III

For some days Henriot saw little of the man who came from Birmingham and

pushed curiosity to a climax by asking for a compass in the middle of

the night. For one thing, he was a good deal with his friends upon the

other side of Helouan, and for another, he slept several nights in the

Desert.

He loved the gigantic peace the Desert gave him. The world was forgotten

there; and not the world merely, but all memory of it. Everything faded

out. The soul turned inwards upon itself.

An Arab boy and donkey took out sleeping-bag, food and water to the Wadi

Hof, a desolate gorge about an hour eastwards. It winds between cliffs

whose summits rise some thousand feet above the sea. It opens suddenly,

cut deep into the swaying world of level plateaux and undulating hills.

It moves about too; he never found it in the same place twice--like an

arm of the Desert that shifted with the changing lights. Here he watched

dawns and sunsets, slept through the mid-day heat, and enjoyed the

unearthly colouring that swept Day and Night across the huge horizons.

In solitude the Desert soaked down into him. At night the jackals cried

in the darkness round his cautiously-fed camp fire--small, because wood

had to be carried--and in the day-time kites circled overhead to inspect

him, and an occasional white vulture flapped across the blue. The weird

desolation of this rocky valley, he thought, was like the scenery of the

moon. He took no watch with him, and the arrival of the donkey boy an

hour after sunrise came almost from another planet, bringing things of

time and common life out of some distant gulf where they had lain

forgotten among lost ages.

The short hour of twilight brought, too, a bewitchment into the silence

that was a little less than comfortable. Full light or darkness he could

manage, but this time of half things made him want to shut his eyes and

hide. Its effect stepped over imagination. The mind got lost. He could

not understand it. For the cliffs and boulders of discoloured limestone

shone then with an inward glow that signalled to the Desert with veiled

lanterns. The misshappen hills, carved by wind and rain into ominous

outlines, stirred and nodded. In the morning light they retired into

themselves, asleep. But at dusk the tide retreated. They rose from the

sea, emerging naked, threatening. They ran together and joined

shoulders, the entire army of them. And the glow of their sandy bodies,

self-luminous, continued even beneath the stars. Only the moonlight

drowned it. For the moonrise over the Mokattam Hills brought a white,

grand loveliness that drenched the entire Desert. It drew a marvellous

sweetness from the sand. It shone across a world as yet unfinished,

whereon no life might show itself for ages yet to come. He was alone

then upon an empty star, before the creation of things that breathed and

moved.

What impressed him, however, more than everything else was the enormous

vitality that rose out of all this apparent death. There was no hint of

the melancholy that belongs commonly to flatness; the sadness of wide,

monotonous landscape was not here. The endless repetition of sweeping

vale and plateau brought infinity within measurable comprehension. He

grasped a definite meaning in the phrase "world without end": the

Desert had no end and no beginning. It gave him a sense of eternal

peace, the silent peace that star-fields know. Instead of subduing the

soul with bewilderment, it inspired with courage, confidence, hope.

Through this sand which was the wreck of countless geological ages,

rushed life that was terrific and uplifting, too huge to include

melancholy, too deep to betray itself in movement. Here was the

stillness of eternity. Behind the spread grey masque of apparent death

lay stores of accumulated life, ready to break forth at any point. In

the Desert he felt himself absolutely royal.

And this contrast of Life, veiling itself in Death, was a contradiction

that somehow intoxicated. The Desert exhilaration never left him. He was

never alone. A companionship of millions went with him, and he _felt_

the Desert close, as stars are close to one another, or grains of sand.

It was the Khamasin, the hot wind bringing sand, that drove him in--with

the feeling that these few days and nights had been immeasurable, and

that he had been away a thousand years. He came back with the magic of

the Desert in his blood, hotel-life tasteless and insipid by comparison.

To human impressions thus he was fresh and vividly sensitive. His being,

cleaned and sensitized by pure grandeur, "felt" people--for a time at

any rate--with an uncommon sharpness of receptive judgment. He returned

to a life somehow mean and meagre, resuming insignificance with his

dinner jacket. Out with the sand he had been regal; now, like a slave,

he strutted self-conscious and reduced.

