"El Hamdullillah! Your letter has come at last! Perhaps I wish it
hadn't been Mosie who brought it, but the boy was clever in riding into
the camp unobserved, and now I have sent him outside to hide in the
darkness while I scribble a few lines in reply. He is to come back
presently, and meantime, please God, he will keep out of the sight of
that she-cat of an Arab woman.
"You are doing right, darling--I am sure you are! Naturally you must be
troubled with thoughts about England and your father, but both will yet
see what motives inspired you, and whatever they do now they will
eventually make amends.
"Bravo, my boy, bravo! Perhaps we shall all become Quakers some day,
but let the peace-people croak as they please, it is war that brings out
the truly heroic virtues, and though you are trying to prevent bloodshed
you are really going into battle. Go, then, and God bless you!
"What wretched ink this is--it must have got mixed with water.
"Oh yes, certainly! I will stay here to the end, and if occasion arises
I will do what you desire, though I have not the faintest hope of
succeeding. The fact is that even if I could persuade Ishmael not to
enter Cairo the people would not under any circumstances be restrained.
"To tell you the truth, I cannot help feeling sorry for him. He really
began with the highest aims and the strongest common sense, but he has
become the victim of his people's idolatry, and, being made an idol, he
may no longer be a man.
"I cannot help feeling sorry for the people also, for I suppose they
have only tried in their blind way to realise the dream of humanity in
all ages, the dream of all the holy books and all the great
prophets--the dream of a millennium.
"It seems, too, as if God, who puts beautiful ideals in people's hearts,
always calls for a scapegoat to pay the price of them. That is what you
are to be, dear, and when I think of what you are going to do to save
these poor people I begin to see for the first time what is meant by the
sacrificial blood of Christ.
"I suppose this is shocking, but I don't care a pin about that. Every
heroic man who risks his life for his fellow-man is doing what Christ
did. You are doing it, and I don't believe the good God will ask any
question about ways and means.
"There! That's something out of my eyes splash on to the very point of
my pen. Don't take it as a mark of weakness, though, but as the
sign-manual of Helena's heart telling you to go on without thinking
about her.
"Forget what I said about my Jewish blood and Jezebel and all that
nonsense. Ishmael's 'work' will not be 'finished' until he enters into
Cairo, so I run no risk while I am here, you see.
"Of course I am in a fever of impatience to know what is happening on
Ghezirah to-night, but you must not suppose that I am afraid. In any
case, I shall stay here, having no longer the faintest thought of
running away, and if there is anything to do I'll do it.
"This _may_ be the last letter I am to write to you, so good-bye, my
Gordon, and God bless you again! My dear, my dear, my dear! HELENA.
"_P.S._--I suppose you are in the thick of it by this time, for I see
that the illuminations on Ghezirah have already begun. My dear, my
dear, my ... my----"
*CHAPTER XVI*
At eight o'clock that night the Pavilion of the Ghezirah Palace was
brilliantly lit up for the "King's Dinner." A troop of British cavalry
was mounted in front of it under the sparkling lights that swung from
the tall palms of the garden, and a crowd of eager spectators were
waiting to see the arrival of the guests.
The Consul-General came early, driving in his open carriage with two
gorgeously clad saises running before him. When he stepped down at the
door, in his cocked hat, laced coat, and gold-braided trousers, he was
saluted like a sovereign. The band of a British regiment under the
trees played some bars of the National Anthem, and the English onlookers
cheered.
In the open court of the Pavilion, which was walled about by Oriental
hangings, the Consul-General's own people were waiting to receive him.
His old and weakened but still massive and even menacing personality
showed out strongly against the shadowy forms of some of the Advisers
and Under-Secretaries who stood behind him.
It was quickly seen that his manner was less brusque and masterful than
usual, but that his tone was cynical and almost bitter. When his First
Secretary stepped up to him and whispered that a Reuter's telegram,
which had just come, announced that the Khedive had left Paris for
Marseilles intending to take steamer for Egypt, he was heard to say--
"I don't care a ---- what the Khedive does or what he intends to do.
Let him wait until to-morrow."
The Sirdar was one of the first of the guests to arrive, and after
saying in a low tone that he had just taken the necessary steps to
withdraw the ammunition from the native troops, he whispered--
"The great thing is to keep calm--not to allow yourself to lose your
temper."
"I _am_ calm, perfectly calm," said the Consul-General.
