My First Idea Naturally Was, That I Still
Remained Fast Under The Power Of A Dream.
I roused myself and drew
aside the silk that covered my eyes, and plunged my bare face into
the light.
Then at least I was well enough wakened, but still
those old Marlen bells rung on, not ringing for joy, but properly,
prosily, steadily, merrily ringing "for church." After a while the
sound died away slowly. It happened that neither I nor any of my
party had a watch by which to measure the exact time of its
lasting, but it seemed to me that about ten minutes had passed
before the bells ceased. I attributed the effect to the great heat
of the sun, the perfect dryness of the clear air through which I
moved, and the deep stillness of all around me. It seemed to me
that these causes, by occasioning a great tension, and consequent
susceptibility, of the hearing organs had rendered them liable to
tingle under the passing touch of some mere memory that must have
swept across my brain in a moment of sleep. Since my return to
England it has been told me that like sounds have been heard at
sea, and that the sailor becalmed under a vertical sun in the midst
of the wide ocean has listened in trembling wonder to the chime of
his own village bells.
At this time I kept a poor shabby pretence of a journal, which just
enabled me to know the day of the month and the week according to
the European calendar, and when in my tent at night I got out my
pocket-book I found that the day was Sunday, and roughly allowing
for the difference of time in this longitude, I concluded that at
the moment of my hearing that strange peal the church-going bells
of Marlen must have been actually calling the prim congregation of
the parish to morning prayer. The coincidence amused me faintly,
but I could not pluck up the least hope that the effect which I had
experienced was anything other than an illusion, an illusion liable
to be explained (as every illusion is in these days) by some of the
philosophers who guess at Nature's riddles. It would have been
sweeter to believe that my kneeling mother by some pious
enchantment had asked, and found, this spell to rouse me from my
scandalous forgetfulness of God's holy day, but my fancy was too
weak to carry a faith like that. Indeed, the vale through which
the bells of Marlen send their song is a highly respectable vale,
and its people (save one, two, or three) are wholly unaddicted to
the practice of magical arts.
After the fifth day of my journey I no longer travelled over
shifting hills, but came upon a dead level, a dead level bed of
sand, quite hard, and studded with small shining pebbles.
The heat grew fierce; there was no valley nor hollow, no hill, no
mound, no shadow of hill nor of mound, by which I could mark the
way I was making. Hour by hour I advanced, and saw no change - I
was still the very centre of a round horizon; hour by hour I
advanced, and still there was the same, and the same, and the same-
-the same circle of flaming sky - the same circle of sand still
glaring with light and fire. Over all the heaven above, over all
the earth beneath, there was no visible power that could balk the
fierce will of the sun: "he rejoiced as a strong man to run a
race; his going forth was from the end of the heaven, and his
circuit unto the ends of it; and there was nothing hid from the
heat thereof." From pole to pole, and from the east to the west,
he brandished his fiery sceptre as though he had usurped all heaven
and earth. As he bid the soft Persian in ancient times, so now,
and fiercely too, he bid me bow down and worship him; so now in his
pride he seemed to command me, and say, "Thou shalt have none other
gods but me." I was all alone before him. There were these two
pitted together, and face to face - the mighty sun for one, and for
the other this poor, pale, solitary self of mine, that I always
carry about with me.
But on the eighth day, and before I had yet turned away from
Jehovah for the glittering god of the Persians, there appeared a
dark line upon the edge of the forward horizon, and soon the line
deepened into a delicate fringe, that sparkled here and there as
though it were sewn with diamonds. There, then, before me were the
gardens and the minarets of Egypt and the mighty works of the Nile,
and I (the eternal Ego that I am!) - I had lived to see, and I saw
them.
When evening came I was still within the confines of the Desert,
and my tent was pitched as usual; but one of my Arabs stalked away
rapidly towards the west, without telling me of the errand on which
he was bent. After a while he returned; he had toiled on a
graceful service; he had travelled all the way on to the border of
the living world, and brought me back for token an ear of rice,
full, fresh, and green.
The next day I entered upon Egypt, and floated along (for the
delight was as the delight of bathing) through green wavy fields of
rice, and pastures fresh and plentiful, and dived into the cold
verdure of groves and gardens, and quenched my hot eyes in shade,
as though in deep, rushing waters.
CHAPTER XVIII - CAIRO AND THE PLAGUE {30}
Cairo and plague! During the whole time of my stay the plague was
so master of the city, and showed itself so staringly in every
street and every alley, that I can't now affect to dissociate the
two ideas.
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