serious objections. No infidel might enter. But we had a pass from
Cairo, exhorting the faithful in the name of the Khedive to give us food
and shelter; and after much examination and many loud discussions, the
gatemen passed us. We entered the town, and stood alone, three Christian
Europeans, in the midst of three thousand fanatical Mohammedans.
I confess it was weird. Elsie shrank by my side. 'Suppose they were to
attack us, Brownie?'
'Thin the sheikh here would never get paid,' Dr. Macloghlen put in with
true Irish recklessness. 'Faix, he'll whistle for his money on the
whistle I gave him.' That touch of humour saved us. We laughed; and the
people about saw we could laugh. They left off scowling, and pressed
around trying to sell us pottery and native brooches. In the intervals
of fanaticism, the Arab has an eye to business.
We passed up the chief street of the bazaar. The inhabitants told us in
pantomime the chief of the town was away at Asioot, whither he had gone
two days ago on business. If he were here, our interpreter gave us to
understand, things might have been different; for the chief had
determined that, whatever came, no infidel dog should settle in _his_
oasis.
[Illustration: HER AGITATION WAS EVIDENT.]
The women with their veiled faces attracted us strangely. They were
wilder than on the river. They ran when one looked at them. Suddenly,
as we passed one, we saw her give a little start. She was veiled like
the rest, but her agitation was evident even through her thick covering.
'She is afraid of Christians,' Elsie cried, nestling towards me.
The woman passed close to us. She never looked in our direction, but in
a very low voice she murmured, as she passed, 'Then you are English!'
I had presence of mind enough to conceal my surprise at this unexpected
utterance. 'Don't seem to notice her, Elsie,' I said, looking away.
'Yes, we are English.'
She stopped and pretended to examine some jewellery on a stall. 'So am
I,' she went on, in the same suppressed low voice. 'For Heaven's sake,
help me!'
'What are you doing here?'
'I live here--married. I was with Gordon's force at Khartoum. They
carried me off. A mere girl then. Now I am thirty.'
'And you have been here ever since?'
She turned away and walked off, but kept whispering behind her veil. We
followed, unobtrusively. 'Yes; I was sold to a man at Dongola. He passed
me on again to the chief of this oasis. I don't know where it is; but I
have been here ever since. I hate this life. Is there any chance of a
rescue?'
'Anny chance of a rescue, is it?' the Doctor broke in, a trifle too
ostensibly. 'If it costs us a whole British Army, me dear lady, we'll
fetch you away and save you.'
'But now--to-day? You won't go away and leave me? You are the first
Europeans I have seen since Khartoum fell. They may sell me again. You
will not desert me?'
'No,' I said. 'We will not.' Then I reflected a moment.
What on earth could we do? This was a painful dilemma. If we once lost
sight of her, we might not see her again. Yet if we walked with her
openly, and talked like friends, we would betray ourselves, and her, to
those fanatical Senoosis.
I made my mind up promptly. I may not have much of a mind; but, such as
it is, I flatter myself I can make it up at a moment's notice.
'Can you come to us outside the gate at sunset?' I asked, as if speaking
to Elsie.
The woman hesitated. 'I think so.'
'Then keep us in sight all day, and when evening comes, stroll out
behind us.'
She turned over some embroidered slippers on a booth, and seemed to be
inspecting them. 'But my children?' she murmured anxiously.
The Doctor interposed. 'Is it childern she has?' he asked. 'Thin they'll
be the Mohammedan gintleman's. We mustn't interfere wid _them_. We can
take away the lady--she's English, and detained against her will: but we
can't deprive anny man of his own childern'.
I was firm, and categorical. 'Yes, we can,' I said, stoutly; 'if he has
forced a woman to bear them to him whether she would or not. That's
common justice. I have no respect for the Mohammedan gentleman's rights.
Let her bring them with her. How many are there?'
'Two--a boy and girl; not very old; the eldest is seven.' She spoke
wistfully. A mother is a mother.
'Then say no more now, but keep us always in sight, and we will keep
_you_. Come to us at the gate about sundown. We will carry you off with
us.'
