III

"Of course I did not sleep a wink last night, but I crept out of my

hiding-place under the high prow of the boat when the dawn came up like

a bride robed in pearly grey and blushing rosy red. By that time we

were nearing Bedrasheen, and now we are moored alongside of it, and the

people are beginning to land, for it seems they are to camp at Sakkara,

in order to be in a position to see the light which is to shine from the

minaret of Mohammed Ali.

"Such joy, such rapture! Men with the madra pole sounding the depths of

the water, men with sculls pushing the boats ashore; all shouting in

strident voices, or singing in guttural tones.

"Soon, very soon, their hopes will be blighted. Will they never know by

whom? I wonder if anybody will tell them about that letter! Where is

Mosie? I trust the Consul-General may keep him in Cairo. The boy is as

true as steel, but with this woman to question him...! My God, make her

meet a fate as black as her heart, the hussy!

"But why do I trouble about this? It matters nothing to me what becomes

of the Arab woman, or of the Egyptians, or of the Soudanese, or even of

Ishmael himself--the whole boiling of them, as you say. I know I'm

heartless, but I can't help it. The only question of any consequence is

what is happening to you. After all, it was I who put you where you

are, and it is quite enough for me to reproach myself with that.

"What is the Government doing to you? What has your father done? What

is going on among the descendants of the creeping things that came out

of the Ark?

* * * * *

"I cannot see Hamid among the crowd on the land, but I hope to find him

as soon as I go ashore. If I miss him in the fearful chaos, I suppose I

shall have to go on to the camp, for, besides my anxiety to receive your

letter, I am living under the strongest conviction that there is

something for me to do for you, and that it has not been for nothing

that I have gone through the bog and slush of this semi-barbaric life.

"There! You see what you've done for me! You've given me as strong a

belief in the 'mystic sense' as you have yourself, and as firm a faith

in fatality.

* * * * *

"No sign of Hamid yet! Never mind! Don't be afraid for me--I am all

right.

"Gordon, my dear, my dear-dear, good-bye!

"HELENA."

*CHAPTER XII*

For more than three weeks the Consul-General had kept his own counsel,

and not even to the Sirdar, whom he saw daily, did he reveal the whole

meaning of his doings.

When the Sirdar had come to say that through the Soudan Intelligence

Department in Cairo he had heard that Ishmael and his vast company had

left Khartoum, and that the Inspector-General was of opinion that the

pilgrimage must be stopped or it would cause trouble, the Consul-General

had said--

"No! Let the man come on. We shall be ready to receive him."

Again, when the Governor at Assouan, hearing of the approach of the

ever-increasing horde of Soudanese, had telegraphed for troops to keep

them out of Egypt, the Consul-General had replied--

"Leave them alone, and mind your own business."

Finally when the Commandant of Police at Cairo had come with looks of

alarm to say that a thousand open boats, all packed with people, were

sailing down the river like an invading army, and that if the pilgrims

attempted to enter the city the native police could not be relied upon

to resist them, the Consul-General had said--

"Don't be afraid. I have made other arrangements."

Meantime the great man who seemed to be so calm on the outside was white

hot within. Every day, while Ishmael was in the Soudan, and every hour

after the Prophet had entered Egypt, he had received telegrams from his

Inspectors saying where the pilgrimage was and what was happening to it.

So great indeed had been the fever of his anxiety that he had caused a

telegraphic tape to be fixed up in his bedroom that in the middle of the

night, if need be, he might rise and read the long white slips.

A few days before the date fixed for the festivities one of the

Inspectors of the Ministry of the Interior came to tell him that there

were whispers of a conspiracy that had been blown upon, with hushed

rumours of some bitter punishment which the Consul-General was preparing

for those who had participated in it. As a consequence a number of the

Notables and certain of the diplomats were rapidly leaving the country,

nearly every train containing some of them. A sombre fire shone in the

great man's eyes while he listened to this, but he only answered with a

sinister smile--

"The air of Egypt doesn't agree with them perhaps. Let them go. They'll

be lucky if they live to come back."

