*CHAPTER I*
When Helena had left the General and Ishmael Ameer together, the signs
she knew so well of illness in her father's face suggested that she
should run at once for the Medical Officer. One moment she stood in the
room adjoining the General's office, listening to the muffled rumble
that came from the other side of the wall, the short snap of her
father's impatient voice and the deep boom of the Egyptian's, and then
she hurried into the outer passages to pin on her hat. There she met
the General's Aide-de-camp, who, seeing her excitement, asked if there
was anything he could do for her, but she answered "No," and then--
"Yes, I think you might go over to the Colonel" (meaning the Colonel
commanding the Citadel) "and tell him this man is here with a crowd of
his followers."
"He must know it already, but I'll go with pleasure," said the young
Lieutenant. At the next moment there were three hasty beats on the
General's bell, followed by a summons from the General's soldier
servant, but the Aide-de-camp had disappeared.
Helena went out by the back of the house, and seeing her cook and the
black boy as she passed the kitchen quarters an impulse came to her to
send somebody else on her errand, lest anything should happen in her
absence; but telling herself that nobody but herself and the Doctor must
know the secret of her father's condition, she hurried along.
Her way was through the unoccupied courts of the old palace, down a
flight of long steps, through an old gateway whereof the iron-clamped
door always stood open, across a disused drawbridge, and so on to the
open parade-ground. The Army Surgeon's quarters were on the farther
side of it, and never before had it seemed so broad.
When she reached her destination the Surgeon was out on his evening
round of the hospital, so she wrote a hurried note asking him to come to
the General's house immediately, sent his assistant in search of him,
and then turned back.
Returning hurriedly by the "married quarters," she was detained for some
moments by a soldier's wife, a young thing, almost a child, who stood at
the door of her house with a red woollen shawl about her shoulders, a
baby in long clothes in her arms, and a look of radiant happiness in her
round face.
"Ye've not seen 'im yet, have ye, Miss?" said the little mother, holding
out her baby to be admired. "Only six weeks old and 'e weighs ten
pounds. Colonel says as 'ow 'e's a credit to the reg'ment, and I'm
agoin' to shorten 'im soon. To-morrow I'm 'avin' 'im photoed to send to
mother. She lives in Clerkenwell, Miss, and she ain't likely to show
'is photo to nobody in our court. Oh no!"
Helena did her best to play up to the pride of the little Cockney
mother, and was turning to go when the girl said--
"But my Harry tells me as how you're to be married yourself soon, so I
wish ye joy, and many of 'em."
"Good-bye, Mrs. Dimmock," said Helena, but the young thing was not yet
done. With a look of wondrous wisdom she said--
"They're a deal of trouble, Miss, but there ain't no love in the house
without 'em. As mother says, they keeps the pot a-boilin'," and she was
ducking down her head to kiss the child as Helena hurried away.
In the bright light of the young mother's life and the breadth of shadow
that lay upon her own, Helena thought of Gordon and her anger rose
against him again, but at the next moment she saw him in her mind's eye
as she had seen him last, going out of the garden, a broken, bankrupt
man, and then her eyes filled and it was as much as she could do to see
her way.
In the quickening flow of her emotion this riot in her heart between
anger with Gordon and with herself only led to deeper hatred of the
Egyptian, and even the memory of his dignity and largeness in the single
moment in which she had looked upon him made her wrath the more intense.
A vague fear, an indefinite forewarning, hardly able yet to assume a
shape, was beginning to take possession of her. She recalled the scene
she had left behind her in the General's office, the two men face to
face, as if in the act of personal quarrel, and told herself that if
anything happened to her father as the result of the excitement caused
by the meeting, the Egyptian would be the cause of it.
In her impatience to be back she began to run. How broad the parade
ground was! The air, too, was so close and lifeless. The sun had
nearly set, the arms of night were closing round the day, but still the
sky was a hot, dark red like the inside of a transparent shell that had
a smouldering fire outside of it.
At one moment she heard hoarse and jarring voices that seemed to come
from the square of the mosque in front of the house. Perhaps the
Egyptian and his people were going off with their usual monotonous
chanting of "Allah! Allah!" She was glad to reach the cool shade and
silence of the empty courts of the old palace, but coming to the gateway
she found it closed.
A footstep was dying away within, so she knocked and called, and after a
moment an old soldier, a kind of caretaker of the Citadel, opened the
gate to her.
"Beg pardon, Miss! Lieutenant Robson told me to shut up everything
immediately," he said, but Helena did not wait for further explanation.
There was nobody in sight when she passed the kitchen quarters, and when
she entered the house a chill silence seemed to strike to the very
centre of her life.
Then followed one of those mystic impulses of the human heart which
nobody can understand. In her creeping fear of what might have happened
during her absence she was at first afraid to go into her father's room.
If she had done so, there and then, and without an instant's hesitation,
she must have found Gordon kneeling over her father's body. But in
dread of learning the truth she tried to keep back the moment of
certainty, and in a blind agony of doubt she stood and tried to think.
The voices of the men were no longer to be heard through the wall, and
the deep rumble of the crowd outside had died away, therefore the
Egyptian must have gone. Had her father gone too? She remembered that
he was in uniform, and took a step back into the hall to see if his cap
hung on the hat-rail. The cap was there. Had he gone into his bedroom?
She crossed to the door. The door was open and the room was empty.
Hardly able to analyse her unlinked ideas, but with a gathering dread of
the unknown, she found herself stepping on tiptoe towards the General's
office. Then she thought she heard a faint cry within, a feeble,
interrupted moan, and in an unsteady voice she called.
There was no answer. She called again, and still there was no reply.
Then girding up her heart to conquer a vague fear, which hardly knew
itself yet for what it was, she opened the door.
