There is a town on the Nile which Fielding Bey called Hasha, meaning
“Heaven Forbid!” He loathed inspecting it. Going up the Nile, he would
put off visiting it till he came down; coming down, he thanked his fates
if accident carried him beyond it. Convenient accidents sometimes did
occur: a murder at one of the villages below it, asking his immediate
presence; a telegram from his Minister at Cairo, requiring his return;
or a very low Nile, when Hasha suddenly found itself a mile away from
the channel and there was no good place to land. So it was that Hasha,
with little inspection, was the least reputable and almost the dirtiest
town on the Nile; for even in those far-off days the official Englishman
had his influence, especially when Kubar Pasha was behind him. Kubar had
his good points.
There were certain definite reasons, however, why Fielding Bey shrank
from visiting Hasha. Donovan Pasha saw something was wrong from the
first moment Hasha was mentioned.
On a particular day they were lying below at another village, on the
Amenhotep. Hasha was the next place marked red on the map, and that
meant inspection. When Dicky Donovan mentioned Hasha, Fielding Bey
twisted a shoulder and walked nervously up and down the deck. He stayed
here for hours: to wait for the next post, he said-serious matters
expected from head quarters. He appeared not to realise that letters
would get to Hasha by rail as quickly as by the Amenhotep.
Every man has a weak spot in his character, a sub-rosa, as it were, in
his business of life; and Dicky fancied he had found Fielding Bey’s.
While they waited, Fielding made a pretence of working hard--for
he really was conscientious--sending his orderly for the
mamour--[magistrate]--and the omdah--[head of a village]--, and holding
fatuous conferences; turning the hose on the local dairymen and butchers
and dategrowers, who came with backsheesh in kind; burying his nose in
official papers; or sending for Holgate, the Yorkshire engineer, to find
out what the run would be to the next stopping-place beyond Hasha. Twice
he did this; which was very little like Fielding Bey. The second time,
when Holgate came below to his engine, Dicky was there playing with a
Farshoot dog.
“We don’t stop at Hasha, then?” Dicky asked, and let the Farshoot fasten
on his leggings.
Holgate swung round and eyed Dicky curiously, a queer smile at his lips.
“Not if Goovnur can ‘elp, aw give ye ma woord, sir,” answered Holgate.
Fielding was affectionately called “the Governor” by his subordinates
and friends.
“We all have our likes and dislikes,” rejoined Dicky casually, and blew
smoke in the eyes of the Farshoot. “Aye, aw’ve seen places that bad! but
Hasha has taaste of its own in Goovnur’s mouth, ma life on’t!”
“Never can tell when a thing’ll pall on the taste. Hasha’s turn with the
Governor now, eh?” rejoined Dicky.
Dicky’s way of getting information seemed guileless, and Holgate opened
his basket as wide as he knew. “Toorn, didst tha sway” (Holgate talked
broadly to Dicky always, for Dicky had told him of his aunt, Lady
Carmichael, who lived near Halifax in Yorkshire), “toorn, aw warrant! It
be reg’lar as kitchen-fire, this Hasha business, for three years, ever
sin’ aw been scrapin’ mud o’ Nile River.”
“That was a nasty row they had over the cemetery three years ago, the
Governor against the lot, from mamour to wekeel!”
Holgate’s eyes flashed, and he looked almost angrily down at Dicky,
whose hand was between the teeth of the playful Farshoot.
“Doost think--noa, tha canst not think that Goovnur be ‘feared o’ Hasha
fook. Thinks’t tha, a man that told ‘em all--a thousand therr--that he’d
hang on nearest tree the foorst that disobeyed him, thinks’t tha that
Goovnur’s lost his nerve by that?”
“The Governor never loses his nerve, Holgate,” said Dicky, smiling and
offering a cigar. “There’s such a thing as a man being afraid to trust
himself where he’s been in a mess, lest he hit out, and doesn’t want
to.”
Holgate, being excited, was in a fit state to tell the truth, if he knew
it; which was what Dicky had worked for; but Holgate only said:
“It bean’t fear, and it bean’t milk o’ human kindness. It be soort o’
thing a man gets. Aw had it once i’ Bradford, in Little Cornish Street.
Aw saw a faace look out o’ window o’ hoose by tinsmith’s shop, an’ that
faace was like hell’s picture-aye, ‘twas a killiagous faace that! Aw
never again could pass that house. ‘Twas a woman’s faace. Horrible
‘twas, an’ sore sad an’ flootered aw were, for t’ faace was like a lass
aw loved when aw wur a lad.”
