II
He slipped through Cairo with the same relief that he left the Riviera,resenting its social vulgarity so close to the imperial aristocracy ofthe Desert; he settled down into the peace of soft and silent littleHelouan. The hotel in which he had a room on the top floor had beenformerly a Khedivial Palace. It had the air of a palace still. He felthimself in a country-house, with lofty ceilings, cool and airycorridors, spacious halls. Soft-footed Arabs attended to his wants;white walls let in light and air without a sign of heat; there was afeeling of a large, spread tent pitched on the very sand; and the windthat stirred the oleanders in the shady gardens also crept in to rustlethe palm leaves of his favourite corner seat. Through the large windowswhere once the Khedive held high court, the sunshine blazed upon vistaedleagues of Desert.
And from his bedroom windows he watched the sun dip into gold andcrimson behind the swelling Libyan sands. This side of the pyramids hesaw the Nile meander among palm groves and tilled fields. Across hisbalcony railings the Egyptian stars trooped down beside his very bed,shaping old constellations for his dreams; while, to the south, helooked out upon the vast untamable Body of the sands that carpeted theworld for thousands of miles towards Upper Egypt, Nubia, and the dreadSahara itself. He wondered again why people thought it necessary to goso far afield to know the Desert. Here, within half an hour of Cairo, itlay breathing solemnly at his very doors.
For little Helouan, caught thus between the shoulders of the Libyan andArabian Deserts, is utterly sand-haunted. The Desert lies all round itlike a sea. Henriot felt he never could escape from it, as he movedabout the island whose coasts are washed with sand. Down each broad andshining street the two end houses framed a vista of its dimimmensity--glimpses of shimmering blue, or flame-touched purple. Therewere stretches of deep sea-green as well, far off upon its bosom. Thestreets were open channels of approach, and the eye ran down them asalong the tube of a telescope laid to catch incredible distance out ofspace. Through them the Desert reached in with long, thin feelerstowards the village. Its Being flooded into Helouan, and over it. Pastwalls and houses, churches and hotels, the sea of Desert pressed insilently with its myriad soft feet of sand. It poured in everywhere,through crack and slit and crannie. These were reminders of possessionand ownership. And every passing wind that lifted eddies of dust at thestreet corners were messages from the quiet, powerful Thing thatpermitted Helouan to lie and dream so peacefully in the sunshine. Mereartificial oasis, its existence was temporary, held on lease, just forninety-nine centuries or so.
This sea idea became insistent. For, in certain lights, and especiallyin the brief, bewildering dusk, the Desert rose--swaying towards thesmall white houses. The waves of it ran for fifty miles without a break.It was too deep for foam or surface agitation, yet it knew the swell oftides. And underneath flowed resolute currents, linking distance to thecentre. These many deserts were really one. A storm, just retreated, hadtossed Helouan upon the shore and left it there to dry; but any morninghe would wake to find it had been carried off again into the depths.Some fragment, at least, would disappear. The grim Mokattam Hills wererollers that ever threatened to topple down and submerge the sandy barthat men called Helouan.
Being soundless, and devoid of perfume, the Desert's message reached himthrough two senses only--sight and touch; chiefly, of course, theformer. Its invasion was concentrated through the eyes. And vision, thusuncorrected, went what pace it pleased. The Desert played with him. Sandstole into his being--through the eyes.
And so obsessing was this majesty of its close presence, that Henriotsometimes wondered how people dared their little social activitieswithin its very sight and hearing; how they played golf and tennis uponreclaimed edges of its face, picnicked so blithely hard upon itsfrontiers, and danced at night while this stern, unfathomable Thing laybreathing just beyond the trumpery walls that kept it out. The challengeof their shallow admiration seemed presumptuous, almost provocative.Their pursuit of pleasure suggested insolent indifference. They ranfool-hardy hazards, he felt; for there was no worship in their vulgarhearts. With a mental shudder, sometimes he watched the cheap touristhorde go laughing, chattering past within view of its ancient,half-closed eyes. It was like defying deity.
