The Green Mummy - Page 11/191

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.