"Where's Fatimah's son, Hafiz?"
"With his regiment at Abbassiah."
"Take him with you--take two other Moslem witnesses as well."
"I'm to bring this new prophet back to Cairo?"
"That's it--bring him here--we'll do all the rest."
"What if there should be trouble with the people?"
"There's a battalion of British soldiers in Alexandria. Keep a force in
readiness--under arms night and day."
"But if it should spread beyond Alexandria?"
"So much the better for you. I mean," said the Consul-General,
hesitating for the first time, "we don't want bloodshed, but if it must
come to that, it must, and the eyes of England will be on you. What
more can a young man want? Think of yourself"--he put his hand on his
son's shoulder again--"think of yourself as on the eve of crushing
England's enemies and rendering a signal service to Gordon Lord as well.
And now go--go up to your General and get his formal consent. My love
to Helena! Fine girl, very! She's the sort of woman who might ... yes,
women are the springs that move everything in this world. Bid good-bye
to your mother and get away. Lose no time. Write to me as soon as you
have anything to say. That's enough for the present. I'm busy. Good
day!"
Almost before Gordon had left the library the Consul-General was back at
his desk--the stern, saturnine man once more, with a face that seemed to
express a mind inaccessible to human emotions of any sort.
"As bright as light--sees things before one says them," he said to
himself, as Gordon closed the door on going out. "Why have I wasted
myself with weaklings so long?"
Gordon kissed his pale-faced mother in the drawing-room and his swarthy
foster-mother in the porch, and went back to his quarters in barracks--a
rather bare room with bed, desk, and bookcase, many riding boots on a
shelf, several weapons of savage warfare on the walls, a dervish's suit
of chain armour with a bullet-hole where the heart of the man had been,
a picture of Eton, his old school, and above all, as became the home of
a soldier, many photographs of his womankind--his mother with her
plaintive smile, Fatimah with her humorous look, and of course Helena,
with her glorious eyes--Helena, Helena, everywhere Helena.
There, taking down the receiver of a telephone, he called up the
headquarters of the Egyptian army and spoke to Hafiz, his
foster-brother, now a captain in the native cavalry.
"Is that you, Hafiz? ... Well, look here, I want to know if you can
arrange to go with me to Alexandria for a day or two ... You can? Good!
I wish you to help me to deal with that new preacher, prophet, Mahdi,
what's his name now? ... That's it, Ishmael Ameer. He has been setting
Moslem against Christian, and we've got to lay the gentleman by the
heels before he gets the poor, credulous people into further trouble....
What do you say? ... Not that kind of man, you think? ... No? ... You
surprise me.... Do you really mean to say ... Certainly, that's only
fair ... Yes, I ought to know all about him.... Your uncle? ...
Chancellor of the University? ... I know, El Azhar.... When could I see
him? ... What day do we go to Alexandria? To-morrow if possible....
To-night the only convenient time, you think? Well, I promised to dine
at the Citadel, but I suppose I must write to Helena.... Oh, needs must
when the devil drives, old fellow.... To-night, then? ... You'll come
down for me immediately? Good! By-bye!"
With that he rang off and sat down to write a letter.
*CHAPTER VI*
Gordon Lord loved the Egyptians. Nursed on the knee of an Egyptian
woman, speaking Arabic as his mother tongue, lisping the songs of Arabia
before he knew a word of English, Egypt was under his very skin, and the
spirit of the Nile and of the desert was in his blood.
Only once a day in his childhood was there a break in his Arab life.
That was in the evening about sunset, when Fatimah took him into his
father's library, and the great man with the stern face, who assumed
towards him a singularly cold manner, put him through a catechism which
was always the same: "Tutor been here to-day, boy?" "Yes, sir." "Done
your lessons?" "Yes, sir." "English--French--everything?" "Yes, sir."
"Say good-night to your mother and go to bed."
Then for a few moments more he was taken into his mother's boudoir, the
cool room with the blinds down to keep out the sun, where the lady with
the beautiful pale face embraced and kissed him, and made him kneel by
her side while they said the Lord's Prayer together in a rustling
whisper like a breeze in the garden. But, after that, off to bed with
Hafiz--who in his Arab caftan and fez had been looking furtively in at
the half-open door--up two steps at a time, shouting and singing in
Arabic, while Fatimah, in fear of the Consul-General, cried, "Hush! Be
good, now, my sweet eyes!"
In his boyhood, too, he had been half a Mohammedan, going every
afternoon to fetch Hafiz home from the kuttab, the school of the mosque,
and romping round the sacred place like a little king in stockinged
feet, until the Sheikh in charge, who pretended as long as possible not
to see him, came with a long cane to whip him out, always saying he
should never come there again--until to-morrow.
