It is nice to go home, even from Harton, though we may be leaving all
our sports behind us. It used to be specially nice in winter; but you
young fellows are made so comfortable at school nowadays that you miss
one great luxury of return to the domestic hearth. Why, they tell me
that the school-rooms at Harton are _warmed_! And I know that the
Senate House at Cambridge is when men are in for their winter
examinations, so it is probable that the younger race is equally
pampered; and if the present Hartonians' teeth chatter at six o'clock
lesson, consciousness of unprepared lessons is the cause, not cold.
But you have harder head-work and fewer holidays than we had, so you are
welcome to your warm school-rooms. I am not sure that you have the best
of it: at any rate, we will cry quits.
But the superior material comforts of home are but a small matter in the
pleasure of going there after all. It is the affections centred in it
which cause it to fill the first place in our hearts, "be it never so
humble."
Harry Forsyth was fond of Harton; fond of football, which was in full
swing; fond of his two chums, Strachan and Kavanagh. He rather liked
his studies than otherwise, and, indeed, took a real pleasure in some
classical authors--Homer and Horace, for example--as any lad who has
turned sixteen who has brains, and is not absolutely idle, is likely to
do. He was strong, active, popular; he had passed from the purgatorial
state of fag to the elysium of fagger. But still his blood seemed
turned to champagne, and his muscles to watch-springs, when the cab,
which carried him and his portmanteau, passed through the gate into the
drive which curved up to the door of Holly Lodge. For Holly Lodge
contained his mother and Trix, and the thought of meeting either of them
after an absence of a school-term set his heart bounding, and his pulse
throbbing, in a way he would not have owned to his best friends for the
choice of bats in the best maker's shop. He loved his father also, but
he did not know so much of him. He was a merchant, and his business had
necessitated his living very much abroad, while Cairo did not suit his
wife's health. His visits to England were for some years but
occasional, and did not always coincide with Harry's holidays. Two
years previously, indeed, he had wound up his affairs, and settled
permanently at home; but he was still a busy man--a director of the
Great Transit Bank, and interested in other things, which took him up to
London every day. He was also fond of club-life and public dinners;
and, though he was affectionate with his wife and children, too much of
their society rather bored him.
When she heard the cab-wheels crunching the gravel, Beatrice Forsyth ran
out without a hat, and Harry seeing her, opened the door and "quitted
the vehicle while yet in motion," as the railway notices have it,
whereby he nearly came a cropper, but recovered his balance, and was
immediately fitted with a live necklace. Beatrice was a slight, fair,
blue-eyed, curly-haired girl of fifteen; so light and springy that her
brother carried her, without an effort, to the hall steps, where, being
set down, she sprang into the cab and began collecting the smaller
packages, rug, umbrella, and other articles, inside it, while Harry
hugged his mother in the hall.
"Your father will be home by four," said Mrs Forsyth, when the first
greetings and inquiries as to health were over.
"And Haroun Alraschid has taken possession of his study," added Trix,
with a sort of awe.
"Haroun, how much?" asked Harry.
"Don't be absurd, Trix!" said Mrs Forsyth. "It is only your uncle,
Ralph Burke."
"Burke, that was your name, mother; this uncle was your brother then?"
"Of course, Harry. Have you never heard me speak of your uncle Ralph?"
"Now you mention it, yes, mother. But I had a sort of idea that he was
dead."
"So we thought him for some time," said Mrs Forsyth, "for he left the
Indian Civil Service, in which he had a good appointment, and
disappeared for years. He met with disappointments, and had a
sunstroke, and went to live with wild men in the desert, and, I believe,
has taken up with some strange religious notions. In fact, I fear that
he is not quite right in his head. But he talks sensibly about things
too, and seems to wish to be kind. We were very fond of one another
when we were children, and he seems to remember it in spite of all he
has gone through."
"I am frightened to death at him," said Trix. "I know he has a large
cupboard at home with the heads of all the wives he has decapitated
hanging up in a row by the back hair!"
"I wonder at your talking so foolishly, Beatrice. You must not be
prejudiced by what she says, Harry. Except your uncle in Ireland, he
has no other relatives, and he may be very well off; and he is quite
harmless."
"You know that you were afraid of him yourself, mamma, when he first
came."
"A little, perhaps, because I did not recognise him, and thought him
dead. And then, you know, I fear he is not quite orthodox. But go and
see him, Harry, and never mind what any one says."
"All right, mother; you have made me a bit curious, I confess," said
Harry, leaving the room.