She clasped her hands and moved off with the peculiar gliding air of the
veiled Mohammedan woman. Our eyes followed her. We walked on through
the bazaar, thinking of nothing else now. It was strange how this
episode made us forget our selfish fears for our own safety. Even dear
timid Elsie remembered only that an Englishwoman's life and liberty were
at stake. We kept her more or less in view all day. She glided in and
out among the people in the alleys. When we went back to the camels at
lunch-time, she followed us unobtrusively through the open gate, and sat
watching us from a little way off, among a crowd of gazers; for all Wadi
Bou was of course agog at this unwonted invasion.
We discussed the circumstance loudly, so that she might hear our plans.
Dr. Macloghlen advised that we should tell our sheikh we meant to return
part of the way to Geergeh that evening by moonlight. I quite agreed
with him. It was the only way out. Besides, I didn't like the looks of
the people. They eyed us askance. This was getting exciting now. I felt
a professional journalistic interest. Whether we escaped or got killed,
what splendid business for the _Daily Telephone_!
The sheikh, of course, declared it was impossible to start that evening.
The men wouldn't move--the camels needed rest. But Dr. Macloghlen was
inexorable. 'Very well, thin, Mr. Sheikh,' he answered, philosophically.
'Ye'll plaze yerself about whether ye come on wid us or whether ye
shtop. That's yer own business. But _we_ set out at sundown; and whin ye
return by yerself on foot to Geergeh, ye can ask for yer camels at the
British Consulate.'
All through that anxious afternoon we sat in our tents, under the shade
of the mud-wall, wondering whether we could carry out our plan or not.
About an hour before sunset the veiled woman strolled out of the gate
with her two children. She joined the crowd of sight-seers once more,
for never through the day were we left alone for a second. The
excitement grew intense. Elsie and I moved up carelessly towards the
group, talking as if to one another. I looked hard at Elsie: then I
said, as though I were speaking about one of the children, 'Go straight
along the road to Geergeh till you are past the big clump of palms at
the edge of the oasis. Just beyond it comes a sharp ridge of rock. Wait
behind the ridge where no one can see you. When we get there,' I patted
the little girl's head, 'don't say a word, but jump on my camel. My two
friends will each take one of the children. If you understand and
consent, stroke your boy's curls. We will accept that for a signal.'
She stroked the child's head at once without the least hesitation. Even
through her veil and behind her dress, I could somehow feel and see her
trembling nerves, her beating heart. But she gave no overt token. She
merely turned and muttered something carelessly in Arabic to a woman
beside her.
We waited once more, in long-drawn suspense. Would she manage to escape
them? Would they suspect her motives?
After ten minutes, when we had returned to our crouching-place under the
shadow of the wall, the woman detached herself slowly from the group,
and began strolling with almost overdone nonchalance along the road to
Geergeh. We could see the little girl was frightened and seemed to
expostulate with her mother: fortunately, the Arabs about were too much
occupied in watching the suspicious strangers to notice this episode of
their own people. Presently, our new friend disappeared; and, with
beating hearts, we awaited the sunset.
[Illustration: CROUCHING BY THE ROCKS SAT OUR MYSTERIOUS STRANGER.]
Then came the usual scene of hubbub with the sheikh, the camels, the
porters, and the drivers. It was eagerness against apathy. With
difficulty we made them understand we meant to get under way at all
hazards. I stormed in bad Arabic. The Doctor inveighed in very choice
Irish. At last they yielded, and set out. One by one the camels rose,
bent their slow knees, and began to stalk in their lordly way with
outstretched necks along the road to the river. We moved through the
palm groves, a crowd of boys following us and shouting for backsheesh.
We began to be afraid they would accompany us too far and discover our
fugitive; but fortunately they all turned back with one accord at a
little whitewashed shrine near the edge of the oasis. We reached the
clump of palms; we turned the corner of the ridge. Had we missed one
another? No! There, crouching by the rocks, with her children by her
side, sat our mysterious stranger.
The Doctor was equal to the emergency. 'Make those bastes kneel!' he
cried authoritatively to the sheikh.
The sheikh was taken aback. This was a new exploit burst upon him. He
flung his arms up, gesticulating wildly. The Doctor, unmoved, made the
drivers understand by some strange pantomime what he wanted. They
nodded, half terrified. In a second, the stranger was by my side, Elsie
had taken the girl, the Doctor the boy, and the camels were passively
beginning to rise again. That is the best of your camel. Once set him on
his road, and he goes mechanically.