Then the other guests came in quick succession, Envoys Extraordinary,
Ministers-Plenipotentiary, Chancellors and Counsellors of Legation and
Attaches, wearing all their orders; Barons, Counts, and
Marquises--attired magnificently in a prodigious quantity of pad and
tailor-work, silk stockings, white, blue, and red, coats with frogs and
fur collars, stars, ribbons, silver shoe-buckles, tight breeches, and
every conceivable kind of uniform and court-dress.
Among the diplomatic corps came Egyptian Ministers wearing the tarboosh
and many decorations; the Turkish High Commissioner, a gorgeous and
expansive person; a Prince of the Khedivial house, a long miscellaneous
line of Pashas and Beys, and finally a few of the Ulema in their turbans
and flowing Eastern robes.
The Consul-General received them all with smiles, and it was said
afterwards that never before had he seemed to be so ceremoniously
polite.
There was a delay in announcing dinner, and people were beginning to ask
who else was expected, when the First Secretary was seen to approach the
host and to say something which only he could hear. A moment later the
venerable Chancellor of El Azhar entered the hall in his simple grey
farageeyah, accompanied by a tall, strong, upright man in the ample
folds of a Bedouin Sheikh, and almost immediately afterwards the guests
went into the dining-hall.
Dinner was served by Arab waiters in white, and while the band in the
gardens outside played selections from the latest French operas, some of
the European guests consumed a prodigious deal of fermented liquor, and
buzzed and twittered and fribbled in the manner of their kind. The
Egyptian Ministers and Pashas were less at ease and the Ulema were
obviously constrained, but the Consul-General himself, though he
continued to smile and to bow, was the most preoccupied person in the
room.
He passed dish after dish, eating little and drinking nothing, though
his tongue wras dry and his throat was parched. From time to time he
looked about him with keen eyes, as if counting up the number of those
among his guests who had conspired against him. There they were, nearly
all of them, his secret enemies, his unceasing revilers, his heartless
and treacherous foes. But wait! Only wait! He would soon see their
confusion!
The Sirdar, who sat on the left of the host, seemed to be conscious of
the Consul-General's impatience, and he whispered again--
"The great thing is to be calm--perfectly calm."
"I _am_ calm," said the Consul-General, but in a tone of anger which
belied his words.
Towards the end of the dinner his Secretary stepped up to the back of
his chair and whispered to him that the bridge had been opened, and
after that his impatience increased visibly, until the last dish had
been served, the waiters had left the room, the band outside had ceased
playing, and the toast-master had called silence for the first toast.
Then in an instant all impatience, all nervousness, all anxiety
disappeared, and the Consul-General rose to propose "The King."
Never had any one heard such a bitter, ironical, biting speech. Every
word stung, every sentence cut to the bone.
He began by telling his guests how happy he was to welcome them in that
historic hall, "sacred to the memory of the glories of Ismail Pasha,
whose princely prodigality brought Egypt to bankruptcy." Then he
assured them that he took their presence there that night as a cordial
recognition of what Great Britain had done through forty hard and
sleepless years to rescue the Valley of the Nile from financial ruin and
moral corruption. Next, he reminded them that England was now reaping
the results of the education it had given the country, and among these
results were certain immature efforts to found Western institutions on
Eastern soil, not to speak of secret conspiracies to embarrass, disturb,
and even destroy her rule in Egypt altogether.
"But I am glad to realise," he said in a withering tone, "that all such
attempts to carry the country back from civilisation to barbarism have
been repelled by the best elements in the community, European and
Egyptian alike, and especially by the illustrious leaders by whom I am
now surrounded."
Then his eyes flashed like the eyes of an old eagle, while, amid
breathless silence, in the husky voice that came from his dry throat,
turning from side to side, he thanked his guests, class by class, for
the help they had given to the representative of the King in putting
down political and religious fanaticism.
"Gentlemen of the diplomatic corps," he said, "you are satisfied with
what England has done for Egypt, and you do not wish to see her rule
disturbed. Between you and ourselves there are no animosities, no
selfish interests to serve, no hostile groupings, no rival combinations.
Knowing that we are the joint trustees of civilisation in a backward
Eastern country, nothing could induce you so to act as if you wanted
Egypt for yourselves. Gentlemen, in the name of the King, I thank you!"
Turning then to the Egyptian Ministers, he said in tones of blistering
irony--
"Your Excellencies, it seems idle to thank you for your loyalty to the
nation by whose power you live. You are far too intelligent not to see
that a man cannot set fire to his house and yet hope to preserve it from
being burnt to the ground, far too sensible of your own interests to
listen to the extremists who would tear to pieces the country you govern
and give it back to bankruptcy and ruin. Gentlemen, in the name of the
King, I thank you."