14. The Secret in the Urn
It was not until after they had gone, when Kit was by herself, that she remembered all Billie had told her at the very last of his stay.
They had walked along the lake shore together, a little behind the others, after they had visited the Flambeau family.
“You haven’t told me anything at all,” Kit said, “about home. When were you in Elmhurst last?”
“Just before we came here,” Billie answered.
“Was everything all right?” Billie hesitated. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Billie, tell me if there is anything. You can’t give me any nervous shocks at all, and I’m dying to find an excuse to get back home.”
“Why, there isn’t anything the matter, exactly,” Billie said cheerfully, but with a reservation in his tone that made Kit impatient. “The only thing that I know about, I heard Grandfather telling Uncle Tom. I don’t suppose I ought to repeat it either.”
“Honestly, Billie, you make me so exasperated at times. How dare you keep back any news of my family from me?”
“It was something about losing some stocks or dividends or something like that. I guess it hit Grandfather, too, but I heard him say that there wasn’t a farm up there that couldn’t support itself, properly run, and he guessed they’d all weather the storm.”
Billie was inclined to take an optimistic view of the whole affair. “Grandfather said that there was no cause for worry,” he went on. “It was just a case of pitch in and get your living out of the farms again.”
“Yes,” said Kit with scorn, “get your living out of the farms. That’s all very well for him to say, when he’s got everything to do with, and twenty of the best cows in the county, but we moved up there on hope and a shoestring. And we’ve never really raised anything except children and chickens.”
“Frank says your place, if it was properly worked, would make one of the finest fruit farms up there, ’cause your land all slopes to the south as far as the river. He says if he had it he’d sell off the heavy timber for cash and put the money right into hardy varieties of fruit and hogs.”
Kit laughed. “Can’t you see Doris’s face over the hogs, with all her aristocratic ideas? Did he tell Dad that?”
“I don’t know,” Billie said doubtfully. “Uncle Tom’s kind of hard to get confidential with over his own affairs, but I wouldn’t worry, Kit, if I were you. Things always come out all right.”
“They do not,” returned Kit calmly. “Even so, thanks ever so much for telling me, Billie. You may have changed the course of destiny, because I can tell you now I’m going home.”
After dinner that night Kit was out for a walk alone with only Sandy for company. Kit was wondering whether it would be best to write first to her mother or to Jean. Jean would be in New York anyway, so perhaps she wouldn’t know any more about it than Kit did. How she wished to know just exactly what the family’s plans were for the winter.
Finally she decided to write to Becky. Even though her decision might not be a favorable one, you always felt sure you were getting it straight without any affectionate bias.
Accordingly, a confidential appeal went East, and back came the reply by return mail, as Kit had known it would.
Dear Kit,
I had been thinking about you when your letter came, so I suppose our thoughts must have crossed.
There’s no doubt at all but what your mother needs you badly right here, especially with Jean in New York. What Billie told you was about the truth.
If I were you, I’d have a heart-to-heart talk with the Dean himself, and I know your mother will be just as relieved as can be to hear you’re homeward bound.
Lovingly,
Becky.
Kit was delighted over the letter, and went directly to the Dean with its message. He was deeply engrossed in getting up his first notes and commentaries on the urn and statue. It had not seemed for the past two or three weeks as if he resided any longer in Delphi at all. Kit told Della she was positive he was wandering through Egypt all the time, the Egypt of five thousand years ago. And it was only the shadow of his self that seemed to sit closeted for hours in the study.
He hardly glanced up now as she came in, but smiled and nodded when he saw who it was, keeping on with his writing.
“Just hand me that volume on the second shelf to your right by the door. Second volume, Explorations in Upper Egypt, look up Seti the First in the index.”
Kit found the place and laid it before him, perching herself on one end of the desk, as she always did when she wanted to attract his attention. The little statuette of Annui smiled grotesquely down upon her from its pedestal. The urn stood in a handy place of honor upon the desk itself as the Dean had been deciphering the inscriptions upon it.
“I hate to disturb you, Uncle Bart,” Kit began, with the directness so characteristic of her, “but I really think I ought to go back home. You’ve been wonderful to give me such a long visit, and I’ve enjoyed the school work immensely, but somehow I begin to feel like a soldier who has been away on a furlough. It’s time for me to get back, because Mother needs me.”
The Dean glanced up in surprise; and came slowly out of his dream of concentration as the meaning of her words dawned upon him.
“Why, my dear child,” he exclaimed, “this is very sudden. There has never been any question about your going back, at least—” He coughed. “Not since we became acquainted with you. Has anything happened?”
