"Be comforted, my son--death is a black camel that kneels at the gate of
all."
There were no women to wail outside the house that night, and next day,
when Adila had to be buried, it was neither in the Mohammedan cemetery
with those who had "received direction," nor in the Christian one with
English soldiers who had fallen in fight, that the slave-wife of a
prisoner could be laid, but out in the open desert, where there was
nothing save the sand and the sky.
They laid her with her face to Jerusalem, wrapped in a cocoa-nut mat,
and put a few thorns over her to keep off the eagles, and when this was
done they would have left her, saying she would sleep cool in her soft
bed, for a warm wind was blowing and the sun was beginning to set; but
Ishmael would not go.
In his sorrow and misery, his doubt and darkness, he was asking himself
whether, if his poor Coptic wife was doomed to hell as an unbeliever, he
could ever be happy in heaven. The moon had risen when at length they
drew him away, and even then in the stillness of the lonely desert he
looked back again and again at the dark patch on the white waste of the
wilderness in which he was leaving her behind him.
Next morning he took the child from the midwife's arms and, carrying it
across to his uncle, he asked him to take care of it and bring it up,
for he was leaving Khartoum and did not know how long he might be away.
Where was he going to? He could not say. Had he any money? None, but
God would provide for him.
"Better stay in the Soudan and marry another woman, a believer," said
his uncle; and then Ishmael answered in a quivering voice--
"No, no, by Allah! One wife I had, and if she was a Christian and was
once a slave, I loved her, and never--never--shall another woman take
her place."
He was ten years away, and only at long intervals did anybody hear of
him, and it was sometimes from Mecca, sometimes from Jerusalem,
sometimes from Rome and finally from the depths of the Libyan desert.
Then he reappeared at Alexandria, and entering a little mosque he
exercised his right as Alim and went up into the pulpit to preach.
His teaching was like fire, and men were like fuel before it. Day by
day the crowds increased that came to hear him, until Alexandria seemed
to be aflame, and he had to remove to the large mosque of Abou Abbas in
the square of the same name.
Such was the man whom Gordon Lord was sent to arrest.
*CHAPTER XV*
"HEADQUARTERS, CARACOL ATTARIN,
"ALEXANDRIA.
"MY DEAREST HELENA,--I have seen my man and it is all a mistake! I can
have no hesitation in saying so--a mistake! _Wallahi_! Ishmael Ameer
is not the cause of the riots which are taking place here--never has
been, never can be. And if his preaching should ever lead by any
indirect means to sporadic outbursts of fanaticism the fault will be
ours--ours, and nobody else's.
"Colonel Jenkinson and the Commandant of Police met me on my arrival.
It seems my coming had somehow got wind, but the only effect of the
rumour had been to increase the panic, for even the conservative
elements among the Europeans had made a run on the gunsmiths' shops for
firearms and--could you believe it?--on the chemists' for prussic acid
to be used by their women in case of the worst.
"Next morning I saw my man for the first time. It was outside Abou
Abbas on the toe of the East port, where the native population, with
quiet Eastern greeting, of hands to the lips and forehead, were
following him from his lodging to the mosque.
"My dear girl, he is not a bit like the man you imagined. Young--as
young as I am, at all events--tall, very tall (his head showing above
others in a crowd) with clean-cut face, brown complexion, skin soft and
clear, hands like a woman's, and large, beaming black eyes as frank as a
child's. His dress is purely Oriental, being white throughout save for
the red slippers under the caftan and the tip of the tarboosh above the
turban. No mealy-mouthed person, though, but a spontaneous, passionate
man, careless alike of the frowns of men and the smiles of women, a real
type of the Arab out of the desert, uncorrupted by the cities, a man of
peace perhaps, but full of deadly fire and dauntless energy.
"My dear Helena, I liked my first sight of Ishmael Ameer, and thinking I
saw in him some of the barbarous virtues we have civilised away, some of
the fine old stuff of the Arab nobleman who would light his beacon to
guide you to his tent even if you were his worst enemy, I could not help
but say to myself, 'By --, here's a man I want to fight!'
