*CHAPTER I*
The day that Ishmael had looked for, longed for, prayed for--the day
that was to see the fulfilment not only of his spiritual hopes but of
his rapturous dream of bliss, the day of his return to Cairo--had come
at last.
But the Ishmael Ameer who was returning to Cairo was by no means the
same man as the Ishmael who had gone away. In a few short months he had
become a totally different person. Two forces had changed him--two
forces which in their effect were one.
By the operation of the first of these forces he had become more of a
mystic; by the operation of the second he had become more of a man; by
the operation of both together he had become a creature who was
controlled by his emotions alone.
When he left Cairo he had been a man of elevated spirit but of
commanding common sense. He had looked upon himself as one whose sole
work was to call men back to God and to righteousness. But little by
little the tyranny of outward events, the pressure of responsibility,
and, above all, the heartfelt and prostrate but dim and perverted
adulation of his followers, had led him to believe that he was a being
apart, specially directed by the Almighty and even permitted to be His
mouthpiece.
Insensibly Ishmael had come to look upon himself as a "Son of God."
When he first saw that the crowds who came to him from east and west
were beginning to believe that he was the Redeemer, the Deliverer, the
Expected One whom he foretold, he was shocked, and he protested. But
when he perceived that this belief helped him to comfort and console and
direct them, he ceased to deny; and when he realised that it was
necessary to his people's confidence that they should think that he who
guided them was himself guided by God, he permitted himself, by his
silence, to acquiesce.
From allowing others to believe in his divinity, he had come to believe
in it himself. His burning, boundless influence over his people had
seemed to his deep heart to be only intelligible as a thing given to him
from Heaven, and then the "miracle" in the desert, the raising of the
Sheikh's daughter from the dead, had swept down the last of his
scruples. God had given him supernatural powers and made him the
mouthpiece of His will.
And now, at the end of his pilgrimage, if he did not accept the idea
that he was in very fact the Redeemer who was to bring in the golden
age, the Kingdom of God, he succumbed to a delusion that was nearly akin
to it--that just as the lord of the Christians, being condemned by the
Roman Governor, had permitted another to take his form and face and
bodily presence and to die on the cross instead of him, so the Messiah,
the Mahdi, the Christ who was to come, was now using him as His
substitute to lead and control His poor, oppressed, and helpless people
until the time came for Him to appear in His own person.
Such was the operation of the force that had made Ishmael more of a
mystic; and the force that had made him more of a man had been playing
in the same way upon his heart.
It had played upon him through Helena.
When Helena entered into his life and he betrothed himself to her, he
honestly believed that he was doing no more than protecting her good
name. For some time afterwards he continued to deceive himself, but the
constant presence of a beautiful woman by his side produced its effect,
and little by little he came to know that his heart was touched.
As soon as he became conscious of this he remembered the vow he had made
when his Coptic slave-wife died, that no other woman should take her
place, and he also reminded himself of his mission, his consecration to
the welfare of humanity. But the more he tried to crush his affection
for Helena, the more it grew.
He was like a boy in the first beautiful morning light of love. The
moment he was alone, after parting from Helena at the door of her
sleeping-room, he would kiss the hand that had touched her hand, and
find a tingling joy in stepping afresh over the places on which her feet
had trod. A glance from her beaming eyes made his pulse beat rapidly,
and when, one day, he saw her combing out her hair, with her round white
arm bare to the elbow, his breathing came quick and loud.
His passion was like a flower which had sprung up in the parched place
of the desert of his desolate soul, and everything that Helena did
seemed to water it. Reading her conduct by the only light he had, he
thought she loved him. Had she not followed him from India, breaking
from her own people to live by his side? Had she not betrothed herself
to him without a thought of any other than spiritual joys?
Her pride in him, too, was no less than her affection. Had she not
proposed that he should go into Cairo in advance, because that being the
place of the greatest danger was the place of highest honour also? In
her womanly jealousy for her husband's rank, had she not resisted and
resented the substitution of another when it was decided by the Sheikhs
that "Omar" should go instead? And, notwithstanding her illness at
Khartoum, had she not insisted on following him across the desert and,
weak as she was, enduring the pains of his pilgrimage in order to
continue by his side?
Allah bless and cherish her! Was there anything in the world so good as
a sweet, unselfish, devoted woman?
During the journey Ishmael's love for Helena grew hour by hour until it
filled his whole being, and made his wild heart a globe of infinite
radiance and hope. Her beauty, her gifts of mind as well as of body,
took complete possession of him. Whenever he saw her, everything
brightened up. Whenever he turned on his camel, and caught sight of her
dromedary at the tail of the caravan, he became excited. Whenever evil
things befell, he had only to think of the Rani and his troubles died
away. All that was good and beautiful in the world seemed to centre in
the litter that held her by day and in the tent that covered her by
night.
Then, in spite of his mission and the burden of his work, he began to
remember that all this loveliness, all this sweetness, belonged _to
him_. The Rani was _his wife_, and he could not help but think of the
possibility of nearer relations between them.
When this thought first came to him he repelled it as a species of
treachery. Had he not pledged himself to a spiritual union? Would it
not be wrong to break that pledge--wrong to the Rani, wrong to his own
higher nature, wrong to God?
But, nevertheless, the temptation to claim the rights of a husband
became stronger day by day, and he struggled to reconcile his faith with
his affection. He reminded himself that renunciation was no part of
Islam, that it was a Christian error, that "monkery" had been condemned
by the Prophet, that it was contrary to the clear law of nature, and
that as soon as his task was finished it was his duty to live a human
life, with woman and with children.
This seemed to solve the Sphinx-like problem of existence, but when he
tried to talk of it to the Rani, in order to break the ground with her,
his tongue would not utter the words that were in his heart, and
something made him stop in confusion and hasten away.
Yet his self-denial only intensified his desire. Keeping away from
Helena by day, he was with her in his dreams by night. One rapturous,
incredible, almost impossible and even terrible dream of bliss was
always stirring within him. A little longer, only a little longer. The
hour in which he would lay down his task as leader, as prophet, would be
the hour in which he would take up his new life as a man.
That hour was now near. He was outside the gates of Cairo. Nothing
would, nothing could, intervene at this last stage to prevent him from
entering the city, and once within, his work would be at an end. O God,
how good it was to live!
All that day at Sakkara, Ishmael had been in the highest state of
religious exaltation, and when night came he walked about the camp as if
demented both in heart and brain.
The camp stretched from the hanks of the Nile at Bedrasheen over the
black ruins of Memphis to the broad sands before the Step Pyramid, and
everywhere the people sat in groups about their fires, eating, drinking,
playing their pipes, tambourines and drums, and singing, to tunes that
were like wild dance music, their songs of rejoicing.
They were singing about himself, his wise words, his miracles, his
miraculous birth (born of a virgin), his good looks, which made all
women love him, and his divinity, which would save him from death.
