David came to know a startling piece of news the next morning-that
Foorgat Bey had died of heart-disease in his bed, and was so found by
his servants. He at once surmised that Foorgat’s body had been carried
out of the Palace; no doubt that it might not be thought he had come
to his death by command of Kaid. His mind became easier. Death, murder,
crime in Egypt was not a nine days’ wonder; it scarce outlived one day.
When a man was gone none troubled. The dead man was in the bosom of
Allah; then why should the living be beset or troubled? If there was
foul play, why make things worse by sending another life after the life
gone, even in the way of justice?
The girl David saved had told him her own name, and had given him the
name of the hotel at which she was staying. He had an early breakfast,
and prepared to go to her hotel, wishing to see her once more. There
were things to be said for the first and last time and then be buried
for ever. She must leave the country at once. In this sick, mad land, in
this whirlpool of secret murder and conspiracy, no one could tell what
plot was hatching, what deeds were forward; and he could not yet be sure
that no one save himself and herself knew who had killed Foorgat Bey.
Her perfect safety lay in instant flight. It was his duty to see that
she went, and at once--this very day. He would go and see her.
He went to the hotel. There he learned that, with her aunt, she had left
that morning for Alexandria en route to England.
He approved her wisdom, he applauded her decision. Yet--yet, somehow,
as he bent his footsteps towards his lodgings again he had a sense of
disappointment, of revelation. What might happen to him--evidently that
had not occurred to her. How could she know but that his life might be
in danger; that, after all, they might have been seen leaving the fatal
room? Well, she had gone, and with all his heart he was glad that she
was safe.
His judgment upon last night’s event was not coloured by a single
direct criticism upon the girl. But he could not prevent the suggestion
suddenly flashing into his mind that she had thought of herself first
and last. Well, she had gone; and he was here to face the future,
unencumbered by aught save the weight of his own conscience.
Yet, the weight of his conscience! His feet were still free--free for
one short hour before he went to Kaid; but his soul was in chains. As he
turned his course to the Nile, and crossed over the great bridge, there
went clanking by in chains a hundred conscripts, torn from their homes
in the Fayoum, bidding farewell for ever to their friends, receiving
their last offerings, for they had no hope of return. He looked at their
haggard and dusty faces, at their excoriated ankles, and his eyes closed
in pain. All they felt he felt. What their homes were to them, these
fellaheen, dragged forth to defend their country, to go into the desert
and waste their lives under leaders tyrannous, cruel, and incompetent,
his old open life, his innocence, his integrity, his truthfulness and
character, were to him. By an impulsive act, by a rash blow, he had
asserted his humanity; but he had killed his fellow-man in anger. He
knew that as that fatal blow had been delivered, there was no thought
of punishment--it was blind anger and hatred: it was the ancient
virus working which had filled the world with war, and armed it at the
expense, the bitter and oppressive expense, of the toilers and the poor.
The taxes for wars were wrung out of the sons of labour and sorrow.
These poor fellaheen had paid taxes on everything they possessed. Taxes,
taxes, nothing but taxes from the cradle! Their lands, houses, and
palm-trees would be taxed still, when they would reap no more. And
having given all save their lives, these lives they must now give under
the whip and the chain and the sword.
As David looked at them in their single blue calico coverings, in which
they had lived and slept-shivering in the cold night air upon the bare
ground--these thoughts came to him; and he had a sudden longing to
follow them and put the chains upon his own arms and legs, and go forth
and suffer with them, and fight and die? To die were easy. To fight?...
Was it then come to that? He was no longer a man of peace, but a man
of the sword; no longer a man of the palm and the evangel, but a man of
blood and of crime! He shrank back out of the glare of the sun; for it
suddenly seemed to him that there was written upon his fore head, “This
is a brother of Cain.” For the first time in his life he had a shrinking
from the light, and from the sun which he had loved like a Persian, had,
in a sense, unconsciously worshipped.
He was scarcely aware where he was. He had wandered on until he had come
to the end of the bridge and into the great groups of traffickers who,
at this place, made a market of their wares. Here sat a seller of sugar
cane; there wandered, clanking his brasses, a merchant of sweet waters;
there shouted a cheap-jack of the Nile the virtues of a knife from
Sheffield. Yonder a camel-driver squatted and counted his earnings; and
a sheepdealer haggled with the owner of a ghiassa bound for the sands of
the North. The curious came about him and looked at him, but he did not
see or hear. He sat upon a stone, his gaze upon the river, following
with his eyes, yet without consciously observing, the dark riverine
population whose ways are hidden, who know only the law of the river and
spend their lives in eluding pirates and brigands now, and yet again the
peaceful porters of commerce.
To his mind, never a criminal in this land but less a criminal than he!
For their standard was a standard of might the only right; but he--his
whole life had been nurtured in an atmosphere of right and justice, had
been a spiritual demonstration against force. He was with out fear, as
he was without an undue love of life. The laying down of his life had
never been presented to him; and yet, now that his conscience was his
only judge, and it condemned him, he would gladly have given his life to
pay the price of blood.