The garden in front of Holly Lodge was formal--just a carriage-drive,
and a bit of shrubbery, and a grass-plat with prim beds on it, which had
various flower eruptions at different periods of the year. First
snowdrops, aconites, and crocuses, then tulips, then geraniums. The
real garden was at the back, and the study looked out upon it. Not upon
the lawn, where bowls, or lawn-tennis, or other disturbing proceedings
might be going on; no, from the oriel window, which alone lighted the
room, one saw a fountain, a statue, rose-bushes, and a catalpa tree,
enclosed in a fringe of foliage, syringa, lilac, laurel, chestnut, high
and thick enough to make it as private and quiet as any man with a
speech to prepare, or sums to do, might require. Harry went along a
passage, turned to the left up five steps, passed through a green-baize
swing door, and knocked at that of the study.
A deep musical voice, which seemed, however, to come from a strange
distance, told him to "come in," and on opening the door, he found that
he had to push aside a curtain hanging over it, and which had dulled the
sound of the voice. Smoke wreaths floated about the apartment, bearing
an aromatic odour quite different from ordinary tobacco, and a curious
gurgling sound, like that of water on the boil, only intermittent, came
from the direction of the broad low sofa, which had been brought from
the drawing-room, and was placed between the fire and the window. Close
to this was a small table with writing materials, a note-book, and a
pile of letters ready for the post, upon it.
On the sofa reclined a man dressed in a black frock-coat, buttoned, and
dark trousers, the only Oriental thing about him being the red cap with
a silk tassel which he wore on his head. But smokers often have a fancy
for wearing the fez, so there was nothing peculiar in that. And yet
there was something different from other people about him. Most men
lounging on a sofa are ungainly and awkward-looking, while the attitude
of this one was easy and graceful, and the motion of his hand, with
which he indicated the chair on which he wished his nephew to be seated,
was courteous and yet commanding.
His complexion was sallow, and appeared the darker from the contrast
afforded by the silvery whiteness of his long beard, moustache, and
thick bushy eyebrows, from the deep cavities beneath which his dark eyes
seemed literally to flash. His nose was aquiline, his cheek-bones
prominent. His hands were small, but strong and nervous, with little
flesh upon them, and the fingers were long and shapely.
When Harry was seated he resettled himself on the sofa, and, keeping his
eyes fixed on the lad, placed the amber mouth-piece of a long spiral
tube connected with a narghile which was smouldering on the floor to his
lips, and the gurgling sound was once more produced. But to Harry's
astonishment, no cloud issued from his uncle's mouth; like a law-abiding
factory chimney, he appeared to consume his own smoke. Then,
deliberately removing the amber tube which he held in his hand, he
said--
"And you are my sister's son? I like your looks, and my heart yearns
towards you. Pity that she did not wed with one of her own land, so
that you might not have had the blood of the accursed race in your
veins. But it was the will of the All-Powerful, and what can we avail
against fate?"
What these words meant Harry could not imagine. Were not his parents of
the same land and race? His mother was Irish and his father English,
and he had no more idea of Irish, Scotch, Welsh, or English being of
different races than of the inhabitants of Surrey and Essex being so.
They were all Englishmen he had always thought. His bewilderment was by
no means diminished when, after this speech, and without again putting
the stem of his narghile near his mouth, his uncle raised his head and
poured out a volume of smoke, which it would have taken the united
efforts of a couple of Germans about five minutes to produce. He was
quite veiled by the cloud, through which the gleam of his eyes seemed to
Harry to have an almost supernatural effect.
"You are nearly seventeen years of age, and will soon be leaving
school," he resumed. "What are they going to do with you then?"
"I have not quite made up my mind what profession I should like," said
Harry, somewhat hesitatingly. "I am fond of drawing, and like being out
of doors, and so I have thought at times of getting articled to a civil
engineer."
"Ay, ay; to aid the march of civilisation, as the cant phrase goes; to
bring nations closer together, that they may cut one another's throats
when they meet. To make machines do the work by which men earn their
living, and so first drive them into cities, and then starve them. Or,
perhaps, you will be a lawyer, and learn how to darken language into
obscure terms, by which a simple, honest man may be made to sell his
birthright without knowing what he is doing. Or a doctor, fighting
madly against the decree of the Omnipotent, daring to try to stem the
flowing tide of death. If your eyes were but opened, how gladly would
you cast off the trammels of an effete society, and follow me to a land
where a man can breathe freely. I will give you a horse fleet as the
wind, and a sword that would split a hair or sever an iron bar, boy!"
