"Just as long or as short as your lordship desires."
And then the Consul-General, who was wiping his spectacles, put them
deliberately on to his nose, looked deliberately into the Pasha's face,
and deliberately replied--
"Then let it be done without a day's delay, your Excellency."
A few minutes afterwards, without too much ceremony, the Consul-General
had dismissed his visitors and was tearing open a number of English
newspapers which Ibrahim had brought into the room.
The first of them, _The Times_, contained a report of the Mansion House
Dinner, headed "UNREST IN THE EAST. Important Speech by Foreign
Minister."
The Consul-General found the beginning full of platitudes. Egypt had
become the great gate between the Eastern and Western hemispheres. It
was essential for the industry and enterprise of mankind that that gate
should be kept open, and therefore it was necessary that Egypt should be
under a peaceful, orderly, and legal Government.
Then, lowering the lights, the Minister had begun to speak to slow
music. While it was the duty of Government to preserve order, it was
also the duty of a Christian nation in occupation of a foreign country
to govern it in the interests of the inhabitants, and, speaking for
himself, he thought the executive authority would be strengthened, not
weakened, by associating the people with the work of government.
However this might be, the public could at least be sure that as long as
the present Ministry remained in power it would countenance no policy on
the part of its representatives that would outrage the moral, social,
and, above all, religious sentiments of a Moslem people.
The Consul-General flung down the paper in disgust.
"Fossils of Whitehall! Dunces of Downing Street!"
For some minutes he tramped about the room, telling himself again that
he didn't care a straw what any Government and any Foreign Minister
might say because he had a power stronger than either at his back--the
public.
This composed his irritated nerves, and presently he took up the other
newspapers. Then came a shock. Without an exception the journals
accepted the Minister's speech as a remonstrance addressed to him, and
reading it so they sympathised with it.
One of them saw that Lord Nuneham, however pure and beneficent his
intentions might be, had no right to force his ideals upon an alien
race. Another hinted that he was destroying England's prestige in her
Mohammedan dominions, and, if permitted to go on, he would not only
endanger the peace of Egypt, but also the safety of our Indian Empire.
And a third, advocating the establishment of representative
institutions, said that the recent arbitrary action of the
Consul-General showed in glaringly dangerous colours the faults of the
One-Man Rule which we granted to the King's representative while we
denied it to the King himself.
The great Proconsul was, for some moments, utterly shaken--the
sheet-anchor of his public life was gone. But within half-an-hour he had
called for his First Secretary and was dictating a letter to the
Premier, who was also the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
"Having read the report of your lordship's speech at the Mansion House,"
he said, "I find myself compelled to tell you that so great a difference
between your lordship's views and mine makes it difficult for me to
remain in Egypt.
"I take the view that nine-tenths of these people are still in
swaddling-clothes, and that any attempt to associate them with the work
of government would do a grave injustice to the inarticulate masses for
whom we rule the country.
"I also take the view that Egypt is honeycombed with agitators, who,
masquerading as religious reformers, are sowing sedition against British
rule, and that the only way to deal with such extremists is by stern
repression.
"Taking these views and finding them at variance with those of your
lordship, I respectfully beg to tender my resignation of the post of
H.M.'s Agent, Consul-General and Minister Plenipotentiary, which I have
held through so many long and laborious years, and at the same time to
express the hope that my successor may be a man qualified by knowledge
and experience of the East to deal with these millions of Orientals who,
accustomed for seventy centuries to the dictation of imperial autocrats,
are so easily inflamed by fanatics and yield so readily to the wily arts
of spies and secret conspirators."
Having finished the dictating of his letter, the Consul-General asked
when the next mail left for England, whereupon the Secretary, whose
voice was now as tremulous as his hand had been, replied that there
would be no direct post for nearly a week.
"That will do. Copy out the letter and let me have it to sign."
With a frightened look the Secretary turned to go.
"Wait! Of course you will observe absolute secrecy about the contents
of it?"
With a tremulous promise to do so the Secretary left the room.
Then the Consul-General took up a calendar that had been standing on his
desk and began to count the days.
"Five--ten--fifteen, and five days more before I can receive a
reply--it's enough," he thought.
England's eyes would be opened by that time and the public would see how
much the Government knew about Egypt. Accept his resignation? They
dare not! It would do them good, though--serve as a rebuke, and
strengthen his own hands for the work he had now to do.
