He turned with sudden energy to
the shelf of guide-books, maps and time-tables--possessions he most
valued in the whole room. He was a happy-go-lucky, adventure-loving
soul, careless of common standards, athirst ever for the new and
strange. "That's the best of having a cheap flat," he laughed, "and no ties in
the world. I can turn the key and disappear. No one cares or knows--no
one but the thieving caretaker. And he's long ago found out that there's
nothing here worth taking!" There followed then no lengthy indecision. Preparation was even shorter
still. He was always ready for a move, and his sojourn in cities was but
breathing-space while he gathered pennies for further wanderings. An
enormous kit-bag--sack-shaped, very worn and dirty--emerged speedily
from the bottom of a cupboard in the wall. It was of limitless capacity. The key and padlock rattled in its depths. Cigarette ashes covered
everything while he stuffed it full of ancient, indescribable garments. And his voice, singing of those "yellow bees in the ivy bloom," mingled
with the crying of the rising wind about his windows. His restlessness
had disappeared by magic. This time, however, there could be no haunted Pelion, nor shady groves
of Tempe, for he lived in sophisticated times when money markets
regulated movement sternly. Travelling was only for the rich; mere
wanderers must pig it. He remembered instead an opportune invitation to
the Desert. "Objective" invitation, his genial hosts had called it,
knowing his hatred of convention. And Helouan danced into letters of
brilliance upon the inner map of his mind. For Egypt had ever held his
spirit in thrall, though as yet he had tried in vain to touch the great
buried soul of her. The excavators, the Egyptologists, the
archaeologists most of all, plastered her grey ancient face with labels
like hotel advertisements on travellers' portmanteaux. They told where
she had come from last, but nothing of what she dreamed and thought and
loved. The heart of Egypt lay beneath the sand, and the trifling robbery
of little details that poked forth from tombs and temples brought no
true revelation of her stupendous spiritual splendour. Henriot, in his
youth, had searched and dived among what material he could find,
believing once--or half believing--that the ceremonial of that ancient
system veiled a weight of symbol that was reflected from genuine
supersensual knowledge. The rituals, now taken literally, and so
pityingly explained away, had once been genuine pathways of approach. But never yet, and least of all in his previous visits to Egypt itself,
had he discovered one single person, worthy of speech, who caught at his
idea. "Curious," they said, then turned away--to go on digging in the
sand. Sand smothered her world to-day. Excavators discovered skeletons. Museums everywhere stored them--grinning, literal relics that told
nothing. But now, while he packed and sang, these hopes of enthusiastic younger
days stirred again--because the emotion that gave them birth was real
and true in him. Through the morning mists upon the Nile an old pyramid
bowed hugely at him across London roofs: "Come," he heard its awful
whisper beneath the ceiling, "I have things to show you, and to tell." He saw the flock of them sailing the Desert like weird grey solemn ships
that make no earthly port. And he imagined them as one: multiple
expressions of some single unearthly portent they adumbrated in mighty
form--dead symbols of some spiritual conception long vanished from the
world. "I mustn't dream like this," he laughed, "or I shall get absent-minded
and pack fire-tongs instead of boots. It looks like a jumble sale
already!" And he stood on a heap of things to wedge them down still
tighter. But the pictures would not cease. He saw the kites circling high in the
blue air. A couple of white vultures flapped lazily away over shining
miles. Felucca sails, like giant wings emerging from the ground, curved
towards him from the Nile. The palm-trees dropped long shadows over
Memphis. He felt the delicious, drenching heat, and the Khamasin, that
over-wind from Nubia, brushed his very cheeks. In the little gardens the
mish-mish was in bloom.... He smelt the Desert ... grey sepulchre of
cancelled cycles.... The stillness of her interminable reaches dropped
down upon old London.... The magic of the sand stole round him in its silent-footed tempest. And while he struggled with that strange, capacious sack, the piles of
clothing ran into shapes of gleaming Bedouin faces; London garments
settled down with the mournful sound of camels' feet, half dropping
wind, half water flowing underground--sound that old Time has brought
over into modern life and left a moment for our wonder and perhaps our
tears. He rose at length with the excitement of some deep enchantment in his
eyes. The thought of Egypt plunged ever so deeply into him, carrying
him into depths where he found it difficult to breathe, so strangely far
away it seemed, yet indefinably familiar. He lost his way. A touch of
fear came with it. "A sack like that is the wonder of the world," he laughed again, kicking
the unwieldy, sausage-shaped monster into a corner of the room, and
sitting down to write the thrilling labels: "Felix Henriot, Alexandria
_via_ Marseilles." But his pen blotted the letters; there was sand in
it. He rewrote the words. Then he remembered a dozen things he had left
out. Impatiently, yet with confusion somewhere, he stuffed them in. They
ran away into shifting heaps; they disappeared; they emerged suddenly
again. It was like packing hot, dry, flowing sand. From the pockets of a
coat--he had worn it last summer down Dorset way--out trickled sand. There was sand in his mind and thoughts. And his dreams that night were full of winds, the old sad winds of
Egypt, and of moving, sifting sand. Arabs and Afreets danced amazingly
together across dunes he could never reach. For he could not follow fast
enough. Something infinitely older than these ever caught his feet and
held him back. A million tiny fingers stung and pricked him. Something
flung a veil before his eyes. Once it touched him--his face and hands
and neck. "Stay here with us," he heard a host of muffled voices crying,
but their sound was smothered, buried, rising through the ground. A
myriad throats were choked. Till, at last, with a violent effort he
turned and seized it. And then the thing he grasped at slipped between
his fingers and ran easily away. It had a grey and yellow face, and it
moved through all its parts. It flowed as water flows, and yet was
solid. It was centuries old. He cried out to it. "Who are you? What is your name? I surely know you
... but I have forgotten ...?" And it stopped, turning from far away its great uncovered countenance of
nameless colouring. He caught a voice. It rolled and boomed and
whispered like the wind. And then he woke, with a curious shaking in his
heart, and a little touch of chilly perspiration on the skin.