For, to his stirred imagination the sublimity of the Desert dwarfedhumanity. These people had been wiser to choose another place for theflaunting of their tawdry insignificance. Any minute this Wilderness,"huddled in grey annihilation," might awake and notice them ...!
In his own hotel were several "smart," so-called "Society" people whoemphasised the protest in him to the point of definite contempt.Overdressed, the latest worldly novel under their arms, they struttedthe narrow pavements of their tiny world, immensely pleased withthemselves. Their vacuous minds expressed themselves in the slang oftheir exclusive circle--value being the element excluded. The pettinessof their outlook hardly distressed him--he was too familiar with it athome--but their essential vulgarity, their innate ugliness, seemed morethan usually offensive in the grandeur of its present setting. Into themighty sands they took the latest London scandal, gabbling it over evenamong the Tombs and Temples. And "it was to laugh," the pains they spentwondering whom they might condescend to know, never dreaming that theythemselves were not worth knowing. Against the background of the nobleDesert their titles seemed the cap and bells of clowns.
And Henriot, knowing some of them personally, could not always escapetheir insipid company. Yet he was the gainer. They little guessed howtheir commonness heightened contrast, set mercilessly thus beside thestrange, eternal beauty of the sand.
Occasionally the protest in his soul betrayed itself in words, whichof course they did not understand. "He is so clever, isn't he?"And then, having relieved his feelings, he would comfort himselfcharacteristically:
"The Desert has not noticed them. The Sand is not aware of theirexistence. How should the sea take note of rubbish that lies above itstide-line?"
For Henriot drew near to its great shifting altars in an attitude ofworship. The wilderness made him kneel in heart. Its shining reaches ledto the oldest Temple in the world, and every journey that he made waslike a sacrament. For him the Desert was a consecrated place. It wassacred.
And his tactful hosts, knowing his peculiarities, left their house opento him when he cared to come--they lived upon the northern edge of theoasis--and he was as free as though he were absolutely alone. He blessedthem; he rejoiced that he had come. Little Helouan accepted him. TheDesert knew that he was there.
* * * * *
From his corner of the big dining-room he could see the other guests,but his roving eye always returned to the figure of a solitary man whosat at an adjoining table, and whose personality stirred his interest.While affecting to look elsewhere, he studied him as closely as mightbe. There was something about the stranger that touched hiscuriosity--a certain air of expectation that he wore. But it was morethan that: it was anticipation, apprehension in it somewhere. The manwas nervous, uneasy. His restless way of suddenly looking about himproved it. Henriot tried every one else in the room as well; but, thoughhis thought settled on others too, he always came back to the figure ofthis solitary being opposite, who ate his dinner as if afraid of beingseen, and glanced up sometimes as if fearful of being watched. Henriot'scuriosity, before he knew it, became suspicion. There was mystery here.The table, he noticed, was laid for two.
"Is he an actor, a priest of some strange religion, an enquiry agent, orjust--a crank?" was the thought that first occurred to him. And thequestion suggested itself without amusement. The impression ofsubterfuge and caution he conveyed left his observer unsatisfied.
The face was clean shaven, dark, and strong; thick hair, straight yetbushy, was slightly unkempt; it was streaked with grey; and anunexpected mobility when he smiled ran over the features that he seemedto hold rigid by deliberate effort. The man was cut to no quite commonmeasure. Henriot jumped to an intuitive conclusion: "He's not here forpleasure or merely sight-see
ing. Something serious has brought him outto Egypt." For the face combined too ill-assorted qualities: anobstinate tenacity that might even mean brutality, and was certainlyrepulsive, yet, with it, an undecipherable dreaminess betrayed by linesof the mouth, but above all in the very light blue eyes, so rarelyraised. Those eyes, he felt, had looked upon unusual things;"dreaminess" was not an adequate description; "searching" conveyed itbetter. The true source of the queer impression remained elusive. Andhence, perhaps, the incongruous marriage in the face--mobility laid upona matter-of-fact foundation underneath. The face showed conflict.
