When Donovan Pasha discovered the facts for the first time, he found
more difficulty in keeping the thing to himself than he had ever found
with any other matter in Egypt. He had unearthed one of those paradoxes
which make for laughter--and for tears. It gave him both; he laughed
till he cried. Then he went to the Khedivial Club and ordered himself
four courses, a pint of champagne and a glass of ‘48 port, his usual
dinner being one course, double portion, and a pint of claret. As he sat
eating he kept reading a letter over and over, and each time he read he
grinned--he did not smile like a well-behaved man of the world, he did
not giggle like a well-veneered Egyptian back from Paris, he chuckled
like a cabman responding to a liberal fare and a good joke. A more
unconventional little man never lived. Simplicity was his very life, and
yet he had a gift for following the sinuosities of the Oriental mind;
he had a quality almost clairvoyant, which came, perhaps, from his Irish
forebears. The cross-strain of English blood had done him good too; it
made him punctilious and kept his impulses within secure bounds. It
also made him very polite when he was angry, and very angry when any one
tried to impose upon him, or flatter him.
The letter he read so often was from Kingsley Bey, the Englishman, who,
coming to Egypt penniless, and leaving estates behind him encumbered
beyond release, as it would seem, had made a fortune and a name in a
curious way. For years he had done no good for himself, trying his hand
at many things--sugar, salt, cotton, cattle, but always just failing to
succeed, though he came out of his enterprises owing no one. Yet he
had held to his belief that he would make a fortune, and he allowed
his estates to become still more encumbered, against the advice of his
solicitors, who grew more irritable as interest increased and rents
further declined. The only European in Egypt who shared his own belief
in himself was Dicky Donovan. Something in the unfailing good-humour,
the buoyant energy, the wide imagination of the man seized Dicky,
warranted the conviction that he would yet make a success. There were
reasons why sugar, salt, cotton, cattle and other things had not done
well. Taxes, the corvee, undue influence in favour of pashas who could
put his water on their land without compensation, or unearthed old
unpaid mortgages on his land, or absorbed his special salt concession in
the Government monopoly, or suddenly put a tax on all horses and cattle
not of native breed; all these and various other imposts, exactions,
or interferences engineered by the wily Mamour, the agent of the
mouffetish, or the intriguing Pasha, killed his efforts, in spite of
labours unbelievable. The venture before the last had been sugar, and
when he arrived in Cairo, having seen his fields and factories absorbed
in the Khedive’s domains, he had but one ten pounds to his name.
He went to Dicky Donovan and asked the loan of a thousand pounds.
It took Dicky’s breath away. His own banking account seldom saw a
thousand--deposit. Dicky told Kingsley he hadn’t got it. Kingsley asked
him to get it--he had credit, could borrow it from the bank, from the
Khedive himself! The proposal was audacious--Kingsley could offer no
security worth having. His enthusiasm and courage were so infectious,
however, though his ventures had been so fruitless, that Dicky laughed
in his face. Kingsley’s manner then suddenly changed, and he assured
Dicky that he would receive five thousand pounds for the thousand within
a year. Now, Dicky knew that Kingsley never made a promise to any one
that he did not fulfil. He gave Kingsley the thousand pounds. He did
more. He went to the Khedive with Kingsley’s whole case. He spoke as he
had seldom spoken, and he secured a bond from Ismail, which might not
be broken. He also secured three thousand pounds of the Khedive’s
borrowings from Europe, on Kingsley’s promise that it should be returned
five-fold.
That was how Kingsley got started in the world again, how he went mining
in the desert afar, where pashas and mamours could not worry him. The
secret of his success was purely Oriental. He became a slave-owner. He
built up a city of the desert round him. He was its ruler. Slavery gave
him steady untaxed labour. A rifle-magazine gave him security against
marauding tribes, his caravans were never over powered; his blacks were
his own. He had a way with them; they thought him the greatest man in
the world. Now, at last, he was rich enough. His mines were worked
out, too, and the market was not so good; he had supplied it too well.
Dicky’s thousand had brought him five thousand, and Ismail’s three
thousand had become fifteen thousand, and another twenty thousand
besides. For once the Khedive had found a kind of taxation, of which he
got the whole proceeds, not divided among many as heretofore. He got
it all. He made Kingsley a Bey, and gave him immunity from all other
imposts or taxation. Nothing but an Egyptian army could have removed him
from his desert-city.
Now, he was coming back--to-night at ten o’clock he would appear at the
Khedivial Club, the first time in seven years. But this was not all. He
was coming back to be married as soon as might be.
This was the thing which convulsed Dicky.
