Complete works of hall c.., p.461
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 461
“Then you came to the door and knocked. ‘Father!’ you said. ‘Are you alone? May I come in?’ Those were your words, and how often I have heard them since! In the middle of the night, in my dreams, oh, God, how many times!”
He dropped his head and stretched a helpless arm along the table.
“I wanted to open the door and say, ‘Helena, forgive me, I didn’t mean to do it, and that is the truth, as God is my witness!’. But I was afraid — I fled away.”
She was now sitting with her hands clasped in her lap and her eyelids tightly closed.
“Next day I wanted to go back to you, but I dared not do so. I wanted to comfort you — I could not. I wanted to give myself up to justice — it -was impossible. There was nothing for me to do except to fly away.”
The tears were rolling down his thin face to his pinched nostrils.
“But I could not fly from myself or from — from my love for you. They told me you had gone to England. ‘Where is she to-night?’ I thought. If I had never really loved you before, I loved you now. And you were gone! I had lost you for ever!”
Emotion choked his voice; tears were forcing themselves through her closed eyelids. There was another moment of silence, and then nervously, hesitatingly, she put out her hand to where his hand was lying on the table and clasped it.
The two unhappy creatures, like wrecked souls about to be swallowed up in a tempestuous ocean, saw one raft of hope — their love for each other, which had survived all the storms of their fate.
But just as their hands were burning, as if with fever, and quivering in each other’s clasp, like the bosom of a captured bird, a voice from without fell on their ears like a trumpet from the skies. It was the voice of the muezzin calling to evening prayers from the minaret of the neighbouring mosque:
It seemed to be a supernatural voice, the voice of an accusing angel, calling them back to their present position. Ishmael — Helena — the betrothal!
Their hands separated and they rose to their feet. One moment they stood with bowed heads at opposite sides of the table, listening to the voice outside, and then, without a word more, they went their different ways — he to his room, she to hers.
Into the empty guest-room a moment afterward came the rumbling and rolling sound of the voices of the people repeating the Fatihah after Ishmael:
“Praise be to God, the Lord of all creatures!... Direct us in the right way, O Lord!... not the way of those who go astray.”
XIV
THAT day the Sirdar had held his secret meeting of the Ulema, the Sheikhs and Notables of Khartoum. Into a room on the ground floor of the Palace, down a dark, arched corridor, in which British soldiers stood on guard, they had been introduced one by one — a group of six or eight unkempt creatures of varying ages, and of differing degrees of intelligence, nearly all wearing the farageeyah, the loose gray robe as of a Moslem monk.
They sat awkwardly on the chairs which had been ranged for them about a mahogany table, and while they waited they talked in whispers. There was a tense, electrical atmosphere among them, as of internal dissension, the rumbling of a sort of subterranean thunder.
But this subsided instantly, when the voice of the Serjeant outside, and the clash of saluting arms, announced the coming of the Sirdar. The Governor-General, who was in uniform and booted and spurred as if returning from a ride, was accompanied by his Inspector-General, his Financial Secretary, the Governor of the town and various minor officers.
He was received by the Sheikhs, all standing, with sweeping salaams from floor to forehead, a circle of smiles and looks of complete accord.
The Sirdar, with his ruddy and cheerful face, took his seat at the head of the table and began by asking, as if casually, who was the stranger that had arrived that day in Khartoum.
“A Bedouin,” said the Cadi. “One whom Ishmael Ameer loves and who loves him.”
“Yet a Bedouin, you say?” asked the Sirdar, in an incredulous tone, and with a certain elevation of the eyebrows.
“A Bedouin, O Excellency!” repeated the Cadi, whereupon the others, without a word of further explanation, bent their turbaned heads in assent.
Then the Sirdar explained the reason for which he had called them together.
“I am given to understand,” he said, “that the idea is abroad that the Government has been trying to introduce changes into the immutable law of Islam, which forms an integral part of your Moslem religion and is therefore rightly regarded with a high degree of veneration by all followers of the Prophet. If anybody is telling you this, or if any one is saying that there is any prejudice against you because you are Mohammedans, he is a wicked and mischievous person, and I beg of you to tell me who he is.”
Saying this, the Sirdar looked sharply round the table, but met nothing there but blank and expressionless faces. Then turning to the Cadi, who, as Chief Judge of the Mohammedan law-courts, had been constituted spokesman, he asked pointedly what Ishmael Ameer was saying.
“Nothing, O Excellency!” said the Cadi; “nothing that is contrary to the Sharia — the religious law of Islam.”
“Is he telling the people to resist the Government?”
The grave company about the table silently shook their heads.
“Do you know if he has anything to do with a conspiracy to resist the payment of taxes?”
The grave company knew nothing.
“Then what is he doing, and why has he come to Khartoum? Pasha, have you no explanation to make to me?” asked the Sirdar, singling out a vivacious old gentleman, with a short, white, carefully oiled beard — a person of doubtful repute who had once been a slave-dealer and was now living patriarchally, under the protection of the Government, with his many wives and concubines.
The old black sinner cast his little glittering eyes around the room and then said:
“If you ask me, O Master, I say, Ishmael Ameer is putting down polygamy and divorce and ought himself to be put down.”
