"Not yet! Wait! The clouds that darken your sky will lift. Be
patient! The arm of our God is long! Never despair! Allah feeds the
worm that lies between the stones. Will He not feed you also? Yet
better your bodies should starve than your souls should perish! Hold
fast to the faith! Your children and your children's children will
bless you!"
But sometimes in the midst of his comforting his voice would fail, and
like Joseph, whose bowels yearned over his brethren, he would stop
suddenly and hasten away to his room lest he should break down
altogether. Helena saw all this, and it was as much as she could do to
withstand it, when one night she was awakened in the small hours by
Mosie, who was whispering through the door of her bedroom--
"Lady, lady, Master sick; come to him."
Then she walked across to the men's side of the house and heard Ishmael
in his own room, calling on God to forgive him and crying like a child.
At that moment, in spite of herself, Helena felt a wave of pity take
possession of her; but at the next, being back in her bedroom, she
remembered her own secret and asked herself again--
"What pity had he for me _when he killed my father_?"
*CHAPTER VII*
Down to this time Ishmael's conduct had been marked by the most
determined common-sense; but now came an incident that seemed to change
the trend of his mind and character.
One day a man of the Jaalin tribe arrived with a letter in the sole of
his sandal.
"God give you greeting, Master," he said in his west-country dialect and
a tone that seemed to foretell trouble.
With trembling fingers Ishmael tore open the letter and read that, to
drown the cries of distress and to throw dust in the eyes of Europe (for
so the Ulema understood the otherwise mysterious object), the
Consul-General was organising a general festival of rejoicing to
celebrate the --th anniversary of the British occupation of Egypt.
At this news Ishmael was overwhelmed. Helena saw his lips quiver and
his cheeks grow pale as he held the crinkling paper in his trembling
hands. In the absence of other explanation the cold-blooded cruelty of
the scheme seemed to be almost devilish.
That day he disappeared, escaping from the importunities of his people
into the desert. He did not return at night, and at sunrise next
morning Black Zogal went in search of him. But the Nubian returned
without him, telling some wild, supernatural tale of having come upon
the Master in the midst of an angelic company. His face was shining with
a celestial radiance, so that at first he could not look upon him. And
when at length he was able to lift his eyes the Master, who was alone,
sent him back, saying he was to tell no man what he had seen.
Four days afterwards Ishmael returned to Khartoum, and there was enough
in his face to explain Black Zogal's story. His eyes, which seemed to
stare, had a look of unearthly joy. This was like flame to the fuel of
his people's delirium, for they did not see that under the torment of
his private sufferings the dauntless courage and hope of the man had
begun to turn towards madness.
He began to preach in the mosque a wild new message. The time of the end
had come! Famine and pestilence, poverty and godless luxury, war and
misery--were not these the signs foretold of the coming of the latter
day?
Lo, the cup of the people's sufferings was full! Behold, while the
children of Allah wept, men feasted and women danced! Never since the
black night when the first-born of Egypt were slain had Egypt been so
mocked! Egypt, the great, the ancient, the cradle of humanity--what was
she now but a playground for the idle wealthy of the world!
"But--no matter!" he cried. "The world travaileth and groaneth like a
woman in labour, but as a woman forgetteth her pains when the hope of
her heart is born, so shall the children of God forget Pharaoh and his
feastings when the Expected One is come. He is coming now, the Living,
the Deliverer, the Redeemer! Wait! Watch! The time is near!"
The new message flashed like fire through Ishmael's followers. Every
eventide for thirteen centuries in Islam the prayer had gone up to
heaven for the advent of the divinely-appointed guide who was to redeem
the world from sorrow and sin, to deliver believers from the hated
bondage of the foreigner, and to re-establish the universal Caliphate;
and now, in the utmost depths of their oppression and suffering, when
hope had all but died out of their hearts, the true Mahdi, the Messiah,
the Christ, was about to come!
The people were beside themselves with joy. They were like children of
the desert who, after a long drought in which their wells have been
dried up, run about in glee when the first drops of rain begin to fall.
They were ready for any task, any enterprise, and Ishmael, who began to
make plans for going back to Cairo (for it was there, according to his
view, that the Expected One was to appear), sent letters to all corners
of the country telling his messengers to return home.
Helena wrote these letters with a trembling hand. In spite of her secret
errand she was surprised by a certain sympathy. The great hope, the
great dream touched her pity, and gave her at the beginning some moments
of compunction. But after a while she began to see it as a wicked
madness, and that enabled her to steel her heart against Ishmael again.
