Everything in the house went smoothly, as Lucy was a methodical young person, who went by the clock and the almanac. Braddock little knew how much of his undeniable comfort he owed to her fostering care; for, prior to her return from school, he had been robbed right and left by unscrupulous domestics. When his step-daughter arrived he simply handed over the keys and the housekeeping money--a fixed sum--and gave her strict instructions not to bother him. Miss Kendal faithfully observed this injunction, as she enjoyed being undisputed mistress, and knew that, so long as her step-father had his meals, his bed, his bath and his clothes, he required nothing save the constant society of his beloved mummies, of which no one wished to deprive him. These he dusted and cleansed and rearranged himself. Not even Lucy dared to invade the museum, and the mere mention of spring cleaning drove the Professor into displaying frantic rage, in which he used bad language.
On returning from her walk with Archie, the girl had lured her step-father into assuming a rusty dress suit, which had done service for many years, and had coaxed him into a promise to be present at dinner. Mrs. Jasher, the lively widow of the district, was coming, and Braddock approved of a woman who looked up to him as the one wise man in the world. Even science is susceptible to judicious flattery, and Mrs. Jasher was never backward in putting her admiration into words. Female gossip declared that the widow wished to become the second Mrs. Braddock, but if this was really the case, she had but small chance of gaining her end. The Professor had once sacrificed his liberty to secure a competence, and, having acquired five hundred a year, was not inclined for a second matrimonial venture. Had the widow been a dollar heiress with a million at her back he would not have troubled to place a ring on her finger. And certainly Mrs. Jasher had little to gain from such a dreary marriage, beyond a collection of rubbish--as she said--and a dull country house situated in a district inhabited solely by peasants belonging to Saxon times.
Archie Hope left Lucy at the door of the Pyramids and repaired to his village lodgings, for the purpose of assuming evening dress. Lucy, being her own housekeeper, assisted the overworked parlor maid to lay and decorate the table before receiving the guests. Thus Mrs. Jasher found no one in the drawing-room to welcome her, and, taking the privilege of old friendship, descended to beard Braddock in his den. The Professor raised his eyes from a newly bought scarabeus to behold a stout little lady smiling on him from the doorway. He did not appear to be grateful for the interruption, but Mrs. Jasher was not at all dismayed, being a man-hunter by profession. Besides, she saw that Braddock was in the clouds as usual, and would have received the King himself in the same absent-minded manner.
“Pouf! what an abominal smell!” exclaimed the widow, holding a flimsy lace handkerchief to her nose. “Kind of camphor-sandal-wood charnel-house smell. I wonder you are not asphyxiated. Pouf! Ugh! Bur-r-r
The Professor stared at her with cold, fishy eyes. “Did you speak?”
“Oh, dear me, yes, and you don't even ask me to take a chair. If I were a nasty stuffy mummy, now, you would be embracing me by, this time. Don't you know that I have come to dinner, you silly man?” and she tapped him playfully with her closed fan.
“I have had dinner,” said Braddock, egotistic as usual.
“No, you have not.” Mrs. Jasher spoke positively, and pointed to a small tray of untouched food on the side table. “You have not even had luncheon. You must live on air, like a chameleon--or on love, perhaps,” she ended in a significantly tender tone.
But she might as well have spoken to the granite image of Horus in the corner. Braddock merely rubbed his chin and stared harder than ever at the glittering visitor.
“Dear me!” he said innocently. “I must have forgotten to eat. Lamplight!” he looked round vaguely. “Of course, I remember lighting the lamps. Time has gone by very rapidly. I am really hungry.” He paused to make sure, then repeated his remark in a more positive manner. “Yes, I am very hungry, Mrs. Jasher.” He looked at her as though she had just entered. “Of course, Mrs. Jasher. Do you wish to see me about anything particular?”
The widow frowned at his inattention, and then laughed. It was impossible to be angry with this dreamer.
“I have come to dinner, Professor. Do try and wake up; you are half asleep and half starved, too, I expect.”