The room was almost dark. She took one step into the gloom, breathing
rapidly, then stopped and said--
"Father! Are you here, father?"
There was no sound, so she took another step into the room, thinking to
switch on the light over the desk and at the same time to reach the
sofa. As she did so she stumbled against something, and her breath was
struck out of her in an instant.
She stooped in the darkness to feel what it was that lay at her feet,
and at the next moment she needed no light to tell her.
"Father! Father!" she cried, and in the dead silence that followed, the
voice of the muezzin came from without.
She was lying prostrate over her father's body when the door was burst
open as by a gust of wind and the Army Surgeon came into the room.
Without a word he knelt and laid his hand over the heart of the fallen
man, while Helena, who rose at the same instant, watched him in the
awful thraldom of fear.
Then young Lieutenant Robson came in hurriedly, switching on the light
and saying something, but the Surgeon silenced him with the lifting of
his left hand. There was one of those blank moments in which time itself
seems to stand still, while the Surgeon was on his knees and Helena
stood aside with whitening lips and with eyes that had a wild stare in
them. Then, lifting his face, which was stamped with the heaviness of
horror and told before he spoke what he was going to say, the Surgeon
rose, and turning to Helena, said in a nervous voice--
"I regret--I deeply regret to tell you..."
"Gone?" asked Helena, and the Surgeon bowed his head.
She did not cry or utter a sound. Only the trembling of her white lips
showed what she felt, but all the cheer of life had died out of her
face, and in a moment it had become hard and stony.
There was an instant of silence, and then the Surgeon and the young
Lieutenant, casting sidelong looks at Helena, began to whisper together.
At sight of her tearless eyes a certain fear had fallen on them which
the presence of death could not create.
"Take her away," whispered the Surgeon, and then the Lieutenant, whose
throat was hard and whose eyes were dim, approached her and said with
the sadness of sympathy--
"May I help you to your room, please?"
Helena shook her head and stood immovable a moment longer, and then,
with a firm step, she walked away.
*CHAPTER II*
All the moral cowardice that had paralysed Gordon Lord was gone the
moment he left the Citadel, and as soon as he reached the streets of the
city the power of life came back to him. There, in tumultuous swarms,
the native people were swinging along in one direction, uttering the
monotonous cries of the Moslems when they are deeply moved. Into this
maelstrom of emotion Gordon was swept before he knew it, and hardly
conscious of where he was going he followed where he was led.
He felt, without knowing why, the lust of violence which comes to the
soldier in battle who wants to run away until the moment when the first
shot has been fired, and then--all fear and moral conscience gone in an
instant--forges his path with shouts and oaths to where danger is
greatest and death most sure.
In the thickening darkness he saw a great glow coming from a spot in
front of him, as of many lanterns and torches burning together. Towards
this spot he pushed his way, calling to the people in their own tongue
to let him pass, or sweeping them aside and ploughing through. In his
delirious excitement his strength seemed to be supernatural, and men
were flung away as if they had been children.
At length he reached a place where a narrow lane, opening on to a
square, was blocked by a line of soldiers, who were coming and going
with the glare of the torch-light on their faces. Here the monotonous
noises of the crowd behind him were pierced by sharp cries, mingled with
screams. Perspiration was pouring down Gordon's neck by this time, and
he stopped to see where he was. He was at the big gate of El Azhar.
On leaving the Citadel, Colonel Macdonald had taken two squadrons with
him, telling the Lieutenant-Colonel commanding the regiment to follow
with the rest.
"Half of these will be enough for this job, and we'll clear the rascals
out like rats," he said.
The Governor of the city, a small man in European dress, acting on the
order of the Minister of the Interior as Regent in the absence of the
Khedive, had met him at the University. They found the gate shut and
barred against them, and when the Governor called for it to be opened
there was no reply. Then the Colonel said--
"Omar Bey, have I your permission to force an entrance?"
Whereupon the Governor, in whom the wine of life was chiefly vinegar,
answered promptly--
"Colonel, I request you to do so."
A few minutes afterwards a stout wooden beam was brought up from
somewhere, and six or eight of the soldiers laid hold of it and began to
use it on the closed gate as a battering ram. The gate was a strong one
clamped with iron, but it was being crunched by the blows that fell on
it when some of the students within clambered on to the top of the walls
and hurled down stones on the heads of the soldiers.
One of them was a young boy of not more than fourteen years, and while
others protected themselves by hiding behind the coping stones, he
exposed his whole body to the troops by standing on the very crest of
the parapet. The windows of the houses around were full of faces, and
from one that was nearly opposite to the gate came the shrill cry of a
woman, calling on the boy to go back. But in the clamour of noises he
heard nothing, or in the fire of his spirit he did not heed, for he
continued to hurl down everything that came to his hand, until Colonel
Macdonald commanded the troop to dismount with rifles and said--
"Stop that young devil up there!"
At the next moment there was the crack of a dozen rifles, and the boy on
the parapet swayed aside, lurched forward, and fell into the street.
The Colonel was giving orders that he should be taken up and carried
away when the woman's cry was heard again, this time in a frenzied
shriek, and at the next instant the soldiers had to make way for the
mightiest thing on earth, an outraged mother in the presence of her
dead.
The woman, who had torn the black veil from her face, lifted the boy's
head to her breast and cried, "My God! My good God! My boy! Ali!
Ali!" But just then the gate gave way with a crash, and the Colonel
ordered one of the squadrons to ride into the courtyard of the mosque,
where five thousand of the students and their professors could be seen
squirming in dense masses like ants on an upturned ant-hill.
The soldiers were forcing their horses through the crowds and beating
with the flat of their swords when two or three shots were fired from
within, and it became certain that some of the students were using
firearms. At that the bulldog in the British Colonel got the better of
the man, and he wanted to shout a command to his men to use the edge of
their weapons and clear the place at any cost, but the shrill cry of the
mother over her dead boy drowned his thick voice.
