VI
Next day, and for several days following, Henriot kept out of the pathof Lady Statham and her nephew. The acquaintanceship had grown toorapidly to be quite comfortable. It was easy to pretend that he tookpeople at their face value, but it was a pose; one liked to knowsomething of antecedents. It was otherwise difficult to "place" them.And Henriot, for the life of him, could not "place" these two. HisSubconsciousness brought explanation when it came--but theSubconsciousness is only temporarily active. When it retired hefloundered without a rudder, in confusion.
With the flood of morning sunshine the value of much she had saidevaporated. Her presence alone had supplied the key to the cipher. Butwhile the indigestible portions he rejected, there remained a good dealhe had already assimilated. The discomfort remained; and with it thegrave, unholy reality of it all. It was something more than theory.Results would follow--if he joined them. He would witness curiousthings.
The force with which it drew him brought hesitation. It operated in himlike a shock that numbs at first by its abrupt arrival, and needs timeto realise in the right proportions to the rest of life. These rightproportions, however, did not come readily, and his emotions rangedbetween sceptical laughter and complete acceptance. The one detail hefelt certain of was this dreadful thing he had divined in Vance. Tryinghard to disbelieve it, he found he could not. It was true. Thoughwithout a shred of real evidence to support it, the horror of itremained. He knew it in his very bones.
And this, perhaps, was what drove him to seek the comfortingcompanionship of folk he understood and felt at home with. He told hishost and hostess about the strangers, though omitting the actualconversation because they would merely smile in blank miscomprehension.But the moment he described the strong black eyes beneath the leveleyelids, his hostess turned with a start, her interest deeply roused:"Why, it's that awful Statham woman," she exclaimed, "that must be LadyStatham, and the man she calls her nephew."
"Sounds like it, certainly," her husband added. "Felix, you'd betterclear out. They'll bewitch you too."
And Henriot bridled, yet wondering why he did so. He drew into his shella little, giving the merest sketch of what had happened. But he listenedclosely while these two practical old friends supplied him withinformation in the gossiping way that human nature loves. No doubt therewas much embroidery, and more perversion, exaggeration too, but theaccount evidently rested upon some basis of solid foundation for allthat. Smoke and fire go together always.
"He _is_ her nephew right enough," Mansfield corrected his wife, beforeproceeding to his own man's form of elaboration; "no question aboutthat, I believe. He's her favourite nephew, and she's as rich as a pig.He follows her out here every year, waiting for her empty shoes. Butthey _are_ an unsavoury couple. I've met 'em in various parts, all overEgypt, but they always come back to Helouan in the end. And the storiesabout them are simply legion. You remember--" he turned hesitatingly tohis wife--"some people, I heard," he changed his sentence, "were madequite ill by her."
"I'm sure Felix ought to know, yes," his wife boldly took him up, "myniece, Fanny, had the most extraordinary experience." She turned toHenriot. "Her room was next to Lady Statham in some hotel or other atAssouan or Edfu, and one night she woke and heard a kind of mysteriouschanting or intoning next her. Hotel doors are so dreadfully thin. Therewas a funny smell too, like incense of something sickly, and a man'svoice kept chiming in. It went on for hours, while she lay terrified inbed--"
"Frightened, you say?" asked Henriot.
"Out of her skin, yes; she said it was so uncanny--made her feel icy.She wanted to ring the bell, but was afraid to leave her bed. The roomwas full of--of things, yet she could see nothing. She _felt_ them, yousee. And after a bit the sound of this sing-song voice so got on hernerves, it half dazed her--a kind of enchantment--she felt choked andsuffocated. And then--" It was her turn to hesitate.
"Tell it all," her husband said, quite gravely too.
"Well--something came in. At least, she describes it oddly, rather; shesaid it made the door bulge inwards from the next room, but not the dooralone; the walls bulged or swayed as if a huge thing pressed againstthem from the other side. And at the same moment her windows--she hadtwo big balconies, and the venetian shutters were fastened--both herwindows _darkened_--though it was two in the morning and pitch darkoutside. She said it was all _one_ thing--trying to get in; just aswater, you see, would rush in through every hole and opening it couldfind, and all at once. And in spite of her terror--that's the odd partof it--she says she felt a kind of splendour in her--a sort of elation."
"She saw nothing?"
"She says she doesn't remember. Her senses left her, I believe--thoughshe won't admit it."
"Fainted for a minute, probably," said Mansfield.
"So there it is," his wife concluded, after a silence. "And that's true.It happened to my niece, didn't it, John?"