"As soon as he had gone into the mosque I sent Hafiz and the two
Egyptians after him by different doors with strict injunctions against
collusion of any kind, and then went off to the police headquarters in
the Governorat to await their report. Hafiz himself was the first to
come to me, and he brought a circumstantial story. Not a word of
sedition, not a syllable about the Christians, good, bad, or
indifferent! Did the man flatter the Moslems? Exactly the reverse!
Never had Hafiz heard such a rating of a congregation even from a
Mohammedan preacher.
"The sermon had been on the degradation of woman in the East, which the
preacher had denounced as a disgrace to their humanity. Christians
believed it to be due to their faith, but what had degraded woman in
Mohammedan countries was not the Mohammedan religion but the people's
own degradation.
"'I dreamt last night,' he said, 'that in punishment of your offences
against woman God lifted the passion of love out of the heart of man.
What a chaos! A cockpit of selfishness and sin! Woman is meant to
sweeten life, to bind its parts together--will you continue to degrade
her? Fools! are you wiser than God, trying to undo what He has done?'
"Such was Ishmael's sermon as Hafiz reported it, and when the Egyptians
came their account was essentially the same, but just at the moment when
I was asking myself what there could be in teaching like this to set
Moslem against Christian, tinkle-tinkle went the bell of the telephone,
and the Commandant of Police, who had been listening with a supercilious
smile, seemed to take a certain joy in telling me that his inspector in
the quarter of Abou Abbas was calling for reinforcements because a fresh
disturbance had broken out there.
"In three minutes I was on the spot, and the first thing I saw was the
white figure of Ishmael Ameer lashing his way through a turbulent crowd,
whereupon the Commandant, who was riding by my side, said, 'See that!
Are you satisfied now, sir?' to which I answered, 'Don't be a fool,'
with a stronger word to drive it home, and then made for the middle of
the throng.
"It was all over before I got there, for Christians and Moslems alike
were flying before Ishmael's face, and without waiting for a word of
thanks he was gone too, and in another moment the square was clear, save
for a dozen men, native and European, whom the police had put under
arrest.
"With these rascals I returned to the Governorat and investigated the
riot, which turned out to be a very petty affair, originating in an
effort on the part of a couple of low-class Greeks to attend to the
scriptural injunction to spoil the Egyptians by robbing a shop (covered
only by a net) while its native owner was in the mosque.
"Next morning came a letter from Ishmael Ameer beginning, 'In the name
of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful,' but otherwise written without
preamble or circumlocution, saying he was aware that certain incidents
in connection with his services had assumed an anti-Christian aspect,
and begging to be permitted in the interests of peace, and in order to
give a feeling of security to Europeans, to preach openly at noon the
next day in the Square of Mohammed Ali.
"I need not tell you, my dear Helena, that everybody at the Governorat
thought the letter a piece of appalling effrontery, and of course the
Commandant, who is one of the good Christians with a rooted contempt for
anything in a turban (forgetting that Jesus Christ probably wore one)
made himself big with phrases out of Blue Books about the only way to
suppress disorder being to refuse to let sedition show its head. But I
have never been afraid of a mob, and thinking the situation justified
the experiment I advised the Governor to let the man come.
"One thing I did, though, my dear Helena, and that was to dictate a
pretty stiff reply saying I should be present myself with a battalion of
soldiers, and if instead of pacifying the people he aggravated their
hostility, I should make it my personal business to see that he would be
the first to suffer.
"That night all the world and his wife declared that I was fishing in
troubled waters, and I hear that some brave souls fled panic-stricken by
the last train to Cairo, where they are now, I presume, preferring their
petitions at the Agency, but next morning (that is to say, this morning)
the air was calmer, and the great square, when I reached it, was as
quiet as an inland sea.
"It was a wonderful sight, however, with the First Suffolk lining the
east walls and the Second Berkshire lining the west, and the overflowing
Egyptian and European populace between, standing together yet apart,
like the hosts of Pharaoh and of Israel with the Red Sea dividing them.
