There is no cry in the world like that of the homeless wind. A vague excitement, scarcely to be analysed, ran through his blood. The curtain of fog waved momentarily aside. Henriot fancied a star peeped down at him.
“It will change things a bit — at last,” he sighed, settling back into his chair. “It will bring movement!”
Already something in himself had changed. A restlessness, as of that wandering wind, woke in his heart — the desire to be off and away. Other things could rouse this wildness too: falling water, the singing of a bird, an odour of wood-fire, a glimpse of winding5 road. But the cry of wind, always searching, questioning, travelling the world’s great routes, remained ever the master-touch. High longing6 took his mood in hand. Mid7 seven millions he felt suddenly — lonely.
“I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.”
He murmured the words over softly to himself. The emotion that produced Innisfree passed strongly through him. He too would be over the hills and far away. He craved8 movement, change, adventure — somewhere far from shops and crowds and motor-‘busses. For a week the fog had stifled9 London. This wind brought life.
Where should he go? Desire was long; his purse was short.
He glanced at his books, letters, newspapers. They had no interest now. Instead he listened. The panorama10 of other journeys rolled in colour through the little room, flying on one another’s heels. Henriot enjoyed this remembered essence of his travels more than the travels themselves. The crying wind brought so many voices, all of them seductive:
There was a soft crashing of waves upon the Black Sea shores, where the huge Caucasus beckoned11 in the sky beyond; a rustling12 in the umbrella pines and cactus13 at Marseilles, whence magic steamers start about the world like flying dreams. He heard the plash of fountains upon Mount Ida’s slopes, and the whisper of the tamarisk on Marathon. It was dawn once more upon the Ionian Sea, and he smelt14 the perfume of the Cyclades. Blue-veiled islands melted in the sunshine, and across the dewy lawns of Tempe, moistened by the spray of many waterfalls, he saw — Great Heavens above! — the dancing of white forms . . . or was it only mist the sunshine painted against Pelion? . . . “Methought, among the lawns together, we wandered underneath15 the young grey dawn. And multitudes of dense16 white fleecy clouds shepherded by the slow, unwilling17 wind. . . . ”
And then, into his stuffy18 room, slipped the singing perfume of a wall-flower on a ruined tower, and with it the sweetness of hot ivy19. He heard the “yellow bees in the ivy bloom.” Wind whipped over the open hills — this very wind that laboured drearily20 through the London fog.
And — he was caught. The darkness melted from the city. The fog whisked off into an azure21 sky. The roar of traffic turned into booming of the sea. There was a whistling among cordage, and the floor swayed to and fro. He saw a sailor touch his cap and pocket the two-franc piece. The syren hooted22 — ominous23 sound that had started him on many a journey of adventure — and the roar of London became mere24 insignificant25 clatter26 of a child’s toy carriages.
He loved that syren’s call; there was something deep and pitiless in it. It drew the wanderers forth27 from cities everywhere: “Leave your known world behind you, and come with me for better or for worse! The anchor is up; it is too late to change. Only — beware! You shall know curious things — and alone!”
Henriot stirred uneasily in his chair. He turned with sudden energy to the shelf of guide-books, maps and time-tables — possessions he most valued in the whole room. He was a happy-go-lucky, adventure-loving soul, careless of common standards, athirst ever for the new and strange.
“That’s the best of having a cheap flat,” he laughed, “and no ties in the world. I can turn the key and disappear. No one cares or knows — no one but the thieving caretaker. And he’s long ago found out that there’s nothing here worth taking!”
There followed then no lengthy28 indecision. Preparation was even shorter still. He was always ready for a move, and his sojourn29 in cities was but breathing-space while he gathered pennies for further wanderings. An enormous kit-bag — sack-shaped, very worn and dirty — emerged speedily from the bottom of a cupboard in the wall. It was of limitless capacity. The key and padlock rattled30 in its depths. Cigarette ashes covered everything while he stuffed it full of ancient, indescribable garments. And his voice, singing of those “yellow bees in the ivy bloom,” mingled31 with the crying of the rising wind about his windows. His restlessness had disappeared by magic.
This time, however, there could be no haunted Pelion, nor shady groves32 of Tempe, for he lived in sophisticated times when money markets regulated movement sternly. Travelling was only for the rich; mere wanderers must pig it. He remembered instead an opportune33 invitation to the Desert. “Objective” invitation, his genial34 hosts had called it, knowing his hatred35 of convention. And Helouan danced into letters of brilliance36 upon the inner map of his mind. For Egypt had ever held his spirit in thrall37, though as yet he had tried in vain to touch the great buried soul of her. The excavators, the Egyptologists, the archaeologists most of all, plastered her grey ancient face with labels like hotel advertisements on travellers’ portmanteaux. They told where she had come from last, but nothing of what she dreamed and thought and loved. The heart of Egypt lay beneath the sand, and the trifling38 robbery of little details that poked39 forth from tombs and temples brought no true revelation of her stupendous spiritual splendour. Henriot, in his youth, had searched and dived among what material he could find, believing once — or half believing — that the ceremonial of that ancient system veiled a weight of symbol that was reflected from genuine supersensual knowledge. The rituals, now taken literally40, and so pityingly explained away, had once been genuine pathways of approach. But never yet, and least of all in his previous visits to Egypt itself, had he discovered one single person, worthy41 of speech, who caught at his idea. “Curious,” they said, then turned away — to go on digging in the sand. Sand smothered42 her world today. Excavators discovered skeletons. Museums everywhere stored them — grinning, literal relics43 that told nothing.
