Next day, and for several days following, Henriot kept out of the
path of Lady Statham and her nephew. The acquaintanceship had grown
too rapidly to be quite comfortable. It was easy to pretend that he
took people at their face value, but it was a pose; one liked to
know something of antecedents. It was otherwise difficult to ‘place’
them. And Henriot, for the life of him, could not ‘place’ these
two. His Subconsciousness brought explanation when it came--but the
Subconsciousness is only temporarily active. When it retired he
floundered without a rudder, in confusion.
With the flood of morning sunshine the value of much she had said
evaporated. Her presence alone had supplied the key to the cipher. But
while the indigestible portions he rejected, there remained a good deal
he had already assimilated. The discomfort remained; and with it the
grave, unholy reality of it all. It was something more than theory.
Results would follow--if he joined them. He would witness curious
things.
The force with which it drew him brought hesitation. It operated in him
like a shock that numbs at first by its abrupt arrival, and needs time
to realise in the right proportions to the rest of life. These right
proportions, however, did not come readily, and his emotions ranged
between sceptical laughter and complete acceptance. The one detail
he felt certain of was this dreadful thing he had divined in Vance.
Trying hard to disbelieve it, he found he could not. It was true.
Though without a shred of real evidence to support it, the horror of it
remained. He knew it in his very bones.
And this, perhaps, was what drove him to seek the comforting
companionship of folk he understood and felt at home with. He told
his host and hostess about the strangers, though omitting the actual
conversation because they would merely smile in blank miscomprehension.
But the moment he described the strong black eyes beneath the level
eyelids, his hostess turned with a start, her interest deeply roused:
‘Why, it’s that awful Statham woman,’ she exclaimed, ‘that must be Lady
Statham, and the man she calls her nephew.’
‘Sounds like it, certainly,’ her husband added. ‘Felix, you’d better
clear out. They’ll bewitch you too.’
And Henriot bridled, yet wondering why he did so. He drew into his
shell a little, giving the merest sketch of what had happened. But he
listened closely while these two practical old friends supplied him
with information in the gossiping way that human nature loves. No doubt
there was much embroidery, and more perversion, exaggeration too, but
the account evidently rested upon some basis of solid foundation for
all that. Smoke and fire go together always.
‘He _is_ her nephew right enough,’ Mansfield corrected his wife, before
proceeding to his own man’s form of elaboration; ‘no question about
that, I believe. He’s her favourite nephew, and she’s as rich as a pig.
He follows her out here every year, waiting for her empty shoes. But
they _are_ an unsavoury couple. I’ve met ’em in various parts, all over
Egypt, but they always come back to Helouan in the end. And the stories
about them are simply legion. You remember--’ he turned hesitatingly to
his wife--‘some people, I heard,’ he changed his sentence, ‘were made
quite ill by her.’
‘I’m sure Felix ought to know, yes,’ his wife boldly took him up, ‘my
niece, Fanny, had the most extraordinary experience.’ She turned to
Henriot. ‘Her room was next to Lady Statham in some hotel or other at
Assouan or Edfu, and one night she woke and heard a kind of mysterious
chanting or intoning next her. Hotel doors are so dreadfully thin.
There was a funny smell too, like incense of something sickly, and
a man’s voice kept chiming in. It went on for hours, while she lay
terrified in bed----’
‘Frightened, you say?’ asked Henriot.
‘Out of her skin, yes; she said it was so uncanny--made her feel icy.
She wanted to ring the bell, but was afraid to leave her bed. The room
was full of--of things, yet she could see nothing. She _felt_ them, you
see. And after a bit the sound of this sing-song voice so got on her
nerves, it half dazed her--a kind of enchantment--she felt choked and
suffocated. And then----’ It was her turn to hesitate.
‘Tell it all,’ her husband said, quite gravely too.
‘Well--something came in. At least, she describes it oddly, rather;
she said it made the door bulge inwards from the next room, but
not the door alone; the walls bulged or swayed as if a huge thing
pressed against them from the other side. And at the same moment
her windows--she had two big balconies, and the Venetian shutters
were fastened--both her windows _darkened_--though it was two
in the morning and pitch dark outside. She said it was all _one_
thing--trying to get in; just as water, you see, would rush in through
every hole and opening it could find, and all at once. And in spite
of her terror--that’s the odd part of it--she says she felt a kind of
splendour in her--a sort of elation.’
‘She saw nothing?’
‘She says she doesn’t remember. Her senses left her, I believe--though
she won’t admit it.’
‘Fainted for a minute, probably,’ said Mansfield.
‘So there it is,’ his wife concluded, after a silence. ‘And that’s
true. It happened to my niece, didn’t it, John?’
