"In times of great war and pestilence God has accepted an atonement, and
perhaps He will do so now. I will go into Cairo and deliver myself to
the Government. I will say, 'The man you hold was arrested instead of
me. I am your true prisoner. Take me and let him--and let my poor
followers--go free.'"
The anguish of the people swelled into sobs, and some of them, full of
zeal, swore that they would never return to their homes without the
Master, but would follow him to prison and to death.
"If you go into Cairo, so will I!" cried one.
"And I too!" cried another.
"And I!" "And I!" "And I!" cried others, each holding up his hand and
stepping out as he spoke, until the square in which Ishmael sat on his
camel was full of excited men.
At that moment of deep emotion, while great tears were rolling down
Ishmael's cheeks and the women on the outskirts of the crowd were
uttering piercing cries, a loud, delirious shout was heard, and a man
was seen to be crushing his way through the people.
It was Zogal, and his wild eyes were ablaze with frenzy.
"Wait! Wait!" he cried. "Has the Master forgotten his own message? He
says the soldiers of the Franks and Turks are waiting in Cairo to
destroy us. But isn't God greater than armies? We are weak and
defenceless, but does He always give His victory to the armed and the
strong? What!" he cried again, "are you afraid that the Christians will
kill us with bullets? That they will eat our flesh and drink our blood?
That they will make us worship the wooden cross? If God is with us what
can our enemies do? It is not they who throw the javelin--it is God!
Therefore," he cried, in a voice that had risen to a scream, "if the
Master is to go into Cairo we will _all_ go with him."
In vain Ishmael tried to stop the man. His protests were drowned in the
rapturous responses of the crowd. People are as easily swayed to as fro;
they regain confidence as rapidly as they lose it. In a moment the
Master was forgotten, and only the wild-eyed Dervish seemed to be heard.
"Did not God promise us, through the mouth of His messenger, that we
should go into Cairo--and will He break His word?"
"Allah! Allah!" shouted the crowd.
"Did he not tell us God would send us a sign?"
"Allah! Allah!"
"Shall we say it will not come, and call God a liar?"
"Allah! Allah!"
"'At the hour of midnight prayers,' he said, 'the light will shine.'"
"Allah! Allah! Allah!"
"Pray for it, my brothers, pray for it," cried Zogal, and in another
moment, with the delirious strength of one possessed, he had cleared a
long passage through the people, and begun to lead a wild, barbaric
Zikr, such as he had seen in the depths of the desert.
"The light! The light! Send the light, O Allah!" cried Zogal, striding
up and down the long alley of bowing and swaying people, and tossing his
sweating and foaming face up to the dark sky.
It has been truly said that everything favours those who have a special
destiny--that they may become glorious against their own will and as if
by the command of fate. It was so with Ishmael. At the very moment
when Zogal on the desert was calling for the light which he believed God
had promised, Hafiz, at the Citadel, having received the message which
Helena had sent over the telephone from the house of the Princess
Nazimah, was running with a powerful lantern up the winding stairway of
one of the minarets of the mosque of Mohammed Ali.
"The light! The light! Send the light, O Allah!" cried the dervish,
and at the next moment, while the breathless crowd about him were
looking through the darkness towards the heights above Cairo, expecting
to see the manifestation of God's sign in the sky, the light appeared!
In an instant the whole camp was a scene of frantic rejoicing. Men were
shouting, women were lu-lu-ing, camels and asses were being saddled,
tents were being struck, and everybody and everything was astir.
Oh, mysterious and divine power of destiny, that could make the fate of
an entire nation hang on the accident of time and the unreasoning
impulses of one poor demented man!
*CHAPTER XII*
Next day Ishmael entered Cairo. News of his coming had been noised
abroad, and the police at their various stations had been told that
beyond the necessary efforts to preserve order they were not in any way
to interfere with his procession. Neither Ishmael nor any of his people
were to be allowed to pose as martyrs. There was to be no resistance
and no bloodshed. If possible there was to be no scene.
