It was half way through tea when the first stray puffs of wind came dropping abruptly, sighing away in tiny eddies of dust beyond the circle. Three human atoms upon the huge yellow carpet, that ere long would shake itself across five hundred miles and rise, whirling, driving, suffocating all life within its folds — three human beings noted the puffs of heated air and reacted variously to the little change. Each felt, it seemed, a slight uneasiness, as though of trouble coming that was yet not entirely atmospherical. Nerves tingled. They looked into each other’s faces. They looked back.
‘We mustn’t stay too late,’ said Tony, filling a basket for the donkey-boys in their dune two hundred yards away. ‘We’ve a long way to go.’ He examined the portentous sky. ‘It won’t come till night,’ he added, ‘still — they’re a bit awkward, these sandstorms, and one never knows.’
‘And I’ve got a train to catch,’ Tom mentioned, ‘absurd as it sounds in a place like this.’ He was scraping his lips with a handkerchief. ‘I’ve eaten enough bread-and-sand to last me till dinner, anyhow.’ He helped his cousin with the Arabs’ food. ‘They probably don’t mind it, they’re used to it.’ He straightened up from his stooping posture. Lettice, he saw, was lying with a cigarette against the bank of sloping sand that curved above them. She was intently watching them. She had not spoken for some time; she looked almost drowsy; the eyelids were half closed; the cigarette smoke rose in a steady little thread that did not waver.… There was perhaps ten yards between them, but he caught the direction of her gaze, and throwing his own eyes into the same line of sight, he saw what she saw. Instinctively, he took a quick step forward — hiding Tony from her immediate view.
It was certainly curious, this desire to screen his cousin, to prevent his appearing at a disadvantage. He was impelled, at all costs and in the smallest details, to help the man she admired, to increase his value, to minimise his disabilities, however trivial. It pained him to see Tony even at a physical disadvantage; Tony must show always at his very best; and at this moment, bending over the baskets, the attitude of the shoulders was disagreeably emphasised.
Tom did not laugh, he did not even smile. Gravely, as though it were of importance, he moved forward so that Lettice should not see the detail of the rounded shoulders which, he knew, compared unfavourably with his own straighter carriage. Yet almost the next minute, when he looked back again, he saw that the cigarette had fallen from her fingers, the eyes were closed, her body had slipped into a more recumbent angle, she seemed actually asleep.
‘Give a shout, Tom, and the boys will come to fetch it,’ said Tony, when at length the basket was ready. He put his hands to his own mouth to coo-ee across the dunes. Tom stopped him at once. ‘Hush! Lettice has dropped off,’ he explained, ‘you’ll wake her. It’s the heat. I’ll carry the things over to them.’ He noticed Tony’s hands as he held them to his lips. And again he felt a touch of sympathy, almost pity. Had she, so observant, so discerning in her fastidious taste — had she failed to notice the small detail too?
‘No, let me take it,’ Tony was saying, seizing the hamper from his cousin. Tom suggested carrying it between them. They tried it, laughing and struggling together with the awkward burden, but keeping their voices low. They lost the direction too; for all the sand-dunes were alike, and the boys were hidden in a hollow. It ended in Tony going off in triumph with the basket under one arm, guided at length by the faint neighing of a donkey in the distance.
Some little time had passed, perhaps five minutes, perhaps longer, when Tom went back to the tea-place across the soft sand, stepping cautiously so as not to disturb the sleeper. And another five minutes, perhaps another ten, had slipped by before Tony’s head reappeared above a neighbouring dune. A boy had come to meet him, shortening his journey.
But Fate calculated to a nicety, wasting no seconds one way or the other. There had been time — just time before Tony’s return — for Tom to have stretched himself at her feet, to have lit a cigarette, and to have smoked sufficient of it for the first ash to fall. He was very careful to make no sound, even lighting the match softly inside his hat. But his hand was trembling. For Lettice slept, and in her sleep made little sounds of pain.
He watched her. There was a tiny frown between the eyebrows, the lips twitched from time to time, she moved uneasily upon the bank of sliding sand; and, as she made these little broken sounds of pain, from beneath the closed eyelids two small tears crept out upon her cheeks.
