He laid the letter aside. When Samir had time he would see for himself what these documents contained. All the world would see. He turned back to the original papyrus.
"But listen to this, Samir--Ramses' last thoughts: 'The Romans can not be condemned for the conquest of Egypt; we were conquered by time itself in the end. And all the wonders of this brave new century should draw me from my grief and yet I can not heal my heart; and so the mind suffers; the mind closes as if it were a flower without sun.' "
Samir was still looking at the mummy, looking at the ring. "Another reference to the sun. Again and again the sun." He turned to Lawrence. "But surely you don't believe it--!"
"Samir, if you can believe in the curse, why can't you believe in an immortal man?"
"Lawrence, you play with me. I have seen the workings of many a curse, my friend. But an immortal man who lived in Athens under Pericles and Rome under the Republic and Carthage under Hannibal? A man who taught Cleopatra the history of Egypt? Of this I know nothing at all."
"Listen again, Samir: 'Her beauty shall forever haunt me; as well as her courage and her frivolity; her passion for life, which seemed inhuman in its intensity while being only human after all.' "
Samir made no answer. His eyes were fixed on the mummy again, as if he could not stop looking at it. Lawrence understood perfectly, which is why he sat with his back to the thing in order to read the papyrus, so that he would get the crucial work done.
"Lawrence, this mummy is as dead as any I have ever seen in the Cairo Museu
m. A storyteller, that is what the man was. Yet these rings."
"Yes, my friend, I observed it very carefully earlier; it is the cartouche of Ramses the Great, and so we have not merely a storyteller but a collector of antiquities. Is that what you want me to believe?"
But what did Lawrence believe? He sat back against the sagging canvas of the camp chair and let his eyes drift over the contents of this strange room. Then again he translated from the scroll.
" 'And so I retreat to this isolated chamber; and now my library shall become my tomb. My servants shall anoint my body and wrap it in fine funerary linen as was the custom of my time now so long forgotten. But no knife shall touch me. No embalmer shall extract the heart and brain from my immortal form.' "
A euphoria overcame Lawrence suddenly; or was it a state of waking dream? This voice--it seemed so real to him; he felt the personality, as one never did with the ancient Egyptians. Ah, but of course, this was an immortal man....
Elliott was getting drunk, but no one knew it. Except Elliott, who leaned on the gilded rail of the half-landing again in a rather casual manner that he almost never assumed. There was a style to even his smallest gestures, and now he carelessly violated it, keenly aware that no one would notice; no one would take offense.
Ah, such a world, made up almost wholly of subtleties. What a horror. And he must think of this marriage; he must talk of this marriage; he must do something about the sad spectacle of his son, quite obviously defeated, who, after watching Julie dance with another, came now up the marble stairs.
"I'm asking you to trust in me," Randolph was saying. "I guarantee this marriage. All it takes is a little time."
"Surely you don't think I enjoy pressing you," Elliott answered. Thick-tongued. Drunk all right. "I'm much more comfortable in a dream world, Randolph, where money simply doesn't exist. But the fact is, we cannot afford such reverie, either of us. This marriage is essential for us both."
"Then I shall go to see Lawrence myself."
Elliott turned to see his son only a few steps away, waiting like a schoolboy for the adults to acknowledge him.
"Father, I badly need consolation," Alex said.
"What you need is courage, young man," Randolph said crossly. "Don't tell me you've taken no for an answer again."
Alex took a glass of champagne from the passing waiter.
"She loves me. She loves me not," he said softly. "The simple fact is I cannot live without her. She's driving me mad."
"Of course you cannot." Elliott laughed gently. "Now, look. That clumsy young man down there is stepping on her feet. I'm sure she'd be very grateful if you came to her rescue at once."
Alex nodded, scarcely noticing as his father took the half-full glass from him and drank down the champagne. He straightened his shoulders and headed back to the dance floor. Such a perfect picture.
"The puzzling part is this," Randolph said under his breath. "She loves him. She always has."
"Yes, but she's like her father. She loves her freedom. And frankly I don't blame her. In a way she's too much for Alex. But he'd make her happy, I know that he would."
"Of course."
"And she would make him supremely happy; and perhaps no one else ever will."
"Nonsense," Randolph said. "Any young woman in London would give her eyeteeth for the chance to make Alex happy. The eighteenth Earl of Rutherford?"