And Henriot, watching him, felt decidedly intrigued. "I'd like to knowthat man, and all about him." His name, he learned later, was RichardVance; from Birmingham; a business man. But it was not the Birmingham hewished to know; it was the--other: cause of the elusive, dreamysearching. Though facing one another at so short a distance, their eyes,however, did not meet. And this, Henriot well knew, was a sure sign thathe himself was also under observation. Richard Vance, from Birmingham,was equally taking careful note of Felix Henriot, from London.
Thus, he could wait his time. They would come together later. Anopportunity would certainly present itself. The first links in a curiouschain had already caught; soon the chain would tighten, pull as thoughby chance, and bring their lives into one and the same circle. Wonderingin particular for what kind of a companion the second cover was laid,Henriot felt certain that their eventual coming together was inevitable.He possessed this kind of divination from first impressions, and notuncommonly it proved correct.
Following instinct, therefore, he took no steps towards acquaintance,and for several days, owing to the fact that he dined frequently withhis hosts, he saw nothing more of Richard Vance, the business man fromBirmingham. Then, one night, coming home late from his friend's house,he had passed along the great corridor, and was actually a step or sointo his bedroom, when a drawling voice sounded close behind him. It wasan unpleasant sound. It was very near him too--
"I beg your pardon, but have you, by any chance, such a thing as acompass you could lend me?"
The voice was so close that he started. Vance stood within touchingdistance of his body. He had stolen up like a ghostly Arab, must havefollowed him, too, some little distance, for further down the passagethe light of an open door--he had passed it on his way--showed where hecame from.
"Eh? I beg your pardon? A--compass, did you say?" He felt disconcertedfor a moment. How short the man was, now that he saw him standing. Broadand powerful too. Henriot looked down upon his thick head of hair. Thepersonality and voice repelled him. Possibly his face, caught unawares,betrayed this.
"Forgive my startling you," said the other apologetically, while thesofter expression danced in for a moment and disorganised the rigid setof the face. "The soft carpet, you know. I'm afraid you didn't hear mytread. I wondered"--he smiled again slightly at the nature of therequest--"if--by any chance--you had a pocket compass you could lendme?"
"Ah, a compass, yes! Please don't apologise. I believe I have one--ifyou'll wait a moment. Come in, won't you? I'll have a look."
The other thanked him but waited in the passage. Henriot, it sohappened, had a compass, and produced it after a moment's search.
"I am greatly indebted to you--if I may return it in the morning. Youwill forgive my disturbing you at such an hour. My own is broken, and Iwanted--er--to find the true north."
Henriot stammered some reply, and the man was gone. It was all over in aminute. He locked his door and sat down in his chair to think. Thelittle incident had upset him, though for the life of him he could notimagine why. It ought by rights to have been almost ludicrous, yetinstead it was the exact reverse--half threatening. Why should not a manwant a compass? But, again, why should he? And at midnight? The voice,the eyes, the near presence--what did they bring that set his nervesthus asking unusual questions? This strange impression that somethinggrave was happening, something unearthly--how was it born exactly? Theman's proximity came like a shock. It had made him start. Hebrought--thus the idea came unbidden to his mind--something with himthat galvanised him quite absurdly, as fear does, or delight, or greatwonder. There was a music in his voice too--a certain--well, he couldonly call it lilt, that reminded him of plainsong, intoning, chanting.Drawling was _not_ the word at all.
He tried to dismiss it as imagination, but it would not be dismissed.The disturbance in himself was caused by something not imaginary, butreal. And then, for the first time, he discovered that the man hadbrought a faint, elusive suggestion of perfume with him, an aromaticodour, that made him think of priests and churches. The ghost of itstill lingered in the air. Ah, here then was the origin of the notionthat his voice had chanted: it was surely the suggestion of incense. Butincense, intoning, a compass to find the true north--at midnight in aDesert hotel!
