II

The name of George Isley had been before the public for some years

when, after a considerable interval, we met again in a hotel in

Egypt, I for my health, he for I knew not what--at first. But I soon

discovered: archaeology and excavation had taken hold of him, though

he had gone so quietly about it that no one seemed to have heard. I

was not sure that he was glad to see me, for he had first withdrawn,

annoyed, it seemed, at being discovered, but later, as though after

consideration, had made tentative advances. He welcomed me with a

curious gesture of the entire body that seemed to shake himself free

from something that had made him forget my identity. There was pathos

somewhere in his attitude, almost as though he asked for sympathy.

‘I’ve been out here, off and on, for the last three years,’ he told

me, after describing something of what he had been doing. ‘I find it

the most repaying hobby in the world. It leads to a reconstruction--an

imaginative reconstruction, of course, I mean--of an enormous thing the

world had entirely lost. A very gorgeous, stimulating hobby, believe

me, and a very entic--’ he quickly changed the word--‘exacting one

indeed.’

I remember looking him up and down with astonishment. There was a

change in him, a lack; a note was missing in his enthusiasm, a colour

in the voice, a quality in his manner. The ingredients were not mixed

quite as of old. I did not bother him with questions, but I noted

thus at the very first a subtle alteration. Another facet of the man

presented itself. Something that had been independent and aggressive

was replaced by a certain emptiness that invited sympathy. Even in his

physical appearance the change was manifested--this odd suggestion of

lessening. I looked again more closely. Lessening was the word. He had

somehow dwindled. It was startling, vaguely unpleasant too.

The entire subject, as usual, was at his finger-tips; he knew all the

important men; and had spent money freely on his hobby. I laughed,

reminding him of his remark that Egypt had no attractions for him,

owing to the organised advertisement of its somewhat theatrical charms.

Admitting his error with a gesture, he brushed the objection easily

aside. His manner, and a certain glow that rose about his atmosphere as

he answered, increased my first astonishment. His voice was significant

and suggestive. ‘Come out with me,’ he said in a low tone, ‘and see

how little the tourists matter, how inappreciable the excavation is

compared to what remains to be done, how gigantic’--he emphasised

the word impressively--‘the scope for discovery remains.’ He made a

movement with his head and shoulders that conveyed a sense of the

prodigious, for he was of massive build, his cast of features stern,

and his eyes, set deep into the face, shone past me with a sombre gleam

in them I did not quite account for. It was the voice, however, that

brought the mystery in. It vibrated somewhere below the actual sound

of it. ‘Egypt,’ he continued--and so gravely that at first I made the

mistake of thinking he chose the curious words on purpose to produce

a theatrical effect--‘that has enriched her blood with the pageant of

so many civilisations, that has devoured Persians, Greeks and Romans,

Saracens and Mamelukes, a dozen conquests and invasions besides,--what

can mere tourists or explorers matter to her? The excavators scratch

their skin and dig up mummies; and as for tourists!’--he laughed

contemptuously--‘flies that settle for a moment on her covered face, to

vanish at the first signs of heat! Egypt is not even aware of them. The

real Egypt lies underground in darkness. Tourists must have light, to

be seen as well as to see. And the diggers----!’

He paused, smiling with something between pity and contempt I did not

quite appreciate, for, personally, I felt a great respect for the

tireless excavators. And then he added, with a touch of feeling in

his tone as though he had a grievance against them, and had not also

‘dug’ himself, ‘Men who uncover the dead, restore the temples, and

reconstruct a skeleton, thinking they have read its beating heart....’

He shrugged his great shoulders, and the rest of the sentence may

have been but the protest of a man in defence of his own hobby, but

that there seemed an undue earnestness and gravity about it that made

me wonder more than ever. He went on to speak of the strangeness of

the land as a mere ribbon of vegetation along the ancient river, the

rest all ruins, desert, sun-drenched wilderness of death, yet so

breakingly alive with wonder, power and a certain disquieting sense of

deathlessness. There seemed, for him, a revelation of unusual spiritual

kind in this land where the Past survived so potently. He spoke almost

as though it obliterated the Present.

Indeed, the hint of something solemn behind his words made it difficult

for me to keep up the conversation, and the pause that presently came I

filled in with some word of questioning surprise, which yet, I think,

was chiefly in concurrence. I was aware of some big belief in him,

some enveloping emotion that escaped my grasp. Yet, though I did not

understand, his great mood swept me.... His voice lowered, then, as

he went on to mention temples, tombs and deities, details of his own

discoveries and of their effect upon him, but to this I listened with

half an ear, because in the unusual language he had first made use of

I detected this other thing that stirred my curiosity more--stirred it

uncomfortably.