As soon as the Inspector was gone the Consul-General sent for his

Secretary and asked what acceptances had been received of the

invitations to the King's Dinner, whereupon the Secretary's face fell,

and he replied that there had been many excuses.

Half the diplomats had pleaded calls from their own countries, and half

the Pashas had protested with apologetic prayers that influenza or

funerals in their families would compel them to decline. The Ministers

had accepted as they needs must, but, with a few exceptions, the Ulema,

after endless invocations to God and the Prophet, had, on various

grounds, begged to be excused.

"And the exceptions, who are they?" asked the Consul-General.

"The Chancellor of El Azhar, his guest the Sheikh Omar Benani, the Grand

Mufti, and----"

"Good! All goes well," said the Consul-General. "Make a list of the

refusals and let me have it on the day of the dinner."

Before that day there was much to do, and on the day immediately

preceding it the British Agency received a stream of visitors. The

first to come by appointment was the English Adviser to the Ministry of

Justice.

"I wish you," said the Consul-General, "to summon the new Special

Tribunal to hold a court in Cairo at ten o'clock to-morrow night."

"Ten o'clock to-morrow night? Did your lordship say ten?" asked the

Adviser.

"Don't I speak plainly?" replied the Consul-General, whereupon the look

of bewilderment on the Adviser's face broke up into an expression of

embarrassment, and his desire to ask further questions was crushed.

The next visitor to come by appointment was the British Adviser to the

Minister of the Interior, the tall young Englishman on whose red hair

the red fez sat so strangely.

"I wish you," said the Consul-General, "to arrange that the gallows be

got out and set up after dark to-morrow night in the square in front of

the Governorat."

"The square in front of the Governorat?" repeated the Adviser in tones

of astonishment. "Does your lordship forget that public execution

within the city is no longer legal?"

"Damn it, I'll make it legal," replied the Consul-General, whereupon the

red head under the red fez bowed itself out of the library without

waiting to ask who was to be hanged.

The next visitor to come to the Agency by appointment was the burly

Commandant of Police.

"You still hold your warrant for the arrest of Ishmael Ameer?" asked the

Consul-General.

"I do, my lord."

"Then come to Ghezirah to-morrow night, and be ready to receive my

orders."

Then came the Colonel who, since the death of General Graves, had been

placed in temporary command of the Army of Occupation.

"Is everything in order?"

"Everything, my lord."

"All your regiments now in the country can arrive at Calioub by the last

train to-morrow night?"

"All of them."

"Then wait there yourself until you hear from me. I shall speak to you

over the telephone from Ghezirah. On receiving my message you will cause

fifty rounds of ammunition to be issued to your men, and then march them

into the city and line them up in the principal thoroughfares. Let them

stay there as long as they may be required to do so--all night if

necessary; and if there is unrest or armed resistance on the part of the

populace, of the native army, or of people coming into the town, you

will promptly put it down. You understand?"

"I understand, my lord."

"But wait for my telephone call. Don't let one man stir out of barracks

until you receive it. Mind that. Good-bye!"

The better part of the day was now gone, yet so great had been the

Consul-General's impatience that he had not even yet broken his fast,

although Fatimah, who alone was permitted to do so, had repeatedly

entered his room to remind him that his meals were ready.

At sunset he went up to the roof of his house. Every day for nearly a

week he had done this, taking a telescope in his hand that he might look

down the river for the mighty octopus of demented people who were soon

to come. Yesterday he had seen them for the first time--a vast flotilla

of innumerable native boats with white, three-cornered sails, stretching

far down the Nile, as a flight of birds of passage might stretch along

the sky.

Now the people were encamped on the desert between Bedrasheen and

Sakkara, a sinuous line of speckled white and black on the golden yellow

of the sand, looking like a great serpent encircling the city on the

south. As a serpent they fascinated the Consul-General when he looked

at them, but not with fear, so sure was he that, by the machinery he had

set to work, the vermin would soon be trampled into the earth.

