Complete works of hall c.., p.427
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 427
An awful, evil, and devilish place, looking like a cauldron over a circle of hellish fire. But higher up the pass the snow lies white and calm and crisp, and higher still are the glistening glaciers, and there, while the mountain quakes in its volcanic throes, the avalanche comes down in winter so suddenly that no man can hear or see it, for it is loud as the crack of doom and swift as the shaft of death.
At daybreak that day Christian Christiansson was crossing this pass on his way to Eyrarbakki, intending to take ship to Norway. Although it was only two hours since he had pushed open the guest-room window and left the Inn-farm, he was already a stronger and braver man. Then he had thought of nothing but ending everything, and the shadow of self-destruction had floated before him, but now he saw clearly that until God ordained he should die it was his duty to live. As he had sinned so he should suffer. He must pay his penalty to its last pang, its uttermost moment. His penalty was to live on without the love he had forfeited, the happiness he had lost the right to claim. It was hard, but it was just, and he must face the end without flinching. Welcome life, then, as long as it lasted! Welcome death when it was due!
After he had passed through the heat and smoke and come out on the clear heights beyond he paused to look back. The world around was all white and stark under the snow of last night’s storm, but a crimson shaft from the sun which had not yet risen was crossing the topmost peaks, and the lowlands were still sleeping in a veil of mist. He thought he could hear the ringing of the church bell, and that sweet human sound came winging its way up to him through the vapour of the sulphur-pits as the singing of a star might rise through the clouds of the world to the ears of the souls in heaven.
Presently the sun strode up and the mist fell back, and then he saw in the valley far below the little church itself and the home he had left behind him. He had left happiness there, and love, and warm comfort, for that was his reparation to the dear ones he had injured, and now for his atonement to God he was going out alone, stripped of everything and unknown to any one.
It was as much as he could bear to think of that, but he smiled to himself sadly while he pictured the surprise and joy of the happy scene when the girl would come out with the pocket-book and the auction would be stopped. He thought, too, of his mother in church, with a soul full of gratitude, and saw Elin with a ray of sunlight from the lead-lighted window on the heart-breaking sweetness of her smile. It was not thus that he had expected to leave them when for ten years he had worked by the sweat of body and spirit that he might come back and be forgiven. But it was not in this world that the prodigal could be taken back; not here that any earthly father could run to meet him and throw his arms about his neck.
What he had sown he must reap, and not all his penitence and tears could undo what he had done.
It was long before he could take his last look at the home he was leaving for ever, and when at length he drew a deep breath and went on he had to comfort himself with the thought that Thora would be pleased with him for giving up their child to Magnus. Her voice from the other world seemed to come to him and say, “Well done! Poor, brave, wounded heart, God’s angels rejoice over you!” But it was hard to find solace in heavenly cheer while his blood ran warm and yearned for human company.
Before he was aware of it he was at the foot of the glaciers, those great lone homes of nature never trodden by the foot of man or animal, where no bird sings and no flower grows, where only the wind moans over motionless billows of ice and the sun rises in a blank barrenness on chasms of the frozen deep. Looking back from this place he could see nothing of the valley and the houses of men, or of anything but a wide circle of mountain peaks, all silent and white, in which he was the only living thing. And then the feeling of being cut off from the rest of humanity amid these grand but grim surroundings elevated his senses and affected him like music, like composing, with a sort of ecstasy which was partly rapture and partly pain.
In this ecstasy of emotion he asked himself if his life had been wasted, if happiness was gone from him for ever because he had sinned, if there was nothing before him now but renunciation and suffering. And then the teaching of his childhood came back to him with a new and sublime significance, and he saw for the first time the lesson of life and the meaning of death. The lesson of life was Duty — to do right without expectation of reward or fear of punishment; and the meaning of death was to bring to the sinful, penitent soul, the pardon the world cannot give.
Then thank God for life, but thank God for death also! Whatever a man’s sin, Nature could not forget it, and the laws of life could not forgive, but the mercy of God was without measure of guilt, and the gates of heaven were wide!
