“Claridge Effendi!”
As David moved forward, his mind was embarrassed by many impressions.
He was not confused, but the glitter and splendour, the Oriental
gorgeousness of the picture into which he stepped, excited his
eye, roused some new sense in him. He was a curious figure in those
surroundings. The consuls and agents of all the nations save one were
in brilliant uniform, and pashas, generals, and great officials were
splendid in gold braid and lace, and wore flashing Orders on their
breasts. David had been asked for half-past eight o’clock, and he was
there on the instant; yet here was every one assembled, the Prince Pasha
included. As he walked up the room he suddenly realised this fact, and,
for a moment, he thought he had made a mistake; but again he remembered
distinctly that the letter said half-past eight, and he wondered now
if this had been arranged by the Prince--for what purpose? To afford
amusement to the assembled company? He drew himself up with dignity, his
face became graver. He had come in a Quaker suit of black broadcloth,
with grey steel buttons, and a plain white stock; and he wore his
broad-brimmed hat--to the consternation of the British Consul-General
and the Europeans present, to the amazement of the Turkish and native
officials, who eyed him keenly. They themselves wore red tarbooshes, as
did the Prince; yet all of them knew that the European custom of showing
respect was by doffing the hat. The Prince Pasha had settled that with
David, however, at their first meeting, when David had kept on his hat
and offered Kaid his hand.
Now, with amusement in his eyes, Prince Kaid watched David coming up the
great hall. What his object was in summoning David for an hour when
all the court and all the official Europeans should be already present,
remained to be seen. As David entered, Kaid was busy receiving salaams,
and returning greeting, but with an eye to the singularly boyish yet
gallant figure approaching. By the time David had reached the group, the
Prince Pasha was ready to receive him.
“Friend, I am glad to welcome thee,” said the Effendina, sly humour
lurking at the corner of his eye. Conscious of the amazement of all
present, he held out his hand to David.
“May thy coming be as the morning dew, friend,” he added, taking David’s
willing hand.
“And thy feet, Kaid, wall in goodly paths, by the grace of God the
compassionate and merciful.”
As a wind, unfelt, stirs the leaves of a forest, making it rustle
delicately, a whisper swept through the room. Official Egypt was
dumfounded. Many had heard of David, a few had seen him, and now all
eyed with inquisitive interest one who defied so many of the customs of
his countrymen; who kept on his hat; who used a Mahommedan salutation
like a true believer; whom the Effendina honoured--and presently
honoured in an unusual degree by seating him at table opposite himself,
where his Chief Chamberlain was used to sit.
During dinner Kaid addressed his conversation again and again to David,
asking questions put to disconcert the consuls and other official folk
present, confident in the naive reply which would be returned. For there
was a keen truthfulness in the young man’s words which, however suave
and carefully balanced, however gravely simple and tactful, left no
doubt as to their meaning. There was nothing in them which could be
challenged, could be construed into active criticism of men or things;
and yet much he said was horrifying. It made Achmet Pasha sit up
aghast, and Nahoum Pasha, the astute Armenian, for a long time past the
confidant and favourite of the Prince Pasha, laugh in his throat; for,
if there was a man in Egypt who enjoyed the thrust of a word or the
bite of a phrase, it was Nahoum. Christian though he was, he was,
nevertheless, Oriental to his farthermost corner, and had the culture of
a French savant. He had also the primitive view of life, and the morals
of a race who, in the clash of East and West, set against Western
character and directness, and loyalty to the terms of a bargain, the
demoralised cunning of the desert folk; the circuitous tactics of those
who believed that no man spoke the truth directly, that it must ever
be found beneath devious and misleading words, to be tracked like a
panther, as an Antipodean bushman once said, “through the sinuosities
of the underbrush.” Nahoum Pasha had also a rich sense of grim humour.
Perhaps that was why he had lived so near the person of the Prince, had
held office so long. There were no Grand Viziers in Egypt; but he was
as much like one as possible, and he had one uncommon virtue, he was
greatly generous. If he took with his right hand he gave with his left;
and Mahommedan as well as Copt and Armenian, and beggars of every race
and creed, hung about his doors each morning to receive the food and
alms he gave freely.
