Complete works of hall c.., p.472
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 472
It has been what the Arabs call a red day, and at that moment the setting sun, catching the clouds of dust raised by the camels, made the whole world one brilliant fiery red. What wonder if these poor, benighted people thought the Lord of Heaven himself had just come down?
We left the village loaded with blessings (Black Zogal galloping frantically in front), and when we came to the next town — Berber with its miles of roofless mud-huts, telling of dervish destruction — crowds came out to salute Ishmael as the “Guided One,”
“The True Mahdi,” and “The Deliverer,” bringing their sick and lame and blind for him to heal them and praying of him to remain.
Oh, my dear Gordon, it is terrifying! Ishmael is no longer the messenger, the forerunner; he is now the Redeemer he foretold! I believe really he is beginning to believe it! This is the pillar of fire that is henceforth to guide us on our way. Already our numbers are three times what they were when we left Khartoum. What is to happen when thirty thousand persons, following a leader they believe to be divine, arrive in Cairo and are confronted by five thousand British soldiers?
No! It is not bloodshed I am afraid of — I know you will prevent that. But what of the awful undeceiving, the utter degradation, the crushing collapse?
And I? Don’t think me a coward, Gordon — it isn’t everybody who was born brave like you — but when I think of what I have done to this man, and how surely it will be found out that I have betrayed him, I tell myself that the moment I touch the skirts of civilisation I must run away.
But meantime our pilgrimage is moving on — to its death, as it seems to me — and I am moving on with it as a slave — the slave of my own actions. If this is Destiny it is wickedly cruel, I will say that for it; and if it is God, I think He might be a jealous God without making the blundering impulse of one poor girl the means of wrecking the hopes of a whole race of helpless people. Of course it acts as a sop to my conscience to remember what you said about God never making mistakes, but I cannot help wishing that in His inscrutable wisdom He could have left me out.
Oh, my dear — dear! Where are you now, I wonder? What are you doing? What is being done to you? Have you seen your father, the Princess and the Grand Cadi? I suppose I must not expect news until we reach Assouan. You promised to write to me, and you will — I know you will. Good-night, dearest! My love, my love, my only love! But I must stop. We are to make a night journey. The camp is in movement and my camel is waiting. Adieu!
HELENA.
VII
SERAI FUM EL KHALIG, CAIRO.
Salaam aleyhoum! Ten days have passed, my dear Helena, since I wrote my last letter, and during that time I have learned all that is going on here — having, in my assumed character of Ishmael in disguise, interviewed nearly the whole of the Ulema, including that double-dyed dastard, the Grand Cadi.
Under the wing — the rather fluttered one — of the good old Chancellor of El Azhar, I saw the oily reprobate in his own house, and in his honeyed voice he made pretence of receiving me with boundless courtesy. I was his “beloved friend in God,”
“the reformer of Islam,” called to the task of bringing men back to the Holy Koran, to the Prophet, and to eternal happiness. On the other hand, my father was “the slave of power,” the “evil doer,” the “adventurer,” and the “great assassin,” who was led away by worldly things, and warring against God.
More than once my hands itched to take the hypocrite from behind by the ample folds of his Turkish garments and fling him like vermin down the stairs, but I was there to hear what he was doing, so I smothered a few strong expressions which only the recording angel knows anything about, and was compelled to sit and listen.
My dear Helena, it is even worse than I expected. Some of the double-dealing Egyptian Ministers, backed by certain of the diplomatic corps, but inspired by this Chief Judge in Islam, have armed a considerable part of the native populace, in the hope that the night when England, in the persons of her chief officials, is merrymaking on the island of Ghezirah, and the greater part of the British force is away in the provinces, quelling disturbances and keeping peace, the people may rise, the Egyptian Army may mutiny, and Ishmael’s followers may take possession of the city.