While at school in England he had felt like a foreigner, wearing his
silk hat on the back of his head as if it had been a tarboosh; and while
at Sandhurst, where he got through his three years more easily in spite
of a certain restiveness under discipline, he had always looked forward
to his Christmas visits home--that is to say, to Cairo.
But at last he came back to Egypt on a great errand, with the expedition
that was intended to revenge the death of his heroic namesake, having
got his commission by that time, and being asked for by his father's old
friend, Reginald Mannering, who was a Colonel in the Egyptian army. His
joy was wild, his excitement delirious, and even the desert marches
under the blazing sun and the sky of brass, killing to some of his
British comrades, was a long delight to the Arab soul in him.
The first fighting he did, too, was done with an Egyptian by his side.
His great chum was a young Lieutenant named Ali Awad, the son of a
Pasha, a bright, intelligent, affectionate young fellow who was
intensely sensitive to the contempt of British officers for the quality
of the courage of their Egyptian colleagues. During the hurly-burly of
the battle of Omdurman both Gordon and Ali had been eager to get at the
enemy, but their Colonel had held them back, saying, "What will your
fathers say to me if I allow you to go into a hell like that?" When the
dervish lines had been utterly broken, though, and one coffee-coloured
demon in chain armour was stealing off with his black banner, the
Colonel said, "Now's your time, boys; show what stuff you are made of;
bring me back that flag," and before the words were out of his mouth the
young soldiers were gone.
Other things happened immediately and the Colonel had forgotten his
order, when, the battle being over and the British and Egyptian army
about to enter the dirty and disgusting city of the Khalifa, he became
aware that Gordon Lord was riding beside him with a black banner in one
hand and some broken pieces of horse's reins in the other.
"Bravo! You've got it, then," said the Colonel.
"Yes, sir," said Gordon, very sadly; and the Colonel saw that there were
tears in the boy's eyes.
"What's amiss?" he said, and looking round, "Where's Ali?"
Then Gordon told him what had happened. They had captured the dervish
and compelled him to give up his spear and rifle, but just as Ali was
leading the man into the English lines, the demon had drawn a knife and
treacherously stabbed him in the back. The boy choked with sobs while
he delivered his comrade's last message: "Say good-bye to the Colonel,
and tell him Ali Awad was not a coward. I didn't let go the Baggara's
horse until he stuck me, and then he had to cut the reins to get away.
Show the bits of the bridle to my Colonel, and tell him I died faithful.
Give my salaams to him, Charlie. I knew Charlie Gordon Lord would stay
with me to the end."
The Colonel was quite broken down, but he only said, "This is no time
for crying, my boy," and a moment afterwards, "What became of the
dervish?" Then, for the first time, the fighting devil flashed out of
Gordon's eyes and he answered--
"I killed him like a dog, sir."
It was the black flag of the Khalifa himself which Gordon had taken, and
when the Commander-in-Chief sent home his despatch he mentioned the name
of the young soldier who had captured it.
From that day onward for fifteen years honours fell thick on Gordon
Lord. Being continually on active service, and generally in staff
appointments, promotions came quickly, so that when he went to South
Africa, the graveyard of so many military reputations, in those first
dark days of the nation's deep humiliation when the very foundations of
her army's renown seemed to be giving way, he was one of the young
officers whose gallantry won back England's fame. Though hot-tempered,
impetuous, and liable to frightful errors, he had the imagination of a
soldier as well as the bravery that goes to the heart of a nation, so
that when in due course, being now full Colonel, he was appointed,
though so young, Second in Command of the Army of Occupation in Cairo,
no one was surprised.
All the same he knew he owed his appointment to his father's influence,
and he wrote to thank him and to say he was delighted to return to
Cairo. Only at intervals had he heard from the Consul-General, and
though his admiration of his father knew no limit and he thought him the
greatest man in the world, he always felt there was a mist between them.
Once, for a moment, had that mist seemed to be dispelled when, on his
coming of age, his father wrote a letter in which he said--
"You are twenty-one years of age, Gordon, and your mother and I have
been recalling the incidents of the day on which you were born. I want
to tell you that from this day forward I am no longer your father; I am
your friend; perhaps the best friend you will ever have; let nothing and
no one come between us."
Gordon's joy on returning to Egypt was not greater than that of the
Egyptians on receiving him. They were waiting in a crowd when he
arrived at the railway station, a red sea of tarbooshes over faces he
remembered as the faces of boys, with the face of Hafiz, now a soldier
like himself, beaming by his carriage window.
It was not good form for a British officer to fraternise with the
Egyptians, but Gordon shook hands with everybody and walked down the
platform with his arm round Hafiz's shoulders, while the others who had
come to meet him cried, "Salaam, brother!" and laughed like children.
