On her wide veranda, a stone's-throw from the banks of the Nile, My Lady
sat pen in hand and paper-pad upon her knee. She had written steadily
for an hour, and now she raised her head to look out on the swift-
flowing, muddy water, where broad khiassas floated down the stream, laden
with bersim; where feluccas covered the river, bearing natives and
donkeys; where faithful Moslems performed their ablutions, and other
faithful Moslems, their sandals laid aside, said their prayers with their
faces towards Mecca, oblivious of all around; where blue-robed women
filled their goolahs with water, and bore them away, steady and stately;
where a gang of conscripts, chained ankle to ankle, followed by a crowd
of weeping and wailing women, were being driven to the anchorage of the
stern-wheeled transport-steamer. All these sights she had seen how many
hundred times! To her it was all slavery. The laden khiassas
represented the fruits of enforced labour; the ablutions and prayers were
but signs of submission to the tyranny of a religion designed for the
benefit of the few at the expense of the many, a creed and code of gross
selfishness--were not women only admitted to Heaven by the intercession
of their husbands and after unceasing prayer? Whether beasts of burden,
the girl with the goolah, women in the harem, or servants of pleasure,
they were all in the bonds of slavery, and the land was in moral
darkness. So it seemed to her.
How many times had she written these things in different forms and to
different people--so often, too often, to the British Consul at Cairo,
whose patience waned. At first, the seizure of conscripts, with all that
it involved, had excited her greatly. It had required all her common-
sense to prevent her, then and there, protesting, pleading, with the
kavass, who did the duty of Ismail's Sirdar. She had confined herself,
however, to asking for permission to give the men cigarettes and
slippers, dates and bread, and bags of lentils for soup. Even this was
not unaccompanied by danger, for the Mahommedan mind could not at first
tolerate the idea of a lady going unveiled; only fellah women, domestic
cattle, bared their faces to the world. The conscripts, too, going to
their death--for how few of them ever returned?--leaving behind all hope,
all freedom, passing to starvation and cruelty, at last to be cut down by
the Arab, or left dying of illness in the desert, they took her gifts
with sullen faces. Her beautiful freedom was in such contrast to their
torture, slavery of a direful kind. But as again and again the kavasses
came and opened midnight doors and snatched away the young men, her
influence had grown so fast that her presence brought comfort, and she
helped to assuage the grief of the wailing women. She even urged upon
them that philosophy of their own, which said "Malaish" to all things--
the "It is no matter," of the fated Hamlet. In time she began to be
grateful that an apathetic resignation, akin to the quiet of despair,
was the possession of their race. She was far from aware that something
in their life, of their philosophy, was affecting her understanding.
She had a strong brain and a stronger will, but she had a capacity for
feeling greater still, and this gave her imagination, temperament, and--
though it would have shocked her to know it--a certain credulity, easily
transmutable into superstition. Yet, as her sympathies were, to some
extent, rationalised by stern fact and everlasting custom, her opposition
to some things became more active and more fervid.
Looking into the distance, she saw two or three hundred men at work on a
canal, draining the property of Selamlik Pasha, whose tyrannies,
robberies, and intrigues were familiar to all Egypt, whose palaces were
almost as many as those of the notorious Mouffetish. These men she saw
now working in the dread corvee had been forced from their homes by a
counterfeit Khedivial order. They had been compelled to bring their own
tools, and to feed and clothe and house themselves, without pay or
reward, having left behind them their own fields untilled, their own
dourha unreaped, their date-palms, which the tax-gatherer confiscated.
Many and many a time--unless she was prevented, and this at first had
been often--she had sent food and blankets to these poor creatures who,
their day's work done, prayed to God as became good Mahommedans, and,
without covering, stretched themselves out on the bare ground to sleep.
It suggested that other slavery, which did not hide itself under the
forms of conscription and corvee. It was on this slavery her mind had
been concentrated, and against it she had turned her energies and her
life. As she now sat, pen in hand, the thought of how little she had
done, how futile had been all her crusade, came to her. Yet there was,
too, a look of triumph in her eyes. Until three days ago she had seen
little result from her labours. Then had come a promise of better
things. From the Englishman, against whom she had inveighed, had been
sent an olive branch, a token--of conversion? Had he not sent six slaves
for her to free, and had she not freed them? That was a step. She
pictured to herself this harsh expatriated adventurer, this desert ruler,
this slave-holder--had he been a slave-dealer she could herself have
gladly been his executioner--surrounded by his black serfs, receiving her
letter. In her mind's eye she saw his face flush as he read her burning
phrases, then turn a little pale, then grow stern.