What was that work? To destroy the man who had robbed him of his son.
*CHAPTER II*
Early the next morning the Consul-General received a letter from the
Princess Nazimah, saying she had something to communicate, and proposed
to come to tea with him. At five o'clock she came, attended by sais,
footmen, and even eunuch, but wearing the latest of Paris hats and the
lightest of chiffon veils.
Tea was laid on the shady verandah overlooking the fresh verdure of the
garden, with its wall of purple bougainvillea, and thinking to set the
lady at ease the Consul-General had told Fatimah, instead of Ibrahim, to
serve it. But hardly had they sat down when the Princess said in
French--
"Send that woman away. I don't trust women. I'm a woman myself, and I
know too much of them."
A few minutes afterwards she said, "Now you can give me a cigarette.
Light it. That will do. Thank you!" Then squaring her plump person in
a large cane chair, she prepared to speak, while the Consul-General, who
was in his most silent mood, composed himself to listen.
"I suppose you were surprised when this woman who blossomed out of a
harem wrote to say that she was coming to take tea with you? Here she
is, though, and now she has something to say to you."
Then puff, puff, puff from the scarlet lips, while the powdered face
grew hard, and the eyes, heavily shaded with kohl, looked steadfastly
forward.
"I have always suspected it, but I discovered it for certain only
yesterday. And where did I discover it? In my own salon!"
"What did you discover in your own salon, Princess?" asked the
Consul-General in his tired voice.
"Conspiracy!"
Trained as was the Consul-General's face to self-command it betrayed
surprise and alarm.
"Yes, conspiracy against you and against England."
[Illustration: "Yes, conspiracy against you and against England"]
"You mean, perhaps, that the man Ishmael Ameer----"
"Rubbish! Ishmael indeed! He is in it, certainly. In a country like
Egypt the holy man always is. Religion and politics are twins
here--Siamese twins, you may say, for you couldn't get a slip of paper
between them.... What's that? The Mahdist movement political? Perhaps
it was, but politics on the top of religion--the monkey on the donkey's
back, you know. Always so in the East. The only way to move the masses
is to make an appeal to their religious passions. _They_ know that, and
they've not scrupled to use their knowledge, the rascals! Rascals,
that's what I call them. Excuse the word. I say what I think,
Nuneham."
"_They_? Who are _they_, Princess?"
"The _corps diplomatique_."
Again the stern face expressed surprise.
"Yes, the _corps dip-lo-ma-tique_!" with a dig on every syllable.
"Half-a-dozen of them were at my house yesterday and they were not
ashamed to let me know what they are doing."
"And what _are_ they doing, Princess?"
"Helping the people to rebel!"
Then throwing away her cigarette the Princess rose to her feet, and
pacing to and fro on the verandah, with a firm tread that had little of
the East and not much of the woman, she repeated the story she had heard
in her salon--how Ishmael Ameer was to return to Cairo, with twenty,
thirty, forty thousand of his followers, and some fantastic dream of
establishing a human society that should be greater, nobler, wider, and
more God-like than any that had yet dwelt on this planet; how the
diplomats laughed at the ridiculous hallucination, but were nevertheless
preparing to support it in order to harass the Government and dishonour
England.
"But how?"
"By finding arms for the people to fight with if you attempt to keep
their Prophet out! Ask your Inspectors! Ask your police! See if rifles
bought with foreign money are not coming into Cairo every day."
By this time it was the Consul-General who was pacing up and down the
verandah, while the Princess, who sat to smoke another cigarette,
repeated the opinions of the foreign representatives one by one--Count
This, who was old and should know better if white hairs brought wisdom;
Baron That, who was as long as a palm tree but without a date; and the
Marquis of So-and-So.
"They tell _me_ because I'm a Turk; but a Turk need not be a traitor, so
I'm telling you."
The iron face of the Consul-General grew white and rigid, but, saying
nothing, he continued to pace to and fro.
"Why don't you turn them all out? They are making nothing but mischief.
The head of the idle man is the house of the devil, and the best way is
to pull it down. Why not? Capitulations! Pooh! While the meat hangs
above, the dogs will quarrel below. Dogs, that's what I call them.
Excuse the word. I speak what I think."
"And the Egyptians--what are they doing?"
