Four Weird Tales
Page 18
_Sand_
I
As Felix Henriot came through the streets that January night the fog wasstifling, but when he reached his little flat upon the top floor therecame a sound of wind. Wind was stirring about the world. It blew againsthis windows, but at first so faintly that he hardly noticed it. Then,with an abrupt rise and fall like a wailing voice that sought to claimattention, it called him. He peered through the window into the blurreddarkness, listening.
There is no cry in the world like that of the homeless wind. A vagueexcitement, scarcely to be analysed, ran through his blood. The curtainof fog waved momentarily aside. Henriot fancied a star peeped down athim.
"It will change things a bit--at last," he sighed, settling back intohis chair. "It will bring movement!"
Already something in himself had changed. A restlessness, as of thatwandering wind, woke in his heart--the desire to be off and away. Otherthings could rouse this wildness too: falling water, the singing of abird, an odour of wood-fire, a glimpse of winding road. But the cry ofwind, always searching, questioning, travelling the world's greatroutes, remained ever the master-touch. High longing took his mood inhand. Mid seven millions he felt suddenly--lonely.
"I will arise and go now, for always night and dayI hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core."
He murmured the words over softly to himself. The emotion that producedInnisfree passed strongly through him. He too would be over the hillsand far away. He craved movement, change, adventure--somewhere far fromshops and crowds and motor-'busses. For a week the fog had stifledLondon. This wind brought life.
Where should he go? Desire was long; his purse was short.
He glanced at his books, letters, newspapers. They had no interest now.Instead he listened. The panorama of other journeys rolled in colourthrough the little room, flying on one another's heels. Henriot enjoyedthis remembered essence of his travels more than the travels themselves.The crying wind brought so many voices, all of them seductive:
There was a soft crashing of waves upon the Black Sea shores, where thehuge Caucasus beckoned in the sky beyond; a rustling in the umbrellapines and cactus at Marseilles, whence magic steamers start about theworld like flying dreams. He heard the plash of fountains upon MountIda's slopes, and the whisper of the tamarisk on Marathon. It was dawnonce more upon the Ionian Sea, and he smelt the perfume of the Cyclades.Blue-veiled islands melted in the sunshine, and across the dewy lawns ofTempe, moistened by the spray of many waterfalls, he saw--Great Heavensabove!--the dancing of white forms ... or was it only mist the sunshinepainted against Pelion?... "Methought, among the lawns together, wewandered underneath the young grey dawn. And multitudes of dense whitefleecy clouds shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind...."
And then, into his stuffy room, slipped the singing perfume of awall-flower on a ruined tower, and with it the sweetness of hot ivy. Heheard the "yellow bees in the ivy bloom." Wind whipped over the openhills--this very wind that laboured drearily through the London fog.
And--he was caught. The darkness melted from the city. The fog whiskedoff into an azure sky. The roar of traffic turned into booming of thesea. There was a whistling among cordage, and the floor swayed to andfro. He saw a sailor touch his cap and pocket the two-franc piece. Thesyren hooted--ominous sound that had started him on many a journey ofadventure--and the roar of London became mere insignificant clatter of achild's toy carriages.
He loved that syren's call; there was something deep and pitiless in it.It drew the wanderers forth from cities everywhere: "Leave your knownworld behind you, and come with me for better or for worse! The anchoris up; it is too late to change. Only--beware! You shall know curiousthings--and alone!"
Henriot stirred uneasily in his chair. He turned with sudden energy tothe shelf of guide-books, maps and time-tables--possessions he mostvalued in the whole room. He was a happy-go-lucky, adventure-lovingsoul, careless of common standards, athirst ever for the new andstrange.
"That's the best of having a cheap flat," he laughed, "and no ties inthe world. I can turn the key and disappear. No one cares or knows--noone but the thieving caretaker. And he's long ago found out that there'snothing here worth taking!"
There followed then no lengthy indecision. Preparation was even shorterstill. He was always ready for a move, and his sojourn in cities was butbreathing-space while he gathered pennies for further wanderings. Anenormous kit-bag--sack-shaped, very worn and dirty--emerged speedilyfrom the bottom of a cupboard in the wall. It was of limitless capacity.The key and padlock rattled in its depths. Cigarette ashes coveredeverything while he stuffed it full of ancient, indescribable garments.And his voice, singing of those "yellow bees in the ivy bloom," mingledwith the crying of the rising wind about his windows. His restlessnesshad disappeared by magic.
This time, however, there could be no haunted Pelion, nor shady grovesof Tempe, for he lived in sophisticated times when money marketsregulated movement sternly. Travelling was only for the rich; merewanderers must pig it. He remembered instead an opportune invitation tothe Desert. "Objective" invitation, his genial hosts had called it,knowing his hatred of convention. And Helouan danced into letters ofbrilliance upon the inner map of his mind. For Egypt had ever held hisspirit in thrall, though as yet he had tried in vain to touch the greatburied soul of her. The excavators, the Egyptologists, thearchaeologists most of all, plastered her grey ancient face with labelslike hotel advertisements on travellers' portmanteaux. They told whereshe had come from last, but nothing of what she dreamed and thought andloved. The heart of Egypt lay beneath the sand, and the trifling robberyof little details that poked forth from tombs and temples brought notrue revelation of her stupendous spiritual splendour. Henriot, in hisyouth, had searched and dived among what material he could find,believing once--or half believing--that the ceremonial of that ancientsystem veiled a weight of symbol that was reflected from genuinesupersensual knowledge. The rituals, now taken literally, and sopityingly explained away, had once been genuine pathways of approach.But never yet, and least of all in his previous visits to Egypt itself,had he discovered one single person, worthy of speech, who caught at hisidea. "Curious," they said, then turned away--to go on digging in thesand. Sand smothered her world to-day. Excavators discovered skeletons.Museums everywhere stored them--grinning, literal relics that toldnothing.