“Why, nothing special—I mean, nothing tragic. It’s only this, Dad’s lost a lot of money all at once. He did have a little income, enough so we never have had to depend on the farm entirely, but now, even that has been swept away.”
“Tom never had any head for business.” The Dean tapped one hand lightly with his glasses in an absent-minded musing way that nearly drove Kit frantic. “But what can you do about it, my dear? Surely by returning at such a time you merely add to your father’s burdens.”
“No, I won’t,” Kit answered. “Because I’ve got a plan that I’ve been thinking about for ever and ever so long. I’m going to try and persuade Dad to let us put in hogs.”
“Hogs,” repeated the Dean in a baffled tone. “Hogs, my dear. Who ever heard of raising hogs when they could raise anything else at all?”
“Well, we’re going to if Dad will let me. I just can’t stay here in this beautiful place with nothing to worry over, while the family are all worried to death.”
There was silence in the old study. The Dean was looking straight at Annui as if for inspiration. He had laid out his own career himself, and had carried every ambition to completion and reality. The last twenty years had been years of fruition, of honors freely given, years of fulfillment. He had not been, like Judge Ellis, intolerant of other men’s failures; he had simply ignored them, never feeling any responsibility toward the weaker ones who fell in the race. In his way, he prided himself on a gentle, aloof philosophy of life which left him the boundaries of the study as a horizon of happiness.
Probably not until that moment had he realized the gradual revolutionary process Kit had been putting him through ever since her arrival. She had trained him into having an interest in other people and things, until now it was impossible for him not to see the picture of Woodhow as she did. He resolved to help Tom Craig out as well.
“How did you find out about this, my dear?” he asked.
“Well,” Kit replied, honestly, “partly from Billie and partly from a letter from Becky. You know Becky, don’t you, Uncle Bart?”
The Dean’s eyes twinkled reminiscently. “Oh, yes, I remember Rebecca well. She used to bully me outrageously. But you’re perfectly right, my dear. I can quite see why you feel that you are needed. You had better start for home as soon as you can.”
The next thing was to break the news gently and convincingly to the family. Kit figured it out from all sides, and finally decided to walk right up to the horns of the dilemma in a fearless attack. Writing back a long, newsy letter to her mother, she simply tacked on the postscript, “Don’t be at all surprised to see me arrive around Christmas.”
The girls took her coming departure with many objections, but Kit was not to be persuaded to stay. The Saturday before she left the many friends she had made came over in the afternoon to say goodbye. Late in the day, Kit saw Jeannette Flambeau coming up the drive.
“It was awfully nice of you to come, Jeannette,” she exclaimed. “I’ve been watching for you.”
“I tried to come earlier, but I couldn’t,” smiled Jeannette. “Will you write to me when you are away?”
“I’d love to. You know it’s a queer thing, Jeannette, but really and truly, out of all the girls I have met here I feel better acquainted with you than with any of them.”
Kit said this rather slowly, as if it were a sort of self-revelation which she had just discovered that minute. And yet it was true. She had enjoyed the class friendships at Hope immensely, but Jeannette had seemed to stand out from the rest of the girls as a distinctly interesting personality.
Jeannette smiled at Kit’s remark.
“I have heard my grandmother say that in her girlhood her people of the northern forests pledged their friendships by saying, ‘While the grass grows and the waters run, so long shall we be friends.’” She turned and smiled at Kit her grave-eyed slow smile. “I will say that to you now, before you go.”
Kit laid one arm around her shoulders. “Me too,” she answered, “sounds like the blood-brother vow they used to take.”
The next evening Kit was to leave Delphi. She found it hard to say goodbye to her aunt and uncle.
“We shall miss you, Kit,” said Della, “but if it gives you any pleasure, my dear, I want to tell you it was your coming which opened my eyes to the folly of sitting with empty hands while there was work to be done. I don’t think I can ever belong to the rocking-chair squad again, without a guilty conscience.”
Kit hugged her fervently. “Oh, but you’re a dear, Aunt Della, to say such things. I only wish I could stay right here and be in two places at once. I’ll tell you what I’ve learned here, organization.” Kit said this very firmly and earnestly. “Back home they say I know just what I want to do, but I don’t know how to do it. Now, I know what I want to do. I want to go back home and organize.”
“The Dean wanted to have a little talk with you before dinner, dear. I think you’d better go in now, because we want to reach the station in plenty of time. Don’t talk too long. You know how he is when he gets absorbed in anything.”
Kit promised and joined the Dean. He had carried back the statue of Annui and stood before it regarding it with perplexity. Kit slipped her arm through his. It seemed as though there had sprung up a new comradeship and understanding between them since their last talk.