That was impossible. His life was not his own to give, save by suicide;
and that would be the unpardonable insult to God and humanity. He
had given his word to the woman, and he would keep it. In those brief
moments she must have suffered more than most men suffer in a long life.
Not her hand, however, but his, had committed the deed. And yet a sudden
wave of pity for her rushed over him, because the conviction seized him
that she would also in her heart take upon herself the burden of his
guilt as though it were her own. He had seen it in the look of her face
last night.
For the sake of her future it was her duty to shield herself from any
imputation which might as unjustly as scandalously arise, if the facts
of that black hour ever became known. Ever became known? The thought
that there might be some human eye which had seen, which knew, sent a
shiver through him.
“I would give my life a thousand times rather than that,” he said
aloud to the swift-flowing river. His head sank on his breast. His lips
murmured in prayer:
“But be merciful to me, Thou just Judge of Israel, for Thou hast made
me, and Thou knowest whereof I am made. Here will I dedicate my life to
Thee for the land’s sake. Not for my soul’s sake, O my God! If it be
Thy will, let my soul be cast away; but for the soul of him whose body I
slew, and for his land, let my life be the long sacrifice.”
Dreams he had had the night before--terrible dreams, which he could
never forget; dreams of a fugitive being hunted through the world,
escaping and eluding, only to be hemmed in once more; on and on till he
grew grey and gaunt, and the hunt suddenly ended in a great morass, into
which he plunged with the howling world behind him. The grey, dank mists
came down on him, his footsteps sank deeper and deeper, and ever the
cries, as of damned spirits, grew in his ears. Mocking shapes flitted
past him, the wings of obscene birds buffeted him, the morass grew up
about him; and now it was all a red moving mass like a dead sea heaving
about him. With a moan of agony he felt the dolorous flood above his
shoulders, and then a cry pierced the gloom and the loathsome misery,
and a voice he knew called to him, “David, David, I am coming!” and he
had awaked with the old hallucination of his uncle’s voice calling to
him in the dawn.
It came to him now as he sat by the water-side, and he raised his face
to the sun and to the world. The idlers had left him alone; none were
staring at him now. They were all intent on their own business, each man
labouring after his kind. He heard the voice of a riverman as he toiled
at a rope standing on the corn that filled his ghiassa from end to
end, from keel to gunwale. The man was singing a wild chant of cheerful
labour, the soul of the hard-smitten of the earth rising above the rack
and burden of the body:
“O, the garden where to-day we sow and to-morrow we reap!
O, the sakkia turning by the garden walls;
O, the onion-field and the date-tree growing,
And my hand on the plough-by the blessing of God;
Strength of my soul, O my brother, all’s well!”
The meaning of the song got into his heart. He pressed his hand to his
breast with a sudden gesture. It touched something hard. It was his
flute. Mechanically he had put it in his pocket when he dressed in the
morning. He took it out and looked at it lovingly. Into it he had poured
his soul in the old days--days, centuries away, it seemed now. It should
still be the link with the old life. He rose and walked towards his home
again. The future spread clearly before him. Rapine, murder, tyranny,
oppression, were round him on every side, and the ruler of the land
called him to his counsels. Here a great duty lay--his life for this
land, his life, and his love, and his faith. He would expiate his crime
and his sin, the crime of homicide for which he alone was responsible,
the sin of secrecy for which he and another were responsible. And that
other? If only there had been but one word of understanding between them
before she left!
At the door of his house stood the American whom he had met at the
citadel yesterday-it seemed a hundred years ago.
“I’ve got a letter for you,” Lacey said. “The lady’s aunt and herself
are cousins of mine more or less removed, and originally at home in the
U. S. A. a generation ago. Her mother was an American. She didn’t know
your name--Miss Hylda Maryon, I mean. I told her, but there wasn’t time
to put it on.” He handed over the unaddressed envelope.
David opened the letter, and read:
“I have seen the papers. I do not understand what has happened, but I
know that all is well. If it were not so, I would not go. That is the
truth. Grateful I am, oh, believe me! So grateful that I do not yet know
what is the return which I must make. But the return will be made. I
hear of what has come to you--how easily I might have destroyed all! My
thoughts blind me. You are great and good; you will know at least that
I go because it is the only thing to do. I fly from the storm with a
broken wing. Take now my promise to pay what I owe in the hour Fate
wills--or in the hour of your need. You can trust him who brings this to
you; he is a distant cousin of my own. Do not judge him by his odd and
foolish words. They hide a good character, and he has a strong nature.
He wants work to do. Can you give it? Farewell.”
David put the letter in his pocket, a strange quietness about his heart.
He scarcely realised what Lacey was saying. “Great girl that. Troubled
about something in England, I guess. Going straight back.”
David thanked him for the letter. Lacey became red in the face. He
tried to say something, but failed. “Thee wishes to say something to me,
friend?” asked David.
“I’m full up; I can’t speak. But, say--”
“I am going to the Palace now. Come back at noon if you will.”
He wrung David’s hand in gratitude. “You’re going to do it. You’re going
to do it. I see it. It’s a great game--like Abe Lincoln’s. Say, let me
black your boots while you’re doing it, will you?”
David pressed his hand.