The boat swung out into mid-stream. Behind him the figure of Mrs.
Haughstone faded away against the bougainvillaea on the wall; in front,
Mohammed's head and shoulders merged with the opposite bank; beyond, the
spectral palms and the shadowy fields of clover slipped into the great
body of the moon-fed desert. The desert itself sank down into a hollow
that seemed to fling those dark Theban hills upwards--towards the stars.
Everything, as it were, went into its background. Everything, animate and
inanimate, rose out of a common ultimate--the Sea. Yet for a moment only.
There was this sense of preliminary withdrawal backwards, as for a leap
that was to come. . . .
He, too, felt merged with his own background. In his soul he knew the
trouble and tumult of the Wave--gathering for a surging rise to
follow. . . .
For some minutes the sense of his own identity passed from him, and he
wondered who he was. 'Who am I?' would have been a quite natural
question. 'Let me see; I'm Kelverdon, Tom Kelverdon.' Of course! Yet he
felt that he was another person too. He lost his grip upon his normal
modern self a moment, lost hold of the steady, confident personality that
was familiar. . . . The voice of Mohammed broke the singular spell.
'Shicago, vair' good donkey. Yis, bes' donkey in Luxor--' and Tom
remembered that he had a ride of an hour or so before he could reach the
Temple of Deir El-Bahri where his friends were bivouacking. He tipped
Mohammed as he landed, mounted 'Chicago,' and started off impatiently,
then ran against little Mohammed coming back for a forgotten--kettle!
He laughed. Every third Arab seemed called Mohammed. But he learned
exactly where the party was. He sent his own donkey-boy home, and rode on
alone across the moon-lit plain.
The wonder of the exquisite night took hold of him, searching his heart
beyond all power of language--the strange Egyptian beauty. The ancient
wilderness, so calm beneath the stars; the mournful hills that leaped to
touch the smoking moon; the perfumed air, the deep old river--each, and
all together, exhaled their innermost, essential magic. Over every
separate boulder spilt the flood of silver. There were troops of shadows.
Among these shadows, beyond the boulders, Isis herself, it seemed, went by
with audible footfall on the sand, secretly guiding his advance; Horus,
dignified and solemn, with hawk-wings hovering, and fierce, deathless
eyes--Horus, too, watched him lest he stumble. . . .
On all sides he seemed aware of the powerful Egyptian gods, their
protective help, their familiar guidance. The deeps within him opened.
He had done this thing before. . . . Even the little details brought the
same lost message back to him, as the hoofs of his donkey shuffled through
the sand or struck a loose stone aside with metallic clatter. He heard
the lizards whistling. . . .
There were other vaster emblems too, quite close. To the south, a little,
the shoulders of the Colossi domed awfully above the flat expanse, and
soon he passed the Ramesseum, the moon just entering the stupendous
aisles. He saw the silvery shafts beneath the huge square pylons.
On all sides lay the welter of prodigious ruins, steeped in a power and
beauty that seemed borrowed from the scale of the immeasurable heavens.
Egypt laid a great hand upon him, her cold wind brushed his cheeks.
He was aware of awfulness, of splendour, of all the immensities.
He was in Eternity; life was continuous throughout the ages; there was no
death. . . .
He felt huge wings, and a hawk, disturbed by his passing, flapped silently
away to another broken pillar just beyond. He seemed swept forward, the
plaything of greater forces than he knew. There was no question of
direction, of resistance: the Wave rushed on and he rushed with it.
His normal simplicity disappeared in a complexity that bewildered him.
Very clear, however, was one thing--courage; that courage due to
abandonment of self. He would face whatever came. He needed it.
It was inevitable. Yes--this time he would face it without shuffling or
disaster. . . . For he recognised disaster--and was aware of blood. . . .
Questions asked themselves in long, long whispers, but found no answers.
They emerged from that mothering background and returned into it
again. . . . Sometimes he rode alone, but sometimes Lettice rode beside
him: Tony joined them. . . . He felt them driven forward, all three
together, obedient to the lift of the same rising wave, urged onwards
towards a climax that was lost to sight, and yet familiar. He knew both
joy and shrinking, a delicious welcome that it was going to happen, yet a
dread of searing pain involved. A great fact lay everywhere about him in
the night, but a fact he could not seize completely. All his faculties
settled on it, but in vain--they settled on a fragment, while the rest lay
free, beyond his reach. Pain, which was a pain at nothing, filled his
heart; joy, which was joy without a reason, sang in him. The Wave rose
higher, higher . . . the breath came with difficulty . . . the wind was
icy . . . there was choking in his throat. . . .