The sheikh broke out with several loud remarks in Arabic, which we did
not understand, but whose hostile character could not easily escape us.
He was beside himself with anger. Then I was suddenly aware of the
splendid advantage of having an Irishman on our side. Dr. Macloghlen
drew his revolver, like one well used to such episodes, and pointed it
full at the angry Arab. 'Look here, Mr. Sheikh,' he said, calmly, yet
with a fine touch of bravado; 'do ye see this revolver? Well, unless ye
make yer camels thravel sthraight to Geergeh widout wan other wurrud,
'tis yer own brains will be spattered, sor, on the sand of this desert!
And if ye touch wan hair of our heads, ye'll answer for it wid yer life
to the British Government.'
I do not feel sure that the sheikh comprehended the exact nature of each
word in this comprehensive threat, but I am certain he took in its
general meaning, punctuated as it was with some flourishes of the
revolver. He turned to the drivers and made a gesture of despair. It
meant, apparently, that this infidel was too much for him. Then he
called out a few sharp directions in Arabic. Next minute, our camels'
legs were stepping out briskly along the road to Geergeh with a
promptitude which I'm sure must have astonished their owners. We rode on
and on through the gloom in a fever of suspense. Had any of the Senoosis
noticed our presence? Would they miss the chief's wife before long, and
follow us under arms? Would our own sheikh betray us? I am no coward, as
women go, but I confess, if it had not been for our fiery Irishman, I
should have felt my heart sink. We were grateful to him for the reckless
and good-humoured courage of the untamed Celt. It kept us from giving
way. 'Ye'll take notice, Mr. Sheikh,' he said, as we threaded our way
among the moon-lit rocks, 'that I have twinty-wan cartridges in me case
for me revolver; and that if there's throuble to-night, 'tis twinty of
them there'll be for your frinds the Senoosis, and wan for yerself; but
for fear of disappointing a gintleman, 'tis yer own special bullet I'll
disthribute first, if it comes to fighting.'
The sheikh's English was a vanishing quantity, but to judge by the way
he nodded and salaamed at this playful remark, I am convinced he
understood the Doctor's Irish quite as well as I did.
We spoke little by the way; we were all far too frightened, except the
Doctor, who kept our hearts up by a running fire of wild Celtic humour.
But I found time meanwhile to learn by a few questions from our veiled
friend something of her captivity. She had seen her father massacred
before her eyes at Khartoum, and had then been sold away to a merchant,
who conveyed her by degrees and by various exchanges across the desert
through lonely spots to the Senoosi oasis. There she had lived all those
years with the chief to whom her last purchaser had trafficked her. She
did not even know that her husband's village was an integral part of the
Khedive's territory; far less that the English were now in practical
occupation of Egypt. She had heard nothing and learnt nothing since that
fateful day; she had waited in vain for the off-chance of a deliverer.
'But did you never try to run away to the Nile?' I cried, astonished.
'Run away? How could I? I did not even know which way the river lay; and
was it possible for me to cross the desert on foot, or find the chance
of a camel? The Senoosis would have killed me. Even with you to help me,
see what dangers surround me; alone, I should have perished, like Hagar
in the wilderness, with no angel to save me.'
'An' ye've got the angel now,' Dr. Macloghlen exclaimed, glancing at me.
'Steady, there, Mr. Sheikh. What's this that's coming?'
It was another caravan, going the opposite way, on its road to the
oasis! A voice halloaed from it.
Our new friend clung tight to me. 'My husband!' she whispered, gasping.
They were still far off on the desert, and the moon shone bright. A few
hurried words to the Doctor, and with a wild resolve we faced the
emergency. He made the camels halt, and all of us, springing off,
crouched down behind their shadows in such a way that the coming caravan
must pass on the far side of us. At the same moment the Doctor turned
resolutely to the sheikh. 'Look here, Mr. Arab,' he said in a quiet
voice, with one more appeal to the simple Volapuk of the pointed
revolver; 'I cover ye wid this. Let these frinds of yours go by. If
there's anny unnecessary talking betwixt ye, or anny throuble of anny
kind, remimber, the first bullet goes sthraight as an arrow t'rough that
haythen head of yours!'
