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A Descent into Egypt Chapters V - IX · Incredible Adventures

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Section nine of Incredible Adventures by aldrenon Blackwood. The LibriVox recordings in the public
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domain read by Ben Tucker. I dissent into Egypt, Chapter five. The
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next few days passed idly, weeks past two, I think, hidden away
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in this cosmopolitan hotel, we lived apart, unnoticed. There was the feeling
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that time went what pace it pleased, now fast, now slow, now
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standing still. The similarity of the brilliant days set between wondrous dawns and sunsets
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left the impression that it was really one long, endless day without divisions.
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The mind's machinery of measurements suffered dislocation. Time went backwards, Dates were forgotten,
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the month, the time of year, the century itself went down into
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undifferentiated life. The present certainly slipped away. Curiously. Newspapers and politics became
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unimportant, news on interesting English life so remote as to be unreal. European
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affairs shadowy. The stream of life ran in another direction, altogether backwards.
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The names and faces of friends appeared through mist. People arrived as though dropped
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from the skies. They suddenly were there. One saw them in the dining
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room, as though they had just slipped in from an outer world that once
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was real somewhere. Of course, a steamer sailed four times a week,
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and the journey took five days. But these things were merely known, not
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realized. The fact that here it was summer, whereas over there winter reigned
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helped to make the distance not quite thinkable. We looked at the desert and
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made plans. We will do this, we will do that. We must
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go there, will visit such and such a place. Yet nothing happened.
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It always was tomorrow or yesterday, and we shared the discovery of Alice that
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there was no reel to day, for our thinking made everything happen. That
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was enough, it had happened. It was the reality of dreams. Egypt
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was a dream world that made the heart live backwards. It came about thus
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that for the next few weeks I watched a fading life, myself alert and
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sympathetic, yet unable somehow to intrude in help. Noticing various little things by
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which George Eily betrayed the progress of the unequal struggle, I found my assistance
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negatived by the fact that I was, in similar case myself what he experienced
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in large And finally, I too experienced in little and for the moment,
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for I seemed also caught upon the fringe of the invisible web. My feelings
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were entangled sufficiently for me to understand, and the decline of his being was
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terrible to watch. His character went with it. I saw his talents fade,
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his personality dwindle, his very soul dissolved before the insidious and invading influence.
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He hardly struggled. I thought of those abominable insects that paralyzed the motor
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systems of their victims and then devour them at their leisure alive. The incredible
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adventure was literally true, but being spiritual may not be told in the terms
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of a detective story. This version must remain an individual rendering an aspect of
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one possible version. All who know the real Egypt, that Egypt which has
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nothing to do with dams and nationalists and the external welfare of the Falahen will
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understand the pilfering of her ancient dead. She suffers still she in revenge praise
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at her leisure on the living. The occasions when he betrayed himself were ordinary
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enough. It was the glimpse they afforded of what was in progress beneath his
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calm exterior that made them interesting once. I remember, we had lunch together
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at Mina, and after visiting certain excavations beyond the Giza Pyramids, we made
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our way homewards by way of the Sphinx. It was dusk and the main
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army of tourists had retired, though so few dozen sight's ears still moved about
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to the cries of donkey boys and baksheesh, the vast head and shoulders suddenly
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emerged, riding undrowned above the sea of sand. Dark and monstrous in the
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fading light, it loomed as ever a being of non human lineage. No
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amount of familiarity could depreciate its grandeur, its impressive setting, the lost expression
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of the countenance that is too huge to focus as a face. A thousand
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visits leave its power undiminished. It has intruded upon our earth from some uncommon
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world. George Eisley and myself both turned aside to acknowledge the presence of this
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alien, uncomfortable thing. We did not linger, but we slackened pace.
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It was the obvious, inevitable thing to do. He pointed. Then,
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with a suddenness that made me start, he indicated the tourists standing round see,
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he said, in a lowered tone, dead night, You'll always find
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a crowd obedient that thing. But notice their behavior. People don't do that
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before any other ruin in the world I have ever seen. He referred to
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the attempts of individuals to creep away alone and stare into the stupendous visage by
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themselves. At different points in the deep sandy basin were men and women standing
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solitary, lying crouching apart from the main company, where the dragomen mouthed their
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exposition with impertinent glibness. The desire to be alone, he went on,
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half to himself as we paused a moment the sense of worship which insists on
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privacy. It was significant, for no amount of advertising could dwarf the impressiveness
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of the inscrutable visage, into whose eyes of stone the silent humans gazed.
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Not even the red coat standing inside one gigantic ear could introduce the commonplace.
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But my companion's words let another thing into the spectacle, a less exalted thing,
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dropping a hint of horror about the sandy cup. It became easy for
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a moment to imagine these tourists worshiping against their will to picture the monster noticing
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that they were there, that it might slowly turn its awful head, that
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the sand might visibly trickle from a stirring paw, That in a word,
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they might be taken changed. Come, he whispered in a dropping tone,
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interrupting my fancies, as though he half divined them. It is getting late,
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and to be alone with the things intolerable to me just now. But
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you notice, don't you, he added, as he took my arm to
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hurry me away, How little the tourists matter. Instead of injuring the effect,
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they increase it, it uses them. And again, a slight sensation
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of chill, communicated possibly by his nervous touch, or possibly by his earnest
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way of saying these curious words, passed through me. Some part of me
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remained behind in that hollow trough of sand, prostrate before an immensity that symbolized
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the past. A curious, wild yearning caught me momentarily, an intense desire
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to understand exactly why that terror stood there, its actual meaning long ago to
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the hearts that set it waiting for the sun, what definite role it played,
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what souls it stirred, and why in that system of towering belief in
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faith, whose indestructible emblem it still remained. The past stood grouped so solemnly
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about its menacing presentment. I was distinctly aware of the spiritual suction backwards that
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my companion yielded to so gladly, yet against his normal modern self, For
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it made the past appear magnificently desirable and loosened all the rivets of the present.