He noticed the same high excitement in him he had experienced a few nights
ago beneath the Karnak pylons--it ended later, he remembered, in the
menace of an unutterable loneliness. This excitement was wild with an
irresponsible hilarity that had no justification. He felt _exalte_.
The wave, he swinging in the crest of it, was going to break, and he knew
the awful thrill upon him before the dizzy, smothering plunge.
The complex of emotions made clear thought impossible. To put two and two
together was beyond him. He felt the power that bore him along immensely
greater than himself. And one of the smaller, self-asking questions
issued from it: 'Was this what _she_ felt? Was Tony also feeling this?
Were all three of them being swept along towards an inevitable climax?'
. . . This singular notion that none of them could help themselves
passed into him. . . .
And then he realised from the slower pace of the animal beneath him that
the path was going uphill. He collected his thoughts and looked about
him. The forbidding cliffs that guard the grim Valley of the Kings, the
haunted Theban hills, stood up pale yellow against the stars. The big
moon, no longer smoking in the earthbound haze, had risen into the clear
dominion of the upper sky. And he saw the terraces and columns of the
Deir El-Bahri Temple facing him at the level of his eyes.
Nothing bore clearer testimony to the half-unconscious method by which the
drama developed itself, to the deliberate yet uncalculated attitude of the
actors towards some inevitable fulfilment, than the little scene which
Tom's surprise arrival then discovered. According to the mood of the
beholder it could mean much or little, everything or nothing. It was so
nicely contrived between concealment and disclosure, and, like much else
that happened, seemed balanced exquisitely, if painfully, between guilt
and innocence. The point of view of the onlooker could alone decide.
At the same time it provided a perfect frame for another picture that
later took the stage. The stage seemed set for it exactly. The later
picture broke in and used it too. That is to say, two separate pictures,
distinct yet interfused, occupied the stage at once.
For Tom, dismounting, and leaving his animal with the donkey-boys some
hundred yards away, approached stealthily over the sand and came upon the
picnic group before he knew it. He watched them a moment before he
announced himself. The scene was some feet below him. He looked down.
Two minutes sooner, he might conceivably have found the party quite
differently grouped. Instead, however, his moment of arrival was exactly
timed as though to witness a scene set cleverly by the invisible Stage
Manager to frame two similar and yet different incidents.
Tom leaned against a broken column, staring.
Young de Lorne and Lady Sybil, he saw, were carefully admiring the
moonlight on the yellow cliffs. Miss de Lorne stooped busily over rugs
and basket packages. Her back was turned to Tony and Madame Jaretzka, who
were intimately engaged, their faces very close together, in the
half-prosaic, half-poetic act of blowing up a gipsy fire of scanty sticks
and crumpled paper. The entire picture seemed arranged as though intended
to convey a 'situation.' And to Tom a situation most certainly was
conveyed successfully, though a situation of which the two chief actors--
who shall say otherwise?--were possibly unconscious. For in that first
moment as he leaned against the column, gazing fixedly, the smoking sticks
between them burst into a flare of sudden flame, setting the two faces in
a frame of bright red light, and Tom, gazing upon them from a distance of
perhaps some twenty yards saw them clearly, yet somehow did not--recognise
them. Another picture thrust itself between: he watched a scene that lay
deep below him. Through the soft blaze of that Egyptian moonlight, across
the silence of that pale Egyptian desert, beneath those old Egyptian
stars, there stole upon him some magic which is deathless, though its
outer covenants have vanished from the world. . . . Down, down he sank
into the forgotten scenes whence it arose. Smothered in sand, it seemed,
he heard the centuries roar past him. . . .
He saw two other persons kneeling above that fire on the desert floor, two
persons familiar to him, yet whom he could not wholly recognise. In that
amazing second, while his heart stopped beating, it seemed as if thought
in anguish cried aloud: 'So, there you are! I have the proof!' while yet
all verification of the tragic 'you' remained just out of reach and
undisclosed.
He did not recognise two persons whom he knew, while yet some portion of
him keenly, fiercely searching, dived back into the limbo of unremembered
time. . . . A thin blue smoke rose before his face, and to his nostrils
stole a delicate perfume as of ambra. It was a picnic fire no longer.