Ishmael heard this, yet he had no misgivings, no fear of what the coming
day would bring forth. A sort of spiritual lightning blinded him to
possible danger, and his heart swelled with love for his people. God
bless them! God bless everybody! Bless East and West, white man and
black man, sons of one Father, soon to be united in one hope, one love,
one faith!
Ishmael felt as if he wanted to take the whole world in his arms. Above
all, he wanted to take the Rani in his arms. It was not that the lower
man, the animal man, was conquering the higher man, the spiritual man,
but that both body and soul were aflame, that a sense of fierce joy
filled his whole being at the thought of entering into a new life, and
that he wished to find physical expression for it.
Before he was aware of what he was doing, he was walking in the
direction of Helena's tent. Striding along in the darkness, which was
slashed here and there with shafts of light from the camp fires, he
approached the tent from the back, the mouth being towards the city.
Close behind it, he stumbled upon some one who was crouching there. It
was a boy, and he rose hastily and hurried away without speaking, being
followed immediately by a woman who seemed to have been watching him.
Ishmael's heart was beating so violently by this time that he had only a
confused impression of having seen this, and at the next instant,
treading softly on the silent sand, he was in front of the tent, looking
at Helena, who was within.
She was sitting on her camp-bed, her angerib, writing on a pad that
rested upon her lap, by the light of a lamp which hung from the pole
that upheld the canvas. Though her face was down, Ishmael could see
that it was suffused by a rosy blush, and when at one moment she raised
her head, her bright and shining eyes seemed to him to be wet with
tears, but full, nevertheless, of joy and love.
Ishmael thought he knew what she was doing. She was thinking of him,
and writing, as she loved to do, the immortal story of his pilgrimage,
happy in the near approach of his great triumph.
Standing in the darkness to look at her, he could hardly restrain
himself any longer. He wanted to burst in upon her and to be alone with
her.
Behind and about him were the lights of the camp and its many sounds of
rejoicing, but he did not see or hear them now. His heart was afire.
He was intoxicated with love. What had been for so long his almost
unconquerable dream of bliss was about to be fulfilled.
"Rani!" he whispered, in a quivering voice, and then, plunging into the
tent, he caught her up in his arms.
*CHAPTER II*
Half blind with tears which belied her brave words, Helena had been
writing the letter to Gordon which Mosie was waiting to take away. She
had told him not to think of her, for she was quite able to take care of
herself whatever happened. Then wiping the tears from her eyes, she had
smiled as she told him to forget the nonsense she had written about
Jezebel and her Jewish blood, and to remember that until Ishmael's work
was "finished" and he entered Cairo she ran no risk by remaining in his
camp.
She had got thus far when she thought she heard a step on the sand
outside, but raising her eyes to look and seeing nothing except the red
and white stars from the rockets that rained through the air at
Ghezirah, she resumed her letter, telling herself, as she did so, that
if the worst came to the worst and matters reached an unexpected crisis
with Ishmael, she could defeat him again, as she had done before, by
diplomacy, by finesse, and by woman's wit.
"I suppose you are in the thick of it by this time, for I see that the
illuminations at Ghezirah have already begun. My dear, my dear, my----"
Her last word was not yet written when she heard Ishmael's tremulous
whisper of the name he knew her by, and, starting up as if she had
received an electric shock, she saw the Egyptian coming into her tent
with the glittering eyes of one who was about to accomplish some joyous
task. At the next moment, before she knew what was happening, she found
herself clasped in his arms.
"My life! My heart! My eyes! My own!" he was saying in hot and
impetuous whispers, and, raising her face to his face, he was kissing
her on the lips.
She struggled to liberate herself, but felt like a helpless child in his
strong, irresistible grasp.
"Leave me! Let me go!" she said, with heat and anger, but he did not
seem to hear her or to be conscious of her resistance.
"Oh, how glad I am!" he said. "Our journey is at an end! Our new life
is about to begin! How happy we shall be!"
All the blood in Helena's body rushed to her cheeks, and, putting up her
hands between their faces, she demanded angrily--
"What do you mean by this? What are you doing?"
Yet still he did not hear her, for his passion was overpowering him, its
intoxicating voice was ringing through his whole being, and he continued
to pour into her ears a torrent of endearing words.
"Yes, yes, our new life is about to begin! It is to begin
to-night--now!"
Helena was overwhelmed with fear, but suddenly, by the operation of an
instinct which she did not comprehend, she smiled up into Ishmael's
smiling face--a feeble, frightened, involuntary smile--and, pointing to
the open mouth of the tent, she said, with a sense of mingled cunning
and confusion--
"Be careful! Look!"
Ishmael loosened his hold of her, and, stepping back to the tent's
mouth, he began to close and button it.
While he did so, Helena watched him and asked herself what she ought to
do next. Cry for help? It would be useless. There were none to hear
her except Ishmael's own people, and they worshipped him and looked upon
her as his wife, his property, his slave, his chattel. Escape?
Impossible! More than ever impossible for what (at her own direction)
he was doing now.
"Then what am I to do?" she asked herself, and before she had found an
answer Ishmael, having sealed up the tent, was returning with
outstretched arms, as if with the intention of embracing and kissing her
again.
She read in his great wild eyes the light of a passion which she had
never seen in a man's face before, but she put on a bold front in spite
of the terror which possessed her, thrust out her right hand to keep him
off, looked him full in the face, and cried--
"No, no! You shall not! On no account! No!"
At that he dropped his outstretched arms, but, still smiling his joyous
smile, he continued to approach her, saying, as he did so, in a tone of
affectionate surprise and remonstrance--
"Why, what is this, O my Rani? Have we not joined hands under the
handkerchief? Are you not my wife? Am I not your husband? It is true
that I pledged myself to renunciation. But renunciation is wrong. It
is against religion--against God."
He came nearer. She could feel his hot breath upon her face. It made
her shiver with the race-feeling she had experienced before.
"And then, how can I continue to deny myself?" he said. "I am like one
who has been dying of hunger in the sight of food. You are my joy, my
flower, my treasure. God has given you to me. You are mine."
With that he threw his irresistible arms about her again, and, bringing
his glittering eyes close to her eyes, he whispered--
"My Rani! My wife!"
Helena knew that the hour she had looked forward to with dread had come
at length; she saw that the diplomacy, the finesse, the woman's wit she
had counted upon to save her, were useless to quell the passion which
flashed from Ishmael's eyes and throbbed in his voice, and she made one
last and violent effort to escape from his arms.
"Let me go! Let me go!" she cried.
"Am I doing wrong?" he said. "No, no! I would not harm you for all the
kingdoms of the world. But every wife must submit to her husband."
"No, no, no!" she cried, in tones of repulsion and loathing.
"Yes, yes, yes!" he replied, still more tenderly, still more
passionately. "But if she is a good woman she has her modesty, her
shield of shame. That is only right, only natural. It makes her the
more sweet, the more dear, the more charming----"
Helena felt his arms tightening about her; she knew that he was lifting
her off her feet, and realised that she was beins carried across the
tent.