"I rode up with Jenkinson a little before twelve, and I think the people
saw that though we had permitted this unusual experiment in the
interests of peace we meant business. A space had been kept clear for
Ishmael at the foot of the statue of the great Khedive, and hardly had
the last notes of the midday call to prayers died away when our man
arrived. He was afoot, quite unattended, walking with an active step
and that assured nobility of bearing which belongs to the Arab blood
alone. He bowed to me, with a simple dignity that had not a particle
either of fear or defiance, and again, Heaven knows why, I said to
myself, 'By --, I want to fight that man!'
"Then he stepped on to the angerib that had been placed for him as a
platform and began to speak. His first words were a surprise, being in
English and faultlessly spoken.
"'The earth and the sky are full of trouble--God has afflicted us,
praise to His name,' he began, and then, pointing to the warships that
were just visible in the bay, he cried--
"'Men who are watching the heavens and who speak with authority tell us
that great conflicts are coming among the nations of the world. Why is
it so? What is dividing us? Is it race? We are the sons of one
Father. Is it faith? It is the work of religion not only to set men
free but to bind them together. Our Prophet says, 'Thou shalt love thy
brother as thyself, and never act towards him but as thou wouldst that
he should act towards thee.' The Gospel of Jesus Christ and the law of
Moses say the same. The true Christian is the true Moslem--the true
Moslem is the true Jew. All that is right in religion is included in one
commandment--Love one another! Then why warfare between brethren so
near akin?'
"His voice, my dear Helena, was such as I had never in my life heard
before. It throbbed with the throb that is peculiar to the voice of the
Arab singer, and seems to go through you like an electric current. His
sermon, too, which was sometimes in English, sometimes in Arabic, the
two languages so intermingled that the whole vast congregation of the
cosmopolitan seaport seemed to follow him at once, was not like
preaching at all, but vehement, enthusiastic, extempore prayer.
"I have sent a long account of it to the Consul-General, so I dare say
you will see what it contained. It was the only preaching I ever heard
that seemed to me to deserve the name of inspiration. Sedition! In one
passage alone did it seem so much as to skirt the problem of England in
Egypt, and then there was a spirit in the man's fiery words that was
above the finest patriotism. Speaking of the universal hope of all
religions, the hope of a time to come when the Almighty will make all
the faiths of the world one faith, and all the peoples of the world one
people, he said--
"'In visions of the night I see that promised day, and what is our Egypt
then? She, the oldest of the nations, who has seen so many centuries of
persecution and shame, trodden under the heel of hard task-masters, and
buried in the sands of her deserts, what is she? She is the
meeting-place of nations, the hand-clasp of two worlds, the interpreter
and the peace-maker between East and West. We can never be a great
nation--let us be a good one. Is it not enough? Look around! We stand
amid ruins half as old as the earth itself--is it not worth waiting
for?'
"Then in his last word, speaking first in Arabic, and afterwards in
English, he cried--
"'Oh, men of many races, be brothers one to another. God is Most Great!
God is Most Great! Take hands, O sons of one Father, believers in one
God! Pray to Him who changes all things but Himself changeth not! God
is Most Great! God is Most Great! Let Allahu-Akbar sound for ever
through your souls!'
"The effect was overwhelming. Even some of the low-class Greeks and
Italians were sobbing aloud, and our poor Egyptian children were like
people possessed. Hungry, out of work, many of them wearing a single
garment and that a ragged one, yet a new magnificence seemed to be given
to their lives. Something radiant and glorious seemed to glimmer in the
distance, making their present sufferings look small and mean.
"And I? I don't know, my dear Helena, how I can better tell you what I
felt than by telling you what I did. I was looking down from the saddle
at my First Suffolk and my Second Berkshire, standing in line with their
poor little rifles, when something gripped me by the throat and I signed
to the officers, shouted 'Back to your quarters!' and rode off, without
waiting to see what would happen, because I _knew_.
"I have written both to the General and to my father, telling them I
have not arrested Ishmael Ameer and don't intend to do so. If this is
quackery and spiritual legerdemain to cover sedition and conspiracy I
throw up the sponge and count myself among the fools. But Ishmael Ameer
is one of the flame-bearers of the world. Let who will put him down--I
will _not_.