But this imperial standard of the Desert stayed a little time beside

him, its purity focussing judgment like a lens. The specks of smaller

emotions left it clear at first, and as his eye wandered vaguely over

the people assembled in the dining-room, it was arrested with a vivid

shock upon two figures at the little table facing him.

He had forgotten Vance, the Birmingham man who sought the North at

midnight with a pocket compass. He now saw him again, with an intuitive

discernment entirely fresh. Before memory brought up her clouding

associations, some brilliance flashed a light upon him. "That man,"

Henriot thought, "might have come with me. He would have understood and

loved it!" But the thought was really this--a moment's reflection spread

it, rather: "He belongs somewhere to the Desert; the Desert brought him

out here." And, again, hidden swiftly behind it like a movement running

below water--"What does he want with it? What is the deeper motive he

conceals? For there is a deeper motive; and it _is_ concealed."

But it was the woman seated next him who absorbed his attention really,

even while this thought flashed and went its way. The empty chair was

occupied at last. Unlike his first encounter with the man, she looked

straight at him. Their eyes met fully. For several seconds there was

steady mutual inspection, while her penetrating stare, intent without

being rude, passed searchingly all over his face. It was disconcerting.

Crumbling his bread, he looked equally hard at her, unable to turn away,

determined not to be the first to shift his gaze. And when at length she

lowered her eyes he felt that many things had happened, as in a long

period of intimate conversation. Her mind had judged him through and

through. Questions and answer flashed. They were no longer strangers.

For the rest of dinner, though he was careful to avoid direct

inspection, he was aware that she felt his presence and was secretly

speaking with him. She asked questions beneath her breath. The answers

rose with the quickened pulses in his blood. Moreover, she explained

Richard Vance. It was this woman's power that shone reflected in the

man. She was the one who knew the big, unusual things. Vance merely

echoed the rush of her vital personality.

This was the first impression that he got--from the most striking,

curious face he had ever seen in a woman. It remained very near him all

through the meal: she had moved to his table, it seemed she sat beside

him. Their minds certainly knew contact from that moment.

It is never difficult to credit strangers with the qualities and

knowledge that oneself craves for, and no doubt Henriot's active fancy

went busily to work. But, none the less, this thing remained and grew:

that this woman was aware of the hidden things of Egypt he had always

longed to know. There was knowledge and guidance she could impart. Her

soul was searching among ancient things. Her face brought the Desert

back into his thoughts. And with it came--the sand.

Here was the flash. The sight of her restored the peace and splendour he

had left behind him in his Desert camps. The rest, of course, was what

his imagination constructed upon this slender basis. Only,--not all of

it was imagination.

Now, Henriot knew little enough of women, and had no pose of

"understanding" them. His experience was of the slightest; the love and

veneration felt for his own mother had set the entire sex upon the

heights. His affairs with women, if so they may be called, had been

transient--all but those of early youth, which having never known the

devastating test of fulfilment, still remained ideal and superb. There

was unconscious humour in his attitude--from a distance; for he regarded

women with wonder and respect, as puzzles that sweetened but complicated

life, might even endanger it. He certainly was not a marrying man! But

now, as he felt the presence of this woman so deliberately possess him,

there came over him two clear, strong messages, each vivid with

certainty. One was that banal suggestion of familiarity claimed by

lovers and the like--he had often heard of it--"I have known that woman

before; I have met her ages ago somewhere; she is strangely familiar to

me"; and the other, growing out of it almost: "Have nothing to do with

her; she will bring you trouble and confusion; avoid her, and be

warned";--in fact, a distinct presentiment.

Yet, although Henriot dismissed both impressions as having no shred of

evidence to justify them, the original clear judgment, as he studied her

extraordinary countenance, persisted through all denials The

familiarity, and the presentiment, remained. There also remained this

other--an enormous imaginative leap!--that she could teach him "Egypt."

