With Kitchener in the Soudan: A Story of Atbara and Omdurman

There were tears in Mrs. Hilliard's eyes, but she said bravely:

"I quite agree with you, Gregory. Of course, I shall be sorry that you should leave me, even for a time; but it seems to me, too, that it is a grand opportunity. You know what a pain it was to me, all the time that we were at Alexandria, that you should be working in such a subordinate position. Now there is an opening by which you will be in a position, ere long, more worthy of your birth and education. I have no doubt I shall get on very well, here. I believe that Hicks Pasha has brought his wife out with him here; and some of his officers will, no doubt, be married men also; and as the wife of one of his officers I shall, of course, get to know them. I should be selfish, indeed, to say a word to keep you back, and shall be delighted to think of you associating with other English gentlemen, as one of themselves."

And so it was settled. The next day, Gregory called on Hicks Pasha. The latter had made some more enquiries respecting him, and was well pleased with his appearance.

"I have already a gentleman named as staff interpreter, Mr. Hilliard, but I can appoint you, at once, interpreter to the quartermaster's department, attached to my personal staff for the present. I can tell you that the Egyptian army will be largely increased, and I shall be able, after a time, to procure you a better appointment. When we have once defeated the Mahdi, and restored order, there will be many appointments open for the reorganization of the Soudan. There are a good many preparations to be made, before I leave, which I expect to do in the course of three or four weeks; and I shall be glad of your assistance, as soon as you can join us."

"I shall be glad to do so, at once. Mr. Ross has kindly told me that I am at liberty to resign my post, under him, as soon as I like."

"Very well, then. You may consider yourself appointed, today. My intention is to go first to Suakim, and thence up to Berber, and so by water to Khartoum."

The next three weeks passed rapidly. Gregory was, on the following day, introduced to the various officers of Hicks Pasha's staff; and, on learning that he was married, the general asked him and his wife to dinner, to make the acquaintance of Lady Hicks, and the wives of three of his fellow officers.

At last, the time came for parting. Annie bore up well; and although, when alone, she had many a cry, she was always cheerful, and went with her husband and saw him off, at the station of the railway for Ismailia, without breaking down badly.

Chapter 3: A Terrible Disaster

It was an anxious time for his wife, after Gregory started. He, and those with him, had left with a feeling of confidence that the insurrection would speedily be put down. The garrison of Khartoum had inflicted several severe defeats upon the Mahdi, but had also suffered some reverses. This, however, was only to be expected, when the troops under him were scarcely more disciplined than those of the Dervishes, who had always been greatly superior in numbers, and inspired with a fanatical belief in their prophet. But with British officers to command, and British officers to drill and discipline the troops, there could be no fear of a recurrence of these disasters.

Before they started, Mrs. Hilliard had become intimate with the wife of Hicks Pasha, and those of the other married officers, and had paid visits with them to the harems of high Turkish officials. Visits were frequently exchanged, and what with these, and the care of the boy, her time was constantly occupied. She received letters from Gregory, as frequently as possible, after his arrival at Omdurman, and until he set out with the main body, under the general, on the way to El Obeid.

Before starting, he said he hoped that, in another two months, the campaign would be over, El Obeid recovered, and the Mahdi smashed up; and that, as soon as they returned to Khartoum, Hicks Pasha would send for his wife and daughters, and the other married officers for their wives; and, of course, she would accompany them.

"I cannot say much for Omdurman," he wrote; "but Khartoum is a nice place. Many of the houses there have shady gardens. Hicks has promised to recommend me for a majority, in one of the Turkish regiments. In the intervals of my own work, I have got up drill. I shall, of course, tell him then what my real name is, so that I can be gazetted in it. It is likely enough that, even after we defeat the Mahdi, this war may go on for some time before it is stamped out; and in another year I may be a full-blown colonel, if only an Egyptian one; and as the pay of the English officers is good, I shall be able to have a very comfortable home for you.

