figure of an old Egyptian king. On the temple wall at his right hand
was incised the figure of a large hawk, which had a certain life-like
stare and stride. Below lay the thick green lake; a little pied
kingfisher fluttered and poised over it. Mahmoud’s donkey had strayed
a little from his owner, and was pulling at some few blades of thin,
straggling weed. The Father of the Box, who had ridden him out to
Karnak, had some foolish prejudice against tying up donkeys’ heads.
Mahmoud explained that it prevented the donkey from having a headache;
but Englishmen always want things done in their own way.
Yet as Mahmoud sat dreaming, his eyes fixed on the water, he was
thinking of none of these things. Rather he was dreaming of little
Fatma, Fatma whom he had run and played with as a little girl--but now
she was old enough to be married. He had seen Fatma as they came out;
she was carrying a waterpot on her head, and the slender fingers were
tipped with henna; her hair was plaited over her brow, and the large
blue-studded rings in her ears swayed as she ran. She held her veil
firmly in her small, white teeth, and only gave him one look, half shy,
half merry, as she passed.
Mahmoud’s father and mother said he must be married this year. He
wished to marry no one but little Fatma; but ah! the marriage-gift.
He stared at the smooth, thick water, and droned a little song--“Oh,
great holy gardener, let me into the garden.”
The sun was just going down, and as Mahmoud turned idly, half lost
in his dreaming, the rays struck the wall where was the image of the
hawk, and the boy stood breathless, for the hawk was all of gold, and
as he looked the fierce head turned a little.
Through his maze came the voice of the Father of the Box, crying to him
to get the donkey.
A moment he started and turned, but when he looked again there was
nothing but the stone hawk carved on the wall; and again came the call,
as the Englishman and the “box” came round the corner.
Mahmoud gasped and panted: “The chicken is all gold.”
“Oh, the Golden Horus,” said the Father of the Box, giving the precious
camera into Mahmoud’s hand. “Hurry up and fetch the donkey, it is
getting dark and damp.”
But he did not ask how a donkey-boy should know the Golden Horus.
II
The donkey-boys were sitting outside the garden gate of the hotel.
Mahmoud was against the wall, and taking little part in the flow of
conversation.
“Achmet Effendi will make a big feast to-morrow,” said one. “He has
killed two sheep for his feast.”
“Achmet Effendi is a very rich man,” said Maouad. “Twenty years ago he
sent his servant Gameel Gameel to dig up stones to burn and lay on his
field, there where the English ‘_sidi matre_’ (cemetery) is. But Gameel
Gameel found a big pot of golden coins and he brought them all back
to Achmet Effendi. For ten years they kept them hidden, then Achmet
Effendi sold them for much money and became a rich man. That is why he
loves Gameel Gameel better than his son.”
“Gameel Gameel was a great fool,” said Hassan flippantly. “Why should
he not become a rich man himself?”
Kuku was speaking aside to Gorgius.
“I tell my lady that I am going to be married to Fatma. I say to her:
‘I see Fatma in the market; I like her very much and she likes me very
much. My mother has arranged it for me. If you give me an English
handkerchief,’ I say to my lady, ‘you shall come to my wedding.’”
“Liar-boy!” said Gorgius scornfully; but Mahmoud feared and sighed in
himself.
A small figure passed, and the light from the gas lamp showed a
withered old man with a white beard and smiling face. He wore a red
tarbûsh turbaned about with white, and trailed a green Mecca robe.
“Mohammed Mohassib will have a big feast,” said one. “He has killed a
camel and made soup with it. The Father of the Beard said to Mohammed,
‘You will feed three hundred men to-morrow.’ Mohammed said, ‘I hope
more than that.’”
“Mohammed Mohassib slept in the temple of Mut,” said Maouad; “that was
fifty years ago, when he was a boy. When the sun rose Mohammed saw the
golden hawk. He ran to catch it, but it flew away into the sky. One
feather fell from it, and Mohammed Mohassib picked it up. Then he was
a lucky man and became rich, and went to Mecca, and to-morrow he will
feed more than three hundred men.”
Mahmoud’s ear was caught for the second time. “If a man sees the golden
bird will he be a lucky man?” he asked.
