III
For some days Henriot saw little of the man who came from Birmingham andpushed curiosity to a climax by asking for a compass in the middle ofthe night. For one thing, he was a good deal with his friends upon theother side of Helouan, and for another, he slept several nights in theDesert.
He loved the gigantic peace the Desert gave him. The world was forgottenthere; and not the world merely, but all memory of it. Everything fadedout. The soul turned inwards upon itself.
An Arab boy and donkey took out sleeping-bag, food and water to the WadiHof, a desolate gorge about an hour eastwards. It winds between cliffswhose summits rise some thousand feet above the sea. It opens suddenly,cut deep into the swaying world of level plateaux and undulating hills.It moves about too; he never found it in the same place twice--like anarm of the Desert that shifted with the changing lights. Here he watcheddawns and sunsets, slept through the mid-day heat, and enjoyed theunearthly colouring that swept Day and Night across the huge horizons.In solitude the Desert soaked down into him. At night the jackals criedin the darkness round his cautiously-fed camp fire--small, because woodhad to be carried--and in the day-time kites circled overhead to inspecthim, and an occasional white vulture flapped across the blue. The weirddesolation of this rocky valley, he thought, was like the scenery of themoon. He took no watch with him, and the arrival of the donkey boy anhour after sunrise came almost from another planet, bringing things oftime and common life out of some distant gulf where they had lainforgotten among lost ages.
The short hour of twilight brought, too, a bewitchment into the silencethat was a little less than comfortable. Full light or darkness he couldmanage, but this time of half things made him want to shut his eyes andhide. Its effect stepped over imagination. The mind got lost. He couldnot understand it. For the cliffs and boulders of discoloured limestoneshone then with an inward glow that signalled to the Desert with veiledlanterns. The misshappen hills, carved by wind and rain into ominousoutlines, stirred and nodded. In the morning light they retired intothemselves, asleep. But at dusk the tide retreated. They rose from thesea, emerging naked, threatening. They ran together and joinedshoulders, the entire army of them. And the glow of their sandy bodies,self-luminous, continued even beneath the stars. Only the moonlightdrowned it. For the moonrise over the Mokattam Hills brought a white,grand loveliness that drenched the entire Desert. It drew a marvelloussweetness from the sand. It shone across a world as yet unfinished,whereon no life might show itself for ages yet to come. He was alonethen upon an empty star, before the creation of things that breathed andmoved.
What impressed him, however, more than everything else was the enormousvitality that rose out of all this apparent death. There was no hint ofthe melancholy that belongs commonly to flatness; the sadness of wide,monotonous landscape was not here. The endless repetition of sweepingvale and plateau brought infinity within measurable comprehension. Hegrasped a definite meaning in the phrase "world without end": theDesert had no end and no beginning. It gave him a sense of eternalpeace, the silent peace that star-fields know. Instead of subduing thesoul with bewilderment, it inspired with courage, confidence, hope.Through this sand which was the wreck of countless geological ages,rushed life that was terrific and uplifting, too huge to includemelancholy, too deep to betray itself in movement. Here was thestillness of eternity. Behind the spread grey masque of apparent deathlay stores of accumulated life, ready to break forth at any point. Inthe Desert he felt himself absolutely royal.
And this contrast of Life, veiling itself in Death, was a contradictionthat somehow intoxicated. The Desert exhilaration never left him. He wasnever alone. A companionship of millions went with him, and he _felt_the Desert close, as stars are close to one another, or grains of sand.
It was the Khamasin, the hot wind bringing sand, that drove him in--withthe feeling that these few days and nights had been immeasurable, andthat he had been away a thousand years. He came back with the magic ofthe Desert in his blood, hotel-life tasteless and insipid by comparison.To human impressions thus he was fresh and vividly sensitive. His being,cleaned and sensitized by pure grandeur, "felt" people--for a time atany rate--with an uncommon sharpness of receptive judgment. He returnedto a life somehow mean and meagre, resuming insignificance with hisdinner jacket. Out with the sand he had been regal; now, like a slave,he strutted self-conscious and reduced.