"What are they always doing? Conspiring with your enemies to turn you
out of the country on the ground that you are trampling on their
religious liberty."
"Which of them?"
"All of them--pashas, people, effendis, officials, your own
Ministers--everybody."
"Everybody?"
"Everybody! The stupids! They can't see farther than the ends of their
noses, or realise that they would only be exchanging one master for
fourteen. What would Egypt be then? A menagerie with all the gates of
the cages open. Oh, I know! I say what I think! I'm their Princess,
but they can take my rank to-morrow if they wish to."
The second cigarette was thrown away, and a powder-puff and small mirror
were taken from a silver bag that hung from the lady's wrist.
"But serve you right, you English! You make the same mistake
everywhere. Education! Civilisation! Judicial reform! Rubbish! The
Koran tells the Moslem what to believe and what to do, so what does he
want with your progress?"
The powder-puff made dabs at the white cheeks, but the lady continued to
talk.
"Your Western institutions are thrown away on him. It's like a
beautiful wife married to a blind husband--a waste!"
The sun began to set behind the wall of purple creeper and the lady rose
to go.
"No news of your Gourdan yet? No? He was the best of the bunch, and I
simply lost my heart to him. You should have kept him more in hand
though.... You couldn't? You, the greatest man in.... Well, there's
something to say for the Eastern way of bringing up boys, it seems."
Passing through the drawing-room the Princess came upon the portrait of
Helena, which used to stand by Lady Nuneham's bed.
"Ah, the moon! The beauty! Bismillah! What did Allah give her such
big black eyes for? Back in England, isn't she? My goodness, there was
red blood in that girl's veins, Nuneham! God have mercy upon me, yes!
You should have heard her talk of your Ishmael!"
The Princess put the portrait to her lips and kissed it, then closed her
eyes and said with a voluptuous laugh--
"Ah, _mon Dieu_, if this had only been a Muslemah, you wouldn't have had
much trouble with your Mahdi!"
Hardly had the Consul-General returned to his library after the
departure of the Princess when his Secretary brought him a telegram from
the Sirdar--the same that he had dictated at Khartoum, telling of the
intended visit to Cairo, of the preparations for Ishmael's projected
pilgrimage, and of the danger that was likely to arise from the growing
belief in the Prophet's "divine" inspiration.
"So our friend is beginning to understand the man at last," he said,
with an expression of bitter joy. "Meet him on his arrival. Tell him I
have much to say."
That night when the Consul-General went up to his bedroom--the room in
which alone the machine became the man--he was thinking, as usual, of
Gordon.
"Such power, such fire, such insight, such resource! My own son too, and
worth all the weaklings put together! Oh, that he could be here
now--now, when every hand seems to be raised against his father! But
where is he? What is he doing? Only God can say."
Then the Consul-General remembered what the Princess had said about
Helena. Ah, if those two could have carried on his line--what a race!
So pure, so clean, so strong! But that was past praying for now, and
woe to the day when they had said to him, "A man child is born to you."
After that the Consul-General thought of Ishmael, and then the
bitterness of his soul almost banished sleep. He had known from the
first that the man could not be working alone; he had known, too, that
some of England's "allies" were her secret enemies, but a combination of
Eastern mummery with Western treachery was more than he had reckoned
upon.
"No matter! I'll master both of them!" he thought.
A great historical tragedy should be played before the startled audience
of disunited Europe, whose international jealousies were conspiring with
religious quackeries to make the government of Egypt impossible, and
when the curtain fell on that drama England would be triumphant, he
would himself be vindicated, and the "fossils of Whitehall" would be
ashamed.
Last of all he thought of the Egyptian Ministers. These were the
ingrates he had made and worked with, but they were no fools, and it was
difficult to understand why they were throwing in their lot with a
visionary mummer who was looking for a millennium.
"I am at a loss to know what to think of a world in which such empty
quackery can be supported by sane people," he thought.
There was one sweeter thought left, though, and as the Consul-General
dropped off to sleep he told himself that, thanks to Helena, he would
soon have Ishmael in his hands, and then he would kill him as he would
kill a dangerous and demented dog.
*CHAPTER III*
During the next few days the Consul-General was closely occupied. The
Law of Public Security being promulgated, he called upon the Minister of
the Interior to call upon the Commandant of Police to issue a warrant
for the arrest of Ishmael Ameer.
