.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 52342
   :PG.Title: The White Prophet, Volume I (of 2)
   :PG.Released: 2016-06-15
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Hall Caine
   :MARCREL.ill: \R. Caton Woodville
   :DC.Title: The White Prophet, Volume I (of 2)
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1909
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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THE WHITE PROPHET, VOLUME I
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   .. _`"By the tombs of our Fathers"`:

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      "By the tombs of our Fathers"

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      THE WHITE PROPHET

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      BY

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      HALL CAINE

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      ILLUSTRATED BY R. CATON WOODVILLE

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      IN TWO VOLUMES
      VOL. I

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      LONDON
      WILLIAM HEINEMANN
      1909

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      Copyright London 1909 by William Heinemann and
      Washington U.S.A. by D. Appleton & Company

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   ILLUSTRATIONS

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`"By the tombs of our Fathers"`_ . . . Frontispiece

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`He stretched out his hand to her, but she made
no response`_

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`"Look here—and here," he cried, pointing to the
broken sword`_

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`"How interesting!" cried the ladies in chorus`_

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   THE WHITE PROPHET

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   FIRST BOOK

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   THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS

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   CHAPTER I

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It was perhaps the first act of open hostility, and there
was really nothing in the scene or circumstance to
provoke an unfriendly demonstration.

On the broad racing ground of the Khedivial Club
a number of the officers and men of the British Army
quartered in Cairo, assisted by a detachment of the
soldiers of the Army of Egypt, had been giving a sham
fight in imitation of the battle of Omdurman, which is
understood to have been the death-struggle and the end
of Mahdism.

The Khedive himself had not been there—he was
away at Constantinople—and his box had stood empty
the whole afternoon; but a kinsman of the Khedive
with a company of friends had occupied the box
adjoining, and Lord Nuneham, the British Consul-General,
had sat in the centre of the grand pavilion, surrounded
by all the great ones of the earth in a sea of muslin,
flowers, and feathers.  There had been European ladies
in bright spring costumes; Sheikhs in flowing robes of
flowered silk; Egyptian Ministers of State in Western
dress, and British Advisers and Under-Secretaries in
Eastern tarbooshes; officers in gold-braided uniforms,
Foreign Ambassadors, and an infinite number of Pashas,
Beys, and Effendis.

Besides these, too, there had been a great crowd of
what are called the common people, chiefly Cairenes, the
volatile, pleasure-loving people of Cairo, who care for
nothing so little as the atmosphere of political trouble.
They had stood in a thick line around the arena, all
capped in crimson, thus giving to the vast ellipse the
effect of an immense picture framed in red.

There had been nothing in the day, either, to stimulate
the spirit of insurrection.  It had been a lazy day,
growing hot in the afternoon, so that the white city
of domes and minarets, as far up as the Mokattam
Hills and the self-conscious Citadel, had seemed to
palpitate in a glistening haze, while the steely ribbon
of the Nile that ran between was reddening in the rays
of the sunset.

General Graves, an elderly man with martial bearing,
commanding the army in Egypt, had taken his place as
Umpire in the Judge's box in front of the pavilion;
four squadrons of British and Egyptian cavalry, a force
of infantry, and a grunting and ruckling camel corps
had marched and pranced and bumped out of a paddock
to the left, and then young Colonel Gordon Lord,
Assistant Adjutant-General, who was to play the part
of Commandant in the sham fight, had come trotting
into the field.

Down to that moment there had been nothing but
gaiety and the spirit of fun among the spectators, who
with ripples of merry laughter had whispered "Littleton's,"
"Wauchope's," "Macdonald's," and "Maxwell's,"
as the white-faced and yellow-faced squadrons
had taken their places.  Then the General had rung
the big bell that was to be the signal for the beginning
of the battle, a bugle had been sounded, and the people
had pretended to shiver as they smiled.

But all at once the atmosphere had changed.  From
somewhere on the right had come the *tum, tum, tum* of
the war drums of the enemy, followed by the *boom, boom,
boom* of their war-horns, a melancholy note, half bellow
and half wail.  Then everybody in the pavilion had
stood up, everybody's glass had been out, and a moment
afterwards a line of strange white things had been seen
fluttering in the far distance.

Were they banners?  No!  They were men, they
were the dervishes, and they were coming down in a
deep white line, like sheeted ghosts in battle array.

"They're here!" said the spectators in a hushed
whisper, and from that moment onward to the end
there had been no more laughter either in the pavilion
or in the dense line around the field.

The dervishes had come galloping on, a huge
disorderly horde in flying white garments, some of them
black as ink, some brown as bronze, brandishing their
glistening spears, their swords, and their flintlocks,
beating their war-drams, blowing their war-horns, and
shouting in high-pitched, rasping, raucous voices their
war-cry and their prayer, "Allah!  Allah!  Allah!"

On and on they had come, like champing surf rolling
in on a reef-bound coast; on and on, faster and faster,
louder and louder; on and on until they had all but
hurled themselves into the British lines, and then—*crash!*
a sheet of blinding flashes, a roll of stifling
smoke, and, when the air cleared, a long empty space
in the front line of the dervishes, and the ground strewn
as with the drapery of two hundred dead men.

In an instant the gap had been filled and the mighty
horde had come on again, but again and again and yet
again they had been swept down before the solid rock
of the British forces like the spent waves of an
angry sea.

At one moment a flag, silver-white and glistening in
the sun, had been seen coming up behind.  It had
seemed to float here, there, and everywhere, like a
disembodied spirit, through the churning breakers of
the enemy, and while the swarthy Arab who carried it
had cried out over the thunder of battle that it was
the Angel of Death leading them to victory or Paradise,
the dervishes had screamed "Allah!  Allah!" and
poured themselves afresh on to the British lines.

But *crash, crash, crash!* the British rifles had spoken,
and the dervishes had fallen in long swathes, like grass
before the scythe, until the broad field had been white
with its harvest of the dead.

The sham fight had lasted a full hour, and until it
was over the vast multitude of spectators had been as
one immense creature that trembled without drawing
breath.  But then the Umpire's big bell had been rung
again, the dead men had leapt briskly to their
feet and scampered back to paddock, and a rustling
breeze of laughter, half merriment and half surprise,
had swept over the pavilion and the field.

This was another moment at which the atmosphere
had seemed to change.  Some one at the foot of the
pavilion had said—

"Whew: What a battle it must have been!"

And some one else had said—

"Don't call it a battle, sir—call it an execution."

And then a third, an Englishman, in the uniform of
an Egyptian Commandant of Police, had cried—

"If it had gone the other way, though—if the
Mahdists had beaten us that day at Omdurman, what
would have happened to Egypt then?"

"Happened?" the first speaker had answered—he
was the English Adviser to one of the Egyptian
Ministers—"What would have happened to Egypt, you say?
Why, there wouldn't have been a dog to howl for a
lost master by this time."

Lord Nuneham had heard the luckless words, and his
square-hewn jaw had grown harder and more grim.
Unfortunately the Egyptian Ministers, the Sheikhs, the
Pashas, the Beys, and the Effendis had heard them
also, and by the mysterious law of nature that sends
messages over a trackless desert, the last biting phrase
had seemed to go like an electric whisper through the
thick line of the red-capped Cairenes around the arena.

In the native mind it altered everything in an
instant; transformed the sham battle into a serious
incident; made it an insult, an outrage, a pre-arranged
political innuendo, something got up by the British
Army of Occupation or perhaps by the Consul-General
himself to rebuke the Egyptians for the fires of
disaffection that had smouldered in their midst for years,
and to say as by visible historiography—-

"See, that's what England saved Egypt from—that
horde of Allah-intoxicated fanatics who would have cut
off the heads of your Khedives, tortured and pillaged
your Pashas, flogged your Effendis, made slaves of your
fellaheen, or swept your whole nation into the Nile."

Every soldier on the field had distinguished himself
that day—the British by his bull-dog courage, the
Soudanese by fighting as dervishes like demons, the
Egyptian by standing his ground like a man; but not
even when young Colonel Lord, the most popular
Englishman in Egypt, the one officer of English blood
who was beloved by the Egyptians—not even when he
had come riding back to paddock after a masterly
handling of his men, sweating but smiling, his horse
blowing and spent, the people on the pavilion receiving
him with shouts and cheers, the clapping of hands, and
the fluttering of handkerchiefs—not even then had the
Cairenes at the edge of the arena made the faintest
demonstration.  Their opportunity came a few minutes
later, and, sullen and grim under the gall of their
unfounded suspicion, they seized it in fierce and rather
ugly fashion.

Hardly had the last man left the field when a company
of mounted police came riding down the fringe of
it, followed by a carriage drawn by two high-stepping
horses, between a body-guard of Egyptian soldiers.
They drew up in front of the box occupied by the
kinsman of the Khedive, and instantly the Cairenes
made a rush for it, besieging the barrier on either side,
and even clambering on each other's shoulders as human
scaffolding from which to witness the departure of the
Prince.

Then the Prince came out, a rather slack, feeble,
ineffectual-looking man, and there were the ordinary
salutations prescribed by custom.  First the cry from
the police in Turkish and in unison, "Long live our
Master!" being cheers for the Khedive whose representative
the Prince was, and then a cry in Arabic for the
Prince himself.  The Prince touched his forehead,
stepped into his carriage, and was about to drive off
when, without sign or premeditation, by one of those
mischievous impulses which the devil himself inspires,
there came a third cry never heard on that ground
before.  In a lusty, guttural voice, a young man
standing on the shoulders of another man, both apparently
students of law or medicine, shouted over the heads of
the people, "Long live Egypt!" and in an instant the
cry was repeated in a deafening roar from every side.

The Prince signalled to his body-guard and his
carriage started, but all the way down the line of the
enclosure, where the red-capped Egyptians were still
standing in solid masses, the words cracked along like
fireworks set alight.

The people on the great pavilion watched and listened,
and to the larger part of them, who were British
subjects, and to the Officers, Advisers, and Under-Secretaries,
who were British officials, the cry was like a
challenge which seemed to say, "Go home to England;
we are a nation of ourselves, and can do without
you."  For a moment the air tingled with expectancy, and
everybody knew that something else was going to
happen.  It happened instantly, with that promptness
which the devil alone contrives.

Almost as soon as the Prince's company had cleared
away, a second carriage, that of the British
Consul-General, came down the line to the pavilion, with a
posse of native police on either side and a sais running
in front.  Then from his seat in the centre Lord
Nuneham rose and stepped down to the arena, shaking
hands with people as he passed, gallant to the ladies
as befits an English gentleman, but bearing himself
with a certain brusque condescension towards the men,
all trying to attract his attention—a medium-sized yet
massive person, with a stern jaw and steady grey eyes,
behind which the cool brain was plainly packed in
ice—a man of iron who had clearly passed through the
pathway of life with a firm, high step.

The posse of native police cleared a way for him, and
under the orders of an officer rendered military honours,
but that was not enough for the British contingent in
the fever of their present excitement.  They called for
three cheers for the King, whose representative the
Consul-General was in Egypt, and then three more for
Lord Nuneham, giving not three but six, with a fierceness
that grew more frantic at every shout, and seemed
to say, as plainly as words could speak, "Here we are,
and here we stay."

The Egyptians listened in silence, some of them
spitting as a sign of contempt, until the last cheer was
dying down, and then the lusty guttural voice cried
again, "Long live Egypt!" and once more the words
rang like a rip-rap down the line.

It was noticed that the stern expression of Lord
Nuneham's face assumed a death-like rigidity, that he
took out a pocket-book, wrote some words, tore away
a leaf, handed it to a native servant, and then, with an
icy smile, stepped into his carriage.  Meantime the
British contingent were cheering again with yet more
deafening clamour, and the rolling sound followed the
Consul-General as he drove away.  But the shout of
the Egyptians followed him too, and when he reached
the high road the one was like muffled drums at a
funeral far behind, while the other was like the sharp
crack of Maxim guns that were always firing by his
side.

The sea of muslin, ribbons, flowers, and feathers in
the pavilion had broken up by this time, the light was
striking level in people's eyes, the west was crimsoning
with sunset tints, the city was red on the tips of
its minarets and ablaze on the bare face of its insurgent
hills, and the Nile itself, taking the colouring of the
sky, was lying like an old serpent of immense size
which had stretched itself along the sand to sleep.





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   CHAPTER II

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General Graves's daughter had been at the sports
that day, sitting in the chair immediately behind Lord
Nuneham's.  Her name was Helena, and she was a fine,
handsome girl in the early twenties, with coal-black
hair, very dark eyes, a speaking face, and a smile like
eternal sunshine, well grown, splendidly developed, and
carrying herself in perfect equipoise with natural grace
and a certain swing when she walked.

Helena Graves was to marry Lord Nuneham's son,
Colonel Gordon Lord, and during the progress of the
sham fight she had had eyes for nobody else.  She had
watched him when he had entered the field, sitting
solid on his Irish horse, which was stepping high and
snorting audibly; when at the "Fire" he had stood
behind the firing line and at the "Cease fire" galloped
in front; when he had threaded his forces round and
round, north, south, and west, in and out as in a dance,
so that they faced the enemy on every side; when
somebody had blundered and his cavalry had been
caught in a trap and he had had to ride without sword
or revolver through a cloud of dark heads that had
sprung up as if out of the ground; and above all, when
his horse had stumbled and he had fallen, and the
dervishes, forgetting that the battle was not a real one,
had hurled their spears like shafts of forked lightning
over his head.  At that moment she had forgotten all
about the high society gathered in a brilliant throng
around her, and had clutched the Consul-General's
chair convulsively, breathing so audibly that he had
heard her, and lowering the glasses through which he
had watched the distant scene, had patted her arm
and said—

"He's safe—don't be afraid, my child."

When the fight was over her eyes were radiant, her
cheeks were like a conflagration, and, notwithstanding
the ugly incident attending the departure of the Prince
and Lord Nuneham, her face was full of a triumphant
joy as she stepped down to the green, where Colonel
Lord, who was waiting for her, put on her motor
cloak—she had come in her automobile—and helped her to
fix the light veil which in her excitement had fallen
back from her hat and showed that she was still blushing
up to the roots of her black hair.

Splendid creature as she was, Colonel Lord was a
match for her.  He was one of the youngest Colonels
in the British Army, being four-and-thirty, of more
than medium height, with crisp brown hair, and eyes
of the flickering, steel-like blue that is common among
enthusiastic natures, especially when they are soldiers—a
man of unmistakable masculinity, yet with that
vague suggestion of the woman about him which,
sometimes seen in a manly face, makes one say, without
knowing any of the circumstances, "That man is like
his mother, and whatever her ruling passion is, his own
will be, only stronger, more daring, and perhaps more
dangerous."

"They're a lovely pair," the women were saying of
them as they stood together, and soon they were
surrounded by a group of people, some complimenting
Helena, others congratulating Gordon, all condemning
the demonstration which had cast a certain gloom over
the concluding scene.

"It was too exciting, too fascinating; but how
shameful—that conduct of the natives.  It was just
like a premeditated insult," said a fashionable lady, a
visitor to Cairo; and then an Englishman—it was the
Adviser who had spoken the first unlucky words—said
promptly—

"So it was—it must have been.  Didn't you see how
it was all done at a pre-concerted signal?"

"I'm not surprised.  I've always said we English in
Egypt are living on the top of a volcano," said a small,
slack, grey-headed man, a Judge in the native courts;
and then the Commandant of Police, a somewhat
pompous person, said bitterly—

"We saved their country from bankruptcy, their
backs from the lash, and their stomachs from
starvation, and now listen: 'Long live Egypt!'"

At that moment a rather effusive American lady
came up to Helena and said—

"Don't you ever recognise your friends, dear?  I
tried to catch your eye during the fight, but a certain
officer had fallen, and of course nobody else existed in
the world."

"Let us make up our minds to it—we are not *liked*,"
the Judge was saying.  "Naturally we were popular
as long as we were plastering the wounds made by
tyrannical masters, but the masters are dead and the
patient is better, so the doctor is found to be a bore."

At that moment an Egyptian Princess, famous for
her wit and daring, came down the pavilion steps.  She
was one of the few Egyptian women who frequented
mixed society and went about with uncovered face—a
large person, with plump, pallid cheeks, very voluble,
outspoken, and quick-tempered, a friend and admirer
of the Consul-General and a champion of the English
rule.  Making straight for Helena, she said—

"Goodness, child, is it your face I see or the light
of the moon?  The battle?  Oh yes, it was beautiful,
but it was terrible, and thank the Lord it is over.  But
tell me about yourself, dear.  You are desperately in
love, they say, and no wonder.  I'm in love with him
myself, I really am, and if ... Oh, you're there, are
you?  Well, I'm telling Helena I'm in love with you.
Such strength, such courage—*pluck*, you call it, don't
you?"

Helena had turned to answer the American lady, and
Gordon, whose eyes had been on her as if waiting for
her to speak, whispered to the Princess—

"Isn't she looking lovely to-day, Princess?"

"Then why don't you tell her so?" said the Princess.

"Hush!" said Gordon, whereupon the Princess said—

"My goodness, what ridiculous creatures men are!
What cowards, too!  As brave as lions before a horde
of savages, but before a woman—*mon Dieu*!"

"Yes," said the Judge in his slow, shrill voice,
"they are fond of talking of the old book of Egypt,
yet the valley of the Nile is strewn with the tombs of
Egyptians who have perished under their hard
taskmasters from the Pharaohs to the Pashas.  Can't they
hear the murmur of the past about them?  Have they
no memory if they have no gratitude?"

At the last words General Graves came up to the
group, looking hot and excited, and he said—

"Memory!  Gratitude!  They're a nation of ingrates
and fools."

"What's that?" asked the Princess.

"Pardon me, Princess.  I say the demonstration of
your countrymen to-day is an example of the grossest
ingratitude."

"You're quite right, General.  But *Ma'aleysh*!  (No
matter!)  The barking of dogs doesn't hurt the clouds."

"And who are the dogs in this instance, Princess?"
said a thin-faced Turco-Egyptian, with a heavy
moustache, who had been congratulating Colonel Lord.

"Your Turco-Egyptian beauties who would set the
country ablaze to light their cigarettes," said the
Princess.  "Children, I call them.  Children, and they
deserve the rod.  Yes, the rod—and serve them right.
Excuse the word.  I know!  I tell you plainly, Pasha."

"And the clouds are the Consul-General, I suppose?"

"Certainly, and he's so much above them that
they can't even see he's the sun in their sky, the
stupids."

Whereupon the Pasha, who was the Egyptian Prime
Minister under a British Adviser, said with a shrug and
a dubious smile—

"Your sentiments are beautiful, but your similes are
a little broken, Princess."

"Not half so much broken as your treasury would
have been if the English hadn't helped it," said the
Princess, and when the Pasha had gone off with a
rather halting laugh, she said—

"*Ma'aleysh*!  When angels come the devils take
their leave.  I don't care.  I say what I think.  I tell
the Egyptians the English are the best friends Egypt
ever had, and Nuneham is their greatest ruler since
the days of Joseph.  But Adam himself wasn't
satisfied with Paradise, and it's no use talking.  'Don't
throw stones into the well you drink from,' I say.  But
serve you right, you English.  You shouldn't have
come.  He who builds on another's land brings up
another's child.  Everybody is excited about this
sedition, and even the harem are asking what the
Government is going to do.  Nuneham knows best,
though.  Leave him alone.  He'll deal with these
half-educated upstarts.  Upstarts—that's what I call them.
Oh, I know!  I speak plainly!"

"I agree with the Princess," chimed the Judge.
"What is this unrest among the Egyptians due to?
The education we ourselves have given them."

"Yes, teach your dog to snap and he'll soon bite you."

"These are the tares in the harvest we are reaping,
and perhaps our Western grain doesn't suit this Eastern
desert."

"Should think it doesn't, indeed.  'Liberty,'
'Equality,' 'Fraternity,' 'representative Institutions'!
If you English come talking this nonsense to the
Egyptians what can you expect?  Socialism, is it?
Well, if I am to be Prince, and you are to be Prince,
who is to drive the donkey?  Excuse the word!  I
know!  I tell you plainly.  Good-bye, my dear!  You
are looking perfect to-day.  But then you are so happy.
I can see when young people are in love by their eyes,
and yours are shining like moons.  After all, your
Western ways are best.  We choose the husbands for
our girls, thinking the silly things don't know what is
good for them, and the chicken isn't wiser than the
hen; but it's the young people, not the old ones, who
have to live together, so why shouldn't they choose
for themselves?"

At that instant there passed from some remote corner
of the grounds a brougham containing two shrouded
figures in close white veils, and the Princess said—

"Look at that, now—that relic of barbarism!
Shutting our women up like canaries in a cage, while
their men are enjoying the sunshine.  Life is a dancing
girl—let her dance a little for all of us."

The Princess was about to go when General Graves
appealed to her.  The Judge had been saying—

"I should call it a religious rather than a political
unrest.  You may do what you will for the Moslem, but
he never forgets that the hand which bestows his
benefits is that of an infidel."

"Yes, we're aliens here, there's no getting over it,"
said the Adviser.

And the General said, "Especially when professional
fanatics are always reminding the Egyptians that we
are not Mohammedans.  By the way, Princess, have
you heard of the new preacher, the new prophet, the
new Mahdi, as they say?"

"Prophet!  Mahdi!  Another of them?"

"Yes, the comet that has just appeared in the firmament
of Alexandria."

"Some holy man, I suppose.  Oh, I know.  Holy
man indeed!  Shake hands with him and count your
rings, General!  Another impostor riding on the
people's backs, and they can't see it, the stupids!
But the camel never can see his hump—not he!  Good-bye,
girl.  Get married soon and keep together as long
as you can.  Stretch your legs to the length of your
bed, my dear—why shouldn't you?  Say good-bye to
Gordon? ... Certainly, where is he?"

At that moment Gordon was listening with head
down to something the General was saying with intense
feeling.

"The only way to deal with religious impostors who
sow disaffection among the people is to suppress them
with a strong hand.  Why not?  Fear of their
followers?  They're fit for nothing but to pray in their
mosques, 'Away with the English, O Lord, but give
us water in due measure!'  Fight?  Not for an
instant!  There isn't an ounce of courage in a hundred
of them, and a score of good soldiers would sweep all
the native Egyptians of Alexandria into the sea."

Then Gordon, who had not yet spoken, lifted his
head and answered, in a rather nervous voice—

"No, no, no, sir!  Ill usage may have made these
people cowards in the old days, but proper treatment
since has made them men, and there wasn't an Egyptian
fellah on the field to-day who wouldn't have followed
me into the jaws of death if I had told him to.  As
for our being aliens in religion"—the nervous voice
became louder and at the same time more tremulous—"that
isn't everything.  We're aliens in sympathy and
brotherhood and even in common courtesy as well.
What is the honest truth about us?  Here we are to
help the Egyptians to regenerate their country, yet we
neither eat nor drink nor associate with them.  How
can we hope to win their hearts while we hold them at
arm's length?  We've given them water, yes, water in
abundance, but have we given them—love?"

The woman in Gordon had leapt out before he knew
it, and he had swung a little aside as if ashamed, while
the men cleared their throats, and the Princess,
notwithstanding that she had been abusing her own people,
suddenly melted in the eyes, and muttered to herself,
"Oh, our God!" and then, reaching over to kiss Helena,
whispered in her ear—

"You've got the best of the bunch, my dear, and if
England would only send us a few more of his sort
we should hear less of 'Long live Egypt.'  Now,
General, you can see me to my carriage if you would
like to.  By-bye, young people!"

At that moment the native servant to whom the
Consul-General had given the note came up and gave
it to Gordon, who read it and then handed it to Helena.
It ran—

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"Come to me immediately.  Have something to say
to you.—N."

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"We'll drive you to the Agency in the car," said
Helena, and they moved away together.

In a crowded lane at the back of the pavilion people
were clamouring for their carriages and complaining of
the idleness and even rudeness of the Arab runners, but
Helena's automobile was brought up instantly, and
when it was moving off, with the General inside, Helena
at the wheel, and Gordon by her side, the natives
touched their foreheads to the Colonel and said,
"*Bismillah!*"

As soon as the car was clear away, and Gordon was
alone with Helena for the first time, there was one of
those privateering passages of love between them which
lovers know how to smuggle through even in public
and the eye of day.

"Well!"

"Well!"

"Everybody has been saying the sweetest things to
me and you've never yet uttered a word."

"Did you really expect me to speak—there—before
all those people?  But it was splendid, glorious,
magnificent!"  And then, the steering-wheel notwithstanding,
her gauntletted left hand went down to where his
right hand was waiting for it.

Crossing the iron bridge over the river, they drew up
at the British Agency, a large, ponderous, uninspired
edifice, with its ambuscaded back to the city and its
defiant front to the Nile, and there, as Gordon got
down, the General, who still looked hot and excited,
said—

"You'll dine with us to-night, my boy—usual hour,
you know?"

"With pleasure, sir," said Gordon, and then Helena
leaned over and whispered—

"May I guess what your father is going to talk about?"

"The demonstration?"

"Oh no!"

"What then?"

"The new prophet at Alexandria."

"I wonder," said Gordon, and with a wave of the
hand he disappeared behind a screen of purple blossom,
as Helena and the General faced home.

Their way lay up through the old city, where groups
of aggressive young students, at sight of the General's
gold-laced cap, started afresh the Kentish fire of their
"Long live Egypt," up and up until they reached the
threatening old fortress on the spur of the Mokattani
Hills, and then through the iron-clamped gates to the
wide courtyard where the mosque of Mohammed Ali, with
its spikey minarets, stands on the edge of the ramparts
like a cock getting ready to crow, and drew up at the
gate of a heavy-lidded house which looks sleepily down
on the city, the sinuous Nile, the sweeping desert, the
preponderating Pyramids, and the last saluting of the
sun.  Then as Helena rose from her seat she saw that
the General's head had fallen back and his face was
scarlet.

"Father, you are ill."

"Only a little faint—I'll be better presently."

But he stumbled in stepping out of the car, and
Helena said—

"You *are* ill, and you must go to bed immediately,
and let me put Gordon off until to-morrow."

"No, let him come.  I want to hear what the
Consul-General had to say to him."

In spite of himself he had to go to bed, though, and
half-an-hour later, having given him a sedative, Helena
was saying—

"You've over-excited yourself again, Father.  You
were anxious about Gordon when his horse fell and
those abominable spears were flying about."

"Not a bit of it.  I knew he would come out all
right.  The fighting devil isn't civilised out of the
British blood yet, thank God!  But those Egyptians
at the end—the ingrates, the dastards!"

"Father!"

"Oh, I am calm enough now—don't be afraid, girl.
I was sorry to hear Gordon standing up for them,
though.  A soldier every inch of him, but how unlike
his father!  Never saw father and son so different.
Yet so much alike too!  Fighting men both of them,
Hope to goodness they'll never come to grips.
Heavens! that would be a bad day for all of us."

And then drowsily, under the influence of the
medicine—

"I wonder what Nuneham wanted with Gordon!
Something about those graceless tarbooshes, I suppose.
He'll make them smart for what they've done to-day.
Wonderful man, Nuneham!  Wonderful!"





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   CHAPTER III

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John Nuneham was the elder son of a financier of
whose earlier life little or nothing was ever learned.
What was known of his later life was that he had
amassed a fortune by colonial speculation, bought a
London newspaper, and been made a baronet for
services to his political party.  Having no inclination
towards journalism the son became a soldier, rose
quickly to the rank of Brevet-Major, served several
years with his regiment abroad, and at six-and-twenty
went to India as Private Secretary to the Viceroy, who,
quickly recognising his natural tendency, transferred
him to the administrative side and put him on the
financial staff.  There he spent five years with
conspicuous success, obtaining rapid promotion, and being
frequently mentioned in the Viceroy's reports to the
Foreign Minister.

Then his father died, without leaving a will, as the
cable of the solicitors informed him, and he returned
to administer the estate.  Here a thunderbolt fell on
him, for he found a younger brother, with whom he
had nothing in common and had never lived at peace,
preparing to dispute his right to his father's title and
fortune on the assumption that he was illegitimate, that
is to say, was born before the date of the marriage of
his parents.

The allegation proved to be only too well founded,
and as soon as the elder brother had recovered from
the shock of the truth, he appealed to the younger one
to leave things as they found them.

"After all, a man's eldest son is his eldest son—let
matters rest," he urged; but his brother was obdurate.
"Nobody knows what the circumstances may have
been—is there no ground of agreement?" but his
brother could see none.

"You can take the inheritance, if that's what you
want, but let me find a way to keep the title so as to
save the family and avoid scandal"; but his brother
was unyielding.

"For our father's sake—it is not for a man's sons to
rake up the dead past of his forgotten life"; but the
younger brother could not be stirred.

"For our mother's sake—nobody wants his mother's
good name to be smirched, least of all when she's in her
grave"; but the younger brother remained unmoved.

"I promise never to marry.  The title shall end with
me.  It shall return to you or to your children"; but
the younger brother would not listen.

"England is the only Christian country in the world
in which a man's son is not always his son—for God's
sake let me keep my father's name?"

"It is mine, and mine alone," said the younger
brother, and then a heavy and solitary tear, the last
he was to shed for forty years, dropped slowly down
John Nuneham's hard-drawn face, for at that instant
the well of his heart ran dry.

"As you will," he said.  "But if it is your pride
that is doing this I shall humble it, and if it is your
greed I shall live long enough to make it ashamed."

From that day forward he dedicated his life to one
object only, the founding of a family that should far
eclipse the family of his brother, and his first step
towards that end was to drop his father's surname in
the register of his regiment and assume his mother's
name of Lord.

At that moment England with two other European
Powers had, like Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego,
entered the fiery furnace of Egyptian affairs, though
not so much to withstand as to protect the worship of
the golden image.  A line of Khedives, each seeking
his own advantage, had culminated in one more
unscrupulous and tyrannical than the rest, who had seized
the lands of the people, borrowed money upon them in
Europe, wasted it in wicked personal extravagance, as
well as in reckless imperial expenditure that had not
yet had time to yield a return, and thus brought the
country to the brink of ruin, with the result that
England was left alone at last to occupy Egypt, much
as Rome occupied Palestine, and to find a man to
administer her affairs in a position analogous to that
of Pontius Pilate.  It found him in John Lord, the
young Financial Secretary who had distinguished
himself in India.

His task was one of immense difficulty, for though
nominally no more than the British Consul-General, he
was really the ruler of the country, being representative
of the sovereign whose soldiers held Egypt in their
grip.  Realising at once that he was the official
receiver to a bankrupt nation, he saw that his first duty
was to make it solvent.  He did make it solvent.  In
less than five years Egypt was able to pay her debt to
Europe.  Therefore Europe was satisfied, England was
pleased, and John Lord was made Knight of the Order
of St. Michael and St. George.

Then he married a New England girl whom he had
met in Cairo, daughter of a Federal General in the Civil
War, a gentle creature, rather delicate, a little
sentimental, and very religious.

During the first years their marriage was childless,
and the wife, seeing with a woman's sure eyes that
her husband's hope had been for a child, began to live
within herself, and to weep when no one could see.
But at last a child came, and it was a son, and she
was overjoyed and the Consul-General was content.
He allowed her to christen the child by what name
she pleased, so she gave him the name of her great
Christian hero, Charles George Gordon.  They called
the boy Gordon, and the little mother was very happy.

But her health became still more delicate, so a nurse
had to be looked for, and they found one in an Egyptian
woman—with a child of her own—who, by power of a
pernicious law of Mohammedan countries, had been
divorced through no fault of hers, at the whim of a
husband who wished to marry another wife.  Thus
Hagar, with her little Ishmael, became foster-mother
to the Consul-General's son, and the two children were
suckled together and slept in the same cot.

Years passed, during which the boy grew up like a
little Arab in the Englishman's house, while his mother
devoted herself more and more to the exercises of her
religion, and his father, without failing in affectionate
attention to either of them, seemed to bury his love
for both too deep in his heart and to seal it with a
seal, although the Egyptian nurse was sometimes
startled late at night by seeing the Consul-General
coming noiselessly into her room before going to his
own, to see if it was well with his child.

Meantime as ruler of Egypt the Consul-General was
going from strength to strength, and seeing that the
Nile is the most wonderful river in the world and the
father of the country through which it flows, he
determined that it should do more than moisten the lips of
the Egyptian desert while the vast body lay parched
with thirst.  Therefore he took engineers up to the
fork of the stream where the clear and crystal Blue
Nile of Khartoum, tumbling down in mighty torrents
from the volcanic gorges of the Abyssinian hills, crosses
the slow and sluggish White Nile of Omdurman, and
told them to build dams, so that the water should not
be wasted into the sea, but spread over the arid land,
leaving the glorious sun of Egypt to do the rest.

The effect was miraculous.  Nature, the great wonder-worker,
had come to his aid, and never since the Spirit
of God first moved upon the face of the waters had
anything so marvellous been seen.  The barren earth
brought forth grass and the desert blossomed like a
rose.  Land values increased; revenues were enlarged;
poor men became rich; rich men became millionaires;
Egypt became a part of Europe; Cairo became a
European city; the record of the progress of the country
began to sound like a story from the "Arabian
Nights," and the Consul-General's annual reports read
like fresh chapters out of the Book of Genesis, telling
of the creation of a new heaven and a new earth.  The
remaking of Egypt was the wonder of the world; the
faces of the Egyptians were whitened; England was
happy, and Sir John Lord was made a baronet.  His
son had gone to school in England by this time, and
from Eton he was to go on to Sandhurst and to take
up the career of a soldier.

Then, thinking the Englishman's mission on foreign
soil was something more than to make money, the
Consul-General attempted to regenerate the country.
He had been sent out to re-establish the authority of
the Khedive, yet he proceeded to curtail it; to
suppress the insurrection of the people, yet he proceeded
to enlarge their liberties.  Setting up a high standard
of morals, both in public and private life, he tolerated
no trickery.  Finding himself in a cockpit of corruption,
he put down bribery, slavery, perjury, and a
hundred kinds of venality and intrigue.  Having views
about individual justice and equal rights before the law,
he cleansed the law courts, established a Christian code
of morals between man and man, and let the light of
Western civilisation into the mud hut of the Egyptian
fellah.

Mentally, morally, and physically his massive
personality became the visible soul of Egypt.  If a poor
man was wronged in the remotest village he said, "I'll
write to Lord," and the threat was enough.  He
became the visible conscience of Egypt, too, and if a rich
man was tempted to do a doubtful deed he thought
of "the Englishman" and the doubtful deed was not
done.

The people at the top of the ladder trusted him,
and the people at the bottom, a simple, credulous,
kindly race, who were such as sixty centuries of
mis-government had made them, touched their breasts,
their lips, and their foreheads at the mention of his
name, and called him "The Father of Egypt."  England
was proud, and Sir John Lord was made a peer.

When the King's letter reached him he took it to
his wife, who now lay for long hours every day on the
couch in the drawing-room, and then wrote to his son,
who had left Sandhurst and was serving with his
regiment in the Soudan, but he said nothing to anybody
else, and left even his secretary to learn the great news
through the newspapers.

He was less reserved when he came to select his title,
and remembering his brother he found a fierce joy in
calling himself by his father's name, thinking he had
earned the right to it.  Twenty-five years had passed
since he had dedicated his life to the founding of a
family that should eclipse and even humiliate the
family of his brother, and now his secret aim was
realised.  He saw a long line succeeding him, his son,
and his son's son, and his son's son's son, all peers of
the realm, and all Nunehams.  His revenge was sweet;
he was very happy.





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   CHAPTER IV

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If Lord Nuneham had died then, or if he had passed
away from Egypt, he would have left an enduring fame
as one of the great Englishmen who twice or thrice in
a hundred years carve their names on the granite page
of the world's history; but he went on and on, until
it sometimes looked as if in the end it might be said
of him, in the phrase of the Arab proverb, that he had
written his name in water.

Having achieved one object of ambition, he set
himself another, and having tasted power he became
possessed by the lust of it.  Great men had been in
England when he first came to Egypt, and he had
submitted to their instructions without demur, but now,
wincing under the orders of inferior successors, he told
himself, not idly boasting, that nobody in London knew
his work as well as he did, and he must be liberated
from the domination of Downing Street.  The work of
emancipation was delicate but not difficult.  There was
one power stronger than any Government, whereby
public opinion might be guided and controlled—the press.

The British Consul-General in Cairo was in a position
of peculiar advantage for guiding and controlling the
press.  He did guide and control it.  What he thought
it well that Europe should know about Egypt that it
knew, and that only.  The generally ill-informed public
opinion in England was corrected; the faulty praise
and blame of the British press was set right; within
five years London had ceased to send instructions to
Cairo; and when a diplomatic question created a fuss
in Parliament the Consul-General was heard to say—

"I don't care a rush what the Government think,
and I don't care a straw what the Foreign Minister
says; I have a power stronger than either at my
back—the public."

It was true, but it was also the beginning of the
end.  Having attained to absolute power, he began to
break up from the seeds of dissolution which always
hide in the heart of it.  Hitherto he had governed
Egypt by guiding a group of gifted Englishmen who as
Secretaries and Advisers had governed the Egyptian
Governors; but now he desired to govern everything
himself.  As a consequence the gifted men had to
go, and their places were taken by subordinates whose
best qualification was their subservience to his strong
and masterful spirit.

Even that did not matter as long as his own strength
served him.  He knew and determined everything,
from the terms of treaties with foreign Powers to the
wages of the Khedive's English coachman.  With five
thousand British bayonets to enforce his will, he said
to a man, "Do that," and the man did it, or left Egypt
without delay.  No Emperor or Czar or King was ever
more powerful, no Pope more infallible; but if his rule
was hard, it was also just, and for some years yet Egypt
was well governed.

"When a fish goes bad," the Arabs say, "is it first
at the head or at the tail?"  As Lord Nuneham grew
old, his health began to fail, and he had to fall back on
the weaklings who were only fit to carry out his will.
Then an undertone of murmuring was heard in Egypt.
The Government was the same, yet it was altogether
different.  The hand was Esau's, but the voice was
Jacob's.  "The millstones are grinding," said the
Egyptians, "but we see no flour."

The glowing fire of the great Englishman's fame
began to turn to ashes, and a cloud no bigger than a
man's hand appeared in the sky.  His Advisers
complained to him of friction with their Ministers; his
Inspectors, returning from tours in the country, gave
him reports of scant courtesy at the hands of natives,
and to account for their failures they worked up in his
mind the idea of a vast racial and religious conspiracy.
The East was the East; the West was the West;
Moslem was Moslem; Christian was Christian; Egyptians
cared more about Islam than they did about
good government, and Europeans in the valley of the
Nile, especially British soldiers and officials, were living
on the top of a volcano.

The Consul-General listened to them with a sour
smile, but he believed them and blundered.  He was a
sick man now, and he was not really living in Egypt
any longer—he was only sleeping at the Agency; and he
thought he saw the work of his lifetime in danger of
being undone.  So, thinking to end fanaticism by one
crushing example, he gave his subordinates an order
like that which the ancient King of Egypt gave to the
midwives, with the result that five men were hanged
and a score were flogged before their screaming wives
and children for an offence that had not a particle of
religious or political significance.

A cry of horror went up through Egypt; the Consul-General
had lost it; his forty years of great labour
had been undone in a day.

As every knife is out when the bull is down, so the
place-hunting Pashas, the greedy Sheikhs, and the cruel
Governors whose corruptions he had suppressed found
instruments to stab him, and the people who had kissed
the hand they dared not bite thought it safe to bite
the hand they need not kiss.  He had opened the
mouths of his enemies, and in Eastern manner they
assailed him first by parables.  Once there had been a
great English eagle; its eyes were clear and piercing;
its talons were firm and relentless in their grip; yet
it was a proud and noble bird; it held its own against
East and West, and protected all who took refuge
under its wing; but now the eagle had grown old and
weak; other birds, smaller and meaner, had deprived
it of its feathers and picked out its eyes, and it had
become blind and cruel and cowardly and sly—would
nobody shoot it or shut it up in a cage?

Rightly or wrongly, the Consul-General became
convinced that the Khedive was intriguing against him,
and one day he drove to the royal palace and
demanded an audience.  The interview that followed was
not the first of many stormy scenes between the real
governor of Egypt and its nominal ruler, and when
Lord Nuneham strode out with his face aflame, through
the line of the quaking bodyguard, he left the Khedive
protesting plaintively to the people of his court that he
would sell up all and leave the country.  At that the
officials put their heads together in private, concluded
that the present condition could not last, and asked
themselves how, since it was useless to expect England
to withdraw the Consul-General, it was possible for
Egypt to get rid of him.

By this time Lord Nuneham, in the manner of all
strong men growing weak, had begun to employ spies,
and one day a Syrian Christian told him a secret story.
He was to be assassinated.  The crime was to be
committed in the Opera House, under the cover of a general
riot, on the night of the Khedive's State visit, when
the Consul-General was always present.  As usual the
Khedive was to rise at the end of the first act and
retire to the saloon overlooking the square; as usual
he was to send for Lord Nuneham to follow him, and
the moment of the Khedive's return to his box was
to be the signal for a rival demonstration of English
and Egyptians that was to end in the Consul-General's
death.  There was no reason to believe the Khedive
himself was party to the plot, or that he knew anything
about it, yet none the less it was necessary to stay
away, to find an excuse—illness at the last
moment—anything.

Lord Nuneham was not afraid, but he sent up to
the Citadel for General Graves, and arranged that a
battalion of infantry and a battery of artillery were to
be marched down to the Opera Square at a message
over the telephone from him.

"If anything happens, you know what to do," he said;
and the General knew perfectly.

Then the night came, and the moment the Khedive
left his palace the Consul-General heard of it.  A
moment later a message was received at the Citadel,
and a quarter of an hour afterwards Lord Nuneham
was taking his place at the Opera.  The air of the
house tingled with excitement, and everything seemed
to justify the Syrian's story.

Sure enough, at the end of the first act the Khedive
rose and retired to the saloon, and sure enough at the
next moment the Consul-General was summoned to
follow him.  His Highness was very gracious, very
agreeable, all trace of their last stormy interview being
gone; and gradually Lord Nuneham drew him up to
the windows overlooking the public square.

There, under the sparkling light of a dozen electric
lamps, in a solid line surrounding the Opera House,
stood a battalion of infantry, with the guns of the
artillery facing outward at every corner; and at sight
of them the Khedive caught his breath and said—

"What is the meaning of this, my lord?"

"Only a little attention to your Highness," said the
Consul-General in a voice that was intended to be heard
all over the room.

At that instant somebody came up hurriedly and
whispered to the Khedive, who turned ashen white,
ordered his carriage, and went home immediately.

Next morning at eleven, Lord Nuneham, with the
same force drawn up in front of Abdeen Palace, went
in to see the Khedive again.

"There's a train for Alexandria at twelve," he said,
"and a steamer for Constantinople at five—your Highness
will feel better for a little holiday in Europe!"
and half-an-hour afterwards the Khedive, accompanied
by several of his Court officials, was on his way to the
railway station, with the escort, in addition to his own
bodyguard, of a British regiment whose band was
playing the Khedivial hymn.

He had got rid of the Khedive at a critical juncture,
but he had still to deal with a sovereign that would
not easily be chloroformed into silence.  The Arabic
press, to which he had been the first to give liberty,
began to attack him openly, to vilify him, and systematically
to misrepresent his actions, so that he who had
been the great torch-bearer of light in a dark country
saw himself called the Great Adventurer, the Tyrant,
the Assassin, the worst Pharaoh Egypt had ever known—a
Pharaoh surrounded by a kindergarten of false
prophets, obsessed by preposterous fears of assassination
and deluded by phantoms of fanaticism.

His subordinates told him that these hysterical tirades
were inflaming the whole of Egypt; that their
influence was in proportion to their violence; that the
huge, untaught mass of the Egyptian people were
listening to them; that there was not an ignorant
fellah possessed of one ragged garment who did not go
to the coffee-house at night to hear them read; that
the lives of British officials were in peril; and that the
promulgation of sedition must be stopped, or the British
governance of the country could not go on.

A sombre fire shone in the Consul-General's eyes
while he heard their prophecy, but he believed it all
the same, and when he spoke contemptuously of
incendiary articles as froth, and they answered that froth
could be stained with blood, he told himself that if
fools and ingrates spouting nonsense in Arabic could
destroy whatever germs of civilisation he had implanted
in Egypt, the doctrine of the liberty of the press was
all moonshine.

And so, after sinister efforts to punish the whole
people for the excesses of their journalists by enlarging
the British army and making the country pay the
expense, he found a means to pass a new press law,
to promulgate it by help of the Prime Minister, now
Regent in the Khedive's place, and to suppress every
native newspaper in Egypt in one day.  By that blow
the Egyptians were staggered into silence, the British
officials went about with stand-off manners and airs of
conscious triumph, and Lord Nuneham himself,
mistaking violence for power, thought he was master of
Egypt once more.

But low, very low on the horizon a new planet now
rose in the firmament.  It was not the star of a Khedive
jealous of Nuneham's power, nor of an Egyptian Minister
chafing under the orders of his Under-Secretary, nor
yet of a journalist vilifying England and flirting with
France, but that of a simple Arab in turban and
caftan, a swarthy son of the desert whose name no
man had heard before, and it was rising over the dome
of the mosque within whose sacred precincts neither
the Consul-General nor his officials could intrude, and
where the march of British soldiers could not be made.
There a reverberation was being heard, a now voice
was going forth, and it was echoing and re-echoing
through the hushed chambers that were the heart of
Islam.

When Lord Nuneham first asked about the Arab he
was told that the man was one Ishmael Ameer, out of
the Libyan Desert, a carpenter's son, and a fanatical,
backward, unenlightened person of no consequence
whatever; but with his sure eye for the political
heavens, the Consul-General perceived that a planet of
no common magnitude had appeared in the Egyptian
firmament, and that it would avail him nothing to have
suppressed the open sedition of the newspapers if he
had only driven it underground, into the mosques, where
it would be a hundredfold more dangerous..

If a political agitation was not to be turned into
religious unrest, if fanaticism was not to conquer
civilisation and a holy war to carry the country back
to its old rotten condition of bankruptcy and barbarity,
that man out of the Libyan Desert must be put down.
But how and by whom?  He himself was old—more
than seventy years old—his best days were behind him,
the road in front of him must be all downhill now; and
when he looked around among the sycophants who said,
"Yes, my lord," "Excellent, my lord," "The very
thing, my lord," for some one to fight the powers of
darkness that were arrayed against him, he saw none.

It was in this mood that he had gone to the sham
fight, merely because he had to show himself in public;
and there, sitting immediately in front of the fine girl
who was to be his daughter soon, and feeling at one
moment her quick breathing on his neck, he had been
suddenly caught up by the spirit of her enthusiasm and
had seen his son as he had never seen him before.
Putting his glasses to his eyes he had watched him—he
and (as it seemed) the girl together.  Such courage,
such fire, such resource, such insight, such foresight!
It must be the finest brain and firmest character in
Egypt, and it was his own flesh and blood, his own
son Gordon!

Hitherto his attitude towards Gordon had been one
of placid affection, compounded partly of selfishness,
being proud that he was no fool and could forge along
in his profession, and pleased to think of him as the
next link in the chain of the family he was founding;
but now everything was changed.  The right man to
put down sedition was the man at his right hand.  He
would save England against Egyptian aggression; he
would save his father too, who was old and whose
strength was spent, and perhaps—why not?—he would
succeed him some day and carry on the traditions of
his work in the conquests of civilisation and its triumph
in the dark countries of the world.

For the first time for forty years a heavy and solitary
tear dropped slowly down the Consul-General's cheek,
now deeply scored with lines; but no one saw it,
because few dared look into his face.  The man who had
never unburdened himself to a living soul wished to
unburden himself at last, so he scribbled his note to
Gordon and then stepped into the carriage that was
to take him home.

Meantime he was aware that some fool had provoked
a demonstration, but that troubled him hardly at all;
and while the crackling cries of "Long live Egypt!"
were following him down the arena he was being borne
along as by invisible wings.

Thus the two aims in the great Proconsul's life had
become one, and that one aim centred in his son.





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   CHAPTER V

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As Gordon went into the British Agency a small, wizened
man with a pock-marked face, wearing Oriental dress,
came out.  He was the Grand Cadi (Chief Judge) of the
Mohammedan courts and representative of the Sultan
of Turkey in Egypt, one who had secretly hated the
Consul-General and raved against the English rule for
years; and as he saluted obsequiously with his honeyed
voice and smiled with his crafty eyes, it flashed upon
Gordon—he did not know why—that just so must
Caiaphas, the high priest, have looked when he came
out of Pilate's judgment hall after saying, "If thou let
this man go thou art not Cæsar's friend."

Gordon leapt up the steps and into the house as one
who was at home, and going first into the shaded
drawing-room he found his mother on the couch
looking to the sunset and the Nile—a sweet old lady in
the twilight of life, with white hair, a thin face almost
as white, and the pale smile of a patient soul who had
suffered pain.  With her, attending upon her, and at
that moment handing a cup of chicken broth to her,
was a stout Egyptian woman with a good homely
countenance—Gordon's old nurse, Fatimah.

His mother turned at the sound of his voice, roused
herself on the couch, and with that startled cry of joy
which has only one note in all nature, that of a mother
meeting her beloved son, she cried, "Gordon!  Gordon!"
and clasped her delicate hands about his neck.  Before
he could prevent it, his foster-mother, too, muttering
in Eastern manner, "O my eye!  O my soul!" had
snatched one of his hands and was smothering it with
kisses.

"And how is Helena?" his mother asked, in her
low, sweet voice.

"Beautiful!" said Gordon.

"She couldn't help being that.  But why doesn't she
come to see me?"

"I think she's anxious about her father's health, and
is afraid to leave him," said Gordon; and then Fatimah,
with blushes showing through her Arab skin, said—

"Take care! a house may hold a hundred men, but
the heart of a woman has only room for one of them."

"Ah, but Helena's heart is as wide as a well,
mammy," said Gordon; whereupon Fatimah said—

"That's the way, you see!  When a young man is
in love there are only two sort of girls in the
world—ordinary girls and his girl."

At that moment, while the women laughed, Gordon
heard his father's deep voice in the hall saying, "Bid
good-bye to my wife before you go, Reg," and then the
Consul-General, with "Here's Gordon also," came into
the drawing-room, followed by Sir Reginald Mannering,
Sirdar of the Egyptian army and Governor of the
Soudan, who said—

"Splendid, my boy!  Not forgotten your first fight,
I see!  Heavens, I felt as if I was back at Omdurman
and wanted to get at the demons again."

"Gordon," said the Consul-General, "see His Excellency
to the door and come to me in the library;"
and when the Sirdar was going out at the porch he
whispered—

"Go easy with the Governor, my boy.  Don't let
anything cross him.  Wonderful man, but I see a
difference since I was down last year.  Bye-bye!"

Gordon found his father writing a letter, with his
*kawas* Ibrahim, in green caftan and red waistband, waiting
by the side of the desk, in the library, a plain room,
formal as an office, being walled with bookcases full of
Blue Books, and relieved by two pictures only—a
portrait of his mother when she was younger than he
could remember to have seen her, and one of himself
when he was a child and wore an Arab fez and slippers.

"The General—the Citadel," said the Consul-General,
giving his letter to Ibrahim; and as soon as the valet
was gone he wheeled his chair round to Gordon and
began—

"I've been writing to your General for his formal
consent, having something I wish you to do for me."

"With pleasure, sir," said Gordon.

"You know all about the riots at Alexandria?"

"Only what I've learned from the London papers, sir.

"Well, for some time past the people there have been
showing signs of effervescence.  First, strikes of
cabmen, carters, God knows what—all concealing political
issues.  Then, open disorder.  Europeans hustled and
spat upon in the streets.  A sheikh crying aloud in the
public thoroughfares, 'O Moslems, come and help me
to drive out the Christians.'  Then a Greek merchant
warned to take care, as the Arabs were going to kill
the Christians that day or the day following.  Then
low-class Moslems shouting in the square of Mohammed
Ali, 'The last day of the Christians is drawing nigh.'  As
a consequence there have been conflicts.  The first
of them was trivial, and the police scattered the rioters
with a water-hose.  The second was more serious, and
some Europeans were wounded.  The third was alarming,
and several natives had to be arrested.  Well, when
I look for the cause I find the usual one."

"What is it, sir?" asked Gordon.

"Egypt has at all times been subject to local
insurrections.  They are generally of a religious character,
and are set on foot by madmen who give themselves
out as divinely-inspired leaders.  But shall I tell you
what it all means?"

"Tell me, sir," said Gordon.

The Consul-General rose from his chair and began to
walk up and down the room with long strides and
heavy tread.

"It means," he said, "that the Egyptians, like all
other Mohammedans, are cut off by their religion from
the spirit and energy of the great civilised nations—that,
swathed in the bands of the Koran, the Moslem
faith is like a mummy, dead to all uses of the modern
world."

The Consul-General drew up sharply and continued—

"Perhaps all dogmatic religions are more or less like
that, but the Christian religion has accommodated itself
to the spirit of the ages, whereas Islam remains fixed,
the religion of the seventh century, born in a desert
and suckled in a society that was hardly better than
barbarism."

He began to walk again and to talk with great
animation.

"What does Islam mean?  It means slavery,
seclusion of women, indiscriminate divorce, unlimited
polygamy, the breakdown of the family and the
destruction of the nation.  Well, what happens?  Civilisation
comes along, and it is death to all such dark ways.
What next?  The scheming Sheikhs, the corrupt
Pashas, the tyrannical Caliphs, all the rascals and
rogues who batten on corruption, the fanatics who are
opponents of the light, cry out against it.  Either they
must lose their interests or civilisation must go.  What
then?  Civilisation means the West, the West means
Christianity.  So 'Down with the Christians!  O
Moslems, help us to kill them!'"

The Consul-General stopped by Gordon's chair, put
his hand on his son's shoulder, and said—

"There comes a time in the history of all our
Mohammedan dependencies—India, Egypt, every one
of them—when England has to confront a condition
like that."

"And what has she to do, sir?"

The Consul-General lifted his right fist and brought
it down on his left palm, and said—

"To come down with a heavy hand on the lying
agitators and intriguers who are leading away the
ignorant populace."

"I agree, sir.  It is the agitators who should be punished,
not the poor, emotional, credulous Egyptian people."

"The Egyptian people, my boy, are graceless ingrates
who under the influence of momentary passion
would brain their best friend with their nabouts, and
go like camels before the camel-driver."

Gordon winced visibly, but only said, "Who is the
camel-driver in this instance, sir?"

"A certain Ishmael Ameer, preaching in the great
mosque at Alexandria, the cradle of all disaffection."

"An Alim?"

"A teacher of some sort, saying England is the deadly
foe of Islam, and must therefore be driven out."

"Then he is worse than the journalists?"

"Yes, we thought of the viper, forgetting the
scorpion."

"But is it certain he is so dangerous?"

"One of the leaders of his own people has just been
here to say that if we let that man go on it will be
death to the rule of England in Egypt."

"The Grand Cadi?"

The Consul-General nodded and then said, "The
cunning rogue has a grievance of his own, I find, but
what's that to me?  The first duty of a government is
to keep order."

"I agree," said Gordon.

"There may be picric acid in prayers as well as in
bombs."

"There may."

"We have to make these fanatical preachers realise
that even if the onward march of progress is but faintly
heard in the sealed vaults of their mosque, civilisation
is standing outside the walls with its laws and, if need
be, its soldiers."

"You are satisfied, sir, that this man is likely to
lead the poor, foolish people into rapine and slaughter?"

"I recognise a bird by its flight.  This is another
Mahdi—I see it—I feel it," said the Consul-General,
and his eyes flashed and his voice echoed like a horn.

"You want me to smash the Mahdi?"

"Exactly!  Your namesake wanted to smash his
predecessor—romantic person—too fond of guiding his
conduct by reference to the prophet Isaiah; but he was
right in that, and the Government was wrong, and the
consequence was the massacre you represented to-day."

"I have to arrest Ishmael Ameer?"

"That's so, in open riot if possible, and if not, by
means of testimony derived from his sermons in the
mosques."

"Hadn't we better begin there, sir—make sure that
he is inciting the people to violence?"

"As you please!"

"You don't forget that the mosques are closed to me
as a Christian?"

The Consul-General reflected for a moment and then
said—

"Where's Fatimah's son, Hafiz?"

"With his regiment at Abbassiah."

"Take him with you—take two other Moslem
witnesses as well."

"I'm to bring this new prophet back to Cairo?"

"That's it—bring him here—we'll do all the rest."

"What if there should be trouble with the people?"

"There's a battalion of British soldiers in Alexandria.
Keep a force in readiness—under arms night and day."

"But if it should spread beyond Alexandria?"

"So much the better for you.  I mean," said the
Consul-General, hesitating for the first time, "we don't
want bloodshed, but if it must come to that, it must,
and the eyes of England will be on you.  What more
can a young man want?  Think of yourself"—he put
his hand on his son's shoulder again—"think of
yourself as on the eve of crushing England's enemies and
rendering a signal service to Gordon Lord as well.  And
now go—go up to your General and get his formal
consent.  My love to Helena!  Fine girl, very!  She's
the sort of woman who might ... yes, women are the
springs that move everything in this world.  Bid
good-bye to your mother and get away.  Lose no time.
Write to me as soon as you have anything to say.
That's enough for the present.  I'm busy.  Good day!"

Almost before Gordon had left the library the
Consul-General was back at his desk—the stern, saturnine man
once more, with a face that seemed to express a mind
inaccessible to human emotions of any sort.

"As bright as light—sees things before one says
them," he said to himself, as Gordon closed the door
on going out.  "Why have I wasted myself with
weaklings so long?"

Gordon kissed his pale-faced mother in the drawing-room
and his swarthy foster-mother in the porch, and
went back to his quarters in barracks—a rather bare
room with bed, desk, and bookcase, many riding boots
on a shelf, several weapons of savage warfare on the
walls, a dervish's suit of chain armour with a bullet-hole
where the heart of the man had been, a picture of
Eton, his old school, and above all, as became the home
of a soldier, many photographs of his womankind—his
mother with her plaintive smile, Fatimah with her
humorous look, and of course Helena, with her glorious
eyes—Helena, Helena, everywhere Helena.

There, taking down the receiver of a telephone, he
called up the headquarters of the Egyptian army and
spoke to Hafiz, his foster-brother, now a captain in the
native cavalry.

"Is that you, Hafiz? ... Well, look here, I want
to know if you can arrange to go with me to Alexandria
for a day or two ... You can?  Good!  I wish you
to help me to deal with that new preacher, prophet,
Mahdi, what's his name now? ... That's it, Ishmael
Ameer.  He has been setting Moslem against Christian,
and we've got to lay the gentleman by the heels before
he gets the poor, credulous people into further trouble....
What do you say? ... Not that kind of man,
you think? ... No? ... You surprise me....  Do
you really mean to say ... Certainly, that's only
fair ... Yes, I ought to know all about him....
Your uncle? ... Chancellor of the University? ... I
know, El Azhar....  When could I see him? ... What
day do we go to Alexandria?  To-morrow if
possible....  To-night the only convenient time, you
think?  Well, I promised to dine at the Citadel, but I
suppose I must write to Helena....  Oh, needs must
when the devil drives, old fellow....  To-night,
then? ... You'll come down for me immediately?  Good!
By-bye!"

With that he rang off and sat down to write a letter.





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   CHAPTER VI

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Gordon Lord loved the Egyptians.  Nursed on the
knee of an Egyptian woman, speaking Arabic as his
mother tongue, lisping the songs of Arabia before he
knew a word of English, Egypt was under his very skin,
and the spirit of the Nile and of the desert was in his
blood.

Only once a day in his childhood was there a break
in his Arab life.  That was in the evening about sunset,
when Fatimah took him into his father's library, and
the great man with the stern face, who assumed towards
him a singularly cold manner, put him through
a catechism which was always the same: "Tutor been
here to-day, boy?"  "Yes, sir."  "Done your
lessons?"  "Yes, sir."  "English—French—everything?"  "Yes,
sir." "Say good-night to your
mother and go to bed."

Then for a few moments more he was taken into his
mother's boudoir, the cool room with the blinds down
to keep out the sun, where the lady with the beautiful
pale face embraced and kissed him, and made him
kneel by her side while they said the Lord's Prayer
together in a rustling whisper like a breeze in the
garden.  But, after that, off to bed with Hafiz—who
in his Arab caftan and fez had been looking furtively
in at the half-open door—up two steps at a time,
shouting and singing in Arabic, while Fatimah, in fear of
the Consul-General, cried, "Hush!  Be good, now, my
sweet eyes!"

In his boyhood, too, he had been half a Mohammedan,
going every afternoon to fetch Hafiz home from the
kuttab, the school of the mosque, and romping round
the sacred place like a little king in stockinged feet, until
the Sheikh in charge, who pretended as long as
possible not to see him, came with a long cane to whip
him out, always saying he should never come there
again—until to-morrow.

While at school in England he had felt like a
foreigner, wearing his silk hat on the back of his head
as if it had been a tarboosh; and while at Sandhurst,
where he got through his three years more easily in
spite of a certain restiveness under discipline, he had
always looked forward to his Christmas visits
home—that is to say, to Cairo.

But at last he came back to Egypt on a great errand,
with the expedition that was intended to revenge the
death of his heroic namesake, having got his commission
by that time, and being asked for by his father's old
friend, Reginald Mannering, who was a Colonel in the
Egyptian army.  His joy was wild, his excitement
delirious, and even the desert marches under the blazing
sun and the sky of brass, killing to some of his British
comrades, was a long delight to the Arab soul in him.

