She had known in advance what he was going to say, but not until he had
said it did the whole truth fall on her. Then in a moment the world
itself seemed to reel. A moral earthquake, upheaving everything, had
brought all her aims to ashes. The mighty force which had guided and
sustained her soul (the sense of doing a necessary and a righteous
thing) had collapsed without an instant's warning. Another force, the
powerful, almost brutal force of fate, had broken it to pieces.
"My God! My God! What has become of me?" she thought, and without
speaking she gazed blankly at Gordon as he sat with his eyes hidden by
his injured hand.
Then in broken words, with gasps of breath, he told her what had
happened, beginning with the torture of his separation from her at the
door of the General's house.
"You said I had not really loved you--that you had been mistaken and
were punished and ... and that was the end."
Going away with the memory of these words in his mind, his wretched soul
had been on the edge of a vortex of madness in which all its anger, all
its hatred, had been directed against the General. In the blind leading
of his passion, torn to the heart's core, he had then returned to the
Citadel to accuse the General of injustice and tyranny.
"'Helena was mine,' I said, 'and you have taken her from, me, and broken
her heart as well as my own. Is that the act of a father?'"
Other words he had also said, in the delirium of his rage, mad and
insulting words such as no father could bear; then the General had
snatched up the broken sword from the floor and fallen on him, hacking
at his hand--see!
"I didn't want to do it, God knows I did not, for he was an old man and
I was no coward, but the hot blood was in my head, and I laid hold of
him by the throat to hold him off."
He uncovered his face--it was full of humility and pain.
"God forgive me, I didn't know my strength. I flung him away; he fell.
I had killed him--my General, my friend!"
Tears filled his eyes. In her eyes, also, tears were gathering.
"Then you came to the door and knocked. 'Father!' you said. 'Are you
alone? May I come in?' Those were your words, and how often I have
heard them since! In the middle of the night, in my dreams, O God, how
many times!"
He dropped his head and stretched a helpless arm along the table.
"I wanted to open the door and say, 'Helena, forgive me, I didn't mean
to do it, and that is the truth, as God is my witness.' But I was
afraid--I fled away."
She was now sitting with her hands clasped in her lap and her eyelids
tightly closed.
"Next day I wanted to go back to you, but I dared not do so. I wanted
to comfort you--I could not. I wanted to give myself up to justice--it
was impossible, there was nothing for me to do except to fly away."
The tears were rolling down his thin face to his pinched nostrils.
"But I could not fly from myself or from ... from my love for you. They
told me you had gone to England. 'Where is she to-night?' I thought.
If I had never really loved you before I loved you now. And you were
gone! I had lost you for ever."
Emotion choked his voice; tears were forcing themselves through her
closed eyelids. There was another moment of silence and then,
nervously, hesitatingly, she put out her hand to where his hand was
lying on the table and clasped it.
The two unhappy creatures, like wrecked souls about to be swallowed up
in a tempestuous ocean, saw one raft of hope--their love for each other,
which had survived all the storms of their fate.
But just as their hands were burning as if with fever, and quivering in
each other's clasp like the bosom of a captured bird, a voice from
without fell on their ears like a trumpet from the skies. It was the
voice of the muezzin calling to evening prayers from the minaret of the
neighbouring mosque:--
[Illustration: Music fragment: God is Most Great! God is Most Great!]
It seemed to be a supernatural voice, the voice of an accusing angel,
calling them back to their present position. Ishmael--Helena--the
betrothal!
Their hands separated and they rose to their feet. One moment they stood
with bowed heads, at opposite sides of the table, listening to the voice
outside, and then, without a word more, they went their different
ways--he to his room, she to hers.
Into the empty guest-room, a moment afterwards, came the rumbling and
rolling sound of the voices of the people, repeating the Fatihah after
Ishmael--
"Praise be to God, the Lord of all creatures.... Direct us in the right
way, O Lord ... not the way of those who go astray."
*CHAPTER XIV*
That day the Sirdar had held his secret meeting of the Ulema, the
Sheikhs and Notables of Khartoum. Into a room on the ground floor of
the Palace, down a dark, arched corridor, in which British soldiers
stood on guard, they had been introduced one by one--a group of six or
eight unkempt creatures of varying ages, and of different degrees of
intelligence, nearly all wearing the farageeyah.
They sat awkwardly on the chairs which had been ranged for them about a
mahogany table, and while they waited they talked in whispers. There
was a tense, electrical atmosphere among them, as of internal
dissension, the rumbling of a sort of subterranean thunder.
But this subsided instantly, when the voice of the sergeant outside, and
the clash of saluting arms, announced the coming of the Sirdar. The
Governor-General, who was in uniform and booted and spurred as if
returning from a ride, was accompanied by his Inspector-General, his
Financial Secretary, the Governor of the town, and various minor
officers.
He was received by the Sheikhs, all standing, with sweeping salaams from
floor to forehead, a circle of smiles and looks of complete accord.
The Sirdar, with his ruddy and cheerful face, took his seat at the head
of the table and began by asking, as if casually, who was the stranger
that had arrived that day in Khartoum.
"A Bedouin," said the Cadi. "One whom Ishmael Ameer loves and who loves
him."
"Yet a _Bedouin_, you say?" asked the Sirdar, in an incredulous tone,
and with a certain elevation of the eyebrows.
"A Bedouin, O Excellency," repeated the Cadi, whereupon the others,
without a word of further explanation, bent their turbaned heads in
assent.
Then the Sirdar explained the reason for which he had called them
together.
"I am given to understand," he said, "that the idea is abroad that the
Government has been trying to introduce changes into the immutable law
of Islam, which forms an integral part of your Moslem religion, and is
therefore rightly regarded with a high degree of veneration by all
followers of the Prophet. If anybody is telling you this, or if any one
is saying that there is any prejudice against you because you are
Mohammedans, he is a wicked and mischievous person, and I beg of you to
tell me who he is."
Saying this, the Sirdar looked sharply round the table, but met nothing
but blank and expressionless faces. Then turning to the Cadi, who as
Chief Judge of the Mohammedan law-courts had been constituted spokesman,
he asked pointedly what Ishmael Ameer was saying.
"Nothing, O Excellency," said the Cadi; "nothing that is contrary to the
Sharia--the religious law of Islam."
"Is he telling the people to resist the Government?"
The grave company about the table silently shook their heads.
"Do you know if he has anything to do with a conspiracy to resist the
payment of taxes?"
The grave company knew nothing.
"Then what is he doing, and why has he come to Khartoum? Pasha, have
_you_ no explanation to make to me?" asked the Sirdar, singling out a
vivacious old gentleman, with a short, white, carefully oiled beard--a
person of doubtful repute who had once been a slave-dealer and was now
living patriarchally, under the protection of the Government, with his
many wives and concubines.
The old black sinner cast his little glittering eyes around the room and
then said--
"If you ask me, O Master, I say, Ishmael Ameer is putting down polygamy
and divorce and ought himself to be put down."
At that there was some clamour among the Ulema, and the Sirdar thought
he saw a rift through which he might discover the truth, but the Pasha
was soon silenced, and in a moment there was the same unanimity as
before.