He watched her carefully, in a sense fascinated. He could only describe

the face as black, so dark it was with the darkness of great age.

Elderly was the obvious, natural word; but elderly described the

features only. The expression of the face wore centuries. Nor was it

merely the coal-black eyes that betrayed an ancient, age-travelled soul

behind them. The entire presentment mysteriously conveyed it. This

woman's heart knew long-forgotten things--the thought kept beating up

against him. There were cheek-bones, oddly high, that made him think

involuntarily of the well-advertised Pharaoh, Ramases; a square, deep

jaw; and an aquiline nose that gave the final touch of power. For the

power undeniably was there, and while the general effect had grimness in

it, there was neither harshness nor any forbidding touch about it. There

was an implacable sternness in the set of lips and jaw, and, most

curious of all, the eyelids over the steady eyes of black were level as

a ruler. This level framing made the woman's stare remarkable beyond

description. Henriot thought of an idol carved in stone, stone hard and

black, with eyes that stared across the sand into a world of things

non-human, very far away, forgotten of men. The face was finely ugly.

This strange dark beauty flashed flame about it.

And, as the way ever was with him, Henriot next fell to constructing the

possible lives of herself and her companion, though without much

success. Imagination soon stopped dead. She was not old enough to be

Vance's mother, and assuredly she was not his wife. His interest was

more than merely piqued--it was puzzled uncommonly. What was the

contrast that made the man seem beside her--vile? Whence came, too, the

impression that she exercised some strong authority, though never

directly exercised, that held him at her mercy? How did he guess that

the man resented it, yet did not dare oppose, and that, apparently

acquiescing good-humouredly, his will was deliberately held in abeyance,

and that he waited sulkily, biding his time? There was furtiveness in

every gesture and expression. A hidden motive lurked in him;

unworthiness somewhere; he was determined yet ashamed. He watched her

ceaselessly and with such uncanny closeness.

Henriot imagined he divined all this. He leaped to the guess that his

expenses were being paid. A good deal more was being paid besides. She

was a rich relation, from whom he had expectations; he was serving his

seven years, ashamed of his servitude, ever calculating escape--but,

perhaps, no ordinary escape. A faint shudder ran over him. He drew in

the reins of imagination.

Of course, the probabilities were that he was hopelessly astray--one

usually is on such occasions--but this time, it so happened, he was

singularly right. Before one thing only his ready invention stopped

every time. This vileness, this notion of unworthiness in Vance, could

not be negative merely. A man with that face was no inactive weakling.

The motive he was at such pains to conceal, betraying its existence by

that very fact, moved, surely, towards aggressive action. Disguised, it

never slept. Vance was sharply on the alert. He had a plan deep out of

sight. And Henriot remembered how the man's soft approach along the

carpeted corridor had made him start. He recalled the quasi shock it

gave him. He thought again of the feeling of discomfort he had

experienced.

Next, his eager fancy sought to plumb the business these two had

together in Egypt--in the Desert. For the Desert, he felt convinced, had

brought them out. But here, though he constructed numerous explanations,

another barrier stopped him. Because he _knew_. This woman was in touch

with that aspect of ancient Egypt he himself had ever sought in vain;

and not merely with stones the sand had buried so deep, but with the

meanings they once represented, buried so utterly by the sands of later

thought.

And here, being ignorant, he found no clue that could lead to any

satisfactory result, for he possessed no knowledge that might guide him.

He floundered--until Fate helped him. And the instant Fate helped him,

the warning and presentiment he had dismissed as fanciful, became real

again. He hesitated. Caution acted. He would think twice before taking

steps to form acquaintance. "Better not," thought whispered. "Better

leave them alone, this queer couple. They're after things that won't do

you any good." This idea of mischief, almost of danger, in their

purposes was oddly insistent; for what could possibly convey it? But,

while he hesitated, Fate, who sent the warning, pushed him at the same

time into the circle of their lives: at first tentatively--he might

still have escaped; but soon urgently--curiosity led him inexorably

towards the end.