The guests at the King's Dinner had left the Ghezirah long before
midnight. Such of them as were innocent of all participation in
conspiracy (they were the majority) attributed the Consul-General's
strange outbreak to an attack of mental vertigo in an old man whose
health had long been failing from the pressure of public work. Nothing
was allowed to occur which would give the incident a more serious
significance. The bridge which had been opened was closed, and the
guests had returned to their homes as usual.
In the early hours of morning they were awakened by loud shoutings in
the streets. Two hundred men from Ishmael's company had galloped ahead
as heralds, and, flying down every thoroughfare to reassure the
population of the nature of the vast procession that was coming, they
were crying--
"Peace! Peace! It is Peace!"
After that the general body of the native people, who had been on the
tiptoe of expectation, were speeding along the streets. They found
mounted and foot police stationed at various points, but no military and
no guns.
It was a triumphant entry. The procession came in by the Gizeh Bridge,
and passing down the Kasr-el-Aini into the Place Ismailyah, it turned
down the broad Boulevard Abul Aziz towards the heart of the city.
The sun was rising, and the scene was a blaze of colour. Banners were
swinging from the houses like ships' pendants in stormy seas. The
streets seemed to be carpeted with the tarbooshes and turbans of the
great, moving, surging masses of humanity that were slowly passing
through them. There were brown faces that were almost white from the
fatigue of the long desert march, and white faces that were burnt brown
by the tropical sun. It was a swarming, shifting, variegated throng,
and over all was the dazzling splendour of the Eastern sunrise.
Before the procession had gone far, it seemed as if the whole population
of Cairo had come out to it. Eternal children! There is nothing they
love more than to look at a great spectacle except to take part in it,
and they hastened to take part in this one. Every window and balcony was
soon full of faces; every housetop was alive with movement and aflame
with colour. People were thronging the footpaths on either side as the
pilgrims passed between.
The wives and children of the hundred emissaries who left Cairo on
Ishmael's errand had come out to look for their husbands and fathers
returning home. Eagerly they were scanning the faces of the pilgrims,
and loud and wild were their cries of joy when they recognised their
own.
Many of those who had no personal interest in the procession fell into
line with it. A company of Dervishes walked by its side playing pipes
and drums. Other musicians joined them with strange-looking wooden and
brass instruments. Bursts of wild Arab music broke out from time to
time and then stopped, leaving a sort of confused and tumultuous
silence.
Carts filled with women and children, who were laughing and lu-lu-ing by
turns, jolted along by the pilgrims like trundling bundles of joy. And
then there were the pilgrims themselves, the vast concourse of fully
forty thousand from the Soudan, from Assouan, from the long valley of
the Nile, some on horses, some on camels, some on donkeys, some wearing
their simple felt skull-caps and galabeahs, others in flowing robes and
crimson head-dresses. The barbaric splendour and intoxicating arrogance
of it all was such as the people of Cairo had never seen before.
To the great body of the Cairenes the entrance of Ishmael Ameer denoted
victory. That the Government permitted it indicated their defeat. The
great English lord, who had closed El Azhar, thereby damming up the
chief fountain of the Islamic faith, had been beaten. Either the
Powers, or God Himself, had suppressed him and rebuked England. Pharaoh
had fallen. The children of Allah were crossing their Red Sea. Even as
Mohammed, after being expelled from Mecca as a rebel, had returned to it
as a conqueror, so Ishmael, after being cast out of Cairo as the enemy
of England, was coming back as England's master and king. So louder and
louder became their wild acclamations.
"Victory to Islam!"
"El Hamdullillah!"
"God has willed it!"
When Ishmael himself appeared the shouts of welcome were deafening. He
had been long in coming, and the people had been waiting for him all
along the line. He came at the end of the procession, and if he could
have escaped from it altogether he would have done so.
In spite of all this glory, all this grandeur, a deep melancholy filled
the soul of Ishmael. He was not carried away by what had happened.
Nothing that had occurred since the night before had touched his pride.
When the light appeared on the minaret he had not been deceived. He
knew that by some unknown turn of the wheel of chance his people were to
be allowed to enter Cairo, but all the same his heart was low.