"Then _what_ is he?" asked the Sirdar, whereupon a venerable old Sheikh,
after the usual Arabic compliments and apologies, said that, having seen
the new teacher with his own eyes and talked with him, he had now not
the slightest doubt that Ishmael was a man sent from God, and therefore
that all who resisted him, all who tried to put him down, would perish
miserably. At these words the electrical atmosphere which had been held
in subjection seemed to burst into flame. In a moment six tongues were
talking together. One Sheikh, with wild eyes, told of Ishmael's
intercourse with angels. Another knew a man who had seen him riding
with the Prophet in the desert. A third had spoken to somebody who had
seen angels, in the form of doves, descending upon him from the skies,
and a fourth was ready to swear that one day, while Ishmael was
preaching in the mosque, people heard a voice from heaven crying, "Hear
him! He is My messenger!"
"What was he preaching about?" said the Sirdar.
"The last days, the coming of the Deliverer," said the Sheikh with the
wild eyes, in an awesome whisper.
"What Deliverer?"
"Seyidna Isa--our Lord Jesus--the White Christ that is to come."
"Is this to be soon?"
"Soon, O Excellency, very soon."
After this outburst there was a moment of tense and breathless silence,
during which the Sirdar sat with his serious eyes fixed on the table,
and his officers, standing behind, glanced at each other and smiled.
Immediately afterwards the Sirdar put an end to the interview.
"Tell your people," he said, "that the Government has no wish to
interfere with your religious beliefs and feelings, whatever they may
be; but tell them also, that it intends to have its orders obeyed, and
that any suspicion of conspiracy, still more of rebellion, will be
instantly put down."
The group of unkempt creatures went off with sweeping salaams, and then
the Sirdar dismissed his officers also, saying--
"Bear in mind that you are the recognised agents of a just and merciful
Government, and whatever your personal opinions may be of these Arabs
and their superstitions, please understand that you are to give no
anti-Islamic colour to your British feelings. At the same time remember
that we have worked for the redemption of the Soudan from a state of
savagery, and we cannot allow it to be turned back to barbarism in the
name of religion."
Both the Ulema and the other British officials being gone, the Sirdar
was alone with his Inspector-General.
"Well?" he said.
"Well?" repeated the Inspector-General, biting the ends of his
close-cropped moustache. "What more did you expect, sir? Naturally the
man's own people were not going to give him away. They nearly did so,
though. You heard what old Zewar Pasha said?"
"Tut! I take no account of that," said the Sirdar. "The brothers of
Christ Himself would have put Him down, too--locked Him up in an asylum,
I dare say."
"That's exactly what I would do with Ishmael Ameer, anyway," said the
Inspector-General. "Of course he performs no miracles, and is attended
by no angels. His removal to Torah, and his inability to free himself
from a Government jail, would soon dispel the belief in his supernatural
agencies."
"But how can we do it? Under what pretext? We can't imprison a man for
preaching the second coming of Christ. If we did, our jails would be
pretty full at home, I'm thinking."
The Inspector-General laughed. "Your old error, dear Sirdar. You can't
apply the same principles to East and West."
"And your old Parliamentary cant, dear friend! I'm sick to death of it."
There was a moment of strained silence, and then the Inspector-General
said--
"Ah well, I know these holy men, with their sham inspirations and their
so-called heavenly messages. They develop by degrees, sir. This one
has begun by proclaiming the advent of the Lord Jesus, and he will end
by hoisting a flag and claiming to be the Lord Jesus himself."
"When he does that, Colonel, we'll consider our position afresh.
Meantime it may do us no mischief to remember that if the family of
Jesus could have dealt with the founder of our own religion as you would
deal with this olive-faced Arab there would probably be no Christianity
in the world to-day."
The Inspector-General shrugged his shoulders and rose to go.
"Good-night, sir."
"Good-night, Colonel," said the Sirdar, and then he sat down to draft a
dispatch to the Consul-General--
"Nothing to report since the marriage, betrothal, or whatever it was, of
the 'Rani' to the man in question. Undoubtedly he is laying a strong
hold on the imagination of the natives and acquiring the allegiance of
large bodies of workers; but I cannot connect him with any conspiracy to
persuade people not to pay taxes or with any organised scheme that is
frankly hostile to the continuance of British rule.
"Will continue to watch him, but find myself at fearful odds owing to
difference of faith. It is one of the disadvantages of Christian
Governments among people of alien race and religion, that methods of
revolt are not always visible to the naked eye, and God knows what is
going on in the sealed chambers of the mosque.
"That only shows the danger of curtailing the liberty of the vernacular
press, whatever the violence of its sporadic and muddled anarchy. Leave
the press alone, I say. Instead of chloroforming it into silence give
it a tonic if need be, or you drive your trouble underground. Such is
the common sense and practical wisdom of how to deal with sedition in a
Mohammedan country, let some of the logger-headed dunces who write
leading articles in England say what they will.
"If this man should develop supernatural pretensions I shall know what
to do. But without that, whether he claim divine inspiration or not, if
his people should come to regard him as divine, the very name and idea
of his divinity may become a danger, and I suppose I shall have to put
him under arrest."
Then remembering that he was addressing not only the Consul-General but
a friend, the Sirdar wrote--
"'Art Thou a King?' Strange that the question of Pontius Pilate is
precisely what we may find in our own mouths soon! And stranger still,
almost ludicrous, even farcical and hideously ironical, that though for
two thousand years Christendom has been spitting on the pusillanimity of
the old pagan, the representative of a Christian Empire will have to do
precisely what he did.
"Short of Pilate's situation, though, I see no right to take this man,
so I am not taking him. Sorry to tell you so, but I cannot help it.
"Our love from both to both. Trust Janet is feeling better. No news of
our poor boy, I suppose?"
"Our boy" had for thirty years been another name for Gordon.
*CHAPTER XV*
Grave as was the gathering in the Sirdar's Palace at Khartoum, there was
a still graver gathering that day at the British Agency in Cairo--the
gathering of the wings of Death.
Lady Nuneham was nearing her end. Since Gordon's disgrace and
disappearance she had been visibly fading away under a burden too heavy
for her to bear.
The Consul-General had been trying hard to shut his eyes to this fact.
More than ever before, he had immersed himself in his work, being
plainly impelled to fresh efforts by hatred of the man who had robbed
him of his son.
Through the Soudan Intelligence Department in Cairo he had watched
Ishmael's movements in Khartoum, expecting him to develop the traits of
the Mahdi and thus throw himself into the hands of the Sirdar.
It was a deep disappointment to the Consul-General that this did not
occur. The same report came to him. again and again. The man was doing
nothing to justify his arrest. Although surrounded by fanatical folk,
whose minds were easily inflamed, he was not trying to upset governors
or giving "divine" sanction for the removal of officials.
But meantime some mischief was manifestly at work all over the country.
From day to day Inspectors had been coming in to say that the people
were not paying their taxes. Convinced that this was the result of
conspiracy, the Consul-General had shown no mercy.