The sheikh salaamed more submissively than ever.
The caravan drew abreast of us. We could hear them cry aloud on either
side the customary salutes: 'In Allah's name, peace!' answered by 'Allah
is great; there is no god but Allah.'
Would anything more happen? Would our sheikh play us false? It was a
moment of breathlessness. We crouched and cowered in the shade, holding
our hearts with fear, while the Arab drivers pretended to be unsaddling
the camels. A minute or two of anxious suspense; then, peering over our
beasts' backs, we saw their long line filing off towards the oasis. We
watched their turbaned heads, silhouetted against the sky, disappear
slowly. One by one they faded away. The danger was past. With beating
hearts we rose up again.
The Doctor sprang into his place and seated himself on his camel. 'Now
ride on, Mr. Sheikh,' he said, 'wid all yer men, as if grim death was
afther ye. Camels or no camels, ye've got to march all night, for ye'll
never draw rein till we're safe back at Geergeh!'
And sure enough we never halted, under the persuasive influence of that
loaded revolver, till we dismounted once more in the early dawn upon the
Nile bank, under British protection.
Then Elsie and I and our rescued country-woman broke down together in an
orgy of relief. We hugged one another and cried like so many children.
VIII
THE ADVENTURE OF THE PEA-GREEN PATRICIAN
Away to India! A life on the ocean wave once more; and--may it prove
less wavy!
In plain prose, my arrangement with 'my proprietor,' Mr. Elworthy (thus
we speak in the newspaper trade), included a trip to Bombay for myself
and Elsie. So, as soon as we had drained Upper Egypt journalistically
dry, we returned to Cairo on our road to Suez. I am glad to say, my
letters to the _Daily Telephone_ gave satisfaction. My employer wrote,
'You are a born journalist.' I confess this surprised me; for I have
always considered myself a truthful person. Still, as he evidently meant
it for praise, I took the doubtful compliment in good part, and offered
no remonstrance.
I have a mercurial temperament. My spirits rise and fall as if they were
Consols. Monotonous Egypt depressed me, as it depressed the Israelites;
but the passage of the Red Sea set me sounding my timbrel. I love fresh
air; I love the sea, if the sea will but behave itself; and I positively
revelled in the change from Egypt.
Unfortunately, we had taken our passages by a P. and O. steamer from
Suez to Bombay many weeks beforehand, so as to secure good berths; and
still more unfortunately, in a letter to Lady Georgina, I had chanced
to mention the name of our ship and the date of the voyage. I kept up a
spasmodic correspondence with Lady Georgina nowadays--tuppence-ha'penny
a fortnight; the dear, cantankerous, racy old lady had been the
foundation of my fortunes, and I was genuinely grateful to her; or,
rather, I ought to say, she had been their second foundress, for I will
do myself the justice to admit that the first was my own initiative and
enterprise. I flatter myself I have the knack of taking the tide on the
turn, and I am justly proud of it. But, being a grateful animal, I wrote
once a fortnight to report progress to Lady Georgina. Besides--let me
whisper--strictly between ourselves--'twas an indirect way of hearing
about Harold.
This time, however, as events turned out, I recognised that I had made a
grave mistake in confiding my movements to my shrewd old lady. She did
not betray me on purpose, of course; but I gathered later that casually
in conversation she must have mentioned the fact and date of my sailing
before somebody who ought to have had no concern in it; and the
somebody, I found, had governed himself accordingly. All this, however,
I only discovered afterwards. So, without anticipating, I will narrate
the facts exactly as they occurred to me.
[Illustration: AN ODD-LOOKING YOUNG MAN.]
When we mounted the gangway of the _Jumna_ at Suez, and began the
process of frizzling down the Red Sea, I noted on deck almost at once an
odd-looking young man of twenty-two or thereabouts, with a curious faint
pea-green complexion. He was the wishy-washiest young man I ever beheld
in my life; an achromatic study: in spite of the delicate pea-greeniness
of his skin, all the colouring matter of the body seemed somehow to have
faded out of him. Perhaps he had been bleached. As he leant over the
taffrail, gazing down with open mouth and vacant stare at the water, I
took a good long look at him. He interested me much--because he was so
exceptionally uninteresting; a pallid, anaemic, indefinite hobbledehoy,
with a high, narrow forehead, and sketchy features. He had watery,
restless eyes of an insipid light blue; thin, yellow hair, almost white
in its paleness; and twitching hands that played nervously all the time
with a shadowy moustache. This shadowy moustache seemed to absorb as a
rule the best part of his attention; it was so sparse and so blanched
that he felt it continually--to assure himself, no doubt, of the reality
of its existence. I need hardly add that he wore an eye-glass.