There they were, he thought, an armed force, the scourings of the

Soudan, under the hypnotic sway of a fanatic-hypocrite, waiting to fall

on the city and to destroy its civilisation. In every saddle-bag a

rifle; in every gebah a copy of the Koran; in every heart a spirit of

hatred and revenge.

Since the Grand Cadi had told him of the conspiracy to establish an Arab

Empire the Consul-General's mind had evolved developments of the

devilish scheme. The practical heart of the matter was Pan-Islamism, a

combination of all the Moslem peoples to resist the Christian nations.

Therefore in the great historical drama which he was soon to play he

would be seen to be the saviour not only of England and of Europe and of

civilisation, but even of Christianity itself!

It would be a life and death struggle, in which cruel things could not

fail to be done, but the issues were world-great, and therefore he would

not shrink. He who wanted the end must not think too much about the

means.

Ishmael? The gallows in the square of the Governorat? Why not? The

man might have begun as a mere paid emissary of the Khedive, but having

developed the Mahdist malady, a belief in his own divinity, he meant to

throw off his allegiance to his master and proclaim himself Caliph.

Therefore they must hang him--hang him before the eyes of his followers,

and fling his "divine" body into the Nile!

As the Consul-General stepped down from the roof Ibrahim met him with a

letter from the Grand Cadi saying he found himself suspected by his own

people, and therefore begged to be excused from attendance at the King's

Dinner, but sent this secret message to warn his Excellency that by the

plotting of his enemies the Kasr-el-Nil bridge which connected Ghezirah

with Cairo would be opened immediately after the beginning of the

festival.

"The fox!" thought the Consul-General, but interpreting in his own way

the dim purpose of the plot--that it was intended to imprison him on the

island while Ishmael's followers entered the city--he merely added to

his order for his carriage an order for his steam-launch as well.

Daylight had faded by this time, and as soon as darkness fell the

Consul-General received a line of other visitors--strange visitors such

as the British Agency had never seen before. They were women, Egyptian

women, the harem, shrouded figures in black satin and the yashmak, the

wives of the Ministers who had felt compelled to accept their

invitations, but were in fear of the consequences of having done so.

Unexampled, unparalleled event, never before known in an Eastern

country, the women, disregarding the seclusion of their sex, had come to

plead for their husbands, to make tacit admission of a conspiracy, but

to say, each trembling woman in her turn, "My husband is not in it," and

to implicate other men who were.

The Consul-General listened with cold, old-fashioned courtesy to

everything they had to say, and then bowed them out without many words.

Instinctively Ibrahim had darkened the Agency as soon as they began to

come, so that veiled they passed in, veiled they passed out, and they

were gone before anybody else was aware.

The dinner-hour was now near, and leaving the library with the intention

of going up to dress, the Consul-General came upon two men who were

sitting in an alcove of the hall. They were Reuter's reporters, who for

the past ten years had been accustomed to come for official information.

Rising as the Consul-General approached, they asked him if he had

anything to say.

"Be here at ten o'clock to-morrow night and I shall have something to

give you," he said. "It will be something important, so keep the wires

open to receive it."

"The wires to London, my lord?"

"To London, Paris, Berlin--everywhere! Good-night!"

Going upstairs with a flat and heavy step but a light and almost joyous

heart, the Consul-General remembered his letter of resignation, and

thought of the hubbub in Downing Street the day after to-morrow when

news of the conspiracy, and of how he had scotched it, fell like a

thunderbolt on the "fossils of Whitehall."

In the conflagration that would blaze heaven-high in England it would be

seen at last how necessary a strong authority in Egypt was, and

then--what then? He would be asked to use his own discretion, unlimited

power be reposed in him; he would hoist the Union Jack over the Citadel,

annex the country to the British Crown, cast off all futile obligations

to the Sultan, and so end for ever the present ridiculous, paradoxical,

suicidal situation.

