"It has happened! I knew it would! I have seen it coming, and it has
come--without any help from Black Zogal's crazy imagination, either.
There was only one thing wanted to complete the faith of these people in
Ishmael's 'divinity'--a miracle, and it has been performed!
"I suppose it really belongs to the order of things that happen
according to natural law--magnetism, suggestion, God knows what--but my
pen positively jibs at recording it, so surely will it seem as if I had
copied it out of a Book I need not name.
"This afternoon our vast human tortoise was trudging along, and a halt
was being called to enable stragglers to come up, when a funeral
procession crossed our track on its way to a graveyard on the stony
hillside opposite.
"The Sheikh of a neighbouring village had lost his only child, a girl
twelve years of age, and behind the blind men chanting the Koran, the
hired mourners with their plaintive wail and the body on a bare board,
the old father walked in his trouble, rending his garments and tearing
off his turban.
"It was a pitiful sight; and when the mourners came up to Ishmael and
told him the Sheikh was a God-fearing man who had not deserved this
sorrow, I could see that he was deeply moved, for he called on the
procession to stop, and making his camel kneel, he got down and tried to
comfort the old man, saying, 'May the name of God be upon thee!'
"Then thinking, as it seemed to me, to show sympathy with the poor
father, he stepped up to the bier and took the little brown hand which,
with its silver ring and bracelet, hung over the board, and held it for
a few moments while he asked when the child had died and what she had
died of, and he was told she had died this morning, and the sun had
killed her.
"All at once I saw Ishmael's hand tremble and a strange contraction pass
over his face, and at the next moment, in a quivering voice, he called
on the bearers to put down the bier. They did so, and at his bidding
they uncovered the body, and I saw the face. It was the face of the
dead! Yes, the dead, as lifeless and as beautiful as a face of bronze.
"At the next instant Ishmael was on his knees beside the body of the
girl, and asking the father for her name. It was Helimah.
"'Helimah! Your father is waiting for you! Come,' said Ishmael,
touching the child's eyes and smoothing her forehead, and speaking in a
soft, caressing voice.
"Gordon, as I am a truthful woman, I saw it happen. A slight fluttering
of the eyelids, a faint heaving of the bosom, and then the eyes were
open, and at the next moment the girl was standing on her feet!
"God! what a scene it was that followed. The Sheikh on his knees
kissing the hem of Ishmael's caftan, the men prostrating themselves
before him, and the women tearing away the black veils that covered
their faces, and crying, 'Blessed be the woman that bore thee!'
"It has been what the Arabs call a red day, and at that moment the
setting sun catching the clouds of dust raised by the camels made the
whole world one brilliant, fiery red. What wonder if these poor,
benighted people thought the Lord of Heaven Himself had just come down!
"We left the village loaded with blessings (Black Zogal galloping
frantically in front), and when we came to the next town--Berber, with
its miles of roofless mud-huts, telling of Dervish destruction--crowds
came out to salute Ishmael as the 'Guided One,' 'The true Mahdi,' and
'The Deliverer,' bringing their sick and lame and blind for him to heal
them, and praying of him to remain.
"Oh, my dear Gordon, it is terrifying! Ishmael is no longer the
messenger, the forerunner; he is now the Redeemer he foretold! I really
believe _he_ is beginning to believe it! This is the pillar of fire
that is henceforth to guide us on our way. Already our numbers are
three times what they were when we left Khartoum. What is to happen
when thirty thousand persons, following a leader they believe to be
divine, arrive in Cairo and are confronted by five thousand British
soldiers?
"No! It is not bloodshed I am afraid of--I know you will prevent that.
But what of the awful undeceiving, the utter degradation, the crushing
collapse?
"And I? Don't think me a coward, Gordon--it isn't everybody who was
born brave like you--but when I think of what I have done to this man,
and how surely it will be found out that I have betrayed him, I tell
myself that the moment I touch the skirts of civilisation I must run
away.
"But meanwhile our pilgrimage is moving on--to its death, as it seems to
me--and I am moving on with it as a slave--the slave of my own actions.
If this is Destiny, it is wickedly cruel, I will say that for it; and if
it is God, I think He might be a jealous God without making the
blundering impulse of one poor girl the means of wrecking the hopes of a
whole race of helpless people. Of course it acts as a sop to my
conscience to remember what you said about God never making mistakes,
but I cannot help wishing that in His inscrutable wisdom He could have
left me out.
"Oh, my dear-dear! Where are you now, I wonder? What are you doing?
What is being done to you? Have you seen your father, the Princess, and
the Grand Cadi? I suppose I must not expect news until we reach
Assouan. You promised to write to me, and you will--I know you will.
