"Naturally. He cheated twice."
"Cheated twice--at cards!" Dicky's voice was hard now. "Who was he?"
"Heatherby--Bob Heatherby!"
"Bob Heatherby--gad! Fielding, I'm sorry--I couldn't have guessed, old
man. Mrs. Henshaw's brother!"
Fielding nodded. Dicky turned his head away; for Fielding was in love
with Mrs. Henshaw, the widow of Henshaw of the Buffs. He realised now
why Fielding loathed Hasha so.
"Forgive me for asking him to mess, guv'nor."
Fielding laughed a little uneasily. "Never mind. You see, it isn't the
old scores only that bar him. He's been a sweep out here. Nothing he
hasn't done. Gone lower and lower and lower. Tax-gatherer with a
kourbash for old Selamlik the beast. Panderer for the same. Sweep of
the lowest sort!"
Dicky's eyes flashed. "I say, Fielding, it would be rather strange if he
hadn't gone down, down, down. A man that's cheated at cards never finds
anybody to help him up, up, up. The chances are dead against him. But
he stood up well to-day, eh?"
"I suppose blood will tell at last in the very worst."
"'And while the lamp holds out to burn
The vilest sinner may return--'"
hummed Dicky musingly. Then he added slowly: "Fielding, fellows of that
kind always flare up a bit according to Cavendish, just before the end.
I've seen it once or twice before. It's the last clutch at the grass as
they go slip--slip--slipping down. Take my word for it, Heatherby's near
the finish."
"I shouldn't wonder. Selamlik, the old leper, 'll lay in wait for him.
He'll get lost in the sugar-cane one of these evenings soon."
"Couldn't we . . ." Dicky paused.
Fielding started, looked at Dicky intently, and then shook his head
sadly. "It's no good, Dicky. It never is."
"'While the lamp holds out to burn . . .'" said Dicky, and lighted
another cigarette.
Precisely at seven o'clock Heatherby appeared. He had on a dress-suit,
brown and rusty, a white tie made of a handkerchief torn in two, and a
pair of patent leather shoes, scraggy and cracked.
Fielding behaved well, Dicky was amiable and attentive, and the dinner
being ready to the instant, there was no waiting, there were no awkward
pauses. No names of English people were mentioned, England was not
named; nor Cairo, nor anything that English people abroad love to
discuss. The fellah, the pasha, the Soudan were the only topics. Under
Fielding's courtesy and Dicky's acute suggestions, Heatherby's weakened
brain awaked, and he talked intelligently, till the moment coffee was
brought in. Then, as Mahommed Seti retired, Heatherby suddenly threw
himself forward, his arms on the table, and burst into sobs.
"Oh, you fellows, you fellows!" he said. There was silence for a
minute, then he sobbed out again: "It's the first time I've been treated
like a gentleman by men that knew me, these fifteen years. It--it gets
me in the throat!"
His body shook with sobs. Fielding and Dicky were uncomfortable, for
these were not the sobs of a driveller or a drunkard. Behind them was
the blank failure of a life--fifteen years of miserable torture, of
degradation, of a daily descent lower into the pit, of the servitude of
shame. When at last he raised his streaming eyes, Fielding and Dicky
could see the haunting terror of the soul, at whose elbow, as it were,
every man cried: "You are without the pale!" That look told them how
Heatherby of the Buffs had gone from table d'hote to table d'hote of
Europe, from town to town, from village to village, to make acquaintances
who repulsed him when they discovered who he really was.
Shady Heatherby, who cheated at cards!
Once Fielding made as if to put a hand on his shoulder and speak to him,
but Dicky intervened with a look. The two drank their coffee, Fielding
a little uneasily; but yet in his face there was a new look: of inquiry,
of kindness, even of hope.
Presently Dicky flashed a look and nodded towards the door, and Fielding
dropped his cigar and went on deck, and called down to Holgate the
engineer:
"Get up steam, and make for Luxor. It's moonlight, and we're safe enough
in this high Nile, eh, Holgate?"
"Safe enough, or aw'm a Dootchman," said Holgate. Then they talked in a
low voice together. Down in the saloon, Dicky sat watching Heatherby.
At last the Lost One raised his head again.
"It's worth more to me, this night, than you fellows know," he said
brokenly.
"That's all right," said Dicky. "Have a cigar?"
He shook his head. "It's come at the right time. I wanted to be treated
like an Englishman once more--just once more."
"Don't worry. Take in a reef and go steady for a bit. The milk's spilt,
but there are other meadows. . . ." Dicky waved an arm up the river,
up towards the Soudan!
The Lost One nodded, then his eyes blazed up and took on a hungry look.
His voice suddenly came in a whisper.
"Gordon was a white man. Gordon said to me three years ago: 'Come with
me, I'll help you on. You don't need to live, if you don't want to.
Most of us will get knocked out up there in the Soudan.' Gordon said
that to me. But there was another fellow with Gordon who knew me,
and I couldn't face it. So I stayed behind here. I've been everything,
anything, to that swine, Selamlik Pasha; but when he told me yesterday to
bring him the daughter of the Arab he killed with his kourbash, I jibbed.
I couldn't stand that. Her father had fed me more than once. I jibbed
--by God, I jibbed! I said I was an Englishman, and I'd see him damned
first. I said it, and I shot the horse, and I'd have shot him--what's
that?"
There was a churning below. The Amenhotep was moving from the bank.
"She's going--the boat's going," said the Lost One, trembling to his
feet.
"Sit down," said Dicky, and gripped him by the arm. "Where are you
taking me?" asked Heatherby, a strange, excited look in his face.
"Up the river."
He seemed to read Dicky's thoughts--the clairvoyance of an overwrought
mind: "To--to Assouan?" The voice had a curious far-away sound.
"You shall go beyond Assouan," said Dicky. "To--to Gordon?" Heatherby's
voice was husky and indistinct.
"Yes, here's Fielding; he'll give you the tip. Sit down." Dicky gently
forced him down into a chair. Six months later, a letter came to Dicky
from an Egyptian officer, saying that Heatherby of the Buffs had died
gallantly fighting in a sortie sent by Gordon into the desert.
"He had a lot of luck," mused Dicky as he read. "They don't end that way
as a rule."
Then he went to Fielding, humming a certain stave from one of Watts's
hymns.