The only interpretation he put upon the change in events was a mystic
one. God had refused his atonement! God had taken the leadership of His
people out of his hands! As punishment of his weakness in permitting
himself to be betrayed, God had made him a mere follower of his own
black servant! Therefore his glory was his shame! His hour of triumph
was his hour of sorrow and disgrace! He was entering Cairo under the
frown of the face of God!
When the camp had been ready to move he had mounted his white camel and
ridden last, beset by melancholy pre-occupations. But when he came to
the Gizeh Bridge and saw the crowds that were coming out to greet him,
and met Zogal, who had galloped into the city and was galloping back to
say that the people of Cairo were preparing a triumph for him, he made
his camel kneel, and in the deep abasement of his soul he got down to
walk.
He walked down the whole length of the Kasr-el-Aini with head down, like
a man who was ashamed, shuddering visibly when the onlookers cheered,
trembling when they commended him to God, and almost falling when they
saluted him as the Deliverer and Redeemer of Islam and its people.
Although of large frame and strong muscle, he was a man of delicate
organisation, and the strain his soul was going through was tearing his
body to pieces. At length, as he approached the Place Ismailyah, where
the crowd was dense, he stumbled and fell on one knee.
Zogal, who was behind, leapt from the ass he was riding and lifted the
Master in his arms, but it was seen that he could not stand. There was
a moment's hesitation, in which the black man seemed to ask himself what
he ought to do, and at the next instant he had thrown his white cloak
over the donkey's back and lifted Ishmael into the saddle.
Meantime the people in the streets, in the balconies, on the housetops,
were waiting for the new prophet. They expected to see him coming into
Cairo as a conqueror--in a litter, perhaps, covered with gold and
fringed with jingling coins and cowries--the central figure of a great
procession such as would remind them of the grandeur of the Mahmal, the
holy carpet returning from Mecca.
When at length he came his appearance gave a shock. His face was pale,
his head was down, and he was riding on an ass!
But truly everything favours him who has the great destiny. After the
spectators had recovered from their first shock at the sight of Ishmael,
his humility touched their imagination. Remembering how he had left
Cairo, and seeing how meekly he was returning to it, their acclamations
became deafening.
"Praise be to God!"
"May God preserve thee!"
"May God give thee long life!"
And then some one who thought he saw in the entrance of Ishmael into
Cairo a reproduction of the most triumphant if the most tragic incident
in the life of the Lord of the Christians, shouted--
"Seyidna Isa! Seyidna Isa!" (Our Lord Jesus!)
In a moment the name was taken up on every side, and resounded in joyous
accents down the streets. The belief of a crowd is created not by slow
processes of reason but by quick flashes of emotion, and instantly the
surging mass of Eastern children had accepted the idea that Ishmael
Ameer was a reincarnation of that "divine man of Judaea" whom he had
taught them to reverence, that "son of Mary" whom the Prophet himself
had placed high among the children of men.
To make the parallel complete, people rushed out of the houses and
spread their coats on the ground in front of him, and some, pushing
their adoration to yet greater lengths, climbed the trees that lined the
Boulevard and tearing away branches and boughs flung them before his
feet.
The Dervishes ran ahead crying the new name in frantic tones, while a
company of grave-looking men walked on either side of Ishmael, chanting
the first Surah: "Praise be to God, the Lord of all creatures," and the
muezzins in the minarets of the mosques (blind men nearly all, who could
see nothing of the boiling, bubbling, gorgeous scene below) chanted the
profession of faith: "There is no god but God! God is Most Great! God
is Most Great!" Men shouted with delight, women lu-lu-ed with joy, and
the thousands of voices that clashed through the air sounded like bells
ringing a joyful peal.
Nothing could have exceeded the savage grandeur of Ishmael's return to
Cairo; but Ishmael himself, the white figure sitting sideways on an ass,
continued to move along with a humbled and chastened soul. He was a sad
man, with his own secret sorrow; a bereaved man, a betrayed man, with a
heart that was torn and bleeding.