"He is dead! They have killed him! My only child! His father died
last week. God took him, and now I have nobody. Ali, come back to me!
Ali! Ali!"
"Take that yelping b---- away!" shouted the Colonel, ripping out an oath
of impatience, and that was the moment when Gordon Lord came up.
What he did then he could never afterwards remember, but what others saw
was that with the spring of a tiger he leapt up to Macdonald, laid hold
of him by the collar of his khaki jacket, dragged him from the saddle,
flung him headlong on the ground, and stamped on him as if he had been a
poisonous snake.
In another moment there would have been no more Macdonald, but just
then, while the soldiers, recognising their First Staff Officer, stood
dismayed, not knowing what it was their duty to do, there came over the
sibilant hiss of the crowd the loud clangour of the hoofs of galloping
horses, and the native people laid hold of Gordon and carried him away.
His great strength was now gone, and he felt himself being dragged out
of the hard glare of the light into the shadow of a side street, where
he was thrust into a carriage and held down in it by somebody who was
saying--
"Lie still, my brother! Lie still! Lie still!"
For one instant longer he heard deafening shouts through the carriage
glass, over the rumble of the moving wheels, and then a blank darkness
fell on him for a time and he knew no more.
When he recovered consciousness his mind had swung back, with no memory
of anything between, to the moment when he was leaving the General's
house, and he was saying to himself again, "I must go back. She may
curse me, but I cannot leave her alone. I cannot--I will not."
Then he was aware of a voice--it was the quavering voice of an old man,
and seemed to come out of a toothless mouth--saying--
"Be careful, Michael! His poor hand is injured. We must send for the
surgeon."
He opened his eyes and saw that he was being carried through a quiet
courtyard where he could hear the footsteps of the men who bore him and
see by the light of a smoking lantern the facade of a church. Then he
heard the same quavering voice say--
"Take him up to the salamlik, my brother," and then there was a jerk and
a jolt and he lost consciousness again.
He was lying on a bed in a dimly lighted room when memory returned and
the events of the day unrolled themselves before him. He made an effort
to raise himself on his elbows, but in his weakness he fell back, and
after a while he dropped into a delirious sleep. In this sleep he saw
first his mother and then Helena, and then Helena and again his
mother--everything and everybody else being quite blotted out.
*CHAPTER III*
Soon after sunset Lady Nuneham had taken her last dose of medicine, and
had got into bed, when the Consul-General came into her room. He had
the worn and jaded look by which she knew that the day had gone heavily
with him, and she waited for him to tell her how and why. With a face
full of the majesty of suffering he told her what had happened,
describing the scene in the General's office, and all the circumstances
whereby matters had been brought to such a tragic pass.
"It was pitiful," he said. "The General went too far--much too far--and
the sight of Gordon's white face and trembling lips was more than I
could bear."
His voice thickened as he spoke, and it seemed to the mother at that
moment as if the pride of the father in his son, which he had hidden so
many years in the sealed chamber of his iron soul, had only come up at
length that she might see it die.
"It's all over with him now, I suppose, and we must make the best of it.
He promised so well, though! Always did--ever since he was a boy. If
one's children could only remain children! The pity of it! Good-night!
Good-night, Janet!"
She had listened to him without speaking and without a tear coming into
her eyes, and she answered his "Good-night" in a low but steady voice.
Soon afterwards the gong sounded in the hall, and, as she lay in her
bed, she knew that he would be dining alone--one of the great men of the
world, and one of the loneliest.
Meantime Fatimah, tidying up the room for the night and sniffling
audibly, was talking as much to herself as to her mistress. At one
moment she was excusing the Consul-General, at the next she was excusing
Gordon. Lady Nuneham let her talk on, and gave no sign until darkness
fell and the moment came for the Egyptian woman also to get into bed.
Then the old lady said--
"Open the door of this room, Fatimah," pointing to a room on her right.
Fatimah did so, without saying a word, and then she lay down, blowing
her nose demonstratively as if trying to drown other noises.
From her place on the pillow the old lady could now see into the
adjoining chamber, and through its two windows on to the Nile. A bright
moon had risen, and she lay a long time looking into the silvery night.
Somewhere in the dead waste of early morning the Egyptian woman thought
she heard somebody calling her, and, rising in alarm, she found that her
mistress had left her bed and was speaking in a toneless voice in the
next room.
"Fatimah! Are you awake? Isn't the boy very restless to-night? He
throws his arms out in his sleep and uncovers little Hafiz too."
She was standing in her nightdress and lace nightcap, with the moon
shining in her face, by the side of one of the two beds the room
contained, tugging at its eiderdown coverlet. Her eyes had the look of
eyes that did not see, but she stood up firmly, and seemed to have
become younger and stronger--so swiftly had her spirit carried her back
in sleep to the woman she used to be.
"Oh my heart, no," said Fatimah. "Gordon hasn't slept in this room for
nearly twenty years--nor Hafiz neither."
At the sound of Fatimah's husky voice and the touch of her moist fingers
the old lady awoke.
"Oh yes, of course," she said, and after a moment, in a sadder tone,
"Yes, yes."
"Come, my heart, come," said Fatimah, and taking her cold and nerveless
hand, she led her, a weak old woman once more, back to her bed, for the
years had rolled up like a tidal wave and the spell of her sweet dream
was broken.
On a little table by the side of her bed stood a portrait of Helena in a
silver frame, and she took it up and looked at it for a moment, and then
the light which Fatimah had switched on was put out again. After a
little while there was a sigh in the darkness, and after a little while
longer a soft, tremulous--
"Ah, well!"