By his own choice, and contrary to custom, quarters had been found for
him in the barracks on the bank of the Nile, and the old familiar scene
from there made his heart leap and tremble. It was evening when at last
he was left alone, and throwing the window wide open he looked out on
the river flowing like liquid gold in the sunset, with its silent boats,
that looked like birds with outstretched wings, floating down without a
ripple, and the violet blossom of the island on the other side spreading
odours in the warm spring air.
He was watching the traffic on the bridge--the camels, the cameleers,
the donkeys, the blue-shirted fellaheen, the women with tattooed chins
and children astraddle on their shoulders, the water-carriers with their
bodies twisted by their burdens, the Bedouins with their lean, lithe,
swarthy forms and the rope round the head-shawls which descended to
their shoulders--when he heard the toot of a motor-horn, and saw a white
automobile threading its way through the crowd. The driver was a girl,
and a veil of white chiffon which she had bound about her head instead
of a hat was flying back in the light breeze, leaving her face framed
within, with its big black eyes and firm but lovely mouth.
An officer in general's uniform was sitting at the back of the car, but
Gordon was conscious of the man's presence without actually seeing him,
so much was he struck by the spirit of the girl, which suggested a proud
strength and self-reliance, coupled with a certain high gaiety, full of
energy and grace.
Gordon leaned out of his window to get a better look at her, and, quick
as the glance was, he thought she looked up at him as the motor glided
by. At the next instant she had gone, and it seemed to him that in one
second, at one stride, the sun had gone too.
That night he dined at the British Agency, but he did not stay late,
thinking his father, who looked much older, seemed preoccupied, and his
mother, who appeared to be more delicate than ever, was over-exciting
herself; but early next morning he rode up to the Citadel to pay his
respects to his General in Command, and there a surprise awaited him.
General Graves was ill and unable to see him, but his daughter came to
offer his apologies--and she was the driver of the automobile.
The impression of strength and energy which the girl bad made on him the
evening before was deepened by this nearer view. She was fairly tall,
and as she swung into the room her graceful round form seemed to be
poised from the hips. This particularly struck him, and he told himself
at that first moment that here was a girl who might be a soldier, with
the passionate daring and chivalry of women like Joan of Arc and the
Rani of Jhansi.
At the next moment he had forgotten all about that, and under the
caressing smile which broke from her face and fascinated him, he was
feeling as if for the first time in his life he was alone with a young
and beautiful woman. They talked a long time, and he was startled by an
unexpected depth in her voice, while his own voice seemed to him to have
suddenly disappeared.
"You like the Egyptians--yes?" she asked.
"I love them," said Gordon. "And coming back here is like coming home.
In fact, it _is_ coming home. I've never been at home in England, and I
love the desert, I love the Nile, I love everything and everybody."
She laughed--a fresh, ringing laugh that was one of her great
charms--and told him about herself and her female friends; the
Khediviah, who was so sweet, and the Princess Nazimah, who was so
amusing, and finally about the Sheikh who for two years had been
teaching her Arabic.
"I should have known you by your resemblance to your mother," she said,
"but you are like your father, too; and then I saw you
yesterday--passing the barracks, you remember."
"So you really did ... I thought our eyes----"
His ridiculous voice was getting out of all control, so he cleared his
throat and got up to go, but the half smile that parted her lips and
brightened her beautiful eyes seemed to say as plainly as words could
speak, "Why leave so soon?"
He lingered as long as he dared, and when he took up his cap and
riding-whip she threw the same chiffon veil over her head and walked
with him through the garden to the gate. There they parted, and when, a
little ashamed of himself, he held her soft white hand somewhat too long
and pressed it slightly, he thought an answering pressure came back from
her.
In three weeks they were engaged.
The General trembled when he heard what had happened, protested he was
losing the only one he had in the world, asked what was to become of him
when Helena had to go away with her husband, as a soldier's wife should,
but finally concluded to go on half-pay and follow her, and then said to
Gordon, "Speak to your father. If he is satisfied, so am I."
The Consul-General listened passively, standing with his back to the
fireplace, and after a moment of silence he said--
"I've never believed in a man marrying for rank or wealth. If he has
any real stuff in him he can do better than that. I didn't do it myself
and I don't expect my son to do it. As for the girl, if she can do as
well for her husband as she has done for her father, she'll be worth
more to you than any title or any fortune. But see what your mother
says. I'm busy. Good-day!"
His mother said very little; she cried all the time he was telling her,
but at last she told him there was not anybody else in the world she
would give him up to except Helena, because Helena was gold--pure, pure
gold.