“Oh, it is Mahmoud who will be the lucky man,” said Hassan, with a
laugh. “To-morrow when Abu el Haggag has done with his boat we shall
set it to float on the Lake of Karnak, and Mahmoud shall see it all
golden at night and shall swim out to it. But Mahmoud, he never speaks,
so when the sun strikes it the boat of Abu el Haggag will be for
Mahmoud.”
A short silence followed this profane speech, for Abu el Haggag is the
great Saint of Luxor, and next day they held the procession of his
sacred boat.
But Hassan rattled on. “I make no feast to-morrow. Everybody else
makes a feast. Nasr says every time he sees his lady he says, ‘I have
bought some sheep and some rice, and my wife has mixed them together
like so; my wife has made balls of them, and she will put them in the
oven to bake them. And I will bring you some.’ Every time he says that.
I would not eat Nasr’s balls. I will go to Rameses Bar and spend money
and drink whisky.”
His audacity succeeded in making itself heard, which was chiefly what
he wanted. And he went on: “Mahmoud gets little money from the Father
of the Box. I say to the Father of the Box when he rides my donkey,
‘Give me more money, this is too little.’ He says, ‘Then I will beat
you.’ But I say to the Mother of the Nose, ‘I am a very poor boy; I am
only ten years old. My father send away my mother. Who shall give my
mother money?’ Then she says, ‘Oh, poor boy! here is some money.’ I
like these ladies. They are very foolish.”
“Did you say to the Mother of the Nose ‘My mother is married again to a
rich man,’ oh liar?” asked Mahmoud.
But at this moment the garden gate opened and a babel of voices
arose:--“Take my donkey; take my donkey; de best donkey in Luxor.”
“Here is Whisky and Soda; no donkey like so.” “Never you believe
nobody. Liar boy. Here is Rameses. Every day he win a race....”
III
Abu el Haggag’s boat had come and passed, poor starveling
representative of the longest pedigree in the world. Here passed of old
the Sacred Bark of the gods, carrying the precious images and emblems,
the king burning incense before it, the oxen lotus-garlanded for the
sacrifice.
And later this sacred bark lent its outward form to the Ark of the Most
High God, bearing the simple symbols of justice and mercy, in the long
desert wanderings and in the Holy Land.
And now the poor, sordid boat on its little truck passed round;
charcoal burned instead of incense. With the feeble tradition the
Arabs tell that it was the boat in which Abu the Saint went to see his
friends. This is all that is left in their minds of that most ancient
idea--this and the golden vision of the boat at midnight on Karnak Lake.
The droning noises of Arab music had died down as Mahmoud ran through
Luxor; a few beggars cleared the remnants of the feast of Mohammed
Mohassib; while the old man stood smiling in his doorway over the
memory of his lordly hospitality. He nodded kindly to Mahmoud running
by.
After he passed the house Mahmoud paused; he did not dare to go on this
way--highway though it was--for he feared above all the afreet-haunted
bridge that he would have to pass. So he turned, and running down a
narrow way crossed the empty market-place and came out on the field
road.
The light was dying down and the sky was cloudy; there was little mist,
but the scent of beanfields hung heavy on the air; the corn-blades
rustled as his dress swept them, running. The barking of the village
dogs died down behind him into silence, so that he started and nearly
fell when a little cue-owl mewed suddenly from a carob-tree.
Down into the cutting, and as he mounted again his heart leaped into
his mouth, for a dark figure rose up above the corn. Then he remembered
that it was only the great lion-headed statue that sat lonely in the
fields, and he took courage again.
When he came to the road he paused, debating. Which of the two ways to
the Lake? By the one he would have to pass the spot where that fierce
golden bird had turned to look at him yesterday. By the other way he
must go up the dark sphinx avenue, a very haunt of afreets. To go on
either way was dreadful; to stay here not less so; to go back, he was
persuaded now, would be to lose Fatma.
He turned to the left and entered the sphinx avenue. A half-grown moon
struggling with the clouds now and again threw straggling and sharp
shadows of the palm leaves across his path, but more dreadful was the
dry rustling of the leaves on high when a cloud passed; before him
loomed the great arch. On each side the sphinxes--crouched like strange
creatures with narrow, beak-like noses--seemed in the darkness ready
to spring. And that great black nodding palm-tree, surely that was an
afreet too, and might catch him. But up the path bordered with horror
he still ran.