*CHAPTER IV*
Helena was still in her room when the Consul-General, who had been
telephoned for, held an inquiry into the circumstances of the General's
death. She was sitting with her hands clasped in her lap and her eyes
looking fixedly before her, hardly listening, hardly hearing, while the
black boy darted in and out with broken and breathless messages which
contained the substance of what was said.
The household servants could say nothing except that, following in the
wake of the new prophet when he left the Citadel, they had left the
house by the side gate of the garden without being aware of anything
that had happened in the General's office. The Surgeon testified to the
finding of the General's body, and the Aide-de-camp explained that the
last time he saw his chief alive was when he was ordered to call Colonel
Macdonald.
"Who was with him at that moment?" asked the Consul-General.
"The Egyptian, Ishmael Ameer."
"Was there anything noticeable in their appearance and demeanour?"
"The General looked hot and indignant."
"Did you think there had been angry words between them?"
"I certainly thought so, my lord."
Other witnesses there were, such as the soldier servant at the door, who
made a lame excuse for leaving his post for a few minutes while the
Egyptian was in the General's office, and the sentry at the gate of the
Citadel, who said no one had come in after Colonel Macdonald and the
cavalry had passed out. Then, some question of calling Helena herself
was promptly quashed by the Consul-General, and the inquiry closed.
Hardly had the black boy delivered the last of his messages when there
was a timid knock at Helena's door, and the Army Surgeon came into the
room. He was a small man with an uneasy manner: married, and with a
family of grown-up girls who were understood to be a cause of anxiety to
him.
"I regret--I deeply regret to tell you, Miss Graves, that your father's
death has been due to heart-failure, the result of undue excitement.
You will do me the justice--I'm sure you will do me the justice to
remember that I repeatedly warned the General of the dangers of
over-exciting himself, but unfortunately his temperament was such----"
The Consul-General's deep voice in the adjoining room seemed to
interrupt the Surgeon, and making a visible call on his resolution he
came closer to Helena and said--
"I have not mentioned my previous knowledge of organic trouble. Lord
Nuneham asked some searching questions, but the promise I made to your
father----"
Again the Consul General's voice interrupted him, and with a flicker of
fear on his face, he said--
"Now that things have turned out so unhappily it might perhaps be
awkward for me if ... In short, my dear Miss Graves, I think I may rely
on you not to ... Oh, thank you, thank you!" he said, as Helena,
understanding his anxiety, bowed her head.
"I thought it would relieve you to receive my assurance that death was
due to natural causes only--purely natural. It's true I thought for a
moment that perhaps there had also been violence----"
"Violence?" said Helena.
"Don't let me alarm you. It was only a passing impression, and I should
be sorry, very sorry----"
But just at that moment, when a new thought was passing through the
stormy night of Helena's mind like a shaft of deadly lightning, the
Chaplain of the Forces came into the room, and the Surgeon left it.
The Chaplain was a well-nurtured person, who talked comfort out of a
full stomach with the expansiveness which sometimes comes to clergy who
live long amongst soldiers.
"I have come to say, my dear young lady, that I place myself entirely at
your service. With your permission I will charge myself with all the
sad and necessary duties. So sudden! So unexpected! How true that in
the midst of life we are in death!"
There was more coin from the same mint, and then, the shaft of deadly
lightning as before.
"It is perhaps the saddest fact of death in this Eastern climate that
burial follows so closely after it. As there seems to be no sufficient
reason to believe that the General's death has been due to any but
natural causes, it will probably be to-morrow--I say it will
probably----"
"Sufficient!" said Helena, and, with a new poison at her heart, she
hurried away to her father's room.
She found the General where they had placed him, on his own bed and in
his uniform. His eyes were now closed, his features were composed, and
everything about him was suggestive of a peaceful end.
While she was standing in the gloomy, echoless chamber, the
Consul-General came in and stood beside her. Though he faintly
simulated his natural composure he was deeply shaken. For a moment he
looked down at his dead friend in silence, while his eyelids blinked and
his lips trembled. Then he took Helena's hand, and drawing her aside,
he said--
"This is a blow to all of us, my child, but to you it is a great and
terrible one."
She did not reply, but stood with her dry eyes looking straight before
her.
"I have made strict inquiry, and I am satisfied--entirely
satisfied--that your father died by the visitation of God."
Still she did not speak, and after a moment he spoke again.
"It is true that the man Ishmael Ameer was the last to be with him, but
what happened at their interview it would be useless to ask--dangerous,
perhaps, in the present state of public feeling."
She listened with complete self-possession and strong hold of her
feelings, though her bosom heaved and her breathing was audible.
"So let us put away painful thoughts, Helena. After all, your father's
end was an enviable one, and harder for us than for him, you know."
He looked steadily for a moment at her averted face and then said, in a
husky voice--
"I'm sorry Lady Nuneham is so much of an invalid that she cannot come to
see you. This is the moment when a mother----"
He stopped without finishing what he had intended to say, and then he
said--
"I'm still more sorry that one who----"
Again he stopped, and then in a low, smothered, scarcely audible voice,
he said hurriedly--
"But that is all over now. Good-night, my child! God help you!"
Helena was standing where the Consul-General had left her, fighting hard
against a fearful thought which had only vaguely taken shape in her
mind, when the black boy came back with his mouth full of news.
The bell of the telephone had rung furiously for the English lord, and
he had gone away hurriedly, his horses galloping through the gate; there
had been a riot at El Azhar; a boy had been shot; a hundred students had
been killed with swords; the cavalry were clearing the streets, and the
people were trooping in thousands into the great mosque of the Sultan
Hakim, where the new prophet was preaching to them.
Helena listened to the terrible story as to some far-off event which in
the tempest of her own trouble did not concern her, and then she sent
the boy away. Gordon had been right, plainly right, from the first, but
what did it matter now?
