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Page 54
"Yes," I said, when he had finished. "I shall have to admit that
immediately suggests Higginson's poem and Cleopatra's name. But
here, try this," and I threw an old copy of the Atlantic Monthly
upon the table. Maitland opened it and laughed. "This may be mere
chance, Doc," he said, "but it is remarkable, none the less. See
here!" He held the magazine toward me, and I read: "Cleopatra's
Needle. The Historic Significance of Central Park's New Monument.
Some of the Difficulties that Attended its Transportation and
Erection. By James Theodore Wright, Ph. D." I was dumfounded.
Things were indeed getting interesting.
"Magazines and newspapers," I said, "seem to be altogether too much
in your line. We'll try a book this time. Here," and I pulled the
first one that came to hand, "is a copy of Tennyson's Poems I fancy
it will trouble you to find your reference in that." Maitland took
it in silence, and, opening it at random, began to read. The result
surprised him even more than it did me. He had chanced upon these
verses from "A Dream of Fair Women":
"'We drank the Libyan Sun to sleep, and lit
Lamps which outburn'd Canopus. O my life
In Egypt! O the dalliance and the wit,
The flattery and the strife.
"'And the wild kiss when fresh from war's alarms,
My Hercules, my Roman Antony,
My mailed Bacchus leapt into my arms,
Contented there to die!
"'And there he died! And when I heard my name
Sigh'd forth with life, I would not brook my fear
Of the other! With a worm I balked his fame.
What else was left? look here!'
"With that she tore her robe apart and half
The polished argent of her breast to sight
Laid bare. Thereto she pointed with a laugh,
Showing the aspic's bite."
"There is no doubt about that," I said, as he laid the book upon the
table. "I want to try this thing once more. Here is Pascal; if you
can find any reference to the 'Serpent of the Nile' in that, you
needn't go any farther, I shall be satisfied," and I passed the book
to him. He turned the pages over in silence for half a minute, or
so, and then said: "I guess this counts as a failure,--no, though,
by Jove! Look here!" His face was of almost deathly pallor, and
his finger trembled upon the passage it indicated as he held the
book toward me. I glanced with some anxiety from his face to the
book, and read, as nearly as I now can remember: "If Cleopatra's
nose had been shorter, the entire face of the world would have been
changed."
It was some minutes before Maitland fully regained his composure,
and during that time neither of us spoke. "Well, Doc," he said at
length, and his manner was decidedly grave, even for him:
"What do you make of it?" I didn't know what to make of it, and
I admitted my ignorance with a frankness at which, considering my
profession, I have often since had occasion to marvel. I told
him that I could scarcely account for it on the ground of mere
coincidence, and I called his attention to that part of "The Mystery
of Marie Roget," where Poe figures out the mathematical likelihood
of a certain combination of peculiarities of clothing being found
to obtain in the case of two young women who were unknown to each
other. If the finding of a single reference to Cleopatra had been
a thing of so infrequent occurrence as to at once challenge
Maitland's attention, what was to be said when, all of a sudden, her
name, or some reference to her, seemed to stare at him from every
page he read?
"'There is something in this more than natural,
If philosophy could find it out,'"
murmured Maitland, more to himself than to me. "Come, what do you
say?" and he turned abruptly to me with one of those searching looks
so peculiar to him in moments of excitement. "I see," I replied,
"that you are determined I shall give my opinion now and here,
without a moment's reflection. Very well; you have just quoted
'Hamlet'; I will do likewise:
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