The man who held out such crazy hopes to a credulous people might be
harmless in England, but in Egypt he was a peril. Once let an ignorant
and superstitious populace believe that the end of the world was coming,
that a Messiah was about to appear, and human government was a
dead-letter. What then? Revolution and bloodshed, for the first duty of
a Government was to preserve law and order!
Helena asked herself if the time had not come at last to write to the
Consul-General, or perhaps to steal away from Khartoum and return to
Cairo that she might report what she had seen and learned.
After reflection she concluded that the only result of doing so would be
that of punishing yet further the poor, misguided populace who had been
punished enough already. It was Ishmael alone who ought to suffer,
whether for his offences against his followers, his conspiracy against
the Government or his crime against herself, and in order to punish him
apart, she would have to separate him from his people.
How was she to do this? It seemed impossible, but fate itself assisted
her.
A few days after Abdel Kader had gone off in his humiliation, the shadow
of his lanky body appeared across the threshold of the guest-room, where
Ishmael was sitting with no other company than old Mahmud and Helena who
was writing the usual letters while little Mosie fanned her to drive off
the flies.
"The peace of God be with you, Master," he said in a low and humble
voice, and then with a shy look of triumph he produced a letter which
had been given to him at Haifa.
The letter was from the Chancellor of El Azhar, and it told Ishmael,
after the usual Arabic salutations, that the festival of which he had
already been informed was to take place on the Ghezirah (the island in
front of Cairo); that the rejoicings were to begin on the anniversary of
the birthday of the English King, something more than a month hence;
that the British soldiers would still be in the provinces at that time,
quelling disturbances and helping the district officers to enforce the
payment of taxes, and that, as a consequence, the Egyptian army alone
would be left in charge of the city.
"The Egyptian soldiers are Moslems, O my brother--the brothers and sons
of our poor afflicted children of Allah. It needs only the right word
from the right man and they will throw down their arms at the city gates
and then the army of God may enter."
Ishmael read the letter aloud in his throbbing voice and his face began
to shine with ecstasy. In an instant a wild scheme took shape in his
mind.
He would announce a pilgrimage! With ten thousand, twenty thousand,
fifty thousand of his followers he would return to Cairo to meet and
greet the Expected One! The native army would not resist their
co-religionists, and once within the city the struggle would be at an
end! In a single hour his fifty thousand would be five hundred
thousand! The Government would not turn them out; it dared not make war
upon them; the whole world would cry out against a general massacre, and
God Himself would not permit it to occur!
_But_ somebody must go into Cairo in advance to prepare the way--to make
sure there should be no bloodshed! Some trusty messenger, some servant
of the Most High, who could kindle the souls of the Egyptian soldiers to
such a blazing flame of love that not all the perils of death could make
them take up arms against the children of God when they came to their
gates!
While Ishmael propounded this scheme with gathering excitement and a
look of frenzy, Helena sat trembling from head to foot and clutching
with nervous fingers the reed pen she held in her hand, for she knew
that her hour had struck at last--the hour she had waited and watched
for, the hour she had come to Khartoum to meet. She held her breath and
gazed intently into Ishmael's quivering face as long as he continued to
speak, and then, in a voice which she could scarcely recognise as her
own, she said--
"But the messenger who goes in advance into Cairo--he must be one whose
wisdom as well as courage you can trust."
"True, true, most true," said Ishmael, speaking eagerly and rapidly.
"Some one whose word will carry influence with the Egyptian army."
"Please God, it shall be so," said Ishmael.
"If the soldiers are native and Moslem, the officers are British and
Christian, therefore the risks they run are great."
"Great, very great, but God will protect them."
"To disobey may be to suffer imprisonment, perhaps discharge, possibly
death."
"I know! I know! But God will bring them to a happy end."
"Therefore," said Helena, whose nervousness was gathering feverish
strength, "the messenger who goes into Cairo in advance must be one who
can make them forget the dangers of death itself."
Ishmael reflected for a moment and then, in a burst of eagerness, he
said--
"The counsel is good. _I will go myself!_"
Helena's flushed face looked triumphant. "The man of all men," she
said. "What messenger from Ishmael could be so sure as Ishmael
himself?"
"Yes, please God, I will go myself," said Ishmael in a louder voice, and
he began to laugh--it was the first laugh that had broken from his lips
since Helena came to Khartoum. Then he paused and said--
"But the people?"
"Anybody can follow with them," said Helena. "Their loyalty is certain;
they need no persuading."
"I'll go," said Ishmael, "for above all there must be no bloodshed."
Then old Mahmud, who alone of the persons present in the guest-room
seemed to be untouched by the excitement of the moment, turned to Helena
and said--
"But is Ishmael the only one for this enterprise, my daughter?"