After one of David’s answers to Kaid, which had had the effect
of causing his Highness to turn a sharp corner of conversation by
addressing himself to the French consul, Nahoum said suavely:
“And so, monsieur, you think that we hold life lightly in the East--that
it is a characteristic of civilisation to make life more sacred, to
cherish it more fondly?”
He was sitting beside David, and though he asked the question casually,
and with apparent intention only of keeping talk going, there was a
lurking inquisition in his eye. He had seen enough to-night to make
him sure that Kaid had once more got the idea of making a European
his confidant and adviser; to introduce to his court one of those
mad Englishmen who cared nothing for gold--only for power; who loved
administration for the sake of administration and the foolish joy of
labour. He was now set to see what sort of match this intellect could
play, when faced by the inherent contradictions present in all truths or
the solutions of all problems.
“It is one of the characteristics of that which lies behind
civilisation, as thee and me have been taught,” answered David.
Nahoum was quick in strategy, but he was unprepared for David’s
knowledge that he was an Armenian Christian, and he had looked for
another answer.
But he kept his head and rose to the occasion. “Ah, it is high, it is
noble, to save life--it is so easy to destroy it,” he answered. “I saw
his Highness put his life in danger once to save a dog from drowning. To
cherish the lives of others, and to be careless of our own; to give
that of great value as though it were of no worth--is it not the
Great Lesson?” He said it with such an air of sincerity, with such
dissimulation, that, for the moment, David was deceived. There was,
however, on the face of the listening Kaid a curious, cynical smile. He
had heard all, and he knew the sardonic meaning behind Nahoum’s words.
Fat High Pasha, the Chief Chamberlain, the corrupt and corruptible,
intervened. “It is not so hard to be careless when care would be
useless,” he said, with a chuckle. “When the khamsin blows the
dust-storms upon the caravan, the camel-driver hath no care for his
camels. ‘Malaish!’ he says, and buries his face in his yelek.”
“Life is beautiful and so difficult--to save,” observed Nahoum, in
a tone meant to tempt David on one hand and to reach the ears of the
notorious Achmet Pasha, whose extortions, cruelties, and taxations had
built his master’s palaces, bribed his harem, given him money to pay
the interest on his European loans, and made himself the richest man in
Egypt, whose spies were everywhere, whose shadow was across every man’s
path. Kaid might slay, might toss a pasha or a slave into the Nile now
and then, might invite a Bey to visit him, and stroke his beard and call
him brother and put diamond-dust in the coffee he drank, so that he
died before two suns came and went again, “of inflammation and a natural
death”; but he, Achmet Pasha, was the dark Inquisitor who tortured every
day, for whose death all men prayed, and whom some would have slain, but
that another worse than himself might succeed him.
At Nahoum’s words the dusky brown of Achmet’s face turned as black as
the sudden dilation of the pupil of an eye deepens its hue, and he said
with a guttural accent:
“Every man hath a time to die.”
“But not his own time,” answered Nahoum maliciously.
“It would appear that in Egypt he hath not always the choice of the
fashion or the time,” remarked David calmly. He had read the malice
behind their words, and there had flashed into his own mind tales told
him, with every circumstance of accuracy, of deaths within and without
the Palace. Also he was now aware that Nahoum had mocked him. He was
concerned to make it clear that he was not wholly beguiled.
“Is there, then, for a man choice of fashion or time in England,
effendi?” asked Nahoum, with assumed innocence.
“In England it is a matter between the Giver and Taker of life and
himself--save where murder does its work,” said David.
“And here it is between man and man--is it that you would say?” asked
Nahoum.
“There seem wider privileges here,” answered David drily.
“Accidents will happen, privileges or no,” rejoined Nahoum, with
lowering eyelids.
The Prince intervened. “Thy own faith forbids the sword, forbids war,
or--punishment.”
“The Prophet I follow was called the Prince of Peace, friend,” answered
David, bowing gravely across the table.
“Hast thou never killed a man?” asked Kaid, with interest in his eyes.
He asked the question as a man might ask another if he had never visited
Paris.
“Never, by the goodness of God, never,” answered David.
“Neither in punishment nor in battle?”
“I am neither judge nor soldier, friend.”
“Inshallah, thou hast yet far to go! Thou art young yet. Who can tell?”