While Ibrahim helped him to dress for dinner, he was partly conscious

that the man was talking about Mosie and repeating some bewildering

story which the black boy had been telling downstairs of Helena's

"marriage to the new Mahdi."

This turned his thoughts in another direction, and for a few short

moments the firm and stern, but not fundamentally hard and cruel man,

became aware that all his fierce and savage and candid ferocity that day

had been no more than the wild ejaculation of a heart that was broken

and trembling because it was bereaved.

It was Gordon again--always Gordon! Where was "our boy" now? What was

happening to him? Could it be possible that he was so far away that he

would not hear of the weltering downfall, so soon to come, of the

"charlatan mummer" whose evil influence had brought his bright young

life to ruin?

*CHAPTER XIII*

That night the Sirdar dined with the Consul-General, and as soon as the

servants had gone from the dining-room he said--

"Nuneham, I have something to tell you."

"What is it?" asked the Consul-General.

"Notwithstanding three weeks of the closest observation, I have found no

trace of insubordination in the Egyptian army, but nevertheless, in

obedience to your warning, I have taken one final precaution. I have

given orders that the ammunition with which every soldier is entrusted

shall be taken from him to-morrow evening, so that if Ishmael Ameer

comes into Cairo at night with any hope of----"

"My dear Mannering," interrupted the Consul-General with his cold smile,

"would it surprise you to be told that Ishmael Ameer is already in

Cairo?"

"Already? Did you say----"

"That he has been here for three weeks, that he came by the same train

as yourself, wearing the costume of a Bedouin Sheikh, and that----"

"But, my dear Nuneham, this is incredible," said the Sirdar, with his

buoyant laugh. "It is certainly true that a Bedouin Sheikh travelled in

the same train with me from the Soudan, but that he was Ishmael Ameer in

disguise is of course utterly unbelievable."

"Why so?"

"Because a week after I left Khartoum I heard that Ishmael was still

living there, and because every other day since then has brought us

advices from our Governors saying the man was coming across the desert

with his people."

"My dear friend," said the Consul-General, "in judging of the East one

must use Eastern weights and measures. The race that could for fourteen

centuries accept the preposterous tradition that it was not Jesus Christ

who was crucified but some one else who took on His likeness and died

instead of Him, is capable of accepting for itself and imposing upon

others a substitute for this White Prophet."

"But you bewilder me," said the Sirdar. "Isn't the man Ishmael at this

moment lying encamped, with fifty thousand of his demented people, on

the desert outside Cairo?"

"No," said the Consul-General.

And then in his slow, deep, firm voice, grown old and husky, he

unburdened himself for the first time--telling of Helena's departure for

Khartoum on her errand of vengeance; of her letter from there announcing

Ishmael's intention of coming into Cairo in advance of his people in

order to draw off the allegiance of the Egyptian army; of Ishmael's

arrival and his residence at the house of the Chancellor of El Azhar; of

the visit of the Princess Nazimah and her report of the conspiracy of

the diplomatic corps, and finally of the Grand Cadi's disclosure of the

Khedive's plot for the establishment of an Arab Empire.

"So you see," said the Consul-General, with an indulgent smile, "that

all the bad concomitants of an Oriental revolution are present, and that

while you, my dear friend, have been holding your hand in the Soudan for

fear of repeating the error of two thousand years ago--troubling

yourself about Pontius Pilate and moral forces versus physical ones, and

giving me the benefit of all the catchwords of your Christian socialism

and Western democracy--a conspiracy of gigantic proportions has been

gathering about us."

The Sirdar's usually ruddy face whitened, and he listened with a dumb,

vague wonder while the Consul-General went on, with bursts of bitter

humour, to describe one by one the means he had taken to defeat the

enemies by whom they were surrounded.