"He knows every one, and every one knows him," said Helena.
"But he who knows everybody, everybody knows," the old man answered;
"not the soldiers merely, but their masters also."
At that Helena's nervousness gathered itself up into a trill of
unnatural laughter, and she said, "Nonsense! He can be disguised! The
kufiah (headdress) of a Bedouin, covering his head and nearly all his
face--what more is wanted?"
"So you are not afraid for him, my daughter?"
"Afraid? I will make the kufiah myself and with my own hands I will put
it on."
"Brave heart of woman!" cried Ishmael. "Stronger than the soul of man!
It is _my_ duty and I will do it!"
With that he turned to Abdel Kader, who had looked on with his staring
eyes, and said--
"Go back to Cairo by the first train, and say, 'It is well--God willing
he will come.'" And then, in the fever of his new purpose, he went off
to the mosque.
There he first called upon the people to repeat the Shehadah, the Moslem
creed, and after that he administered an oath to them--never, by the
grace of God and His Prophet, to reveal what he was going to say except
to true believers, and only to them on their taking a like oath of
secrecy and fidelity.
The people repeated in chorus the words he spoke in a loud voice, and
concluded--each man with his right hand on the Koran, and his left
upraised to heaven--with a solemn Amen!
Then Ishmael told them everything--how the time had come for their
deliverance from bondage and corruption to the glorious liberty of the
children of God--how, as the people of the Prophet had returned from
Medina to Mecca, so they were to go up from Khartoum to Cairo--how he
was to go before them, and they, under another leader, were to follow
him, and God would give them a great reward.
At this news the poor, unlettered people grew delirious in their
excitement, each man interpreting Ishmael's message according to his own
vision of the millennium. Some saw themselves turning the hated
foreigner out of Egypt; others were already in imagination taking
possession of Cairo and all the rich lands of the valley of the Nile;
while a few, like Ishmael himself, were happy enough in the expectation
of prostrating themselves at the feet of the divinely appointed guide
who was to redeem the world from sorrow and sin.
As soon as prayers were over, Black Zogal ran back to old Mahmud's house
with a wild story of flashes of light which he saw darting from
Ishmael's head while he spoke from the pulpit.
Helena heard him. She was sitting alone in the guest-room, tortured by
contending thoughts. "Am I a wicked woman?" she asked herself,
remembering how easily she had taken advantage of Ishmael's fanatical
ecstasy. But again she hardened her heart against Ishmael, telling
herself that his simplicity was cunning, and that he was an impostor who
had gone so far with his imposture that he could even impose upon
himself.
How could one who had committed a crime, a cruel and cowardly crime, be
anything but a villain? A madman, perhaps, but all the same a villain.
And then other thoughts thronged upon her, sweet and bitter thoughts,
with memories of Gordon, of her father, of the early days in Grasmere,
of the short morning of happiness in Cairo, and of the brief rift in the
clouds of her life that was now plunged in perpetual night.
Thus she stifled every qualm of conscience by going back and back to the
same plea, the same support--
"_After all, he killed my father!_"
*CHAPTER VIII*
In a village outside blind-walled, dead Metimmeh, with its blank and
empty hovels, emblems of Mahdist massacres, two travellers were
encamped. One of them was what the quick-eyed natives called a "white
Egyptian," but he was dressed as a Bedouin Sheikh; the other was his
servant. They were travelling south, and having been long on their
journey, their camels had begun to fail them. A she-camel ridden by the
Bedouin was suffering in one of its feet, and the men were resting while
a doctor dressed it.
Meantime the villagers were feeding them with the best of their native
bread and making a fantasia for their entertainment. The night was a
little cold, and the people had built a fire, before which the
travellers were sitting with the Sheikh of the village by their side.
In a broad half-circle on the other side of the fire a group of
blue-shirted Arabs were squatting on the sand. A singer was warbling
love-songs in a throbbing voice, a number of his comrades were beating
time on the ground with sticks, and a swaggering girl, who glittered
with gold coins in her hair and on her hips, was dancing in the space
between. On their nut-brown faces was the flickering red light of the
fire, and over their heads was the great, wide, tranquil whiteness of
the moon.
In the midst of their fantasia they heard the hollow thud of a camel's
tread, and presently a stranger arrived, a lanky fellow with wild eyes
and a north-country accent. The Sheikh saluted him, and he made his
camel kneel and got down to rest and to eat.
"The peace of God be with you!"
"And with you! What is your name?" asked the Sheikh.
"They call me Abdel Kader, and I am riding all night to catch the train
from Atbara in the morning."
"It must be great news you carry in such haste, O brother."