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It bodied forth three main ingredients of this deep Egyptian spell, size,
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mystery, and immobility. Yet to my relief, the cheaper aspect of this
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Egyptian glamor left him cold. He remained unmoved by the commonplace mysterious. He
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told no mummy stories, nor ever hinted at the supernatural quality that leaps to
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the mind of the majority. There was no play in him. The influence
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was grave and vital, And although I knew he held strong views with regard
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to the impiety of disturbing the dead, he never, in my hearing,
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attached any possible revengeful character to the energy of an outrage past. The current
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tales of this description he ignored. They were for superstitious minds or children.
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The deities that claimed his soul were of a grander order. Altogether, he
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lived, if it may be so expressed, already in a world his heart
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had reconstructed or remembered. It drew him in another direction altogether, with the
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modern sensational view of life. His spirit held no traffic any longer. He
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was living backwards. I saw his figure receding mournfully, yet never sentimentally,
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into the spacious, golden atmosphere of recaptured days. The enormous soul buried Egypt
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drew him down. The dwindling of his physical appearance was, of course a
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mental interpretation of my own, but another stranger interpretation of a spirit kind moved
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parallel with it, marvelous and horrible. For as he diminished outwardly and in
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his modern present aspect, he grew within gigantic. The size of Egypt entered
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into him. Huge proportions now began to accompany any presentiment of his personality.
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To my inner vision, he towered these two qualities of the land already obsessed
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him, magnitude and immobility, and that awe which modern life ignores contemptuously woke
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in my heart. I almost feared his presence at certain times. For one
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aspect of the Egyptian spell is explained by sheer's size and bulk. Disdainful of
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mere speed to day, the heart is still uncomfortable with magnitude, and in
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Egypt there is size that may easily appall for every detail, shunts it laboriously
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upon the mind. It elbows out the present. The desert's vastness is not
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made comprehensible by mileage, and the sources of the nile are so distant that
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they exist less on the map than in the imagination. The effort to realize
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suffers paralysis. They might equally be in the Moon or Saturn. The undecorated
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magnificence of the desert remains unknown, just as the proportions of pyramid and temple,
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of pylons and colossi approach the edge of the mind, yet never enter
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in. I'll stand outside, clothed in this prodigious measurement of the past,
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and the old beliefs not only share this titanic effect upon the consciousness, but
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carry it stages further. The entire scale haunts with uncomfortable immensity, so that
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the majority run back with relief to the measurable details of a more manageable scale,
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express trains, flying machines, atlantic liners. These produce no unpleasant stretching
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of the faculties compared to the influence of the Karnak pylons, the peer pyramids,
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or the interior of the serapium. Close behind this magnitude, moreover,
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steps the monstrous. It is revealed not in sand and stone alone, in
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queer effects of light and shadow, of glittering sunsets, and of magical dusks,
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but in the very aspect of the bird and animal life. The heavy
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headed buffaloes betray it equally with the vultures, the myriad kites, the grotesqueness
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of the mouthing camels, the rude, enormous scenery has it everywhere. There
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is nothing lyrical in this land of passionate mirages. Uncouth immensity notes the little
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human flittings. The days roll by in a tide of gold and splendor.
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One goes helplessly with the flood. But it is an irresistible flood that sweeps
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backward and below. The silent footed natives and their colored robes move before a
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curtain, and behind that curtain dwells the soul of ancient Egypt. The reality,
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as George Isley called it watching with sleepless eyes of gray infinity. Then
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sometimes the curtain stirs and lifts an edge, an invisible hand creeps forth,
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the soul is touched, and some one disappears. Chapter six. The process
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of disintegration must have been at work a long time before I appeared upon the
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scene. The changes went forward with such rapidity. It was his third year
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in Egypt, two of which had been spent without interruption, in company with
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an Egyptologist named Mollusson in the neighborhood of Thebes. I soon discovered that this
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region was for him the center of attraction, or, as he put it,
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of the web. Not lux Or, of course, nor the images
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of reconstructed Karnak, but that stretch of grim forbidding mountains, where royalty,
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earthly and spiritual sought eternal peace for the physical remains there, amid surroundings of
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superb desolation. Great priests and mighty kings had thought themselves secure from sacrilegious touch.
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In caverns underground, they kept their faithful tryst with centuries, guarded by
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the silence of magnificent gloom. There they waited, communing with passing ages in
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their sleep till ra their glad divinity should summon them to the fulfillment of their
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ancient dream. And there in the valley of the Tombs of the Kings,
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their dream was shattered, their lovely prophecies derided, and their glory dimmed by
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the impious desecration of the curious. That George Isley and his companion had spent
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their time not merely digging and deciphering, like their practical confreres, but engaged
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in some strange experiments of recovery and reconstruction was matter for open comment among the
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fraternity. That incredible things had happened. There was the big story of two
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Egyptian seasons. At least I heard this later, only tales of utterly incredible
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kind. That the desolate Vale of Roc was seen repeopled on moonlit nights,
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that the smoke of unaccustomed fires rose to cap the flat topped peaks, that
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the pageantry of some forgotten worship had been seen to issue from the openings of
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these hills, and that sounds of chanting, sonorous and marvelously sweet had been
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heard to echo from those bleak, repellent precipices. The tales, apparently,
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were grossly exaggerated wandering Bedouins brought them in. The guides and Dragomen repeated them
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with mysterious editions till they filtered down through the native servants in the hotels and
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reached the tourists with highly picturesque embroidery. They reached the authorities too. The
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only accurate fact I gathered at the time, however, was that they had
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abruptly ceased. George Isley and Mollison moreover, had parted company, and Mollison,
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I heard, was the originator of the business. He was at this
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time unknown to me, his arresting book on a modern reconstruction of Sun worship
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in Ancient Egypt being my only link with his unusual mind. Apparently, he
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regarded the Sun as the deity of the scientific reas religion of the future,
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which would replace the various anthropomorphic gods of childish creeds. He discussed the possibility
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of the zodiacal science being some kind of celestial intelligences. Belief blazed on every
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page. Men's life is heat derived solely from the Sun, and men were
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therefore part of the Son in the sense that a Christian is part of his
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personal deity and absorption was the end, his description of sun worship ceremonials conveyed
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an amazing reality and beauty. This singular book, however, was all I
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knew of him until he came to visit us in Heroine, though I easily
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discerned that his influence somehow was the original cause of the change in my companion.