“I should think it was something like that,” answered Dicky, his eyes
wandering over the peninsula beyond which lay Hasha.
“Summat, aw be sure,” answered Holgate, “an’ ma woord on’t... ah, yon
coomes orderly wi’ post for Goovnur. Now it be Hasha, or it be not
Hasha, it be time for steam oop.”
Holgate turned to his engine as Dicky mounted the stairs and went
to Fielding’s cabin, where the orderly was untying a handkerchief
overflowing with letters.
As Fielding read his official letters his face fell more and more. When
he had read the last, he sat for a minute without speaking, his brow
very black. There was no excuse for pushing past Hasha. He had not been
there for over a year. It was his duty to inspect the place: he had
a conscience; there was time to get to Hasha that afternoon. With an
effort he rose, hurried along the deck, and called down to Holgate:
“Full-steam to Hasha!”
Then, with a quick command to the reis, who was already at the wheel,
he lighted a cigar, and, joining Dicky Donovan, began to smoke and talk
furiously. But he did not talk of Hasha.
At sunset the Amenhotep drew in to the bank by Hasha, and, from
the deck, Fielding Bey saluted the mamour, the omdah and his own
subordinates, who, buttoning up their coats as they came, hurried to the
bank to make salaams to him. Behind them, at a distance, came villagers,
a dozen ghaffirs armed with naboots of dom-wood, and a brace of
well-mounted, badly-dressed policemen, with seats like a monkey on a
stick. The conferences with the mamour and omdah were short, in keeping
with the temper of “Fielding Saadat”; and long into the night Dicky lay
and looked out of his cabin window to the fires on the banks, where sat
Mahommed Seti the servant, the orderly, and some attendant ghaffirs,
who, feasting on the remains of the effendi’s supper, kept watch. For
Hasha was noted for its robbers. It was even rumoured that the egregious
Selamlik Pasha, with the sugar plantation near by--“Trousers,” Dicky
called him when he saw him on the morrow, because of the elephantine
breeks he wore--was not averse to sending his Abyssinian slaves through
the sugar-cane to waylay and rob, and worse, maybe.
By five o’clock next day the inspection was over. The streets had been
swept for the Excellency--which is to say Saadat--the first time in a
year. The prison had been cleaned of visible horrors, the first time in
a month. The last time it was ordered there had been a riot among the
starving, infested prisoners; earth had been thrown over the protruding
bones of the dear lamented dead in the cemetery; the water of the
ablution places in the mosque had been changed; the ragged policemen
had new putties; the kourbashes of the tax-gatherers were hid in their
yeleks; the egregious Pasha wore a greasy smile, and the submudir, as he
conducted Fielding--“whom God preserve and honour!”--through the prison
and through the hospital, where goat’s milk had been laid on for this
especial day, smirked gently through the bazaar above his Parisian
waistcoat.
But Fielding, as he rode on Selamlik Pasha’s gorgeous black donkey from
Assiout, with its crimson trappings, knew what proportion of improvement
this “hankypanky,” as Dicky called it, bore to the condition of things
at the last inspection. He had spoken little all day, and Dicky had
noticed that his eye was constantly turning here and there, as though
looking for an unwelcome something or somebody.
At last the thing was over, and they were just crossing the canal, the
old Bahr-el-Yusef, which cuts the town in twain as the river Abana does
Damascus, when Dicky saw nearing them a heavily-laden boat, a cross
between a Thames house-boat and an Italian gondola, being drawn by one
poor raw-bone--raw-bone in truth, for there was on each shoulder a round
red place, made raw by the unsheathed ropes used as harness. The beast’s
sides were scraped as a tree is barked, and the hind quarters gored as
though by a harrow. Dicky was riding with the mamour of the district,
Fielding was a distance behind with Trousers and the Mudir. Dicky pulled
up his donkey, got off and ran towards the horse, pale with fury; for
he loved animals better than men, and had wasted his strength beating
donkey-boys with the sticks they used on their victims. The boat had
now reached a point opposite the mudirieh, its stopping-place; and the
raw-bone, reeking with sweat and blood, stood still and trembled, its
knees shaking with the strain just taken off them, its head sunk nearly
to the ground.
