"Gordon, do you remember that you came to my room in the Citadel before
you went in to that ... that fatal interview?"
"Yes, yes! How can I forget it?"
"Do you also remember what I told you then, that whatever happened that
day I could never leave my father?"
"Yes, certainly, yes."
"Do you remember that you asked me why, and I said I couldn't tell you
because it was a secret--somebody else's secret?"
"Well?" His pulses were beating violently; she could feel them
throbbing on her arms.
"Gordon," she said, "do you know what that secret was? I can tell you
now. Do you know what it was?"
"What?"
"That my father was suffering from heart-disease, and had already
received his death-warrant."
She waited for Gordon to speak, but he was almost afraid to breathe.
"He didn't know his condition until we arrived in Egypt, and then
perhaps he ought to have resigned his commission, but he had been out of
the service for two years, and the temptation to remain was too much for
him, so he asked me to promise to say nothing about it."
Gordon released her arms and she sat down again. He stood over her,
breathing fast and painfully.
"I thought you ought to have been told at the time when we became
engaged, but my father said, 'No! Why put him in a false position, and
burden him with responsibilities he ought not to bear?'"
Helena's own voice was breaking now, and as Gordon listened to it he was
looking down at her flushed face, which was thinner than before but more
beautiful than ever in his eyes, and a hundredfold more touching than
when it first won his heart.
"I tried to tell you that day, too, before you went into the General's
office, so that you might see for yourself, dear, that if you separated
yourself from my father I ... I couldn't possibly follow you, but there
was my promise, and then ... then my pride and ... and something you
said that pained and wounded me----"
"I know, I know, I know," he said.
"But now," she continued, rising to her feet again, "now," she repeated,
in the same trembling voice, but with a look of joy and triumph, "now
that you have told me what happened after your return to the Citadel, I
see quite clearly--I am sure--perfectly sure--that my dear father died
not by your hand at all, but by the hand and the will of God."
"Helena! Helena!" cried Gordon, and in the tempest of his love and the
overwhelming sense of boundless relief he flung his arms about her and
covered her face with kisses.
One long moment of immeasurable joy they were permitted to know, and
then the hand of fate snatched at them again.
From their intoxicating happiness they were awakened by a voice. It was
only the voice of the muezzin calling to mid-day prayers, but it seemed
to be reproaching them, separating them, tearing them asunder, reminding
them of where they were now, and what they were, and that God was over
them.
[Illustration: Music fragment]
Their lips parted, their arms fell away from each other, and
irresistibly, simultaneously, as if by an impulse of the same heart,
they dropped to their knees to pray for pardon.
The voice of the muezzin ceased, and in the silence of the following
moment they heard a soft footstep coming behind.
It was Ishmael. He did not speak to either of them, but seeing them on
their knees, at the hour of mid-day prayers, he stepped up and knelt
between.
*CHAPTER XXII*
When Gordon had time to examine the new situation in which he found
himself he saw that he was now in a worse case than before.
It had been an inexpressible relief to realise that he was not the first
cause of the General's death, and therefore that conscience did not
require him to go into Cairo in order to protect Ishmael from the
consequences of a crime he did not commit. But no sooner had he passed
this great crisis than he was brought up against a great test. What was
it to him that he could save his life if he had to lose Helena?
Helena was now Ishmael's wife--betrothed to him by the most sacred
pledges of Mohammedan law. If the barrier of blood which had kept him
from Helena had been removed, the barrier of marriage which kept Helena
from him remained.
"What can we do?" he asked himself, and for a long time he saw no
answer.
In the fierce struggle that followed, honour and duty seemed to say,
that inasmuch as Helena had entered into this union of her own free
will--however passively acquiescing in its strange conditions--she must
abide by it, and he must leave her where she was and crush down his
consuming passion, which was an unholy passion now. But honour and duty
are halting and timorous guides in the presence of love, and when Gordon
came to think of Helena as the actual wife of Ishmael he was conscious
of nothing but the flame that was burning at his heart's core.