“I have never so far to go as that, friend,” said David, in a voice that
rang a little.
“To-morrow is no man’s gift.”
David was about to answer, but chancing to raise his eyes above the
Prince Pasha’s head, his glance was arrested and startled by seeing a
face--the face of a woman-looking out of a panel in a mooshrabieh screen
in a gallery above. He would not have dwelt upon the incident, he would
have set it down to the curiosity of a woman of the harem, but that
the face looking out was that of an English girl, and peering over her
shoulder was the dark, handsome face of an Egyptian or a Turk.
Self-control was the habit of his life, the training of his faith,
and, as a rule, his face gave little evidence of inner excitement.
Demonstration was discouraged, if not forbidden, among the Quakers, and
if, to others, it gave a cold and austere manner, in David it tempered
to a warm stillness the powerful impulses in him, the rivers of feeling
which sometimes roared through his veins.
Only Nahoum Pasha had noticed his arrested look, so motionless did he
sit; and now, without replying, he bowed gravely and deferentially to
Kaid, who rose from the table. He followed with the rest. Presently the
Prince sent Higli Pasha to ask his nearer presence.
The Prince made a motion of his hand, and the circle withdrew. He waved
David to a seat.
“To-morrow thy business shall be settled,” said the Prince suavely, “and
on such terms as will not startle. Death-tribute is no new thing in the
East. It is fortunate for thee that the tribute is from thy hand to my
hand, and not through many others to mine.”
“I am conscious I have been treated with favour, friend,” said David.
“I would that I might show thee kindness. Though how may a man of no
account make return to a great Prince?”
“By the beard of my father, it is easily done, if thy kindness is a
real thing, and not that which makes me poorer the more I have of it--as
though one should be given a herd of horses which must not be sold but
still must be fed.”
“I have given thee truth. Is not truth cheaper than falsehood?”
“It is the most expensive thing in Egypt; so that I despair of buying
thee. Yet I would buy thee to remain here--here at my court; here by my
hand which will give thee the labour thou lovest, and will defend thee
if defence be needed. Thou hast not greed, thou hast no thirst for
honour, yet thou hast wisdom beyond thy years. Kaid has never besought
men, but he beseeches thee. Once there was in Egypt, Joseph, a wise
youth, who served a Pharaoh, and was his chief counsellor, and it was
well with the land. Thy name is a good name; well-being may follow thee.
The ages have gone, and the rest of the world has changed, but Egypt is
the same Egypt, the Nile rises and falls, and the old lean years and fat
years come and go. Though I am in truth a Turk, and those who serve
and rob me here are Turks, yet the fellah is the same as he was five
thousand years ago. What Joseph the Israelite did, thou canst do; for
I am no more unjust than was that Rameses whom Joseph served. Wilt thou
stay with me?”
David looked at Kaid as though he would read in his face the reply that
he must make, but he did not see Kaid; he saw, rather, the face of
one he had loved more than Jonathan had been loved by the young
shepherd-prince of Israel. In his ears he heard the voice that had
called him in his sleep-the voice of Benn Claridge; and, at the same
instant, there flashed into his mind a picture of himself fighting
outside the tavern beyond Hamley and bidding farewell to the girl at the
crossroads.
“Friend, I cannot answer thee now,” he said, in a troubled voice.
Kaid rose. “I will give thee an hour to think upon it. Come with me.” He
stepped forward. “To-morrow I will answer thee, Kaid.”
“To-morrow there is work for thee to do. Come.” David followed him.
The eyes that followed the Prince and the Quaker were not friendly.
What Kaid had long foreshadowed seemed at hand: the coming of a European
counsellor and confidant. They realised that in the man who had just
left the room with Kaid there were characteristics unlike those they had
ever met before in Europeans.
“A madman,” whispered High Pasha to Achmet the Ropemaker.
“Then his will be the fate of the swine of Gadarene,” said Nahoum Pasha,
who had heard.
“At least one need not argue with a madman.” The face of Achmet the
Ropemaker was not more pleasant than his dark words.
“It is not the madman with whom you have to deal, but his keeper,”
rejoined Nahoum.
