Isaacson refused to get into the omnibus at the station in Cairo, and
drove to Shepheard's Hotel in a victoria, drawn by a pair of lean grey
horses with long manes and tails. The coachman was an Arab much pitted
with smallpox, who wore the tarbush with European clothes. It was about
three o'clock in the afternoon, and the streets of the enticing and
confusing city were crowded. Isaacson sat up very straight and looked
about him with eager eyes. He felt keenly excited. This was his very
first taste of Eastern life. Never before had he set foot in his "own
place." Already, despite the zest shed through him by novelty, he had an
odd, happy feeling of being at home. He saw here and there houses with
white facades, before which palm-trees were waving. And in those houses
he knew he could be very much at ease. The courtyards, the steps, the
tiles, a fountain, small rugs, a divan, a carved dark door, a great
screen of wood hiding an inner apartment--could he not see within? He
had never entered that house there on the left, and yet he knew it. And
this throng of Eastern men, with dark, keen, shining eyes, with heavy,
slumbrous eyes, with eyes glittering with the yellow fires of greed;
this throng, yellow-skinned, brown-skinned, black-skinned, with thin,
expressive hands, with henna-tinted nails, with narrow, cunning wrists;
this throng that talked volubly, that gesticulated, that gazed,
observing without self-consciousness, summing up without pity, whose
eyes took all and gave nothing--if he stepped out of the carriage, if he
forsook the borrowed comforts and the borrowed delights of Europe, if he
hid himself in this throng, would he not find himself for the first
time?
He was sorry when the carriage drew up before the great terrace of the
hotel. But he had not lost touch with the pageant. He realized that,
almost with a sensation of exultation, when he came down from his room
between four and five o'clock, and took a seat by the railing.
"Tea, sir?"
He nodded to the German waiter. Somewhere a band was playing melodies of
Europe. That night he would seek in the native quarter the whining and
syncopated tunes of the East.
The tea was brought, and an Arab approached with papers: the "_Sphinx_,"
a French paper published in Cairo, and London papers, the "_Times_," the
"_Morning Post_." Isaacson bought two or three, vaguely. It was but
rarely he felt vague, but now, as he sipped his tea, his excitement was
linked with something else, that seemed misty and nebulous, yet not free
from a sort of enchantment. By the railing, before and beneath him, a
world of many of his dreams--his nargeeleh dreams--flowed by. The
abruptness of his decision to come--that made half the enchantment of
his coming, made a wonder of his arrival. The boy in him was alive
to-day, but with the boy there stood the dreamer.
The terrace, of course, was crowded. People of many nations sat behind
and on each side of Meyer Isaacson, walked up and down the broad flight
of steps that connected the terrace with the pavement, stared,
gesticulated, gossiped. There was a clatter of china. Girls in long
veils munched cakes, and, more delicately, ate ices tinted pink, pale
green, and almond colour. Elderly ladies sat low in basket chairs,
almost dehumanized by sight-seeing. Antiquarians argued and protested,
shaking their forefingers, browned by the sun that shines in the desert.
American business men, on holiday, smoked large cigars, and invited
friends from New York, Boston, Washington to dinner. European boys,
smartly dressed, full of life and gaiety, went eagerly up and down
excitedly retailing experiences. And perpetually carriages drove up, set
down, and departed, while a lean, beautifully clad Arab with grey hair
noted hours, prices, numbers, in a mysterious book.
But Meyer Isaacson all the time was watching the Easterns who passed and
repassed in the noisy street. He had not even glanced keenly once at the
crowd of travellers to see if there were any whom he knew, patients,
friends, enemies. His usual sharp consciousness of those about him was
for once completely in abeyance.
Presently, however, his attention was transferred from the street to the
terrace, carried thither, so it seemed to him, by a man who moved from
the one to the other. There passed in front of him slowly one of the
most perfectly built mail phaetons he had ever seen. It was very high
and large, but looked elegantly light, and it was drawn by a pair of
superb Russian horses, jet-black, full of fiery spirit, matched to a
hair, and with such grand action that it was an aesthetic pleasure to
look upon them moving.
