In the Dwellings of the Wilderness/Chapter I
In the Dwellings of the Wilderness
CHAPTER I
In the Dark Backward and Abysm of Time
eane came out of his tent, lighting a particularly unclean briar, and strolled over to where Merritt lay flat on his back, his hands behind his head, staring out over the desert into the painted sunset sky. Off to the right were the excavations, gaping like raw wounds in the monotone of brown desert sand; huge mounds of out-flung earth, monstrous and grotesque, deep pits and chasms with sloping ridges and embankments; in the great mound called by the Arabs the Mound of the Lost City, which overtopped and dominated all the rest, wide trenches, long and deep, cutting far into the hidden heart of it, by which men had ascended from and descended to what lay below. To the left were the small army of labourers, camped behind one of the smaller untapped mounds, intent upon their meagre supper of parched corn. The bluish smoke of a fire rose from behind a jutting breastwork of earth where Ibraheem, the overseer, was making the thick, fragrant coffee of his land. Already the loneliness of coming night was upon the earth; already the sun had dipped below the desert's rim, and the fierce colour of the sky was fading. Away to the east, behind the camps, far to the edge of the world, the shadow of darkness was racing with swift, silent strides.
Deane sat down beside Merritt's prostrate figure. He was tall, and deep-chested, and thin-flanked, with a certain gravity about him which made him appear older than his years. His eyes were brown and quiet, his hair a brownish red, remarkably stiff and wiry; about his mouth were faint lines of humour. Merritt, short and thin and tough as whit-leather, grey of hair and keen of face, moved a hand from beneath his head, tilted back the hat that hid his face, and looked up at Deane.
"Where's Holloway?" he inquired.
"He took his camera early this afternoon and said he was going to get some views of what we've uncovered of the North Temple," Deane replied. "Seems to me we ought to find more tablets in there somewhere—well-preserved ones. This place is modern compared with some of the sites of other cities we've come across."
He eyed the excavations with interest, eager to probe the depths of their ancient mystery. Also he wished that Holloway would return. Holloway was young and ardently imaginative, and one could talk to him about the spell of fascination which this mighty grave held for one, the thoughts of greatness risen and passed away and lost which it conjured up. One could not easily talk to Merritt thus, be cause Merritt was an old hand at the business, eminently practical and hard as rocks, and matter-of-fact to his finger-ends, apt to confuse sentiment with sentimentality and consequently despise it.
The sun sank below the horizon and swiftly the world grew dark. From the men's camp came a mournful chant, subdued, and heard as from far away, and the measured thump of a drum. At intervals a donkey raised his voice, after the manner of a saw-shrieking its way through wood. With the darkness came the stars, leaping into the black arch of heaven, great and of a number beyond all counting; the night-wind turned the heat of the day to sudden coolness, sweeping softly among the ruins. The mounds of earth, softened in outline by the darkness, loomed vast and shadowlike, melting into the sombre mystery of the night. Mingled with the chant of the natives and the occasional hee-haw of the donkeys was the fretful bleating of goats, destined for the masters' food. Around the jutting earthwork a faint gleam of light shone from the overseer's fire. Over all the night brooded, swallowing sound and motion in its immensity.
"Those brutes would work like cattle all day and sing like bullfrogs all night," Merritt said suddenly. He heaved himself on an elbow and shouted for Ibraheem. Soon this one came stalking from his fire, a blot against the night.
"Why are the men so noisy to-night?" Merritt wished to know.
"Ney pray for well-luck, saar," Ibraheem said, answering Merritt's Arabic with proud English, fluent and execrable, and an accent all his own. "Nis defunct citee is not good to be disturbed. Lord-God, He curse it in way back sometimes, and ne men are grief-ful and fearing of—um—ghos'. Ghos', yaas. Vurry ignorunt men."
"Oh, that's it, is it?" Merritt, losing interest, settled again to the ground. "Well, tell them they need not be afraid of ghosts. The last one died of old age a good thousand years ago."
"Vurry good, saar!" Ibraheem said, conceiving this the most correct and English response to make. Merritt and his men were the first Americans he had met, otherwise he would have said "All right." He fell back into the shadows; and by degrees the chant died to a whimper and a whine, and ceased.
"We'll get to the east wing of the palace to-morrow, don't you think?" Deane inquired.
Merritt stretched comfortably on the warm ground and cast his hat aside.