Then she remembered the assurances she had given to Gordon, the promises
she had made to herself; and hardly conscious of what she did until it
was done, or what she was saying until it was said, she brought her open
hands heavily down upon his face, and cried in a fury of wrath and
scorn--
"Let me go, I tell you! You shall! You must! Can't you see that you
are hateful and odious to me--that you are a black man and I am a white
woman?"
At the next moment she felt Ishmael's arms relax, and she found herself
on her feet. A sense of immense, immeasurable relief came over her. A
sense of triumph, too, for what she had said she would do she had done.
When she recovered herself sufficiently to look at Ishmael again, he was
standing apart from her and his head was down. He could no longer
deceive himself. A whirlwind of chaotic darkness had swept over him.
The storm of his passion was gone.
Helena saw that he was deeply wounded, and, notwithstanding the aversion
he had inspired in her a moment before, she pitied him from the bottom
of her heart.
"I am sorry for what I said just now," she murmured in a low tone. "It
was hateful of me, and I ask your pardon."
She was still panting, and she had to pause for breath, but he did not
reply, and after a moment she began to excuse herself, saying
falteringly--
"But you must see that ... that there could never have been anything
between you and me, because ... because----"
Raising his eyes, he looked not into her face but at the veil that was
fixed to her hair, and she found it difficult to go on.
"Did you not say yourself," she said, "that marriage was not joining
hands under a handkerchief, or repeating words after a Cadi, but a
sacrament of love, mutual love, and that everything else was sin?
Therefore----"
"Well?"
"Therefore if ... if I do not love you----"
"And you do not?"
"No."
"Allah! Allah!" he muttered, in a voice that seemed to come up out of
the depths of his soul, and at the next moment he sank down on to the
angerib which was close behind him.
But hardly had he done so when he leapt to his feet again, and in a
voice that rang with wrath he said--
"Then why did you betroth yourself to me? I put no constraint upon you.
If you had told me that your heart was far from me, I should have gone
no further. But I gave you time to consider, and you came to me of your
own free will. Why was this? Answer me. I have a right to know that,
at all events."
It came into her mind to reply that when they were betrothed he did not
ask her if she loved him, and she did not understand that she was to
belong to him. But what was the use of defending herself? On what
ground could she justify her conduct?
"Or if," he said, and his voice shook with the intensity of his
emotion--"if it was after our betrothal that your heart left me--if
something I said or did lost me your love--why did you follow me from
Khartoum? You might have stayed there. I was willing to leave you
behind me. Why did you follow me over the desert? Why did you come
with my company? Why are you here now?"
She found it impossible to answer him, and feeling how deeply she had
wronged him, yet how impossible, how unthinkable, how inconceivable it
was that she could have acted otherwise than she had, in the light of
her great and undying love for Gordon, she clasped her hands in front of
her face and burst into a flood of tears.
Her tears drove away his anger in a moment, for he mistook the cause of
them, and, deeply and incurably wounded as he was, a wave of sympathy
and compassion passed over him. Drawing her hands from her face and
holding them in his own, he looked steadfastly into her wet eyes, and
said in a softer voice--
"I see how it has been, O my Rani. You followed the teacher, not the
man; the message, not the poor soiled volume it was written in, and
perhaps you were right--quite right."
Every word he uttered went like iron into Helena's soul.
"I thought a woman lived by her heart alone," he said, "and that when
she betrothed herself it must be for love, not from any higher and
nobler motive, but it seems I was wrong--quite wrong. I thought, too,"
he said, "that where love was," and here his voice thickened and almost
broke, "there was neither black nor white, neither race nor caste; but
it seems I was wrong in that also. Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me!"
He lifted her hands in his own long and delicate ones and put them to
his lips, and then gently let them fall.
"But God knows best what is good for us," he said, "and perhaps ...
perhaps He has sent me this as a warning and a punishment, lest ... lest
I forget ... in the love of home and wife and children, the task the
great task He has laid upon me. In-sha-allah! In-sha-allah!"
With that he turned to leave the tent, a shaken and agitated and totally
different man from the man who had entered it; and Helena,
notwithstanding that she was deeply moved, again felt a sense of
immense, immeasurable relief.
But at the next moment a feeling akin to terror seized her, for while
Ishmael was unbuttoning the canvas at the tent's mouth there came, over
the dull rumble of many sounds outside, a clear, sharp voice, crying--
"Ishmael Ameer! Ishmael Ameer! Urgent news! Where are you?"
Helena's heart stood still. She seemed to know in advance what was
coming. The hour of Ishmael's downfall had arrived, and he was to hear
that he had been betrayed. She had escaped from her physical
danger--what, now, of her moral peril?
*CHAPTER III*
A moment later Ishmael had torn the mouth of the tent open. An Egyptian
was standing there in the turban and farageeyah of an Alim. The man,
who was solemnly making his salaams, held a lantern in one hand and a
letter in the other. Behind him, against the dark sky, were a number of
Ishmael's own people. Their mouths were open, and fear was on their
faces.
"What words are these, oh my brother?" asked Ishmael.
Without speaking, the Alim offered him the letter. It was that of the
Chancellor of El Azhar, written immediately after the arrest of Gordon.
Ishmael took it, and standing under the lamp that hung from the pole of
the tent he read it. For some moments he did not move or raise his
eyes, but little by little his face assumed a death-like rigidity, and
at length the paper crinkled in his trembling fingers.
So strong had been his faith in his mission, and so firm his conviction
that God would not allow anything to interfere with its fulfilment, that
it was almost impossible for him to take in the truth--that his cause
was lost, that his pilgrimage was wasted, that his people could not
enter Cairo, and their hope was at an end.
When at length he raised his eyes he looked with an expression of blank
bewilderment into Helena's face.
"See," he said, in a tone of piteous helplessness, and he put the letter
into her reluctant hand.
The blood rushed to Helena's head, stars danced before her eyes, and it
was with difficulty that she could see to read. But there was little
need to do so, for already she knew, as by a sense of doom, what the
letter contained.
In a moment the people behind the Alim grew more and more numerous. The
mouth of the tent became choked with them, and their faces were blotched
with lights and shadows from the lamp within. They were talking eagerly
among themselves, in low tones, full of dread. At length one of them
spoke to Ishmael.
"Is it bad news, O Master?" he asked, but with the expressionless voice
of one who knew already what the answer would be.
There was a moment of strained silence, and then Ishmael turned again to
Helena, and said in the same tone of piteous helplessness as before--
"Read it to them. Let them know the worst, O Rani."
Helena could find no escape. With a fearful effort she began to read
the letter aloud. But hardly had she finished the first clause of
it--telling Ishmael that his messenger and missionary had been betrayed
into the hands of the Government by means of a message sent into Cairo
from some one who stood near to him in his own camp--than a deep groan
came from the people at the mouth of the tent.
Black Zogal was there with his wild eyes, and by his side stood old
Zewar Pasha with his suspicious looks.
"Who is the traitor, O Master?" asked the old man in his rasping voice,
and it seemed to Helena that while he spoke every eye, except Ishmael's,
was fixed upon her face.
Then a fearful thing befell. Ishmael, the man of peace, whom none had
ever seen in any mood but one of tenderness and love, broke into a
torrent of fierce passion.
"Allah curse him whoever he is!" he cried. "Curse him in his lying
down, and in his getting up! Curse him in the morning splendour, and in
the still of night! Curse him in the life that now is, and in the life
that is to come!"
Helena felt as if the tent itself as well as the black and
copper-coloured faces at the mouth of it were reeling around her. But
it was not alone the terror of Ishmael's curse, with its unrevealed
reference to herself, that created her confusion. She was thinking of
Gordon. What did his arrest imply? Did it mean that he had succeeded
in the perilous task he had undertaken? Or did it mean that he had
failed?
When she recovered consciousness of what was going on about her she
heard, above a wild tumult of voices outside, the voice of a woman and
the voice of a boy. She knew that the woman was Zenoba and the boy was
Mosie. At the next moment both were coming headlong into the tent, the
one dragging the other through a way that had been made for them. The
boy's shaven black head was bare, his caftan was torn open at the
breast, and his skin was bleeding at the neck as if vindictive fingers
had been clutching him by the throat. The woman's swarthy face was
bathed in sweat, twitching with excitement and convulsed with evil
passions.
"There!" she cried. "There he is, O Master, and if you want to know who
took the letter to the English lord, ask him."
"Who is he?" asked Ishmael.
"Your Rani's servant," replied the Arab woman, with a curl of her cruel
lip. "He left Khartoum for Cairo a month ago and has not been seen
until to-day."
Another deep groan came from the people at the tent's mouth, and again
it seemed to Helena that every eye, except Ishmael's, was looking into
her face.
Meantime Mosie, thinking the groan of the people was meant for him, and
that his life was in danger from their anger, had broken away from the
woman's grasp and flung himself at Ishmael's feet, crying--
"Mercy, O Master! I kiss your feet. I take refuge with God and with
you. Save me, and I will tell you every thing."
Ishmael, who by this time had regained his self-command, motioned to the
Arab woman to stand back. Then he questioned the boy calmly, and the
boy answered him in a fever of fear, gasping and sobbing at every word.
"My boy, you have come out of Cairo?"
"Yes, O Master, yes."
"You went there from Khartoum?"
"Yes, yes, O Master, yes."
"You took a letter to the English lord?"
"Yes, Master, a letter to the English lord."
"From some one in Khartoum?"
"Yes, I will tell my Master everything--from some one in Khartoum."
"What treacherous man sent you with that letter?"
"No man at all, O Master. You see, I am telling my Master everything."
"Was it a woman?"
"Yes, Master, a woman. See, I kiss your feet. I keep nothing back from
my Master."
Another groan came from the people at the tent's mouth, and the black
boy clutched at Ishmael's white caftan as if to protect himself from
their wrath. Ishmael himself had a confused sense of something terrible
that had not yet taken shape in his mind. He looked round at Helena who
was standing by the angerib at the back, but her head was down and her
thoughts were far away.
"What woman, then?" he asked in a sterner voice.
"No, no, I cannot tell you that," said the boy.
"Speak, boy. You shall be safe. I will protect you from all harm.
What woman was it?"
"Master, do not ask me. I dare not tell you."
"Listen," said Ishmael, and his voice grew hard and hoarse. "There is a
traitor in my camp, and I must find out who it is. What treacherous
woman sent you into Cairo with that letter?"
The boy struggled hard. His ugly black face under his shaven poll was
distorted by fear. He hesitated, began to speak, then stopped
altogether.
At that moment Helena came forward as if she had suddenly awakened from
a dream, and Mosie saw her for the first time since he had been dragged
into the tent. In another instant all fear had gone from his face and
his eyes were blazing with courage.
"Tell me, I command you," said Ishmael.
"No, no, I will _never_ tell you," said the boy.
Again a groan--this time a growl--came from the people at the tent's
mouth.
"Torment would make his tongue wag," said one.
"Beat the innocent until the guilty confess--it is a good maxim, O
Master," said Zewar in his rasping tones.
Black Zogal, with his wild eyes, stepped out as if to lay hold of the
lad, but Ishmael waved him back.
"Wait!" he said.
He was looking at Helena again, and his face had undergone a fearful
change.
"My boy," he said, still keeping his eyes on Helena, "if you do not tell
me I must give you back to the people."
At that the boy broke into a paroxysm of hysterical sobs.
"No, no, my Master will not do that. But see," he said, tearing wider
his torn caftan so as to expose his breast, "my Master himself shall
kill me."
At the next moment Helena's hand was on Ishmael's arm.
"Let the boy go," she said. "I can tell the rest."
A gloomy chill traversed Ishmael's heart. He had a sense of spiritual
paralysis--as if everything in the world were crumbling and crashing
down to impotent wreck and ruin.
His people at the tent's mouth were muttering among themselves. He
dismissed them, sending everybody away including the boy and the Arab
woman. Most of them went off grudgingly, ungraciously, for the first
time reluctant to obey his will.
Then he closed up the mouth of the tent, and was once more alone with
Helena.
*CHAPTER IV*
In spite of the dread with which, for more than a month, Helena had
looked forward to the hour in which Ishmael should hear of his betrayal,
she felt none of the terror from that cause which she had feared and
expected.
She could think of nothing but Gordon. Where was he now? What were
they doing to him? It seemed to be the only possible explanation of his
arrest that his scheme for the salvation of the people had failed.
Would he be handed over to the military authorities? Would he be tried
by court-martial? And what would be the punishment of his offences as a
soldier? Sinking down on the angerib she pressed her hands over her
brow and over her eyes that she might think of this and shut out
everything else.
Meantime the mind of Ishmael was going through a conflict as strange and
no less cruel. Although the plain evidences of his senses had already
told him that he had been betrayed by the woman he loved, yet the dread
of discovering the traitor in his own tent, in his own wife, filled him
with terror, and he tried to escape from it.
Having fastened up the tent, he walked to and fro for some moments
without speaking, and then sitting down by Helena's side and taking her
hand and smoothing it, he said, in his throbbing, quivering voice--
"Rani, we have eaten bread and salt together. Be faithful with me--what
woman sent that letter?"
Helena hardly heard what he was saying. She was still thinking of
Gordon. "They will condemn him to death," she told herself.
"Rani," said Ishmael again, "we have lived under the same roof; you have
shared with me the closest secrets of my soul. Tell me--what woman sent
that letter?"
Helena looked at him and tried to listen, but Gordon's doom was ringing
in her ears, and it drowned all the other sounds of life.
"Rani," said Ishmael once more, "though you denied me the rights of a
husband, yet you are my wife. Our lives have been united not by man but
by God, and in the presence of Him, whose name be exalted--of Him who
reads all hearts--I ask you--what woman sent that letter?"