"Sell them up," he had said, and the Inspectors, taking their cue from
his own spirit but exceeding his orders, had done his work without
remorse.
Week by week the trouble had deepened, and when disturbances had been
threatened he had asked the British Army of Occupation, meaning no
violence, to go out into the country and show the people England's
power.
Then grumblings had come down on him from the representatives of foreign
nations. If the people were so discontented with British rule that they
were refusing to pay their taxes, there would be a deficit in the
Egyptian treasury--how then were Egypt's creditors to be paid?
"Time enough to cross the bridge when you come to it, gentlemen," said
the Consul-General, in his stinging tone and with a curl of his iron
lip.
If the worst came to the worst England would pay, but England should not
be asked to do so because Egypt must meet the cost of her own
government. Hence more distraining and some inevitable violence in
suppressing the riots that resulted from evictions.
Finally came a hubbub in Parliament, with the customary "Christian"
prattlers prating again. Fools! They did not know what a subtle and
secret conspiracy he had to deal with while they were crying out against
his means of killing it.
He _must_ kill it! This form of passive resistance, this attack on the
Treasury, was the deadliest blow that had ever yet been aimed at
England's power in Egypt.
But he must not let Europe see it! He must make believe that nothing
was happening to occasion the least alarm. Therefore to drown the cries
of the people who were suffering not because they were poor and could
not pay, but because they were perverse and would not, he must organise
some immense demonstration.
Thus came to the Consul-General the scheme of the combined festival of
the King's Birthday and the --th anniversary of the British Occupation
of Egypt. It would do good to foreign Powers, for it would make them
feel that, not for the first time, England had been the torch-bearer in
a dark country. It would do good to the Egyptians, too, for it would
force their youngsters (born since Tel-el-Kebir) to realise the strength
of England's arm.
Thus had the Consul-General occupied himself while his wife had faded
away. But at length he had been compelled to see that the end was near,
and towards the close of every day he had gone to her room and sat
almost in silence, with bowed head, in the chair by her side.
The great man, who for forty years had been the virtual ruler of
millions, had no wisdom that told him what to say to a dying woman; but
at last, seeing that her pallor had become whiteness, and that she was
sinking rapidly and hungering for the consolations of her religion, he
asked her if she would like to take the sacrament.
"It is just what I wish, dear," she answered, with the nervous smile of
one who had been afraid to ask.
At heart the Consul-General had been an agnostic all his life, looking
upon religion as no better than a civilising superstition, but all the
same he went downstairs and sent one of his secretaries for the Chaplain
of St. Mary's--the English Church.
The moment he had gone out of the door Fatimah, under the direction of
the dying woman, began to prepare the bedroom for the reception of the
clergyman by laying a side-table with a fair white cloth, a large
prayer-book, and two silver candlesticks containing new candles.
While the Egyptian nurse did this the old lady looked on with her deep,
slow, weary eyes, and talked in whispers, as if the wings of the august
Presence that was soon to come were already rustling in the room. When
all was done she looked very happy.
"Everything is nice and comfortable now," she said, as she lay back to
wait for the clergyman.
But even then she could not help thinking the one thought that made a
tug at her resignation. It was about Gordon.
"I am quite ready to die, Fatimah," she said, "but I should have loved
to see my dear Gordon once more."
This was what she had been waiting for, praying for, eating her heart
and her life out for.
"Only to see and kiss my boy! It would have been so easy to go then."
Fatimah, who was snuffling audibly, as she straightened the eider-down
coverlet over the bed, began to hint that if her "sweet eyes" could not
see her son she could send him a message.
"Perhaps I know somebody who could see it reaches him, too," said
Fatimah, in a husky whisper.
The old lady understood her instantly.
"You mean Hafiz! I always thought as much. Bring me my
writing-case--quick!"
The writing-case was brought and laid open before her, and she made some
effort to write a letter, but the power of life in her was low, and
after a moment the shaking pen dropped from her fingers.
"_Ma'aleysh_, my lady!" said Fatimah soothingly. "Tell me what you wish
to say. I will remember everything."
Then the dying mother sent a few touching words as her last message to
her beloved son.
"Wait! Let me think. My head is a little ... just a little ... Yes,
this is what I wish to say, Fatimah. Tell my boy that my last thoughts
were about him. Though I am sorry he took the side of the false
prophet, say I am certain he did what he thought was right. Be sure you
tell him I die happy, because I know I shall see him again. If I am
never to see him in this world I shall do so in the world to come. Say
I shall be waiting for him there. And tell him it will not seem long."
"Could you sign your name for him, my heart?" said Fatimah, in her husky
voice.
"Yes, oh yes, easily," said the old lady, and then with an awful effort
she wrote--
"Your ever-loving Mother."
At that moment Ibrahim in his green caftan, carrying a small black bag,
brought the English chaplain into the room.
"Peace be to this house," said the clergyman, using the words of his
Church ritual, and the Egyptian nurse, thinking it was an Eastern
salutation, answered, "Peace!"
The Chaplain went into the "boys' room" to put on his surplice, and when
he came out, robed in white, and began to light the candles and prepare
the vessels which he placed on the side-table, the old lady was talking
to Fatimah in nervous whispers--
"His lordship?" "Yes!" "Do you think, my lady----"
She wanted the Consul-General to be present and was half afraid to send
for him; but just at that instant the door opened again, and her pale,
spiritual face lit up with a smile as she saw her husband come into the
room.
The clergyman was now ready to begin, and the old lady looked timidly
across the bed at the Consul-General as if there were something she
wished to ask and dared not.
"Yes, I will take the sacrament with you, Janet," said the old man, and
then the old lady's face shone like the face of an angel.
The Consul-General took the chair by the side of the bed and the
Chaplain began the service--
"Almighty, ever-living God, Maker of mankind, who dost correct those
whom Thou dost love----"
All the time the triumphant words reverberated through the room the
dying woman was praying fervently, her lips moving to her unspoken words
and her eyes shining as if the Lord of Life she had always loved was
with her now and she was giving herself to Him--her soul, her all.
The Consul-General was praying too--praying for the first time to the
God he did not know and had never looked to--
"If Thou art God, let her die in peace. It is all I ask--all I wish."
Thus the two old people took the sacrament together, and when the
Communion Service came to a close, the old lady looked again at the
Consul-General and asked, with a little confusion, if they might sing a
hymn.
The old man bent his head, and a moment later the Chaplain, after a
whispered word from the dying woman, began to sing--
"Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour dear,
It is not night if Thou be near ..."
At the second bar the old lady joined him in her breaking, cracking
voice, and the Consul-General, albeit his throat was choking him, forced
himself to sing with her--
"When the soft dews of kindly sleep
My wearied eyelids gently steep..."
It was as much as the Consul-General could do to sing of a faith he did
not feel, but he felt tenderly to it for his wife's sake now, and with a
great effort he went on with her to the end--
"If some poor wandering child of Thine
Have spurned to-day the voice divine ..."
The light of another world was in the old lady's eyes when all was over,
and she seemed to be already half way to heaven.
