I
Two years have elapsed since I quitted the world, and the presence in
Egypt of a one-time colleague, of which I have been advised, prompts me
to put on record these particulars of the strangest, most wonderful, and
most beautiful experience which has ever befallen any man. I do not
expect my story to be believed. The scepticism of the material world of
Fleet Street will consume my statement with its devouring fires. But I
do not care. The old itching to make a "story" is upon me. As a "story"
let this paper be regarded.
Where the experience actually began I must leave to each reader to judge
for himself. I, personally, do not profess to know, even now. But the
curtain first arose upon that part of the story which it is my present
purpose to chronicle one afternoon near the corner of the Street
of the Silversmiths in Cairo. I was wandering in those wonderful
narrow, winding lanes, unaccompanied, for I am by habit a solitary
being; and despite my ignorance of the language and customs of the
natives I awakened to the fact that a link of sympathy--of silent
understanding--seemed to bind me to these busy brown men.
I had for many years cherished a secret ambition to pay a protracted
visit to Egypt, but the ties of an arduous profession hitherto had
rendered its realisation impossible. Now, a stranger in a strange land,
I found myself _at home_. I cannot hope to make evident to my readers
the completeness of this recognition. From Shepheard's, with its throngs
of cosmopolitan travellers and its hosts of pretty women, I had early
fled in dismay to the comparative quiet of Mena House. But the only real
happiness I ever knew--indeed, as I soon began to realise, had ever
known--I found among the discordant cries and mingled smells of perfume
and decay in the native city. The desert called to me sweetly, but it
was the people, the shops, the shuttered houses, the noise and the
smells of the Eastern streets which gripped my heart.
Delightedly I watched the passage of those commercial vehicles, narrow
and set high upon monstrous wheels, which convey loads of indescribable
variety along streets no wider than the "hall" of a small suburban
residence. The Parsees in the Khân Khalîl with their carpets and
shining silk-ware, the Arab dealers, fierce swarthy tradesmen from the
desert, and the smooth-tongued Cairenes upholding embroidered cloths and
gauzy _yashmaks_ to allure the eye--all these I watched with a kind of
gladness that was almost tender, that was unlike any sentiment I had
ever experienced toward my fellow-creatures before.
Mendicants crying the eternal "_Bakshîsh!_", _Sakhas_ with their skins
of Nile water, and the other hundred and one familiar figures of the
quarter filled me with a great and glad contentment.
I purposely haunted the Mûski during the heat of the day because at
that hour it was comparatively free from the presence of Europeans and
Americans. Thus, on the occasion of which I write, coming to the end
of the street in which the shops of the principal silversmiths are
situated, I found myself to be the only white man (if I except the
Greeks) in the immediate neighbourhood.
A group of men hurrying out of the street as I approached it first
attracted my attention. They were glancing behind them apprehensively
as though at a rabid dog. Then came a white-bearded man riding a tiny
donkey and also glancing back apprehensively over his shoulder. He all
but collided with me in his blind haste; and, stepping quickly aside to
avoid him, I knocked down an old woman who was coming out of the street.
The man who had been the real cause of the accident rode off at headlong
speed and I found myself left with the poor victim of my clumsiness
in a spot which seemed miraculously to have become deserted. If the
shopkeepers remained in their shops, they were invisible, and must
have retreated into the darkest corners of the caves in the wall which
constitute native emporiums. Pedestrians there were none.
I stooped to the old woman, who lay moaning at my feet ... and as I did
so, I shrank. How can I describe the loathing, the repulsion which I
experienced? Never in the whole of my career had I seen such a hideous
face. A ragged black veil which she wore had been torn from its brass
fastenings as she fell, and her countenance was revealed in all its
appalling ugliness. Yellow, shrivelled, toothless, it was scarcely
human; but, above all, it repelled because of its aspect of _extreme
age_. I do not mean that it was like the face of a woman of eighty;
it was like that of a woman who had miraculously survived decease for
several centuries! It was a witch-face, a deathly face.
And as I shrank, she opened her eyes, moaning feebly, and groping with
claw-like hands as if darkness surrounded her. Furthermore I saw a new
pain, and a keener pain, light up those aged eyes. She had detected my
involuntary movement of loathing.
Those who knew me will bear testimony to the fact that I was not an
emotional man or one readily impressionable by any kind of human appeal.
Therefore they will wonder the more to learn that this pathetic light in
the old woman's eyes changed my revulsion to a poignant sorrow. I had
roughly knocked her from her feet and now hesitated to assist her to
rise again! Truly, she was scorned and rejected by all. A wave of
tenderness, that cannot be described, that could not be resisted, swept
over me. My eyes grew misty and a great remorse claimed me.
"Poor old soul!" I whispered.
Stooping, I gently raised the shrivelled, ape-like head, resting it
against my knee; and, bending down, I kissed the old woman on the brow!
I record the fact, but even now, looking back upon its happening, and
seeking to recapture the cold, solitary Saville Grainger who has left
the world, I realise the wonder of it. That _I_ should have given rein
to such an impulse! That such an impulse should have stirred me! Which
phenomenon was the more remarkable?
The result of my act--regretted as soon as performed--was singular. The
aged, hideous creature sighed in a manner I can never forget, and an
expression that almost lent comeliness to her features momentarily crept
over her face. Then she rose to her feet with difficulty, raised her
hands as if blessing me, and muttering something in Arabic went
shuffling along the deserted street, stooping as she walked.
Apparently the episode had passed unnoticed. Certainly if anyone
witnessed it he was well concealed. But, conscious of a strange
embarrassment, with which were mingled other tumultuous emotions, I
turned out of the Street of the Silversmiths and found myself amid the
normal activities of the quarter again. The memory of the Kiss was
repugnant, I wanted to wipe my lips--but something seemed to forbid the
act; a lingering compassion that was almost a yearning.
For once in my life I desired to find myself among normal, healthy,
moderately brainless Europeans. I longed for the smell of cigar-smoke,
for the rattle of the cocktail-maker and the sight of a pretty face. I
hurried to Shepheard's.