"I should think so." His voice became slow, hushed to accord with the quiet of the night. "The palace where those old people lived and died two thousand years ago. Fancy what this place must have looked like then, the centre and heart of a civilisation that throbbed with pulses as keen as ours. Tell you what, Deane, it gives me a queer feeling at the roots of my hair every time I come to a closed door or open a buried tomb. 'Think of it, old man; take it home to you and live on it! Yours is the first foot to cross that threshold, the first hand to pick up tablet or jar or potsherd since those old folks left it.' That's what I say to myself every time. They died, or were killed off somehow, and they left their city behind them, deserted." Merritt's voice grew slower, with long pauses between his sentences. He seemed not talking to Deane at all. "Then the courtyards began to fill with dust and sand, just a thin layer at first, you know, with all the colours good and bright, and the walls standing. Then weeds began to grow between the stones, and the gardens went to jungle and the layer of dust deepened. By and by a wall fell … out here in the loneliness, a dead city left to its fate … Wild beasts made the halls their lair, and monkeys chattered in this very palace we are going to see to-morrow, and lizards slept on the steps in the sun … And more walls fell, and the sand crept up around them, and there was never a voice to break the stillness, nor a sound except the dropping of a stone. Then by degrees the face of the world changed, and the earth, like an ocean wave, rose until the city was covered, and there were only misshapen mounds to show that life had been there. And the city was dead and buried, waiting for us, just us three from the other end of the world, to lay it open to the light once more."
Abruptly his voice ceased. In the darkness neither could see the other's face. Deane sat and listened silently, immeasurably surprised. Merritt the hardheaded, Merritt the practical, who would sneer at sentimentality, to rhapsodise thus? Deane knew that it is precisely the man most reserved and self-contained, who, when he speaks at all, will go to greater lengths even than the habitually confiding, and lay bare the deep, shy heart of him to its very roots. Deane also knew that when this rare mood fastens on such an one it is to be marvelled at and its tale held sacred; for always it will mark some crisis in the man's life, the outward sign of a stress which perhaps none but himself may know. And because Deane's every nerve thrilled in response to the suggestion in Merritt's words, and because that might be said in darkness, between men, which daylight would show up pitilessly and render commonplace and futilely inane, Deane said slowly, staring up at the great stars that blazed above them:
"I didn't know you felt like that about it too."
Merritt countered with quick eagerness.
"Do you? Can you put yourself back in that old vanished life when you come upon the broken corpse of it here, and reverence it? Can you build these ruined walls again, and see, instead of mounds and trenches, a city with tower-capped walls, and groves of trees, and gardens, teeming with human life whose very ashes have dissolved? That's what I do, every time. It began when I was a little shaver, back home. They wanted to make an engineer of me, but I said I'd rather dig up things that other people had built than spend my time building things for other people to dig up. It sort of took a grip on me—and it never let go."
Deane nodded sympathetically in the darkness.
"I know what you mean, all right. But—well, I had no idea that you felt—er—this way about it."
Merritt laughed.
"I don't know what made it all ooze out to-night," he confessed. "But I've been thinking about it a lot. It '11 be a big thing, Deane. It will mean a good deal to all of us, if we can put it through."
"Why shouldn't we put it through?" Deane questioned.
Merritt sat up and felt himself for matches.
"I don't know!" he answered somewhat dubiously. "No reason, I suppose. But somehow, all along, I haven't been able to see us getting to the end of it. I can plan out to a certain point with a reasonable certainty, barring accidents and the will of God, that things will fall out as I intended. But beyond that point, in a way it is as though I had an inkling that it was the unexpected which would happen. Of course, it is merely nonsense. By the way, hasn't Holloway got back yet?"
"I presume so," Deane answered. "His boy left those rolls of films he insisted on bringing, in the sun yesterday, and they've melted. I told him films would be a good deal of a nuisance in a climate like this."
"He'll come out all right, I guess," Merritt said easily. "It's his first trip, and he's green, but he's a forehanded youngster, and he surely knows how to get good pictures."
The two fell into silence, conscious subtly of a new sympathy between them. Each had penetrated the other's shell, had touched the hidden spring of a feeling which both shared; and without more words it became a bond between them. They smoked quietly, at peace with themselves, with each other, with all the world.
A black figure grew out of the night and came over to them, with the faint glow of a cigarette stabbing a hole in the darkness.
"Apparatus all right?" Deane asked. "Get any views this afternoon?"
"Yes," Holloway answered. "I've been prowling. This place is great. Awfully lonesome sort of feeling it gives a fellow, though, to look into the holes we've dug and think what the old chaps would say if they could see us." Deane and Merritt, unseen, grinned in sympathy. "That brute of a boy got all my films sunstruck—four dozen rolls. I didn't expect to use them much, but I hate to have 'em go, on principle. I believe I'll turn in. Good-night, everybody."
"'Night!" they chorused solemnly.
Holloway disappeared. Soon Deane followed him, and Merritt was left sitting alone in the night, with his hard, weather-worn face and his dream-woven fancies.