Tom stared, making no sound or movement. The tears rolled down and fell into the sand. The suffering in the face made his heart beat irregularly. Something transfixed him. She wore the expression he had seen in the London theatre. For a moment he felt terror — a terror of something coming, something going to happen. He stared, trembling, holding his breath. She was dreaming, as a person even in a three-minute sleep can dream — deeply, vividly. He waited. He had the amazing sensation that he knew what she was dreaming — that he took part in it with her almost.… Unable, finally, to restrain himself another instant, he moved — and the noise wakened her. She sighed. The eyes opened of their own accord. She stared at him in a dazed way for a moment. Then she looked over his shoulder across the desert.
‘You’ve been asleep, Lettice,’ he whispered, ‘and actually dreaming — all in five minutes.’
She rubbed her eyes slowly, as though sand was in them. She stared into his face a moment before she spoke.
‘Yes, I dreamed,’ she answered with a little frightened sigh. ‘I dreamed of you —— There was a tent — the flap lifted suddenly — oh, it was so vivid! Then there was a crowd and awful drums were beating — and my river with the floating faces was there and I plunged in to save one — it was yours, Tom, yours — —’
She paused for a fraction of a second, while his heart went thumping against his ribs. He did not speak. He waited.
‘Then somehow you were taken from me,’ she went on; ‘you left me, Tom.’ Her voice sank. ‘And it broke my heart in two.’
‘Lettice…!’
He made a sudden movement in the sand — at which moment, precisely, Tony’s head appeared above the neighbouring dune, the rest of his body following it immediately.
And it seemed to Tom that his cousin came upon them out of the heart of a dream, out of the earth, out of a sandy tomb. His very existence, for those minutes, had been utterly forgotten, obliterated. He rose from the dead and came towards them over the hot, yellow desert. The distant hills — the Theban Hills above the Valley of the Kings — disgorged him. And, as once before, he looked dreadful, threatening, his great hands held out in front of him. He came gliding down the yielding slope. He caught them!
In that second — it was but the fraction of a second actually — the impression upon Tom’s mind was acute and terrible. Speech and movement were not in him anywhere; he could only sit and stare, both terrified and fascinated. Between himself and Lettice stretched an interval of six feet certainly, and into this very gap, the figure of his cousin, followed and preceded by heaps of moving sand, descended now. It was towards Lettice that Tony came so swiftly gliding.
It was his cousin surely…?
He saw the big hands outspread, he saw the slightly stooping shoulders, he saw the face and eyes, the light blue eyes. But also he saw strange, unaccustomed raiment, he saw a sheet of gold, he smelt the soft breath of ambra.… And the face was dark and menacing. There were words, too, careless, playful words, uttered undoubtedly by Tony’s familiar voice: ‘Caught you both asleep! Well, I declare! You are a couple…!’ followed by something else about its being ‘time to pack up and go because the sand was coming.…’ Tom heard the words distinctly, but far away, tiny with curious distance; they were half smothered, half submerged, it seemed, behind an acute inner hearing that caught another set of words he could not understand — in a language he both remembered and forgot. And the deep sense of dread passed swiftly then into a blinding jealous rage; he saw red; a fury of wrath that could kill and stab and strangle rushed ov
er him in a flood of passionate emotion. He lost control. He rushed headlong.
Seconds dragged out incredibly into minutes, as though time halted.… An intense, murderous hatred blazed in his heart.
From where he sat, both figures were above him, sheltered halfway up the long sliding slope. At the base of the yellow dune he crouched; he looked up at them. His eyes perhaps were blinded by the red tempest in his heart; or perhaps the tiny particles of flying sand drove against his eyeballs. He saw, at any rate, the figures close together, as if the man came gliding straight into her arms. He rose —
At the same moment a draught of sudden, violent wind broke with a pouring rush across the desert, and the entire crest of the undulating dune behind them rose to meet it in a single whirling eddy. As a gust of sea-wind tosses the spray into the air, this burst of scorching desert-wind drew the ridge up after it, then flung it in a blinding swirl against his face and skin.