Nahoum’s face was heavier than usual. Going to weight, he was still
muscular and well groomed. His light brown beard and hair and blue eyes
gave him a look almost Saxon, and bland power spoke in his face and in
every gesture.
He was seldom without the string of beads so many Orientals love
to carry, and, Armenian Christian as he was, the act seemed almost
religious. It was to him, however, like a ground-wire in telegraphy--it
carried off the nervous force tingling in him and driving him to
impulsive action, while his reputation called for a constant outward
urbanity, a philosophical apathy. He had had his great fight for place
and power, alien as he was in religion, though he had lived in Egypt
since a child. Bar to progress as his religion had been at first, it had
been an advantage afterwards; for, through it, he could exclude himself
from complications with the Wakfs, the religious court of the Muslim
creed, which had lands to administer, and controlled the laws of
marriage and inheritance. He could shrug his shoulders and play with his
beads, and urbanely explain his own helplessness and ineligibility when
his influence was summoned, or it was sought to entangle him in warring
interests. Oriental through and through, the basis of his creed was
similar to that of a Muslim: Mahomet was a prophet and Christ was a
prophet. It was a case of rival prophets--all else was obscured into a
legend, and he saw the strife of race in the difference of creed. For
the rest, he flourished the salutations and language of the Arab as
though they were his own, and he spoke Arabic as perfectly as he did
French and English.
He was the second son of his father. The first son, who was but a year
older, and was as dark as he was fair, had inherited--had seized--all
his father’s wealth. He had lived abroad for some years in France and
England. In the latter place he had been one of the Turkish Embassy,
and, having none of the outward characteristics of the Turk, and being
in appearance more of a Spaniard than an Oriental, he had, by his gifts,
his address and personal appearance, won the good-will of the Duchess of
Middlesex, and had had that success all too flattering to the soul of a
libertine. It had, however, been the means of his premature retirement
from England, for his chief at the Embassy had a preference for an
Oriental entourage. He was called Foorgat Bey.
Sitting at table, Nahoum alone of all present had caught David’s
arrested look, and, glancing up, had seen the girl’s face at the panel
of mooshrabieh, and had seen also over her shoulder the face of his
brother, Foorgat Bey. He had been even more astonished than David,
and far more disturbed. He knew his brother’s abilities; he knew his
insinuating address--had he not influenced their father to give him
wealth while he was yet alive? He was aware also that his brother had
visited the Palace often of late. It would seem as though the Prince
Pasha was ready to make him, as well as David, a favourite. But the
face of the girl--it was an English face! Familiar with the Palace,
and bribing when it was necessary to bribe, Foorgat Bey had evidently
brought her to see the function, there where all women were forbidden.
He could little imagine Foorgat doing this from mere courtesy; he could
not imagine any woman, save one wholly sophisticated, or one entirely
innocent, trusting herself with him--and in such a place. The girl’s
face, though not that of one in her teens, had seemed to him a very
flower of innocence.
But, as he stood telling his beads, abstractedly listening to the
scandal talked by Achmet and Higli, he was not thinking of his brother,
but of the two who had just left the chamber. He was speculating as
to which room they were likely to enter. They had not gone by the door
convenient to passage to Kaid’s own apartments. He would give much to
hear the conversation between Kaid and the stranger; he was all too
conscious of its purport. As he stood thinking, Kaid returned. After
looking round the room for a moment, the Prince came slowly over to
Nahoum, and, stretching out a hand, stroked his beard.
“Oh, brother of all the wise, may thy sun never pass its noon!” said
Kaid, in a low, friendly voice.
Despite his will, a shudder passed through Nahoum Pasha’s frame.
How often in Egypt this gesture and such words were the prelude to
assassination, from which there was no escape save by death itself. Into
Nahoum’s mind there flashed the words of an Arab teacher, “There is
no refuge from God but God Himself,” and he found himself blindly
wondering, even as he felt Kaid’s hand upon his beard and listened to
the honeyed words, what manner of death was now preparing for him, and
what death of his own contriving should intervene. Escape, he knew,
there was none, if his death was determined on; for spies were
everywhere, and slaves in the pay of Kaid were everywhere, and such as
were not could be bought or compelled, even if he took refuge in the
house of a foreign consul. The lean, invisible, ghastly arm of death
could find him, if Kaid willed, though he delved in the bowels of the
Cairene earth, or climbed to an eagle’s eyrie in the Libyan Hills.