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At Thebes, then was the activity center of the influence that drew my
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friend away from modern things. It was there I easily guessed that obstacles had
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been placed in the way of these men's too close inquiry, And that haunted
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and oppressive valley where profane and reverent come to actual grips, where modern curiosity
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is most busily organized, and even taurists are aware of a masked hostility that
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dogs the prying of the least imaginative mind. There in the neighborhood of the
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hundred gated City had Egypt set the headquarters of her irreconcilable enmity. And it
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was there, amid the ruins of her loveliest past, that George Isley had
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spent his years of magical reconstruction and met the influence that now dominated his entire
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life. And though no definite avowal of the struggle betrayed itself. In speech
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between us, I remember fragments of conversation even at this stage that proved his
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willing surrender of the present. We spoke of fear once, though with the
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indirectness of connection I have mentioned. I urged that the mind, once it
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is forewarned, can remain master of itself and prevent a thing from happening.
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But that does not make the thing unreal, he objected. The mind can
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deny it, I said, it then becomes unreal. He shook his head.
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One does not deny an unreality. Denial is a childish act of self
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protection against something you expect to happen. He caught my eye. A moment,
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you deny what you are afraid of, he said. Fear invites,
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and he smiled uneasily, you know and must get you in the end,
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and both of us, being aware secretly to what our talk referred, it
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seemed bold blooded and improper. For actually we discussed the psychology of his disappearance.
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Yet while I disliked it, there was a fascination about the subject that
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compelled attraction. Once fear gets in, he added, presently confidence is undermined.
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The structure of life is threatened, and you go gladly. The foundation
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of everything is belief. A man is what he believes about himself, and
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in Egypt you can believe things that elsewhere you would not even think about.
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It attacks the essentials, he sighed, Yet with a curious pleasure and a
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smile of resignation. In relief, passed over his rugged features and was gone
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again. The luxury of abandonment lay already in him. But even belief I
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protested must be founded on some experience or other. It seemed ghastly to speak
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of his spiritual malady behind the mask of indirect illusion. My excuse was that
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he so obviously talked willingly. He agreed instantly experience of one kind or another,
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he said darkly. There always is talk with the men who live out
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here. Ask any one who thinks, or who has the imagination which divines,
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you'll get only one reply. Phrase it how they may. Even the
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torus and the little commonplace officials feel it. And it's not the climate.
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It's not nerves. It's not any definite tendency that they can name or lay
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their finger on, nor is it mere orientalizing of the mind. It's something
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that first takes you from your common life, and that later takes common life
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from you, you willingly resign an unremunerative present. There are no half measures
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either, once the gates are open. There was so much undeniable truth in
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this that I found no corrective by way of strong rejoinder. All my attempts,
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indeed, were futile. In this way. He meant to go.
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My words could not stop him. He wanted a witness, he dreaded the
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loneliness of going, but he brooked no interference. The contradictory position involved a
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perplexing state of heart and mind in both of us. The atmosphere of this
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majestic land, to day so trifling, yesterday so immense, most certainly induced
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a lifting of the spiritual horizon that revealed amazing possibilities. Chapter seven. It
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was in the windless days of a perfect December that Mullison the Egyptologian found us
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out and paid a flying visit to Hellowin. His duties took him up and
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down the land, but his time seemed largely at his own disposal. He
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lingered on his coming introduced a new element I was not quite able to estimate,
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though speaking generally The effect of his presence upon My Companion was to emphasize
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the latter's alteration. It underlined the change and drew attention to it. The
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new arrival, I gathered, was not altogether welcome. I should never have
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expected to find you here, laughed Mullison. When they met, and when
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he referred to Hellowe or to the hotel was not quite clear. I got
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the impression he meant both. I remembered my fancy that it was a good
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hotel to hide in. George Isley had betrayed a slight involuntary start when the
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visiting card was brought to him at tea time. I think he had wished
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to escape from his former co worker. Mullison had found him out. I
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heard you had a friend with you and were contemplating further exp work, he
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added, He changed the word experiment quickly to the other. The former,
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as you see, is true, but not the latter, replied My companion
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dryly, and in his manner was a touch of opposition that might have been
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hostility. Their intimacy, I saw, was close and of old standing.
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In all they said and did and looked, there was an undercurrent of other
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meaning that just escaped me they were up to something. They had been up
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to something, But Eisley would have withdrawn if he could. Mullison was an
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ambitious and energetic personality, absorbed in his profession alive to the poetical as well
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as to the practical value of archaeology, and he made at first a wholly
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delightful impression upon me. An instinctive flare for his subject had early in life
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brought him success and a measure of fame as well. His knowledge was accurate
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and scholarly, his mind saturated in the lore of a vanished civilization. Behind
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an exterior that was quietly careless, I divined a passionate and complex nature,
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and I watched him with interest, as the man for whom the old and
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sun worship of unscientific days held some beauty of reality and truth. Much in
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his strange book that had bewildered me now seemed intelligible when I saw the author.
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I cannot explain this more closely. Something about him somehow made it possible.
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Though modern to the finger tips and thoroughly equipped with all the tendencies of
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the day, there seemed to hide in him another self that held aloof with
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a dignified detachment from the interests in which his educated mind was centered. He
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read living secrets beneath museum labels, I might put it, he stepped out
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of the days of the pharaohs, if ever man did. And I realized
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early in our acquaintance that this was the man who had exceptional powers of resistance
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and self protection, and was, in his particular branch of work unusual in
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manner. He was light and gay, his sense of humor strong, with
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a way of treating everything as though laughter was the sanest attitude towards life.
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There is, however, the laughter that hides other things. Mullisson, as
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I gathered from many clues of talk and manner and silence, was a deep
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and singular being. His experiences in Egypt, if any he had survived admirably,
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there were at least two Mullussons. I felt him more than double multiple
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in appearance, tall, thin and fleshless, with a dried up skin and
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features withered as a mummy's. He said laughingly that nature had picked him physically
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for his job, and indeed one could see him worming his way down narrow
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tunnels into the sandy tombs, and writhing along sunless passages of suffocating heat,
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without too much personal inconvenience. Something sinuous, almost fluid in his mind expressed
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itself in his body too. He might go in any direction without causing surprise.