Sitting alone in the front of the phaeton was the man who, almost
immediately, was to draw Isaacson's attention to the terrace. He was
Mahmoud Baroudi. He was dressed in a light grey suit, and wore the
tarbush. Behind him sat a very smart little English groom, dressed in
livery, with a shining top-hat, breeches, and top-boots. The phaeton was
black with scarlet wheels. The silver on the harness glittered with
polish; the chains which fastened the horses to the scarlet pole gleamed
brilliantly in the sunshine. But it was Baroudi, his extraordinary
physique, his striking, nonchalant face, and his first-rate driving,
which attracted all eyes, which held Isaacson's eyes. He pulled up his
horses in front of the steps. The groom was down in a moment. Baroudi
gave him the reins, got out, and walked up to the terrace. He stood for
a moment, looking calmly round; then brought his right hand to his
tarbush as he saw a party of French friends, which he immediately
joined. They welcomed him with obvious delight. Two of them, perfectly
dressed Parisian women, made room for him between them. As he sat down,
smiling, Isaacson noticed his slanting eyebrows and his magnificent
throat, which looked as strong as the throat of a bull.
"My dear Isaacson! Is it possible? I should almost as soon have expected
to meet the Sphinx in Cleveland Square!"
A tall man, not much over thirty, with light, imaginative, yet
penetrating eyes, stood before him, and with a "May I?" sat down beside
him, after cordially grasping his hand.
"Starnworth, you're one of the few men--I might say almost the only
man--I'm glad to meet at this moment. Where have you just come from, or
where are you just going? I can't believe you are going to stay in
Cairo."
"No. I've been in Syria, just arrived from Damascus. I've been with a
caravan--yes, I'll have some tea. I'm going to start to-morrow or next
day from Mena House for another little desert trip."
"Little! How many days?"
"Oh, I don't know," said the newcomer, negligently. "Three weeks out and
three weeks back, I believe--something like that--to visit an oasis
where there are some extraordinary ruins. But why are you here? What
induced you to leave your innumerable patients?"
After a very slight hesitation Isaacson answered:
"A whim."
"The deuce! Can doctors who are the rage permit themselves to be
governed by whims?"
This man, Basil Starnworth, was an English nomad who for years had
steeped himself in the golden East, who spoke Arabic and innumerable
Eastern dialects, who was more at home with Bedouins than with his own
brothers, and who was a mine of knowledge about the natives of Syria, of
Egypt, and the whole of Northern Africa--about their passions, their
customs, their superstitions, and all their ways of life. Isaacson had
cured him of a malarial fever contracted on one of his journeys. That
night they dined together, and after dinner Starnworth took Isaacson to
see some of the native quarters of the town.
It was towards eleven o'clock when Isaacson found himself sitting in a
small, rude cafe that was hidden in the very bowels of Cairo. Through
winding alleys they had reached it--alleys full of painted ladies,
alleys gleaming with the lights shed from solitary candles set within
entries tinted mauve, and blue, and scarlet, or placed half-way up
narrow flights of whitewashed stairs. And in these winding alleys,
mingled with human cries, and laughter, and murmured invitations, and
barterings, and refusals, there had been music that seemed to wind on
and on in ribands of sound--music that was hoarse and shrill and weary,
that was piercing, yet at the same time furtive--music that was
provocative, and yet that was often sad, with a strange sadness of the
desert and of desire among the sands. Even now, in the maze around this
cafe, there was another maze of sound, the tripping notes of Eastern
dance tunes, the wail of the African hautboy, the twitter of little
flutes that set the pace for the pale Circassians, the dull murmur of
daraboukkehs.
An old Arab who was "hajjee" brought them coffee, straight from the
glowing embers. Starnworth took from his pocket a little box of tobacco
and cigarette-papers, and deftly rolled two cigarettes. There were but
few people in the cafe, and they were Easterns--two Egyptians, a negro,
and three soldiers from the Soudan, black, thin almost as snakes, with
skins so dry that they looked like the skins of some reptiles of the
sands. And these Easterns were almost motionless, and seemed to be sunk
in dreams.
"Why did you bring me here?" asked Isaacson.
"It bores you?"
"No. But I want to know why you chose this cafe out of all the cafes of
Cairo."
"It's a very old and, among Easterns, very famous resort of smokers of
hashish. You notice the blackened walls, the want of light. The hashish
smoker does not desire any luxury or brightness. He wants his dream, and
he gets it here. You would scarcely suppose it, but there are rich
Egyptians of the upper classes, men who are seen at official receptions,
who go to the great balls at the smart hotels, and who slink in here
secretly night after night, mingle with the lowest riff-raff, to have
their dream beneath this blackened roof. There is one coming in now."