Whether it was diamond-dust or Achmet’s thin thong that stopped the
breath, it mattered not; it was sure. Yet he was not of the breed to
tremble under the descending sword, and he had long accustomed himself
to the chance of “sudden demise.” It had been chief among the chances he
had taken when he entered the high and perilous service of Kaid. Now,
as he felt the secret joy of these dark spirits surrounding him--Achmet,
and High Pasha, who kept saying beneath his breath in thankfulness
that it was not his turn, Praise be to God!--as he, felt their secret
self-gratulations, and their evil joy over his prospective downfall,
he settled himself steadily, made a low salutation to Kaid, and calmly
awaited further speech. It came soon enough.
“It is written upon a cucumber leaf--does not the world read it?--that
Nahoum Pasha’s form shall cast a longer shadow than the trees; so that
every man in Egypt shall, thinking on him, be as covetous as Ashaah, who
knew but one thing more covetous than himself--the sheep that mistook
the rainbow for a rope of hay, and, jumping for it, broke his neck.”
Kaid laughed softly at his own words.
With his eye meeting Kaid’s again, after a low salaam, Nahoum made
answer:
“I would that the lance of my fame might sheathe itself in the breasts
of thy enemies, Effendina.”
“Thy tongue does that office well,” was the reply. Once more Kaid laid
a gentle hand upon Nahoum’s beard. Then, with a gesture towards the
consuls and Europeans, he said to them in French: “If I might but beg
your presence for yet a little time!” Then he turned and walked away. He
left by a door leading to his own apartments.
When he had gone, Nahoum swung slowly round and faced the agitated
groups.
“He who sleeps with one eye open sees the sun rise first,” he said, with
a sarcastic laugh. “He who goes blindfold never sees it set.”
Then, with a complacent look upon them all, he slowly left the room by
the door out of which David and Kaid had first passed.
Outside the room his face did not change. His manner had not been
bravado. It was as natural to him as David’s manner was to himself. Each
had trained himself in his own way to the mastery of his will, and the
will in each was stronger than any passion of emotion in them. So far
at least it had been so. In David it was the outcome of his faith,
in Nahoum it was the outcome of his philosophy, a simple, fearless
fatalism.
David had been left by Kaid in a small room, little more than an
alcove, next to a larger room richly furnished. Both rooms belonged to a
spacious suite which lay between the harem and the major portion of the
Palace. It had its own entrance and exits from the Palace, opening on
the square at the front, at the back opening on its own garden, which
also had its own exits to the public road. The quarters of the Chief
Eunuch separated the suite from the harem, and Mizraim, the present
Chief Eunuch, was a man of power in the Palace, knew more secrets, was
more courted, and was richer than some of the princes. Nahoum had an
office in the Palace, also, which gave him the freedom of the place, and
brought him often in touch with the Chief Eunuch. He had made Mizraim
a fast friend ever since the day he had, by an able device, saved the
Chief Eunuch from determined robbery by the former Prince Pasha, with
whom he had suddenly come out of favour.
When Nahoum left the great salon, he directed his steps towards the
quarters of the Chief Eunuch, thinking of David, with a vague desire
for pursuit and conflict. He was too much of a philosopher to seek to do
David physical injury--a futile act; for it could do him no good in the
end, could not mend his own fortunes; and, merciless as he could be on
occasion, he had no love of bloodshed. Besides, the game afoot was not
of his making, and he was ready to await the finish, the more so because
he was sure that to-morrow would bring forth momentous things. There was
a crisis in the Soudan, there was trouble in the army, there was
dark conspiracy of which he knew the heart, and anything might happen
to-morrow! He had yet some cards to play, and Achmet and Higli--and
another very high and great--might be delivered over to Kaid’s deadly
purposes rather than himself tomorrow. What he knew Kaid did not know.
He had not meant to act yet; but new facts faced him, and he must make
one struggle for his life. But as he went towards Mizraim’s quarters he
saw no sure escape from the stage of those untoward events, save by the
exit which is for all in some appointed hour.
