The Secret of the Court. A romance of life and death, etc

Front matter

THE SECRET OF THE COURT Frankfort Moore's Novels. CHEAP EDITIONS. In Cr. 8vo., cloth gilt, 6/- each. ONE FAIR DAUGHTER. [Immediately. "I FORBID THE BANNS." The story of a comedy which was played seriously. [Eighth Edition. A GRAY EYE OR SO. [Eighth Edition. DAIREEN. A South African Story. [Second Edition. In cr. 8vo., cloth gilt, 2,6, paper boards 2/-. SOJOURNERS TOGETHER. A Holiday Romance. HUTCHINSON & CO., 34 Paternoster Row. " He had his lingers upon the loose flesh of his throat before they both fell in a heap on the ground." {Frontispiece. A ROMANCE OF LIFE AND DEATH BY F. Frankfort Moore With numerous illustrations by G. H. EDWARDS £on£>on 1895 HUTCHINSON & CO. PATERNOSTER ROW TRINTEr AT N1MEGUEN (nOLLAND) BT H. C. A. TH1EME OF NJMEGUEN (HOLLAND) AND TAI.BOT HOUSE, ARUNDE1. STREET. LONDON, W.C. part tbe first.

Chapter I

The sun was setting among the rocks of El Ghebir, giving them for some minutes the appearance of the ragged-edged crater of a volcano. Masses of red fire and tongues of orange flame blazed upward with wild un accountable flashes, making a lurid back ground against which the irregular outlines of the rocks were sharply cut, black, but with a velvety gloss that had a sheen of its own, like the sheen of a full sea under a midnight sky. Far away in the direction of Bab-el- Wady a couple of camels were marching westward ; for there the white gleam of water appeared among the sands, with a cluster of date palms just beyond. But between the entrance to the valley and the high bank of the river whence the scene was surveyed by Arthur I Hampden, lay the irregular mounds of tawny scrub— islands in the midst of an ocean of sand.

"This is the very spot where we mustered and formed the square," said the man. "By George! one might fancy that the sun had stood still ever since, the same as it did — yes, for a space — a bit further to the east ward some years before — Joshua the son of Nun was the Wolseley of that expedition — for the colours in the sky and in the valley are just the same as they were on that evening when we waited for the charge of Fuzzy- Wuzzy. Great heavens ! Where are all those men now? How many feet are they beneath the sand — that sand which they made black as they poured out from the valley? The valley was black with them before the light of the sunset had gone out of the sky. Poor beggars ! The sand was black with them and with the vultures when we were going down to the boats in the morning. Poor beggars !

They gave me my Cross. " Recalling at every step fresh incidents of the campaign in which he had taken part on the Nile five years before, the man continued strolling along the ridges of the high scrubby ground overlooking the sandy plain. He had had his share of the fighting at that time, and a few weeks later in the Camel Corps ; so that he had a good many incidents to recall, if that was his object in wandering over the old ground. A fight is a pleasant enough incident as a subject of recollection — yes, when ■one has had the best of it ; but before Major Hampden had strolled on for more than half a mile, he had ceased to think of the past. All his thoughts were given over to the future, and all his thoughts of the future became gradually narrowed down to the one question as to whether or not a young woman with whom he was acquainted could be induced to love him and then marry him, or to marry him and then love him, which is much the same thing, only he did not think so.

It is obvious that the adequate considera tion of such a matter must occupy a longer space of time than even the amplest store of reminiscences of a campaign; so that it is not surprising that he should have wandered on until not the faintest thread of crimson remained along the horizon line of uneven ridges to mark the place of sunset, trying to arrive at some conclusion on the many points of the question that he had under considera tion. He knew that he loved her; but this assurance was by no means equivalent to the assurance that she loved him; and he had an idea that if she did not love him, life con tained no joy for him, even though it might be his good luck to take part in another campaign demanding some more hard fighting. Did she care for him in the least? How on earth could he tell?

She was a very amiable young woman, and such a young woman is the most perplexing to the men who fall in love with her. She is so exceed ingly agreeable to everyone with whom she comes in contact, it is only the most pre sumptuous man who can interpret her attitude into one of affection for himself to the exclu sion of the others. The sunshine of the smiles of an amiable girl is pleasant to bask in, but the lover who basks in it has got as great reason to grumble as the farmer who complained that the fine summer had done all his neighbours quite as much good as it had done himself, so that the prices of produce could not be otherwise than low. Arthur Hampden felt that he had no right to assume that Violet Flaxman loved him in particular, though she had occasionally smiled upon him very pleasantly.

