The weird of the wanderer Being the papyrus records of some incidents in one of the previous lives of Mr. Nicholas Crabbe
Tuesday, viiij Apr.) are only at the beginning of their labours. A. H.
THE FOURTH PAPYRUS
Touching the ordeal of the scorching staff, I consulted Amenemhat. He
had grave doubts as to whether it was lawful to protect the hand with
a magic unguent, or to hold the staff with tongs; and he stood by the
injunctions of the well-written papyrus which ordained that the staff
must be held in the hand. But, as for me, my dear mind foamed with
blood, and my stomach shifted inch by inch, and the gorge of me swang
to and fro, at the anticipation of the grievous anguish which I was
to undergo: although I knew that, by enduring the ordeal the first
time, I had summoned from the dead a master of magic, from whom I was
learning ineffable wisdom, and, that, by enduring the same a second
time, I should call from the dead a master of masters of magic, from
whom I might learn wisdom absolutely illimitable. But, notwithstanding
this, the heart in my bosom would take no cheer, but remained dull and
spiritless and weighted with premonitions of disaster.
Furthermore, while my mind was thus obliquing brusquely in the manner
of a crab, I needs must add to my perturbations by certain thoughts
about the gods of my own motherland. And I pondered the question
again, asking myself whether what I was meditating actually amounted
to apostacy. And I went over much old ground: for the point was a
very nice and subtile one. I told myself how that bad hierarchs and
far-from-immaculate anointed ones, all the most righteous of men, of my
race and age and tongue, had refused to let me serve my gods and theirs
in the manner which those divine ones inhabiting heavenly palaces had
themselves designed. And I enumerated, one by one, all the occasions
when the same blameless persons, out of spite or out of pique or out
of merely natural and ungracious cruelty, had chased me from temple
after temple with secret anathemas, denied me my rites, and withdrawn
from me the very hem of the skirt of fellowship. And I postulated that
a well-minded man must have a religion. Therefore, without disloyalty
to the gods of my own land, from whose worship my fellow-worshippers
cut me off, I pronounced that it was permissible for me, in default of
fulness, to use a moiety. Thus, then, I argued with myself, until I was
satisfied, that is to say satisfied as nearly as might be.
And anon I addressed myself to my task, placing the crystal orb
in the silver cup, and filling the last with Nile-water, while my
familiar poured into the thirsty trench below the steps that magic
emerald-coloured liquid, whose exact ingredients may not be told at
large. Which having been well-done, we prepared to summon a Great
One of the Greater Ones out of the Outer Immensity. And, for this
cause, that the one whom I was about to summon was coming from so vast
a distance of time, I knew that the heat of my magic staff would be
immeasurably greater at this second summons than at the first. For
movement is heat and heat is movement; and, the faster and longer the
movement, the fiercer the heat of the burning.
But, while the priest Amenemhat sprinkled beautiful-smelling
gum-tragacanth, I intoned the hymn _I am the One among the Forms
which the Eye the Only One hath created_, and the incantation called
_Of the Buckle of Red Jasper_; and then we both prayed to Ptah the
Pain-lessener to make my ordeal as endurable as might be. It is true
that I was not to have an additional burning from the fierce clear of
the moon, since I was (this time) far beneath the earth: but I ceased
not from my pure-minded prayers to Ptah, even when the crystal orb
began to glow. For I was convinced that some catastrophe was at hand.
Wherefore, fearing lest the sudden death of his summoner (and I
expected no less) should leave Amenemhat to drag out a weary existence
for ever on man-breeding earth--for a spirit reincarnated by means of
Nile-water must remain incarnate until his own incarnator shall permit
him to depart his body--then, indeed, I hastily gave to my familiar the
_Word of Freedom_, saying: “O Amenemhat, it seems that the time of our
separation is at hand. But I am loth to part, for thou hast taught and
served me well: but I will not help myself at another man’s serious
cost. Therefore I free thee from my bond of rule, that thou mayst
return to thy place when it shall seem good to thee. And, for thine own
sake setting thee free, O Amenemhat, I bid thee farewell.”
But his response came to me very thinly, very reed-like: for his body
instantly began to fade away from him; and he was fast becoming an
Osirian and a spider’s-web-coloured mist in my sight. And he said: “O
Nicholas, Conquistator of Peoples, I indeed thank thee for the respite
from the gnawing weariness of Amentet which thou hast granted to me, by
summoning me to tread the kindly earth for a space; and, in return, I
will unfold to thee some pages of the book of thy destiny. For, having
been and being now about to be an Osirian, I can read plainly in that
book: yet I may not tell thee all, for the gods have forbidden it. And,
ere thou hast lived another moon’s age, thou shalt see me as I used
to be: for I and thou are linked together in an unbreakable cycle of
nigh two thousand years. And I and thou will meet again in this land of
Khem, I the priest of Tanis, and thou: for that awful round of years
is----”
Thus he departed, leaving the unfinished phrase lapping against my
mind. But I was very grievously perturbed: for, unless I read his
prediction awry, I was doomed to die within the month. And I was not
ready, having an infinity (an inconceivable infinity) of things to do,
of souls to save, of sufferers to soothe, of oppression to remove, of
wrongs to put right, of liars and thieves and slanderers to confute and
to despoil and to shame, of cruelties to avenge with head-diggings and
eye-gougings and revenges and slaughters and maimings and stonings and
spine-impalings with much moaning, and many other mind-grieving evils.
