It was in the windless days of a perfect December that Moleson, the
Egyptologist, found us out and paid a flying visit to Helouan. His
duties took him up and down the land, but his time seemed largely at
his own disposal. He lingered on. His coming introduced a new element
I was not quite able to estimate; though, speaking generally, the
effect of his presence upon my companion was to emphasise the latter’s
alteration. It underlined the change, and drew attention to it. The
new arrival, I gathered, was not altogether welcome. ‘I should never
have expected to find you _here_,’ laughed Moleson when they met, and
whether he referred to Helouan or to the hotel was not quite clear. I
got the impression he meant both; I remembered my fancy that it was a
good hotel to hide in. George Isley had betrayed a slight involuntary
start when the visiting card was brought to him at tea-time. I think he
had wished to escape from his former co-worker. Moleson had found him
out. ‘I heard you had a friend with you and were contemplating further
exper--work,’ he added. He changed the word ‘experiment’ quickly to the
other.
‘The former, as you see, is true, but not the latter,’ replied my
companion dryly, and in his manner was a touch of opposition that
might have been hostility. Their intimacy, I saw, was close and of
old standing. In all they said and did and looked, there was an
undercurrent of other meaning that just escaped me. They were up to
something--they _had_ been up to something; but Isley would have
withdrawn if he could!
Moleson was an ambitious and energetic personality, absorbed in his
profession, alive to the poetical as well as to the practical value
of archaeology, and he made at first a wholly delightful impression
upon me. An instinctive _flair_ for his subject had early in life
brought him success and a measure of fame as well. His knowledge was
accurate and scholarly, his mind saturated in the lore of a vanished
civilisation. Behind an exterior that was quietly careless, I divined
a passionate and complex nature, and I watched him with interest as
the man for whom the olden sun-worship of unscientific days held
some beauty of reality and truth. Much in his strange book that
had bewildered me now seemed intelligible when I saw the author. I
cannot explain this more closely. Something about him somehow made it
possible. Though modern to the finger-tips and thoroughly equipped with
all the tendencies of the day, there seemed to hide in him another self
that held aloof with a dignified detachment from the interests in which
his ‘educated’ mind was centred. He read living secrets beneath museum
labels, I might put it. He stepped out of the days of the Pharaohs if
ever man did, and I realised early in our acquaintance that this was
the man who had exceptional powers of ‘resistance and self-protection,’
and was, in his particular branch of work, ‘unusual.’ In manner he
was light and gay, his sense of humour strong, with a way of treating
everything as though laughter was the sanest attitude towards life.
There is, however, the laughter that hides--other things. Moleson, as
I gathered from many clues of talk and manner and silence, was a deep
and singular being. His experiences in Egypt, if any, he had survived
admirably. There were at least two Molesons. I felt him more than
double----multiple.
In appearance tall, thin, and fleshless, with a dried-up skin and
features withered as a mummy’s, he said laughingly that Nature had
picked him physically for his ‘job’; and, indeed, one could see him
worming his way down narrow tunnels into the sandy tombs, and writhing
along sunless passages of suffocating heat without too much personal
inconvenience. Something sinuous, almost fluid in his mind expressed
itself in his body too. He might go in any direction without causing
surprise. He might go backwards or forwards. He might go in two
directions at once.
And my first impression of the man deepened before many days were past.
There was irresponsibility in him, insincerity somewhere, almost want
of heart. His morality was certainly not to-day’s, and the mind in him
was slippery. I think the modern world, to which he was unattached,
confused and irritated him. A sense of insecurity came with him.
His interest in George Isley was the interest in a psychological
‘specimen.’ I remembered how in his book he described the selection
of individuals for certain functions of that marvellous worship, and
the odd idea flashed through me--well, that Isley exactly suited some
purpose of his re-creating energies. The man was keenly observant from
top to toe, but not with his sight alone; he seemed to be aware of
motives and emotions before he noticed the acts or gestures that these
caused. I felt that he took me in as well. Certainly he eyed me up and
down by means of this inner observation that seemed automatic with him.
Moleson was not staying in our hotel; he had chosen one where social
life was more abundant; but he came up frequently to lunch and dine,
and sometimes spent the evening in Isley’s rooms, amusing us with
his skill upon the piano, singing Arab songs, and chanting phrases
from the ancient Egyptian rituals to rhythms of his own invention.
The old Egyptian music, both in harmony and melody, was far more
developed than I had realised, the use of sound having been of radical
importance in their ceremonies. The chanting in particular he did with
extraordinary effect, though whether its success lay in his sonorous
voice, his peculiar increasing of the vowel sounds, or in anything
deeper, I cannot pretend to say. The result at any rate was of a unique
description. It brought buried Egypt to the surface; the gigantic
Presence entered sensibly into the room. It came, huge and gorgeous,
rolling upon the mind the instant he began, and something in it was
both terrible and oppressive. The repose of eternity lay in the sound.
Invariably, after a few moments of that transforming music, I saw the
Valley of the Kings, the deserted temples, titanic faces of stone,
great effigies coifed with zodiacal signs, but above all--the twin
Colossi.