Four Weird Tales

by Algernon Blackwood

  IV

  It was so simple a manoeuvre by which Fate began the innocent game. Thewoman left a couple of books behind her on the table one night, andHenriot, after a moment's hesitation, took them out after her. He knewthe titles--_The House of the Master_, and _The House of the HiddenPlaces_, both singular interpretations of the Pyramids that once hadheld his own mind spellbound. Their ideas had been since disproved, ifhe remembered rightly, yet the titles were a clue--a clue to thatimaginative part of his mind that was so busy constructing theories andhad found its stride. Loose sheets of paper, covered with notes in aminute handwriting, lay between the pages; but these, of course, he didnot read, noticing only that they were written round designs of variouskinds--intricate designs.

  He discovered Vance in a corner of the smoking-lounge. The woman haddisappeared.

  Vance thanked him politely. "My aunt is so forgetful sometimes," hesaid, and took them with a covert eagerness that did not escape theother's observation. He folded up the sheets and put them carefully inhis pocket. On one there was an ink-sketched map, crammed with detail,that might well have referred to some portion of the Desert. The pointsof the compass stood out boldly at the bottom. There were involvedgeometrical designs again. Henriot saw them. They exchanged, then, thecommonplaces of conversation, but these led to nothing further. Vancewas nervous and betrayed impatience. He presently excused himself andleft the lounge. Ten minutes later he passed through the outer hall, thewoman beside him, and the pair of them, wrapped up in cloak and ulster,went out into the night. At the door, Vance turned and threw a quick,investigating glance in his direction. There seemed a hint ofquestioning in that glance; it might almost have been a tentativeinvitation. But, also, he wanted to see if their exit had beenparticularly noticed--and by whom.

  This, briefly told, was the first manoeuvre by which Fate introducedthem. There was nothing in it. The details were so insignificant, soslight the conversation, so meagre the pieces thus added to Henriot'simaginative structure. Yet they somehow built it up and made it solid;the outline in his mind began to stand foursquare. That writing, thosedesigns, the manner of the man, their going out together, the finalcurious look--each and all betrayed points of a hidden thing.Subconsciously he was excavating their buried purposes. The sand wasshifting. The concentration of his mind incessantly upon them removed itgrain by grain and speck by speck. Tips of the smothered thing emerged.Presently a subsidence would follow with a rush and light would blazeupon its skeleton. He felt it stirring underneath his feet--this flowingmovement of light, dry, heaped-up sand. It was always--sand.

  Then other incidents of a similar kind came about, clearing the way to anatural acquaintanceship. Henriot watched the process with amusement,yet with another feeling too that was only a little less than anxiety. Akeen observer, no detail escaped him; he saw the forces of their livesdraw closer. It made him think of the devices of young people who desireto know one another, yet cannot get a proper introduction. Fatecondescended to such little tricks. They wanted a third person, he beganto feel. A third was necessary to some plan they had on hand, and--theywaited to see if he could fill the place. This woman, with whom he hadyet exchanged no single word, seemed so familiar to him, well known foryears. They weighed and watched him, wondering if he would do.

  None of the devices were too obviously used, but at length Henriotpicked up so many forgotten articles, and heard so many significantphrases, casually let fall, that he began to feel like the villain in amachine-made play, where the hero for ever drops clues his enemy isintended to discover.

  Introduction followed inevitably. "My aunt can tell you; she knowsArabic perfectly." He had been discussing the meaning of some local nameor other with a neighbour after dinner, and Vance had joined them. Theneighbour moved away; these two were left standing alone, and heaccepted a cigarette from the other's case. There was a rustle of skirtsbehind them. "Here she comes," said Vance; "you will let me introduceyou." He did not ask for Henriot's name; he had already taken thetrouble to find it out--another little betrayal, and another clue.

  It was in a secluded corner of the great hall, and Henriot turned to seethe woman's stately figure coming towards them across the thick carpetthat deadened her footsteps. She came sailing up, her black eyes fixedupon his face. Very erect, head upright, shoulders almost squared, shemoved wonderfully well; there was dignity and power in her walk. She wasdressed in black, and her face was like the night. He found itimpossible to say what lent her this air of impressiveness and solemnitythat was almost majestic. But there _was_ this touch of darkness and ofpower in the way she came that made him think of some sphinx-like figureof stone, some idol motionless in all its parts but moving as a whole,and gliding across--sand. Beneath those level lids her eyes stared hardat him. And a faint sensation of distress stirred in him deep, deepdown. Where had he seen those eyes before?