Remembering what Helena had told him, and what he had seen since he came
to that house, he reminded himself that after all the marriage was only
a marriage _pro forma_, a promise made under the mysterious compulsion
of fate, a contract of convenience and perhaps generosity on the one
side, and on the other side of dark and calculating designs which would
not bear to be thought of any longer, being a result of the blind
leading of awful passions under circumstances of the most irresistible
provocation.
When he came to think of love he was dead to everything else. Ishmael
did not love Helena, whereas he, Gordon, loved her with all his heart
and soul and strength. She was everything in life to him, and though he
might have gone to his death without her, it was impossible to live and
leave her behind him.
Thinking so, he began to conjure up the picture of a time when Ishmael,
under the influence of Helena's beauty and charm, might perhaps forget
the bargain between them, and claim his rights as a husband, and then
the thought of her beautiful head with its dark curling locks as it lay
in his arms that day lying in the arms of the Arab, with Ishmael's
swarthy face above her, so tortured him that it swept away every other
consideration.
"It must not, shall not, cannot be!" he told himself.
And that brought him to the final thought that since he loved Helena,
and since Helena loved him and not her husband, their position in
Ishmael's house was utterly false and wrong, and could not possibly
continue.
"It is not fair even to Ishmael himself," he thought.
And when, struggling with his conscience, he asked himself how he was to
put an end to the odious and miserable situation, he concluded at once
that he would go boldly to Ishmael and tell him the whole story of
Helena's error and temptation, thereby securing his sympathy and
extricating all of them from the position in which they were placed.
"Anything will be better than the present state of things," he thought,
as he reflected upon the difficult and delicate task he intended to
undertake.
But after a moment he saw that while it would be hard to explain
Helena's impulse of vengeance to the man who had been the object of it,
to tell him of the message she had sent into Cairo would be utterly
impossible.
"I cannot say anything to Ishmael about that," he thought, and the only
logical sequence of ideas was that he could not say anything to Ishmael
at all.
This left him with only one conclusion--that inasmuch as it was
impossible that he and Helena could remain any longer in that house, and
equally impossible that they could leave it with Ishmael's knowledge and
consent, there was nothing for them to do but to fly away.
He found it hard to reconcile himself to the idea of a secret flight.
The very thought of it seemed to put them into the position of
adulterers, deceiving an unsuspecting husband. But when he remembered
the scene in the guest-room that day, the moment of over-powering love,
the irresistible kiss, and then the crushing sense of duplicity, as
Ishmael entered and without a thought of treachery knelt between them,
he told himself that at any cost whatsoever he must put an end to the
false position in which they lived.
"We must do it soon--the sooner the better," he thought.
Though he had lived so long with the thought of losing Helena, that kiss
had in a moment put his soul and body into a flame. He knew that his
love was blinding him to certain serious considerations, and that some
of these would rise up later and perhaps accuse him of selfishness or
disloyalty or worse. But he could only think of Helena now, and his
longing to possess her made him dead to everything else.
In a fever of excitement he began to think out plans for their escape,
and reflecting that two days had still to pass before the train left
Khartoum by which it had been intended that he should travel in his
character as Ishmael's messenger, he decided that it was impossible for
them to wait for that.
They must get away at once by camel if not by rail. And remembering
Osman, his former guide and companion, he concluded to go over to the
Gordon College and secure his aid.
Having reached this point, he asked himself if he ought not to obtain
Helena's consent before going any further; but no, he would not wait
even for that. And then, remembering how utterly crushed she was, a
victim of storm and tempest, a bird with a broken wing, he assumed the
attitude of strength towards her, telling himself she was a woman after
all, and it was his duty as a man to think and to act for her.
