Complete works of hall c.., p.436
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 436
“‘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 taskmasters, 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 peacemaker 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 mins half as old as the earth itself — is it not worth waiting for?’
“Then in his last word, speaking first in Arabic and afterward in English, he cried:
“‘O 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 hack. ‘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 am 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!”
XVI
“GENERAL’S HOUSE, CITADEL, CAIRO.
“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 schoolgirls 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 her 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 man nor the smiles of woman,’ 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 him self 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.
“That 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 you 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 said 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!
“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.
“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.”
XVII
RETURNING to Cairo by the first train the following morning, Gordon received Helena’s letter and replied to it:
“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 lore to his daughter. — GORDON.”
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 do not 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 he 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.”