It was an Eastern woman he saw lean forward across the gleam of a golden
brazier and yield a kiss to the lips of a man who claimed it passionately.
He saw her small hands folded and clinging about his neck. The face of
the man he could not see, the head and shoulders being turned away, but
hers he saw clearly--the dark, lustrous eyes that shone between
half-closed eyelids. They were highly placed in life, these two, for
their aspect as their garments told it; the man, indeed, had gold about
him somewhere and the woman, in her mien, wore royalty. Yet, though he
but saw their hands and heads alone, he knew instinctively that, if not
regal, they were semi-regal, and set beyond his reach in power natural to
them both. They were high-born, the favoured of the world. Inferiority
was his who watched them, the helpless inferiority of subordinate
position. That, too, he knew . . . for a gasp of terror, though quickly
smothered terror, rose vividly behind an anger that could gladly--kill.
There was a flash of fiery and intolerable pain within him. . . .
The next second he saw merely--Lettice!--blowing the smoke from her face
and eyes, with an impatient little gesture of both hands, while in front
of her knelt Tony--fanning a reluctant fire of sticks and paper with his
old felt hat.
He had been gazing at a coloured bubble, the bubble had burst into air and
vanished, the entire mood and picture vanished with it--so swiftly, so
instantaneously, moreover, that Tom was ready to deny the entire
experience.
Indeed, he did deny it. He refused to credit it. It had been, surely, a
feeling rather than a sight. But the feeling having utterly vanished, he
discredited the sight as well. The fiery pain had vanished too. He found
himself watching the semi-comical picture of de Lorne and Lady Sybil
flirting in dumb action, and Tony and Lettice trying to make a fire
without the instinct or ability to succeed. And, incontinently, he burst
out laughing audibly.
Yet, apparently, his laughter was not heard; he had made no actual sound.
There was, instead, a little scream, a sudden movement, a scurrying of
feet among the sand and stones, and Lettice and Tony rose upon one single
impulse, as once before he had seen them rise in Karnak weeks ago.
They stood up like one person. They looked about them into the
surrounding shadows, disturbed, afflicted, yet as though they were not
certain they had heard . . . and then, abruptly, the figure of Tony went
out . . . it disappeared. How, precisely, was not clear, but it was gone
into the darkness. . . .
And another picture--or another aspect of the first--dropped into place.
There was an outline of a shadowy tent. The flap was stirring lightly, as
though behind it some one hid--and watched. He could not tell. A deep
confusion, as of two pictures interfused, was in him. For somehow he
transferred his own self--was it physical desire? was it spiritual
yearning? was it love?--projected his own self into the figure that had
kissed her, taking her own passionate kiss in return. He actually
experienced it. He did this thing. He had done it--once before!
Knowing himself beside her, he both did it and saw himself doing it.
He was both actor and onlooker. . . .
There poured back upon him then, sweet and poignant, his love of an
Egyptian woman, the fragrance of remembered tresses, the perfume of fair
limbs that clung and of arms that lingered round his neck--yet that in the
last moment slipped from his full possession. He was on his knees before
her; he gazed up into her ardent eyes, set in a glowing face above his
own; the face bent lower; he raised two slender hands, the fingers
henna-stained, and pressed them to his lips. He felt their silken
texture, the fragile pressure, her breath upon his face--yet all sharply
withdrawn again before he captured them completely. There was the odour
of long-forgotten unguents, sweet with a tang that sharpened them towards
desire in days that knew a fiercer sunlight. . . . His brain went
reeling. The effort to keep one picture separate from the other broke
them both. He could not disentangle, could not distinguish.
They intermingled. He was both the figure hidden behind the tent and the
figure who held the woman in his arms. What his heart desired became, it
seemed, that which happened. . . .
And then the flap of the tent flung open, and out rushed a violent,
leaping outline--the figure of a man. Another--it seemed himself--rushed
to meet him. There was a gleam, a long deep cry. . . . A woman, with
arms outstretched, knelt close beside the struggling figures on the sand.
He saw two huge, dark, muscular hands about a bent and yielding neck,
blood oozing thickly between the gripping fingers, staining them . . .
then sudden darkness that blacked out the entire scene, and a choking
effort to find breath. . . . But it was his own breath that failed,
choked as by blood and fire that broke into his own throat. . . .