“I certainly feel unaccountably hungry,” admitted Braddock cautiously.
“Unaccountably, when you have eaten nothing since breakfast. You weird man, I believe you are a mummy yourself.”
But the Professor had again returned to examine the scarabeus, this time with a powerful magnifying glass.
“It certainly belongs to the twentieth dynasty,” he murmured, wrinkling his brows.
Mrs. Jasher stamped and flirted her fan pettishly. The creature's soul, she decided, was certainly not in his body, and until it came back he would continue to ignore her. With the annoyance of a woman who is not getting her own way, she leaned back in Braddock's one comfortable chair--which she had unerringly selected--and examined him intently. Perhaps the gossips were correct, and she was trying to imagine what kind of a husband he would make. But whatever might be her thoughts, she eyed Braddock as earnestly as Braddock eyed the scarabeus.
Outwardly the Professor did not appear like the savant he was reported to be. He was small of stature, plump of body, rosy as a little Cupid, and extraordinarily youthful, considering his fifty-odd years of scientific wear and tear. With a smooth, clean-shaven face, plentiful white hair like spun silk, and neat feet and hands, he did not look his age. The dreamy look in his small blue eyes was rather belied by the hardness of his thin-lipped mouth, and by the pugnacious push of his jaw. The eyes and the dome-like forehead hinted that brain without much originality; but the lower part of this contradictory countenance might have belonged to a prize-fighter. Nevertheless, Braddock's plumpness did away to a considerable extent with his aggressive look. It was certainly latent, but only came to the surface when he fought with a brother savant over some tomb-dweller from Thebes. In the soft lamplight he looked like a fighting cherub, and it was a pity--in the interests of art--that the hairless pink and white face did not surmount a pair of wings rather than a rusty and ill-fitting dress suit.
“He's nane sa dafty as he looks,” thought Mrs. Jasher, who was Scotch, although she claimed to be cosmopolitan. “With his mummies he is all right, but outside those he might be difficult to manage. And these things,” she glanced round the shadowy room, crowded with the dead and their earthly belongings. “I don't think I would care to marry the British Museum. Too much like hard work, and I am not so young as I was.”
The near mirror--a polished silver one, which had belonged, ages ago, to some coquette of Memphis--denied this uncomplimentary thought, for Mrs. Jasher did not look a day over thirty, although her birth certificate set her down as forty-five. In the lamplight she might have passed for even younger, so carefully had she preserved what remained to her of youth. She assuredly was somewhat stout, and never had been so tall as she desired to be. But the lines of her plump figure were still discernible in the cunningly cut gown, and she carried her little self with such mighty dignity that people overlooked the mortifying height of a trifle over five feet. Her features were small and neat, but her large blue eyes were so noticeable and melting that those on whom she turned them ignored the lack of boldness in chin and nose. Her hair was brown and arranged in the latest fashion, while her complexion was so fresh and pink that, if she did paint--as jealous women averred--she must have been quite an artist with the hare's foot and the rouge pot and the necessary powder puff.
Mrs. Jasher's clothes repaid the thought she expended upon them, and she was artistic in this as in other things. Dressed in a crocus-yellow gown, with short sleeves to reveal her beautiful arms, and cut low to display her splendid bust, she looked perfectly dressed. A woman would have declared the wide-netted black lace with which the dress was draped to be cheap, and would have hinted that the widow wore too many jewels in her hair, on her corsage, round her arms, and ridiculously gaudy rings on her fingers. This might have been true, for Mrs. Jasher sparkled like the Milky Way at every movement; but the gleam of gold and the flash of gems seemed to suit her opulent beauty. Her slightest movement wafted around her a strange Chinese perfume, which she obtained--so she said--from a friend of her late husband's who was in the British Embassy at Pekin. No one possessed this especial perfume but Mrs. Jasher, and anyone who had previously met her, meeting her in the darkness, could have guessed at her identity. With a smile to show her white teeth, with her golden-hued dress and glittering jewels, the pretty widow glowed in that glimmering room like a tropical bird.