Now he must turn to the right, before the arch is reached; and but a
short way farther pass those four images of great old kings mutilated,
but not the less uncanny and fearful in this dim light. They seemed
to look down on the little figure still running; but he had passed in
safety, and there lay the lake, black and still like the pool of ink in
which men saw strange visions.
Mahmoud said his prayer and praise and lay down to sleep by the
lake....
IV
The first time Mahmoud woke the moon had won the battle, and was
shining on the temple, turning all to unreal, ethereal building,
faintly roseate, a temple seen in a dream. Mahmoud looked towards the
lake and all was still; the moon made a white sheet of water.
The second time Mahmoud woke the moon was down, but from the lake came
a light--soft, lambent, golden. He looked towards it, and oh the glory,
the wonder! a golden boat was riding on the water.
Mahmoud had often seen under the hot sun, in some ripple of desert
sand, a sudden sheet of water. In the middle it was clear water,
bright, reflecting the edge of cultivated land. At the margin it was
uncertain; no eye could tell where it melted into the shaking haze of
heat. So here, the middle of the boat was clear and distinct, and on
the deck was standing one single figure; but at the stern and prow,
though he saw figures he saw them dimly, the outlines of them melted
into the gold reflection of the water.
The central figure on the deck he marked from head to foot. He says
he has seen the face outlined on some temple wall, but he can never
find it. He says, too, it was not unlike the father of Gorgius the
Copt donkey-boy. But the father of Gorgius, he added, was only a
fellah-man; this was a great man, greater than the Khedive of Egypt, as
great as a King of England.
But of one thing he is certain: not only had the figure a strange
erection on his head, but he wore a lion’s tail behind. Mahmoud’s eyes
were so riveted to the figure that he could not tell how the boat
moved. He said something about a sail and something about oars; but
this he knew, that though it moved on with its golden reflection over
the lake, it stirred no water in front and no widening ripple ran out
behind.
It was drawing to the shore, and suddenly, as if it had come within
focus, the prow was clear to him, with a man leaping down to the land,
a coil of golden rope upon his arm.
What passed next was but the work of an instant. Without rising to his
feet Mahmoud shot down like a snake among the stones, and as the man
coiled the rope round a rock he seized it.
As the lightning flash strikes across the sky, so the man with this
golden light upon him leaped back; and into the waters of the lake,
into the golden reflection, sank the boat, without sound or ripple.
Mahmoud was standing alone by the black pool in the light of the stars
under the lonely night. But by the light of the stars he saw in his
scarred and bleeding hand the strands of the golden rope.
* * * * *
Now Mahmoud trails the Mecca robe through the streets of Luxor, but
they say that Fatma wears the golden rope.
THE UNSEEN WORLD
VIII
THE UNSEEN WORLD
The whole world had faded and darkened to a uniform tint, black and
dingy. The woman who stood there could hardly say whether this tint
were brown or grey, for there was no colour to contrast it with,
nothing but her own black dress seen through the same sordid medium.
In front of her, rather lighter in tint, she could see a few inches of
parapet, on which her hands were lying, and dimly could discern the
ground at her feet. If she leant over the parapet she could not see the
water, but where she believed it to be, something like the shadow of a
ripple moved across the dusk.
And as for want of contrast she could determine no colour, so for want
of distance she could determine no size. All she saw could be enclosed
by four small walls; all she could not see might reveal miles of
river-bank, streets of stately houses. It was not the Infinite but the
Indetermined that she looked upon. Noises had sunk into a hoarse murmur
and swell, dulled as by this thick, heavy medium. No such monotony of
existence could be conceived; a world of shadows, an Isle of Voices,
would be life itself to this. And yet she believed herself to be
standing in the heart of the greatest city in the world, but a few
paces removed from streets where men and women were moving up and down;
where her face was turned across the water stood (she believed) a great
house, a town garden where wood-pigeons built, and where she had seen
lilies of the valley flower, saying softly to herself:--
“Here in dust and dirt, oh here,
The lilies of His love appear.”
How was it possible that in so short a time such a change should fall,
such a swallowing up of life as the centuries cannot bring to the
cities of the south? Truly she was living by faith in a blank world of
existence. A foot or two of parapet each side of her hands; a foot or
two of gravel each side of her feet--beyond that limit nothingness. Yet
by faith she would move in this void.
