He slipped through Cairo with the same relief that he left the Riviera,
resenting its social vulgarity so close to the imperial aristocracy of
the Desert; he settled down into the peace of soft and silent little
Helouan. The hotel in which he had a room on the top floor had been
formerly a Khedivial Palace. It had the air of a palace still. He
felt himself in a country-house, with lofty ceilings, cool and airy
corridors, spacious halls. Soft-footed Arabs attended to his wants;
white walls let in light and air without a sign of heat; there was a
feeling of a large, spread tent pitched on the very sand; and the wind
that stirred the oleanders in the shady gardens also crept in to rustle
the palm leaves of his favourite corner seat. Through the large windows
where once the Khedive held high court, the sunshine blazed upon
vistaed leagues of Desert.
And from his bedroom windows he watched the sun dip into gold and
crimson behind the swelling Libyan sands. This side of the pyramids he
saw the Nile meander among palm groves and tilled fields. Across his
balcony railings the Egyptian stars trooped down beside his very bed,
shaping old constellations for his dreams; while, to the south, he
looked out upon the vast untamable Body of the sands that carpeted the
world for thousands of miles towards Upper Egypt, Nubia, and the dread
Sahara itself. He wondered again why people thought it necessary to go
so far afield to know the Desert. Here, within half an hour of Cairo,
it lay breathing solemnly at his very doors.
For little Helouan, caught thus between the shoulders of the Libyan
and Arabian Deserts, is utterly sand-haunted. The Desert lies all
round it like a sea. Henriot felt he never could escape from it, as he
moved about the island whose coasts are washed with sand. Down each
broad and shining street the two end houses framed a vista of its dim
immensity--glimpses of shimmering blue, or flame-touched purple. There
were stretches of deep sea-green as well, far off upon its bosom. The
streets were open channels of approach, and the eye ran down them as
along the tube of a telescope laid to catch incredible distance out
of space. Through them the Desert reached in with long, thin feelers
towards the village. Its Being flooded into Helouan, and over it. Past
walls and houses, churches and hotels, the sea of Desert pressed in
silently with its myriad soft feet of sand. It poured in everywhere,
through crack and slit and crannie. These were reminders of possession
and ownership. And every passing wind that lifted eddies of dust at
the street corners were messages from the quiet, powerful Thing that
permitted Helouan to lie and dream so peacefully in the sunshine. Mere
artificial oasis, its existence was temporary, held on lease, just for
ninety-nine centuries or so.
This sea idea became insistent. For, in certain lights, and especially
in the brief, bewildering dusk, the Desert rose--swaying towards the
small 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 of tides. And underneath flowed resolute currents, linking
distance to the centre. These many deserts were really one. A storm,
just retreated, had tossed Helouan upon the shore and left it there
to dry; but any morning he would wake to find it had been carried off
again into the depths. Some fragment, at least, would disappear. The
grim Mokattam Hills were rollers that ever threatened to topple down
and submerge the sandy bar that men called Helouan.
Being soundless, and devoid of perfume, the Desert’s message reached
him through two senses only--sight and touch; chiefly, of course, the
former. Its invasion was concentrated through the eyes. And vision,
thus uncorrected, went what pace it pleased. The Desert played with
him. Sand stole into his being--through the eyes.
And so obsessing was this majesty of its close presence, that Henriot
sometimes wondered how people dared their little social activities
within its very sight and hearing; how they played golf and tennis
upon reclaimed edges of its face, picnicked so blithely hard upon its
frontiers, and danced at night while this stern, unfathomable Thing
lay breathing just beyond the trumpery walls that kept it out. The
challenge of their shallow admiration seemed presumptuous, almost
provocative. Their pursuit of pleasure suggested insolent indifference.
They ran fool-hardy hazards, he felt; for there was no worship in their
vulgar hearts. With a mental shudder, sometimes he watched the cheap
tourist horde 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 dwarfed
humanity. These people had been wiser to choose another place for the
flaunting 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
who emphasised the protest in him to the point of definite contempt.
Overdressed, the latest worldly novel under their arms, they strutted
the narrow pavements of their tiny world, immensely pleased with
themselves. Their vacuous minds expressed themselves in the slang of
their exclusive circle--value being the element excluded. The pettiness
of their outlook hardly distressed him--he was too familiar with it at
home--but their essential vulgarity, their innate ugliness, seemed more
than usually offensive in the grandeur of its present setting. Into
the mighty sands they took the latest London scandal, gabbling it over
even among the Tombs and Temples. And ‘it was to laugh,’ the pains they
spent wondering whom they might condescend to know, never dreaming that
they themselves were not worth knowing. Against the background of the
noble Desert their titles seemed the cap and bells of clowns.