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He might go backwards or forwards. He might go in two directions at
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once. And my first impression of the man deepened before many days were past.
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There was irresponsibility in him, insincerity somewhere, almost want of heart.
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His morality was certainly not to day's, and the mind in him was slippery.
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I think the modern world to which he was unattached confused and irritated him.
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A sense of insecurity came with him. His interest in George Isley was
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the interest in a psychological specimen. I remembered how in his book he described
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the selection of individuals for certain functions of that marvelous worship, and the odd
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idea flashed through me well that Eisley exactly suited some purpose of his recreating energies.
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The man was keenly observant from top to toe, but not with his
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sight alone. He seemed to be aware of motives and emotions before he noticed
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the acts or gestures that these caused. I felt that he took me in
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as well. Certainly he eyed me up and down by means of this inner
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observation that seemed automatic with him. Mullison was not staying in our hotel.
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He had chosen one where social life was more abundant. But he came up
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frequently to lunch and dine, and sometimes spent the evening in Eisley's rooms,
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amusing us with his skill upon the piano, singing Arab songs and chanting phrases
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from the ancient Egyptian rituals to rhythms of his own invention. The old Egyptian
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music, both in harmony and melody, was far more developed than I realized,
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the use of sound having been of radical importance in their ceremonies. The
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chanting, in particular, he did with extraordinary effect. Though whether its success
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lay in his sonorous voice, his peculiar increasing of the vowel sounds, or
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in anything deeper, I cannot pretend to say. The result, at any
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rate was of a unique description. It brought buried Egypt to the surface.
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The gigantic presence entered sensibly into the room. It came huge and gorgeous,
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rolling upon the mind. The instant he began and something in it was both
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terrible and oppressive. The repose of eternity lay in the sound. Invariably,
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after a few moments of that transforming music, I saw the valley of the
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Kings, the deserted temples, Titanic faces of stone, great effigies coifed with
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zodiacal signs, but above all the twin Colossi. I mentioned this latter detail.
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Curious you should feel that too, Curious you should say it, I
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mean, Mullison replied, not looking at me, yet with an air as
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if I had said something he expected to me. The memnon figures express Egypt
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better than all the other monuments put together. Like the desert, they are
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featureless. They sum her up, as it were, yet leave the message
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unuttered. For you see, they cannot, he laughed a little in his
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throat. They have neither eyes, nor lips, nor nose. Their features
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are gone, yet they tell the secret to those who care to listen.
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Put an eyesley and a scarcely noticeable voice. Just because they have no words,
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they still sing at dawn, he added, in a louder, almost
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a challenging tone. It startled me. Mullison turned round at him, opened
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his lips, to speak, hesitated, stopped, he said nothing. For
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a moment. I cannot describe what it was in the lightning glance, the
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exchange that put me on the alert for something other than was obvious. My
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nerves quivered suddenly, and a breath of colder air stolen among us. Mullison
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swung round to me again. I almost think, he said, laughing when
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I complimented him upon music, that I must have been a priest of Attunrah
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in an earlier existence. For all this comes to my finger tips as if
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it were instinctive knowledge. Platinus remembered lived a few miles away at Alexandria,
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with his great idea that knowledge is recollection, he said, with a kind
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of cynical amusement. In those days, at any rate, he added,
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more significantly, worship was real, and ceremonials actually expressed great ideas in teaching.
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There was power in them. Two of the Mullusons spoke in that contradictory
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utterance. I saw that Eisley was fidgeting where he sat, betraying by certain
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gestures that uneasiness was in him. He hid his face a moment in his
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hands. He sighed, He made a movement as though to prevent something coming,
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but Mollison resisted his attempt to change the conversation, though the key shifted
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a little of its own accord. There were numerous occasions like this when I
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was aware that both men skirted something that had happened, something that Mollison wished
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to resume, but that Esily seemed anxious to postpone. I found myself studying
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Mlleson's personality, yet never getting beyond a certain point. Shrewd, subtle,
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with an acute rather than a large intelligence. He was cynical as well as
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insincere, and yet I cannot describe by what means. I arrived at two
28:40
other conclusions as well about him, First that this insincerity and want of heart
28:45
had not been so always, and secondly, that he sought social diversion with
28:49
deliberate and unordinary purpose. I could well believe that the first was Egypt's mark
28:55
upon him, and the second an effort at resistance and self protection. If
29:00
it wasn't for the gaiety, he remarked once, in a flippant way that
29:03
thinly hid significance, a man out here would go under in a year.
29:08
Social life gets rather reckless. Exaggerated people do things they would never dream of
29:12
doing at home. Perhaps you've noticed it, he added, looking suddenly at
29:17
me. Cairo and the rest they plunge at it, as though driven a
29:21
sort of excess about it. Somewhere I nodded agreement. The way he said
29:26
it was unpleasant. Rather, it's an antidote, he said, a subacid
29:32
flavor in his tone. I used to loathe society myself, but now I
29:36
find gaiety a certain irresponsible excitement of importance. Egypt gets on the nerves.
29:42
After a bit, the moral fiber fails, the whale grows weak. And
29:48
he glanced covertly at Eiesley, as with a desire to point his meaning.
29:52
It's the clash between the ugly present and the majestic past, perhaps, he
29:57
smiled. Isley shrugged his shoulders, making no reply, and the other went
30:03
on to tell stories of friends and acquaintances whom Egypt had adversely effected. Barton,
30:08
the Oxford Man school teacher who had insisted in living in a tent until
30:12
the government relieved him of his job. He took to his tent, roamed
30:17
the desert, drawn irresistibly practical considerations of the present of no avail this yearning
30:22
took him, though he could never define the exact attraction. In the end
30:27
his mental balance was disturbed. But now he's all right again. I saw
30:33
him in London only this year. He can't say what he fell to or
30:37
why he did it. Only he's different of John Lattin too. He spoke
30:42
whom agoraphobia caught so terribly an upper Egypt of Malahide, upon whom some fascination
30:48
of the Nile induced suicidal mania in attempts at drowning of Jimmullison, a cousin
30:55
who had camped at Thebes with himself in Icley, whom megalomania of a most
30:59
singleingular type attacked suddenly in a sandy waste, all radically cured as soon as
31:03
they left Egypt, yet one and all changed and made otherwise in their very
31:08
souls. He talked in a loose, disjointed way, and though much he
31:12
said was fantastic, as if meant to challenge opposition, there was impressiveness about
31:18
it somewhere, due I think, to a kind of cumulative emotion he produced.
