The quiet Nile, sighing with age, passed down towards the sea;
there loomed the menacing Pyramids across the twilight; beneath them,
in monstrous dignity, crouched that Shadow from whose eyes of battered
stone proceeds the nameless thing that contracts the heart, then opens
it again to terror; and everywhere, from towering monoliths as from
secret tombs, rose that strange, long whisper which, defying time and
distance, laughs at death. The spell of Egypt, which is the spell of
immortality, touched their hearts. Already, as the group of picnickers rode homewards now, the first
stars twinkled overhead, and the peerless Egyptian night was on the
way. There was hurry in the passing of the dusk. And the cold sensibly
increased. "So you did no painting after all," said Rivers to the girl who rode
a little in front of him, "for I never saw you touch your sketch-book
once." They were some distance now behind the others; the line straggled; and
when no answer came he quickened his pace, drew up alongside and saw
that her eyes, in the reflection of the sunset, shone with moisture. But she turned her head a little, smiling into his face, so that the
human and the non-human beauty came over him with an onset that was
almost shock. Neither one nor other, he knew, were long for him, and
the realisation fell upon him with a pang of actual physical pain. The
acuteness, the hopelessness of the realisation, for a moment, were more
than he could bear, stern of temper though he was, and he tried to pass
in front of her, urging his donkey with resounding strokes. Her own
animal, however, following the lead, at once came up with him. "You felt it, perhaps, as I did," he said some moments later,
his voice quite steady again. "The stupendous, everlasting
thing--the--_life_ behind it all." He hesitated a little in his speech,
unable to find the substantive that could compass even a fragment of
his thought. She paused, too, similarly inarticulate before the surge
of incomprehensible feelings. "It's--awful," she said, half laughing, yet the tone hushed and a
little quaver in it somewhere. And her voice to his was like the first
sound he had ever heard in the world, for the first sound a full-grown
man heard in the world would be beyond all telling--magical. "I shall
not try again," she continued, leaving out the laughter this time; "my
sketch-book is a farce. For, to tell the truth"--and the next three
words she said below her breath--"I dare not." He turned and looked at her for a second. It seemed to him that the
following wave had caught them up, and was about to break above her,
too. But the big-brimmed hat and the streaming veil shrouded her
features. He saw, instead, the Universe. He felt as though he and
she had always, always been together, and always, always would be. Separation was inconceivable. "It came so close," she whispered. "It--shook me!" They were cut off from their companions, whose voices sounded far
ahead. Her words might have been spoken by the darkness, or by some one
who peered at them from within that following wave. Yet the fanciful
phrase was better than any he could find. From the immeasurable space
of time and distance men's hearts vainly seek to plumb, it drew into
closer perspective a certain meaning that words may hardly compass,
a formidable truth that belongs to that deep place where hope and
doubt fight their incessant battle. The awe she spoke of was the
awe of immortality, of belonging to something that is endless and
beginningless. And he understood that the tears and laughter were one--caused by
that spell which takes a little human life and shakes it, as an animal
shakes its prey that later shall feed its blood and increase its power
of growth. His other thoughts--really but a single thought--he had not
the right to utter. Pain this time easily routed hope as the wave came
nearer. For it was the wave of death that would shortly break, he knew,
over him, but not over her. Him it would sweep with its huge withdrawal
into the desert whence it came: her it would leave high upon the shores
of life--alone. And yet the separation would somehow not be real. They
were together in eternity even now. They were endless as this desert,
beginningless as this sky ... immortal. The realisation overwhelmed.... The lights of Helouan seemed to come no nearer as they rode on in
silence for the rest of the way. Against the dark background of the
Mokattam Hills these fairy lights twinkled brightly, hanging in
mid-air, but after an hour they were no closer than before. It was like
riding towards the stars. It would take centuries to reach them. There
were centuries in which to do so. Hurry has no place in the desert;
it is born in streets. The desert stands still; to go fast in it is
to go backwards. Now, in particular, its enormous, uncanny leisure
was everywhere--in keeping with that mighty scale the sunset had made
visible. His thoughts, like the steps of the weary animal that bore
him, had no progress in them. The serpent of eternity, holding its tail
in its own mouth, rose from the sand, enclosing himself, the stars--and
her. Behind him, in the hollows of that shadowy wave, the procession
of dynasties and conquests, the great series of gorgeous civilisations
the mind calls Past, stood still, crowded with shining eyes and
beckoning faces, still waiting to arrive. There is no death in Egypt. His own death stood so close that he could touch it by stretching out
his hand, yet it seemed as much behind as in front of him. What man
called a beginning was a trick. There was no such thing. He was with
this girl--_now_, when Death waited so close for him--yet he had never
really begun. Their lives ran always parallel. The hand he stretched
to clasp approaching death caught instead in this girl's shadowy hair,
drawing her in with him to the centre where he breathed the eternity
of the desert. Yet expression of any sort was as futile as it was
unnecessary. To paint, to speak, to sing, even the slightest gesture of
the soul, became a crude and foolish thing. Silence was here the truth. And they rode in silence towards the fairy lights. Then suddenly the rocky ground rose up close before them; boulders
stood out vividly with black shadows and shining heads; a flat-roofed
house slid by; three palm trees rattled in the evening wind; beyond, a
mosque and minaret sailed upwards, like the spars and rigging of some
phantom craft; and the colonnades of the great modern hotel, standing
upon its dome of limestone ridge, loomed over them. Helouan was about
them before they knew it. The desert lay behind with its huge, arrested
billow. Slowly, owing to its prodigious volume, yet with a speed that
merged it instantly with the far horizon behind the night, this wave
now withdrew a little. There was no hurry. It came, for the moment, no
farther. Rivers knew. For he was in it to the throat. Only his head
was above the surface. He still could breathe--and speak--and see.