The dune rose in a Wave of glittering yellow sand, drowning them from head to foot. He saw the glint and shimmer of the myriad particles in the sunset; he saw them drifting by the thousand, by the million through the whirling mass of it; he saw the two figures side by side above him, caught beneath the toppling crest of this bending billow that curved and broke against the fiery sky; he smelt the faint perfume of the desert underneath the hollow arch; he heard the thin, metallic grating of the countless grains in friction; he heard the palm leaves rattling; he saw two pairs of eyes… his feet went shuffling. It was The Wave — of sand.…
And the nightmare clutch laid hold upon his heart with giant pincers. The fiery red of insensate anger burst into flames, filled his throat to choking, set his paralysed muscles free with uncontrollable energy. This savage lust of murder caught him. The shuffling went faster, faster.… He turned and faced the eyes. He would kill — rather than see her touched by those great hands. It seemed he made the leap of a wild animal upon its prey.…
Fire flashed… then passed, before he knew it, from red to shining amber, from sullen crimson into purest gold, from gold to the sheen of dazzling whiteness. The change was instantaneous. His leap was arrested in mid-air. The red wrath passed amazingly, forgotten or transmuted. With a miraculous swiftness he was aware of understanding, of sympathy, of forgiveness.… The red light melted into white — the white of glory. The murder faded from his heart, replaced by a deep, deep glow of peace, of love, of infinite trust, of complete comprehension.… He accepted something marvellously. . . He forgot — himself.…
The eyes faded, the gold, the raiment, the perfume vanished, the sound died away. He no longer shuffled upon yielding sand. There was solid ground beneath his feet.… He was standing alert and upright, his arms outstretched to save — Tony from collapse upon the sliding dune. And the sandy wind drove blindingly against his face and skin.
The three of them stood side by side, holding to each other, laughing, choking, spluttering, heads bent and eyes closed tightly. Tom found his cousin’s hand in his own, clutching it firmly to keep his balance, while behind himself — against his ‘straight back,’ he realised, even while he choked and laughed — Lettice clung for shelter. Tom, therefore, actually had leaped forward — but to protect and not to kill. He protected both of them. This time, however, it was to himself that Lettice clung, instead of to another.
The violent gust passed on its way, the flying cloud of sand subsided, settling down on everything. For a moment they stood there rubbing their eyes, shaking their clothing free; then raising their heads cautiously, they looked about them. The air was still and calm again, but in the distance, already a mile away and swiftly travelling across the luminous waste, they saw the miniature whirlwind driving furiously, leaping from ridge to ridge. It swept over the innumerable dunes, lifting the series, one crest after another, into upright waves upon a yellow shimmering sea, then scattering them in a cloud that shone and glinted against the fiery sunset. Its track was easily marked. They watched it.…
Tony was the first to recover breath.
‘Whew!’ he cried, still spluttering, ‘but that was sudden! It took me clean off my feet for a moment. I got your hand, Tom, only just in time to save myself!’ He shook himself, the sand was down his back and in his hair, his shoes were full of it. ‘There’ll be another any minute now — another whirlwind — we’d better be starting.’ He began packing up busily, shouting as he did so to the donkey-boys. ‘By Jove!’ he cried the next second, ‘look what’s happened to our dune!’
Tom, who was on his knees, helping Lettice shake her skirts free, rose to look. The high, curving bank of sand where they had sheltered had indeed changed its shape; the entire ridge had been flattened by the wind; the crest had been lifted and carried away, scattered in all directions. The wave-outline of two minutes before no longer existed, it had broken, fallen over, melted back into the surrounding sea of desert whence it rose.…
‘It’s disappeared!’ exclaimed Tom and Lettice in the same breath.
The boys arrived with the animals and sand-cart; the baskets were quickly arranged, Tony mounted, Tom helped Lettice in. She leaned heavily on his arm and shoulder. It was in this moment’s pause before the actual start that Lettice turned her head suddenly as though listening. The air, motionless again, extraordinarily heated, hung in a dull and yet transparent curtain between them and the sinking sun. The entire heavens seemed to form a sounding-board, the least vibration resonant beneath its stretch.