Dicky had hardly reached the spot when a figure came running to the
poor waler with a quick stumbling motion. Dicky drew back in wonder,
for never had he seen eyes so painful as these that glanced from the
tortured beast to himself--staring, bulbous, bloodshot, hunted eyes;
but they were blue, a sickly, faded blue; and they were English! Dicky’s
hand was, on his pistol, for his first impulse had been to shoot the
rawbone; but it dropped away in sheer astonishment at the sight of this
strange figure in threadbare dirty clothes and riding-breeches made by
shearing the legs of a long pair--cut with an unsteady hand, for the
edges were jagged and uneven, and the man’s bare leg showed above the
cast-off putties of a policeman. The coat was an old khaki jacket of
a Gippy soldier, and, being scant of buttons, doubtful linen showed
beneath. Above the hook-nose, once aristocratic, now vulture-like
and shrunken like that of Rameses in his glass case at Ghizeh, was a
tarboosh tilting forward over the eyes, nearly covering the forehead.
The figure must have been very tall once, but it was stooped now, though
the height was still well above medium. Hunted, haunted, ravaged and
lost, was the face, and the long grey moustache, covering the chin
almost, seemed to cover an immeasurable depravity.
Dicky took it all in at a glance, and wondered with a bitter wonder; for
this was an Englishman, and behind him and around him, though not
very near him, were Arabs, Soudanese, and Fellaheen, with sneering yet
apprehensive faces.
As Dicky’s hand dropped away from his pistol, the other shot out
trembling, graceful, eager fingers, the one inexpressibly gentlemanly
thing about him.
“Give it to me--quick!” he said, and he threw a backward glance towards
the approaching group--Fielding, the egregious Pasha, and the rest.
Dicky did not hesitate; he passed the pistol over. The Lost One took the
pistol, cocked it, and held it to the head of the waler, which feebly
turned to him in recognition.
“Good-bye, old man!” he said, and fired.
The horse dropped, kicked, struggled once or twice, and was gone.
“If you know the right spot, there’s hardly a kick,” said the Lost One,
and turned to face the Pasha, who had whipped his donkey forward on
them, and sat now livid with rage, before the two. He stood speechless
for a moment, for his anger had forced the fat of his neck up into his
throat.
But Dicky did not notice the Pasha. His eye was fixed on Fielding Bey,
and the eye of Fielding Bey was on the Lost One. All at once Dicky
understood why it was that Fielding Bey had shrunk from coming to Hasha.
Fielding might have offered many reasons, but this figure before them
was the true one. Trouble, pity, anxiety, pride, all were in Fielding’s
face. Because the Lost One was an Englishman, and the race was shamed
and injured by this outcast? Not that alone. Fielding had the natural
pride of his race, but this look was personal. He glanced at the dead
horse, at the scarred sides, the raw shoulders, the corrugated haunches,
he saw the pistol in the Lost One’s hand, and then, as a thread of
light steals between the black trees of a jungle, a light stole across
Fielding’s face for a moment. He saw the Lost One hand the pistol back
to Dicky and fix his debauched blue eyes on the Pasha. These blue eyes
did not once look at Fielding, though they were aware of his presence.
“Son of a dog!” said the Pasha, and his fat forefinger convulsively
pointed to the horse.
The Lost One’s eyes wavered a second, as though their owner had not
the courage to abide the effect of his action, then they quickened to a
point of steadiness, as a lash suddenly knots for a crack in the hand of
a postilion.
“Swine!” said the Lost One into the Pasha’s face, and his round
shoulders drew up a little farther, so that he seemed more like a man
among men. His hands fell on his hips as, in his mess, an officer with
no pockets drops his knuckles on his waist-line for a stand-at-ease.
The egregious Selamlik Pasha stood high in favour with the Khedive: was
it not he who had suggested a tax on the earnings of the dancing girls,
the Ghazeeyehs, and did he not himself act as the first tax-gatherer?
Was it not Selamlik Pasha also who whispered into the ear of the
Mouffetish that a birth-tax and a burial-tax should be instituted?
And had he not seen them carried out in the mudiriehs under his own
supervision? Had he not himself made the Fellaheen pay thrice over for
water for their onion-fields? Had he not flogged an Arab to death with
his own hand, the day before Fielding’s and Dicky’s arrival, and had he
not tried to get this same Arab’s daughter into his harem--this Selamlik
Pasha!
The voice of the Lost One suddenly rose shrill and excited, and he
shouted at the Pasha. “Swine! swine! swine!... Kill your slaves with a
kourbash if you like, but a bullet’s the thing for a waler!--Swine of a
leper!”
The whole frame of the Lost One was still, but the voice was shaking,
querulous, half hysterical; the eyes were lighted with a terrible
excitement, the lips under the grey moustache twitched; the nervous
slipshod dignity of carriage was in curious contrast to the disordered
patchwork dress.
The trouble on Fielding’s face glimmered with a little ray of hope
now. Dicky came over to him, and was about to speak, but a motion of
Fielding’s hand stopped him. The hand said: “Let them fight it out.”