She saw him, after a sleepless night, haunted by her warnings, her appeal
to his English manhood. She saw him rise, meditative and relenting, and
send forthwith these slaves for her to free. Her eye glistened again,
as it had shone while she had written of this thing to the British Consul
at Cairo, to her father in England, who approved of her sympathies and
lamented her actions. Had her crusade been altogether fruitless, she
asked herself. Ismail's freed Circassian was in her household, being
educated like an English girl, lifted out of her former degradation, made
to understand "a higher life"; and yesterday she had sent away six
liberated slaves, with a gold-piece each, as a gift from a free woman to
free men. It seemed to her for a moment now, as she sat musing and
looking, that her thirty years of life had not been--rather, might not
be-in vain.
There was one other letter she would write--to Donovan Pasha, who had not
been ardent in her cause, yet who might have done so much through his
influence with Ismail, who, it was said, liked him better than any
Englishman he had known, save Gordon. True, Donovan Pasha had steadily
worked for the reduction of the corvee, and had, in the name of the
Khedive, steadily reduced private corvee, but he had never set his face
against slavery, save to see that no slave-dealing was permitted below
Assouan. Yet, with her own eyes she had seen Abyssinian slaves sold
in the market-place of Assiout. True, when she appealed to him, Donovan
Pasha had seen to it that the slave-dealers were severely punished, but
the fact remained that he was unsympathetic on the large issue. When
appealed to, the British Consul had petulantly told her that Donovan
Pasha was doing more important work. Yet she could only think of England
as the engine of civilisation, as an evangelising power, as the John the
Baptist of the nations--a country with a mission. For so beautiful a
woman, of so worldly a stock, of a society so in the front of things, she
had some Philistine notions, some quite middle-class ideals. It was like
a duchess taking to Exeter Hall; but few duchesses so afflicted had been
so beautiful and so young, so much of the worldly world--her father was
high in the household of an illustrious person. . . . If she could
but make any headway against slavery--she had as disciples ten Armenian
pashas, several wealthy Copts, a number of Arab sheikhs, and three
Egyptian princes, sympathetic rather than active--perhaps, through her
father, she might be able to move the illustrious person, and so, in
time, the Government of England.
It was a delightful dream--the best she had imagined for many a day. She
was roused from it by the scream of a whistle, and the hoonch-hoonch of a
sternwheel steamer. A Government boat was hastening in to the bank,
almost opposite her house. She picked up the field-glass from the
window-sill behind her, and swept the deck of the steamer. There were
two figures in English dress, though one wore the tarboosh. The figure
shorter and smaller than the other she recognised. This was Donovan
Pasha. She need not write her letter to him, then. He would be sure to
visit her. Disapprove of him as she did from one stand-point, he always
excited in her feelings of homesickness, of an old life, full of
interests--music, drama, art, politics, diplomacy, the court, the
hunting-field, the quiet house-party. He troubled her in a way too,
for his sane certainty, set against her aspiring credulity, arrested,
even commanded, her sometimes.
Instinctively she put out her hand to gather in flying threads of hair,
she felt at the pearl fastening of her collar, she looked at her brown
shoes and her dress, and was satisfied. She was spotless. And never had
her face shone--really shone--to such advantage. It had not now the
brilliant colours of the first years. The climate, her work in hospital
building, her labours against slavery, had touched her with a little
whiteness. She was none the less good to see.
Who was this striding along with Donovan Pasha, straight towards her
house? No one she had ever seen in Egypt, and yet in manner like some
one she had seen before--a long time before. Her mind flashed back
through the years to the time when she was a girl, and visited old
friends of her father in a castle looking towards Skaw Fell, above the
long valley of the Nidd. A kind of mist came before her eyes now.
When she really saw again, they were at the steps of the veranda, and
Donovan Pasha's voice was greeting her. Then, as, without a word but
with a welcoming smile, she shook hands with Dicky, her look was held,
first by a blank arrest of memory, then by surprise.
Dicky turned for his office of introduction but was stayed by the look
of amusement in his friend's face, and by the amazed recognition in that
of My Lady. He stepped back with an exclamation, partly of chagrin.
