Chapter X: The Stage Fills

The party which gradually assembled on the lawn about four was somewhat small, but very select. Nitocris had too much common sense and too much real consideration for her friends and acquaintances to get together a mere mob of well-dressed people of probably incompatible tastes and temperament, and call it a party. She disliked an elbowing crowd and a clatter of fashionably shrill tongues with all the aversion of a delicately developed sensibility. No consideration of rank or social power or wealth had the slightest weight with her when she was distributing cards of invitation, wherefore the said cards were all the more eagerly awaited by those who did, and did not, get them. The result of this in the present case was that, although every one accepted and came, rather less than fifty people had the run of the broad lawns and the leafy wilderness about them on that momentous afternoon.

The first of the arrivals was Professor Hartley, reputed to be the greatest mathematician in England. He was a large man with rather heavy features, lit up by alert grey eyes, a big, dome-like cranium, and a manner that was modest almost to diffidence. He brought his wife, a slim and somewhat stern-featured lady, who, in the domestic sense, kept him in his place with inflexible decision, and worshipped him in his professional capacity, and two pretty, well-dressed, and obviously well-bred daughters. Their carriage drew up, turned into the drive precisely at four. Punctuality was the Professor’s one and only social vice.

Next came Commander Merrill in a hansom. This would be one of the very few meetings that he could hope for with his lost beloved--as he now sadly thought of her--before he put H.M.S. Blazer into commission, and so punctuality on his part was both natural and excusable. Then came a few more carriages containing very nice people with whom we have here but little concern; and then Miss Brenda, deeply regretting her beautiful Napier, with her father and mother in a very smart Savoy turn-out followed by a coronetted brougham drawn by a splendid pair of black Orloffs. This was followed by an equally smart dog-cart driven by a rather slightly-built but well set-up young man with a light moustache, bronzed skin, and brilliant blue eyes. He was good-looking, but if his features had been absolutely plain he could never have looked commonplace, for this was Lord Lester Leighton, son of the Earl of Kyneston, and twenty generations of unblemished descent had made him the aristocrat that he was.

Nitocris did not like pompous announcements by servants, and so she received her guests, who were all acquaintances or friends, in the great porch through which many a brilliant presence had passed, and had two maids waiting inside to see to the wants of the ladies, and their own coachman and a couple of grooms to attend to matters outside.

Merrill was made as happy as possible by a bright smile, a real hand-clasp instead of the usual Society paw-waggle, and instructions to go and make himself agreeable and useful. Brenda also received a hearty “shake”--Nitocris did not believe in kissing in public--and when the Professor and Mrs Huysman had gone in, she whispered:

“I suppose that’s the Prince’s brougham. You must wait here, dear, and do the introductions. You’re responsible, you know.”

Brenda assented with a nod and a smile, as the brougham drew up and the smart tiger jumped down and opened the door. The Prince got out, and was followed by Phadrig the Adept. As she looked at the two men, Nitocris felt as though a wave of cold air had suddenly enveloped her whole being--body and soul.

“Niti, this is our friend, Prince Oscar Oscarovitch, whom you have been kind enough to let me invite by proxy. Prince, this is Miss Nitocris Marmion.”

Of course all the world knew of Oscar Oscarovitch, the modern Skobeleff, the lineal descendant of Ivan the Terrible, the crystal-brained, steel-willed man who was to be the saviour and regenerator of half-ruined, revolution-rent Russia, but this was the first time that Nitocris had met him in her present life. When she had returned his stately bow, she looked up and saw with a strange intuition, which somehow seemed half-reminiscent an almost perfect type of the primitive warrior through the disguise of his faultless twentieth-century attire. He was nearly two inches over six feet, but he was so exquisitely proportioned that he looked less than his height. His skin was fair and smooth, but tanned to an olive-brown. His forehead was of medium height, straight and square, with jet-black brows drawn almost straight across it above a pair of rather soft, dreamy eyes that were blue or black according to the mood of their possessor. His nose was strong and slightly curved, with delicately sensitive nostrils. A dark glossy moustache and beard trimmed à la Tsar, partly hid full, almost sensual lips and a powerful somewhat projecting chin.