Why should she love him instead of his elder brother, he asked him self. His elder brother had a considerable amount of property and a considerable posi tion in his own county, so that the smiles which he had seen her bestow upon his brother might reasonably be accepted as an indication that she loved that brother. He was thus as little comforted by these reflections as any lover must be who looks to reason for consolation. As he seated him self under the glittering stars of that Nile landscape he felt that if girls only knew what troubles their amiability now and again brings about, they would soon cease to be amiable. That reflection proved how little he knew about the nature of women. Then, having come to some sort of a conclusion — however unsatisfactory it might be— on the matter which he had set himself to think out, he began to wonder how he had been thoughtless enough to stray so far away from the river bank.

He had actually wandered among the rocks of Bab-el- Wadyr before he had seated himself. But the fact was that the landscape, breathing of peace and calm, in contrast to the rush and the roar of the battle in which he had taken part when he had last looked over its breadth, had unconsciously lured him on until he found himself at the entrance to the valley. He jumped up from where he sat smoking a cigar, and was in the act of taking his bearings by such landmarks as were still visible, when he became aware of the move ment as of some animal behind him. Before he could turn round he was struck on the side of the head with a heavy pistol. He reeled for a moment, then with his teeth set he sprang upon the turbaned figure of a Bedouin. He had his fingers upon the loose flesh of his throat before they both fell in a heap on the ground.

Another blow on the back of the head was needed to cause his hold on the man's throat to relax. He lay there with his face to the stars, just as he had witnessed so many men lying about the same place five years before, and the robbers — there were three of them — proceeded in a thoroughly business-like manner, but with great Oriental dignity and a grace of attitude that would have been appreciated by a sculptor — provided that he was not in their hands — to pick his pockets. They took his watch, his pocket aneroid, his cigar case, his scarf-pin and the white scarf that it fastened, his collar stud, his sleeve links, his silk hand kerchief, and everything that was his, including a sovereign or two in English gold and a franc or two in French silver. They did the business very adroitly. They did not get into one another's way as less accomplished rascals would have done in stripping their victim; and they were never otherwise than dignified in their movements.

When they had satisfied themselves that the man had not another pocket anywhere about him, they exchanged remarks that were highly complimentary to Allah, and prepared to take themselves off to where they had fastened their horses when, three hours before, they had seen their victim on the high bank of the river and had prayed to Allah with great A vulture flapped slowly down to one of the rock: earnestness to put it into his heart to stray within reach of their arms. Just as they were at the point of starting, one of the Bedouins knelt beside where their victim was lying, and groped about the ground on each side for some moments. He o-ave an exclamation of satisfaction, and picked up the remainder of the cigar that Major Hamp den had been smoking. Quite the half of it was unconsumed. It was a fine flavoured Laranaga.

Then the robbers went quietly to their horses, mounted them, and galloped off to the eastward, praising Allah, who had heard their prayers and had thrown a good thing in their way. A vulture flapped slowly down to one of the rocks.

Chapter II

When Major Hampden recovered conscious ness he found himself in a curious place. It suggested to him the interior of a vault. The light that was suspended above him was burning clearly, and it showed him an infinity of low, but enormously thick, columns scat tered all around him, supporting a flat roof of stone. They dwindled away in the distance, resembling an illustration of the principles of perspective that he had once seen, years before. There was no indication of a wall in any direction — only this infinity of columns. How on earth had he come here, was the thought that oppressed him. He went through the tedious operation of recalling the events that led up, as he supposed, to his arrival at this singular place. He recollected going ashore from the Nile boat and watching the sunset; but he could not pass that point.

He knew that the ruins of Luxor were not ro many miles from where the boat had anchored;: but he had no recollection of visiting: Luxor or the remains of any other city ofthe same region. He put up his hand mechanically to his forehead and the instant that his finger came in contact with a linen bandage which passed across his forehead to the back of his head,. with a broad piece above, he remembered being attacked by the robbers. He had received a blow and had caught the ruffian by the throat — they had fallen together, and then Beyond this second stage his memory refused to go, no matter what pressure he put upon it — as a matter of fact, the greater the pres sure he put upon it the more feeble was its response. But if he could not recall anything further, he was still able to draw a reasonable deduction trom such incidents as he could recall, and he thought that it was reasonable to con clude that he had been found by some people, unconscious among the rocks, and that they had taken the trouble to lay him in this spacious tomb, supposing him to be dead.

He felt perfectly satisfied that he had arrived at a logical conclusion upon this matter, until he began to think of the bandage around his head. How did that bandage fit into his calculations? In his muster of the incidents which he believed to have followed that blow which he had received, where did that bandage come in? He was puzzled. The linen was, he could feel, bound with great rigidity and fastened witn a degree of precision that was unknown to desert surgery. It would be ridiculous to fancy that it was the handiwork of an Arab. It had clearly been applied by someone who had ambulance experience. Of so much he was convinced, and therefore he was compelled to acknowledge to himself that he had been mistaken in believing himself to be within a vault. No, he was not buried. The man who had skill enough to bind that bandage would certainly have cleverness enough to perceive that he was not dead but only in a condition of unconsciousness.

Then he began to ask himself if it was possible that he was still in that condition. He would, he knew, have a certain amount of difficulty persuading himself that the array of pillars which were all around him and dwindling away into the distance, was nothing more than a delusion due to some interference with those nerves that transmitted certain sensations to his brain. Still, he had studied the most recent theories of some investigators of cerebral phenomena, and he was quite ready to believe what was contrary to his senses — everyone who is desirous of accepting most modern theories must be prepared to do so. When he was thus making reasonable progress on the road to madness, via the most recent theories of cerebration, a figure wearing, a white robe moved toward him from behind one of the columns, and bent over him, looking into his face.

Arthur made a remark to this visitor in a language which he fondly supposed to be Arabic, and which, indeed, the Nile boatmen understood nearly as well as they did English. The white-robed figure shook his head gravely and made a remark in real Arabic, the import of which Major Hampden did not appreciate, so he also shook his head. The figure thereupon hastened away and disappeared among the forest of columns. Arthur Hampden was more than ever in clined to accept a theory of cerebration that assumed what one writer had termed "a period of conscious inanimation", to bridge ■over his difficulties. In a short time another figure in a white robe appeared and halted beside him. Ar thur asked him in Arabic — his Arabic — where he was. "Don't bother yourself trying to get over that question, my friend," said the man in the robe.

"Let it be enough for you to know that you are safe for the present. How do you feel? What about that head of yours?" "Good God!— Sefton!" exclaimed Arthur, after a pause, during which the stranger scrutinised the bandage at the back of his head. The man laughed. "You're all right, Arthur, my lad," said he. "When you are able to recognise a comrade after five years, you can't be in a very bad way. " There was another interval of silence, before Arthur repeated his exclamation but in a more subdued tone : "Good God! Sefton !— Rodney Sefton!" "Now don't worry yourself," said Sefton. " If I had had the least notion that you would recognise me I wouldn't have hurried to you just now. I don't believe that my •own wife would recognise me. " Arthur gave a laugh ; but suddenly he checked himself and tried to put out his hand in the direction of Sefton's. He succeeded, too, after three or four attempts.

" Oh, don't be annoyed with yourself for that laugh, " said Sefton. " I laugh myself often when I think over that episode — my wife! Lord, what fools women are!" " Thank God ! " said Arthur. " If they weren't, the world would be nearly as dull as heaven — the heaven of the literary church man." " Oh Lord ! he wants to start a theological discussion, and his temperature is a hundred and three and his skull is cracked in two places ! " cried Sefton. " Hold hard, my man ! I'm sorry to have to interpose when everything was shaping itself so well in the direction of a full-flavoured argument on heaven and woman and other abstractions, but I really must veto any further talk until I get your temperature below a hundred. I must shift that ice bag an inch or two — so. Now take a spoonful of this mixture of mine,.

"Now take a spoonful of this mixture of mine. and in a day or two you'll be able to make yourself as unintelligible as the ablest theo logian — " "In the British army," said Arthur. "It's all right, Rodney, I'll do anything that you tell me ; I did so once before, when you took such a gloomy view of the scratch I got at Abu Klea." "And the result is that you are here to day," said Sefton. " Yes, that is how I came to be here — that, and a few other incidents with which I am as yet unacquainted. By the bye, would it be going too far if I were now to enquire where I am? I remember everything up to the attack made upon me by those rascals, but at that point my memory breaks down." " You must ask nothing, my friend. You've got to go asleep and to remain so for, say, forty-eight hours." I'm due at Cairo in a week "Then you must sleep for seventy-two hours.

Do you feel more pain at the back of your head or in the region of the temple ? " "All that I feel is an intermittent stinging pain just above my ears. What does that mean? " That means that you must sleep for four days and four nights. Begin now." He walked away and disappeared in a few moments from Arthur's view among the intricacies of that forest of pillars. The surprise that Major Hampden felt at meeting his old comrade Doctor Rodney Sefton in this place prevented his falling asleep with the promptitude which Rodney Sefton seemed to expect from him. He could not avoid repeating the doctor's name several times as he mused upon the extraordinary circumstance of his coming upon him after an interval of close upon five years. In a few minutes he had begun to feel that only on the assumption that he had been dreaming, was his meeting with Rodney Sefton susceptible of explanation.

He had become reconciled to this view of the situa tion before the light of the lamp grew pale to his eyes, and the confusing mingling of the pillars in the distance became still more confused. It sickened him to watch that grey stonework dwindling into the blackness of the distance. He closed his eyes against its influence, and felt that he was dying. He somehow felt glad to die. It would be a relief to him to have solved in a moment the mystery of those pillars — the mystery •of this dream of talking with Rodney Sefton — the mystery of Violet Flaxman — whether she loved him or not. Yes, he felt a languid sort of satisfaction in the reflection that he need not vex himself further on any •of these matters. He was dying, and they would all be solved in a few minutes. He closed his eyes, and did not open them again for thirteen hours.

Chapter III

When Arthur Hampden awoke it was with a sense of being refreshed beyond any previous sensation of refreshment he had experienced. His brain was now clear; he could count the columns that surrounded him without being greatly confused. He recollected all that had happened before he had slept, and now it never occurred to him that his meeting with Rodney Sefton was a vision. He wondered how he could have been stupid enough to fail to see that the occurrence was a natural one; it might have been foreseen as easily as the attack by the Be douins. Did not everyone know that Rodney Sefton had retired from the army so soon as he had returned with the Nile Expedition from Khartum ? Was there anyone still unac quainted with the fact that, after his retire ment, he had devoted himself to the work of excavation with which his name had for several years been closely associated?

What, then, was there remarkable in his coming in •contact once again with his old comrade? Rodney Sefton had been the chief medical •officer attached to the brigade with which Arthur Hampden had gone through the Egyptian campaign. He had been selected for this post by that General who has never hesitated to advance into prominent positions the most suitable officers, even though his doing so has involved the shelving of the unsuitable who howled in consequence. But in the case of Dr. Sefton the howls were minimized, for it was well known that he had had more experience of the Nile region than any man in the Service. His reputa tion as an Egyptologist had travelled even beyond the Service : it had long before become established in every part of Europe. It was understood that he had outstripped the most laborious of German investigators of ancient hieroglyphics ; he had, it was allowed, added another thousand years to the records of civilization.

He had boldly assigned the date b.c. 5200 to one of the inscriptions to which he had succeeded in assigning an historical value. It could scarcely be doubted that this was the right man to receive the appointment. It was understood that, next to Providence and cold tea, the success of the expedition would be dependent upon the efficiency of the medical staff, and the course of events showed that this assumption was fully justi fied. Dr. Sefton proved that his knowledge of the conditions necessary to health in the Nile region of to-day was as extensive and as accurate as his acquaintance with the idio syncrasies of the Pharaohs of a thousand years or thereabouts before Joseph ; and on the return of the brigade to Cairo it was known that a C.B. awaited the chief of the medical staff. It soon became known also that a letter awaited Rodney Sefton — a letter from his wife whom he had left in England, mentioning, with other matters, the fact that she had recently discovered that her love had been transferred from her husband to one of his neighbours, with whom she had gone to live in a pleasant and healthy French watering-place.

On receiving this letter Rodney Sefton had, without going to Europe, retired from the Service, and made excavation the business of his life — previously it had only been a holi day recreation. It was rumoured that his new book would ante-date civilization by yet another thousand years. All this Arthur Hampden recalled to mind within the first few minutes of his awaking from his thirteen hours' sleep. He had no doubt that he had been found unconscious by Dr. Sefton among the rocks of Bab-el- Wady, and conveyed to one of the palaces or temples which Sefton had partially excavated. An hour had passed, however, before the doctor appeared and corroborated his surmises. " But what I cannot understand," said Sefton, " is how you came to be close upon two miles from the river at that hour of the evening.

Surely you must have known that the region is swarming with Bedouin robbers who would think no more of cutting a man's throat than you would of slicing a cucumber for a salad. " " I was an ass, " said Arthur. " I had come up the river to have a look at the old fighting ground — my brother and his party I left at Cairo — and when I got ashore from the boat I began to think over some matters that have been causing me a deal of thought lately, and I became so absorbed as to forget where I was. I suppose those rascals escaped?" " They did ; but I'll get you back your property in the course of a day or two," said Sefton. " Those fellows are not licensed to steal from me or my friends. I did their Sheikh a good turn, and he shows his grati tude by giving me and my friends a clean bill for all this region.

I dare say you were thinking about a girl." " I was," said Arthur, meekly. " I've chucked the Service." "And you mean to go over to the enemy?" "I hope that I'll be lucky enough to get accepted. She is at Cairo with my brother and some of her people: I wish now that I hadn't been seized with that insane desire to revisit the scene of the fight." "It may be all for the best: your brother has come in for the property, I believe." " What do you mean ? If you suggest that that girl—" " I suggest nothing except that you should keep as tranquil as possible for the next few days — if the young woman accepts you, you may look back on the tranquillity of these few days as the camel-drivers look back on the days spent at one of the oases of the Soudan. " Arthur laughed at the expression of the doctor's pessimism.

He felt that the doctor had a right to whatever consolation pessimism can afford to a sufferer. "I'll obey you implicitly, " said he. "And now I hope it won't be prejudicial to the course which you have prescribed, for you to tell me where I happen to be at the pre sent moment. From a cursory glance round this place I should say that you have been fortunate enough to discover the growing place of all the pillars of all the churches of the world. It looks like a pillar nursery." " Yes ; there's a pretty fair lot of them, isn't there?" said the doctor. " Things were done on a large scale in those days." " What days are those days ?" " Heaven knows. This is, so far as I can gather, the Temple of Hevoth, and he may be called the father of all gods. Three years ago I came upon a papyrus written by the Theban scribe Ennana who was, I need hardly tell you, the Royal Librarian to Merenptah the Pharaoh of the Exodus.

It was, as usual, inclosed in an earthen cy linder, and it contained a reference to the excavations which were then exciting a good deal of interest in antiquarian circles in Egypt. The Temple of Hevoth and the Court of the Thousand Pillars seemed, according to this document, to promise excellent results to the archæologists. Over a thousand years had passed since they had disappeared, as all things Egyptian disappear, in the sands, and reference was made to its ancient glories when Hevoth was still worshipped. It was that papyrus which led me to search for the Temple. After a year I found it, but not by excavation." " How, then?" " I came across a High Priest of Hevoth, and he led me to the Temple. The worship had not died out — it has not yet died out,. though all modern Egyptologists refer to it as something that was no more than a vague myth in the days of the Exodus.

I have been working at the Hevoth problem for two years and I have made some discoveries in connection with it." " Of what nature ?" " Of what nature ?" The doctor looked into Arthur's face, and,. after a pause, gave a laugh. Then he became grave. He rose from the low, rough-hewn stone bench where he had been sitting, and walked some distance away, returning after an interval very slowly. " You want to know what is the nature of my discoveries?" said he. "I can lead you to the fringe of some of them ; that's all. I have succeeded in deciphering a few in scriptions on the hieratic papyri written four thousand years ago, and from them I learned that this Temple was at that time at least a thousand years old, and that it was built on the foundations of another that had existed a thousand years.

The list of dynasties previous to the building of the original Temple extended over two thousand years more. Beyond that date Hevoth worship becomes somewhat obscure. But the fact remains : I can lay my hand on a chapter of the history of the world written ten thousand years ago." "That's a longish space of time," remarked Major Hampden ; " it makes one's head ache, especially when referred to in this place." " That must be avoided at any sacrifice, " said the doctor, drawing a long breath. " You are quite right : it needs a man to be very fit before he can take in the idea of a civilization ten thousand years old, Hampden. To go back ten thousand years is to bring a man at least a stride closer to the great Beginning of things. The old writer — he may have written his papyrus on this very bench — who recorded that five thousand-year-old tradition about the sons of God walking about the earth and in love with the daughters of men, was, I believe, a priest of Hevoth.

The priests of Hevoth were the descendants of the offspring of those unions. The sons of God communicated their secrets — of that change which we call Life, of that change which we call Death — to their children, and one of them wrote down much that he knew on some slabs of stone which I unearthed. By the aid of an old man — the oldest ofthe priests of Hevoth — God only knows what age he is — I am in possession of the key to the system of writing that can still be seen traced upon the stone pages. " " What value are the secrets, I should like to know ? " " What value? Hampden, have you followed me and do you yet ask of what value are these secrets? Think of it, Hampden — think what is meant by that record of which I have told you. The wisdom of the sons of God — the revelation that came direct from the Beginning of all things — the origin of Life — the One who created the Soul of man and endowed it with immortality — think of it, Hampden.