Some hours passed, and again and again the black boy came back to the
room with fresh news and messages, first, to say that her supper was
served, next, that her bedroom was ready, and finally, with shame-faced
looks and a face blubbered over with tears, to explain the cause of his
absence from the house when the tragic incident happened. He had
followed the crowd out of the Citadel, and only when he found himself at
the foot of the hill had he thought, "Who is to take care of lady while
Mosie is away?" Then he had run back fast, very fast, but he was too
late, it was all over.
"Will lady ever forgive Mosie? Will lady like Mosie any more?"
Helena comforted the little twisted and tortured soul with some words of
cheer, and then sent him to bed. But with a sad longing in his big eyes,
and the look of a dumb creature that wanted to lick her hand, he came
back to say he could not sleep in his own room because death was in the
house, and might he sit on the floor where lady was and keep her
company.
Touched by the tender bit of human nature that was tearing the big,
little soul of the black boy who worshipped her, Helena went back to her
own bedroom, and then a grin of delight passed over Mosie's ugly face
and he said--
"Never mind! It's no thing! Lady will forget all about it to-morrow.
Now lady will lie down and sleep."
Helena put out the light in her room, and sitting by the open window she
looked long into the moonlight that lay over the city. At one moment
she heard the clatter of horses' hoofs--Macdonald's cavalry were
returning to the Citadel after their efforts in the interests of peace
and order. At intervals she heard the ghafirs (watchmen) who cried
_Wahhed!_ (God is One) in the silent streets below. Constantly she
looked across to the barracks that stood at the edge of the glistening
Nile, and at every moment the cruel core in her heart grew yet more
hard.
Why had not Gordon come to her? He must know of her father's death by
this time--why was he not there? Why had he not written to her at all
events? It was true they had parted in anger, but what of that? He had
never loved her or he would be with her now. She had done well to drive
him away from her, and, thank God, she would never see him again!
The moon died out, a cold breath passed through the air, the city seemed
to yawn in its sleep, the dawn came with its pale, pink streamers and
with its joyous birds--the happy, heart-breaking children of the
air--twittering in the eaves, and then the pride and hatred of her
wounded heart broke down utterly.
She wanted Gordon now as she had never wanted him before. She wanted
the sound of his voice, she wanted the touch of his hand, she wanted to
lay her head on his breast like a child, and hear him tell her that it
would all be well.
She found a hundred excuses for him in as many minutes. He was a
prisoner--how could he leave his quarters? They might be keeping him
under close arrest--how could he get away? Perhaps they had never even
told him of her father's death--how could he write to her about it?
In the fever of her fresh thought, she decided that she herself would
tell him, and in the tumult of her confused brain she never doubted that
he would come to her. Regulations? They would count for nothing. He
was brave, he was fearless, he would find a way. Already she could see
him flinging open the door of her room and she could feel herself flying
into his arms.
Thus with a yearning and choking heart, in the vacant stillness of the
early dawn, she sat down to write to Gordon. This is what she wrote:--
"_Six o'clock, Sunday morning_.
"DEAREST,--The greatest sorrow I have ever known--God, our good God, has
taken my beloved father.
"He loved you and was always so proud of you. He thought there was
nobody like you. I try to think how it all happened at the end, and I
cannot.
"Forgive me for what I said yesterday. It seems you were right about
everything, and everybody else was wrong. But that doesn't matter
now--nothing matters.
"I want you. I have nobody else. I am quite alone. God help me! Come
to me soon----"
Unconsciously she was speaking the words aloud as she wrote them and
sobbing as she spoke. Suddenly she became aware of another voice in the
adjoining room. She thought it might be Gordon's voice, and catching
her breath she rose to listen. Then in a muffled, broken, tear-laden
tone, these words came to her through the wall--
"O Allah, most High, most Merciful, make lady sleep. Make lady sleep, O
Allah, most High, most Merciful!"
Her black boy had been lying all night like a dog on the mat behind her
door.
*CHAPTER V*
Before Gordon opened his eyes that morning he heard the tinkling of
cymbals and the sweet sound of the voices of boys singing in a choir,
and he felt for a moment as if he were carried back to his school at
Eton, where the morning dawned on green fields to the joyous carolling
of birds.
Then he looked and saw that he was lying in a little yellow-curtained
room which was full of the gentle rays of the early sun, and opened on
to a garden in a quiet courtyard, with one date tree in the middle and
the facade of a Christian church at the opposite side. In the disarray
of his senses he could not at first remember what had happened to him,
and he said aloud--
"Where am I?"
Then a cheery voice by his side said, "Ah, you are awake?" and an
elderly man with a good, simple, homely face looked down at him and
smiled.
"What place is this?" asked Gordon.
"This?" said the good man. "This is the house of the Coptic Patriarch.
And I am Michael, the Patriarch's servant. He brought you home in his
carriage last night. Out of the riots in the streets, you know. But I
must tell him you are awake. 'Tell me the moment he opens his eyes,
Michael,' he said. No time to lose, though. Listen! They're at
matins. He'll be going into church soon. Lie still! I'll be back
presently."
Then Gordon remembered everything. The events of the night before rose
before him in a moment, and he drank of memory's very dregs. He had
closed his eyes again with a groan when he heard shuffling footsteps
coming into the room, and a husky, kindly voice, interrupted by gusty
breathing, saying cheerfully--
"God be praised! Michael tells me you are awake and well."
The Coptic Patriarch was a little man in a black turban and a kind of
black cassock, very old, nearly ninety years of age, and with a saintly
face in which the fires of life had kindled no evil passions.
"Don't speak yet, my son. Don't exhaust yourself. The surgeon said you
were to have rest--rest and sleep above all things. He came last night
to dress your poor hand. It was wounded in the cruel fight at El Azhar.