The first fighting he did, too, was done with an
Egyptian by his side.  His great chum was a young
Lieutenant named Ali Awad, the son of a Pasha, a
bright, intelligent, affectionate young fellow who was
intensely sensitive to the contempt of British officers
for the quality of the courage of their Egyptian
colleagues.  During the hurly-burly of the battle of
Omdurman both Gordon and Ali had been eager to get
at the enemy, but their Colonel had held them back,
saying, "What will your fathers say to me if I allow
you to go into a hell like that?"  When the dervish
lines had been utterly broken, though, and one
coffee-coloured demon in chain armour was stealing off with
his black banner, the Colonel said, "Now's your time,
boys; show what stuff you are made of; bring me
back that flag," and before the words were out of his
mouth the young soldiers were gone.

Other things happened immediately and the Colonel
had forgotten his order, when, the battle being over
and the British and Egyptian army about to enter the
dirty and disgusting city of the Khalifa, he became
aware that Gordon Lord was riding beside him with a
black banner in one hand and some broken pieces of
horse's reins in the other.

"Bravo!  You've got it, then," said the Colonel.

"Yes, sir," said Gordon, very sadly; and the Colonel
saw that there were tears in the boy's eyes.

"What's amiss?" he said, and looking round,
"Where's Ali?"

Then Gordon told him what had happened.  They
had captured the dervish and compelled him to give
up his spear and rifle, but just as Ali was leading the
man into the English lines, the demon had drawn a
knife and treacherously stabbed him in the back.  The
boy choked with sobs while he delivered his comrade's
last message: "Say good-bye to the Colonel, and tell
him Ali Awad was not a coward.  I didn't let go the
Baggara's horse until he stuck me, and then he had to
cut the reins to get away.  Show the bits of the bridle
to my Colonel, and tell him I died faithful.  Give my
salaams to him, Charlie.  I knew Charlie Gordon Lord
would stay with me to the end."

The Colonel was quite broken down, but he only said,
"This is no time for crying, my boy," and a moment
afterwards, "What became of the dervish?"  Then,
for the first time, the fighting devil flashed out of
Gordon's eyes and he answered—

"I killed him like a dog, sir."

It was the black flag of the Khalifa himself which
Gordon had taken, and when the Commander-in-Chief
sent home his despatch he mentioned the name of the
young soldier who had captured it.

From that day onward for fifteen years honours fell
thick on Gordon Lord.  Being continually on active
service, and generally in staff appointments, promotions
came quickly, so that when he went to South Africa, the
graveyard of so many military reputations, in those
first dark days of the nation's deep humiliation when
the very foundations of her army's renown seemed to
be giving way, he was one of the young officers whose
gallantry won back England's fame.  Though hot-tempered,
impetuous, and liable to frightful errors, he
had the imagination of a soldier as well as the bravery
that goes to the heart of a nation, so that when in due
course, being now full Colonel, he was appointed, though
so young, Second in Command of the Army of Occupation
in Cairo, no one was surprised.

All the same he knew he owed his appointment to
his father's influence, and he wrote to thank him and
to say he was delighted to return to Cairo.  Only at
intervals had he heard from the Consul-General, and
though his admiration of his father knew no limit and
he thought him the greatest man in the world, he
always felt there was a mist between them.  Once, for
a moment, had that mist seemed to be dispelled when,
on his coming of age, his father wrote a letter in which
he said—

"You are twenty-one years of age, Gordon, and your
mother and I have been recalling the incidents of the
day on which you were born.  I want to tell you that
from this day forward I am no longer your father; I
am your friend; perhaps the best friend you will ever
have; let nothing and no one come between us."

Gordon's joy on returning to Egypt was not greater
than that of the Egyptians on receiving him.  They
were waiting in a crowd when he arrived at the railway
station, a red sea of tarbooshes over faces he
remembered as the faces of boys, with the face of Hafiz,
now a soldier like himself, beaming by his carriage
window.

It was not good form for a British officer to fraternise
with the Egyptians, but Gordon shook hands with
everybody and walked down the platform with his
arm round Hafiz's shoulders, while the others who had
come to meet him cried, "Salaam, brother!" and
laughed like children.

By his own choice, and contrary to custom, quarters
had been found for him in the barracks on the bank of
the Nile, and the old familiar scene from there made
his heart leap and tremble.  It was evening when at
last he was left alone, and throwing the window wide
open he looked out on the river flowing like liquid
gold in the sunset, with its silent boats, that looked like
birds with outstretched wings, floating down without a
ripple, and the violet blossom of the island on the
other side spreading odours in the warm spring air.

He was watching the traffic on the bridge—the
camels, the cameleers, the donkeys, the blue-shirted
fellaheen, the women with tattooed chins and children
astraddle on their shoulders, the water-carriers with
their bodies twisted by their burdens, the Bedouins
with their lean, lithe, swarthy forms and the rope
round the head-shawls which descended to their
shoulders—when he heard the toot of a motor-horn, and
saw a white automobile threading its way through the
crowd.  The driver was a girl, and a veil of white
chiffon which she had bound about her head instead of
a hat was flying back in the light breeze, leaving her
face framed within, with its big black eyes and firm but
lovely mouth.

An officer in general's uniform was sitting at the
back of the car, but Gordon was conscious of the man's
presence without actually seeing him, so much was he
struck by the spirit of the girl, which suggested a
proud strength and self-reliance, coupled with a certain
high gaiety, full of energy and grace.

Gordon leaned out of his window to get a better look
at her, and, quick as the glance was, he thought she
looked up at him as the motor glided by.  At the next
instant she had gone, and it seemed to him that in one
second, at one stride, the sun had gone too.

That night he dined at the British Agency, but he
did not stay late, thinking his father, who looked much
older, seemed preoccupied, and his mother, who
appeared to be more delicate than ever, was over-exciting
herself; but early next morning he rode up to the
Citadel to pay his respects to his General in Command,
and there a surprise awaited him.  General Graves was
ill and unable to see him, but his daughter came to
offer his apologies—and she was the driver of the automobile.

The impression of strength and energy which the girl
bad made on him the evening before was deepened by
this nearer view.  She was fairly tall, and as she swung
into the room her graceful round form seemed to be
poised from the hips.  This particularly struck him,
and he told himself at that first moment that here was
a girl who might be a soldier, with the passionate
daring and chivalry of women like Joan of Arc and the
Rani of Jhansi.

At the next moment he had forgotten all about that,
and under the caressing smile which broke from her
face and fascinated him, he was feeling as if for the
first time in his life he was alone with a young and
beautiful woman.  They talked a long time, and he
was startled by an unexpected depth in her voice,
while his own voice seemed to him to have suddenly
disappeared.

"You like the Egyptians—yes?" she asked.

"I love them," said Gordon.  "And coming back
here is like coming home.  In fact, it *is* coming home.
I've never been at home in England, and I love the
desert, I love the Nile, I love everything and everybody."

She laughed—a fresh, ringing laugh that was one of
her great charms—and told him about herself and her
female friends; the Khediviah, who was so sweet, and
the Princess Nazimah, who was so amusing, and finally
about the Sheikh who for two years had been teaching
her Arabic.

"I should have known you by your resemblance to
your mother," she said, "but you are like your father,
too; and then I saw you yesterday—passing the
barracks, you remember."

"So you really did ... I thought our eyes——"

His ridiculous voice was getting out of all control,
so he cleared his throat and got up to go, but the half
smile that parted her lips and brightened her beautiful
eyes seemed to say as plainly as words could speak,
"Why leave so soon?"

He lingered as long as he dared, and when he took
up his cap and riding-whip she threw the same chiffon
veil over her head and walked with him through the
garden to the gate.  There they parted, and when, a
little ashamed of himself, he held her soft white hand
somewhat too long and pressed it slightly, he thought
an answering pressure came back from her.

In three weeks they were engaged.

The General trembled when he heard what had happened,
protested he was losing the only one he had in
the world, asked what was to become of him when
Helena had to go away with her husband, as a soldier's
wife should, but finally concluded to go on half-pay
and follow her, and then said to Gordon, "Speak to
your father.  If he is satisfied, so am I."

The Consul-General listened passively, standing with
his back to the fireplace, and after a moment of silence
he said—

"I've never believed in a man marrying for rank or
wealth.  If he has any real stuff in him he can do
better than that.  I didn't do it myself and I don't
expect my son to do it.  As for the girl, if she can
do as well for her husband as she has done for her
father, she'll be worth more to you than any title or
any fortune.  But see what your mother says.  I'm
busy.  Good-day!"

His mother said very little; she cried all the time
he was telling her, but at last she told him there was
not anybody else in the world she would give him up
to except Helena, because Helena was gold—pure, pure
gold.

Gordon was writing to Helena now:—

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"DEAREST HELENA,—Dreadfully disappointed I cannot
dine with you to-night, having to go to Alexandria
to-morrow, and finding it necessary to begin
preparations immediately.

"You must really be a witch—your prediction
proved to be exactly right—it *was* about the new Mahdi,
the new prophet, my father wished to speak to me.

"The Governor thinks the man is making mischief,
inciting the people to rebellion by preaching sedition,
so with the General's consent I am to smash him
without delay.

"Hafiz is to go with me to Alexandria, and strangely
enough, he tells me over the telephone that the new
prophet, as far as he can learn, is not a firebrand at
all; but I am just off to see his uncle, the Chancellor
of the University, and he is to tell me everything
about him.

"Therefore think of me to-night as penned up in the
thick atmosphere of El Azhar, *tête-à-tête*, with some
sallow-faced fossil with pock-marked cheeks perhaps,
when I hoped to be in the fragrant freshness of the
Citadel, looking into somebody's big black eyes, you
know.

"But really, my dear Nell, the way you know things
without learning them is wonderful, and seems to indicate
an error of nature in not making you a diplomatist,
which would have given you plenty of scope for your
uncanny gift of second sight.

"On second thoughts, though, I prefer you as you
are and am not exactly dying to see you turned into
a man.

"Maa-es-salamah!  I kiss your hand!

"GORDON.

"*P.S.*—Your father would get a letter from the
Consul-General suggesting my task, but of course I
must go up for his formal order, and you might tell
him I expect to be at the Citadel about tea-time
to-morrow, which will enable me to kill two birds with
one stone, you know, and catch the evening train as
well.

"Strange if it should turn out that this new Mahdi
is a wholesome influence after all, and not a person one
can conscientiously put down!  I have always
suspected that the old Mahdi was a good man at the
beginning, an enemy created by our own errors and
excesses.  Is history repeating itself?  I wonder!  And
if so, what will the Consul-General say?  I wonder!
I wonder!"

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Gordon was sealing and addressing his letter when
his soldier servant brought in Hafiz, a bright young
Egyptian officer, whose plump face seemed to be all
smiles.

"Helloa!  Here you are!" cried Gordon, and then
giving his letter to his servant, he said,
"Citadel—General's house, you know....  And now, Hafiz, my
boy, let's be off."





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   CHAPTER VII

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El Azhar is a vast edifice that stands in the midst of
the Arab quarter of Cairo like a fortress on an island
rock, being surrounded by a tangled maze of narrow,
dirty, unpaved streets, with a swarming population of
Mohammedans of every race; and the Christian who
crosses its rather forbidding portals feels that he has
passed in an instant out of the twentieth century and
a city of civilisation into scenes of Bible lands and the
earliest years of recorded time.

It is a thousand years old, and the central seat of
Moslem learning, not for Egypt only but for the whole
of the kingdoms and principalities of the Mohammedan
world, sending out from there the water of spiritual
life that has kept the Moslem soul alive through
centuries of persecution and pain.

As you approach its threshold a monotonous cadence
comes out to you, the murmur of the mass of humanity
within, and you feel like one who stands at the mouth
of some great subterranean river whose waters have
flowed with just that sound on just that spot since the
old world itself was young.

It was not yet full sunset when the two young soldiers
reached El Azhar, and after yellow slippers had been
tied over their boots at the outer gate they entered the
dim, bewildering place of vast courts and long corridors,
with low roofs supported by a forest of columns, and
floors covered by a vast multitude of men and boys,
who were squatting on the ground in knots and circles,
all talking together, teachers and pupils, and many of
them swaying rhythmically to and fro to a monotonous
chanting of the Koran whose verses they were learning
by heart.

Picking their way through the classes on the floor,
the young soldiers crossed an open quadrangle and
ascended many flights of stairs until they reached the
Chancellor's room in the highest roof, where the droning
murmur in the courts below could be only faintly heard
and the clear voice of the muezzin struck level with
their faces when he came out of a minaret near by and
sent into the upper air, north, south, east, and west,
his call to evening prayers.

They had hardly entered this silent room, with its
thick carpets on which their slippered feet made no
noise, when the Chancellor came to welcome them.  He
was a striking figure, with his venerable face, long white
beard, high forehead, refined features, graceful robes,
and very soft voice, a type of the grave and dignified
Oriental, such as might have walked out of the days of
the prophet Samuel.

"Peace be on you!" they said.

"And on you too!  Welcome!" he said, and
motioned them to sit on the divans that ran round the
walls.

Then Hafiz explained the object of their visit—how
Gordon was ordered to Alexandria to suppress the riots
there, and, if need be, to arrest the preacher who was
supposed to have provoked them.

"I have already told him," said Hafiz, "that so far
as I know Ishmael Ameer is no firebrand; but, hearing
through the mouth of one of our own people that he
is another Mahdi, threatening the rule of England in
Egypt——"

"Oh, peace, my son," said the Chancellor.  "Ishmael
Ameer is no Mahdi.  He claims no divinity."

"Then tell me, O Sheikh," said Gordon, "tell me
what Ishmael Ameer is, that I may know what to do
when it becomes my duty to deal with him."

Leisurely the Chancellor took snuff, leisurely he opened
a folded handkerchief, dusted his nostrils, and then, in
his soft voice, said—

"Ishmael Ameer is a Koranist—that is to say, one
who takes the Koran as the basis of belief and keeps
an open mind about tradition."

"I know," said Gordon.  "We have people like that
among Christians—people who take the Bible as the
basis of faith and turn their backs on dogma."

"Ishmael Ameer reads the Koran by the spirit, not
the letter."

"We have people like that too—the letter killeth, you
know, the spirit maketh alive."

"Ishmael Ameer thinks Islam should advance with
advancing progress."

"There again we are with you, O Sheikh—we have
people of the same kind in Christianity."

"Ishmael Ameer thinks slavery, the seclusion of
women, divorce, and polygamy are as much opposed to
the teaching of Mohammed as to the progress of society."

"Excellent!  My father says the same thing.  *Wallahi*!
(I assure you!)  Or rather, he holds that Islam can
never take its place as the religion of great progressive
nations until it rids itself of these evils."

"Ishmael Ameer thinks the corruptions of Islam are
the work of the partisans of the old barbaric ideas, who
are associating the cause of religion with their own
interests and passions."

"Splendid!  Do you know the Consul-General is
always saying that, sir?"

"Ishmael Ameer believes that if God wills it (praise
be to Him, the Exalted One!) the day is not distant
when an appeal to the Prophet's own words will
regenerate Islam, and banish the Caliphs and Sultans
whose selfishness and sensuality keep it in bondage to
the powers of darkness."

"Really," said Gordon, rising impetuously to his
feet, "if Ishmael Ameer says this, he is the man Egypt,
India, the whole Mohammedan world, is waiting for.
No wonder men like the Cadi are trying to destroy him,
though that's only an instinct of self-preservation—but
my father, the Consul-General ... What is there in all
this to create ... Why should such teaching set
Moslem against Christian?"

"Ishmael Ameer, O my brother," the Chancellor
continued with the same soft voice, "thinks Islam is
not the only faith that has departed from the spirit of
its founder."

"True!"

"If Islam for its handmaidens has divorce and polygamy,
Christianity has drunkenness and prostitution."

"No doubt—certainly."

"Coming out of the East, out of the desert, Ishmael
Ameer sees in the Christianity of the West a contradiction
of every principle for which your great Master
fought and suffered."

Gordon sat down again.

"His was a religion of peace, but while your Christian
Church prays for unity and concord among the nations
your Christian States are daily increasing the instruments
of destruction.  His was a religion of poverty,
but while your Christian priests are saying 'Blessed are
the meek,' your Christian communities are struggling
for wealth and trampling upon the poor in their efforts
to gain it.  Ishmael Ameer believes that if your great
Master came back now He would not recognise in the
civilisation known by His name the true posterity of
the little church He founded on the shores of the Lake
of Galilee."

"All this is true, too true," said Gordon, "yet under
all that ... Doesn't Ishmael Ameer see that under all
that——"

"Ishmael Ameer sees," said the Chancellor, "that
what is known to the world as Christian civilisation
is little better than an organised hypocrisy, a lust of
empire in nations and a greed of gold in men, destroying
liberty, morality, and truth.  Therefore he warns his
followers against a civilisation which comes to the East
with religion in one hand and violence and avarice in
the other."

"But surely he sees," said Gordon, "what Christian
civilisation has done for the world, what science has
done for progress; what England, for example, has done
for Egypt?"

"Ishmael Ameer thinks," replied the Chancellor in
the same slow, soft voice, "that the essential qualities
of national greatness are moral, not material; that
man does not live by bread alone; that it is of little
value to Egypt that her barns are full if the hearts of
her children are empty; that Egypt can afford to be
patient, for she is old and eternal; that many are
the events which have passed before the eyes of
the crouching Sphinx; that the life of man is
threescore and ten years, but when Egypt reviews
her past she looks back on threescore and ten
centuries."

There was silence for a moment, during which the
muezzin's voice was heard again, calling the first hour
of night, and then Gordon, visibly agitated, said—

"You think Ishmael Ameer a regenerator, a reformer,
a redeemer of Islam; and if his preaching prevailed it
would send the Grand Cadi back to his Sultan—isn't
that so?"  But the Chancellor made no reply.

"It would also send England out of Egypt—wouldn't
it?" said Gordon, but still the Chancellor gave no sign.

"It would go farther than that perhaps—it would
drive Western civilisation out of the East—wouldn't
that be the end of it?" said Gordon, and then the
Chancellor replied—

"It would drive a corrupt and ungodly civilisation
out of the world, my son."

"I see!" said Gordon.  "You think the mission
of Ishmael Ameer transcends Egypt, transcends even
Europe, and says to humanity in general, 'What you
call civilisation is killing religion, because the
nations—Christian and Moslem alike—have sold themselves to
the lust of empire and the greed of gold'—isn't that
what you mean?"

The Chancellor bowed his grave head, and in a
scarcely audible voice said, "Yes."

"You think, too," said Gordon, whose breathing was
now quick and loud, "that Ishmael Ameer is an apostle
of the soul of Islam—perhaps of the soul of religion
itself without respect of creed—one of the great men
who come once in a hundred years to call the world
back from a squalid and sordid materialism, and are
ready to live, aye, and to die for their faith—the
Savonarolas, the Luthers, the Gamal-ed-Deens—perhaps
the Mohammeds and" (dropping his voice) "in a sense
the Christs?"

But the Egyptian soul, like the mirage of the
Egyptian desert, recedes as it is approached, and again
the Chancellor made no reply.

"Tell me, O Sheikh," said Gordon, rising to go, "if
Ishmael Ameer came to Cairo, would you permit him
to preach in El Azhar?"

"He is an Alim" (a doctor of the Koran); "I could
not prevent him."

"But would you lodge him in your own house?"

"Yes."

"That is enough for me.  Now I must go to
Alexandria and see him for myself."

"May God guide you, O my son," said the Chancellor,
and a moment afterwards his soft voice was
saying farewell to the two young soldiers at the door.

"Let us walk back to barracks, Hafiz," said Gordon.
"My head aches a little, somehow."





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   CHAPTER VIII

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It was night by this time; the courts and corridors of
El Azhar were empty, and even the tangled streets
outside were less loud than before with the guttural
cries of a swarming population, but a rumbling murmur
came from the mosque of the University, and the young
soldiers stood a moment at the door to look in.  There,
under a multitude of tiny lanterns, stood long rows of
men in stockinged feet and Eastern costume, rising and
kneeling in unison, at one moment erect and at the
next with foreheads to the floor, while the voice of the
Imam echoed in the arches of the mosque and the
voices of the people answered him.

Then through narrow alleys, full of life, lit only by
the faint gleam of uncovered candles, with native
women, black-robed and veiled, passing like shadows
through a moving crowd of men, the young soldiers
came to the quarter of Cairo that is nick-named the
"Fish Market," where the streets are brilliantly lighted
up, where the names over the shops are English and
French, Greek, and Italian, and where girls with
painted faces wave their hands from barred windows
and call to men who sit at tables in front of the cafés
opposite, drinking wine, smoking cigarettes, and
playing dominoes.  The sound of music and dancing came
from the open windows behind the girls who glittered
with gold brocade and diamonds; and among the men
were young Egyptians in the tarboosh and British
soldiers in khaki, who looked across at the women in
the flare of the coarse light and laughed.

At the gate of the Kasr-el-Nil barracks the young
men parted.

"Tell me, Hafiz," said Gordon, "if a soldier is
ordered to act in a way he believes to be wrong, what
is he to do?"

"His duty, I suppose," said Hafiz.

"His duty to what—his Commander or his conscience?"

"If a soldier is under orders I suppose he has no
conscience?"

"I wonder!" said Gordon, and promising to write
to Hafiz in the morning, he went up to his quarters.

The room was in darkness, save for the moonlight
with its gleam of mellow gold, which seemed to vibrate
from the river outside, and Gordon stood by the
window, with a dull sense of headache, looking at the
old Nile that had seen so many acts in the drama of
humanity and still flowed so silently, until he became
conscious of a perfume he knew, and then, switching on
the light, he found a letter in a scented envelope lying
on his desk.  It was from Helena, and it was written
in her bold, upright hand, with the gay raillery, the
passionate tenderness, and the fierce earnestness which
he recognised as her chief characteristics:—

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"MISTER, most glorious and respected, the illustrious
Colonel Lord, owner of Serenity and Virtue, otherwise
dear old Gordon—

"It was wrong of you not to come to dinner, for
though Father over-excited himself at Ghezirah to-day
and I have had to pack him off to bed, I made every
preparation to receive you, and here I am in my best
bib and tucker, wearing the crown of pink blossom which
my own particular Sultan says suits my gipsy hair, and
nobody to admire it but my poor little black boy
Mosie—who is falling in love with me, I may tell you,
and is looking at me now with his scrubby face all
blubbered up like a sentimental hippopotamus.

"I am not surprised that the Consul-General talked
about the new 'holy man,' and I do not wonder that he
ordered you to arrest him, but I am at a loss to know
why you should take counsel with that old fossil at El
Azhar, and you can tell Master Hafiz I mean to dust
his jacket for suggesting it, knowing your silly old
heart is like wax, and they have only to recite
something out of the 'noble Koran' and you'll be as weak
as—well, as a woman.

"As for holy men generally, I agree with the Princess
that they are holy humbugs, which is the title I would
give to a good many of the *genus* at home as well as
here, so I say with your namesake of glorious memory
(who wasn't an ogre, goodness knows!), *Smash the Mahdi!*

"A thousand to one he is some ugly, cross-eyed old
fanatic, who would destroy every germ of civilisation in
Egypt and carry the country back to barbarity and
ruin, so I say again, *Smash the Mahdi!*

"As for your 'conscience,' I cry 'Marry-come-up!' by
what right does it push its nose where it isn't wanted,
seeing it is the conscience of the Consul-General that
will be damned if the work is wrong and wicked and
there won't be so much as a plum of Paradise for yours
if it is right and good, so once again I say, *Smash the
Mahdi!*

"Moreover, and furthermore, and by these presents,
I rede ye beware of resisting the will of your father,
for if you do, as sure as I'm a 'witch' and 'know
things without learning them,' I have a 'mystic sense'
there will be trouble, and nobody can say where it will
end or how many of us may be involved in it, so again
and yet again I say, *Smash the Mahdi!*

"The Consul-General's letter has come, but I shall not
read it to Father until morning, and meantime, if I
ever pass through your imagination, think of me as
poor Ruth sitting on the threshing-floor with Boaz, and
dreaming of Zion—that is to say, of stuffy old El Azhar,
where somebody who ought to know better is now talking
to an old frump in petticoats instead of to me.

"*Inshallah*!  The slave of your Virtues.—HELENA.

"*P.S.*—Dying for to-morrow afternoon, dear.

"*P.P.S.*—IMPORTANT—*Smash the Mahdi!*"





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   CHAPTER IX

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Helena Graves was everything to her father, for the
General's marriage had been unhappy, and it had come
to a tragic end.  His wife, the daughter of a Jewish
merchant in Madras, had been a woman of strong character
and great beauty but of little principle, and they
had been married while he was serving as senior Major
with a battalion of his regiment in India, and there,
Helena, their only child, had been born.

Things had gone tolerably between them until the
Major returned to England as Lieutenant-Colonel
commanding the battalion of his regiment at home, and
then, in their little military town, they had met and
become intimate with the Lord-Lieutenant of the
county, a nobleman, a bachelor, a sportsman, a breeder
of racehorses, and a member of the Government.

The end of that intimacy had been a violent scene,
in which the husband, in his ungovernable rage, had
flung the nobleman on the ground and trampled on him,
torn the jewels out of his wife's breast and crushed
them under his heel, and then, realising the bankruptcy
his life had come to, had gone home and had brain
fever.

Helena, like her father, was passionate and impetuous,
and her mother had neglected and never really loved
her.  With the keen eyes of a child who is supposed to
see nothing, she had observed from the first what was
going on at home, and all her soul had risen against her
mother and her mother's lover with a hatred which no
presents could appease.  Being now a girl of eighteen,
well grown and developed, and seeing with what
treachery and cruelty her father had been stricken
down, her heart went out to him, and she became a
woman in one day.

When the brain fever was gone, the General, weak
both in body and mind, was ordered rest and change.
Somebody suggested the Lake Country, as his native air,
so Helena, who did everything for him, took him to a
furnished cottage in Grasmere, a sweet place bowered
in roses, with its face to the sedgy lake, and with the
beautiful river, the Rotha, laughing and babbling by
the garden at the back.

There he recovered bodily strength, but it was long
before his mind returned to him, and meantime he had
strange delusions.  Something, perhaps, in the place of
their retreat brought ghosts of the past out of a world
of shadows, for he thought he was a boy again and
Helena was his mother, who was thirty years dead and
buried in the little churchyard lower down the stream,
where the Rotha was deep and flowed with a solemn
hush.

Helena played up to his pathetic delusion, took the
tender endearments that were meant for the grandmother
she had never known, and as his young days
came to the surface with the beautiful persistence of
old memories ha the human mind, she fell in with them
as if they had been her own.  Thus on Sunday morning,
when the bells rang, she would walk with him to church,
holding his hand in her hand as if she were the mother
and he the child.

It was very sweet to look upon, for, in the sleep of
the General's brain, he was very happy, and only to
those who saw that the brave girl, with her eyes of
light and her lips of dew, was giving away her youth to
her old father, was it charged with feeling too deep for
tears.

But at length the stricken man came out of the
twilight land, and his dream faded away.  Helena had
to play their little American organ every evening that
he might sing a hymn to it, for that was what his
mother had always done, when she was putting her boy
to bed and thinking, like a soldier's wife, of his father
who was away at the wars.  It was always the same
hymn, and one breathless evening, when the sun had
gone down and the vale was still, they had come to—

   |  "Hide me, O my Saviour, hide,
   |  Till the storms of life be past"—

and then his voice stopped suddenly, and he shaded his
eyes as if something were blinding them.

At that moment the past, which had been dead so
long, seemed to rise from its grave, with all its mournful
incidents—his wife and his shattered home—and Helena
was not his mother but his daughter, and he was not a
happy boy but an old soldier, with a broken life behind
him.

Seeing by the look in his eyes that he was coming
to himself, Helena tried to comfort him, and when he
gasped, "Who is it?" she answered in a voice she
tried to render cheerful, "It is I.  It is Helena.  Don't
you know me, Father?"  And then the years rolled
back upon him like a flood, and he sobbed on her
shoulder.

The awakening had been painful, but it was not all
pain.  If he had lost a wife he had gained a daughter,
and she was the strongest, staunchest creature in the
world.  For her sake he must begin again.  Having
had so much shadow in her young life, she must now
have sunshine.  Thus Helena became her father's idol,
the one thing on earth to him, and he was more to her
than a father usually is to a daughter, because she had
seen him in his weakness and mothered him back to
strength.

Two years after the breakdown they were in London,
and there Helena met Lord Nuneham on one of his
few visits to England.  The great Proconsul, who had
heard what she had done, was most favourably
impressed by her, and as she talked to him, he said to
himself, "This girl has the blood of the great women
of the Bible, the Deborahs who were mothers in Israel,
aye, and the Jaels who avenged her."  At that time the
post of Major-General to the British Army in Egypt
was shortly to become vacant, and by Lord Nuneham's
influence it was offered to Graves.  Six months later
father and daughter arrived in Cairo.

It had been an exciting time, but Helena had
managed everything, and the General had borne up
manfully until they took possession of the house assigned
to them, a renovated old palace on the edge of the
Citadel.  Then in a moment he had collapsed, and fallen
from his chair to the floor.  Helena had lifted him in
her strong arms, laid him on the couch, and sent his
Aide-de-camp for the Medical Officer in charge.

Consciousness came back quickly, and Helena laughed
through the tears that had gathered in her great eyes,
but the surgeon continued to look grave.

"Has the General ever had attacks like this before?"
he asked.

"Never that I know of," said Helena.

"He must be kept quiet.  I'll see him in the morning."

Next day the Medical Officer had no doubts of his
diagnosis—heart-disease, quite unmistakably.  The
news had to be broken to the General, and he bore it
bravely, but thinking of Helena he made one request—that
nothing should be said on the subject.  If the fact
were known at the War Office he might be retired, and
there could be no necessity for that until the army was
put on active service.

"But isn't the army always on active service in
Egypt, sir?" said the surgeon.

"Technically perhaps, not really," said the General.
"In any case I'm not afraid, and I ask you to keep the
matter quiet."

"As you please, sir."

"You and I and Helena must be the only ones to
know anything about it."

"Very well, but you must promise to take care.
Any undue excitement, any over-exertion, any outburst
of anger even——"

"It shall not occur—I give you my word for it,"
said the General.

But it had occurred, not once but frequently during
the twelve months following.  It occurred after Gordon
asked for Helena, and again last night, the moment the
General reached his bedroom on his return from the
Khedivial Club.

He was better next morning, and then Helena took
up the letter from Lord Nuneham.  "Read it," said
the General, and Helena read—

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"DEAR GENERAL,—Gordon is here, and I will send
him up to tell you what I think it necessary to do in
order to put an end to the riots at Alexandria and make
an example of the ringleaders.

"The chief of them is the Arab preacher, Ishmael
Ameer, and I propose that we bring him up to Cairo
immediately, try him by Special Tribunal, and despatch
him without delay to our new penal settlement in the
Soudan.

"For that purpose (as the local police are chiefly
native and therefore scarcely reliable, and your Colonel
on the spot might hesitate to act on his own initiative
in the possible event of a rising of the man's Moslem
followers), I propose that you send some one from Cairo
to take command, and therefore suggest Gordon, your
first staff officer, and the most proper person (always
excepting yourself) to deal with a situation of such
gravity.—Yours in haste, NUNEHAM."

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While Helena was reading the letter the General
could hardly restrain his excitement.

"Just as I thought!" he said.  "I knew the
Consul-General would put down that new Mahdi.  Wonderful
man, Nuneham!  And what a chance for Gordon!  By
Gad, he'll have all Europe talking about him.  He
deserves it, though.  Ask the staff.  Ask the officers.
Ask the men.  I see what Nuneham's aiming at—making
Gordon his successor!  Well, why not?  Why
not Gordon Lord the Consul-General?  I ask, why not?
Good for Egypt and good for England too.  Am I wrong?"

Then, remembering to whom he was addressing these
imperative challenges, he laughed and said, "Ah, of
course!  I congratulate you, my child!  I'll live to see
you proud and happy yet, Helena.  Now go—I'm going
to get up."

And when Helena warned him that he was over-exciting
himself again, he said, "Not a bit of it.  I'm
all right now.  But I must write to Alexandria
immediately and see Gordon at once....  Coming up this
afternoon, you say?  That will do.  Splendid fellow!
Fine as his father!  Father and son—both splendid!"





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   CHAPTER X

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When Gordon reached the General's house at five o'clock
that day there was for a while a clash of opposing wills.
Thinking of Helena's peremptory advice, *Smash the
Mahdi*, he was determined to tell her what the
Chancellor of El Azhar had said of Ishmael Ameer, and she
was resolved that he should say nothing about him.
So while Gordon stood by the shaded window, looking
down on the city below, which still lay hot under the
sun's fierce eye, Helena talked of his mother, her father,
and of the Princess Nazimah, who had invited her, in
a funny letter, to join the ladies' council for the
emancipation of Egyptian women and the abolition of
polygamy, saying among other things, "The needle
carries but one thread, my dear, and the heart cannot
carry two."  But at length she said—

"When do you leave for Alexandria?"

"To-night at half-past six.  My servant is to take
my bag to the railway station, and Hafiz and two other
Moslems are to meet me there."

"Good gracious!  No time to lose, then.  Mosie!"
she cried, and a small black boy with large limpid eyes,
wearing a scarlet caftan and blue waistband, came into
the room.

"Tea, Mosie, quick!  Tell the cook the Colonel has
to catch a train."

The black boy kissed her hand and went bounding
out, whereupon she talked again to prevent Gordon
from talking.

"Didn't I tell you that boy was falling in love with
me?  I found him fighting in the market-place.  That
was a week ago, since when he has adopted me, and
now he is always kissing my hand or the hem of my
gown, as who would say, 'I have none but her, and I
love her like my eyes.'  A most dear little human dog,
and I do believe—yes, I really do believe—if I wished
it he would go to his death for me."

Gordon, who was gloomy and dejected, and had been
drumming on the window-pane without listening, then
said—

"Helena, can you imagine what it is to a soldier to
feel that he is on the wrong side in battle?  If he is
to fight well he ought to feel that he is fighting for his
country, his flag, and—justice.  But when the position
is the reverse of that; when, for example——"

But at that moment the General came into the room
and welcomed Gordon with a shout.

"Just been writing to Alexandria, telling Jenkinson
to keep a force in readiness for you night and day,"
he said.  "Only way, my boy!  Force is the one thing
the Easterns understand.  Of course we don't want
bloodshed, but if these rascals are telling the people
that the power is not in our hands, or that England
will not allow us to use it—we must let them see—we
can't help it.  Glorious commission, Gordon!  I
congratulate you!  My job, though, and there's only one
man I could give it up to—only one man in the world."

And then Gordon, who had been biting his underlip,
said, "I almost wish you could do it yourself,
General."

"Why, what the deuce——"

"Gordon has been taking counsel with the Chancellor
of El Azhar," said Helena, "and the old silly
seems to have given him 'the eye' or talked nonsense
out of the noble Koran."

"Not nonsense, Helena, and not out of the Koran,
but out of the book of life itself," said Gordon, and
after the black boy had brought in the tea, he told
them what the Chancellor had said.

"So you see," he said, "the preaching of this new
prophet has nothing to do with England in Egypt—nothing
more, at least, than with England in India, or
South Africa, or even Canada itself.  It transcends all
that, and is teaching for the world, for humanity.  Isn't
it true, too?  Take what he says about the lust of
empire, and look at the conduct of the Christian
countries.  They are praying in their churches 'that it may
please Thee to give to all nations unity, peace, and
concord,' yet they are increasing their armaments every
day.  What for—defence?  Certainly!  But what does
that mean?—fear of aggression.  So, while in our
King's speeches and our President's messages, in our
newspapers and even in our pulpits we keep up the
pretence that we are at peace with the world, we are
always, according to the devil's code of honour,
preparing for the time when two high-spirited nations may
find it convenient to fly at each other's throats.  Peace
with the world!  Lies, sir, all lies, and barefaced
hypocrisy!  The nations never are at peace with the
world, never have been, never want to be."

The General tried to protest, but Gordon, who was
now excited, said—

"Oh, I know—I'm a soldier too, sir, and I don't
want to see my country walked upon.  It may be all
right, all necessary to the game of empire, but for
Heaven's sake let us call it by its right name—conquest,
not Christianity—and put away the cant and quackery
of being Christian countries."

Again the General tried to protest, but Gordon did
not hear.

"Think of it!  Kaisers and Kings and Presidents
asking God's blessing on their Ministries of War!  Bishops
and Archbishops praying for more battleships!  Christians?
Followers of Christ?  Why, in the name of
God, do they not tear the scales from their eyes and
stand revealed to themselves as good, upright, honest,
honourable Pagans, bent on the re-paganisation of the
world and the destruction of Christian civilisation?
I'm a soldier, yes, but I hope to Heaven I'm not a
hypocrite, and show me the soldier worth his salt who
is not at heart a man of peace."

The General's face was growing scarlet, but Gordon
saw nothing of that.

"Then take what this new preacher says about the
greed of wealth—isn't that true, too?  We pretend to
believe that 'it is easier for a camel to go through the
eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the
kingdom of God,' yet we are nearly all trying, struggling,
fighting, scrambling to be rich."

He laughed out loud and then said—-

"Look at America—I'm half an American myself,
sir, so I've a right to say it—where a man may become
a millionaire by crushing out everybody else and
appropriating the gifts of nature which God meant for
humanity!  But America is a Christian country, too,
and its richest men build, of their abundance, churches
in which to glorify the giving of the widow's mite!  Is
the man to be silenced who warns the world that such
sordid and squalid materialism is swallowing up
religion, morality, and truth?  Such a man may be the
very soul of a country, yet what do we do with him?
We hang him or stone him or crucify him—that's what
we do with him, sir."

Gordon, who had been walking up and down the room
and talking in an intense and poignant voice, stopped
suddenly and said—

"General, did you ever reflect upon the way in
which Jesus Christ was brought to His death?"

"Good gracious, man, what has that subject to do
with this?" said the General.

"A good deal, I think, sir.  Did you ever ask
yourself who it was that betrayed Jesus?"

"Judas Iscariot, I suppose."

"No, sir, Judas was only the catspaw—scorned
through all the ages and burnt in a million effigies,
but nearly as innocent of the death of his Master as
you or I.  The real betrayer was the High Priest of the
Jews.  He was the head of the bad system which
Christ came to wipe out, and he saw that if he did not
destroy Jesus, Jesus would destroy him.  What did he
do?  He went to the Governor, the Consul-General of
the Roman Occupation, and said, 'This man is setting
himself up against Cæsar.  If you let him go you are
not Cæsar's friend.'"

"Well?"

"That's what the High Priest of Islam is doing in
Egypt now.  As I was going into the Agency yesterday
I met the Grand Cadi coming out.  You know what he
is, sir—the most fanatical supporter of the old dark
ways—slavery, divorce, polygamy, all the refuse of bad
Mohammedanism."

"Well, well?"

"Well, my father told me the Grand Cadi had said,
'If you let Ishmael Ameer go on it will be death to the
rule of England in Egypt.'"

"And what does it all come to?"

"It comes to this, sir—that if the Chancellor of El
Azhar has told me the truth—*if*, I say *if*—when we
take Ishmael Ameer and shut him up in prison for life
with nothing but a desert around him, we shall be
doing something that bears an ugly resemblance to what
the Romans did in Palestine."

Then the General, who had not once taken his eyes
off Gordon, rose in visible agitation and said—

"Gordon Lord, you astonish me!  If what you say
means anything it means that this man Ishmael is not
only preaching sedition but is justified in doing so.
That's what you mean!  Am I wrong?"

In his excitement he spoke so rapidly that he
stammered, and Helena cried, "Father!"

"Leave me alone, Helena.  I'm calm, but when a
man talks of ... When you talk of conquest you
mean England in Egypt—yes, you do—and you refuse
to see that we have to hold high the honour of our
country and to protect our dominions in the East."

His voice sounded choked, but he went on—

"More than that, when you compare our Lord's trial
and death with that of this—this half-educated Arab
out of the desert—this religious Don Quixote who is a
menace not only to Government but to the very structure
of civilised society—it's shocking, it's blasphemous,
and I will not listen to it."

The General was going out in white anger when he
stopped at the door and said—

"Gordon Lord, I take leave to think this man an
impostor, and if you want my view of how to deal with
him and with the credulous simpletons who are turning
sedition into crime and crime into bloody anarchy,
I give it to you—'Martial law, sir, and no damned
nonsense!'"

Save for one word Helena had not yet spoken, but
now with tightly-compressed lips, and such an expression
on her face as Gordon had never before seen there,
she said—

"I hate that man!  I hate him!  I hate him!"

Her eyes blazed, and she looked straight into Gordon's
face, as she said, "I hate him because you are allowing
yourself to be influenced in his favour against your
own father, and your own country.  An Englishman's
duty is to stand by England, whatever she is and
whatever she does.  And the duty of an English soldier is
to fight for her and ask no questions.  She is his mother,
and to inquire of himself whether she is right or wrong,
when her enemies are upon her, is not worthy of a son."

The colour rushed to Gordon's face and he dropped
his head.

"As for this man's teaching, it may transcend Egypt
but it includes it, and these people will take out of it
only what they want, and what they want is an excuse
to resist authority and turn their best friends out of
the country.  As for you," she said, with new force,
"your duty is to go to Alexandria and bring this man
back to Cairo.  It begins and ends there, and has
nothing to do with anything else."

Then Gordon raised his head and answered, "You
are right, Helena.  You are always right.  A son is
not the judge of his father.  And where would England
be to-day if her soldiers had always asked themselves
whether she was in the right or the wrong?  I thought
England would be sinning against the light if she sent
Ishmael Ameer to the Soudan and so stifled a voice that
might be the soul of the East, but I know nothing about
him except what his friends have told me....  After
all, grapes don't grow on pine trees, and the only fruit
we see is ... I'll see the man for myself, Helena, and
if I find he is encouraging the rioters ... if even in his
sermons in the mosques ... Hafiz and the Moslems are
to tell me what he says in them....  They must tell
me the truth, though ... Whatever the consequences
... they must tell me the truth.  They shall—my
God, they *must*."





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   CHAPTER XI

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The clock struck six, and Gordon rose to go.  Helena
helped him to belt up the sword he had taken off and
to put on his military greatcoat.  Then she threw a lace
scarf over her head and went out with him into the
garden that they might bid good-bye at the gate.

The sun was going down by this time, the odourless
air of the desert was cooler and fresher than before, and
all nature was full of a soothing and blissful peace.

"Don't go yet; you have a few minutes to spare
still.  Come," said Helena, and taking his hand she
drew him to a blossom-thatched arbour which stood on
the edge of the ramparts.

There, with the red glow on their faces, as on the
face of the great mosque which stood in conscious
grandeur by their side, they looked out in silence for
some moments on the glittering city, the gleaming Nile,
the yellow desert, and all the glory of the sky.

It was just that mysterious moment between day and
night when the earth seems to sing a silent song which
only the human heart can hear, and, stirred by an
emotion she could scarcely understand, Helena, who
had been so brave until now, began to tremble and
break down, and the woman in her to appear.

"Don't think me foolish," she said, "but I feel—I
feel as if—as if this were the last time you and I were
to be together."

"Don't unman me, Helena," said Gordon.  "The
work I have to do in Alexandria may be dangerous, but
don't tell me you are afraid——"

"It isn't that.  I shouldn't be fit to be a soldier's
daughter or to become—to become a soldier's wife if
I were afraid of that.  No, I'm not afraid of that,
Gordon.  I shall never allow myself to be afraid of that.
But——"

"But what, Helena?"

"I feel as if something has broken between you and
me, and we shall never be the same to each other after
to-night.  It frightens me.  You are so near, yet you
seem so far away.  Coming out of the house a moment
ago, I felt as if I had to take farewell of you, here and
now."

Without more ado Gordon took her firmly in his
arms, and with one hand on her forehead that he might
look full in her face, he said—

"You are not angry with me, Helena—for what I
said to your father just now?"

"No, oh no! you were speaking out of your heart,
and perhaps it was partly that——"

"You didn't agree with me, I know that quite well,
but you love me still, Helena?"

"Don't ask me that, dear."

"I must.  I am going away, so speak out, I entreat
you.  You love me still, Helena?"

"I am here.  Isn't that enough?" she said, putting
her arms about his neck and laying her head on his
breast.

He kissed her, and there was silence for some moments
more.  Then in a sharp, agitated whisper she said—

"Gordon, that man is coming between us."

"Ishmael Ameer?"

"Yes."

"What utter absurdity, Helena!"

"No, I'm telling you the truth.  That man is coming
between us.  I know it—I feel it—something is speaking
to me—warning me.  Listen!  Last night I saw it
in a dream.  I cannot remember what happened but
he was there, and you and I, and your father and
mine, and then——"

"My dear Nell, how foolish!  But I see what has
happened.  When did you receive the Princess Nazimah's
letter?"

"Last night—just before going to bed."

"Exactly!  And you were brooding over what she
said of the needle carrying only one thread?"

"I was thinking of it—yes."

"You were also thinking of what you had said yourself
in your letter to me—that if I resisted my father's
will the results might be serious for all of us?"

"That too, perhaps."

"There you are, then—there's the stuff of your
dream, dear.  But don't you see that whatever a man's
opinions and sympathies may be, his affections are a
different matter altogether—that love is above everything
else in a man's life—yes, everything—and that
even if this Ishmael Ameer were to divide me from my
father or from your father—which God forbid!—he
could not possibly separate me from you?"

She looked up into his eyes and said—there was a
smile on her lips now—"Could nothing separate you
and me?"

"Nothing in this world," he answered.

Her trembling lips fluttered up to his, and again
there was a moment of silence.  The sun had gone
down, the stars had begun to appear, and, under the
mellow gold of mingled night and day, the city below,
lying in the midst of the desert, looked like a great
jewel on the soft bosom of the world.

"You must go now, dear," she whispered.

"And you will promise me never to think these ugly
thoughts again?"

"'Love is above everything'—I shall only think of
that.  Good-bye!"

"Good-bye!" he said, and he embraced her passionately.
At the next moment he was gone.

Shadows from the wing of night had gathered over
the city by this time, and there came up from the heart
of it a surge of indistinguishable voices, some faint and
far away, some near and loud, the voices of the muezzins
calling from a thousand minarets to evening prayers—and
then came another voice from the glistening crest
of the great mosque on the ramparts, clear as a clarion
and winging its way through the upper air over the
darkening mass below—

"God is Most Great! God is Most Great!"

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   Music fragment





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   CHAPTER XII

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At half-past six Gordon was at the railway-station.  He
found his soldier servant half-way down the platform,
on which blue-shirted porters bustled to and fro,
holding open the door of a compartment labelled
"Reserved."  He found Hafiz also, and with him were two
pale-faced Egyptians, in the dress of Sheikhs, who
touched their foreheads as Gordon approached.

"These are the men you asked for," said Hafiz.

Gordon shook hands with the Egyptians, and then
standing between them, with one firm hand on the
shoulder of each and the light of an electric arc lamp
in their faces, he said—

"You know what you've got to do, brothers?"

"We know," the men answered.

"The future of Egypt, perhaps of the East, may
depend upon what you tell me—you will tell me the
truth?"

"We will tell you the truth, Colonel."

"If the man we are going to see should be condemned
on your report and on my denunciation you may suffer
at the hands of his followers.  Protect you as I please,
you may be discovered, followed, tracked down—you
have no fear of the consequences?"

"We have no fear, sir."

"You are prepared to follow me into any danger?"

"Into any danger."

"To death if need be?"

"To death if need be, brother."

"Step in, then," said Gordon.

At the next moment there was the whistle of the
locomotive, and then slowly, rhythmically, with its
heavy volcanic throb shaking the platform and rumbling
in the glass roof, the train moved out of the station on
its way to Alexandria.





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   CHAPTER XIII

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Ishmael Ameer was the son of a Libyan carpenter and
boat-builder who, shortly before the days of the Mahdi,
had removed with his family to Khartoum.  His
earliest memory was of the solitary figure of the great
white Pasha, on the roof of the palace, looking up the
Nile for the relief army that never arrived, and of the
same white-headed Englishman, with the pale face, who,
walking to and fro on the sands outside the palace
garden, patted his head and smiled.

His next memory was of the morning after the fall
of the desert city, when, awakened by the melancholy
moan of the great ombeya, the elephant-horn that was
the trumpet of death, he heard the hellish shrieks of
the massacre that was going on in the streets, and saw
his mother lying dead in front of the door of the inner
closet in which she had hidden him, and found his
father's body on the outer threshold.

He was seven years of age at this time, and being
adopted by an uncle, a merchant in the town who had
been rich enough to buy his own life, he was sent in
due course first to the little school of the mosque in
Khartoum, and afterwards, at eighteen, to El Azhar in
Cairo, where, with other poor students, he slept in the
stifling rooms under the flat roof and lived on the hard
bread and the jars of cheese and butter which were sent
to him from home.

Within four years he had passed the highest examination
at the Arabic University, taking the rank of Alim
(doctor of Koranic divinity), which entitled him to
teach and preach in any quarter of the Mohammedan
world, and then, by reason of his rich voice and his
devout mind, he was made Reader in the mosque of
El Azhar.

Morality was low among the governing classes at that
period, and when it occurred that the Grand Cadi, who
was a compound of the Eastern voluptuary and the
libertine of the Parisian boulevards, marrying for the
fourth time, made a feast that went on for a week, in
which the days were spent in eating and drinking and
the nights in carousing of an unsaintly character, the
orgy so shocked the young Alim from the desert that
he went down to the great man's house to protest.

"How is this, your Eminence?" he said stoutly.
"The Koran teaches temperance, chastity, and contempt
of the things of the world, yet you, who are a
tower and a light in Islam, have darkened our faces
before the infidel."

So daring an outrage on the authority of the Cadi
had never been committed before, and Ishmael was
promptly flung into the streets, but the matter made
some noise, and led in the end to the expulsion of all
the Governors (the Ulema) of the University except the
one man who, being the first cause of the scandal, was
also the representative of the Sultan, and therefore could
not be charged.

Meantime Ishmael, returning no more to El Azhar,
had settled himself on an island far up the river, and
there practising extreme austerities, he gathered a great
reputation for holiness, and attracted attention throughout
the valley of the Nile by breathing out threatening
and slaughter, not so much against the leaders of his
own people who were degrading Islam as against the
Christians, under whose hated bondage, as he believed,
the whole Mohammedan world was going mad.

So wide was the appeal of Ishmael's impeachment
and so vast became his following that the Government
(now Anglo-Egyptian), always sure that, after
sand-storms and sand-flies, holy men of all sorts were the
most pernicious products of the Soudan, thought it
necessary to put him down, and for this purpose they
sent two companies of Arab camel police, promising a
reward to the one that should capture the new prophet.

The two camel corps set out on different tracks, but
each resolving to take Ishmael by night, they entered
his village at the same time from opposite ends, met in
the darkness, and fought and destroyed one another, so
that when morning dawned they saw their leaders on
both sides lying dead in the crimsoning light.

The gruesome incident had the effect of the supernatural
on the Arab intellect, and when Ishmael and
his followers, with nothing but a stick in one hand and
the Koran in the other, came down with a roar of voices
and the sand whirling in the wind, the native remnant
turned tail and fled before the young prophet's
face.

Then the Governor-General, an agnostic with a contempt
for "mystic senses" of all kinds, sent a ruckling,
swearing, unbelieving company of British infantry, and
they took Ishmael without further trouble, brought
him up to Khartoum, put him on trial for plotting
against the Christian Governor of his province, and
imprisoned him in a compound outside the town.

But soon the Government began to see that though
they had crushed Ishmael they could not crush
Ishmaelism, and they lent an ear to certain of the
leaders of his own faith, judges of the Mohammedan law
courts, who, having put their heads together, had
devised a scheme to wean him from his asceticism, and
so destroy the movement by destroying the man.  The
scheme was an old one, the vales of a woman, and they
knew the very woman for the purpose.

This was a girl named Adila, a Copt, only twenty
years of age, and by no means a voluptuous creature,
but a little winsome thing, very sweet and feminine,
always freshly clad, and walking barefoot on the hot
sand with an erect confidence that was beautiful to see.

Adila had been the daughter of a Christian merchant
at Assouan, and there, six years before, she had been
kidnapped by a Bisharin tribe, who, answering her tears
with rough comfort, promised to make her a queen.

In their own way they did so, for those being the
dark days of Mahdism, they brought her to Omdurman
and put her up to auction in the open slave-market,
where the black eunuch of the Caliph, after thrusting
his yellow fingers into her mouth to examine her
teeth, bought her, among other girls, for his master's
harem.

There, with forty women of varying ages, gathered
by concupiscence from all quarters of the Soudan, she
was mewed up in the close atmosphere of two sealed
chambers in the Caliph's crudely gorgeous palace,
seeing no more of her owner than his coffee-coloured
countenance as he passed once a day through the
curtained rooms and signalled to one or other of their
bedecked and be-ringleted occupants to follow him down
a hidden stairway to his private quarters.  At such
moments of inspection Adila would sit trembling and
breathless, in dread of being seen, and she found her
companions only too happy to help her to hide herself
from the attentions they were seeking for themselves.

This lasted nearly a year, and then came a day when
the howling in the streets outside, the wailing of shells
overhead, and the crashing of cannon-ball in the dome
of the Mahdi's tomb, told the imprisoned women, who
were creeping together in corners and clinging to each
other in terror, that the English had come at last, and
that the Caliph had fallen and fled.

When Adila was set at liberty by the English Sirdar
she learned that, in grief at the loss of their daughter,
her parents had died, and so, ashamed to return to
Assouan, after being a slave girl in Omdurman, she
took service with a Greek widow who kept a bakery in
Khartoum.

It was there the Sheikhs of the law-courts found her,
and they proceeded to coax and flatter her, telling her
she had been a good girl who had seen much sorrow,
and therefore ought to know some happiness now, to
which end they had found a husband to marry her, and
he was a fine handsome man, young and learned and
rich.

At this Adila, remembering the Caliph, and thinking
that such a person as they pictured could only want
her as the slave of his bed, turned sharply upon them
and said, "When did I ask you to find me a man?"
and the Sheikhs had to go back discomfited.

Meanwhile Ishmael, raving against the Christians who
were corrupting Mohammedans while he was lying
helpless in his prison, fell into a fever, and the Greek
mistress of Adila, hearing who had been meant for her
handmaiden, and fearing the girl might think too much
of herself, began to taunt and mock her.

"They told you he was rich, didn't they?" said the
widow.  "Well, he has no bread but what the Government
gives him, and he is in chains and he is dying,
and you would only have had to nurse him and bury
him.  That's all the husband you would have got, my
girl, so perhaps you are better off where you are."

But the widow's taunting went wide, for as soon as
Adila had heard her out she went across to the
Mohammedan court-house and said—

"Why didn't you tell me it was Ishmael Ameer you
meant?"

The Sheikhs answered with a show of shame that
they had intended to do so eventually, and if they had
not done so at first it was only out of fear of frightening
her.

"He's sick and in chains, isn't he?" said Adila.

They admitted that it was true.

"He may never come out of prison alive—isn't
that so?"

They could not deny it.

"Then I want to marry him," said Adila.

"What a strange girl you are!" said the Sheikhs,
but without more ado the contract was made while
Ishmael was so sick that he knew little about it, the
marriage document was drawn up in his name, Adila
signed it, half her dowry was paid to her, and she
promptly gave the money to the poor.

Next day Ishmael was tossing on his angerib in the
mud hut which served for his cell when he saw his
Soudanese guard come in, followed by four women, and
the first of them was Adila, carrying a basket full of
cakes such as are made in that country for a marriage
festival.  One moment she stood over him as he lay on
his bed with what seemed to be the dews of death on
his forehead, and then putting her basket on the ground
she slipped to her knees by his side and said—

"I am Adila.  I belong to you now, and have come
to take care of you."

"Why do you come to me?" he answered.  "Go
away.  I don't want you."

"But we are married, and I am your wife, and I am
here to nurse you until you are well," she said.

"I shall never be well," he replied.  "I am dying
and will soon be dead.  Why should you waste your
life on me, my girl?  Go away, and God bless you.
Praise to His name!"

With that she kissed his hand and her tears fell over
it, but after a moment she wiped her eyes, rose to
her feet, and turning briskly to the other women she
said—

"Take your cakes and be off with you—I'm going to
stay."





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   CHAPTER XIV

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Three weeks longer Ishmael lay in the grip of his fever,
and day and night Adila tended him, moistening his
parched lips and cooling his hot forehead, while he
raged against his enemies in his strong delirium, crying,
"Down with the Christians!  Drive them away!  Kill
them!"  Then the thunging and roaring in his poor
brain ceased, and his body was like a boat that had slid
in an instant out of a stormy sea into a quiet harbour.
Opening his eyes, with his face to the red wall, in the
cool light of a breathless morning, he heard behind him
the soft and mellow voice of a woman who seemed to
be whispering to herself or to Heaven, and she was
saying—

"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that
trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil; for Thine is the kingdom, the
power, and the glory.  Amen."

"What is that?" he asked, closing his eyes again,
and at the next moment the mellow voice came from
somewhere above his face—

"So you are better?  Oh, how good that is!  I am
Adila.  Don't you remember me?"

"What was that you were saying, my girl?"

"That?  Oh, that was the prayer of the Lord Isa (Jesus)."

"The Lord Isa?"

"Don't you know?  Long ago my father told me
about Him, and I've not forgotten it even yet.  He was
only a poor man, a poor Jewish man, a carpenter, but
He was so good that He loved all the world, especially
sinful women when they were sorry, and little helpless
children.  He never did harm to His enemies either,
but people were cruel and they crucified Him.  And
now He is in heaven, sitting at God's right hand, with
Mary His mother beside Him."

There was silence for a moment, and then—

"Say His prayer again, Adila."

So Adila, with more constraint than before, but still
softly and sweetly, began afresh—

"Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy
name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth
as it is in heaven; give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that
trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but
deliver us from evil; for Thine is the kingdom, the
power, and the glory.  Amen."

Thus the little Coptic woman, in her soft and mellow
voice, said her Lord's prayer in that mud hut on the
edge of the desert, with only the sick man to hear her,
and he was a prisoner and in chains; but long before
she had finished, Ishmael's face was hidden in his
bed-clothes and he was crying like a child.

There were three weeks more of a painless and
dreamy convalescence, in which Adila repeated other
stories her father had told her, and Ishmael saw Christianity
for the first time as it used to be, and wondered
to find it a faith so sweet and so true, and above all,
save for the character of Jesus, so like his own.

Then a new set of emotions took possession of him,
and with returning strength he began to see Adila with
fresh eyes.  He loved to look at her soft, round form,
and he found the air of his gloomy prison full of
perfume and light as she walked with her beautiful
erect bearing and smiling blue eyes about his bed.
Hitherto she had slept on a mattress which she had
laid out on the ground by the side of his angerib, but
now he wished to change places, and when nothing
would avail with her to do so, he would stretch out his
arm at night until their hands met and clasped and
thus linked together they would fall asleep.

But often he would awake in the darkness, not being
able to sleep for thinking of her, and, finding one night
that she was awake too, he said in a tremulous voice—

"Will you not come on to the angerib, Adila?"

"Should I?" she whispered, and she did.

Next day the black Soudanese guard that had been
set to watch him reported to the Mohammedan Sheikhs
that the devotee had been swallowed up in the man,
whereupon the Sheikhs, with a chuckle, reported the
same to the Government, and then Ishmael, with certain
formalities, was set free.

At the expense of his uncle a house was found for
him outside the town, for in contempt of his weakness
in being tricked, as his people believed, by a Coptic
slave girl, his following had gone, and he and Adila were
to be left alone.  Little they recked of that, though,
for in the first sweet joys of husband and wife they
were very happy, talking in delicious whispers, and
with the frank candour of the East, of the child that
was to come.  He was sure it would be a girl, so they
agreed to call it Ayesha (Mary), she for the sake of the
sinful soul who had washed her Master's feet with her
tears and wiped them with the hair of her head, and
he in memory of the poor Jewish woman, the mother
of Isa, whose heart had been torn with grief for the
sorrows of her son.

But when at length came their day of days, at the
height of their happiness a bolt fell out of a cloudless
sky, for though God gave them a child, and it was a
girl, He took the mother in place of it.

She made a bravo end, the sweet Coptic woman, only
thinking of Ishmael and holding his hand to cheer him.
It was noon, the sun was hot outside, and in the cool
shade of the courtyard three Moslems chanted the
"Islamee la Illaha," for so much they could do even for
the infidel, while Ishmael sat within on one side of his
wife's angerib, with his uncle, seventy years of age now,
on the other.  She was too weak to speak to her
husband, but she held up her mouth to him like a
child to be kissed.

A moment later the old man closed her eyes and said—

"Be comforted, my son—death is a black camel that
kneels at the gate of all."

There were no women to wail outside the house that
night, and next day, when Adila had to be buried, it
was neither in the Mohammedan cemetery with those
who had "received direction," nor in the Christian one
with English soldiers who had fallen in fight, that the
slave-wife of a prisoner could be laid, but out in the
open desert, where there was nothing save the sand and
the sky.

They laid her with her face to Jerusalem, wrapped in
a cocoa-nut mat, and put a few thorns over her to keep
off the eagles, and when this was done they would have
left her, saying she would sleep cool in her soft bed,
for a warm wind was blowing and the sun was beginning
to set; but Ishmael would not go.

In his sorrow and misery, his doubt and darkness, he
was asking himself whether, if his poor Coptic wife was
doomed to hell as an unbeliever, he could ever be
happy in heaven.  The moon had risen when at length
they drew him away, and even then in the stillness of
the lonely desert he looked back again and again at the
dark patch on the white waste of the wilderness in
which he was leaving her behind him.