At that there was some clamour among the Ulema, and the Sirdar thought he saw a rift through which he might discover the truth, but the Pasha was soon silenced, and in a moment there was the same unanimity as before.
“Then what is he?” asked the Sirdar. Whereupon a venerable old Sheikh, after the usual Arabic compliments and apologies, said that having seen the new teacher with his own eyes and talked with him, he had now not the slightest doubt that Ishmael was a man sent from God, and therefore that all who resisted him, all who tried to put him down, would perish miserably.
At these words the electrical atmosphere which had been held in subjection seemed to burst into flame. In a moment six tongues were talking together. One Sheikh, with wild eyes, told of Ishmael’s intercourse with angels. Another knew a man who had seen him riding with the Prophet in the desert. A third had spoken to somebody who had seen angels, in the form of doves, descending upon him from the skies, and a fourth was ready to swear that one day while Ishmael was preaching in the mosque people heard a voice from heaven crying, “Hear him! He is my messenger!”
“What was he preaching about?” said the Sirdar.
“The last days, the coming of the Deliverer,” said the Sheikh with the wild eyes, in an awesome whisper.
“What Deliverer?”
“The Shaidna Isa — the Lord Jesus — the’ White Christ that is to come.”
“Is this to be soon?”
“Soon, O Excellency! very soon.”
After this outburst there was a moment of tense and breathless silence, during which the Sirdar sat with his serious eyes fixed on the table, and his officers, standing behind, glanced at each other and smiled.
A moment afterward the Sirdar put an end to the interview.
“Tell your people,” he said, “that the Government has no wish to interfere with your religious beliefs and feelings, whatever they may be; but tell them also, that it intends to have its orders obeyed, and that any suspicion, of conspiracy, still more rebellion, will be instantly put down.”
The group of unkempt creatures went off with sweeping salaams, and then the Sirdar dismissed his officers also, saying:
“Bear in mind that you are the recognized agents of a just and merciful Government, and whatever your personal opinions may be of these Arabs and their superstitions, please understand that you are to give no anti-Islamic colour to your British feelings. At the same time remember that we have worked for the redemption of the Soudan from a state of savagery, and we cannot allow it to be turned back to barbarism in the name of religion.”
Both the Ulema and the other British officials being gone, the Sirdar was alone with his Inspector-General.
“Well?” he said.
“Well?” repeated the Inspector-General, biting the ends of his close-cropped mustache. “What more did you expect, sir? Naturally the man’s own people were not going to give him away. They nearly did so, though. You heard what old Zewar Pasha said?”
“Tut! I take no account of that,” said the Sirdar. “The brothers of Christ Himself would have put Him down, too — locked Him up in an asylum, I dare say.”
“That’s exactly what I would do with Ishmael Ameer anyway,” said the Inspector-General. “Of course he performs no miracles, and is attended by no angels. His removal to Torah, and his inability to free himself from a government jail, would soon dispel the belief in his supernatural agencies.”
“But how can we do it? Under what pretext? We can’t imprison a man for preaching the second coming of Christ. If we did, our jails would be pretty full at home, I’m thinking,”
The Inspector-General laughed. “Your old error, dear Sirdar. You can’t apply the same principles to East and West.”
“And your old Parliamentary cant, dear Pasha! I’m sick to death of it.”
There was a moment of strained silence and then the Inspector-General said:
“Ah, well, I know these holy men, with their sham inspirations and their so-called heavenly messages. They develop by degrees, sir. This one has begun by proclaiming the advent of the Lord Jesus, and he will end by hoisting a flag and claiming to be the Lord Jesus himself.”
“When he does that, Colonel, we’ll consider our position afresh. Meantime it may do us no mischief to remember that if the family of Jesus could have dealt with the Pounder of our own religion as you would deal with this olive-faced Arab, there would probably be no Christianity in the world to-day.”
The Inspector-General shrugged his shoulders and rose to go.
“Good-night, sir.”
“Good-night, Colonel,” said the Sirdar, and then he sat down to draft a despatch to the Consul-General:
“Nothing to report since the marriage, betrothal, or whatever it was, of the ‘Rani’ to the man in question. Undoubtedly he is laying a strong hold on the imagination of the natives and acquiring the allegiance of large bodies of workers; but I cannot connect him with any conspiracy to persuade people not to pay taxes or with any organised scheme that is frankly hostile to the continuance of British rule.
“Will continue to watch him, but find myself at fearful odds owing to difference of faith. It is one of the disadvantages of Christian governments among people of alien race and religion that methods of revolt are not always visible to the naked eye, and God knows what is going on in the sealed chambers of the mosque.
“That only shows the danger of curtailing the liberty of the vernacular press, whatever the violence of its sporadic and muddled anarchy. Leave the press alone, I say. Instead of chloroforming it into silence give it a tonic if need be, or you drive your trouble underground. Such is the common sense and practical wisdom of how to deal with sedition in a Mohammedan country, let some of the logger-headed dunces who write leading articles in England say what they will.