But this imperial standard of the Desert stayed a little time besidehim, its purity focussing judgment like a lens. The specks of smalleremotions left it clear at first, and as his eye wandered vaguely overthe people assembled in the dining-room, it was arrested with a vividshock upon two figures at the little table facing him.
He had forgotten Vance, the Birmingham man who sought the North atmidnight with a pocket compass. He now saw him again, with an intuitivediscernment entirely fresh. Before memory brought up her cloudingassociations, some brilliance flashed a light upon him. "That man,"Henriot thought, "might have come with me. He would have understood andloved it!" But the thought was really this--a moment's reflection spreadit, rather: "He belongs somewhere to the Desert; the Desert brought himout here." And, again, hidden swiftly behind it like a movement runningbelow water--"What does he want with it? What is the deeper motive heconceals? For there is a deeper motive; and it _is_ concealed."
But it was the woman seated next him who absorbed his attention really,even while this thought flashed and went its way. The empty chair wasoccupied at last. Unlike his first encounter with the man, she lookedstraight at him. Their eyes met fully. For several seconds there wassteady mutual inspection, while her penetrating stare, intent withoutbeing rude, passed searchingly all over his face. It was disconcerting.Crumbling his bread, he looked equally hard at her, unable to turn away,determined not to be the first to shift his gaze. And when at length shelowered her eyes he felt that many things had happened, as in a longperiod of intimate conversation. Her mind had judged him through andthrough. Questions and answer flashed. They were no longer strangers.For the rest of dinner, though he was careful to avoid directinspection, he was aware that she felt his presence and was secretlyspeaking with him. She asked questions beneath her breath. The answersrose with the quickened pulses in his blood. Moreover, she explainedRichard Vance. It was this woman's power that shone reflected in theman. She was the one who knew the big, unusual things. Vance merelyechoed the rush of her vital personality.
This was the first impression that he got--from the most striking,curious face he had ever seen in a woman. It remained very near him allthrough the meal: she had moved to his table, it seemed she sat besidehim. Their minds certainly knew contact from that moment.
It is never difficult to credit strangers with the qualities andknowledge that oneself craves for, and no doubt Henriot's active fancywent busily to work. But, none the less, this thing remained and grew:that this woman was aware of the hidden things of Egypt he had alwayslonged to know. There was knowledge and guidance she could impart. Hersoul was searching among ancient things. Her face brought the Desertback into his thoughts. And with it came--the sand.
Here was the flash. The sight of her restored the peace and splendour hehad left behind him in his Desert camps. The rest, of course, was whathis imagination constructed upon this slender basis. Only,--not all ofit was imagination.
Now, Henriot knew little enough of women, and had no pose of"understanding" them. His experience was of the slightest; the love andveneration felt for his own mother had set the entire sex upon theheights. His affairs with women, if so they may be called, had beentransient--all but those of early youth, which having never known thedevastating test of fulfilment, still remained ideal and superb. Therewas unconscious humour in his attitude--from a distance; for he regardedwomen with wonder and respect, as puzzles that sweetened but complicatedlife, might even endanger it. He certainly was not a marrying man! Butnow, as he felt the presence of this woman so deliberately possess him,there came over him two clear, strong messages, each vivid withcertainty.
One was that banal suggestion of familiarity claimed bylovers and the like--he had often heard of it--"I have known that womanbefore; I have met her ages ago somewhere; she is strangely familiar tome"; and the other, growing out of it almost: "Have nothing to do withher; she will bring you trouble and confusion; avoid her, and bewarned";--in fact, a distinct presentiment.
Yet, although Henriot dismissed both impressions as having no shred ofevidence to justify them, the original clear judgment, as he studied herextraordinary countenance, persisted through all denials Thefamiliarity, and the presentiment, remained. There also remained thisother--an enormous imaginative leap!--that she could teach him "Egypt."