"I need not repeat my instructions, darling, as to what you must do in the event, improbable as it is, of disaster. When absolutely assured of my death, but not until then, you will go back to England with the boy, and see my father. He is not a man to change his mind, unless I were to humble myself before him; but I think he would do the right thing for you. If he will not, there is the letter for Geoffrey. He has no settled income at present, but when he comes into the title he will, I feel quite certain, make you an allowance. I know that you would, for yourself, shrink from doing this; but, for the boy's sake, you will not hesitate to carry out my instructions. I should say you had better write to my father, for the interview might be an unpleasant one; but if you have to appeal to Geoffrey, you had better call upon him and show him this letter. I feel sure that he will do what he can.

"Gregory."

A month later, a messenger came up from Suakim with a despatch, dated October 3rd. The force was then within a few days' march of El Obeid. The news was not altogether cheering. Hordes of the enemy hovered about their rear. Communication was already difficult, and they had to depend upon the stores they carried, and cut themselves off altogether from the base. He brought some private letters from the officers, and among them one for Mrs. Hilliard. It was short, and written in pencil:

"In a few days, Dear, the decisive battle will take place; and although it will be a tough fight, none of us have any fear of the result. In the very improbable event of a defeat, I shall, if I have time, slip on the Arab dress I have with me, and may hope to escape. However, I have little fear that it will come to that. God bless and protect you, and the boy!

"Gregory."

A month passed away. No news came from Hicks Pasha, or any of his officers. Then there were rumours current in the bazaars, of disaster; and one morning, when Annie called upon Lady Hicks, she found several of the ladies there with pale and anxious faces. She paused at the door.

"Do not be alarmed, Mrs. Hilliard," Lady Hicks said. "Nizim Pasha has been here this morning. He thought that I might have heard the rumours that are current in the bazaar, that there has been a disaster, but he says there is no confirmation whatever of these reports. He does not deny, however, that they have caused anxiety among the authorities; for sometimes these rumours, whose origin no one knows, do turn out to be correct. He said that enquiries have been made, but no foundation for the stories can be got at. I questioned him closely, and he says that he can only account for them on the ground that, if a victory had been won, an official account from government should have been here before this; and that it is solely on this account that these rumours have got about. He said there was no reason for supposing that this silence meant disaster. A complete victory might have been won; and yet the messenger with the despatches might have been captured, and killed, by the parties of tribesmen hanging behind the army, or wandering about the country between the army and Khartoum. Still, of course, this is making us all very anxious."

The party soon broke up, none having any reassuring suggestions to offer; and Annie returned to her lodging, to weep over her boy, and pray for the safety of his father. Days and weeks passed, and still no word came to Cairo. At Khartoum there was a ferment among the native population. No secret was made of the fact that the tribesmen who came and went all declared that Hicks Pasha's army was utterly destroyed. At length, the Egyptian government announced to the wives of the officers that pensions would be given to them, according to the rank of their husbands. As captain and interpreter, Gregory's wife had but a small one, but it was sufficient for her to live upon.

One by one, the other ladies gave up hope and returned to England, but Annie stayed on. Misfortune might have befallen the army, but Gregory might have escaped in disguise. She had, like the other ladies, put on mourning for him; for had she declared her belief that he might still be alive, she could not have applied for the pension, and this was necessary for the child's sake. Of one thing she was determined. She would not go with him, as beggars, to the father who had cast Gregory off; until, as he had said, she received absolute news of his death. She was not in want; but as her pension was a small one, and she felt that it would be well for her to be employed, she asked Lady Hicks, before she left, to mention at the houses of the Egyptian ladies to whom she went to say goodbye, that Mrs. Hilliard would be glad to give lessons in English, French, or music.

The idea pleased them, and she obtained several pupils. Some of these were the ladies themselves, and the lessons generally consisted in sitting for an hour with them, two or three times a week, and talking to them; the conversation being in short sentences, of which she gave them the English translation, which they repeated over and over again, until they knew them by heart. This caused great amusement, and was accompanied by much laughter, on the part of the ladies and their attendants.

