Complete works of hall c.., p.480
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 480
“I see how it has been, oh, my Rani. You did not intend to betray my people — my poor people whose sufferings you have seen, whose faith and hopes and dreams you have shared and witnessed. It was Omar you were thinking of. Your heart has never forgiven him for taking the place you meant for your husband. You were jealous of him for my sake, and your jealousy got the better of your judgment. ‘I will punish him,’ you thought. ‘I will make his mission of no effect.’ And so you sent that letter. But you did not reflect that in destroying Omar you would be destroying my people also. It was wrong, it was cruel, but it was a woman’s fault and you have seen it and suffered for it ever since. Jealousy of Omar, perhaps hatred of Omar — that was it, was it not, oh, my Rani?”
His voice was breaking as he spoke, for the pitiful explanation he had lighted upon was failing to bring conviction to his own mind, yet he fixed his sad eyes eagerly on Helena’s face and repeated:
“Jealousy of Omar, perhaps hatred of Omar — that was what caused you to send that letter?”
Helena could not speak. The pathos of his error was choking her. But she replied to him with a look which it required no words to interpret.
“No?” he said. “Not of Omar? Of whom, then?”
Helena could not lie. “He must know some day,” she thought.
“Of whom, then?” he repeated in his helpless confusion.
“Yourself,” she replied.
“Allah! Allah! Myself! Myself!” he said in a breathless whisper, rising to his feet again and striding across the tent.
At the first moment after Helena’s confession it seemed to Ishmael that both sun and moon had suffered eclipse and the world was in total darkness. Why had the Rani betrayed him? From what motive? For what object? He tried to follow her thoughts and found it impossible to do so.
There was a short period of frightful silence, and then, feeling as if he wanted to cry, he drew up before Helena again, and said in a husky voice, his swarthy face trembling and twitching:
“But why, O Rani? I had done you no wrong. From the day you came to me I did all I could for you — all I could to make your nights peaceful and your mornings happy. Why has your heart been so far away from me?”
Helena felt that the time had come to tell him everything. Yet in order to do so she must begin with the death of her father, and she could not speak of that without involving Gordon. “But that is impossible,” she thought, “absolutely impossible.”
“Speak,” said Ishmael. “When you sent your letter to the English lord you must have known that you were dooming me to death — what had I done to deserve it?”
“I cannot tell you — I cannot, I cannot,” she answered.
“It is unnecessary,” said Ishmael.
In the moment of Helena’s silence a terrible explanation of her conduct had come to him, and he thought he saw, as by flashes of lightning, into the dark abyss that was at his feet.
His manner, which had been gentle down to that moment, suddenly became harsh, and his voice, which had been soft, became hard.
“When did you send that letter?” he demanded.
She saw the stem closing of his lips, and for an instant she felt afraid.
“Was it before the meeting of the Sheikhs at which Omar was chosen?”
“Yes,” she replied. If Gordon was to be condemned to death it was of no consequence what become of her.
“You told the English lord that Ishmael was coming to Cairo?”
“Yes.” His deep, impenetrable eyes seemed to be looking through and through her.
“With what object and in — in what disguise?”
“Yes.” She knew she was dashing herself to destruction, but no matter.
“When you sent your letter you said to yourself, ‘Ishmael will go into Cairo, but my letter shall go before him.’ Yes?”
“Yes.” In the lowest depths of her soul she felt that if he killed her now she did not care.
“And when Omar stepped into the place you had meant for me you thought, ‘The letter I wrote to destroy Ishmael will destroy Omar instead?’”
“Yes.”
“Was that why you tried to prevent Omar from going?”
“Yes.” Tears were choking her utterance.
“Why you were unwilling to make the kufiah?”
“Yes.”
“Why you fainted in the mosque?”
She bowed her head, being unable to utter another word.
“Then,” said Ishmael, and his voice rose to a husky cry, “then it was love of Omar, not hatred of him, that inspired your letter?”
She made no reply. Filled as she was with shame for what she had done to Ishmael, the image of Gordon was still in her mind. Even at that moment, when terrible consequences threatened her, she could not help thinking of him. If he were tried by Field General Court-Martial tonight he might be executed in the morning!
That thought carried her back to the Citadel. She was on the drilling-ground in the dead gray light of dawn. A regiment of soldiers were drawn up in line. Six of them stood out from the rest with rifles to their shoulders. And before them, standing alone, with his back to the ramparts, was one condemned but dauntless man. “My last thoughts are about you,” he was saying to her, and living in that cruel dream she burst into tears.
Again Ishmael misunderstood her weeping, and again a wave of compassion passed over him.
“It is possible I am wrong,” he said. “I may be judging you unjustly. In that case tell me so and I will kiss your feet. I will ask your pardon.”
She could not speak. “This will end in some way,” she thought.
“In the name of Heaven, speak! Tell me you do not love this man. Tell me I am wrong,” he cried.
“No, you are not wrong,” she said. “I do love him and I am in despair. All you have said is true, but I cannot help it. I am a wicked woman, and my life by your side has been a deception from the first.”