Good-night, dearest! My love, my love, my only love! But I must stop.
We are to make a night journey. The camp is in movement, and my camel
is waiting. Adieu!
"HELENA."
*CHAPTER VII*
"SERAI FUM EL KHALIG,
"CAIRO.
"Salaam aleykoum! Ten days have passed, my dear Helena, since I wrote
my last letter, and during that time I have learned all that is going on
here, having in my assumed character of Ishmael in disguise interviewed
nearly the whole of the Ulema, including that double-dyed dastard, the
Grand Cadi.
"Under the wing--the rather fluttered one--of the good old Chancellor of
El Azhar I saw the oily reprobate in his own house, and in his honeyed
voice he made pretence of receiving me with boundless courtesy. I was
his 'beloved friend in God,' 'the reformer of Islam,' called to the task
of bringing men back to the Holy Koran, to the Prophet, and to eternal
happiness. On the other hand, my father was 'the slave of power,' the
'evil-doer,' the 'adventurer,' and the 'great assassin,' who was led
away by worldly things, and warring against God.
"More than once my hands itched to take the hypocrite from behind by the
ample folds of his Turkish garments and fling him like vermin down the
stairs, but I was there to hear what he was doing, so I smothered a few
strong expressions which only the recording angel knows anything about,
and was compelled to sit and listen.
"My dear Helena, it is even worse than I expected. Some of the
double-dealing Egyptian Ministers, backed by certain of the diplomatic
corps, but inspired by this Chief Judge in Islam, have armed a
considerable part of the native populace, in the hope that the night
when England, in the persons of her chief officials, is merry-making on
the island of Ghezirah, and the greater part of the British force is
away in the provinces quelling disturbances and keeping peace, the
people may rise, the Egyptian army may mutiny, and Ishmael's followers
may take possession of the city.
"All this and more, with many suave words about the 'enlightening help
of God,' and the certainty of 'a bloodless victory,' in which the
Almighty would make me glorious and the English would be driven out of
Egypt, the crafty scoundrel did not hesitate to propound as a means
whereby the 'true faith might be established all over Europe, _Rome and
London_!'
"Since my interview with the Grand Cadi I have learned of a certainty,
what I had already surmised, that the Consul-General has been made aware
of the whole plot, and is taking his own measures to defeat it.
Undoubtedly the first duty of a Government is to preserve order and to
establish authority, and I know my father well enough to be sure that at
any cost he will set himself to do both. But what will happen?
"Mark my word, the British army will be ordered back to the
Capital--perhaps on the eve of the festival--and as surely as it enters
the city on the night of the King's Birthday there will be massacre in
the streets, for the Egyptian soldiers will rebel, and the people who
have been provided with arms from the Secret Service money of England's
enemies will rise, thinking the object of the Government is to prevent
the entrance of Ishmael and his followers.
"Result--a holy war; and as that is the only kind of war that was ever
yet worth waging, it will put Egypt in the right and England in the
wrong.
"Does Ishmael expect this? No; he thinks he is to make a peaceful entry
into Cairo when he comes to establish his World State, his millennium of
universal faith and empire. Do the Ulema expect it? No; they think the
Army of Occupation will be far away when their crazy scheme is carried
into effect. Does my father expect it? Not for one moment, so sure is
he--I know it perfectly, I have heard him say it a score of times--that
the Egyptian soldier will not fight alone, and that Egyptian civilians
can be scattered by a water-hose.
"Heaven help him! If ever a man was preparing to draw a sword from its
scabbard it is my father at this moment, but it is only because he is
played upon and deceived by this son and successor of Caiaphas the
damned. I'll go and open his eyes to the Grand Cadi's duplicity. I'll
say, 'Bring your oily scoundrel face to face with me, and see what I
will say. If he denies it, you must choose for yourself which of us you
will believe--your own son, who has nothing to gain by coming back to
warn you, or this reptile who is fighting for the life of his rotten old
class.'
"The thing is hateful to me, and if there were any other possible way of
stopping the wretched slaughter I should not go, for I know it will end
in the Consul-General handing me over to the military authorities to be
court-martialled for my former offences, and, as you may say, it is
horrible to put a father, with a high sense of duty, into the position
of being compelled to cut off his own son.
"Meanwhile I am conscious that the police continue to watch me, and I am
just as much a prisoner as if I were already within the walls of a jail.
For their own purposes they are leaving me at liberty, and I believe
they will go on doing so until after the night of the King's Birthday.
After that, God knows what will happen.
