‘They made use of what they called a “root-language” in their rituals,’
he went on, ‘and it consisted entirely of vowel sounds. There were no
consonants. For vowel sounds, you see, run on for ever without end or
beginning, whereas consonants interrupt their flow and break it up and
limit it. A consonant has no sound of its own at all. Real language is
continuous.’
We stood a moment, smoking in silence. I understood then that this
thing Moleson had done was based on definite knowledge. He had
rendered some fragment of an ancient Ritual he and Isley had unearthed
together, and while he knew its effect upon the latter, he chanced it
on myself. Not otherwise, I feel, could it have influenced me in the
extraordinary way it did. In the faith and poetry of a nation lies its
soul-life, and the gigantic faith of Egypt blazed behind the rhythm
of that long, monotonous chant. There were blood and heart and nerves
in it. Millions had heard it sung; millions had wept and prayed and
yearned; it was ensouled by the passion of that marvellous civilisation
that loved the godhead of the Sun, and that now hid, waiting but still
alive, below the ground. The majestic faith of ancient Egypt poured up
with it--that tremendous, burning elaboration of the after-life and of
Eternity that was the pivot of those spacious days. For centuries vast
multitudes, led by their royal priests, had uttered this very form and
ritual--believed it, lived it, felt it. The rising of the sun remained
its climax. Its spiritual power still clung to the great ruined
symbols. The faith of a buried civilisation had burned back into the
present and into our hearts as well.
And a curious respect for the man who was able to produce this effect
upon two modern minds crept over me, and mingled with the repulsion
that I felt. I looked furtively at his withered, dried-up features. He
wore some vague and shadowy impress still of what had just been in him.
There was a stony appearance in his shrunken cheeks. He looked smaller.
I saw him lessened. I thought of him as he had been so short a time
before, imprisoned in his great stone captors that had obsessed him....
‘There’s tremendous power in it,--an awful power,’ I stammered, more
to break the oppressive pause than for any desire in me to speak with
him. ‘It brings back Egypt in some extraordinary way--ancient Egypt, I
mean--brings it close--into the heart.’ My words ran on of their own
accord almost. I spoke with a hush, unwittingly. There was awe in me.
Isley had moved away towards the window, leaving me face to face with
this strange incarnation of another age.
‘It must,’ he replied, deep light still glowing in his eyes, ‘for the
soul of the old days is in it. No one, I think, can hear it and remain
the same. It expresses, you see, the essential passion and beauty
of that gorgeous worship, that splendid faith, that reasonable and
intelligent worship of the sun, the only scientific belief the world
has ever known. Its popular form, of course, was largely superstitious,
but the sacerdotal form--the form used by the priests, that is--who
understood the relationship between colour, sound and symbol, was----’
He broke off suddenly, as though he had been speaking to himself. We
sat down. George Isley leaned out of the window with his back to us,
watching the desert in the moonless night.
‘You have tried its effect before upon--others?’ I asked point-blank.
‘Upon myself,’ he answered shortly.
‘Upon others?’ I insisted.
He hesitated an instant.
‘Upon one other--yes,’ he admitted.
‘Intentionally?’ And something quivered in me as I asked it.
He shrugged his shoulders slightly. ‘I’m merely a speculative
archaeologist,’ he smiled, ‘and--and an imaginative Egyptologist. My
bounden duty is to reconstruct the past so that it lives for others.’
An impulse rose in me to take him by the throat.
‘You know perfectly well, of course, the magical effect it’s
sure--likely at least--to have?’
He stared steadily at me through the cigarette smoke. To this day I
cannot think exactly what it was in this man that made me shudder.
‘I’m sure of nothing,’ he replied smoothly, ‘but I consider it quite
legitimate to try. Magical--the word you used--has no meaning for
me. If such a thing exists, it is merely scientific--undiscovered or
forgotten knowledge.’ An insolent, aggressive light shone in his eyes
as he spoke; his manner was almost truculent. ‘You refer, I take it,
to--our friend--rather than to yourself?’
And with difficulty I met his singular stare. From his whole person
something still emanated that was forbidding, yet overmasteringly
persuasive. It brought back the notion of that invisible Web, that dim
gauze curtain, that motionless Influence lying waiting at the centre
for its prey, those monstrous and mysterious Items standing, alert
and watchful, through the centuries. ‘You mean,’ he added lower, ‘his
altered attitude to life--his going?’
To hear him use the words, the very phrase, struck me with sudden
chill. Before I could answer, however, and certainly before I could
master the touch of horror that rushed over me, I heard him continuing
in a whisper. It seemed again that he spoke to himself as much as he
spoke to me.
