Part 1 (2/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration]
[Ill.u.s.tration]
II
For five minutes the decorous silence of the anteroom was unbroken.
Then the door of the inner office swung open and closed behind a dejected-looking young man, and the boy, without so much as asking for a card, preceded the secretly-elated Simpkins into the hall.
They had stepped from the present into the past. Simpkins found himself looking between a double row of pillars, covered with hieroglyphics in red and black, to an altar of polished black basalt, guarded on either side by stone sphinxes. Behind it, straight from the lofty ceiling, fell a veil of black velvet, embroidered with golden scarabaei, and fringed with violet. The approach, a hundred paces or more, was guarded by twoscore mummies in black cases, standing upright along the pillars.
”Watcher gawkin' at?” demanded the youth, grinning up at the staring Simpkins. ”Lose dat farmer-boy face or it's back to de ole homestead for youse. Her royal nibs ain't lookin' for no good milker.”
”Oh, I'm just rubbering to see where the goat's kept,” the reporter answered, trying to a.s.sume a properly metropolitan expression. ”Suppose I'll have to take the third degree before I can get out of here.”
The youth started noiselessly across the floor, and Simpkins saw that he wore sandals. His own heavy walking boots rang loudly on the flagged floors and woke the echoes in the vaulted ceiling. He began to tread on tiptoe, as one moves in a death-chamber.
And that was what this great room was: a charnel-house filled with the spoil of tombs and temples. The dim light fluttered down from quaint, triangular windows, set with a checker-work of brick-red and saffron-colored panes about a central design, a scarlet heart upon a white star, and within that a black scarabaeus. The white background of the walls threw into relief the angular figures on the frieze, scenes from old Egyptian life: games, marriages, feasts and battles, painted in the crude colors of early art. Between were paneled pictures of the G.o.ds, monstrous and deformed deities, half men, half beasts; and the dado, done in black, pictured the funeral rites of the Egyptians, with explanatory pa.s.sages from the ritual of the dead. Rudely-sculptured bas-reliefs and intaglios, torn from ancient mastabas, were set over windows and doors, and stone colossi of kings and G.o.ds leered and threatened from dusky corners. Sarcophagi of black basalt, red porphyry and pink-veined alabaster, cunningly carved, were disposed as they had been found in the pits of the dead, with the sepulchral vases and the hideous wooden idols beside them.
The descriptions of the place had prepared Simpkins for something out of the ordinary, but nothing like this; and he looked about him with wonder in his eyes and a vague awe at his heart, until he found himself standing in the corner of the hall to the right of the black altar in the west. Two sarcophagi, one of basalt, the other of alabaster, were placed at right angles to the walls, partially inclosing a small s.p.a.ce.
Within this inclosure, bowed over a stone table, sat a woman, writing.
At either end of the table a mummy case, one black, the other gilt, stood upright. The boy halted just outside this singular private office, and the woman rose and came toward them.
Simpkins had never read Virgil, but he knew the G.o.ddess by her walk. She was young--not over thirty--and tall and stately. Her gown was black, some soft stuff which clung about her, and a bunch of violets at her waist made the whole corner faintly sweet. Her features were regular, but of a type strange to Simpkins, the nose slightly aquiline, the lips full and red--vividly so by contrast to the clear white of the skin--and the forehead low and straight. Black hair waved back from it, and was caught up by the coils of a golden asp, from whose lifted head two rubies gleamed. Doubtless a woman would have p.r.o.nounced her gown absurd and her way of wearing her hair an intolerable affectation. But it was effective with the less discriminating animal--instantly so with Simpkins.
And then she raised her eyes and looked at him. To the first glance they were dusky eyes, deep and fathomless, changing swiftly to the blue-black of the northern skies on a clear winter night, and flas.h.i.+ng out sharp points of light, like star-rays. He knew that in that glance he had been weighed, gauged and cla.s.sed, and, though he was used to questioning Governors and Senators quite unabashed and unafraid, he found himself standing awkward and ill-at-ease in the presence of this woman.
Had she addressed him in Greek or Egyptian, he would have accepted it as a matter of course. But when she did speak it was in the soft, clear tones of a well-bred Englishwoman, and what she said was commonplace enough.
”I suppose you've called to see about the place?” she asked.
”Ye-es,” stammered Simpkins, but with wit enough to know that he had come at an opportune moment. If there were a place, decidedly he had called to see about it.
”Who sent you?” she continued, and he understood that he was not there in answer to a want advertis.e.m.e.nt.
”Professor Blackburn.” And he presented his letter and went on, with a return of his glibness: ”You see, I've been working my way through Harvard--preparing for the ministry--Congregationalist. Found I'd have to stop and go to work regularly for a while before I could finish. So I've come over here, where I can attend the night cla.s.ses at Columbia at the same time. And as I'm interested in Egyptology, and had heard a good deal about your collection, I got that letter to you. Thought you might know some one in the building who wanted a man, as work in a place like this would be right in my line. Of course, if you're looking for any one, I'd like to apply for the place.” And he paused expectantly.
”I see. You want to be a Dissenting minister, and you're working for your education. Very creditable of you, I'm sure. And you're a stranger in New York, you say?”
”Utter,” returned Simpkins.
Mrs. Athelstone proceeded to question him at some length about his qualifications. When he had satisfied her that he was competent to attend to the easy, clerical work of the office and to care for the more valuable articles in the hall, things which she did not care to leave to the regular cleaners, she concluded:
”I'm disposed to give you a trial, Mr. Simpkins, but I want you to understand that under no circ.u.mstances are you to talk about me or your work outside the office. I've been so hunted and harried by reporters----” And her voice broke. ”What I want above all else is a clerk that I can trust.”
The a.s.surance which Simpkins gave in reply came harder than all the lies he had told that morning, and, some way, none of them had slipped out so smoothly as usual. He was a fairly truthful and tender-hearted man outside his work, but in it he had accustomed himself to regard men and women in a purely impersonal way, and their troubles and scandals simply as material. To his mind, nothing was worth while unless it had a news value; and nothing was sacred that had. But he was uneasily conscious now that he was doing a deliberately brutal thing, and for the first time he felt that regard for a subject's feelings which is so fatal to success in certain branches of the new journalism. But he repressed the troublesome instinct, and when Mrs. Athelstone dismissed him a few minutes later, it was with the understanding that he should report the next morning, ready for work.
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