But now, while he packed and sang, these hopes of enthusiastic youngerdays stirred again--because the emotion that gave them birth was realand true in him. Through the morning mists upon the Nile an old pyramidbowed hugely at him across London roofs: "Come," he heard its awfulwhisper beneath the ceiling, "I have things to show you, and to tell."He saw the flock of them sailing the Desert like weird grey solemn shipsthat make no earthly port. And he imagined them as one: multipleexpressions of some single unearthly portent they adumbrated in mightyform--dead symbols of some spiritual conception long vanished from theworld.
"I mustn't dream like this," he laughed, "or I shall get absent-mindedand pack fire-tongs instead of boots. It looks like a jumble salealready!" And he stood on a heap of things to wedge them down stilltighter.
But the pictures would not cease. He saw the kites circling high in theblue air. A couple of white vultures flapped lazily away over shiningmiles. Felucca sails, like giant wings emerging from the ground, curvedtowards him from the Nile. The palm-trees dropped long shadows overMemphis. He felt the delicious, drenching heat, and the Khamasin, thatover-wind from Nubia, brushed his very cheeks. In the little gardens themish-mish was in bloom.... He smelt the Desert ... grey sepulchre ofcancelled cycles.... The stillness of her interminable reaches droppeddown upon old London....
The magic of the sand stole round him in its silent-footed tempest.
And while he struggled with that strange, capacious sack, the piles ofclothing ran into shapes of gleaming Bedouin faces; London garmentssettled down with the mournful sound of camels' feet, ha
lf droppingwind, half water flowing underground--sound that old Time has broughtover into modern life and left a moment for our wonder and perhaps ourtears.
He rose at length with the excitement of some deep enchantment in hiseyes. The thought of Egypt plunged ever so deeply into him, carryinghim into depths where he found it difficult to breathe, so strangely faraway it seemed, yet indefinably familiar. He lost his way. A touch offear came with it.
"A sack like that is the wonder of the world," he laughed again, kickingthe unwieldy, sausage-shaped monster into a corner of the room, andsitting down to write the thrilling labels: "Felix Henriot, Alexandria_via_ Marseilles." But his pen blotted the letters; there was sand init. He rewrote the words. Then he remembered a dozen things he had leftout. Impatiently, yet with confusion somewhere, he stuffed them in. Theyran away into shifting heaps; they disappeared; they emerged suddenlyagain. It was like packing hot, dry, flowing sand. From the pockets of acoat--he had worn it last summer down Dorset way--out trickled sand.There was sand in his mind and thoughts.
And his dreams that night were full of winds, the old sad winds ofEgypt, and of moving, sifting sand. Arabs and Afreets danced amazinglytogether across dunes he could never reach. For he could not follow fastenough. Something infinitely older than these ever caught his feet andheld him back. A million tiny fingers stung and pricked him. Somethingflung a veil before his eyes. Once it touched him--his face and handsand neck. "Stay here with us," he heard a host of muffled voices crying,but their sound was smothered, buried, rising through the ground. Amyriad throats were choked. Till, at last, with a violent effort heturned and seized it. And then the thing he grasped at slipped betweenhis fingers and ran easily away. It had a grey and yellow face, and itmoved through all its parts. It flowed as water flows, and yet wassolid. It was centuries old.
He cried out to it. "Who are you? What is your name? I surely know you... but I have forgotten ...?"
And it stopped, turning from far away its great uncovered countenance ofnameless colouring. He caught a voice. It rolled and boomed andwhispered like the wind. And then he woke, with a curious shaking in hisheart, and a little touch of chilly perspiration on the skin.
But the voice seemed in the room still--close beside him:
"I am the Sand," he heard, before it died away.
* * * * *
And next he realised that the glitter of Paris lay behind him, and asteamer was taking him with much unnecessary motion across a sparklingsea towards Alexandria. Gladly he saw the Riviera fade below thehorizon, with its hard bright sunshine, treacherous winds, and its smearof rich, conventional English. All restlessness now had left him. Truevagabond still at forty, he only felt the unrest and discomfort of lifewhen caught in the network of routine and rigid streets, no chance ofbreaking loose. He was off again at last, money scarce enough indeed,but the joy of wandering expressing itself in happy emotions of release.Every warning of calculation was stifled. He thought of the Americanwoman who walked out of her Long Island house one summer's day to lookat a passing sail--and was gone eight years before she walked in again.Eight years of roving travel! He had always felt respect and admirationfor that woman.
For Felix Henriot, with his admixture of foreign blood, was philosopheras well as vagabond, a strong poetic and religious strain sometimesbreaking out through fissures in his complex nature. He had seen muchlife; had read many books. The passionate desire of youth to solve theworld's big riddles had given place to a resignation filled to the brimwith wonder. Anything _might_ be true. Nothing surprised him. The mostoutlandish beliefs, for all he knew, might fringe truth somewhere. Hehad escaped that cheap cynicism with which disappointed men soothe theirvanity when they realise that an intelligible explanation of theuniverse lies beyond their powers. He no longer expected final answers.
For him, even the smallest journeys held the spice of some adventure;all minutes were loaded with enticing potentialities. And they shapedfor themselves somehow a dramatic form. "It's like a story," his friendssaid when he told his travels. It always was a story.
But the adventure that lay waiting for him where the silent streets oflittle Helouan kiss the great Desert's lips, was of a different kind toany Henriot had yet encountered. Looking back, he has often askedhimself, "How in the world can I accept it?"
And, perhaps, he never yet has accepted it. It was sand that brought it.For the Desert, the stupendous thing that mothers little Helouan,produced it.