I was passing at the moment and the people put you into my carriage.
'Save him for the love of God,' they said. 'He is our brother and he
will be taken.' So I brought you home, seeing you were hurt and not
knowing what else to do with you. But now I am glad and thankful,
having read the newspapers this morning and learned that you were in
great peril.... No, no, my son, lie still."
Gordon had made an effort to raise himself on his elbow, but resting his
weight on his left hand and finding it was closely bandaged and gave him
pain, he was easily pushed back to his pillow.
"Lie still until the surgeon comes. Michael has gone for him. He will
be here immediately. A good man--make yourself sure about that. He
will be secret. He will say nothing."
Then there came through the open window the sound of footsteps on the
gravel path of the garden, and the old Patriarch, leaning over Gordon,
said in the same husky, kindly whisper--
"They are coming, and I must go into church. But don't be afraid. You
did bravely and nobly, and no harm shall come to you while you are
here."
Hardly knowing what to understand, but choking with confusion and shame,
Gordon heard the old man's shuffling step going out of the room, and, a
moment afterwards, the firm tread of the surgeon coming into it. The
surgeon, who was a middle-aged man, a Copt, with a bright face and a
hearty manner, took Gordon's right arm to feel his pulse, and said--
"Better! Much better! Last night the condition was so serious that I
found it necessary to inject morphia. There was the hand too, you know.
The third finger had been badly hurt, and I was compelled to take the
injured part away. This morning, however----"
But Gordon's impatience could restrain itself no longer. "Doctor," he
said, clutching at the surgeon's sleeve, "close the door and tell me
what has happened."
The surgeon repeated the reports which appeared in the English
newspapers--about the clearing out of El Azhar, the shooting of the boy,
the killing of a hundred students by the sword, and the imprisonment of
nearly four hundred others. And then, thinking that the drug he had
administered was still beclouding his patient's brain, he spoke of
Gordon's own share in the bad work of the night before--how he had
refused to obey instructions and been ordered under open arrest to
return to his own quarters; how he had defied authority, and, making his
way to the University, had perpetrated a violent personal attack on the
officer commanding the troops there.
"I know nothing about it, you know, but what Colonel Macdonald has
communicated to the press--contrary, I should think, to Army Regulations
and all sense of honour and decency--but he says you have been guilty of
a threefold offence; first, mutiny, next desertion, and finally gross
assault on an officer while in the execution of his duty."
Gordon had hardly listened to this part of the surgeon's story, but his
face betrayed a feverish eagerness when the surgeon said--
"There is something else, but I hardly know whether I ought to tell
you."
"What is it?" asked Gordon, though he knew full well what the surgeon
was about to say.
"It occurred last night, too, but the Consul-General has managed to keep
it out of the morning newspapers. I feel I ought to tell you, though,
and if I could be sure you would take it calmly----"
"Tell me."
"General Graves is dead. He was found dead on the floor of his office.
His daughter found him."
Gordon covered his face and asked, in a voice which he tried in vain to
render natural, "What do they say he died of?"
"God!" said the surgeon. "That's what the Mohammedans call it, and I
don't know that science can find a better name."
Suffocating with the sickness of fear, Gordon said, "What about his
daughter?"
"Bearing herself with a strange stoicism, they say. Not a tear on her
face, they tell me. But if I know anything of human nature she is
suffering all the more for that, poor girl!"
Gordon threw off the counterpane and rose in bed. "I'm better now," he
said. "Let me get up. I must go out."
"Impossible!" said the surgeon. "You are far too weak to go into the
streets. Besides, you would never reach your destination. Macdonald
would take care of that. Haven't I told you? He has given it out that
the penalty of military law for the least of your offences is--well,
death."
Gordon dropped back in bed, and the surgeon continued, "But if you have
a message to send to any one why not write it? Michael will see that it
reaches safe hands. I'll send him in. He's cooking some food for you,
and I'll tell him to bring paper and pens."
With that the surgeon left him, and a moment later the serving-man's
cheery face came into the room behind a smoking basin of savoury broth.
"Here it is! You're to drink it at once," he said, and then taking a
writing-pad from under his armpit, he laid it with pens and ink on a
table by the bed, saying the doctor had told him he was to deliver a
letter.
Gordon replied that he would ring when he was ready, whereupon Michael
said, "Good! You'll take your broth first. It will put some strength
into you," and he smiled and nodded his simple face out of the room.
In vain Gordon tried to write to Helena. His first impulse was to tell
her all, to make a clean breast of everything. "Dearest Helena, I am in
the deepest sorrow and shame, but I cannot live another hour without
letting you know that your dear father----"
But that was impossible. At a moment when one great blow had fallen on
her it was impossible to inflict another. If she suffered now when she
thought her father had died by the hand of God, how much more would she
suffer if she heard that his death had been due to violence, to foul
play, to the hand of the man who said he loved her?
Destroying his first attempt, Gordon began again. "My poor dear Helena,
I am inexpressibly shocked and grieved by the news of----"
But that was impossible also. Its hypocrisy of concealment seemed to
blister his very soul. He tried again and yet again, but not a word
would come that was not cruel or false. Then a great trembling came
over him as he realised that being what he was to Helena, and she being
what she was to her father, he was struck dumb before her as by the hand
of Heaven.
Hours passed, and though the day was bright a deep, impenetrable
darkness seemed to close around him. At certain moments he was vaguely
conscious of noises in the streets outside, a great scuttling and
scurrying of feet, a loud clamour of tongues chopping and ripping the
air, the barking and bleating of a mob in full flight, and then the
clattering of horses' hoofs and the whistling and shouting of soldiers.