All this, and more, with many suave words about the “enlightening help of God” and the certainty of “a bloodless victory,” in which the Almighty would make me glorious, and the English would be driven out of Egypt, the crafty scoundrel did not hesitate to propound as a means whereby the true faith might be established all over Europe, Rome, and London.”
Since my interview with the Grand Cadi I have learned of a certainty, what I had already surmised, that the Consul-General has been made aware of the whole plot, and is taking his own measures to defeat it. Undoubtedly the first duty of a government is to preserve order and to establish authority, and I know my father well enough to be sure that, at any cost, he will set himself to do both. But what will happen?
Mark my word — the British Army will he ordered back to the Capital — perhaps on the eve of the festival — and as surely as it enters the city on the night of the King’s Birthday there will he massacre in the streets, for the Egyptian soldiers will rebel, and the people who have been provided with arms from the secret service money of England’s enemies will rise, thinking the object of the Government is to prevent the entrance of Ishmael and his followers.
Result — a holy war, and as that is the only kind of war that was ever yet worth waging, it will put Egypt in the right and England in the wrong.
Does Ishmael expect this? No, he thinks he is to make a peaceful entry into Cairo when he comes to establish his World State, his millennium of universal faith and empire. Do the Ulema expect it? No, they think the Army of Occupation will be far away when their crazy scheme is carried into effect. Does my father expect it? Not for one moment, so sure is he — I know it perfectly, I have heard him say it a score of times — that the Egyptian soldier will not fight alone, and that Egyptian civilians can be scattered by a water hose.
Heaven help him! If ever a man was preparing to draw a sword from its scabbard it is my father at this moment, but it is only because he is played upon and deceived by this son and successor of Caiaphas, the damned. I’ll go and open his eyes to the Grand Cadi’s duplicity. I’ll say, “Bring your oily scoundrel face to face with me and see what I will say. If he denies it you must choose for yourself which of us you will believe — your own son, who has nothing to gain by coming back to warn you, or this reptile, who is fighting for the life of his rotten old class.”
The thing is hateful to me, and if there were any other possible way of stopping the wretched slaughter, I should not go, for I know it will end in the Consul-General handing me over to the military authorities to he court-martialled for my former offences, and, as you may say, it is horrible to put a father, with a high sense of duty, into the position of being compelled to cut off his own son.
Meanwhile, I am conscious that the police continue to watch me, and I am just as much a prisoner as if I were already within the walls of jail. For their own purposes they are leaving me at liberty, and I believe they will go on doing so until after the night of the King’s Birthday. After that God knows what will happen.
I am writing late and I must turn in soon, so good-night and God bless and preserve you, my own darling — mine, mine, mine, and nobody else’s — remember that! Hafiz continues to protest that the Prophet has a love for you, and will bring out everything for the best. I think so, too — I really do, so you must not be frightened about anything I have said in this letter.
There is only one thing frightens, and that is the damnable trick memory plays me when it rakes up all you told me of the terms of your betrothal to Ishmael. I can bear it pretty well during the day, but in that dead gray hour of the early morning when the moonlight slinks into the dawn, before the sparrows begin to chop the air and the Arabs to rend it, I find myself thinking that though Ishmael, when he proposed marriage to you, may have been thinking of nothing but how to protect your good name, being a pure-minded man who had consecrated his life to a spiritual mission, yet the constant presence of a beautiful woman by his side must sooner or later sweep away his pledge.
He wouldn’t be a man if it didn’t, and, the prophet notwithstanding, Ishmael is that to his finger tips. But heaven help me! I daren’t let my mind dwell on this subject or I should have to fly hack to you and leave my task here unfulfilled. So as often as I shut my eyes and see you trudging through the desert in Ishmael’s camp I tell myself that Providence has something for you to do there — must have — though what the deuce it is I don’t yet see.
No matter! D. V. I’ll know some day, and meantime I’ll nail my colours to the mast of your strength and courage, knowing that the bravest girl in the world belongs to me, and wherever she is she is mine and always will be.