31:22
The monuments do not impress merely by their bulk, but by their majestic
31:27
symmetry. I remember him saying, look at the choice of form alone.
31:33
The pyramids, for instance, no other shape was possible. Dome, square
31:37
spires all would have been hideously inadequate. The wedge shaped mass, immense foundations,
31:44
and pointed apex were the mot juste and outline. Do you think people
31:48
without greatness in themselves chose that form? There was no unbalance in the minds
31:53
that conceived the harmonious and magnificent structures of the temples. There stately grandeur in
32:00
their consciousness that could only be born of truth and knowledge. The power in
32:05
their images is a direct expression of eternal and essential things they knew. We
32:10
listened in silence. He was off upon his hobby. But behind the careless
32:15
tone and laughing questions there was this lurking passionateness that made me feel uncomfortable.
32:22
He was edging up, I felt, towards some climax that meant life and
32:24
death to himself and Eyley. I could not fathom it. My sympathy let
32:30
me in a little, yet not enough to understand completely. Elely, I
32:34
saw was also uneasy, though for reasons that equally evaded me. One could
32:38
almost believe he continued that something still hangs about in the atmosphere from those olden
32:45
times. He half closed his eyes, but I caught the gleam in them.
32:50
It affects the mind through the imagination, with some changes the point of
32:54
view. It takes the soul back with it to former quite different conditions.
33:00
That must have been almost another kind of consciousness. He paused an instant and
33:05
looked up at us. The intensity of belief in those days, he resumed,
33:10
since neither of us accepted the challenge, was amazing, something quite unknown
33:15
anywhere in the world. To day. It was so sure, so positive,
33:20
no mere speculative theories. I mean, as though something in the climate,
33:23
the exact position beneath the stars, the attitude of this particular stretch of
33:29
Earth in relation to the sun thinned the veil between humanity and other things.
33:35
Their hierarchies of gods, you know, were not mere idols, animals,
33:38
birds, monsters and what not. All typified spiritual forces and powers that influenced
33:45
their daily life. But the strong thing is they knew people who were scientific
33:52
as they were, did not swallow foolish superstitions. They made colors that could
33:55
last six thousand years even in the open air and without instruments. They measured
34:00
accurately, an enormously difficult and involved calculation, the procession of the equinoxes.
34:07
You've been to Denderah. He suddenly glanced at me. No, well,
34:12
the minds that realized the zodiacal signs could hardly believe you know that Hathor was
34:16
a cow Eisley coughed. He was about to interrupt, but before he could
34:22
find words, Mollusson was off again, some new quality in his tone and
34:24
manner that was almost aggressive. The hints he offered seemed more than hints.
34:29
There was a strange conviction in his heart. I think he was skirting a
34:32
bigger thing than he and his companion knew. Yet that his real object was
34:36
to see in how far I was open to attack, how far my sympathy
34:40
might be with them. I became aware that he and George Isley shared this
34:45
bigger thing. It was based, I felt on some certain knowledge that experiment
34:50
had brought them. Think of the grand teaching of Achnaton, that young pharaoh
34:57
who regenerated the entire land and brought it to it's immense prosperity. He taught
35:01
the worship of the sun, but not of the visible sun. The deity
35:06
had neither form nor shape. The great disk of glory was but the manifestation
35:10
each beneficent ray, ending in a hand that blessed the world. It was
35:15
a god of everlasting energy, love and power. Yet men could know it
35:20
at first hand in their daily lives, worshiping it at dawn and sunset with
35:24
passionate devotion. No anthropomorphic idol masqueraded in that an extraordinary glow was about him.
35:31
As he said it, the same minute he lowered his voice, shifting
35:36
the key perceptibly. He kept looking up at me through half closed eyelids.
35:40
And another thing they wonderfully knew, he almost whispered, was that with the
35:45
precession of their deity across the equinoctial changes, there came new powers down into
35:52
the world of men. Each cycle, each zodiacal sign brought its special powers,
35:59
which they quickly typified in the monstrous effigies we labeled today in our doll
36:02
museums. Each sign took some two thousand years to traverse. Each sign,
36:09
moreover, involved a change in human consciousness. There was this relation between the
36:15
heavens and the human heart. All that they knew. While the sun crawled
36:21
through the sign of Taurus it was the bull they worshiped with Erys. It
36:24
was the ram that coifed the granite symbols. Then came, as you remember,
36:30
with Pisces, the great new arrival, when already they sank from their
36:34
grand zenith, And the fish was taken as the emblem of the changing powers
36:37
which the Christ embodied for the human soul they held echoed the changes in the
36:43
immense journey in the original Deity, who is its source across the zodiac,
36:49
and the truth of as above so below remains the key to our manifested life.
36:53
And today the sun just entering Aquarius, new powers their clothes upon the
37:00
world. The old that which has been for two thousand years again is crumbling,
37:06
passing, dying. New powers and a new consciousness are knocking at our
37:12
doors. It is a time of change. It is also he leaned forward,
37:16
so that his eyes came close before me, the time to make the
37:21
change. The soul can choose its own conditions. It can A sudden crash
37:28
smothered the rest of the sentence. A chair had fallen with a clatter upon
37:30
a wooden floor, where the carpet left it bare, Whether eyesley and rising
37:35
had stumbled against it, or whether he had purposely knocked it over, I
37:38
could not say. I only knew that he had abruptly risen, and as
37:42
abruptly sat down again. A curious feeling came to me that the sign was
37:45
somehow pre arranged. It was so sudden. His voice, too, was
37:51
forced. I thought worse. But we can do without all that, Mullison,
37:55
he interrupted, with acute abruptness. Suppose we have a tube instead.