She turned to the left and walked along the path which appeared step
by step as she paced, until in front of her the shadow of a building
fell upon the fog: cornerwise it rose, fading into mist, and likewise
vanished a few feet above her head.
Yet she believed that this was a great tower; she believed that the
building stretched away from her, and that at that moment, gathered
inside its halls, was the Council of the Nation. It is strange if you
think of it, how firmly she believed in that invisible building, in
those inaudible deliberations, in the reality of its connection with
the isolated fragments of parapet and path--fragments without visible
support, the only things she could see and the least of all she
believed in.
For as she believed in a present invisible, so she believed in a future
uncreated; that she should presently return from where she stood to
her own house, the fragment of visible world opening before her and
above her, closing behind her as she went. If she could not find the
way, other figures dawning on her, fog-enwrapped, would direct her.
Strange--how she believed in their existence, though she could neither
see nor hear them, how she trusted in their good faith, though she
knew neither who they were nor whence they would come, in their greater
knowledge, though all men were more or less astray in the same fog.
So resting peaceably in this belief she looked again over the parapet.
A shadow on blank colourlessness in front; a splash as of water to the
ear. The shadow deepened, defined itself, and out of nothingness grew a
great black barge; it seemed to float on water that she could not see.
Two men, one with body bent forward, one with body swayed back, swung
a great oar at the stern. They were steering in this indistinguishable
world; in this chaos of a world, threading their way between dangers
undiscerned till ruin was impending. Now the black outline was
opposite to her and now the barge was shortened, and still the two
figures swayed and bent, swayed and bent, at their steering. The dark
vision faded into darkness again. Out of nothing grew that barge, into
nothing it went.
The third thing she saw was this: just below the parapet where the fog
was least thick, out of nothingness came a bird, like a little white
spirit. It was smaller than a seagull; its wings, delicately shaded
with brown, showed a sharper outline, and round them ran a dark line;
the head too was dark.
A moment it hung below her lightly poised, white wings uplifted, head
down-bent, feet down-dropped towards the flood below. Then this too
vanished in the mist.
And having seen that she went away content.
FROM THE BANK OF THE RIVER
IX
FROM THE BANK OF THE RIVER
I
In a room in an hotel of the south some one was lying ill. It was
March, and an airless, parching heat lay outside, the palms drooped
yellow leaves, the bee-eaters chattering on a carob-bush dived
luxuriantly into corn so green that they were in no wise distinguished
from it; they turned and fluttered like butterflies, and from the
bronze wing feathers a sheen of gold rippled over their emerald in the
sun.
Inside the room was as cool as it might be; when, from time to time,
the shutters were opened the glory of gold and green outside flashed
into sight. Outside life was heavy with heat, luxuriant, substantial;
bounded, limited and weighed down by its very fullness.
Inside life had dwindled to a thin thread of consciousness, or rather
it seemed like two strands worn nearly to breaking lying side by side.
The one, the actual physical consciousness of a corporal life ebbing,
of breath drawn with difficulty; of physical sensation not perhaps
actually painful, but almost altogether wearying--a consciousness
close to that mysterious land of delusions, where the physical symptoms
are set apart from the personal consciousness and become external
antagonistic forces. It was not intolerable because it was becoming a
thing more and more external, more separate from that other spiritual
consciousness with which it was still lightly entwined.
And that other thread of being, how shall one describe it? It was not
quite continuous, for now and again the physical sensation numbed it;
now and then, when times of refreshment came, the other like a stream
rose and engulfed it.
Compare that old image of the Rhone and the Saone. The one flows on,
blue, clear, transparent; the other side by side, turbulent, muddy and
swift. The man lying here seemed to himself to be both, but most of all
the clearer thinner stream. The turbulence, the force of the other is
daily less and less himself, more and more an alien power to which he
yet jealously clings in the body of this death, and will not, cannot
part from it.
And from time to time comes a new impulse of the stronger torrent--its
yellowing waters tinge the blue--it is fuller, and there is a sense of
well-being; and yet that transparent river of spiritual being, clear as
crystal, has been sullied, it has disappeared.
Such little trivial things too will give him back the life which is
his power and his bondage;--the cup of iced coffee, that he looks for
and can drink when other food nauseates, this makes him feel that he
lives again and yet kills that clearer, sweeter, finer, life;--as much,
in a sense, as overpowering bodily discomfort kills it--more, perhaps,
for the more it overpowers the more external it is, the less it is
himself.