Upon the Nile at Assiout lived a young English lady whose life was
devoted to agitation against slavery in Egypt. Perhaps the Civil War in
America, not so many years before, had fired her spirit; perhaps it was
pious enthusiasm; perhaps it was some altruistic sentiment in her which
must find expression; perhaps, as people said, she had had a love affair
in England which had turned out badly. At any rate she had come over
to Egypt with an elderly companion, and, after a short stay at the
Consulate, had begun the career of the evangel. She had now and then
created international difficulty, and Ismail, tolerant enough, had been
tempted to compel her to leave the country, but, with a zeal which took
on an aspect of self-opinionated audacity, she had kept on. Perhaps
her beauty helped her on her course--perhaps the fact that her superb
egotism kept her from being timorous, made her career possible. In any
case, there she was at Assiout, and there she had been for years, and no
accident had come to her; and, during the three months she was at Cairo
every year, pleading against slavery and the corvee, she increased
steadily the respect in which she was held; but she was considered mad
as Gordon. So delighted had Ismail been by a quiet, personal attack she
made upon him, that without malice, and with an obtuse and impulsive
kindness, he sent her the next morning a young Circassian slave, as a
mark of his esteem, begging her through the swelling rhetoric of his
messenger to keep the girl, and more than hinting at her value.
It stupefied her, and the laughter of Cairo added to her momentary
embarrassment; but she kept the girl, and prepared to send her back to
her people.
The girl said she had no people, and would not go; she would stay with
“My Lady”--she would stay for ever with “My Lady.” It was confusing, but
the girl stayed, worshipping the ground “My Lady” walked on. In vain My
Lady educated her. Out of hearing, she proudly told whoever would listen
that she was “My Lady’s slave.” It was an Egyptian paradox; it was in
line with everything else in the country, part of the moral opera boufe.
In due course, the lady came to hear of the English slave-owner, who
ruled the desert-city and was making a great fortune out of the labours
of his slaves. The desert Arabs who came down the long caravan road,
white with bleached bones, to Assiout, told her he had a thousand
slaves. Against this Englishman her anger, was great. She unceasingly
condemned him, and whenever she met Dicky Donovan she delivered her
attack with delicate violence. Did Dicky know him? Why did not he, in
favour with Ismail, and with great influence, stop this dreadful and
humiliating business? It was a disgrace to the English name. How could
we preach freedom and a higher civilisation to the Egyptians while an
Englishman enriched himself and ruled a province by slavery? Dicky’s
invariable reply was that we couldn’t, and that things weren’t moving
very much towards a higher civilisation in Egypt. But he asked her if
she ever heard of a slave running away from Kingsley Bey, or had she
ever heard of a case of cruelty on his part? Her reply was that he
had given slaves the kourbash, and had even shot them. Dicky thereupon
suggested that Kingsley Bey was a government, and that the kourbash was
not yet abolished in the English navy, for instance; also that men had
to be shot sometimes.
At last she had made a direct appeal to Kingsley Bey. She sent an
embassy to him--Dicky prevented her from going herself; he said he would
have her deported straightway, if she attempted it. She was not in such
deadly earnest that she did not know he would keep his word, and that
the Consulate could not help her would have no time to do so. So, she
confined herself to an elaborate letter, written in admirable English
and inspired by most noble sentiments. The beauty that was in her face
was in her letter in even a greater degree. It was very adroit, too,
very ably argued, and the moral appeal was delicate and touching, put
with an eloquence at once direct and arresting. The invocation with
which the letter ended was, as Kingsley Bey afterwards put it, “a pitch
of poetry and humanity never reached except by a Wagner opera.”
Kingsley Bey’s response to the appeal was a letter to the lady, brought
by a sarraf, a mamour and six slaves, beautifully mounted and armed,
saying that he had been deeply moved by her appeal, and as a proof of
the effect of her letter, she might free the six slaves of his embassy.
This she straightway did joyfully, and when they said they wished to go
to Cairo, she saw them and their horses off on the boat with gladness,
and she shook them each by the hand and prayed Heaven in their language
to give them long plumes of life and happiness. Arrived at Cairo these
freemen of Assiout did as they had been ordered by Kingsley--found
Donovan Pasha, delivered a certain letter to him, and then proceeded,
also as they had been ordered, to a certain place in the city, even to
Ismail’s stables, to await their master’s coming.
This letter was now in Dicky’s hand, and his mirth was caused by the
statement that Kingsley Bey had declared that he was coming to marry My
Lady--she really was “My Lady,” the Lady May Harley; that he was coming
by a different route from “his niggers,” and would be there the same
day. Dicky would find him at ten o’clock at the Khedivial Club.
My Lady hated slavery--and unconsciously she kept a slave; she regarded
Kingsley Bey as an enemy to civilisation and to Egypt, she detested him
as strongly as an idealistic nature could and should--and he had set out
to marry her, the woman who had bitterly arraigned him at the bar of her
judgment. All this play was in Dicky’s hands for himself to enjoy, in
a perfect dress rehearsal ere ever one of the Cairene public or the
English world could pay for admission and take their seats. Dicky had
in more senses than one got his money’s worth out of Kingsley Bey. He
wished he might let the Khedive into the secret at once, for he had an
opinion of Ismail’s sense of humour; had he not said that very day
in the presence of the French Consul, “Shut the window, quick! If
the consul sneezes, France will demand compensation!” But Dicky was
satisfied that things should be as they were. He looked at the clock--it
was five minutes to ten. He rose from the table, and went to the
smoking-room. In vain it was sought to draw him into the friendly
circles of gossiping idlers and officials. He took a chair at the very
end of the room and opposite the door, and waited, watching.