Next morning he took the child from the midwife's
arms and, carrying it across to his uncle, he asked him
to take care of it and bring it up, for he was leaving
Khartoum and did not know how long he might be
away.  Where was he going to?  He could not say.
Had he any money?  None, but God would provide
for him.

"Better stay in the Soudan and marry another
woman, a believer," said his uncle; and then Ishmael
answered in a quivering voice—

"No, no, by Allah!  One wife I had, and if she
was a Christian and was once a slave, I loved her,
and never—never—shall another woman take her
place."

He was ten years away, and only at long intervals did
anybody hear of him, and it was sometimes from Mecca,
sometimes from Jerusalem, sometimes from Rome and
finally from the depths of the Libyan desert.  Then he
reappeared at Alexandria, and entering a little mosque
he exercised his right as Alim and went up into the
pulpit to preach.

His teaching was like fire, and men were like fuel
before it.  Day by day the crowds increased that came
to hear him, until Alexandria seemed to be aflame, and
he had to remove to the large mosque of Abou Abbas in
the square of the same name.

Such was the man whom Gordon Lord was sent to arrest.





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.. _`CHAPTER XV`:

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   CHAPTER XV

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   "HEADQUARTERS, CARACOL ATTARIN,
          "ALEXANDRIA.

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"MY DEAREST HELENA,—I have seen my man and it is
all a mistake!  I can have no hesitation in saying
so—a mistake!  *Wallahi*!  Ishmael Ameer is not the cause
of the riots which are taking place here—never has been,
never can be.  And if his preaching should ever lead by
any indirect means to sporadic outbursts of fanaticism
the fault will be ours—ours, and nobody else's.

"Colonel Jenkinson and the Commandant of Police
met me on my arrival.  It seems my coming had
somehow got wind, but the only effect of the rumour had
been to increase the panic, for even the conservative
elements among the Europeans had made a run on the
gunsmiths' shops for firearms and—could you believe
it?—on the chemists' for prussic acid to be used by
their women in case of the worst.

"Next morning I saw my man for the first time.  It
was outside Abou Abbas on the toe of the East port,
where the native population, with quiet Eastern
greeting, of hands to the lips and forehead, were following
him from his lodging to the mosque.

"My dear girl, he is not a bit like the man you
imagined.  Young—as young as I am, at all events—tall,
very tall (his head showing above others in a crowd)
with clean-cut face, brown complexion, skin soft and
clear, hands like a woman's, and large, beaming black
eyes as frank as a child's.  His dress is purely Oriental,
being white throughout save for the red slippers under
the caftan and the tip of the tarboosh above the turban.
No mealy-mouthed person, though, but a spontaneous,
passionate man, careless alike of the frowns of men and
the smiles of women, a real type of the Arab out of
the desert, uncorrupted by the cities, a man of peace
perhaps, but full of deadly fire and dauntless energy.

"My dear Helena, I liked my first sight of Ishmael
Ameer, and thinking I saw in him some of the barbarous
virtues we have civilised away, some of the fine old
stuff of the Arab nobleman who would light his beacon
to guide you to his tent even if you were his worst
enemy, I could not help but say to myself, 'By —,
here's a man I want to fight!'

"As soon as he had gone into the mosque I sent
Hafiz and the two Egyptians after him by different
doors with strict injunctions against collusion of any
kind, and then went off to the police headquarters in
the Governorat to await their report.  Hafiz himself
was the first to come to me, and he brought a
circumstantial story.  Not a word of sedition, not a syllable
about the Christians, good, bad, or indifferent!  Did
the man flatter the Moslems?  Exactly the reverse!
Never had Hafiz heard such a rating of a congregation
even from a Mohammedan preacher.

"The sermon had been on the degradation of woman
in the East, which the preacher had denounced as a
disgrace to their humanity.  Christians believed it to
be due to their faith, but what had degraded woman in
Mohammedan countries was not the Mohammedan religion
but the people's own degradation.

"'I dreamt last night,' he said, 'that in punishment
of your offences against woman God lifted the passion
of love out of the heart of man.  What a chaos!  A
cockpit of selfishness and sin!  Woman is meant to
sweeten life, to bind its parts together—will you
continue to degrade her?  Fools! are you wiser than God,
trying to undo what He has done?'

"Such was Ishmael's sermon as Hafiz reported it,
and when the Egyptians came their account was essentially
the same, but just at the moment when I was asking
myself what there could be in teaching like this to set
Moslem against Christian, tinkle-tinkle went the bell
of the telephone, and the Commandant of Police, who
had been listening with a supercilious smile, seemed to
take a certain joy in telling me that his inspector in the
quarter of Abou Abbas was calling for reinforcements
because a fresh disturbance had broken out there.

"In three minutes I was on the spot, and the first
thing I saw was the white figure of Ishmael Ameer
lashing his way through a turbulent crowd, whereupon
the Commandant, who was riding by my side, said, 'See
that!  Are you satisfied now, sir?' to which I answered,
'Don't be a fool,' with a stronger word to drive it home,
and then made for the middle of the throng.

"It was all over before I got there, for Christians
and Moslems alike were flying before Ishmael's face,
and without waiting for a word of thanks he was gone
too, and in another moment the square was clear, save
for a dozen men, native and European, whom the
police had put under arrest.

"With these rascals I returned to the Governorat
and investigated the riot, which turned out to be a
very petty affair, originating in an effort on the part of
a couple of low-class Greeks to attend to the scriptural
injunction to spoil the Egyptians by robbing a shop
(covered only by a net) while its native owner was in
the mosque.

"Next morning came a letter from Ishmael Ameer
beginning, 'In the name of God, the Compassionate,
the Merciful,' but otherwise written without preamble
or circumlocution, saying he was aware that certain
incidents in connection with his services had assumed
an anti-Christian aspect, and begging to be permitted
in the interests of peace, and in order to give a feeling
of security to Europeans, to preach openly at noon the
next day in the Square of Mohammed Ali.

"I need not tell you, my dear Helena, that everybody
at the Governorat thought the letter a piece of
appalling effrontery, and of course the Commandant,
who is one of the good Christians with a rooted
contempt for anything in a turban (forgetting that Jesus
Christ probably wore one) made himself big with phrases
out of Blue Books about the only way to suppress
disorder being to refuse to let sedition show its head.  But
I have never been afraid of a mob, and thinking the
situation justified the experiment I advised the Governor
to let the man come.

"One thing I did, though, my dear Helena, and that
was to dictate a pretty stiff reply saying I should be
present myself with a battalion of soldiers, and if
instead of pacifying the people he aggravated their
hostility, I should make it my personal business to
see that he would be the first to suffer.

"That night all the world and his wife declared that
I was fishing in troubled waters, and I hear that some
brave souls fled panic-stricken by the last train to Cairo,
where they are now, I presume, preferring their petitions
at the Agency, but next morning (that is to say, this
morning) the air was calmer, and the great square,
when I reached it, was as quiet as an inland sea.

"It was a wonderful sight, however, with the First
Suffolk lining the east walls and the Second Berkshire
lining the west, and the overflowing Egyptian and
European populace between, standing together yet
apart, like the hosts of Pharaoh and of Israel with the
Red Sea dividing them.

"I rode up with Jenkinson a little before twelve,
and I think the people saw that though we had permitted
this unusual experiment in the interests of peace
we meant business.  A space had been kept clear for
Ishmael at the foot of the statue of the great Khedive,
and hardly had the last notes of the midday call to
prayers died away when our man arrived.  He was
afoot, quite unattended, walking with an active step
and that assured nobility of bearing which belongs to
the Arab blood alone.  He bowed to me, with a simple
dignity that had not a particle either of fear or defiance,
and again, Heaven knows why, I said to myself, 'By
—, I want to fight that man!'

"Then he stepped on to the angerib that had been
placed for him as a platform and began to speak.  His
first words were a surprise, being in English and
faultlessly spoken.

"'The earth and the sky are full of trouble—God
has afflicted us, praise to His name,' he began, and
then, pointing to the warships that were just visible in
the bay, he cried—

"'Men who are watching the heavens and who speak
with authority tell us that great conflicts are coming
among the nations of the world.  Why is it so?  What
is dividing us?  Is it race?  We are the sons of one
Father.  Is it faith?  It is the work of religion not
only to set men free but to bind them together.  Our
Prophet says, 'Thou shalt love thy brother as thyself,
and never act towards him but as thou wouldst that he
should act towards thee.'  The Gospel of Jesus Christ
and the law of Moses say the same.  The true Christian
is the true Moslem—the true Moslem is the true Jew.
All that is right in religion is included in one
commandment—Love one another!  Then why warfare
between brethren so near akin?'

"His voice, my dear Helena, was such as I had never
in my life heard before.  It throbbed with the throb
that is peculiar to the voice of the Arab singer, and
seems to go through you like an electric current.  His
sermon, too, which was sometimes in English, sometimes
in Arabic, the two languages so intermingled that
the whole vast congregation of the cosmopolitan
seaport seemed to follow him at once, was not like
preaching at all, but vehement, enthusiastic, extempore prayer.

"I have sent a long account of it to the Consul-General,
so I dare say you will see what it contained.
It was the only preaching I ever heard that seemed to
me to deserve the name of inspiration.  Sedition!  In
one passage alone did it seem so much as to skirt the
problem of England in Egypt, and then there was a
spirit in the man's fiery words that was above the
finest patriotism.  Speaking of the universal hope of
all religions, the hope of a time to come when the
Almighty will make all the faiths of the world one faith,
and all the peoples of the world one people, he said—

"'In visions of the night I see that promised day,
and what is our Egypt then?  She, the oldest of the
nations, who has seen so many centuries of persecution
and shame, trodden under the heel of hard task-masters,
and buried in the sands of her deserts, what is she?
She is the meeting-place of nations, the hand-clasp of
two worlds, the interpreter and the peace-maker
between East and West.  We can never be a great
nation—let us be a good one.  Is it not enough?  Look
around!  We stand amid ruins half as old as the earth
itself—is it not worth waiting for?'

"Then in his last word, speaking first in Arabic, and
afterwards in English, he cried—

"'Oh, men of many races, be brothers one to another.
God is Most Great!  God is Most Great!  Take hands,
O sons of one Father, believers in one God!  Pray to
Him who changes all things but Himself changeth not!
God is Most Great!  God is Most Great!  Let
Allahu-Akbar sound for ever through your souls!'

"The effect was overwhelming.  Even some of the
low-class Greeks and Italians were sobbing aloud, and
our poor Egyptian children were like people possessed.
Hungry, out of work, many of them wearing a single
garment and that a ragged one, yet a new magnificence
seemed to be given to their lives.  Something radiant
and glorious seemed to glimmer in the distance, making
their present sufferings look small and mean.

"And I?  I don't know, my dear Helena, how I
can better tell you what I felt than by telling you what
I did.  I was looking down from the saddle at my First
Suffolk and my Second Berkshire, standing in line with
their poor little rifles, when something gripped me by
the throat and I signed to the officers, shouted 'Back
to your quarters!' and rode off, without waiting to see
what would happen, because I *knew*.

"I have written both to the General and to my
father, telling them I have not arrested Ishmael Ameer
and don't intend to do so.  If this is quackery and
spiritual legerdemain to cover sedition and conspiracy
I throw up the sponge and count myself among the
fools.  But Ishmael Ameer is one of the flame-bearers
of the world.  Let who will put him down—I will *not*.

"My dearest Helena, I've written all this about the
new prophet and not a word about yourself, though I've
been feeling the quivering grip of your hand in mine
every moment of the time.  The memory of that
delicious quarter of an hour in the garden has sweetened
the sulphurous air of Alexandria for me, and I'm in a
fever to get back.  *Smash the Mahdi*, you said, thinking
if I didn't obey my father and yours I should offend
both, and so lead to trouble between you and me.  But
the Consul-General is a just man if he is a hard one,
and I should not deserve to be his son if I did not dare
to warn him when he was going to do wrong.  Neither
should I deserve to be loved by the bravest girl alive
if I hadn't the pluck to stand up for the right.

"Good-night, sweetheart!  It's two in the morning,
the town is as quiet as a desert village, and I'm going
to turn in.  GORDON.

"*P.S.*—Forgot to say Ishmael Ameer is to go up to
Cairo shortly, so you'll soon see him for yourself.  But
Heaven help me! what is to become of Gordon Lord
when you've once looked on this son of the wilderness?

"*P.P.S.*—Not an arrest since yesterday!"





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.. _`CHAPTER XVI`:

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   CHAPTER XVI

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   "GENERAL'S HOUSE,
       "CITADEL, CAIRO.

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"MY DEAR GORDON,—You're in for it!  In that whispering
gallery which people call the East, where everything
is known before it happens to happen, rumours
without end were coming to Cairo of what you were
doing in Alexandria, but nobody in authority believed
the half of it until your letters arrived at noon to-day,
and now—heigho, for the wind and the rain!

"My dear Dad is going about like an old Tom with
his tail up, and as for the Consul-General ... whew!
(a whistle, your Excellency).

"Let me take things in their order, though, so that
you may see what has come to pass.  I was reading
your letter for the third (or was it the thirtieth?) time
this afternoon when who should come in but the
Princess Nazimah, so I couldn't resist an impulse to
tell her what your son of Hagar had to say on the
position of Eastern women, thinking it would gratify
her and she would agree.  But no, not a bit of it; off
she went on the other side, with talk straight out of
the harem, showing that the woman of the East isn't
worthy of emancipation and shouldn't get it—*yet*.

"It seems that if the men of the East are 'beasts'
the women are 'creatures.'  Love?  They never heard
of such a thing.  Husband?  The word doesn't exist
for them.  Not '*my* Master' even!  Just 'Master'!
Living together like school-girls and loving each other
like sisters—think of that, my dear!

"And when I urged that we were all taught to love
one another—all Christians, at all events—she cried,
'What! and share one man between four of you?'  In
short, the condition was only possible to cocks and
hens, and that Eastern women could put up with it
showed they were creatures—simple creatures, content
and happy if their husbands (beg pardon, their Masters)
gave them equal presents of dresses and jewels and
Turkish delight.  No, let the woman of the East keep
a little longer to her harem window, her closed carriage,
and the wisp of mousseline de soie she calls her veil,
or she'll misuse her liberty.  'Oh, I know!  I say what
I think!  I don't care!'

"As for your Ishmael, the Princess wouldn't have him
at any price.  He's just another Mahdi, and if he's
championing the cause of women, the son of a duck
knows how to swim.  His predecessor began by
denouncing slavery and ended by being the biggest
slave-dealer in the Soudan.  Ergo, your Ishmael, who cares
neither for 'the frowns of men nor the smiles of women,'
is going to finish up like Solomon or Samson either as
the tyrant of a hundred women or the victim of one of
them whose heart is snares and nets.  'Oh, I know!
Every man is a Sultan to himself, and the tail of a
dog is never straight!'

"But as for you it seems you are 'a brother of girls,'
which being interpreted means you are a man to whom
God has given a clean heart to love all women as his
sisters, and courage and strength to fight for their
protection.  'Didn't I tell you that you had the best of
the bunch, my child?'  (She did, Serenity!)  'But
though he is a soldier and as brave as a lion he has too
much of the woman in him.'  In this respect you
resemble, it seems, one of the Princess's own husbands,
but having had a variety of them, both right- and
left-handed, she found a difficulty in fixing your prototype.
'My first husband was like that—or no, it was my
second—or perhaps it was one of the other ones.'

"But this being so, O virtuous one, it became my
duty to get you back from Alexandria as speedily as
possible.  'Love like the sparrows comes and goes!  Oh,
I know!  I've seen it myself, my child!'

"'And listen, my moon!  Don't allow your Gordon'
(she calls you Gourdan) 'to go against his father.
Nuneham is the greatest man in the world, but let
anybody cross him—*mon Dieu*!  If you go out as the
wind you meet the whirlwind, and serve you right,
too!'

"In complete agreement on this point, the Princess
and I were parting in much kindness when Father came
dashing into my drawing-room like a gust of the
Khamseen, having just had a telephone message from the
Consul-General requiring him to go down to the Agency
without delay.  Whereupon, with a word or two of
apology to the Princess and a rumbling subterranean
growl of 'Don't know what the d— that young
man...' he picked up your letter to himself and was
gone in a moment.

"It is now 10 P.M. and he hasn't come back yet.
Another telephone message told me he wouldn't be
home to dinner, so I dined alone, with only Mosie Gobs
for company, but he waits on me like my shadow, and
gives me good advice on all occasions.

"It seems his heart is still on fire with love for me,
and having caught him examining his face in my toilet-glass
this morning I was amused, and a little touched,
when he asked me to-night if the Army Surgeon had
any medicine to make people white.

"Apparently his former love was a small black
maiden who works in the laundry, and he shares your
view (as revealed in happier hours, your Highness) that
there's nothing in the world so nice as a little girl
except a big one.  But I find he hasn't the best opinion
of you, for when I was trying to while away an hour
after dinner by playing the piano I overheard the
monkey telling the cook that to see her hands (*i.e.* mine)
run over the teeth of the music-box amazes the
mind—therefore why should her husband (*id est*, you) spend
so much time in the coffee-shop?

"Since then I've been out in the arbour trying to
live over again the delicious quarter of an hour you
speak of, but though the wing of night is over the city
and the air is as soft as somebody's kiss is (except
sometimes) it was a dreadful failure, for when I closed
my eyes, thinking hearts see each other, I could feel
nothing but the sting of a mosquito, and could only
hear the watchman crying *Wahhed!* and what that
was like you've only to open your mouth wide and then
say it and you'll know.

"So here I am at my desk talking against time until
Father comes and there's something to say.  And if you
would know how I am myself, I would tell you, most
glorious and respected, that I'm as tranquil as can be
expected considering what a fever you've put me in,
for, falling on my knees before your unsullied hands,
O Serenity, it seems to me you're a dunce after all, and
have gone and done exactly what your great namesake
did before you, in spite of his tragic fate to warn you.

"The trouble in Gordon Major's case was that the
Government gave him a discretionary power and he
used it, and it seems as if something similar has
happened to Gordon Minor, with the same results.  I hope
to goodness they may send you a definite order as the
consequence of their colloguing to-night, and then you
can have no choice and there will be no further
trouble.

"This is not to say that I think you are wrong in
your view of this new Mahdi, but merely that I don't
want to know anything about him.  His protests
against the spirit of the world may be good and beneficial,
but peace and quiet are better.  His predictions
about the millennium may be right too, and if he likes
to live on that dinner of herbs, let him.  Can't you
leave such people to boil their own pot without your
providing them with sticks?  I'm a woman, of course,
and my Moslem sisters may be suffering this, that, or
the other injustice, but when it comes to letting these
things get in between your happiness and mine, what
the dickens and the deuce and the divil do I care—which
is proof of what Mosie says to the cook about
the sweetness of my tongue.

"As for your 'Arab nobleman' taking me by storm,
no thank you!  I dare say he has red finger-nails, and
if one touched the tip of his nose it would be as soft
as Mosie's.  I hate him anyway, and if you are ever
again tempted to fight him, take my advice and fall!
But look here, Mr. Charlie Gordon Lord!  If you're so
very keen for a fight come here and fight *me*—I'm game
for you!

"Soberly, my dear-dear, don't think I'm not proud
of you that you are the only man in all Egypt, aye, or
the world, who dares stand up to your father.  When
God made you he made you without fear—I know that.
He made you with a heart that would die rather than
do a wrong—I know that too.  I don't believe you are
taking advantage of your position as a son, either, and
when people blame your parents for bringing you up as
an Arab I know it all comes from deeper down than
that.  I suppose it is the Plymouth rock in you, the
soul and blood of the men of the *Mayflower*.  You
cannot help it, and you would fight your own father
for what you believed to be the right.

"But, oh dear, that's just what makes me tremble.
Your father and you on opposite sides is a thing too
terrible to think about.  English gentlemen?  Yes, I'm
not saying anything to the contrary, but British
bulldogs too, and as if that were not enough *you've* got the
American eagle in you as well.  You'll destroy each
other—that will be the end of it.  And if you ask me
what reason I have for saying so, I answer—simply a
woman's, I *know*!  I *know*!

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"Father just back—dreadfully excited and exhausted—had
to get him off to bed.  Something fresh
brewing—cannot tell what.

"I gather that your friend the Grand Cadi was at
the Agency to-night—but I'll hear more in the morning.

"It's very late, and the city seems to be tossing in
its sleep—a kind of somnambulant moan coming up
from it.  They say the Nile is beginning to rise, and by
the light of the moon (it has just risen) I can faintly
see a streak of red water down the middle of the river.
Ugh!  It's like blood, and makes me shiver, so I must
go to bed.

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"Father much better this morning.  But
oh! oh! oh! ... It seems you are to be telegraphed for to
return immediately.  Something you have to do in
Cairo—I don't know what.  I'm glad you are to come
back, though, for I hate to think of you in the same
city as that man Ishmael.  Let me hear from you the
minute you arrive, for I may have something to say by
that time, and meantime I send this letter by hand to
your quarters at Kasr-el-Nil.

"That red streak in the Nile is plain enough this
morning.  I suppose it's only the first water that
comes pouring down from the clay soil of Abyssinia,
but I hate to look at it.

"Take care of yourself, Gordon, dear—I'm really a
shocking coward, you know.  HELENA.

"*P.S.*—Another dream last night!  Same as before
exactly—that man coming between you and me."





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   CHAPTER XVII

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Returning to Cairo by the first train the following
morning, Gordon received Helena's letter and replied
to it—

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"Just arrived in obedience to their telegram.  But
don't be afraid, dearest.  Nothing can happen that will
injure either of us.  My father cannot have wished me
to arrest an innocent man.  Therefore set your mind
at ease and be happy.  Going over to the Agency now,
but hope to see you in the course of the day.  Greetings
to the General and all my love to his daughter.

"GORDON."

.. vspace:: 2

But in spite of the brave tone of this letter he was
not without a certain uneasiness as he rode across to
his father's house.  "I couldn't have acted otherwise,"
he thought.  And then, recalling Helena's hint of
something else which it was intended he should do, he told
himself that his father was being deceived and did not
know what he was doing.  "First of all I must tell
him the truth—at all costs, the truth," he thought.

This firm resolution was a little shaken the moment
he entered the garden and the home atmosphere began
to creep upon him.  And when Ibrahim, his father's
Egyptian servant, told him that his mother, who had
been less well since he went away, was keeping her bed
that morning, the shadow of domestic trouble seemed
to banish his stalwart purpose.

Bounding upstairs three steps at a time he called in
a cheery voice at his mother's door, but almost before
the faint, half-frightened answer came back to him, he
was in the room, and the pale-faced old lady in her
nightdress was in his arms.

"I knew it was you," she said, and then, with her
thin, moist hands clasped about his neck and her head
against his breast she began in a plaintive, hesitating
voice, as if she were afraid of her own son, to warn and
reprove him.

"I don't understand what is happening, dear, but
you must never let anybody poison your mind against
your father.  He may be a little hard sometimes—I'm
not denying that; but then he is not to be judged like
other men—he is really not, you know.  He would cut
off his right hand if he thought it had done him a
wrong, but he is very tender to those he loves, and he
loves you, dear, and wants to do so much for you.  It
was pitiful to hear him last night, Gordon.  'I feel as
if my enemy has stolen my own son,' he said.  'My own
son, my own son,' he kept saying, until I could have
cried, and I couldn't sleep for thinking of it.  You
won't let anybody poison your mind against your
father—promise me you won't, dear."

Gordon comforted and kissed her, and rallied her and
laughed, but he felt for a moment as if he had come
back as a traitor to destroy the happiness of home.

Fatimah followed him out of the room, and winking
to keep back her tears, she whispered some disconnected
story of what had happened on the day on which his
father received his letter.

"Oh, my eye, my soul, it was sad!  We could hear
his footsteps in his bedroom all night long.  Sometimes
he was speaking to himself.  'The scoundrels!'  'They
don't know what shame is!'  'Haven't I had enough?
And now he too!  My son, my son!'"

Gordon went downstairs with a slow and heavy step.
He felt as if everything were conspiring to make him
abandon his purpose.  "Why can't I leave things
alone?" he thought.  But just as he reached the hall
the Egyptian Prime Minister, who was going out of the
house, passed in front of him without seeing him, and
a certain sinister look in the man's sallow face wiped
out in an instant all the softening effect of the scenes
upstairs.  "Take care!" he thought.  "Tell him the
truth whatever happens."

When he entered the library he expected his father
to fly out at him, but the old man was very quiet.

"Sit down—I shall be ready in a moment," he said,
and he continued to write without raising his eyes.

Gordon saw that his father's face was more than
usually furrowed and severe, and a voice seemed to say
to him, "Don't be afraid!"  So he walked over to the
window and tried to look at the glistening waters of
the Nile and the red wedges of Pyramids across the
river.

"Well, I received your letter," said the old man
after a moment.  "But what was the nonsensical reason
you gave me for not doing your duty?"

It was the brusque tone he had always taken with
his secretaries when they were in the wrong, but it was
a blunder to adopt it with Gordon, who flushed up to
the forehead, wheeled round from the window, walked
up to the desk, and said, beginning a little hesitatingly
but gathering strength as he went on—

"My reason, Father ... for not doing my ... what
I was sent to do ... was merely that I found I could
not do it without being either a rascal or a fool."

The old man flinched and his glasses fell.  "Explain
yourself," he said.

"I came to the conclusion, sir, that you were
mistaken in this matter."

"Really!"

"Possibly misinformed——"

"Indeed!"

"By British officials who don't know what they are
talking about or by native scoundrels who do."

Not for forty years had anybody in Egypt spoken to
the Consul-General like that, but he only said—

"Don't stand there like a parson in a pulpit.  Sit
down and tell me all about it," whereupon Gordon took
a seat by the desk.

"The only riot I witnessed in Alexandria, sir, was
due simply to the bad feeling which always exists
between the lowest elements of the European and Egyptian
inhabitants.  Ishmael Ameer had nothing to do with it.
On the contrary he helped to put it down."

"You heard what he had said in the mosques?"

"I had one of his sermons reported to me, sir, and it
was teaching such as would have had your own
sympathy, being in line with what you have always said
yourself about the corruptions of Islam, and the
necessity of uplifting the Egyptian woman as a means of
raising the Egyptian man."

"So you decided, it seems——"

"I decided, Father, that to arrest Ishmael Ameer as
one who was promulgating sedition, and inciting the
people to rebellion, would be an act of injustice which
you could not wish me to perpetrate in your name."

The Consul-General put up his glasses, looked for a
letter which lay on the desk, glanced at it, and said—

"I see you say that before you arrived in Alexandria
it was known that you were to come."

"That is so, sir."

"And that after the riot you counselled the Governor
to consent to the man's request that he should preach
in public."

"I did, sir—I thought it would be a good experiment
to try the effect of a little moral influence."

"Of course the experiment was justified?"

"Perfectly justified—the people dispersed quietly, and
there has not been a single arrest since."

"But you had a battalion of soldiers on the spot?"

"I had—it was only right to be ready for emergencies."

The old man laughed bitterly.  "I'm surprised at
you.  Don't you see how you've been hoodwinked?
The man was warned of your coming—warned from
Cairo, from El Azhar, which I find you were so foolish
as to visit before you left for Alexandria.  Everything
was prepared for you.  A trick, an Eastern trick, and
you were so simple as to be taken in.  I'm ashamed of
you—ashamed of you before my servants, my secretaries."

Gordon coloured up to his flickering steel-blue eyes
and said—

"Father, I must ask you to begin by remembering
that I am no longer a child and not quite a simpleton.
I *know* the Egyptians.  I know them better than all
your people put together."

"Better than your father himself, perhaps?"

"Yes, sir, better than my father himself
because—because I love them, whereas you—you have hated
them from the first.  They've never deceived me yet,
sir, and, with your permission, I'm not going to
deceive them."

The passionate words were hotly, almost aggressively
spoken, but in some unfathomable depth of the father's
heart the old man was proud of his son at that
moment—strong, fearless, and right.

"And the sermon in public—was that also on the
corruptions of Islam?"

"No, sir, it was about the spirit of the world—the
greed of wealth which is making people forget in these
days that the true welfare of a nation is moral, not
material."

"Anything else?"

"Yes—the hope of a time when the world will have
so far progressed towards peace that arms will be laid
down and a Redeemer will come to proclaim a universal
brotherhood."

"That didn't strike you as ridiculous—to see one
unlettered man trying to efface the laws of civilised
society—asking sensible people to turn their backs on
the facts of life in order to live in a spiritual hothouse
of dreams?"

"No, Father, that did not strike me as ridiculous,
because——"

"Because—what—what now?"

"Because John the Baptist and Jesus Christ did
precisely the same thing."

There was silence for a moment, and then the old.
man said-

"In this golden age that is to come, he predicts, I
am told, a peculiar place for Egypt—is that so?"

"Yes, sir.  He holds that in the commonwealth of
the world, Egypt, by reason of her geographical position,
will become the interpreter and peacemaker between
the East and the West—that that's what she has lived
so long for."

"Yet it didn't occur to you that this was sedition in
its most seductive form, and that the man who
promulgated it was probably the most dangerous of the
demagogues—the worst of the Egyptians who prate
about the natives governing themselves and the English
being usurping foreigners?"

"No, sir, that didn't occur to me at all, because I
felt that a Moslem people had a right to their own
ideals, and also because I thought——"

"Well?  Well?"

"That the man who imagines that the soul of
a nation can be governed by the sword—whoever
he is, King, Kaiser, or—or Czar—is the worst of
tyrants."

The old autocrat flinched visibly.  The scene was
becoming tragic to him.  For forty years he had been
fighting his enemies, and he had beaten them, and now
suddenly his own son was standing up as his foe.  After
a moment of silence he rose and said, with stony
gravity—

"Very well!  Having heard your views on Ishmael
Ameer, and incidentally on myself and all I have
hitherto attempted to do in Egypt, it only remains to
me to tell you what I intend to do now.  You know
that this man is coming on to Cairo?"

Gordon bowed.

"You are probably aware that it is intended that he
shall preach at El Azhar?"

"I didn't know that, sir, but I'm not surprised to
hear it."

"Well, El Azhar has to be closed before he arrives."

"Closed?"

"That is what I said—closed, shut up, and its students
and professors turned into the streets."

"But there are sixteen thousand of them—from all
parts of the Mohammedan world, sir."

"That's why!  The press as a medium of disaffection
was bad enough, but El Azhar is worse.  It is a
hotbed of rebellion, and a word spoken there goes, as
by wireless telegraphy, all over Egypt.  It is a secret
society, and as such it must be stopped."

"But have you reflected——"

"Do I do anything without reflection?"

"Closed, you say?  The University?  The mosque
of mosques?  It is impossible!  You are trifling with me."

"Have you taken leave of your senses, sir?"

"I beg your pardon, Father.  I only wish to prevent
you from doing something you will never cease to
regret.  It's dangerous work to touch the religious
beliefs of an Eastern people—you know that, sir, better
than I do.  And if you shut up their University, their
holy of holies, you shake the foundations of their
society.  It's like shutting up St. Peter's in Rome or
St. Paul's in London."

"Both events have happened," said the old man,
resuming his seat.

"Father, I beg of you to beware.  Trust me, I know
these people.  No Christian nation nowadays believes
in Christianity as these Moslems believe in Islam.  We
don't care enough for our faith to fight for it.  But
these dusky millions will die for their religion.  And
then there's Ishmael Ameer—you must see for yourself
what manner of man he is—careless alike of comfort or
fame; a fanatic if you like, but he has only to call to
the people and they'll follow him.  All the wealth and
well-being you have bestowed on them will go to the
winds, and they'll follow him to a man."

The Consul-General's lip curled again and he said
quietly—

"You ask me to believe that at the word of this
man without a penny, and with his head full of
worthless noise, the blue-shirted fellaheen will leave their
comfortable homes and their lands——"

"Aye, and their wives and children too—everything
they have or ever hope to have!  And if he promises
them nothing but danger and death all the more they'll
go to him."

"Then we must deal with him also."

"You can't—you can't do anything with a man like
that—a man who wants nothing and is afraid of
nothing—except kill him, and you can't do that either."

The Consul-General did not reply immediately, and,
coming closer, Gordon began to plead with him.

"Father, believe me, I know what I'm saying.  Don't
be blind to the storm that is brewing, and so undo all
the good you have ever done.  For Egypt's sake,
England's, your own, don't let damnable scoundrels
like the Grand Cadi and the Prime Minister play on
you like a pipe."

It was Gordon who had blundered now, and the
consequences were cruel.  The ruthless, saturnine old
man rose again, and on his square-hewn face there was
an icy smile.

"That brings me," he said, speaking very slowly,
"from what *I* have done to what you must do.  The
Ulema of El Azhar have received an order to close the
University.  It went to them this morning through the
President of the Council, who is acting as Regent in
the absence of the Khedive.  If they refuse to go it
will be your duty to turn them out."

"Mine?"

"Yours!  The Governor of the City and the Commandant
of Police will go with you, but where sixteen
thousand students and a disaffected population have to
be dealt with the military will be required.  If you had
brought Ishmael Ameer back from Alexandria this step
might have been unnecessary, but now instead of one
man you may have to arrest hundreds."

"But if they resist—and they will—I know they
will——"

"In that case they will be tried by Special Tribunal
as persons assaulting members of the British Army
of Occupation, and be dispatched without delay to the
Soudan."

"But surely——"

"The Ulema are required to signify their assent by
to-morrow morning, and we are to meet at the Citadel
at four in the afternoon.  You will probably be
required to be there."

"But, Father——"

"We left something to your discretion before, hoping
to give you an opportunity of distinguishing yourself
in the eyes of England, but in this case your orders will
be definite, and your only duty will be to obey."

"But will you not permit me to——"

"That will do for the present.  I'm busy.  Good-day!"

Gordon went out dazed and dumbfounded.  He saw
nothing of Ibrahim who handed him his linen-covered
cap in the hall, or of the page-boy at the porch who
gave him his reins and held down his stirrup.  When
he came back to consciousness he was riding by the side
of the Nile where the bridge was open, and a number
of boats with white sails, like a flight of great sea-gulls,
were sweeping through.

At the next moment he was at the entrance to his
own quarters, and found a white motor-car standing
there.  It was Helena's car, and leaping from the saddle,
he went bounding up the stairs.





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   CHAPTER XVIII

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Helena, with an anxious and perplexed face, was at his
door, talking to his soldier-servant.  At the next
instant they were in each other's arms, and their troubles
were gone.  Her smile seemed to light up his room
more than all its wealth of sunlight, and nothing else
was of the smallest consequence.  But after a moment
she drew out a letter and said—

"I told Father you were back, and he dictated a
message to you.  He was going to send it by his A.D.C.,
but I asked to be allowed to bring it myself and he
consented.  Here it is, dear."

Gordon opened and read the General's letter.  It was
a formal request that he should be in attendance at the
Citadel at four the following day to receive urgent and
important instructions.

"You know what it refers to, Helena?"

"Yes, I know," she answered.

The look of perplexity had returned to her face, and
for some minutes they stood arm-in-arm by the open
window, looking down at the Nile in a dazed and
dreamy way.

"What are you going to do, Gordon?"

"I don't know—yet."

"It will be an order now, and as an officer you can
do nothing but obey."

"I suppose not, dear."

"There are so many things calling for your obedience,
too—honour, ambition, everything a soldier can
want, you know."

"I know!  I know!"

She crept closer and said, "Then there's something
else, dear."

"What else, Helena?"

"Haven't I always told you that sooner or later that
man would come between us?"

"Ishmael?"

"Yes.  Last night my father said ... but I hate
to mention it."

"Tell me, dear, tell me."

"He said, 'You couldn't marry a man who had
disobeyed and been degraded.'"

"Meaning that if I refused to obey orders, you and I
perhaps ... by arrangement between your father and
mine, maybe——"

"That is what I understood him to mean, dear, and
therefore I came to see you."

He flushed crimson for a moment and then began to
laugh.

"No, no!  I'll never believe that of them.  It would
be monstrous—impossible!"

But the questioning look in Helena's eyes remained,
and he tried to reassure her.  So many things might
happen to remove the difficulty altogether.  The Ulema
might take the order of the Government as a protest
against the visit of Ishmael Ameer, and send him
instructions not to come to Cairo.

"He's here already, dear," said Helena.

As she drove down from the Citadel she had passed
through a crowd of natives coming from the direction
of the railway station, and some one had said it was a
procession in honour of the new prophet who had just
arrived from Alexandria.

"Then you've seen him yourself, Helena?"

"I saw a man in a white dress on a white camel, but
I didn't look at him.—I had somebody else to think
about."

He was carried away by the singleness of her love,
and with a score of passionate expressions he kissed her
beautiful white hands and did his best to comfort her.

"Never mind, dear!  Don't be afraid!  The Governors
of El Azhar may agree to close their doors—temporarily,
at all events.  Anyhow, we'll muddle through
somehow."

She made him promise not to go near the "new
Mahdi," and then began to draw on her long yellow
driving gloves.

"I suppose the gossips of Cairo would be shocked if
they knew I had come to see you," she said.

"It's not the first time you've been here, though.
You're here always—see!" he said, and with his arm
about her waist he took her round his room to look at
her portraits that hung on the walls.  It was Helena
here, Helena there, Helena everywhere, but since that
was the first time the real Helena had visited his quarters
she must drink his health there.

She would only drink it in water, and when she had
done so, she had to slip off her glove again and dip her
finger into the same glass that he might drink her own
health as well.  In spite of the shadow of trouble which
hung over them they were very happy.  A world of
warm impulses coursed through their veins, and they
could hardly permit themselves to part.  It was sweet
to stand by the window again and look down at the
dazzling Nile.  For them the old river flowed, for them
it sang its sleepy song.  They looked into each other's
eyes and smiled without speaking.  It was just as if
their hearts saw each other and were satisfied.

At length she clasped her arms about his neck, and
he felt the warm glow of her body.

"You think that still, Gordon?"

"What, dearest?"

"That love is above everything?"

"Everything in the world," he whispered, and then
she kissed him of herself and nothing else
mattered—nothing on earth or in heaven.





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   CHAPTER XIX

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When Helena had gone the air of his room seemed to
be more dumb and empty than it had ever been before;
but the bell of the telephone rang immediately, and
Hafiz spoke to him.

Hafiz had just heard from his uncle that the Ulema
were to meet at eight o'clock to consider what course
they ought to adopt.  The Chancellor was in favour of
submission to superior force, but some of his colleagues
of the reactionary party—the old stick-in-the-muds
made in Mecca—not being able to believe the Government
could be in earnest, were advocating revolt, even
resistance.

"Hadn't you better go up to El Azhar to-night,
Gordon, and tell them the Government means business?
They'll believe *you*, you know, and it may save riot,
perhaps bloodshed."

"I hadn't intended to go there again, Hafiz, but if
you think I can do any good——"

"You can—I'm sure you can.  Let me call for you
at eight and we'll go up together."

"Can't see why we shouldn't....  But wait!
Ishmael Ameer is in Cairo—will he be there, think
you?"

"Don't know—should think it very likely."

"Well, it can't be helped.  Eight o'clock, then!
By-bye!" said Gordon, and with that he rang off and
wrote to Helena, telling her what he was going to do.
He was going to break his word to her again, but it
was only in the interests of peace, and with the hope of
preventing trouble.

"Don't suppose these people can influence me a
hair's-breadth, dearest," he wrote, "and above all don't
be angry."

At eight o'clock Hafiz came for him, and, dressed in
mufti, they walked up to the University.  With more
than usual ceremony they were taken to the Chancellor's
room in the roof, and there in a tense, electrical
atmosphere, the Ulema were already assembled—a
group of eight or nine rugged and unkempt creatures
in their farageeyahs (a loose grey robe like that of a
monk), squatting on the divans about the walls.  All
the members of the Board of El Azhar were present,
and the only stranger there, except themselves, was
Ishmael Ameer, who sat, in his spotless white dress and
with his solemn face, on a chair beside the door.

In silence, and with many sweeping salaams from
floor to forehead, Gordon was received by the company,
and at the request of the Chancellor he explained the
object of his visit.  It was not official, and it was
scarcely proper, but it was intended to do good.  There
were moments when, passion being excited, there was a
serious risk of collision between governors and governed.
This was one of them.  Rightly or wrongly the
Consul-General was convinced that the University of Cairo
was likely to become a centre of sedition—could they
not agree to close it for a time at all events?

At that the electrical atmosphere of the room broke
into rumblings of thunder.  The order of the
Government was an outrage on the Mohammedan religion,
which England had pledged herself to respect.  El
Azhar was one of the three holy places of the Islamic
world, and to close it was to take the bread of life from
the Moslems.  "The Government might as well cut
our throats at once and have done with it," said some one.

From denouncing the order of the Government the
Ulema went on to denounce the Government itself.  It
was eating the people!  It was like wolves trying to
devour them!  "Are we to be body and soul under the
heel of the infidel!" they asked themselves.

After that they denounced Lord Nuneham.  He was
the slave of power!  He was drunk with the strong
drink of authority!  The University was their
voice—he had deprived them of every other—and now he was
trying to strike them dumb!  When somebody, remembering
that they were speaking before the Consul-General's
son, suggested that if he were doing a bad
act it might be with a good conscience, an Alim with
an injured eye and a malignant face cried, "No, by
Allah!  The man who usurps the place of God becomes
a devil, and that's what Nuneham is and long has been."

Listening to their violence, Gordon had found himself
taking his father's part, and at this moment his anger
had risen so high that he was struggling against an
impulse to take the unkempt creature by the throat
and fling him out of the room, when the soft voice of
the Chancellor began to plead for peace—

"Mohammed (to him be prayer and peace!) always
yielded to superior force, and who are we that we
should be too proud to follow his example?"

But at that the reactionary party became louder and
fiercer than before.  "Our Prophet," cried one, "has
commanded us not to seek war and not to begin it.
But he has also told us that if war is waged against
Islam we are to resist it under penalty of being
ourselves as unbelievers, and to follow up those who assail
us without pity and without remorse.  Therefore, if
the English close our holy El Azhar, they will be waging
war on our religion, and by the Most High God, we win
fight them to the last man, woman, and child."

At that instant Hafiz, who had been trembling in an
obscure seat by the door, rose to his feet and said in a
nervous voice, addressing his uncle—

"Eminence, may I say something?"

"Speak, son of my sister," said the Chancellor.

"It is about Colonel Lord," said Hafiz.  "If you
refuse to close El Azhar, an order to force you to do so
will be issued to the military, and Colonel Lord will be
required to carry it into effect."

"Well?"

"He is the friend of the Muslemeen, your Eminence,
but if you resist him he will be compelled to kill you."

"Wouldn't it be well to say 'With God's permission'?"
said the man with the injured eye, whereupon
Hafiz wheeled round on him and answered hotly—

"He has the bayonets and he has the courage, and
if you fight him there won't be so much as a rat among
you that will be left alive."

There was a moment of tense and breathless silence,
and then Hafiz, now as nervous as before, said quietly—

"On the other hand, if he refuses to obey his orders
he will lose his place and rank as a soldier.  Which of
these do you wish to see, your Eminence?"

There was another moment of breathless silence, and
then Ishmael Ameer, who had not spoken before, said
in his quivering voice—

"Let us call on God to guide us, my brothers—in
tears and in fervent prayer, all night long in the mosque,
until His light shines on us and a door of hope has
opened."





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   CHAPTER XX

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As Gordon returned to barracks the air of the native
section of the city seemed to tingle with excitement.
The dirty, unpaved streets with their overhanging
tenements were thronged.  Framed portraits of Ishmael
Ameer, with candles burning in front of them, were
standing on the counters of nearly all the cafés, and
the men squatting on the benches about were chanting
the Koran.  One man, generally a blind man, with his
right hand before his ear, would be reciting the text,
and at the close of every Surah the others would cry
"Allah!  Allah!"

In the densest quarter, where the streets were
narrowest and most full of ruts, the houses most
wretched, and the windows most covered with cobwebs,
a company of dervishes were walking in procession,
bearing their ragged banners, and singing their weird
Arab music to the accompaniment of pipes and drums,
while boys parading beside them were carrying tin
lamps and open flares.  Before certain of the houses
they stopped, and for some minutes they swayed their
bodies to an increasing chorus of "Allah!  Allah!  Allah!"

Gordon saw what had happened.  With the coming
of the new teacher a wave of religious feeling had swept
over the city.  Dam it up suddenly, and what scenes
of fanatical frenzy might not occur!

Back in his room, with the window down to shut out
the noises from the river and the bridge, he tried to come
to a conclusion as to what he ought to do the following
day if the Ulema decided to resist.  They *would* resist,
he had no doubt about that, for where men were under
the influence of gusts of religious passion, they might
call on God, but God's answer was always the same.

If the Ulema were to decide not to close their sacred
place they would intend to die in defence of it, and,
seeing the issue from the Moslem point of view, that
El Azhar was the centre of their spiritual life, Gordon
concluded that they would be justified in resisting.  If
they were justified the order to evict them would be
wicked, and the act of eviction would be a crime.  "I
can't do it," he told himself.  "I can't and I won't!"

This firm resolve relieved him for a moment, and
then he began to ask himself what would happen if he
refused to obey.  The bad work would be done all the
same, for somebody else would do it.  "What, then,
will be the result?" he thought.

The first result would be that he himself would
suffer.  He would be tried for insubordination, and of
course degraded and punished.  As a man he might be
in the right, but as a soldier he would be in the wrong.
He thought of his hard-fought fights and of the honours
he had won, and his head went round in a whirl.

The next result would be that he would bring disgrace
upon his father as well.  His refusal to obey orders
would become known, and if the consequences he
expected should come to pass he would seem to stand up
as the first of his father's accusers.  He, his father's
only son, would be the means of condemning him in
the eyes of England, of Europe, of the world!  In his
old age, too, and after all he had done for Egypt!

Then above all there was Helena!  The General
would side with the Consul-General, and Helena would
be required to cast in her lot with her father or with
him.  If she sided with him she would have to break
with her father; if she sided with her father she would
have to part from him.  In either case the happiness of
her life would be wasted—*he* would have wasted it, and
he would have wasted his own happiness as well.

This thought seemed to take him by the throat and
stifle him.  He leapt from the bed on which he had
been lying in restless pain and threw open the window.
The river and the bridge were quiet by that time, but
through the breathless night air there came the music
of a waltz.  It was the last dance of the visiting season
at an hotel near by—a number of British officers were
dancing on the edge of the volcano.

Gordon shut the window and again threw himself on
the bed.  At length the problem that tormented him
seemed to resolve itself into one issue.  His father did
not realise that the Moslems would die rather than give
up possession of their holy place, and that, in order to
turn them out of it, he would have to destroy
them—slaughter them.  A man could not outrage the most
sacred of human feelings without being morally blind
to what he was doing.  His father was a great man—a
thousand times greater than he himself could ever hope
to be—but in this case he was blind, and somebody had
to open his eyes.

"I'll go and bring him to reason," he thought.  "He
may insult me if he likes, but no matter!"

The last cab had rattled home and the streets were
silent when Gordon reached the entrance to the Agency.
Then he saw that it was late, for the house was in
darkness and not even the window of the library showed
a light.  The moon was full and he looked at his watch.
Good heavens!  It was two o'clock!

The house-dog heard his footsteps on the gravel path
and barked and bounded towards him; then, recognising
him, it began to snuffle and to lick his hands.  At
the same moment a light appeared in an upper window.
It was the window of his mother's room, and at sight
of it his resolution began to ebb away and he was once
more seized with uncertainty.

Strife between himself and his father would extinguish
the last rays of his mother's flickering life.
He could see her looking at him with her pleading,
frightened eyes.

"Am I really going to kill my mother—that too?"
he thought.

He was as far as ever from knowing what course
he ought to take, but the light in his mother's
window, filtering through the lace curtains that were
drawn across it, was like a tear-dimmed, accusing eye,
and with a new emotion he was compelled to turn away.





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   CHAPTER XXI

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As two o'clock struck on the soft cathedral bell of a
little clock by the side of her bed Fatimah rose with a
yawn, switched on the electric light, and filled a small
glass from a bottle on the mantel-piece.

"Time to take your medicine, my lady," she said in
a sleepy voice.

Her mistress did not reply immediately, and she
asked—

"Are you asleep?"

But her lady, who was wide awake, whispered,
"Hush! do you hear Rover?  Isn't that somebody
on the path?"

Fatimah listened as well as she could through the
drums of sleep that were beating in her ears, and then
she answered—

"No, I hear nothing."

"I thought it was Gordon's footstep," said the old
lady, raising herself in bed to take the medicine that
Fatimah was holding out to her.

"It's strange!  Gordon's step is exactly like his
grandfather's."

"Don't spill it, my lady," said Fatimah, and with a
trembling hand the old lady drank off her dose.

"He's like his grandfather in other things, too.  I
remember when I was a girl there was a story of how
he struck one of his soldiers in the Civil War, thinking
the man was guilty of some offence.  But afterwards
he found the poor fellow was innocent, and had taken
the blow for his brother without saying a word.  Father
never forgave himself for that—never!"

"Shall I put on the eider-down?  The nights are
cold if the days are hot, you know."

"Yes—no—just as you think best, nurse....  I'm
sure Gordon will do what is right, whatever happens.
I'm sorry for his father, though.  Did you hear what
he said when he came to bid me good-night?—'They
think they've caught me now that they've caught my
son, but let them wait—we'll see.'"

"Hush!" said Fatimah, and she pointed to the wall
of the adjoining room.  From the other side of it came
the faint sound of measured footsteps.

"He's walking again—can't sleep, I suppose," said
Fatimah in a drowsy whisper.

"Ah, well!" said the old lady, after listening for a
moment.  And then Fatimah put out the light and
went back to her bed.

"God bless my boy!" said a tremulous voice in the
darkness.

After that there was a sigh, and then silence—save
for the hollow thud of footsteps in the adjoining room.





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   CHAPTER XXII

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Before Gordon was out of bed next morning Hafiz
rang him up on the telephone.  He had just heard
from his uncle, the Chancellor, that as a result of their
night-long deliberation and prayer, the Ulema had
decided to ask the Consul-General to receive Ishmael
Ameer and listen to a suggestion.

"What will it be?" asked Gordon.

"That the Government should leave El Azhar alone
on condition that the Ulema consent to open it, and all
the mosques connected with it, to public and police
inspection, so as to dissipate the suspicion that they
are centres of sedition."

"Splendid!  To make the mosques as free as Christian
churches is a splendid thought—an inspiration!
But if the Government will not agree—what then?"

"Then the order to close El Azhar will be resisted.
'Only over our dead bodies,' they say, 'shall the
soldiers enter it.'"

Gordon went about his work that morning like a man
dazed and dumb, but after lunch he dressed himself
carefully in his full staff uniform, with his aiguilettes
hanging from his left shoulder, his gold and crimson
sash, his sword, and his white, be-spiked helmet.  He
put on all his medals and decorations—his Distinguished
Service Order: his King's and South African
War medal with four clasps: his British Soudan medal:
his Medjidieh: and his Khedive's medal with four clasps.
It was not for nothing that he did this, nor merely
because he was going to an official conference, but
with a certain pride as of a man who had won the right
to consideration.

Taking a cab by the gate of the barracks he drove
through the native quarters of the city, and saw crowds
surging through the streets in the direction of El Azhar.
The atmosphere seemed to tingle with the spirit of
revolution, and seeing the operation of the sublime
instinct of humanity which leads people in defence of
their faith to the place where danger is greatest, he felt
glad and proud that what was best in him was about to
conquer.

Arriving at the Citadel he found Helena's black boy
waiting for him at the door of the General's house with
a message from his mistress, saying the gentlemen had
not arrived and she wished to see him.  The city below
lay bright under the warm *soolham* of the afternoon sun,
and the swallows were swirling past the windows of
Helena's sitting-room, but Helena herself was under a
cloud.

"I see what it is—you are angry with me for going
to El Azhar last night," said Gordon.

"No, it isn't that, though I think you might have
kept faith with me," she answered.  "But we have no
time to lose, and I have something to say to you.  In
the first place I want you to know that Colonel
Macdonald, your Deputy Assistant Adjutant, has been
ordered to stand by.  He will be only too happy to
take your place if necessary."

"He's welcome!" said Gordon.

Her brows were contracted, her lips set.  She fastened
her eyes on him and said—

"Then there is something else I wish to tell you."

"What is it, Helena?"

"When my father asked me if I could marry a man
who had disobeyed and been degraded, I said ... But
it doesn't matter what I said.  My father has hardly
spoken to me since.  It is the first cloud that has come
between us—the very first.  But when I answered him
as I did, there was something I had forgotten."

"What was it, dearest?"

"I cannot tell you what it was—I can only tell you
what it comes to."

"What does it come to, Helena?"

"That whatever happens to-day I can never leave
my father—never as long as he lives."

"God forbid that you should be tempted to do so—but why?"

"That is what I cannot tell you.  It is a secret."

"I can think of no secret that I could not share
with you, Helena."

"Nor I with you—if it were my own—but this isn't."

"I cannot understand you, dear."

"Say it is somebody else's secret, and that his life,
his career, depends upon it.  Say it couldn't be told to
you without putting you in a false position—involving
you in responsibilities which you have no right to
bear."

"You puzzle me, bewilder me, Helena."

"Then trust me, dear—trust me for the present at
all events, and some day you shall know everything,"
she said; whereupon Gordon, who had not taken his
eyes off her, said—

"So what it really comes to is this—that whatever
course your father takes to-day I must take it also,
under pain of a violent separation from you!  Isn't
that it, Helena?  Isn't it?  And if so, isn't it like
sending a man into battle with his hands tied and his
eyes blindfolded?"

She dropped her head but made no reply.

"That is not what I expected of you, Helena.  The
Helena who has been living in my mind is a girl who
would say to me at a moment like this, 'Do what you
believe to be right, Gordon, and whether you are
degraded to the lowest rank or raised to the highest
honour, I will be with you—I will stand by your side.'"

Her eyes flashed and she drew herself up.

"So you think I couldn't say that—that I didn't
say anything like it when my father spoke to me?  But
if you have been thinking of me as a girl like that, I
have been thinking of you as a man who would say, 'I
love you, and do you know what my love means?  It
means that my love for you is above everything and
everybody in the world.'"

"And it is, Helena, it is."

"Then why," she said, with her eyes fixed on his,
"why do you let this Egyptian and his interests come
between us?  If you take his part after what I have
just told you, will it not be the same thing in the end
as choosing him against me?"

"Don't vex me, Helena.  I've told you before that
your jealousy of this man is nonsense."

The word cut her to the quick, and she drew herself
up again.

"Very well," she said, with a new force; "if it's
jealousy and if it's nonsense you must make your
account with it.  I said I *couldn't* tell you why I cannot
leave my father—now I *won't*.  You must choose
between us.  It is either that man or me."

"You mean that if the General decides against
Ishmael Ameer you will follow your father, and that
I—whatever my conscience may say—I must follow you?"

Her eyes blazed and she answered, "Yes."

"Good God, Helena!  What is it you want me to
be?  Is it a man or a manikin?"

At that moment the young Lieutenant who was the
General's Aide-de-camp came in to say that the
Consul-General and the Prime Minister had arrived, and
required Colonel Lord's attendance.

"Presently," said Gordon, and as soon as the
Lieutenant had gone he turned to Helena again.

"Helena," he said, "there is not a moment to lose.
Remember, this is the last time I can see you before I
am required to act one way or the other.  God knows
what may happen before I come out of that room.
Will you send me into it without any choice?"

She was breathing hard and biting her under lip.

"Your happiness is dearer to me than anything else
in life, dear, but I am a man, not a child, and if I am
to follow your father in order not to lose you, I must
know why.  Will you tell me?"

Without raising her eyes Helena answered, "No!"

"Very well!" he said.  "In that case it must be as
the fates determine," and straightening his sword-belt,
he stepped to the door.

Helena looked up at him and in a fluttering voice
called "Gordon!"

He turned, with his hand on the handle.  "What
is it?"

For one instant she had an impulse to break her
promise and tell him of her father's infirmity, but at
the next moment she thought of the Egyptian, and her
pride and jealousy conquered.

"What is it, Helena?"

"Nothing," she said, and fled into her bedroom.

Gordon looked after her until she had disappeared,
and then—hot, angry, nervous, less able than before to
meet the ordeal before him—he turned the handle of
the door and entered the General's office.





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   CHAPTER XXIII

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The Consul-General, the General, and the Egyptian
Pasha in his tarboosh were sitting in a half-circle; the
General's Military Secretary, Captain Graham, was
writing at the desk, and his Aide-de-camp, Lieutenant
Robson, was standing beside it.  Nobody was speaking
as Gordon entered, and the air of the room
had the dumb emptiness which goes before a storm.
The General signalled to Gordon to sit, and
requested his Aide-de-camp to step out and wait in his
own office, and then said, speaking in a jerky, nervous
way—

"Gordon, I have an order of the utmost importance
to give you, but before I do so your father has
something to say."

With that he took a seat by the side of the desk,
while the Consul-General, without changing the
direction of his eyes, said slowly and deliberately—

"I need hardly tell you, Gordon, that the explanation
I am about to make would be quite unnecessary
in the case of an ordinary officer receiving an ordinary
command, but I have decided to make it to you out of
regard to the fact of who you are and what your
relation to the General is to be."

Gordon bowed without speaking.  He was struggling
to compose himself, and something was whispering to
him, "Above all things, be calm!"

"I regret to say the Ulema have ignored the order
which his Excellency sent to them," said the
Consul-General, indicating the Pasha.

"Ignored?"

"That's what it comes to, though it's true they
asked me to receive the man Ishmael Ameer and to
consider a suggestion."

"You did, sir?"

"I did.  The man came, I saw him, and heard what
he had to say—and now I am more than ever
convinced that he is a public peril."

"A peril?"

"First, because he advises officers and men to abstain
from military service on the ground that war is incompatible
with religion.  That is opposed to the existing.
order of society, and therefore harmful to good
government."

"I agree," said the General, swinging restlessly in
his revolving chair.

"Next, because he tells the Egyptian people that
where the authority of the law is opposed to what he is
pleased to consider the commandments of God they are
to obey God and not the Government.  That is to make
every man a law to himself, and to cause the rule of
the Government to be defied."

The Pasha smiled and bowed his thin face over his
hands, which were clasped at his breast.

"Finally, because he says openly that in the time
to come Egypt will be a separate state with a peculiar
mission, and that means Nationalism and the end of
the rule of England in the valley of the Nile."

Gordon made an effort to speak, but his father waved
him aside.

"I am not here to argue with you about the man's
teaching, but merely to define it.  He is one of the
mischievous people who, taking no account of the
religious principles which lie at the root of civilisation,
would use religion to turn the world back to barbarism.
What is true in his doctrines is not new, and what is
new is not true.  As for his reforms of polygamy,
divorce, seclusion of women, and so forth, I have no use
for the people who, in Cairo or in London, are for ever
correcting the proof-sheets of the Almighty by reading
their holy book as they please, whether it is the Koran
or the Bible.  And as for his prophecies, there are such
things as mental strong drinks, and a man like this is
providing them."

"You spoke of a suggestion, sir," said Gordon, who
was still struggling to keep calm.

"His suggestion," said the Consul-General with icy
composure, "his suggestion was an aggravation of his
offence.  He proposed that we should leave El Azhar
unmolested on condition that the Ulema opened it to
the public.  That meant that the Government must
either countenance his sedition or suppress it by the
stupid means of discussing his principles in courts of
law."

The Pasha smiled and the General laughed, and then
in a last word the Consul-General said quietly—

"General Graves will now tell you what we require
you to do."

The General, still jerky and nervous, then said—

"All the necessary preparations have been made,
Gordon.  The—the Governor of the City will call you
up at your quarters, and on—on receiving his message
you will take a regiment of cavalry which is ready
here in the Citadel and one battalion of infantry which
is under arms at Kasr-el-Nil and accompany him
to El Azhar.  There—as—as commander of the troops
you—at the request of the Governor—you will take
such military steps as in your opinion will be required
to enter the University—and—and clear out its students
and professors.  You will cause ten rounds of ammunition
to be served out to the men, and you will have absolute
discretion as to the way you go to work, and as to the
amount of force necessary to be used—but you—of
course you will be responsible for everything that is
done—or not done—in carrying out your order.  I—I
ask you to attend to this matter at once, and to report
to me to-night if possible."

When the General's flurried words were spoken there
was silence for a moment, and then Gordon, trying in
vain to control his voice, said haltingly—

"You know I don't want to do this work, General,
and if it must be done I beg of you to order some one
else to do it."

"That is impossible," replied the General.  "You
are the proper person for this duty, and to give it to
another officer would be to—to strengthen the party of
rebellion by saying in so many words that there is
disaffection in our own ranks."

"Then permit me to resign my appointment on your
staff, sir.  I don't want to do so—God knows I don't.
My rank as a soldier is the one thing in the world I'm
proudest of, but I would rather resign it——"

"Resign it if you please—if you are so foolish.  Send
in your papers, but until they are accepted you are my
officer, and I must ask you to obey my order."

Gordon struggled hard with himself, and then said
boldly—

"General, you must pardon me if I tell you that you
don't know what you are asking me to do."

The three old men looked sharply round at him, but
he was now keyed up and did not care.

"No, sir—none of you!  You think you are merely
asking me to drive out of El Azhar a number of rebellious
students and their teachers.  But you are really
asking me to kill hundreds, perhaps thousands of them."

"Fudge!  Fiddlesticks!" cried the General, and then,
forgetting the presence of the Pasha, he said, "These
people are Egyptians—miserable, pigeon-livered
Egyptians!  Before you fire a shot they'll fly away to a
man.  But even if they stay the responsibility will be
their own—so what the dev——"

"That's just where we join issue, General," said
Gordon.  "There isn't a worm that hasn't a right to
resent a wrong, and this will be a wrong, and the people
will be justified in resenting it."