"I have thought I should like the army, too, sir," said bewildered
Harry, trying vainly to understand, and catching at the sword and horse
as something tangible.
"The army! To be a European soldier! A living machine--the slave of
slaves! To fight without a cause, even without an object! To waste
your blood in the conquest of a country and the ruin and slaughter of
its inhabitants, and then to leave it! Madmen! Ye kill and are killed
for nothing; not even plunder."
He drew several long inhalations, repeating the conjuring trick of
swallowing the smoke and emitting it several seconds afterwards, for
quite ten minutes before he spoke again.
"But the ties of home and kindred are strong," he continued in a calmer
tone. "Your mother, your sister, will draw you back from the nobler
lot. I know what the love of family is; I, who have returned to this
seething cauldron of misery, vice, disease, and degradation which fools
call civilisation, and take a pride in, in order to see my sister once
more. Partly for that at least. And you are her son, and you have the
stamp of the Burke upon your face. Hark you, boy! In the time of
Cromwell, not two hundred and fifty years ago, your direct ancestor was
a powerful Irish chief, with large domains and many brave men to follow
him to battle. When the English came with the cold-blooded,
preconceived scheme of pacifying Ireland once and for all by the
wholesale massacre of the inhabitants, our grandsire was overpowered by
numbers, betrayed, surprised, and driven to his last refuge, a castle
but little capable of defence. He was surrounded; his wife and children
were with him, all young, one an infant at the breast; and there were
other women, helpless and homeless, who had sought shelter within the
walls. Therefore, resistance being quite hopeless, our chief offered to
surrender. But the English leader replied, `Give no quarter; they are
wild beasts, not men. Burn up the wasps' nest, maggots and all!' They
did it; faggots were piled round the building and set on fire, and those
who attempted to escape were received on the English spears and tossed
back into the flames. The eldest son was away with a detachment at the
time, and so escaped the fate which would otherwise have annihilated our
race. But his estates were stolen from him and conferred on the
murderers, whose descendants hold them to the present day. Have the
Burkes best reason to love the English or to hate them?"
Harry Forsyth was a practical youth, who took things as he found them,
and he could not even understand how anybody's feelings, much less their
actions, should be affected by anything which happened in the days of
Oliver Cromwell. He might just as well refuse a penny to an Italian
organ-grinder, because Julius Caesar ill-treated the ancient Britons.
Besides, he was half a Forsyth, and the Forsyths were probably all
English. For all he knew, some old Forsyth might have had a hand in
burning up the Burkes. He did not offer any such suggestion, however,
but sat somewhat awe-stricken, wondering what this strange uncle would
say or do next.
He relapsed into thought, and for some time the silence was only broken
by the bubbling of the water in the narghile. When at last he spoke
again, it was in a calmer tone of voice, and with eyes withdrawn from
his nephew's face.
"Serve not the English Government, civil or military," he said. "Or, if
you do, confine yourself to your allotted task. That which is exactly
due for the pay you receive, do for honour and honesty's sake. But do
no more; show no zeal: above all, trust not to any sense of justice for
reward of any work done in excess of the bargain. Incur no
responsibility, or you will be made a cat's-paw of.
"Listen. At the time of the Crimean War a young man in the Indian
service had a severe illness which obliged him to return to England on
furlough. At one of the stations where his ship touched a number of
women and children and invalids belonging to a regiment which had gone
on to the seat of war were taken on board, and he, according to previous
arrangement, was placed in charge of them.
"It came on to blow hard in the Gulf of Lyons, and the old transport
strained so that she sprang a leak, which put her fires out. Later on
her masts went, and after beating about for several wretched days, she
went ashore on a desolate part of the coast of Spain. The officers and
crew of the ship behaved well enough, and though many of them, including
the captain and chief mate, were lost, nearly all the passengers were
safely landed. But though rescued from the sea, there seemed to be
every prospect of their perishing from exposure and famine. With great
difficulty the officer in charge managed to find some rude shelter and
insufficient food for immediate succour, and then, making his way to the
nearest town, he applied to the authorities, and being a linguist who
included something of the language in which Don Quixote was written
amongst his acquisitions, he obtained clothes, food, and a sum of money
for present necessities, with the promise of a vessel to transfer the
unfortunates to Gibraltar.
"Of course he had lost everything when the ship went to pieces, and he
could only get this aid by signing bills and making himself personally
responsible. True, he was engaging himself for more than he could
perform, but he could neither desert these people who were entrusted to
his care, nor stand idly by to see them perish. And he never doubted
but that the authorities at home would take the responsibility off his
hands. They refused to do so, or rather, worse than that, they drove
him about from pillar to post, one official directing him to a second,
the second to a third, the third to the first again. And they made him
fill up forms, and returned them as incorrect, and broke his heart with
subterfuges.