38:00
Chapter eight. It was after dinner in his private room, and he had
38:05
sat very silent in his corner until this sudden outburst. Mollison got up quietly,
38:10
without a word, and moved over to the piano. I saw,
38:14
or was it imagination merely a new expression slide upon his withered face. He
38:20
meant mischief somewhere from that instant, From the moment he rose and walked over
38:24
the thick carpet, he fascinated me. The atmosphere his talk and stories had
38:30
brought remained. His lean fingers ran over the keys, and at first he
38:35
played fragments from popular musical comedies that were pleasant enough but made no demand upon
38:39
the attention. I heard them without listening. I was thinking of another thing.
38:45
His walk, for the way he moved across those few feet of carpet
38:50
had power in it. He looked different, He seemed another man. He
38:54
was changed. I saw him curiously as I sometimes now saw Icily, too
39:00
bigger, in some manner that was both enchanting and oppressive. His presence from
39:05
that moment drew my imagination, as by an air of authority it held.
39:09
I left my seat in the far corner and dropped into a chair beside the
39:13
window, nearer to the piano. Isley, I then noticed, had also
39:16
turned to watch him. But it was George Isley, not quite as he
39:20
was now. I felt, rather than saw, the change both men had
39:23
subtly altered. They seemed extended. Their outlines Shadowy Eley, alert and anxious,
39:30
glanced up at the player his mind of earlier years, For the expression
39:34
of his face was plain following the light music, yet with difficulty that invoked
39:38
effort, almost struggle. Play that again, will you? I heard him
39:43
say From time to time. He was trying to take hold of it,
39:46
to climb back to a condition where the music had linked him to the present,
39:50
to seize a mental structure that was gone, to grip hold tightly of
39:53
it, only to find that it was too far forgotten and too fragile.
39:58
It would not bear him. I am sure of it, and I can
40:00
swear I divined his mood. He fought to realize himself as he played a
40:07
faint whisper floated through the room. You are in Egypt. Nowhere else could
40:13
this queer feeling of presentiment, of anticipation have gained a footing so easily.
40:17
I was aware of intense emotion in all three of us. The least reminder
40:22
of to day seemed ugly. I longed for some ancient, forgotten splendor that
40:25
was lost. The scene fixed my attention very steadily, for I was aware
40:30
of something deliberate and calculated. On Mollison's part, the thing was well considered
40:36
in his mind, intention only half concealed. It was Egypt. He interpreted
40:40
by sound, expressing what in him was true, then observing its effect as
40:45
he led us cleverly towards the past, beginning with the present. He played
40:51
persuasively with penetration, with insistent meaning. Too. He had that touch which
40:57
conjured up real atmosphere, and at first that atmosphere termed modern. He rendered
41:02
vividly the note of London, passing from Jingles of musical comedy, nervous ragtimes
41:07
and sensuous tango dances into the higher strains of concert rooms and cultured circles.
41:14
Yet not too abruptly, most dexterously, he shifted the level and with it
41:19
our emotion. I recognize as in a parody of various ultra modern thrills,
41:23
the tumult of Strauss, the pagan sweetness of primitive Debussy, the weirdness and
41:29
ecstasy of metaphysical Scriabin, the composite note of to day. In both extremes
41:34
he brought into this private sitting room of the Desert hotel, while George Eisley,
41:38
listening keenly fidgeted in his chair, A prey medi d'ufont, said Mullison,
41:45
dreamily, answering the question as to what he played debusies you know,
41:51
and the thing before it was from dilullinschpieger Strauss. Of course, he drawled
41:57
swaying slowly with the rhythm and leaving pauses between the wordsds. His attention was
42:00
not wholly on his listener, and in the voice was a quality that increased
42:05
my uneasy apprehension. I felt distress for Isley. Somewhere something it seemed was
42:12
coming. Mullson brought it unconsciously in his walk. It now appeared consciously in
42:16
his music, and it came from what was underground in him. A charm,
42:21
a subtle change, stole oddly over the room. It stole over my
42:25
heart as well. Some power of estimating left me, as though my mind
42:30
were slipping backwards and losing familiar common standards. The true modern note in it
42:37
isn't there, he drawled, cleverness. I think intellectual surface ingenuity, no
42:45
depth or permanence, just the sensational brilliance of to day. He turned and
42:52
stared at me fixedly, an instant, nothing everlasting, he added, impressively,
43:00
everything it knows, because it's small enough. And the room turned pettier
43:06
as he said it. Another bigger shadow draped its little walls. Through the
43:09
open windows. Came a stealthy gesture of eternity. The atmosphere stretched visibly.
43:15
Mollison was playing a marvelous fragment from Scribbons Prometheus. It sounded thin and shallow,
43:21
This modern music, all of it was out of place and trivial.
43:24
It was almost ridiculous. The scale of our emotion changed insensibly into a deeper
43:30
thing that has no name in dictionaries, being of another age. And I
43:35
glanced at the windows, where stone columns framed dim sections of great Egypt.
43:38
Listening outside, there was no moon, only deep drafts of stars blazed hanging
43:45
in the sky. I thought with awe the mysterious knowledge that vanished people had
43:49
of these stars, and of the Sun's huge journey through the zodiac. And
43:55
with astonishing suddenness, as of dream, there rose a pictured image against that
44:00
starlit sky lifted into the air between heaven and Earth. I saw a float
44:06
swiftly past a panorama of the stately temples, led by Dundera adfu Abu Simbel.