As their eyes met the shiver of revulsion passed through her again. She hardly heard his murmured compliments, but her attention awoke when he turned to the man who was standing behind him, and said with a very graceful gesture of his left hand:

“Miss Marmion, this is the gentleman whom you have so graciously permitted me to bring to your house. This is Phadrig the Adept, as he is known in his own ancient land of Egypt, a worker of wonders which really are wonders, and not mere sleight-of-hand conjuring tricks. He has been good enough to accompany me in order to convince the learned of the West that the Immemorial East could still teach it something if it chose.”

Nitocris bowed, and as she looked at the figure which now stood beside the Prince, she shivered again. She had a swift sense of standing in the presence of implacable enemies, and yet she had never seen these men before, and, for all she knew, she had not an enemy in the world. She was intensely relieved when Lord Lester Leighton came up and held out his hand, and she was able to ask the Prince and his companion to go through to the lawn.

No one would have recognised the shabby denizen of the grimy room in Candler’s Court, Borough High Street, in the tall, dignified Eastern gentleman who walked with slow and stately step through the spacious old hall of “The Wilderness.” He was clad in a light frock-coat suit of irreproachable cut and fit. The correctly-creased trousers met brightly-burnished, narrow-toed tan boots; a black-tasselled scarlet tarbush was set square on his high forehead, and the dark red tie under his two-ply collar just added the necessary touch of Oriental colour to his costume, and went excellently with the lighter red of the tarbush. It is hardly necessary to say that when he and the Prince went out on to the lawn, they were, as a Society paper report of the function would have put it, “the observed of all observers.”

“I’m so glad you were able to be here in time for my little party, Lord Leighton,” said Nitocris, when she had ended the welcoming of the other guests. “Dad will be delighted, too----”

She stopped rather suddenly, remembering that Dad would have to tell his young friend the sad story of the mysterious loss of the Mummy; but another subject was uppermost in her mind just then, and, taking refuge in it, she went on quickly:

“Come along to the lawn. I want to introduce you to a very distinguished gentleman--and his wife and daughter. No less a person, my lord, than the great Professor Hoskins van Huysman!”

“What!” exclaimed Leighton, with a laugh that was almost boyish for such a serious and learned young man. “The Huysman: the Professor’s most doughty antagonist in the arena of symbols and theorems? Oh, now that is good!”

“Yes; I think you will find him very interesting,” replied Nitocris, hoping in her soul that he would find Brenda a great deal more interesting. “Come along, or Dad will be beginning to think that I am neglecting my duties, and I must be on quite my best behaviour to-day. We are favoured by the presence of another very celebrated celebrity to-day. That tall man who came in just before you was Prince Oscar Oscarovitch.”

“Oh yes,” he said lightly; “I recognised the brute.”

“The brute? Dear me, that is rather severe. Then you know His Highness?” she asked in a low, almost eager, voice.

“There are not many men in the Near or Far East who have not some cause to know His Highness,” he replied in a serious tone, tinged by the suspicion of a sneer. “He is about the finest specimen of the well-veneered savage that even Russia has produced for the last century. He is a brilliant scholar, statesman, and soldier; delightful among his equals--or those he chooses to consider so--charming to men, and, they say, almost irresistible to women; but to his opponents and his inferiors, a pitiless brute-beast without heart, or soul, or honour. A curious mixture: but that’s the man.”

“How awful!” murmured Nitocris. “Fancy a man like that being in such a position!”

But, although she did not understand why, she had heard his harshly-spoken words with a positive sense of relief. They exactly translated and crystallised her first inexplicable feelings of desperate aversion--almost of terror.

She led Leighton to a little group on the left side of the lawn, composed of the three Professors and the wives and daughters of two of them. As they approached them, Nitocris became sensible of a curious kind of nervousness. She did not know that by this commonplace action she was reuniting two links in a long-severed chain of destiny, but she had a dim consciousness that she was going to do something much more important than merely introducing two strangers to each other. She looked quite anxiously at Brenda, who had turned towards them as they came near, and saw that, just for the fraction of a second, her eyes brightened, and a passing flush deepened the delicate colour in her cheeks. It was almost like a glance of recognition, and yet she had only heard his name two or three times, and certainly had never seen him before. Then she looked swiftly at Leighton. Yes, there was a flush under his tan and a new light in his eyes. When she had completed the introductions she looked away for a moment, and said in her soul: