He. Lang Andrew
I did, after all, take up and open the vast cylindrical roll of MS.4 in the mummy case. Dawn found me still reading the following record of unparalleled adventure.5
CHAPTER II.
POLLY'S NARRATIVE
I am the plainest woman in England, bar none.6Even in youth I was not, strictly speaking, voluptuously lovely. Short, stumpy, with a fringe like the thatch of a newly evicted cottage, such was my appearance at twenty, and such it remains. Like Cain, I was branded.7 But enough of personalities. I had in youth but one friend, a lady of kingly descent (the kings, to be sure, were Irish), and of bewitching loveliness. When she rushed into my lonely rooms, one wild winter night, with a cradle in her arms and a baby in the cradle; when she besought me to teach that infant Hittite, Hebrew, and the Differential Calculus, and to bring it up in college, on commons (where the air is salubrious), what could I do but acquiesce? It is unusual, I know, for a student of my sex, however learned, to educate an infant in college and bring her up on commons. But for once the uncompromising nature of my charms strangled the breath of scandal in the bud, and little Leonora O'Dolite became the darling of the university. The old Keeper of the Bodleian was a crusty bachelor, who liked nothing young but calf, and preferred morocco to that. But even he loved Leonora. One night the little girl was lost, and only after looking for her in the Hebdomadal Boardroom, in the Sheldonian, the Pusaeum, and all the barges, did we find that unprincipled old man amusing her by letting off crackers and Roman-candles among the Mexican MSS. in the Bodleian!
These were halcyon hours, happier as Leonora grew up and received the education prescribed for her by her parent. Her Hebrew was fair, and her Hittite up to a first class, but, to my distress, she mainly devoted herself to Celtic studies.
I should tell you that Leonora's chief interest in life was the decipherment of the inscriptions on her cradle – the mummy case which had rocked her ancestors since Abraham's time, and which is now in your possession. Of itself it is a sufficient proof of the accuracy of this narrative. The mummy case is not the ordinary coffin of Egyptian commerce. The hieroglyphics have baffled Dr. Isaac Taylor, and have been variously construed as Chinese, Etruscan, and Basque, by the various professors of these learned lingoes.8
Now about this mummy case: you must know that it had been in Leonora's family ever since her ancestress, Theodolitê, Pharaoh's daughter, left Egypt, not knowing when she was well off, and settled in Ireland, of all places, where she founded the national prosperity.9
The mummy case and a queer ring (see cover) inscribed with a duck, a duck's egg, and an umbrella, were about all that the O'Dolites kept of their ancient property. The older Leonora grew the more deeply she studied the inscriptions on the mummy case. She tried it as Zend, she tried it as Sanskrit, and Japanese, and the American language, and finally she tried it as Irish.
We had a very rainy season that winter even for Oxford, and the more it rained the more Leonora pored over that mummy case. I kept telling her there was nothing in it, but she would not listen to me.
CHAPTER III.
LEONORA'S DISCOVERY
One wild winter night, when the sleet lashed the pane, my door suddenly opened. I started out of a slumber, and – could I believe my eyes? can history repeat itself? – there stood the friend of my early youth, her eyes ablaze, a cradle in her arms. Was it all coming round again? A moment's reflection showed me that it was not my early friend, but her daughter, Leonora.
'Leonora,' I screamed, 'don't tell me that you– '
'I have deciphered the inscription,' said the girl proudly, setting down the cradle. The baby had not come round.
'Oh, is that all?' I replied. 'Let's have a squint at it' (in my case no mere figure of speech).
'What do you call that?' said Leonora, handing me the accompanying document.
'I call it pie,' said I, using a technical term of typography. 'I can't make head or tail of it,' I said peevishly.
'Well, pie or no pie, I love it like pie, and I've broken the crust,' answered the girl, 'according to my interpretation, which I cannot mistrust.'
'Why?' I asked.
'Because,' she answered; and the response seemed sufficient when mixed with her bright smile.
'It runs thus,' she resumed with severity, 'in the only language you can partially understand —
'It runs thus,' she reiterated, and I could not help saying under such breath as I had left, 'Been running a long time now.'
She frowned and read —
'I, Theodolitê, daughter of a race that has never been run out, did to the magician Jambres, whose skill was even as the skill of the gods, those things which as you have not yet heard I shall now proceed to relate to you.
'Of him, I say, was I jealous, for that he loved a maiden inferior – Oh how inferior! – to me in charms, wit, beauty, intellect, stature, girth, and ancestry. Therefore, being well assured of this, I made the man into a mummy, ere ever his living spirit had left him. What arts I used to this last purpose it boots not, nor do I choose to tell. When I had done this thing I put him secretly away in a fitting box, even as Set concealed Osiris. Then came my maidens and tidied him away, as is the wont of these accursed ones. From that hour, even until now, has no man nor woman known where to find him, even Jambres the magician. For though the mummifying, as thou shalt not fail to discover, was in some sort incomplete, yet the tidying away and the losing were so complete that no putting forth of precious papyri into cupboards beneath flights of stairs has ever equalled it.
'Now, therefore, shall I curse these maidens, even in Amenti, the place of their tormenting.
'Forget them, may they be eternally forgotten.
'Curse them up and down through the whole solar system.'
'This is very violent language, my dear,' said I.
'Our people swore terribly in Egypt,' answered Leonora, calmly.
'But it is vain, no woman can curse worth a daric.10
'But for this, the losing of the one whom I mummied, must I suffer countless penalties. For I, even the seeress, know not what the said maidens did with the said mummy, nor do you know, nor any other. And not to know, for I want my mummy to have a good cry over, is great part of my punishment. But this I, the seeress, do know right well, for it was revealed to me in a dream. And this I do prophesy unto thee, my daughter, or daughter's daughter, ay, this do I say, that a curse will rest upon me until He who was mummied shall be found.
'Now this also do I, the seeress, tell thee. He who was mummified shall be found in the dark country, where there is no sun, and men breathe the vapour of smoke, and light lamps at noonday, and wire themselves even with wires when the wind bloweth. And the place where the mummy dwelleth is beneath the Three Balls of Gold. And one will lead thee thither who abides hard by the great tree carven like the head of an Ethiopian. And thou shalt come to the people who slate strangers, and to the place of the Rolling of Logs, and the music thereof.
'Thereafter shalt thou find Him, even Jambres. And when thou hast healed him the Curse shall fall from me!
'Nor, indeed, shall the unmummying be accomplished, even then, unless thou, O my daughter, or my daughter's daughter as before, shalt go with He-who-was-mummied to the Hall of Egyptian Darkness and sit in the Wizard's Chair that is thereby, even the seat which was erst the Siege Perilous. These things have I said, well knowing that they shall be accomplished.
'To thee, my daughter!
'There,
Don't you think it would stand being cut a little? – Publisher.
We shall see. – Ed.
There is just one thing that puzzles me. Polly and Leonora have gone, no man knows where, and, taking everything into consideration, it may be a good two thousand years before they come back.
Ought I not, then, to invest,
I may as well say at once that I
See
Is this not 'log rolling'? – Publisher.
Don't you think this bit is a little dull? The public don't care about dead languages. – Publisher.
Story can't possibly get on without it, as you'll see. You
Is not
No; it is in all the Irish histories. See Lady Wilde's
From the use of the word