As he spoke, Mahmoud Baroudi appeared in the doorway. He was dressed in
native costume--very poorly dressed; wore a dingy turban, and a long
gibbeh of discoloured cloth. With the usual salaam, muttered in his
throat, he went into the farthest and darkest corner of the cafe and
squatted down on the floor. The old Arab carried to him in a moment a
gozeh, a pipe resembling a nargeeleh, but without the snake-like handle.
Baroudi took it for a moment, inhaled the smoke of the hashish, and
poured it out from his mouth and nostrils.
"He looks like a poor Egyptian," said Isaacson, almost in a whisper.
"He is a millionaire. By the way, didn't you see him this afternoon?"
"Where?"
"At Shepheard's. He drove up just before I saw you in a phaeton."
"The man with the Russian horses! Surely, it's impossible!"
"This afternoon he was the cosmopolitan millionaire. To-night he sinks
down into his native East."
"Who is he?"
"Mahmoud Baroudi."
"Mahmoud Baroudi!" repeated Isaacson, slowly and softly.
An old man who had crept in began to sing in a high and quavering voice
a song of the smokers of hashish, accompanying himself upon an
instrument of tortoise and goat-skin. A youth in skirts began to posture
and dance an unfinished dance of the dreamer who has been led by hashish
into a world that is sweet and vague.
"I'll tell you about him later," whispered Starnworth.
That night they sat up in the hotel till the third time of the Moslem's
prayer was near at hand. Starnworth, pleased to have an auditor who was
much more than merely sympathetic, who understood his Eastern lore as if
with a mind of the East, poured forth his curious knowledge. And
Isaacson gripped it as only the Jew can grip. He listened and listened,
saying little, until Starnworth began to speak of the strange
immutability that is apparent in Islam, and of how the East must ever,
despite the most powerful outside influences, remain utterly the East.
"Or so it seems up to now," he said.
He illustrated and emphasized his contention by a number of striking
examples. He spoke of Arabs, of Egyptians he had known intimately, whom
he had seen subjected to every kind of European influence, whom he had
even seen apparently "Europeanized," as he put it, but who, when the
moment came, had shown themselves "native" to the core.
"And it is even so when there is mingled blood," he said. "For instance,
that man you saw to-night smoking hashish, wrapped up in that dirty old
gibbeh, had a Greek mother, and may have--no doubt has--some aptitudes,
some characteristics that are Greek, but they are dominated, almost
swallowed up by the East that is in him."
"Do you know him?"
"I have never spoken to him, but I have heard a great deal about
him--from Egyptians, mind you, as well as Europeans. With the English,
and foreigners generally, he is an immense success. He is a very clever
man, and has excellent qualities, I believe. But he is of the East. He
is capable of giving one--who does not know very much--the most profound
surprises. To ordinary eyes he shows nothing, nothing of what he is. He
seems calm, dominating, practical, even cold and businesslike, full
always of the most complete self-possession, calculating, but generous,
and kind, charming, polished, suave and indifferent, with a sort of
tremendously masculine indifference. I have often seen him in society.
Even to me he has given that type of impression."
"And what is the real man?"
"Red-hot under the crust, a tremendous hater and a simply tremendous
lover. But he hates with his soul and he loves with his body--they say.
They say he's the slave of his soul in hatred, the slave of his body in
love. He's committed crimes for women, if I ever get truth from my
native friends. And I believe I am one of the few Europeans who can get
a good deal of truth from the natives."
"Crimes, you say?"
"Yes," returned Starnworth, with his odd, negligent manner, which
suggested a man who would undertake a desert journey full of tremendous
hardships clad in a dressing-gown and slippers.
"But not for his own women, not for the beauties of the East. Baroudi is
one of the many Egyptians who go mad over the women of Europe and of the
New World, who go mad over their fairness of skin, their delicate
colouring and shining hair. There was a dancer at the opera house here
one season--a Dane she was, all fairness, the Northern sunbeam type--"
"I know."
"He spent thousands upon her. Gave her a yacht, took her off in it to
the Greek islands and Naples. Presently she wanted to marry."
"Him?"
