In a certain year when Dicky Donovan was the one being in Egypt who had
any restraining influence on the Khedive, he suddenly asked leave of
absence to visit England. Ismail granted it with reluctance, chiefly
because he disliked any interference with his comforts, and Dicky was
one of them--in some respects the most important.
“My friend,” he said half petulantly to Dicky, as he tossed the plans
for a new palace to his secretary and dismissed him, “are you not happy
here? Have you not all a prince can give?”
“Highness,” answered Dicky, “I have kith and kin in England. Shall a man
forget his native land?” The Khedive yawned, lighted a cigarette, and
murmured through the smoke: “Inshallah! It might be pleasant--betimes.”
“I have your Highness’s leave to go?” asked Dicky. “May God preserve
your head from harm!” answered Ismail in farewell salutation, and,
taking a ring from his finger set with a large emerald, he gave it to
Dicky. “Gold is scarce in Egypt,” he went on, “but there are jewels
still in the palace--and the Khedive’s promises-to-pay with every
money-barber of Europe!” he added, with a cynical sneer, and touched his
forehead and his breast courteously as Dicky retired.
Outside the presence Dicky unbuttoned his coat like an Englishman again,
and ten minutes later flung his tarboosh into a corner of the room; for
the tarboosh was the sign of official servitude, and Dicky was never
the perfect official. Initiative was his strong point, independence his
life; he loathed the machine of system in so far as he could not command
it; he revolted at being a cog in the wheel. Ismail had discovered this,
and Dicky had been made a kind of confidential secretary who seldom
wrote a line. By his influence with Ismail he had even more power at
last than the Chief Eunuch or the valet-de-chambre, before whom the
highest officials bowed low. He was hated profoundly by many of the
household, cultivated by certain of the Ministers, fawned upon by
outsiders, trusted by the Khedive, and entirely believed in by the few
Englishmen and Frenchmen who worked for decent administration faithfully
but without hope and sometimes with nausea.
It was nausea that had seized upon Dicky at last, nausea and one other
thing--the spirit of adventure, an inveterate curiosity. His was the
instinct of the explorer, his feet were the feet of the Wandering
Jew. He knew things behind closed doors by instinct; he was like a
thought-reader in the sure touch of discovery; the Khedive looked upon
him as occult almost and laughed in the face of Sadik the Mouffetish
when he said some evil things of Dicky. Also, the Khedive told the
Mouffetish that if any harm came to Dicky there would come harm to him.
The Khedive loved to play one man off against another, and the death
of Sadik or the death of Dicky would have given him no pain, if either
seemed necessary. For the moment, however, he loved them both after his
fashion; for Sadik lied to him, and squeezed the land dry, and flailed
it with kourbashes for gold for his august master and himself; and Dicky
told him the truth about everything--which gave the Khedive knowledge of
how he really stood all round.
Dicky told the great spendthrift the truth about himself; but he did not
tell the truth when he said he was going to England on a visit to his
kith and kin. Seized by the most irresistible curiosity of his life,
moved by desire for knowledge, that a certain plan in his mind might be
successfully advanced he went south and east, not west and north.
For four months Egypt knew him not. For four months the Khedive was
never told the truth save by European financiers, when truths were
obvious facts; for four long months never saw a fearless or an honest
eye in his own household. Not that it mattered in one sense; but Ismail
was a man of ideas, a sportsman of a sort, an Iniquity with points; a
man who chose the broad way because it was easier, not because he was
remorseless. At the start he meant well by his people, but he meant
better by himself; and not being able to satisfy both sides of the
equation, he satisfied one at the expense of the other and of that x
quantity otherwise known as Europe. Now Europe was heckling him; the
settling of accounts was near. Commissioners had been sent to find where
were the ninety millions he had borrowed. Only Ismail and Sadik the
Mouffetish, once slave and foster-brother, could reply. The Khedive
could not long stave off the evil day when he must “pay the debt of the
lobster,” and Sadik give account of his stewardship. Meanwhile, his mind
turned to the resourceful little Englishman with the face of a girl and
the tongue of an honest man.
But the day Dicky had set for his return had come and gone, and Dicky
himself had not appeared. With a grim sort of satisfaction, harmonious
with his irritation, Ismail went forth with his retinue to the Dosah,
the gruesome celebration of the Prophet’s birthday, following on the
return of the pilgrimage from Mecca. At noon he entered his splendid
tent at one side of a square made of splendid tents, and looked out
listlessly, yet sourly, upon the vast crowds assembled--upon the lines
of banners, the red and green pennons embroidered with phrases from the
Koran. His half-shut, stormy eyes fell upon the tent of the chief of
the dervishes, and he scarcely checked a sneer, for the ceremony to be
performed appealed to nothing in him save a barbaric instinct, and this
barbaric instinct had been veneered by French civilisation and pierced
by the criticism of one honest man. His look fell upon the long pathway
whereon, for three hundred yards, matting had been spread. It was a
field of the cloth of blood; for on this cloth dervishes returned from
Mecca, mad with fanaticism and hashish, would lie packed like herrings,
while the Sheikh of the Dosah rode his horse over their bodies, a
pavement of human flesh and bone.