"But where _is_ Ishmael Ameer?" asked the Minister.
When this was reported to the Consul-General his stern face smiled, and
he said--
"Let him wait and see."
Early one morning his Secretary came to his room to say that the Sirdar
had arrived from Khartoum, and had gone on to headquarters, but would
give himself the pleasure of calling upon his lordship before long.
"Tell him it must be soon--there is much to do," said the
Consul-General.
Later the same day the Commandant of Police came, with a knowing smile
on his ruddy face, to say that the Bedouin had reached Cairo, and that
he had been followed to the Serai Fum el Khalig, the palace of the
Chancellor of El Azhar, where he had already been visited by the Grand
Mufti, some of the Ministers, certain of the Diplomatic Corps and nearly
the whole of the Ulema.
"Was he alone?" asked the Consul-General.
"Quite alone, your lordship, and now he is as safely in our hands as if
he were already under lock and key."
"Good! What did you say his address was?"
"Serai Fum el Khalig."
"Palace Fum el Khalig," repeated the Consul-General, making a note on a
marble tablet which stood on his desk.
Later still, very late, the Grand Cadi came with the same news. The
suave old Moslem judge was visibly excited. His pale, lymphatic,
pock-marked cheeks, his earth-coloured lips, his base eyes, and his nose
as sharp as a beak, gave him more than ever the appearance of a fierce
and sagacious bird of prey. After exaggerated bows, he began to speak
in the oily, half-smothered voice of one who lives in constant fear of
being overheard.
"Your Excellency will remember that when on former occasions I have had
the inestimable privilege of approaching your honourable person in order
to warn you that if you did not put down a certain Arab innovator the
result would be death to the rule of England in Egypt, your Excellency
has demanded proofs."
"Well?"
"I am now in a position to provide them."
"State the case precisely," said the Consul-General.
"Your Excellency will be interested to hear that a person of some
consequence has arrived in Cairo."
Trained to self-control, the Consul-General conquered an impulse to say,
"I know," and merely said, "Who is he?"
"He calls himself Sheikh Omar Benani, and is understood to be the wise
and wealthy head of the great tribe of the Ababdah Bedouins who inhabit
the country that lies east of Assouan to the Red Sea."
"Well?"
"The man who calls himself Omar Benani is--Ishmael Ameer."
At that the base eyes glanced up with a look of triumph, but the
Consul-General's face remained immovable.
"Well?"
"No doubt your Excellency is asking yourself why he comes in this
disguise, and if your Excellency will deign to give me your attention I
will tell you."
"I am listening."
"Ishmael Ameer pretends to be a reformer intent upon the moral and
intellectual regeneration of Islam, and he preaches the coming of a
golden age in which unity, peace and brotherhood are to reign throughout
the earth.
"Well?"
"With this ridiculous and impracticable propaganda he has appealed to
many wild and ardent minds, so that a vast following of half-civilised
people whom he has gathered up in the Soudan are to start soon--may have
started already--for this city, which they believe to be the Mecca of
the new world."
"Well?"
"Ishmael Ameer pretends to have come to Cairo in advance of his
followers to prepare for that millennium."
"And what has he really come for?"
"To establish a political State."
Down to that moment the Consul-General had been leaning back in his
chair in the attitude of one who was listening to something he already
knew, but now he sat up sharply.
"Is this a fact?"
"It is a fact, your Excellency. And if your Excellency will once more
deign to grant me your attention, I will put you in possession of a
secret."
"Go on," said the Consul-General.
Instinctively the suave old judge drew his legs up on his chair and
fingered his amber beads.
"Your Excellency will perhaps remember that owing to differences of
opinion with the Khedive--may Allah bless him!--you were compelled to
require that for a while he should leave the country."
"Well?"
"He went to Constantinople with the intention of laying his grievances
against England before His Serenity the Sultan--may the Merciful give
him long life!"
"Well?"
"The Sultan is a friend of England, your Excellency--the Khedive was
turned away."
"And then?"
"Then he went to Paris, as your Excellency is probably aware."
"Well?"
"Perhaps your Excellency supposes that he occupied himself with the
frivolities of the gay capital of France--dinners, theatres, dances,
races? But no! He had two enemies now, England and Turkey, and he
presumed to think he could punish both."