The General, who was breathing hard, turned to the
Consul-General and said, "I'm sorry, my lord, very
sorry, but you see——"

There was a short silence, and then the Consul-General,
still calm on the outside as a frozen lake, said,
"Gordon, I presume you know what you will be doing
if you refuse to obey your General's order?"

Gordon did not answer, and his father, in a biting
note, continued—-

"I dare say you suppose you are following the dictates
of conscience, and I don't question your sincerity.  I'm
beginning to see that this empire of ours is destined to
be destroyed in the end by its humanitarians, its
philanthropists, its foolish people who are bewitched by good
intentions."

The sarcasm was cutting Gordon to the bone, but
he did not reply, and presently the old man's voice
softened.

"I presume you know that if you refuse to obey
your General's order you will be dealing a blow at your
father—dishonouring him, accusing him.  Your refusal
will go far.  There will be no hushing it up.  England
as well as Egypt will hear of it."

A deep flush overspread the Proconsul's face.

"For forty years I've been doing the work of civilisation
in this country.  I think progress has received a
certain impetus.  And now when I am old, and my
strength is not what it once was, my son—my only
son—is pulling the lever that is to bring my house down
over my head."

The old man's voice trembled and almost broke.

"You've not thought of that, I suppose?"

Gordon's emotions almost mastered him.  "Yes, sir,"
he said, "I have thought of it, and it's a great grief to
me to oppose you.  But it would be a still greater grief
to help you—to help you to undo all the great work
you have ever done in Egypt.  Father, believe me, I
know what I am saying.  There will be bloodshed, and
as sure as that happens there will be an outcry all over
the Mohammedan world.  The prestige of England will
suffer—in India—in Europe—America—everywhere.
And you, father, you alone will be blamed."

At that the General rose in great wrath, but the
Consul-General interposed.

"One moment, please!  I am anxious to make allowances
for fanaticism, and at a moment of tension I
could wish to avoid any act that might create a
conflagration.  Therefore," he said, turning to Gordon,
"if you are so sure that there will be bloodshed
I am willing to hold my hand on one condition—that
the man Ishmael, the mouthpiece of the sedition
we wish to suppress, should leave Egypt without
delay."

Gordon did not reply immediately, and his father
continued, "Why not?  It is surely better that one
man should go than that the whole nation should suffer.
Send him out, drive him out, walk him over the frontier,
and for the present I am satisfied."

"Father," said Gordon, "what you ask me to do is
impossible.  The Egyptians believe Ishmael to be one
of the prophets who are sent into the world to keep
the souls of men alive.  He is like the Mahdi to them,
and—who knows?—they may come to think of him as
the Redeemer, the Christ, who is to pacify the world.
Rightly or wrongly, they think of him already as a living
protest against that part of Western civilisation which
is the result of force and fraud.  Therefore to drive
him out of the country would be the same thing to
them as to drive out religion.  In their view, it would
be a sin against humanity—a sin against God."

But the General could bear no more.  Rising from
the desk, he said contemptuously—

"All that's very fine, very exalted, I dare say, but
we are plain soldiers, you and I, and we cannot follow
the flights of great minds like these Mohammedan
Sheikhs.  So without further argument I ask you if you
are willing to carry out the order I have given you."

"It would be a crime, sir."

"Crime or no crime, it would be no concern of yours.
Do you refuse to obey my order?"

"Recall your order, sir, and I shall have no reason
to refuse to obey it."

"Do you refuse to obey my order?"

"It would be against my conscience, General."

"Your conscience is not in question.  Your only
duty is to carry out the will of your superior."

"When I accepted my commission in the army did I
lose my rights as a human being, sir?"

"Don't talk to me about losing your rights.  In the
face of duty an officer loses father and mother, wife
and child.  According to the King's regulations, you
are a soldier first, remember."

"No, sir; according to the King's regulations I am
first of all a man."

The General bridled his gathering anger and answered—

"Of course you can ask for a written order—if you
wish to avoid the danger of blame."

"I wish to avoid the danger of doing wrong, sir,"
said Gordon, and then, glancing towards his father, he
added, "Let me feel that I'm fighting for the right.
An English soldier cannot fight without that."

"Then I ask you as an English soldier if you refuse
to obey my order?" repeated the General.  But Gordon,
still with his face towards his father, said—

"Wherever the English flag flies men say, 'Here is
justice.'  That's something to be proud of.  Don't let
us lose it, sir."

"I ask you again," said the General, "if you refuse
to obey my order?"

"I have done wrong things without knowing them,"
said Gordon, "but when you ask me to——"

"England asks you to obey your General—will you
do it?" said General Graves, and then Gordon faced
back to him, and in a voice that rang through the room
he said—

"No, not for England will I do what I *know* to be wrong."

At that the Consul-General waved his hand and said,
"Let us have done," whereupon General Graves, who
was now violently agitated, touched a hand-bell on the
desk, and when his servant appeared, he said—

"Tell my daughter to come to me."

Not a word more was spoken until light footsteps
were heard approaching and Helena came into the
room, with a handkerchief in her hand, pale as if she
had been crying and breathless as if she had been
running hard.  The three old gentlemen rose and bowed
to her as she entered, but Gordon, whose face had
frowned when he heard the General's command, rose
and sat down again without turning in her direction.

"Sit down, Helena," said the General, and Helena sat.

"Helena, you will remember that I asked you if you
could marry an officer who for disobedience to his
General—and that General your father—had been
court-martialled and perhaps degraded?"

In a scarcely audible voice Helena answered, "Yes."

"Then tell Colonel Lord what course you will take
if by his own deliberate act that misfortune should
befall him."

A hot blush mounted to Helena's cheeks, and looking
at the hem of her handkerchief she said—

"Gordon knows already what I would say, father.
There is no need to tell him."

Then the General turned back to Gordon.  "You
hear?" he said.  "I presume you understand Helena's
answer.  For the sake of our mutual peace and happiness
I wished to give you one more chance.  The issue
is now plain.  Either you obey your General's order or
you renounce all hope of his daughter—which is it
to be?"

The young man swallowed his anger and answered—

"Is it fair, sir—fair to Helena, I mean—to put her
to a test like that—either violent separation from her
father or from me?  But as you have spoken to Helena
I ask you to allow me to do so also."

"No, I forbid it!" said the General.

"Don't be afraid, sir.  I'm not going to appeal over
your head to any love for me in Helena's heart.  That
must speak for itself now—if it's to speak at all.
But"—his voice was so soft and low that it could hardly be
heard—"I wish to ask her a question.  Helena——"

"I forbid it, I tell you," said the General hotly.

There was a moment of tense silence and then Gordon,
who had suddenly become hoarse, said—

"You spoke about a written order, General—give it
to me."

"With pleasure!" said the General, and turning to
his Military Secretary at the desk he requested him to
make out an order in the Order Book according to the
terms of his verbal command.

Nothing was heard in the silence of the next moment
but the spasmodic scratching of Captain Graham's quill
pen.  The Consul-General sat motionless, and the Pasha
merely smoothed one white hand over the other.
Gordon tried to glance into Helena's face, but she
looked fixedly before her out of her large, wide-open,
swollen eyes.

Only one idea shaped itself clearly through the storm
that raged in Gordon's brain—to secure his happiness
with Helena he must make himself unhappy in every
other relation of life—to save himself from degradation
as a soldier he must degrade himself as a man.

Presently through the whirling mist of his
half-consciousness he was aware that the Military Secretary
had ceased writing, and that the General was offering
him a paper.

"Here it is," the General was saying, with a certain
bitterness.  "Now you may set your mind at ease.  If
there are any bad consequences, you can preserve your
reputation as an officer.  And if there are any
complaints from the War Office or anywhere else, you can
lay the blame on me.  You can go on with your duty
without fear for your honour, and when——"

But Gordon, whose gorge had risen at every word,
suddenly lost control of himself, and getting up with
the paper in his hand he said—

"No, I will not go on.  Do you suppose I have been
thinking of myself?  Take back your order.  There is
no obedience due to a sinful command, and this command
is sinful.  It is wicked, it is mad, it is abominable.
You are asking me to commit murder—that's it—murder—and
I will not commit it.  There's your order—take
it back and damn it!"

So saying, he crushed the paper in his hands and
flung it on the desk.

At the next instant everybody in the room had risen.
There was consternation on every face, and the General,
who was choking with anger, was saying in a
half-stifled voice—

"You are no fool—you know what you have done
now.  You have not only refused to obey orders—you
have insulted your General and been guilty of deliberate
insubordination.  Therefore you are unworthy of
bearing arms—give me your sword."

Gordon hesitated for a moment, and the General said—

"Give it me—give it me."

Then with a rapid gesture Gordon unbuckled his
sword from the belt and handed it to the General.

The General held it in both his hands, which were
vibrating like the parts of an engine from the moving
power within, while he said, in the same half-stifled
voice as before—

"You have had the greatest opportunity that ever
came to an English soldier and—thrown it away.  You
have humiliated your father, outraged the love of your
intended wife, and insulted England.  Therefore you are
a traitor!"

Gordon quivered visibly at that word, and seeing
this, the General hurled it at him again.

"A traitor, I say.  A traitor who has consorted with
the enemies of his country."  With that he drew the
sword from its scabbard, broke it across his knee, and
flung the fragments at Gordon's feet.

Helena turned and fled from the room in agony at
the harrowing scene, and the Consul-General, unable to
bear the sight of it, rose and walked to the window, his
face broken up with pain as no one had ever seen it
before.

Then the General, who had been worked up to a
towering rage by his own words and acts, lost himself
utterly, and saying—

"You are unfit to wear the decorations of an English
soldier.  Take them off, take them off!" he laid
hold of Gordon's medals—the Distinguished Service
Order, the South African Medal with its four clasps,
the British Soudan Medal, the Medjidieh, and the
Khedive's star—and tore them from his tunic, ripping
pieces of the cloth away with them, and threw them on
the ground.

Then in a voice like the scream of a wild bird, he
cried—

"Now go!  Go back to your quarters and consider
yourself under arrest.  Or take my advice and be off
altogether.  Quit the army you have dishonoured and
the friends you have disgraced and hide your infamous
conduct in some foreign land.  Leave the room at once!"

Gordon had stood through this gross indignity bolt
upright and without speaking.  His face had become
deadly white and his colourless lower lip had trembled.
At the end, while the old General was taking gusts of
breath, he tried to say something, but his tongue
refused to speak.  At length he staggered rather than
walked to the door, and with his hand on the handle
he turned and said quietly, but in a voice which his
father never forgot—

"General, the time may come when it will be even
more painful to you to remember all this than it has
been to me to bear it."

Then he stumbled out of the room.





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   CHAPTER XXIV

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Out in the hall he had an impulse to turn towards
Helena's room on the right, but through his half-blind
eyes he saw Helena herself on the left, standing by the
open entrance to the garden, with her handkerchief at
her mouth.

"Helena!"

She made a little nervous cry, but stifling it in her
throat she turned hotly round on him.

"You told me that love was above everything," she
said, "and this is how you love me!"

Torn as he was to his heart's core, outraged as he
believed himself to be, he made a feeble effort to excuse
himself.

"I couldn't help it, Helena,—it was impossible for
me to act otherwise."

"Oh, I know!  I know!" she said.  "You were
doing what you thought to be right.  But I am no
match for you.  You have duties that are higher than
your duty to me."

Her tone cut him to the quick, and he tried to speak
but could not.  Like a drowning man he stretched out
his hand to her, but she made no response.

.. _`He stretched out his hand to her, but she made no response`:

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   :alt: He stretched out his hand to her, but she made no response

   He stretched out his hand to her, but she made no response

"It was not to be, I see that now," she said, while
her eyes filled and her bosom heaved.  "I am not
worthy of you.  But I loved you and I thought you
loved me, and I believed you when you told me that
nothing could come between us."

Again he tried to speak, to explain, to protest, but
his tongue would not utter a sound.

"If you had really loved me you would have been
ready to ... even to....  But I was mistaken and I
am punished, and this is how it is to end!"

"Helena, for God's sake—" he began, but he could
bear no more.  He did not see that the girl's love was
fighting with her pride.  The hideous injustice of it all
was working like madness in his brain, and after a
moment he turned to go.

As he walked across the garden the ground under his
feet sounded hollow in his ears like the ground above a
new-covered grave.  When he reached the gate he thought
he heard Helena calling in a pleading, sobbing voice—

"Gordon!"

But when he turned to look back she had disappeared.
Then bareheaded, without helmet or sword, with
every badge of rank and honour gone, he pulled the
gate open and staggered into the square.





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   CHAPTER XXV

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Helena returned to her father's room, and found the
two old men getting ready to go.  In the Pasha's face
there were traces of that impulse to smile which comes
to shallow natures in the presence of another person's
troubles.  But the face of the Consul-General was a
tragic sight.  The square-set jaw hung low, and the eyes
were heavy as with unshed tears.  It was easy to see
that the iron man was deeply moved—that the depths
of his ice-bound soul were utterly broken up.

Only in short, disjointed sentences did he speak at
all.  It was about his enemies—the corrupt, cruel, and
hypocritical upholders of the old dark ways.  They had
bided their time; they had taken their revenge; they
had hit him at last where he could least bear a blow;
they had struck him in the face with the hand of his
only son.

"There is no shame left in them," he said, and then
he turned to Helena as if intending to say some word
of sympathy.  He wanted to tell her that he had hoped
for other things, and would have been happy if they
had come to pass.  But when he saw the girl standing
before him with her red eyes and pale cheeks, he
hesitated, grasped her hand, held it for a moment, and
then walked away without a word.

The Military Secretary accompanied the Consul-General
and the Pasha to their carriages, and so father
and daughter were left together.  The General, labouring
under the most painful of all senses, the sense of
having done an unworthy thing, walked for some
minutes about the room, and talked excitedly, while
Helena sat on the sofa in silence, and, resting her chin
on her hand, looked fixedly before her.

"Well, well, it's all over, thank God!  It couldn't
be helped, either!  It had to be!  Better as it is, too,
than if it had come later on....  How hot I am!  My
throat is like fire.  Get me a drink of water, girl."

"Let me give you your medicine, father.  It's here
on the desk," said Helena.

"No, no!  Water, girl, water!  That's right!
There! ... He has gone, I suppose?  Has he gone?  Yes?
Good thing too!  Hope I'll never see him again!  I
never will—never! ... How my head aches!  No
wonder either!"

"You're ill, father—let me run for the doctor."

"Certainly not.  I'm all right.  Sit down, girl.  Sit
down and don't worry....  You mustn't mind me.
I'm a bit put out—naturally!  It's hard for you, I
know, but don't cry, Helena!"

"I'm not crying, father—you see I'm not."

"That's right!  That's right, dear!  It's hard for
you, I say, but then it isn't easy for me either.  I
liked him.  I did, I confess it.  I really liked him, and
to ... to do that was like cutting off one's own son.
But ... give me another drink of water, Helena ... or
perhaps if you think you ought to run ... no, give
me the medicine and I'll be better presently."

She poured out a dose and he drank it off.

"Now I'll lie down and close my eyes.  I soon get
better when I lie down and close my eyes, you know.
And don't fret, dear.  Think what an escape you've
had!  Merciful heavens!  A traitor!  Think if you
had married a traitor!  A man who had sold himself
to the enemies of England!  I was proud of you when
you showed him that—come what would—you must
stand by your country.  Splendid!  Just what I
expected of you, Helena!  Splendid!"

After a while his excited speech and gusty breathing
softened down to silence and to something like sleep,
and then Helena sat on a stool beside the sofa and
covered her face with her hands.  A hot flush mounted
to her pale cheeks when she remembered that it had
not been for England that she had acted as she had,
but first for her father and next for herself.

Perhaps she ought to have told Gordon why she
could not leave her father.  If she had done so he
might have acted otherwise.  But the real author of
the whole trouble had been the Egyptian.  How she
hated that man!  With all the bitterness of her
tortured heart she hated him!

As for Gordon, traitor or no traitor, he had been
above them all!  Far, far above everybody!  Even the
Consul-General, now she came to think of it, had been
a little man compared with his son.

With her face buried in both hands and the tears at
last trickling through her fingers, she saw everything
over again, and one thing above all—Gordon standing
in silence while her father insulted and degraded him.

The General opened his eyes, and seeing Helena at
his feet he tried to comfort her, but every word he
spoke went like iron into her soul.

"I'm sorry for you, Helena—very sorry!  We must
bear this trouble together, dear.  Only ourselves again
now, you know, just as it was five years ago at home.
Your dark hour, this time, darling, but I'll make it up
to you.  Come, kiss me, Helena," and, drying her
weary eyes, she kissed him.

The afternoon sun was then reddening the alabaster
walls of the mosque outside, and they heard a surging
sound as of a crowd approaching.  A moment later
little black Mosie ran in to say that the new Mahdi
was coming, and almost before the General and Helena
could rise to their feet a tall man in white Oriental
costume entered the room.  He came in slowly, solemnly,
and with head bent, saying—

"Excuse me, sir, if I come without ceremony."

"Ishmael Ameer?" asked the General.

"My name is Ishmael—you are the Commander of
the British forces.  May I speak with you alone?"

The General stood still for a moment, measuring his
man from head to foot, and then said—

"Leave us, Helena."

Helena hesitated, and the General said, "I'm better
now—leave us."

With that she went out reluctantly, turning at the
door to look at her enemy, who stood in his great
height in the middle of the floor and never so much as
glanced in her direction.





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   CHAPTER XXVI

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Both men continued to stand during the interview that
followed—the one in his white robes by the end of the
sofa, resting two tapering fingers upon it, the other in
his General's uniform by the side of the desk, except
when in the heat of his anger he strode with heavy step
and the jingling of spurs across the space between.

"Now, sir, now," said the General.  "I have urgent
work to do, and not much time to give you.  What
is it?"

"I come," said Ishmael, who was outwardly very
calm, though his large black eyes were full of fire and
light, "I come to speak to you about the order to close
El Azhar."

"Then you come to the wrong place," said the
General sharply.  "You should go to the Agency—the
British Agency."

"I have seen the English lord already.  He refuses
to withdraw his order.  Therefore I am here to ask
you—forgive me—I am here to ask you not to obey it."

The General tried to laugh.  "Wonderful!" he said.
"Your Eastern ideas of discipline are wonderful!
Please understand, sir, *I* am here as the instrument of
authority—that and that only."

"An instrument has its responsibility," said Ishmael.
"If there were no instruments to do evil deeds would
evil deeds be done?  It is not your fault, sir, that the
order has been issued, but it *will* be your fault if it is
carried into effect."

"Really!" said the General, again trying to laugh.
"Permit me to tell you, sir, that in this case there will
be no fault in question, neither of mine nor anybody else's.
El Azhar is a hotbed of sedition, and it is high time the
Government cleared it out."

"El Azhar," said Ishmael, "is the heart of the
Moslem faith.  Take their religion away from them and
the Moslems have nothing left.  You are a Christian,
and when your great Master was on earth He fed the
souls of the people first."

"Yes, and He whipped the rascals out of the temple,
and that's what the Government is going to do now—to
drive out the pretentious impostors who are putting
a lying spirit into the mouth of the people and making
it impossible to govern them."

The Egyptian showed no anger.  "I am here only to
plead for the people, sir.  Do not harden your heart
against them.  Do not send armed men among an
unarmed populace.  It will be slaughter."

"Tell them to submit to the Government and there
will be no harm done to any one.  It's their duty, isn't
it?  Whatever the Government may be, isn't it their
duty to submit to it?"

"Yes," said Ishmael.  "We who are Moslems are
taught by the Prophet (blessed be his name!) that even
if a negro slave is appointed to rule over us we ought
to obey him."

"Deuce take it, sir, what do you mean by that?"
said the General.

"But Government is a trust from God," said the
Egyptian, "and at the Day of Resurrection the Most
High will ask you what you have done to His children."

"Damn it, sir, have you come here to preach me a
sermon?"

"I have come to plead with you for justice—the
justice you look for from your Saviour.  'Be merciful
to the weak,' He taught, and it is for the weak I appeal
to you.  He was meek and lowly—will you forget His
precepts?  'Love one another'—will you make strife
between man and man?  He is dead—shall it be said
that His spirit has died out among those who call Him
their Redeemer?"

The General brought his fist heavily down on the desk
as if to command silence.

"Listen here, sir," he said.  "If you imagine for one
moment that this tall talk will have any effect upon
me, let me advise you to drop it.  Being a plain soldier
who has received a plain command, I shall take whatever
military steps are necessary to see it faithfully
carried out, and if the precious leaders of the people,
playing on their credulity and fanaticism, should
instigate rebellion, I shall have the honour—understand me
plainly—I shall have the honour to lodge them in safe
quarters, whosoever they are and whatsoever their
pretensions may be."

The Egyptian's eyes showed at that moment that he
was a man capable of wild frenzy, but he controlled
himself and answered—

"I am not here to defend myself, sir.  You can take
me now if you choose to do so.  But if I cannot plead
with you for the people let me plead with you for
yourself—your family."

The General, who had turned away from Ishmael,
swung round on him.

"My family?"

"He that troubleth his own house, saith the Koran,
shall inherit the wind.  Will you, my brother, allow
your daughter to be separated from the brave man who
loves her?  A woman is tender and sweet; all she
wants is love; and love is a sacred thing, sir.  Your
daughter is your flesh and blood—will you make her
unhappy?  I see a day when you are dead—will it
comfort you in the grave that two who should be
together are apart?"

"They're apart already, so that's over and done
with," said the General.  "But listen to me again, sir.
My girl needs none of your pity.  She has done her
duty as a soldier's daughter, and cut off the traitor
whom you, and men like you, appear to have corrupted.
Look here—and here," he cried, pointing to the broken
sword and the medals which were still lying where he
had flung them on the floor.  "The man has gone—gone
in disgrace and shame.  That's what you've done
for him, if it's any satisfaction to you to know it.  As
for my daughter," he said, raising his voice in his
gathering wrath and striding up to Ishmael with heavy
steps and the jingling of his spurs, "As for my daughter,
Helena, I will ask you to be so good as to keep her
name out of it—do you hear?  Keep her name out of
it, or else——"

.. _`"Look here—and here," he cried, pointing to the broken sword`:

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   :alt: "Look here—and here," he cried, pointing to the broken sword

   "Look here—and here," he cried, pointing to the broken sword

At that moment the men heard the door open and a
woman's light footsteps behind them.  It was Helena
coming into the room.

"Did you call me, father?" she asked.

"No; go back immediately."

She looked doubtfully at the two men, who were
now face to face as if in the act of personal quarrel,
hesitated, seemed about to speak, and then, went out
slowly.

There was silence for a moment after she was gone,
and then Ishmael said—

"Do I understand you to say, sir, that Colonel Lord
has gone in disgrace?"

"Yes, for consorting with the enemies of his country
and refusing to obey the order of his General."

"Lost his place and rank as a soldier?"

"Soon will, and then he will be alone and have you
to thank for it."

The Egyptian drew himself up to his full height and
answered, "You are wrong, sir.  He who has no one
has God, and if that brave man has suffered rather
than do an evil act, will God forget him?  No!"

"God will do as He thinks best without considering
either you or me, sir," said the General.  "But I have
something to do and I will ask you to leave me....  Or
wait one moment!  Lest you should carry away the
impression that because Colonel Lord has refused to
obey his General's order the order will not be
obeyed—wait and see."

He touched the bell and called for his Aide-de-camp.

"Tell Colonel Macdonald to come to me immediately,"
said the General, and when the Aide-de-camp had gone
he turned to his desk for papers.

The Egyptian, who had never moved from his place
by the sofa, now took one step forward and said in a
low, quivering voice—

"General, I have appealed to you on behalf of my
people and on your own behalf, but there is one thing
more."

"What is it?"

"Your country."

The General made an impatient gesture, and the
Egyptian said, "Hear me, I beg, I pray!  Real as life,
real as death, real as wells of water in a desert place,
is their religion to the Muslemeen, and if you lay so
much as your finger upon it your Government will die."

He raised his hand and with one trembling finger
pointed upwards.  "Do you think your swords will
govern them?  What can your swords do to their
souls?  By the Most High God I swear to you that I
have only to speak the word and the rule of England in
Egypt will end."

At that moment Colonel Macdonald, a large man in
khaki, a Highlander, with a ruddy face and a glass in
his left eye, opened the door and stood by it, while the
General, whose own face was scarlet with anger, said—

"So!  So that's how you talked to Colonel Lord, I
presume—how you darkened the poor devil's understanding!
Now see—see what effect your threats have
upon me.  Step forward, Colonel Macdonald."

The Colonel saluted and stepped up to the General,
who repeated to him word for word the order he had
given to Gordon, and then said—

"You will arrest all who resist you, and if any resist
with violence you will *compel* obedience—you understand?"

"Perfectly," said the Colonel, and saluting again he
left the room.

"Now, sir, you can go," said the General to Ishmael,
whereupon the Egyptian, whose face had taken on an
extreme pallor, replied—

"Very well!  I have warned you and you will not
hear me.  But I tell you that at this moment Israfil
has the trumpet to his mouth and is only waiting for
God's order to blow it!  I tell you, too, that I see
you—you—on the Day of Judgment, and there are black
marks on your face."

"Silence, sir!" said the General, bringing his clenched
fist heavily down on the desk.  Then he struck the bell,
and in a choking voice called first for his servant and
afterwards for his Aide-de-camp.  "Robson!  See this
man out of the Citadel!  This damnable, presumptuous
braggart!  Robson!  Where are you?"  But the servant
did not appear and the Aide-de-camp did not answer.

"No matter," said the Egyptian.  "I will go of
myself.  I will try to forget the hard words you have
said of me.  I will not retort them upon you. You are
a Christian, and it was a Christian who said 'Resist not
evil.'  That is a commandment as binding upon us as
upon you.  God's will be done."

With that Ishmael went out as he had entered,
slowly, solemnly, with head bent and eyes on the
ground.





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   CHAPTER XXVII

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The General was now utterly exhausted.  Being left
alone he leaned against the desk, intending to wait
until his breathing had become more regular and he
could reach the sofa.  Standing there, he heard the
surging noise of the crowd that had been waiting
outside for their Arab prophet and were now going away
with him.  He wanted to call Helena, but restrained
himself, remembering how often she had warned him.

"Robson!" he called again but again the Aide-de-camp
did not answer—he must have gone off on some
errand for Colonel Macdonald.

The General took up his medicine and gulped down
a large dose, drinking from the neck of the bottle, and
then sank on to the sofa.

Some minutes passed and he began to feel better.
The sunset was deflected into his face from the alabaster
walls of the mosque outside, but he could not get up to
pull down the blind of his window.  So he closed his
eyes and thought of what had happened.

It seemed to him that Gordon had been to blame for
everything.  But for Gordon's monstrous conduct they
would have been spared all this trouble—Lord Nuneham's
crushing blow, his own humiliating action, so
wickedly forced upon him, and above all, Helena's
sorrow.

In the delirium of his anger against Gordon he felt
as if he would choke.  Thinking of Helena and her
ruined happiness, he wondered why he had let Gordon
off so lightly, and he wanted to follow and punish him.

Then he heard the door open, and thinking Helena
was coming into the room, he rose to his feet and faced
around, when before him, with a haggard face, stood
Gordon himself.





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   CHAPTER XXVIII

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When Gordon Lord, after parting with Helena, had
left the Citadel, his mental anguish had been so intense
as to deaden all his faculties.  His reason was clogged,
his ideas were obscure, he could not see or hear
properly.  Passing the sentry in his lodge by the gate, he
did not notice the man's bewildered stare or acknowledge
his abbreviated salute.  The whole event of the
last hour had overwhelmed him as with a terrible darkness,
and in this darkness he plodded on, until he came
into the streets, dense with people and clamorous with
all the noises of an Eastern city—the clapping of
water-carriers, the crying of lemonade-sellers, the braying of
donkeys, and the ruckling of camels.

"Where am I going?" he asked himself at one
moment, and when he remembered that he was going
back to his quarters—for that was what he had been
ordered to do, that he might be under arrest and in
due course tried by court-martial—he told himself that
he had been tried and condemned and punished already.
At that thought, though clouded and obscure, he bit
his lip until it bled, and muttered, "No, I cannot go
back to quarters—I will not!"

At the next moment a certain helplessness came over
him, and up from the deep place where the strongest
man is as a child, by the pathetic instinct that keeps
the boy alive in him to the last dark day of his life
and in the hour of death, came a desire to go home—to
his mother.  But when he thought of his mother's
pleading voice as she begged him to keep peace with
his father, and then, by some juggling twist of torturing
memory, of the first evening after his return to Egypt,
when he wore his medals and she fingered them on his
breast with a pride that no queen ever had in the
jewels in her crown, he said to himself, "No, I can
never go home again."

His mind was oscillating among these agonising
thoughts when he became aware that he was walking in
the Esbekiah district, the European quarter of Cairo,
where the ooze of the gutter of the city is flung up under
the public eye; and there under the open piazza,
containing a line of drinking places, in an atmosphere
that was thick with tobacco smoke, the reek of alcohol,
the babel of many tongues, the striking of matches,
and the popping of corks, he sat down at a table and
called for a glass of brandy.

The brandy seemed to clear his faculties for a
moment, and his aimless and wandering thoughts began
to concentrate themselves.  Then the scene in the
General's office came back to him—the drawing of his
sword from its scabbard, the breaking of it across the
knee, the throwing of the wretched fragments at his
feet, the ripping away of his medals and the trampling
of them under foot.  The hideous memory of it all, so
illegal, so un-English, made his blood to boil, and when
his beaten brain swung back to the scenes in which
he had won his honours at the risk of his life—Omdurman,
Ladysmith, Pretoria—the rank injustice he had
suffered almost stifled him with rage, and he swore
and struck the table.

All his anger was against the General, not against his
father, of whom he had hardly thought at all, but the
cruellest agony he passed through came at the moment
when his wrath rose against Helena.  As he thought of
her he became dizzy; his brain reeled with a dance of
ideas, in which no picture lasted longer than an instant,
and no emotion would stay.  At one moment he was
seeing her as he saw her first, with her big eyes, black
as a sloe, the joyous smile that was one of her greatest
charms, the arched brow, the silken lashes, the gleam
of celestial fire, the "Don't go yet" that came into her
look, and then his quickening pulse, the thrill that
passed through him, and the mysterious voice that
whispered, "It is She!"

Without knowing it he groaned aloud as he thought
of the ruin all this had come to, and at the next moment
he was in the midst of another memory—a memory of
the future as he had imagined it would be.  They were
to be married soon, and then, realising one of the
dreams of his life, they were to visit America, for his
mother's blood called to him to go there, to see the
great new world—yes, but above all to stand, with
Helena's quivering hand in his, on that rock at Plymouth,
where a handful of fearless men and women had landed
on a bleak and hungry coast, afraid of no fate, for
God was with them, and in two short centuries had
peopled a vast continent and created one of the
mightiest empires of the earth.  Remembering this as
a vanished dream, his wretched soul was on the edge
of a vortex of madness, and he laughed outright with
a laugh that shivered the air around him.

Then he was conscious that somebody was speaking
to him.  It was a young girl in a gaudy silk dress,
with a pasty face, lips painted very red, eyebrows
darkened, a flower in her full bosom which was covered
with transparent lace, and a little satchel swinging on
her wrist.

"Overdoing it a bit, haven't you, dear?" she said
in French, and she smiled at him, a poor sidelong smile,
out of her crushed and crumpled soul.

At the same moment he became aware that three
men at a table behind him were winking at the girl and
joking at his expense.  One of them, a little fat American
Jew with puffy cheeks, chewing the end of a cigar, was
saying—

"Guess a man don't have no use for a hat in a
climate like this—sun so soft, and only ninety-nine in
the shade."

Whereupon an Englishman with a ripped and ragged
mouth and a miscellaneous nose, half pug and half
Roman, answered—

"Been hanging himself up on a nail by the breast
of his coat, too, you bet."

Putting his hand to his hair and looking down at the
torn cloth of his tunic, Gordon realised for the first
time that he was bareheaded, having left his helmet at
the Citadel, and that to the unclean consciousness of
the people about him he was drunk.

At that moment he started up suddenly, and coming
into collision with the American, who was swinging on
the back legs of his chair, he sent him sprawling on
the ground, where he yelled—

"Here, I say, you blazing——"

But the third man at the table, a dragoman in a fez,
whispered—

"Hush!  I know that gentleman.  Leave him alone,
sirs, please.  Let him go."

With heart and soul aflame, Gordon walked away,
intending to take the first cab that came along and then
forgetting to do so.  One wild thought now took
possession of him and expelled all other thoughts.  He
must go back to the Citadel and accuse the General of
his gross injustice.  He must say what he meant to
say when he stood by the door as he was going out.

The General should hear it—he should, and by —— he
must!

The brandy was working in his brain by this time,
and in the blind leading of passion everything that
happened on the way seemed to fortify his resolve.
The streets of the native city were now surging with
people, as a submerged mine surges with the water that
runs through it.  He knew where they were going—they
were going to El Azhar—and when he came
to the great mosque he had to fight his way through a
crowd that was coming from the opposite direction,
with the turbaned head of a very tall man showing
conspicuously in the midst of the multitude, who were
chanting verses from the Koran and crying in chorus,
"La ilaha illa-llah."

At sight of this procession, knowing what it meant—that
the Moslems were going to the doomed place, to
defend it or to die—a thousand confused forms danced
before Gordon's eyes.  His impatience to reach the
Citadel became feverish, and he began to run, but again
at the foot of the hill on which the fortress stands he
was kept back.  This time it was by a troop of cavalry
who were trotting hard towards El Azhar.  He saw
his deputy, Macdonald, with his blotchy face and his
monocle, but he was himself seen by no one, and in the
crush he was almost ridden down.

The Citadel, when he reached it, seemed to be
deserted, even the sentry standing with his back to him
in the sentry-box as he hurried through.  There was
nobody in the square of the mosque or yet at the gate
to the General's garden, which was open, and the door
of the house, when he came to it, was open too.  With
the hot blood in his head, his teeth compressed, and his
nostrils quivering, he burst into the General's office and
came face to face with the old soldier as he was rising
from the sofa.  Thus in the blind swirl of circumstance
the two men met at the moment when the heart of each
was full of hatred for the other.

They were brave men both of them, and never for
one instant had either of them known what it was to
feel afraid.  They were not afraid now, but they had
loved each other once, and up from what deep place in
their souls God alone can say, there came a wave of
feeling that fought with their hate.  The General no
longer wanted to punish Gordon, but only that Gordon
should go away, while Gordon's rage, which was to have
thundered at the General, broke into an agonising cry.

"What are you doing here?  Didn't I order you to
your quarters?  Do you wish me to put you under
close arrest?  Get off!"

"Not yet.  You and I have to settle accounts first.
You have behaved like a tyrant.  A tyrant—that's the
only word for it!  If I was guilty of insubordination,
you were guilty of outrage.  You had a right to arrest
me, and to order that I should be court-martialled, but
what right had you to condemn me before I was tried
and punish me before I was sentenced?  Before or
after, what right had you to break my sword and tear
off my medals?  Degradation is obsolete in the British
Army—what right had you to degrade me?  Before
my father, too, and before Helena—what *right* had you?"

"Leave my house instantly; leave it, leave it!" said
the General, his voice coming thick and hoarse.

"Not till you hear what I've come to tell you," said
Gordon, and then he repeated the threat—who knows on
what inherited cell of his brain imprinted—which his
father had made forty years before.

"I've come to tell you that I'll go back to my
quarters and you shall court-martial me to-morrow *if
you dare*.  Before that, England may know by what is
done to-night that I refused to obey your order because
I'm a soldier, not a murderer.  But if she never knows,"
he cried, in his breaking voice, "and you try me and
condemn me and degrade me even to the ranks, I'll
get up again—do you hear me?—I'll get up again, and
win back all I've lost and more—until I'm your own
master and you'll have to obey *me*."

The General's face became scarlet, and lifting his hand
as if to strike Gordon, he cried, in a choking voice—

"Go, before I do something——"

But Gordon in the delirium of his rage heard nothing
except the sound of his own quivering voice.

"More than that," he said, "I'll win back Helena.
She was mine, and you have separated her from me
and broken her heart as well as my own.  Was that the
act of a father, or of a robber and a tyrant?  But she
will come back to me, and when you are dead and in
your grave we shall be together, because ... Stop
that!  Stop it, I say!"

The General, unable to command himself any longer,
had snatched up the broken sword from the floor and
was making for Gordon as if to smite him.

"Stand away!  You are an old man and I am not
a coward.  Drop that, or by God you——"

But the General, losing himself utterly, flung himself
on Gordon with the broken sword, his voice gone in a
husky growl and his breath coming in hoarse gusts.

The struggle was short but terrible.  Gordon in the
strength of his young manhood first laid hold of the
General by the upper part of the breast to keep him
off, and then, feeling that his hand was wounded, he
gripped at the old man's throat with fingers that clung
like claws.  At the next moment he snatched the sword
from the General, and at the same instant, with a
delirious laugh, he flung the man himself away.

The General fell heavily with a deep groan and a
gurgling cry.  Gordon, with a contemptuous gesture,
threw the broken sword on the floor, and then with
the growl of a wild creature he turned to go.

"Fight me—would you, eh!  Kill me, perhaps!
We've settled accounts at last—haven't we?"

But hearing no answer he turned at the door to look
back and saw the General lying where he had fallen,
outstretched and still.  At that sight the breath seemed
to go out of his body at one gasp.  His head turned
giddy, and the red gleams of the sunset which were
deflected into the room appeared to his half-blind eyes
to cover everything with blood.





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   CHAPTER XXIX

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Gordon stood with his mouth open, the brute sense
struck out of him by the dead silence.  Then he said—

"Get up!  Why don't you get up?" hardly knowing
what he was saying.

He got no answer, and a horrible idea began to take
shape in his mind.  Though so hot a moment ago, he
shivered and his teeth began to chatter.  He looked
around him for a moment in the dazed way of a man
awakening from a nightmare, and then stepped up on
tiptoe to where the General lay.

Raising his head he looked at him, and found it hard
to believe that what he vaguely feared had happened.
There was no sign of injury anywhere.  The eyes were
open, and they looked fixedly at him with so fierce a
stare that they seemed to jump out of their sockets.

"Stunned—that's all—stunned by the fall," he
thought, and seeing a bottle of brandy on the shelf of
the desk he got up and poured a little into the medicine
glass, and then, kneeling and lifting the General's head
again, he forced the liquor through the tightly
compressed lips.

It ran out as it went in, and, with gathering fear
and fumbling fingers, Gordon unbuttoned the General's
frock coat and laid a trembling hand over his heart.
At one moment he thought he felt a beat, but at the
next he knew it was only the throb of his own pulse.

At that the world seemed for a moment to be blotted
out, and when he came to himself again he was holding
the General in his arms and calling to him—

"General!  General!  Speak to me!  For God's sake
speak to me."

In the torrent of his remorse he was kissing the
General's forehead, and crying over his face, but there
was no response.

Then a great trembling shook his whole body, and
dropping the head gently back to the floor he rose to
his feet.  The General was dead, and he knew it.

He had seen death a hundred times before, but only
on the battlefield, amid the boom of cannon, the wail
of shell, the snap of rifles, and the oaths of men, but
now it filled him with terror.

The silence was awful.  A minute ago the General
had been a living man, face to face with him, and the
room had been ringing with the clashing of their voices;
but now this breathless hush, this paralysing stillness,
in which the very air seemed to be dead, for something
was gone as by the stroke of an almighty hand, and
there was nothing left but the motionless figure at his
feet.

"What have I done?" he asked, and when he told
himself that in his headstrong wrath he had killed a
man, his head spun round and round.  He, who had
refused to obey orders because he would not commit
murder was guilty of murder himself!  What devil out
of hell had ordered things so that as the very
consequence of refusing to commit a crime he had become a
criminal?

"God have pity upon me and tell me it is not true,"
he thought.

But he knew it was true, and when he told himself
that the man he had killed was his General his pain
increased tenfold.  The General had loved him and
favoured him, been proud of him and upheld him, and
never, down to the coming of this trouble, had their
friendship been darkened by a cloud.

"Oh, forgive me!  God forgive me!" he thought.

In his blind misery, which hardly saw itself yet for
what it was, the impulse came to him to carry the
burden of his sin, too heavy for himself, to Helena, that
she might help him to bear it; and he had taken some
steps towards the door leading to her room when it
struck him as a blow on the brain that she was the
daughter of the dead man, and he was going to her for
comfort after killing her father.

At that thought he stopped and laid hold of the desk
for support, being so weak that he could scarcely keep
on his legs.  He remembered Helena's love for the
General, how much of her young life she had given to
him, and how the quarrel that had divided himself from
her had come of her determination not to leave her
father as long as he lived.  And now he had killed him!

Beads of sweat started from his forehead, but after
a moment he told himself that if he could not expect
comfort from Helena it was his duty to comfort her—to
break the news to her.  He saw himself doing so.
"Helena, listen, dear; be brave."  "What is it?"  "Your
father—is—is dead."  "Dead?"  "Worse, a
thousandfold worse—he is murdered."  "Murdered?"  "It
was all in the heat of blood—the man didn't know
what he was doing."  "Who was it—who was it?"  "Don't
you see, Helena—it was I."

He had turned again to the door leading to Helena's
room when another blow from an invisible hand seemed
to fall upon him.  He saw Helena's eyes fixed on his
face in the intensity of her hate, and he heard her
voice driving him away.  "Go, let me never see you
again!"  That was more than he could bear, and
staggering to the sofa he sat down.

Some minutes passed.  The red glow in the room
deepened to a dull brown, and at one moment there
was a groan in the gathering gloom.  He heard it and
looked up, but there was nobody there and then he
realised that it was he who had groaned.  At another
moment his mind occupied itself with lesser things.  He
saw that one finger of his left hand was badly wounded,
and he bound it up in his handkerchief.  Then he
looked at himself in a mirror that hung on the wall in
front of the sofa, but he could not see his face
distinctly—eyes, nose, and mouth being blurred.  He did
not attempt to escape.  Never for an instant did it
occur to him to run away.

The sun went down behind the black Pyramids across
the Nile, and after a while the dead silence of the
evening of the Eastern day was broken by the multitudinous
cries of the muezzin, which came up from the city below
like a deep ground-swell on a rugged coast.

After that Gordon knelt again by the General's body,
trying to believe he was not dead.  The eyes were still
open, but all the light had gone out of them, and seeing
their stony stare the thought came to him that the
General's soul was with him in the room.  The stupor
of his senses had suddenly given way to a supernatural
acuteness, and at one moment he imagined he felt the
touch of a hand on his shoulder.

At the next instant he was plainly conscious of a
door opening and closing in the inner part of the house,
and of light and rapid footsteps approaching.  He knew
what had occurred—Helena had been out on the terrace
or in the parade ground and had just come back.

She was now in the next room, breathing hard as if
she had been running.  He could hear the rustling of
her skirt and her soft step as she walked towards the
door of the General's office.

At the next moment there came a knock, but Gordon,
held his breath and made no answer.

Then "Father!" in a tremulous voice, full of fear,
as if Helena knew what had happened.

Still Gordon made no reply, and the frightened voice
came again.

"Are you alone now?  May I come in?"

Then Gordon felt an impulse to throw the door open
and confess everything, saying, "I did it, Helena, but
I didn't intend to do it.  He threw himself upon me,
and I flung him off and he fell, and that is the truth,
as God is my witness."

But he could not do this, because he was afraid.  He
who had never before known fear, he who had stood in
the firing line when hordes of savage men had galloped
down with fanatical cries—he was trembling now at the
thought of meeting a woman's face.

So, treading softly, he stole out of the room by the
outer door, the door leading to the gate, and as he
closed it behind him he felt that the door of hope also
was now for ever closed between Helena and him.

But going through the garden he had to pass the
arbour, and at sight of that loved spot a wave of tender
memories swept over him, and in pity of Helena's position
he wanted to return.  She would be in her father's
room by this time, standing over his dead body and
alone in her great grief.

"I will go back," he thought.  "She has no one
else.  She may curse me, but I cannot leave her alone.
I will go back—I will—I must!"

That was what his soul was saying to itself, but at
the same time his body was carrying him away—through
the open gate and across the deserted square,
swiftly, stealthily, like a criminal leaving the scene of
his crime.

The day was now gone, the twilight was deep, and as
he passed under the outer port of the Citadel in the
dead silence of the unquickened air, a voice like that
of an accusing angel, telling of judgment to come, fell
upon his ear.  It was the voice of the last of the muezzin
on the minaret of the Mohammed Mosque calling to
evening prayer—"God is Most Great!  God is Most Great!"

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   Music fragment

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   END OF FIRST BOOK

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   SECOND BOOK

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   THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD

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   CHAPTER I

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When Helena had left the General and Ishmael Ameer
together, the signs she knew so well of illness in her
father's face suggested that she should run at once for
the Medical Officer.  One moment she stood in the
room adjoining the General's office, listening to the
muffled rumble that came from the other side of the
wall, the short snap of her father's impatient voice and
the deep boom of the Egyptian's, and then she hurried
into the outer passages to pin on her hat.  There she
met the General's Aide-de-camp, who, seeing her
excitement, asked if there was anything he could do for her,
but she answered "No," and then—

"Yes, I think you might go over to the Colonel"
(meaning the Colonel commanding the Citadel) "and
tell him this man is here with a crowd of his followers."

"He must know it already, but I'll go with pleasure,"
said the young Lieutenant.  At the next moment there
were three hasty beats on the General's bell, followed
by a summons from the General's soldier servant, but
the Aide-de-camp had disappeared.

Helena went out by the back of the house, and seeing
her cook and the black boy as she passed the kitchen
quarters an impulse came to her to send somebody else
on her errand, lest anything should happen in her
absence; but telling herself that nobody but herself
and the Doctor must know the secret of her father's
condition, she hurried along.

Her way was through the unoccupied courts of the
old palace, down a flight of long steps, through an old
gateway whereof the iron-clamped door always stood
open, across a disused drawbridge, and so on to the
open parade-ground.  The Army Surgeon's quarters
were on the farther side of it, and never before had it
seemed so broad.

When she reached her destination the Surgeon was
out on his evening round of the hospital, so she wrote
a hurried note asking him to come to the General's
house immediately, sent his assistant in search of him,
and then turned back.

Returning hurriedly by the "married quarters," she
was detained for some moments by a soldier's wife, a
young thing, almost a child, who stood at the door of
her house with a red woollen shawl about her shoulders,
a baby in long clothes in her arms, and a look of radiant
happiness in her round face.

"Ye've not seen 'im yet, have ye, Miss?" said the
little mother, holding out her baby to be admired.
"Only six weeks old and 'e weighs ten pounds.
Colonel says as 'ow 'e's a credit to the reg'ment, and
I'm agoin' to shorten 'im soon.  To-morrow I'm 'avin'
'im photoed to send to mother.  She lives in Clerkenwell,
Miss, and she ain't likely to show 'is photo to
nobody in our court.  Oh no!"

Helena did her best to play up to the pride of the
little Cockney mother, and was turning to go when the
girl said—

"But my Harry tells me as how you're to be married
yourself soon, so I wish ye joy, and many of 'em."

"Good-bye, Mrs. Dimmock," said Helena, but the
young thing was not yet done.  With a look of wondrous
wisdom she said—

"They're a deal of trouble, Miss, but there ain't no
love in the house without 'em.  As mother says, they
keeps the pot a-boilin'," and she was ducking down her
head to kiss the child as Helena hurried away.

In the bright light of the young mother's life and
the breadth of shadow that lay upon her own, Helena
thought of Gordon and her anger rose against him
again, but at the next moment she saw him in her
mind's eye as she had seen him last, going out of the
garden, a broken, bankrupt man, and then her eyes
filled and it was as much as she could do to see her way.

In the quickening flow of her emotion this riot in her
heart between anger with Gordon and with herself only
led to deeper hatred of the Egyptian, and even the
memory of his dignity and largeness in the single
moment in which she had looked upon him made her
wrath the more intense.

A vague fear, an indefinite forewarning, hardly able
yet to assume a shape, was beginning to take possession
of her.  She recalled the scene she had left behind her
in the General's office, the two men face to face, as if
in the act of personal quarrel, and told herself that if
anything happened to her father as the result of the
excitement caused by the meeting, the Egyptian would
be the cause of it.

In her impatience to be back she began to run.  How
broad the parade ground was!  The air, too, was so
close and lifeless.  The sun had nearly set, the arms of
night were closing round the day, but still the sky was
a hot, dark red like the inside of a transparent shell
that had a smouldering fire outside of it.

At one moment she heard hoarse and jarring voices
that seemed to come from the square of the mosque in
front of the house.  Perhaps the Egyptian and his
people were going off with their usual monotonous
chanting of "Allah!  Allah!"  She was glad to
reach the cool shade and silence of the empty courts of
the old palace, but coming to the gateway she found it
closed.

A footstep was dying away within, so she knocked
and called, and after a moment an old soldier, a kind of
caretaker of the Citadel, opened the gate to her.

"Beg pardon, Miss!  Lieutenant Robson told me to
shut up everything immediately," he said, but Helena
did not wait for further explanation.

There was nobody in sight when she passed the
kitchen quarters, and when she entered the house a
chill silence seemed to strike to the very centre of her
life.

Then followed one of those mystic impulses of the
human heart which nobody can understand.  In her
creeping fear of what might have happened during her
absence she was at first afraid to go into her father's
room.  If she had done so, there and then, and without
an instant's hesitation, she must have found Gordon
kneeling over her father's body.  But in dread of
learning the truth she tried to keep back the moment of
certainty, and in a blind agony of doubt she stood and
tried to think.

The voices of the men were no longer to be heard
through the wall, and the deep rumble of the crowd
outside had died away, therefore the Egyptian must
have gone.  Had her father gone too?  She remembered
that he was in uniform, and took a step back into
the hall to see if his cap hung on the hat-rail.  The cap
was there.  Had he gone into his bedroom?  She
crossed to the door.  The door was open and the room
was empty.

Hardly able to analyse her unlinked ideas, but with
a gathering dread of the unknown, she found herself
stepping on tiptoe towards the General's office.  Then
she thought she heard a faint cry within, a feeble,
interrupted moan, and in an unsteady voice she called.

There was no answer.  She called again, and still
there was no reply.  Then girding up her heart to
conquer a vague fear, which hardly knew itself yet
for what it was, she opened the door.

The room was almost dark.  She took one step into
the gloom, breathing rapidly, then stopped and said—

"Father!  Are you here, father?"

There was no sound, so she took another step into
the room, thinking to switch on the light over the desk
and at the same time to reach the sofa.  As she did so
she stumbled against something, and her breath was
struck out of her in an instant.

She stooped in the darkness to feel what it was that
lay at her feet, and at the next moment she needed no
light to tell her.

"Father!  Father!" she cried, and in the dead
silence that followed, the voice of the muezzin came
from without.

She was lying prostrate over her father's body when
the door was burst open as by a gust of wind and the
Army Surgeon came into the room.  Without a word
he knelt and laid his hand over the heart of the fallen
man, while Helena, who rose at the same instant,
watched him in the awful thraldom of fear.

Then young Lieutenant Robson came in hurriedly,
switching on the light and saying something, but the
Surgeon silenced him with the lifting of his left hand.
There was one of those blank moments in which time
itself seems to stand still, while the Surgeon was on
his knees and Helena stood aside with whitening lips
and with eyes that had a wild stare in them.  Then,
lifting his face, which was stamped with the heaviness of
horror and told before he spoke what he was going to
say, the Surgeon rose, and turning to Helena, said in a
nervous voice—

"I regret—I deeply regret to tell you..."

"Gone?" asked Helena, and the Surgeon bowed his head.

She did not cry or utter a sound.  Only the trembling
of her white lips showed what she felt, but all the cheer
of life had died out of her face, and in a moment it had
become hard and stony.

There was an instant of silence, and then the Surgeon
and the young Lieutenant, casting sidelong looks at
Helena, began to whisper together.  At sight of her
tearless eyes a certain fear had fallen on them which
the presence of death could not create.

"Take her away," whispered the Surgeon, and then
the Lieutenant, whose throat was hard and whose eyes
were dim, approached her and said with the sadness of
sympathy—

"May I help you to your room, please?"

Helena shook her head and stood immovable a
moment longer, and then, with a firm step, she walked
away.





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   CHAPTER II

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All the moral cowardice that had paralysed Gordon
Lord was gone the moment he left the Citadel, and as
soon as he reached the streets of the city the power of
life came back to him.  There, in tumultuous swarms,
the native people were swinging along in one direction,
uttering the monotonous cries of the Moslems when
they are deeply moved.  Into this maelstrom of emotion
Gordon was swept before he knew it, and hardly
conscious of where he was going he followed where he
was led.

He felt, without knowing why, the lust of violence
which comes to the soldier in battle who wants to run
away until the moment when the first shot has been
fired, and then—all fear and moral conscience gone in
an instant—forges his path with shouts and oaths to
where danger is greatest and death most sure.

In the thickening darkness he saw a great glow coming
from a spot in front of him, as of many lanterns and
torches burning together.  Towards this spot he pushed
his way, calling to the people in their own tongue to
let him pass, or sweeping them aside and ploughing
through.  In his delirious excitement his strength
seemed to be supernatural, and men were flung away
as if they had been children.

At length he reached a place where a narrow lane,
opening on to a square, was blocked by a line of soldiers,
who were coming and going with the glare of the
torch-light on their faces.  Here the monotonous noises of
the crowd behind him were pierced by sharp cries,
mingled with screams.  Perspiration was pouring down
Gordon's neck by this time, and he stopped to see where
he was.  He was at the big gate of El Azhar.

On leaving the Citadel, Colonel Macdonald had taken
two squadrons with him, telling the Lieutenant-Colonel
commanding the regiment to follow with the rest.

"Half of these will be enough for this job, and we'll
clear the rascals out like rats," he said.

The Governor of the city, a small man in European
dress, acting on the order of the Minister of the Interior
as Regent in the absence of the Khedive, had met him
at the University.  They found the gate shut and
barred against them, and when the Governor called for
it to be opened there was no reply.  Then the Colonel
said—

"Omar Bey, have I your permission to force an
entrance?"

Whereupon the Governor, in whom the wine of life
was chiefly vinegar, answered promptly—

"Colonel, I request you to do so."

A few minutes afterwards a stout wooden beam was
brought up from somewhere, and six or eight of the
soldiers laid hold of it and began to use it on the closed
gate as a battering ram.  The gate was a strong one
clamped with iron, but it was being crunched by the
blows that fell on it when some of the students within
clambered on to the top of the walls and hurled down
stones on the heads of the soldiers.

One of them was a young boy of not more than
fourteen years, and while others protected themselves
by hiding behind the coping stones, he exposed his
whole body to the troops by standing on the very crest
of the parapet.  The windows of the houses around
were full of faces, and from one that was nearly opposite
to the gate came the shrill cry of a woman, calling on
the boy to go back.  But in the clamour of noises he
heard nothing, or in the fire of his spirit he did not
heed, for he continued to hurl down everything that
came to his hand, until Colonel Macdonald commanded
the troop to dismount with rifles and said—

"Stop that young devil up there!"

At the next moment there was the crack of a dozen
rifles, and the boy on the parapet swayed aside,
lurched forward, and fell into the street.  The Colonel
was giving orders that he should be taken up and
carried away when the woman's cry was heard again,
this time in a frenzied shriek, and at the next instant
the soldiers had to make way for the mightiest thing on
earth, an outraged mother in the presence of her dead.

The woman, who had torn the black veil from her
face, lifted the boy's head to her breast and cried,
"My God!  My good God!  My boy!  Ali!  Ali!"  But
just then the gate gave way with a crash, and the
Colonel ordered one of the squadrons to ride into the
courtyard of the mosque, where five thousand of the
students and their professors could be seen squirming
in dense masses like ants on an upturned ant-hill.

The soldiers were forcing their horses through the
crowds and beating with the flat of their swords when
two or three shots were fired from within, and it became
certain that some of the students were using firearms.
At that the bulldog in the British Colonel got the
better of the man, and he wanted to shout a command
to his men to use the edge of their weapons and clear
the place at any cost, but the shrill cry of the mother
over her dead boy drowned his thick voice.

"He is dead!  They have killed him!  My only
child!  His father died last week.  God took him, and
now I have nobody.  Ali, come back to me!  Ali!  Ali!"

"Take that yelping b—— away!" shouted the Colonel,
ripping out an oath of impatience, and that was the
moment when Gordon Lord came up.

What he did then he could never afterwards remember,
but what others saw was that with the spring
of a tiger he leapt up to Macdonald, laid hold of him by
the collar of his khaki jacket, dragged him from the
saddle, flung him headlong on the ground, and stamped
on him as if he had been a poisonous snake.

In another moment there would have been no more
Macdonald, but just then, while the soldiers, recognising
their First Staff Officer, stood dismayed, not knowing
what it was their duty to do, there came over the
sibilant hiss of the crowd the loud clangour of the hoofs
of galloping horses, and the native people laid hold of
Gordon and carried him away.

His great strength was now gone, and he felt himself
being dragged out of the hard glare of the light into
the shadow of a side street, where he was thrust into a
carriage and held down in it by somebody who was
saying—

"Lie still, my brother!  Lie still!  Lie still!"

For one instant longer he heard deafening shouts
through the carriage glass, over the rumble of the
moving wheels, and then a blank darkness fell on him
for a time and he knew no more.

When he recovered consciousness his mind had swung
back, with no memory of anything between, to the
moment when he was leaving the General's house, and
he was saying to himself again, "I must go back.  She
may curse me, but I cannot leave her alone.  I
cannot—I will not."

Then he was aware of a voice—it was the quavering
voice of an old man, and seemed to come out of a
toothless mouth—saying—

"Be careful, Michael!  His poor hand is injured.
We must send for the surgeon."

He opened his eyes and saw that he was being carried
through a quiet courtyard where he could hear the
footsteps of the men who bore him and see by the
light of a smoking lantern the façade of a church.  Then
he heard the same quavering voice say—

"Take him up to the salamlik, my brother," and
then there was a jerk and a jolt and he lost
consciousness again.

He was lying on a bed in a dimly lighted room when
memory returned and the events of the day unrolled
themselves before him.  He made an effort to raise
himself on his elbows, but in his weakness he fell back,
and after a while he dropped into a delirious sleep.  In
this sleep he saw first his mother and then Helena, and
then Helena and again his mother—everything and
everybody else being quite blotted out.





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   CHAPTER III

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Soon after sunset Lady Nuneham had taken her last
dose of medicine, and had got into bed, when the
Consul-General came into her room.  He had the worn
and jaded look by which she knew that the day had
gone heavily with him, and she waited for him to tell
her how and why.  With a face full of the majesty of
suffering he told her what had happened, describing the
scene in the General's office, and all the circumstances
whereby matters had been brought to such a tragic pass.

"It was pitiful," he said.  "The General went too
far—much too far—and the sight of Gordon's white face
and trembling lips was more than I could bear."

His voice thickened as he spoke, and it seemed to the
mother at that moment as if the pride of the father in
his son, which he had hidden so many years in the
sealed chamber of his iron soul, had only come up at
length that she might see it die.

"It's all over with him now, I suppose, and we must
make the best of it.  He promised so well, though!
Always did—ever since he was a boy.  If one's children
could only remain children!  The pity of it!  Good-night!
Good-night, Janet!"

She had listened to him without speaking and without
a tear coming into her eyes, and she answered his
"Good-night" in a low but steady voice.  Soon afterwards the
gong sounded in the hall, and, as she lay in her bed, she
knew that he would be dining alone—one of the great
men of the world, and one of the loneliest.

Meantime Fatimah, tidying up the room for the night
and sniffling audibly, was talking as much to herself as
to her mistress.  At one moment she was excusing the
Consul-General, at the next she was excusing Gordon.
Lady Nuneham let her talk on, and gave no sign until
darkness fell and the moment came for the Egyptian
woman also to get into bed.  Then the old lady said—

"Open the door of this room, Fatimah," pointing to
a room on her right.

Fatimah did so, without saying a word, and then she
lay down, blowing her nose demonstratively as if trying
to drown other noises.

From her place on the pillow the old lady could now
see into the adjoining chamber, and through its two
windows on to the Nile.  A bright moon had risen, and
she lay a long time looking into the silvery night.

Somewhere in the dead waste of early morning the
Egyptian woman thought she heard somebody calling
her, and, rising in alarm, she found that her mistress
had left her bed and was speaking in a toneless voice
in the next room.

"Fatimah!  Are you awake?  Isn't the boy very
restless to-night?  He throws his arms out in his sleep
and uncovers little Hafiz too."

She was standing in her nightdress and lace nightcap,
with the moon shining in her face, by the side of one of
the two beds the room contained, tugging at its eiderdown
coverlet.  Her eyes had the look of eyes that did
not see, but she stood up firmly, and seemed to have
become younger and stronger—so swiftly had her spirit
carried her back in sleep to the woman she used to be.

"Oh my heart, no," said Fatimah.  "Gordon hasn't
slept in this room for nearly twenty years—nor Hafiz
neither."

At the sound of Fatimah's husky voice and the touch
of her moist fingers the old lady awoke.

"Oh yes, of course," she said, and after a moment,
in a sadder tone, "Yes, yes."

"Come, my heart, come," said Fatimah, and taking
her cold and nerveless hand, she led her, a weak
old woman once more, back to her bed, for the years
had rolled up like a tidal wave and the spell of her
sweet dream was broken.

On a little table by the side of her bed stood a portrait
of Helena in a silver frame, and she took it up and
looked at it for a moment, and then the light which
Fatimah had switched on was put out again.  After a
little while there was a sigh in the darkness, and after
a little while longer a soft, tremulous—

"Ah, well!"