Helena heard him, yet terrible as his question was, and perilous as she
knew her answer must be, she felt no fear. "If I tell him," she
thought. "Why not? It does not matter now."
"Rani," said Ishmael yet again, "God gives me the right to command you.
I _do_ command you. What woman sent that letter?"
"_I_ did," said Helena, and though the words were spoken in a faltering
whisper they seemed to Ishmael like a deafening roar.
"Allah! Allah!" he cried, leaping to his feet, for though he had
expected that reply he reeled under it as under a blow.
Helena realised what her answer meant to him, and again, from the bottom
of her heart, she pitied him, but at the next moment her thoughts swung
back to her own trouble.
She remembered that her father had admitted that the British army in
Egypt was always on active service, and she asked herself what would
happen to Gordon if the military authorities lost their heads in fear of
insurrection. Would they try him by Field General Court-Martial? In
that case would the Court be called instantly? Would the inquiry last
only a few minutes? Would the sentence be carried into immediate
effect?
"O God, can it be possible that it is all over already?" she asked
herself.
Meantime Ishmael, after moments of suffering which seemed hours of
eternity, was again struggling to resist the only conclusion the facts
had left to him. It was true that the Rani had confessed to sending the
letter which had led to the arrest of his messenger, but all his heart
rebelled against the inference that she had intended to betray his cause
and his people. Had she not cast in her own lot with them? Had she not
come from a distant country and a richer home to live in their poor
house in Khartoum? And had she not endured the hardship of the desert
journey in their company?
Like a man who has been shipwrecked in a whirlwind of darkness, he was
groping blindly through tempestuous waves for some means of rescue. At
length a sort of raft of hope came to him, a helpless, impotent thing,
but he clung to it, and sitting down by Helena's side again, he said, in
the same piteous voice as before--
"I see how it has been, O my Rani. You did not intend to betray my
people--my poor people whose sufferings you have seen, whose faith and
hopes and dreams you have shared and witnessed. It was Omar you were
thinking of. Your heart has never forgiven him for taking the place you
meant for your husband. You were jealous of him for my sake, and your
jealousy got the better of your judgment. 'I will punish him,' you
thought. 'I will make his mission of no effect.' And so you sent that
letter. But you did not reflect that in destroying Omar you would be
destroying my people also. It was wrong, it was cruel, but it was a
woman's fault, and you have seen it and suffered for it ever since.
Jealousy of Omar, perhaps hatred of Omar--that was it, was it not, O my
Rani?"
His voice was breaking as he spoke, for the pitiful explanation he had
lighted upon was failing to bring conviction to his own mind, yet he
fixed his sad eyes eagerly on Helena's face and repeated--
"Jealousy of Omar, perhaps hatred of Omar--that was what caused you to
send that letter?"
Helena could not speak. The pathos of his error was choking her. But
she replied to him with a look which it required no words to interpret.
"No?" he said. "Not of Omar? Of whom, then?"
Helena could not lie. "He must know some day," she thought.
"Of whom, then?" he repeated, in his helpless confusion.
"Yourself," she replied.
"Allah! Allah! Myself! Myself!" he said, in a breathless whisper,
rising to his feet again and striding across the tent.
At the first moment after Helena's confession it seemed to Ishmael that
both sun and moon had suffered eclipse and the world was in total
darkness. Why had the Rani betrayed him? From what motive? For what
object? He tried to follow her thoughts, and found it impossible to do
so.
There was a short period of frightful silence, and then, feeling as if
he wanted to cry, he drew up before Helena again, and said in a husky
voice, his swarthy face trembling and twitching--
"But why, O Rani? I had done you no wrong. From the day you came to me
I did all I could for you--all I could to make your nights peaceful and
your mornings happy. Why has your heart been so far away from me?"
Helena felt that the time had come to tell him everything. Yet in order
to do so she must begin with the death of her father, and she could not
speak of that without involving Gordon. "But that is impossible," she
thought, "absolutely impossible."
"Speak," said Ishmael. "When you sent your letter to the English lord,
you must have known that you were dooming me to death--what had I done
to deserve it?"
"I cannot tell you--I cannot, I cannot," she answered.
"It is unnecessary," said Ishmael.
In the moment of Helena's silence a terrible explanation of her conduct
had come to him, and he thought he saw, as by flashes of lightning, into
the dark abyss that was at his feet.
His manner, which had been gentle down to that moment, suddenly became
harsh, and his voice, which had been soft, became hard.
"When did you send that letter?" he demanded.
She saw the stern closing of his lips, and for an instant she felt
afraid.
"Was it before the meeting of the Sheikhs at which Omar was chosen?"
"Yes," she replied. If Gordon was to be condemned to death, it was of
no consequence what became of her.
"You told the English lord that Ishmael was coming to Cairo?"
"Yes." His deep, impenetrable eyes seemed to be looking through and
through her.
"With what object and in--in what disguise?"
"Yes." She knew she was dashing herself to destruction, but no matter.
"When you sent your letter you said to yourself, 'Ishmael will go into
Cairo, but my letter shall go before him.' Yes?"
"Yes." In the lowest depths of her soul she felt that if he killed her
now she did not care.
"And when Omar stepped into the place you had meant for me you thought,
'The letter I wrote to destroy Ishmael will destroy Omar instead'?"
"Yes."
"Was that why you tried to prevent Omar from going?"
"Yes." Tears were choking her utterance.
"Why you were unwilling to make the kufiah?"
"Yes."
"Why you fainted in the mosque?"
She bowed her head, being unable to utter another word.
"Then," said Ishmael, and his voice rose to a husky cry--"then it was
love of Omar, not hatred of him, that inspired your letter?"
She made no reply. Filled as she was with shame for what she had done
to Ishmael, the image of Gordon was still in her mind. Even at that
moment, when terrible consequences threatened her, she could not help
thinking of him. If he were tried by Field General Court-Martial
to-night he might be executed in the morning!
That thought carried her back to the Citadel. She was on the
drilling-ground in the dead grey light of dawn. A regiment of soldiers
was drawn up in line. Six of them stood out from the rest with rifles to
their shoulders. And before them, standing alone, with his back to the
ramparts, was one condemned but dauntless man. "My last thoughts are
about you," he was saying to her, and living in that cruel dream she
burst into tears.
Again Ishmael misunderstood her weeping, and again a wave of compassion
passed over him.
"It is possible I am wrong," he said. "I may be judging you unjustly.
In that case tell me so, and I will kiss your feet. I will ask your
pardon."
Sho could not speak. "This will end in some way," she thought.
"In the name of Heaven, speak! Tell me you do not love this man. Tell
me I am wrong," he cried.
"No, you are not wrong," she said. "I do love him, and I am in despair.
All you have said is true, but I cannot help it. I am a wicked woman,
and my life by your side has been a deception from the first."