“Won’t he tell you his secrets, Uncle Bart?” she asked. “He has such an aggravating smile, just as if he were amused at baffling you.”
“I am baffled,” the Dean conceded genially. “I’ve reached a certain point and there is a blank which no historic record seems to fill. I thought when I had restored the inscription on the urn that it would tell me several of the missing points, but it seems to be merely a sort of sacred invocation. I am amazed at the urn being hollow. Every other memorial urn which I found during our excavations in Egypt was sealed, and upon being opened we always found rolls of papyrus within. I am disappointed.”
Kit lifted the urn very carefully and stared at it, reflectively. “What does the inscription say?” Kit asked.
“It merely traces the origin of King Amenotaph to the god Thoth,” said the Dean, thoughtfully, “that is, the Egyptian Hermes, or Mercury, as we know him, and it is extremely vague, being a curious mixture of the Coptic and the ancient Aramaic.”
“But what does it say?” asked Kit again.
The Dean followed the curious markings on the urn with his fingertip, bending forward as he did so. “It says, ‘Amenotaph, born of Thoth, shall reign in wisdom. Kings shall serve at his foot stool. Ra shall shine upon him. He shall lie in peace, encompassed by Ra.’”
“Is that all?”
“That is all,” sighed the Dean. “It seems merely a laudatory sentiment.”
“Who was Ra?” asked Kit curiously, running her hand around the top of the urn.
“The Sun god. His symbol was the circle. You see it here.”
Kit repeated again slowly, what her uncle had just read. Then she shook the urn close to her ear.
“My dear child, do be careful,” cried the Dean, “it’s priceless.”
But Kit put it under one arm as though it had been a milk pail and tapped around the inside with her knuckles, listening.
“That’s a perfectly good hollow jug,” she said solemnly. “Just you tap it, and listen, Uncle Bart. I’ll bet they’ve hidden something inside the outside and that Ra has guarded it all these years.”
“Just a moment, just a moment, my dear,” exclaimed the Dean, smiling like a happy boy. “You’ve given me an idea. This may be a cryptogram, or an ideographic cipher. Just a moment, now, don’t speak to me.”
He sat down at the desk and figured laboriously for nearly twenty minutes, working out the inscription in cipher, while Kit stared at him delightedly. After all, it was gratifying, she thought, to have somebody in the family who could take a little remark made thousands of years ago in Egypt and make sense out of it today. She waited patiently until he had finished. His hands were trembling as he reached for the urn.
“The circle,” he repeated, “the circle. ‘Ra in his circle shall guard Amenotaph.’ The secret lies in the circle, Kit. Do you suppose it could mean the rim of the urn?”
Kit studied the urn again and with the fingertip she traced the inscription and stopped when she came to a small circle in black and red outline.
“Do you suppose Ra lives here, Uncle Bart?” she asked, poking at it thoughtfully. She peered on the inner side at the corresponding spot to the circle, and gave a little cry of excitement. There was the faintest sign of a circle here also. “See,” she cried, “when you push on this side, the other gives a little bit.”
The Dean could not speak. He took the urn from her over to the window and carefully examined the inner circle through a microscope.
“Yes,” he said, fervently, “you are perfectly right, my dear. The circle moves. I think I shall have to send it to Washington. I would not take the responsibility of trying to remove it myself.”
“Oh, jeepers, it seems awful to have to wait so long,” Kit exclaimed regretfully. “It seemed to me as if you could just press it through with your thumb, like this.”
She had not intended pressing so hard, but merely to show him what she meant, and, under the pressure of her thumb, the circle of Ra depressed and pushed slowly through. The Dean looked on in utter amazement, as Kit lifted the urn and tested the inner section by shaking it. Then she peered into the circular hole, about the size of a quarter. The urn was fully two inches thick, and by inserting her finger into the space she found that it was made in two sections, with enough room between for a place of concealment.
“There’s something in here like asbestos, Uncle Bart,” she began, and turning the urn upside down, she tried shaking it, using a little pressure on the circle to separate the two rims. Slowly they gave, while the Dean hovered over her, cautioning and directing the operation, until two complete urns lay before them. But it was not these that the Dean snatched at. It was the curious cap-shaped mass which fell out in the form of a cone. To Kit it appeared to be of no significance whatever, but the Dean handled it as tenderly as a newborn child, and under his deft and tender touch it unrolled in long scrolls of papyrus.
The Dean rose to his feet solemnly, and his voice was hushed, as he said, “Kit, you do not know what you have done. Some day the significance of this occasion will recur to you. All I can say is that you have lifted the veil of the past, and revealed the secret of Amenotaph.”