"That is exactly what his Excellency _does_ intend to do."
"But what is to become of _me_?" asked the Cadi. "This is exactly the
errand I came upon. Already the people are threatening me, and I came
to ask for protection. I am suspected of giving information to his
Excellency. Will his Excellency desert me ... leave me to the mercy of
this man Ishmael, this corrupter and destroyer of the faith?"
Then the Consul-General, who had sat with head down, the picture of
despair, rose to his full height and faced the Grand Cadi.
"Listen," he said, with a flash of his old fire. "I give your Eminence
twenty-four hours to leave Egypt. If the _people_ do not dispose of you
after that time, as sure as there is a British Minister in
Constantinople, _I will_."
Tho look of alarm on the Cadi's cunning face was smitten into an
expression of terror. Not a word more did he say. One glance he gave
at the letters in the Sirdar's hands, and then rising, with a low bow,
and touching his breast and forehead, he turned to leave the room.
Meantime the Sirdar had rung the bell for Ibrahim, and then stepping to
the door, he had opened it. The ample folds of the Cadi's sleeves
swelled as he walked, and he passed out like a human bat.
Being alone with the Sirdar, the Consul-General's mind went back to
Helena.
"Poor child!" he said. "I hadn't the heart to tell her what I had done.
Go to her, Reg. She's in the drawing-room. Give her back her letters,
and tell her what has happened. Then take her to the Princess Nazimah.
Poor girl! Poor Gordon!"
The Sirdar made some effort to comfort him, but it was hard to say
anything now to the man who in the days of his strength had hated all
forms of sentimentality. Yet the shadow of supernatural powers seemed to
be over him, for he muttered some simple, almost child-like words about
the Almighty permitting him to fall because he had wandered away from
Him.
"Janet! My poor Janet!" the old man murmured, and his humbled head hung
low.
The Sirdar could bear no more, and he quietly left the library.
As he approached the drawing-room he heard voices within. Fatimah was
with Helena. All the mother-heart in the Egyptian woman had warmed to
the girl in her trouble, and, forgetful of the difference of class, they
were clasped in each other's arms.
The Sirdar could see by the tears that were trickling down Helena's
cheeks that already she knew everything, but, all the same, he told her
that Gordon had been handed over to the military authorities. She stood
the fire of the sad news without flinching, and a few minutes afterwards
they were in the Sirdar's carriage on their way to the Princess
Nazimah's, the black boy on his donkey trotting proudly behind.
"We must not lose heart, though," said the Sirdar. "Now that I come to
think of it, to be court-martialled may be the beat thing that can
happen to him. He'll have a good deal to say for himself. And whatever
the sentence may be, there's the Army Council, and there's the Secretary
of State, and there's the King himself, you know."
"Then you think there's some hope still?" she said faintly, but sweetly.
"I'm certain there is," said the Sirdar; and as the carriage passed
under the electric arc-lamps in the streets he could see that Helena's
wet eyes were shining.
After a while she asked where Gordon was imprisoned, and was told that
he was at the Citadel, but that he was in officer's quarters, and that
his Egyptian foster-brother, Hafiz Ahmed, was permitted to be with him.
Then she asked if Ishmael and his people would be permitted to come into
Cairo, and was told that they would, and that they might encamp in El
Azhar if they cared to, Ishmael being nothing to the Sirdar but an
inoffensive dreamer with a disordered brain.
Helena's lovely face looked almost happy. She was thinking of the light
that was expected to shine at midnight from the minaret of the mosque of
Mohammed Ali, and was telling herself that as soon as she reached the
house of the Princess she would call up Hafiz at the Citadel and see
what could be done.
Meantime Fatimah, who had gone to the Consul-General's bedroom to see
that everything was in order, had felt something crunching under her
feet, and picking it up, she found that it was the portrait of Gordon as
a boy in his Arab fez. With many sighs she was putting the pieces aside
when the old man entered the room. He did not seem to see her, and
though she lingered some little while, he did not speak.
Sitting on the sofa, he rested his head on his hands mid looked fixedly
at the carpet between his feet. Half-an-hour passed--an hour--two
hours--but he did not move. At intervals the telegraphic machine, which
stood in an alcove of the room, ticked for a time and then stopped. The
debate on the Amendment to the Address was still going on, but that did
not matter now. Nothing mattered except one thing---that he, he
himself, had sent his own son to his death, thus cutting off his line,
ending his family, and destroying the one hope and lodestar of his life.
"All well! It's all over!" he thought, and at length, switching off the
lights, he went to bed.
While the great Proconsul slept his restless, troubled sleep the
telegraphic machine ticked out in the darkness on the long slip of white
paper that rolled on to the floor the future history of Egypt, and, in
some sense, of the world.
Far away in London the Foreign Minister was speaking.
"I am one of those who think," he was saying, "that just as religious
leaders, Popes as well as Mahdis, may go to wreck under the mental
malady which permits them to believe they are the mouthpieces of the
Almighty, so statesmen may be destroyed by the seeds of dissolution
which power, especially absolute power, carries within itself.