Precisely at ten the door opened and a tall, thin, loose-knit figure
entered. He glanced quickly round, saw Dicky, and swung down the room,
nodding to men who sprang to their feet to greet him. Some of the
Egyptians looked darkly at him, but he smiled all round, caught at one
or two hands thrust out to him, said: “Business--business first!” in a
deep bass voice, and, hastening on, seized both of Dicky’s hands in his,
then his shoulders, and almost roared: “Well, what do you think of it?
Isn’t it all right? Am I, or am I not, Dicky Pasha?”
“You very much are,” answered Dicky, thrust a cigar at him, and set him
down in the deepest chair he could find. He sprawled wide, and lighted
his cigar, then lay back and looked down his long nose at his friend.
“I mean it, too,” he said after a minute, and reached for a glass of
water the waiter brought. “No, thanks, no whiskey--never touch it--good
example to the slaves!” He laughed long and low, and looked at Dicky out
of the corner of his eye. “Good-looking lot I sent you, eh?”
“Oosters, every one of ‘em. Butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. I
learnt their grin, it suits my style of beauty.” Dicky fitted the action
to the word. “You’ll start with me in the morning to Assiout?”
“I can start, but life and time are short.”
“You think I can’t and won’t marry her?”
“This isn’t the day of Lochinvar.”
“This is the day of Kingsley Bey, Dicky Pasha.”
Dicky frowned. He had a rare and fine sense where women were concerned,
were they absent or present. “How very artless--and in so short a time,
too!” he said tartly.
Kingsley laughed quietly. “Art is long, but tempers are short!” he
retorted.
Dicky liked a Roland for his Oliver. “It’s good to see you back again,”
he said, changing the subject.
“How long do you mean to stay?”
“Here?” Dicky nodded. “Till I’m married.”
Dicky became very quiet, a little formal, and his voice took on a
curious smoothness, through which sharp suggestion pierced.
“So long?--Enter our Kingsley Bey into the underground Levantine world.”
This was biting enough. To be swallowed up by Cairo life and all that it
involves, was no fate to suggest to an Englishman, whose opinion of the
Levantine needs no defining. “Try again, Dicky,” said Kingsley, refusing
to be drawn. “This is not one huge joke, or one vast impertinence, so
far as the lady is concerned. I’ve come back-b-a-c-k” (he spelled the
word out), “with all that it involves. I’ve come back, Dicky.”
He quieted all at once, and leaned over towards his friend. “You know
the fight I’ve had. You know the life I’ve lived in Egypt. You know what
I left behind me in England--nearly all. You’ve seen the white man
work. You’ve seen the black ooster save him. You’ve seen the
ten-times-a-failure pull out. Have I played the game? Have I acted
squarely? Have I given kindness for kindness, blow for blow? Have I
treated my slaves like human beings? Have I--have I won my way back to
life--life?” He spread out a hand with a little grasping motion. “Have
I saved the old stand off there in Cumberland by the sea, where you can
see the snow on Skaw Fell? Have I? Do you wonder that I laugh? Ye gods
and little fishes! I’ve had to wear a long face years enough--seven hard
years, seven fearful years, when I might be murdered by a slave, and
I and my slaves might be murdered by some stray brigade, under some
general of Ismail’s, working without orders, without orders, of
course--oh, very much of course! Why shouldn’t I play the boy to-day,
little Dicky Donovan? I am a Mahommedan come Christian again. I am a
navvy again come gentleman. I am an Arab come Englishman once more.
“I am an outcast come home. I am a dead man come to life.”
Dicky leaned over and laid a hand on his knee. “You are a credit to
Cumberland,” he said. “No other man could have done it. I won’t ask any
more questions. Anything you want of me, I am with you, to do, or say,
or be.”
“Good. I want you to go to Assiout to-morrow.”
“Will you see Ismail first? It might be safer--good policy.”
“I will see My Lady first.... Trust me. I know what I’m doing. You will
laugh as I do.” Laughter broke from his lips. It was as though his heart
was ten years old. Dicky’s eyes moistened. He had never seen anything
like it--such happiness, such boyish confidence. And what had not
this man experienced! How had he drunk misfortune to the dregs! What
unbelievable optimism had been his! How had he been at once hard and
kind, tyrannical and human, defiant and peaceful, daring yet submissive,
fierce yet just! And now, here, with so much done, with a great fortune
and great power, a very boy, he was planning to win the heart of, and
marry, his avowed foe, the woman who had condemned him without stint.