He was not, however, more perplexed and troubled than David, who, in
the little room where he had been brought and left alone with coffee and
cigarettes, served by a slave from some distant portion of the Palace,
sat facing his future.
David looked round the little room. Upon the walls hung weapons of every
kind--from a polished dagger of Toledo to a Damascus blade, suits of
chain armour, long-handled, two-edged Arab swords, pistols which had
been used in the Syrian wars of Ibrahim, lances which had been taken
from the Druses at Palmyra, rude battle-axes from the tribes of the
Soudan, and neboots of dom-wood which had done service against
Napoleon at Damietta. The cushions among which he sat had come from
Constantinople, the rug at his feet from Tiflis, the prayer-rug on the
wall from Mecca.
All that he saw was as unlike what he had known in past years as though
he had come to Mars or Jupiter. All that he had heard recalled to him
his first readings in the Old Testament--the story of Nebuchadnezzar, of
Belshazzar, of Ahasuerus--of Ahasuerus! He suddenly remembered the
face he had seen looking down at the Prince’s table from the panel of
mooshrabieh. That English face--where was it? Why was it there? Who
was the man with her? Whose the dark face peering scornfully over her
shoulder? The face of an English girl in that place dedicated to sombre
intrigue, to the dark effacement of women, to the darker effacement of
life, as he well knew, all too often! In looking at this prospect for
good work in the cause of civilisation, he was not deceived, he was not
allured. He knew into what subterranean ways he must walk, through what
mazes of treachery and falsehood he must find his way; and though he
did not know to the full the corruption which it was his duty to Kaid
to turn to incorruption, he knew enough to give his spirit pause. What
would be--what could be--the end? Would he not prove to be as much out
of place as was the face of that English girl? The English girl! England
rushed back upon him--the love of those at home; of his father, the only
father he had ever known; of Faith, the only mother or sister he had
ever known; of old John Fairley; the love of the woods and the hills
where he had wandered came upon him. There was work to do in England,
work too little done--the memory of the great meeting at Heddington
flashed upon him. Could his labour and his skill, if he had any, not be
used there? Ah, the green fields, the soft grey skies, the quiet vale,
the brave, self-respecting, toiling millions, the beautiful sense of law
and order and goodness! Could his gifts and labours not be used there?
Could not--
He was suddenly startled by a smothered cry, then a call of distress. It
was the voice of a woman.
He started up. The voice seemed to come from a room at his right; not
that from which he had entered, but one still beyond this where he was.
He sprang towards the wall and examined it swiftly. Finding a division
in the tapestry, he ran his fingers quickly and heavily down the crack
between. It came upon the button of a spring. He pressed it, the door
yielded, and, throwing it back, he stepped into the room-to see a woman
struggling to resist the embraces and kisses of a man. The face was that
of the girl who had looked out of the panel in the mooshrabieh screen.
Then it was beautiful in its mirth and animation, now it was pale
and terror-stricken, as with one free hand she fiercely beat the face
pressed to hers.
The girl only had seen David enter. The man was not conscious of his
presence till he was seized and flung against the wall. The violence of
the impact brought down at his feet two weapons from the wall above
him. He seized one-a dagger-and sprang to his feet. Before he could move
forward or raise his arm, however, David struck him a blow in the neck
which flung him upon a square marble pedestal intended for a statue.
In falling his head struck violently a sharp corner of the pedestal. He
lurched, rolled over on the floor, and lay still.
The girl gave a choking cry. David quickly stooped and turned the body
over. There was a cut where the hair met the temple. He opened the
waistcoat and thrust his hand inside the shirt. Then he felt the pulse
of the limp wrist.
For a moment he looked at the face steadily, almost contemplatively it
might have seemed, and then drew both arms close to the body.
Foorgat Bey, the brother of Nahoum Pasha, was dead.
Rising, David turned, as if in a dream, to the girl. He made a motion of
the hand towards the body. She understood. Dismay was in her face, but
the look of horror and desperation was gone. She seemed not to realise,
as did David, the awful position in which they were placed, the deed
which David had done, the significance of the thing that lay at their
feet.
“Where are thy people?” said David. “Come, we will go to them.”
“I have no people here,” she said, in a whisper.
“Who brought thee?”