With that she burst into another flood of tears, and falling face downward on the angerib she buried her head in the pillow.
“Allah! Allah!” said Ishmael, and all the blood in his body seemed to flush his heart. He was passing through the supreme phase of his agony — perhaps the cruellest that man can suffer — the agony of knowing that the woman he loved, the woman he worshipped, loved and worshipped another man.
In the cloud of maddening thoughts which sprang to his brain he imagined he read the mystery of Helena’s conduct from the first. Remembering that she had called him a black man, the wild deep heart in him rose to a fever of jealous wrath.
“I see how it has been,” he said. “The white man came to my tent. I welcomed him. I loved him. I trusted him. He was my brother and he slept by my side. I made him free of my harem. I put my honour in his hands. And how did he repay me? By robbing me of the love that was my love, the heart that was my heart.”
She tried to speak, to protest, but in a torrent of wrath he bore her down.
“Your white man has overreached himself, though. ‘I will outdo Ishmael in her eyes,’ he thought. But he has only fallen into the pit that was dug for me. Let him perish there, and the curse of God be on him!”
Again she tried to protest, and again in the blind hurricane of his anger he silenced her.
“And you — it was nothing to you that in betraying me you were betraying my people also — my poor people who have suffered so much and followed me so faithfully.”
His face was terrible — it had the sullen glow of the western sky before a storm.
“You have wrecked my hopes in the hour of their fulfilment. You have made dust and ashes of the expectations of my people. You have uncovered my nakedness and made me a thing to point the finger at and to scorn. You have turned my heart to stone.”
Then the wild anguish of the jealous man became united to the fierce wrath of the fanatic, and going nearer to Helena and leaning over her he said:
“Worse than that — a hundredfold worse — you have made the plans and promises of God of no avail. You have allowed the Evil One to enter into your heart and to use your guilty passions to defeat the schemes of the Most High. Therefore,” he said, raising his quivering voice until it rang through the tent like a tortured cry, “therefore as the instrument of Satan you have no right to live. I say you have no right to live. And I — I who have loved you — I whose heart has been wrapped about you like the rope about the wheel of the well — I whom you have betrayed and destroyed and — and my people with me — it is I — yes, it is I who must — who must—”
Helena heard him stammering and sobbing over her. At the same time she felt that his strong ferocious hands were laying hold of her. She felt that the long Eastern veil that had hung down her back was being wrapped around her throat. She felt that its folds were growing tighter and yet tighter and that she was being strangled and was losing consciousness.
Then suddenly she became aware that Ishmael’s formidable grasp had slackened, that he had stepped back from the angerib on which she lay, and was saying to himself in a tremulous whisper:
“Allah! Allah! What is this I am doing? Allah! Allah! Allah!”
And at the next moment she realised that in horror of his own impulse he had turned and fled out of the tent.
V
BEING left alone, Helena’s emotions were so strange, so bewildering, so overpowering that she could not immediately make out clearly what she felt The most contradictory thoughts and feelings crowded upon her.
First came a sense of suffocating shame, due to Ishmael’s hideous misconception of her relation to Gordon, which put her into the position of an unfaithful wife. But would the truth have been any better — that she was not an Indian Rani, not a Muslemah, that she and Gordon had known and loved each other before Ishmael came into their lives, and that a desire to punish him for coming between them had been the impulse that had taken her to Khartoum?
Next came a sense of her utter degradation during the recent scene, in which her lips had been sealed and she had been compelled to submit to Ishmael’s just and natural wrath.
Then came a sense of abject humiliation with the thought that Ishmael had been right from the beginning and she had been wrong, and therefore she had merited all that had come to her. “If he had killed me I could have forgiven him,” she told herself.
Finally (perhaps from some deep place in her Jewish blood) came the feeling that after all it was not so much Ishmael who had been shaming her for her treachery as the Almighty who had been punishing her for attempting to take His vengeance out of His hand. “Vengeance is Mine,” saith the Lord, and her impious act had deserved the penalty that had overtaken it.
But against all this, opposing it, fighting it, conquering it, triumphing over it, was the memory of her love for Gordon. “I loved him and I could not have acted otherwise,” she thought.
More plainly than ever she now saw that her love for Gordon had been the first cause and origin of all she had done. This single-hearted devotion left her nothing else to think about. It wiped out Ishmael and his troubles and all the troubles of his people. “I may be selfish and cruel, but I cannot help it,” she told herself again and again, as she continued to lie where Ishmael had left her, face down on the angerib, shaken with sobs.
After a while she heard a step approaching. The Arab woman had entered the tent.
“So you are there, oh, my beauty,” said Zenoba with a bitter ring in her voice.
Without raising her head to look, Helena knew that the usual obsequious smiles had gone from the woman’s face, and that her eyes were full of undisguised contempt. In another moment all the impulses of hatred which had scoured through her jealous soul for months fell on Helena in bitter reproaches.
“I knew it would come to this. I always told him so, but he would not listen. ‘Ask pardon of God, Zenoba,’ he said. How he will have to ask pardon of me.”
Helena could hardly control herself, but with an effort she submitted in silence and let the woman have her way.