In a paroxysm of passion Selamlik Pasha called two Abyssinian slaves
standing behind. “This brother of a toad to prison!” he said.
The Lost One’s eyes sought Dicky like a flash. Without a word, and as
quick as the tick of a clock, Dicky tossed over his pistol to the Lost
One, who caught it smoothly, turned it in his hand, and levelled it at
the Abyssinians.
“No more of this damned nonsense, Pasha,” said Fielding suddenly.
“He doesn’t put a high price on his life, and you do on yours. I’d be
careful!”
“Steady, Trousers!” said Dicky in a soft voice, and smiled his girlish
smile.
Selamlik Pasha stared for a moment in black anger, then stuttered forth:
“Will you speak for a dog of a slave that his own country vomits out?”
“Your mother was a slave of Darfur, Pasha,” answered Fielding, in a low
voice; “your father lost his life stealing slaves. Let’s have no airs
and graces.”
Dicky’s eyes had been fixed on the Lost One, and his voice now said in
its quaint treble: “Don’t get into a perspiration. He’s from where we
get our bad manners, and he messes with us to-night, Pasha.”
The effect of these words was curious. Fielding’s face was a blank
surprise, and his mouth opened to say no, but he caught Dicky’s look and
the word was not uttered. The Pasha’s face showed curious incredulity;
under the pallor of the Lost One’s a purplish flush crept, stayed a
moment, then faded away, and left it paler than before.
“We’ve no more business, I think, Pasha,” said Fielding brusquely, and
turned his donkey towards the river. The Pasha salaamed without a word,
his Abyssinian slaves helped him on his great white donkey, and he
trotted away towards the palace, the trousers flapping about his huge
legs. The Lost One stood fingering the revolver. Presently he looked up
at Dicky, and, standing still, held out the pistol.
“Better keep it,” said Dicky; “I’ll give you some peas for it to-night.
Speak to the poor devil, Fielding,” he added quickly, in a low tone.
Fielding turned in his saddle. “Seven’s the hour,” he said, and rode on.
“Thanks, you fellows,” said the Lost One, and walked swiftly away.
As they rode to the Amenhotep Dicky did not speak, but once he turned
round to look after the outcast, who was shambling along the bank of the
canal.
When Fielding and Dicky reached the deck of the Amenhotep, and Mahommed
Seti had brought refreshment, Dicky said: “What did he do?”
Fielding’s voice was constrained and hard: “Cheated at cards.”
Dicky’s lips tightened. “Where?”
“At Hong Kong.”
“Officer?”
“In the Buffs.”
Dicky drew a long breath. “He’s paid the piper.”
“Naturally. He cheated twice.”
“Cheated twice--at cards!” Dicky’s voice was hard now. “Who was he?”
“Heatherby--Bob Heatherby!”
“Bob Heatherby--gad! Fielding, I’m sorry--I couldn’t have guessed, old
man. Mrs. Henshaw’s brother!”
Fielding nodded. Dicky turned his head away; for Fielding was in love
with Mrs. Henshaw, the widow of Henshaw of the Buffs. He realised now
why Fielding loathed Hasha so.
“Forgive me for asking him to mess, guv’nor.”
Fielding laughed a little uneasily. “Never mind. You see, it isn’t the
old scores only that bar him. He’s been a sweep out here. Nothing
he hasn’t done. Gone lower and lower and lower. Tax-gatherer with a
kourbash for old Selamlik the beast. Panderer for the same. Sweep of the
lowest sort!”
Dicky’s eyes flashed. “I say, Fielding, it would be rather strange if he
hadn’t gone down, down, down. A man that’s cheated at cards never finds
anybody to help him up, up, up. The chances are dead against him. But he
stood up well to-day, eh?”
“I suppose blood will tell at last in the very worst.”
“‘And while the lamp holds out to burn
The vilest sinner may return--’”
hummed Dicky musingly. Then he added slowly: “Fielding, fellows of that
kind always flare up a bit according to Cavendish, just before the end.
I’ve seen it once or twice before. It’s the last clutch at the grass as
they go slip--slip--slipping down. Take my word for it, Heatherby’s near
the finish.”
“I shouldn’t wonder. Selamlik, the old leper, ‘ll lay in wait for him.
He’ll get lost in the sugar-cane one of these evenings soon.”
“Couldn’t we...” Dicky paused.
Fielding started, looked at Dicky intently, and then shook his head
sadly. “It’s no good, Dicky. It never is.”
“‘While the lamp holds out to burn...’” said Dicky, and lighted another
cigarette.