"How? In what way?"
"By founding a secret society for the conquest of Syria, Palestine and
Arabia, and the establishment of a great Arab Empire with himself as its
Caliph and Cairo as its capital."
"Well? What happened?"
"Need I say what happened, your Excellency? By means of his great
wealth he was able to send out hundreds of paid emissaries to every part
of the Arabic world, and Ishmael Ameer was the first of them."
The Consul-General was at length startled out of all his composure.
"Can you prove this?" he said.
"Your Excellency, if I say anything I can always prove it."
The Consul-General's brow grew more and more severe.
"And his name--his assumed name--what did you say it was?"
"Sheikh Omar Benani."
"Sheikh Omar Benani," repeated the Consul-General, making another note
on his marble tablet.
"That is enough for the present," he said. "I have something to do
to-night. I must ask your Eminence to excuse me."
After the Grand Cadi had gone, with many sweeping salaams, various oily
compliments, and that cruel gleam in his base eyes which proceeds only
from base souls, the Consul-General rang sharply for his Secretary.
"We have not yet made out our invitations for the King's dinner--let us
do so now," he said.
He threw a sheet of paper across the table to his Secretary, who
prepared to make notes.
"First, the Diplomatic Corps--every one of them."
"Yes, my lord."
"Next, our Egyptian Ministers and the leading members of the Legislative
Council."
"Yes, my lord."
"Next, the more prominent Pashas and Notables."
"Yes!"
"Of course our own people as usual, and finally----"
"Yes?"
"Finally, the Ulema of El Azhar."
The Secretary looked up in astonishment.
"Oh, I know," said the Consul-General. "They have never been invited
before, but this is a special occasion."
"Quite so, my lord."
The Consul-General fixed his eyeglass and took up his marble tablet.
"In writing to the Chancellor of El Azhar at the Palace Fum el Khalig,"
he said, "enclose a card for the Sheikh Omar Benani."
"Sheikh Omar Benani."
"Say that hearing that one so highly esteemed among his own people is at
present on a visit to Cairo, I shall be honoured by his company."
"Yes, my lord."
"That will do. Good-night!"
"Good-night, my lord."
It was early morning before the Consul-General went to bed. The Grand
Cadi's story, being so exactly what he wanted to believe, had thrown him
entirely off his guard. It appeared to illuminate everything that had
looked dark and mysterious--the sudden advent of Ishmael, the growth of
his influence, the sending out of his emissaries, his projected
pilgrimage, and the gathering up of camels and horses in such enormous
quantities as even the Government could not have commanded in time of
war.
It accounted for Ishmael's presence in Cairo, and his mission (as
described by Helena) of drawing off the allegiance of the Egyptian army.
It accounted, too, for the treachery of the Ministers, Pashas and
Notables, who were too shrewd and too selfish (whatever the riff-raff of
the Soudan might be) to risk their comfortable incomes for a religious
chimera.
Yes, the Khedive's money and the substantial prospect of establishing a
vast Arab Empire, not the vague hope of a spiritual millennium, had been
the power that worked these wonders.
It vexed him to think that his old enemy whom he had banished had been
more powerful in exile than at home, and it tortured him to reflect that
Ishmael had developed, with the religious malady of the Mahdi, his
political mania as well.
But no matter! He would be more than a match for all these forces, and
when his great historical drama came to be played before the eyes of
astonished humanity, it would be seen that he had saved, not England
only but Europe, and perhaps civilisation itself.
Thus, for three triumphant hours, the Consul-General saw himself as a
patriot trampling on the enemies of his country; but hardly had he left
the library and begun to climb the stairs of his great, empty, echoing
house, switching off the lights as he ascended, and leaving darkness
behind him, than the statesman sank back on the man--the broken,
bereaved human being--and he recognised his motives for what they were.
A few minutes after he had reached his bedroom Fatimah entered it with a
jug of hot water, and found him sitting with his head in his hands,
looking fixedly at the portrait in the black-and-gilt frame of the
little lad in an Arab fez.
"Ah, everybody loved that boy," she said, whereupon the old man raised
his head and dismissed her brusquely.
"You ought to be in bed by this time--go at once," he said.
"Dear heart, so ought your lordship," said the Egyptian woman.