“Anybody might have seen what was going on from the moment the white Christian came to Khartoum. But no, it was no use talking. When a man looks at a woman he sees her eyes, not her heart, and is blind to those that love and serve him.”
Helena’s own heart was beating violently and painfully, but she compelled herself to lie still. “It’s no more than I deserve,” she thought.
And then the Arab woman lashed her to the bone with reports of what the people in the camp were saying. All that had happened might have been foreseen. He who tried to emancipate woman had been the first to suffer for it. Good women did not wish to be emancipated, and the bad women who let their veils fall and meddled with the affairs of men, only wanted to imitate the evil ways of the women of the West. “Our mothers did not do it, and neither shall our wives,” said some, while others declared that it was better to have a thousand enemies outside your house than one within.
The camp was utterly disorganised, utterly demoralised.
Instead of the singing and rejoicing of an hour ago, there was now wailing and lamentation; instead of prayer and praise, there was cursing and swearing. Some of the people, in a state of panic, were saying that the soldiers of the Christian government would soon be upon them; that they would be shot dead with bullets; that they would be carried into Cairo as prisoners and crucified in the public streets; that the Christians would eat their flesh and suck their blood; that those who were not slain would be walking skeletons and talking images and made to worship the wooden cross instead of their own God, their Allah. As a consequence, many were packing their baggage hurriedly and turning the heads of their camels to the south. Boats were being unmoored at Bedrasheen and boatloads were preparing to push off.
Desolation was over the whole camp. The hopes of the people were in the dust. Some of the women were kneeling on the ground and throwing the sand over their heads and faces. Some of the men were heaping insults on Ishmael’s name — their former love and reverence being already gone. “Where are the promises he made us?” they were asking. “Is it for this that he brought us from our homes?”
Others were calling and searching for the Master. His tent was empty. He was nowhere to be seen. Had he deserted them in their hour of trouble? “Where is he?” they were crying. “What has become of him?” No one knew. Even Black Zogal could not say. And then some were crying, “Ela’an abu, abu, abu!” (“Cursed be his father, and his father’s father, and his father’s father’s father!”).
But worse, far worse, because more fierce and terrible than the people’s anger against Ishmael, was their wrath against the “White Woman.” It was she who had betrayed them. But for her evil influence and secret schemes they might have inherited Egypt and all the rich lands and treasures of the Valley of the Nile. Listen! They were gathering about the tent, and murmuring and shouting excitedly. Hark! That was Zogal’s voice — he was persuading them to go away.
“But they’ll come back, oh, my beauty,” said Zenoba.
“Better get away before they return and tear you to pieces, as a hungry jackal tears a dog.”
With that merciless word the bitter-hearted woman took herself off, leaving Helena still lying face down on the angerib in her agony of mingled anger and shame.
Being once more left alone in the tent, Helena continued to see what was going on in the camp. The wailing of the women, who were throwing sand over their heads, seemed as if it would never cease. At length some of them began to sing. They sang songs of sorrow which contrasted strangely with the songs of victory which the men had sung before. The weird and monotonous but moving notes that are peculiar to Arab music sounded like dirges in the depth of night.
The people were in despair. Their consoling and inspiring idea of divine guidance was gone, and the hope that had sustained their souls through the toils of the desert march was dead. The myth of Ishmael’s divinity had already disappeared; the Master was no longer the Redeemer, the Mahdi, the Christ. All that had been a hideous illusion, a mirage of the soul, without reason or reality.
It was terrible, it was horrible, it was almost as if the whole people had died an hour ago in “the sure and certain hope,” and then suddenly awakened in the other world to find that there was no God, no heaven, no reward for the pains of this life, and all they had looked for and expected had been the shadow of a dream.
Listening to this as she lay on the angerib, and thinking she was partly to blame for it, Helena asked herself if there was anything she could do to save Ishmael and his people.
“O God! is there nothing I can do?” she thought.
At first there came no answer to this question. Do what she would to fix her mind on the people’s sufferings and Ishmael’s downfall, her mind swung back to its old subject and once again she thought of Gordon and his arrest.
Things in that regard were plainer to her now. The idea of a Field General Court-Martial, which had made her chill with fear, had been the figment of an over-excited brain. Whatever had happened to Gordon’s efforts in the interests of peace — whether they had failed or succeeded — his own trial would take the ordinary course. A military court of the usual kind would have to be summoned, its sentence would have to be confirmed and only the King could confirm it.
All this would take time and therefore there was no need for panic. But meantime what was Gordon’s position? He had been arrested in mistake for Ishmael, and consequently he would, one way or another, be liable to punishment for Ishmael’s offence. That was to say, for the offence she had attributed to Ishmael. Yet Gordon had done no wrong, he had intended no evil.
“Is there nothing I can do? — nothing at all?” she asked herself again.
Suddenly a light dawned on her. If the Consul-General could be made to see what Gordon’s motives had really been — to save England, to save Egypt, to save the good name of his own father — and if he could be made to realise that Ishmael’s aim was not rebellion and his followers were not an armed force, but merely a vast concourse of religious visionaries — what then?