So he set out in haste to see Osman, and when, on his way through the
town, he passed (without being recognised) a former comrade in khaki, a
Colonel of Lancers, whose life had been darkened by the loss of his wife
through the treachery of a brother officer, he felt no qualms at all at
the thought of taking Helena from Ishmael.
"Ours is a different case altogether," he said, and then he told himself
that their life would be all the brighter in the future because it had
had this terrible event in it.
It was late and dark when he returned from the Gordon College, and then
old Mahmud's house was as busy as a fair, with people coming and going
on errands relating to the impending pilgrimage, but he watched his
opportunity to speak to Helena, and as soon as Ishmael, who was more
than commonly animated and excited that night, had dismissed his
followers and gone to the door to drive them home, he approached her and
whispered in her ear--
"Helena!"
"Yes?"
"Can you be ready to leave Khartoum at four o'clock in the morning?"
For a moment she made no reply. It seemed to her an incredible
happiness that they were really to go away together. But quickly
collecting her wandering thoughts she answered--
"Yes, I can be ready."
"Then go down to the Post Landing. I shall be there with a launch."
"Yes, yes!" Her heart was beating furiously.
"Osman, the guide who brought me here, will be waiting with camels on
the other side of the river."
"Yes, yes, yes!"
"We are to ride as far as Atbara, and take train from there to the Red
Sea."
"And what then?"
"God knows what then. We must wait for the direction of fate. America,
perhaps, as we always hoped and intended."
She looked quickly round, then took his face between her hands and
kissed him.
"To-morrow morning at four o'clock," she whispered.
"At four," he repeated.
A thousand thoughts were flashing through her mind, but she asked no
further questions, and at the next moment she went off to her own
quarters.
The door of her room was ajar, and the face of the Arab woman, who was
within, doing something with the clothes of the child, seemed to wear
the same mocking smile as before; but Helena was neither angry nor
alarmed. When she asked herself if the woman had seen or heard what had
taken place between Gordon and herself, no dangers loomed before her in
relation to their flight.
Her confidence in Gordon--his strength, his courage, his power to
protect her--was absolute. If he intended to take her away he would do
so, and not Ishmael nor all the Arabs on earth could stop him.
*CHAPTER XXIII*
Gordon could not allow himself to sleep that night, lest he should not
be awake when the hour came to go. The room he shared with Ishmael was
large, and it had one window looking to the river and another to
Khartoum. Through these windows, which were open, he heard every noise
of the desert town by night.
Sometimes there was the dead, measured thud of a camel's tread on the
unpaved streets; sometimes the light beat of a donkey's hoofs; at
intervals there were the faint and distant cries of the night watchmen
from various parts of the town, intersecting the air like cross currents
of wireless telegraphy, and once an hour there was the guttural voice of
Black Zogal at the door of their own house, calling the confession of
faith.
"There is no god but God--no god but God!"
It had been late when Ishmael came to bed, and even then, being excited
and in high spirits, and finding Gordon still awake, he had talked for a
long time in the darkness of his preparations for the forthcoming
pilgrimage and his hopes of its progress across the desert--three and a
half miles an hour, fourteen hours a day, making a month for the journey
altogether. But finding that Gordon did not reply, and thinking he must
be sleepy, he wished him a good night and a blessed morning, and then,
with a few more words that were trustful, affectionate, warm-hearted and
brotherly, he fell asleep.
It was after twelve by this time, and though Gordon intended to rise at
three it seemed to him that the few hours between would never end. He
listened to the measured breathing of the sleeping man and counted the
cries outside, but the time passed as if with feet of lead.
It was never quite dark, and through the luminous dark blue of the
southern night, fretted with stars, nearly everything outside could be
dimly seen. Of all lights that is the one most conducive to thought,
and in spite of himself Gordon could not help thinking. The obstinate
questions which he had been able to crush down during the day were now
rising to torment him.
"What will happen when this household which is now asleep awakes in the
morning?" he asked himself.