"Holding this opinion, I also hold that to place one person in sole
charge of millions of people of a different race, creed, and mode of
thought, is to put a load on one man's shoulders which no man, whatever
his power and influence, his integrity and the nobility of his
principles, ought to be called upon to bear."
But the heavy-lidded house on the Nile was asleep. The Consul-General
did not hear.
*CHAPTER X*
When Ishmael left Helena's tent he did not return to his own. In the
torment of his soul he sought the solitude of the desert. For two hours
he walked on the sand without knowing where he was going. The night was
dark, save for an innumerable army of stars, an eastern night, still and
fragrant, but the unhappy man was wandering in it like a creature
accursed, a prey to the most terrible upheaval of the soul, the most
bitter and sorrowful reflections.
His first thoughts were about Helena--that all the sweetness, all the
loveliness which had been his joy by day and his dream by night belonged
not to him, but to another.
"I am nothing to her," he told himself, and greater grief than he felt
at that thought seemed to surpass the bounds of possibility.
But there was worse behind. At the next moment of his anguish he
remembered that not only did Helena not love him, but he was repulsive
to her. "Don't you see you are hateful and odious to me--that you are a
black man, and I am a white woman?"
This was more than heartrending--it was physically excruciating, like
poison creeping under the skin. But it had its spiritual torture also.
He who had built his life on the belief that the sons and daughters of
men were all children of one Father, had found out in a moment, in the
twinkling of an eye, within his own camp, in his own tent, that Nature
gave the lie to his faith, and that he--he himself--was only as a black
man to the white woman whom he called his wife.
"I thought that where love was there could be neither race nor colour,
but I was wrong, quite wrong," he told himself again, and it seemed as
if everything that had built up his soul was crumbling away.
But even worse than all this was the thought that Helena had betrayed
him--she who had seemed to sacrifice so much. Pitiful delusion! Cruel
snare!
It was maddening to think of the merely human side of his betrayal--that
between the guilty wife and her lover he was only the husband who had to
be got rid of--but the spiritual aspect was still more terrible. He who
had allowed himself to believe that he was specially guided by God, that
the Merciful had made him His messenger, had been deceived and duped,
and was no more than a poor, weak, helpless man, who had been led away
by his love for a woman.
The shame of his betrayal was stifling, the sense of his downfall was
crushing, but still more painful was the consciousness of the penalty
which his people would have to pay for the pride and blind love which
had misled him. They had followed him across the desert, suffering all
the pains of the long and toilsome journey, buoyed up by the hopes with
which he had inspired them; they had trusted and loved and looked up to
him, hardly distinguishing between his word and the word of God, and
now--their leader was deceived, their hopes were dead, the mirage of
their dreams had disappeared.
Thinking of this in the agony of his despair, he asked himself why God
had permitted it to come to pass that not himself only, but the whole
body of his people should suffer. "Why, O God, why?" he cried, lifting
up his arms to the sky.
For some moments a cloud passed between him and the faith which had so
long sustained him. He began to deplore his lofty mission, and to
remember with regret his earlier days in Khartoum with the simple girl
who loved him and lay on the angerib in his arms. He had been humble
then--content to be a man; and recalling one by one the touching
memories of his life with Adila--in their prison, brightened by rays of
love, in their poor desert home, illuminated more than a palace by the
expectation of the child that was to come--his heart failed him, and he
wanted to curse the destiny which had led him to a greatness wherein all
was vain.
The wild insurrection in his soul had left him no time to think which
course he was taking, but wandering across the Sakkara desert he had by
this time come to the foot of the Sphinx.
Calm, immovable, tremendous, the great scarred face was gazing in
passionless meditation into the luminous starlight, asking, as it had
asked through the long yesterday of the past, as it will continue to ask
through the long to-morrow of the future, the everlasting question, the
question of humanity, the question of all suffering souls--
"Why?"
Why should man aim higher than he can reach? Why should he give up the
joys of humanity for divine dreams that can never be realised? Why
should he be a victim to the devilish powers, within and without, which
are always waiting to betray and destroy him? Why should God forsake
him just when he is striving to serve Him best?
"Allah! Allah! Why? Why?" he cried.
But his higher nature speedily regained its supremacy. It came to him
as a flash of light in his darkness that the true explanation of his
downfall was that God was punishing him for his presumption in allowing
the idolatry of his people to carry him away from his first humility--to
forget his proper place as a man, and to think of himself as if he were
a god.
This led him to thoughts of atonement, and in a moment the image of
death came to him--his own death--as a sacrifice. He began to see what
he had now to do. He had to take all that had happened upon himself.
He had to call his people together and to say, "I lied to you! I was a
false prophet! I deceived myself, and in deceiving myself I deceived you
also! The wonderful world I promised you--the Redeemer I foretold--all,
all is vain!"
And then--what then? What of himself--the betrayed, the betrayer?
After he had parted from the people with their broken hearts, he would
deliver himself up to the authorities. He had done no wrong to the
Government, but he had sinned against his followers, and he had sinned
against God, and God would accept the one punishment for the other.