"Listen to me, my dear. I'm a woman of experience at all events. Have
a good cry and get him out of your head. Why not? He's gone, isn't he?
He can never come back to the army, and his career as a soldier is at an
end. The felled tree doesn't bear any more dates, so what's the good of
him anyway? Oh, _I_ know! You needn't tell _me_! Love is sweet in the
suckling and bitter in the weaning, and you think you can't do it, but
you can. You are going back to England, I hear. So much the better!
Far from the eyes, far from the heart, and quite right too. Get married
as soon as possible and have some big bouncing babies. I haven't had
any myself certainly, but that's different--I thought I wouldn't repeat
the crime of my mother, God forgive her!"
Helena's head was down; she was hardly listening.
"Lose no time either, my sweet. Time is money, they say, and perhaps it
is, though it has different prices on the Bourse, I notice. I've known
days that would have been dear at two piastres and a few quarters of an
hour that I wouldn't have parted with for millions of money. Perhaps
you've felt like that, my beauty. But perhaps you haven't. You're only
a child yet, my chicken."
"The man Ishmael has gone, hasn't he?" asked Helena.
"Yes, they've let him go, the stupids! Back to the Soudan--to Khartoum,
they tell me."
"Khartoum?"
"Just like you English! Dunces! Excuse the word. I say what I think.
You judge of the East by the West, and can't see that force is the only
thing these people understand. I stood it for five days, boiling all
over inside, and then I went down to the Agency. 'Good gracious,' I
said, 'why has the Government allowed these men to slip through their
fingers?' And when Nuneham said he had laid a hundred and fifty of them
by the heels, I said 'Tut! Taking water by drops will never fill the
water-skin. You should have laid hold of a hundred and fifty thousand,
and that man Ishmael above all. But you've let him go--him and his
hundred messengers--and now you'll have to take the consequences. Serve
you right, too! What was the use of putting down the Arabic press if
you let the Arabic preachers go unmolested?'"
"What did he say to that, Princess?"
"He said he had scotched the snake but he was not forgetting the
scorpion. It's no use talking, though. Nuneham is a great man, but he
has lost his nerve, and is always asking himself what they are saying
about him in England. Boobies in Parliament, I suppose, and he wants to
be ready to reply to them. But, goodness me, if you throw a missile at
every dog that barks at you the stones in your street will be as
precious as jewels soon. Oh, I know! I'm a woman of experience."
Helena was staring straight before her.
"I see what is going to happen," said the Princess. "This man will sow
sedition all over the country and meantime preach peace in Khartoum and
throw dust in the eyes of Europe."
"He is a scoundrel, a hypocrite----"
"Of course he is, my dear, but when people are bad they always pretend
that they want to make other people better."
"Can the Government do nothing to stop him, to destroy him?"
"No, my dear. There is only one thing that can do that now."
"What?"
"A woman!"
"A woman?"
"Why not? Follow the holy man no farther than his threshold, they say.
But some woman always does so. Always!"
Helena's staring eyes with their far-away look had come back to the
Princess's face. The Princess was beating her hand and laughing.
"You English think woman has no power in the East. Rubbish! She is more
powerful here than anywhere else. Even polygamy gives her power--for a
time, at all events. While she is first favourite she rules everything,
and when she ceases to be that--" the Princess laughed again, closed her
eyes, and said: "She who doesn't take her revenge has an ass for uncle."
Helena's heart began to beat so violently that she could scarcely speak,
but she said--
"You mean that some woman will betray this man----"
"What is more likely? They all fall that way sooner or later, my
beauty. This one has taken a kind of vow of celibacy, they say, but
what matter? When I was as young as you are there was nothing I loved
so much as to meet with a man of that sort. It was child's play, my
darling."
All the blood in Helena's body was now boiling under the poison of a new
thought.
"I hear he says he will come back in glory, and then Egypt will be at
his feet. _Bismillah!_" said the Princess, raising her eyes in mock
reverence, and then laughing gaily she added--
"Perhaps--who knows?--before that time comes some woman of the harem may
find her opportunity. Jealousy--envy--revenge--one may see how the world
goes without eyes, my beauty!"
Helena sat motionless; she was scarcely able to breathe.
"Good luck to her, I say!" said the Princess. "She'll do more for Egypt
than all the Nunehams and Sirdars put together."