With that she burst into another flood of tears, and falling face
downward on the angerib, she buried her head in the pillow.
"Allah! Allah!" said Ishmael, and all the blood in his body seemed to
flush his heart. He was passing through the supreme phase of his
agony--perhaps the cruellest that man can suffer--the agony of knowing
that the woman he loved, the woman he worshipped, loved and worshipped
another man.
In the cloud of maddening thoughts which sprang to his brain he imagined
he read the mystery of Helena's conduct from the first. Remembering
that she had called him a black man, the wild deep heart in him rose to
a fever of jealous wrath.
"I see how it has been," he said. "The white man came to my tent. I
welcomed him. I loved him. I trusted him. He was my brother, and he
slept by my side. I made him free of my harem. I put my honour in his
hands. And how did he repay me? By robbing me of the love that was my
love, the heart that was my heart."
She tried to speak, to protest, but in a torrent of wrath he bore her
down.
"Your white man has over-reached himself, though. 'I will outdo Ishmael
in her eyes,' he thought. But he has only fallen into the pit that was
dug for me. Let him perish there, and the curse of God be upon him!"
Again she tried to protest, and again in the blind hurricane of his
anger he silenced her.
"And you--it was nothing to you that in betraying me you were betraying
my people also--my poor people, who have suffered so much and followed
me so faithfully."
His face was terrible--it had the sullen glow of the Western sky before
a storm.
"You have wrecked my hopes in the hour of their fulfilment. You have
made dust and ashes of the expectations of my people. You have
uncovered my nakedness, and made me a thing to point the finger at and
to scorn. You have turned my heart to stone."
Then the wild anguish of the jealous man became united to the fierce
wrath of the fanatic, and going nearer to Helena, and leaning over her,
he said--
"Worse than that--a hundredfold worse--you have made the plans and
promises of God of no avail. You have allowed the Evil One to enter
into your heart, and to use your guilty passions to defeat the schemes
of the Most High. Therefore," he said, raising his quivering voice
until it rang through the tent like a tortured cry--"therefore, as the
instrument of Satan you have no right to live. I say you have no right
even to live. And I ... I, who have loved you ... I, whose heart has
been wrapped about you like the rope about the wheel of the well ... I,
whom you have betrayed and destroyed, and ... and my people with me ...
it is I ... yes, it is I who must ... who must----"
Helena heard him stammering and sobbing over her. At the same time she
felt that his trembling, ferocious hands were laying hold of her. She
felt that the long Eastern veil that had hung down her back was being
wrapped around her throat. She felt that its folds were growing tighter
and yet tighter, and that she was being strangled and was losing
consciousness.
Then suddenly she became aware that Ishmael's formidable grasp had
slackened, that he had stepped back from the angerib on which she lay,
and was saying to himself in a tremulous whisper--
"Allah! Allah! what is this I am doing? Allah! Allah! Allah!"
And at the next moment she realised that in horror of his own impulse he
had turned and fled out of the tent.
*CHAPTER V*
Being left alone, Helena's emotions were so strange, so bewildering, so
overpowering that she could not immediately make out clearly what she
felt. The most contradictory thoughts and feelings crowded upon her.
First came a sense of suffocating shame, due to Ishmael's hideous
misconception of her relation to Gordon, which put her into the position
of an unfaithful wife. But would the truth have been any better--that
she was not an Indian Rani, not a Muslemah, that she and Gordon had
known and loved each other before Ishmael came into their lives, and
that a desire to punish him for coming between them had been the impulse
that had taken her to Khartoum?
Next came a sense of her utter degradation during the recent scene, in
which her lips had been sealed and she had been compelled to submit to
Ishmael's just and natural wrath.
Then came a sense of abject humiliation with the thought that Ishmael
had been right from the beginning and she had been wrong, and therefore
she had merited all that had come to her. "If he had killed me I could
have forgiven him," she told herself.
Finally (perhaps from, some deep place in her Jewish blood) came the
feeling that after all it was not so much Ishmael who had been shaming
her for her treachery as the Almighty who had been punishing her for
attempting to take His vengeance out of His hand. "Vengeance is Mine,"
saith the Lord, and her impious act had deserved the penalty that had
overtaken it.
But against all this, opposing it, fighting it, conquering it,
triumphing over it, was the memory of her love for Gordon. "I loved
him, and I could not have acted otherwise," she thought.
More plainly than ever, she now saw that her love for Gordon had been
the first cause and origin of all she had done. This single-hearted
devotion left her nothing else to think about. It wiped out Ishmael and
his troubles,and all the troubles of his people. "I may be selfish and
cruel, but I cannot help it," she told herself again and again, as she
continued to lie, where Ishmael had left her, face down on the angerib,
shaken with sobs.
After a while she heard a step approaching. The Arab woman had entered
the tent.
"So you are there, oh my beauty," said Zenoba, with a bitter ring in her
voice.
Without raising her head to look, Helena knew that the usual obsequious
smiles had gone from the woman's face, and that her eyes were full of
undisguised contempt. In another moment all the impulses of hatred
which had scoured through her jealous soul for months fell on Helena in
bitter reproaches.
"I knew it would come to this. I always told him so, but he would not
listen. 'Ask pardon of God, Zenoba,' he said. Now he will have to ask
pardon of me."
Helena could hardly control herself, but with an effort she submitted in
silence, and let the woman have her way.
"Anybody might have seen what was going on from the moment the white
Christian came to Khartoum. But no, it was no use talking. When a man
looks at a woman he sees her eyes, not her heart, and is blind to those
that love and serve him."
Helena's own heart was beating violently and paintully, but she
compelled herself to lie still. "It's no more than I deserve," she
thought.
And then the Arab woman lashed her to the bone with reports of what the
people in the camp were saying. All that had happened might have been
foreseen. He who had tried to emancipate women had been the first to
suffer for it. Good women did not wish to be emancipated, and the bad
women who let their veils fall, and meddled with the affairs of men,
only wanted to imitate the evil ways of the women of the West. "Our
mothers did not do it, and neither shall our wives," said some, while
others declared that it was better to have a thousand enemies outside
your house than one within.
The camp was utterly disorganised, utterly demoralised. Instead of the
singing and rejoicing of an hour ago there was now wailing and
lamentation; instead of prayer and praise there was cursing and
swearing. Some of the people, in a state of panic, were saying that the
soldiers of the Christian government would soon be upon them; that they
would be shot dead with bullets; that they would be carried into Cairo
as prisoners and crucified in the public streets; that the Christians
would eat their flesh and suck their blood; that those who were not
slain would be walking skeletons and talking images, and made to worship
the wooden cross instead of their own God, their Allah. As a consequence
many were packing their baggage hurriedly and turning the heads of their
camels to the south. Boats were being unmoored at Bedrasheen, and
boat-loads were preparing to push off.
Desolation was over the whole camp. The hopes of the people were in the
dust. Some of the women were kneeling on the ground and throwing the
sand over their heads and faces. Some of the men were heaping insults
on Ishmael's name--their former love and reverence being already gone.
