Part 11 (2/2)

As a rule I am a decently truthful person, but under these alarming circ.u.mstances I ventured to tell a slight fib with an air of nonchalant boldness. ”I am a younger brother of our reigning king,” I said without a moment's hesitation; for there was n.o.body present to gainsay me, and I tried to salve my conscience by reflecting that at any rate I was only claiming consanguinity with an imaginary personage.

”In that case,” said King Thothmes, with more geniality in his tone, ”there can be no impropriety in my addressing you personally. Will you take a place at our table next to myself, and we can converse together without interrupting a banquet which must be brief enough in any circ.u.mstances? Hatasou, my dear, you may seat yourself next to the barbarian prince.”

I felt a visible swelling to the proper dimensions of a Royal Highness as I sat down by the king's right hand. The n.o.bles resumed their places, the bronze-skinned waitresses left off standing like soldiers in a row and staring straight at my humble self, the goblets went round once more, and a comely maid soon brought me meat, bread, fruits, and date wine.

All this time I was naturally burning with curiosity to inquire who my strange hosts might be, and how they had preserved their existence for so many centuries in this undiscovered hall; but I was obliged to wait until I had satisfied his Majesty of my own nationality, the means by which I had entered the Pyramid, the general state of affairs throughout the world at the present moment, and fifty thousand other matters of a similar sort. Thothmes utterly refused to believe my reiterated a.s.sertion that our existing civilization was far superior to the Egyptian; ”because,” said he, ”I see from your dress that your nation is utterly devoid of taste or invention;” but he listened with great interest to my account of modern society, the steam-engine, the Permissive Prohibitory Bill, the telegraph, the House of Commons, Home Rule, and the other blessings of our advanced era, as well as to a brief _resume_ of European history from the rise of the Greek culture to the Russo-Turkish war. At last his questions were nearly exhausted, and I got a chance of making a few counter inquiries on my own account.

”And now,” I said, turning to the charming Hatasou, whom I thought a more pleasing informant than her august papa, ”I should like to know who _you_ are.”

”What, don't you know?” she cried with unaffected surprise. ”Why, we're mummies.”

She made this astounding statement with just the same quiet unconsciousness as if she had said, ”we're French,” or ”we're Americans.” I glanced round the walls, and observed behind the columns, what I had not noticed till then--a large number of empty mummy-cases, with their lids placed carelessly by their sides.

”But what are you doing here?” I asked in a bewildered way.

”Is it possible,” said Hatasou, ”that you don't really know the object of embalming? Though your manners show you to be an agreeable and well-bred young man, you must excuse my saying that you are shockingly ignorant. We are made into mummies in order to preserve our immortality.

Once in every thousand years we wake up for twenty-four hours, recover our flesh and blood, and banquet once more upon the mummied dishes and other good things laid by for us in the Pyramid. To-day is the first day of a millennium, and so we have waked up for the sixth time since we were first embalmed.”

”The _sixth_ time?” I inquired incredulously. ”Then you must have been dead six thousand years.”

”Exactly so.”

”But the world has not yet existed so long,” I cried, in a fervour of orthodox horror.

”Excuse me, barbarian prince. This is the first day of the three hundred and twenty-seven thousandth millennium.”

My orthodoxy received a severe shock. However, I had been accustomed to geological calculations, and was somewhat inclined to accept the antiquity of man; so I swallowed the statement without more ado.

Besides, if such a charming girl as Hatasou had asked me at that moment to turn Mohammedan, or to wors.h.i.+p Osiris, I believe I should incontinently have done so.

”You wake up only for a single day and night, then?” I said.

”Only for a single day and night. After that, we go to sleep for another millennium.”

”Unless you are meanwhile burned as fuel on the Cairo Railway,” I added mentally. ”But how,” I continued aloud, ”do you get these lights?”

”The Pyramid is built above a spring of inflammable gas. We have a reservoir in one of the side chambers in which it collects during the thousand years. As soon as we awake, we turn it on at once from the tap, and light it with a lucifer match.”

”Upon my word,” I interposed, ”I had no notion you Ancient Egyptians were acquainted with the use of matches.”

”Very likely not. 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Cephrenes, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,' as the bard of Philae puts it.”

Further inquiries brought out all the secrets of that strange tomb-house, and kept me fully interested till the close of the banquet.

Then the chief priest solemnly rose, offered a small fragment of meat to a deified crocodile, who sat in a meditative manner by the side of his deserted mummy-case, and declared the feast concluded for the night. All rose from their places, wandered away into the long corridors or side-aisles, and formed little groups of talkers under the brilliant gas-lamps.

For my part, I scrolled off with Hatasou down the least illuminated of the colonnades, and took my seat beside a marble fountain, where several fish (G.o.ds of great sanct.i.ty, Hatasou a.s.sured me) were disporting themselves in a porphyry basin. How long we sat there I cannot tell, but I know that we talked a good deal about fish, and G.o.ds, and Egyptian habits, and Egyptian philosophy, and, above all, Egyptian love-making.

The last-named subject we found very interesting, and when once we got fully started upon it, no diversion afterwards occurred to break the even tenour of the conversation. Hatasou was a lovely figure, tall, queenly, with smooth dark arms and neck of polished bronze: her big black eyes full of tenderness, and her long hair bound up into a bright Egyptian headdress, that harmonized to a tone with her complexion and her robe. The more we talked, the more desperately did I fall in love, and the more utterly oblivious did I become of my duty to Editha Fitz-Simkins. The mere ugly daughter of a rich and vulgar brand-new knight, forsooth, to show off her airs before me, when here was a Princess of the Blood Royal of Egypt, obviously sensible to the attentions which I was paying her, and not unwilling to receive them with a coy and modest grace.

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