to bitterly regret having ever suggested it; for, when my proud mother told the story, my various brothers and sisters, separately and collectively, insisted that some one had told me to say it, and I am not sure that they did not, each in turn, give me a thrashing to impress upon me the vice of “trying to be sharp.” When children have brothers and sisters, their schooling begins early and lasts a long time--fortunately for themselves and the world at large.

That, however, has nothing to do with the matter I was going to write about. I suppose you sometimes look through those galleries of garments which begin and end ladies’ journals, just as I occasionally glance at the advertisements of new books, which I find at the end of a modern novel. The other day I was idly turning over the pages of such a series of advertisements (each page devoted to one book, and quotations from the newspaper reviews of it), and I could not help noticing how, in the case of every book, if not in every _critique_, the author was compared with some well-known writer--Dickens, Thackeray, George Meredith, Zola, Ibsen, De Maupassant--it does not seem to matter who it is, so long as it is some one. As for Mr. Rudyard Kipling, a writer who mentions India, China, Japan, Siam, the French or Dutch Indies, or any place within two or three thousand miles of them, is certain to find himself compared with the astonishingly talented author of “Soldiers Three,” “The Drums of the Fore and Aft,” and a dozen other tales that had made Mr. Kipling famous in India years before his name had been heard in the West.

I know that whenever we visit a new place, we have a ridiculous desire to compare it with some totally different spot that is familiar to us; and I suppose we make the comparison, either because we want to show that we have been somewhere and seen something, or because we are so devoid of ideas or language to express them, that this comparison is our only means of description. Like London, only bigger; Petersburg in winter, but not so cold; bluer than the Mediterranean, and so on. It seems to imply poverty of resource; but if to help readers to realise the appearance of a spot in New Zealand, that place is compared with the Carse of Stirling, the information is not of much use to those who do not know their Scotland.

Is it the same with literary critics? Hardly, I fancy; because even though they write easily of Lake Toba, the Thibetan highlands, or more or less known writers, it can’t give them any real satisfaction, for their own names are but seldom disclosed.

Enlightened people who attend places of Christian worship, often wish that the occupant of the pulpit would read a sermon by some great divine, rather than stumble through an original discourse, which possibly arouses only the scorn, the resentment, or the pity of his hearers. The preacher who is conscious of his own want of eloquence, or realises that the spring of his ideas trickles in the thinnest and most uncertain of streams, may seek to improve his language, or replenish his own exhausted stock of subjects, by studying the sermons of abler men. I doubt if he is greatly to be blamed. Some illustrious writers have won renown after a diligent study of the works of dead authors, and a suggestion of the style of a famous master may be observable in the work of his admirer; just as a modern painter may, consciously or unconsciously, follow the methods, the composition, or the colour schemes of a genius who has given his name to a school of imitators. It would, however, be a little unreasonable to compare all play-writers with Shakespeare, all essayists with Macaulay. If there is nothing new under the sun, two or more men or women, contemporaries, may have the same ideas on a given subject without either being open to a charge of plagiarism. They may express the same ideas differently, or put different ideas in somewhat the same style of language: both may have drawn inspiration from a more or less original source, not generally known or quoted--in all these cases comparisons may be, and often are, simply inept. Some subjects are not yet entirely exhausted, and while it is interesting to compare the different views of recognised authorities, it is annoying to both writers and readers to find that the highest flight of criticism of a new work seems often to consist in mentioning the names of other writers on the same subject--as though it were, in a sense, their personal property, or they had some vested interest in it, by reason of discovery or continual harping on that particular theme. I suppose reviewers, except in a few instances, have no time to really read the books they criticise, and judge them on their merits; but, if they could, it would be more satisfactory to possible readers, who, as things are, can form very little opinion of what a book contains, its relative value or worthlessness, from statements like this, which purports to be an extract from a review in a leading London paper:--

“The opening chapters have a savour of Dickens; the climax is almost Zolaesque.”

Or this:--

“The knowledge of character revealed reminds us of George Eliot’s ‘Scenes of Clerical Life.’”

You will think that one who wanders from an infantile legend about the word _postscript_ to a growl anent newspaper reviews, is indifferently qualified to criticise any one or anything. As a letter-writer I acknowledge that I am inconsequent. I do not even seek to be otherwise.

XXXII

A CHALLENGE

Oh! Oh! Oh! What a storm! But are you not a little unreasonable?

You are not a circulating library, you say, nor a railway book-stall; you don’t want to hear tales of forest and flood which have no personal interest for you or me; and you cannot carry on a correspondence with a phrase-book, a thing that has no existence as a human being, and, when not lecturing you, or taking advantage of your good-nature to air boring platitudes, is doling out little stories to you, as though you were a child in a Sunday School.

My dear lady, I hope that you feel better after that tirade; but as you have attacked me with violence, and at all points at once, I claim the right to defend myself, and again I say you are unreasonable. We were never strangers to each other, or so it seems to me, but circumstances and a certain mental attraction drew us into friendship. In the delight of your society I realised what it would be to me if, through that friendship, I might win your affection. I even dreamed that I might compel the impossible, and attain to an earthly paradise of sweet alliance whence no mortal promises and no inspired writings could ever win me.