*CHAPTER XVI*
All the same there was a sweet humanity left in her, and when the
Chaplain was gone and the side-table had been cleared, and she was left
alone with her old husband, there came little gleams of the woman who
wanted to be loved to the last.
"How are you now?" he asked.
"Better so much better," she said, smiling upon him, and caressing with
her wrinkled hand the other wrinkled hand that lay on the eider-down
quilt.
The great Consul-General, sitting on the chair by the side of the bed,
felt as helpless as before, as ignorant as ever of what millions of
simple people know--how to talk to those they love when the wings of
Death are hovering over them. But the sweet old lady, with the wisdom
and the courage which God gives to His own on the verge of eternity,
began to speak in a lively and natural voice of the end that was coming
and what was to follow it.
He was not to allow any of his arrangements to be interfered with, and,
above all, the festivities appointed for the King's Birthday were not to
be disturbed.
"They must be necessary or you would not have them, especially now," she
said, "and I shall not be happy if I know that on my account they are
not coming off."
And then, with the sweet childishness which the feebleness of illness
brings, she talked of the last King's Birthday, and of the ball they had
given in honour of it.
That had been in their own house, and the dancing had been in the
drawing-room, and the Consul-General had told Ibrahim to set the big
green arm-chair for her in the alcove, and sitting there she had seen
everything. What a spectacle! Ministers Plenipotentiary, Egyptian
Ministers, ladies, soldiers! Such gorgeous uniforms! Such glittering
orders! Such beautiful toilets!
The old lady's pale face filled with light as she thought of all this,
but the Consul-General dropped his head, for he knew well what was
coming next.
"And, John, don't you remember? Gordon was there that night, and
Helena--dear Helena! How lovely they looked! Among all those lovely
people, dear.... He was wearing every one of his medals that night, you
know. So tall, so brave-looking, a soldier every inch of him, and such
a perfect English gentleman! Was there ever anything in the world so
beautiful? And Helena, too! She wore a silvery silk, and a kind of
coif on her beautiful black hair. Oh, she was the loveliest thing in
all the room, I thought! And when they led the cotillion--don't you
remember they led the cotillion, dear?--I could have cried, I was so
proud of them."
The Consul-General continued to sit with his head down, listening to the
old lady and saying nothing, yet seeing the scene as she depicted it and
feeling again the tingling pride which he, too, had felt that night but
permitted nobody to know.
After a moment the beaming face on the bed became clouded over, as if
that memory had brought other memories less easy to bear--dreams of
happy days to come, of honours and of children.
"Ah well, God knows best," she said in a tremulous voice, releasing the
Consul-General's hand.
The old man felt as if he would have to hurry out of the room without
uttering another word, but, as well as he could, he controlled himself
and said--
"You are agitating yourself, Janet. You must lie quiet now."
"Yes, I must lie quiet now, and think of ... of other things," she
answered.
He was stepping away when she called on him to turn her on her right
side, for that was how she always slept, and upon the Egyptian nurse
coming hurrying up to help, she said--
"No, no, not you, Fatimah--his lordship."
Then the Consul-General put his arms about her--feeling how thin and
wasted she was, and how little of her was left to die--and turning her
gently round he laid her back on the pillow which Fatimah had in the
meantime shaken out.
While he did so her dim eyes brightened again, and stretching her white
hands out of her silk nightdress she clasped them about his neck, with
the last tender efforts of the woman who wanted to be fondled to the
end.
The strain of talking had been too much for her, and after a few minutes
she sank into a restless doze, in which the perspiration broke out on
her forehead and her face acquired an expression of pain, for sleep
knows no pretences. But at length her features became more composed and
her breathing more regular, and then the Consul-General, who had been
standing aside, mute with anguish, said in a low tone to Fatimah--
"She is sleeping quietly now," and then he turned to go.
Fatimah followed him to the head of the stairs and said in a husky
whisper--
"It will be all over to-night, though--you'll see it will."
For a moment he looked steadfastly into the woman's eyes, and then,
without answering her, walked heavily down the stairs.
Back in the library, he stood for some time with his face to the empty
fireplace. Over the mantelpiece there hung a little picture, in a
black-and-gilt frame, of a bright-faced boy in an Arab fez. It was more
than he could do to look at that portrait now, so he took it off its
nail and laid it, face down, on the marble mantel-shelf.
Just at that moment one of his secretaries brought in a despatch. It
was the despatch from the Sirdar, sent in cypher but now written out at
length. The Consul-General read it without any apparent emotion and put
it aside without a word.
The hours passed slowly; the night was very long; the old man did not go
to bed. Not for the first time, he was asking himself searching
questions about the mystery of life and death, but the great enigma was
still baffling him. Could it be possible that while he had occupied
himself with the mere shows and semblance of things, calling them by
great names--Civilisation and Progress--that simple soul upstairs had
been grasping the eternal realities?
There were questions that cut deeper even than that, and now they faced
him one by one. Was it true that he had married merely in the hope of
having some one to carry on his name and thus fulfil the aspirations of
his pride? Had he for nearly forty years locked his heart away from the
woman who had been starving for his love, and was it only by the loss of
the son who was to have been the crown of his life that they were
brought together in the end?
Thus the hoofs of the dark hours beat heavily on the great Proconsul's
brain, and in the awful light that came to him from an open grave, the
triumphs of the life behind him looked poor and small.
But meantime the palpitating air of the room upstairs was full of a
different spirit. The old lady had apparently awakened from her
restless sleep, for she had opened her eyes and was talking in a bright
and happy voice. Her cheeks were tinged with the glow of health, and
her whole face was filled with light.
"I knew I should see them," she said.
"See whom, my heart?" asked Fatimah, but without answering her, the old
lady, with the same rapturous expression, went on talking.
"I knew I should, and I have! I have seen both of them!"
"Whom have you seen, my lady?" asked Fatimah again, but once more the
dying woman paid no heed to her.
"I saw them as plainly as I see you now, dear. It was in a place I did
not know. The sun was so hot, and the room was so close. There was a
rush roof and divans all round the walls. But Gordon and Helena were
there together, sitting at opposite sides of a table and holding each
other's hands."
"Allah! Allah!" muttered Fatimah, with upraised hands.
The old lady seemed to hear her, for an indulgent smile passed over her
radiant face and she said in a tone of tender remonstrance--
"Don't be foolish, Fatimah! _Of course_ I saw him. The Lord said I
should, and He never breaks His promises. 'Help me, O God, for Christ's
sake,' I said. 'Shall I see my dear son again? O God, give me a sign.'
And He did! Yes, it was in the middle of the night. 'Janet,' said a
voice, and I was not afraid. 'Be patient, Janet. You shall see your
dear boy before you die.'"
Her face was full of happy visions. The life of this world seemed to be
no longer there. A kind of life from the other world appeared to
reanimate the sinking woman. The near approach of eternity illumined
her whole being with a supernatural light. She was dying in a flood of
joy.
"Oh, how good the Lord is! It is so easy to go now! ... John, you must
not think I suffer any longer, because I don't. I have no pain now,
dear--none whatever."