He saw that this recognition was no coincidence, so far as the man was
concerned, though the woman had been surprised in a double sense. He
resented the fact that Kingsley Bey had kept this from him--he had the
weakness of small-statured men and of diplomatic people who have
reputations for knowing and doing. The man, all smiling, held out his
hand, and his look was quizzically humorous as he said:
"You scarcely looked to see me here, Lady May?" Her voice trembled with
pleasure. "No, of course. When did you come, Lord Selden? . . .
Won't you sit down?"
That high green terrace of Cumberland, the mist on Skaw Fell, the sun out
over the sea, they were in her eyes. So much water had gone under the
bridges since!
"I was such a young girl then--in short frocks--it was a long time ago,
I fear," she added, as if in continuation of the thought flashing through
her mind. "Let me see," she went on fearlessly; "I am thirty; that was
thirteen years ago."
"I am thirty-seven, and still it is thirteen years ago."
"You look older, when you don't smile," she added, and glanced at his
grey hair.
He laughed now. She was far, far franker than she was those many years
ago, and it was very agreeable and refreshing. "Donovan, there, reproved
me last night for frivolity," he said.
"If Donovan Pasha has become grave, then there is hope for Egypt," she
said, turning to Dicky with a new brightness.
"When there's hope for Egypt, I'll have lost my situation, and there'll
be reason for drawing a long face," said Dicky, and got the two at such
an angle that he could watch them to advantage. "I thrive while it's
opera boufe. Give us the legitimate drama, and I go with Ismail."
The lady shrank a little. "If it weren't you, Donovan Pasha, I should
say that, associated with Ismail, as you are, you are as criminal as he."
"What is crime in one country, is virtue in another," answered Dicky.
"I clamp the wheel sometimes to keep it from spinning too fast. That's
my only duty. I am neither Don Quixote nor Alexander Imperator."
She thought he was referring obliquely to the corvee and the other thing
in which her life-work was involved. She became severe. "It is
compromising with evil," she said.
"No. It's getting a breakfast-roll instead of the whole bakery," he
answered.
"What do you think?" she exclaimed, turning to Kingsley.
"I think there's one man in Egypt who keeps the boiler from bursting," he
answered.
"Oh, don't think I undervalue his Excellency here," she said with a
little laugh. "It is because he is strong, because he matters so much,
that one feels he could do more. Ismail thinks there is no one like him
in the world."
"Except Gordon," interrupted Kingsley.
"Except Gordon, of course; only Gordon isn't in Egypt. And he would do
no good in Egypt. The officials would block his way. It is only in the
Soudan that he could have a free hand, be of real use. There, a man, a
real man, like Gordon, could show the world how civilisation can be
accepted by desert races, despite a crude and cruel religion and low
standards of morality."
"All races have their social codes--what they call civilisation,"
rejoined Kingsley. "It takes a long time to get custom out of the blood,
especially when it is part of the religion. I'm afraid that expediency
isn't the motto of those who try to civilise the Orient and the East."
"I believe in struggling openly for principle," she observed a little
acidly.
"Have you succeeded?" he asked, trying to keep his gravity. "How about
your own household, for instance? Have you Christianised and civilised
your people--your niggers, and the others?"
She flushed indignantly, but held herself in control. She rang a bell.
"I have no 'niggers,'" she answered quietly. "I have some Berberine
servants, two fellah boatmen, an Egyptian gardener, an Arab cook, and a
Circassian maid. They are, I think, devoted to me."
A Berberine servant appeared. "Tea, Mahommed," she said. "And tell
Madame that Donovan Pasha is here. My cousin admires his Excellency so
much," she added to Kingsley, laughing. "I have never had any real
trouble with them," she continued with a little gesture of pride towards
the disappearing Berberine.
"There was the Armenian," put in Dicky slyly; "and the Copt sarraf. They
were no credit to their Christian religion, were they?"
"That was not the fault of the religion, but of the generations of
oppression--they lie as a child lies, to escape consequences. Had they
not been oppressed they would have been good Christians in practice as in
precept."
"They don't steal as a child steals," laughed Dicky.
"Armenians are Oriental through and through. They no more understand the
Christian religion than the Soudanese understand freedom."