The Consul-General could dismiss Fatimah, but there was some one he
could not get rid of, the manly, magnificent, heart-breaking young
figure that always lived in his mind's eye, with its deadly white face,
its trembling lower lip, and its quivering voice, which said, "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."
Where was he now? What was he doing? His son, his only son, all that
was left to him!
There was only one way to lay that ghost, and the Consul-General did so
by telling himself with a sort of fierce joy that wherever Gordon might
be he must soon hear that Ishmael, in a pitiful and tricky disguise, had
been discovered in Cairo, and then he would see for himself what an
arrant schemer and unscrupulous charlatan was the person for whom he had
sacrificed his life.
With that bitter-sweet thought the lonely old man forced back the tears
that had been gathering in his eyes and went to bed.
*CHAPTER IV*
I
"SERAI FUM EL KHALIG,
"CAIRO.
"MY DEAREST HELENA,--Here I am, you see, and I am not arrested, although
I travelled in the same train with the Sirdar, met him face to face on
the platform at Khartoum, again on the platform at Atbara, again on the
landing place at Shelal, and finally in the station at Cairo, where he
was received on his arrival by his officers of the Egyptian army, by my
father's first Secretary, and by the Commandant of Police.
"I was asking myself what this could mean, whether your black boy had
reached his destination, and if your letter had been delivered, when
suddenly I became aware that I was being observed, watched and followed
to this house, and by that I knew that in this land of mystery my
liberty was to be allowed to me a little longer for reasons I have still
to fathom.
"This is the home of the Chancellor of El Azhar, and I have delivered
Ishmael's letter announcing the change of plan whereby I have come into
Cairo instead of him, but I have pledged the good old man to secrecy on
that subject, for the present at all events, giving him my confident
assurance that in common with the best of the Ulema he is being wickedly
deceived and made an innocent instrument for the destruction of his own
cause.
"My dear Helena, I was right. My vague suspicions of that damnable
intriguer the Grand Cadi were justified. Already I realise that after
fruitless efforts to inveigle Ishmael into schemes of anarchical
rebellion it was he who conceived the conspiracy, which has taken our
friend by storm, in the form of a passive mutiny of the Egyptian army.
The accursed scoundrel knows well it cannot be passive, that somewhere
and somehow it will break into active resistance, but that is precisely
what he desires. As I told you, it is the old trick of Caiaphas over
again, and that is the lowest, meanest, dirtiest thing in history.
"Query, is he playing the same game with the Consul-General? I am sure
he is, and when I think that England and my father may be in as much
danger as Egypt and Ishmael from the man's devilish machinations, I am
more than ever certain that Providence had a purpose in bringing me to
Cairo, and I feel reconciled to the necessity of living here in this
threefold disguise, being one thing to Ishmael, another to the Grand
Cadi and Co., and a third to the Government and police. I feel
reconciled too, or almost reconciled, to the necessity of leaving you
where you are, for the present at all events, although it rips me like a
sword-cut as often as I think of it.
"I have sent for Hafiz and expect to hear through him what is happening
at the Agency, but I am hoping he will not come until morning, for
to-night I can think of nothing but ourselves. When I left you at
Khartoum I felt that higher powers were constraining and controlling me,
and that I was only yielding at last to an overwhelming sense of
fatality. I thought I had made every possible effort, had exhausted
every means and had nothing to reproach myself with, but hardly had I
got away into the desert when a hand seemed to grasp me at the back of
my neck and to say, 'Why did you leave her behind?'
"In Ishmael's house and in that atmosphere of delirious ecstasy in the
mosque it was easy to think it necessary for you to remain, otherwise my
purpose in going away must from the first be frustrated, but awakening
in the morning in my native compartment, with men and boys lying about
on sacks, the sandy daylight filtering through the closed shutters of
the carriage and the train full of the fetid atmosphere of exhausted
sleep, I could not help but protest to myself that at any cost whatever
I should have found a way to bring you with me.
"Thank God, if I have left you behind in that trying and false position
it is with no Khalifa, no corrupt and concupiscent fanatic, but a man of
the finest and purest instincts, who is too much occupied with his
spiritual mission, praise the Lord, to think of the beautiful woman by
his side, so I tell myself it was the will of Providence, and there is
nothing to do now but to leave ourselves in the hands of fate.
"Good-night, dearest! _D.V._ I'll write again to-morrow."