If only he can keep from fear, for that kills all. And yet this thread
of consciousness, which I have called spiritual, is not thinking any
thought, it is seeing visions, and these visions are not of another
world but of the sweeter, purer things of this world, transfigured
and serene. He is a child again in a Cornish lane, and the grass is
deep and dewy, the banks are high, crowned with little bushes nearly
bare of leaf, for it is spring; deep in the grass are primroses, long
stalked and growing by the handful, you can thrust your hand into the
damp grass, rich in little ferns and unnamed leaves, and pluck them so;
between the primroses there are violets--are they purple or grey or
blue?--and here and there a celandine, golden yellow. Or he is a boy
sitting on a rock; his feet are bare, the sea is shallow round him, the
ripples run out, and the sun shining through them laces the fine sand
below with gold. He tells the nurses that as soon as he is well he will
go to the sea and dip his feet in it.
Then he thinks of music that he knows, and it comes with unutterable
sweetness of cadence like music heard in dreams.
And this radiance lies not only on things imagined but on things seen.
The roses brought into the room are the roses of Dorothea; the scent
of the palm, in blossom outside, fills the room with an ethereal
fragrance; and oh, those clusters of waxen palm flowers that his
friends bring in and place in the green jug, surely it must come from
that tree whose very leaves are for the healing of the nations!
It is only at night that the horror comes--no nameless horror, but the
horror of fighting with the darkness; it is hot, and it stifles. The
doctors have been, and he knows their report is not good though no one
has told him so. The medicine bottles begin to change; there is one
like a knight’s head near the candle, he knows it is only a cork in it,
but it is very like the armoured head of a knight; and the darkness
comes near, it oppresses all, laying a heavy hand on the world: it is
too near, too heavy, all round us and weighing on us above.
He sleeps, to shout at the people in the room--he asks the nurse to
expel the Arab who is beside the bed. He knows they are not there at
all, but he does not want to sleep, for he will wake in that horrible
strangle of breath. It is so long, if only there were any light at
all! Weary, interminable length, and some lines of a poem run in his
mind:
“An hour or two more and God is so kind
The day will be blue in the window blind.”
* * * * *
“Thank the kind God the carts come in.”
They come in so early in London.--Only an hour or two is quiet in the
night, and you would know that the world is alive again, one would not
have to keep the darkness long at bay; but here the night is day-long.
Brandy--what is the good? The smell is nauseating; but it is at his
lips, and he drinks. Has he slept? but it is black and still and dark,
the dogs howl and scuffle past the window. Hours more to come, hours
of the blackness. One of these people who is about the room sits down
by the bed. She is not terrifying. She is only an old lady with grey
hair, but she expects something. She must be told to go away; they will
not tell her, and he is angry with urging. But of course she was not
really there, it was only a dream; so he must have slept again, and the
minutes must have passed.
There is a hint of grey in the sky, the whisper of a breeze in the palm
leaves--dawn is coming. Now there is one hour of horror to go through,
for the windows must be shut; he cannot breathe--he cannot live like
this for an hour. The door into the passage may be opened, and the
nurse’s step falls cold and echoing on the stone outside; no one else
is moving, it is all grey and cold; he knows how that empty passage
must look. This is better, for the blackness is going.
He sees the palm-trees outside above the muslin blinds; all the world
is still and dead, its light gone out, but it can be rekindled. From
the other window nothing can be seen but colourless sky, but the sky
itself begins to kindle into life.
Suddenly something falls across the muslin blind; a bar, and a dot of
sunlight, of that molten gold of Egyptian sunshine before the day has
dried it into dust of gold. Oh the extraordinary beauty of that gold!
Has sunshine been always in the world before, and yet we never knew it
was like that? The darkness has passed, the light shines, the rapture
and the beauty of the light spreads and broadens; the sky is awake,
the garden is alive, the night is gone--and now the window towards
the south is thrown open, and very faint and fair, a delicate violet
light lies on the hills beyond the river. The air is blown in sweet,
fragrant, unspeakably pure; and that carob-tree on which the birds sat
yesterday is green and fresh, and below is the blue-green of the corn
into which they dropped.