‘Then the spell,’ I asked, remembering the effect of Egypt upon myself

two years before, ‘has worked upon you as upon most others, only with

greater power?’

He looked hard at me a moment, signs of trouble showing themselves

faintly in his rugged, interesting face. I think he wanted to say more

than he could bring himself to confess. He hesitated.

‘I’m only glad,’ he replied after a pause, ‘it didn’t get hold of me

earlier in life. It would have absorbed me. I should have lost all

other interests. Now,’--that curious look of helplessness, of asking

sympathy, flitted like a shadow through his eyes--‘now that I’m on the

decline ... it matters less.’

On the decline! I cannot imagine by what blundering I missed this

chance he never offered again; somehow or other the singular phrase

passed unnoticed at the moment, and only came upon me with its full

significance later when it was too awkward to refer to it. He tested my

readiness to help, to sympathise, to share his inner life. I missed the

clue. For, at the moment, a more practical consideration interested me

in his language. Being of those who regretted that he had not excelled

by devoting his powers to a single object, I shrugged my shoulders.

He caught my meaning instantly. Oh, he was glad to talk. He felt the

possibility of my sympathy underneath, I think.

‘No, no, you take me wrongly there,’ he said with gravity. ‘What

I mean--and I ought to know if any one does!--is that while most

countries give, others take away. Egypt changes you. No one can live

here and remain exactly what he was before.’

This puzzled me. It startled, too, again. His manner was so earnest.

‘And Egypt, you mean, is one of the countries that take away?’ I asked.

The strange idea unsettled my thoughts a little.

‘First takes away from you,’ he replied, ‘but in the end takes _you_

away. Some lands enrich you,’ he went on, seeing that I listened,

‘while others impoverish. From India, Greece, Italy, all ancient

lands, you return with memories you can use. From Egypt you return

with--nothing. Its splendour stupefies; it’s useless. There is a change

in your inmost being, an emptiness, an unaccountable yearning, but you

find nothing that can fill the lack you’re conscious of. Nothing comes

to replace what has gone. You have been drained.’

I stared; but I nodded a general acquiescence. Of a sensitive, artistic

temperament this was certainly true, though by no means the superficial

and generally accepted verdict. The majority imagine that Egypt has

filled them to the brim. I took his deeper reading of the facts. I was

aware of an odd fascination in his idea.

‘Modern Egypt,’ he continued, ‘is, after all, but a trick of

civilisation,’ and there was a kind of breathlessness in his measured

tone, ‘but ancient Egypt lies waiting, hiding, underneath. Though dead,

she is amazingly alive. And you feel her touching you. She takes from

you. She enriches herself. You return from Egypt--less than you were

before.’

What came over my mind is hard to say. Some touch of visionary

imagination burned its flaming path across my mind. I thought of some

old Grecian hero speaking of his delicious battle with the gods--battle

in which he knew he must be worsted, but yet in which he delighted

because at death his spirit would join their glorious company beyond

this world. I was aware, that is to say, of resignation as well as

resistance in him. He already felt the effortless peace which follows

upon long, unequal battling, as of a man who has fought the rapids with

a strain beyond his strength, then sinks back and goes with the awful

mass of water smoothly and indifferently--over the quiet fall.

Yet, it was not so much his words which clothed picturesquely an

undeniable truth, as the force of conviction that drove behind them,

shrouding my mind with mystery and darkness. His eyes, so steadily

holding mine, were lit, I admit, yet they were calm and sane as those

of a doctor discussing the symptoms of that daily battle to which we

all finally succumb. This analogy occurred to me.

‘There _is_’--I stammered a little, faltering in my speech--‘an

incalculable element in the country ... somewhere, I confess. You put

it--rather strongly, though, don’t you?’

He answered quietly, moving his eyes from my face towards the window

that framed the serene and exquisite sky towards the Nile.

‘The real, invisible Egypt,’ he murmured, ‘I do find rather--strong.

I find it difficult to deal with. You see,’ and he turned towards me,

smiling like a tired child, ‘I think the truth is that Egypt deals

with me.’

‘It draws----’ I began, then started as he interrupted me at once.

‘Into the Past.’ He uttered the little word in a way beyond me to

describe. There came a flood of glory with it, a sense of peace and

beauty, of battles over and of rest attained. No saint could have

brimmed ‘Heaven’ with as much passionately enticing meaning. He went

willingly, prolonging the struggle merely to enjoy the greater relief

and joy of the consummation.

For again he spoke as though a struggle were in progress in his being.