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   CHAPTER IV

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Helena was still in her room when the Consul-General,
who had been telephoned for, held an inquiry into the
circumstances of the General's death.  She was sitting
with her hands clasped in her lap and her eyes looking
fixedly before her, hardly listening, hardly hearing,
while the black boy darted in and out with broken and
breathless messages which contained the substance of
what was said.

The household servants could say nothing except
that, following in the wake of the new prophet when he
left the Citadel, they had left the house by the side gate
of the garden without being aware of anything that
had happened in the General's office.  The Surgeon
testified to the finding of the General's body, and the
Aide-de-camp explained that the last time he saw his
chief alive was when he was ordered to call Colonel
Macdonald.

"Who was with him at that moment?" asked the
Consul-General.

"The Egyptian, Ishmael Ameer."

"Was there anything noticeable in their appearance
and demeanour?"

"The General looked hot and indignant."

"Did you think there had been angry words between them?"

"I certainly thought so, my lord."

Other witnesses there were, such as the soldier servant
at the door, who made a lame excuse for leaving his
post for a few minutes while the Egyptian was in the
General's office, and the sentry at the gate of the
Citadel, who said no one had come in after Colonel
Macdonald and the cavalry had passed out.  Then,
some question of calling Helena herself was promptly
quashed by the Consul-General, and the inquiry closed.

Hardly had the black boy delivered the last of his
messages when there was a timid knock at Helena's
door, and the Army Surgeon came into the room.  He
was a small man with an uneasy manner: married, and
with a family of grown-up girls who were understood
to be a cause of anxiety to him.

"I regret—I deeply regret to tell you, Miss Graves,
that your father's death has been due to heart-failure,
the result of undue excitement.  You will do me the
justice—I'm sure you will do me the justice to remember
that I repeatedly warned the General of the dangers of
over-exciting himself, but unfortunately his temperament
was such——"

The Consul-General's deep voice in the adjoining
room seemed to interrupt the Surgeon, and making a
visible call on his resolution he came closer to Helena
and said—

"I have not mentioned my previous knowledge of
organic trouble.  Lord Nuneham asked some searching
questions, but the promise I made to your father——"

Again the Consul General's voice interrupted him,
and with a flicker of fear on his face, he said—

"Now that things have turned out so unhappily it
might perhaps be awkward for me if ... In short, my
dear Miss Graves, I think I may rely on you not to
... Oh, thank you, thank you!" he said, as Helena,
understanding his anxiety, bowed her head.

"I thought it would relieve you to receive my assurance
that death was due to natural causes only—purely
natural.  It's true I thought for a moment that perhaps
there had also been violence——"

"Violence?" said Helena.

"Don't let me alarm you.  It was only a passing
impression, and I should be sorry, very sorry——"

But just at that moment, when a new thought was
passing through the stormy night of Helena's mind like
a shaft of deadly lightning, the Chaplain of the Forces
came into the room, and the Surgeon left it.

The Chaplain was a well-nurtured person, who talked
comfort out of a full stomach with the expansiveness
which sometimes comes to clergy who live long amongst
soldiers.

"I have come to say, my dear young lady, that I
place myself entirely at your service.  With your
permission I will charge myself with all the sad and
necessary duties.  So sudden!  So unexpected!  How true
that in the midst of life we are in death!"

There was more coin from the same mint, and then,
the shaft of deadly lightning as before.

"It is perhaps the saddest fact of death in this
Eastern climate that burial follows so closely after it.
As there seems to be no sufficient reason to believe that
the General's death has been due to any but natural
causes, it will probably be to-morrow—I say it will
probably——"

"Sufficient!" said Helena, and, with a new poison at
her heart, she hurried away to her father's room.

She found the General where they had placed him, on
his own bed and in his uniform.  His eyes were now
closed, his features were composed, and everything
about him was suggestive of a peaceful end.

While she was standing in the gloomy, echoless
chamber, the Consul-General came in and stood beside
her.  Though he faintly simulated his natural
composure he was deeply shaken.  For a moment he looked
down at his dead friend in silence, while his eyelids
blinked and his lips trembled.  Then he took Helena's
hand, and drawing her aside, he said—

"This is a blow to all of us, my child, but to you
it is a great and terrible one."

She did not reply, but stood with her dry eyes looking
straight before her.

"I have made strict inquiry, and I am satisfied—entirely
satisfied—that your father died by the visitation
of God."

Still she did not speak, and after a moment he spoke
again.

"It is true that the man Ishmael Ameer was the last
to be with him, but what happened at their interview
it would be useless to ask—dangerous, perhaps, in the
present state of public feeling."

She listened with complete self-possession and strong
hold of her feelings, though her bosom heaved and her
breathing was audible.

"So let us put away painful thoughts, Helena.  After
all, your father's end was an enviable one, and harder
for us than for him, you know."

He looked steadily for a moment at her averted face
and then said, in a husky voice—

"I'm sorry Lady Nuneham is so much of an invalid
that she cannot come to see you.  This is the moment
when a mother——"

He stopped without finishing what he had intended
to say, and then he said—

"I'm still more sorry that one who——"

Again he stopped, and then in a low, smothered,
scarcely audible voice, he said hurriedly—

"But that is all over now.  Good-night, my child!
God help you!"

Helena was standing where the Consul-General had
left her, fighting hard against a fearful thought which
had only vaguely taken shape in her mind, when the
black boy came back with his mouth full of news.

The bell of the telephone had rung furiously for the
English lord, and he had gone away hurriedly, his horses
galloping through the gate; there had been a riot at
El Azhar; a boy had been shot; a hundred students
had been killed with swords; the cavalry were clearing
the streets, and the people were trooping in thousands
into the great mosque of the Sultan Hakim, where the
new prophet was preaching to them.

Helena listened to the terrible story as to some
far-off event which in the tempest of her own trouble did
not concern her, and then she sent the boy away.
Gordon had been right, plainly right, from the first, but
what did it matter now?

Some hours passed, and again and again the black
boy came back to the room with fresh news and
messages, first, to say that her supper was served, next,
that her bedroom was ready, and finally, with shame-faced
looks and a face blubbered over with tears, to
explain the cause of his absence from the house when
the tragic incident happened.  He had followed the
crowd out of the Citadel, and only when he found himself
at the foot of the hill had he thought, "Who is to
take care of lady while Mosie is away?"  Then he had
run back fast, very fast, but he was too late, it was
all over.

"Will lady ever forgive Mosie?  Will lady like Mosie
any more?"

Helena comforted the little twisted and tortured soul
with some words of cheer, and then sent him to bed.
But with a sad longing in his big eyes, and the look of
a dumb creature that wanted to lick her hand, he came
back to say he could not sleep in his own room because
death was in the house, and might he sit on the floor
where lady was and keep her company.

Touched by the tender bit of human nature that was
tearing the big, little soul of the black boy who
worshipped her, Helena went back to her own bedroom,
and then a grin of delight passed over Mosie's ugly face
and he said—

"Never mind!  It's no thing!  Lady will forget all
about it to-morrow.  Now lady will lie down and
sleep."

Helena put out the light in her room, and sitting by
the open window she looked long into the moonlight
that lay over the city.  At one moment she heard the
clatter of horses' hoofs—Macdonald's cavalry were
returning to the Citadel after their efforts in the interests
of peace and order.  At intervals she heard the ghafirs
(watchmen) who cried *Wahhed!* (God is One) in the
silent streets below.  Constantly she looked across to
the barracks that stood at the edge of the glistening
Nile, and at every moment the cruel core in her heart
grew yet more hard.

Why had not Gordon come to her?  He must know
of her father's death by this time—why was he not
there?  Why had he not written to her at all events?
It was true they had parted in anger, but what of that?
He had never loved her or he would be with her now.
She had done well to drive him away from her, and,
thank God, she would never see him again!

The moon died out, a cold breath passed through the
air, the city seemed to yawn in its sleep, the dawn came
with its pale, pink streamers and with its joyous birds—the
happy, heart-breaking children of the air—twittering
in the eaves, and then the pride and hatred
of her wounded heart broke down utterly.

She wanted Gordon now as she had never wanted him
before.  She wanted the sound of his voice, she wanted
the touch of his hand, she wanted to lay her head on
his breast like a child, and hear him tell her that it
would all be well.

She found a hundred excuses for him in as many
minutes.  He was a prisoner—how could he leave his
quarters?  They might be keeping him under close
arrest—how could he get away?  Perhaps they had
never even told him of her father's death—how could
he write to her about it?

In the fever of her fresh thought, she decided that she
herself would tell him, and in the tumult of her
confused brain she never doubted that he would come to
her.  Regulations?  They would count for nothing.
He was brave, he was fearless, he would find a way.
Already she could see him flinging open the door of her
room and she could feel herself flying into his arms.

Thus with a yearning and choking heart, in the vacant
stillness of the early dawn, she sat down to write to
Gordon.  This is what she wrote:—

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"*Six o'clock, Sunday morning*.

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"DEAREST,—The greatest sorrow I have ever
known—God, our good God, has taken my beloved father.

"He loved you and was always so proud of you.  He
thought there was nobody like you.  I try to think how
it all happened at the end, and I cannot.

"Forgive me for what I said yesterday.  It seems
you were right about everything, and everybody else
was wrong.  But that doesn't matter now—nothing
matters.

"I want you.  I have nobody else.  I am quite alone.
God help me!  Come to me soon——"

.. vspace:: 2

Unconsciously she was speaking the words aloud as
she wrote them and sobbing as she spoke.  Suddenly
she became aware of another voice in the adjoining
room.  She thought it might be Gordon's voice, and
catching her breath she rose to listen.  Then in a
muffled, broken, tear-laden tone, these words came to
her through the wall—

"O Allah, most High, most Merciful, make lady
sleep.  Make lady sleep, O Allah, most High, most
Merciful!"

Her black boy had been lying all night like a dog on
the mat behind her door.





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   CHAPTER V

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Before Gordon opened his eyes that morning he heard
the tinkling of cymbals and the sweet sound of the
voices of boys singing in a choir, and he felt for a
moment as if he were carried back to his school at
Eton, where the morning dawned on green fields to the
joyous carolling of birds.

Then he looked and saw that he was lying in a little
yellow-curtained room which was full of the gentle rays
of the early sun, and opened on to a garden in a quiet
courtyard, with one date tree in the middle and the
façade of a Christian church at the opposite side.  In
the disarray of his senses he could not at first remember
what had happened to him, and he said aloud—

"Where am I?"

Then a cheery voice by his side said, "Ah, you are
awake?" and an elderly man with a good, simple,
homely face looked down at him and smiled.

"What place is this?" asked Gordon.

"This?" said the good man.  "This is the house of
the Coptic Patriarch.  And I am Michael, the Patriarch's
servant.  He brought you home in his carriage last
night.  Out of the riots in the streets, you know.  But
I must tell him you are awake.  'Tell me the moment
he opens his eyes, Michael,' he said.  No time to lose,
though.  Listen!  They're at matins.  He'll be going
into church soon.  Lie still!  I'll be back presently."

Then Gordon remembered everything.  The events of
the night before rose before him in a moment, and he
drank of memory's very dregs.  He had closed his eyes
again with a groan when he heard shuffling footsteps
coming into the room, and a husky, kindly voice,
interrupted by gusty breathing, saying cheerfully—

"God be praised!  Michael tells me you are awake
and well."

The Coptic Patriarch was a little man in a black
turban and a kind of black cassock, very old, nearly
ninety years of age, and with a saintly face in which
the fires of life had kindled no evil passions.

"Don't speak yet, my son.  Don't exhaust yourself.
The surgeon said you were to have rest—rest and sleep
above all things.  He came last night to dress your
poor hand.  It was wounded in the cruel fight at El
Azhar.  I was passing at the moment and the people
put you into my carriage.  'Save him for the love of
God,' they said.  'He is our brother and he will be
taken.'  So I brought you home, seeing you were hurt
and not knowing what else to do with you.  But now I
am glad and thankful, having read the newspapers this
morning and learned that you were in great peril....
No, no, my son, lie still."

Gordon had made an effort to raise himself on his
elbow, but resting his weight on his left hand and
finding it was closely bandaged and gave him pain, he was
easily pushed back to his pillow.

"Lie still until the surgeon comes.  Michael has gone
for him.  He will be here immediately.  A good man—make
yourself sure about that.  He will be secret.
He will say nothing."

Then there came through the open window the sound
of footsteps on the gravel path of the garden, and the
old Patriarch, leaning over Gordon, said in the same
husky, kindly whisper—

"They are coming, and I must go into church.  But
don't be afraid.  You did bravely and nobly, and no
harm shall come to you while you are here."

Hardly knowing what to understand, but choking
with confusion and shame, Gordon heard the old man's
shuffling step going out of the room, and, a moment
afterwards, the firm tread of the surgeon coming into it.
The surgeon, who was a middle-aged man, a Copt,
with a bright face and a hearty manner, took Gordon's
right arm to feel his pulse, and said—

"Better!  Much better!  Last night the condition
was so serious that I found it necessary to inject
morphia.  There was the hand too, you know.  The
third finger had been badly hurt, and I was compelled
to take the injured part away.  This morning, however——"

But Gordon's impatience could restrain itself no
longer.  "Doctor," he said, clutching at the surgeon's
sleeve, "close the door and tell me what has happened."

The surgeon repeated the reports which appeared in
the English newspapers—about the clearing out of El
Azhar, the shooting of the boy, the killing of a hundred
students by the sword, and the imprisonment of nearly
four hundred others.  And then, thinking that the drug
he had administered was still beclouding his patient's
brain, he spoke of Gordon's own share in the bad work
of the night before—how he had refused to obey
instructions and been ordered under open arrest to return
to his own quarters; how he had defied authority, and,
making his way to the University, had perpetrated a
violent personal attack on the officer commanding the
troops there.

"I know nothing about it, you know, but what
Colonel Macdonald has communicated to the press—contrary,
I should think, to Army Regulations and all
sense of honour and decency—but he says you have
been guilty of a threefold offence; first, mutiny, next
desertion, and finally gross assault on an officer while
in the execution of his duty."

Gordon had hardly listened to this part of the
surgeon's story, but his face betrayed a feverish
eagerness when the surgeon said—

"There is something else, but I hardly know whether
I ought to tell you."

"What is it?" asked Gordon, though he knew full
well what the surgeon was about to say.

"It occurred last night, too, but the Consul-General
has managed to keep it out of the morning newspapers.
I feel I ought to tell you, though, and if I could be sure
you would take it calmly——"

"Tell me."

"General Graves is dead.  He was found dead on the
floor of his office.  His daughter found him."

Gordon covered his face and asked, in a voice which
he tried in vain to render natural, "What do they say
he died of?"

"God!" said the surgeon.  "That's what the
Mohammedans call it, and I don't know that science
can find a better name."

Suffocating with the sickness of fear, Gordon said,
"What about his daughter?"

"Bearing herself with a strange stoicism, they say.
Not a tear on her face, they tell me.  But if I know
anything of human nature she is suffering all the more
for that, poor girl!"

Gordon threw off the counterpane and rose in bed.  "I'm
better now," he said.  "Let me get up.  I must go out."

"Impossible!" said the surgeon.  "You are far too
weak to go into the streets.  Besides, you would never
reach your destination.  Macdonald would take care of
that.  Haven't I told you?  He has given it out that
the penalty of military law for the least of your offences
is—well, death."

Gordon dropped back in bed, and the surgeon
continued, "But if you have a message to send to any one
why not write it?  Michael will see that it reaches
safe hands.  I'll send him in.  He's cooking some food
for you, and I'll tell him to bring paper and pens."

With that the surgeon left him, and a moment later
the serving-man's cheery face came into the room
behind a smoking basin of savoury broth.

"Here it is!  You're to drink it at once," he said,
and then taking a writing-pad from under his armpit,
he laid it with pens and ink on a table by the bed,
saying the doctor had told him he was to deliver a letter.

Gordon replied that he would ring when he was
ready, whereupon Michael said, "Good!  You'll take
your broth first.  It will put some strength into you,"
and he smiled and nodded his simple face out of the
room.

In vain Gordon tried to write to Helena.  His first
impulse was to tell her all, to make a clean breast of
everything.  "Dearest Helena, I am in the deepest
sorrow and shame, but I cannot live another hour
without letting you know that your dear father——"

But that was impossible.  At a moment when one
great blow had fallen on her it was impossible to inflict
another.  If she suffered now when she thought her
father had died by the hand of God, how much more
would she suffer if she heard that his death had been
due to violence, to foul play, to the hand of the man
who said he loved her?

Destroying his first attempt, Gordon began again.
"My poor dear Helena, I am inexpressibly shocked and
grieved by the news of——"

But that was impossible also.  Its hypocrisy of
concealment seemed to blister his very soul.  He tried
again and yet again, but not a word would come that
was not cruel or false.  Then a great trembling came
over him as he realised that being what he was to
Helena, and she being what she was to her father, he
was struck dumb before her as by the hand of Heaven.

Hours passed, and though the day was bright a deep,
impenetrable darkness seemed to close around him.  At
certain moments he was vaguely conscious of noises in
the streets outside, a great scuttling and scurrying of
feet, a loud clamour of tongues chopping and ripping
the air, the barking and bleating of a mob in full flight,
and then the clattering of horses' hoofs and the whistling
and shouting of soldiers.

Michael came back at last, having waited in vain to
be summoned, and he was full of news.  All business
in Cairo had been suspended, the Notables had met in
the Opera Square to condemn the action of the British
Army, a vast multitude of Egyptians had joined them,
and they had gone up to the house of the Grand Cadi
to ask him to call on the Sultan to protest to England.

"Well, well?" said Gordon.

"The Cadi was afraid, and hearing the crowd were
coming he barricaded his doors and windows."

"And then?"

"They wrecked his house, shouting 'Down with the
Turks!'  'Long live Egypt!'  But the Cadi himself was
inside, sir, speaking on the telephone to the officer
commanding on the Citadel, and the soldiers came galloping
up and took a hundred and fifty prisoners."

In spite of his better feelings Gordon felt a certain
joy in the bad news Michael brought him.  He had
been right!  Everybody would see that he had been
right!  What, then, was his duty?  His duty was to
deliver himself up and say, "Here I am!  Court-martial
me now if you will—if you dare!"

Plain, practical sense seemed to tell him that
he ought to go to the Agency, where his father (the
highest British authority in Egypt, even though a civil
one), seeing the turn events had taken, the chaos into
which affairs had fallen, and the ruin which Macdonald's
brutality threatened, and having witnessed the utterly
illegal circumstances which had attended his arrest,
would place him in command, pending instructions
from the War Office, and trust to his influence with
the populace to restore peace.  He could do it, too.
Why not?

But the General?  A sickening pang of hope shot
through him as he told himself that no one knew he
had killed the General, that even if he had done so it
had only been in self-defence, that the veriest poltroon
would have done what he did, and that the mind
that counted such an act as crime was morbid and
diseased.

Helena?  She thought her father had died by the
visitation of God—why could he not leave her at that?
She was suffering, though, and it was for him to
comfort her.  He would fly to her side.  All their
differences would be over now.  She, too, would see that he
had been right and that her jealousy had been mistaken,
and then death with its mighty wing would sweep away
everything else.

Thus in the blind labouring of hope he threw off the
counterpane again and got out of bed, whereupon
Michael, whose garrulous tongue had been going ever
since he came into the room, first asking for the letter
which the surgeon had told him to deliver, then protesting
in plaintive tones that the broth was untouched
and now it was cold, laid hold of him and said—

"No, brother, no!  You cannot get up to-day.
Doctor says you must not, and if you attempt to do so
I am to tell the Patriarch."

But Michael's voice only whistled by Gordon's ear
like the wind in a desert sand-storm, and seeing that
Gordon was determined to dress, the good fellow fled
off to fetch his master.

Hardly had Michael gone when the barrenness of his
hope was borne down on Gordon's mind, and he was
asking himself by what title he could go out as a
champion of the right, being so deeply in the wrong.
Even if everything happened as he expected; if his
threefold offence against the letter of military law could
be overlooked in the light of his obedience to its spirit;
if the Consul-General were able to place him in
command, pending instructions from the War Office; and
if he were capable of restoring order in Cairo by virtue
of his influence with the inhabitants—what then?

What of his conscience, which had clamoured so loudly,
in relation to his own conduct?  Could he continue to
plead extenuation of his own offence on the ground of
the General's unjustifiable and unsoldierly conduct? or
to tell himself that what he had done in the General's
house had been in self-defence?  Had it been in
self-defence that he had returned to the Citadel after he
was ordered to his own quarters? or that he had
hurled hot and insulting words at the General, such as
no man could listen to without loss of pride or even
self-respect?

"No, no; my God, no!" he thought.

And then Helena?  With what conscience could he
comfort her in her sufferings, being himself the cause of
them?  With what sincerity could his tongue speak if
his pen refused to write?  And if he juggled himself
into deceiving her, could he go on, as his affections
would tempt him to do—now more than ever since her
father was gone and she was quite alone—to carry out
the plans he had made for them before these fearful
events befell?

"Impossible! utterly impossible!" he told himself.

A grim vision rose before him of a shameful life,
corrupted by hypocrisy and damned by deceit, in which
he was married to Helena, having succeeded to her
father's rank and occupying his house, his room, his
office, with one sight standing before his eyes always—the
sight of the General's body lying on the floor where
he had flung it.

"O God, save me from that!" he thought.

Gordon dropped back to the bed and sat on the edge
of it, doubled up and with his hands covering his face.
How long he sat there he never knew, for his mind was
deadened to all sense of time, and only at intervals of
lucidity was he partly conscious of what was going on
outside the little pulseless place in which he was hidden
away while the world went on without him.

At one moment he heard the bells of the Coptic
Cathedral ringing for evensong; then the light pattering
as of rain when the people passed over the pavement
into the church; and then suddenly there came a sound
that seemed to beat on his very soul.

It was the firing of the guns at the Citadel, and as a
soldier he knew what they were—they were the minute
guns for the General's funeral.  *Boom—boom*!  He could
see what was taking place as plainly as if his eyes
beheld it; the square of the mosque lined up with
troops—two battalions of Infantry, one regiment of
Cavalry, and two batteries of Artillery.  *Boom—boom*!
The coffin on the gun-carriage covered with the silken
Union Jack and with the General's sword and his
plumed white helmet on the top of all.  *Boom—boom*!
The General's charger immediately behind the body,
with his spurred boots in the stirrups reversed.
*Boom—boom—boom*!  The officers of the Army of Occupation
drawn up by the door of the General's house, every one
of them that could be spared from duty except himself,
who ought, above all others, to be there.  Then the
carriages of the Consul-General and of the Egyptian
Prime Minister, and then *boom—boom—boom—boom*,
as the cortège moved away to the slow squirling of the
funeral march, through the square of the mosque and
under the gate of the old fortress.

The firing ceased, and in the dumb emptiness of the
air Gordon saw another sight that tore at his heart
still more terribly.  It was a room in the General's
house, dark and blind, with curtains drawn, and Helena
sitting there, alone for the first time, and no one to
comfort her.  Seeing this, and thinking of the barrier
that was between them, of the blood that was dividing
them, and that they could never again come together,
all his manhood went down at last, and he burst into
tears like a boy.

"Forgive me, Helena!  I am alone too!  Forgive
me, forgive me!"

Then over the sound of his own voice he heard the
innocent voices of the choir-boys singing their evening
hymn—"Remove my sin from before Thy sight, O
God!"—and at the next moment he was conscious of
an old and wrinkled hand being laid on his bare arm
and of somebody by his side who was saying huskily—

"Peace, my son!  God is merciful!"

Then the sharp rattle of three volleys of musketry
coming from far away.

The body of the General had been committed to the grave.





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   CHAPTER VI

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Helena had been in the act of sending out her letter
when the General's Aide-de-camp came in with news of
the doings of the night before—the riot at El Azhar,
Gordon's assault on Colonel Macdonald, and then his
disappearance, before the troops could recover from
their surprise, as suddenly and unaccountably as if he
had been swallowed up by the earth.

"Of course Macdonald acted like a brute," said the
young Lieutenant, "and the Colonel did exactly what
might have been expected of him under the circumstances.
He would have done the same if the offender
had been the Commander-in-Chief himself.  But now he
has to pay the penalty, and it cannot be a light one.
Macdonald is scouring the city to find him—every nook
and corner of the Mohammedan quarter.  He has two
motives for doing so, too—ambition and revenge."

As Helena tore up her letter and dropped it bit by
bit into the waste-paper basket she felt as if the last
of her hopes dropped with it.  But they rose again
with the thought that though Gordon might be in
danger he could not be afraid, and that his love for her
was so great, so unconquerable, that it would bring him
back to her now, in her time of trouble, in the teeth of
death itself.

"He'll come—I'm sure he'll come," she thought.

In this confidence she sat in the semi-darkness of her
room during the preparations for the military funeral,
hearing all that was being done outside with that
supernatural acuteness which comes to the bereaved—the
marching of troops, the rolling of the gun-carriage and
the arrival of friends, as well as the soul-crushing
booming of the minute gun.  She was waiting to be
told that Gordon was there, and was listening for his
name as her black boy darted in and out with whispered
news of Egyptian Ministers, English Advisers, Inspectors,
and Judges, and finally the Consul-General himself.

When the last moment came, and the band of the
Guards had begun to play "Toll for the Brave," and it
was certain that Gordon had not come, her heart sank
low; but then she told herself that if he ran the risk
of arrest, that was reason enough why he should not
show himself at the fortress.

"He will be at the chapel instead," she thought, and
though she had not intended to be present at the
funeral she determined now that she would go.

She was put into a carriage with the Consul-General
and sat by his side without speaking, merely looking
through the windows at the crowds that stood in the
streets, quietly, silently, but without much grief on
their faces, and listening to the slow squirling of the
"Dead March" and the roll of the muffled drums over
the dull rumbling of the closed coach.

When they reached the cemetery in the desolate
quarter of Old Cairo, and the band stopped and the
drumming ceased and she stepped out of the carriage,
and the breathing silence of the open air was broken by
the tremendous words, "I am the Resurrection and the
Life," she was sure, as she took the arm of the
Consul-General and walked with him over the crackling gravel
to the door of the chapel, that the moment she crossed
its threshold the first person she would see would be
Gordon.

Her heart sank lower than ever when she realised that
he was not there, and after she had taken her seat and
the chill chapel had filled up behind her, and the service
began, she tried in vain, save at moments of poignant
memory, to fix her mind on the awful errand that had
brought her.

"He will be at the graveside," she thought.  No one
would arrest him at a place like that.  English soldiers
were English gentlemen, and if the Arab nobleman in
the desert could allow the enemy who had stumbled
into his tent at night to get clear away in the morning.
Gordon would be allowed to stand by the grave of his
friend and General, and no one would know he was there.

When the short service was over and the Consul-General
drew her hand through his arm again, and they
walked together over the gravel and through the grass
to the open grave behind the rose-bushes that grew
near to the wall, she thought she knew she had only
to raise her eyes from the ground and she would see
Gordon standing there, shaken with sobs.

She knew, too, that the moment she saw him she
would break down altogether, so she kept her head low
as long as she could.  But when the troops had formed
in a rectangle, and the Chaplain had taken his place
and the last words had been spoken, and through a
deeper hush the bugle had led the voices of the soldiers
with—

   |  "Father, in Thy gracious keeping
   |  Leave we now Thy servant sleeping,"

and she looked up at last and saw that Gordon had not
come at all, she felt as if something that had been soft
and tender within her had broken, and something that
was hard and bitter had taken its place.

While the volleys were being fired over the grave the
officers of the army came up to her one by one—brave
men all of them, but many of them hardly able at that
moment to speak or see.  Still she did not weep, and
when the Consul-General, with twitching lips, said,
"Let us go," she gave him her hand again, though it
was limp and nerveless now, and, under her long black
glove, as cold as snow.

The blinds were drawn up in her room when she
returned to the Citadel, and with eyes that did not see
she was staring out on its far view of the city, the
Nile, the Pyramids, and the rolling waves of desert
beyond, when a knock came to the door and the
Consul-General entered.  He was clearly much affected.  His
firm mouth, which often looked as if it had been cast in
bronze, seemed now to be blown in foam.

"Helena," he said, "the time has come to speak
plainly.  I am sorry.  It is quite unavoidable."

After the first salutation she continued to stand by a
chair and to stare out of the window.

"Gordon has gone.  I can no longer have any doubt
about that.  Others, with other motives, have been
trying to find him and have failed.  I have been trying,
too, with better purposes perhaps, but no better results."

His voice was hoarse; he was struggling to control it.

"I am now satisfied that when he left this house after
the scene ... the painful, perhaps unsoldierly, scene
of his ... his degradation, he took the advice your
father gave him—to fly from Egypt and hide his shame
in some other country."

He paused for a moment and then said—

"It was scarcely proper advice, perhaps; but who
can be hot and cold, wise and angry, in a moment?
Whatever the merits of your father's counsel, I think
Gordon made up his mind to follow it.  Only as the
conduct of a despairing man who knew that all was
over can I explain his last appearance at El Azhar."

Again he paused for a moment, and then, after
clearing his throat, he said—

"I do not think we shall see him again.  I do not
think I wish to see him.  A military court would
probably hold him responsible for the blood that has been
shed during the past twenty-four hours, thinking the
encouragement he gave the populace had led them to
rebel.  Therefore its judgment upon his offences as a
soldier could hardly be less than ... than the most
severe."

His voice was scarcely audible as he added—

"That would be harder for me to bear than to think
of him as dead.  Therefore, whatever others may be
doing, his mother or ... or yourself, I am cherishing
no illusions.  My son is gone.  His career is at an
end.  Let us ... please let us say no more on the
subject."

Helena did not reply.  Her bosom was stirred by her
rapid breathing, but she continued to stare out of the
window.  After a moment the Consul-General said more
calmly—

"Have you any plans for the future?"

Helena shook her head.

"No desire to remain in Egypt?"

"Any relatives or friends in England?"

"All the same I think it will be best for you
to return home."

Helena bowed without speaking.

"The sooner the better, perhaps."

"This is Sunday.  There is a steamship from Alexandria
on Saturday—will it suit you to sail by that?"

"One of my secretaries shall make arrangements and
see you safely aboard.  Meantime have no anxieties.
England will take care of your father's daughter."

Then he rose, and taking her ice-cold hand, he said—

"I think that is all.  I'll come up on Saturday
morning to see you off.  Good-bye for the present."  And
then, in the same hoarse voice as before, looking
steadfastly into her face for a moment, "God bless you,
my girl!"

For some minutes Helena did not move from the
spot on which Lord Nuneham left her.  A sense of
double bereavement had fallen on her for the first time
with a crushing blow.  That some day she would lose
her father was an idea to which her mind had long been
accustomed, but never for one moment until then—not
even in the bitter hour in which they had parted at the
door—had she allowed herself to believe that a time
would come when she would have to live on without
Gordon.  It was here now.  The past and the future
alike were closed to her.  A black curtain had fallen
about her life.  If Gordon could not return without the
risk of arrest, what right had she to expect him to come
back to her at all?  He was gone.  He was lost to her.
She was alone.

The city, which had been lying hot in the quivering
sun, began to grow red and hazy, and in the gathering
twilight Helena became conscious of criers in the streets
below.  The black boy, who was always bustling about
her, interpreted their cries.  They were crying the
funeral of the students who had fallen at El Azhar.  It
was to take place that night.  Ishmael Ameer called on
the people to gather in the great market-place of
Mohammed Ali and walk up by torchlight to the Arab
cemetery outside the town.

"Would lady like Mosie go and see?  Then Mosie
come back and tell lady everything," said the black
boy, and in the hope of being alone Helena allowed
him to go.

But hardly had the boy gone when a timid knock
came to her door and the Army surgeon entered the
room.  The man's thin lips were twitching, and he was
clearly ill at ease.

"Excuse me," he said, "but hearing you were soon
to leave for home ... I thought it only fair to myself
... In fact, I have come to make an explanation."

"What is it?" asked Helena, without a trace of
interest in her tone.

The surgeon gnawed the ends of his moustache for
an instant, and then, looking uneasily at Helena, he
said—

"When you come to turn things over in your mind
you may perhaps think I was to blame in keeping your
dear father's secret.  His condition, however, was not
so serious but that under ordinary circumstances
... I say *ordinary* circumstances ...  he might have lived
five years, ten years, even fifteen.  The truth is,
though——"

"Well?"

"I want to prove the sincerity of my friendship, Miss
Graves.  I am sure you prefer that I should speak
plainly."

"The truth is—what!" asked Helena, who was now
listening with strained attention.

"That ... that your dear father's death ... I am
now fully convinced of it ... was due—partly due at
all events ... to circumstances that ... that were
*not* ordinary."

Helena's pale face turned white, but she made no
answer, and after a moment the surgeon said—

"It would have been cruel to tell you this last night
immediately after the shock of your bereavement but
... but now that you are going away ... Besides, I
spoke to Lord Nuneham.  I mentioned my surmises.
But you know what he is ... a great man, undoubtedly
a great man, but incapable of taking counsel.  Always
has been, always will be, we all of us find it so."

Helena, seized with an indefinable fear, was speechless,
but the surgeon's blundering tongue went on—

"'Better not speak of it,' said Lord Nuneham.
'Drop it!  Don't let us weaken our case against the
man and rouse popular fury by an accusation we cannot
possibly bring home.  Wait!  We'll get hold of him
to better purpose by-and-by.'"

Helena's heart was beating violently, but she only
said, with laboured breathing—

"Can't we dispense with all this?  You have come
to tell me that my father did not die from natural
causes—isn't that it?"

"Yes ... that is to say ... pardon me ... we
are alone?"

Helena assented impatiently.

"Then, to tell you the truth ... I am satisfied that
violence ... as a contributing cause, at all events
... I looked at him again this morning, when ... at the
last moment, in fact ... and the marks were even
plainer than before."

"Marks?"

"Marks of a man's hand about the throat."

"A man's hand?" said Helena, with her lips rather
than with her voice.

"I thought at first it might have been the General's
own hand, but there was one peculiarity which forbade
that inference."

"Tell me."

"It was the left hand, and while the thumb and the
first, second, and fourth fingers were plainly indicated,
there was no impression made by the third."

"So?"

"So I concluded that the marks about the throat
must have been made by somebody who had lost the
third finger of his left hand."

Helena gazed a long time blankly into the surgeon's
face, until at length, frozen by fear, having said all, he
tried to convey the impression that he had said nothing.

"Miss Graves, I have given you pain—I feel I have.
And mind, I do not say certainly that the hand at your
father's throat was the cause of his death.  It may
have been used merely to push him off.  But if the
person seen last in the General's company was
apparently quarrelling with him ... please understand, I
make no accusations.  I have never met Ishmael Ameer.
And even if it should be found that he had this
peculiarity ... of the third finger, I mean ... In
any case, the Consul-General will not hear of an
indictment, so I'm sure ... I'm sure I can rely on your
discretion.  But hearing you were going home, I felt I
could not allow you to think that I had permitted your
dear father——"

The surgeon went stammering on for some time
longer, but Helena did not listen, and when at last the
man backed himself out of her room, hugging his shallow
soul with the flattering thought that in following his
selfish impulse he had done well, she did not hear him go.

She was now sure of that which she had hitherto
only half suspected.  The Egyptian had killed her
father!  Killed him! there was no other word for it;
not merely by the excitement his presence engendered
but by actual violence.  The authorities knew it, too,
they knew it perfectly, but they were afraid—afraid in
the absence of conclusive evidence—to risk the breakdown
of a charge against one whom the people in their
blindness worshipped.

The sky had grown blue and luminous by this time,
the stars had come out in the distant depths of the
heavens, and from the market-place below the ramparts
of the Citadel there came up into the clear air
the thick murmuring of the vast multitude that had
gathered there, with ten thousand smoking torches, to
follow the new prophet to the Arab cemetery beyond
the town.

When Helena thought of the Egyptian again it was
with an intensity of hatred she had never felt before.
He had not only killed her father but he had been the
first cause of the devilish entanglement which had led
to Gordon's disgrace.  Yet he was to escape punishment
for these offences; he was to go on until some
sin against the State had brought him into the meshes
of its Ministers, while her father was in his grave and
Gordon was in banishment and she ... she was sent
home in her womanish helplessness and shame!

"O God, is there to be no one to punish this man?"
she thought, in the dark searching of her soul, while
her finger-nails were digging trenches in her palms and
from the hard clenching of her teeth her lips were
bleeding.

Then suddenly, in the delirium of her hatred of the
Egyptian and the tragic tangle of her error, while she
was standing alone in her desolate room, with the
"Allah!  Allah!" of Ishmael's followers surging up
from below, a new feeling—a feeling she had never
felt before—stirred in the depths of her abased and
outraged soul.

"Shall I go back to England?" she asked herself.
"Shall I?"





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   CHAPTER VII

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As soon as Lord Nuneham reached the Agency he went
up to his wife's room.  The sweet old lady was sitting
in her dressing-gown with her face to the windows on
the west, while the Egyptian woman was combing out
her thin, white hair and binding it up for the night.
The sun was gone, but the river and the sky were
shining like molten gold, and a faint reflected glow was
on her soft, pale cheeks.

"Ah, is it you, John?" she said in a nervous voice,
and while he was taking a seat she looked at him with
her deep, slow, weary eyes as if waiting for an answer
to a question she was afraid to ask.

"Helena is going home, Janet," said the old man
after a moment.

"Poor girl!"

"There is a steamship on Saturday.  I thought it
better she should sail by that."

"Poor thing!  Poor darling!"

"Her will seems to be quite gone—she agrees to
everything."

"Poor Helena!"

"I don't think she has shed a tear since her father
died.  It is extraordinary.  She startles me, almost
frightens me.  Either she is a girl of astonishing
character, or else——"

"She has had a great shock, poor child.  Only yesterday
at this hour her father was with her, and now——"

"True—quite true!"

A hush fell upon all.  Even Fatimah's comb was
quiet.  It was almost as if a spirit were passing through
the room.  At length the old lady said—

"Any news of——"

"None."

"Would you tell me if there were?"

"If you asked me—yes."

"My poor boy!"

"Hafiz has inquired everywhere.  Nobody knows
anything about him."

"He will come back, though, I am sure he will,"
said Lady Nuneham with a nervous trill, and then a
strange contraction passed over the Consul-General's
face, and he rose to go.

"We'll not speak about that again, Janet," he said;
but, full of the sweetest and bitterest emotion that
comes to the human soul—the emotion of a mother
when she thinks of the son that is lost to her—the old
lady did not hear.

"I remember that his grandfather ... it was in the
early days of the Civil War, I think ... he had done
something against his General, I suppose——"

She had been speaking for some moments when
Fatimah, who was standing behind, reached round to
her ear and said—

"His lordship has gone, my lady," and then there
was a sudden and deep silence.

The molten gold died out of the river and the sky,
and in the luminous blue twilight the old lady got
into bed.

"Fatimah," she said, "do you think Doctor would
allow me to go up to the Citadel one day this week?"

"Why not, if the carriage was closed and the blinds
down?"

"And, Fatimah?"

"What is it, O my heart?"

"What do you think the Consul-General meant when
he said Helena frightened him?"

"I think he meant that she's one of the girls who
do things when they're in trouble—drown themselves,
take poison, or something."

"My poor Helena!  My poor Gordon!"

There was the rustling whisper of a prayer at the
pillow, and then, for the weary and careworn old lady
another day slid into night.





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   CHAPTER VIII

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Meantime Gordon, with a heart filled with darkness,
sat huddled up on his bed in the little guest-room of
the Coptic Cathedral.  On a table at his left a small
green-shaded lamp was burning, and on a chair at his
right sat the saintly old Patriarch, gently patting his
bare arm and trying in vain to comfort him.

"Yes, God is merciful, my son, and it is just because
we are such guilty creatures that our Lord came to
deliver us."

"But you don't know, Father, you don't know," said
Gordon.

"Know—what, my son?"

"You don't know what reason I have to reproach
myself," said Gordon, and then, catching by the sure
instinct of a pure heart some vague sense of Gordon's
position, the old man began to talk of confession,
wherein the soul of man lays down its sins before God
and begins to feel as if it had wings.

"On receiving the penitent's confession," he said, "it
is the duty of the Coptic priest to take his sin upon
himself just as if it were his own, and if I, my son——"

"But you can't!  It's impossible!  God forbid it,"
said Gordon; and then the saintly old soul, allowing
that there were sacred places in the heart of man
which only God's eye should see, spoke of atonement,
whereby he that is guilty of any sin may begin his
journey towards repentance, and be numbered at last,
if his penitence be true, among the living who live in
God's peace.

"Why should any of us, my son, no matter how foul
the stain of sin we have contracted, live in the dread
of miscarrying for ever while we have energy to atone?"
said the good old man in his worn and husky voice; and
then the tides of Gordon's troubled mind, which had
ebbed and flowed like the sea on a desolate shore under
the blank darkness of a starless night, seemed to be
suddenly brightened by a light from the morning.

"Father," he said, "could you send for somebody?"

"Indeed I could—who is it?" asked the Patriarch.

"Captain Hafiz Ahmed of the Egyptian Army.  He
can be found at headquarters.  Say that some one he
knows well wishes to see him at once."

"I'll tell Michael to take the message immediately,"
said the Patriarch, and his shuffling old feet went off
on his errand.

The new light that had dawned on Gordon's mind
was the same as he had seen before, and yet it was now
quite different.  He would deliver himself up, as he
had first intended to do, but in humility, not in pride,
in submission to the will of God, not in defiance of the
power of man.  A reclaiming voice seemed to say to
him, "Atone for your crime!  Confess everything!
Die—on the gallows if need be!  Better suffer the
pains of death than the furies of remorse!  Give your
own life for the life you have taken, no matter by what
impulse of self-defence or devilish accident of fate!"

Hafiz would carry his message to headquarters, or
perhaps help him to go there, and the good old Patriarch
would explain why he had not gone before.

"It is the only way now, the only hope," he thought.

Within half-an-hour Hafiz arrived hot and breathless
as if he had been running.  One moment he stood
near the door, while his lip lagged low and his cheerful
face darkened at sight of Gordon's white cheeks, and
then he gushed out into words which tried their best
to be brave but were tragic with tears.

"I knew it," he said, "I've said so all day long.
'He's lying ill somewhere, or he would show up now,
whatever the consequences.'  You're wounded, aren't
you?  Let me see."

"It's nothing," said Gordon.  "Nothing at all.  Sit
down, old fellow."

And then Hafiz sat on the right of the bed, holding
Gordon's hand in his hand, and told him what had
happened during the day—how Macdonald and his
bloodhounds had been out in pursuit of him, expecting
to arrest and court-martial him, and how he also had
been searching for him since yesterday, but with the
hope of helping him to escape.

"High and low we've looked, everywhere—everywhere
except here—and who would have thought of a place
like this?" said Hafiz.  "So much the better, though!
You'll stay here until you are well and I can get you
safely away.  I will, too!  You'll see I will!"

It was hard to listen to the good fellow's schemes
for his escape and tell him at once of his intention to
give himself up, so Gordon asked one by one the questions
that were uppermost in his mind, little thinking
that Hafiz's answers would break up his purpose and
stifle for ever the cry of his tortured heart.

"The General is buried, isn't he?" he said, turning
his face away as he spoke, and when Hafiz answered
Yes, that he had died by the hand of God and been
buried that afternoon, and that everybody was saying
that he had been a good man and a great soldier and
Egypt would never again see his equal, Gordon asked
himself what, after all, would be the worth of an
atonement which offered as an equivalent for a life like the
General's a life such as his own, which was no longer
of any use to him or to any one.

And again, when he asked in a low voice that was
breathless with fear, how his father was, and Hafiz
answered that the iron man whose name had been a
terror in Egypt for so many years, though calm on the
outside still, was breaking up like a frozen lake from
below; that he had been calling him over the telephone
all day long, and entreating him to find his son that
he might tell him to deliver himself up immediately, in
spite of everything, lest he should be charged with
desertion and be liable to death, Gordon sickened with
a sense of the shame into which he was about to plunge
his father in his last days by the confession he intended
to make and the fate he meant to meet.

And again, when with deepening emotion he asked
about his mother—was she worse for the disgrace that
had overtaken himself?—and Hafiz told him No, that
though sitting in a sort of bewilderment, waiting for
God's light in the darkness that had fallen on her life,
she was yet living in a beautiful blind hope that he
would come back to justify himself, and meantime
sending messages to him saying, "Tell him his mother
is sure he only did what he believed to be right,
because her boy could not do what was wrong," Gordon's
heart knocked hard at his breast with the thought that
the brave atonement to which he had set his face would
surely kill his mother before it had time to kill him.

And when, last of all, in the sore pain of a wounded
tenderness, he asked about Helena—was she well and
was she asking after him?—and Hafiz again answered,
No, but that he had seen her at the General's funeral
(where he could not trust himself to speak to her for
pity of the dumb trouble in her pale face), and that,
leaning on the arm of the Consul-General, she had
lifted her tearless eyes as if looking for somebody she
could not see, and that she was to go back to England
soon, very soon—on Saturday—without any one for
company, being alone in the world now, then Gordon
broke down altogether, for he saw himself following her
on her lonely journey home with a cruel and needless
blow that would ruin the little that was left of her
peace.

"On Saturday, you say?"

"Yes, by the English steamer from Alexandria," said
Hafiz, and then, eagerly, as if by a sudden thought,
"Gordon!"

"Well?"

"Why shouldn't you go with her?"

Gordon shook his head.

"Why not?  You'll be better by that time, and
even if you're not ... You can't stay here for ever,
and if you should fall into Macdonald's hands ...
Besides, it's better in any case to let the War Office deal
with you.  They'll know everything before you reach
London, and they'll see you've been in the right.  You'll
get justice there.  Gordon, whereas here ...  Then
there's Helena, too—she's expecting you to join her—I'm
sure she is—why shouldn't she, being friendless in
Egypt now, and without anybody to go to even at
home?  And if the worst comes to the worst, and you
have to leave the army, which God forbid, you'll be
together at all events; she'll be with you anyway——"

"No, no, my boy, no!" cried Gordon; but Hafiz, full
of his new hope, was not to be denied.

"You think it's impossible, but it isn't.  *Wallahi*!
Leave it to me.  I'll arrange everything.  Trust me!"
he said, and in the warmth of his new resolve and the
urgency of another errand, he got up to go.

The hundred and fifty Notables who had been arrested
that morning before the Grand Cadi's house had been
tried in the afternoon by a Special Tribunal, and
despatched in the evening as dangerous rebels to the
penal settlement in the Soudan.  In protest against
this injustice, as well as in lamentation for the loss of
the students who had fallen at El Azhar, Ishmael
Ameer had called upon the people of Cairo to follow
him in procession to the Arabic cemetery outside the
city, that there, without violence or offence, they might
appeal from the barbarity of man to the judgment seat
of God.

"They've gone with him, too," said Hafiz, "tens of
thousands of them, so that the streets are deserted and
half the shops shut up.  Oh, they've not done with
Ishmael yet—you'll see they have not!  I must find
out what he's doing, though, and come back and tell
you what's going on.  Meantime I'll say nothing about
you—about knowing where you are, I mean—nothing
to the Consul-General, nothing to my mother, nothing
to anybody.  Good-bye, old fellow!  Leave yourself to
me.  I'll see you through."

When Hafiz went off with a rush of spirits, Gordon,
being left alone, sank to a still deeper depression than
before.  He felt as if he were thrown back again on
that desolate shore where the tides of his mind ebbed
and flowed under the blank darkness of a starless sky.

The proud atonement whereby he had expected to
wipe out his crime had fallen utterly to ashes.  It
looked like nothing better now than a selfish impulse
to escape from a life that had become a burden to him
by killing his father's honour, his mother's trust, and
the last hope of Helena's happiness.

"No, I cannot deliver myself up.  It is impossible,"
he thought.

But if death itself was denied to him, what was there
left to him in life?  His career as a soldier was clearly
at an end, his father's house was for ever closed to him,
and his days with Helena were over.

"Then what can I do?  Where can I go?" he asked himself.

Suddenly he remembered what the General had said
in that delirious moment when with bitter taunts he
had told him to fly to some foreign country where men
would know nothing of his disgrace.  Cruel and unjust
as that sentence had seemed to him then, it appeared
to be all that was left to him now, when work and home
and love alike were gone from him.

"Yes, I'll go away," he thought, with a choking sob.
"I'll bury myself as far from humanity as possible."

Yet at the next moment the hand of iron was on his
heart again, and he told himself that though he might
fly from the sight of man he could not escape from the
eye of God, and to be alone with that was more than a
guilty man could bear, and live.

"But why can't I go to America?" he asked himself.

It was his mother's home, and a country to which
something in his blood had always been calling him.
But no!  That refuge also was denied to him, for though
he might hide in New York, or Boston, or Philadelphia,
or Chicago, or San Francisco, better than in the trackless
desert itself, yet in the very pulse of life he would
still be alone, with a mind that must always be rambling
through the ways of the past, seeing nothing in the
happiness of other men but cruel visions of what might
have come to him also but for one blind moment of
headstrong passion.

"Is life, then, to be utterly closed to me?" he
thought.

Was he neither to die for his crime nor live for his
repentance?  Had God Almighty set His face against
both?

He thought of Helena as she would be in England,
alone like himself, cut off for the rest of her life from
every happiness except the bitter one of her memory
of their few short days together, thinking ill of him, as
she needs must for leaving her in her sore need, while
all the time his heart was yearning for love of her and
he would have given his soul to be by her side, but for
the barrier of blood which now seemed to separate them
forever.

And then in the bitterness of his remorse and the
depths of his abased penitence, thinking the Almighty
Himself must be against him, he began to pray—never
having prayed since the days when his mother held him
to her knee.

"O God, have pity upon me," he cried, as he sat
huddled up on his bed.  "I only intended to do what
was right, yet I have plunged everybody I love into
trouble.  What can I do?  Where can I go?  Let it
be anything and anywhere!  O Lord, speak to me, lead
me, deliver me, tell me what I ought to do; tell me,
tell me!"

The green-shaded lamp on the table had gone out by
this time, the darkness of the night had gone, and a
dim gleam of saffron-tinted light from the dawn had
begun to filter through the yellow window curtains of
the room.

Then suddenly the silence of the little, pulseless place
was broken by the sound of eager footsteps running
over the gravel path of the courtyard and leaping up
the stone staircase of the house.

It was Hafiz returning from the cemetery.





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   CHAPTER IX

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The Mohammedan cemetery of Cairo lies to the north-east
of the city, outside the Bab-en-Nasr (the Gate of
Victory), on the fringe of the desert, and down a dusty
road that leads to a group of tomb-mosques of the
Caliphs, now old and falling into decay.

No more forlorn and desolate spot ever lay under
the zealous blue of the sky.  Not a tree, not a blade of
grass, not a rill of water, not a bird singing in the
empty air.  Only an arid waste, dotted over by an
irregular encampment of the narrow mansions of the
dead, the round hummocks of blistered clay, each with
its upright stone, its *shahed*, capped with turban or
tarboosh.  The barren nakedness and savage aridity of
the place make it a melancholy spectacle by day, but
in the silence of night, under the moon's quiet eye, or
with the darkness flushed by the white light of the
stars, the wild desolation of the city of the dead is an
awesome sight.  Such was the spot in which the people
of Cairo had concluded to pass their Night of
Lamentation—such was their Gethsemane.

When tidings of their intention passed through the
town there were rumblings of thunder in the
ever-lowering diplomatic atmosphere.  The Consul-General
heard it, and sent for the Commandant of Police.

"This gathering of great numbers of natives outside
the walls," he said, "looks like a ruse for an organised
attack on the European inhabitants.  Therefore let your
plans for their protection be put into operation
without delay.  As the ostensible object of the demonstration
is a funeral, you cannot stop it, but see that a
sufficient body of police goes with it and that your
entire force is in readiness."

After that he called up the officer who was now in
command of the Army of Occupation, and advised that
the troops at Kasr-el-Nil, at the Citadel, and particularly
at the barracks of Abbassiah, should be strictly confined
and kept in readiness for all emergencies.

"If all goes well to-night," he said, "give your men
an airing in the streets in the morning.  Let their
bands go with them, so that when the turbulent gentlemen
who are organising all this hubbub take their walks
abroad they may meet one of your companies coming
along.  If they turn aside to avoid it, let them meet
another and another ... And wait!" said the old
man, while his brow contracted and his lip stiffened.
"The man Ishmael Ameer has escaped us thus far.
He has been lying low and allowing others to get into
trouble.  But he seems to be putting his head into the
noose this time.  Follow him, watch him—don't be
afraid."

The bodies of the students who were to be buried
that night had been lying in the Mosque of the Sultan
Hasan at the foot of the Citadel, and as soon as word
came that the Imams had recited the prayer for the
dead, asking "Give your testimony respecting them—were
they faithful?" and being answered, "Aye, faithful
unto death," the cortège started.

First a group of blind men, at slow pace, chanting the
first Surah of the Koran; then the biers, a melancholy
line of them, covered with red and green cloths and
borne head foremost; then schoolboys singing, in shrill
voices, passages from a poem describing the last judgment;
then companies of Fikees, reciting the profession
of faith; then the female relatives of the dead,
shrouded black forms with dishevelled hair, sitting in
carriages or squatting on carts, wailing in their woe;
and finally Ishmael Ameer himself and his vast and
various following.

Never had any one seen so great a concourse, not
even on the days when the sacred carpet came from
Mecca.  There were men and women, rich and poor,
great and small, religious fraternities with half-furled
banners and dervishes with wrapped-up flags, sheikhs
in robes and beggars in rags.  Boys carried lamps,
women carried candles, and young men carried torches
and open flares which sent coils of smoke into the
windless air.

Their way lay down the broad boulevard of Mohammed
Ali, across the wide square of the Bab-el-Khalk, past
the Governorat and the police headquarters.  As they
walked at slow pace, they chanted the Surah which
says, "O Allah!  There is no strength nor power but
in God!  To God we belong and to Him we must
return."  The shops were shut, and the muezzins called
from the minarets as the procession went by the
mosques.

Thus like a long, sinuous stream, sometimes flowing
deep and still, sometimes rumbling in low tones,
sometimes breaking into sharp sounds, they passed through
the narrow streets of the city and out by the Bab-en-Nasr
to the Mohammedan cemetery beyond the walls.

As Hafiz approached this place the deep multitudinous
hum of many tongues that came up from it was like
the loud sighing of the wind.  Calm as the night was, it
was the same as if a storm had broken over that spot
while the desert around lay sleeping under the
unclouded moon.  Through a thick haze that floated over
the ground there were bubbles and flashes of light, the
red and white flames of the lamps and torches, spurting
and steaming like electrical apparitions from a cauldron.

A cordon of mounted police surrounded the cemetery,
and a few were riding inside.  The funerals were
over, and the people were squatting in groups on the
bare sand.  Hafiz could hear the solemn chanting of
the Fikees as they passed their beads through their
fingers and recited to the spirits of the dead.  Some of
the dervishes were dancing, and some of the women
were swaying their bodies to a slow, monotonous,
hypnotic movement that seemed to act on them like a drug.

A number of the Ulema, professors of El Azhar and
teachers of the Koran, were passing from group to group,
comforting and counselling the people.  Behind each
of them was a little crowd of followers, and, where the
crowd of such followers was greatest, there always was
the erect white figure and pale face of Ishmael Ameer,
He stood in his great stature above the heads of the
tallest of the men about him, and as he passed from
company to company he left hope and inspiration behind
him, for his lips seemed to be touched with fire.

"Night has fallen on us, O my brothers," he said in
his throbbing voice.  "Our path is desolate, we are
encompassed by sorrows, we envy the dead who are in
their graves.  O ye people of the tombs, you have
passed on before us.  Peace be to you!  Peace be to
us also!  A woman is here who has lost her husband—the
camel of her house is gone!  A mother is here
who has lost her son—the eye of her heart is blind!
O Thou most merciful of those that show mercy,
comfort and keep them and send them safely to Thy
Paradise!  Sleep, O servants of God, in the arms of
the Mighty and Compassionate!"

"Poor me, poor my children, poor all the people!"
cried the women who crouched at his feet.

"Oppressors have risen against us, O God, but let us
not cry to Thee for vengeance against them.  They are
Christians, and it was a Christian who said, 'Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do.'"

"La ilaha illa-llah!  La ilaha illa-llah!" cried the
men, but their faces were dark and stern.

"O sons of Adam," cried Ishmael, "shall the children
of one Father fight before His face?  To-night the
lamps are lit to the Lord on the rock at Mecca.
To-night, too, the lamps are burning to God on the Calvary
at Jerusalem.  So it has been for a thousand years.
So it will be for a thousand more.  Father, forgive them,
for they know not what they do."

At that a great shout went up from the clamorous
billow of human beings about him, and "O children of
Allah," he cried, "religion is the bread of our souls, and
the strangers who have come to us from the West are
trying to take it away.  Let us fight to preserve it!
Let us draw the sword of our spirit against a black
devouring world!  By the life of our God, let us be
men!  By the tombs of our fathers, let us be living
souls!  By the beard of the Prophet (praise to his
name!), let us no longer be mere machines for the
making of gold for Europe!  Better the mud hut of the
fellah with the Spirit of God within, than the palace of
the rich man with the devil's arms on the doorpost.
If we cannot be free in the city, let us go out to the
desert.  Out from the empire of man to the empire of
Allah!  And if we must leave behind our gorgeous
mosques, built on the bones of slaves and cemented
with the blood of conquest, we shall worship in a vaster
and more magnificent temple, the dome whereof is the sky."

By this time the excitement of the people amounted
to frenzy.  "Allah!  Allah!" they shouted as they
followed Ishmael from group to group in an ever-increasing
crowd that was like a boiling, surging, rushing
river, flashing in fierce brilliance under the light of
the lamps and torches.

"Brothers," said Ishmael again, "your homes are
here, and your wives and children.  I am going out
into the desert and you cannot all follow me.  But
give me one hundred men and your enemies will afflict
you no more.  One hundred men to carry into every
town and village the word of the message of God, and
the reign of Mammon will be at an end.  Our Prophet
(praise to his name!) was driven out of Mecca as a
slave, but he returned to it as a conqueror.  We are
driven out of Cairo in disgrace but we shall come back
in glory.  So the years pass and repeat themselves,"
he cried, and then, in triumphant tone, "Yes, by
Allah!"

The emotional Egyptian people were now like children
possessed, and the fever in Ishmael's own face seemed
to have consumed the natural man.

"I ask for martyrs, not for soldiers," he cried.
"Shall not the reward of him who suffers daily for his
brethren's sake be equal to that of the man who dies
in battle?  I ask for the young and the strong, not the
weak and the old—difficulty is before us and danger
and perhaps death.  I ask for sinners, not saints—though
you are as pure as the sands of the sea-shore,
like the sands of the shore you may be fruitless.  But
are you sin-laden and suffering?  Do the ways of life
seem to be closed to you?  Does the sweet light of
morning bring you no joy?  Are you praying for the
darkness of death to cover you?  Is your repentance
deep?  In the bitterness of your soul are you calling
upon God for a way of redemption?  Then come
to me, my brothers!  Your purification is here!  A
pilgrimage is before you that will cleanse you of all
sin.

"Allah!  Allah!  Allah!" cried the people with
one voice, and the cry of their thousand throats in
that desolate place was like the boom of breakers in
cavernous rocks.

It was one of those moments of life when by a
spontaneous impulse humanity shows how divine is the
heart of man.  In an instant, more than five hundred
men, some of them looked upon as low and base, leapt
out in answer to Ishmael's call, and were struggling,
quarrelling, almost fighting to go with him.

For two hours thereafter the professors and teachers
were busy selecting one hundred from the five hundred,
telling them what they had to do and where they had
to go, each man to his allotted place, while the mounted
police rode round and through them in a vain effort
to find out what was being said.

The night was now near to morning, the lamps and
torches were dying out, and a dun streak, like an arrow's
barb, was shooting up into the darkness of the sky.
In this vague fore-dawn the hundred chosen men were
drawn up before the tomb of a Sheikh, and Ishmael,
standing on the dome of it, with his tall figure against
the uncertain light, spoke to them and to the vast
company of the people that had gathered about.

"Brothers," he said, "you offer yourselves as
messengers of the Compassionate to carry His word to the
uttermost ends of this country and as far as the tongue
you speak is spoken.  You have been told what to say
and you will say it without fear.  You are no rebels
against the State, but if the commandments of the
Government are against the commandments of God,
you are to tell the people to obey God and not the
Government."

At that word the sea of faces seemed to flash white
under the heaviness of the sky, but Ishmael only looked
down at the hundred men who stood below and said
calmly—

"You are soldiers of God, therefore you will carry
no weapons of the devil with you on your journey.  Do
you expect to conquer by the sword?  Stand back, this
pilgrimage is not yours!  Do you wish to drive the
English out of Egypt, to establish Khedive or Sultan,
to found kingdom or empire?  Go home!  This work
is not for you!  Only one enemy will you drive out,
and that is the devil!  Only one Sultan will you
establish, and that is God!"

The mass of moving heads seemed to sway for a
moment, and then, amid the deep breathing of the
people, Ishmael said—

"You will take nothing with you on your way,
neither purse nor scrip nor second coat.  In the city
or the village or the desert the Merciful will make your
beds, the Compassionate will provide for you.  Where
the Mussulman is, there is your brother—greet him, he
will welcome you.  Where his house is there is your
home—enter it, it will shelter you.  But you are slaves
of God, therefore look for no ease and comfort.  Burning
heat by day, weary marches by night, hunger and
thirst and toil and pain—these only are the allurements
God offers to His servants—these and glory!"