Precisely at seven o’clock Heatherby appeared. He had on a dress-suit,
brown and rusty, a white tie made of a handkerchief torn in two, and a
pair of patent leather shoes, scraggy and cracked.
Fielding behaved well, Dicky was amiable and attentive, and the dinner
being ready to the instant, there was no waiting, there were no awkward
pauses. No names of English people were mentioned, England was not
named; nor Cairo, nor anything that English people abroad love to
discuss. The fellah, the pasha, the Soudan were the only topics. Under
Fielding’s courtesy and Dicky’s acute suggestions, Heatherby’s weakened
brain awaked, and he talked intelligently, till the moment coffee was
brought in. Then, as Mahommed Seti retired, Heatherby suddenly threw
himself forward, his arms on the table, and burst into sobs.
“Oh, you fellows, you fellows!” he said. There was silence for a minute,
then he sobbed out again: “It’s the first time I’ve been treated like
a gentleman by men that knew me, these fifteen years. It--it gets me in
the throat!”
His body shook with sobs. Fielding and Dicky were uncomfortable, for
these were not the sobs of a driveller or a drunkard. Behind them was
the blank failure of a life--fifteen years of miserable torture, of
degradation, of a daily descent lower into the pit, of the servitude
of shame. When at last he raised his streaming eyes, Fielding and Dicky
could see the haunting terror of the soul, at whose elbow, as it were,
every man cried: “You are without the pale!” That look told them how
Heatherby of the Buffs had gone from table d’hote to table d’hote
of Europe, from town to town, from village to village, to make
acquaintances who repulsed him when they discovered who he really was.
Shady Heatherby, who cheated at cards!
Once Fielding made as if to put a hand on his shoulder and speak to him,
but Dicky intervened with a look. The two drank their coffee, Fielding
a little uneasily; but yet in his face there was a new look: of inquiry,
of kindness, even of hope.
Presently Dicky flashed a look and nodded towards the door, and Fielding
dropped his cigar and went on deck, and called down to Holgate the
engineer:
“Get up steam, and make for Luxor. It’s moonlight, and we’re safe enough
in this high Nile, eh, Holgate?”
“Safe enough, or aw’m a Dootchman,” said Holgate. Then they talked in a
low voice together. Down in the saloon, Dicky sat watching Heatherby. At
last the Lost One raised his head again.
“It’s worth more to me, this night, than you fellows know,” he said
brokenly.
“That’s all right,” said Dicky. “Have a cigar?”
He shook his head. “It’s come at the right time. I wanted to be treated
like an Englishman once more--just once more.”
“Don’t worry. Take in a reef and go steady for a bit. The milk’s spilt,
but there are other meadows....” Dicky waved an arm up the river, up
towards the Soudan!
The Lost One nodded, then his eyes blazed up and took on a hungry look.
His voice suddenly came in a whisper.
“Gordon was a white man. Gordon said to me three years ago: ‘Come with
me, I’ll help you on. You don’t need to live, if you don’t want to. Most
of us will get knocked out up there in the Soudan.’ Gordon said that to
me. But there was another fellow with Gordon who knew me, and I couldn’t
face it. So I stayed behind here. I’ve been everything, anything, to
that swine, Selamlik Pasha; but when he told me yesterday to bring
him the daughter of the Arab he killed with his kourbash, I jibbed. I
couldn’t stand that. Her father had fed me more than once. I jibbed--by
God, I jibbed! I said I was an Englishman, and I’d see him damned first.
I said it, and I shot the horse, and I’d have shot him--what’s that?”
There was a churning below. The Amenhotep was moving from the bank.
“She’s going--the boat’s going,” said the Lost One, trembling to his
feet.
“Sit down,” said Dicky, and gripped him by the arm. “Where are you
taking me?” asked Heatherby, a strange, excited look in his face.
“Up the river.”
He seemed to read Dicky’s thoughts--the clairvoyance of an overwrought
mind: “To--to Assouan?” The voice had a curious far-away sound.
“You shall go beyond Assouan,” said Dicky. “To--to Gordon?” Heatherby’s
voice was husky and indistinct.
“Yes, here’s Fielding; he’ll give you the tip. Sit down.” Dicky gently
forced him down into a chair. Six months later, a letter came to Dicky
from an Egyptian officer, saying that Heatherby of the Buffs had died
gallantly fighting in a sortie sent by Gordon into the desert.
“He had a lot of luck,” mused Dicky as he read. “They don’t end that way
as a rule.”
Then he went to Fielding, humming a certain stave from one of Watts’s
hymns.