"Where are the promises he made us?" they were asking. "Is it for this
that he brought us from our homes?"
Others were calling and searching for the Master. His tent was empty.
He was nowhere to be seen. Had he deserted them in their hour of
trouble?
"Where is he?" they were crying. "What has become of him?" No one
knew. Even Black Zogal could not say. And then some were crying,
"Ela'an abu, abu, abu!" (Cursed be his father, and his father's father,
and his father's father's father!)
But worse, far worse, because more fierce and terrible than the people's
anger against Ishmael, was their wrath against the "White Woman." It was
she who had betrayed them. But for her evil influence and secret
schemes, they might have inherited Egypt and all the rich lands and
treasures of the Valley of the Nile. Listen! They were gathering about
the tent, and murmuring and shouting excitedly. Hark! That was Zogal's
voice--he was persuading them to go away.
"But they'll come back, oh my beauty," said Zenoba. "Better get away
before they return and tear you to pieces as a hungry jackal tears a
dog."
With that merciless word the bitter-hearted woman took herself off,
leaving Helena still lying face down on the angerib in her agony of
mingled anger and shame.
Being once more left alone in the tent, Helena continued to know what
was going on in the camp. The wailing of the women, who were throwing
sand over their heads, seemed as if it would never cease. At length
some of them began to sing. They sang songs of sorrow which contrasted
strangely with the songs of victory which the men had sung before. The
weird and monotonous but moving notes that are peculiar to Arab music
sounded like dirges in the depth of night.
The people were in despair. Their consoling and inspiring idea of
divine guidance was gone, and the hope that had sustained their souls
through the toils of the desert march was dead. The myth of Ishmael's
divinity had already disappeared; the Master was no longer the Redeemer,
the Mahdi, the Christ. All that had been a hideous illusion, a mirage
of the soul, without reason or reality.
It was terrible; it was horrible; it was almost as if the whole people
had died an hour ago in "the sure and certain hope," and then suddenly
awakened in the other world to find that there was no God, no heaven, no
reward for the pains of this life, and all they had looked for and
expected had been the shadow of a dream.
Listening to this as she lay on the angerib, and thinking she was partly
to blame for it, Helena asked herself if there was anything she could do
to save Ishmael and his people.
"O God, is there _nothing_ I can do?" she thought.
At first there came no answer to this question. Do what she would to
fix her mind on the people's sufferings and Ishmael's downfall, her mind
swung back to its old subject, and once again she thought of Gordon and
his arrest.
Things in that regard were plainer to her now. The idea of a Field
General Court-Martial, which had made her chill with fear, had been the
figment of an over-excited brain. Whatever had happened to Gordon's
efforts in the interests of peace--whether they had failed or
succeeded--his own trial would take the ordinary course. A military
court of the usual kind would have to be summoned, its sentence would
have to be confirmed, and only the King could confirm it.
All this would take time, and therefore there was no need for panic.
But meantime what was Gordon's position? He had been arrested in
mistake for Ishmael, and consequently he would, one way or another, be
liable to punishment for Ishmael's offence. That was to say, for the
offence she had attributed to Ishmael. Yet Gordon had done no wrong, he
had intended no evil.
"Is there nothing I can do?--nothing at ail?" she asked herself again.
Suddenly a light dawned on her. If the Consul-General could be made to
see what Gordon's motives had really been--to save England, to save
Egypt, to save the good name of his own father--and if he could be made
to realise that Ishmael's aim was not rebellion, and his followers not
an armed force, but merely a vast concourse of religious
visionaries--what then?
Then as a just man, if a stern and hard one, he would be compelled to
see that his own son was not punished, and perhaps--who could say?--he
might even permit Ishmael's people to enter Cairo.
Vague, undefined, and unconsidered as this idea was, Helena leapt at it
as a solution of all their difficulties, and when she asked herself how
she was to bring conviction to the Consul-General's mind, she remembered
Gordon's letters.
Nothing could be better. Being written before the event, and intended
for her eyes only, they must be convincing to anybody whatever, and
absolutely irresistible to a father. Private? No matter! Intimate and
affectionate and full of the closest secrets of the soul? Never mind!
Sho would share them with one who was flesh of Gordon's flesh, for his
heart must be with her, and the issue was life or death.
Yes, she would go into Cairo, see the Consul-General, show him Gordon's
letters, and prove and explain everything. Thus she who had been the
first cause of the people's sufferings, of Ishmael's downfall, and of
Gordon's arrest, would be Gordon's, Ishmael's, and the people's
deliverer! Yes, she, she, she!
But wait! Had she not promised Gordon that she would remain in the
camp, whatever happened? She had; but that promise was annulled by this
time, while this great errand must be precisely what she had been sent
there for, and by flying away now she would be fulfilling her destiny in
a wider and deeper sense than even Gordon himself could have conceived.
"I'll go at once," she thought, and she sprang up from the angerib to
carry out her purpose.
As she did so she saw a little ugly black face, all blubbered over with
tears, on the ground beside her. It was Mosie, and he was kissing the
hem of her skirt and saying--
"Mosie very sorry. He not know. Will lady ever forgive Mosie?"
Helena's heart leapt up at sight of the boy. She wanted his help
immediately, and his unexpected appearance at that moment was like an
assurance from heaven that what she intended to do ought to be done.
Comforting the lad and drying his eyes, she asked him in breathless
whispers a number of questions. Where was the donkey on which he had
ridden into the camp? it was near by, tethered. Did he know the way to
the railway-station at Bedrasheen? He did. Could he lead her there
through the darkness? He could. It was now half-past nine--would there
be a train to Cairo soon? Yes, for the Alim had just gone to catch one
that was to go to Boukq Daorour at ten o'clock.
"The very thing," said Helena. "Bring your donkey to the back of the
tent and wait there until I come."
"Yes, yes," said the boy, now ablaze with eagerness, and kissing both
her hands alternately, he shot out on his errand.
Then Helena picked up a little locked handbag which contained Gordon's
precious letters, added her own letter to them, and after extinguishing
the lamp that hung from the pole, stepped out of the tent.
A few minutes later, mounted on a donkey that was led by a boy, a woman,
looking like an Egyptian with her black skirt drawn over the back of her
head and closely clipped under her nose, was picking her way through the
darkness.
All was quiet by this time. The weeping and wailing had at last come to
an end, and from the vast encampment there rose nothing but the deep,
somnambulent moan that ascends from a great city when it is falling
asleep. The fires were smouldering out, and the people, such of them as
remained, were lying, some in their tents, others outstretched on the
sand, all weary and heart-broken in the misery of their dead hope, their
dead dream, their dead faith.
A kind of soulless silence hung in the air. Even the call of the
Night-watchman ("God is One!") was no more to be heard. Only the
braying of donkeys at intervals, the ruckling of camels, and the barking
of dogs.
There was no moon, but the stars were thick, and one of them was
falling.
