"Are you asleep?"
But her lady, who was wide awake, whispered, "Hush! do you hear Rover?
Isn't that somebody on the path?"
Fatimah listened as well as she could through the drums of sleep that
were beating in her ears, and then she answered--
"No, I hear nothing."
"I thought it was Gordon's footstep," said the old lady, raising herself
in bed to take the medicine that Fatimah was holding out to her.
"It's strange! Gordon's step is exactly like his grandfather's."
"Don't spill it, my lady," said Fatimah, and with a trembling hand the
old lady drank off her dose.
"He's like his grandfather in other things, too. I remember when I was
a girl there was a story of how he struck one of his soldiers in the
Civil War, thinking the man was guilty of some offence. But afterwards
he found the poor fellow was innocent, and had taken the blow for his
brother without saying a word. Father never forgave himself for
that--never!"
"Shall I put on the eider-down? The nights are cold if the days are
hot, you know."
"Yes--no--just as you think best, nurse.... I'm sure Gordon will do
what is right, whatever happens. I'm sorry for his father, though. Did
you hear what he said when he came to bid me good-night?--'They think
they've caught me now that they've caught my son, but let them
wait--we'll see.'"
"Hush!" said Fatimah, and she pointed to the wall of the adjoining room.
From the other side of it came the faint sound of measured footsteps.
"He's walking again--can't sleep, I suppose," said Fatimah in a drowsy
whisper.
"Ah, well!" said the old lady, after listening for a moment. And then
Fatimah put out the light and went back to her bed.
"God bless my boy!" said a tremulous voice in the darkness.
After that there was a sigh, and then silence--save for the hollow thud
of footsteps in the adjoining room.
*CHAPTER XXII*
Before Gordon was out of bed next morning Hafiz rang him up on the
telephone. He had just heard from his uncle, the Chancellor, that as a
result of their night-long deliberation and prayer, the Ulema had
decided to ask the Consul-General to receive Ishmael Ameer and listen to
a suggestion.
"What will it be?" asked Gordon.
"That the Government should leave El Azhar alone on condition that the
Ulema consent to open it, and all the mosques connected with it, to
public and police inspection, so as to dissipate the suspicion that they
are centres of sedition."
"Splendid! To make the mosques as free as Christian churches is a
splendid thought--an inspiration! But if the Government will not
agree--what then?"
"Then the order to close El Azhar will be resisted. 'Only over our dead
bodies,' they say, 'shall the soldiers enter it.'"
Gordon went about his work that morning like a man dazed and dumb, but
after lunch he dressed himself carefully in his full staff uniform, with
his aiguilettes hanging from his left shoulder, his gold and crimson
sash, his sword, and his white, be-spiked helmet. He put on all his
medals and decorations--his Distinguished Service Order: his King's and
South African War medal with four clasps: his British Soudan medal: his
Medjidieh: and his Khedive's medal with four clasps. It was not for
nothing that he did this, nor merely because he was going to an official
conference, but with a certain pride as of a man who had won the right
to consideration.
Taking a cab by the gate of the barracks he drove through the native
quarters of the city, and saw crowds surging through the streets in the
direction of El Azhar. The atmosphere seemed to tingle with the spirit
of revolution, and seeing the operation of the sublime instinct of
humanity which leads people in defence of their faith to the place where
danger is greatest, he felt glad and proud that what was best in him was
about to conquer.
Arriving at the Citadel he found Helena's black boy waiting for him at
the door of the General's house with a message from his mistress, saying
the gentlemen had not arrived and she wished to see him. The city below
lay bright under the warm _soolham_ of the afternoon sun, and the
swallows were swirling past the windows of Helena's sitting-room, but
Helena herself was under a cloud.
"I see what it is--you are angry with me for going to El Azhar last
night," said Gordon.
"No, it isn't that, though I think you might have kept faith with me,"
she answered. "But we have no time to lose, and I have something to say
to you. In the first place I want you to know that Colonel Macdonald,
your Deputy Assistant Adjutant, has been ordered to stand by. He will
be only too happy to take your place if necessary."
"He's welcome!" said Gordon.
Her brows were contracted, her lips set. She fastened her eyes on him
and said--
"Then there is something else I wish to tell you."
"What is it, Helena?"
"When my father asked me if I could marry a man who had disobeyed and
been degraded, I said ... But it doesn't matter what I said. My father
has hardly spoken to me since. It is the first cloud that has come
between us--the very first. But when I answered him as I did, there was
something I had forgotten."
"What was it, dearest?"
"I cannot tell you what it was--I can only tell you what it comes to."
"What does it come to, Helena?"
"That whatever happens to-day I can never leave my father--never as long
as he lives."
"God forbid that you should be tempted to do so--but why?"
"That is what I cannot tell you. It is a secret."
"I can think of no secret that I could not share with you, Helena."
"Nor I with you--if it were my own--but this isn't."
"I cannot understand you, dear."
"Say it is somebody else's secret, and that his life, his career,
depends upon it. Say it couldn't be told to you without putting you in
a false position--involving you in responsibilities which you have no
right to bear."
"You puzzle me, bewilder me, Helena."
"Then trust me, dear--trust me for the present at all events, and some
day you shall know everything," she said; whereupon Gordon, who had not
taken his eyes off her, said--
"So what it really comes to is this--that whatever course your father
takes to-day I must take it also, under pain of a violent separation
from you! Isn't that it, Helena? Isn't it? And if so, isn't it like
sending a man into battle with his hands tied and his eyes blindfolded?"
She dropped her head but made no reply.
"That is not what I expected of you, Helena. The Helena who has been
living in my mind is a girl who would say to me at a moment like this,
'Do what you believe to be right, Gordon, and whether you are degraded
to the lowest rank or raised to the highest honour, I will be with
you--I will stand by your side.'"
Her eyes flashed and she drew herself up.
"So you think I couldn't say that--that I didn't say anything like it
when my father spoke to me? But if you have been thinking of me as a
girl like that, I have been thinking of you as a man who would say, 'I
love you, and do you know what my love means? It means that my love for
you is above everything and everybody in the world.'"
"And it is, Helena, it is."
"Then why," she said, with her eyes fixed on his, "why do you let this
Egyptian and his interests come between us? If you take his part after
what I have just told you, will it not be the same thing in the end as
choosing him against me?"
"Don't vex me, Helena. I've told you before that your jealousy of this
man is nonsense."
The word cut her to the quick, and she drew herself up again.
"Very well," she said, with a new force; "if it's jealousy and if it's
nonsense you must make your account with it. I said I _couldn't_ tell
you why I cannot leave my father--now I _won't_. You must choose
between us. It is either that man or me."
"You mean that if the General decides against Ishmael Ameer you will
follow your father, and that I--whatever my conscience may say--I must
follow you?"