GORDON.
P. S. I am now despatching my two letters to Assouan by Hamid Ibrahim — the second of the two Sheikhs who went with me to Alexandria — and if you find you can send me an answer — for God’s sake do. I am hungering and thirsting and starving and perishing for a letter from you, a line, a word, a syllable, the scratch of your pen on a piece of paper. Send it, for heaven’s sake!
I hear that hundreds of native boats are going up to Assouan to bring you down the Nile, so look out for my next letter when you get to Luxor — I may have something to tell you by that time.
VIII
NUBIAN DESERT (ANYWHERE).
OH, MY GORDON: Such startling developments! Ishmael’s character has made a new manifestation. It concerns me, and I hardly know whether I ought to speak of it. Yet I must — I cannot help myself.
I find there is something distinctly masculine in his interest in me! In Khartoum (in spite of certain evidences to the contrary) I was always fool enough to suppose that it was without sex — what milksops call Platonic — as if any such relation between a man and a woman ever was or ever will be!
Oh, I know what you are saying! “That foolish young woman thinks Ishmael is falling in love with her.” But wait, sir, only wait and listen.
We left Berber at night and rode four hours in the moonlight. Goodness! What ghosts the desert is full of — ghosts of pyramids that loom large and then fade away! Such mysterious lights! Such spectral watch-towers standing on spectral heights! It was what the Arabs call “a white night,” and besides the moon in its splendour there was a vast star-strewn sky. Sometimes we heard the hyena’s cry, sometimes the jackal’s ululation, and through the silver shimmering haze we could see the wild creatures scuttling away from us.
Thus on and on -went our -weary caravan — the camels like great swans with their steady upturned heads, slithering as if in slippers along the noiseless sand, and many of the tired people asleep on them. But I could not sleep, and Ishmael, who was very much awake, rode by my side and talked to me.
It was about love, and included one pretty story of a daughter of the Bedawee who married a Sultan — how she scorned the silken clothes he gave her, and would not live in his palace — saying she was no fellaha to sleep in houses — and made him come out into the desert with her and dwell in a tent. I thought there was a certain self-reference in the story, but that was not all by any means.
At midnight we halted by a group of wells, and while our vast army of animals was being watered, my tent was set up outside the camp so that I might rest without noise. I suppose I had been looking faint and pale, for just as I was listening to the monotonous voice of a boy who, at a fire not far away, was singing both himself and me to sleep, Ishmael came with a dish of medida, saying, “Drink this — it will do you good.”
Then he sat down, and, with that paralysing plainness of speech which the Easterns have, began to talk of love again, especially in relation to the duty of renunciation, quoting in that connection “the lord of the Christians,” who had said, “There be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.”
It was more than embarrassing from the beginning, but it became startling and almost shocking when he went on to talk about Jesus in relation to Mary Magdalene (whom he supposed to be the sister of Martha) and of the home at Bethany as the only place in which he found the solace of female society, and how he had to turn his back on the love of woman for his work’s sake.
We are so accustomed to think of Jesus’ inaccessibility to human affection as if it were a merit in him to be superior to love, that it made my skin creep to hear this person of another faith talk like that. But I shivered a good deal more when he came to closer quarters and said that renunciation was the duty of every one on whom God had laid a great mission until his task was finished, and then... then it was just as much his duty to live as a man!
He went away quite calmly, commending me to God, but he left me in a state of terror, and though I was nearly worn to death by the double journey I did not sleep a wink that night, for thinking of that accursed day of the betrothal, and what would happen if he ever broke his promise and came to me to claim the rights of a husband.
The next day or two passed without any serious incident except that Ishmael, who had grown a pair of haunting, imploring eyes, was always riding his camel by its halter and nose-rein at the side of my litter, and talking constantly on the same subject. But then came an event of thrilling interest. Can I — shall I — must I tell you about it? Yes, I can, I shall, I must!