  He bowed, as she joined them, and Vance led the way to the armchairs ina corner of the lounge. The meeting, as the talk that followed, he felt,were all part of a preconceived plan. It had happened before. The woman,that is, was familiar to him--to some part of his being that had droppedstitches of old, old memory.

  Lady Statham! At first the name had disappointed him. So many folk weartitles, as syllables in certain tongues wear accents--without them beingmute, unnoticed, unpronounced. Nonentities, born to names, so oftenclaim attention for their insignificance in this way. But this woman,had she been Jemima Jones, would have made the name distinguished andselect. She was a big and sombre personality. Why was it, he wonderedafterwards, that for a moment something in him shrank, and that hismind, metaphorically speaking, flung up an arm in self-protection? Theinstinct flashed and passed. But it seemed to him born of an automaticfeeling that he must protect--not himself, but the woman from the man.There was confusion in it all; links were missing. He studied herintently. She was a woman who had none of the external feminine signalsin either dress or manner, no graces, no little womanly hesitations andalarms, no daintiness, yet neither anything distinctly masculine. Hercharm was strong, possessing; only he kept forgetting that he wastalking to a--woman; and the thing she inspired in him included, withrespect and wonder, somewhere also this curious hint of dread. Thisinstinct to protect her fled as soon as it was born, for the interest ofthe conversation in which she so quickly plunged him obliterated allminor emotions whatsoever. Here, for the first time, he drew close toEgypt, the Egypt he had sought so long. It was not to be explained. He_felt_ it.

  Beginning with commonplaces, such as "You like Egypt? You find here whatyou expected?" she led him into better regions with "One finds here whatone brings." He knew the delightful experience of talking fluently onsubjects he was at home in, and to some one who understood. The feelingat first that to this woman he could not say mere anythings, slippedinto its opposite--that he could say everything. Strangers ten minutesago, they were at once in deep and intimate talk together. He found hisideas readily followed, agreed with up to a point--the point whichpermits discussion to start from a basis of general accord towardsspeculation. In the excitement of ideas he neglected the uncomfortablenote that had stirred his caution, forgot the warning too. Her mind,moreover, seemed known to him; he was often aware of what she was goingto say before he actually heard it; the current of her thoughts struck afamiliar gait, and more than once he experienced vividly again the oddsensation that it all had happened before. The very sentences andphrases with which she pointed the turns of her unusual ideas were neverwholly unexpected.

  For her ideas were decidedly unusual, in the sense that she acceptedwithout question speculations not commonly deemed worth consideration atall, indeed not ordinarily even known. Henriot knew them, because he hadread in many fields. It was the strength of her belief that fascinatedhim. She offered no apologies. She knew. And while he talked, shelistening with folded arms and her black eyes fixed upon his own,Richard Vance watched with vigilant eyes and listened too, ceaselesslyalert. Vance joined in little enough, however, gave no opinions, hi
sattitude one of general acquiescence. Twice, when pauses of slackeninginterest made it possible, Henriot fancied he surprised another qualityin this negative attitude. Interpreting it each time differently, he yetdismissed both interpretations with a smile. His imagination leaped soabsurdly to violent conclusions. They were not tenable: Vance wasneither her keeper, nor was he in some fashion a detective. Yet in hismanner was sometimes this suggestion of the detective order. He watchedwith such deep attention, and he concealed it so clumsily with anaffectation of careless indifference.

  There is nothing more dangerous than that impulsive intimacy strangerssometimes adopt when an atmosphere of mutual sympathy takes them bysurprise, for it is akin to the false frankness friends affect whentelling "candidly" one another's faults. The mood is invariablyregretted later. Henriot, however, yielded to it now with something likeabandon. The pleasure of talking with this woman was so unexpected, andso keen.

  For Lady Statham believed apparently in some Egypt of her dreams. Herinterest was neither historical, archaeological, nor political. It wasreligious--yet hardly of this earth at all. The conversation turned uponthe knowledge of the ancient Egyptians from an unearthly point of view,and even while he talked he was vaguely aware that it was _her_ mindtalking through his own. She drew out his ideas and made him say them.But this he was properly aware of only afterwards--that she hadcleverly, mercilessly pumped him of all he had ever known or read uponthe subject. Moreover, what Vance watched so intently was himself, andthe reactions in himself this remarkable woman produced. That also herealised later.

  His first impression that these two belonged to what may be called the"crank" order was justified by the conversation. But, at least, it wasinteresting crankiness, and the belief behind it made it evenfascinating. Long before the end he surprised in her a more vital formof his own attitude that anything _may_ be true, since knowledge hasnever yet found final answers to any of the biggest questions.

