Chapter XV: The Advancement of Nitocris--the Resolve of Oscarovitch

Franklin Marmion and Hoskins van Huysman parted that evening in what may be described as a state of armed neutrality, but with more cordiality than Brenda, at any rate, had hoped for. Still, they were both gentlemen, and, moreover, the American scientist was honestly looking forward to the discovery of some fatal flaw in the reasoning of his English rival which should leave the final triumph with him--and such a triumph would be not only final but crushing.

Brenda whirled her father and Lord Leighton--who, of course, sat beside her in front as she drove--off to supper; Merrill went to his club to ruminate happily for an hour; and the hero of the evening and his daughter drove home almost in silence, and it was a silence for which there was a very sufficient reason. Such people do not talk about trivialities when they are thinking about much more serious concerns.

After supper Nitocris followed her father into the study, as he quite expected her to do, and when she had shut the door, she faced him and said in a voice that was not quite her own:

“Dad, there seems to me to be only one explanation of what you did to-night. I know enough mathematics to see that it is the only one. If you tell me that I am wrong, of course I shall believe you--and then I shall ask you how else you did it.”

As she spoke he felt that his soul was asking itself a momentous question. She had guessed--or did she already know?--the Great Secret. And, if either, was she herself near enough to the dividing line between the two worlds for him to tell her the truth?

He sat down in the chair before his writing-table and stared hard at his plotting-pad for a few moments. Then he looked up at her and saw the answer.

“Niti,” he said slowly, and with a little halt between the words, “you have asked me a question which I think some one else must answer, if it can be answered at all. Look behind you!”

She turned swiftly, and there, almost beside her, stood--not the Mummy, but the Queen, her living other-self, royal-robed and crowned as she had been in the dim past, which was now again the present.

Would she flinch or faint, or cry out with fear? If her unconscious feet had not advanced very near to the Border she would certainly do one or the other. Indeed, it was with an inward quaking of fear for her that her father had told her to turn. It might well have meant the difference between sanity and insanity, knowing what she already did of the Mummy and its mysterious disappearance. But no: there before his eyes was worked again the miracle which had already been worked in his own case, though now it was, if possible, even more marvellous than it had been before. As Nitocris turned she uttered a low cry of wonder and recognition, and held out both hands to her other twin-self. The Queen took them, and said in the Ancient Tongue, which now she understood again after many centuries:

“Welcome, thou who wast once myself, into this larger life to which the Perfect Knowledge hath led thee: where Time is not, and that which was, and is, and shall be are the same! Thou hast yet many days, as men call them, to live in that limited life known as mortal, and so the mortal lot, with its perils and sorrows and joys, shall yet be thine: yet, although, if the High Gods will it so, that life shall end and begin and end again many times, thou hast already won through the shadows which bound that little life into the light of the Day which knows not dawn nor noon nor night. I who was, and thou who art, are one again!”

Then came silence. Franklin Marmion saw the two kindred shapes merge into each other. He closed his eyes for a moment, as he thought, and when he opened them again he was alone. He looked at the clock, and saw that it was after four.

“Dear me!” he said, getting up with a shake of his shoulders, “I must have fallen asleep. Where’s Niti? Why, of course, she has been in bed for hours, and it’s about time that I got there, too.”

When they met before breakfast Nitocris said to him:

“I had a very strange experience last night, Dad. I either saw, or dreamt I saw, the Mummy alive again, robed and crowned like a queen of ancient Egypt; and then we seemed to become the same person, and I remembered that I had been Queen Nitocris of Egypt once. Then I found myself alone--so very much alone--in a new world which was still like this one, only there wasn’t any time. I had another sense which made me able to see past, present, and future all at once, and here and there, and up and down, and something else were all the same, and yet it did not seem in the slightest strange to me, so I suppose it was a dream.”

“It was no dream, Niti,” said her father, looking at her with grave eyes. “Last night, as we have to say in the state of Three Dimensions, you had your first glimpse of the state of Four. I saw what you did.”

“Ah!” she replied, without any sign of astonishment. “Then that is why I was able to understand your demonstrations last night when all the rest were puzzled. I didn’t think I quite did then, however, but I see now that I did. And so I and Her Majesty are really one and the same! It ought to seem very wonderful, but somehow it doesn’t in the slightest.”

“I don’t think that anything will seem wonderful to you now, Niti,” was the quiet response. “But as we are at present on the lower plane of existence, it will be necessary for us to go to breakfast.”

Oscarovitch and Phadrig went back after the lecture to the Prince’s flat in Royal Court Mansions, which, as a bachelor and a bird of passage, he found much more convenient in many ways than a house. He ordered his Russian servant to make coffee for his guest, and mixed a stiff brandy-and-soda for himself. He wanted it, for the experiences of the evening had shaken even his nerves not a little. He was essentially a man of power, both physically and mentally, of boundless ambitions and iron will, vast knowledge of the world, as he knew it, and of very high intellectual attainments; but the cast of his mind was absolutely material, and therefore he both hated and feared anything which appeared to transcend the material plane to which his mental vision was at present entirely confined.