He touched the right note this time. Kingsley flashed a half-startled,
half-humorous look at him; the face of the lady became set, her manner
delicately frigid. She was about to make a quiet, severe reply, but
something overcame her, and her eyes, her face, suddenly glowed. She
leaned forward, her hands clasped tightly on her knees--Kingsley could
not but note how beautiful and brown they were, capable, handsome,
confident hands--and, in a voice thrilling with feeling, said:
"What is there in the life here that gets into the eyes of Europeans and
blinds them? The United States spent scores of thousands of lives to
free the African slave. England paid millions, and sacrificed ministries
and men, to free the slave; and in England, you--you, Donovan Pasha, and
men like you, would be in the van against slavery. Yet here, where
England has more influence than any other nation--"
"More power, not influence," Dicky interrupted smiling.
"Here, you endure, you encourage, you approve of it. Here, an Englishman
rules a city of slaves in the desert and grows rich out of their labour.
What can we say to the rest of the world, while out there in the desert"
--her eyes swept over the grey and violet hills--"that man, Kingsley Bey,
sets at defiance his race, his country, civilisation, all those things in
which he was educated? Egypt will not believe in English civilisation,
Europe will not believe in her humanity and honesty, so long as he
pursues his wicked course."
She turned with a gesture of impatience, and in silence began to pour the
tea the servant had brought, with a message that Madame had a headache.
Kingsley Bey was about to speak--it was so unfair to listen, and she
would forgive this no more readily than she would forgive slavery. Dicky
intervened, however.
"He isn't so black as he's painted, personally. He's a rash, inflammable
sort of fellow, who has a way with the native--treats him well, too,
I believe. Very flamboyant, doomed to failure, so far as his merit is
concerned, but with an incredible luck. He gambled, and he lost a dozen
times; and then gambled again, and won. That's the truth, I fancy. No
real stuff in him whatever."
Their hostess put down her tea-cup, and looked at Dicky in blank
surprise. Not a muscle in his face moved. She looked at Kingsley. He
had difficulty in restraining himself, but by stooping to give her fox-
terrier a piece of cake, he was able to conceal his consternation.
"I cannot--cannot believe it," she said slowly. "The British Consul does
not speak of him like that."
"He is a cousin of the Consul," urged Dicky. "Cousin--what cousin? I
never heard--he never told me that."
"Oh, nobody tells anything in Egypt, unless he's kourbashed or thumb-
screwed. It's safer to tell nothing, you know."
"Cousin! I didn't know there were Kingsleys in that family. What reason
could the Consul have for hiding the relationship?"
"Well, I don't know, you must ask Kingsley. Flamboyant and garrulous as
he is, he probably won't tell you that."
"If I saw Kingsley Bey, I should ask him questions which interest me
more. I should prefer, however, to ask them through a lawyer--to him in
the prisoner's dock."
"You dislike him intensely?"
"I detest him for what he has done; but I do not despise him as you
suggest I should. Flamboyant, garrulous--I don't believe that. I think
him, feel him, to be a hard man, a strong man, and a bad man--if not
wholly bad."
"Yet you would put him in the prisoner's dock," interposed Kingsley
musingly, and wondering how he was to tell her that Lord Selden and
Kingsley Bey were one and the same person.
"Certainly. A man who commits public wrongs should be punished. Yet I
am sorry that a man so capable should be so inhuman."
"Your grandfather was inhuman," put in Kingsley. "He owned great West
Indian slave properties.
"He was culpable, and should have been punished--and was; for we are all
poor at last. The world has higher, better standards now, and we should
live up to them. Kingsley Bey should live up to them."
"I suppose we might be able to punish him yet," said Dicky meditatively.
"If Ismail turned rusty, we could soon settle him, I fancy. Certainly,
you present a strong case." He peered innocently into the distance.
"But could it be done--but would you?" she asked, suddenly leaning
forward. "If you would, you could--you could!"
"If I did it at all, if I could make up my mind to it, it should be done
thoroughly--no half measures."
"What would be the whole measures?" she asked eagerly, but with a
certain faint shrinking, for Dicky seemed cold-blooded.
"Of course you never could tell what would happen when Ismail throws the
slipper. This isn't a country where things are cut and dried, and done
according to Hoyle. You get a new combination every time you pull a
string. Where there's no system and a thousand methods you have to run
risks. Kingsley Bey might get mangled in the machinery."