"My dearest Helena, I've written all this about the new prophet and not
a word about yourself, though I've been feeling the quivering grip of
your hand in mine every moment of the time. The memory of that
delicious quarter of an hour in the garden has sweetened the sulphurous
air of Alexandria for me, and I'm in a fever to get back. _Smash the
Mahdi_, you said, thinking if I didn't obey my father and yours I should
offend both, and so lead to trouble between you and me. But the
Consul-General is a just man if he is a hard one, and I should not
deserve to be his son if I did not dare to warn him when he was going to
do wrong. Neither should I deserve to be loved by the bravest girl
alive if I hadn't the pluck to stand up for the right.
"Good-night, sweetheart! It's two in the morning, the town is as quiet
as a desert village, and I'm going to turn in. GORDON.
"_P.S._--Forgot to say Ishmael Ameer is to go up to Cairo shortly, so
you'll soon see him for yourself. But Heaven help me! what is to become
of Gordon Lord when you've once looked on this son of the wilderness?
"_P.P.S._--Not an arrest since yesterday!"
*CHAPTER XVI*
"GENERAL'S HOUSE,
"CITADEL, CAIRO.
"MY DEAR GORDON,--You're in for it! In that whispering gallery which
people call the East, where everything is known before it happens to
happen, rumours without end were coming to Cairo of what you were doing
in Alexandria, but nobody in authority believed the half of it until
your letters arrived at noon to-day, and now--heigho, for the wind and
the rain!
"My dear Dad is going about like an old Tom with his tail up, and as for
the Consul-General ... whew! (a whistle, your Excellency).
"Let me take things in their order, though, so that you may see what has
come to pass. I was reading your letter for the third (or was it the
thirtieth?) time this afternoon when who should come in but the Princess
Nazimah, so I couldn't resist an impulse to tell her what your son of
Hagar had to say on the position of Eastern women, thinking it would
gratify her and she would agree. But no, not a bit of it; off she went
on the other side, with talk straight out of the harem, showing that the
woman of the East isn't worthy of emancipation and shouldn't get
it--_yet_.
"It seems that if the men of the East are 'beasts' the women are
'creatures.' Love? They never heard of such a thing. Husband? The
word doesn't exist for them. Not '_my_ Master' even! Just 'Master'!
Living together like school-girls and loving each other like
sisters--think of that, my dear!
"And when I urged that we were all taught to love one another--all
Christians, at all events--she cried, 'What! and share one man between
four of you?' In short, the condition was only possible to cocks and
hens, and that Eastern women could put up with it showed they were
creatures--simple creatures, content and happy if their husbands (beg
pardon, their Masters) gave them equal presents of dresses and jewels
and Turkish delight. No, let the woman of the East keep a little longer
to her harem window, her closed carriage, and the wisp of mousseline de
soie she calls her veil, or she'll misuse her liberty. 'Oh, I know! I
say what I think! I don't care!'
"As for your Ishmael, the Princess wouldn't have him at any price. He's
just another Mahdi, and if he's championing the cause of women, the son
of a duck knows how to swim. His predecessor began by denouncing
slavery and ended by being the biggest slave-dealer in the Soudan.
Ergo, your Ishmael, who cares neither for 'the frowns of men nor the
smiles of women,' is going to finish up like Solomon or Samson either as
the tyrant of a hundred women or the victim of one of them whose heart
is snares and nets. 'Oh, I know! Every man is a Sultan to himself, and
the tail of a dog is never straight!'
"But as for you it seems you are 'a brother of girls,' which being
interpreted means you are a man to whom God has given a clean heart to
love all women as his sisters, and courage and strength to fight for
their protection. 'Didn't I tell you that you had the best of the
bunch, my child?' (She did, Serenity!) 'But though he is a soldier and
as brave as a lion he has too much of the woman in him.' In this
respect you resemble, it seems, one of the Princess's own husbands, but
having had a variety of them, both right- and left-handed, she found a
difficulty in fixing your prototype. 'My first husband was like that--or
no, it was my second--or perhaps it was one of the other ones.'