"The greatest! When the sun rises above the horizon we see no more the
stars."
It was obvious enough through his fine language that the stranger was
eager to tell his story, and after calling for an oath of secrecy and
fidelity he told it to the Sheikh and the Bedouin in bated breath.
The time of the end had come! A pilgrimage had been proclaimed!
Ishmael Ameer was to go up to Cairo secretly and his people were to
follow him; the Egyptian army were to help them to enter the city, the
hated foreigner was to be flung out of the country, and Egypt was to be
God's!
The Sheikh of the village was completely carried away by the stranger's
news, but the Bedouin listened to it with unconcealed alarm.
"Is this the plan of Ishmael Ameer?" he asked.
"It is," said the stranger, "and God bring it to a happy end!"
"Did anybody put it into his head?" asked the Bedouin.
"Yes, a woman, his wife, and God bless and reward her!"
"His wife, you say?"
"Wallahi!" said the stranger, and then, with many fine sentiments and
much flowery speech, he told of the lady, the White Lady, the Rani, the
Princess, who had lately been married to Ishmael Ameer and had now so
much power over him.
"What says the old saw?" said the stranger. "'He who eats honey risks
the sting of bees,' but no danger in this case."
And then followed more fine sentiments on the sweetness and wisdom of
woman in general and of the Rani in particular.
"Well, he who lives long sees much," said the Bedouin, with increasing
uneasiness; and, turning to the Sheikh, he asked if he might have the
loan of a fresh camel in the place of the one that was disabled.
"Certainly, but my brother is not leaving me to-night?" asked the
Sheikh.
"I must," said the Bedouin.
"But the night is with us," said the Sheikh.
"And so is the moon, and the tracks are clear," said the Bedouin. "But
one thing you can do for me, O Sheikh--send a letter into Khartoum by
the train that goes up from Metimmeh in the morning."
That was agreed to; and, by the light of a large tin lamp which his
servant held before him as he sat on the sand, the Bedouin wrote a
hurried message to Ishmael Ameer, saying who he was and why he was
making his journey, and asking that nothing should be done until they
came together.
By this time the fantasia was over, the fire had died down, the camels
had been brought up, the flowery stranger had started afresh on his
northward way, and the Sheikh and his people were standing ready to say
farewell to the two travellers who were facing south.
"God take you safely to your journey's end, O brother," said the Sheikh.
Then, with a grunt, the camels knelt and rose, and at the next moment,
amid a chorus of pious ejaculations, into the glistening moon-track
across the sand the Bedouin and his man disappeared.
The Bedouin was Gordon. He was thinner and more bronzed, yet not less
well than when he left Cairo, for he had the strength of a soldier
inured to hardship. But Osman, his servant and guide, having lived all
his life in the schoolroom and the library, had dwindled away like their
camels which were utterly debilitated and had lost their humps.
Their journey had been long, for they had missed their way, being
sometimes carried off by mirages and sometimes impeded by mountain
ranges that rose sheer and sharp across their course. And often in the
face of such obstacles, with his companion and his camels failing before
his eyes, Gordon's own spirit had also failed, and he had asked himself
why, since he knew of no use that Heaven could have for him there, he
continued to trudge along through this bare and barren wilderness.
But doubt and uncertainty were now gone. He was in a fever of
impatience to reach Khartoum that he might put an end to Ishmael's
scheme. That scheme was madness, and it could only end in disaster.
Carried into execution it would be another Arabi insurrection, and would
lead to like failure and as much bloodshed.
The Englishman and the British soldier in Gordon, no less than the
friend of the Egyptian people, rebelled against Ishmael's plot. It was
political mutiny against England, which Ishmael, in Cairo, had protested
was no part of his spiritual plan. What influence had since played upon
him to make him change the object of his mission? Who was this white
woman, this Rani, this Princess who had put an evil motive into his
mind? Was she acting in the folly of good faith or was she deceiving
and betraying him? His wife, too! What could it mean?
In Gordon's impatience only one thing was clear to him--that for
England's sake, and for Egypt's also, he must reach Khartoum without
delay. He must show Ishmael how impossible was his scheme, how
dangerous, how deadly, how certain to lead to his own detection and
perhaps death.
"We are thirty hours from Omdurman--can we do it in a day and a night,
Osman?" he said, as soon as the camels swung away.
"God willing, we will," said Osman, in a voice that betrayed at once his
weakness and his devotion.
They rode all night, first in the breathless moonlight with its silvery
shimmering haze, then in a strong wind that made the clouds to sail
before the stars and the camels beneath them to feel like ships that
were riding through a running sea, and last of all in the black hour
before the dawn, when it was difficult to see the tracks, and the beasts
stumbled in the darkness.