At that last word a loud shout broke from the people,
but when Ishmael spoke again the burden of a great
awe seemed to fall upon them.

"Say farewell to one another and to your wives and
children.  If God wills it you will come back.  If He
does not will it you will go on, never more to look in
each other's faces."

Then in a louder, shriller voice than before, he cried—

"But fear nothing!  The battle is not yours but
God's!  You will be purified by your pilgrimage, your
sins will be forgiven you, and when death comes that
stands at the foot of life's account, Paradise will wait
for you and the arms of the Merciful be open!  In the
name of the Compassionate, peace!"

"Peace!  Peace!" cried the vast mass in a voice
that seemed to ring through the empty dome of the sky.
The men who had been standing before Ishmael now
prostrated themselves with their faces to the east, and
then rising to their feet they embraced each other.  A
subdued murmur passed through the people, and at the
next moment the crowd parted in many places, leaving
long, wide ways that went out from the foot of the
tomb.  Down these paths the men passed in twos and
threes as if going in different directions, some north,
some south, some east, some west.

Thus the hundred messengers set out on their
pilgrimage, each his own way, and none knowing if they
should ever meet again.  Though the eager, emotional
Egyptian people were ready to sob at sight of them,
yet they kept back their cries.  Some of the women
held out their children to be kissed by their husbands
as they passed, but they dried their own eyes lest the
men should see them weep.

The dawn was coming up by this time in a thin
streak of pink across the eastern sky, and the people
watched the men as they passed away—beyond the
ruined tombs of the Caliphs, towards the barracks of
the soldiers at Abbassiah and over the reddening crest
of the Mokattam Hills—until they could be seen no
more.

Then slowly as the great mass of the crowd had
opened, it closed again, and while women sobbed and
men broke down in tears, the tall figure of Ishmael,
forgotten for a moment, was seen standing in the
mystic light of the dawn above the multitude of moving
heads, and his throbbing voice was heard pealing over
them.

"O children of God," he cried, "be comforted!  Go
back to your homes and wait!  Be patient!  Is not
that what Islam means?  Shed no tears for those who
have gone away from you.  As sure as the sun will rise
your brethren will return.  Look!  Already it is gilding
the fringes of the clouds; it is sending away the
spirits of darkness; it is approaching the gates of
morning!  Even so in life or in death, in the spirit or
in the flesh, those who have left you will return, and
when they come back our Egypt will be God's."

With that, amid an answering cry from the people,
he stepped down from the tomb.  Then the crowd
parted as before, and he passed through them towards
the town in the direction of the Bab-en-Nasr, the Gate
of Victory.  There was no shouting or waving of banners
as he went away, but only the silent Eastern greeting
of hands to the lips and forehead, with hardly a noise
as loud as the sound of human breath.

The sun was now rising above the yellow Mokattam
Hills, the day was reddening over the desert, the gleaming
streak of the Nile was shooting out of the mist, and
in the radiance of morning the crowd began to break
up and return to the city.  Their eyes were shining
with a new light, a new joy, a new hope.  They had
come out to mourn and they were going back rejoicing.

Hafiz was among the first to go.  With his mouth full
of a fresh message he was flying back to Gordon.  As
he passed through the echoing streets he met the band
of one of the British battalions, and it was playing a
march from the latest opera.





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   CHAPTER X

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Gordon, lying in his bed, heard the voice of Hafiz in
the hall.

"Only me, Michael!  All right!  Don't get up yet."

At the next moment Hafiz himself, puffing and blowing,
and with the cool air of morning in his clothes,
came dashing into the room.

"Halloa!  Thought I was never coming back, I
suppose!  Couldn't tear myself away—had to see it
through—only just over.  Tell you what, though—I do
believe ... yes, I do really believe that brute of a
Macdonald has set the trackers on to you!  Coming
down by El Azhar, behold, two damned blacks—Soudanese,
I mean—poking their noses into the soft
ground as if looking for footsteps.  But no matter!
We'll dish the devil yet!"

Thus the good fellow, after the nightlong flight of
his spirit among sacred things, was giving way to the
natural man, with chuckles and crows and shouts of
joy and even harmless oaths that had no bitterness
behind them.

"Lord God! you should have seen it, Gordon!  Just
like one of the 'Nights of the Prophet,' only
bigger—yes, by my soul, bigger!"

Then, sitting on the side of the bed, he described the
doings of the night—how Ishmael had passed from
group to group, comforting the mourners and laying a
soothing hand on every mother's sorrow, every father's
grief.

"Can't tell what the deuce it is in the man—whether
it's the prophet or the poet or the diviner—but he
doesn't need that anybody should tell him anything,
because he *knows*."

It was not at first that Gordon, coming out of the
long night of his sufferings, caught the contagion of
Hafiz's good spirits, but his weary, bloodshot eyes began
to shine when Hafiz described Ishmael's appeal to the
people to leave everything behind them and go with
him into the desert—out of the empire of man into
the empire of Allah.

"It was thrilling!  *Wallahi*!  You had to hear it,
though!  It was not so much what he said as something
in the man himself that set all your nerves tingling."

And when Hafiz went on to tell of Ishmael's appeal
for help, not to the saints, the men whom God had
cleansed of all sins, the souls that were as pure as the
sands of the sea-shore and as fruitless, but to the
sinners, the sin-laden and sin-stained, to whom the
peace of life and the repose of death were both denied,
he felt Gordon's hand clutching at his own and his
whole body quivering.

"Sinners, not saints—did he say that, Hafiz?"

"Yes!  'Come to me, my brothers,' he said.  'Your
purification is here.  A pilgrimage is before you that
will cleanse you from all sin.'  They took him at his
word too.  Good Lord!  You never saw such
scrambling!  Such a crew!  Sinners, by Jove!  Some of
them the most notorious scoundrels in Cairo—rich
rascals who have been living for themselves all their
lives and beggaring everybody about them.  Assassins
too, or men who have been suspected of being so.  Yet
there they were, fighting for a chance of going out to
starvation and danger and death."

Gordon's eyes were running over by this time, but
they were glistening too, like the sun when it shines
through a cloud of rain.

"Open the curtains, Hafiz," he said, and when Hafiz
had done so it was almost as if an angel of hope had
parted them and come sweeping with a stream of
sunlight into the room.

Then Hafiz told of the going away of the hundred
messengers, of Ishmael's triumphant prediction that
they would come back, and finally of the return of the
people to their homes with the flow as of a great tide,
filled with a new spirit, comforted, changed,
transformed, transfigured.

"And Ishmael himself?" asked Gordon.

"He has gone also," said Hafiz.

"Where has he gone?"

"That was kept quiet, but the Chancellor was there,
and I got it out of him—he has gone to Khartoum."

"Khartoum?"

"That's where he comes from—where he lived in his
youth, at all events.  He has to take the early train
for Upper Egypt, so he'll be on his way already.  Oh,
something is going to happen!  Wait!  You'll see!
Couldn't find out exactly what the men were told to
do, but Government has its work cut out for it."

"There was to be no resistance to the rule of
England—do you say he said that, Hafiz?"

"That's true.  'Do you wish to drive England out
of Egypt?  Go home,' he said, 'this pilgrimage is not
yours.  Do you expect to conquer by the sword?
Stand back!  This work is not for you.'  All the same
there'll be a mighty stir at the Ministry of the
Interior.  Omdehs and Moudirs and all the miscellaneous
blackguards will be watching Ishmael and his men.  So
much the better for us, my boy.  Now's your time!
Now's your opportunity!"

While Gordon listened a great burden seemed to fall
from him; a sort of electric revelation appeared to
suffuse the path that had been so obscure a few moments
before.  His prayers seemed to be answered; the
bright glory of a new hope seemed to be born within
him and he thought he saw his way at last.

Though his career as a soldier was at an end; though
his father, his mother and Helena were gone from him;
though he had lost everything he had loved and been
proud of; though the ways of life seemed to be for
ever closed to him and the world had no use for him
any longer, and he was beaten and broken and alone,
there was One who was with him still—there was God!

"With our God is forgiveness," and in the immensity
and majesty of His compassion, the Almighty had
willed it that he, even he, might yet do something.

He would join the forces of the new prophet!

Why not?  Their cause was a good one.  It was
not a crusade of Egypt against England, but of right
against wrong, of justice against injustice, of belief
against unbelief, of God against the world.

Hold!  A traitor to his Church and country?

No, for this was the great universal war—the war
of an empire that had no boundaries, the holy war that
had been waged all the earth over and all the ages
through—the war of religion and truth against the
powers of darkness and death.

So thinking God's hand was leading him, he saw
himself—white man and Christian and British soldier though
he was—following Ishmael Ameer into the desert, working
by his side, and then coming back at last when his
sin had been forgiven and his redemption won.

"Yet wait!  What about my father?" he thought.

But he could not think of his father at the same
time as he thought of his return.  He remembered his
mother, though, and saw himself taking her in his
arms and saying, "Mother, I've come back to you, as
you always said I would.  I only meant to do what
was right, and if I did what was wrong, God has
pardoned me."

And then far off, very far, hardly daring to see itself
yet, in his awakened soul there was a hope of Helena.
Somehow and somewhere he would meet her again—he
knew not how or where or when, but Heaven knew
everything, and the end would be with God.

Thus with a labouring and quivering heart, and with
clouded eyes that were running over, he sat on his bed,
looking into the stream of sunlight that was pouring
into the room, and feeling with an immense joy that
God had manifested His will at last.

Meanwhile Hafiz, still tuning his speech to the spirit
of the natural man, was chuckling and crowing over his
new chance of getting Gordon out of the country.

"Damn it all, man, we'll beat them yet, if you'll only
leave yourself to me.  And you will, I know you will!"

"Hafiz," said Gordon, "you thought last night you
could help me to get away from here—do you still
think you could?"

"Certainly!  Isn't that what I'm saying?"

"Do you think you could do it now?"

"Why not ... that is to say, if you are well enough
... It's your hand, isn't it?"

"That's nothing—only a sore finger, you know."

"God!  A sore finger, and old Michael says it's
gone—half of it, anyway!  But if it had been half your
arm it wouldn't have stopped you—I know that quite
well.  So if you're game I'm ready.  The sooner the
better too!  The dear old Patriarch will close his eyes,
and as for Michael——"

"What day is this, Hafiz?" said Gordon—he had
lost count of time.

"Monday—that's the worst of it.  The steamer
doesn't sail until Saturday, and you'll have to stay in
Alexandria until ... Or wait!  Why not take a foreign
boat?  The French one to Marseilles, or—let me
think—the Italian boat to Messina.  The very thing!  She
sails on Wednesday.  You can join the English ship at
Naples.  Splendid!  Better than joining her at
Alexandria.  There's Helena, you know.

"Helena?"

"A woman's a woman after all, my boy.  Mind I
don't say Helena would give you away, but she might—not
having seen you since her father's death and then
coming so unexpectedly upon you at Alexandria—at the
ship's side, perhaps.  Better not risk it.  Get out of the
country before you meet her—away from that brute of
a Macdonald and all the tags and bobs of the
Intelligence Department."

"I'll want a disguise of some sort, Hafiz."

"Good idea!" said Hafiz, slapping his knee.  "You
can't set foot in the streets of Cairo without being
recognised.  Then if I'm right about the trackers
... but we'll not talk about that.  Something Eastern, eh?
What do you say to a Coptic priest?  Old Michael could
lend us a black gown and a black turban.  Or no, a
Bedouin, going to Naples for ammunition!  Why, it
happens every day!  Splendid costume!  Covers your
head and nearly all your face, you know ... Oh,
we'll lick him, the big, bloated, blithering ... Ha,
ha!  Effendi thinks he holds the field, and he is
walking about the city like a leopard among dogs.  But
wait!  We'll see!"

Then getting up from the side of the bed and walking
to and fro in the room, Hafiz laughed out loud in his
savage joy at the thought of defeating Macdonald, until
Gordon said—

"I shall want a man to go with me.  Can you find
me a man, Hafiz?" and thereupon the good fellow's
spirits dropped suddenly and his laughing mouth began
to lag.

"A man?  To go with you?  Well, I ... I thought
of doing that myself, Gordon ... as far as the boat I
mean ... just to see the last of you ... not knowing
when I may ... But perhaps you're right.  I
might cause you to be suspected, and then ... Yes, I
must give that up, I suppose."

"That's all right, Hafiz—we'll meet again
somewhere," said Gordon, and when Hafiz's face had
brightened afresh he added—

"I'll want camels, Hafiz—two good, strong camels."

"Camels?  Why, what the deuce....  Ah, of
course!  What a fool I am!  Every station watched!
Wonder I never thought of that before!  The jackals
are all along the line, and if you had gone by train,
damn it, man! where should we have been?  In Macdonald's
mousetraps in no time!  Oh, yes, camels, of
course.  I'll get you camels.  Good ones, too.  Bedouins
always have good camels.  Ha, ha!  Effendi will go
to the place he is fit for, and God increase the might
of Islam!"

"I'll want money too, Hafiz."

"Don't trouble about that.  I've got a little
myself—all you'll want to get away."

"I'll want a good deal, Hafiz.  There's a bundle of
bank notes in the top drawer of my desk at the
barracks.  You'll find the key in my trousers' pocket,
and if you can only contrive——"

"Of course I can.  Your soldier boy has been asking
after you ever since you went away.  He'll manage
it.  Macdonald's bloodhounds are beating about the
barracks, of course, but Tommy—trust Tommy to get
the money for you....  In your trousers' pocket, you
say? ... All right.  Here's the key! ... Let me see,
now—you'll want your berth booked—to Messina, I
mean.  I'll do that myself and give you whatever's
left ... I must keep out of people's way until after
Wednesday, though!  No calling at the Agency—not if
I know it!  My mother must be told I've been sent off
somewhere, and as for the Consul-General and the
telephone—I'll break the blessed receiver, that's what
I'll do! ... Never mind about my not seeing you off.
Lord alive, that's nothing!  Hope to get leave before
long, and then I'll slip over to England.  So I'll not be
saying good-bye to you when you go away,
Gordon—not altogether, you know—not for good, I mean.  And
if all goes well with you and Helena——"

But the chuckling and the crowing and the laughing
out loud in savage exultation at the thought of beating
Macdonald were beginning to break down, and then
Gordon, unable to keep back the truth any longer, said
in a voice that chilled the ear of Hafiz—

"Hafiz, old fellow!"

"Well?"

"I don't intend to go back to England."

"You don't intend to go back——"

"No."

"Then where the ... where are you going to, Charlie?"

"I'm going to Khartoum."





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   CHAPTER XI

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During the earlier hours of the Night of Lamentation
Helena sat in her room looking over bundles of old
letters and tying them up with ribbon.  The letters
were nearly all from Gordon, but being written under
different conditions and meant to be read in happier
hours, every playful passage in them stung and every
word of affection scorched.

She was waiting for the black boy to come back
from the demonstration, and thinking out a course of
conduct.  Instead of returning to England she was to
remain in Cairo, and by help of the new evidence she
was to compel the law to arrest and convict the guilty
man.  It was her right to do so, and since the
authorities, thinking of other things, were shirking their
responsibility, it was her duty, her solemn and sacred
duty.

What did State considerations matter to her?  Nothing!
She remembered the predicament of the Army
surgeon without compunction, and even when she
thought of the position of the Consul-General she did
not care.  Her father was dead, Gordon was lost to her,
she was a woman and she was alone, and nothing else
was of the smallest consequence.  Thus seeing to the
bottom of her own misery, she had now no pity for
anybody else.

At midnight the black boy had not returned, and
being worn out with sleeplessness, and assured by her
other servants that Mosie was well able to take care of
himself, she went to bed.  But the moonlight filtered
through the white window-blind, and she lay for some
time with wide-open eyes thinking what she would do
next day.  She would go down to the Ministry of the
Interior and set the law in motion.  There would be
no time to lose, for if Ishmael escaped the consequences
of to-night's proceedings he might leave Cairo without
delay.

She slept a few hours only, and when she awoke the
sun was flecking with fiery bars a window that faced
to the east.  While she lay on her back with her arm
under her head, looking at the ceiling, and working
herself up into a still greater hatred of Ishmael, there
came a timid knock at the door and the black boy
entered the room.  He was breathless and dishevelled
and full of apologies.

"Lady angry with Mosie?  Mosie stop all night to
tell lady everything," he said, and then he told her
what had happened in the Mohammedan cemetery—a
wild, disordered, delirious story of the departure of the
hundred men.

"But the prophet himself—what has become of
him?" asked Helena, raising her head from her pillow.

"White Prophet gone," said Mosie.

"Gone?"

"Mosie follow him to station.  White Prophet go by
train, lady."

"By train?"

"Yes, lady.  White Prophet go by train to Upper
Egypt," said Mosie, and then Helena heard no more.

Her head fell back to her pillow and she covered her
eyes with her hands.  The guilty man was gone, the
authorities had allowed him to go, and if the evil-doer
was to be punished there was nothing left but personal
vengeance.

Every tender impulse of her heart was now dead.
Overwhelmed as by a new burden, and haunted by a
dark responsibility—that of seeing God's vengeance
brought down upon her father's murderer—she saw
herself at one moment prompting Gordon to kill
Ishmael.  Why not?  There was no other way.  Gordon
should kill Ishmael Ameer because Ishmael Ameer had
killed her father!

At the next moment the recollection that Gordon
had gone took her back once more to the bitterest part
of her suffering.  She had always thought that when
God made Gordon He had made him without fear, yet
he had run away from the consequences of being
court-martialled.  It was intensely painful to her to despise
Gordon, but do what she would she could not help
feeling a growing contempt for him.  If he had only
stood up to his punishment she would have been proud
of him, and even if he had been drummed out of the
army, or any fate had befallen him less terrible than
death, he would have found her standing by his side.

But he had fled, he had left her, and being useless for
all purposes of righteous vengeance, a woman without
a man behind her, she could do nothing now but go
back to England.

During the next three days she was kept busy by the
mechanical preparations for her departure.  There was
not much she had to do, for the contents of the General's
house belonged to the army, and beyond her own and
her father's personal possessions there was little to
pack up, yet the black boy was always beside her, with
a helping hand but a lagging lip and many plaintive
lamentations.

"Lady not want Mosie any more now—no?"

On the Thursday he came running into Helena's
room to say that Lady Nuneham, with her Egyptian
maid, had come to call on her.

Helena met Gordon's mother at the door, the sweet
old soul with her pale, spiritual face, suffering visibly,
but bearing herself bravely as she stepped out of her
closely curtained carriage and crossed the garden path,
under the white heat of the noonday sun, with one arm
through Fatimah's, and a trembling hand on the ebony
handle of a walking-stick.

As soon as she reached the hall the old lady lifted
her veil and stretched out her arms to Helena and
kissed her, and then patted her shoulder with her
mittened hand as if Helena had been a child and she
had come to comfort her.

"My poor Helena!  It's hard for you, I know, but
if God sends the cross He sends the strength to carry
it.  I've always found it so, my dear," she said, and
when she was seated on the sofa with Helena beside
her, she began to talk of her own father, how they had
been everything to each other, and when he had died
she had thought she could not live without him, but
God had been good—He had sent her her husband and
then——

But that was a blind alley down which she could
walk no further, for there was one name that was
trembling on the lips of both women and neither of
them could yet bring herself to speak it.

"When my mother died, too—I was married then
and living here in Cairo, but mother couldn't leave the
old home in Massachusetts where I was brought up as
a child ... Poor mother, she used to play Blind-man's-buff
in the hall with me, I remember, for we were far
away from other people and I had no little playmates
... when she died I thought I should have died too,
but God was good to me again—He sent me my own
child, my boy, my——"

It was just as if all roads converged to one centre,
and to escape from it the old lady began to talk of
little things, asking simple questions and giving motherly
advice, while Helena held down her head and drew the
hem of her handkerchief through her fingers.

"You are sailing on Saturday, are you not?"

"Yes, on Saturday."

"You must take good care of yourself, dearest.  It
is hot in Cairo, but it may be cool in Alexandria and
even cold on the sea.  Put some warm clothing on,
dear—some nice warm underclothing, you know."

She was sure to meet pleasant people on the steamer
and they would see her safely into the train at Marseilles.
It would be such an agreeable break to travel overland,
through Paris, and when she reached London——

"Have you anybody to meet you in London, Helena?"

Still drawing the hem of her handkerchief through
her fingers, Helena shook her head.

"I'm sorry for that, dear, very sorry."

Arriving in London was so trying, so bewildering,
especially to a woman.  Such crowds, such confusion!
It always made her feel so helpless.  And then she had
the Consul-General to look after her, and once Gordon
had come to meet her too.  He was at the Staff
College at that time, and before she alighted from the
carriage she had seen him forging his way down the
platform, and he kissed his hand to her——

But the sweet old thing could bear up no longer, and
while Helena pressed her handkerchief to her lips, she
said—

"O Helena, how happy we might have been!  It's
wrong of me, I know it's wrong, but I can't reconcile
myself to it even yet.  'Why is my life prolonged?' I
have often thought, and then I have told myself it was
because God intended that I should live to see my dear
children happy.  Ah, my darling, it would have been
so beautiful!  My children and perhaps my children's
children.  If I could only have seen them all together
once!  It would have been so easy to go then.  But
now my son is gone—I don't know what has become of
him—and my daughter—my sweet daughter that was
to be——"

Helena sank to her knees.  "Mother!" she said, and
burying her face in Lady Nuneham's shoulder, she felt,
for the first time in her life, that a mother's heart was
beating against her own.

After a while the old lady, whose arms had been
about Helena's neck, began to stroke her forehead and
the top of her head and to say in a calmer voice—

"It was wrong of me to repine, dear.  Happiness
does not depend on us.  It depends on God, and we
should leave everything to Him.  He will do what is
best.  I'm sure He will."

Then in a nervous way she attempted to defend
Gordon.  They were not to be too hard on him.  No
doubt he thought he was doing what was right.

"And he was, too, wasn't he?  In a sense at least.
Don't you think so, Helena?"

Helena could not answer, but she made a helpless
motion with her head.

They were not to suppose he meant to forsake them
either, and if he had fled away he was not thinking of
himself only—they might be sure of that.  He never
did—never had done—never once since he was a child.

"You couldn't give him a handful of sweets when he
was a boy but he asked for another for Hafiz."

Perhaps he was thinking of his father—that if he
gave himself up and there was an inquiry, a court-martial,
the Consul-General would suffer in his influence
in Egypt and his esteem in England.  Perhaps he was
thinking of Helena herself—that it might seem as if
her father's death had been hastened by the painful
scene with himself.  And perhaps he was thinking a
little of his mother, too—of the pain she would suffer
at sight of her husband and her son at war before the
world.

However this might be, he would come back.  She
knew he would.  Oh yes, she knew quite well he would
come back.  For four days she had asked God, and He
had answered her at last.

"'Help me, O God, for Christ's sake!' I said.  'Will
my dear son come back to me?  Shall I see him again?
O God, give me a sign.'  And He did, my dear.  Yes, it
was just before dawn this morning.  'Janet!' said a
voice, and I was not afraid.  'Be patient, Janet!  All
will be well!'"

Helena dared not look up, being afraid to penetrate
by so much as a glance the sanctity of the old lady's
soul.

"So you see it's wrong to repine, dear.  Everything
will work out for the best.  You are going to England,
but that doesn't matter in the least.  We'll all come
together again yet.  And when my dear ones are
united, my sweet daughter and my boy, my brave,
brave boy——"

The old lady's voice was quivering with the excitement
of her joy, when Fatimah, who had stood aside
in silence, stepped forward and said—

"Better go home now, my lady.  His lordship will
be waiting for his lunch."

Lady Nuneham took Helena's head between her
hands and kissed her on the forehead, then dropped her
veil and rose to her feet by help of Fatimah's arm on
the one side and her stick on the other.

"Good-bye for the present, Helena!  Be sure you
write as soon as you get to England.  Take good care
of yourself on the voyage, dear.  And don't forget to
put on some nice warm underclothing, you know.
Good-bye!"

Helena saw her to the door, the sweet, helpless
old child, living by the life of her beautiful love.  As
she passed down the path she waved her delicate hand
in its silken mitten, and Helena said farewell to her
with her eyes, knowing she would see her no more.





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   CHAPTER XII

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After a while Helena began to think tenderly of
Gordon, and to conjure up the beautiful moments of
their love—the moment in the arbour before he set off
for Alexandria, the moment in his quarters when she
had to slip off her glove and dip her finger in the glass
from which he drank her health, and above all, the
moment of their first meeting, when he said he loved
Egypt and the Egyptians, and everything and everybody,
and they laughed and looked into each other's
eyes, and smiled without speaking, and he took her
hand and kept on holding it, and a world of warm
impulses coursed through her veins, and something
whispered to her, "It is he!"

But thinking like this about Gordon only made her
remember with even more bitterness than before the
man who had taken him away from her.  Presently she
saw that there was a kind of dishonour to Gordon in
hating the Egyptian for that, and though she tried to
justify herself by thinking of Gordon's mother, and of
the beautiful blind faith that was doomed to death, she
was compelled to go back at length to the one sure
ground on which she could continue to hate Ishmael
and keep a good conscience—that the man had killed
her father.

So intensely did she work up her feelings on this
subject that, awaking in the middle of the night after
Lady Nuneham's visit, she held out her hands in bed
and prayed to God to let His vengeance fall on the
Egyptian.

"Punish him, O God, punish him, punish, him!  My
father is dead!  My dear father is dead!  He was so
weak, so ill, so old!  O God, let Thy vengeance fall on
the coward who killed him!  Let Thy hand be on him
as long as he lives!  Follow him wherever he goes!
Destroy him whatever he does!  Let him never know
another happy hour!  Let him be an exile and an
outcast to the last hour of his life!  O God, hear me,
hear me!"

Next morning she felt ashamed of this outburst, but
less because of its bitterness than its futility, and then
with a sense of utter helplessness she began to feel the
misery of being a woman.  It was a part of the cruel
scheme of nature that, however injured and outraged,
a woman could do nothing.  In the East, above all, she
was useless—useless for all purposes of justice or
vengeance or revenge.

On the Friday afternoon, having made the last preparations
for her departure, she was sitting at her desk
writing labels for her trunks and portmanteaus, when
Mosie dashed in upon her to say that the Princess
Nazimah, with sais and footmen and eunuchs, was
driving up to the door.  A moment later the Princess
entered the room.  Her plump person, redolent of
perfume, was clad in a tussore silk gown, and under the
latest of Paris hats her powdered face was plainly
visible through the thinnest of chiffon veils.

"I hear you are leaving Egypt, so I've come to bid
good-bye to you," she said, and then taking Helena by
the shoulders and looking into her face she cried—

"Merciful powers, what has become of your eyes, my
beauty?  What have you been doing to yourself, my
moon?"

"Nothing," said Helena.

"Nothing?  Don't tell me.  You are not sleeping,
no, nor eating either.  Come, sit down and tell me all
about it," and sitting heavily on the sofa, with Helena
beside her, she proceeded to do the talking herself.

"But, my dear creature, my good girl, this is
nonsense.  Excuse the word—nonsense!  Good God!  Is
a girl to kill herself because her father dies before her?
Fathers do, and why shouldn't they?  Mine did.  He
was a beast.  Excuse the word—a beast.  Forty
wives—or was it fifty?—but he died nevertheless."

With that she lifted her veil, used a smelling bottle,
and then began again—

"I see what it is, though—your ways are not our
ways, and all this comes of your religion.  It makes
you think about death and the grave, whereas ours tells
us to think about life.  Your Christianity is a funeral
mute, my dear, while Islam is a dancing girl, God bless
her!  You groan and weep when your kindred die.  We
laugh and are happy, or if we are not we ought to be.
I'm sure I was when my first husband died.  'Thank
the Lord he's gone,' I said.  It's true I hadn't lived on
the best of terms with him, but then——"

"It's not my father's death only," began Helena
haltingly, whereupon the Princess said—

"Yes, of course!  I've heard all about it.  He's
gone, and I suppose you know no more than anybody
else what has become of him.  No?"

"No!"

"Ah, my dear, my moon, my beauty, all this wouldn't
have happened if you had taken my advice.  When
your Gourdan began to oppose his father you should
have stopped him.  Yes, you could have done it.  Of
course you could."

"I couldn't, Princess," said Helena.

"What?  You mean to say you tried to and you
couldn't?  You couldn't get him to give up that
ridiculous holy man for a girl like ... Then God have
mercy upon us, what are you moaning about?  Who
ever heard of such a thing?  A young woman like you
eating her heart out for the loss of a man who prefers
... well, upon my word!"

The Princess put her smelling bottle to both nostrils
in quick succession, and then said—

"It's true I thought him the best of the bunch.  In
fact I simply lost my heart to him.  But if he had been
the only man in the world ... Oh, I know!  You
think he *is* the only one.  I thought that myself when
my first husband left me.  It wasn't a Mahdi in his
case.  Only a milliner, and I was ready to die of shame.
But I didn't.  I just put some kohl on my eyes and
looked round for another.  It's true my second wasn't
much of a man, but a donkey of your own is better
than a horse of somebody else's."

Again the smelling bottle and then—

"Listen to me, my dear.  I'm a woman of experience
at all events.  Have a good cry and get him out
of your head.  Why not?  He's gone, isn't he?  He
can never come back to the army, and his career as a
soldier is at an end.  The felled tree doesn't bear any
more dates, so what's the good of him anyway?  Oh,
*I* know!  You needn't tell *me*!  Love is sweet in the
suckling and bitter in the weaning, and you think you
can't do it, but you can.  You are going back to
England, I hear.  So much the better!  Far from the
eyes, far from the heart, and quite right too.  Get
married as soon as possible and have some big bouncing
babies.  I haven't had any myself certainly, but that's
different—I thought I wouldn't repeat the crime of my
mother, God forgive her!"

Helena's head was down; she was hardly listening.

"Lose no time either, my sweet.  Time is money,
they say, and perhaps it is, though it has different
prices on the Bourse, I notice.  I've known days that
would have been dear at two piastres and a few quarters
of an hour that I wouldn't have parted with for millions
of money.  Perhaps you've felt like that, my beauty.
But perhaps you haven't.  You're only a child yet, my
chicken."

"The man Ishmael has gone, hasn't he?" asked Helena.

"Yes, they've let him go, the stupids!  Back to the
Soudan—to Khartoum, they tell me."

"Khartoum?"

"Just like you English!  Dunces!  Excuse the
word.  I say what I think.  You judge of the East by
the West, and can't see that force is the only thing
these people understand.  I stood it for five days,
boiling all over inside, and then I went down to the
Agency.  'Good gracious,' I said, 'why has the Government
allowed these men to slip through their fingers?'  And
when Nuneham said he had laid a hundred and
fifty of them by the heels, I said 'Tut!  Taking water
by drops will never fill the water-skin.  You should have
laid hold of a hundred and fifty thousand, and that
man Ishmael above all.  But you've let him go—him
and his hundred messengers—and now you'll have to
take the consequences.  Serve you right, too!  What
was the use of putting down the Arabic press if you let
the Arabic preachers go unmolested?'"

"What did he say to that, Princess?"

"He said he had scotched the snake but he was not
forgetting the scorpion.  It's no use talking, though.
Nuneham is a great man, but he has lost his nerve, and
is always asking himself what they are saying about
him in England.  Boobies in Parliament, I suppose,
and he wants to be ready to reply to them.  But, goodness
me, if you throw a missile at every dog that barks
at you the stones in your street will be as precious as
jewels soon.  Oh, I know!  I'm a woman of experience."

Helena was staring straight before her.

"I see what is going to happen," said the Princess.
"This man will sow sedition all over the country and
meantime preach peace in Khartoum and throw dust in
the eyes of Europe."

"He is a scoundrel, a hypocrite——"

"Of course he is, my dear, but when people are bad
they always pretend that they want to make other
people better."

"Can the Government do nothing to stop him, to
destroy him?"

"No, my dear.  There is only one thing that can do
that now."

"What?"

"A woman!"

"A woman?"

"Why not?  Follow the holy man no farther than
his threshold, they say.  But some woman always does
so.  Always!"

Helena's staring eyes with their far-away look had
come back to the Princess's face.  The Princess was
beating her hand and laughing.

"You English think woman has no power in the East.
Rubbish!  She is more powerful here than anywhere
else.  Even polygamy gives her power—for a time, at
all events.  While she is first favourite she rules
everything, and when she ceases to be that—" the Princess
laughed again, closed her eyes, and said: "She who
doesn't take her revenge has an ass for uncle."

Helena's heart began to beat so violently that she
could scarcely speak, but she said—

"You mean that some woman will betray this
man——"

"What is more likely?  They all fall that way
sooner or later, my beauty.  This one has taken a kind
of vow of celibacy, they say, but what matter?  When
I was as young as you are there was nothing I loved
so much as to meet with a man of that sort.  It was
child's play, my darling."

All the blood in Helena's body was now boiling under
the poison of a new thought.

"I hear he says he will come back in glory, and then
Egypt will be at his feet.  *Bismillah!*" said the
Princess, raising her eyes in mock reverence, and then
laughing gaily she added—

"Perhaps—who knows?—before that time comes
some woman of the harem may find her opportunity.
Jealousy—envy—revenge—one may see how the world
goes without eyes, my beauty!"

Helena sat motionless; she was scarcely able to
breathe.

"Good luck to her, I say!" said the Princess.  "She'll
do more for Egypt than all the Nunehams and Sirdars
put together."

Then she looked round at Helena and said—

"I've shocked you, haven't I, nay dear?  Women in
the West don't do these things, do they?  No, they
are civilised, and when they have been wronged by men
they take them into the courts and make them pay.
Faugh!  There can be no red blood in women's veins
in your countries."

The Princess rummaged in her bag for her powder
puff, used it vigorously, put away her smelling bottle,
and then rose to go, saying—

"I don't mean you, my sweet.  Your mother was
Jewish, wasn't she?—and it was a Jewish woman who
destroyed the captain of the Assyrians and smote off
his head with his own falchion.  Women can't fight
their battles with swords, though.  But," laughing and
patting Helena's hand again, "what has Allah given
them such big black eyes for?  Adieu, my dear!  Adieu!"

Helena stood in the middle of the floor where the
Princess had left her and slowly looked around.  For a
long time she remained there thinking.  Was woman so
utterly helpless as she had supposed?  And when she
was deeply wronged, when her dear ones were torn
from her, when she was a victim of cruel violence and
heartless hypocrisy, and the law failed her, and the
State—having its own ends to serve—tried to shuffle
her off, was she not justified in using against her enemy
the only weapons which God had given her?

At that she grew hot and then cold, and then a sense
o£ shame came over her and she covered her face with
her hands.  "What am I thinking of?" she asked
herself, and the floor seemed to slide from under her
feet.  The thought which the Princess had put into her
mind was treason to her love for Gordon.  That love
was a sacred thing to her, and it would always remain
so, even though she might never see Gordon again.
Love itself was sacred, and she who gave it away for
any gain of vengeance or revenge was a bad woman.

Helena sat down with her elbows on the desk and
her chin resting on her hands and stared out of the
window.  After a while a kind of relief came to her.
She began to recall some of the Princess's parting
words.  "She will do more for Egypt than all the
Nunehams and Sirdars put together."  That seemed to
justify the thought that had taken possession of her.
She began to feel herself the champion of justice, and
to find the good conscience for which she sought.

This man Ishmael, who had killed her father, and by
hypocritical pretences had deceived Gordon and caused
him to be carried away from her, was an impostor who
would turn England out of Egypt by playing on the
fanaticism of an ignorant populace.  He was another
Mahdi, who, with words of peace in his mouth, would
devastate the country and sow the very sands of its
deserts with blood.  When law failed to defeat an
enemy like that, and the machinery of civilised
government proved to be impotent against him, were there
any means, any arts, which it was not proper to use?

Love?  It was quite unnecessary to think about that.
This man pretended to be an emancipator of the Eastern
woman.  Therefore a woman might go to him and offer
to help him, and while helping him she might possess
herself of all his secrets.  "Follow the holy man no
farther than his threshold," said the Arabs.  She would
do it nevertheless, and in doing it she would be serving
England and Egypt, and even the world.

Thus she fought with herself in a fierce effort to hold
on to her good conscience.  But staring out of the
window she felt as if something from the river were
stretching out its evil hands to her.  The red streak in
the rising Nile was now wider than before, and it
looked more than ever like blood.

Ishmael Ameer would not know her.  During the
single moment in which she had stood in the same room
with him he had never so much as looked in her direction.
The Sirdar and the British officers of the Soudan
had not yet seen her.  If there were any danger of
their asking questions the Consul-General could set
them at rest.  "I can do it," she thought.  "I can,
and I will."

The black boy, who had been creeping in and out of
her room, looking more and more miserable as he found
her always in the same position, now approached her
and said, pointing to the labels under her elbows—

"Mosie tie them on to boxes, lady?"

She looked round at him, and the utter slavishness in
his little soul touched her pity.  It also stirred her
caution, for she told herself that she might need the
boy's help, and that he would die for her if need be.

"Mosie," she said, "would you like to go away
with me?"

Mosie, in his delirious joy, could hardly believe his
ears.

"Lady take Mosie to England with her?"

"No, to your own country—to the Soudan."

Mosie first leapt off the floor as if he wanted to fly
up to the ceiling and then began to make himself big,
saying Mosie was a good boy, lie was lady's own boy
from one hand to the other, and what would have
become of lady if she had gone away without him?

"Then bring up two cabs immediately, one for the
luggage and the other for ourselves, and don't say a
word to anybody," said Helena, who had risen to
consult a railway time-table and was now tearing up
her labels.

Hugging himself with delight, the black boy shot
away instantly.  Helena heard his joyous laughter as
it rippled like a river along the garden path, and then
she sat down at the desk to write to the Consul-General.





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   CHAPTER XIII

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Gordon, in the meantime, living on the heights of his
new resolve, had been waiting impatiently for the
opportunity of departure.  No prisoner looking forward
to the hour of his escape ever suffered more from the
slow passage of time.  He lost all appetite for food,
sleep deserted him, and as the week went on he was
in an ever-increasing fever of excitement.  On the
Tuesday he received through Michael a letter from
Hafiz saying—

"We must be careful.  I'll tell you why.  I was
right about the trackers.  That beast Macdonald,
having sworn that he would find you if you were above
ground, and being sure that you were still in Cairo and
that the people were concealing you, employed the
services of a couple of serpents from the Soudan.  These
human reptiles, with green eyes like the eyes of
boa-constrictors, had no difficulty in tracing your footsteps
to a side street in the neighbourhood of El Azhar, but
there your footsteps failed them as absolutely as if you
had sunk into the earth.

"Perplexed and baffled, they were on the point of
giving up the search when in the soft mud of the
disgusting thoroughfare they found the marks of horses'
hoofs and of the hoops of wheels, and from these they
concluded that you had been carried off in a conveyance
of some sort.  But track of the carriage was lost the
moment they reached the paved way which passes
through the Mousky, and now they are again bewildered.

"In this extremity, however, they have thought of
another device for your discovery which is—what do
you think?  To watch *me*!  Under the impression that
I know where you are, they are dogging my footsteps
every moment I am off duty.  No matter!  I'll beat
the beasts!  As a bloodhound is nothing but a nose, so
a tracker is nothing but an eye, and he has hardly as
much brain as would stuff a mushroom.  Therefore
wait!  Trust yourself to Hafiz!  Why not?  You
cannot depend on a better man."

Next day, Wednesday, the doctor, with his bright
face and cheery voice, came again to dress the wounded
finger.

"Wonderful!" he cried.  "Almost healed already!
That's what youth and decent living do for a man."

"I have no money at present, Doctor," said Gordon,
"but I expect to receive some very soon, and before I
go your fee will be paid."

"Of course it will—when I ask for it.  But 'go'?
Not yet, I think."

The streets were like a sackful of eyes, and every
eye seemed to be looking for Gordon—either to attack
or to protect him.

"But wait!  Things don't seem to be going too
smoothly for the Government."

Cables at the clubs made it clear that England was
not very pleased with the turn events had taken in
Cairo.  There had been questions in Parliament, and
the Foreign Minister was at his wits' end to defend the
Consul-General.  Mention of Gordon himself too, and
some of the Liberal Opposition up in arms for him.

"So wait, I say!  Who knows?  You may walk out
without danger by-and-by."

Thursday passed heavily with Gordon, who was alone
all day long save for the visits of old Michael when
bringing the food which went away untouched, but
towards midnight Hafiz arrived with his eyes full of
mischief and his fat cheeks wreathed in smiles.

"Look!" he said, "that's the way to beat the
brutes," and holding up one foot he pointed to a native
yellow slipper which he wore over his military boots.
He had made a circuit of six miles to get there, though—it
was like taking a country walk in order to cross the
street.

"But no matter!  Trust yourself to Hafiz."

He carried a small bundle under his arm, and
throwing it on a chair he said—

"Your Bedouin clothes, my boy—you'll find them
all right, I think."

Gordon caught the flame of his eagerness, and was
asking a dozen questions at once when Hafiz said—

"A moment, old chap!  Let us speak of everything
in its place.  First," taking a roll of bank notes out of
his pocket, "here's your money—short of what I've
spent for you.  Tommy got it.  Couldn't get anything
else, though."

Thinking civilian clothes might be useful, Hafiz had
told Gordon's soldier servant to smuggle a suit out also,
but it had been found impossible to do so.

"That comes of taking up your quarters in a barracks
instead of at the Club or at a private house, as Staff
Officers always do," said Hafiz, and when Gordon gave
some hint of explanation he added, "Oh, I know!
You wanted to make common cause with the men, but
now you have to pay the price of it."

"What about the man to go with me?" asked Gordon.

"I've got him.  You remember the two Sheikhs who
went with us to Alexandria.  It's one of them."

His name was Osman.  He had been tutor to the
Khedive's children, but he wished to become a teacher
of Mohammedan law in the college at Khartoum, so
the journey suited his book exactly.

"And the camels?"

"I've got them also.  Young ones, too, with ripping
big humps!  They'll want their humps before they've
crossed that desert."

"Where and when am I to meet them, Hafiz?"

"At the first village beyond the fort on the Gebel
Mokattam at eleven o'clock to-morrow night.  But I'll
come for you at ten and see you safely started."

Gordon looked up in alarm.

"Don't be afraid for me.  Leave everything to Hafiz.
You can't depend on a better man."

"I'm sure I can't," said Gordon, and then in a lower
tone, "But, Hafiz?"

"Well?"

"What about Helena?"

"Packed up and ready to go.  The Consul-General's
secretary booked her berth to-day, and she sails, as I
said she would, on Saturday."

Next day, Friday, the hours went by with feet of
lead, but Gordon's impatience to get away from Cairo
had now begun to abate.  More easily could he have
reconciled himself to go if Helena had gone before him,
but to leave her behind, if only for a few hours, was
like cowardice.  Little by little his spirit fell from the
elevation on which it had lived for the better part of a
week, and in the face of his flight he felt ashamed.

Towards nightfall, nevertheless, he began to make
preparations for his departure, and, opening the bundle
of clothes which Hafiz had left for him, he found that
they consisted of a Bedouin's outer garments only,
caftan, skull-cap, kufiah (head-shawl), and head-rope,
but no underclothing and no slippers.  This seemed for
a moment like an insurmountable difficulty, but at the
next instant, with the sense of a higher power ruling
everything, he saw the finger of God in it, compelling
him to wear his soldier's clothes and military boots
beneath his Bedouin costume, lest leaving them behind
him might lead to trouble for the good people who had
befriended him.

By ten o'clock he had finished his dressing, and then
the door of his room was opened by a man in the flowing
silk garments of a Sheikh, with the light of a smile
on his chubby face and a cautionary finger to his lip.

"Here I am—are you ready?"

It was Hafiz, tingling with excitement but chuckling
with joy, and having looked at Gordon in his head-shawl
descending to his shoulders, with the head-rope coiled
about it, he said—

"Marvellous!  Your own father wouldn't know you!"

The disguise was none too good though, for the
trackers were keenly on the trail that night, having got
it into their heads that Gordon would try to leave
Egypt with Helena in the morning.

"So the sooner we are on the safe side of the Gebel
Mokattam the better, my boy....  One moment,
though."

"What is it?"

"Remember—your name is Omar—Omar Benani."

"Omar Benani."

The last moment having come, Gordon, who seemed
now to catch at every straw that would delay his
departure, was unwilling to leave the house that had been
his refuge without bidding farewell to the Patriarch.
Hafiz tried to dissuade him from doing so, saying that
the Patriarch, who knew all, wished to be blind to what
was going on.  But Gordon was not to be gainsaid, and
after a while Michael was called and he led the way to
the Patriarch's room.

The old man had just finished his frugal supper of
spinach and egg, and he was lifting his horn-rimmed
spectacles from his nose to wipe his rheumy eyes with
his red-print handkerchief when Michael opened the
door.

"A poor traveller asks your blessing, Patriarch,"
said Michael, and then Gordon, in his Bedouin costume,
stepped forward and knelt at the old priest's feet.

The Patriarch rose and stood for a moment with a
look of perplexity on his wrinkled face.  Then, lending
himself to the transparent deception, the saintly old
man laid his bony hand, trembling visibly, on Gordon's
head, and speaking in a faltering voice, with breath that
came quickly through his toothless jaws, he said—

"God bless you, my son, and send you safely to your
journey's end and to your own place and people."

But seeing at the next instant how pathetic was the
error which in his momentary confusion he had
unwittingly made, he corrected himself and added—

"Fear not, my son, neither in the days of thy life,
nor in the hour of death, for God will go with thee and
*He will bring thee back*."

A moment later Gordon, with Hafiz by his side, had
passed out of the echoing harbour of the little cathedral
close into the running tides of the streets without.





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   CHAPTER XIV

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The Coptic Cathedral stands in the midst of the most
ancient part of Cairo, and it is coiled about by a
cobweb of close and narrow thoroughfares.  Through
these thoroughfares, lit by tin lanterns and open
candles only, and dense with a various throng of native
people—hawkers, pedlars, water-carriers, fruit-sellers,
the shrouded black forms of women gliding noiselessly
along and the blue figures of men lounging at coffee-stalls
or squatting at the open mouths of shops—Gordon
in his Bedouin costume walked with a long, slow step
and the indifference to danger which he had learned
in war, while Hafiz, who was now quivering with
impatience, and trembling with the dread of detection,
slackened his speed to keep pace with him.

"Can't we go faster?" whispered Hafiz, but Gordon
did not seem to hear.  Slowly, steadily, with a rhythmic
stride that might have come out of the desert itself, he
pushed his way through the throng of town-dwellers,
always answering the pious ejaculations of the passers-by
and returning their Eastern greetings.

Before Hafiz was aware of the direction they were
taking they had passed out of the dim-lit native streets,
where people moved like shadows in a mist, into the
coarse flare of the Esbekiah (the European) quarter,
where multitudes of men in Western dress sat drinking
at tables on the pavement, while girls in gold brocade
and with painted faces smiled down at them from
upper windows.

"Why should we go this way?" said Hafiz in Arabic,
but still Gordon made no reply.

Two mounted police who were standing at guard by
the entrance to a dark alley craned forward to peer
into their faces, and a group of young British officers,
smoking cigarettes on the balcony of an hotel, watched
them while they passed and broke into a subdued trill
of laughter when they were gone.

"Are we not exposing ourselves unnecessarily?"
whispered Hafiz, but Gordon only gripped the hand
that hung by his side and went on without speaking.

Presently they crossed the Opera Square and turned
down an avenue that led to the Nile, and then Hafiz's
impatience could contain itself no longer.

"We are going in the wrong direction," he whispered.
"It's nearly eleven o'clock, and Osman is waiting
for us."

"Come on," said Gordon, and he continued to walk
steadily forward.

At length it dawned on Hafiz that, in spite of all
possible consequences, Gordon intended to go to the
Agency before he left Cairo, and having assured himself
that this was so, he began to pour out a running whisper
of passionate entreaties.

"But, Gordon!  My dear Gordon!  This is madness.
It cannot be done," he said.

"It must!" said Gordon.

"The trackers will be there if they are anywhere."

"Hush!"

"It is the one place they'll keep watch upon to-night."

"I can't help that," said Gordon without stopping;
and Hafiz had no choice but to follow on.

A few minutes later the good fellow, whose heart
was now panting up to his throat, walked close to
Gordon's side and whispered in a breaking voice—

"If you have any message to send to your mother I'll
take it—I'll take it after you are gone."

"I must see her myself," said Gordon; and then
Hafiz could say no more.

They passed through populous places into thoroughfares
that were less and less crowded, and came out at
last by the barracks on the banks of the Nile.  There
the broad street was empty and silent, and the white
moonlight lay over the river which flowed like liquid
steel.  Under the dark window of his own quarters
Gordon paused for a moment, for it was the spot on
which he had first seen Helena.  He could see it still
as he saw it then, with its tide of clamorous traffic from
the bridge—the camels, the cameleers, the blue-shirted
fellaheen, the women with tattooed chins and children
astride on their shoulders, and then the girl driving the
automobile, with the veil of white chiffon about her
head and the ruddy glow of the sunset kissing her
upturned face as she lifted her eyes to look at him.

Hafiz was choking with emotion by this time, but his
sense of Gordon's danger came uppermost again when
they turned into the road that led to the Consul-General's
house and caught sight of a group of men who
were standing at the gate.

"There they are," he whispered.  "What did I tell
you?  Let us go back.  Gordon, I implore you!  I
entreat you!  By all you love and who love you——"

"Come on," said Gordon again, and though quaking
with fear, Hafiz continued to walk by his side.

There were only three men at the gate of the Agency,
and two of them were the native porters of the house,
but the third was a lean and lank Soudanese, who
carried by a cord about his neck a small round lantern
whereof the light was turned against his breast.  A
cold glitter in the black man's eyes was like the gleam
of a dagger to Hafiz, but Gordon paid no heed to it.
He saluted the porters, saying he had come to see
Ibrahim, the Consul-General's servant, and then,
without waiting for permission, he walked through.

Hafiz followed him into the garden, where the
moonlight lay over the silent trees and made blotches
of shadow on the path.

"Stay here," he said, and leaving Hafiz in the
darkness he stepped up to the door.

Ibrahim himself opened it, and the moment he had
done so, Gordon entered the outer hall.

"Tell Fatimah I come from her son and wish to see
her at once," he said.

Ibrahim looked searchingly at the stranger, and a
shade of doubt and anger crossed his face.

"I can't do that, my man," he answered.

"Why can't you?" asked Gordon.

"I won't," said Ibrahim.

There was a little lodge at the right of the hall, where
visitors to the Consul-General wrote their names in a
book.  Into this lodge Gordon drew Ibrahim by the
arm and whispered a few hasty words in his ear.  The
man's lips whitened and quivered, and he began to
stutter and stammer in his fright.

"Are you, then ... can it be ... is it really——"

"Hush!  Yes.  Ibrahim," said Gordon, "I wish to
see my mother."

Ibrahim began to wring his hands.  It was impossible.
Yes, impossible.  Quite impossible.  Her ladyship
was ill.

"Ill?"

"She went up to the Citadel yesterday, sir, and came
home utterly exhausted."

"Do you mean that my mother is very ill—dangerously
ill, Ibrahim?"

"I don't know, sir.  I can't say, sir.  I fear she is,
sir."

"Then all the more I wish to see her," said Gordon.

But again Ibrahim wrung his hands.  The doctor had
been there four times that day and ordered absolute
rest and quiet.  Only Fatimah was permitted to enter
the patient's room—except the Consul-General, and he
went up to it every hour.

"It would be a shock to her, sir.  It might kill her,
sir.  *Wallahi*!  I beg of you not to attempt it, sir."

Ibrahim was right, plainly right, but never until that
moment had Gordon known the full bitterness of the
cup he had to drink from.  Because his mother was ill,
dangerously ill, dying perhaps, therefore he must not
see her—he of all others!  He was going far, and might
never see her again.  Was another blank wall to be
built about his life?  It was monstrous, it was
impossible, it should not be!

In the agony of his revolt a wild thought came to
him—he would see his father!  Why not?  Back to
his memory across the bridge of so many years came
the words which his father had written to him when
he came of age: "You are twenty-one years of age,
Gordon, and your mother and I have been recalling
the incidents of the day on which you were born....
From this day forward I am no longer your father, I
am your friend—perhaps the best friend you will ever
have; let nothing and no one come between us."  Then,
why not?  What was there to be afraid of?

"Ibrahim," said Gordon, "where is the Consul-General
now?"

"In the library with his secretary, sir," replied
Ibrahim.

"Then tell him—" began Gordon, but just at that
moment there was a flat and deadened step on the soft
carpet of the landing above, and then a cold voice that
chilled his ear came from the upper hall.

"Ibrahim!"

It was the Consul-General himself with a letter in his
hand.

"Hush!" said Ibrahim, and, leaving the lodge, he
walked up the three or four steps to meet his master.

"Take this to the office of the Commandant of
Police—take it yourself and see it safely delivered."

"Yes, my lord."

"If the Commandant has gone home for the night
you will ask for his Deputy and say my answer is, 'Yes,
I let nothing come between me and the law.  If you
suspect that the person you refer to is still in Cairo
you will deal with him as you would deal with anybody
else.'  You understand me?"

"Yes, my lord," said Ibrahim, but he was staring
stupidly at the letter as if he had lost his wits.

"Who is that in the lodge with you?" asked the
Consul-General, and then Ibrahim, fumbling the letter
until it almost fell out of his fingers, seemed unable to
reply.

The wild thought had gone from Gordon by this time,
and he said in a voice which he did not recognise as
his own, "Tell Fatimah that her brother will come
again to see her," and then, feeling ashamed of his
sorry masquerade, and less than a servant in his father's
house, he stumbled out into the garden.

Hafiz was waiting for him there, and he was in a
state of still greater terror than before.  The moment
Gordon had gone, a light footstep, trying to make itself
noiseless, had come crackling over the gravel from the
direction of the gate.  It was that of the Soudanese,
and he had crept along the path like a serpent, half
doubled up and with his eyes and his lantern to the
ground.  After a while he had returned to where he
came from, and Hafiz had followed him, walking
stealthily in the shadow of the trees, in order to hear
what he had to say.  "Your Bedouin is a child of
Cairo and his boots were made in England," he had
said, and then chuckling to himself he had hurried
away.

"Are you wearing your military boots, Gordon?
Did you forget the slippers?  Or was it Osman who
forgot them?  It can't be helped, though.  The man
was a tracker—I told you so—and now he has gone
for the others and we shall be followed by the whole
troop of them.  Let us be off."

But still Gordon was in no hurry to go.  The sense
of stealing like a stranger from a spot that was dear to
him by a thousand memories seemed to be more than
he could bear.  Leaving Hafiz on the path, he went
round the house until he reached a place from which
he could see the light in his mother's window.  His
mother, his sweet and sainted mother, innocent of
everything yet the victim of all!  God forgive him!
Was it worth while to go away at all?  A gentle breeze
had risen by this time, and Hafiz was starting at every
leaf that rustled over his head.

When at length they left the Agency they were
going in the right direction, but Gordon was once more
choosing the lighter and more crowded thoroughfares.
Again the hawkers, the pedlars, the water-carriers, the
shrouded black forms of women and the blue figures of
men.  Again the salutations, the pious ejaculations, the
silent Eastern greetings.  It was almost as if Gordon
were tempting Providence, as if he were trying to leave
time for the trackers to overtake him.

"Every moment we lose fills me with fear—can't we
go faster now?" whispered Hafiz in English, but Gordon
continued to walk with the same even step.

"I know it might look like fright and arouse
suspicion, but still——"

As often as he dared to do so, Hafiz looked back to
see if they were pursued.

"Nothing in sight yet—God has delivered, us thus
far—but must we walk so slow?"

In the agony of his impatience every noise in the
streets was like the sound of a pursuer.  If a boy
shouted to his playmate, he shuddered; if a hawker
yelled over his tray, he trembled.  When they had
passed out of the busy thoroughfares into the darker
streets, where watchmen call to each other through the
hours of the night, the cry of a ghafir far ahead
(*Wahhed!*) seemed to Hafiz like the bay of a bloodhound,
and the answer of another close behind was like
the shrill voice of some one who was pouncing upon his
shoulders.

"It would be a pity to be taken now—at the last
moment, too," he whispered, and he strained his
ear to catch the faintest sound of footsteps behind
them.

After that no more was said until they came to the
open space under the heights of the Citadel where one
path goes up to the Mokattam Hills and another crosses
the arid land that lies on the east bank of the Nile.
Then suddenly Hafiz, who had been panting and
gasping, began to laugh and crow.

"I know what we've got to do," he said.  "Good
Lord alive! why didn't I think of it before?"

With that he stooped and whipped off the slippers he
wore over his boots and called on Gordon to hold up
his foot.

"What for?" asked Gordon.

"I have a reason—a good one.  Hold up!  The other
one!  Quick!"

In a moment the slippers he had taken off his own
boots had been pulled over Gordon's.

"Right!  And now, my dear Gordon, you and I are
going to part company."

"Here?" said Gordon.

"Yes, here," said Hafiz, and then pointing with one
hand to the hill and with the other to the waste, he
said, "You are going that way—I am going this."

"Why so?"

"Why?  Do you ask me why?  Because the trackers
are after us—because they may be here at any moment—because
they know there are two of us, but when they
find we have separated they'll follow up the man who
wears the military boots."

"Hafiz!"

"Well, I wear them, don't I?"

"Do you mean it, Hafiz—that you are going to turn
the trackers on to yourself?"

"Way shouldn't I?  Lord God! what can they do
to me?  If they catch me I'll only laugh in their dirty
black faces.  I'll give them a run before that, though.
Bedrasheen, Sakkara, Mena, Gizeh—a man wants some
fun after a night like this, you know."

He was laughing as if he were beside himself with
excitement.

"By that time you'll be far away from here, please
God!  Six hours at least—I'll see it's six, Gordon; six
hours' start on good camels—across the desert, too—and
not a black devil of them all to know what the dickens
has become of you."

His fear was as great as ever, but it had suddenly
become heroic.

"Hafiz!" said Gordon.  His voice was faltering, and
he was holding out both hands, but Hafiz, unable to
trust himself, was pretending not to hear or see.

"No time to lose, though!  Time is life, brother,
and you mustn't stay here a moment longer.  Over the
hill—first village beyond the fort—Osman will be
waiting for you."

"Hafiz!"

"Can't wait for farewells, Gordon.  Besides, you're
not going for good, you know.  Lord, no, not a bit of
it!  You'll come back some day—Ishmael too—and
then there'll be the deuce to pay by some of them."

He was running a few paces away, then stepping back
again.

"Why don't you go?  I'm going, anyway!  It's a
race for life or death to-night, my boy!  Such fun!
I'll beat the brutes!  Didn't I tell you to leave
everything to Hafiz?  I said you couldn't depend on a
better man."

"Hafiz!"

"Good-night, old chap!  Good-night, Charlie!
Charlie Gordon Lord has been a good old chum to me,
but damn it all, I'm going to be quits with him!"

With that he went bounding away, laughing and
crying and swearing and sobbing at the same time, and
in a moment he had disappeared in the darkness.





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   CHAPTER XV

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Being left alone, Gordon looked up at the Citadel and
saw that a light was burning in the window of Helena's
sitting-room.  That sight brought back the choking
sense of shame which he had felt some days before at
the thought of leaving Helena behind him.

"I cannot go without seeing her," he thought.  "It
is impossible—utterly impossible."

Then back to his mind, as by flashes of mental lightning,
came one by one the reasons which he had forged
for not seeing Helena, but they were all of no avail.
In vain did he ask himself what he was to say to her,
how he was to account for his past silence, and what
explanation he was to give of his present flight.  There
was no answer to these questions, yet all the same an
irresistible impulse seemed to draw him up to Helena's
side.  He must see her again, no matter at what risk.
He must take her in his arms once more, no matter at
what cost.

"I must, I must," he continued to say to himself,
while the same animal instinct which had carried him
away from the Citadel on the night of the crime was
now carrying him back to it.

Almost before his mind had time to tell him where he
was going he found himself ascending the hill that leads
up to the Bab-el-Gedid.  The sight of the gate of the
Citadel suggested fresh considerations that might have
acted as warnings, but he paid no heed to them.  It
was nothing to him in his present mood that he was
like a man who was putting his head into a noose, walking
deliberately into a trap, marching straight into the
camp of the enemy whose first interest it was to
destroy him.  The image of Helena and the sense of
her presence so near to him left little else to think
about.

The gate was still open, for it was not yet twelve
o'clock, and in deference to the ritual of the Moslem
faith, the muezzin, who lived outside the walls, was
permitted to pass through that he might chant the
midnight call to prayers from the minaret of the mosque
inside the fortress.

"Goin' to sing 'is bloomin' song, I suppose," thought
the sentry, a private of a Middlesex regiment, when
Gordon, as one having authority, walked boldly through
the gateway.

Being now within the Citadel, Gordon began to be
besieged by thoughts of the trackers, who would surely
keep watch upon the General's house also if, as Hafiz
had said, there was a suspicion that Helena and he
intended to go away together.  But again the vision of
Helena rose before him, and all other considerations
were swept away.

"To leave Cairo while Helena remains in it would be
cowardly," he told himself; and emboldened by this
thought he walked fearlessly across the square of the
mosque and round the old arsenal to the gate of the
General's house without caring whom he met there.

He met no one.  The gate was standing wide open,
and the door of the house, when he came to it, was open
also, and there was nobody anywhere about.  With a
gathering sense of shame, such as he had never felt
before, he stood there for a moment, wondering what
course he ought to take, whether to ring for a servant
or to walk through as he had been wont to do before
the dread events befell.  Suddenly the walls of the house
within resounded to a peal of raucous laughter, followed
by a burst of noisy voices in coarse and clamorous talk.