But now, while he packed and sang, these hopes of enthusiastic younger days stirred again — because the emotion that gave them birth was real and true in him. Through the morning mists upon the Nile an old pyramid bowed hugely at him across London roofs: “Come,” he heard its awful whisper beneath the ceiling, “I have things to show you, and to tell.” He saw the flock of them sailing the Desert like weird44 grey solemn ships that make no earthly port. And he imagined them as one: multiple expressions of some single unearthly portent45 they adumbrated46 in mighty47 form — dead symbols of some spiritual conception long vanished from the world.
“I mustn’t dream like this,” he laughed, “or I shall get absent-minded and pack fire-tongs instead of boots. It looks like a jumble48 sale already!” And he stood on a heap of things to wedge them down still tighter.
But the pictures would not cease. He saw the kites circling high in the blue air. A couple of white vultures flapped lazily away over shining miles. Felucca sails, like giant wings emerging from the ground, curved towards him from the Nile. The palm-trees dropped long shadows over Memphis. He felt the delicious, drenching49 heat, and the Khamasin, that over-wind from Nubia, brushed his very cheeks. In the little gardens the mish-mish was in bloom. . . . He smelt the Desert . . . grey sepulchre of cancelled cycles. . . . The stillness of her interminable reaches dropped down upon old London. . . .
The magic of the sand stole round him in its silent-footed tempest.
And while he struggled with that strange, capacious sack, the piles of clothing ran into shapes of gleaming Bedouin faces; London garments settled down with the mournful sound of camels’ feet, half dropping wind, half water flowing underground — sound that old Time has brought over into modern life and left a moment for our wonder and perhaps our tears.
He rose at length with the excitement of some deep enchantment50 in his eyes. The thought of Egypt plunged51 ever so deeply into him, carrying him into depths where he found it difficult to breathe, so strangely far away it seemed, yet indefinably familiar. He lost his way. A touch of fear came with it.
“A sack like that is the wonder of the world,” he laughed again, kicking the unwieldy, sausage-shaped monster into a corner of the room, and sitting down to write the thrilling labels: “Felix Henriot, Alexandria via Marseilles.” But his pen blotted52 the letters; there was sand in it. He rewrote the words. Then he remembered a dozen things he had left out. Impatiently, yet with confusion somewhere, he stuffed them in. They ran away into shifting heaps; they disappeared; they emerged suddenly again. It was like packing hot, dry, flowing sand. From the pockets of a coat — he had worn it last summer down Dorset way — out trickled53 sand. There was sand in his mind and thoughts.
And his dreams that night were full of winds, the old sad winds of Egypt, and of moving, sifting54 sand. Arabs and Afreets danced amazingly together across dunes55 he could never reach. For he could not follow fast enough. Something infinitely56 older than these ever caught his feet and held him back. A million tiny fingers stung and pricked57 him. Something flung a veil before his eyes. Once it touched him — his face and hands and neck. “Stay here with us,” he heard a host of muffled58 voices crying, but their sound was smothered, buried, rising through the ground. A myriad59 throats were choked. Till, at last, with a violent effort he turned and seized it. And then the thing he grasped at slipped between his fingers and ran easily away. It had a grey and yellow face, and it moved through all its parts. It flowed as water flows, and yet was solid. It was centuries old.
He cried out to it. “Who are you? What is your name? I surely know you . . . but I have forgotten . . .?”
And it stopped, turning from far away its great uncovered countenance60 of nameless colouring. He caught a voice. It rolled and boomed and whispered like the wind. And then he woke, with a curious shaking in his heart, and a little touch of chilly61 perspiration62 on the skin.
But the voice seemed in the room still — close beside him:
“I am the Sand,” he heard, before it died away.
And next he realised that the glitter of Paris lay behind him, and a steamer was taking him with much unnecessary motion across a sparkling sea towards Alexandria. Gladly he saw the Riviera fade below the horizon, with its hard bright sunshine, treacherous63 winds, and its smear64 of rich, conventional English. All restlessness now had left him. True vagabond still at forty, he only felt the unrest and discomfort65 of life when caught in the network of routine and rigid66 streets, no chance of breaking loose. He was off again at last, money scarce enough indeed, but the joy of wandering expressing itself in happy emotions of release. Every warning of calculation was stifled. He thought of the American woman who walked out of her Long Island house one summer’s day to look at a passing sail — and was gone eight years before she walked in again. Eight years of roving travel! He had always felt respect and admiration67 for that woman.