When he remembered that in spite of his betrayal, his predictions were
being fulfilled, he told himself that that was by God's doing only, not
by his in any way. When he heard the divine name by which the people
greeted him he felt as if he were being burned to the very marrow. He
was crushed by their mistaken worship. He knew himself now for a poor,
weak, blind, deceived, and self-deluded man, whom the Almighty had
smitten and brought low. Therefore he made no response to the frantic
acclamations. Every step of the road as he passed along was like a
purgatorial procession, and his suffering was written in lines of fire
on his downcast face.
"O Father, spare me, spare me," he prayed as the people shouted by his
side.
Once he made an effort to dismount, but Zogal, thinking the Master's
strength was failing, put an arm about him and held him in his seat.
It took the whole morning for the procession to pass through the city.
Unconsciously, as the blood flows back to the heart, it went up through
the Mousky to El Azhar. All the gates of the University, which had been
so long closed, were standing open. Who had opened them no one seemed
to know. The people crowded into the courtyard, and in a little while
the vast place was full. A platform had been raised at the further side,
and on this Ishmael was placed with the chief of the Ulema beside him.
By one of those accidents which always attach themselves to great events
it chanced that the day of Ishmael's return to Cairo was also the first
of the Mouled-en-Naby--the nine days of rejoicing for the birthday of
the Prophet. This fact was quickly seized upon as a means for uniting
to the beautiful Moslem custom for "attaining the holy satisfaction" the
opportunity of celebrating the victory for Islam which Ishmael was
thought to have attained. Therefore the Sheikh Seyid-el-Bakri,
descendant of the Prophet, and head of the Moslem confraternities,
determined to receive his congregations in El Azhar, where Ishmael might
share in their homage. They came in thousands, carrying their gilded
banners which were written over with lines from the Koran, ranged
themselves, company after company, in half-circles before the dais,
salaamed to those who sat on it, chanted words to the glory of God and
His Prophet, and then stepped up to kiss the hands and sometimes the
feet of their chief and his companions.
Ishmael tried to avoid their homage, but could not do so. Mechanically
he uttered the usual response, "May God repeat upon you this feast in
happiness and benediction," and then fell back upon his own reflections.
Notwithstanding the blaze and blare of the scene about him, his mind was
returning to Helena. Where was she? What fate had befallen her? At
length, unable to bear any longer the burden of his thoughts, and the
purgatory of his position, he got up and stole away through the
corridors at the back of the mosque.
When darkness fell, the native quarters of Cairo were illuminated.
Lamps were hung from the poles which project from the minarets of the
mosques. Ropes were swung from minaret to minaret, and from these,
also, lamps were suspended. In the poorer streets people were going
about with open flares in iron grills, and in the better avenues rich
men were walking behind their lantern-bearers. Blind beggars in the
cafes were reciting the genealogy of the Prophet, and at the end of
every passage other blind beggars were crying, "La ilaha illa-llah!"
Late at night, when the vast following which Ishmael had brought into
the city had to be housed, messengers ran through the streets asking for
lodgings for the pilgrims, and people answered from their windows and
balconies, "I'll take one," "I'll take two." Twenty thousand slept in
the courtyard and en the roofs of El Azhar; the rest in the houses round
about.
The trust in God, which had seemed to be slain the night before, awoke
to a new life, and when at length the delirious city lay down to sleep,
the watchmen walked through the deserted thoroughfares crying, "Wahhed!
Wahhed!" (God is One!)
In the dead, hollow, echoing hours of early morning a solitary coach
passed through the streets in the direction of the outlying stations of
the railway to Port Said. Its blinds were down. It was empty. But on
the box seat beside the coachman sat a nervous, watchful person with an
evil face, wearing the costume of a footman.
It was the Grand Cadi. He had been the supreme orthodox authority of
the Moslem faith, sent from Constantinople as representative and
exponent of the spiritual authority vested in the Sultan of Turkey as
the Caliph of Islam, but he was stealing out of Cairo like a thief.