"But this being so, O virtuous one, it became my duty to get you back
from Alexandria as speedily as possible. 'Love like the sparrows comes
and goes! Oh, I know! I've seen it myself, my child!'
"'And listen, my moon! Don't allow your Gordon' (she calls you Gourdan)
'to go against his father. Nuneham is the greatest man in the world, but
let anybody cross him--_mon Dieu_! If you go out as the wind you meet
the whirlwind, and serve you right, too!'
"In complete agreement on this point, the Princess and I were parting in
much kindness when Father came dashing into my drawing-room like a gust
of the Khamseen, having just had a telephone message from the
Consul-General requiring him to go down to the Agency without delay.
Whereupon, with a word or two of apology to the Princess and a rumbling
subterranean growl of 'Don't know what the d-- that young man...' he
picked up your letter to himself and was gone in a moment.
"It is now 10 P.M. and he hasn't come back yet. Another telephone
message told me he wouldn't be home to dinner, so I dined alone, with
only Mosie Gobs for company, but he waits on me like my shadow, and
gives me good advice on all occasions.
"It seems his heart is still on fire with love for me, and having caught
him examining his face in my toilet-glass this morning I was amused, and
a little touched, when he asked me to-night if the Army Surgeon had any
medicine to make people white.
"Apparently his former love was a small black maiden who works in the
laundry, and he shares your view (as revealed in happier hours, your
Highness) that there's nothing in the world so nice as a little girl
except a big one. But I find he hasn't the best opinion of you, for
when I was trying to while away an hour after dinner by playing the
piano I overheard the monkey telling the cook that to see her hands
(_i.e._ mine) run over the teeth of the music-box amazes the
mind--therefore why should her husband (_id est_, you) spend so much
time in the coffee-shop?
"Since then I've been out in the arbour trying to live over again the
delicious quarter of an hour you speak of, but though the wing of night
is over the city and the air is as soft as somebody's kiss is (except
sometimes) it was a dreadful failure, for when I closed my eyes,
thinking hearts see each other, I could feel nothing but the sting of a
mosquito, and could only hear the watchman crying _Wahhed!_ and what
that was like you've only to open your mouth wide and then say it and
you'll know.
"So here I am at my desk talking against time until Father comes and
there's something to say. And if you would know how I am myself, I
would tell you, most glorious and respected, that I'm as tranquil as can
be expected considering what a fever you've put me in, for, falling on
my knees before your unsullied hands, O Serenity, it seems to me you're
a dunce after all, and have gone and done exactly what your great
namesake did before you, in spite of his tragic fate to warn you.
"The trouble in Gordon Major's case was that the Government gave him a
discretionary power and he used it, and it seems as if something similar
has happened to Gordon Minor, with the same results. I hope to goodness
they may send you a definite order as the consequence of their
colloguing to-night, and then you can have no choice and there will be
no further trouble.
"This is not to say that I think you are wrong in your view of this new
Mahdi, but merely that I don't want to know anything about him. His
protests against the spirit of the world may be good and beneficial, but
peace and quiet are better. His predictions about the millennium may be
right too, and if he likes to live on that dinner of herbs, let him.
Can't you leave such people to boil their own pot without your providing
them with sticks? I'm a woman, of course, and my Moslem sisters may be
suffering this, that, or the other injustice, but when it comes to
letting these things get in between your happiness and mine, what the
dickens and the deuce and the divil do I care--which is proof of what
Mosie says to the cook about the sweetness of my tongue.
"As for your 'Arab nobleman' taking me by storm, no thank you! I dare
say he has red finger-nails, and if one touched the tip of his nose it
would be as soft as Mosie's. I hate him anyway, and if you are ever
again tempted to fight him, take my advice and fall! But look here, Mr.
Charlie Gordon Lord! If you're so very keen for a fight come here and
fight _me_--I'm game for you!