He watched her carefully, in a sense fascinated. He could only describethe face as black, so dark it was with the darkness of great age.Elderly was the obvious, natural word; but elderly described thefeatures only. The expression of the face wore centuries. Nor was itmerely the coal-black eyes that betrayed an ancient, age-travelled soulbehind them. The entire presentment mysteriously conveyed it. Thiswoman's heart knew long-forgotten things--the thought kept beating upagainst him. There were cheek-bones, oddly high, that made him thinkinvoluntarily of the well-advertised Pharaoh, Ramases; a square, deepjaw; and an aquiline nose that gave the final touch of power. For thepower undeniably was there, and while the general effect had grimness init, there was neither harshness nor any forbidding touch about it. Therewas an implacable sternness in the set of lips and jaw, and, mostcurious of all, the eyelids over the steady eyes of black were level asa ruler. This level framing made the woman's stare remarkable beyonddescription. Henriot thought of an idol carved in stone, stone hard andblack, with eyes that stared across the sand into a world of thingsnon-human, very far away, forgotten of men. The face was finely ugly.This strange dark beauty flashed flame about it.
And, as the way ever was with him, Henriot next fell to constructing thepossible lives of herself and her companion, though without muchsuccess. Imagination soon stopped dead. She was not old enough to beVance's mother, and assuredly she was not his wife. His interest wasmore than merely piqued--it was puzzled uncommonly. What was thecontrast that made the man seem beside her--vile? Whence came, too, theimpression that she exercised some strong authority, though neverdirectly exercised, that held him at her mercy? How did he guess thatthe man resented it, yet did not dare oppose, and that, apparentlyacquiescing good-humouredly, his will was deliberately held in abeyance,and that he waited sulkily, biding his time? There was furtiveness inevery gesture and expression. A hidden motive lurked in him;unworthiness somewhere; he was determined yet ashamed. He watched herceaselessly and with such uncanny closeness.
Henriot imagined he divined all this. He leaped to the guess that hisexpenses were being paid. A good deal more was being paid besides. Shewas a rich relation, from whom he had expectations; he was serving hisseven years, ashamed of his servitude, ever calculating escape--but,perhaps, no ordinary escape. A faint shudder ran over him. He drew inthe reins of imagination.
Of course, the probabilities were that he was hopelessly astray--oneusually is on such occasions--but this time, it so happened, he wassingularly right. Before one thing only his ready invention stoppedevery time. This vileness, this notion of unworthiness in Vance, couldnot be negative merely. A man with that face was no inactive weakling.The motive he was at such pains to conceal, betraying its existence bythat very fact, moved, surely, towards aggressive action. Disguised, itnever slept. Vance was sharply on the alert. He had a plan deep out ofsight. And Henriot remembered how the man's soft approach along thecarpeted corridor had made him start. He recalled the quasi shock itgave him. He thought again of the feeling of discomfort he hadexperienced.
Next, his eager fancy sought to plumb the business these two hadtogether in Egypt--in the Desert. For the Desert, he felt convinced, hadbrought them out. But here, though he constructed numerous explanations,another barrier stopped him. Because he _knew_. This woman was in touchwith that aspect of ancient Egypt he himself had ever sought in vain;and not merely with stones the sand had buried so deep, but with themeanings they once represented, buried so utterly by the sands of laterthought.
And here, being ignorant, he found no clue that could lead to anysatisfactory result, for he possessed no knowledge that might guide him.He floundered--until Fate helped him. And the instant Fate helped him,the warning and presentiment he had dismissed as fanciful, became realagain. He hesitated. Caution acted. He would think twice before takingsteps to form acquaintance. "Better not," thought whispered. "Betterleave them alone, this queer couple. They're after things that won't doyou any good." This idea of mischief, almost of danger, in theirpurposes was oddly insistent; for what could possibly convey it? But,while he hesitated, Fate, who sent the warning, pushed him at the sametime into the circle of their lives: at first tentatively--he mightstill have escaped; but soon urgently--curiosity led him inexorablytowards the end.