Michael came back at last, having waited in vain to be summoned, and he
was full of news. All business in Cairo had been suspended, the
Notables had met in the Opera Square to condemn the action of the
British Army, a vast multitude of Egyptians had joined them, and they
had gone up to the house of the Grand Cadi to ask him to call on the
Sultan to protest to England.
"Well, well?" said Gordon.
"The Cadi was afraid, and hearing the crowd were coming he barricaded
his doors and windows."
"And then?"
"They wrecked his house, shouting 'Down with the Turks!' 'Long live
Egypt!' But the Cadi himself was inside, sir, speaking on the telephone
to the officer commanding on the Citadel, and the soldiers came
galloping up and took a hundred and fifty prisoners."
In spite of his better feelings Gordon felt a certain joy in the bad
news Michael brought him. He had been right! Everybody would see that
he had been right! What, then, was his duty? His duty was to deliver
himself up and say, "Here I am! Court-martial me now if you will--if
you dare!"
Plain, practical sense seemed to tell him that he ought to go to the
Agency, where his father (the highest British authority in Egypt, even
though a civil one), seeing the turn events had taken, the chaos into
which affairs had fallen, and the ruin which Macdonald's brutality
threatened, and having witnessed the utterly illegal circumstances which
had attended his arrest, would place him in command, pending
instructions from the War Office, and trust to his influence with the
populace to restore peace. He could do it, too. Why not?
But the General? A sickening pang of hope shot through him as he told
himself that no one knew he had killed the General, that even if he had
done so it had only been in self-defence, that the veriest poltroon
would have done what he did, and that the mind that counted such an act
as crime was morbid and diseased.
Helena? She thought her father had died by the visitation of God--why
could he not leave her at that? She was suffering, though, and it was
for him to comfort her. He would fly to her side. All their
differences would be over now. She, too, would see that he had been
right and that her jealousy had been mistaken, and then death with its
mighty wing would sweep away everything else.
Thus in the blind labouring of hope he threw off the counterpane again
and got out of bed, whereupon Michael, whose garrulous tongue had been
going ever since he came into the room, first asking for the letter
which the surgeon had told him to deliver, then protesting in plaintive
tones that the broth was untouched and now it was cold, laid hold of him
and said--
"No, brother, no! You cannot get up to-day. Doctor says you must not,
and if you attempt to do so I am to tell the Patriarch."
But Michael's voice only whistled by Gordon's ear like the wind in a
desert sand-storm, and seeing that Gordon was determined to dress, the
good fellow fled off to fetch his master.
Hardly had Michael gone when the barrenness of his hope was borne down
on Gordon's mind, and he was asking himself by what title he could go
out as a champion of the right, being so deeply in the wrong. Even if
everything happened as he expected; if his threefold offence against the
letter of military law could be overlooked in the light of his obedience
to its spirit; if the Consul-General were able to place him in command,
pending instructions from the War Office; and if he were capable of
restoring order in Cairo by virtue of his influence with the
inhabitants--what then?
What of his conscience, which had clamoured so loudly, in relation to
his own conduct? Could he continue to plead extenuation of his own
offence on the ground of the General's unjustifiable and unsoldierly
conduct? or to tell himself that what he had done in the General's house
had been in self-defence? Had it been in self-defence that he had
returned to the Citadel after he was ordered to his own quarters? or
that he had hurled hot and insulting words at the General, such as no
man could listen to without loss of pride or even self-respect?
"No, no; my God, no!" he thought.
And then Helena? With what conscience could he comfort her in her
sufferings, being himself the cause of them? With what sincerity could
his tongue speak if his pen refused to write? And if he juggled himself
into deceiving her, could he go on, as his affections would tempt him to
do--now more than ever since her father was gone and she was quite
alone--to carry out the plans he had made for them before these fearful
events befell?
"Impossible! utterly impossible!" he told himself.
A grim vision rose before him of a shameful life, corrupted by hypocrisy
and damned by deceit, in which he was married to Helena, having
succeeded to her father's rank and occupying his house, his room, his
office, with one sight standing before his eyes always--the sight of the
General's body lying on the floor where he had flung it.
"O God, save me from that!" he thought.
Gordon dropped back to the bed and sat on the edge of it, doubled up and
with his hands covering his face. How long he sat there he never knew,
for his mind was deadened to all sense of time, and only at intervals of
lucidity was he partly conscious of what was going on outside the little
pulseless place in which he was hidden away while the world went on
without him.
At one moment he heard the bells of the Coptic Cathedral ringing for
evensong; then the light pattering as of rain when the people passed
over the pavement into the church; and then suddenly there came a sound
that seemed to beat on his very soul.
It was the firing of the guns at the Citadel, and as a soldier he knew
what they were--they were the minute guns for the General's funeral.
_Boom--boom_! He could see what was taking place as plainly as if his
eyes beheld it; the square of the mosque lined up with troops--two
battalions of Infantry, one regiment of Cavalry, and two batteries of
Artillery. _Boom--boom_! The coffin on the gun-carriage covered with
the silken Union Jack and with the General's sword and his plumed white
helmet on the top of all. _Boom--boom_! The General's charger
immediately behind the body, with his spurred boots in the stirrups
reversed. _Boom--boom--boom_! The officers of the Army of Occupation
drawn up by the door of the General's house, every one of them that
could be spared from duty except himself, who ought, above all others,
to be there. Then the carriages of the Consul-General and of the
Egyptian Prime Minister, and then _boom--boom--boom--boom_, as the
cortege moved away to the slow squirling of the funeral march, through
the square of the mosque and under the gate of the old fortress.
The firing ceased, and in the dumb emptiness of the air Gordon saw
another sight that tore at his heart still more terribly. It was a room
in the General's house, dark and blind, with curtains drawn, and Helena
sitting there, alone for the first time, and no one to comfort her.