The morning grew grey and they were still riding. But Osman's strength
was failing rapidly, and when, half an hour afterwards, the sun in its
rising brightness began to flush with pink the stony heights of distant
hills, they drew rein, made their camels kneel, and dismounted.
They were then near a well, from which a group of laughing girls, with
bare bronze arms and shoulders, were drawing water in pitchers and
carrying it away on their heads. While Osman loosened the saddles of
the camels and fed the tired creatures with durah, Gordon asked one of
the girls for a drink, and she held her pitcher to his lips, saying with
a smile, "May it give thee health and prosperity!"
After half-an-hour's rest, having filled their water-skins and being
refreshed with biscuits and dates, they readjusted the saddles of the
camels, mounted and rose and started again, making their salaams to the
young daughters of the desert who stood grouped together in the morning
sunshine and looked after them with laughing eyes.
The clear, vivifying, elastic desert air breathed upon their faces; and
their camels, strengthened by rest and food, swung away with better
speed. All day long they continued to ride without stopping. Gordon's
impatience increased every hour as he reflected upon the probable
consequences of the scheme with which the unknown woman had inspired
Ishmael, and Osman, being told of the danger, forgot his weakness in the
fervour of his devotion.
The shadows lengthened along the sea-flat sand while they passed over
wastes without a bush or a scrub or a sign of life, but just as the sun
was setting they entered the crater-like valley of Kerreri with its
clumps of mimosa and its far view of the innumerable islands of the
Nile.
This was the scene of Gordon's first battle, the battle of Omdurman, and
a score of tender and thrilling memories came crowding upon him from the
past. Yonder was the thicket in which he had taken the Khalifa's flag,
the spot where he had left Ali: "Show the bits of the bridle to my
Colonel and tell him I died faithful. Give my salaams to him, Charlie.
I knew Charlie Gordon Lord would stay with me to the end."
How different the old battlefield was to-day! Instead of the deafening
roar of cannon, the wail of shell the frenzied shouts of the dervishes,
and the swathes of sheeted dead, there was only the grim solitude of
stony hills and yellow sand, with here and there some white and
glistening bones over which the vultures circled in the silent air.
Night had fallen when they entered Omdurman, and the change in the town,
too, struck a chill into Gordon's heated spirit. No longer the dirty,
disgusting Mahdist capital, it was deodorised, swept, and sweet. Could
it be possible that he was opposing the forces which had brought this
civilising change?
When the travellers reached the ferry the last boat for Khartoum had
gone, and, the Nile being high, they had no choice but to remain in
Omdurman until morning.
"_Ma'aleysh_! All happens as God ordains," said Osman. But Gordon's
impatience could scarcely contain itself, so eager was he to undo the
work of the woman who had done so much ill.
They lodged in a khan of the old slave-market, which was now full of
peaceful people sitting about coffee-stalls lit by lanterns and candles,
where formerly the air was tense with the frenzied gallopings of the
wild Baggara, and the melancholy boom of the great ombeya, the fearful
trumpet of death.
Before going to bed Gordon wrote another letter to Ishmael, saying he
had got thus far and expected to meet him in the morning. Then, being
unable, as yet, to sleep under a roof, after sleeping so long on the
desert, he dragged his angerib into the open and stretched himself under
the stars.
There, gazing up into the great vault of heaven, a memory came back to
him which had never once failed to come when he lay down to sleep--the
memory of Helena. Every night on his long desert journey, whatever the
discomfort of his bed, if it were only the hole between stones which the
Arab shepherds build to protect themselves from the wind, his last
thought had been of her.
She was gone, she was lost to him, she would be in England by this time,
and he was exiled from home for ever, but in the twilight moments of the
heart and mind that go between the waking sense and sleep she was with
him still.
And now, lying on his angerib in Omdurman, he could see her radiant eyes
and hear her deep, melodious voice, and catch the note of the gay
raillery that was perhaps her greatest charm. Though he had done this
ever since he left Cairo he felt to-night as if the sweet agony of it
all would break his heart.
He looked up at the stars and found pleasure in thinking that the same
sky was over Helena in England. Then he looked across at Khartoum and
saw that all the windows of the Palace were lit up as for a dance.
A mystic sense of some impending event came over him. What could it be?
he wondered. Then he remembered the word of Osman, who was now
breathing heavily at his side.
"_Ma'aleysh_! All happens as God ordains," he thought. Then, sending a
last greeting to Helena in England, he turned over and fell asleep.