Smothered in sand, the centuries roared past him, died away into the
distance, sank back into the interminable desert. . . . He found his
voice this time. He shouted.
He saw again--Lettice, blowing the smoke from her face and eyes with an
impatient little gesture of both hands, while Tony knelt in front of her
and fanned a reluctant fire with his old felt hat. The picture--the
second picture--had been instantaneous. It had not lasted a fraction of a
second even.
He shouted. And this time his voice was audible. Lettice and Tony stood
up, as though a single person rose. Both turned in the direction of the
sound. Then Tony moved off quickly. Tom's vision had interpenetrated
this very action even while it was actually taking place--the first time.
'Why--I do declare--if it isn't--Tom!' he heard in a startled woman's
voice.
He came down towards her slowly. Something of the 'pictures' still swam
in between what was next said and done. It seemed in the atmosphere,
pervading the three of them. But it was weakening, passing away quickly.
For one moment, however, before it passed, it became overpowering again.
'But, Tom--is this a joke, or what? You frightened me,'--she gave a horrid
gasp--'nearly to death! You've come back----!'
'It's a surprise,' he cried, trying to laugh, though his lips were dry and
refused the effort. 'I have surprised you. I've come back!'
He heard the gasp prolonged. Breathing seemed difficult. Some deep
distress was in her. Yet, in place of pity, exultation caught him oddly.
The next instant he felt suddenly afraid. There was confusion in his
soul. For it was _he and she_, it seemed, who had been 'surprised and
caught.' And her voice called shrilly:
'Tony! Tony . . .!'
There was amazement in the sound of it--terror, relief, and passion too.
The thin note of fear and anguish broke through the natural call.
Then, as Tony came running up, a few sticks in his big hands--she
screamed, yet with failing breath:
'Oh, oh . . .! Who _are_ you . . .?'
For the man she summoned came, but came too swiftly. Moving with
uncertain gait, he yet came rapidly--terribly, somehow, and with
violence. Instantaneously, it seemed, he covered the intervening space.
In the calm, sweet moonlight, beneath the blaze of the steady stars, he
suddenly was--there, upon that patch of ancient desert sand. He looked
half unearthly. The big hands he held outspread before him glistened a
little in the shimmer of the moon. Yet they were dark, and they seemed
menacing. They threatened--as with some power he meant to use, because it
was his right. But the gleam upon them was not of swarthy skin alone.
The gleam, the darkness, were of blood. . . . There was a cry again--a
sound of anguish almost intolerable. . . .
And the same instant Tom felt the clasp of his cousin's hand upon his own,
and heard his jolly voice with easy, natural laughter in it: 'But, Tom,
old chap, how ripping! You're really back! This _is_ a grand surprise!
It's splendid!'
There was nothing that called upon either his courage or control.
They were overjoyed to see him, the surprise he provided proved indeed the
success of the evening.
'I thought at first you were Mohammed with the kettle,' exclaimed Madame
Jaretzka, coming close to make quite sure, and murmuring quickly--
nervously as well, he thought--'Oh, Tom, I _am_ so glad,' beneath her
breath. 'You're just in time--we all wanted you so.'
Explanations followed; Tony's friends had postponed the Cairo trip at the
last moment; the picnic had been planned as a rehearsal for the real one
that was to follow later. Tom's adroitness in finding them was praised;
he became the unwilling hero of the piece, and as such had to make the
fire a success and prove himself generally the _clou_ of the party that
hitherto was missing. He became at once the life and centre of the little
group, gay and in the highest spirits, the emotion accumulated in him
discharging itself in the entirely unexpected direction of hilarious fun
and gaiety.
The sense of tragedy he had gathered on his journey, if it muttered at
all, muttered out of sight. He looked back upon his feelings of an hour
before with amazement, dismay, distress--then utterly forgot them.
The picture itself--the vision--was as though it had not been at all.
What, in the name of common sense, had possessed him that he could ever
have admitted such preposterous uneasiness? He thought of Mrs.
Haughstone's absurd warnings with a sharp contempt, and felt his spirits
only rise higher than before. She was meanly suspicious about nothing.
Of course he would give Lettice a hint: why not, indeed? He would give it
then and there before them all and hear them laugh about it till they
cried. And he would have done so, doubtless, but that he realised the
woman's jealousy was a sordid topic to introduce into so gay a party.