"Soberly, my dear-dear, don't think I'm not proud of you that you are
the only man in all Egypt, aye, or the world, who dares stand up to your
father. When God made you he made you without fear--I know that. He
made you with a heart that would die rather than do a wrong--I know that
too. I don't believe you are taking advantage of your position as a
son, either, and when people blame your parents for bringing you up as
an Arab I know it all comes from deeper down than that. I suppose it is
the Plymouth rock in you, the soul and blood of the men of the
_Mayflower_. You cannot help it, and you would fight your own father
for what you believed to be the right.
"But, oh dear, that's just what makes me tremble. Your father and you on
opposite sides is a thing too terrible to think about. English
gentlemen? Yes, I'm not saying anything to the contrary, but British
bulldogs too, and as if that were not enough _you've_ got the American
eagle in you as well. You'll destroy each other--that will be the end
of it. And if you ask me what reason I have for saying so, I
answer--simply a woman's, I _know_! I _know_!
* * * * *
"Father just back--dreadfully excited and exhausted--had to get him off
to bed. Something fresh brewing--cannot tell what.
"I gather that your friend the Grand Cadi was at the Agency
to-night--but I'll hear more in the morning.
"It's very late, and the city seems to be tossing in its sleep--a kind
of somnambulant moan coming up from it. They say the Nile is beginning
to rise, and by the light of the moon (it has just risen) I can faintly
see a streak of red water down the middle of the river. Ugh! It's like
blood, and makes me shiver, so I must go to bed.
* * * * *
"Father much better this morning. But oh! oh! oh! ... It seems you are
to be telegraphed for to return immediately. Something you have to do
in Cairo--I don't know what. I'm glad you are to come back, though, for
I hate to think of you in the same city as that man Ishmael. Let me
hear from you the minute you arrive, for I may have something to say by
that time, and meantime I send this letter by hand to your quarters at
Kasr-el-Nil.
"That red streak in the Nile is plain enough this morning. I suppose
it's only the first water that comes pouring down from the clay soil of
Abyssinia, but I hate to look at it.
"Take care of yourself, Gordon, dear--I'm really a shocking coward, you
know. HELENA.
"_P.S._--Another dream last night! Same as before exactly--that man
coming between you and me."
*CHAPTER XVII*
Returning to Cairo by the first train the following morning, Gordon
received Helena's letter and replied to it--
"Just arrived in obedience to their telegram. But don't be afraid,
dearest. Nothing can happen that will injure either of us. My father
cannot have wished me to arrest an innocent man. Therefore set your
mind at ease and be happy. Going over to the Agency now, but hope to
see you in the course of the day. Greetings to the General and all my
love to his daughter.
"GORDON."
But in spite of the brave tone of this letter he was not without a
certain uneasiness as he rode across to his father's house. "I couldn't
have acted otherwise," he thought. And then, recalling Helena's hint of
something else which it was intended he should do, he told himself that
his father was being deceived and did not know what he was doing.
"First of all I must tell him the truth--at all costs, the truth," he
thought.
This firm resolution was a little shaken the moment he entered the
garden and the home atmosphere began to creep upon him. And when
Ibrahim, his father's Egyptian servant, told him that his mother, who
had been less well since he went away, was keeping her bed that morning,
the shadow of domestic trouble seemed to banish his stalwart purpose.
Bounding upstairs three steps at a time he called in a cheery voice at
his mother's door, but almost before the faint, half-frightened answer
came back to him, he was in the room, and the pale-faced old lady in her
nightdress was in his arms.
"I knew it was you," she said, and then, with her thin, moist hands
clasped about his neck and her head against his breast she began in a
plaintive, hesitating voice, as if she were afraid of her own son, to
warn and reprove him.
"I don't understand what is happening, dear, but you must never let
anybody poison your mind against your father. He may be a little hard
sometimes--I'm not denying that; but then he is not to be judged like
other men--he is really not, you know. He would cut off his right hand
if he thought it had done him a wrong, but he is very tender to those he
loves, and he loves you, dear, and wants to do so much for you. It was
pitiful to hear him last night, Gordon. 'I feel as if my enemy has
stolen my own son,' he said. 'My own son, my own son,' he kept saying,
until I could have cried, and I couldn't sleep for thinking of it. You
won't let anybody poison your mind against your father--promise me you
won't, dear."