For which causes I was not ready to die then.
Wherefore, arising with shoutings from my lethargy, I adjured the mind
in my dear breast to be very strong, very valiant indeed, very alert to
withstand Death’s insidious onsets. For, though I had seen many things,
I never yet had met personally beautiful Death the soother of men.
And first, I set myself to endure the ordeal in which I was engaged.
For lurid gleams were leaping from the emerald liquid in the trench,
wafting hot breaths in my direction.
Instantly, stripping off my linen robe and casting it outside the
circle, I again ascended to the porphyry altar; and grasped the
magic staff with my bare hand. Now that my mind was blazing with
firm courage, the staff at first seemed cold. Anon, a gentle wave of
warmth flushed through it; and a dart of anguish shot into my flesh.
Pang followed pang: stab pierced stab. More swiftly came fiercer
thrusts of pain as the heat increased. But I kept my mind fixed and
my lips addressed to Ptah the Pain-lessener. Great scorching flames
flowed from the staff over my hand and arm. I seemed to be holding a
nineteen-times-heated fire; and, yet, amid all the intolerable agony, I
was ware that this was but the beginning of my torment.
The heat of the flame was so intense, that I looked for my arm to
vanish away in impalpable ashes. Irresistible desire of dropping the
staff assailed me; and my fingers loosened a little against my will.
Like as the helmsman of a ship, whose rudder is shattered by wintry
storms, and who (knowing the right course) is unable to steer his
vessel, even so was I then. The staff fell out of my grasp: but the
silver chain, which looped it round my wrist, prevented it from rolling
away.
Instantly, the flames expired; and the lambent streamers in the
divination-cup died down. But I stood, alone, in darkness.
After a space of gloom and silence, I saw tiny golden sparks floating
in the vast circumferent void. But I watched them: for there seemed
naught else for me to do, nor was my will any longer inclined to force
leadlike unwilling limbs to act. And the sparks became spots. And
the spots became swiftly-rolling globes of light. I tried to utter a
_Spell_: but voice and hearing had deserted me.
I lay, crouched against the blood-red altar of porphyry. The globes of
light changed, taking wonderful forms. All my members were enfeebled;
and, indeed, only the mind in my breast was me. For my body had
renounced its allegiance to my sway, and had gone apart from me in
shocking rebellion, leaving me to die having nothing but my mind and my
mind’s eye, which saw and thought the very queerest things, the most
terrible, the most unheard-of.
All round me, I saw the spirits of my senses standing. On the left,
was my hearing: on his right, was my smell: on his right again, was
my sight: on the right of that one was my taste: on his right was my
touch. Above these, hovered my life, in the form of a small white bird
like a beautifully-crowned hoopoe. Behind them, were my powers of
speech and movement, very large, and sudden, and frightful. And the
mind in my breast told me that these things were so.
But all these shapes mopped and mowed and sighed at me; and my voice
made as though he would have derided me, his fallen master: but the
bird of life forbade him. And the shapes wagged and wavered horribly,
gesticulating among themselves; and some seemed friendly: but others
were undoubtedly hostile. And, suddenly, with a pitiful gesture, my
hearing put up his hands and dived cleanly into me; and I heard faint
voices, as one hears the whimpering of miners coming up a pit-shaft.
For my powers and my senses were arguing against me: but the bird of
life argued for me.
“Ye shall not leave him thus:” cried the bird.
“And who can prevent us?” shrieked the rebels.
“I,” said my life, “for I will not leave him; and how can ye wander
lifeless through the wide-bosomed earth when I am here refusing to die?”
Then, indeed, the mind in my noble breast spoke unwinged words, saying
the _Spell of Not Letting the Powers and Senses of a Man be Taken from
Him in the Netherworld_; and, afterward, I intoned aloud: “How now,
rebellious creatures, why dally in idleness when work remains to be
done? Know ye your master; and obey.”
And, with shambling gait and visages rueful and ashamed, my senses and
my powers obliqued each to his separate task.
But I staggered to my feet; and, seizing the divination-cup, I drained
its cool contents, looping my arm through the chain of the crystal orb.
And, at the moment, flames began to rise from the summit of the purple
altar. Whitish-green they were, ever-increasing in volume, as though
some mountain (a forge of the Kyklops) were vomiting from a new vent.
And the flames rose higher and higher, till they licked the very apex
of the hall ninety men’s heights above me; and there was neither smoke
nor vapour: but only fervent flames, humming and buzzing and bounding
upward with irresistible leapings. But, changing to violet, they
vanished, leaving the place in a violet glare wherein was the whirring
of wheels.
But I dismissed inertia; and, having my faculties under order, I began
to look upon these happenings with a wholesome curiosity.
In the midst of the wheels were faces and figures and events, faint
indeed at first, but growing clearer and firmer and more violent in
movement till they displaced the wheels. But I watched very intently;
and I saw the histories of mortal men of many different races being
enacted before my eyes. For, things (which then were past, and since
have been) were done in my sight in that secret subterranean hall of
Thebes. Kings and queens and emperors and princes and republicans