For Felix Henriot, with his admixture of foreign blood, was philosopher as well as vagabond, a strong poetic68 and religious strain sometimes breaking out through fissures69 in his complex nature. He had seen much life; had read many books. The passionate70 desire of youth to solve the world’s big riddles71 had given place to a resignation filled to the brim with wonder. Anything might be true. Nothing surprised him. The most outlandish beliefs, for all he knew, might fringe truth somewhere. He had escaped that cheap cynicism with which disappointed men soothe72 their vanity when they realise that an intelligible73 explanation of the universe lies beyond their powers. He no longer expected final answers.
For him, even the smallest journeys held the spice of some adventure; all minutes were loaded with enticing74 potentialities. And they shaped for themselves somehow a dramatic form. “It’s like a story,” his friends said when he told his travels. It always was a story.
But the adventure that lay waiting for him where the silent streets of little Helouan kiss the great Desert’s lips, was of a different kind to any Henriot had yet encountered. Looking back, he has often asked himself, “How in the world can I accept it?”
And, perhaps, he never yet has accepted it. It was sand that brought it. For the Desert, the stupendous thing that mothers little Helouan, produced it.
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1
stifling
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| a.令人窒息的 | |
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abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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wailing
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的现在分词 )；沱 | |
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4
blurred
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| v.（使）变模糊( blur的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）难以区分；模模糊糊；迷离 | |
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winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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mid
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| adj.中央的，中间的 | |
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craved
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| 渴望，热望( crave的过去式 )； 恳求，请求 | |
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stifled
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| （使）窒息， （使）窒闷( stifle的过去式和过去分词 )； 镇压，遏制； 堵 | |
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panorama
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| n.全景，全景画，全景摄影，全景照片[装置] | |
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11
beckoned
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| v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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12
rustling
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| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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13
cactus
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| n.仙人掌 | |
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14
smelt
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| v.熔解，熔炼；n.银白鱼，胡瓜鱼 | |
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15
underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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16
dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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18
stuffy
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| adj.不透气的，闷热的 | |
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ivy
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| n.常青藤，常春藤 | |
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20
drearily
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| 沉寂地，厌倦地，可怕地 | |
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21
azure
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| adj.天蓝色的，蔚蓝色的 | |
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22
hooted
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| （使）作汽笛声响，作汽车喇叭声( hoot的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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23
ominous
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| adj.不祥的，不吉的，预兆的，预示的 | |
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24
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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clatter
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| v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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lengthy
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| adj.漫长的，冗长的 | |
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sojourn
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| v./n.旅居，寄居；逗留 | |
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30
rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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31
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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32
groves
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| 树丛，小树林( grove的名词复数 ) | |
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33
opportune
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| adj.合适的，适当的 | |
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genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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brilliance
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| n.光辉，辉煌，壮丽，（卓越的）才华，才智 | |
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37
thrall
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| n.奴隶；奴隶制 | |
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38
trifling
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| adj.微不足道的；没什么价值的 | |
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39
poked
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| v.伸出( poke的过去式和过去分词 )；戳出；拨弄；与（某人）性交 | |
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40
literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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41
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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42
smothered
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| （使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的过去式和过去分词 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制 | |
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43
relics
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| [pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸 | |
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44
weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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45
portent
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| n.预兆；恶兆；怪事 | |
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46
adumbrated
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| v.约略显示，勾画出…的轮廓( adumbrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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47
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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48
jumble
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| vt.使混乱，混杂；n.混乱；杂乱的一堆 | |
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49
drenching
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| n.湿透v.使湿透( drench的现在分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
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50
enchantment
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| n.迷惑，妖术，魅力 | |
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51
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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52
blotted
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| 涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 )； （用吸墨纸）吸干 | |
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53
trickled
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| v.滴( trickle的过去式和过去分词 )；淌；使)慢慢走；缓慢移动 | |
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54
sifting
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| n.筛，过滤v.筛( sift的现在分词 )；筛滤；细查；详审 | |
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55
dunes
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| 沙丘( dune的名词复数 ) | |
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56
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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57
pricked
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| 刺，扎，戳( prick的过去式和过去分词 )； 刺伤； 刺痛； 使剧痛 | |
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58
muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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59
myriad
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| adj.无数的；n.无数，极大数量 | |
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60
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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61
chilly
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| adj.凉快的，寒冷的 | |
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perspiration
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| n.汗水；出汗 | |
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63
treacherous
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| adj.不可靠的，有暗藏的危险的；adj.背叛的，背信弃义的 | |
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64
smear
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| v.涂抹；诽谤，玷污；n.污点；诽谤，污蔑 | |
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65
discomfort
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| n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便 | |
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66
rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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67
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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68
poetic
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| adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的 | |
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69
fissures
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| n.狭长裂缝或裂隙( fissure的名词复数 )；裂伤；分歧；分裂v.裂开( fissure的第三人称单数 ) | |
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70
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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71
riddles
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| n.谜（语）( riddle的名词复数 )；猜不透的难题，难解之谜 | |
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72
soothe
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| v.安慰；使平静；使减轻；缓和；奉承 | |
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73
intelligible
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| adj.可理解的，明白易懂的，清楚的 | |
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74
enticing
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| adj.迷人的；诱人的 | |
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