“If this man should develop supernatural pretensions I shall know what to do. And without that, whether he claim divine inspiration or not, if his people should come to regard him as divine, the very name and idea of his divinity may become a danger and I suppose I shall have to put him under arrest.”
Then remembering that he was addressing not only the Consul-General, but a friend, the Sirdar wrote:
“‘Art Thou a King?’ Strange that the question of Pontius Pilate is precisely what we may find in our own mouths soon! And stranger still, almost ludicrous, even farcical and hideously ironical, that though for two thousand years Christendom has been spitting on the pusillanimity of the old pagan, the representative of a Christian Empire will have to do precisely what he did.
“Short of Pilate’s situation, though, I see no right to take this man, so I am not taking him. Sorry to tell you so, but I cannot help it.
“Our love from both to both. Trust Janet is feeling better. No news of our poor boy, I suppose?”
“Our boy” had for thirty years been another name for Gordon.
XV
GRAVE as was the gathering in the Sirdar’s Palace at Khartoum there was a still graver gathering that day in the British Agency at Cairo — the gathering of the wings of Death.
Lady Nuneham was nearing her end. Since Gordon’s disgrace and disappearance she had been visibly fading away under a burden too heavy for her to bear.
The Consul-General had been trying hard to shut his eyes to this fact. More than ever before he had immersed himself in his work, being plainly impelled to fresh effort by hatred of the man who had robbed him of his son.
Through the Soudan Intelligence Department in Cairo he had watched Ishmael’s movements in Khartoum, expecting him to develop the traits of the Mahdi and thus throw himself into the hands of the Sirdar.
It was a deep disappointment to the Consul-General that this did not occur. The same report came to him again and again. The man was doing nothing to justify his arrest. Although surrounded by fanatical folk whose minds were easily inflamed, he was not trying to upset Governors or giving divine sanction for the removal of officials.
But meantime some mischief was manifestly at work all over the country. From day to day Inspectors had been coming in to say that the people were not paying their taxes. Convinced that this was the result of conspiracy the Consul-General had shown no mercy.
“Sell them up,” he had said, and the Inspectors, taking their cue from his own spirit but exceeding his orders, had done his work without remorse.
Week by week the trouble had deepened, and when disturbances had been threatened he had asked the British Army of Occupation, meaning no violence, to go out into the country and show the people England’s power.
Then grumblings had come down on him from the representatives of foreign nations. If the people were so discontented with British rule that they were refusing to pay their taxes there would be a deficit in the Egyptian treasury — how then were Egypt’s creditors to be paid?
“Time enough to cross the bridge when you come to it, gentlemen,” said the Consul-General, in his stinging tone and with a curl of his iron lip.
If the worst came to the worst England would pay, but England should not be asked to do so, because Egypt must meet the cost of her own Government. Hence more distraining and some inevitable violence in suppressing the riots that resulted from evictions.
Finally came a hubbub in Parliament, with the customary “Christian” prattlers prating again. Fools! They did not know what a subtle and secret conspiracy he had to deal with while they were crying out against his means of killing it.
He must kill it! This form of passive resistance, this attack on the Treasury, was the deadliest blow that had ever yet been aimed at England’s power in Egypt.
But he must not let Europe see it! He must make believe that nothing was happening to occasion the least alarm. Therefore to drown the cries of the people who were suffering, not because they were poor and could not pay, but because they were perverse and would not, he must organise some immense demonstration.
Thus came to the Consul-General the schemes of the great festival of the — th anniversary of the British occupation of Egypt. It would do good to foreign powers, for it would make them feel that, not for the first time, England had been the torch-bearer of light in a dark country. It would do good to the Egyptians, too, for it would force their youngsters (born since Tel-el-Kebir) to realise the strength of England’s arm.
Thus had the Consul-General occupied himself while his wife was fading away. But at length he had been compelled to see that the end was near, and toward the close of every day he had gone to her room and sat almost in silence, with bowed head, in the chair by her side.
The great man who for forty years had been the virtual ruler of countless millions, had no wisdom that told him what to say to a dying woman; but at last, seeing that her pallor had become whiteness, and that she was sinking rapidly and hungering for the consolations of her religion, he asked her if she would like to take the sacrament.
“It is just what I wish, dear,” she answered, with the nervous smile of one who had been afraid to ask.
At heart the Consul-General had been an agnostic all his life, looking upon religion as no better than a civilising superstition, but all the same he went downstairs and sent one of his Secretaries for the Chaplain of St. Mary’s — the English Church.
The moment he had gone out of the door Fatimah, under the direction of the dying woman, began to prepare the bedroom for the reception of the clergyman by laying a side-table with a fair white cloth, a large prayer-book, and two silver candlesticks containing new candles.
While the Egyptian nurse did this the old lady looked on with her deep, slow, weary eyes, and talked in whispers, as if the wings of the august Presence that was soon to come were already rustling in the room. When all was done she looked very happy.
“Everything is nice and comfortable now,” she said, as she lay back to wait for the clergyman.
But even then she could not help thinking the one thought that made a tug at her resignation. It was about Gordon.
“I am quite ready to die, Fatimah,” she said, “but I should have loved to see my dear Gordon once more.”