Out here on the desert I always feel as if I were travelling in Bible lands, and if our caravan were to come upon “Abram the Hebrew” and Rachel and Rebecca flying away with some Bedouin Jacob I should not be the least surprised, so it seemed natural enough that yesterday, in the country of the Bisharin Arabs, we lit upon Laban, living as a patriarch among his people.
There were his sons and his sons’ sons, big, brawny boys, strong and clean of limb, and with their loins well girt, but hardly anything else covered, and there were “the souls born of his house” in their felt skull caps and blue galabeahs. But what most concerned me were his two splendid daughters. No corsetted women out of Bond Street, sir, but superbly fine and majestic young females, tall and straight, with big bosoms like pomegranates, ringletted black hair, clear oval faces, the olive skin of the purest Arab blood, and large black eyes that shone like gems.
Such a woman, I thought, must Ruth have been when she lay at the feet of Boaz, but lo! it never occurred to me that the people’s faith in Ishmael’s “divinity” did not forbid their ascribing to him the attributes of a man. Shall I go on? Yes, I will, for already you know that your Helena, your lady-love, is no mealy-mouthed miss — never was and never can be.
Well, last night, late, while I was looking at the shadowy forms of the camels coming and going in the light of the dying fires, I saw Laban, who had been pouring hospitalities upon us, leading one of his daughters, whose head was low, to Ishmael’s tent. It was like something horrible out of the Old Testament, but I had to watch — I simply could not help it — and after a while I saw Laban and Rachel going away together, and then the old man’s head as well as the girl’s was down.
Act one being finished last night, act two began to-day. We are in the middle of the Nubian desert now, and as the heat is great under the red wrath of the fiery mountains on either side, we have to rest for three hours in the middle of every day. Well, at noon to-day Ishmael came to my tent and talked of love again. It was a heavenly passion. Surely God had created it. Yet the Christians had made “mockery,” and were thus rebuking the Almighty and claiming to be wiser than He. The union of man and woman without love was sin. That was what made so many Moslem marriages sinful. Marriage was not betrothal, not the joining of hands under a handkerchief, not the repeating of prayers after a Cadi; marriage was the sacrament of love, and love being present and nothing else intervening, renunciation was wrong; it was against the spirit of Islam, and no matter who he might be, a man should live as a man.
I don’t know what I said, or whether I said anything, but I do know that the blood left my heart and seemed long in making its way back again. My skin was creeping, and I had a feeling which I had never known before — a feeling of repulsion — the feeling of the white woman about the black man. Ishmael is not black by any means, but I felt exactly as if he were, for I could see quite well what was going on in his mind. He was thinking of his journey’s end, of the day when his work would be finished, and he was promising himself the realization of his love.
That shall never, never be! No, not under any circumstances! My God, no, not for worlds of worlds! Goodnight, Gordon! I may be betrothed to this man, but there is no law of nature that binds me to him. I belong to you, just as Rachel belonged to Jacob, and whatever I may be in my religion I am no trinitarian in my love at all events.
Good-bye, dearest! Don’t let what I have said alarm you. Oh, I know what you are saying now: “That foolish young woman expects me to hear her when I am in Cairo and she is in the middle of the Nubian desert.” But you do, I am sure you do. And I bear you also. I hear your voice at this moment as clearly as I hear it when I awake in the middle of the night and it rings through my miserable tent and makes me wildly hysterical. So don’t be alarmed, I can take care of myself, I tell you! My love, my love, my love!
II
Mercy! I don’t know who did it, or by whose orders it was done, but last night Ishmael’s tent, which has hitherto been set up at a distance, was placed mouth to mouth with mine. More than that, the odious Arab woman, who has always afflicted me with her abominable presence, was nowhere to be seen. I was feeling one of your “mystic senses” that something was going to happen, when late, very date, the last of the fires having died down and the camp being asleep, I heard Ishmael calling to me in a whisper:
“Rani!”
