But this sensible partnership lasted only for five years. Mrs. Braddock
died of a chill on the liver and left her five hundred a year to the
Professor for life, with remainder to Lucy, then a small girl of ten. It
was at this critical moment that Braddock became a practical man for
the first and last time in his dreamy life. He buried his wife with
unfeigned regret--for he had been sincerely attached to her in his
absent-minded way--and sent Lucy to a Hampstead boarding school. After
an interview with his late wife's lawyer to see that the income was
safe, he sought for a house in the country, and quickly discovered
Gartley Grange, which no one would take because of its isolation. Within
three months from the burial of Mrs. Braddock, the widower had removed
himself and his collection to Gartley, and had renamed his new abode
the Pyramids. Here he dwelt quietly and enjoyably--from his dry-as-dust
point of view--for ten years, and here Lucy Kendal had come when her
education was completed. The arrival of a marriageable young lady made
no difference in the Professor's habits, and he hailed her thankfully as
the successor to her mother in managing the small establishment. It is
to be feared that Braddock was somewhat selfish in his views, but the
fixed idea of archaeological research made him egotistical.
The mansion was three-story, flat-roofed, extremely ugly and
unexpectedly comfortable. Built of mellow red brick with dingy white
stone facings, it stood a few yards back from the roadway which ran from
Gartley Fort through the village, and, at the precise point where the
Pyramids was situated, curved abruptly through woodlands to terminate a
mile away, at Jessum, the local station of the Thames Railway Line. An
iron railing, embedded in moldering stone work, divided the narrow front
garden from the road, and on either side of the door--which could be
reached by five shallow steps--grew two small yew trees, smartly clipped
and trimmed into cones of dull green. These yews possessed some magical
significance, which Professor Braddock would occasionally explain to
chance visitors interested in occult matters; for, amongst other things
Egyptian, the archaeologist searched into the magic of the Sons of
Khem, and insisted that there was more truth than superstition in their
enchantments.
Braddock used all the vast rooms of the ground floor to house his
collection of antiquities, which he had acquired through many laborious
years. He dwelt entirely in this museum, as his bedroom adjoined
his study, and he frequently devoured his hurried meals amongst the
brilliantly tinted mummy cases. The embalmed dead populated his world,
and only now and then, when Lucy insisted, did he ascend to the first
floor, which was her particular abode. Here was the drawing-room,
the dining-room and Lucy's boudoir; here also were sundry bedrooms,
furnished and unfurnished, in one of which Miss Kendal slept, while
the others remained vacant for chance visitors, principally from
the scientific world. The third story was devoted to the cook, her
husband--who acted as gardener--and to the house parlor maid, a
composite domestic, who worked from morning until night in keeping
the great house clean. During the day these servants attended to their
business in a comfortable basement, where the cook ruled supreme. At the
back of the mansion stretched a fairly large kitchen garden, to which
the cook's husband devoted his attention. This was the entire domain
belonging to the tenant, as, of course, the Professor did not rent
the arable acres and comfortable farms which had belonged to the
dispossessed family.