"So you see, too," he said at last, lifting unconsciously his tired

voice, "that by this time to-morrow we shall have defeated the worst

conspiracy that has ever been made even in Egypt--meted out sternly

retributive justice to the authors of it; put an end to all forms of

resistance, whether passive or active, silenced all chatter about

Nationalism and all prattle about representative institutions, destroyed

the devilish machinery of this accursed Pan-Islamism, crushed the

Khedive, and wiped out his fanatic-hypocrite and charlatan-mummer,

Ishmael Ameer."

The Consul-General had spoken with such intensity, and the Sirdar had

listened so eagerly, that down to that moment neither of them had been

aware that another person was in the room. It was Fatimah, who was

standing, with the death-like rigidity of a ghost, near to the door, in

the half-light of the shaded electric lamps.

The Sirdar saw her first, and with a motion of his hand he indicated her

presence to the Consul-General, who, with a face that was pale and

stern, turned angrily round and asked the woman what she wanted,

whereupon Fatimah, with trembling lips and a quivering voice, as if

struggling with the spirit of falsehood, said she had only come to ask

if the Sirdar intended to sleep there that night and whether she was to

make up a bed for him.

"No, certainly not! Why should you think so? Go to bed yourself," said

the Consul-General, and with obvious relief the woman turned to go.

"Wait!" he cried. "How long have you been in the room?"

"Only a little moment, oh my lord," replied Fatimah.

After that the two men went to the library, but some time passed before

the conversation was resumed. The Sirdar lit a cigar and puffed in

silence, while the Consul-General, who did not smoke, sat in an

arm-chair with his wrinkled hands clasped before his breast. At length

the Sirdar said--

"And all this came of Helena's letter from Khartoum?"

"Was suggested by it," said the Consul-General.

"You told me she was there, but I could not imagine what she was

doing--what her errand was. Good heavens, what a revenge! It makes one

shiver! Carries one back to another age!"

"A better age," said the Consul-General. "A more natural and less

hypocritical age at all events."

"The age of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, perhaps--the age of

a hot and consuming God."

"Yes, a God of wrath, a God of anger, a God who _did_ something, not the

pale, meek, forgiving, anaemic God of our day--a God who does nothing."

"The God of our day is at least a God of mercy, of pity, and of love,"

said the Sirdar.

"He is a lay figure, my friend, who permits wrong without avenging

it--in short, no God at all, but an illogical, inconsequential, useless

creature."

The Sirdar made no further resistance, and the Consul-General went on to

defend Helena's impulse of vengeance by assailing the Christian spirit

of forgiveness.

"There was at least something natural and logical as well as majestic

and magnificent in the old ideal of Jehovah, but your new ideal of Jesus

is contrary to nature and opposed to the laws of life. 'Love your

enemies.' 'Do good to them that hate you.' 'If a man smite thee on the

right cheek, turn to him the other also.' 'Resist not evil!' 'If any

man take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also!' Impossible!

Fatal! If this is Christianity, I am no Christian. When I am hit, I hit

back. When I am injured, I demand justice. The only way! Any other

would lead to the triumph of the worst elements in humanity. And what I

do everybody else does--everybody--though the hypocrisy of the modern

world will not permit people to admit it."

The Consul-General had risen and was tramping heavily across the room.

"Is there one man alive who will dare to say that he actually orders his

life according to the precepts of Christ? If so, he is either a liar or

a fool. As for the nations, look at the facts. Christianity has been

two thousand years in the world, yet here we are competing against each

other in the building of warships, the imposition of tariffs, the union

of trades. Why not? I say, why not?"

The Consul-General drew up and waited, but getting no answer he

continued--

"Civilisation requires it--I say requires it. What holds the world

together and preserves peace among the nations is not Christianity but

cast-iron and gunpowder. Yet what vexes me and stirs my soul is to hear

people praying in their churches for peace and concord, while all the

time they know that 'peace and concord' is an impossible ideal, that

Christianity in its first sense is dead, and that Jesus as a practical

guide to life--as a practical guide to life, mind you--has _failed_."