I did not answer — I could not have done so if I bad tried, for my heart was thumping like an anvil.
We left the village loaded with blessings (Black Zogal galloping frantically in front), and when we came to the next town — Berber with its miles of roofless mud-huts, telling of dervish destruction — crowds came out to salute Ishmael as the “Guided One,”
“The True Mahdi,” and “The Deliverer,” bringing their sick and lame and blind for him to heal them and praying of him to remain.
Oh, my dear Gordon, it is terrifying! Ishmael is no longer the messenger, the forerunner; he is now the Redeemer he foretold! I believe really he is beginning to believe it! This is the pillar of fire that is henceforth to guide us on our way. Already our numbers are three times what they were when we left Khartoum. What is to happen when thirty thousand persons, following a leader they believe to be divine, arrive in Cairo and are confronted by five thousand British soldiers?
No! It is not bloodshed I am afraid of — I know you will prevent that. But what of the awful undeceiving, the utter degradation, the crushing collapse?
And I? Don’t think me a coward, Gordon — it isn’t everybody who was born brave like you — but when I think of what I have done to this man, and how surely it will be found out that I have betrayed him, I tell myself that the moment I touch the skirts of civilisation I must run away.
But meantime our pilgrimage is moving on — to its death, as it seems to me — and I am moving on with it as a slave — the slave of my own actions. If this is Destiny it is wickedly cruel, I will say that for it; and if it is God, I think He might be a jealous God without making the blundering impulse of one poor girl the means of wrecking the hopes of a whole race of helpless people. Of course it acts as a sop to my conscience to remember what you said about God never making mistakes, but I cannot help wishing that in His inscrutable wisdom He could have left me out.
Oh, my dear — dear! Where are you now, I wonder? What are you doing? What is being done to you? Have you seen your father, the Princess and the Grand Cadi? I suppose I must not expect news until we reach Assouan. You promised to write to me, and you will — I know you will. Good-night, dearest! My love, my love, my only love! But I must stop. We are to make a night journey. The camp is in movement and my camel is waiting. Adieu!
HELENA.
VII
SERAI FUM EL KHALIG, CAIRO.
Salaam aleyhoum! Ten days have passed, my dear Helena, since I wrote my last letter, and during that time I have learned all that is going on here — having, in my assumed character of Ishmael in disguise, interviewed nearly the whole of the Ulema, including that double-dyed dastard, the Grand Cadi.
Under the wing — the rather fluttered one — of the good old Chancellor of El Azhar, I saw the oily reprobate in his own house, and in his honeyed voice he made pretence of receiving me with boundless courtesy. I was his “beloved friend in God,”
“the reformer of Islam,” called to the task of bringing men back to the Holy Koran, to the Prophet, and to eternal happiness. On the other hand, my father was “the slave of power,” the “evil doer,” the “adventurer,” and the “great assassin,” who was led away by worldly things, and warring against God.
More than once my hands itched to take the hypocrite from behind by the ample folds of his Turkish garments and fling him like vermin down the stairs, but I was there to hear what he was doing, so I smothered a few strong expressions which only the recording angel knows anything about, and was compelled to sit and listen.
My dear Helena, it is even worse than I expected. Some of the double-dealing Egyptian Ministers, backed by certain of the diplomatic corps, but inspired by this Chief Judge in Islam, have armed a considerable part of the native populace, in the hope that the night when England, in the persons of her chief officials, is merrymaking on the island of Ghezirah, and the greater part of the British force is away in the provinces, quelling disturbances and keeping peace, the people may rise, the Egyptian Army may mutiny, and Ishmael’s followers may take possession of the city.
All this, and more, with many suave words about the “enlightening help of God” and the certainty of “a bloodless victory,” in which the Almighty would make me glorious, and the English would be driven out of Egypt, the crafty scoundrel did not hesitate to propound as a means whereby the true faith might be established all over Europe, Rome, and London.”