Stories and legendary accounts of strange things that the presence ofthese two brought poured out then. They were obviously somewhat mixed,one account borrowing picturesque details from another, and all indisproportion, as when people tell stories in a language they arelittle familiar with. But, listening with avidity, yet also withuneasiness, somehow, Henriot put two and two together. Truth stoodbehind them somewhere. These two held traffic with the powers thatancient Egypt knew.
"Tell Felix, dear, about the time you met the nephew--horridcreature--in the Valley of the Kings," he heard his wife say presently.And Mansfield told it plainly enough, evidently glad to get it done,though.
"It was some years ago now, and I didn't know who he was then, oranything about him. I don't know much more now--except that he's adangerous sort of charlatan-devil, _I_ think. But I came across him onenight up there by Thebes in the Valley of the Kings--you know, wherethey buried all their Johnnies with so much magnificence and processionsand masses, and all the rest. It's the most astounding, the most hauntedplace you ever saw, gloomy, silent, full of gorgeous lights and shadowsthat seem alive--terribly impressive; it makes you creep and shudder.You feel old Egypt watching you."
"Get on, dear," said his wife.
"Well, I was coming home late on a blasted lazy donkey, dog-tired intothe bargain, when my donkey boy suddenly ran for his life and left mealone. It was after sunset. The sand was red and shining, and the bigcliffs sort of fiery. And my donkey stuck its four feet in the groundand wouldn't budge. Then, about fifty yards away, I saw afellow--European apparently--doing something--Heaven knows what, for Ican't describe it--among the boulders that lie all over the groundthere. Ceremony, I suppose you'd call it. I was so interested that atfirst I watched. Then I saw he wasn't alone. There were a lot of movingthings round him, towering big things, that came and went like shadows.That twilight is fearfully bewildering; perspective changes, anddistance gets all confused. It's fearfully hard to see properly. I onlyremember that I got off my donkey and went up closer, and when I waswithin a dozen yards of him--well, it sounds such rot, you know, but Iswear the things suddenly rushed off and left him there alone. They wentwith a roaring noise like wind; shadowy but tremendously big, they were,and they vanished up against the fiery precipices as though they slippedbang into the stone itself. The only thing I can think of to describe'em is--well, those sand-storms the Khamasin raises--the hot winds, youknow."
"They probably _were_ sand," his wife suggested, burning to tellanother story of her own.
"Possibly, only there wasn't a breath of wind, and it was hot asblazes--and--I had such extraordinary sensations--never felt anythinglike it before--wild and exhilarated--drunk, I tell you, drunk."
"You saw them?" asked Henriot. "You made out their shape at all, oroutline?"
"Sphinx," he replied at once, "for all the world like sphinxes. You knowthe kind of face and head these limestone strata in the Deserttake--great visages with square Egyptian head-dresses where the drivensand has eaten away the softer stuff beneath? You see iteverywhere--enormous idols they seem, with faces and eyes and lipsawfully li
ke the sphinx--well, that's the nearest I can get to it." Hepuffed his pipe hard. But there was no sign of levity in him. He toldthe actual truth as far as in him lay, yet half ashamed of what he told.And a good deal he left out, too.
"She's got a face of the same sort, that Statham horror," his wife saidwith a shiver. "Reduce the size, and paint in awful black eyes, andyou've got her exactly--a living idol." And all three laughed, yet alaughter without merriment in it.
"And you spoke to the man?"
"I did," the Englishman answered, "though I confess I'm a bit ashamed ofthe way I spoke. Fact is, I was excited, thunderingly excited, and felta kind of anger. I wanted to kick the beggar for practising such ballyrubbish, and in such a place too. Yet all the time--well, well, Ibelieve it was sheer funk now," he laughed; "for I felt uncommonly queerout there in the dusk, alone with--with that kind of business; and I wasangry with myself for feeling it. Anyhow, I went up--I'd lost my donkeyboy as well, remember--and slated him like a dog. I can't remember whatI said exactly--only that he stood and stared at me in silence. Thatmade it worse--seemed twice as real then. The beggar said no single wordthe whole time. He signed to me with one hand to clear out. And then,suddenly out of nothing--she--that woman--appeared and stood beside him.I never saw her come. She must have been behind some boulder or other,for she simply rose out of the ground. She stood there and stared at metoo--bang in the face. She was turned towards the sunset--what was leftof it in the west--and her black eyes shone like--ugh! I can't describeit--it was shocking."
"She spoke?"
"She said five words--and her voice--it'll make you laugh--it wasmetallic like a gong: 'You are in danger here.' That's all she said. Isimply turned and cleared out as fast as ever I could. But I had to goon foot. My donkey had followed its boy long before. I tell you--smileas you may--my blood was all curdled for an hour afterwards."