Gordon comforted and kissed her, and rallied her and laughed, but he
felt for a moment as if he had come back as a traitor to destroy the
happiness of home.
Fatimah followed him out of the room, and winking to keep back her
tears, she whispered some disconnected story of what had happened on the
day on which his father received his letter.
"Oh, my eye, my soul, it was sad! We could hear his footsteps in his
bedroom all night long. Sometimes he was speaking to himself. 'The
scoundrels!' 'They don't know what shame is!' 'Haven't I had enough?
And now he too! My son, my son!'"
Gordon went downstairs with a slow and heavy step. He felt as if
everything were conspiring to make him abandon his purpose. "Why can't
I leave things alone?" he thought. But just as he reached the hall the
Egyptian Prime Minister, who was going out of the house, passed in front
of him without seeing him, and a certain sinister look in the man's
sallow face wiped out in an instant all the softening effect of the
scenes upstairs. "Take care!" he thought. "Tell him the truth whatever
happens."
When he entered the library he expected his father to fly out at him,
but the old man was very quiet.
"Sit down--I shall be ready in a moment," he said, and he continued to
write without raising his eyes.
Gordon saw that his father's face was more than usually furrowed and
severe, and a voice seemed to say to him, "Don't be afraid!" So he
walked over to the window and tried to look at the glistening waters of
the Nile and the red wedges of Pyramids across the river.
"Well, I received your letter," said the old man after a moment. "But
what was the nonsensical reason you gave me for not doing your duty?"
It was the brusque tone he had always taken with his secretaries when
they were in the wrong, but it was a blunder to adopt it with Gordon,
who flushed up to the forehead, wheeled round from the window, walked up
to the desk, and said, beginning a little hesitatingly but gathering
strength as he went on--
"My reason, Father ... for not doing my ... what I was sent to do ...
was merely that I found I could not do it without being either a rascal
or a fool."
The old man flinched and his glasses fell. "Explain yourself," he said.
"I came to the conclusion, sir, that you were mistaken in this matter."
"Really!"
"Possibly misinformed----"
"Indeed!"
"By British officials who don't know what they are talking about or by
native scoundrels who do."
Not for forty years had anybody in Egypt spoken to the Consul-General
like that, but he only said--
"Don't stand there like a parson in a pulpit. Sit down and tell me all
about it," whereupon Gordon took a seat by the desk.
"The only riot I witnessed in Alexandria, sir, was due simply to the bad
feeling which always exists between the lowest elements of the European
and Egyptian inhabitants. Ishmael Ameer had nothing to do with it. On
the contrary he helped to put it down."
"You heard what he had said in the mosques?"
"I had one of his sermons reported to me, sir, and it was teaching such
as would have had your own sympathy, being in line with what you have
always said yourself about the corruptions of Islam, and the necessity
of uplifting the Egyptian woman as a means of raising the Egyptian man."
"So you decided, it seems----"
"I decided, Father, that to arrest Ishmael Ameer as one who was
promulgating sedition, and inciting the people to rebellion, would be an
act of injustice which you could not wish me to perpetrate in your
name."
The Consul-General put up his glasses, looked for a letter which lay on
the desk, glanced at it, and said--
"I see you say that before you arrived in Alexandria it was known that
you were to come."
"That is so, sir."
"And that after the riot you counselled the Governor to consent to the
man's request that he should preach in public."
"I did, sir--I thought it would be a good experiment to try the effect
of a little moral influence."
"Of course the experiment was justified?"
"Perfectly justified--the people dispersed quietly, and there has not
been a single arrest since."
"But you had a battalion of soldiers on the spot?"
"I had--it was only right to be ready for emergencies."
The old man laughed bitterly. "I'm surprised at you. Don't you see how
you've been hoodwinked? The man was warned of your coming--warned from
Cairo, from El Azhar, which I find you were so foolish as to visit
before you left for Alexandria. Everything was prepared for you. A
trick, an Eastern trick, and you were so simple as to be taken in. I'm
ashamed of you--ashamed of you before my servants, my secretaries."