"A merchant of Copenhagen, a very rich man. Baroudi was charming about
it. The merchant came out to Cairo during the dancer's second season at
the opera. Baroudi entertained him, became his friend, talked business,
impressed the Dane immensely with his practical qualities, put him up to
some splendid 'specs.' Result--the Dane was ruined, and went back to
Copenhagen minus his fortune and--naturally--minus his lady-love."
"And what became of her?"
"I forget. Don't think I ever knew. She vanished from the opera house.
But the best of it is that the Dane to this day swears by Baroudi, and
thinks it was his own folly that did for him. There are much worse
things than that, though. Baroudi's a man who would stick at absolutely
nothing once he got the madness for a woman into his body. For
instance--"
He told stories of Baroudi, stories which the Europeans of Egypt knew
nothing of, but which some Egyptians knew and smiled at; one or two of
them sounded very ugly to European ears.
"He's a Turco-Egyptian, you know," Starnworth said, presently, "and has
the cunning that comes from the Bosphorus grafted on to the cunning that
flourishes beneath the indifference of the Sphinx. We should call him a
rank bad lot"--the dressing-gown and slippers manner was very much in
evidence just here--"but the Turco-Egyptian has a different code from
ours. I must say I admire the man. He's got so much grit in him. Worker,
lover, hater--there's grit and go in each. Whichever bobs up, bobs up to
win right out. But it's the madness for women that really rules the
fellow's life, according to Egyptians who are near him and who know him
well. And that's so with far more men of Eastern blood than you would
suppose, unless you'd lived among them and knew them as I do. Arabs will
literally run crazy for a fair face. So will Egyptians. And once they
are dominated, they are dominated to an extent an Englishman would
scarcely be able to understand. I knew an Arab of the Sahara who broke
down the palm-wood door of an auberge at El-Kelf and cut the throat of
the Frenchwoman who kept it, cut it while she was screaming her soul
out--and only to get the few francs in the till to send to a girl in
Paris he'd met at the great Exhibition. And the old Frenchwoman had
befriended that man for over sixteen years, had almost brought him up
from a boy, had written his letters for him to the tourists and
sportsmen whose guide he was. Mahmoud Baroudi would do as much for a
woman, once he'd got the madness for her into his body, but he'd do it
in a more brainy way."
Starnworth talked on and on. The time of the third prayer was at hand
when at last he said good-night. Turning at the door, just as he was
going out, he looked at Isaacson with his light and imaginative eyes.
"A different code from ours, you see!" he murmured.
He went out and gently shut the door.
Although it was so late and Isaacson had that day arrived from a
journey, he felt strongly alive, and as if no power to sleep were in
him. Of course, he must go to bed, nevertheless. Slowly he began to
undress, slowly and reluctantly.
And he was in Cairo, actually in Cairo! All around him in the night was
Cairo, with its houses full of Egyptians sleeping, with its harims, with
its mosques! Not far away was the Sphinx looking east in the sand!
He pottered about his room. He did things very slowly. Eastern life, as
it had flowed from the lips of Starnworth, went before his imagination
like a great and strange procession. And in this procession Mahmoud
Baroudi drove Russian horses, and walked, almost like a mendicant, in a
discoloured gibbeh. And then the procession stopped, and Isaacson saw
the dingy cafe in the entrails of Cairo, and Mahmoud Baroudi crouched
upon the floor drawing the smoke of the hashish into his nostrils.
At last Isaacson was in pajamas and ready for bed. But still his mind
was terribly wide awake. The papers he had bought in the afternoon were
lying upon his table. Should he read a little to compose his mind? He
took up a paper--the _Morning Post_--opened it, and glanced casually
over the middle page.
"Sudden death of the Earl of Harwich."
So Nigel's brother was gone, and, but for the twin boys so recently
arrived, Mrs. Armine would at this moment be Countess of Harwich!
Isaacson read the paragraph quickly; then he put the paper down and
opened his window. He wanted to think in the air. As he leaned out to
the silent city, faintly, as if from very far off, he heard a cry that
thrilled through his blood and set his pulses beating.
From a minaret a mueddin was calling the faithful to prayer, at "fegr,"
when the sun pushes the first ray of steel-coloured light, like the
blade of a distant lance, into the breast of the East.
"Al-la-hu-akbar! Al-la-hu-ak-bar!"