  He understood, from sentences dropped early in the talk, that she wasamong those few "superstitious" folk who think that the old Egyptianscame closer to reading the eternal riddles of the world than anyothers, and that their knowledge was a remnant of that ancient WisdomReligion which existed in the superb, dark civilization of the sunkenAtlantis, lost continent that once joined Africa to Mexico. Eightythousand years ago the dim sands of Poseidonis, great island adjoiningthe main continent which itself had vanished a vast period before, sankdown beneath the waves, and the entire known world to-day was descendedfrom its survivors.

  Hence the significant fact that all religions and "mythological" systemsbegin with a story of a flood--some cataclysmic upheaval that destroyedthe world. Egypt itself was colonised by a group of Atlantean priestswho brought their curious, deep knowledge with them. They had foreseenthe cataclysm.

  Lady Statham talked well, bringing into her great dream this strong,insistent quality of belief and fact. She knew, from Plato to Donelly,all that the minds of men have ever speculated upon the gorgeous legend.The evidence for such a sunken continent--Henriot had skimmed it too inyears gone by--she made bewilderingly complete. He had heard Baconiansdemolish Shakespeare with an array of evidence equally overwhelming. Itcatches the imagination though not the mind. Yet out of her facts, asshe presented them, grew a strange likelihood. The force of this woman'spersonality, and her calm and quiet way of believing all she talkedabout, took her listener to some extent--further than ever before,certainly--into the great dream after her. And the dream, to say theleast, was a picturesque one, laden with wonderful possibilities. For asshe talked the spirit of old Egypt moved up, staring down upon him outof eyes lidded so curiously level. Hitherto all had prated to him of theArabs, their ancient faith and customs, and the splendour of theBedouins, those Princes of the Desert. But what he sought, barelyconfessed in words even to himself, was something older far than this.And this strange, dark woman brought it close. Deeps in his soul, longslumbering, awoke. He heard forgotten questions.

  Only in this brief way could he attempt to sum up the storm she rousedin him.

  She carried him far beyond mere outline, however, though afterwards herecalled the details with difficulty. So much more was suggested thanactually expressed. She contrived to make the general modern scepticisman evidence of cheap mentality. It was so easy; the depth it affects toconceal, mere emptiness. "We have tried all things, and found allwanting"--the mind, as measuring instrument, merely confessedinadequate. Various shrewd judgments of this kind increased his respect,although her acceptance went so far beyond his own. And, while the labelof credulity refused to stick to her, her sense of imaginative wonderenabled her to escape that dreadful compromise, a man's mind in awoman's temperament. She fascinated him.

  The spiritual worship of the ancient Egyptians, she held, was asymbolical explanation of things generally alluded to as the secrets oflife and death; their knowledge was a remnant of the wisdom of Atlantis.Material relics, equally misunderstood, still stood to-day at Karnac,Stonehenge, and in the mysterious writings on buried Mexican temples andcities, so significantly akin to the hieroglyphics upon the Egyptiantombs.

  "The one misinterpreted as literally as the other," she suggested, "yetboth fragments of an advanced knowledge that found its grave in the sea.The Wisdom of that old spiritual system has vanished from the world,only a degraded literalism left of its undecipherable language. Thejewel has been lost, and the casket is filled with sand, sand, sand."

  How keenly her black eyes searched his own as she said it, and how oddlyshe made the little word resound. The syllable drew out almost intochanting. Echoes answered from the depths within him, carrying it on andon across some desert of forgotten belief. Veils of sand flew everywhereabout his mind. Curtains lifted. Whole hills of sand went shifting intolevel surfaces whence gardens of dim outline emerged to meet thesunlight.

  "But the sand may be removed." It was her nephew, speaking almost forthe first time, and the interruption had an odd effect, introducing asharply practical element. For the tone expressed, so far as he daredexpress it, disapproval. It was a baited observation, an invitation toopinion.

  "We are not sand-diggers, Mr. Henriot," put in Lady Statham, before hedecided to respond. "Our object is quite another one; and I believe--Ihave a feeling," she added almost questioningly, "that you might beinterested enough to help us perhaps."

  He only wondered the direct attack had not come sooner. Its bluntnesshardly surprised him. He felt himself leap forward to accept it. Asudden subsidence had freed his feet.

