"But perhaps I am only an antiquated person, behind the new age and the
new ideas. If so, I'm satisfied. I belong to the number of those who
have always thought it the duty of great nations to carry the light of
civilisation into dark continents, and I am not sorry to be left behind
by the cranks who would legislate for all men alike. Pshaw! You might
as well tailorise for all men alike, and put clothes of the same pattern
on all mankind."
Again the old man laughed.
"It's part and parcel of the preposterous American doctrine that all men
are born free and equal--the doctrine that made the United States
enfranchise as well as emancipate their blacks. May the results be no
worse in this case!"
There was another moment of strained silence and then the Consul-General
said--
"I suppose they'll say the man Ishmael has beaten me."
He made a contemptuous but almost inaudible laugh, and then added, "Let
them--they're welcome; time will tell. Anyhow I do not lament. When a
man is old his useless life must burn itself out. That's only natural.
And after all, I've seen too much of power to regret the loss of it."
Still Gordon could not speak. He was feeling how great his father was
in his downfall, how brave, how proud, how splendid.
The old man walked to the window and looked out. with fixed eyes. After
a moment he turned back and said--
"All the same, Gordon, I am glad of what has happened for your
sake--sincerely glad. You've not always been with me, but you've won,
and I do not grudge you your victory. Indeed," he added, and here his
voice trembled perceptibly, "I am a little proud of it. Yes, proud! An
old man cannot be indifferent to the fact that his son has won the
hearts of twelve millions of people, even though--even though _he_
himself may have lost them."
Gordon's throat was hurting him and Helena's eyes were full of tears.
The old man, too, was struggling to control his voice.
"You thought Nunehamism wasn't synonymous with patriotism. Perhaps you
were right. You believed yourself to be the better Englishman of the
two. I don't say you were not. And it may be that in her present mind
England will think that one secret withheld from me has been revealed to
you--namely, that an alien race can only be ruled by ... by love. Yes,
I'm glad for your sake, Gordon; and as for me--I leave myself to Time
and Fate."
The old man's pride in his son's success was fighting hard with his own
humiliation. After a while Gordon recovered strength enough to ask his
father what he meant to do in England.
"Who can say?" answered the Consul-General, lifting one hand with a
gesture of helplessness. "I have spent the best years of my life in
Egypt. What is England to me now? Home? No, exile."
He had moved to the window again, and following the direction of his
eyes Gordon could see that he was looking towards the cypress trees
which shaded the English cemetery of Cairo.
A deep and profound silence ensued, and, feeling as if his mother's
spirit were passing through the room, Gordon dropped his head and tears
leapt to his eyes.
It was the first time father and son had been together since the
tenderest link that had bound them had been broken, but while both were
thinking of this, neither of them could trust himself to speak of it.
"Janet, your dream has come true! How happy you would have been!"
thought the Consul-General, while Gordon, unable to unravel the
intricacies of his emotions, was saying to himself, "Mother! My sweet
mother!"
The last moment came, and it was a very moving one. Up from some hidden
depths of the old man's oceanic soul there came a certain joy. In spite
of all that he in his blindness had done to prevent it, by the operation
of the inscrutable powers that had controlled his destiny, the great
hope of his life was about to be realised. Gordon and Helena had been
brought together, and as he looked at them, standing side by side when
they rose to bid farewell to him, the man so brave and fearless, the
girl so beautiful and superb, he thought, with a thrill of the heart,
that, whatever might happen to himself--old, worn-out, fallen perhaps,
his life ended--yet would his line go on in the time to come, pure,
clean, and strong, and the name of Nuneham be written high in the
history of his country.
Holding out a hand to each, he looked steadily into their faces for a
moment, while he bade his silent good-bye. Not a word, not the quiver
of an eyelid. It was the English gentleman coming out top in the end,
firm, stern, heroic.
Before Gordon and Helena seemed to be aware of it, the old man was gone,
and they heard the rumble of the wheels of his carriage as it passed out
of the courtyard.
*CHAPTER XVI*
At nightfall the great Proconsul left Cairo. He knew that all day long
the telegraphic agencies had been busy with messages from London about
his resignation. He also knew that after the first thunderclap of
surprise the Egyptian population had concluded that he had been
recalled--recalled in disgrace, and at the petition of the Khedive to
the King.
It did not take him long to prepare for his departure. In the course of
an hour Ibrahim was able to pack up the few personal effects--how
few!--which during the longest residence gather about the house of a
servant of the State.
Perhaps the acutest of his feelings on leaving Egypt came to him as he
drove in a closed carriage out of the grounds of the Agency, and looked
up for the last time at the windows of the room that used to be occupied
by his wife. At that moment he felt something of the dumb desolation
which rolls over the strongest souls when, after a lifetime of
comradeship, the asundering comes and they long for the voice that is
still.
Poor Janet! He must leave all that remained of her behind him under the
tall cypress trees on the edge of the Nile. Yet no, not all, for he was
carrying away the better part of her--her pure soul and saintly
memory--within him. None the less, that moment of parting brought the
old man nearer than he had ever been to the sense of tears in mortal
things.
The Sirdar had accompanied him, but though the fact of his intended
departure had become known, having been announced in all the evening
papers, there was nobody at the station to bid adieu to him--not a
member of the Khedive's _entourage_; not one of the Egyptian Ministers,
not even any of the Advisers and Under-Secretaries whom he had himself
created.
Never had there lived a more self-centred and self-sufficient man, but
this fact cut him to the quick. He had done what he believed to be his
duty in Egypt, and feeling that he was neglected and forgotten at the
end, the ingratitude of those whom he had served went like poison into
his soul.
To escape from the sense of it he began to talk with a bitter raillery
which in a weaker man would have expressed itself in tears, and seemed
indeed to have tears--glittering, frozen tears--behind it.
"Do you know, my dear Reg," he said, "I feel to-night as if I might be
another incarnation of your friend Pontius Pilate. Like him, I am being
withdrawn, you see, and apparently for the same reason. And--who
knows?--perhaps like him too, I am destined to earn the maledictions of
mankind."
The Sirdar found the old man's irony intensely affecting, and therefore
he made no protest.
"Well, I'm not ashamed of the comparison, if it means that against all
forms of anarchy I have belonged to the party of order, though of course
there will be some wise heads that will see the finger of Heaven in what
has happened."
The strong man, with his fortunes sunk to zero, was defiant to the very
end and last hour of calamity. But standing on the platform by the door
of the compartment that had been reserved for him, he looked round at
length and said--all his irony, all his raillery suddenly gone--
"Reg, I have given forty years of my life to those people and there is
not one of them to see me off."