He was an aristocrat, I felt sure; Eton and Christ Church: no ordinary
person could have been quite so flavourless. Imbecility like his is only
to be attained as the result of long and judicious selection.
He went on gazing in a vacant way at the water below, an ineffectual
patrician smile playing feebly round the corners of his mouth meanwhile.
Then he turned and stared at me as I lay back in my deck-chair. For a
minute he looked me over as if I were a horse for sale. When he had
finished inspecting me, he beckoned to somebody at the far end of the
quarter-deck.
The somebody sidled up with a deferential air which confirmed my belief
in the pea-green young man's aristocratic origin. It was such deference
as the British flunkey pays only to blue blood; for he has gradations of
flunkeydom. He is respectful to wealth; polite to acquired rank; but
servile only to hereditary nobility. Indeed, you can make a rough guess
at the social status of the person he addresses by observing which one
of his twenty-seven nicely graduated manners he adopts in addressing
him.
The pea-green young man glanced over in my direction, and murmured
something to the satellite, whose back was turned towards me. I felt
sure, from his attitude, he was asking whether I was the person he
suspected me to be. The satellite nodded assent, whereat the pea-green
young man, screwing up his face to fix his eye-glass, stared harder than
ever. He must be heir to a peerage, I felt convinced; nobody short of
that rank would consider himself entitled to stare with such frank
unconcern at an unknown lady.
Presently it further occurred to me that the satellite's back seemed
strangely familiar. 'I have seen that man somewhere, Elsie,' I
whispered, putting aside the wisps of hair that blew about my face.
'So have I, dear,' Elsie answered, with a slight shudder. And I was
instinctively aware that I too disliked him.
As Elsie spoke, the man turned, and strolled slowly past us, with that
ineffable insolence which is the other side of the flunkey's
insufferable self-abasement. He cast a glance at us as he went by, a
withering glance of brazen effrontery. We knew him now, of course: it
was that variable star, our old acquaintance, Mr. Higginson the courier.
He was here as himself this time; no longer the count or the mysterious
faith-healer. The diplomat hid his rays under the garb of the
man-servant.
'Depend upon it, Elsie,' I cried, clutching her arm with a vague sense
of fear, 'this man means mischief. There is danger ahead. When a
creature of Higginson's sort, who has risen to be a count and a
fashionable physician, descends again to be a courier, you may rest
assured it is because he has something to gain by it. He has some deep
scheme afloat. And _we_ are part of it.'
'His master looks weak enough and silly enough for anything,' Elsie
answered, eyeing the suspected lordling. 'I should think he is just the
sort of man such a wily rogue would naturally fasten upon.'
'When a wily rogue gets hold of a weak fool, who is also dishonest,' I
said, 'the two together may make a formidable combination. But never
mind. We're forewarned. I think I shall be even with him.'
That evening, at dinner in the saloon, the pea-green young man strolled
in with a jaunty air and took his seat next to us. The Red Sea, by the
way, was kinder than the Mediterranean: it allowed us to dine from the
very first evening. Cards had been laid on the plates to mark our
places. I glanced at my neighbour's. It bore the inscription, 'Viscount
Southminster.'
That was the name of Lord Kynaston's eldest son--Lady Georgina's nephew;
Harold Tillington's cousin! So _this_ was the man who might possibly
inherit Mr. Marmaduke Ashurst's money! I remembered now how often and
how fervently Lady Georgina had said, 'Kynaston's sons are all fools.'
If the rest came up to sample, I was inclined to agree with her.
It also flashed across me that Lord Southminster might have heard
through Higginson of our meeting with Mr. Marmaduke Ashurst at Florence,
and of my acquaintance with Harold Tillington at Schlangenbad and
Lungern. With a woman's instinct, I jumped at the fact that the
pea-green young man had taken passage by this boat, on purpose to baffle
both me and Harold.