*CHAPTER VI*
Taking his steam-launch, which had been moored to the boat-landing of
the Ghezirah Palace, the Consul-General returned home immediately after
Gordon's arrest. He did not wait to say what was to be done with the
prisoner, or to tell his officials what further steps, if any, were to
be taken to prevent the expected insurrection. One overwhelming event
had wiped everything else out of his mind. His plans had been
frustrated; he had been degraded, made a laughing-stock, and by
Gordon--his own son.
As his launch skimmed across the river in the darkness he could hear in
the back-wash of the propeller the guffaws of the diplomatic corps, and
in the throbbing of the engine the choking laughter of the whole world.
His mind was going like a weaver's shuttle, and he was asking himself by
what sinister development of fate this devilish surprise had been
brought about. He could find no answer. In the baffling mystery of
events only one thing seemed clear--that Gordon, when he disappeared
from Cairo after the affair of El Azhar, had not gone to America or
India or Australia, as everybody had supposed, but straight to the man
Ishmael's camp, and that he had allowed himself to be used by that
charlatan mummer to further his intrigues. Against his own father, too!
His father, who had been thinking of him every day, every night, and
nearly all night, and was now, by his instrumentality, made an object of
derision and contempt.
"Fool! Fool! Fool!" thought the Consul-General, and his anger against
Gordon burnt in his heart like a fierce and consuming fire.
On reaching the Agency he went upstairs to his room and rang violently
for Fatimah. Somebody within his own household had become aware of his
plans and revealed them to his enemies. He had little doubt of the
identity of the traitor, for he remembered Fatimah's unexpected
appearance in the dining-room the night before, and her confusion and
lame excuse when the Sirdar observed her presence.
Fatimah answered her bell cheerfully as one who had nothing to fear, but
the moment she saw the Consul-General's face, with the deep folds in his
forehead and the hard and implacable lines about his mouth, she dropped
on her knees before he had uttered a word.
"What is this you have been doing, woman?" he demanded, in a stern
voice, whereupon Fatimah made no attempt at disguise.
"I couldn't help it, O Master," she said, breaking into tears. "I would
have given him my eyes. He was the same as my own son, and I had
suckled him at my breast. Can a woman deny anything to her own?"
The Consul-General looked down at her for a moment in silence, and his
drooping lower lip trembled. Then, with a gesture of impatience, he
said--
"Get away to your room at once," and opening the door for her he closed
and locked it when she was gone.
But the momentary spasm of tenderness towards Gordon which had come to
the Consul-General at sight of the foster-mother's love disappeared at
the next instant. The only excuse he could find for his son's conduct
in duping his ignorant Egyptian nurse was that perhaps he had himself
been duped.
After the first plans had been formed in Khartoum and Helena's letter
had been dispatched, the "fanatic-hypocrite" had probably discovered
that his intrigue had become known in Cairo. Then he had put Gordon
into the gap, and Gordon had been so simple, so innocent, so stupid as
to be deceived! There was small comfort in this reading of the riddle,
and the Consul-General's fury and shame increased tenfold.
"Fool! Fool! Fool," he thought, and taking from the mantelpiece the
portrait of the boy in the Arab fez, he looked at it for a moment and
then flung it back impatiently. It fell to the floor.
Some minutes passed in which the infuriated man was unconscious of his
surroundings, for great anger wipes out time and place, and then he
became aware that there was a knock at the door of his room.
"Who's there?" he cried.
It was Ibrahim. He had come to tell his Excellency that two reporters
from Reuter's Agency were below by appointment and wished to hear what
his Excellency had to give them.
"Nothing. Send them away," said the Consul-General.
A moment afterwards there was another knock at the door.
"Who's there now?" cried the Consul-General.
It was his First Secretary. The Adviser to the Ministry of Justice had
come to say that the Special Tribunal had been summoned and the Judges
were waiting for further instructions.
"Tell them there will be no sitting to-night," said the Consul-General.
A little later there was yet another knock at the door. It was the
Secretary again. The Adviser to the Ministry of the Interior had called
him up on the telephone to say that, according to instructions, the
gallows had been set up in the Square in front of the Governorat, and
now he wished to know----
"Tell the men to take it down again at once, and don't come up again,"
said the Consul-General in a voice that was hoarse with wrath and thick
with shame.
These interruptions had been like visitations of the spirits of the dead
to a tormented murderer, and it was some time before the Consul-General
could bring his mind back to the mystery before him. When he was able
to do so he asked himself how it had come to pass that if Gordon had
been in Khartoum, and if he had been duped into taking Ishmael's place,
Helena had not informed him of the change? Where had she been? Where
was she now? What had become of her? Could it be possible that she,
too, by her love for Gordon, had been won over to the side of his
enemies?
Thinking of that as a possible explanation of the devilish tangle of
circumstance by which he was surrounded, the Consul-General's wrath
against Gordon rose to a frenzy of madness. Fierce and wild
imprecations broke from his mouth, such as had never passed his lips
before, and then, suddenly remembering that they were directed against
his own flesh and blood, his own son, he cried, in the midst of his fury
and passion--
"No, no! God forgive me! Not that!"
Ibrahim knocked at the door again. The Grand Cadi had come, and begged
the inestimable privilege of approaching his Excellency's honourable
person.
"Say I can't see him," said the Consul-General, and then sitting down on
a sofa in an alcove of the room he tried his best to compose himself.
In the silence of the next few minutes he was conscious of the ticking
of the telegraph tape that was unrolling itself by his side, and to
relieve his mind of the burden that oppressed it, he stretched out his
hand for the long white slip.
It reported a debate on the Address to the Crown at the opening of a new
session of Parliament. Somebody, a rabid, irresponsible Radical, had
proposed as an Amendment that the time had come to associate the people
of Egypt with the government of the country and the Foreign Minister was
making his reply.
"This much I am willing to admit," said the Minister, "that there are
two cardinal errors in the governing of alien races--to rule them as if
they were Englishmen, and to repress their aspirations by blowing them
out of the mouth of a gun."
The Consul-General rose to his feet in a new flood of anger. But for
Gordon he would have silenced all such babbling. To-morrow morning was
to have seen Downing Street in confusion, and in the conflagration that
was to have blazed heaven-high on the report of the Egyptian conspiracy
and how he had crushed it, he was to have found himself the saviour of
civilisation.
But now--what now? Duped by his own son, who had taken sides against
him, he was about to become the laughing-stock of all Europe.
"Fool! Fool! Fool!" he cried, and in the cruel riot of anger and love
that was going on within him he felt for the first time in his life as
if he wanted to burst into tears.
Another knock came to the door. It was Ibrahim again, to say that the
Grand Cadi, who sent his humble salaams, had said he would wait, and now
the Sirdar had come and he wished to see his Excellency immediately.
"Tell the Sirdar I can see no one to-night," said the Consul-General.
"But his Excellency says his business is urgent and he must come
upstairs if your Excellency will not come down."