*CHAPTER IX*
Early that morning Abdullah had entered Ishmael's room while the Master
was still sleeping, for a messenger from Metimmeh, coming by train, had
brought an urgent letter.
Ishmael read the letter and rose immediately, and when Helena met him in
the guest-room half-an-hour afterwards, she saw that he was excited and
disturbed.
"Rani," he said, "I have been thinking about our plan and have certain
doubts about it. Better let it rest for a few days at all events."
Helena asked why, and she was told that a stranger was coming whose
counsel might be wise, for he knew Cairo, the Government, and the
Egyptian army, and he had asked Ishmael to wait until he arrived before
committing himself to any course.
"Who is he?" she asked.
"One who loves the people and has suffered sorely for his love of them."
"What is his name?"
"They call him Sheikh Omar Benani."
At that moment she learned no more than that the stranger was a Bedouin
chief of great fame and influence, that he had rested at Metimmeh the
night before, but was now coming on to Khartoum as fast as a camel could
carry him.
"He may be here to-night, to-morrow at latest," said Ishmael, "so let us
leave things where they are until our brother arrives."
This news threw Helena into a fever of excitement. She saw the
possibility of her scheme coming to nought. The Bedouin who was now on
his way might destroy it.
She was afraid of this Bedouin. If he knew Cairo, the Government, and
the Egyptian army, he must also know that the plan which Ishmael had
proposed to himself was impossible. That being so, he would advise
Ishmael against it. His influence with Ishmael would be greater than
her own, and as a consequence her plan would fail. Then all she had
hoped for, all she had come for, all she had sacrificed so much for,
would be lost and wasted.
What was she to do? There was only one thing possible--to cause Ishmael
to commit himself to her plan before the Bedouin arrived in Khartoum.
Again fate assisted her. The same train that brought the Bedouin's
letter brought another messenger from Cairo. He was an immensely tall
Dinka, who had been employed to avert suspicion. As soon as he was
alone with Ishmael and his household he slipped off his sandal and
tearing open the undersole produced a very small letter.
It was from the Ulema of El Azhar, and gave further particulars of the
forthcoming festivities, with one hint of amazing advice that certainly
could not have come from men of the world.
The Consul-General had decided to give his annual dinner in honour of
the King's Birthday not as usual at the British Agency, but in the
Pavilion of the Ghezirah Palace, on the island in front of the city.
All the authorities would be there that night, housed under one roof.
The British army would still be in the provinces, and the Egyptian army
alone would be left in defence of the town. Therefore, to prevent the
possibility of bloodshed, there was only one thing to do--turn the key
on the Pavilion, in order to imprison the persons in command, and then
open the bridge that crossed the Nile, that Ishmael's following, with
the consent of the native soldiers, might enter Cairo unopposed!
It was a plot whereof the counterpart could only have been found in the
history of Abu Moslim and "Al Mansour," and perhaps for that reason
alone it took Ishmael's heart by storm. But it required immediate
confirmation, for if the secret scheme was to be carried out, the
arrangements were matters of urgency and the reply must be received at
once.
There were some moments of tense silence after Ishmael had read the
letter, for already he had begun to hesitate, to talk again of waiting
for the Bedouin, who knew Egypt better than any one in the Soudan, and
was wise and brave and learned in war. But, Helena, seeing her
advantage, began to speak, with a flushed face and a trembling tongue,
of the train that was to leave Khartoum for Cairo that morning, and of
the interval of four days before the departure of another one.
"There can be no time to lose," she said, with a stifling sense of
duplicity, "especially if the Ulema are to arrange for your own arrival
as well."
At length Ishmael, no longer the man he used to be, strong above all in
common-sense, but an enthusiast living in a world of dream, was swept
away by the Ulema's scheme. Seeing only one sure way to avoid
bloodshed--that of shutting up the British officials in the midst of
their festivities while the bridge that crossed the Nile was opened and
his followers took peaceful possession of the city--he called on Helena
to write his reply. It ran:--
"To his Serenity the Chancellor of El Azhar, from the slave of God,
Ishmael Ameer: Good news! In the interests of peace I agree, though
liking not for other reasons your plan of imprisoning Pharaoh and his
people in their Pavilion lest it should be said of us, 'Behold the true
believer resorts to the tricks of the infidels, who trust not in the
good arm of God'--praise be to Him, the Exalted One!
"Nevertheless, I send you this word of greeting, giving my consent and
saying, 'Shortly I go down to Cairo myself to call upon our brothers
under arms to our very great Lord, the Khedive, to refuse, when the day
of our deliverance comes, to shed the blood of the children of the Most
High.'"