44:12
It paused, it hovered, it disappeared, leaving incalculable solemnity behind it
44:16
in the air. It vanished. And to see so vast a thing move
44:20
at that easy yet unhastening speed unhinged some sense of measurement in me. It
44:25
was, of course, I assured myself, mere memory, objectified owing to
44:30
something that the music summoned. Yet the apprehension rose in me that the whole
44:35
of Egypt presently would stream past in similar fashion. Egypt as she was in
44:39
the zenith of her unrecoverable past. Behind the tinkling of the modern piano passed
44:45
the rustling of a multitude, the tramping of countless feet on sand. It
44:51
was singularly vivid. It arrested in me something that normally went flowing. And
44:55
when I turned my head towards the room to call attention to my strange experience,
45:00
the eyes of Mollison I saw were laid upon my own. He stared
45:05
at me. The light in them transfixed me, and I understood that the
45:09
allusion was due in some manner to his evocation. Eley rose. At the
45:14
same moment from his chair. The thing I had vaguely been expecting had shifted
45:17
closer, and the same moment the musician abruptly changed his key. You may
45:23
like this better, he murmured, half to himself, but in tones he
45:27
somehow made echoing. It's more suited to the place. There was a resonance
45:32
in the voice, as though it emerged from hollows underground. The other seemed
45:37
almost sacrilegious here, and his voice drawled off in the rhythm of slower modulations
45:44
that he played, it had grown muffled. There was an impression, too,
45:47
that he did not strike the piano, but that the music issued from
45:51
himself. Jis what place, asked Isley. Quickly, his head turned sharply
45:57
as he spoke. His tone and its remoteess made me tremble, the musician
46:01
laughed to himself. I meant that this hotel seems really an impertinence, he
46:07
murmured, leaning down upon the notes as he played upon so softly and so
46:10
well, and that it's but the thinnest kind of pretense when you come to
46:15
think of it. We are in the desert, really, the coloss i
46:19
are outside, and all the emptied temples or ought to be, he added,
46:24
raising his tone abruptly with a glance at me. He straightened up and
46:29
stared out into the starry sky past George Isley's shoulders. That, he exclaimed
46:34
with betraying vehemence, is where we are and what we play too. His
46:38
voice suddenly increased. There was a roar in it that he repeated, is
46:43
the thing that takes our hearts away. The volume of intonation was astonishing,
46:49
for the way he uttered the monosyllable suddenly revealed the man beneath the outer sheath
46:52
of cynicism and laughter explained his heartlessness. His secret stream of life. He
46:58
too, a soul and body in the pass that revealed more than pages of
47:02
descriptive phrases. His heart lived in the temple aisles, his mind unearthed forgotten
47:07
knowledge. His soul had closed hisself anew in the seductive glory of antiquity.
47:12
He dwelt with a quickening magic of existence, in the reconstructed splendor of what
47:15
most term only ruins. He and George Isley together had revivified a power that
47:22
enticed them backwards. But whereas the latter struggled still, the former had already
47:25
made his permanent home there. The faculty in me that saw the vision of
47:30
streaming temples saw also this remorselessly definite molluson himself sat naked at that piano.
47:37
I saw him clearly. Then he no longer masqueraded behind his sneers and laughter.
47:40
He too had long ago surrendered, lost himself, gone out, and
47:45
from the place his soul now dwelt in he watched George Isley sinking down to
47:50
join him. He lived in ancient subterranean Egypt. This great hotel stood precariously
47:57
on the merest upper crust of desert. Thousand tombs, a hundred temples,
48:01
lay outside, within reach almost of our very voices. Mollison was merging with
48:07
that. This intuition flashed upon me like the picture in the sky, and
48:13
both were true. And meanwhile, this other thing he played had a surge
48:16
of power in it, impossible to describe. It was somber, huge and
48:21
solemn. It conveyed the power that his walk conveyed. There was distance in
48:25
it, but a distance not of space alone, a remoteness of time breathed
48:30
through it with that strange sadness and melancholy yearning that enormous interval brings. It
48:36
marched, but very far away. It held refrains that assumed the rhythms of
48:40
a multitude the centuries muted. It sang, but the singing was underground in
48:46
passages that fine sand muffled, lost wandering winds sighed through it, booming.
48:53
The contrast after the modern, cheaper music was dislocating, yet the change had
49:00
been quite naturally affected. It would sound empty and monotonous elsewhere in London,
49:07
for instance, I heard Mollison drawling as he swayed to and fro. But
49:12
here it is big and splendid. True, you hear what I mean,
49:17
he added, gravely. You understand what is it? Asked Isley thickly.
49:25
Before I could say a word, I forget exactly. It has tears in
49:30
it more than I can bear. The end of his sentence died away in
49:36
his throat. Mullison did not look at him as he answered. He looked
49:39
at me. You surely ought to know, he replied, the voice rising
49:45
and falling as though the rhythm forced it. You have heard it all before
49:50
that chant from the ritual. We Isley sprang up and stopped him. I
49:53
did not hear the sentence complete. An extraordinary thought blazed into me that the
49:57
voices of both men were not quite their own. I fancied wild, impossible
50:01
as it sounds, that I heard the twin coloss eyes singing to each other
50:06
in the dawn. Stupendous ideas sprang past me, leaping. It seemed as
50:10
though eternal symbols of the cosmos, discovered and worshiped in this ancient land,
50:15
leaped into awful life. My consciousness became enveloping. I had the distressing feeling
50:22
that ages slipped out of place and took me with them. They dominated me,
50:27
They rushed me off my feet like water. I was drawn backwards.
50:30
I too, was changing being changed, I remember, said Isley softly,
50:38
a reverence of worship in his voice. But there was anguish in it too,
50:42
and pity. He let the present go completely from him. The last
50:45
strands severed with a wrench of pain, I imagined, I heard his soul
50:51
pass weeping far away below. I'll sing it, murmured Mullison. For the
50:58
voice is necessary, sound and rhythm I utterly divine Chapter nine, and forthwith
51:07
his voice began a series of long drawn cadences that seemed somehow the root sounds
51:13
of every tongue that ever was. A spell came over me. I could
51:16
touch and feel a web encompassed me. My arms and feet became entangled.
51:22
A veil of fine threads wove across my eyes. The enthralling power of the
51:25
rhythm produced some magical movement in the soul. I was aware of life everywhere
51:30
about me, far and near, in the dwellings of the dead, as
51:35
also in the corridors of the Iron Hills. Thieves stood erect, and Memphis
51:40
teemed upon the river banks. For the modern world fell swaying at this sound
51:45
that restored the past. And in this past, both men before me lived
51:51
and had their being. The storm of present life passed o'er their heads while
51:55
they dwelt underground, obliterated, gone, Upon the wave of sound, they
52:00
went down into their recovered kingdom. I shivered, moved vigorously, half rose
52:07
up, then instantly sank back again, resigned and helpless. For I entered
52:13
by their side, it seemed the conditions of their strange captivity, my thoughts,
52:16
my feelings, my point of view were transplanted to another center. Consciousness
52:22
shifted in me. I saw things from another's point of view, antiquities,
52:28
the present forgotten, but the past suprememe. I lost reality. Our room
52:32
became a pinpoint picture seen in a drop of water, while this subterranean world
52:37
replacing it turned immense. My heart took on the gigantic leisured stride of what
52:43
had been proportions grew. Sighs captured me, and magnitude turned monstrous, swept
52:50
mere measurement away. Some hand of golden sunshine picked me up and set me
52:55
in the quivering web beside those other two. I heard the rustle of the
53:00
settling threads. I heard the shuffling of the feet and sand. I heard
53:05
the whispers and the dwellings of the dead behind the monotony of the sacerdotal music.
