The Green Mummy. Hume Fergus
But in six months he was knocking the head off me.”
“The man who would lay his hand on a woman save in the way of – ”
“Oh, Archie, what nonsense, you talk!” cried Miss Kendal pettishly.
“Ah!” sighed the woman of experience, “I called it nonsense too, my lady, afore Aaron, who now lies with the worms, laid me out with a flat-iron. Men’s fit for jails only, as I allays says.”
“A nice opinion you have of our sex,” remarked Archie dryly.
“I have, sir. I could tell you things as would make your head waggle with horror on there shoulders of yours.”
“What about your son Sidney? Is he also wicked?”
“He would be if he had the strength, which he hasn’t,” exclaimed the widow with uncomplimentary fervor. “He’s Aaron’s son, and Aaron hadn’t much to learn from them as is where he’s gone too,” and she looked downward significantly.
“Sidney is a decent young fellow,” said Lucy sharply. “How dare you miscall your own flesh and blood, Widow Anne? My father thinks a great deal of Sidney, else he would not have sent him to Malta. Do try and be cheerful, there’s a good soul. Sidney will tell you plenty to make you laugh, when he comes home.”
“If he ever does come home,” sighed the old woman.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, it’s all very well asking questions as can’t be answered nohow, my lady, but I be all of a mubble-fubble, that I be.”
“What is a mubble-fubble?” asked Hope, staring.
“It’s a queer-like feeling of death and sorrow and tears of blood and not lifting your head for groans,” said Widow Anne incoherently, “and there’s meanings in mubble-fumbles, as we’re told in Scripture. Not but what the Perfesser’s been a kind gentleman to Sid in taking him from going round with the laundry cart, and eddicating him to watch camphorated corpses: not as what I’d like to keep an eye on them things myself. But there’s no more watching for my boy Sid, as I dreamed.”
“What did you dream?” asked Lucy curiously.
Widow Anne threw up two gnarled hands, wrinkled with age and laundry work, screwing up her face meanwhile.
“I dreamed of battle and murder and sudden death, my lady, with Sid in his cold grave playing on a harp, angel-like. Yes!” she folded her rusty shawl tightly round her spare form and nodded, “there was Sid, looking beautiful in his coffin, and cut into a hash, as you might say, with – ”
“Ugh! ugh!” shuddered Lucy, and Archie strove to draw her away.
“With murder written all over his poor face,” pursued the widow. “And I woke up screeching with cramp in my legs and pains in my lungs, and beatings in my heart, and stiffness in my – ”
“Oh, hang it, shut up!” shouted Archie, seeing that Lucy was growing pale at this ghoulish recital, “don’t be fool, woman. Professor Braddock says that Bolton’ll be back in three days with the mummy he has been sent to fetch from Malta. You have been having nightmare! Don’t you see how you are frightening Miss Kendal?”
“‘The Witch’ of Endor, sir – ”
“Deuce take the Witch of Endor and you also. There’s a shilling. Go and drink yourself into a more cheery frame of mind.”
Widow Anne bit the shilling with one of her two remaining teeth, and dropped a curtsey.
“You’re a good, kind gentleman,” she smirked, cheered at the idea of unlimited gin. “And when my boy Sid do come home a corpse, I hope you’ll come to the funeral, sir.”
“What a raven!” said Lucy, as Widow Anne toddled away in the direction of the one public-house in Gartley village.
“I don’t wonder that the late Mr. Bolton laid her out with a flat-iron. To slay such a woman would be meritorious.”
“I wonder how she came to be the mother of Sidney,” said Miss Kendal reflectively, as they resumed their walk, “he’s such a clever, smart, and handsome young man.”
“I think Bolton owes everything to the Professor’s teaching and example, Lucy,” replied her lover. “He was an uncouth lad, I understand, when your step-father took him into the house six years ago. Now he is quite presentable. I shouldn’t wonder if he married Mrs. Jasher.”
“H’m! I rather think Mrs. Jasher admires the Professor.”
“Oh, he’ll never marry her. If she were a mummy there might be a chance, of course, but as a human being the Professor will never look at her.”
“I don’t know so much about that, Archie. Mrs. Jasher is attractive.”
Hope laughed. “In a mutton-dressed-as-lamb way, no doubt.”
“And she has money. My father is poor and so – ”
“You make up a match at once, as every woman will do. Well, let us get back to the Pyramids, and see how the flirtation is progressing.”
Lucy walked on for a few steps in silence. “Do you believe in Mrs. Bolton’s dream, Archie?”
“No! I believe she eats heavy suppers. Bolton will return quite safe; he is a clever fellow, not easily taken advantage of. Don’t bother any more about Widow Anne and her dismal prophecies.”
“I’ll try not to,” replied Lucy dutifully. “All the same, I wish she had not told me her dream,” and she shivered.
CHAPTER II. PROFESSOR BRADDOCK
There was only one really palatial mansion in Gartley, and that was the ancient Georgian house known as the Pyramids. Lucy’s step-father had given the place this eccentric name on taking up his abode there some ten years previously. Before that time the dwelling had been occupied by the Lord of the Manor and his family. But now the old squire was dead, and his impecunious children were scattered to the four quarters of the globe in search of money with which to rebuild their ruined fortunes. As the village was somewhat isolated and rather unhealthily situated in a marshy country, the huge, roomy old Grange had not been easy to let, and had proved quite impossible to sell. Under these disastrous circumstances, Professor Braddock – who described himself humorously as a scientific pauper – had obtained the tenancy at a ridiculously low rental, much to his satisfaction.
Many people would have paid money to avoid exile in these damp waste lands, which, as it were, fringed civilization, but their loneliness and desolation suited the Professor exactly. He required ample room for his Egyptian collection, with plenty of time to decipher hieroglyphics and study perished dynasties of the Nile Valley. The world of the present day did not interest Braddock in the least. He lived almost continuously on that portion of the mental plane which had to do with the far-distant past, and only concerned himself with physical existence, when it consisted of mummies and mystic beetles, sepulchral ornaments, pictured documents, hawk-headed deities and suchlike things of almost inconceivable antiquity. He rarely walked abroad and was invariably late for meals, save when he missed any particular one altogether, which happened frequently. Absent-minded in conversation, untidy in dress, unpractical in business, dreamy in manner, Professor Braddock lived solely for archaeology. That such a man should have taken to himself a wife was mystery.
Yet he had been married fifteen years before to a widow, who possessed a limited income and one small child. It was the opportunity of securing the use of a steady income which had decoyed Braddock into the matrimonial snare of Mrs. Kendal. To put it plainly, he had married the agreeable widow for her money, although he could scarcely be called a fortune-hunter. Like Eugene Aram, he desired cash to assist learning, and as that scholar had committed murder to secure what he wanted, so did the Professor marry to obtain his ends. These were to have someone to manage the house, and to be set free from the necessity of earning his bread, so that he might indulge in pursuits more pleasurable than money-making. Mrs. Kendal was a placid, phlegmatic lady, who liked rather than loved the Professor, and who desired him more as a companion than as a husband. With