"The day of the festivities is approaching, and already the preparations
have begun. Placards on the walls announcing a military tattoo,
officials flying about the town, workmen hanging up lanterns for the
illumination of the public gardens, and police bands in the squares
playing 'God save' and 'The Girl I left,' and meantime Ishmael with his
vast following coming up the Nile, full of the great Hope, the great
Expectation!
"Talk about Nero fiddling while Rome burned! that was an act of no
particular callousness compared to the infectious merriment of the
European population, though many of them know nothing about the tidal
wave that is sweeping down, the English press having been forbidden to
mention it, and the one strong man in Egypt waiting calmly at the Agency
until the moment comes to dam it.
"Of course the official classes are aware of what is happening, and
their attitude towards the mighty flood that is coming on is a wonderful
example of our British pluck and our crass stupidity. Not a man will
budge, that much I can say for my countrymen who are ready to face death
any day under a vertical sun, amid deadly swamps and human beings almost
as dangerous. But they will not see that while the fanaticism of one
hallucinated individual (Ishmael, for example) may be a little thing,
the soul of a whole nation is a big thing, and God help the Government
that attempts to crush it.
"In order to realise the situation here at this moment one has to make a
daring, audacious, almost impious comparison--to think of the day when
Christ entered Jerusalem through a dense, delirious crowd that shouted
'Hosanna to the Son of David!' and (forgetting that soon afterwards they
deserted Him when His divinity appeared to fail) ask oneself what would
have happened _then_ if the Roman Consul, prompted by the Chief Priests,
had met that frenzied multitude with a charge of Roman steel!
"God keep us from such consequences in Cairo; but meantime, though the
Arabic newspapers are suppressed, the natives know that Ishmael's host
is coming on, and the effect of the rumour that has gone through the air
like a breath of wind seems to be frantically intoxicating. I confess
that the sense of that mighty human wave, sweeping down the red waters
of the high Nile, coming on and on, as they think to the millennium, but
as I know to death, sits on me, too, like a nightmare. It has the
effect of the supernatural, and I ask myself what in the name of God I
can do to prevent the collision that will occur between two forces that
seem bent on destroying each other.
"Something I must do, that is certain, and seeing that I am now the only
one who knows what is being done on both sides, and that it is useless
to appeal either to my father or to Ishmael, what I do must be done by
me alone. Alone is a terrible word, Helena; but what I do I do, and the
devil take the consequences.
"I expect to get further information from Hafiz to-morrow, so (_D.V._)
I'll write my last letter to Bedrasheen, where, as I hear, you are to
encamp. Look out for it there--I see something I may want you to do for
me with Ishmael. Meantime don't be afraid of him. Remember that you
belong to _me_, to me _only_, and that I'm thinking of you every hour
and minute, and then nothing can go seriously astray. Good-bye, my
beloved, my dear, my darling! GORDON.
"_P.S._--Is it not extraordinary, my dear Helena, that notwithstanding
the torment I suffer at the thought of your position in Ishmael's camp I
continue to ask you to remain in it? But wait--only wait! Something
good is going to happen! In-sha-allah!"
*CHAPTER XI*
I
"THE NILE
"(_between Luxor and Bedrasheen_).
"MY DEAR, DEAR GORDON--I saw your Hamid Ibrahim the moment I set foot in
Luxor, and the way he passed your letter to me and I passed mine to him
would have done credit to Charlie Bates and the Artful Dodger in the art
of passing 'a wipe.'
"I really think we escaped the eyes of this odious Arab woman, but I am
bound to add that almost as soon as I got back to the boat, and began to
read your letter and to weep tears of joy over it, I was conscious of a
shadow at the mouth of my cabin, and it was she, the daughter of a dog!
"No matter! Who the dickens cares! I shall be gone from here before
the woman can do me any mischief, and if I am still in Ishmael's camp it
is only because you said you were sending your last letter to
Bedrasheen, so, you see, I had no choice but to come on.
"What you tell me of the course of affairs in Cairo only fills me with
hatred of the Grand Cadi ('whom Allah damn'), and I find that I exhaust
my Christianity in finding names that seem suitable to 'his
Serenity'--beginning, of course, with the fourth letter of the English
alphabet.
"I see already what you are going to do, and when I think of it I feel
like a shocking coward. If you cannot work with the Consul-General I
suppose you will work without him, perhaps against him, and a conflict
between you and your father is the tragedy I always foresaw. It will be
the end of one or both of you, and I am trembling at the bare thought.
"Oh, I know you are the bravest thing God ever made and at the same time
the most unselfish, but I sometimes wish to heaven you were not--though
I suppose in that event you would fall from your god-like pedestal, and
I should not love you so much if I admired you less.
"We left Luxor immediately, for although there were still three days to
spare before the day of the "festivities" and the river was racing down
fast enough to carry a fleet of war, the people were in a fever to reach
the end of their journey, so Ishmael consented to go on without a rest.
"I find the whole thing more frightening than ever now that we are so
near to the end, for I suppose it is certain that whatever else happens,
this vast horde of Ishmael's fanatical followers will never be allowed
to enter Cairo, and it will be impossible to convince the Consul-General
and the Government that they are not coming as an armed force. Then
what will the people do? What will they say to Ishmael? And if Ishmael
suspects treachery, what will he say? What will he say to _me_? But no
matter--I shall be gone before that can occur.
"It is now eleven o'clock at night, yet I cannot sleep, so I shall sit
up all night and see the rising of the Southern Cross. A silver slip of
a moon has just appeared, and by its shimmering light our vast fleet
seems to be floating down the rive like ships in a dream. Such calm,
such silence! Phantoms of houses, of villages, of funereal palms
gliding in ghostly muteness past us. Sometimes an obelisk goes like a
dark skeleton down the bank--vestige of a vanished civilisation as full,
perhaps, of delusive faith as ours. What is God doing with us all, I
wonder? Why does He----