Then she clasped her wasted hands together in the attitude of prayer and
said in a rustling whisper--
"To-night, Lord Jesus! Let it be to-night!"
After that her rapturous voice died away and her ecstatic eyes gently
closed, but an ineffable smile continued to play on her faintly-tinted
face, as if she were looking on the wings that were waiting to bear her
away.
The doctor came in at that moment, and was told what had occurred.
"Delirium, of course," he said. A change had come; the crisis was
approaching. If the same thing happened at the supreme moment the
patient was not to be contradicted; her delusion was to be indulged.
It did not happen.
In the early hours of the morning the Consul-General was called
upstairs. There was a deep silence in the bedroom, as if the air had
suddenly become empty and void. The day was breaking, and through the
windows that looked over to the Nile the white sails of a line of boats
gliding by seemed like the passing of angels' wings. Sparrows were
twittering in the eaves, and through the windows to the east the first
streamers of the sunrise were rising in the sky.
The Consul-General approached the bed and looked down at the pallid face
on the pillow. He wanted to stoop and kiss it, but he felt as if it
would be a profanation to do so now. His own face was full of
suffering, for the sealed chambers of his iron soul had been broken open
at last.
With his hands clasped behind his back he stood for some minutes quite
motionless. Then laying one hand on the brass head-rail of the bed, he
leaned over his dead wife and spoke to her as if she could hear.
"Forgive me, Janet! Forgive me!" he said in a low voice that was like a
sob.
Did she hear him? Who can say she did not? Was it only a ray from the
sunrise that made the Egyptian woman think that over the dead face of
the careworn and weary one, whose sweet soul was even then winging its
way to heaven, there passed the light of a loving smile?
*CHAPTER XVII*
Within three days the softening effects on the Consul-General of Lady
Nuneham's death were lost. Out of his very bereavement and the sense of
being left friendless and alone he became a harder and severer man than
before. His secretaries were more than ever afraid of him, and his
servants trembled as they entered his room.
It heightened his anger against Gordon to believe that by his conduct he
had hastened his mother's end. In his absolute self-abasement there were
moments when he would have found it easier to forgive Gordon if he had
been a prodigal, a wastrel, prompted to do what he had done by the
grossest selfishness; but deep down in some obscure depths of the
father's heart the worst suffering came of the certainty that his son
had been moved by that tragic earnestness which belongs only to the
greatest and noblest souls.
Still more hardening and embittering to the Consul-General than the
memory of Gordon was the thought of Ishmael. It intensified his anger
against the Egyptian to feel that having first by his "visionary
mummery," by his "manoeuvring and quackery," robbed him of his son, he
had now, by direct consequence, robbed him of his wife also.
All the Consul-General's bull-necked strength, all his force of soul,
were roused to fury when he thought of that. He was old and tired and
he needed rest, but before he permitted himself to think of retirement,
he must crush Ishmael Ameer.
Not that he allowed himself to recognise his vindictiveness. Shutting
his eyes to his personal motive, he believed he was thinking of England
only. Ishmael was the head-centre of an anarchical conspiracy which was
using secret and stealthy weapons that were more deadly than bombs;
therefore Ishmael must be put down, he must be trampled into the earth,
and his movement must be destroyed.
But how?
Within a few hours after Lady Nuneham's funeral the Grand Cadi came by
night, and with many vague accusations against "the Arab innovator,"
repeated his former warning--
"I tell you again, O Excellency, if you permit that man to go on it will
be death to the rule of England in Egypt."
"Then prove what you say--prove it, prove it," cried the Consul-General,
raising his impatient voice.
But the suave old Moslem judge either could not or would not do so.
Indeed, being a Turkish official, accustomed to quite different
procedure, he was at a loss to understand why the Consul-General wanted
proof.
"Arrest the offender first and you'll find evidence enough afterwards,"
he said.
An English statesman could not act on lines like those, so the
Consul-General turned back to the despatches of the Sirdar. The last of
them--the one received during the dark hours preceding his wife's
death--contained significant passages--
"If this man should develop supernatural pretensions I shall know what
to do."
Ha! There was hope in that! The charlatan element in Ishmael Ameer
might carry him far if only the temptation of popular idolatry were
strong enough.
Once let a man deceive himself with the idea that he was divine, nay,
once let his followers delude themselves with the notion of his
divinity, and a civilised Government would be bound to make short work
of him. Whosoever and whatsoever he might be, that man must die!
A sudden cloud passed over the face of the Consul-General as he glanced
again at the Sirdar's despatch and saw its references to Christ.
"How senseless everybody is becoming in this world," he thought.
Pontius Pilate! Pshaw! When would religious hypocrisy open its eyes
and see that, according to all the laws of civilised states, the Roman
Governor had done right? Jesus claimed to be divine, His people were
ready to recognise Him as King; and whether His kingdom was of this
world or another, what did it matter? If His pretensions had been
permitted they would have led to wild, chaotic, shapeless anarchy.
Therefore Pilate crucified Jesus, and, scorned though he had been
through all the ages, he had done no more than any so-called "Christian"
governor would be compelled to do to-day.
"Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." Why would not people
understand that these words were written not in derision but in
self-defence? There could be only one authority in Palestine then, and
there could be only one authority in Egypt now.
"If this visionary mummer, with his empty quackeries, should develop the
idea that he is divine, or even the messenger of divinity, I will hang
him like a dog!" thought the Consul-General.
*CHAPTER XVIII*
Five days after the death of Lady Nuneham the Consul-General was reading
at his breakfast the last copy of the _Times_ to arrive in Cairo. It
contained an anticipatory announcement of a forthcoming Mansion House
Banquet in honour of the King's Birthday. The Foreign Minister was
expected to speak on the "unrest in the East, with special reference to
the affair of El Azhar."
The Consul-General's face frowned darkly, and he began to picture the
scene as it would occur. The gilded hall, the crowd of distinguished
persons eating in public, the mixed odours of many dishes, the pop of
champagne corks, the smoke of cigars, the buzz of chatter like the
gobbling of geese on a green, and then the Minister, with his hand on
his heart, uttering timorous apologies for his Proconsul's policy, and
pouring out pompous platitudes as if he had newly discovered the
Decalogue.
The Consul-General's gorge rose at the thought. Oh, when would these
people, who stayed comfortably at home and lived by the votes of the
factory-hands of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and hungered for the shouts
of the mob, understand the position of men like himself, who, in foreign
lands, among alien races, encompassed by secret conspiracies, were
spending their strength in holding high the banner of Empire?
"Having chosen a good man, why can't they leave him alone?" thought the
Consul-General.
And then, his personal feelings getting the better of his patriotism, he
almost wished that the charlatan element in Ishmael Ameer might develop
speedily; that he might draw off the allegiance of the native soldiers
in the Soudan and break out, like the Mahdi, into open rebellion. That
would bring the Secretary of State to his senses, make him realise a
real danger, and see in the everlasting "affair of El Azhar" if not
light, then lightning.
The door of the breakfast-room opened and Ibrahim entered.