God veiled His face from His creatures, and to man’s questioning eyes the infinite wisdom was as blank as these white walls of ice and snow, but two thousand years ago a simple Galilean had read this riddle of life as no man before or since has read it He had read it for all men, good or bad, but most of all for wayworn sinners like himself, for whom the world has no pity, and no forgiveness. And though he was the guiltiest of the guilty, and his sin had found him out, and as the price of his repentance he had had to give up everything in life that he held most dear — the love of his child and the hope of pardon and reconciliation — yet love and pardon and reconciliation were waiting for him still when God’s own voice should call him, and “this mortal should put on immortality.”
By this time he was in that mood in which a man of his temperament finds it difficult to distinguish the real from the imaginary, in which he hears the sounds of Nature and mistakes them for voices from the other world. He had wandered without knowing it from the path of the pass, which was marked by stones standing upright out of the snow, when the volcanic fire in the womb of the mountain began to shake it with mighty throbs, and then suddenly the awful stillness was broken by a crash and a resounding rumble as of echoing thunder coming down from the snow-capped heights.
Oscar Stephensson did not see or hear or feel anything. He was only conscious of a burst of heavenly music, of a sense of ten thousand angels singing an anthem, a triumphant pæan of praise that grew louder and louder every moment; a sense of blinding light, and of travelling at a terrific velocity into the realms of the sun; a sense of the Day of Judgment, of the life of the world being over, its busy throngs gone, its pageants finished, its honours, distinctions, castes, gold, wealth, and fame passed into nothingness; a sense of being outside the great Judgment Hall with an infinite multitude of kings and beggars, good men and bad, the guilty and the innocent, and of kneeling there among the meanest and most ashamed; a sense of a spirit stooping to him and taking his hand and saying, “Come,” of looking up into her face, and seeing it was Thora, and of his breath coming so fast and short that he could scarcely breathe; a sense of stumbling along with his head down and the spirit leading him forward and singing as they ascended; a sense of an overwhelming Presence somewhere in front of him, of the music dying down and becoming fainter and fainter, and then of an awful hush and of a blessed Voice which said —
“FOR THIS MY SON WAS DEAD AND IS ALIVE AGAIN, WAS
LOST AND IS FOUND.”
A moment afterwards there was no one on Hengel mountain, the great lone home of Nature was calm and white and silent.
THE END
THE WHITE PROPHET
First published by Heinemann in 1909, The White Prophet is set in Egypt and addresses the problems of colonial rule, whilst attempting a synthesis of the world’s religions. A dramatic adaptation of the work had been produced in the previous year in Douglas. On the first night one of the actors was ill and Caine himself took the part. The White Prophet appeared as a book the following month. For the first time in a Caine novel, the strongest theme of the work is not romance, but rather adventure, with a degree of theological discussion. However, the book did not fare as well in sales the previous novels had done.
Title page of the US first edition
CONTENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
FIRST BOOK. THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX
SECOND BOOK. THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
THIRD BOOK. THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
FOURTH BOOK. THE COMING DAY
I
II
III
IV
II
V
II
III
IV
II
III
VII
VIII
II
III
IX
II
X
II
III
XI
II
III
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
II
XVI
XVII
XVIII
FIFTH BOOK. THE DAWN
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
EPILOGUE
The original frontispiece
“I know that my Redeemer liveth and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Many erroneous statements made in the press during the serial publication of this story, coupling its characters and incidents with distinguished living persons and recent public events, make it necessary to say that “The White Prophet” is intended to be read as a work of fiction only.
H. C.
GREBA CASTLE, ISLE OF MAN, 1909.
FIRST BOOK. THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS
I
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 Khédivial 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’s, 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 is 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 to the Mokattam hills and the selfconscious 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 “Lyttelton’s,”
“Wauchope’s,”
“Macdonald’s,” and “Maxwell’s,” as the whitefaced 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 turn, turn, turn of 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 flint-locks, beating their war-drums, 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 leaped 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 the 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 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 prearranged 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:
