Complete works of hall c.., p.429
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 429
“You’ve got the best of the hunch, 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:
“Come to me immediately. Have something to say to you. — N.”
“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 gauntleted 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 blossoms 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 Mokattam hills, and then through the iron-clamped gates to the wide courtyard where the mosque of Mohammed Ali, with its spiky 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!”
III
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 toward 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 England 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 toward 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, Meshach, 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 Mile 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. Mature, the great wonderworker, 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 Mights,” 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 misgovernment 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.
IV
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 every thing for 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 had,” 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 hack 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 ho 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.