Utterly bewildered, he stepped forward in the direction
of Helena's boudoir, and then he realised that that
was the room the voices came from.  After a moment
of uncertainty he knocked, whereupon somebody shouted
to him in Arabic to enter, and then he opened the
door.

Helena's servants, being paid off, and required to
leave the house in the morning, had invited certain of
their friends and made a feast for them.  Squatting on
the floor around a huge brass tray, which contained a
lamb roasted whole and various smaller dishes, they
were now regaling themselves after the manner of their
kind with the last contents of the General's larder,
washed down by many pious speeches and by stories
less devotional.

"A little more, O my brother?"  "No, thanks be
to God, I have eaten well."  "Then by the beard of
the Prophet (to whom prayer and peace!), coffee and
cigarettes, and the tale of the little dancing girl."

At the height of their deafening merriment the door
of the room opened and a man in Bedouin dress stood
upon the threshold, and then there was silence.

Gordon stood for a moment in amazement at sight
of this coarse scene on a spot associated with so many
delicate memories.  Then he said—

"You don't happen to know if ... if the boy Mosie
is about?"

"Gone!" shouted several voices at once.

"Gone?"

"Yes, gone, O Sheikh," said one of the men—he was
the cook—pausing to speak with a piece of meat between
his finger and thumb, half way to his mouth.  "Mosie
has gone to England with the lady Helena.  They left
here at six o'clock to catch the night train to Alexandria,
so as to be in good time for to-morrow's steamer."

Gordon stood a moment longer, looking down at the
grinning yellow faces about the tray, and then, with
various apologies and after many answering salaams,
he closed the door behind him, whereupon he heard the
buzz of renewed conversation within the room, followed
by another but more subdued burst of laughter.

Alone in the corridor, he asked himself why, since
Helena was gone, he had been brought back to this
place.  Was it for punishment, for penance?  It must
have been so.  "All that had to be expiated," he told
himself, and then he turned to go.

But walking through the outer hall he had to pass
the door of the General's office, and thinking it would
be a sort of penance to enter the room itself he
persuaded himself to do so.

The room seemed naked and dead now, being denuded
of the little personal things that had made it live.  It
was dark, too, save for a ray of light that came from a
lamp outside, but the first thing that met Gordon's
eyes was the spot on which the General fell.  He forced
himself to look at that spot; for some moments he
compelled himself to stand by it, though his hair rose
from his crown and beads of perspiration broke from
his forehead.

"All that had to be expiated," he told himself again,
and again he turned to go.

But back in the hall he was on the spot where he had
last parted from Helena, and there a new penance
awaited him.  He remembered that in the hideous
moment when he had tried in vain to reply to her
reproaches he had been telling himself that if she loved
him as he loved her she would be trying to see things
with his eyes.  That thought had helped him to leave
her then, but it brought him no comfort now.  Why
had he not seen that the girl's love was fighting with
her pride?  Why had he not followed her into the
house when in her pleading, sobbing voice she had
called after him?

"Yes, everything had to be expiated," he told himself,
and once more he turned to go.

But passing through the garden he caught sight of
the arbour on the edge of the ramparts, and it seemed
to him that the deepest penance of all would be to stand
for an instant on that loved spot.  Giving himself no
quarter, abating nothing of the bitterness of his expiation,
drinking to the dregs the cup that fate had forced
to his lips, he entered the arbour, and there the image
of the girl he had loved, the girl he still loved, rose
most vividly of all before him.

He could almost feel her bodily presence by his
side—the gleam of her eyes, the odour of her hair, the
heaving of her bosom.  He could see the caressing smile
that broke from her face, he could hear the echo
of her ringing laugh.  Her proud strength and
self-reliance; her energy and grace; her passionate daring
and chivalry, and the gay raillery that was her greatest
charm—everything that was Helena appeared to be
about him now.

"Love is above everything—I shall only think of
that," she had said.

The moon was shining, the leaves were rustling, the
silvery haze of night-dew was in the near air, while the
lights of the city were blinking below and the river was
flowing silently beyond.  How often on such a night
had he walked on the ramparts with Helena leaning
closely on his arm and springing rightly by his side!
It almost seemed as if he had only to turn his head
and he would see her there, with her light scarf over
her head, crossed under her chin and thrown over her
shoulders.

"Could nothing separate you and me?" she had
asked, and he had answered, "Nothing in this world."

His grief was crushing.  It was of that kind,
unequalled for bitterness and sweetness combined, which
comes to the strong man who has been robbed of the
woman he loves by a fate more cruel than death.
Helena was not dead, and when ha thought of her on
her way to England while he was a homeless wanderer
in the desert, shut out from love and friendship, the
practice of his profession, and the progress of the world,
the pain of his position was almost more than he could
bear.

After a while he was brought back to himself by
another burst of raucous laughter—the laughter of the
servants inside the house—and at the next moment he
saw a light running along the ground in the dark
market-place below—the light of the trackers who were
going off on the wrong scent, with a company of mounted
police, in the direction taken by Hafiz.





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   CHAPTER XVI

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Gordon left the Citadel unchallenged and unobserved,
and in less than half-an-hour he was climbing the yellow
road—white now in the moonlight—that goes up to
the Mokattam Hills.  By this time he was beginning to
see the meaning of that night's experience.  Unconsciously
he had been putting Providence to the proof.
Unwittingly he had been asking the fates to say if the
path he had marked out for himself had been the right
one when he had decided to follow Ishmael Ameer to
Khartoum, to work by his side, and to come back at
last when his sin had been forgiven and his redemption won.

Providence had decided in his favour.  If destiny
had determined that he should not leave Cairo he
might have been taken a hundred times.  Because he
had not been taken it was clear to him that it was
intended that he should go.

He had tried to see his mother, and if he could have
done so he must have stayed with her at all hazards,
since she was so ill and perhaps so near to death.  He
had tried to see Helena also, and if she had not gone
to England already he must have clung to her at all
costs and in spite of all consequences.  On the other
hand he had seen his father, and heard from his very
lips that nothing—not even the liberty nor yet the life
of his own son—could stand between him and his duty
to the law.

What did it mean that he should be so cut off, so
stripped naked, so deprived of his place as son and
lover and soldier and man, that all that had hitherto
stood to him as himself, as Gordon Lord, was gone?  It
meant that another existence was before him—another
work, another mission.  Destiny was carrying him away
from his former life, and he had only to go forward
without fear.

Thus once again on the heights of his great resolve
he pushed on with a quick step, not daring to look back
lest the sense of seeing things for the last time should
be more than he could bear, lest the thought of leaving
the city he loved, the people who loved him, his men
and his brother officers, his mother and the memory of
his happiness with Helena, his father and the consciousness
of having wrecked the hopes of a lifetime, should
drag him back at the last moment.

In the midst of these emotions he was startled by a
loud, sharp voice that was without and not within him.

"Enta meen?" (Who are you?)

Then he realised that he had reached the fort on the
top of the hill, and that the Egyptian sentry at the
gate was challenging him.  For a moment he stood
speechless, trying in vain to remember the name by
which he was henceforward to be known.

"Who are you?" cried the sentry again, and then
Gordon answered—

"Omar."

"Omar—what?" cried the sentry.

Again Gordon was speechless for a moment.

"Answer!" cried the sentry, and he raised his rifle
to his shoulder.

"Omar Benani the Bedouin," said Gordon at last,
and then the sentry lowered his gun.

"Pass, Omar Benani.  All's well!"

But Gordon had a still greater surprise awaiting
him.  As he was going on, he became aware that the
Egyptian soldier was walking by his side and speaking
in a low tone.

"Have they taken him?" he was saying.

"Taken whom?" asked Gordon.

"Our English brother—the Colonel—Colonel Lord.
Have they arrested him?"

It was not at first that Gordon could command his
voice to reply, but at length he said—

"Not yet—not when I came out of Cairo."

"El Hamdullillah!" (Praise be to God!) said the
sentry, and then in a louder voice he cried—

"Peace to you, O brother!"  Whereupon Gordon
answered as well as he could for the thickening of his
throat which seemed to stifle him—

"And to you!"

More sure than ever now that God's hand was leading
him, he walked on with a quicker step than before, and
presently he saw in the distance a dark group which he
recognised as Osman and the camels.

"Allah be praised, you've come at last," whispered
Osman.

He was a bright and intelligent young Egyptian, and
for the last hour he had lived in a fever of alarm,
thinking Gordon must have fallen into the hands of the
police.

"They got wind that you were hiding at the Coptic
Patriarch's house," he said, "and were only waiting
for the permission of the Agency to raid it at eleven
o'clock."

"I left it at ten," said Gordon.

"Thank God for that, sir," said Osman.  "The
Prophet must have taken a love for you to carry you
off so soon.  We must start away now, though," he
whispered.  "It's past twelve, and the village is fast
asleep!"

"Is everything ready?" asked Gordon.

"Everything—water, biscuits, dates, durah, rifles——"

"Rifles?"

"Why not, sir?  Two good Bedouin flintlocks.  Even
if we never have occasion to use them they'll help us
to divert suspicion."

"Let us be off, then," said Gordon.

"Good," said Osman.  "If we can only get away
quietly our journey will be as white as milk."

In the shadow of a high wall the camels sat munching
their food under their saddles covered with green
cloth and decorated with fringes of cowries, and with
their sahharahs (square boxes for provisions) hanging
on either side.  They were restive when they had to
rise, and it was as much as Osman could do to keep
them from grunting, being so fresh and so full of corn.
But he held their mouths closed until they were on
their feet, and then mounted his own camel by climbing
on its neck.  A moment afterwards the good creatures
were gliding swiftly away into the obscurity of the
night, with their upturned, steadfast faces, their
noiseless tread, and swinging motion.

Both men were accustomed to camel-riding, and both
knew the track before them, therefore they lost no time
in getting under weigh.  The first village was soon
left behind, and as they came near to other hamlets
the howling of dogs warned them of their danger, and
they skirted round and quickened their pace.

A little beyond Helwan they came upon a Bedouin
camp with its long, irregular, dark tents and an open
fire around which a company of men sat talking, but
Gordon pushed forward with his flintlock swung across
his saddle-bow, while Osman, thinking to avoid
suspicion, hung back for a moment to exchange news and
greetings.

Then on and on they went, up and down the yellow
hills, across sandy plains that were still warm with the
heat of the day, and over rocky gorges that seemed to
echo a hundred times to the softest footfall.

In less than three hours they were out on the open
desert, lonely and grand, without a soul or yet a sound,
save the faint thud of the camels' tread on the sand
and the dice-like rattle of the cowries that hung from
the saddles.

"Allah khalasna!" (God has delivered us!) said
Osman at last, as he wiped the cold sweat of fear from
his forehead.

But never for a moment had Gordon felt afraid.  No
more now than before did he know what fate was
before him, but if a pillar of fire had appeared in the
dark blue sky he could not have been more sure
that—sinful man as he was—God's light was leading him.

He had fallen in the dark, but he was about to rise
again.  God's wrath had burnt against him, but he was
soon to be forgiven.  After the emotions and experiences
of that night he knew of a certainty that the path
he had chosen was the path which it was intended that
he should take.  Somewhere—he knew not where—and
somehow—he knew not how—Heaven had uses for him still.

As he rode over the sandy waste it became fixed in
his mind that, being rejected by all the world now, and
stripped of everything that man holds dear, it was
meant by God that he should offer his life in some
great cause.  That thought did not terrify him at all.
It delighted and inspired him, and stirred every passion
of the soldier in his soul.

To be, perhaps, a link between East and West, to
carry the white man's burden into the black man's
country for higher ends than greed of wealth or lust of
empire, he would die, if need be, a thousand deaths.

How did he come to think of this as the fate before
him?  Who can know?  Who can say?  There are
moments when man feels the influence of invisible
powers which it is equally impossible to explain and to
control.  Such a moment was this to Gordon.  He was
flying away as a homeless fugitive, yet he was going
with a full heart and a high resolve.  Somewhere his
great hour waited for him—he could only follow and
obey.

But meanwhile there was nothing before him except
the rolling waves of the desert, nothing about him
except the silence of immensity, and nothing above him
but the unclouded glory of the moon.





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   CHAPTER XVII

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As midnight had struck on the soft cathedral-bell of
the clock in Lady Nuneham's room the old lady had
raised herself in bed and looked round with bright and
joyful eyes.

"Fatimah!"

"Yes, my heart," said Fatimah, rising hurriedly
from the chair in which she had been knitting and
stopping up to the bedside.

"Has he gone, Fatimah?"

"Has who gone, O my lady?"

The bright eyes looked at the Egyptian woman with
a reproving smile.

"Why, you know quite well, Fatimah.  You saw him
yourself, didn't you?"

"You mean his lordship?"

"No, no, but——"

The old lady paused, looked round again, and said—

"Can it be possible that you didn't see him, Fatimah?"

"See whom, my lady?"

"Why, Gordon."

Fatimah made an upward gesture with her hand.

"When, my heart?"

"Just now—not a moment ago."

Fatimah raised both hands and seemed for a moment
unable to speak.

"He knocked at the door—I knew his knock immediately.
Then he said outside, 'Don't be afraid'—I
knew his voice too.  And then he opened the door and
came in, and I thought at first it was a Bedouin, for he
wore Eastern clothes, but he whispered, 'Mother,' and
it was Gordon himself."

"O my dear eyes, you have been dreaming," said
Fatimah, whereupon the old lady looked reproachfully
at her and said—

"How can you say that, Fatimah?  I clasped my
arms around his neck, and he put his arms about me
and kissed me, and then——"

"Well?"

The old lady thought for a moment.  "I think I
must have fainted," she said.  "I cannot remember
what happened then."

"O my lady, O my heart, you have been sleeping for
nearly an hour," said Fatimah.

"Sleeping?"

"Yes, but a little after eleven o'clock you were
restless and threw out your arms and I covered them up
again."

The joyful gleam had now gone from the old lady's
eyes, and a troubled look had taken the place of it.

"Do you say that Gordon has not been here, Fatimah?"

"Alas, no, my lady."

"Has nobody been?"

"Nobody at all, my lady, since his lordship was up
last."

"But I could have been sure that——"

She stopped; a smile crossed her bewildered face,
and she said in a soft, indulgent voice—

"My poor Fatimah!  I wear you out.  I wear out
everybody.  You must have dozed off at that moment,
and so——"

"Oh no, my lady, no!  Wallahi!  I've not closed
my eyes since yesterday."

"How strange!"

"But Ibrahim ought to know if anybody has come
upstairs.  Should I call him, my lady?"

"Yes ... no ... that is to say ... wait!"

There was silence for a moment, and then, all the
sweet illusion being gone, the old lady said in a sadder
tone—

"Perhaps you are right, Fatimah.  But it was so
dear to think that ... Hush!"

She had heard her husband's footsteps on the stairs,
and she began to straighten her lace cap with her
delicate white fingers.

The Consul-General had gone through a heavy and
trying day.  In the morning he had received from the
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs a despatch which
was couched in terms more caustic than had been
addressed to him from London at any time during his
forty years in Egypt.  He had spent the night in
dictating an answer to this Despatch, and his reply,
though framed in diplomatic form, had been no less
biting and severe.

Having finished his work in some warmth, he was
now on his way to bed, and thinking of the humiliation
to which he had been exposed in England by the late
disturbance in Cairo, he was blaming his son for the
worst of it.  Every step of his heavy foot as he went
upstairs was like a word or a blow against Gordon.  It
was Gordon who had encouraged the people to rebel;
it was Gordon's name that was being used (because it
was his own name also) by pestilent prattlers in
Parliament to support the accusation that he had outraged
(contrary to the best traditions of British rule) the
religious instincts of an Eastern people; therefore
it was Gordon who had poisoned the source of his
authority in Egypt and the fount of his influence at
home.

In this mood he entered his wife's room, and there
Fatimah, who had been frightened for all her brave
show of unbelief, fell at once to telling him of her
mistress's delusion.

"But this is wrong of you, Janet—very, very wrong,"
said the Consul-General with a frown.  "These visions
and dreams are doing more than anything else to
destroy your health, and they will kill you if you
continue to encourage them.  Gordon is gone.  You must
make up your mind to it."

"Is it quite certain that he is gone, dear?" said the
old lady, who was now nervously plucking at the
counterpane.  "For instance, Fatimah told me to-day
that there was a story in town——"

"Fatimah has no business to repeat such idle
rumours," said the Consul-General sharply.  He was
walking to and fro in the room with a face that was
hard and furrowed.

"As for the story you speak of, they sent it up to
me as late as ten o'clock to-night, saying Gordon was
being sheltered in a certain place, and asking what
steps they were to take with respect to him."

The old lady fixed her frightened eyes on her
husband's face and began to ask in a whisper—

"And what did you——"

"The rumour was groundless," said the Consul-General.
"I've just heard so from the Commandant
of Police.  Gordon was not there.  There was no sign
that he ever had been."

The old lady wept silently, and the Consul-General
continued to walk to and fro at the foot of her bed as
if he were trying to avoid her face.

"You still think he left Cairo on the night of the
riot, dear?"

"I trust he did.  I trust, too, that he is far from
here by this time—on his way to America, India,
Australia, anywhere.  And as he has broken the law,
and his career is at an end, I think the kindest thing
we can do is to hope that he may never come back
again."

The old lady tried to speak but her voice failed her.

"More than that," continued the Consul-General, "as
he deliberately took sides against us, I also think it is
our duty—our strict and bounden duty—to dismiss all
further thought of him."

Saying this with heat and emphasis, he caught sight
of his wife's wet eyes and his conscience began to
accuse him.

"I don't say it is easy to do," he said, taking a
chair by the side of the bed.  "Perhaps it is the reverse
of easy—especially for you—for his mother."

At that the sweet old woman wished to take the part
of her absent son—to say that if he had taken the
wrong course, and allowed himself to be led away by
some one, he could not have counted on any gain in
doing so, and must have been moved by the most unselfish
motives—but her tears prevented her, and still
she could not speak.

"Why should we continue to think of *him* if he
never thinks of *us*—of either of us?" asked the
Consul-General.

He was calmer now, and was speaking with less anger.

"Was he thinking of you when he took the step
which broke up your health like this?  Was he thinking
of me when he took the side of my enemies—of one of
my enemies, at all events—perhaps the worst of them—and
left me to the mercy of ... in my old age, too—a
childless man?"

There was a moment in which nothing was spoken,
and then in a voice that quivered perceptibly the
Consul-General said—

"Let us trifle with ourselves no longer, Janet.  Our
son has gone.  He has abandoned us.  We have to
think no more about him."

After that there was a long silence, during which the
Consul-General sat with his head down and his eyes
tightly closed.  Then a voice came softly from the bed.

"John!"

"Well?"

"It is harder for you, dear."

The old man turned his head aside.

"You wanted a son so much, you know."

Fatimah, who had been sitting out of sight, now
stepped into the boys' room and closed the door
noiselessly behind her, leaving the two old people alone
together with the sanctities of their married life, on
which no other eye should look.

"I thought at first that God was not going to give
me any children, but when my child came, and it was
a boy, how happy we both were!"

The old man closed his eyes still more tightly and
stiffened his iron lip.

"Foolish people used to think in those days that
you didn't love our little one because you couldn't pay
much heed to him.  But Fatimah was telling me only
to-night that you never went to bed without going into
her room to see if it was well with our child."

The tears were now forcing themselves through the
old man's eyelids.

"And when our dear boy had the fever, and he was
so ill that we had to shave his little head, you never
went to bed at all—not until the crisis came, and
then—don't you remember?—just when we thought the
wings of death were over us, he opened his beautiful
blue eyes and smiled.  I think that was the happiest
moment of all our lives, dear."

She was on her husband's side at last—thinking for
him—seeing everything from his point of view.

"Then all the years afterwards you worked so hard,
and won such high honours and such a great name,
only to leave them behind to our son, and now
... now——"

The Consul-General laid one of his wrinkled hands on
the counterpane, and in a moment the old lady had
put her delicate white hand over it.

"Yes, it's harder for you, dear."

"No, Janet, no! ... But it's hard for both of us."

There was another moment of silence, and then,
pressing the hand that lay under her hand, the old
lady said—

"I think I know now what people feel when they
are old and their children die before them.  They feel
that they ought to be more to each other than they
have ever been before, and keep together as long as
they can."

The Consul-General drew his hand away and covered
his face with it.  He was asking himself why, through
so many years, he had buried his love for his wife so
deep in his heart and sealed it as with a seal.
Presently a more cheerful voice came from the bed.

"John!"

"Yes!"

"I'm going to get up to-morrow."

"No, no!"

"But I must!  Mohammed" (the cook) "is so forgetful
when there's no mistress about—I must see that
he gives you good food, you know.  Besides, it must be
lonely to eat your meals by yourself—I must make it
a rule to go down to lunch at all events."

"That is nothing, Janet.  You are weak and ill—the
doctor will not permit you to disturb yourself."

There was a sigh, and then in a faltering voice the
old lady said—

"You must forgive me, dear—I've not been what I
ought to have been to you."

"No, Janet, no, it is I——"

He could not utter another word, but he rose to his
feet, and, clasping his wife in his arms, he kissed her on
her wrinkled forehead and her whitened hair more
fervently than he had ever done in their youth.

At the next moment the old lady was speaking about
Helena.  The Consul-General would see her off in the
morning, and he was to give all her motherly love to
her.  He was also to warn her to take good care of
herself on the voyage, and not to be anxious or to repine.

"Tell her to remember what I said, dear.  She is
going back to England, but that doesn't matter in the
least.  God keeps all His promises, and He will keep
His promise in this case too—I'm sure He will.  Tell
her that, dear."

The Consul-General answered "Yes" and "Yes" to
all her messages, but he did not hear them.  Bent
almost double, with the light of his wearied eyes almost
extinct, he stumbled out of the room.  He was no
longer angry with Gordon, but he was choking with
hatred and scorn, and above all, with jealousy of the
man who had robbed him of his son, the man who had
robbed his wife of her only pride and joy, and left them,
hopeless and old and lone.

At the door of his bedroom one of his secretaries was
waiting for him with a paper in his hand.

"Well, well, what is it now?" he asked.

"An important telegram from, the Soudan, sir,"
said the secretary.  "Ishmael Ameer has turned up in
Khartoum."

Then the austere calm of the stern old man deserted
him for a moment, and the pent-up agony of the broken
and bankrupt hopes of a lifetime broke into a shout.

"Damn him!  Damn him!  Tell the Sirdar to kill
him like a dog," he cried, and his secretary fled in a
fright.





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   CHAPTER XVIII

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Hours passed before the Consul-General slept.  He was
telling himself that there were now two reasons why he
should suppress and destroy the man Ishmael Ameer.

First because "this madman, this fanatic, this false
prophet," under the cloak of religion and the mantle of
prophecy, was a cover for the corruption and the
self-seeking which in the name and the guise of Nationalism
were trying to drive England out of the valley of the
Nile; because he was the rallying-point of the
retrograde forces which were doing their best to destroy
whatever seeds of civilisation had been implanted in the
country during forty sleepless years; because he was
trying to turn prosperity back to bankruptcy, order
back to anarchy, and the helpless millions of the
unmoving and the uncomplaining peasantry back to slavery
and barbarity; because, in a word, he was the head
centre of the schools and nurseries of sedition which
were undoing the hard labour of his lifetime and striving
to wipe his name out of Egypt as utterly as if he had
never been.

This was the first of the Consul-General's two reasons
why he should suppress and destroy Ishmael Ameer, and
the second was still more personal and more intimate.

His second reason was because "this madman, this
fanatic, this false prophet" had stepped in between him
and the one hope of his life—the hope of founding a
family.  That hope had been a secret which he believed
he had never betrayed to any one, not even to his wife,
but all the more on that account it had been sweet and
sacred.  Born in a moment of fierce anger and in a
spirit of revenge, it had grown to be his master passion.
It had cheered his darkest hours, brightened his heaviest
labour, exalted his drudgery into duty, given joy to his
success, and wings to his patriotism itself.

That, at the end of his life of hard work, and as the
reward and the crown of it, he should see the name he
had made for himself among the great names of the
British nation, and that his son should succeed to it,
and his son's son, and his son's son's son, being all
peers of the realm and all Nunehams—this had been
the cherished aspiration of his soul.

But now his high-built hope was in the dust.  By
robbing him of his son—his only son—"this madman,
this fanatic, this false prophet" had turned his one aim
to ashes.  When he was old, too, and his best powers
were spent, and his life was behind him, and there was
nothing before him but a few short years of failing
strength and then—the end.

"Damn him!  Damn him!" he cried again in the
darkness as he rolled about in his bed.

But when he tried to think out some means, some
swift and secret tribunal, perhaps, by which he could
suppress and destroy the man Ishmael, who had
laid waste his life and was joining with the worst
elements in Egypt to make the government of the
country impossible, he had to tell himself how powerless
after all was the machinery of Western civilisation
against the hypocritical machinations of Eastern
fanaticism.

On the one side the clogs and impediments of
representative government, and on the other the subtlety,
secrecy, duplicity, and deceit of men like Ishmael
Ameer.  If he could only scotch these troubles once for
all by a short and sharp military struggle—how different
the results would be!

But with every act of his life watched from Whitehall,
and with operations of frightful urgency kept back by
cable; dogged by foreign diplomats who, professing to
be England's friends, were yet waiting to find their
opportunity in the hour of England's need; vilified by
boobies in Parliament who did not know the difference
between the East and the West, between the Mousky
and the Mile End Road, and were constantly sending the
echo of their parrot-like prattle down the Mediterranean
to add to the difficulties of his position in Cairo; scolded
by Secretaries of State who were appointed to their
places for no better reason than their power to command
votes; gibed at by journalists at home who could not
see that a free press and a foreign occupation were
things that could never exist together; and preached at
by religious milksops in the pulpit who were so simple
as to suppose that the black man and the white man
were one flesh, that all men were born free and equal,
and that it was possible to govern great nations
according to the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount—what
could he do against the religious delirium of an ignorant
Eastern populace, who were capable of mistaking a
manifest impostor, practising his spiritual legerdemain,
for a Prophet, a Redeemer, a Mahdi, a Messiah, a
Christ?  Nothing!

He had found that out to his bitter disappointment
during the past few days, when, working with Western
machinery, he had tried in vain to catch the man
Ishmael in some seditious expression that would enable
the Government to lay him openly by the heels.

"Fools!  Fools!  Fools!"

Why could not people see that all this vapouring
unrest in Eastern dominions was a religious question
from first to last; that it was Islamism against
Christianity, slavery against liberty, corruption against
purity, the backwash of retrogression against the flowing
tide of progress; and that to fight the secret methods
of the mosque and the insidious crimes of a vicious
superstition with any weapons less swift and sure than
the rifle and the rope was to be weak and wicked.

"If I could only permit myself to meet Eastern needs
by Eastern means," he thought, "intrigue by intrigue,
subtlety by subtlety, secrecy by secrecy, duplicity by
duplicity, treachery by treachery, deceit by deceit!"

"And why not?" he asked himself suddenly.  "In
a desperate case like this, why not?  In the face of
anarchical conspiracy and menace to public safety, why
not?  Before the catastrophe comes, why not?" he
asked himself again and again during the long hours in
which he lay awake.

"It is a case of civilisation on the one side and a
return to barbarism on the other.  Why not?  Why not?"

And this, with the cruel memory of his wasted hopes,
was the last thought present to his mind before he
slept.

It was late when he awoke in the morning, and then,
remembering that he had promised to call on Helena
before her departure, he rang the bell that he might
order his carriage to take him up to the Citadel.
Ibrahim answered it, and brought him a number of
letters.  The first of them to come to hand was a
letter from Helena herself.  It was written with many
signs of haste, and some of emotion, and it ran—


"DEAR LORD NUNEHAM,—Do not come up to see me
off to-morrow morning, and please forgive me for all
the unnecessary trouble I have given you.  I cannot go
back to England—I really cannot—it is impossible.
There is nothing for me there but a useless and lonely
life—oh, how lonely and how full of bitter and cruel
memories!

"On the other hand there seems to be something I
can do in Egypt, and though it is not the kind of work
a woman would choose for herself I cannot and I will
not shrink from it.

"To tell you the truth at once, I am on the point of
taking the night train *en route* for Khartoum, but that
is a secret which I am revealing to nobody else, so I
beseech you to say nothing about it.  I also beseech
you not to follow me nor to send after me nor to
inquire about me in any way, and lest the Sirdar and his
officers should recognise me on my arrival in the Soudan
(though I shall try to make it difficult for them to do
so) I beg of you to ask them to forget that they have
ever seen me before and to leave me entirely alone."

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The Consul-General dropped the hand that held the
letter and thought, "What on earth does the girl intend
to do, I wonder?"

.. vspace:: 2

"You may ask me why I am going to Khartoum, and
I find it hard to answer you, but you will remember
that another person is reported to have gone there
already, and perhaps you will put the two facts
together.  That person is neither your friend nor mine.
He has wrecked my life and darkened your happiness.
He has also been an evil influence in the country, and,
thus far, you have tried in vain to punish him.  Let
me help you to do so.  I can—I am sure I can—and
before I have finished with the man who has injured
both of us I shall have done some service to England
and to Egypt as well.

"Don't think I am mad or that I am idly boasting,
and please don't despise my help because I am only a
woman.  In the history of the world women have saved
nations even when kings and armies have failed.  And
if that has happened in the past may it not happen in
the future also?  It can, and it shall."

.. vspace:: 2

Again the Consul-General dropped the hand that
held the letter and he looked fixedly before him for a
moment.

.. vspace:: 2

"Dear Lord Nuneham, I know what you are thinking.
You are thinking that, if I am not mad and if I
am not boasting, I am cruel and revengeful and vindictive.
I am sorry if you are thinking that, sir, but if so
I cannot help it.  I have lost my father and I have
lost Gordon, and I am alone and my heart is torn.  Oh,
if you knew how much this means to me you would not
judge me too harshly.  When I think of my father in
his grave and of Gordon in disgrace—at the ends of the
earth, perhaps—never to be seen or heard of any
more—I feel that anything is justified—anything—that
will punish the man who has brought things to this
pass."

.. vspace:: 2

The Consul-General removed his spectacles, wiped
away the moisture that had gathered on them, put them
back, and resumed the reading of the letter.

.. vspace:: 2

"Sometimes I tell myself I might have saved Gordon
if I had been less proud and hard—if I had told him
more, and allowed him to feel that I could see things
from his side also.  But it is too late to think of that.
I can think of nothing now but how to degrade and
destroy the man who deceived and misled him, and is
deceiving and misleading these poor Egyptian people
also, and will end, as such men always end, in sowing
the sand of their deserts with blood.

"But don't be afraid that I shall permit myself to
do anything unwomanly, or that I shall ever be false
for a moment to the love—the wronged and outraged
love—which prompts me.  Gordon is gone, I have lost
him, but I can never do that—never!

"I know exactly how far I intend to go, and I shall
go no farther.  I also know exactly what I intend to do,
and I shall do it without fear or remorse.

"Good-bye, or rather *au revoir*!  You will hear from
me or perhaps see me again before long, I think, and
then—then your enemy and mine and Gordon's as well
as England's and Egypt's will be in your hands.

.. vspace:: 1

"HELENA GRAVES.

.. vspace:: 2

"Please don't speak about this to Lady Nuneham.
Give her my fondest, truest love, and let her believe
that I have gone home to England.  It would only
make her unhappy to be told what I intend to do, and
she might even think me a wicked woman.  You will
not think that, I hope—will you?"

.. vspace:: 2

The letter dropped on to the counterpane out of the
Consul-General's hand, and again he looked fixedly
before him.  After a moment his wearied old eyes began
to gleam with light and fire.

"What did I say when I saw her first?" he thought.
"This girl has the blood of the great women of the
Bible—the Deborahs who were mothers in Israel; aye,
and the Jaels who avenged her."

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   END OF SECOND BOOK

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   THIRD BOOK

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   THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD

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   CHAPTER I

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A mixed Eastern and Western city lying in the midst
of a wide waste of grim desert, with a fierce sun blazing
down on it by day and a rain of stars over it by night;
a strip of verdure with slender palms and red and yellow
blossoms, stretching for some three miles along the
banks of the Nile, where the great river is cleft in
twain as by the sweep of a giant's hand, and one branch
goes up through the brown and yellow wilderness to
the Abyssinian hills and the other to the lakes of the
Equator—such is Khartoum.

The city had changed since Ishmael Ameer spent his
youth there.  Lifeless and vacant then, it had risen out
of the dust of its own decay.  On the river's front a
line of Western buildings, a college, a barrack, and a
palace over which the white crescent and the Union
Jack crackled in the breeze together; at the back of
these a great open market, with rows of booths and
shanties, a native quarter with lines of mud-brick
houses, and a handsome mosque; and behind all these
an encampment of the tribes in tents, fronting an
horizon of sand, empty and silent as the sea.

When Ishmael returned to the city of his boyhood
British officials of the Anglo-Egyptian Government,
wearing the Crescent on their pith helmets, were
walking in the wide streets with Soudanese blacksmiths,
Arab carpenters, and women of many races, some veiled
in white, others in black, and yet others nearly naked
of body as well as face.  Two battalions of British
soldiers, a British Sirdar, a British Inspector-General,
and British Governors of provinces were there as signs
and symbols of the change that had been wrought since
Khartoum was shrivelled up in a blast of fire.

Ishmael's fame had gone before him, from Alexandria
and from Cairo, and both the British and the native
population of Khartoum looked for his coming with a
keen curiosity.  The British saw a man taller and more
powerful than the common, with the fiery, flashing
black eyes that they associated with their fears of the
fanatic; but the natives, to their disappointment,
recognised a face they knew, and they said among
themselves, "Is not this Ishmael Ameer, the nephew of old
Mahmud and the son of the boat-builder?"  And that
was a discovery which for a while dispelled some of
the marvel as well as the mystery which had hitherto
surrounded the new prophet's identity.

Ishmael made his home in his uncle's house on the
fringe of the native quarter, a large Arab dwelling with
one face to the desert and another to the white river
and the forts of Omdurman.  Besides the old uncle
himself, now more than fourscore years, a God-fearing
man devoted to his nephew, the household consisted of
Ishmael's little daughter, Ayesha, a sweet child of ten,
who sang quaint little Soudanese songs all day long,
and had the animal grace of the gazelle; an Arab
woman, Ayesha's nurse, Zenoba, a voluptuous person,
with cheeks marked by three tribal slits, wearing
massive gold ear-rings and hair twisted into innumerable
thin ringlets; and Abdullah, a Soudanese servant,
formerly a slave.

Before Ishmael had been long in Khartoum most of
the British officials had made up their minds about his
personal character.  He was one of those complex beings
whom they recognised as essentially Eastern—that
mixture of hypocrisy and spirituality, of sincerity and
quackery, which they believed to be most dangerous of
all in its effects upon a fanatical populace.  The natives,
on the other hand, began to see that though a
spontaneous and passionate man, outspoken and vehement
in his dealings with the strong and the rich, he was
very tender to the old and to the erring, that he was
beloved of children, and trusted by the outcast and the
poor.

Before many days had passed the Moslems of Khartoum
asked him to lecture to them, and in the evenings
he would sit on an angerib which Abdullah brought out
of the house, with a palm net spread over it, and speak
to the people who squatted on the ground about him.
Clad in his white caftan and Mecca skull cap, with its
white muslin turban bound round it, the British
Inspectors would see him there, on the edge of the desert,
surrounded by a multitude of Soudanese, brown and
black, and of Arabs, olive and walnut, and holding
his learners by the breathless intensity with which he
uttered himself.

Yet he did not flatter them.  On the contrary, no
man had ever so condemned the evils which they had
come to regard as part and parcel of their faith.  All
the Arab soul and blood of the man seemed to be afire,
and his wonderful voice, throbbing over their heads
far away to the silent desert beyond, carried such
denunciations of the corruptions of Islam as the people
had never heard before.

"Beware of slavery," he said.  "What says the
Koran?  'Righteousness is to him who freeth the
slave.'  Beware of sorcery, of spells, of magic, of
divinations—they are of the devil."

Teaching like this might drive away the dominant
races but it drew the subject ones, and among others
that attached themselves to Ishmael was a half-witted
Nubian (an Ethiopian of the Bible), known as Black
Zogal, who from that time forward followed him about
by day and lay like a dog at the door of his house by
night, crying the confession of faith at the end of
every hour.

After condemning slavery and sorcery Ishmael came
to closer quarters—he denounced polygamy and divorce.

"Beware of polygamy," he said.  "It pulls down
the pillars of the house.  No man would permit another
man to join with him in love for his wife.  Why, therefore,
ask a woman to allow another woman to join with
her in love for her husband?

"Beware of divorce, for it brings sorrow and shame.
What says the Prophet (to him be prayer and peace)?
'Of all lawful things hated of God, divorce is the most
hateful.'

"Brothers," he cried, "I see a house that is full of
light.  There is a new wife there.  She is very happy.
But in the upper rooms I hear children weeping.  They
are weeping for their mother who has been put away.
She has done no wrong, she has committed no crime,
but while the guests feast and the new wife counts her
jewels, the mother's heart is bleeding for the children
she may see no more.

"O men," he cried again in his throbbing voice,
"night is for sleep, and your children slumber, but in
their dreams their mother comes to them.  She embraces
them and they dry their tears.  But they awake
in the morning and she is gone.  Where is your father's
heart, O ye men of righteousness?  Has all justice died
out of you?  Shame on you!  May Heaven punish you
as you deserve!  Divorce shakes the throne of Islam!
Wipe it out, that your faces may be whitened before the
world!"

After condemning polygamy and divorce, Ishmael
came to closer quarters still—he denounced the seclusion
and the degradation of women.

"Remove the veil from your women," he said.  "At
the beginning it was the badge of shame.  What says
the Koran?  'O Prophet, speak to thy wives and thy
daughters that they let their wrappers fall so that they
may not be affronted.'

"Dismiss the madness of a bygone age that woman
is inferior to man.  We are all children of one mother.
What says the Prophet?  'Paradise lies under the feet
of mothers.'  The proverb of our people says, 'The
threshold weeps for forty days when a girl is born,' but
I tell you the stars sing for joy and the dry wells of the
desert spring afresh.  Man's dominion over woman is
the product of darkness—put it away.  O my brothers,
woman's suffering in the world is so great that if she
does not cry aloud the mountains themselves will groan."

If Ishmael's teaching offended certain of the men, it
attracted great multitudes of the women, many of whom
laid aside their veils to come to him, and among others
that came were a number of black girls from
Omdurman who were known to have been the paramours of
British and Egyptian soldiers at Khartoum.  His
bearing towards these girls had that shy tenderness which
is peculiar to the pure-minded man in his dealings with
erring women, and when some of his followers grumbled
at his intercourse with such notorious sinners he told
them a story of the Lord Isa (Jesus).

It was the story of His visit to the rich man's house,
and of the sinful woman who did not cease to wash
His feet with her tears and to dry them with the hair of
her head.

"Shall I be less charitable than the Lord of the
Christians?" he asked, and the choking pathos of his
story silenced everybody.

In his preaching he turned for ever to the prophets—the
prophet Abraham, the prophet Moses, the prophet
Mohammed, and above all, the prophet Isa.  He called
Jesus the divine teacher of Judæa, one of the great
brother souls.

"Only a poor Jewish man," he said, with a memory
of his own that none might share, "only a poor carpenter,
but perhaps the greatest and noblest spirit save
one that ever lived in the world."

Thus, evening after evening, when the blazing sun had
gone down, Ishmael sat on the angerib in front of his
uncle's house and taught the ever-increasing crowds
that squatted before him on the brown and yellow sand.
The heat and flame of his teaching burnt itself into the
wild Arab souls of the great body of his hearers, but
there were some among his own people who asked—

"Is not this the Ishmael Ameer who denounced the
Christians as the corrupters of our faith?"

And there were others who answered—

"Yes, the same Ishmael Ameer that married the
Coptic woman who lies buried on the edge of the desert."

And meantime the British Inspectors, suspecting some
hidden quackery and fatuity, some fanatical intrigue
masquerading as religious liberalism, were whispering
among themselves—

"This is a new kind of religious game—what the deuce
does it mean, I wonder?"





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   CHAPTER II

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Within a month an immense concourse of people had
gathered about Ishmael at Khartoum.  They came first
from Omdurman and the little shipbuilding village of
Khogali, on the other side of the Blue Nile, which sent
daily through the desert air a ceaseless noise of the
hammering of rivets; then they came from Kordofan
and still farther south, and from Berber and yet farther
north.

A few who had means lodged in the houses of the
native quarter, but the larger number encamped in
tents on the desert side of old Mahmud's house.  Men,
women, and children, they flocked in thousands to see
the holy man of Khartoum and to drink of the river of
his words.  They began to see in him a man sent from
God, to call him "Master," and to speak of him as the
"White Prophet."

At that the Governor of the city, a British Colonel,
began to be alarmed, and with certain of his Inspectors
he went over to see Ishmael.

"What can these people want here?" he asked.
"What bread is there for them in this wilderness?"

"The bread of life," Ishmael answered, and the
Christian Governor went away silenced though unsatisfied.

During Ishmael's first weeks in Khartoum his house
was open, and anybody might come and go in it; but
somewhat later it was observed that he was daily
receiving messengers, agents, emissaries, and missionaries
of some sort in secret.  They came and went by camel,
by boat, and by train, and rumour had it that they
communicated with every quarter of Egypt and the
Soudan.  Ishmael appeared to spend the morning of
every day in his house receiving and dispatching these
people.  What did it mean?  The British Inspectors
suspected the existence of a vast network of fanatical
conspiracy, but only the members of Ishmael's own
household knew what was going on.

Meantime at noon every day Ishmael, exercising his
right as an Alim, lectured in the mosque.  What he
said in that sealed chamber no Christian might know,
and never an echo of his message there was permitted
to escape from its hushed and guarded vaults.  But
still after sunset he sat on the angerib in front of his
uncle's house and taught the excited crowds that were
eager to catch a word of his inspired doctrine.

His lectures took a new subject.  They denounced
the spirit of the age.  It was irreligious, for it put a
premium on selfishness.  It was idolatrous, for it
provoked to the worship of wealth.

"O my brothers," cried Ishmael, "when Mohammed
(to him be prayer and peace) arose in Mecca, men
worshipped the black wooden idols of the Koreish.  To his
earnest soul this was a darkness, a mockery, an abomination.
There was only one god, and that was God.  God
was great, and there was nothing else great.  Therefore
he went out from Mecca that he might gather strength
to assail the black wooden idols of the Koreish, and
when he returned he broke them in pieces.

"That was thirteen centuries ago, O my brothers,
and behold, darkness covers the earth again.  Men are
now worshipping the yellow idols of a corrupt
civilisation.  Moslems and Christians alike are bending the
knee to the golden calf.  It is idolatry as rank as the
Prophet destroyed, and tenfold more damnable because
it is done in the name of God."

With that, he called on his people to renounce the
things of this world.  Its prizes were not the prizes
that could enrich them.  Time and its shows rested on
eternity.  The things of the other world were the only
true realities.  Why struggle for the semblance and
form of things and neglect the substance and essence?
This poor earth of ours was the threshold of heaven—let
them forget the affairs of this life and fix their
minds on the life to come.

The people listened to Ishmael with bated breath.
Ignorant, unlettered, wild creatures as they were, sons
and daughters of the desert, they knew what application
of his words they were intended to make.

But the authorities were perplexed.  Just as sure as
ever of the presence of a far-reaching fanatical
conspiracy, and that Ishmael's teaching meant opposition
to the Government, some of them said—

"This is the doctrine of the Mahdi, and it will end as
it ended before, in destruction and desolation—let us
put it down before the storm breaks."

But others said—

"It is the Gospel of Christ—what the dickens are
we to do with it?"

Meantime Ishmael's own people had begun to see
him not as a poet, a dreamer, but as a prophet with a
mighty mission.  In moments of rapture he told them
of a new order that was coming, a great day when all
the religions of the world would be united, when all
faiths would be one faith, all races one race, all nations
one nation, when East and West would be one world,
and there would be only one God in it, one King and
one Law.

They saw him with tears in his eyes looking over the
desert as he foretold the conquest of the world for God,
and listening eagerly to his predictions of a better and
happier day, they began to see something God-like in
himself, to regard him as a God-inspired man, a man
sent down from the skies with a message.

"Our souls lie beneath his sheepskin," they would
say, and then they would tell each other stories of
supernatural appearances that surrounded the new
prophet—how while he preached celestial lights floated
about his head, and when he rode on his milk-white
camel into the desert of an afternoon, as it was his
habit to do, flights of angels were seen to descend and
attend him.

The creation of this kind of myth led to trouble, for
among Ishmael's secret enemies were certain of the
Ulema of Khartoum, who, jealous of his great influence
with the people, and suspecting him of an attempt to
change the immutable law of Islam, conceived the trick
of getting him to avow himself as a re-incarnation of
the Mahdi in order that they might betray him to the
Government.  So three of the meanest of them came
one morning to old Mahmud's house, and sitting in the
guest-room, under its thatch of corn-stalks, began to
flatter Ishmael and say—

"From the moment we beheld thee we knew that
thou wert the messenger of God—the Expected One."

"Yes, indeed, Mohammed Ahmed is dead but Ishmael
Ameer is alive!"

Ishmael listened to them for a moment in silence,
and then with a flash of fire out of his big eyes he clapped
his hands and cried—

"Zogal!  Abdullah!  Turn these men out of the
house," and in another moment his two black giants
had swept out the spies like rats.

But the crowds continued to come to Khartoum from
north, south, east and west, and at length, in fear that
many might die of want, the Governor of the city went
up to Ishmael and said—

"Send these people back to their homes or they'll
die of starvation."

Whereupon Ishmael looked at him and answered—

"Colonel, you are a Christian, and when your Divine
Master was on earth a great multitude came to Him in
a desert place, and His disciples said, 'Send these
people away that they may return to their villages and
buy themselves food.'  And then your Master answered
them, 'They need not depart.  Give ye them to eat.'"

Thus Ishmael was irresistible.  There was nothing
and nobody that seemed to have the power to touch him.





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   CHAPTER III

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"To every sun its moon—to every man a woman."  Wise
and powerful as Ishmael was, people began to
whisper that there was a woman who ruled him.  He
submitted everything to her judgment, and was guided
and even governed by her counsel.

Who was this woman?  A Soudanese?  No!  An
Egyptian?  No!  Rumour had it that she was a
stranger, totally unknown to Ishmael down to the
moment of his coming back to the Soudan—a Muslemah
(Mohammedan lady) from India, the sister of a reigning
prince of the Punjab, who having been educated
under British rule, and therefore Western influences, had
revolted against the captivity of the zenana, and broken
away from her own people.

Attracted by the fame of the new prophet as an
emancipator of women and a reformer of bad Mohammedan
customs, this woman had, according to report,
followed him from Alexandria and Cairo to Khartoum,
where she had settled herself, with a black boy as her
servant, at the house of the Greek widow—the same
who had formerly been the mistress of Ishmael's first
wife, Adila.

The black boy called his mistress "the Lady," and
most of the people about her knew her by the same
name, but some called her the Sitt-el-beda, the
Khatoun (the White Lady), and others the Emirah,
and the Rani (the Princess, the Queen), in recognition
of what they believed to be her rank and wealth.

It was in the early days of Ishmael's return to
Khartoum, when women of all classes were coming to him
unveiled, that he met with "the Princess" first.  Sitting
alone in the late afternoon on the bank of a broad
stretch of land which was flooded by the high Nile,
and looking across its glistening waters to where the
sky was red behind the shattered dome of the Mahdi's
tomb in Omdurman, he saw a young and beautiful
woman approaching him.

She seemed to him to be a splendid creature under
those southern skies—tall, well developed, with shining
coal-black hair, long black lashes and brilliant eyes,
and a mouth that was full of fire and movement.  Her
dress was such as is worn by Parsee ladies both in the
East and in the West, having nothing more noticeably
Oriental than a silken scarf which was bound about
her head as a turban and a light, silver-edged muslin
veil that fell back on her shoulders.

She came up to him with a certain air of timidity, as
of one who might be afraid to be thought immodest or
perhaps of being recognised, yet with the proud bearing
of a woman who had passed through life with a high
step and would not shrink from any consequences.

He rose to receive her, and she looked at him for
a moment without speaking—almost as if she had for
an instant lost the power of speech, being at last face
to face with a man whom she had long thought of and
long sought.

On his side, too, there was a momentary silence and
a look of enthusiastic admiration which he tried in
vain to control.  The lady seemed to see this in an
instant, and an expression of joy which she could not
restrain shone in her face.

Then, gathering confidence, she began to tell him the
object of her visit to Khartoum—how, hearing so much
about him, she had wished to see him for herself, and
now begged to be allowed to serve him in any way
whatever that lay within her power.

He listened to her with the same expression of
enthusiastic admiration in his face, and it would have
been obvious to an observer that the lady was
congratulating herself upon the power of the impression she
had made.  But at the next moment he set her a very
humble task, namely that of seeing to the welfare of
the women who were employed at sixpence a day by
the Government to draw and carry water for the public
streets.

The lady looked surprised and a little chagrined, but
finding it impossible to recede from the unconditional
offer she had made she went away to the work that had
been given to her.

It was ugly and thankless work enough, for the
water-women of Khartoum were among the coarsest and
most degraded of their sex, being chiefly of the black
tribes from south of Kordofan, going about bare from
the waist upwards and herding like animals in the brown
huts that were beyond the barracks outside the town.

After a little while "the Princess" came to Ishmael
again, and this time he was sitting with old Mahmud,
his uncle, in the guest-room which divided the women's
side from the men's side in their house.

She was dressed still more attractively than before,
in a gold-embroidered bodice and a clinging diaphanous
gown, and was attended by her black boy.  Ishmael
salaamed and the old man struggled to his feet as, with
a certain air of embarrassment, she stepped forward
and begged to be pardoned if what she came to ask
should displease the Master.

Ishmael looked at her with the same expression of
enthusiastic ecstasy which she had observed before, and
said—

"No, no, my sister cannot displease me.  What is
the request she wishes to make?"

Then she told him that the work he had given her
was good and necessary, but was there nothing she
could do for himself?  She had been educated in India
by English governesses and could read English, French,
and German—could she act as his translator or
interpreter?  Having lived so long among Arabs of the
higher classes she had also taught herself to write as
well as speak Arabic—could she not serve him as his
secretary?

Ishmael remembered his busy mornings with the
messengers, agents, emissaries, and missionaries who
came to him from all corners of Egypt and the Soudan,
bringing many letters and foreign newspapers; and
before he had time to reflect on what he was doing, he
had answered—

"Yes, such help is exactly what I need."

If any eyes less dim than old Mahmud's had been
there at that moment they would have seen a look of
triumph in the lady's face which she vainly struggled
to conceal.  But at the next moment it was full of
humility and gratitude as she bowed herself out and
promised to come again the following day.

Hardly had the lady gone when Ishmael's simple
nature began to recover itself from the spell of her sex
and beauty, but the old uncle's admiration was quite
ungovernable, and he began to hint at the possibility
of yet more intimate relations between his nephew and
the devoted young Muslemah.

"I have always told you that you ought to marry
again, a good woman and a believer," he said; whereupon
Ishmael, with the ecstasy created by "the Princess's"
loveliness still shining in his eyes, answered—

"No!  I have always said, 'No, no, by Allah!
One wife I had, and though she was a Christian and
had been a slave I loved her, and never, never shall
another woman take her place.'"

"Ah, well, God knows best what to do with us,"
said the old man.  "But life is a passing shadow and
youth a departing guest."

Next morning the white lady came according to
appointment, and Ishmael set her to read some European
newspapers containing accounts of recent doings
in Cairo.

She was translating these newspapers aloud when
Ishmael's little daughter Ayesha came bounding into
the house, followed by her nurse, the Arab woman
Zenoba—the child barefoot as her mother used to be,
and with her mother's beautiful, erect confidence as
she moved about, lightly clad, with her middle small-girt
by a scarlet sash over her pure white shirt—the
woman in her blue habarah and with a silver ring in
her nose.

Ishmael presented both of them to the lady, whereupon
the child, by an instinctive impulse, ran over to her
and kissed her hand and held it, but the Arab woman
only bowed with a look of suspicion, and, as long as
she remained in the guest-room, continued to watch
out of the sidelong slits of her eyes.

The Arab woman's obvious mistrust made more
impression upon Ishmael than his daughter's spontaneous
liking, for as soon as he was alone with the lady again
he began to talk to her of the gravity of the task he
had undertaken, and of the need for caution and even
secrecy with respect to all his doings.

The lady's brilliant eyes glistened under their long
black lashes as she listened to him, and she answered
his warnings with assuring words, until, coming to
closer quarters, he proposed that for his people's sake
rather than his own she should take an oath of fidelity
to him and to his cause.

At that she looked startled, and could with difficulty
conceal her agitation.  And when he went on to recite
the terms of the oath to her—solemn terms, taking God
and His prophet to witness that she would never reveal
anything which came to her knowledge within the walls
of that house—she seemed to be stifling with a sense
of fear or shame.

Not as such, however, did Ishmael's unsuspecting
nature recognise the lady's embarrassment, but setting
it down to the heat of the day, for the khamseen, the
hot wind, was blowing, he clapped his hands for water.

The Arab woman brought it in, although it was
Abdullah's task to do so, and she lingered long in the
room, and looked searchingly at the lady while Ishmael
again recited his oath.

The lady did not at first respond, but continued to
look out at the open door on to the slow waters of the
White Nile, and there was silence in the air both within
and without, save for the far-off hammering from the
dockyards across the river.

At length she asked in a tremulous voice—

"Master, is this necessary?"

Ishmael reflected for a moment and then said—

"No, it is not necessary, and we shall do without it.
What says the Lord of the Christians?  'Swear not at
all; neither by heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by
the earth, for it is His footstool.'"

The lady drew a long breath of relief and went on
with her foreign newspapers.





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   CHAPTER IV

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Hardly had "the Princess" gone for the day when
the Arab woman, Zenoba, with all her dusky face contracted
into lines of jealousy, came to Ishmael to warn
him.

"Forgive me, O Master," she said, "if the thing I
say displeases you."

"What is it, O Zenoba?" asked Ishmael.

"Is it well to trust the secrets of God and of His
people to two tongues and four eyes?"

Ishmael's face darkened visibly, but he held himself
in check and answered with dignity—

"Zenoba, ask pardon of God for a suspicious mind.
The least of all noble traits is to keep a secret, the
greatest is to forget that you have confided it."

The Arab woman was stung by the rebuke, but
assuming the meekest expression of face she changed
her course entirely.

"Master, I beg of you to listen to me until I have
done," she said, and then she began to talk of the
visits of the white lady.

The lady was young and beautiful.  Evil minds were
many.  If she were to come to Ishmael's house every
day and to be closeted alone with him, what would
people say?

"Forgive me, O Master; it is nothing to me, and I
have no right to speak," said the Arab woman, with
the agony of a jealous spirit imprinted on every feature
of her face.  "I only wish to put you on your guard
against the slanderous tongues that would love to injure
you."

Ishmael listened to her with the look of a man who
had never once reflected on the interpretation that
might be put upon his conduct, and then he said—

"You are right, O Zenoba, and I thank you for
reminding me of something I had permitted myself to
forget."

When the white lady came next day, Ishmael began
to speak to her about her position in his house.

"My sister," he said, "I have been thinking this is
not good.  The thoughts of the world are evil, and if
you continue to come here according to the agreement
we made together your pure name will be tarnished."

The lady's brows contracted slightly, for it flashed
upon her that Ishmael was about to send her away.
But that was not his intention, and in the winding way
of Eastern explanations he proceeded to propound his
plan.

"When the Prophet (to him be prayer and peace)
lost his first wife, Khadija, the mother of Islam, and
took a second wife, it was a widow, well stricken in
years and without wealth or beauty.  Why did the
Prophet marry her?  That he might care for her and
protect her and shield her from every ill."

The lady looked on the ground and listened.  A
strange sensation of joy mingled with fear took possession
of her, for she saw what Ishmael was going to say.

"If the Prophet did this for her who was so far
removed from the slanders of evil tongues, shall not
his servant do as much for one who is young and
beautiful?"

The lady's head began to swim, and the ground to
sway under her feet as if she were at sea on a rolling
ship, but Ishmael saw nothing in her agitation but
modesty, and he went on in a soft voice to tell her
what he wished to do.

He wished to marry her, that is to say, to *betroth*
himself to her, to make her his wife, his spiritual wife,
his wife in name only—never to be claimed of him as
a husband, for, besides his consecration to the great task
he had undertaken for God, there was a vow he had
made to the memory of one who was dead, and both
forbade him ever to think again of the joys of the life
of a man.

The lady was now totally unable to conceal her
agitation, and taking out her handkerchief she kept
running her trembling fingers along the hem.  She was
asking herself what she could do, how she could reply,
for she could plainly see that the Oriental in Ishmael
had never for one instant allowed him to think that if
he were willing to give her the protection of his name
she could have any possible objection.

It was the still hour of noon, and, pale with fear, she
sat silent for a moment looking into the palpitating
air that floated over the glistening waters of the Nile.
Then assuming, as well as she could, an expression of
humility and confusion, she said, while her heart was
beating violently—

"Master, it is too much honour—I can hardly think
of it."

He could see by her face how hard she fought with
herself, but still taking her agitation for maidenly
modesty, he dropped his voice and whispered—

"Do not decide at once.  Wait a little.  Go away
now, and think of what I have said."

He held out his hand to help her to her feet, and she
went off with an unsteady step, first stopping, then
going quickly, as if she had an impulse to speak again
and could not do so, because of the feeling, akin to
terror, which seemed to stifle her.

If any one, following the white lady to her lodging
in the Greek widow's house, had been able to look into
the depths of her soul, he would have found a tragic
struggle going on there.  A score of conflicting voices
were clamouring to be heard at once.  "What am I
doing?"  "Where am I?"  "Am I myself or some
one else?"  "Don't take on this fearful responsibility
to such a man."  "But I must do so, or I can do
nothing."  "I must go on or else go back."  "But isn't
this going too far?"  "Nonsense, this is no marriage;
it is merely a nominal union—a betrothal.  I shall only
be his wife *pro forma*.  According to an alien faith, too,
a faith that does not bind my conscience."  "It must
be done—it shall!"

When the white lady returned to Ishmael's house on
the following day it was with a firm, decided step, as
if she were lifted up and sustained by some invisible
power.  With a strange light in her eyes and an expression
in her face that he had never seen there before,
she told him that she agreed to his proposal.

He received her consent with a glad cry, and clapping
his hands to summon his household he announced the
good news to them with a bright look and a happy voice.

The old uncle was overjoyed, and little Ayesha leapt
into the lady's arms and kissed her, but Zenoba, with
a face full of confusion, drew Ishmael aside and began
to stammer out objections and difficulties.  The house
was small, there was no separate room for the white
lady.  Then, her black boy—there was not even a
corner that could be occupied by him.

"Put the Rani in the room with the child, and let
the boy sleep on the mat at her door," said Ishmael,
and without more ado he went on to make arrangements
for the wedding.

The arrangements were few, for Ishmael determined
that the marriage should be concluded immediately and
conducted without any kind of pomp.  But in order
that all his world might know what he was doing he
invited the Cadi of Khartoum to make the contract,
and then, having sent the lady to her lodging, he set
out to fetch her back on the milk-white camel he usually
rode himself.

It was Sunday, and the sun had gone down in a blaze
of red as he walked by the camel's side through the
native quarter of the town with the white lady, the
Rani, the Princess, wearing a gold-edged muslin shawl
over her head and descending to her shoulders, riding
on the crimson saddle fringed with cowries.

By the time they reached old Mahmud's house it was
full of guests in wedding garments, and gorgeous with
crimson curtains hanging over all the walls, and
illuminated by countless lamps both large and small.

But the ceremony was of the simplest.

First, the Fatihah (the first chapter of the Koran)
recited by the whole company standing, and then the
bride and bridegroom sitting on the ground, face to face,
grasping each other's hands.

Down to this moment the white lady had been
sustained by the same invisible power, as if clad in an
impenetrable armour of defiance which no emotion
could pierce; but when the Cadi stepped forward and
placed a handkerchief over the clasped hands and began
to say some words of prayer, she felt faint and could
scarcely breathe.

With a struggle, nevertheless, she recovered herself
when the Cadi, leaning over her, told her in a low voice
to repeat after him the words that he should speak.

"I betroth myself to thee—to serve thee and to
submit to thee——"

"I betroth myself to thee ... to serve ... to serve
thee ... and to ... to submit to thee——"

With an effort she got the words spoken, feeling
numb at her heart and with a sense of darkness coming
over her, but being spurred at last by sight of the Arab
woman's glittering eyes watching her intently.

But when the Cadi turned from her to Ishmael, and
the bridegroom, in his throbbing voice, said loudly—

"And I accept thy betrothal and take thee under
my care, and bind myself to afford thee my protection,
as ye who are here bear witness," she felt as if the
tempest of darkness had overwhelmed her and she were
falling, falling, falling into a bottomless abyss.

When the lady came to herself again the Arab woman
was holding a dish of water to her mouth, and her own
black boy, with big tears like beads dropping out of
his eyes, was fanning her with a fan of ostrich feathers.

But now the people, who had been saying among
themselves, in astonishment at such maimed rites, "Is
this a widow or a divorced woman?" being determined
not to be done out of such marriage fêtes as they
considered only decent, had begun to gather in front of
the house, the men in their brown skull-caps and blue
galabeahs, the married women in their black silk habarahs
with silver rings in their noses, and the unmarried girls
in their white scarves with coins in their hair and with
big silver anklets.