She made a motion behind her towards the body. David glanced down. The
eyes of the dead man were open. He stooped and closed them gently. The
collar and tie were disarranged; he straightened them, then turned again
to her.
“I must take thee away,” he said calmly. “But it must be secretly.”
He looked around, perplexed. “We came secretly. My maid is outside the
garden--in a carriage. Oh, come, let us go, let us escape. They will
kill you--!” Terror came into her face again. “Thee, not me, is in
danger--name, goodness, future, all.... Which way did thee come?”
“Here--through many rooms--” She made a gesture to curtains beyond. “But
we first entered through doors with sphinxes on either side, with a room
where was a statue of Mehemet Ali.”
It was the room through which David had come with Kaid. He took her
hand. “Come quickly. I know the way. It is here,” he said, pointing to
the panel-door by which he had entered.
Holding her hand still, as though she were a child, he led her quickly
from the room, and shut the panel behind them. As they passed through,
a hand drew aside the curtains on the other side of the room which they
were leaving.
Presently the face of Nahoum Pasha followed the hand. A swift glance
to the floor, then he ran forward, stooped down, and laid a hand on his
brother’s breast. The slight wound on the forehead answered his rapid
scrutiny. He realised the situation as plainly as if it had been written
down for him--he knew his brother well.
Noiselessly he moved forward and touched the spring of the door through
which the two had gone. It yielded, and he passed through, closed the
door again and stealthily listened, then stole a look into the farther
chamber. It was empty. He heard the outer doors close. For a moment he
listened, then went forward and passed through into the hall. Softly
turning the handle of the big wooden doors which faced him, he opened
them an inch or so, and listened. He could hear swiftly retreating
footsteps. Presently he heard the faint noise of a gate shutting. He
nodded his head, and was about to close the doors and turn away, when
his quick ear detected footsteps again in the garden. Some one--the man,
of course--was returning.
“May fire burn his eyes for ever! He would talk with Kald, then go again
among them all, and so pass out unsuspected and safe. For who but I--who
but I could say he did it? And I--what is my proof? Only the words which
I speak.”
A scornful, fateful smile passed over his face. “‘Hast thou never killed
a man?’ said Kaid. ‘Never,’ said he--‘by the goodness of God, never!’
The voice of Him of Galilee, the hand of Cain, the craft of Jael. But
God is with the patient.”
He went hastily and noiselessly-his footfall was light for so heavy a
man-through the large room to the farther side from that by which David
and Kaid had first entered. Drawing behind a clump of palms near a door
opening to a passage leading to Mizraim’s quarters, he waited. He saw
David enter quickly, yet without any air of secrecy, and pass into the
little room where Kaid had left him.
For a long time there was silence.
The reasons were clear in Nahoum’s mind why he should not act yet. A new
factor had changed the equation which had presented itself a short half
hour ago.
A new factor had also entered into the equation which had been presented
to David by Kaid with so flattering an insistence. He sat in the place
where Kaid had left him, his face drawn and white, his eyes burning, but
with no other “sign of agitation. He was frozen and still. His look was
fastened now upon the door by which the Prince Pasha would enter, now
upon the door through which he had passed to the rescue of the English
girl, whom he had seen drive off safely with her maid. In their swift
passage from the Palace to the carriage, a thing had been done of even
greater moment than the killing of the sensualist in the next room.
In the journey to the gateway the girl David served had begged him to
escape with her. This he had almost sharply declined; it would be no
escape, he had said. She had urged that no one knew. He had replied that
Kaid would come again for him, and suspicion would be aroused if he were
gone.
“Thee has safety,” he had said. “I will go back. I will say that I
killed him. I have taken a life, I will pay for it as is the law.”
Excited as she was, she had seen the inflexibility of his purpose. She
had seen the issue also clearly. He would give himself up, and the whole
story would be the scandal of Europe.
“You have no right to save me only to kill me,” she had said
desperately. “You would give your life, but you would destroy that
which is more than life to me. You did not intend to kill him. It was
no murder, it was punishment.” Her voice had got harder. “He would have
killed my life because he was evil. Will you kill it because you are
good? Will you be brave, quixotic, but not pitiful?... No, no, no!”
she had said, as his hand was upon the gate, “I will not go unless you
promise that you will hide the truth, if you can.” She had laid her hand
upon his shoulder with an agonised impulse. “You will hide it for a girl
who will cherish your memory her whole life long. Ah--God bless you!”
She had felt that she conquered before he spoke as, indeed, he did not
speak, but nodded his head and murmured something indistinctly. But that
did not matter, for she had won; she had a feeling that all would be
well. Then he had placed her in her carriage, and she was driven swiftly
away, saying to herself half hysterically: “I am safe, I am safe. He
will keep his word.”
Her safety and his promise were the new factor which changed the
equation for which Kaid would presently ask the satisfaction. David’s
life had suddenly come upon problems for which his whole past was no
preparation. Conscience, which had been his guide in every situation,
was now disarmed, disabled, and routed. It had come to terms.
In going quickly through the room, they had disarranged a table. The
girl’s cloak had swept over it, and a piece of brie-a-brae had been
thrown upon the floor. He got up and replaced it with an attentive
air. He rearranged the other pieces on the table mechanically, seeing,
feeling another scene, another inanimate thing which must be for ever
and for ever a picture burning in his memory. Yet he appeared to be
casually doing a trivial and necessary act. He did not definitely
realise his actions; but long afterwards he could have drawn an accurate
plan of the table, could have reproduced upon it each article in its
exact place as correctly as though it had been photographed. There were
one or two spots of dust or dirt on the floor, brought in by his boots
from the garden. He flicked them aside with his handkerchief.
How still it was! Or was it his life which had become so still? It
seemed as if the world must be noiseless, for not a sound of the life in
other parts of the Palace came to him, not an echo or vibration of the
city which stirred beyond the great gateway. Was it the chilly hand of
death passing over everything, and smothering all the activities? His
pulses, which, but a few minutes past, were throbbing and pounding like
drums in his ears, seemed now to flow and beat in very quiet. Was this,
then, the way that murderers felt, that men felt who took human life--so
frozen, so little a part of their surroundings? Did they move as dead
men among the living, devitalised, vacuous calm?
His life had been suddenly twisted out of recognition. All that his
habit, his code, his morals, his religion, had imposed upon him had
been overturned in one moment. To take a human life, even in battle, was
against the code by which he had ever been governed, yet he had taken
life secretly, and was hiding it from the world.
Accident? But had it been necessary to strike at all? His presence alone
would have been enough to save the girl from further molestation; but,
he had thrown himself upon the man like a tiger. Yet, somehow, he felt
no sorrow for that. He knew that if again and yet again he were placed
in the same position he would do even as he had done--even as he had
done with the man Kimber by the Fox and Goose tavern beyond Hamley. He
knew that the blow he had given then was inevitable, and he had never
felt real repentance. Thinking of that blow, he saw its sequel in the
blow he had given now. Thus was that day linked with the present, thus
had a blow struck in punishment of the wrong done the woman at the
crossroads been repeated in the wrong done the girl who had just left
him.
A sound now broke the stillness. It was a door shutting not far off.
Kaid was coming. David turned his face towards the room where Foorgat
Bey was lying dead. He lifted his arms with a sudden passionate gesture.
The blood came rushing through his veins again. His life, which had
seemed suspended, was set free; and an exaltation of sorrow, of pain, of
action, possessed him.
“I have taken a life, O my God!” he murmured. “Accept mine in service
for this land. What I have done in secret, let me atone for in secret,
for this land--for this poor land, for Christ’s sake!”
Footsteps were approaching quickly. With a great effort of the will he
ruled himself to quietness again. Kaid entered, and stood before him in
silence. David rose. He looked Kaid steadily in the eyes. “Well?” said
Kaid placidly.
“For Egypt’s sake I will serve thee,” was the reply. He held out his
hand. Kaid took it, but said, in smiling comment on the action: “As the
Viceroy’s servant there is another way!”
“I will salaam to-morrow, Kaid,” answered David.
“It is the only custom of the place I will require of thee, effendi.
Come.”
A few moments later they were standing among the consuls and officials
in the salon.
“Where is Nahoum?” asked Kaid, looking round on the agitated throng.
No one answered. Smiling, Kaid whispered in David’s ear.