  Then the warning operated suddenly--for an instant. Henriot _was_interested; more, he was half seduced; but, as yet, he did not mean tobe included in their purposes, whatever these might be. That shrinkingdread came back a moment, and was gone again before he could questionit. His eyes looked full at Lady Statham. "What is it that you know?"they asked her. "Tell me the things we once knew together, you and I.These words are merely trifling. And why does another man now stand inmy place? For the sands heaped upon my memory are shifting, and it is_you_ who are moving them away."

  His soul whispered it; his voice said quite another thing, although thewords he used seemed oddly chosen:

  "There is much in the ideas of ancient Egypt that has attracted me eversince I can remember, though I have never caught up with anythingdefinite enough to follow. There was majesty somewhere in theirconceptions--a large, calm majesty of spiritual dominion, one might callit perhaps. I _am_ interested."

  Her face remained expressionless as she listened, but there was graveconviction in the eyes that held him like a spell. He saw through theminto dim, faint pictures whose background was always sand. He forgotthat he was speaking with a woman, a woman who half an hour ago had beena stranger to him. He followed these faded mental pictures, though henever caught them up.... It was like his dream in London.

  Lady Statham was talking--he had not noticed the means by which sheeffected the abrupt transition--of familiar beliefs of old Egypt; of theKa, or Double, by whose existence the sur
vival of the soul was possible,even its return into manifested, physical life; of the astrology, orinfluence of the heavenly bodies upon all sublunar activities; ofterrific forms of other life, known to the ancient worship of Atlantis,great Potencies that might be invoked by ritual and ceremonial, and oftheir lesser influence as recognised in certain lower forms, hencetreated with veneration as the "Sacred Animal" branch of this dimreligion. And she spoke lightly of the modern learning which so gliblyimagined it was the animals themselves that were looked upon as"gods"--the bull, the bird, the crocodile, the cat. "It's there they allgo so absurdly wrong," she said, "taking the symbol for the powersymbolised. Yet natural enough. The mind to-day wears blinkers, studiesonly the details seen directly before it. Had none of us experiencedlove, we should think the first lover mad. Few to-day know the Powers_they_ knew, hence deny them. If the world were deaf it would stand withmockery before a hearing group swayed by an orchestra, pitying bothlisteners and performers. It would deem our admiration of a greatswinging bell mere foolish worship of form and movement. Similarly, withhigh Powers that once expressed themselves in common forms--where bestthey could--being themselves bodiless. The learned men classify theforms with painstaking detail. But deity has gone out of life. ThePowers symbolised are no longer experienced."

  "These Powers, you suggest, then--their Kas, as it were--may still--"

  But she waved aside the interruption. "They are satisfied, as the commonpeople were, with a degraded literalism," she went on. "Nut was theHeavens, who spread herself across the earth in the form of a woman;Shu, the vastness of space; the ibis typified Thoth, and Hathor was thePatron of the Western Hills; Khonsu, the moon, was personified, as wasthe deity of the Nile. But the high priest of Ra, the sun, you notice,remained ever the Great One of Visions."

  The High Priest, the Great One of Visions!--How wonderfully again shemade the sentence sing. She put splendour into it. The pictures shiftedsuddenly closer in his mind. He saw the grandeur of Memphis andHeliopolis rise against the stars and shake the sand of ages from theirstern old temples.

  "You think it possible, then, to get into touch with these High Powersyou speak of, Powers once manifested in common forms?"

  Henriot asked the question with a degree of conviction and solemnitythat surprised himself. The scenery changed about him as he listened.The spacious halls of this former khedivial Palace melted into Desertspaces. He smelt the open wilderness, the sand that haunted Helouan. Thesoft-footed Arab servants moved across the hall in their white sheetslike eddies of dust the wind stirred from the Libyan dunes. And overthese two strangers close beside him stole a queer, indefinitealteration. Moods and emotions, nameless as unknown stars, rose throughhis soul, trailing dark mists of memory from unfathomable distances.

  Lady Statham answered him indirectly. He found himself wishing thatthose steady eyes would sometimes close.

  "Love is known only by feeling it," she said, her voice deepening alittle. "Behind the form you feel the person loved. The process is anevocation, pure and simple. An arduous ceremonial, involving worship anddevotional preparation, is the means. It is a difficult ritual--theonly one acknowledged by the world as still effectual. Ritual is thepassage way of the soul into the Infinite."

  He might have said the words himself. The thought lay in him while sheuttered it. Evocation everywhere in life was as true as assimilation.Nevertheless, he stared his companion full in the eyes with a touch ofalmost rude amazement. But no further questions prompted themselves; or,rather, he declined to ask them. He recalled, somehow uneasily, that inceremonial the points of the compass have significance, standing forforces and activities that sleep there until invoked, and a passinglight fell upon that curious midnight request in the corridor upstairs.These two were on the track of undesirable experiments, he thought....They wished to include him too.