And Henriot, knowing some of them personally, could not always escape
their insipid company. Yet he was the gainer. They little guessed how
their commonness heightened contrast, set mercilessly thus beside the
strange, eternal beauty of the sand.
Occasionally the protest in his soul betrayed itself in words, which
of course they did not understand. ‘He is so clever, isn’t he?’
And then, having relieved his feelings, he would comfort himself
characteristically:
‘The Desert has not noticed them. The Sand is not aware of their
existence. How should the sea take note of rubbish that lies above its
tide-line?’
For Henriot drew near to its great shifting altars in an attitude of
worship. The wilderness made him kneel in heart. Its shining reaches
led to the oldest Temple in the world, and every journey that he made
was like a sacrament. For him the Desert was a consecrated place. It
was sacred.
And his tactful hosts, knowing his peculiarities, left their house
open to him when he cared to come--they lived upon the northern edge
of the oasis--and he was as free as though he were absolutely alone.
He blessed them; he rejoiced that he had come. Little Helouan accepted
him. The Desert 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
who sat at an adjoining table, and whose personality stirred his
interest. While affecting to look elsewhere, he studied him as closely
as might be. There was something about the stranger that touched his
curiosity--a certain air of expectation that he wore. But it was more
than that: it was anticipation, apprehension in it somewhere. The man
was nervous, uneasy. His restless way of suddenly looking about him
proved it. Henriot tried every one else in the room as well; but,
though his thought settled on others too, he always came back to the
figure of this solitary being opposite, who ate his dinner as if afraid
of being seen, and glanced up sometimes as if fearful of being watched.
Henriot’s curiosity, 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,
or just--a crank?’ was the thought that first occurred to him. And
the question suggested itself without amusement. The impression of
subterfuge and caution he conveyed left his observer unsatisfied.
The face was clean shaven, dark, and strong; thick hair, straight
yet bushy, was slightly unkempt; it was streaked with grey; and an
unexpected mobility when he smiled ran over the features that he seemed
to hold rigid by deliberate effort. The man was cut to no quite common
measure. Henriot jumped to an intuitive conclusion: ‘He’s not here for
pleasure or merely sight-seeing. Something serious has brought him
out to Egypt.’ For the face combined too ill-assorted qualities: an
obstinate tenacity that might even mean brutality, and was certainly
repulsive, yet, with it, an undecipherable dreaminess betrayed by
lines of the mouth, but above all in the very light blue eyes, so
rarely raised. Those eyes, he felt, had looked upon unusual things;
‘dreaminess’ was not an adequate description; ‘searching’ conveyed it
better. The true source of the queer impression remained elusive. And
hence, perhaps, the incongruous marriage in the face--mobility laid
upon a matter-of-fact foundation underneath. The face showed conflict.
And Henriot, watching him, felt decidedly intrigued. ‘I’d like to know
that man, and all about him.’ His name, he learned later, was Richard
Vance; from Birmingham; a business man. But it was not the Birmingham
he wished to know; it was the--other: cause of the elusive, dreamy
searching. Though facing one another at so short a distance, their
eyes, however, did not meet. And this, Henriot well knew, was a sure
sign that he 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. An
opportunity would certainly present itself. The first links in a
curious chain had already caught; soon the chain would tighten, pull as
though by chance, and bring their lives into one and the same circle.
Wondering in 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 not uncommonly it proved correct.
Following instinct, therefore, he took no steps towards acquaintance,
and for several days, owing to the fact that he dined frequently with
his hosts, he saw nothing more of Richard Vance, the business man from
Birmingham. Then, one night, coming home late from his friend’s house,
he had passed along the great corridor, and was actually a step or so
into his bedroom, when a drawling voice sounded close behind him. It
was an unpleasant sound. It was very near him too----
‘I beg your pardon, but have you, by any chance, such a thing as a
compass you could lend me?’
The voice was so close that he started. Vance stood within touching
distance of his body. He had stolen up like a ghostly Arab, must have
followed him, too, some little distance, for further down the passage
the light of an open door--he had passed it on his way--showed where he
came from.
‘Eh? I beg your pardon? A--compass, did you say?’ He felt disconcerted
for a moment. How short the man was, now that he saw him standing.
Broad and powerful too. Henriot looked down upon his thick head of
hair. The personality and voice repelled him. Possibly his face, caught
unawares, betrayed this.
‘Forgive my startling you,’ said the other apologetically, while the
softer expression danced in for a moment and disorganised the rigid set
of the face. ‘The soft carpet, you know. I’m afraid you didn’t hear
my tread. I wondered’--he smiled again slightly at the nature of the
request--‘if--by any chance--you had a pocket compass you could lend
me?’