"I am writing late, and I must turn in soon, so good-night, and God
bless and preserve you, my own darling--mine, mine, mine, and nobody
else's, remember that! Hafiz continues to protest that the Prophet has a
love for you, and will bring out everything for the best. I think so
too--I really do, so you must not be frightened about anything I have
said in this letter.
"There is only one thing frightens me, and that is the damnable trick
memory plays me when it rakes up all you told me of the terms of your
betrothal to Ishmael. I can bear it pretty well during the day, but in
that dead grey hour of the early morning, when the moonlight slinks into
the dawn, before the sparrows begin to chop the air and the Arabs to
rend it, I find myself thinking that though Ishmael, when he proposed
marriage to you, may have been thinking of nothing but how to protect
your good name, being a pure-minded man who had consecrated his life to
a spiritual mission, yet the constant presence of a beautiful woman by
his side must sooner or later sweep away his pledge.
"He wouldn't be a man if it didn't, and, the prophet notwithstanding,
Ishmael is that to his finger-tips. But heaven help me! I daren't let
my mind dwell on this subject, or I should have to fly back to you and
leave my task here unfulfilled. So as often as I shut my eyes and see
you trudging through the desert in Ishmael's caravan, I tell myself that
Providence has something for you to do there--must have--though what the
deuce it is, I don't yet see.
"No matter! _D.V._ I'll know some day, and meantime I'll nail my
colours to the mast of your strength and courage, knowing that the
bravest girl in the world belongs to me, and wherever she is, she is
_mine_, and always will be. GORDON.
"_P.S._--I am now dispatching my two letters to Assouan by Hamid
Ibrahim--the second of the two Sheikhs who went with me to
Alexandria--and if you find you can send me an answer, for God's sake,
do! I am hungering and thirsting and starving and perishing for a letter
from you--a line, a word, a syllable, the scratch of your pen on a piece
of paper. Send it, for heaven's sake!
"I hear that hundreds of native boats are going up to Assouan to bring
you down the Nile, so look out for my next letter when you get to
Luxor--I may have something to tell you by that time."
*CHAPTER VIII*
I
"NUBIAN DESERT (_anywhere_).
"O MY GORDON,--Such startling developments! Ishmael's character has made
a new manifestation. It concerns me, and I hardly know whether I ought
to speak of it. Yet I must--I cannot help myself.
"I find there is something distinctly masculine in his interest in me!
In Khartoum (in spite of certain evidences to the contrary) I was always
fool enough to suppose that it was without sex--what milksops call
Platonic--as if any such relation between a man and a woman ever was or
ever will be!
"Oh, I know what you are saying! 'That foolish young woman thinks
Ishmael is falling in love with her.' But wait, sir, only wait and
listen.
"We left Berber at night, and rode for four hours in the moonlight.
Goodness! What ghosts the desert is full of--ghosts of pyramids that
loom large and then fade away. Such mysterious lights! Such spectral
watch-towers standing on spectral heights! It was what the Arabs call
'a white night,' and besides the moon in its splendour there was a vast
star-strewn sky. Sometimes we heard the hyena's cry, sometimes the
jackal's ululation, and through the silver shimmering haze we could see
the wild creatures scuttling away from us.
"Thus on and on went our weary caravan--the camels like great swans with
their steady upturned heads, slithering as if in slippers along the
noiseless sand, and many of the tired people asleep on them. But I could
not sleep, and Ishmael, who was very much awake, rode by my side and
talked to me.
"It was about love, and included one pretty story of a daughter of the
Bedawee who married a Sultan--how she scorned the silken clothes he gave
her and would not live in his palace--saying she was no fellaha to sleep
in houses--and made him come out into the desert with her and dwell in a
tent. I thought there was a certain self-reference in the story, but
that was not all by any means.
"At midnight we halted by a group of wells, and while our vast army of
animals was being watered my tent was set up outside the camp, so that I
might rest without noise. I suppose I had been looking faint and pale,
for just as I was listening to the monotonous voice of a boy who, at a
fire not far away, was singing both himself and me to sleep, Ishmael
came with a dish of medida, saying, 'Drink this, it will do you good.'
"Then he sat down, and, with that paralysing plainness of speech which
the Easterns have, began to talk of love again, especially in relation
to the duty of renunciation, quoting in that connection 'the lord of the
Christians,' who had said, 'There be eunuchs which have made themselves
eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake.'
"It was more than embarrassing from the beginning, but it became
startling and almost shocking when he went on to talk about Jesus in
relation to Mary Magdalene (whom he supposed to be the sister of
Martha), and of the home at Bethany as the only place in which He found
the solace of female society, and how He had to turn His back on the
love of woman for His work's sake.