Having dictated this letter, and added the usual Arabic salutations, he
signed it, and then, full of a fresh enthusiasm, he went off to mid-day
prayers in the mosque, where with greater fervour than before he
delivered his new message about the coming of the end.
Helena was now alone, for the Dinka had gone in with Abdullah to eat and
to rest. The signed letter lay before her, and she knew that her time
had come. In great haste she made a copy of the letter, and without
waiting to think what she was doing she added Ishmael's name to it.
Then, hiding the original in her bosom, she called for the Dinka, gave
him the copy, and hurried him off to the train, which was leaving
immediately. After that, with a sense of mingled shame and triumph, she
wrote to the Consul-General. Her excitement was so great that she could
hardly hold the pen or frame coherent sentences. This was what she
wrote:--
"DEAR LORD NUNEHAM.--You will remember that in the letter I wrote to you
before I left Cairo I told you that I should write again, and that when
I wrote, your enemy and mine and Gordon's as well as England's and
Egypt's would be in your hands.
"I am now fulfilling my promise, and you shall judge for yourself
whether I am justifying my word. Ishmael Ameer, at the instigation of
the Ulema, is about to return to Cairo. His object is to organise a
mutiny among the soldiers of the Egyptian army, so that a vast multitude
of his followers, coming behind him, may take possession of the city.
"This is to be done during the forthcoming festivities, and it is to
reach its climax on the night of the King's Birthday. Proof enclosed.
It is the original of a letter to the Chancellor of El Azhar, a copy
having been sent instead.
"Ishmael will travel by train--probably within a week--and he will wear
the disguise of a Bedouin Sheikh. I leave you to wait and watch for
him.
"Did I not say I was not idly boasting? In haste,--
"HELENA GRAVES.
"_P.S._--I send this by my boy Mosie. Please keep him in Cairo until
you hear from me again."
When she had finished her letter she paused for a moment and looked
fixedly before her. Although she said nothing her lips moved as if she
were interrogating the empty air. She was asking herself again, "Am I
cruel and revengeful and vindictive?" And she was replying to herself
as she had replied before: "If so, I cannot help it. I have lost my
father and I have lost Gordon and I am alone and my heart is torn."
Strengthened by this thought she took Ishmael's letter from her bosom
and folded it inside her own. But while she was in the act of putting
both into an envelope she paused again, for a new and more startling
memory had flashed upon her. It was the memory of the marks upon her
father's throat, and of the missing finger-print which had somehow
formed so fatal an evidence of Ishmael's guilt.
How had it happened that she had forgotten this fact until now--that
during all the time she had been in Khartoum she had never once
remembered to verify it--that even at the moment she could not say
whether the third finger of Ishmael's left hand was intact or not?
But no matter! It was not a fact of the greatest consequence, and in
any case she had gone too far to think of it now.
She sealed her envelope and addressed it and then called for Mosie. The
black boy came running at the sound of her agitated voice.
"Mosie," she said in a breathless whisper, "you have always said that
you loved me so much that you would lay down your life for me." The
black boy showed his shining white teeth as if from ear to ear. "Do you
think you could find your way back to Cairo alone and deliver a letter
to the English lord?"
"Let lady try me," said Mosie, who was ablaze with excitement in an
instant.
Then she told him how he was to go--by train to Haifa, by Government
boat to Shellal, by train again from Assouan to his journey's end,
travelling always in compartments occupied by natives. She also gave
him strict injunctions against speaking to any one, either in Khartoum
or on the way, or in Cairo until he came to the British Agency. There
he was to ask for the Consul-General and give into his hands--his
only--her private letter.
"The train leaves in half-an-hour, Mosie, so you'll have to be quick,"
she whispered.
"Yes, lady, yes, yes," said Mosie at every word, and in his eagerness to
be gone he almost snatched the letter out of her hand.
"No, give me one of your sandals," she said, and when he had whipped it
off she took her scissors and lifting the inner sole she hid her letter
underneath.
Then she hurried into her room, and returning with a small canvas bag,
which contained nearly all the money she had left in the world, she gave
it to the black boy and sent him off.
*CHAPTER X*
After that she sat down, for her heart was beating violently and she
could scarcely breathe. At the same moment she caught sight of her face
in a hand-glass that stood on the table at which she wrote, and the
features looked so strange that they scarcely seemed to be her own.
If anybody with the eye of the spirit could have gazed at that moment
into the deepest recesses of her soul--harder to look into than the
obscurity of the sea--he would have seen a battlefield of contending
passions. She was reflecting for the first time on the whole meaning of
what she had done. She had condemned Ishmael Ameer to death! Or at
least, at the very least, to lifelong imprisonment in Damietta or Torah!