As the Khedive looked, his lip curled a little, for he recalled
what Dicky Donovan had said about it; how he had pleaded against it,
describing loathsome wounds and pilgrims done to death. Dicky had ended
his brief homily by saying: “And isn’t that a pretty dish to set
before a king!” to Ismail’s amusement; for he was no good Mussulman, no
Mussulman at all, in fact, save in occasional violent prejudices got of
inheritance and association.
To-day, however, Ismail was in a bad humour with Dicky and with the
world. He had that very morning flogged a soldier senseless with his
own hand; he had handed over his favourite Circassian slave to a
ruffian Bey, who would drown her or sell her within a month; and he had
dishonoured his own note of hand for fifty thousand pounds to a great
merchant who had served him not wisely but too well. He was not taking
his troubles quietly, and woe be to the man or woman who crossed him
this day! Tiberius was an hungered for a victim to his temper. His
entourage knew it well, and many a man trembled that day for his place,
or his head, or his home. Even Sadik the Mouffetish--Sadik, who had
four hundred women slaves dressed in purple and fine linen--Sadik, whose
kitchen alone cost him sixty thousand pounds a year, the price of whose
cigarette ash-trays was equal to the salary of an English consul--even
Sadik, foster-brother, panderer, the Barabbas of his master, was silent
and watchful to-day.
And Sadik, silent and watchful and fearful, was also a dangerous man.
As Sadik’s look wandered over the packed crowds, his faded eyes scarce
realising the bright-coloured garments of the men, the crimson silk
tents and banners and pennons, the gorgeous canopies and trappings and
plumes of the approaching dervishes, led by the Amir-el-Haj or Prince
of the Pilgrims, returned from Mecca, he wondered what lamb for the
sacrifice might be provided to soothe the mind of his master. He looked
at the matting in the long lane before them, and he knew that the bodies
which would lie here presently, yielding to the hoofs of the Sheikh’s
horse, were not sufficient to appease the rabid spirit tearing at
the Khedive’s soul. He himself had been flouted by one ugly look this
morning, and one from Ismail was enough.
It did his own soul good now to see the dervish fanatics foaming at the
mouth, their eyes rolling, as they crushed glass in their mouths and ate
it, as they swallowed fire, as they tore live serpents to pieces with
their teeth and devoured them, as they thrust daggers and spikes of
steel through their cheeks, and gashed their breasts with knives and
swords. He watched the effect of it on the Khedive; but Ismail had seen
all this before, and he took it in the stride. This was not sufficient.
Sadik racked his brain to think who in the palace or in official life
might be made the scapegoat, upon whom the dark spirit in the heart
of the Khedive might be turned. His mean, colourless eyes wandered
inquiringly over the crowd, as the mad dervishes, half-naked, some with
masses of dishevelled hair, some with no hair at all, bleached, haggard,
moaning and shrieking, threw themselves to the ground on the matting,
while attendants pulled off their slippers and placed them under their
heads, which lay face downwards. At last Sadik’s eyes were arrested by a
group of ten dervishes, among them one short in stature and very slight,
whose gestures were not so excited as those of his fellows. He also saw
that one or two of the dervishes watched the slight man covertly.
Five of the little group suddenly threw themselves upon the matting,
adding their bodies to the highway of bones and flesh. Then another and
another did the same, leaving three who, with the little man, made
a fanatical chorus. Now the three near the little man began to cut
themselves with steel and knives, and one set fire to his jibbeh and
began to chew the flames. Yet the faces of all three were turned towards
the little man, who did no more than shriek and gesticulate and sway his
body wildly up and down. He was tanned and ragged and bearded and
thin, and there was a weird brilliance in his eyes, which watched his
companions closely.
So fierce and frenzied were the actions of those with him, that the
attention of the Khedive was drawn; and Sadik, looking at his master,
saw that his eyes also were intently fixed on the little man. At that
instant the little man himself caught the eye of the Khedive, and Ismail
involuntarily dropped a hand upon his sword, for some gesture of this
dervish, some familiar turn of his body, startled him. Where had he
seen the gesture before? Who was this pilgrim who did not cut and wound
himself like his companions? Suddenly the three mad dervishes waved
their hands towards the matting and shrieked something into his ear.