"We are so accustomed to think of Jesus's inaccessibility to human
affection as if it were a merit in Him to be superior to love, that it
made my skin creep to hear this person of another faith talk like that.
But I shivered a good deal more when he came to closer quarters, and
said that renunciation was the duty of every one on whom God had laid a
great mission _until his task was finished_, and then ... _then_ it was
just as much his duty _to live as a man_!
"He went away quite calmly, commending me to God, but he left me in a
state of terror; and though I was nearly worn to death by the double
journey, I did not sleep a wink that night for thinking of that accursed
day of the betrothal, and what would happen if he ever broke his promise
and came to me to claim the rights of a husband.
"The next day or two passed without any serious incident except that
Ishmael, who had developed a pair of haunting, imploring eyes, was
always riding his camel by its halter and nose-rein at the side of my
litter, and talking constantly on the same subject. But then came an
event of thrilling interest. Can I--shall I--must I tell you about it?
Yes, I can, I shall, I must!
"Out here on the desert I always feel as if I were travelling in Bible
lands, and if our caravan were to come upon 'Abram the Hebrew,' and
Rachel and Rebecca flying away with some Bedouin Jacob, I should not be
the least surprised, so it seemed natural enough that yesterday, in the
country of the Bisharin Arabs, we lit upon Laban, living as a patriarch
among his people.
"There were his sons and his sons' sons, big, brawny boys, strong and
clean of limb, and with their loins well girt but hardly anything else
covered, and there were 'the souls born of his house' in their felt
skull-caps and blue galabeahs. But what most concerned me were his two
splendid daughters. No corsetted women out of Bond Street, sir, but
superbly fine and majestic young females, tall and straight, with big
bosoms like pomegranates, ringletted black hair, clear oval faces, the
olive skin of the purest Arab blood, and large black eyes that shone
like gems.
"Such a woman, I thought, must Ruth have been when she lay at the feet
of Boaz; but lo, it never occurred to me that the people's faith in
Ishmael's 'divinity' did not forbid their ascribing to him the
attributes of a man. Shall I go on? Yes, I will, for already you know
that your Helena, your lady-love, is no mealy-mouthed miss--never was,
and never can be.
"Well, last night, late, while I was looking at the shadowy forms of the
camels coming and going in the light of the dying fires, I saw Laban,
who had been pouring hospitalities upon us, leading one of his
daughters, whose head was low, to Ishmael's tent. It was like something
horrible out of the Old Testament, but I had to watch--I simply could
not help it--and after a while I saw Laban and Rachel going away
together, and then the old man's head as well as the girl's was down.
"Act One being finished last night, Act Two began to-day. We are in the
middle of the Nubian desert now, and as the heat is great under the red
wrath of the fiery mountains on either side, we have to rest for three
hours in the middle of every day. Well, at noon to-day Ishmael came to
my tent and talked of love again. It was a heavenly passion. Surely
God had created it. Yet the Christians had made 'monkery,' and were
thus rebuking the Almighty and claiming to be wiser than He. The union
of man and woman without love was sin. That was what made so many
Moslem marriages sinful. Marriage was not betrothal, not the joining of
hands under a handkerchief, not the repeating of words after a Cadi;
marriage was the sacrament of love, and love being present and nothing
else intervening, _renunciation was wrong_, it was against the spirit of
Islam, and no matter who he might be, _a man should live as a man_.
"I don't know what I said, or whether I said anything, but I do know
that the blood left my heart and seemed long in making its way back
again. My skin was creeping, and I had a feeling which I had never
known before--a feeling of repulsion--the feeling of the white woman
about the black man. Ishmael is not black by any means, but I felt
exactly as if he were, for I could see quite well what was going on in
his mind. He was thinking of his journey's end, of the day when his
work would be finished, and he was promising himself the realisation of
his love.
"That shall never, never be! No, not under any circumstances! My God,
no, not for worlds of worlds! Good-night, Gordon! I may be betrothed to
this man, but there is no law of nature that binds me to him. I belong
to you, just as Rachel belonged to Jacob, and whatever I may be in my
religion, I am no Trinitarian in my love at all events.
"Good-bye, dearest! Don't let what I have said alarm you. Oh, I know
what you are _now_: 'That foolish young woman expects me to hear her
when I am in Cairo and she is in the middle of the Nubian desert.' But
you do, I am sure you do. And I hear you also. I hear your voice at
this moment as clearly as I hear it when I awake in the middle of the
night and it rings through my miserable tent and makes me wildly
hysterical. So don't be alarmed; I can take care of myself, I tell you!
My love, my love, my love!