‘The soul, I suppose, has the right to choose its own conditions and
surroundings. To pass elsewhere involves translation, not extinction.’
He smoked a moment in silence, then said another curious thing, looking
up into my face with an expression of intense earnestness. Something
genuine in him again replaced the pose of cynicism. ‘The soul is
eternal and can take its place anywhere, regardless of mere duration.
What is there in the vulgar and superficial Present that should hold
it so exclusively; and where can it find to-day the belief, the faith,
the beauty that are the very essence of its life--where in the rush
and scatter of this tawdry age can it make its home? Shall it flutter
for ever in a valley of dry bones, when a living Past lies ready and
waiting with loveliness, strength, and glory?’ He moved closer; he
touched my arm; I felt his breath upon my face. ‘Come with us,’ he
whispered awfully; ‘come back with us! Withdraw your life from the
rubbish of this futile ugliness! Come back and worship with us in the
spirit of the Past. Take up the old, old splendour, the glory, the
immense conceptions, the wondrous certainty, the ineffable knowledge of
essentials. It all lies about you still; it’s calling, ever calling;
it’s very close; it draws you day and night--calling, calling,
calling....’
His voice died off curiously into distance on the word; I can hear it
to this day, and the soft, droning quality in the intense yet fading
tone: ‘Calling, calling, calling.’ But his eyes turned wicked. I felt
the sinister power of the man. I was aware of madness in his thought
and mind. The Past he sought to glorify I saw black, as with the
forbidding Egyptian darkness of a plague. It was not beauty but Death
that I heard calling, calling, calling.
‘It’s real,’ he went on, hardly aware that I shrank, ‘and not a dream.
These ruined symbols still remain in touch with that which was. They
are potent to-day as they were six thousand years ago. The amazing
life of those days brims behind them. They are not mere masses of
oppressive stone; they express in visible form great powers that still
are--_knowable_.’ He lowered his head, peered up into my face, and
whispered. Something secret passed into his eyes.
‘I saw you change,’ came the words below his breath, ‘as you saw the
change in us. But only worship can produce that change. The soul
assumes the qualities of the deity it worships. The powers of its deity
possess it and transform it into its own likeness. You also felt it.
_You_ also were possessed. I saw the stone-faced deity upon your own.’
I seemed to shake myself as a dog shakes water from its body. I stood
up. I remember that I stretched my hands out as though to push him from
me and expel some creeping influence from my mind. I remember another
thing as well. But for the reality of the sequel, and but for the
matter-of-fact result still facing me to-day in the disappearance of
George Isley--the loss to the present time of all George Isley _was_--I
might have found subject for laughter in what I saw. Comedy was in it
certainly. Yet it was both ghastly and terrific. Deep horror crept
below the aspect of the ludicrous, for the apparent mimicry cloaked
truth. It was appalling because it was real.
In the large mirror that reflected the room behind me I saw myself
and Moleson; I saw Isley too in the background by the open window.
And the attitude of all three was the attitude of hieroglyphics come
to life. My arms indeed were stretched, but not stretched, as I had
thought, in mere self-defence. They were stretched--unnaturally. The
forearms made those strange obtuse angles that the old carved granite
wears, the palms of the hands held upwards, the heads thrown back,
the legs advanced, the bodies stiffened into postures that expressed
forgotten, ancient minds. The physical conformation of all three was
monstrous; and yet reverence and truth dictated even the uncouthness
of the gestures. Something in all three of us inspired the forms our
bodies had assumed. Our attitudes expressed buried yearnings, emotions,
tendencies--whatever they may be termed--that the spirit of the Past
evoked.
I saw the reflected picture but for a moment. I dropped my arms, aware
of foolishness in my way of standing. Moleson moved forward with his
long, significant stride, and at the same instant Isley came up quickly
and joined us from his place by the open window. We looked into each
other’s faces without a word. There was this little pause that lasted
perhaps ten seconds. But in that pause I felt the entire world slide
past me. I heard the centuries rush by at headlong speed. The present
dipped away. Existence was no longer in a line that stretched two ways;
it was a circle in which ourselves, together with Past and Future,
stood motionless at the centre, all details equally accessible at once.
The three of us were falling, falling backwards....
‘Come!’ said the voice of Moleson solemnly, but with the sweetness as
of a child anticipating joy. ‘Come! Let us go together, for the boat
of Ra has crossed the Underworld. The darkness has been conquered. Let
us go out together and find the dawn. Listen! It is calling, calling,
calling....’