I got the impression that he somewhere wanted help. I understood

the pathetic quality I had vaguely discerned already. His character

naturally was so strong and independent. It now seemed weaker, as

though certain fibres had been drawn out. And I understood then that

the spell of Egypt, so lightly chattered about in its sensational

aspect, so rarely known in its naked power, the nameless, creeping

influence that begins deep below the surface and thence sends delicate

tendrils outwards, was in his blood. I, in my untaught ignorance, had

felt it too; it is undeniable; one is aware of unaccountable, queer

things in Egypt; even the utterly prosaic feel them. Dead Egypt is

marvellously alive....

I glanced past him out of the big windows where the desert glimmered

in its featureless expanse of yellow leagues, two monstrous pyramids

signalling from across the Nile, and for a moment--inexplicably, it

seemed to me afterwards--I lost sight of my companion’s stalwart

figure that was yet so close before my eyes. He had risen from his

chair; he was standing near me; yet my sight missed him altogether.

Something, dim as a shadow, faint as a breath of air, rose up and bore

my thoughts away, obliterating vision too. I forgot for a moment who

I was; identity slipped from me. Thought, sight, feeling, all sank

away into the emptiness of those sun-baked sands, sank, as it were,

into nothingness, caught away from the Present, enticed, absorbed....

And when I looked back again to answer him, or rather to ask what

his curious words could mean--he was no longer there. More than

surprised--for there was something of shock in the disappearance--I

turned to search. I had not seen him go. He had stolen from my side so

softly, slipped away silently, mysteriously, and--so easily. I remember

that a faint shiver ran down my back as I realised that I was alone.

Was it that, momentarily, I had caught a reflex of his state of mind?

Had my sympathy induced in myself an echo of what he experienced in

full--a going backwards, a loss of present vigour, the enticing, subtle

draw of those immeasurable sands that hide the living dead from the

interruptions of the careless living...?

I sat down to reflect and, incidentally, to watch the magnificence of

the sunset; and the thing he had said returned upon me with insistent

power, ringing like distant bells within my mind. His talk of the

tombs and temples passed, but this remained. It stimulated oddly. His

talk, I remembered, had always excited curiosity in this way. Some

countries give, while others take away. What did he mean precisely?

What had Egypt taken away from him? And I realised more definitely

that something in him was missing, something he possessed in former

years that was now no longer there. He had grown shadowy already in

my thoughts. The mind searched keenly, but in vain ... and after some

time I left my chair and moved over to another window, aware that a

vague discomfort stirred within me that involved uneasiness--for him.

I felt pity. But behind the pity was an eager, absorbing curiosity as

well. He seemed receding curiously into misty distance, and the strong

desire leaped in me to overtake, to travel with him into some vanished

splendour that he had rediscovered. The feeling was a most remarkable

one, for it included yearning--the yearning for some nameless,

forgotten loveliness the world has lost. It was in me too.

At the approach of twilight the mind loves to harbour shadows. The

room, empty of guests, was dark behind me; darkness, too, was creeping

across the desert like a veil, deepening the serenity of its grim,

unfeatured face. It turned pale with distance; the whole great sheet

of it went rustling into night. The first stars peeped and twinkled,

hanging loosely in the air as though they could be plucked like golden

berries; and the sun was already below the Libyan horizon, where gold

and crimson faded through violet into blue. I stood watching this

mysterious Egyptian dusk, while an eerie glamour seemed to bring the

incredible within uneasy reach of the half-faltering senses.... And

suddenly the truth dropped into me. Over George Isley, over his mind

and energies, over his thoughts and over his emotions too, a kind of

darkness was also slowly creeping. Something in him had dimmed, yet not

with age; it had gone out. Some inner night, stealing over the Present,

obliterated it. And yet he looked towards the dawn. Like the Egyptian

monuments his eyes turned--eastwards.

And so it came to me that what he had lost was personal ambition. He

was glad, he said, that these Egyptian studies had not caught him

earlier in life; the language he made use of was peculiar: ‘Now I am on

the decline it matters less.’ A slight foundation, no doubt, to build

conviction on, and yet I felt sure that I was partly right. He was

fascinated, but fascinated against his will. The Present in him battled

against the Past. Still fighting, he had yet lost hope. The desire

_not_ to change was now no longer in him....

I turned away from the window so as not to see that grey, encroaching

desert, for the discovery produced a certain agitation in me. Egypt

seemed suddenly a living entity of enormous power. She stirred about

me. She was stirring now. This flat and motionless land pretending

it had no movement, was actually busy with a million gestures that

came creeping round the heart. She was reducing him. Already from

the complex texture of his personality she had drawn one vital

thread that in its relation to the general woof was of central

importance--ambition. The mind chose the simile; but in my heart where

thought fluttered in singular distress, another suggested itself as

truer. ‘Thread’ changed to ‘artery.’ I turned quickly and went up to my

room where I could be alone. The idea was somewhere ghastly.