Mechanically I took the cigarette he offered me, thinking confusedly what answer I could make.
‘It’s irresistible,’ I murmured; ‘I understand that it’s easier to go.’
‘Sweeter as well,’ he whispered with a sigh, ‘and very wonderful!’
The hand that lit my cigarette, I saw, was trembling. A desire to do something violent woke in me suddenly--to move energetically, to push or drive something away.
‘What was it?’ I asked abruptly, in a louder, half-challenging voice, intended for the man at the piano. ‘Such a performance--upon others--without first asking their permission--seems to me unpermissible--it’s----’
And it was Moleson who replied. He ignored the end of my sentence as though he had not heard it. He strolled over to our side, taking a cigarette and pressing it carefully into shape between his long thin fingers.
‘You may well ask,’ he answered quietly; ‘but it’s not so easy to tell. We discovered it’--he nodded towards Isley--‘two years ago in the “Valley.” It lay beside a Priest, a very important personage, apparently, and was part of the Ritual he used in the worship of the sun. In the Museum now--you can see it any day at the Boulak--it is simply labelled “Hymn to Ra.” The period was Aknahton’s.’
‘The words, yes,’ put in Isley, who was listening closely.
‘The words?’ repeated Moleson in a curious tone. ‘There _are_ no words. It’s all really a manipulation of the vowel sounds. And the rhythm, or chanting, or whatever you like to call it, I--I invented myself. The Egyptians did not write their music, you see.’ He suddenly searched my face a moment with questioning eyes. ‘Any words you heard,’ he said, ‘or thought you heard, were merely your own interpretation.’
‘They made use of what they called a “root-language” in their rituals,’ he went on, ‘and it consisted entirely of vowel sounds. There were no consonants. For vowel sounds, you see, run on for ever without end or beginning, whereas consonants interrupt their flow and break it up and limit it. A consonant has no sound of its own at all. Real language is continuous.’
We stood a moment, smoking in silence. I understood then that this thing Moleson had done was based on definite knowledge. He had rendered some fragment of an ancient Ritual he and Isley had unearthed together, and while he knew its effect upon the latter, he chanced it on myself. Not otherwise, I feel, could it have influenced me in the extraordinary way it did. In the faith and poetry of a nation lies its soul-life, and the gigantic faith of Egypt blazed behind the rhythm of that long, monotonous chant. There were blood and heart and nerves in it. Millions had heard it sung; millions had wept and prayed and yearned; it was ensouled by the passion of that marvellous civilisation that loved the godhead of the Sun, and that now hid, waiting but still alive, below the ground. The majestic faith of ancient Egypt poured up with it--that tremendous, burning elaboration of the after-life and of Eternity that was the pivot of those spacious days. For centuries vast multitudes, led by their royal priests, had uttered this very form and ritual--believed it, lived it, felt it. The rising of the sun remained its climax. Its spiritual power still clung to the great ruined symbols. The faith of a buried civilisation had burned back into the present and into our hearts as well.