"Well, what is it?" demanded the Consul-General with a frown.
Ibrahim answered in some confusion that a small boy was in the hall,
asking to see the English lord. He said he brought an urgent message,
but would not tell what it was or where it came from. Had been there
three times before, slept last night on the ground outside the gate, and
could not be driven away--would his lordship see the lad?
"What is his race? Egyptian?"
"Nubian, my lord."
"Ever seen the boy before?"
"No ... yes ... that is to say ... well, now that your lordship mentions
it, I think ... yes I think he came here once with Miss Hel ... I mean
General Graves's daughter."
"Bring him up immediately," said the Consul-General.
At the next moment a black boy stepped boldly into the room. It was
Mosie. His clothes were dirty, and his pudgy face was like a block of
dark soap splashed with stale lather, but his eyes were clear and alert
and his manner was eager.
"Well, my boy, what do you want?" asked the Consul-General.
Mosie looked fearlessly up into the stern face with its iron jaw, and
tipped his black thumb over his shoulder to where Ibrahim, in his
gorgeous green caftan, stood timidly behind him.
At a sign from the Consul-General, the Egyptian servant left the room,
and then, quick as light, Mosie slipped off his sandal, ripped open its
inner sole, and plucked out a letter stained with grease.
It was the letter which Helena had written in Khartoum.
The Consul-General read it rapidly, with an eagerness which even he
could not conceal. So great, indeed, was his excitement that he did not
see that a second paper (Ishmael's letter to the Chancellor of El Azhar)
had fallen to the floor until Mosie picked it up and held it out to him.
"Good boy," said the Consul-General--the cloud had passed and his face
bore an expression of joy.
Instantly apprehending the dim purport of Helena's hasty letter, the
Consul-General saw that what he had predicted and half hoped for was
already coming to pass. It was to be open conspiracy now, not passive
conspiracy any longer. The man Ishmael was falling a victim to the most
fatal of all mental maladies. The Mahdist delusion was taking possession
of him, and he was throwing himself into the Government's hands.
Hurriedly ringing his bell, the Consul-General committed Mosie to
Ibrahim's care, whereupon the small black boy, in his soiled clothes,
with his dirty face and hands, strutted out of the room in front of the
Egyptian servant, looking as proud as a peacock and feeling like sixteen
feet tall. Then the Consul-General called for one of his secretaries
and sent him for the Commandant of Police.
The Commandant came in hot haste. He was a big and rather corpulent
Englishman, wearing a blue-braided uniform and a fez--naturally a
blusterous person with his own people, but as soft-voiced as a woman and
as obsequious as a slave before his chief.
"Draw up your chair, Commandant--closer; now listen," said the
Consul-General.
And then in a low tone he repeated what he had already learned from
Helena's letter, and added what he had instantly divined from it--that
Ishmael Ameer was to return to Cairo; that he was to come back in the
disguise of a Bedouin Sheikh; that his object was to draw off the
allegiance of the Egyptian army in order that a vast horde of his
followers might take possession of the city; that this was to be done
during the period of the forthcoming festivities, while the British army
was still in the provinces, and that the conspiracy was to reach its
treacherous climax on the night of the King's Birthday.
The Commandant listened with a gloomy face, and, looking timidly into
the flashing eyes before him, he asked if his Excellency could rely on
the source of his information.
"Absolutely! Infallibly!" said the Consul-General.
"Then," said the Commandant nervously, "I presume the festivities must
be postponed?"
"Certainly not, sir."
"Or perhaps your Excellency intends to have the British army called back
to Cairo?"
"Not that either."
"At least you will arrest the 'Bedouin'?"
"Not yet at all events."
The policy to be pursued was to be something quite different.
Everything was to go on as usual. Sports, golf, cricket, croquet,
tennis-tournaments, polo-matches, race-meetings, automobile-meetings,
"all the usual fooleries and frivolities"--with crowds of sight-seers,
men in flannels and ladies in beautiful toilets--were to be encouraged
to proceed. The police-bands were to play in the public gardens, the
squares, the streets, everywhere.
"Say nothing to anybody. Give no sign of any kind. Let the conspiracy
go on as if we knew nothing about it. But----"
"Yes, my lord? Yes?"
"Keep an eye on the 'Bedouin.' Let every train that arrives at the
railway-station and every boat that comes down the river be watched. As
soon as you have spotted your man, see where he goes. He may be a
fanatical fool, miscalculating his 'divine' influence with the native
soldier, but he cannot be working alone. Therefore find out who visit
him, learn all their movements, let their plans come to a head, and,
when the proper time arrives, in one hour, at one blow we will crush
their conspiracy and clap our hands upon the whole of them."
"Splendid! An inspiration, my lord!"
"I've always said it would some day be necessary to forge a special
weapon to meet special needs, and the time has come to forge it.
Meantime undertake nothing hurriedly. Make no mistakes, and see that
your men make none."
"Certainly, my lord."
"Investigate every detail for yourself, and above all hold your tongue
and guard your information with inviolable secrecy."
"Surely, my lord."
"You can go now. I'm busy. Good-morning!"
"Wonderful man!" thought the Commandant, as he went out at the porch.
"Seems to have taken a new lease of life! Wonderful!"
The Consul-General spent the whole of that day in thinking out his
scheme for a "special weapon," and when night came and he went
upstairs--through the great echoing house that was like the bureau of a
department of state now, being so empty and so cheerless, and past the
dark and silent room whereof the door was always closed--he felt
conscious of a firmer and lighter step than he had known for years.
Fatimah was in his bedroom, for she had constituted herself his own
nurse since his wife's death. She was nailing up on the wall the
picture of the little boy in the Arab fez, and, having her own theory
about why he had taken it down in the library, she said--
"There! It will be company for your lordship, and nobody will ask
questions about it here."
When Fatimah had gone the Consul-General could not but think of Gordon.
He always thought of him at that hour of the night, and the picture of
his son that rose in his mind's eye was always the same. It was a
picture of Gordon's deadly white face with its trembling lower lip, as
he stood bolt upright while his medals were being torn from his breast,
and then said, in that voice which his father could never forget:
"General, the time may come when it will be even more painful to you to
remember all this than it has been to me to bear it."
Oh, that Gordon could be here now and see for himself what a sorry
charlatan, what a self-deceived quack and conspirator, was the man in
whose defence he had allowed his own valuable life to rush down to a
confused welter of wreck and ruin!
As the Consul-General got into bed he was thinking of Helena. What a
glorious, courageous, resourceful woman she was! It carried his mind
back to Biblical days to find anything equal to her daring and her
success. But what was the price she had paid for them? He remembered
something the Sirdar had said of "a marriage, a sort of betrothal," and
then he recalled the words of her first letter: "I know exactly how far
I intend to go, and I shall go no farther. I know exactly what I intend
to do, and I shall do it without fear or remorse."
What had happened in the Soudan? What was happening there now? In what
battle-whirlwind had that splendid girl's magnificent victory been won?
*CHAPTER XIX*
Meantime Helena in Khartoum was feeling like a miserable traitress.