Seeing this, and thinking of the barrier that was between them, of the
blood that was dividing them, and that they could never again come
together, all his manhood went down at last, and he burst into tears
like a boy.
"Forgive me, Helena! I am alone too! Forgive me, forgive me!"
Then over the sound of his own voice he heard the innocent voices of the
choir-boys singing their evening hymn--"Remove my sin from before Thy
sight, O God!"--and at the next moment he was conscious of an old and
wrinkled hand being laid on his bare arm and of somebody by his side who
was saying huskily--
"Peace, my son! God is merciful!"
Then the sharp rattle of three volleys of musketry coming from far away.
The body of the General had been committed to the grave.
*CHAPTER VI*
Helena had been in the act of sending out her letter when the General's
Aide-de-camp came in with news of the doings of the night before--the
riot at El Azhar, Gordon's assault on Colonel Macdonald, and then his
disappearance, before the troops could recover from their surprise, as
suddenly and unaccountably as if he had been swallowed up by the earth.
"Of course Macdonald acted like a brute," said the young Lieutenant,
"and the Colonel did exactly what might have been expected of him under
the circumstances. He would have done the same if the offender had been
the Commander-in-Chief himself. But now he has to pay the penalty, and
it cannot be a light one. Macdonald is scouring the city to find
him--every nook and corner of the Mohammedan quarter. He has two
motives for doing so, too--ambition and revenge."
As Helena tore up her letter and dropped it bit by bit into the
waste-paper basket she felt as if the last of her hopes dropped with it.
But they rose again with the thought that though Gordon might be in
danger he could not be afraid, and that his love for her was so great,
so unconquerable, that it would bring him back to her now, in her time
of trouble, in the teeth of death itself.
"He'll come--I'm sure he'll come," she thought.
In this confidence she sat in the semi-darkness of her room during the
preparations for the military funeral, hearing all that was being done
outside with that supernatural acuteness which comes to the
bereaved--the marching of troops, the rolling of the gun-carriage and
the arrival of friends, as well as the soul-crushing booming of the
minute gun. She was waiting to be told that Gordon was there, and was
listening for his name as her black boy darted in and out with whispered
news of Egyptian Ministers, English Advisers, Inspectors, and Judges,
and finally the Consul-General himself.
When the last moment came, and the band of the Guards had begun to play
"Toll for the Brave," and it was certain that Gordon had not come, her
heart sank low; but then she told herself that if he ran the risk of
arrest, that was reason enough why he should not show himself at the
fortress.
"He will be at the chapel instead," she thought, and though she had not
intended to be present at the funeral she determined now that she would
go.
She was put into a carriage with the Consul-General and sat by his side
without speaking, merely looking through the windows at the crowds that
stood in the streets, quietly, silently, but without much grief on their
faces, and listening to the slow squirling of the "Dead March" and the
roll of the muffled drums over the dull rumbling of the closed coach.
When they reached the cemetery in the desolate quarter of Old Cairo, and
the band stopped and the drumming ceased and she stepped out of the
carriage, and the breathing silence of the open air was broken by the
tremendous words, "I am the Resurrection and the Life," she was sure, as
she took the arm of the Consul-General and walked with him over the
crackling gravel to the door of the chapel, that the moment she crossed
its threshold the first person she would see would be Gordon.
Her heart sank lower than ever when she realised that he was not there,
and after she had taken her seat and the chill chapel had filled up
behind her, and the service began, she tried in vain, save at moments of
poignant memory, to fix her mind on the awful errand that had brought
her.
"He will be at the graveside," she thought. No one would arrest him at
a place like that. English soldiers were English gentlemen, and if the
Arab nobleman in the desert could allow the enemy who had stumbled into
his tent at night to get clear away in the morning. Gordon would be
allowed to stand by the grave of his friend and General, and no one
would know he was there.
When the short service was over and the Consul-General drew her hand
through his arm again, and they walked together over the gravel and
through the grass to the open grave behind the rose-bushes that grew
near to the wall, she thought she knew she had only to raise her eyes
from the ground and she would see Gordon standing there, shaken with
sobs.
She knew, too, that the moment she saw him she would break down
altogether, so she kept her head low as long as she could. But when the
troops had formed in a rectangle, and the Chaplain had taken his place
and the last words had been spoken, and through a deeper hush the bugle
had led the voices of the soldiers with--
"Father, in Thy gracious keeping
Leave we now Thy servant sleeping,"
and she looked up at last and saw that Gordon had not come at all, she
felt as if something that had been soft and tender within her had
broken, and something that was hard and bitter had taken its place.
While the volleys were being fired over the grave the officers of the
army came up to her one by one--brave men all of them, but many of them
hardly able at that moment to speak or see. Still she did not weep, and
when the Consul-General, with twitching lips, said, "Let us go," she
gave him her hand again, though it was limp and nerveless now, and,
under her long black glove, as cold as snow.
The blinds were drawn up in her room when she returned to the Citadel,
and with eyes that did not see she was staring out on its far view of
the city, the Nile, the Pyramids, and the rolling waves of desert
beyond, when a knock came to the door and the Consul-General entered.
He was clearly much affected. His firm mouth, which often looked as if
it had been cast in bronze, seemed now to be blown in foam.
"Helena," he said, "the time has come to speak plainly. I am sorry. It
is quite unavoidable."
After the first salutation she continued to stand by a chair and to
stare out of the window.
"Gordon has gone. I can no longer have any doubt about that. Others,
with other motives, have been trying to find him and have failed. I
have been trying, too, with better purposes perhaps, but no better
results."
His voice was hoarse; he was struggling to control it.
"I am now satisfied that when he left this house after the scene ... the
painful, perhaps unsoldierly, scene of his ... his degradation, he took
the advice your father gave him--to fly from Egypt and hide his shame in
some other country."