He knew quite well what would happen. He would soon be missed. Helena
would be missed too, and it would be concluded that they had gone
together. But after he had banished the picture which rose to his
mind's eye of the confusion that would ensue on the discovery of their
flight, he set himself to defend it.
It was true that he was breaking the pledge he had made to the people
when he undertook to go into Cairo, but he had made his promise under a
mistake as to his own position, and therefore it was not incumbent upon
him to keep it, now that he knew the truth.
It was true that Helena was breaking the betrothal which she had entered
into with Ishmael, but she, too, had acted under an error, and therefore
her marriage was not binding upon her conscience.
But do what he would to justify himself, he could not shake off a sense
of deceit and even of treachery. He thought of Ishmael, and how he had
heaped kindness and honour upon him since he came to Khartoum. He
thought of Helena, and of the shame with which her flight would
overwhelm the man who considered himself her husband.
"Go on!" something seemed to say in a taunting whisper. "Fly away!
Seek your own happiness and think of nothing else! This is what you
came to Khartoum for! This is what your great hopes and aims amount to!
Leave this good man in the midst of the confusion you have brought upon
him! Let him go into Cairo, innocent though he is, and die by the cruel
error of fate! That's good! That's brave! That's worthy of a man and a
soldier!"
Against thoughts like these he tried to set the memory of old Mahmud's
words at the meeting of the Sheikhs: "Man cannot resist his destiny. If
God wills that you should go into Cairo you will go, and God will
protect you!"
But there was really only one way to reconcile himself to what he
intended to do, and that was to think of Helena and to keep her
beautiful face constantly before him. She was on the other side of the
wall, and she would be awake now--the only other person in the house who
was not asleep--thinking of him and waiting for the hour when they were
to escape.
The luminous dark blue of the air died into the soft red of the early
dawn, the "Wahhed!" of the night watchmen became less frequent, and the
call of Black Zogal stopped altogether. It was now three o'clock, and
Gordon, who had not undressed, rose to a sitting position on his bed.
This brought him face to face with Ishmael, whose angerib was on the
opposite side of the room. The Arab was sleeping peacefully. He, too,
had lain down in his clothes, having to rise early, but he had unrolled
his turban, leaving nothing on his head but his Mecca skullcap, which
made him look like the picture of a saintly Pope. The dim light that
was filtering through the windows rested on him as he lay in his white
garments under a white sheepskin. There was a look of serenity, of
radiance, almost of divinity, in his tranquil face.
Gordon felt as if he were a thief and a murderer--stealing from and
stabbing the man who loved and trusted him. He had an almost
irresistible impulse to waken Ishmael there and then, and tell him
plainly what he was about to do. But the thought of Helena came back
again, and he remembered that that was quite impossible.
At length he rose to go. He was still wearing Hafiz's slippers, but he
found himself stepping on his toes to deaden the sound of his tread.
When he got to the door he opened it carefully so as to make no noise;
but just at that moment the sleeping man stirred and began to speak.
In the toneless voice of sleep, but nevertheless with an accent of
affection which Gordon had never heard from him before, Ishmael said--
"Rani! _My_ Rani!"
Gordon stood and listened, not daring to move. After a moment all was
quiet again. There was no sound in the room but Ishmael's measured
breathing as before.
How Gordon got out at last he never quite knew. When he recovered his
self-possession he was in the guest-room, drawing aside the curtain that
covered the open doorway, and feeling the cool, fresh, odourless desert
air on his hot face and in his nostrils.
He saw Black Zogal stretched out at the bottom of the wooden steps, fast
asleep and with his staff beside him. The insurgent dawn was sweeping
up, but all was silent both within and without. Save for the Nubian's
heavy snoring there was not a sound about the house.
Feeling his throat to be parched, he turned back to the water-niche for
a drink, and while he was lifting the can to his lips his eye fell on a
letter which had been left for him there, having come by the train which
arrived late the night before, and then been specially delivered after
he had gone to bed.