She had condemned an innocent man to death! Ishmael had _not_ killed her
father, yet she had taken such steps that the moment he entered Cairo he
would be walking to his doom!
One after another sweet and cruel memories crowded upon her, and in the
light of the awful truth as Gordon had revealed it, she began to see
Ishmael with quite different eyes. All she had hitherto thought evil in
his character now looked like good; what she had taken for hypocrisy was
sincerity; what she had supposed to be subtlety was simplicity. His
real nature was a rebuke to every one of her preconceived ideas. The
thought of his tenderness, his modesty, his devotion, and even the
unselfishness which had led to their betrothal, cut her to the heart.
Yet she had doomed him to destruction. The letter she had written to
the Consul-General was his death-warrant.
That night she could fix her mind on nothing except the horror of her
position, but next morning she set herself to think out schemes for
stopping the consequences of her own act.
The black boy was gone; it was not possible to overtake him; there was
no other train to Egypt for four days, but there was the telegraph--she
could make use of that.
"I'll telegraph to the Consul-General to pay no attention to my letter,"
she thought.
Useless! The Consul-General would ask himself searching questions and
take his precautions just the same.
"I'll telegraph that my letter is a forgery," she thought.
Madness! The Consul-General would ask himself how, if it was a forgery,
she could know anything about it.
"I'll go across to the Sirdar and tell him everything, and leave him to
act for both of us as he thinks best!"
Impossible! How could she explain her position to the Sirdar without
betraying Gordon's identity and thereby leading to his arrest?
That settled everything. There was no escape from the consequences of
her conduct, no way to put an end to the network of dangers by which she
had surrounded Ishmael. Mosie was now far on his way to Cairo; he
carried to the Consul-General not only her own letter but also the
original of Ishmael's letter to the Chancellor of El Azhar. The hideous
work was done.
Two days passed, during which her over-excited feelings seemed to
paralyse all her powers of thought. Then a new idea took possession of
her, and she set herself to undo what she had done with Ishmael himself.
Little by little, in tremulous tones, and with a still deeper sense of
duplicity than before, she began to express halting doubts of the
success of their enterprise.
"I have been thinking about it," she said nervously, "and now I
fear----"
"What do you fear, O Rani?" asked Ishmael.
"I fear," said Helena, trembling visibly, "that the moment the
Government learn from the Sirdar, as they needs must, that the great
body of your people have left Khartoum, and are travelling north, they
will recall the British army to protect the capital and thus----"
But Ishmael interrupted her with a laugh.
"If the day of the Redeemer has come," he said, "will human armies
hinder him? No!"
It was useless! Ishmael was now more than ever an enthusiast, a
fanatic, a visionary. His spiritual ecstasy swept away every obstacle,
and made him blind to every danger.
Helena felt like a witch who was trying to undo the effects of her
charm. She could not undo them. She could not destroy the potency of
the spell she herself had raised, and the effort to do so put her into a
fever of excitement.
Two days more passed like this, and still Helena was in the toils of her
own actions. From time to time she saw Gordon as he sat at meals or
moved about the house. He did not speak to her, and she dropped her
head in shame as often as they came close together. But at length she
caught a look in his face which seemed to her to say, "Are you really
going to let an innocent man walk into the jaws of death?"
That brought her wavering mind to a quick conclusion. Gordon was
waiting for her to speak. She must speak! She must confess everything!
She must tell Ishmael what she had done, and by what tragic error she
had done it. At any cost, no matter what, she must put an end to the
false situation in which she lived, and thus redeem herself in Gordon's
eyes and in her own.
At noon that day, being Friday, Ishmael preached in the mosque,
delivering a still more fervent and passionate message. The kingdom of
heaven which the Lord Isa had foretold was soon to come! When it came
God would lend them legions of angels, if need be, to protect the
oppressed and to uphold the down-trodden! Therefore let the children of
God fear nothing from the powers and principalities of the world! Their
pilgrimage was safe! No harm could come to them, for however their feet
might slip the arms of the Compassionate would bear them up!
As Ishmael's ecstasy had increased so had the devotion of his people,
and when he returned home they followed him in a dense crowd through the
streets shouting the wildest acclamations.
"Out of the way! The Master is coming! The Messenger is here! Allah!
El Hamdullillah!"
Helena heard them, but she did not hear Ishmael reprove them, as in
earlier days he had been wont to do. She was standing in the guest-room,
and the noise of the approaching crowd had brought Gordon from his
bedroom, at the moment when Ishmael, surrounded by a group of his
people, stepped into the house.
Ishmael was in a state of excitement amounting to exaltation, and after
holding out hands both to Helena and Gordon he turned to his followers
to dismiss them. "Go back now," he said, "and to-night, two hours after
sunset, let the Ulema and the Notables come to me that we may decide on
the details of our pilgrimage."
"Allah! El Hamdullillah!" cried the people.
More than ever they were like creatures possessed. Hungry and ragged as
many of them were, the new magnificence that was to be given to their
lives appeared to be already shining in their eyes.
Helena saw this, and her heart was smitten with remorse at the thought
of the cruel confession she had decided to make. She could not make it
in sight of the hopes it must destroy. But neither could she look into
Gordon's searching face and remain silent, and as soon as the crowd had
gone, she made an effort to speak.
"Ishmael," she said, trembling all over, "there is something I wish to
say--if it will not displease you."
"Nothing the Rani can say will displease me," said Ishmael.
He was looking at her with the expression of enthusiastic admiration
which she had seen in his eyes before. It was hard to go on.
"Your intentions are now known to everybody," she said. "You have not
hidden them from any of your own people. That has been very trustful,
very noble, but still----"
"Still--what, my sister?"
"If somebody ... should betray your scheme to the Government, and ...
and the moment you set foot in Cairo----"
Again Ishmael interrupted her with a laugh.
"Impossible!" he said, smiling upon her with his bright and joyous eyes.
"Islam has only one heart, one soul, one mind."
Then taking her quivering hand and leading her to the door, he pointed
to the camp outside and said--
"Look! Ten thousand of our poor unhappy people are there. They have
come to me from the tyrannies of cruel taskmasters and have been true to
me through the temptations of hunger and thirst. Some of them are from
Cairo and are waiting to return home. All are the children of Islam,
and are looking for the coming of the Expected who brings peace and joy.
Is there one of them who will betray me now? Not one! Treachery would
injure me, but it would hurt the betrayer more."
Then with the same expression of enthusiastic admiration, and in a still
tenderer and softer voice, he began to laugh and to rally her, saying he
knew well what was going on in his sweet sister's mind--that though her
brave spirit had devised the plan they had adopted, yet now that the
time was near for carrying it into execution her womanly heart was
failing her, and affectionate anxiety for his own safety was making her
afraid.
"But have no fear at all," he said, standing behind her and smoothing
her cheek with a light touch of his tapering fingers. "If this is God's
work will God forget me? No!"
With a sense of stifling duplicity Helena made one more effort and
said--
"Still, who knows, there may be some one----"
"None, O Rani!"
"But don't you know----"
"I don't want to know anything except one thing--that God guides and
directs me."