Since my interview with the Grand Cadi I have learned of a certainty, what I had already surmised, that the Consul-General has been made aware of the whole plot, and is taking his own measures to defeat it. Undoubtedly the first duty of a government is to preserve order and to establish authority, and I know my father well enough to be sure that, at any cost, he will set himself to do both. But what will happen?
Mark my word — the British Army will he ordered back to the Capital — perhaps on the eve of the festival — and as surely as it enters the city on the night of the King’s Birthday there will he massacre in the streets, for the Egyptian soldiers will rebel, and the people who have been provided with arms from the secret service money of England’s enemies will rise, thinking the object of the Government is to prevent the entrance of Ishmael and his followers.
Result — a holy war, and as that is the only kind of war that was ever yet worth waging, it will put Egypt in the right and England in the wrong.
Does Ishmael expect this? No, he thinks he is to make a peaceful entry into Cairo when he comes to establish his World State, his millennium of universal faith and empire. Do the Ulema expect it? No, they think the Army of Occupation will be far away when their crazy scheme is carried into effect. Does my father expect it? Not for one moment, so sure is he — I know it perfectly, I have heard him say it a score of times — that the Egyptian soldier will not fight alone, and that Egyptian civilians can be scattered by a water hose.
Heaven help him! If ever a man was preparing to draw a sword from its scabbard it is my father at this moment, but it is only because he is played upon and deceived by this son and successor of Caiaphas, the damned. I’ll go and open his eyes to the Grand Cadi’s duplicity. I’ll say, “Bring your oily scoundrel face to face with me and see what I will say. If he denies it you must choose for yourself which of us you will believe — your own son, who has nothing to gain by coming back to warn you, or this reptile, who is fighting for the life of his rotten old class.”
The thing is hateful to me, and if there were any other possible way of stopping the wretched slaughter, I should not go, for I know it will end in the Consul-General handing me over to the military authorities to he court-martialled for my former offences, and, as you may say, it is horrible to put a father, with a high sense of duty, into the position of being compelled to cut off his own son.
Meanwhile, I am conscious that the police continue to watch me, and I am just as much a prisoner as if I were already within the walls of jail. For their own purposes they are leaving me at liberty, and I believe they will go on doing so until after the night of the King’s Birthday. After that God knows what will happen.
I am writing late and I must turn in soon, so good-night and God bless and preserve you, my own darling — mine, mine, mine, and nobody else’s — remember that! Hafiz continues to protest that the Prophet has a love for you, and will bring out everything for the best. I think so, too — I really do, so you must not be frightened about anything I have said in this letter.
There is only one thing frightens, and that is the damnable trick memory plays me when it rakes up all you told me of the terms of your betrothal to Ishmael. I can bear it pretty well during the day, but in that dead gray hour of the early morning when the moonlight slinks into the dawn, before the sparrows begin to chop the air and the Arabs to rend it, I find myself thinking that though Ishmael, when he proposed marriage to you, may have been thinking of nothing but how to protect your good name, being a pure-minded man who had consecrated his life to a spiritual mission, yet the constant presence of a beautiful woman by his side must sooner or later sweep away his pledge.
He wouldn’t be a man if it didn’t, and, the prophet notwithstanding, Ishmael is that to his finger tips. But heaven help me! I daren’t let my mind dwell on this subject or I should have to fly hack to you and leave my task here unfulfilled. So as often as I shut my eyes and see you trudging through the desert in Ishmael’s camp I tell myself that Providence has something for you to do there — must have — though what the deuce it is I don’t yet see.
No matter! D. V. I’ll know some day, and meantime I’ll nail my colours to the mast of your strength and courage, knowing that the bravest girl in the world belongs to me, and wherever she is she is mine and always will be.
GORDON.