"In the meantime he had to meet the claims, and was impoverished. Then,
excited by this infamous treatment, he forced his way into a great man's
presence, and was violent, and the consequence of his violence was that
he lost his Indian appointment. It was well for him that he did so; but
his story will none the less show you what a country England is to
serve."
Again there was a long period of stillness, broken only by the hubble-
bubble. Gradually the smoker raised his eyes in the direction of his
nephew, but Harry saw that he was looking _beyond_ him, not at him. And
this gaze became so steadfast and eager that he turned his head to see
what attracted it, almost expecting to see a face on the other side of
the window.
There was nothing, but still the intense look remained, and it made
Harry feel as if cold water was running down his back. His uncle spoke
at length, low and slowly at first, more energetically as he went on.
"I see it; the crescent rises; the sordid hordes of the West fall in
ruin around. The squalid denizens of cities find the fiendish devices
of destruction to which they trust for putting the weak over the strong
fail them. Man to man they have to stand, and they fall like corn
before the scythe."
He dropped his pipe tube, and slowly rose to his feet, still gazing
fixedly at nothing in particular in the same uncanny manner, and
bringing his right-hand round towards his left hip, as if ready to grasp
a sword-hilt.
"One prophet," he continued, "was raised up for the destruction of
idolatry, and wherever he appeared the false gods vanished. There were
those who worshipped the True God, but received not his Prophet, and
with them Islam has for centuries waged equal war, for their time was
not yet come, and the mission of Mohammed was not for them. But the
years of probation have expired, and the nations of the West remain in
wilful darkness. They receive not the commandments of the Prophet; they
drink fermented liquor, they eat the unclean beast, their worship of
gold and science has become a real idolatry. Another prophet has arisen
for their destruction, and Asia and Africa shall, ere another generation
has come and gone, be swept clean of the Infidel. Swept clean! Swept
clean! With the scimitar for a besom!"
He remained with his eyes fixed and his lips parted, and Harry did not
quite know what to do next. But he summoned courage to rise and say
that he hoped his father would have come home by now and as he had not
seen him yet, he thought he would go.
Filial affection might surely be taken as a valid excuse for withdrawal.
And yet, having had no experience of the etiquette due to prophets when
the orgy of vaticination is upon them, he was not quite comfortable on
the question of being scathed. There was no need for fear; Sheikh
Burrachee was too rapt to heed his presence or absence. He heard not
his voice, and knew not when he crossed the room and closed the door
softly behind him. He found Trix in the hall looking out for him.
"Well?" she cried.
"Oh, my prophetic uncle!" ejaculated Harry.
"That is a mis-quotation."
"It is not a quotation at all; it is an exclamation, and a very natural
one under the circumstances."
"Has he been telling your fortune?" asked Beatrice, her large eyes
expanding with the interest which is begotten of mystery.
"Not exactly," replied Harry; "except that he hinted something about the
propriety of my choosing the profession of a Bedouin, and, I suppose,
making a fortune by robbing caravans. But he told the misfortunes of
other people with a vengeance. The Mohammedans are going to turn the
Christians out of Asia and Africa everywhere."
"Good gracious, Harry! Why, papa's a director of the Great Transit
Bank, and all our money is in it, and it does all its business in the
East."
"By Jove! Let us hope the prophet _doesn't know_, then. But, upon my
word, he looked like seeing into futurity. At least, I could not make
out what else he was looking at."
"Poor man, he had a sunstroke when he was quite young in India, and has
led a queer life amongst savages ever since. But papa has come home and
been asking for you. You will find him in the drawing-room."
Harry thought his father thinner and older than when he had last seen
him, and asked how he was in a more earnest and meaning manner than is
customary in the conventional "How do you do?"
"Do I look altered?" asked Mr Forsyth, quickly.
"Oh, no, father, only a little pale; tired-looking, you know," said
Harry, rather hesitatingly, in spite of the effort made to speak
carelessly.
"I have not been quite the thing, and have seen a physician about it.
Only a little weakness about the heart, which affects the circulation.
But do not mention it to your mother or sister; women are so easily
frightened, and their serious faces would make me imagine myself
seriously ill. Well, how did you get on with your uncle? You see he
has turned me out of my private den."
"Is he at all--a little--that is, a trifle cracked, father?"