Then he explained that he felt some kind of explanation or apology wasdue, since the couple lodged in his own hotel, and how he approached theman in the smoking-room after dinner. A conversation resulted--the manwas quite intelligent after all--of which only one sentence had remainedin his mind.
"Perhaps you can explain it, Felix. I wrote it down, as well as I couldremember. The rest confused me beyond words or memory; though I mustconfess it did not seem--well, not utter rot exactly. It was aboutastrology and rituals and the worship of the old Egyptians, and I don'tknow what else besides. Only, he made it intelligible and almostsensible, if only I could have got the hang of the thing enough toremember it. You know," he added, as though believing in spite ofhimself, "there _is_ a lot of that wonderful old Egyptian religiousbusiness still hanging about in the atmosphere of this place, say whatyou like."
"But this sentence?" Henriot asked. And the other went off to get anote-book where he had written it down.
"He was jawing, you see," he continued when he came back, Henriot andhis wife having kept silence meanwhile, "about direction being ofimportance in religious ceremonies, West and North symbolising certainpowers, or something of the kind, why people turn to the East and allthat sort of thing, and speaking of the whole Universe as if it hadliving forces tucked away in it that expressed themselves somehow whenroused up. That's how I remember it anyhow. And then he said thisthing--in answer to some fool question probably that I put." And he readout of the note-book:
"'You were in danger because you came through the Gateway of the West,and the Powers from the Gateway of the East were at that moment rising,and therefore in direct opposition to you.'"
Then came the following, apparently a simile offered by way ofexplanation. Mansfield read it in a shamefaced tone, evidently preparedfor laughter:
"'Whether I strike you on the back or in the face determines what kindof answering force I rouse in you. Direction is significant.' And hesaid it was the period called the Night of Power--time when the Desertencroaches and spirits are close."
And tossing the book aside, he lit his pipe again and waited a moment tohear what might be said. "Can you explain such gibberish?" he asked atlength, as neither of his listeners spoke. But Henriot said he couldn't.And the wife then took up her own tale of stories that had grown aboutthis singular couple.
These were less detailed, and therefore less impressive, but allcontributed something towards the atmosphere of reality that framed theentire picture. They belonged to the type one hears at every dinnerparty in Egypt--stories of the vengeance mummies seem to take on thosewho robbed them, desecrating their peace of centuries; of a womanwearing a necklace of scarabs taken from a princess's tomb, who felthands about her throat to strangle her; of little Ka figures, Pashtgoddesses, amulets and the rest, that brought curious disaster to thosewho kept them. They are many and various, astonishingly circumstantialoften, and vouched for by persons the reverse of credulous. The modernsuperstition that haunts the desert gullies with Afreets has nothing incommon with them. They rest upon a basis of indubitable experience; andthey remain--inexplicable. And about the personalities of Lady Stathamand her nephew they crowded like flies attracted by a dish of fruit. TheArabs, too, were afraid of her. She had difficulty in getting guides anddragomen.
"My dear chap," concluded Mansfield, "take my advice and have nothing todo with 'em. There _is_ a lot of queer business knocking about in thisold country, and people like that know ways of reviving it somehow. It'supset you already; you looked scared, I thought, the moment you camein." They laughed, but the Englishman was in earnest. "I tell you what,"he added, "we'll go off for a bit of shooting together. The fields alongthe Delta are packed with birds now: they're home early this year ontheir way to the North. What d'ye say, eh?"
But Henriot did not care about the quail shooting. He felt more inclinedto be alone and think things out by himself. He had come to his friendsfor comfort, and instead they had made him uneasy and excited. Hisinterest had suddenly doubled. Though half afraid, he longed to knowwhat these two were up to--to follow the adventure to the bitter end. Hedisregarded the warning of his host as well as the premonition in hisown heart. The sand had caught his feet.
There were moments when he laughed in utter disbelief, but these wereoptimistic moods that did not last. He always returned to the feelingthat truth lurked somewhere in the whole strange business, and that ifhe joined forces with them, as they seemed to wish, he wouldwitness--well, he hardly knew what--but it enticed him as danger doesthe reckless man, or death the suicide. The sand had caught his mind.
He decided to offer himself to all they wanted--his pencil too. He wouldsee--a shiver ran through him at the thought--what they saw, and knowsome eddy of that vanished tide of power and splendour the ancientEgyptian priesthood knew, and that perhaps was even common experience inthe far-off days of dim Atlantis. The sand had caught his imaginationtoo. He was utterly sand-haunted.