"Your dear mother didn't know how much I love you. But she knows now,"
he added, "for the dead know all."
There was no further interruption until Helena had finished, and then
Ishmael said--
"She didn't know, either, what work the Merciful had waiting for you in
Khartoum. Perhaps you did not know yourself. Something called you to
come here. Something drew you on. Which of us has not felt like that?
But God guides our hearts--the Merciful makes no mistakes."
Nobody spoke, but Gordon's eyes began to shine with a light which
Helena, who was looking at him, had never seen in them before.
"All the same," continued Ishmael, "you hear what your mother says, and
it is not for me to keep you against your will. If you wish to go back
now none shall reproach you. Speak, Omar; do you wish to leave me?"
There was a moment of tense silence, in which Gordon hesitated and
Helena waited breathlessly for his reply. Then with a great effort
Gordon answered--
"No."
"El Hamdullillah!" cried the two black servants; and then Ishmael sent
Zogal into the town and the camp to say that the faithful would bid
farewell to Omar in the mosque the following night.
That evening after sunset, instead of delivering his usual lecture to
the people squatting on the sand in front of his house, Ishmael read the
prayers for the dead, while Gordon and Helena and a number of the
Sheikhs sat on the divans in the guest-room.
When the service was over, and the company was breaking up, the old men
pressed Gordon's hand as they were passing out and said--
"May God give you compensation!"
As soon as they were gone Gordon approached Helena and whispered
hurriedly--
"I must speak to you soon--where can it be?"
"I ought to go to the water-women's well by the Goods Landing to-morrow
morning," said Helena.
"At what hour?"
"Ten."
"I shall be there," said Gordon.
His eyes were still full of the strange wild light.
*CHAPTER XXV*
At ten o'clock next morning Helena was at the well by the Goods Landing
where the water-women draw water in their earthen jars to water the
gardens and the streets, and while standing among the gross creatures
who, with their half-naked bodies and stark-naked souls, were crowding
about her for what they could get, she saw Gordon coming down in his
Bedouin dress with a firm, strong step.
His flickering, steel-blue eyes were as full of light as when she saw
them last, but that vague suggestion of his mother which she had
hitherto seen in his face was gone, and there was a look of his father
which she had never observed before.
"Let us walk this way," he said, indicating a road that went down to the
empty and unfrequented tongue of land that leads to the point at which
the Blue Nile and the White Nile meet.
"Helena," he said, stepping closely by her side, and speaking almost in
her ear, "there is something I wish to say--to ask--and everything
depends on your answer--what we are to do and what is to become of us."
"What is it?" said she, with trembling voice.
"When our escape from Khartoum was stopped by the letter telling me of
my mother's death, I thought at first it was only an accident--a sad,
strange accident--that it should arrive at that moment."
"And don't you think so now?" she asked.
"No; I think it was a divine intervention."
She glanced up at him. "He is going to talk about the betrothal," she
thought.