‘Listen!’ she exclaimed. She had uttered no word till now. She looked down at Tom, then looked away again.
They turned their heads in the direction where she pointed, and Tom caught a faint, distant sound as of little strokes that fell thudding on the heavy air. Tony declared he heard nothing. The sound repeated itself rapidly, but at rhythmic intervals; it was unpleasant somewhere, a hint of alarm and menace in the throbbing note — ominous as though it warned. In the pulse of the blood it seemed, like the beating of the heart, Tom thought. It came to him almost through the pressure of her hand upon his shoulder, although his ear told him it came from the horizon where the Theban Hills loomed through the coming dusk, just visible, but shadowy. The muttering died away, then ceased, but not before he suddenly recalled an early morning hour beside a mountain lake, when months ago the thud of invisible paddle-wheels had stolen upon him through the quiet air.…
‘A drum,’ he heard Lettice murmur. ‘It’s a native drum in Thebes. My little dream! How the sound travels too! And how it multiplies!’ She peered at Tom through half-closed eyelids. ‘It must be at least a dozen miles away…!’ She smiled faintly, then dropped her eyes quickly.
‘Or a dozen centuries,’ he replied, not knowing quite why he said it. ‘And more like a thousand drums than only one!’ He smiled too. For another part of him, beyond capture somehow, knew what he meant, knew also why he smiled — knew also that she knew.
‘It frightens me! It’s horrible. It sounds like death!’ And though she whispered the words, more to herself than to the others, Tom heard each syllable.
The sound died away into the distance, and then ceased.
Then Tony, watching them both, but, unable to hear anything himself, called out again impatiently that it was time to start, that Tom had a train to catch, that any minute the real, big wind might be upon them. The hand slowly, half lingeringly, left Tom’s shoulder. They started rapidly with a kind of flourish. In a thin, black line the small procession crept across the immense darkening desert, like a strip of life that drifted upon a shoreless ocean.…
The sun sank down below the Libyan sands. But no awful wind descended. They reached home safely, exhausted and rather silent. The two hours seemed to Tom to have passed with a dream-like swiftness. The stars were shining as they clattered down the little Luxor street. In a dream, too, he went to the hotel to change, and fetch his bag; in a dream he stood upon the platform, held Tony’s hand, held the soft hand of Lettice, said good-bye… and watched the station lights glide past as he left them standing there toget
her, side by side.
CHAPTER XXXII.
One incident, however, — trivial, yet pregnant with significant revelation, — remained vividly outside the dream. The Play behind broke through, as it were; an actor forgot his rôle, and involved another actor; for an instant the masquerade tripped up, and merged with the commonplace reality of daily life. Explicit disclosure lay in the trifling matter.
They supplied a touch of comedy, but of rather ghastly comedy, ludicrous and at the same time painful — those smart, new yellow gloves that Tony put on when he climbed into the sand-cart and took the reins. His donkey had gone lame, he abandoned it to the boys behind, he climbed in to drive with Lettice. Tom, riding beside the cart, witnessed the entire incident; he laughed as heartily as either of the others; he felt it, however, as she felt it — a new sudden spiritual proximity to her proved this to him. Both shrank — from something disagreeable and afflicting. The hands looked somehow dreadful.
For the first time Tom realised the physiognomy of hands — that hands, rather than faces, should be photographed; not merely that they seemed now so large, so spread, so ugly, but that somehow the glaring canary yellow subtly emphasised another aspect that was distasteful and unpleasant — an undesirable aspect in their owner. The cotton was atrocious. So obvious was it to Tom that he felt pity before he felt disgust. The obnoxious revelation was so palpable. He was aware that he felt ashamed — for Lettice. He stared for a moment, unable to move his eyes away. The next second, lifting his glance, he saw that she, too, had noticed it. With a flash of keen relief, he was aware that she, like himself, shrank visibly from the distressing half-sinister revelation that was betrayal.
Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood Page 194