  "You go at night sometimes into the Desert?" he heard himself saying. Itwas impulsive and miscalculated. His feeling that it would be wise tochange the conversation resulted in giving it fresh impetus instead.

  "We saw you there--in the Wadi Hof," put in Vance, suddenly breaking hislong silence; "you too sleep out, then? It means, you know, the Valleyof Fear."

  "We wondered--" It was Lady Statham's voice, and she leaned forwardeagerly as she said it, then abruptly left the sentence incomplete.Henriot started; a sense of momentary acute discomfort again ran overhim. The same second she continued, though obviously changing thephrase--"we wondered how you spent your day there, during the heat. Butyou paint, don't you? You draw, I mean?"

  The commonplace question, he realised in every fibre of his being, meantsomething _they_ deemed significant. Was it his talent for drawing thatthey sought to use him for? Even as he answered with a simpleaffirmative, he had a flash of intuition that might be fanciful, yetthat might be true: that this extraordinary pair were intent upon someceremony of evocation that should summon into actual physical expressionsome Power--some type of life--known long ago to ancient worship, andthat they even sought to fix its bodily outline with the pencil--hispencil.

  A gateway of incredible adventure opened at his feet. He balanced on theedge of knowing unutterable things. Here was a clue that might lead himtowards the hidden Egypt he had ever craved to know. An awful hand wasbeckoning. The sands were shifting. He saw the million eyes of theDesert watching him from beneath the level lids of centuries. Speck byspeck, and grain by grain, the sand that smothered memory lifted thecountless wrappings that embalmed it.

  And he was willing, yet afraid. Why in the world did he hesitate andshrink? Why was it that the presence of this silent, watchingpersonality in the chair beside him kept caution still alive, withwarning close behind? The pictures in his mind were gorgeously coloured.It was Richard Vance who somehow streaked them through with black. Athing of darkness, born of this man's unassertive presence, flitted everacross the scenery, marring its grandeur with something evil, petty,dreadful. He held a horrible thought alive. His mind was thinking venalpurposes.

  In Henriot himself imagination had grown curiously heated, fed by whathad been suggested rather than actually said. Ideas of immensity crowdedhis brain, yet never assumed definite shape. They were familiar, even asthis strange woman was familiar. Once, long ago, he had known them well;had even practised them beneath these bright Egyptian stars. Whence camethis prodigious glad excitement in his heart, this sense of mightyPowers coaxed down to influence the very details of daily life? Behindthem, for all their vagueness, lay an archetypal splendour, fraught withforgotten meanings. He had always been aware of it in this mysteriousland, but it had ever hitherto eluded him. It hovered everywhere. He hadfelt it brooding behind the towering Colossi at Thebes, in the skeletonsof wasted temples, in the uncouth comeliness of the Sphinx, and in thecrude terror of the Pyramids even. Over the whole of Egypt hung itsinvisible wings. These were but isolated fragments of the Body thatmight express it. And the Desert remained its cleanest, truest symbol.Sand knew it closest. Sand might even give it bodily form and outline.

  But, while it escaped description in his mind, as equally it eludedvisualisation in his soul, he felt that it combined with its vastnesssomething infinitely small as well. Of such wee particles is the giantDesert born....

  Henriot started nervously in his chair, convicted once more ofunconscionable staring; and at the same moment a group of hotel people,returning from a dance, passed through the hall and nodded himgood-night. The scent of the women reached him; and with it the sound oftheir voices discussing personalities just left behind. A Londonatmosphere came with them. He caught trivial phrases, uttered in adrawling tone, and followed by the shrill laughter of a girl. Theypassed upstairs, discussing their little things, like marionettes upon atiny stage.

  But their passage brought him back to things of modern life, and to somestandard of familiar measurement. The pictures that his soul had gazedat so deep within, he realised, were a pictorial transfer caughtincompletely from this woman's vivid mind. He had seen the Desert as thegrey, enormous To
mb where hovered still the Ka of ancient Egypt. Sandscreened her visage with the veil of centuries. But She was there, andShe was living. Egypt herself had pitched a temporary camp in him, andthen moved on.

  There was a momentary break, a sense of abruptness and dislocation. Andthen he became aware that Lady Statham had been speaking for some timebefore he caught her actual words, and that a certain change had comeinto her voice as also into her manner.