On the Lightship Part 14

"Come in; please come in."

"I think the curtain must be caught," replied a low, melodious voice without. Dunbarton took three strides across the room, seized the drapery, and, with a single movement of his arm, swept it aside.

"Oh!" he cried, starting back, while Morewood clutched the table for support. Then, instantly recovering themselves, both men bowed as in the presence of a queen. And well they might.

Against the background of green velvet curtain with its embroidery of dull gold, there stood a lady all in poppy red, crowned with a headdress seemingly of the flowers themselves. It was not the dress of any period of time, for since the beginning of time flowers have grown for women to wear, and the two onlookers, being masculine, knew only that she wore them, and cared not whether they had bloomed in Eden or the Rue de la Paix. Time was for the moment eliminated, disregarded: the centuries rolled away like dewdrops from a rose, for, by the grace of Isis and Osiris, were they not bowing before the peerless priestess of the rites of Amen Ra? It was she and none other--the mistress of the mummy-case, the mystery of the Kodak film; the lady of Thebes three thousand years ago.

Morewood pa.s.sed his hand across his brow and caught his breath; Dunbarton was the first to recover the power of speech.

"Madam," he said, and his voice shook a little, "you do me far too great an honor. What is your will? You have but to command me."

"I venture to a.s.sert a prior claim to do your bidding," put in Morewood, coming forward quickly.

The priestess of Amen Ra tried to control a little laugh, and failed bewitchingly. "I am looking for a Mr. Dunbarton," she explained.

The painter drew himself erect and bowed with dignity. "I have the good fortune to bear that name," he said, taking a sidewise step which left his friend a trifle in the background.

"Oh, I am so glad!" cried the lady. "Then perhaps you can tell me where to find a Mr. Morewood?"

"Your humble and devoted servant!" the other man p.r.o.nounced himself, executing a maneuver which totally eclipsed Dunbarton.

"Really?" asked the lady, her face radiant with pleasure. "How very fortunate!"

At this Morewood fairly beamed with satisfaction, but she went on rapidly, in a silvery ripple of feminine narrative:

"Do you know, Mr. Morewood, that you have something of mine and I have something of yours? It was not my fault and it wasn't yours, either; it was the stupid person in the parcel room of the Museum. Of course two Kodaks are exactly alike, if one of them hasn't got a name scratched on the bottom with a pin; but I don't suppose he ever thought of looking, so he gave you mine and me yours, and I should never have found out who you were if you hadn't been arrested. Of course it wouldn't have made very much difference, after all, if my Cousin Jack hadn't snapped me in a most ridiculous Egyptian fancy dress."

Dunbarton gave a groan as of agony suppressed, and Morewood's face might have been in color a fragment of the sacerdotal robe of Ra.

"Oh!" moaned the painter, "if I could only howl!"

"Don't mind him, please!" the other man pleaded. "You see, I, too, had used a film, and we were rather interested in seeing how it came out."

"Oh, but yours came out beautifully!" she rea.s.sured him. "My Cousin Jack developed it after lunch. That's the way we discovered the mistake, and here it is. We made up our minds that you must be at least seventy-five years old to want to photograph a hideous mummy-case."

It was then that Dunbarton mastered himself and became once more conscious of the duties of hospitality.

"A thousand pardons!" he protested, "for not offering you a seat. This is a painter's workshop, as you see, and therefore public property in a way. Might I suggest a cup of tea? It won't take me a minute to telephone for a chaperon."

The priestess was graciously pleased to laugh.

"I should like tea," she said, with an approving glance about the room, flooded with the last of a long sunset; "but, if you don't mind, I detest chaperons. You see, I'm from Oklahoma."

There was an instant's hesitation, then:

"My friend, Mr. Morewood," remarked the painter, "has just been telling me the strangest story in the world. Perhaps you can induce him to repeat it for you."

He laughed a mocking laugh and turned to busy himself with the silver tea-service standing on an Adams table, while Morewood drew forward a low chair for the lady.

"Is your story romantic?" she asked, as she settled her poppy-colored ruffles; "has it a heroine?"

"Oh, yes, indeed," he answered, by no means including Dunbarton in the confidence. "No less a personage than the priestess of Amen Ra."

She looked at him suspiciously, while the veriest suggestion of a blush suffused her cheek.

"Is there anything about photographs in it?" she demanded, regarding him defiantly.

"Yes," he replied, "there is; a lot!"

"Then I don't care to hear it, for it's certain to be stupid," she protested, pouting.

"It is," he told her, frankly; "and I shall not inflict it on you now.

But some day, when we know each other better."

"We start for Boston to-morrow morning early," she interrupted; "and from there we go to Bar Harbor for mamma's hay fever. We're staying at the Waldorf."

"Then I shall return the camera this evening," said Morewood.

"If you do," she said, "my Cousin Jack will be very glad to talk photographs with you."

"How old is your Cousin Jack?" Morewood demanded.

"Twelve," replied the lady, with just the shadow of a smile.

THE GIRL FROM MERCURY

AN INTERPLANETARY LOVE STORY

Being the interpretation of certain phonic vibragraphs recorded by the Long's Peak Wireless Installation, now for the first time made public through the courtesy of Professor Caducious, Ph. D., sometime secretary of the Boulder branch of the a.s.sociation for the advancement of interplanetary communication.

It is evident that the following logograms form part of a correspondence between a young lady, formerly of Mercury, and her confidential friend still resident upon the inferior planet. The translator has thought it best to preserve as far as possible the spirit of the original by the employment of mundane colloquialisms; the result, in spite of many regrettable trivialities will, it is believed, be of interest to students of Cosmic Sociology.

THE GIRL FROM MERCURY

THE FIRST RECORD

Yes, dear, it's me. I'm down here on the Earth, and in our Settlement House, safe and sound. I meant to have called you up before, but really this is the first moment I have had to myself all day.--Yes, of course, I said "all day." You know very well they have days and nights here, because this restless little planet spins, or something of the sort.--I haven't the least idea why it does so, and I don't care.--I did not come here to make intelligent observations like a dowdy "Seeing Saturn"

tourist. So don't be Uranian. Try to exercise intuitive perception if I say anything you can't understand.--What is that?--Please concentrate a little harder.--Oh! Yes, I have seen a lot of human beings already, and would you believe it? some of them seem almost possible--especially _one_.--But I will come to that one later. I've got so much to tell you all at once I scarcely know where to begin.--Yes, dear, the One happens to be a man. You would not have me discriminate, would you, when our object is to bring whatever happiness we can to those less fortunate than ourselves? You know success in slumming depends first of all upon getting yourself admired, for then the others will want to be like you, and once thoroughly dissatisfied with themselves they are almost certain to reform. Of course I am only a visitor here, and shall not stay long enough to take up serious work, so Ooma says I may as well proceed along the line of least resistance.--If you remember Ooma's enthusiasm when she ran the Board of Missions to Inferior Planets, you can fancy her now that she has an opportunity to carry out all her theories. Oh, she's great!

My transmigration was disappointing as an experience. It was nothing more than going to sleep and dreaming about circles--orange circles, yellow circles, with a thousand others of graduated shades between, and so on through the spectrum till you pa.s.s absolute green and get a tone or two toward blue and strike the Earth color-note. Then with me everything got jumbled together and seemed about to take new shapes, and I woke up in the most commonplace manner and opened my eyes to find myself externalized in our Earth Settlement House with Ooma laughing at me.