Again he laughed, and asked where was the kufiah (the Bedouin
head-dress) which she had promised to make for his disguise.
"Get to work at it quick," he said; "it will be wanted soon, my sister."
And then, clapping his hands for the mid-day meal, he went into his room
to prepare for it, leaving Gordon and Helena for some moments alone
together.
Gordon had been standing aside in the torment of a hundred mixed
emotions, and now he and Helena spoke in whispers.
"He is determined to go into Cairo," she said.
"Quite determined."
"Oh, is there _no_ way to prevent him?"
"None now--unless----"
"Unless--what?" she asked eagerly.
"Let us ... Let us wait and see," said Gordon, and then Abdullah came in
to lay the table.
*CHAPTER XX*
As soon as the mid-day meal was over Gordon escaped to his room--the
room he shared with Ishmael--and throwing himself down on the angerib
with his hands clasped across his face, he tried to think out the
situation in which he found himself, to gaze into the depths of his
conscience, and to see where he was and what he ought to do.
So violent was the state of his soul that he sat there a long time
before he could link together his memories of what had happened since he
arrived in Khartoum.
"Am I dreaming?" he asked himself again and again, as one by one his
thoughts rolled over him like tempestuous waves.
The first thing he saw clearly was that Ishmael was not now the same man
that he had known at Alexandria; that the anxieties, responsibilities,
and sufferings he had gone through as a religious leader had dissipated
his strong common sense; and that as a consequence the caution whereby
men guard their conduct had gone.
He also saw that Ishmael's spiritual ecstasy had reached a point not far
removed from madness; that his faith in divine guidance, divine
guardianship, divine intervention had become an absolute obsession.
Therefore it was hopeless to try to move him from his purpose by any
appeals on the score of danger to himself or to his people.
"He is determined to go into Cairo," thought Gordon, "and into Cairo he
will go."
The next thing Gordon saw, as he examined the situation before him, was
that Helena was powerless to undo the work which by the cruel error of
fate she had been led to do; that her act was irrevocable; that there
was no calling it back, and that it would go from its consequences to
the consequences of its consequences.
Helena's face appeared to him, and his heart bled for her as he thought
of how she passed before him--she who had always been so bold and
gay--with her once proud head bent low. He remembered her former
strength and self-reliance; her natural force and grace; her fearless
daring and that dash of devilry which had been for him one of her
greatest charms; and then he thought of her false position in that
house, brought there by her own will, held there by her own act--a
tragic figure of a woman in the meshes of her own net.
"She cannot continue to live like this. It is impossible. Yet what can
the end be?" he asked himself.
Hours passed like this. His head under his hot hands burned and his
temples throbbed, yet no ray of light emerged from the darkness
surrounding him.
But at length the man in him, the soldier and the lover, swept down
every obstacle, and he told himself that he must save Helena from the
consequences of her own conduct whatever the result might be.
"I must! I must!" he kept on repeating as Helena's face rose before
him; and after a while this blind resolution brought him at one stride
to a new idea.
Ishmael was determined to go into Cairo, but there was one way to
prevent him doing so--that he, Gordon himself, should go instead!
When he first thought of that his temples beat so violently that it
seemed as if they would burst, and he felt as if he had been brought to
the very brink of despair. Seeing nothing before him but instant arrest
the moment he entered the city, it seemed to be a pitiful end to his
long journey across the desert, a poor sequel to his fierce struggle
with himself, and to the mystic hopes with which he had buoyed up his
heart, that immediately after he had reached Khartoum he should turn
back to his death.
Work, mission, redemption--all that had so recently had a meaning for
him had disappeared. But his heart rose when he remembered that if he
did what he had determined to do he would break the cruel error of fate
whereby Ishmael had been doomed to die for an offence he did not commit.
What was the first fact of this cruel situation? That Helena had
believed Ishmael to be guilty of the death of her father. But Ishmael
was innocent, whereas he, Gordon, was guilty! Could he allow an
innocent man to die for his crime?
That brought him to the crisis of his conscience. It settled
everything. Destiny, acting under the blind force of a poor girl's love
for her father, was sending Ishmael to his death. But destiny should be
defeated! He should pay his own penalty! Ishmael should be snatched
from the doom that threatened him, and Helena should be saved from
lifelong remorse.
"Yes, yes, I must go into Cairo instead," he told himself.
It had grown late by this time, and the bedroom had become dark when
Abdullah knocked at the door and said that the Sheikhs were in the
guest-room and Ishmael was asking for Omar.
Under its roof thatched with stalks of durah, lit by lamps suspended
from its rafters, the Ulema and Notables of Khartoum--the same that
visited the Sirdar--had gathered soon after sunset, and squatting on the
divans covered by carpets and cushions, had drunk their coffee and
talked in their winding, circuitous Eastern way of the business before
them, and particularly of the White Lady's part in it, while they waited
for Ishmael, who was still at the mosque.
"Yes," the vivacious old Pasha had said, "no matter how great a man may
be, when he undertakes an enterprise like this he should always consult
ten of his friends."
"But great ones are not great in friends," said a younger Sheikh. "What
if he has not got ten?"
"Then let him consult one friend ten times over."
"Nay, but if he stands so high that he has not got even one friend?"
"Then," said the old man, with a sly look over his shoulder towards the
women's side of the house, "let him consult his wife, and, whatever she
advises, let him do the contrary."
When Gordon in his Bedouin dress entered the guest-room, Ishmael was
sitting in the midst of his people, and he called to him to take the
seat by his right side.
"But where is the Rani?" he asked, looking round, whereupon Abdullah
answered that she was still in her room, and the old Pasha hinted that
in the emancipation of the Eastern woman perhaps women themselves would
be the chief impediment.
"I know! I know!" said Ishmael. "But all the same we must turn our
backs on the madness of a bygone age that woman is inferior to man, and
her counsel is not to be trusted. Bring her, Abdullah."
A few minutes afterwards Helena, wearing her Indian veil but with her
face uncovered, entered the guest-room with downcast eyes, followed by
the Arab woman and the child.
It cut Gordon to the heart to see her look of shame and of confusion,
but Ishmael saw nothing in Helena's manner except maidenly modesty under
the eyes of so many men, and making a place for her on his left, he
began without further delay on the business that had brought them
together.
They were about to win a dear victory for God, but it was to be a white
war, a bloodless revolution. The heartless festivities that were to be
held in honour of the birthday of the King who lived across the seas
while people perished in Egypt, were to reach their climax something
more than a month hence. Therefore the great caravan of God's children
who were to cross the desert by camel and horse and ass, in order that
they might meet the Expected One when he appeared in Cairo, should start
within a week. But the messenger of God who had to prepare the path
before them must go by train, and he ought to leave Khartoum in four
days.
Other preliminaries of the pilgrimage there were to arrange, and after
the manner of their kind the Sheikhs talked long and leisurely, agreeing
finally that Ishmael should go first into Cairo in the disguise of a
Bedouin Sheikh to make sure of the success of their mission, and that
Omar (Gordon) should follow him in command of the body of the people.