P. S. I am now despatching my two letters to Assouan by Hamid Ibrahim — the second of the two Sheikhs who went with me to Alexandria — and if you find you can send me an answer — for God’s sake do. I am hungering and thirsting and starving and perishing for a letter from you, a line, a word, a syllable, the scratch of your pen on a piece of paper. Send it, for heaven’s sake!
I hear that hundreds of native boats are going up to Assouan to bring you down the Nile, so look out for my next letter when you get to Luxor — I may have something to tell you by that time.
VIII
NUBIAN DESERT (ANYWHERE).
OH, MY GORDON: Such startling developments! Ishmael’s character has made a new manifestation. It concerns me, and I hardly know whether I ought to speak of it. Yet I must — I cannot help myself.
I find there is something distinctly masculine in his interest in me! In Khartoum (in spite of certain evidences to the contrary) I was always fool enough to suppose that it was without sex — what milksops call Platonic — as if any such relation between a man and a woman ever was or ever will be!
Oh, I know what you are saying! “That foolish young woman thinks Ishmael is falling in love with her.” But wait, sir, only wait and listen.
We left Berber at night and rode four hours in the moonlight. Goodness! What ghosts the desert is full of — ghosts of pyramids that loom large and then fade away! Such mysterious lights! Such spectral watch-towers standing on spectral heights! It was what the Arabs call “a white night,” and besides the moon in its splendour there was a vast star-strewn sky. Sometimes we heard the hyena’s cry, sometimes the jackal’s ululation, and through the silver shimmering haze we could see the wild creatures scuttling away from us.
Thus on and on -went our -weary caravan — the camels like great swans with their steady upturned heads, slithering as if in slippers along the noiseless sand, and many of the tired people asleep on them. But I could not sleep, and Ishmael, who was very much awake, rode by my side and talked to me.
It was about love, and included one pretty story of a daughter of the Bedawee who married a Sultan — how she scorned the silken clothes he gave her, and would not live in his palace — saying she was no fellaha to sleep in houses — and made him come out into the desert with her and dwell in a tent. I thought there was a certain self-reference in the story, but that was not all by any means.
At midnight we halted by a group of wells, and while our vast army of animals was being watered, my tent was set up outside the camp so that I might rest without noise. I suppose I had been looking faint and pale, for just as I was listening to the monotonous voice of a boy who, at a fire not far away, was singing both himself and me to sleep, Ishmael came with a dish of medida, saying, “Drink this — it will do you good.”
Then he sat down, and, with that paralysing plainness of speech which the Easterns have, began to talk of love again, especially in relation to the duty of renunciation, quoting in that connection “the lord of the Christians,” who had said, “There be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.”
It was more than embarrassing from the beginning, but it became startling and almost shocking when he went on to talk about Jesus in relation to Mary Magdalene (whom he supposed to be the sister of Martha) and of the home at Bethany as the only place in which he found the solace of female society, and how he had to turn his back on the love of woman for his work’s sake.
We are so accustomed to think of Jesus’ inaccessibility to human affection as if it were a merit in him to be superior to love, that it made my skin creep to hear this person of another faith talk like that. But I shivered a good deal more when he came to closer quarters and said that renunciation was the duty of every one on whom God had laid a great mission until his task was finished, and then... then it was just as much his duty to live as a man!
He went away quite calmly, commending me to God, but he left me in a state of terror, and though I was nearly worn to death by the double journey I did not sleep a wink that night, for thinking of that accursed day of the betrothal, and what would happen if he ever broke his promise and came to me to claim the rights of a husband.
The next day or two passed without any serious incident except that Ishmael, who had grown a pair of haunting, imploring eyes, was always riding his camel by its halter and nose-rein at the side of my litter, and talking constantly on the same subject. But then came an event of thrilling interest. Can I — shall I — must I tell you about it? Yes, I can, I shall, I must!