*CHAPTER XIII*
A general Court-Martial was fixed for the following morning, and Helena
was for going to it just as she was, in the mixed Eastern and Western
costume which she had worn on the desert, but the Princess would not
hear of that. She must wear the finest gown and the smartest Paris hat
that could be obtained in Cairo, in order that Gordon might see her at
her best.
"He may be a hero," said the Princess, "but he is a man, too, God bless
him, and he'll want to see the woman he loves look lovely."
So the milliners and dressmakers were set to work immediately, and bound
by endless pledges.
"Of course they'll promise you the stars at noonday," said the Princess,
"but if they don't come up to the scratch they get no money. Keep your
cat hungry and she'll catch the rat, you know."
In due time the costume was ready, and when Helena had put it on--a
close-fitting silver-grey robe and a large black hat--the Princess stood
off from her and said--
"Well, my moon, my sweet, my beauty, if he doesn't want to live a little
longer after he has seen you in that, he's not fit to be alive!"
But at the last moment Helena called for a thick dark veil.
"I've no right to sap away his courage," she said; and the Princess, who
had heard everything that Helena had to tell, and had swung round to
Gordon's side entirely, could say no more.
Hafiz came to take the ladies to the Citadel, and as he was leaving them
at the gate to go to Gordon in his quarters, Helena gave him the letter
she had written at Sakkara.
"Tell him I mean all I say--every word of it," she whispered.
The Court-Martial was held in one of the rooms of the palace of Mohammed
Ali--up a wide stone staircase across a bare court, through a groined
archway, beyond a great hall which in former days had seen vast
assemblies, and past a door labelled "Minister of War," into a
gorgeously decorated chamber, overlooking a garden with its patch of
green shut in by high stone walls. It had once been the harem of the
great Pasha.
The room was already full when Helena and the Princess arrived, but
places were found for them near the door. This position suited Helena
perfectly, but to the Princess it was a deep disappointment, and as a
consequence nothing pleased her.
"All English and all soldiers! Not an Egyptian among them," she said.
"After what he has done for them, too! Ingrates! Excuse the word.
That's what I call them."
At that moment Hafiz entered, and the Princess, touching him on the arm,
said--
"Here, you come and sit on the other side of her and keep up her heart,
the sweet one."
Hafiz did as he was told, and as soon as he was seated beside Helena he
whispered--
"I've just left him."
"How is he?"
"Firm as a rock. He sent you a message."
"What is it?"
"'Tell her,' he said, 'that great love conquers death.'"
"Ah!"
At the next moment Helena's hand and Hafiz's found each other in a
fervent clasp, and sweetheart and foster-brother sat together so until
the end of the inquiry.
Presently the Judges of the Court entered and took their places at the
table that had been prepared for them--one full Colonel and four
Lieutenant-Colonels of mature age, from different British regiments.
"They look all right, but white hairs are no proof of wisdom," muttered
the Princess.
Then the accused was called, and amid breathless silence Gordon entered
with a firm step, attended by the officer who had him in charge. His
manner was calm, and though his face was pale almost to pallor, his
expression betrayed neither fear nor bravado. His appearance made a
deep impression, and the President told him to sit. At the same moment
it was observed that the Sirdar came in by a door at the farther end of
the room and took a seat immediately in front of him.
The Court was then sworn and the charge was read. It accused the
prisoner of three offences under the Army Act; first, that being a
person subject to military law he had disobeyed the lawful command of a
superior in such a way as to show a wilful disregard of authority (A.A.
9, 1); second, that he had been guilty of acts and conduct to the
prejudice of good order and military discipline (A.A. 40); third, that
he had deserted his Majesty's service while on active service (A.A. 12,
13).
"He heard it all yesterday morning," whispered Hafiz to Helena, whose
nervous fingers were tightening about his own.
The charges having been read out to the accused, he was called upon to
plead.
"Are you guilty or not guilty?" asked the President.
There was a moment of breathless silence, and then, in a measured voice
without a break or a tremor, Gordon said--
"I do not wish to plead at all."