Stories and legendary accounts of strange things that the presence
of these two brought poured out then. They were obviously somewhat
mixed, one account borrowing picturesque details from another, and
all in disproportion, as when people tell stories in a language they
are little familiar with. But, listening with avidity, yet also with
uneasiness, somehow, Henriot put two and two together. Truth stood
behind them somewhere. These two held traffic with the powers that
ancient Egypt knew.
‘Tell Felix, dear, about the time you met the nephew--horrid
creature--in the Valley of the Kings,’ he heard his wife say presently.
And Mansfield told it plainly enough, evidently glad to get it done,
though.
‘It was some years ago now, and I didn’t know who he was then, or
anything about him. I don’t know much more now--except that he’s a
dangerous sort of charlatan-devil, _I_ think. But I came across him
one night up there by Thebes in the Valley of the Kings--you know,
where they buried all their Johnnies with so much magnificence and
processions and masses, and all the rest. It’s the most astounding,
the most haunted place you ever saw, gloomy, silent, full of gorgeous
lights and shadows that seem alive--terribly impressive; it makes you
creep and shudder. You feel old Egypt watching you.’
‘Get on, dear,’ said his wife.
‘Well, I was coming home late on a blasted lazy donkey, dog-tired
into the bargain, when my donkey boy suddenly ran for his life and
left me alone. It was after sunset. The sand was red and shining, and
the big cliffs sort of fiery. And my donkey stuck its four feet in
the ground and wouldn’t budge. Then, about fifty yards away, I saw a
fellow--European apparently--doing something--Heaven knows what, for
I can’t describe it--among the boulders that lie all over the ground
there. Ceremony, I suppose you’d call it. I was so interested that
at first I watched. Then I saw he wasn’t alone. There were a lot of
moving things round him, towering big things, that came and went like
shadows. That twilight is fearfully bewildering; perspective changes,
and distance gets all confused. It’s fearfully hard to see properly. I
only remember that I got off my donkey and went up closer, and when I
was within a dozen yards of him--well, it sounds such rot, you know,
but I swear the things suddenly rushed off and left him there alone.
They went with a roaring noise like wind; shadowy but tremendously big,
they were, and they vanished up against the fiery precipices as though
they slipped bang into the stone itself. The only thing I can think of
to describe ’em is--well, those sand-storms the Khamasin raises--the
hot winds, you know.’
‘They probably _were_ sand,’ his wife suggested, burning to tell
another story of her own.
‘Possibly, only there wasn’t a breath of wind, and it was hot as
blazes--and--I had such extraordinary sensations--never felt anything
like it before--wild and exhilarated--drunk, I tell you, drunk.’
‘You saw them?’ asked Henriot. ‘You made out their shape at all, or
outline?’
‘Sphinx,’ he replied at once, ‘for all the world like sphinxes.
You know the kind of face and head these limestone strata in the
Desert take--great visages with square Egyptian head-dresses where
the driven sand has eaten away the softer stuff beneath? You see it
everywhere--enormous idols they seem, with faces and eyes and lips
awfully like the sphinx--well, that’s the nearest I can get to it.’ He
puffed his pipe hard. But there was no sign of levity in him. He told
the actual truth as far as in him lay, yet half ashamed of what he
told. And a good deal he left out, too.
‘She’s got a face of the same sort, that Statham horror,’ his wife said
with a shiver. ‘Reduce the size, and paint in awful black eyes, and
you’ve got her exactly--a living idol.’ And all three laughed, yet a
laughter without merriment in it.
‘And you spoke to the man?’
‘I did,’ the Englishman answered, ‘though I confess I’m a bit ashamed
of the way I spoke. Fact is, I was excited, thunderingly excited, and
felt a kind of anger. I wanted to kick the beggar for practising such
bally rubbish, and in such a place too. Yet all the time--well, well,
I believe it was sheer funk now,’ he laughed; ‘for I felt uncommonly
queer out there in the dusk, alone with--with that kind of business;
and I was angry with myself for feeling it. Anyhow, I went up--I’d
lost my donkey boy as well, remember--and slated him like a dog. I
can’t remember what I said exactly--only that he stood and stared at me
in silence. That made it worse--seemed twice as real then. The beggar
said no single word the whole time. He signed to me with one hand to
clear out. And then, suddenly out of nothing--she--that woman--appeared
and stood beside him. I never saw her come. She must have been behind
some boulder or other, for she simply rose out of the ground. She stood
there and stared at me too--bang in the face. She was turned towards
the sunset--what was left of it in the west--and her black eyes shone
like--ugh! I can’t describe it--it was shocking.’
‘She spoke?’