A touch of uneasiness ran through the curiosity and excitement that hefelt.
And he undressed for bed. "Confound my old imagination," he thought,"what tricks it plays me! It'll keep me awake!"
But the questions, once started in his mind, continued. He must findexplanation of one kind or another before he could lie down and sleep,and he found it at length in--the stars. The man was an astronomer ofsorts; possibly an astrologer into the bargain! Why not? The stars werewonderful above Helouan. Was there not an observatory on the MokattamHills, too, where tourists could use the telescopes on privileged days?He had it at last. He even stole out on to his balcony to see if thestranger perhaps was looking through some wonderful apparatus at theheavens. Their rooms were on the same side. But the shuttered windowsrevealed no stooping figure with eyes glued to a telescope. The starsblinked in their many thousands down upon the silent desert. The nightheld neither sound nor movement. There was a cool breeze blowing acrossthe Nile from the Lybian Sands. It nipped; and he stepped back quicklyinto the room again. Drawing the mosquito curtains carefully about thebed, he put the light out and turned over to sleep.
And sleep came quickly, contrary to his expectations, though it was alight and surface sleep. That last glimpse of the darkened Desert lyingbeneath the Egyptian stars had touched him with some hand of awful powerthat ousted the first, lesser excitement. It calmed and soothed him inone sense, yet in another, a sense he could not understand, it caughthim in a net of deep, deep feelings whose mesh, while infinitelydelicate, was utterly stupendous. His nerves this deeper emotion leftalone: it reached instead to something infinite in him that mere nervescould neither deal with nor interpret. The soul awoke and whispered inhim while his body slept.
And the little, foolish dreams that ran to and fro across this veil ofsurface sleep brought oddly tangled pictures of things quite tiny and atthe same time of others that were mighty beyond words. With these twocounters Nightmare played. They interwove. There was the figure of thisdark-faced man with the compass, measuring the sky to find the truenorth, and there were hints of giant Presences that hovered just outsidesome curious outline that he traced upon the ground, copied in somenightmare fashion from the heavens. The excitement caused by hisvisitor's singular request mingled with the profounder sensations hisfinal look at the stars and Desert stirred. The two were somehowinter-related.
Some hours later, before this surface sleep passed into genuine slumber,Henriot woke--with an appalling feeling that the Desert had comecreeping into his room and now stared down upon him where he lay in bed.The wind was crying audibly about the walls outside. A faint, sharptapping came against the window panes.
He sprang instantly out of bed, not yet awake enough to feel actualalarm, yet with the nightmare touch still close enough to cause a sortof feverish, loose bewilderment. He switched the lights on. A momentlater he knew the meaning of that curious tapping, for the rising windwas flinging tiny specks of sand against the glass. The idea that theyhad summoned him belonged, of course, to dream.
He opened the window, and stepped out on to the balcony. The stone wasvery cold under his bare feet. There was a wash of wind all over him. Hes
aw the sheet of glimmering, pale desert near and far; and somethingstung his skin below the eyes.
"The sand," he whispered, "again the sand; always the sand. Waking orsleeping, the sand is everywhere--nothing but sand, sand, Sand...."
He rubbed his eyes. It was like talking in his sleep, talking to Someonewho had questioned him just before he woke. But was he really properlyawake? It seemed next day that he had dreamed it. Something enormous,with rustling skirts of sand, had just retreated far into the Desert.Sand went with it--flowing, trailing, smothering the world. The winddied down.
And Henriot went back to sleep, caught instantly away intounconsciousness; covered, blinded, swept over by this spreading thing ofreddish brown with the great, grey face, whose Being was colossal yetquite tiny, and whose fingers, wings and eyes were countless as thestars.
But all night long it watched and waited, rising to peer above thelittle balcony, and sometimes entering the room and piling up beside hisvery pillow. He dreamed of Sand.
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