The little man’s eyes shot a look at the Khedive. Ismail’s ferret eye
fastened on him, and a quick fear as of assassination crossed his face
as the small dervish ran forward with the other three to the lane of
human flesh, where there was still a gap to be filled, and the cry rose
up that the Sheikh of the Dosah had left his tent and was about to begin
his direful ride.
Sadik the Mouffetish saw the Khedive’s face, and suddenly said in his
ear: “Shall my slave seize him, Highness whom God preserve?”
The Khedive did not reply, for at that moment he recognised the dervish;
and now he understood that Dicky Donovan had made the pilgrimage to
Mecca with the Mahmal caravan; that an infidel had desecrated the holy
city; and that his Englishman had lied to him. His first impulse was to
have Dicky seized and cast to the crowd, to be torn to pieces. Dicky’s
eyes met his without wavering--a desperate yet resolute look--and Ismail
knew that the little man would sell his life dearly, if he had but half
a chance. He also saw in Dicky’s eyes the old honesty, the fearless
straightforwardness--and an appeal too, not humble, but still eager and
downright. Ismail’s fury was great, for the blue devils had him by
the heels that day; but on the instant he saw the eyes of Sadik the
Mouffetish, and their cunning, cruelty, and soulless depravity, their
present search for a victim to his master’s bad temper, acted at once on
Ismail’s sense of humour. He saw that Sadik half suspected something, he
saw that Dicky’s three companions suspected, and his mind was made up on
the instant--things should take their course--he would not interfere.
He looked Dicky squarely in the face, and Dicky knew that the Khedive’s
glance said as plainly as words:
“Fool of an Englishman, go on! I will not kill you, but I will not save
you. The game is in your hands alone. You can only avert suspicion by
letting the Sheikh of the Dosah make a bridge of your back. Mecca is a
jest you must pay for.”
With the wild cry of a dervish fanatic Dicky threw himself down, his
head on his arms, and the vengeful three threw themselves down beside
him. The attendants pulled off their slippers and thrust them under
their faces, and now the siais of the Sheikh ran over their bodies
lightly, calling out for all to lie still--the Sheikh was coming on his
horse.
Dicky weighed his chances with a little shrinking, but with no fear:
he had been in imminent danger for four long months, and he was
little likely to give way now. The three men lying beside him had only
suspected him for the last three days, and during that time they had
never let him out of heir sight. What had roused their suspicion he
did not know: probably a hesitation concerning some Arab custom or
the pronunciation of some Arab word--the timbre of the Arab voice was
rougher and heavier. There had been no chance of escape during these
three days, for his three friends had never left his side, and now they
were beside him. His chances were not brilliant. If he escaped from the
iron hoofs of the Sheikh’s horse, if the weight did not crush the life
out of his small body, there was a fair chance; for to escape unhurt
from the Dosah is to prove yourself for ever a good Mussulman, who has
undergone the final test and is saved evermore by the promise of the
Prophet. But even if he escaped unhurt, and the suspicions of his
comrades were allayed, what would the Khedive do? The Khedive had
recognised him, and had done nothing--so far. Yet Ismail, the chief
Mussulman in Egypt, should have thrown him like a rat to the terriers!
Why he had acted otherwise he was not certain: perhaps to avoid a
horrible sensation at the Dosah and the outcry of the newspapers of
Europe; perhaps to have him assassinated privately; perhaps, after all,
to pardon him. Yet this last alternative was not reasonable, save from
the stand-point that Ismail had no religion at all.
Whatever it was to be, his fate would soon come, and in any case he had
done what only one European before him had done--he had penetrated to
the tomb of Mahomet at Mecca. Whatever should come, he had crowded into
his short life a thousand unusual and interesting things. His inveterate
curiosity had served him well, and he had paid fairly for the candles of
his game. He was ready.
Low moans came to his ears. He could hear the treading hoofs of the
Sheikh’s horse. Nearer and nearer the frightened animal came; the shout
of those who led the horse was in his ears: “Lie close and still,
O brothers of giants!” he heard the ribs of a man but two from him
break-he heard the gurgle in the throat of another into whose neck the
horse’s hoof had sunk. He braced himself and drew his breast close to
the ground.
He could hear now the heavy breathing of the Sheikh of the Dosah, who,
to strengthen himself for his ride, had taken a heavy dose of hashish.
The toe of the Arab leading the horse touched his head, then a hoof was
on him--between the shoulders, pressing-pressing down, the iron crushing
into the flesh--down--down--down, till his eyes seemed to fill with
blood. Then another hoof--and this would crush the life out of him. He
gasped, and nerved himself. The iron shoe came down, slipped a little,
grazed his side roughly, and sank between himself and the dervish next
him, who had shrunk away at the last moment.