53:10
I heard them in their dim carved chambers. The ancient galleries were awake.
53:15
The life of unremembered ages stirred in multitudes about me. The reality of
53:22
so incredible an experience evaporates through the stream of language. I can only affirm
53:27
this singular proof that the deepest, most satisfying knowledge the present could offer seemed
53:31
insignificant beside some stalwart majesty of the past that utterly usurped it. This modern
53:38
room, holding a piano and two figures of to day appeared as a paltry
53:43
miniature, pinned against a vast, transparent curtain, whose foreground was thick with
53:46
symbols of temple, sphinx, and pyramid, but whose background of stupendous hanging
53:52
gray. Slid off towards a splendor where the cities of the dead shook off
53:55
their sand and thronged space to its ultimate horizons. The stars, the entired
54:01
universe, vibrating and alive, became involved in it. Long periods of time
54:07
slipped past me. I seemed living ages ago. I was living backwards.
54:15
The size and eternity of Egypt took me easily. There was an overwhelming grandeur
54:20
in it that elbowed out all present standards. The whole place towered and stood
54:24
up. The desert reared, the very horizons lifted, Majestic figures of granite
54:30
rose above the hotel. Great faces hovered and drove past. Huge arms reached
54:37
up to pluck the stars and set them. In the ceilings of the labyrinthine
54:39
tombs, the colossal meaning of the ancient land emerged through all its ruined details,
54:46
reconstructed, burningly alive. It became at length unbearable. I longed for
54:53
the droning sounds to cease, for the rhythm to lessen its prodigious sweep.
55:00
Heart cried out for the gold of the sunlight on the desert, for the
55:02
sweet air by the river's banks, for the violet lights upon the hills at
55:07
dawn. And I resisted. I made an effort to return your chant is
55:15
horrible. For God's sakes, Let's have an Arab song or the music of
55:19
to day. The effort was intense. The result was nothing. I swear
55:25
I used these words. I heard the actual sound of my voice if no
55:30
one else did. For I remember that it was pitiful in the way great
55:32
space devoured it, making of its appreciable volume the merest whisper as of some
55:37
bird or insect cry. But the figure that I took for Mollisson, instead
55:42
of answer or acknowledgment, merely grew and grew as things grow in a fairy
55:45
tale. I hardly know. I certainly cannot say that dwindling part of me,
55:51
which offered comments on the entire occurrence, noted this extraordinary effect, as
55:55
though it happened naturally that Mollison himself was mar valously increasing. The entire spell
56:02
became operative all at once. I experienced both the delight of complete abandonment and
56:07
the terror of letting go what had seemed real. I understood Mullison's sham laughter
56:15
in the subtle resignation of George Isley, and an amazing thought flashed bird like
56:20
across my changing consciousness that this resurrection into the past, this rebirth of the
56:25
spirit which they sought, involved taking upon themselves the guise of these ancient symbols
56:30
each turn, as the embryo assumes each evolutionary stage below it before the human
56:37
semblance is attained. So the souls of those two adventurers took upon themselves the
56:43
various emblems of that intense belief the devout worshiper takes on the qualities of his
56:49
deity. They wore the entire series of the old world gods so potently that
56:54
I perceived them and even objectified them by my senses. The present was their
57:00
prenatal stage to enter the past. They were being born again. But it
57:06
was not Mollusson's semblance alone that took on this awful change. Both faces,
57:12
scaled to the measure of Egypt's outstanding quality of size, became in this little
57:15
modern room distressingly immense. Distorting mirrors can suggest no simile, for the symmetry
57:22
of proportion was not injured. I lost their human physiognomies. I saw their
57:28
thoughts, their feelings, their augmented altered hearts, the thing that Egypt put
57:31
there while she stole their love from modern life. There grew an awful stateliness
57:37
upon them. And that was huge, mysterious, and motionless as stone.
57:43
For Mollusson's narrow face at first turned hawklike in the semblance of the sinister deity
57:47
Horace, only stretching to tower above the toy scale piano. It was keen
57:52
and sly and monstrous after prey, while a swiftness of the sunrise leaped from
57:58
both the brilliant eyes. George Eisley, equally immense of outline, was in
58:02
general presentiment more magnificent, a breath of the sphinx about his spreading shoulders,
58:07
and in his countenance an inscrutable power of calm temple images. These were the
58:14
first signs of obsession, but others followed in rapid series, Like lantern slides
58:20
upon a screen. The ancient symbols flashed one after another across these two extended
58:24
human faces, and were gone. Disentanglement became impossible. The successive signatures seemed
58:31
almost superimposed, as in a composite photograph, each appearing and vanished before recognition
58:37
was even possible. While I interpreted the inner alchemy by means of outer tokens
58:42
familiar to my senses, Egypt, possessing them, expressed herself thus marvelously in
58:47
their physical aspect, using the symbols of her intense regenerative power. The changes
58:54
merged with such swiftness and to one another, that I did not seize the
58:58
half of them, till finally the procession culminated in a single one that remained
59:02
fixed awfully upon them. Both, the entire series merged. I was aware
59:08
of this single masterful image, which summed up all the others in sublime repose.
59:15
The gigantic thing rose up in this incredible statue form. The spirit of
59:21
Egypt, synthesized in this monstrous symbol, obliterated them both. I saw the
59:25
seated figures of the grim Colossi dipped in sand, night over them, waiting
59:31
for the dawn. End of Section nine,