‘She said five words--and her voice--it’ll make you laugh--it was
metallic like a gong: “You are in danger here.” That’s all she said. I
simply turned and cleared out as fast as ever I could. But I had to go
on foot. My donkey had followed its boy long before. I tell you--smile
as you may--my blood was all curdled for an hour afterwards.’
Then he explained that he felt some kind of explanation or apology was
due, since the couple lodged in his own hotel, and how he approached
the man in the smoking-room after dinner. A conversation resulted--the
man was quite intelligent after all--of which only one sentence had
remained in his mind.
‘Perhaps you can explain it, Felix. I wrote it down, as well as I
could remember. The rest confused me beyond words or memory; though
I must confess it did not seem--well, not utter rot exactly. It was
about astrology and rituals and the worship of the old Egyptians, and
I don’t know what else besides. Only, he made it intelligible and
almost sensible, if only I could have got the hang of the thing enough
to remember it. You know,’ he added, as though believing in spite of
himself, ‘there _is_ a lot of that wonderful old Egyptian religious
business still hanging about in the atmosphere of this place, say what
you like.’
‘But this sentence?’ Henriot asked. And the other went off to get a
note-book where he had written it down.
‘He was jawing, you see,’ he continued when he came back, Henriot and
his wife having kept silence meanwhile, ‘about direction being of
importance in religious ceremonies, West and North symbolising certain
powers, or something of the kind, why people turn to the East and all
that sort of thing, and speaking of the whole Universe as if it had
living forces tucked away in it that expressed themselves somehow when
roused up. That’s how I remember it anyhow. And then he said this
thing--in answer to some fool question probably that I put.’ And he
read out of the note-book:
‘“You were in danger because you came through the Gateway of the West,
and the Powers from the Gateway of the East were at that moment rising,
and therefore in direct opposition to you.”’
Then came the following, apparently a simile offered by way of
explanation. Mansfield read it in a shamefaced tone, evidently prepared
for laughter:
‘“Whether I strike you on the back or in the face determines what kind
of answering force I rouse in you. Direction is significant.” And he
said it was the period called the Night of Power--time when the Desert
encroaches and spirits are close.’
And tossing the book aside, he lit his pipe again and waited a moment
to hear what might be said. ‘Can you explain such gibberish?’ he asked
at length, as neither of his listeners spoke. But Henriot said he
couldn’t. And the wife then took up her own tale of stories that had
grown about this singular couple.
These were less detailed, and therefore less impressive, but all
contributed something towards the atmosphere of reality that framed the
entire picture. They belonged to the type one hears at every dinner
party in Egypt--stories of the vengeance mummies seem to take on those
who robbed them, desecrating their peace of centuries; of a woman
wearing a necklace of scarabs taken from a princess’s tomb, who felt
hands about her throat to strangle her; of little Ka figures, Pasht
goddesses, amulets and the rest, that brought curious disaster to those
who kept them. They are many and various, astonishingly circumstantial
often, and vouched for by persons the reverse of credulous. The modern
superstition that haunts the desert gullies with Afreets has nothing in
common with them. They rest upon a basis of indubitable experience; and
they remain--inexplicable. And about the personalities of Lady Statham
and her nephew they crowded like flies attracted by a dish of fruit.
The Arabs, too, were afraid of her. She had difficulty in getting
guides and dragomen.
‘My dear chap,’ concluded Mansfield, ‘take my advice and have nothing
to do with ’em. There _is_ a lot of queer business knocking about
in this old country, and people like that know ways of reviving it
somehow. It’s upset you already; you looked scared, I thought, the
moment you came in.’ They laughed, but the Englishman was in earnest.
‘I tell you what,’ he added, ‘we’ll go off for a bit of shooting
together. The fields along the Delta are packed with birds now:
they’re home early this year on their way to the North. What d’ye say,
eh?’
But Henriot did not care about the quail shooting. He felt more
inclined to be alone and think things out by himself. He had come to
his friends for comfort, and instead they had made him uneasy and
excited. His interest had suddenly doubled. Though half afraid, he
longed to know what these two were up to--to follow the adventure to
the bitter end. He disregarded the warning of his host as well as the
premonition in his own heart. The sand had caught his feet.
There were moments when he laughed in utter disbelief, but these
were optimistic moods that did not last. He always returned to the
feeling that truth lurked somewhere in the whole strange business, and
that if he joined forces with them, as they seemed to wish, he would
witness--well, he hardly knew what--but it enticed him as danger does
the reckless man, or death the suicide. The sand had caught his mind.
He decided to offer himself to all they wanted--his pencil too. He
would see--a shiver ran through him at the thought--what they saw,
and know some eddy of that vanished tide of power and splendour the
ancient Egyptian priesthood knew, and that perhaps was even common
experience in the far-off days of dim Atlantis. The sand had caught his
imagination too. He was utterly sand-haunted.