‘Ah, a compass, yes! Please don’t apologise. I believe I have one--if
you’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 so
happened, 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. You
will forgive my disturbing you at such an hour. My own is broken, and I
wanted--er--to find the true north.’
Henriot stammered some reply, and the man was gone. It was all over
in a minute. He locked his door and sat down in his chair to think.
The little incident had upset him, though for the life of him he could
not imagine why. It ought by rights to have been almost ludicrous, yet
instead it was the exact reverse--half threatening. Why should not a
man want a compass? But, again, why should he? And at midnight? The
voice, the eyes, the near presence--what did they bring that set his
nerves thus asking unusual questions? This strange impression that
something grave was happening, something unearthly--how was it born
exactly? The man’s proximity came like a shock. It had made him start.
He brought--thus the idea came unbidden to his mind--something with him
that galvanised him quite absurdly, as fear does, or delight, or great
wonder. There was a music in his voice too--a certain--well, he could
only 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, but
real. And then, for the first time, he discovered that the man had
brought a faint, elusive suggestion of perfume with him, an aromatic
odour, that made him think of priests and churches. The ghost of it
still lingered in the air. Ah, here then was the origin of the notion
that his voice had chanted: it was surely the suggestion of incense.
But incense, intoning, a compass to find the true north--at midnight in
a Desert hotel!
A touch of uneasiness ran through the curiosity and excitement that he
felt.
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 find
explanation 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 of
sorts; possibly an astrologer into the bargain! Why not? The stars were
wonderful above Helouan. Was there not an observatory on the Mokattam
Hills, 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 the
stranger perhaps was looking through some wonderful apparatus at the
heavens. Their rooms were on the same side. But the shuttered windows
revealed no stooping figure with eyes glued to a telescope. The stars
blinked in their many thousands down upon the silent desert. The night
held neither sound nor movement. There was a cool breeze blowing across
the Nile from the Lybian Sands. It nipped; and he stepped back quickly
into the room again. Drawing the mosquito curtains carefully about the
bed, he put the light out and turned over to sleep.
And sleep came quickly, contrary to his expectations, though it was a
light and surface sleep. That last glimpse of the darkened Desert lying
beneath the Egyptian stars had touched him with some hand of awful
power that ousted the first, lesser excitement. It calmed and soothed
him in one sense, yet in another, a sense he could not understand, it
caught him in a net of deep, deep feelings whose mesh, while infinitely
delicate, was utterly stupendous. His nerves this deeper emotion left
alone: it reached instead to something infinite in him that mere nerves
could neither deal with nor interpret. The soul awoke and whispered in
him while his body slept.
And the little, foolish dreams that ran to and fro across this veil of
surface sleep brought oddly tangled pictures of things quite tiny and
at the same time of others that were mighty beyond words. With these
two counters Nightmare played. They interwove. There was the figure of
this dark-faced man with the compass, measuring the sky to find the
true north, and there were hints of giant Presences that hovered just
outside some curious outline that he traced upon the ground, copied
in some nightmare fashion from the heavens. The excitement caused by
his visitor’s singular request mingled with the profounder sensations
his final look at the stars and Desert stirred. The two were somehow
inter-related.
Some hours later, before this surface sleep passed into genuine
slumber, Henriot woke--with an appalling feeling that the Desert had
come creeping 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,
sharp tapping came against the window panes.
He sprang instantly out of bed, not yet awake enough to feel actual
alarm, yet with the nightmare touch still close enough to cause a sort
of feverish, loose bewilderment. He switched the lights on. A moment
later he knew the meaning of that curious tapping, for the rising wind
was flinging tiny specks of sand against the glass. The idea that they
had summoned him belonged, of course, to dream.
He opened the window, and stepped out on to the balcony. The stone was
very cold under his bare feet. There was a wash of wind all over him.
He saw the sheet of glimmering, pale desert near and far; and something
stung his skin below the eyes.
‘The sand,’ he whispered, ‘again the sand; always the sand. Waking or
sleeping, the sand is everywhere--nothing but sand, sand, Sand....’
He rubbed his eyes. It was like talking in his sleep, talking to
Someone who had questioned him just before he woke. But was he really
properly awake? 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 wind died down.
And Henriot went back to sleep, caught instantly away into
unconsciousness; covered, blinded, swept over by this spreading thing
of reddish brown with the great, grey face, whose Being was colossal
yet quite tiny, and whose fingers, wings and eyes were countless as the
stars.
But all night long it watched and waited, rising to peer above the
little balcony, and sometimes entering the room and piling up beside
his very pillow. He dreamed of Sand.