A mad act; for the horse stumbled, and in recovering himself plunged
forward heavily. Dicky expected the hind hoofs to crush down on his back
or neck, and drew in his breath; but the horse, excited by the cries of
the people, drove clear of him, and the hind hoofs fell with a sickening
thud on the back and neck of the dervish who had been the cause of the
disaster.
Dicky lay still for a moment to get his breath, then sprang to his feet
lightly, cast a swift glance of triumph towards the Khedive, and turned
to the dervishes who had lain beside him. The man who had shrunk away
from the horse’s hoofs was dead, the one on the other side was badly
wounded, and the last, bruised and dazed, got slowly to his feet.
“God is great,” said Dicky to him: “I have no hurt, Mahommed.”
“It is the will of God. Extolled be Him who created thee!” answered the
dervish, all suspicion gone, and admiration in his eyes, as Dicky cried
his Allah Kerim--“God is bountiful!”
A kavass touched Dicky on the arm.
“His Highness would speak with you,” he said. Dicky gladly turned his
back on the long lane of frantic immolation and the sight of the wounded
and dead being carried away. Coming over to the Khedive he salaamed,
and kneeling on the ground touched the toe of Ismail’s boot with his
forehead.
Ismail smiled, and his eyes dropped with satisfaction upon the prostrate
Dicky. Never before had an Englishman done this, and that Dicky, of all
Englishmen, should do it gave him an ironical pleasure which chased his
black humour away.
“It is written that the true believer shall come unscathed from the
hoofs of the horse. Thou hast no hurt, Mahommed?”
“None, Highness, whose life God preserve,” said Dicky in faultless
Arabic, with the eyes of Sadik upon him searching his mystery.
“May the dogs bite the heart of thine enemies! What is thy name?” said
Ismail.
“Rekab, so God wills, Highness.”
“Thine occupation?”
“I am a poor scribe, Highness,” answered Dicky with a dangerous humour,
though he had seen a look in the Khedive’s face which boded only safety.
“I have need of scribes. Get you to the Palace of Abdin, and wait upon
me at sunset after prayers,” said Ismail.
“I am the slave of your Highness. Peace be on thee, O Prince of the
Faithful!”
“A moment, Mahommed. Hast thou wife or child?”
“None, Highness.”
“Nor kith nor kin?” Ismail’s smile was grim.
“They be far away, beyond the blessed rule of your Highness.”
“Thou wilt desire to return to them. How long wilt thou serve me?” asked
Ismail slowly.
“Till the two Karadh-gatherers return,” answered Dicky, quoting the old
Arabic saying which means for ever, since the two Karadh-gatherers who
went to gather the fruit of the sant and the leaves of the selem never
returned.
“So be it,” said the Khedive, and, rising, waved Dicky away. “At
sunset!”
“At sunset after prayers, Highness,” answered Dicky, and was instantly
lost in the throng which now crowded upon the tent to see the Sheikh of
the Dosah arrive to make obeisance to Ismail.
That night at sunset, Dicky, once more clothed and shaven and well
appointed, but bronzed and weatherbeaten, was shown into the presence of
the Khedive, whose face showed neither pleasure nor displeasure.
“You have returned from your kith and kin in England?” asked Ismail,
with malicious irony.
“I have no excuses, Highness. I have done what I set out to do.”
“If I had given you to death as an infidel who had defiled the holy tomb
and the sacred city--”
“Your Highness would have lost a faithful servant,” answered Dicky. “I
took my chances.”
“Even now it would be easy to furnish--accidents for you.”
“But not wise, Highness, till my story is told.”
“Sadik Pasha suspects you.”
“I suspect Sadik Pasha,” answered Dicky.
“Of what?” inquired Ismail, starting. “He is true to me--Sadik is true
to me?” he urged, with a shudder; for if Sadik was false in this crisis,
with Europe clamouring for the payment of debts and for reforms, where
should he look for faithful knavery?
“He will desert your Highness in the last ditch. Let me tell your
Highness the truth, in return for saving my life. Your only salvation
lies in giving up to the creditors of Egypt your own wealth, and also
Sadik’s, which is twice your own.”
“Sadik will not give it up.”
“Is not Ismail the Khedive master in Egypt?”
“Sit down and smoke,” said Ismail eagerly, handing Dicky a cigarette.
......................
When Dicky left the Khedive at midnight, he thought he saw a better day
dawning for Egypt. He felt also that he had done the land a good turn
in trying to break the shameless contract between Ismail and Sadik the
Mouffetish; and he had the Khedive’s promise that it should be broken,
given as Ismail pinned on his breast the Order of the Mejidieh.
He was not, however, prepared to hear of the arrest of the Mouffetish
before another sunset, and then of his hugger-mugger death, of which the
world talks to this day; though the manner of it is only known to a few,
and to them it is an ugly memory.