Out here on the desert I always feel as if I were travelling in Bible lands, and if our caravan were to come upon “Abram the Hebrew” and Rachel and Rebecca flying away with some Bedouin Jacob I should not be the least surprised, so it seemed natural enough that yesterday, in the country of the Bisharin Arabs, we lit upon Laban, living as a patriarch among his people.
There were his sons and his sons’ sons, big, brawny boys, strong and clean of limb, and with their loins well girt, but hardly anything else covered, and there were “the souls born of his house” in their felt skull caps and blue galabeahs. But what most concerned me were his two splendid daughters. No corsetted women out of Bond Street, sir, but superbly fine and majestic young females, tall and straight, with big bosoms like pomegranates, ringletted black hair, clear oval faces, the olive skin of the purest Arab blood, and large black eyes that shone like gems.
Such a woman, I thought, must Ruth have been when she lay at the feet of Boaz, but lo! it never occurred to me that the people’s faith in Ishmael’s “divinity” did not forbid their ascribing to him the attributes of a man. Shall I go on? Yes, I will, for already you know that your Helena, your lady-love, is no mealy-mouthed miss — never was and never can be.
Well, last night, late, while I was looking at the shadowy forms of the camels coming and going in the light of the dying fires, I saw Laban, who had been pouring hospitalities upon us, leading one of his daughters, whose head was low, to Ishmael’s tent. It was like something horrible out of the Old Testament, but I had to watch — I simply could not help it — and after a while I saw Laban and Rachel going away together, and then the old man’s head as well as the girl’s was down.
Act one being finished last night, act two began to-day. We are in the middle of the Nubian desert now, and as the heat is great under the red wrath of the fiery mountains on either side, we have to rest for three hours in the middle of every day. Well, at noon to-day Ishmael came to my tent and talked of love again. It was a heavenly passion. Surely God had created it. Yet the Christians had made “mockery,” and were thus rebuking the Almighty and claiming to be wiser than He. The union of man and woman without love was sin. That was what made so many Moslem marriages sinful. Marriage was not betrothal, not the joining of hands under a handkerchief, not the repeating of prayers after a Cadi; marriage was the sacrament of love, and love being present and nothing else intervening, renunciation was wrong; it was against the spirit of Islam, and no matter who he might be, a man should live as a man.
I don’t know what I said, or whether I said anything, but I do know that the blood left my heart and seemed long in making its way back again. My skin was creeping, and I had a feeling which I had never known before — a feeling of repulsion — the feeling of the white woman about the black man. Ishmael is not black by any means, but I felt exactly as if he were, for I could see quite well what was going on in his mind. He was thinking of his journey’s end, of the day when his work would be finished, and he was promising himself the realization of his love.
That shall never, never be! No, not under any circumstances! My God, no, not for worlds of worlds! Goodnight, Gordon! I may be betrothed to this man, but there is no law of nature that binds me to him. I belong to you, just as Rachel belonged to Jacob, and whatever I may be in my religion I am no trinitarian in my love at all events.
Good-bye, dearest! Don’t let what I have said alarm you. Oh, I know what you are saying now: “That foolish young woman expects me to hear her when I am in Cairo and she is in the middle of the Nubian desert.” But you do, I am sure you do. And I bear you also. I hear your voice at this moment as clearly as I hear it when I awake in the middle of the night and it rings through my miserable tent and makes me wildly hysterical. So don’t be alarmed, I can take care of myself, I tell you! My love, my love, my love!
II
Mercy! I don’t know who did it, or by whose orders it was done, but last night Ishmael’s tent, which has hitherto been set up at a distance, was placed mouth to mouth with mine. More than that, the odious Arab woman, who has always afflicted me with her abominable presence, was nowhere to be seen. I was feeling one of your “mystic senses” that something was going to happen, when late, very date, the last of the fires having died down and the camp being asleep, I heard Ishmael calling to me in a whisper:
“Rani!”
I did not answer — I could not have done so if I bad tried, for my heart was thumping like an anvil.