"A good deal, I should say. And yet he is a very clever man, and
sensible enough at times, and upon some subjects. He was most useful to
me out in Egypt on several occasions when we happened to meet. A great
traveller and a wonderful linguist."
"Was he badly treated by Government? He told me a story in the third
person, but I expect that he referred to himself all the time," said
Harry.
"Well," replied Mr Forsyth, "it is difficult to tell all the rights of
the story. Ever since he had an illness in India, as a very young man,
he has been subject to delusions. No doubt he behaved well on the
occasion of a certain shipwreck--if that is what you allude to--and
incurred heavy expense, which ought to have been made up to him. But I
doubt if he went the right way to work, and suspect that his failure was
due very much to impatience and wrong-headedness, and the mixing up of
political questions with his personal claims. He wrote a book, which
made some noise, and caused him to lose his appointment. Then he came
to me in Egypt, and was very useful.
"I should have liked him for a partner, but he went off to discover the
source of the Nile. He thought he had succeeded, and after a
disappearance of some years came back triumphant. But he had followed
the Blue Nile instead of the real branch, and the discoveries of Speke,
Grant, Livingstone, and Stanley were terribly bitter to him--drove him
quite mad, I think. Since then he has identified himself with the Arab
race, and seems to hate all Europeans, except his sister and her family.
With me he has never quarrelled, and I think remembers that I offered
him a home and employment when his career was cut short. What he is in
England for now I do not know. Perhaps only to see your mother once
more, but I suspect there is something else.
"He writes many letters, and makes a point of posting them himself. I
fear that he takes opium, or some drug of that kind, and altogether,
though it is inhospitable perhaps to say so, it will be a relief when he
is gone, and that will not be many days now."
After leaving his uncle in such a rapt state, it was curious to Harry to
see him walk into the drawing-room before dinner in correct evening
costume, and not wearing his fez. He was somewhat taciturn, ate very
little, and drank nothing but water, but his manners were those of a
perfect gentleman. After dinner he retired, and they saw no more of him
that evening.
Harry Forsyth had several other interviews with his uncle, who showed
more fondness for his company than he had for that of any other member
of the family, but who kept a greater guard over himself, and was more
reticent than he had been on the occasion of his first interview. He
spoke of Eastern climes, war, sport, and scenery, with enthusiasm
indeed, but rationally, and Harry grew interested, and liked to hear
him, though he never got over the feeling that there was something
uncanny about him.
One night, after dinner, when a fortnight of Harry's holidays had
elapsed, the uncle, on retiring, asked his nephew to come and see him in
the study at eleven on the following morning, and Harry, punctually
complying, found him seated on a chair before the large table with three
packets before him.
"Sit down, my lad," he said, and the deep musical tones of his voice had
an affectionate sadness in them.
"I am going back to my own land to-morrow, and shall never leave it
again. But we shall meet, for such is the will of the All-Powerful,
unless the inward voice deceives me, as it has never hitherto done. You
will, or let us say you _may_, need my aid. You will learn where and
how to find the Sheikh Burrachee--which is my real name--from Yusuff,
the sword dealer, in the armourers' bazaar, at Cairo. But you will more
certainly do so by applying to the head Dervish at the mosques of
Suakim, Berber, or Khartoum. At the last town, indeed, you will have no
difficulty in learning where I am, and being conducted to me; and,
indeed, in any considerable place above the second cataract of the Nile,
you will probably learn at the mosque how and where to obtain the
required direction, even if they cannot give it you themselves. If
there is hesitation, show the holy man this ring, and it will be removed
at once. Should you meet with hindrance in your journey from any desert
tribe, ask to be led to the chief, and give him this parchment. He may
not be an ally to help you, but he may, and if not, he will probably not
hinder you. Lastly, take these three stones, and see that you keep them
securely in a safe place, and that no one knows that you possess them.
They are sapphires of some value I exact no promise, but I bid you not
to part with these for any purpose but that of coming to me. For that,
sell them. Should you hear of my death, or should ten years elapse
without your coming to me, they are yours to do what you like with.
Lest you should forget any part of my directions, I have written them on
a paper which is at the bottom of the box containing the sapphires.
Come."
Harry rose and stood by his side. His uncle fitted the ring on his
fore-finger, put the morocco box containing the sapphires, and the thin
silver case, like a lady's large-sized card-case, that protected the
written document, into his breast pocket, and then rising himself,
rested his two hands on the lad's shoulders, and gazed long and
earnestly into his face.
Then turning his eyes upwards, he muttered a prayer in Arabic, after
which he gently drew him to the door, and, releasing him, opened it, and
said, "Farewell."