And while the Sheikhs and Notables within, sitting
on the dikkahs around the guest-room, listened to a
blind man's chanting of the Koran, the peasant people,
squatting on the sand, under the stars, employed
themselves after their own fashion with the beating of
drums, big and little, the playing of pipes, and the
singing of love-songs.  And through and among them as
they huddled together, with their faces to the illuminated
house of joy, and both the bride and the bridegroom
before them, a water-carrier, a sakka, went about
with his water-skin and a brass cup, distributing drinks
of water; a girl, with jingling jewels, squirted scent;
and Abdullah and Black Zogal, showing their shining
white teeth in their happiness and pride, handed round
sweetmeats and cups of thick coffee.

Meantime the white lady sat, with her flushed face
uncovered and her gold-edged veil thrown back, where
Ishmael had placed her, near to the threshold, in order
that, contrary to bad custom, the people might see her,
and the child, with its sweet olive-brown face, sat by
her side, almost on her lap, amusing herself by holding
her hand and drawing off and putting on a beautiful
diamond ring which she wore on the third finger of her
left hand.

This innocent action of the sweet child seemed to
torture the lady at certain moments, and never more
than when one of the male singers, sitting close beneath
her, sang a camel-boy's song of love.  He was far away
on the desert, but the soft eyes of the gazelle recalled
the timid looks of his beloved.  And when he reached
the oasis in the midst of the wilderness the song of the
bird in the date-tree brought back the voice of his
darling.

As soon as the singer finished, the women on the
ground made their shrill, quavering cry of joy, the
zaghareet, and then the white lady drew her hand away
from the child with an abrupt and almost angry gesture.

After that, she sat for a long hour without stirring,
merely gazing out on the people in front of the house
as if she saw and comprehended nothing.  A taste of
bitterness was in her mouth, and as often as she was
recalled to herself by some question addressed to her
she looked as if she wished to disappear from sight
altogether.

At length she thought her torture was at an end, for
the Cadi rose and said in a loud voice—

"If your friend is sweet do not eat him up," whereupon
the tom-toms were silenced and with a laugh
everybody rose, and then, all standing, the whole
company chanted the Fatihah—

.. vspace:: 2

..
   
   "Praise be to God, the Lord of all creatures, the
   most merciful, the King of the Day of Judgment.
   Thee do we worship and of Thee do we beg assistance.
   Direct us in the right way, in the way of
   those to whom Thou hast been gracious; not of
   those against whom Thou art incensed, nor of
   those who go astray."

.. vspace:: 2

The solemn words died away like a receding wave on
the outskirts of the crowd, and then the people broke
up and went back to their houses and tents, leaving
Ishmael and his household together.  A little later the
household also separated for the night, the child, now
very sleepy, being carried to bed by her nurse, and old
Mahmud shuffling off to his room after saying to the
white lady—

"An old man's blessing can do you no harm, my
daughter, therefore God bless you and bring you joyful
increase."

The white lady was now alone with Ishmael, and her
agitation increased tenfold.

"Let us sit again for a while," he said in a soft
voice, and leading her to one of the wooden benches,
covered with carpet, which faced the open front of the
house, he placed himself beside her.

There the moon was on their faces, and from time to
time there was a silvery rain of southern stars.  They
sat for a while in silence, she with a sense of shame,
he with a momentary thrill of passion that came up
from the place where he was no longer a prophet but
a man.

She felt that he was trying to look into her face with
his lustrous black eyes, and she wished to turn away
from him.  This brought the hot colour of blood into
her cheeks, and only made her the more beautiful.

A sense of physical fear began to take possession of
her, and a storm of thoughts and memories came in
rapid succession.  She could not express even to her
own mind the intricacies of her emotions.  This man
was an Oriental, and she believed him to be capable of
treachery and guilty of violence.  Yet she was his wife,
according to his own view, and what at this moment,
when they were alone, was the worth of the pledge
whereby she (for her own purposes) had consented to
be his wife in name only, his betrothed!

Her nervousness increased every moment.  When he
touched her arm she recoiled slightly and felt her skin
creep.  He seemed to be conscious of this, for he sat
by her side a little longer without speaking.

The silence of night was on the desert and along the
moon-track across the river, as far as to the ruined dome
of the Mahdi's tomb, which seemed so threatening and
so near.

At length in a soft voice he said, "Come," and held
out his hand to help her to rise.

She rose, trembling all over with fright and a sort
of physical humiliation—she who had always been so
proud, so strong, so brave.

He led her to the women's side of the house, without
speaking a word until they got there, and then, almost
in a whisper, he said—

"You sleep here with little Ayesha.  May your night
be happy and your morning good!"

She looked up at him as he recommended her to God,
and was amazed at the calm, luminous face that now
met her own.  At the next moment he was gone.

It was an immense relief to find herself in her
bedroom, where a little open lamp was burning, and there
was no sound but the soft and measured breathing of
the child, who was asleep in bed.

At the first moment the sleeping child was like a
great protector, but when she became calmer, and began
to think of this, she felt the more ashamed.

"What impossible, terrible thing has happened?"
she thought, and then she asked herself again, "Am I
really myself or some one else?"

"Oh, what have I done?" she thought, and a sense
of sin took possession of her, which was almost like
that which a good woman feels when she has committed
adultery.

"It is terrible, but it is inevitable," she thought, and
then she fought against the sentiment of shame which
oppressed her, by telling herself that Ishmael was a
crafty hypocrite, whose soft words were a sham, whose
religion was a lie, whose wicked deeds deserved punishment
at any price whatever.

"But no, I cannot think of that now," she thought,
and after a while she turned the light bedclothes aside,
and putting out the lamp, got into bed by the side of
the child, who was smelling sweet with the soft odours
of sleep.

She lay a long time motionless, with her eyes open,
and still the horror of what she had done weighed on
her like a nightmare.  Then she covered her eyes with
her hands, and the image of another filled her with
emotions that were at once sweet and bitter.  With a
woman's sense of injustice she was blaming the absent
one for the position of shame in which she found
herself.

"Why did he choose this man instead of me?" she
thought, and then, at last, in the fiercest fire of jealousy
and hatred, weeping bitter tears in the darkness, she
reconciled her tormented conscience to everything she
had done, everything she intended to do, by saying to
herself with quivering lips—

"*He killed my father!*"

At that moment she was startled by a voice outside
that broke sharp and harsh upon the silence of the
night—

"There is no god but God!  There is no god but God!"

It was Black Zogal, the half-witted Nubian, crying
the confession of faith at the door of Ishmael's house.

The Lady, the White Lady, the Rani, the Princess,
was Helena Graves.





.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V

.. vspace:: 2

While Ishmael's followers had been squatting on the
sands to celebrate his betrothal the Sirdar had been
having a dinner-party in the Palace, composed of the
chief officers of his military government and the cream
of the British society at Khartoum.

Towards ten o'clock the large after-dinner group of
ladies in low-cut corsage, showing white arms and
shoulders, and officers in full-dress uniform, had come
out on the terrace with its open arches and its
handsome steps sweeping down to the silent garden.

Below were the broad lawns, the mimosa trees filling
the night air with perfume, the trembling sycamores
and the tall dates, sleeping under the great deep heaven
with its stars.  Behind was the lamp-lit palace, from
which native servants in gold-embroidered crimson were
carrying silver trays laden with decanters and glasses
and small cups and saucers.

It was almost the spot on which "the martyr of the
Soudan" fell under the lances of the dervishes, yet one
of the Sirdar's servants, Abdullahi, with three
cross-cuts on his cheeks, his tribal mark as a son of the
bloodthirsty Baggara, and with the pleasantest of
smiles on his walnut-coloured face, was drawing corks,
pouring out whisky and soda-water, and striking matches
to light the men's cigarettes.

The company was full of the gaiety and animation
which comes after a pleasant dinner, with a little of
the excitement which follows when people have partaken
of wine.  The eyes of the ladies sparkled and the
faces of the men smiled, and both talked freely and
laughed a good deal.

The conversation was made up of trifles until one of
the ladies—it was the wife of the Governor of the city,
clad in the lightest of lace-chiffon gowns and wearing
yellow satin slippers—inquired the meaning of the
sounds of rejoicing, the blowing of pipes and the beating
of tom-toms, which had come through the wide-open
windows of the Palace from the direction of the native
quarter.

To this question the Inspector-General of the
Soudan—an English Pasha, whose gold-laced tunic was half
covered with medals—replied that the new prophet who
had lately arrived in Khartoum had that day taken to
himself a wife.

"How *interesting*!" cried the ladies in chorus, with
a note of laughter that was intended to belie the word,
and then the lady in the yellow slippers turned to the
Inspector-General and said—

.. _`"How interesting!" cried the ladies in chorus`:

.. figure:: images/img-344.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "How interesting!" cried the ladies in chorus

   "How interesting!" cried the ladies in chorus

"Of course he has as many as the Mahdi already—but
who is the new one, I wonder?"

"No, he has only one wife at present—runs 'em
tandem, I hear—and the new bride is the beautiful
person in Parsee costume who arrived here about the
same time as himself."

"The Mohammedan Rani, you mean?  My husband
tells me she is perfectly lovely.  But they say she will
never let a European get a glimpse of her face—puts
down her Parsee veil, I suppose—so goodness knows
how *he* knows, you know."

"Perhaps your husband is a privileged person, my
dear," said one of the other ladies, whereupon there
was a trill of laughter and the little feet in satin
slippers were beaten upon the floor.

"But a Rani!  Think of that!  Who can she be, I
wonder?" said another of the ladies, and then the
mistress of the Palace, Lady Mannering, hinted that she
believed the Sirdar knew something about her.

"Oh, tell us! tell us!" cried a dozen female voices
at once; but the Sirdar, a shrewd and kindly autocrat
who had been smoking a cigarette in silence, merely
answered—

"Time will tell you, perhaps."  Then turning to the
Inspector-General he said—

"She has *married* the man, you say?"

"That's so, your Excellency."

"There must be some mistake about that, surely."

The company broke up late, and the ladies went on
in light wraps and the men bare-headed through the
soft, reverberant air of the southern night.  But the
Sirdar had asked certain of his officers to remain for
a few moments, and among them were the Inspector-General,
the Financial Secretary, and the Governor of
the town.  To the latter came his Zabit, a police
officer, whose duty it was to report to his chief early
and late, and as soon as the men had seated themselves
the Sirdar said—

"Any further news about this man, Ishmael Ameer?"

"None, your Excellency," said the Governor.

"You've discovered nothing about his object in
coming here?"

"Nothing at all."

"He is not sowing dissension between Moslems and
Christians?"

"No!  On the contrary, he professes to be opposed
to all that, sir."

"Then you see no reason to think that he is likely
to be a danger to the public peace?"

"Unfortunately no, sir, no!"

The Sirdar laughed.  "He hasn't yet given 'divine'
sanction for your removal, Colonel?"

"Not that I know of, at all events."

"Then you and your wife may sleep in peace for the
present, I suppose."

There was a little general laughter, and then the
Inspector-General, a sceptic with a contempt for holy
men of all kinds, said—

"All the same, your Excellency, I should make short
work of this pseudo-Messiah."

"Without plain cause we cannot," said the Sirdar,
who was the friend of all faiths and the enemy of none.
"Indeed, a broad-minded Mohammedan such as this
man is said to be might possibly be of service in
directing the religion of the Soudan."

"Yes, sir, but too many of these religious celebrities
are contaminated by Mahdism."

"Surely Mahdism is dead, my dear fellow."

"Not yet, sir!  Only yesterday I saw a man kneeling
by the Mahdi's tomb—so hard do religions die!
As for this man, Ishmael, he may be preaching peace
while he is gathering his followers, but wait till they're
numerous enough to fight and you'll see what he will
do.  Besides, isn't there evidence enough already that
the tranquillity of the Soudan has been disturbed?"

"What evidence do you mean?"

"I mean ... my informers all over the country tell
me the people are no longer pleading poverty as an
excuse for remission of taxation—they are boldly
*refusing* to pay."

The Financial Secretary corroborated this statement,
saying that the taxes due on the land and the date-trees
had not yet been collected, and that he had heard
from Cairo that the same difficulty was being met with
in Egypt in respect of the taxes on berseem and wheat.

"You mean," said the Sirdar, "that a conspiracy of
passive resistance against the Government has been
set afoot?"

"It looks like it, sir," said the Inspector-General.
"A pretty insidious kind of conspiracy it is, too, and
I think all the signs are that Ishmael Ameer is at the
head of it."

There was silence, for some minutes, during which the
Sirdar was telling himself that, if this was so, the rule
of England in Egypt was face to face with a most
subtle enemy—subtler far than the Mahdi and
immeasurably more dangerous.

"Well, the first thing we've got to do is to find out
the truth," he said, and thereupon he gave the Zabit
an order to summon the Ulema of Khartoum, the Cadi,
the Notables, and Sheikhs to a meeting in the Palace.

"Let it be soon," he said.

"Yes, sir."

"And secret."

"Certainly, your Excellency."

The Governor and the Financial Secretary went off
with the police officer, but for some minutes longer the
Inspector-General remained with the Sirdar.

"If the man were likely to cause a disturbance,"
said the Sirdar, "it would be easy to deal with him,
but he's not.  Public security is in no present danger.
On the contrary, everything I hear of the man's
teaching is calculated to promote peace."

"As to that, sir, if you believe all he says, he is the
prince of peace himself, and his Islam isn't Islam at
all as we know it, but something quite different."

"If he were claiming 'divine' authority, and telling
people to resist the Government——"

"Oh, he is far too clever for that, sir, and his
conspiracy is the deep-laid plan of a subtle impostor, not
the unpremeditated action of a lunatic."

"All I hear about his personal character is good,"
said the Sirdar.  "He is tender to children, charitable
to the poor, and weeps like a woman at a story of
distress."

The Inspector-General laughed.  "Pepper in his
finger-nails—the hoary old trick, sir!  Good-night,
Sirdar!"

"Good-night, Colonel!"  And the Inspector-General
descended the steps.

Being left alone, the Sirdar walked for a long hour
to and fro on the terrace, trying to see what course he
ought to take in dealing with a religious leader who
differed so dangerously from the holy men that were
more troublesome, but hardly more deadly, than the
sand-flies of the desert.

At midnight he found himself standing on the very
spot on which General Gordon met his death, and in an
instant, as by a flash of mental lightning, he saw the
scene that had been enacted there only a few years
before—the grey dawn, the mad rush of the howling
dervishes in their lust of blood, up from the dim garden
to the top of these steps, on which stood, calmly waiting
for them, the fearless soul that had waited for his
own countrymen in vain.  "Where is your Master, the
Mahdi?" he cried.  Then a barbarous shriek, the flash
of a score of lances, and the martyr of the Soudan fell.

Was this to be another such revolt, more subtle if
not more bloody, turning England out of the valley of
the Nile by making it impossible for her to meet the
expense of governing the country, and thereby destroying
the seeds of civilisation that had been sown in
the Soudan through so many toilsome years?

On the other hand, was it the beginning of a great
spiritual revolution that was intended by God to pass
over the whole face of the world?  It might even be
that, though the Soudan was only a brown and barren
wilderness, for had not all great faiths and all great
prophets sprung out of the desert—Moses, Mohammed,
Christ!

This brought the Sirdar back to a memory that had
troubled him deeply for many weeks—the memory of
the disgrace that had fallen in Cairo on his comrade of
long ago, the son of his old friend Nuneham, young
Gordon Lord.

Then it dawned upon him for the first time that,
however serious his offence as a soldier, the son of his
friend had done no more and no less than his great
namesake did before him when he resisted authority
*because authority was in the wrong*!

Good God! could it be possible that young Gordon
was in the right after all, and that this movement of the
man Ishmael was the beginning of a world-wide revolt
against the materialism, the selfishness, the venality,
and the oppression of a corrupt civilisation that mocked
religion by taking the name of Him who came to earth
to destroy such evils?

If that were so, could any Christian country in these
days dare to repeat the appalling error of the Roman
Empire in Palestine two thousand years ago—the error
of trying to put down moral forces by physical ones?

The Sirdar laughed when he thought of that, so
grotesque seemed the mysterious law of the mind by
which he had coupled an olive-faced Arab like Ishmael
Ameer with Christ!

The southern night was silent.  Not a sound came up
from the moonlit garden except the croaking of frogs
in the pond.  Presently a voice that was like a wave of
wind came sweeping through the breathless air—

"There is no god but God!  There is no god but God!"

The Sirdar shuddered and turned into the house.





.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI

.. vspace:: 2

Being betrothed to Ishmael, and therefore in effect his
wife, Helena had now no difficulty in reading the secret
he had so carefully hidden from British eyes.  Every
morning she sat with him in the guest-room while he
received his messengers and agents, and if they demurred
at her presence, being distrustful of her because she was
a woman, he would say—

"Have no fear.  My wife is myself.  Think of her
as you think of me."

Thus little by little she realised what the plan of his
opposition to the Government had been, when, in Cairo,
after the closing of El Azhar, he had sent out his
hundred emissaries.  It was to tell the people in every
village of Egypt and the Soudan to pay no taxes until
their faith was free and the Government took its hand
off the central seat of their religion.

She also realised that the people had obeyed Ishmael
and had suffered as the consequence.  Agents were
coming every day with secret letters and messages concealed
in their turbans, telling of the pains and penalties
already endured by those who had boldly refused to
pay the taxes due at that season of the year.

At first these lamentations were couched after Eastern
manner in the language of metaphor.  Pharaoh was
laying intolerable burdens upon the people—what were
they to do?  God had once sent Moses, a man of prayer,
to plead with Pharaoh to loosen his hand—would He
not do so again?

But as the people's sufferings increased the metaphors
were dropped, and the injustices they laboured under
were stated in plain terms.  Hitherto, when a summons
had been taken out against a man for the non-payment
of his taxes, the magistrate might remit or cancel or
postpone, but now there was nothing but summary
execution everywhere, with the result that stock and
crops were being sold up by the police, and neither the
Mudirs (the governors) nor their Sarrafs (cashiers) cared
what price was realised so long as the amount of the
taxes was met.

"Is there no redress, no remedy, no appeal?  What
are we to do?" asked the people, in the messages that
came in the turbans.

"Be patient!" replied Ishmael.  "It is written,
'God is with the patient.'"

A hundred times Helena wrote this answer at Ishmael's
dictation, on pieces of paper hardly bigger than a large
postage stamp, and it was hidden away in some secret
place in the messenger's clothes.

As time went on the messages became more urgent
and painful.  The law said that at times of distraint
the clothes of the debtor, his implements of cultivation,
and the cattle he employed in agriculture were to be
exempt from seizure, but the district officers were
seizing everything by which the people worked, and yet
requiring them to pay taxes just the same.

"What are we to say?" asked the messengers.

"Say nothing," answered Ishmael.  "Suffer and be
strong.  Not for the first time on the banks of the
Nile have people been required to make bricks without
straw.  But God will avenge you.  Wait!"

This message, also, Helena wrote a hundred times,
wishing it had been more explicit, but Ishmael
committed his signature to no compromising statement, no
evidence of conspiracy, and that deepened Helena's
conviction of his cunning and duplicity.

The intensity of her feeling against Ishmael did not
abate by coming to close quarters.  Day by day, as she
sat in the guest-room, she poisoned her mind and
hardened her heart against him.  She even found herself
taking the side of his people in the sufferings he
continued to impose upon them.  She was sure, too,
that in addition to his plan of passive resistance he had
some active scheme of vengeance against the Government.
What was it?  She must wait and see.

After a while letters began to arrive from Cairo.
They were from the Chancellor of El Azhar, and
contained the messages of the Ulema.

The Ulema had appealed to the representatives of
the Powers, who had answered them that they could
do nothing unless it became clear to all the world that
the action of England was imperilling the peace of
Egypt and thereby the lives of the Europeans—what
were they to say?

"Fools!" cried Ishmael.  "Don't you see that they
*want* you to rebel?  Grasp every hand that is held out
to you in good will, but fly from the finger that would
point you into the fire."

Helena thought she saw light at last.  Having
expelled England from Egypt by making it impossible for
her to govern the country, Ishmael intended to establish,
like the Mahdi, an entirely worldly and temporal
power with himself at the head of it.

The second letter from the Ulema at Cairo contained
a still more serious message.  Having met and
concluded that the action of the Government justified the
proclamation of a Jehad, a holy war, on the just ground
that the unbelievers were trying to expel them from
their country, they had solemnly sworn on the Koran
to turn England out of Egypt or die in the attempt.
To this letter Ishmael sent an instant answer, saying—

"No!  What will it profit you to turn England out
of Egypt while she holds the Soudan and the sources
of the Nile?  O blind and weak!  If you have
forgotten your souls, have you no thoughts for your
stomachs?"

Then came further letters from the Chancellor of El
Azhar saying that the fellaheen were being evicted
from their houses and lands, and that their sufferings
were now so dire that no counsels could keep them from
revolt.  Even the young women were calling upon the
young men to fight, saying they were not half the men
their fathers had been, or they would conquer or die
for the homes that were being taken from them and
for the religion of God and His prophet.

To this message also Ishmael returned a determined
answer.

"War is mutual deceit," he said.  "Avoid it!  Fly
from it!  I will countenance no warfare!  That is my
unalterable mind!  Hear it, for God's sake!"

But hardly had Ishmael's answer gone from Khartoum
when messengers began to arrive from all parts of
Egypt saying that the fellaheen had already risen in
various places, and that battalions of the British army
had been sent out to repress them; that the people
had been put down with loss of life and suffering, and
that many were now trooping into the cities, homeless
and hopeless, and crying in their despair, "How long,
O Lord, how long?"

It was a black day in Khartoum when this news came,
for among Ishmael's immediate following there were not
a few who had lost members of their own families.
Some of these, that night when all was still, went out
into the desert, far away from the tents, and sang a
solemn dirge for the dead.  It was a melancholy sight
in that lonesome place, for they were chiefly women,
and their voices, under the deep blue sky with its stars,
made a most touching lamentation, like that of the
sobbing of the sea.

Helena heard it, and, with her heart still poisoned
against Ishmael, it made her yet more bitter against
him, as one who for his own ends was holding the
poor, weak people under their cruel fate by the spell
of superstitious hopes and fears.

Knowing the Moslem ethics of warfare, that it is only
wicked when it is likely to fail, she convinced herself
that Ishmael was merely biding his time for the execution
of some violent scheme, and remembering his
secret (the secret of the crime he thought he had hidden
from everybody), the idea took possession of her that
he was laying some personal plot against the Consul-General.

One day a lanky fellow, with a short-cut Moslem
beard, arrived by train, and, after the usual Arabic
salutations, produced a letter.  It ran—

.. vspace:: 2

"The bearer of this is Abdel Kader, and he is our
envoy to you with a solemn message which is too
secret to commit to paper.  Trust him.  He is honest
and his word is true.—Your friends, who wait for you
in Cairo with outstretched arms——"

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And then followed the names not only of many of
the Ulema of Cairo but of most of the Notables as well.

Abdel Kader proved to be a sort of Arab Don Quixote,
full of fine language and grand sentiments.  Much of
this he expended upon Ishmael in the secrecy of the
carefully guarded guest-room before he came to the
substance of his message, which was to say that as a
great doctor of Moslem law, Gamal-ed-Deen, had upheld
assassination itself as a last means of righting the
wrongs of the people, the leaders had reluctantly
concluded that the English Lord (Lord Nuneham) must be
removed in order that his heavy foot might be lifted
from the necks of the oppressed.  To this end they had
decided that he should be assassinated some day as he
passed in his carriage on his afternoon drive over the
Kasr-el-Nil bridge, but lacking a person capable of
taking the lead in such an affair they appealed to
Ishmael to return to Cairo for this purpose.

Having discharged himself of the burden of his
message, the Arab Don Quixote was proceeding with
many large words, that were intended to show how
safely this act of righteous vengeance might be
executed by one whom the law dared not touch for fear of
the people, when Ishmael, who had listened breathlessly,
burst out on him and cried—

"No, no, I tell you, no!  Return to them that sent
you and say, 'Ishmael Ameer is no murderer.'  Say,
too, that the world has no use for patriots who would
right the people by putting them in the wrong.  Away
with you!  Away!"

At that, he rose up and went out of the guest-room
with a flaming face, leaving the envoy to strike his
forehead, and to curse the day that had brought him.

Helena, who, with old Mahmud, had been present
at this interview, found herself utterly shaken at the
end of it by a storm of conflicting feelings, and from
that time forward her heart was constantly being
surprised by emotions which she had hitherto struggled
to suppress.

Day by day, as messengers came thronging into
Khartoum with sadder and yet sadder stories of the
people's sufferings—how, living under the shadow of
the sword, impoverished by the law and by the cruel
injustice of the native officers, the Omdehs and the
Sarrafs, sold up and evicted from their homes, they
were tramping the deserts, men, women, and children,
hungry and naked, and with nothing of their own except
the sand and the sky—Helena saw that Ishmael's face
grew paler and paler, as if his sleep had left him, and
under the burden of his responsibility for what had
befallen the country as the consequence of its obedience
to his will, his heart was bleeding and his life ebbing
away.

"Master, is there no help for us?" the messengers
would ask, with tears in their half-witted eyes.  "You
are our father, we are your children—what are we to
do?  We are sheep without a shepherd—will you not
lead us?"

To all such pleading Ishmael would show a brave
face and say—

"Not yet!  Wait!  The clouds that darken your
sky will lift.  Be patient!  The arm of our God is
long!  Never despair!  Allah feeds the worm that lies
between the stones.  Will He not feed you also?  Yet
better your bodies should starve than your souls should
perish!  Hold fast to the faith!  Your children and
your children's children will bless you!"

But sometimes in the midst of his comforting his
voice would fail, and like Joseph, whose bowels yearned
over his brethren, he would stop suddenly and hasten
away to his room lest he should break down altogether.
Helena saw all this, and it was as much as she could
do to withstand it, when one night she was awakened
in the small hours by Mosie, who was whispering through
the door of her bedroom—

"Lady, lady, Master sick; come to him."

Then she walked across to the men's side of the house
and heard Ishmael in his own room, calling on God to
forgive him and crying like a child.

At that moment, in spite of herself, Helena felt a
wave of pity take possession of her; but at the next,
being back in her bedroom, she remembered her own
secret and asked herself again—

"What pity had he for me *when he killed my father*?"





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   CHAPTER VII

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Down to this time Ishmael's conduct had been marked
by the most determined common-sense; but now came
an incident that seemed to change the trend of his mind
and character.

One day a man of the Jaalin tribe arrived with a
letter in the sole of his sandal.

"God give you greeting, Master," he said in his
west-country dialect and a tone that seemed to foretell
trouble.

With trembling fingers Ishmael tore open the letter
and read that, to drown the cries of distress and to
throw dust in the eyes of Europe (for so the Ulema
understood the otherwise mysterious object), the
Consul-General was organising a general festival of rejoicing
to celebrate the —th anniversary of the British
occupation of Egypt.

At this news Ishmael was overwhelmed.  Helena saw
his lips quiver and his cheeks grow pale as he held the
crinkling paper in his trembling hands.  In the absence
of other explanation the cold-blooded cruelty of the
scheme seemed to be almost devilish.

That day he disappeared, escaping from the importunities
of his people into the desert.  He did not
return at night, and at sunrise next morning Black Zogal
went in search of him.  But the Nubian returned
without him, telling some wild, supernatural tale of having
come upon the Master in the midst of an angelic company.
His face was shining with a celestial radiance,
so that at first he could not look upon him.  And when
at length he was able to lift his eyes the Master, who
was alone, sent him back, saying he was to tell no man
what he had seen.

Four days afterwards Ishmael returned to Khartoum,
and there was enough in his face to explain Black
Zogal's story.  His eyes, which seemed to stare, had a
look of unearthly joy.  This was like flame to the fuel
of his people's delirium, for they did not see that under
the torment of his private sufferings the dauntless
courage and hope of the man had begun to turn towards
madness.

He began to preach in the mosque a wild new message.
The time of the end had come!  Famine and pestilence,
poverty and godless luxury, war and misery—were
not these the signs foretold of the coming of the
latter day?

Lo, the cup of the people's sufferings was full!
Behold, while the children of Allah wept, men feasted and
women danced!  Never since the black night when
the first-born of Egypt were slain had Egypt been so
mocked!  Egypt, the great, the ancient, the cradle of
humanity—what was she now but a playground for the
idle wealthy of the world!

"But—no matter!" he cried.  "The world travaileth
and groaneth like a woman in labour, but as a woman
forgetteth her pains when the hope of her heart is born,
so shall the children of God forget Pharaoh and his
feastings when the Expected One is come.  He is
coming now, the Living, the Deliverer, the Redeemer!
Wait!  Watch!  The time is near!"

The new message flashed like fire through Ishmael's
followers.  Every eventide for thirteen centuries in
Islam the prayer had gone up to heaven for the advent
of the divinely-appointed guide who was to redeem the
world from sorrow and sin, to deliver believers from the
hated bondage of the foreigner, and to re-establish the
universal Caliphate; and now, in the utmost depths of
their oppression and suffering, when hope had all but
died out of their hearts, the true Mahdi, the Messiah,
the Christ, was about to come!

The people were beside themselves with joy.  They
were like children of the desert who, after a long drought
in which their wells have been dried up, run about in
glee when the first drops of rain begin to fall.  They
were ready for any task, any enterprise, and Ishmael,
who began to make plans for going back to Cairo (for
it was there, according to his view, that the Expected
One was to appear), sent letters to all corners of the
country telling his messengers to return home.

Helena wrote these letters with a trembling hand.
In spite of her secret errand she was surprised by a
certain sympathy.  The great hope, the great dream
touched her pity, and gave her at the beginning some
moments of compunction.  But after a while she began
to see it as a wicked madness, and that enabled her to
steel her heart against Ishmael again.

The man who held out such crazy hopes to a credulous
people might be harmless in England, but in
Egypt he was a peril.  Once let an ignorant and
superstitious populace believe that the end of the world
was coming, that a Messiah was about to appear, and
human government was a dead-letter.  What then?
Revolution and bloodshed, for the first duty of a
Government was to preserve law and order!

Helena asked herself if the time had not come at last
to write to the Consul-General, or perhaps to steal away
from Khartoum and return to Cairo that she might
report what she had seen and learned.

After reflection she concluded that the only result of
doing so would be that of punishing yet further the
poor, misguided populace who had been punished enough
already.  It was Ishmael alone who ought to suffer,
whether for his offences against his followers, his
conspiracy against the Government or his crime against
herself, and in order to punish him apart, she would
have to separate him from his people.

How was she to do this?  It seemed impossible, but
fate itself assisted her.

A few days after Abdel Kader had gone off in his
humiliation, the shadow of his lanky body appeared
across the threshold of the guest-room, where Ishmael
was sitting with no other company than old Mahmud
and Helena who was writing the usual letters while
little Mosie fanned her to drive off the flies.

"The peace of God be with you, Master," he said in
a low and humble voice, and then with a shy look of
triumph he produced a letter which had been given to
him at Haifa.

The letter was from the Chancellor of El Azhar, and
it told Ishmael, after the usual Arabic salutations, that
the festival of which he had already been informed was
to take place on the Ghezirah (the island in front of
Cairo); that the rejoicings were to begin on the
anniversary of the birthday of the English King, something
more than a month hence; that the British soldiers
would still be in the provinces at that time, quelling
disturbances and helping the district officers to enforce
the payment of taxes, and that, as a consequence, the
Egyptian army alone would be left in charge of the city.

"The Egyptian soldiers are Moslems, O my brother—the
brothers and sons of our poor afflicted children of
Allah.  It needs only the right word from the right
man and they will throw down their arms at the city
gates and then the army of God may enter."

Ishmael read the letter aloud in his throbbing voice
and his face began to shine with ecstasy.  In an instant
a wild scheme took shape in his mind.

He would announce a pilgrimage!  With ten thousand,
twenty thousand, fifty thousand of his followers he
would return to Cairo to meet and greet the Expected
One!  The native army would not resist their co-religionists,
and once within the city the struggle would
be at an end!  In a single hour his fifty thousand would
be five hundred thousand!  The Government would not
turn them out; it dared not make war upon them; the
whole world would cry out against a general massacre,
and God Himself would not permit it to occur!

*But* somebody must go into Cairo in advance to
prepare the way—to make sure there should be no
bloodshed!  Some trusty messenger, some servant of the
Most High, who could kindle the souls of the Egyptian
soldiers to such a blazing flame of love that not all the
perils of death could make them take up arms against
the children of God when they came to their gates!

While Ishmael propounded this scheme with gathering
excitement and a look of frenzy, Helena sat trembling
from head to foot and clutching with nervous fingers
the reed pen she held in her hand, for she knew that
her hour had struck at last—the hour she had waited
and watched for, the hour she had come to Khartoum
to meet.  She held her breath and gazed intently into
Ishmael's quivering face as long as he continued to
speak, and then, in a voice which she could scarcely
recognise as her own, she said—

"But the messenger who goes in advance into Cairo—he
must be one whose wisdom as well as courage you
can trust."

"True, true, most true," said Ishmael, speaking
eagerly and rapidly.

"Some one whose word will carry influence with the
Egyptian army."

"Please God, it shall be so," said Ishmael.

"If the soldiers are native and Moslem, the officers
are British and Christian, therefore the risks they run
are great."

"Great, very great, but God will protect them."

"To disobey may be to suffer imprisonment, perhaps
discharge, possibly death."

"I know!  I know!  But God will bring them to a
happy end."

"Therefore," said Helena, whose nervousness was
gathering feverish strength, "the messenger who goes
into Cairo in advance must be one who can make them
forget the dangers of death itself."

Ishmael reflected for a moment and then, in a burst
of eagerness, he said—

"The counsel is good.  *I will go myself!*"

Helena's flushed face looked triumphant.  "The man
of all men," she said.  "What messenger from Ishmael
could be so sure as Ishmael himself?"

"Yes, please God, I will go myself," said Ishmael in
a louder voice, and he began to laugh—it was the first
laugh that had broken from his lips since Helena came
to Khartoum.  Then he paused and said—

"But the people?"

"Anybody can follow with them," said Helena.
"Their loyalty is certain; they need no persuading."

"I'll go," said Ishmael, "for above all there must
be no bloodshed."

Then old Mahmud, who alone of the persons present
in the guest-room seemed to be untouched by the
excitement of the moment, turned to Helena and said—

"But is Ishmael the only one for this enterprise, my
daughter?"

"He knows every one, and every one knows him,"
said Helena.

"But he who knows everybody, everybody knows,"
the old man answered; "not the soldiers merely, but
their masters also."

At that Helena's nervousness gathered itself up into
a trill of unnatural laughter, and she said, "Nonsense!
He can be disguised!  The kufiah (headdress) of a
Bedouin, covering his head and nearly all his face—what
more is wanted?"

"So you are not afraid for him, my daughter?"

"Afraid?  I will make the kufiah myself and with
my own hands I will put it on."

"Brave heart of woman!" cried Ishmael.  "Stronger
than the soul of man!  It is *my* duty and I will do it!"

With that he turned to Abdel Kader, who had looked
on with his staring eyes, and said—

"Go back to Cairo by the first train, and say, 'It is
well—God willing he will come.'"  And then, in the
fever of his new purpose, he went off to the mosque.

There he first called upon the people to repeat the
Shehadah, the Moslem creed, and after that he administered
an oath to them—never, by the grace of God and
His Prophet, to reveal what he was going to say except
to true believers, and only to them on their taking a
like oath of secrecy and fidelity.

The people repeated in chorus the words he spoke in
a loud voice, and concluded—each man with his right
hand on the Koran, and his left upraised to
heaven—with a solemn Amen!

Then Ishmael told them everything—how the time
had come for their deliverance from bondage and
corruption to the glorious liberty of the children of
God—how, as the people of the Prophet had returned from
Medina to Mecca, so they were to go up from Khartoum
to Cairo—how he was to go before them, and they,
under another leader, were to follow him, and God
would give them a great reward.

At this news the poor, unlettered people grew delirious
in their excitement, each man interpreting Ishmael's
message according to his own vision of the millennium.
Some saw themselves turning the hated foreigner out
of Egypt; others were already in imagination taking
possession of Cairo and all the rich lands of the valley
of the Nile; while a few, like Ishmael himself, were
happy enough in the expectation of prostrating
themselves at the feet of the divinely appointed guide who
was to redeem the world from sorrow and sin.

As soon as prayers were over, Black Zogal ran back
to old Mahmud's house with a wild story of flashes of
light which he saw darting from Ishmael's head while
he spoke from the pulpit.

Helena heard him.  She was sitting alone in the
guest-room, tortured by contending thoughts.  "Am I a
wicked woman?" she asked herself, remembering how
easily she had taken advantage of Ishmael's fanatical
ecstasy.  But again she hardened her heart against
Ishmael, telling herself that his simplicity was cunning,
and that he was an impostor who had gone so far
with his imposture that he could even impose upon
himself.

How could one who had committed a crime, a cruel
and cowardly crime, be anything but a villain?  A
madman, perhaps, but all the same a villain.

And then other thoughts thronged upon her, sweet
and bitter thoughts, with memories of Gordon, of her
father, of the early days in Grasmere, of the short
morning of happiness in Cairo, and of the brief rift in
the clouds of her life that was now plunged in perpetual
night.

Thus she stifled every qualm of conscience by going
back and back to the same plea, the same support—

"*After all, he killed my father!*"





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   CHAPTER VIII

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In a village outside blind-walled, dead Metimmeh,
with its blank and empty hovels, emblems of Mahdist
massacres, two travellers were encamped.  One of them
was what the quick-eyed natives called a "white
Egyptian," but he was dressed as a Bedouin Sheikh;
the other was his servant.  They were travelling south,
and having been long on their journey, their camels had
begun to fail them.  A she-camel ridden by the Bedouin
was suffering in one of its feet, and the men were resting
while a doctor dressed it.

Meantime the villagers were feeding them with the
best of their native bread and making a fantasia for
their entertainment.  The night was a little cold, and
the people had built a fire, before which the travellers
were sitting with the Sheikh of the village by their side.

In a broad half-circle on the other side of the fire a
group of blue-shirted Arabs were squatting on the sand.
A singer was warbling love-songs in a throbbing voice,
a number of his comrades were beating time on the
ground with sticks, and a swaggering girl, who glittered
with gold coins in her hair and on her hips, was
dancing in the space between.  On their nut-brown
faces was the flickering red light of the fire, and over
their heads was the great, wide, tranquil whiteness of
the moon.

In the midst of their fantasia they heard the hollow
thud of a camel's tread, and presently a stranger
arrived, a lanky fellow with wild eyes and a
north-country accent.  The Sheikh saluted him, and he made
his camel kneel and got down to rest and to eat.

"The peace of God be with you!"

"And with you!  What is your name?" asked the Sheikh.

"They call me Abdel Kader, and I am riding all
night to catch the train from Atbara in the morning."

"It must be great news you carry in such haste, O
brother."

"The greatest!  When the sun rises above the horizon
we see no more the stars."

It was obvious enough through his fine language
that the stranger was eager to tell his story, and
after calling for an oath of secrecy and fidelity he
told it to the Sheikh and the Bedouin in bated
breath.

The time of the end had come!  A pilgrimage had
been proclaimed!  Ishmael Ameer was to go up to
Cairo secretly and his people were to follow him; the
Egyptian army were to help them to enter the city,
the hated foreigner was to be flung out of the country,
and Egypt was to be God's!

The Sheikh of the village was completely carried away
by the stranger's news, but the Bedouin listened to it
with unconcealed alarm.

"Is this the plan of Ishmael Ameer?" he asked.

"It is," said the stranger, "and God bring it to a
happy end!"

"Did anybody put it into his head?" asked the
Bedouin.

"Yes, a woman, his wife, and God bless and reward her!"

"His wife, you say?"

"Wallahi!" said the stranger, and then, with many
fine sentiments and much flowery speech, he told of the
lady, the White Lady, the Rani, the Princess, who had
lately been married to Ishmael Ameer and had now so
much power over him.

"What says the old saw?" said the stranger.  "'He
who eats honey risks the sting of bees,' but no danger
in this case."

And then followed more fine sentiments on the sweetness
and wisdom of woman in general and of the Rani
in particular.

"Well, he who lives long sees much," said the Bedouin,
with increasing uneasiness; and, turning to the Sheikh,
he asked if he might have the loan of a fresh camel in
the place of the one that was disabled.

"Certainly, but my brother is not leaving me to-night?"
asked the Sheikh.

"I must," said the Bedouin.

"But the night is with us," said the Sheikh.

"And so is the moon, and the tracks are clear," said
the Bedouin.  "But one thing you can do for me,
O Sheikh—send a letter into Khartoum by the train
that goes up from Metimmeh in the morning."

That was agreed to; and, by the light of a large
tin lamp which his servant held before him as he
sat on the sand, the Bedouin wrote a hurried message
to Ishmael Ameer, saying who he was and why he was
making his journey, and asking that nothing should be
done until they came together.

By this time the fantasia was over, the fire had died
down, the camels had been brought up, the flowery
stranger had started afresh on his northward way, and
the Sheikh and his people were standing ready to say
farewell to the two travellers who were facing south.

"God take you safely to your journey's end, O
brother," said the Sheikh.  Then, with a grunt, the
camels knelt and rose, and at the next moment, amid a
chorus of pious ejaculations, into the glistening
moon-track across the sand the Bedouin and his man
disappeared.

The Bedouin was Gordon.  He was thinner and more
bronzed, yet not less well than when he left Cairo, for
he had the strength of a soldier inured to hardship.
But Osman, his servant and guide, having lived all his
life in the schoolroom and the library, had dwindled
away like their camels which were utterly debilitated
and had lost their humps.

Their journey had been long, for they had missed
their way, being sometimes carried off by mirages and
sometimes impeded by mountain ranges that rose sheer
and sharp across their course.  And often in the face
of such obstacles, with his companion and his camels
failing before his eyes, Gordon's own spirit had also
failed, and he had asked himself why, since he knew of
no use that Heaven could have for him there, he
continued to trudge along through this bare and barren
wilderness.

But doubt and uncertainty were now gone.  He was
in a fever of impatience to reach Khartoum that he
might put an end to Ishmael's scheme.  That scheme
was madness, and it could only end in disaster.  Carried
into execution it would be another Arabi insurrection,
and would lead to like failure and as much bloodshed.

The Englishman and the British soldier in Gordon,
no less than the friend of the Egyptian people,
rebelled against Ishmael's plot.  It was political mutiny
against England, which Ishmael, in Cairo, had
protested was no part of his spiritual plan.  What
influence had since played upon him to make him change
the object of his mission?  Who was this white woman,
this Rani, this Princess who had put an evil motive
into his mind?  Was she acting in the folly of good
faith or was she deceiving and betraying him?  His
wife, too!  What could it mean?

In Gordon's impatience only one thing was clear to
him—that for England's sake, and for Egypt's also, he
must reach Khartoum without delay.  He must show
Ishmael how impossible was his scheme, how dangerous,
how deadly, how certain to lead to his own
detection and perhaps death.

"We are thirty hours from Omdurman—can we do
it in a day and a night, Osman?" he said, as soon as
the camels swung away.

"God willing, we will," said Osman, in a voice that
betrayed at once his weakness and his devotion.

They rode all night, first in the breathless moonlight
with its silvery shimmering haze, then in a strong wind
that made the clouds to sail before the stars and the
camels beneath them to feel like ships that were riding
through a running sea, and last of all in the black
hour before the dawn, when it was difficult to see the
tracks, and the beasts stumbled in the darkness.

The morning grew grey and they were still riding.
But Osman's strength was failing rapidly, and when,
half an hour afterwards, the sun in its rising brightness
began to flush with pink the stony heights of distant
hills, they drew rein, made their camels kneel, and
dismounted.

They were then near a well, from which a group
of laughing girls, with bare bronze arms and shoulders,
were drawing water in pitchers and carrying it away on
their heads.  While Osman loosened the saddles of the
camels and fed the tired creatures with durah, Gordon
asked one of the girls for a drink, and she held her
pitcher to his lips, saying with a smile, "May it give
thee health and prosperity!"

After half-an-hour's rest, having filled their water-skins
and being refreshed with biscuits and dates, they
readjusted the saddles of the camels, mounted and rose
and started again, making their salaams to the young
daughters of the desert who stood grouped together
in the morning sunshine and looked after them with
laughing eyes.

The clear, vivifying, elastic desert air breathed upon
their faces; and their camels, strengthened by rest and
food, swung away with better speed.  All day long they
continued to ride without stopping.  Gordon's impatience
increased every hour as he reflected upon the
probable consequences of the scheme with which the
unknown woman had inspired Ishmael, and Osman,
being told of the danger, forgot his weakness in the
fervour of his devotion.

The shadows lengthened along the sea-flat sand while
they passed over wastes without a bush or a scrub or a
sign of life, but just as the sun was setting they entered
the crater-like valley of Kerreri with its clumps of
mimosa and its far view of the innumerable islands of
the Nile.

This was the scene of Gordon's first battle, the battle
of Omdurman, and a score of tender and thrilling
memories came crowding upon him from the past.
Yonder was the thicket in which he had taken the
Khalifa's flag, the spot where he had left Ali: "Show
the bits of the bridle to my Colonel and tell him I died
faithful.  Give my salaams to him, Charlie.  I knew
Charlie Gordon Lord would stay with me to the end."

How different the old battlefield was to-day!  Instead
of the deafening roar of cannon, the wail of shell
the frenzied shouts of the dervishes, and the swathes of
sheeted dead, there was only the grim solitude of stony
hills and yellow sand, with here and there some white
and glistening bones over which the vultures circled in
the silent air.

Night had fallen when they entered Omdurman, and
the change in the town, too, struck a chill into Gordon's
heated spirit.  No longer the dirty, disgusting Mahdist
capital, it was deodorised, swept, and sweet.  Could it
be possible that he was opposing the forces which had
brought this civilising change?

When the travellers reached the ferry the last boat
for Khartoum had gone, and, the Nile being high,
they had no choice but to remain in Omdurman until
morning.

"*Ma'aleysh*!  All happens as God ordains," said
Osman.  But Gordon's impatience could scarcely
contain itself, so eager was he to undo the work of the
woman who had done so much ill.

They lodged in a khan of the old slave-market, which
was now full of peaceful people sitting about coffee-stalls
lit by lanterns and candles, where formerly the
air was tense with the frenzied gallopings of the wild
Baggara, and the melancholy boom of the great
ombeya, the fearful trumpet of death.

Before going to bed Gordon wrote another letter to
Ishmael, saying he had got thus far and expected to
meet him in the morning.  Then, being unable, as yet,
to sleep under a roof, after sleeping so long on the
desert, he dragged his angerib into the open and stretched
himself under the stars.

There, gazing up into the great vault of heaven, a
memory came back to him which had never once failed
to come when he lay down to sleep—the memory of
Helena.  Every night on his long desert journey, whatever
the discomfort of his bed, if it were only the hole
between stones which the Arab shepherds build to
protect themselves from the wind, his last thought had
been of her.

She was gone, she was lost to him, she would be in
England by this time, and he was exiled from home for
ever, but in the twilight moments of the heart and
mind that go between the waking sense and sleep she
was with him still.

And now, lying on his angerib in Omdurman, he
could see her radiant eyes and hear her deep, melodious
voice, and catch the note of the gay raillery that was
perhaps her greatest charm.  Though he had done this
ever since he left Cairo he felt to-night as if the sweet
agony of it all would break his heart.

He looked up at the stars and found pleasure in
thinking that the same sky was over Helena in England.
Then he looked across at Khartoum and saw that all
the windows of the Palace were lit up as for a dance.

A mystic sense of some impending event came over
him.  What could it be?  he wondered.  Then he
remembered the word of Osman, who was now breathing
heavily at his side.

"*Ma'aleysh*!  All happens as God ordains," he
thought.  Then, sending a last greeting to Helena in
England, he turned over and fell asleep.





.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX

.. vspace:: 2

Early that morning Abdullah had entered Ishmael's
room while the Master was still sleeping, for a messenger
from Metimmeh, coming by train, had brought an
urgent letter.

Ishmael read the letter and rose immediately, and
when Helena met him in the guest-room half-an-hour
afterwards, she saw that he was excited and disturbed.

"Rani," he said, "I have been thinking about our
plan and have certain doubts about it.  Better let it
rest for a few days at all events."

Helena asked why, and she was told that a stranger
was coming whose counsel might be wise, for he knew
Cairo, the Government, and the Egyptian army, and
he had asked Ishmael to wait until he arrived before
committing himself to any course.

"Who is he?" she asked.

"One who loves the people and has suffered sorely
for his love of them."

"What is his name?"

"They call him Sheikh Omar Benani."

At that moment she learned no more than that the
stranger was a Bedouin chief of great fame and influence,
that he had rested at Metimmeh the night before,
but was now coming on to Khartoum as fast as a
camel could carry him.

"He may be here to-night, to-morrow at latest,"
said Ishmael, "so let us leave things where they are
until our brother arrives."

This news threw Helena into a fever of excitement.
She saw the possibility of her scheme coming to nought.
The Bedouin who was now on his way might destroy it.

She was afraid of this Bedouin.  If he knew Cairo,
the Government, and the Egyptian army, he must also
know that the plan which Ishmael had proposed to
himself was impossible.  That being so, he would advise
Ishmael against it.  His influence with Ishmael would
be greater than her own, and as a consequence her plan
would fail.  Then all she had hoped for, all she had
come for, all she had sacrificed so much for, would be
lost and wasted.

What was she to do?  There was only one thing
possible—to cause Ishmael to commit himself to her
plan before the Bedouin arrived in Khartoum.

Again fate assisted her.  The same train that brought
the Bedouin's letter brought another messenger from
Cairo.  He was an immensely tall Dinka, who had
been employed to avert suspicion.  As soon as he was
alone with Ishmael and his household he slipped off his
sandal and tearing open the undersole produced a very
small letter.

It was from the Ulema of El Azhar, and gave further
particulars of the forthcoming festivities, with one hint
of amazing advice that certainly could not have come
from men of the world.

The Consul-General had decided to give his annual
dinner in honour of the King's Birthday not as usual
at the British Agency, but in the Pavilion of the Ghezirah
Palace, on the island in front of the city.  All the
authorities would be there that night, housed under one roof.
The British army would still be in the provinces, and
the Egyptian army alone would be left in defence of
the town.  Therefore, to prevent the possibility of
bloodshed, there was only one thing to do—turn the
key on the Pavilion, in order to imprison the persons
in command, and then open the bridge that crossed the
Nile, that Ishmael's following, with the consent of the
native soldiers, might enter Cairo unopposed!

It was a plot whereof the counterpart could only
have been found in the history of Abu Moslim and
"Al Mansour," and perhaps for that reason alone it
took Ishmael's heart by storm.  But it required
immediate confirmation, for if the secret scheme was to
be carried out, the arrangements were matters of urgency
and the reply must be received at once.

There were some moments of tense silence after
Ishmael had read the letter, for already he had begun
to hesitate, to talk again of waiting for the Bedouin,
who knew Egypt better than any one in the Soudan,
and was wise and brave and learned in war.  But,
Helena, seeing her advantage, began to speak, with a
flushed face and a trembling tongue, of the train that
was to leave Khartoum for Cairo that morning, and
of the interval of four days before the departure of
another one.

"There can be no time to lose," she said, with a
stifling sense of duplicity, "especially if the Ulema are
to arrange for your own arrival as well."

At length Ishmael, no longer the man he used to be,
strong above all in common-sense, but an enthusiast
living in a world of dream, was swept away by the
Ulema's scheme.  Seeing only one sure way to avoid
bloodshed—that of shutting up the British officials in
the midst of their festivities while the bridge that
crossed the Nile was opened and his followers took
peaceful possession of the city—he called on Helena to
write his reply.  It ran:—

.. vspace:: 2

"To his Serenity the Chancellor of El Azhar, from
the slave of God, Ishmael Ameer: Good news!  In the
interests of peace I agree, though liking not for other
reasons your plan of imprisoning Pharaoh and his
people in their Pavilion lest it should be said of us,
'Behold the true believer resorts to the tricks of the
infidels, who trust not in the good arm of God'—praise
be to Him, the Exalted One!

"Nevertheless, I send you this word of greeting,
giving my consent and saying, 'Shortly I go down to
Cairo myself to call upon our brothers under arms to
our very great Lord, the Khedive, to refuse, when the
day of our deliverance comes, to shed the blood of the
children of the Most High.'"

.. vspace:: 2

Having dictated this letter, and added the usual
Arabic salutations, he signed it, and then, full of a
fresh enthusiasm, he went off to mid-day prayers in
the mosque, where with greater fervour than before he
delivered his new message about the coming of the end.

Helena was now alone, for the Dinka had gone in
with Abdullah to eat and to rest.  The signed letter
lay before her, and she knew that her time had come.
In great haste she made a copy of the letter, and
without waiting to think what she was doing she added
Ishmael's name to it.  Then, hiding the original in her
bosom, she called for the Dinka, gave him the copy,
and hurried him off to the train, which was leaving
immediately.  After that, with a sense of mingled shame
and triumph, she wrote to the Consul-General.  Her
excitement was so great that she could hardly hold the
pen or frame coherent sentences.  This was what she
wrote:—

.. vspace:: 2

"DEAR LORD NUNEHAM.—You will remember that
in the letter I wrote to you before I left Cairo I told
you that I should write again, and that when I wrote,
your enemy and mine and Gordon's as well as England's
and Egypt's would be in your hands.

"I am now fulfilling my promise, and you shall
judge for yourself whether I am justifying my word.
Ishmael Ameer, at the instigation of the Ulema, is
about to return to Cairo.  His object is to organise a
mutiny among the soldiers of the Egyptian army, so
that a vast multitude of his followers, coming behind
him, may take possession of the city.

"This is to be done during the forthcoming festivities,
and it is to reach its climax on the night of the King's
Birthday.  Proof enclosed.  It is the original of a letter
to the Chancellor of El Azhar, a copy having been sent
instead.

"Ishmael will travel by train—probably within a
week—and he will wear the disguise of a Bedouin
Sheikh.  I leave you to wait and watch for him.

"Did I not say I was not idly boasting?  In haste,—

.. vspace:: 1

"HELENA GRAVES.

.. vspace:: 1

"*P.S.*—I send this by my boy Mosie.  Please keep
him in Cairo until you hear from me again."

.. vspace:: 2

When she had finished her letter she paused for a
moment and looked fixedly before her.  Although she
said nothing her lips moved as if she were interrogating
the empty air.  She was asking herself again, "Am I
cruel and revengeful and vindictive?"  And she was
replying to herself as she had replied before: "If so,
I cannot help it.  I have lost my father and I have
lost Gordon and I am alone and my heart is torn."

Strengthened by this thought she took Ishmael's
letter from her bosom and folded it inside her own.
But while she was in the act of putting both into an
envelope she paused again, for a new and more startling
memory had flashed upon her.  It was the memory of
the marks upon her father's throat, and of the missing
finger-print which had somehow formed so fatal an
evidence of Ishmael's guilt.

How had it happened that she had forgotten this
fact until now—that during all the time she had been
in Khartoum she had never once remembered to verify
it—that even at the moment she could not say whether
the third finger of Ishmael's left hand was intact or
not?

But no matter!  It was not a fact of the greatest
consequence, and in any case she had gone too far to
think of it now.

She sealed her envelope and addressed it and then
called for Mosie.  The black boy came running at the
sound of her agitated voice.

"Mosie," she said in a breathless whisper, "you
have always said that you loved me so much that you
would lay down your life for me."  The black boy
showed his shining white teeth as if from ear to ear.
"Do you think you could find your way back to Cairo
alone and deliver a letter to the English lord?"

"Let lady try me," said Mosie, who was ablaze with
excitement in an instant.

Then she told him how he was to go—by train to
Haifa, by Government boat to Shellal, by train again
from Assouan to his journey's end, travelling always in
compartments occupied by natives.  She also gave him
strict injunctions against speaking to any one, either in
Khartoum or on the way, or in Cairo until he came to
the British Agency.  There he was to ask for the
Consul-General and give into his hands—his only—her private
letter.

"The train leaves in half-an-hour, Mosie, so you'll
have to be quick," she whispered.

"Yes, lady, yes, yes," said Mosie at every word, and
in his eagerness to be gone he almost snatched the
letter out of her hand.

"No, give me one of your sandals," she said, and
when he had whipped it off she took her scissors and
lifting the inner sole she hid her letter underneath.

Then she hurried into her room, and returning with
a small canvas bag, which contained nearly all the
money she had left in the world, she gave it to the
black boy and sent him off.





.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X

.. vspace:: 2

After that she sat down, for her heart was beating
violently and she could scarcely breathe.  At the same
moment she caught sight of her face in a hand-glass
that stood on the table at which she wrote, and the
features looked so strange that they scarcely seemed to
be her own.

If anybody with the eye of the spirit could have
gazed at that moment into the deepest recesses of her
soul—harder to look into than the obscurity of the sea—he
would have seen a battlefield of contending passions.
She was reflecting for the first time on the whole
meaning of what she had done.  She had condemned Ishmael
Ameer to death!  Or at least, at the very least, to
lifelong imprisonment in Damietta or Torah!

When she put it so the furnace of her conscience
seemed to consume her, and in order to live with herself
she had to oppose that thought with thoughts of
Gordon—Gordon gone, she knew not where, an exile,
an outcast, his brilliant young life wasted, never to be
seen again.

This relieved the riot in her brain, and to ease her
heart still further she made herself believe that what
she had done had not been to revenge herself but to
avenge Gordon, whom Ishmael's evil influence had
destroyed.

"Serve him right," she thought.  "Let him go to
Damietta!  What better does he deserve?"

At that moment Ayesha, Ishmael's little daughter,
came running with bare feet into the house, and seeing
Helena she leapt into her arms and kissed her.  The
kiss of the child seemed like a blow—it made her dizzy.

At the next moment, while Ayesha was mumbling
affectionate play-words which Helena did not hear, and
Zenoba, the Arab nurse, stood beating her impatient
foot upon the floor, there came from outside the murmur
of a crowd.  It was the crowd of Ishmael's followers,
bringing him home from the mosque.

They were calling upon God and His Prophet to bless
him, touching his white caftan as if it were divine and
virtue were coming out of him.

He dismissed them with words of rebuke—gentler
and more indulgent than before, perhaps—and, entering
the house, he called for food.

A few minutes afterwards Ishmael and Helena and
old Mahmud were sitting in the guest-room together,
drinking new milk and eating soft bread.

"But where is your boy, O Rani?" asked Ishmael,
who missed the great fan of ostrich feathers.

Helena made a halting excuse.  Mosie had been
troublesome—she had sent him back to where he came
from—Cairo.

"Cairo?" asked the Arab woman, with a glance of
suspicion.

Helena looked confused, but Ishmael saw nothing.
He was more than usually excited, enthusiastic, and
full of great hopes.  After a while he talked of the
Bedouin who was coming.

"Our brother is not, in fact, a Bedouin," he said.

"Not a Bedouin?"

"Neither is he a Moslem.  He is a Christian and
indeed an Englishman."

"An Englishman?"

"All yes, but he is one who loves the Moslems, and
has gone through shame and degradation rather than
do them a wrong."

Helena was afraid to ask further questions.  She
could only listen, terrified by a vague apprehension.

"Truly, O lady, he who loveth all the children of
God, him God loveth," said Ishmael.  "This brave
man was a soldier, and if he has suffered rather than
do an evil act will God forget him?  No!"

Helena shuddered.  The idea that was taking shape
in her mind seemed incredible.  Ishmael was speaking
in the softest tones, yet his voice seemed like the
subterranean sounds that precede great shocks of earthquake.

"He is coming.  Be good to him, my Rani.  If we
could take his heart out and weigh it we should find it
gold."

Helena was struck with a sort of stupor.  "Am I
dreaming?" she asked herself.  "What am I thinking
about?"  It was one of those mysterious moments on
the eve of the great events of life, when murmurs come
from we know not where.

The long hours of that day passed in a sort of dark
confusion.  At last the sun set, and the moon rose over
the desert, the golden tropical moon in the purple of
the Eastern sky, and lit up the wilderness of sand as
with a softer sun.

It grew late and Helena rose to go to her room.  As
she did so she almost fell from dizziness, and Ishmael
helped her to the door of the women's quarters.  She
had seen his lustrous eyes upon her with the expression
that had made her tremble on the night of the betrothal,
but again, in the same scarcely audible voice,
he said—

"God give you a good morning!" and putting, for
the first time, his lips to her hand he went away.

When she was alone a long hour passed in silence.
The bedroom was in a state of perfect calm, yet a
frightful tumult was going on in her brain.  Could it
be possible that he who was coming was——

No!  The wild irony of that thought was too terrible.

That at the very moment when she thought she was
avenging Gordon for the injury he had suffered at
the hands of Ishmael—that at that moment, by some
sinister eccentricity of destiny, he ... he, himself——

In the midst of her hideous pain a sweet and joyous
sound fell upon her ear.  It was the voice of the child,
who had awakened for a moment from her peaceful sleep.

"Will you not come into bed, Rani?"

"Yes, yes, dear, presently," she answered, and at
the next moment the child's equal and tranquil
breathing, so gentle, so calm, fell on her ear again.

Innocence is the most formidable of all spectacles
that can confront an uneasy conscience, and when at
length Helena got into bed, and the child, in the blind
mists of sleep, nestled up to her, she had to justify
herself by thinking that in everything she had done,
everything she had tried to do, she had been moved by
incidents of the most irresistible provocation.

"After all, *he killed my father*," she thought.

But nevertheless she felt again, as she was dropping
off to sleep, that she was falling, falling, falling over the
edge of a yawning precipice.

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center

   END OF VOL. I

.. vspace:: 3

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