When she put it so the furnace of her conscience seemed to consume her,
and in order to live with herself she had to oppose that thought with
thoughts of Gordon--Gordon gone, she knew not where, an exile, an
outcast, his brilliant young life wasted, never to be seen again.
This relieved the riot in her brain, and to ease her heart still further
she made herself believe that what she had done had not been to revenge
herself but to avenge Gordon, whom Ishmael's evil influence had
destroyed.
"Serve him right," she thought. "Let him go to Damietta! What better
does he deserve?"
At that moment Ayesha, Ishmael's little daughter, came running with bare
feet into the house, and seeing Helena she leapt into her arms and
kissed her. The kiss of the child seemed like a blow--it made her
dizzy.
At the next moment, while Ayesha was mumbling affectionate play-words
which Helena did not hear, and Zenoba, the Arab nurse, stood beating her
impatient foot upon the floor, there came from outside the murmur of a
crowd. It was the crowd of Ishmael's followers, bringing him home from
the mosque.
They were calling upon God and His Prophet to bless him, touching his
white caftan as if it were divine and virtue were coming out of him.
He dismissed them with words of rebuke--gentler and more indulgent than
before, perhaps--and, entering the house, he called for food.
A few minutes afterwards Ishmael and Helena and old Mahmud were sitting
in the guest-room together, drinking new milk and eating soft bread.
"But where is your boy, O Rani?" asked Ishmael, who missed the great fan
of ostrich feathers.
Helena made a halting excuse. Mosie had been troublesome--she had sent
him back to where he came from--Cairo.
"Cairo?" asked the Arab woman, with a glance of suspicion.
Helena looked confused, but Ishmael saw nothing. He was more than
usually excited, enthusiastic, and full of great hopes. After a while
he talked of the Bedouin who was coming.
"Our brother is not, in fact, a Bedouin," he said.
"Not a Bedouin?"
"Neither is he a Moslem. He is a Christian and indeed an Englishman."
"An Englishman?"
"All yes, but he is one who loves the Moslems, and has gone through
shame and degradation rather than do them a wrong."
Helena was afraid to ask further questions. She could only listen,
terrified by a vague apprehension.
"Truly, O lady, he who loveth all the children of God, him God loveth,"
said Ishmael. "This brave man was a soldier, and if he has suffered
rather than do an evil act will God forget him? No!"
Helena shuddered. The idea that was taking shape in her mind seemed
incredible. Ishmael was speaking in the softest tones, yet his voice
seemed like the subterranean sounds that precede great shocks of
earthquake.
"He is coming. Be good to him, my Rani. If we could take his heart out
and weigh it we should find it gold."
Helena was struck with a sort of stupor. "Am I dreaming?" she asked
herself. "What am I thinking about?" It was one of those mysterious
moments on the eve of the great events of life, when murmurs come from
we know not where.
The long hours of that day passed in a sort of dark confusion. At last
the sun set, and the moon rose over the desert, the golden tropical moon
in the purple of the Eastern sky, and lit up the wilderness of sand as
with a softer sun.
It grew late and Helena rose to go to her room. As she did so she
almost fell from dizziness, and Ishmael helped her to the door of the
women's quarters. She had seen his lustrous eyes upon her with the
expression that had made her tremble on the night of the betrothal, but
again, in the same scarcely audible voice, he said--
"God give you a good morning!" and putting, for the first time, his lips
to her hand he went away.
When she was alone a long hour passed in silence. The bedroom was in a
state of perfect calm, yet a frightful tumult was going on in her brain.
Could it be possible that he who was coming was----
No! The wild irony of that thought was too terrible.
That at the very moment when she thought she was avenging Gordon for the
injury he had suffered at the hands of Ishmael--that at that moment, by
some sinister eccentricity of destiny, he ... he, himself----
In the midst of her hideous pain a sweet and joyous sound fell upon her
ear. It was the voice of the child, who had awakened for a moment from
her peaceful sleep.
"Will you not come into bed, Rani?"
"Yes, yes, dear, presently," she answered, and at the next moment the
child's equal and tranquil breathing, so gentle, so calm, fell on her
ear again.
Innocence is the most formidable of all spectacles that can confront an
uneasy conscience, and when at length Helena got into bed, and the
child, in the blind mists of sleep, nestled up to her, she had to
justify herself by thinking that in everything she had done, everything
she had tried to do, she had been moved by incidents of the most
irresistible provocation.
"After all, _he killed my father_," she thought.
But nevertheless she felt again, as she was dropping off to sleep, that
she was falling, falling, falling over the edge of a yawning precipice.