'You arrived in the nick of time, Tom,' Lettice told him. 'We were
beginning to feel the solemnity of these surroundings, the awful Tombs of
the Kings and Priests and people. Those cliffs are too oppressive for a
picnic.'
'A fact,' cried Tony. 'It feels like sacrilege. They resent us being
here.' He glanced at Madame Jaretzka as he said it. 'If you hadn't come,
Tom, I'm sure there'd have been a disaster somewhere. Anyhow, one must
feel superstitious to enjoy a place like this. It's the proper
atmosphere!'
Lettice looked up at Tom, and added, 'You've really saved us. The least
we can do is to worship the sun the moment he gets up. We'll adore old
Amon-Ra. It's obvious. We must!'
They made themselves merry over a rather sandy meal. She arranged a place
for him close beside her, and her genuine pleasure at his unexpected
return filled him with a joy that crowded out even the memory of other
emotions. The mixture called Tom Kelverdon asserted itself: he felt
ashamed; he heartily despised his moods, wondering whence they came so
strangely. Tony himself was quiet and affectionate. If anything was
lacking, Tom's high spirits carried him too boisterously to notice it.
Otherwise he might possibly have thought that she spoke a little sharply
once or twice to Tony, neglecting him in a way that was not quite her
normal way, and that to himself, even before the others, she was
unusually--almost too emphatically--dear and tender. Indeed, she seemed
so pleased he had come that a cynical observer, cursed with an acute,
experienced mind, might almost have thought she showed something not far
from positive relief. But Tom, too happy to be sensitive to shades of
feminine conduct, was aware chiefly, if not solely, of his own joy and
welcome.
'You didn't get my letter, then, before you left?' she asked him once; and
he replied, 'The answer, as in Parliament, is in the negative. But it
will be forwarded all right.' He would get it the following night.
'Ah, but you mustn't read it _now_,' she said. 'You must tear it up
unread,' and made him promise faithfully he would obey. '_I_ wrote to you
too,' mentioned Tony, as though determined to be left out of nothing.
'You'll get it at the same time. But you mustn't tear mine up, remember.
It's full of advice and wisdom you badly need.' And Tom promised that
faithfully as well. The reply was in the affirmative.
The bivouac was a complete success; all looked back upon it as an
unforgettable experience. They declared, of course, they had not slept a
wink, yet all had snored quite audibly beneath the wheeling stars.
They were fresh and lively enough, certainly, when the sun poured his
delicious warmth across the cloudless sky, while Tom and Tony made the
fire and set the coffee on for breakfast.
Of the marvellous beauty that preceded the actual sunrise no one spoke; it
left them breathless rather; they watched the sky beyond the hills
change colour; great shafts of gold transfixed the violet heavens; the
Nile shone faintly; then, with a sudden drive, the stars rushed backwards
in a shower, and the amazing sun came up as with a shout. Perfumes that
have no name rose from the desert and the fields along the distant river
banks. The silence deepened, for no birds sang. Light took the world--
and it was morning.
And when the donkey-boys arrived at eight o'clock, the party were slow in
starting: it was so pleasant to lie and bask in the sumptuous bath of heat
and light that drenched them. The night had been chilly enough.
They were a tired party. Once home again, all retired with one accord to
sleep, remaining invisible until the sun was slanting over Persia and the
Indian Ocean, gilding the horizon probably above the starry skies of far
Cathay.
But as Tom dozed off behind the shuttered windows in the hotel towards
eleven o'clock, having bathed and breakfasted a second time, he thought
vaguely of what Mrs. Haughstone had said to him a few hours before.
It seemed days ago already. He was too drowsy to hold the thought more
than a moment in his mind, much less to reflect upon it. 'It may be just
as well to give a hint,' occurred to him. 'Tony _is_ a bit too fond of
her--too fond for his happiness, perhaps.' Nothing had happened at the
picnic to revive the notion; it just struck him as he fell asleep, then
vanished; it was a moment's instinct. The vision--it had been an
instantaneous flash after all and nothing more--had left his mind
completely for the time.
But Tom looked back afterwards upon the all-night bivouac as an occasion
marked specially in memory's calendar, yet for a reason that was unlike
the reasons his companions knew. He remembered it with mingled joy and
pain, also with a wonder that he could have been so blind--the last night
of happiness in his brief Egyptian winter.