Several of her pupils, however, were young boys and girls, and the teaching here was of a more serious kind. The lessons to the boys were given the first thing in the morning, and the pupils were brought to her house by attendants. At eleven o'clock she taught the girls, and returned at one, and had two hours more teaching in the afternoon. She could have obtained more pupils, had she wished to; but the pay she received, added to her income, enabled her to live very comfortably, and to save up money. She had a Negro servant, who was very fond of the boy, and she could leave him in her charge with perfect confidence, while she was teaching.

In the latter part of 1884, she ventured to hope that some news might yet come to her, for a British expedition had started for the relief of General Gordon, who had gone up early in the year to Khartoum; where it was hoped that the influence he had gained among the natives, at the time he was in command of the Egyptian forces in the Soudan, would enable him to make head against the insurrection. His arrival had been hailed by the population, but it was soon evident to him that, unless aided by England with something more than words, Khartoum must finally fall.

But his requests for aid were slighted. He had asked that two regiments should be sent from Suakim, to keep open the route to Berber, but Mr. Gladstone's government refused even this slight assistance to the man they had sent out, and it was not until May that public indignation, at this base desertion of one of the noblest spirits that Britain ever produced, caused preparations for his rescue to be made; and it was December before the leading regiment arrived at Korti, far up the Nile.

After fighting two hard battles, a force that had marched across the loop of the Nile came down upon it above Metemmeh. A party started up the river at once, in two steamers which Gordon had sent down to meet them, but only arrived near the town to hear that they were too late, that Khartoum had fallen, and that Gordon had been murdered. The army was at once hurried back to the coast, leaving it to the Mahdists–more triumphant than ever–to occupy Dongola; and to push down, and possibly, as they were confident they should do, to capture Egypt itself.

The news of the failure was a terrible blow to Mrs. Hilliard. She had hoped that, when Khartoum was relieved, some information at least might be obtained, from prisoners, as to the fate of the British officers at El Obeid. That most of them had been killed was certain, but she still clung to the hope that her husband might have escaped from the general massacre, thanks to his knowledge of the language, and the disguise he had with him; and even that if captured later on he might be a prisoner; or that he might have escaped detection altogether, and be still living among friendly tribesmen. It was a heavy blow to her, therefore, when she heard that the troops were being hurried down to the coast, and that the Mahdi would be uncontested master of Egypt, as far as Assouan.

She did, however, receive news when the force returned to Cairo, which, although depressing, did not extinguish all hope. Lieutenant Colonel Colborne, by good luck, had ascertained that a native boy in the service of General Buller claimed to have been at El Obeid. Upon questioning him closely, he found out that he had unquestionably been there, for he described accurately the position Colonel Colborne–who had started with Hicks Pasha, but had been forced by illness to return–had occupied in one of the engagements. The boy was then the slave of an Egyptian officer of the expedition.

The army had suffered much from want of water, but they had obtained plenty from a lake within three days' march from El Obeid. From this point they were incessantly fired at, by the enemy. On the second day they were attacked, but beat off the enemy, though with heavy loss to themselves. The next day they pressed forward, as it was necessary to get to water; but they were misled by their guide, and at noon the Arabs burst down upon them, the square in which the force was marching was broken, and a terrible slaughter took place. Then Hicks Pasha, with his officers, seeing that all was lost, gathered together and kept the enemy at bay with their revolvers, till their ammunition was exhausted. After that they fought with their swords till all were killed, Hicks Pasha being the last to fall. The lad himself hid among the dead and was not discovered until the next morning, when he was made a slave by the man who found him.

This was terrible! But there was still hope. If this boy had concealed himself among the dead, her husband might have done the same. Not being a combatant officer, he might not have been near the others when the affair took place; and moreover, the lad had said that the black regiment in the rear of the square had kept together and marched away; he believed all had been afterwards killed, but this he did not know. If Gregory had been there when the square was broken, he might well have kept with them, and at nightfall slipped on his disguise and made his escape. It was at least possible–she would not give up all hope.

So years went on. Things were quiet in Egypt. A native army had been raised there, under the command of British officers, and these had checked the northern progress of the Mahdists and restored confidence in Egypt. Gregory–for the boy had been named after his father–grew up strong and hearty. His mother devoted her evenings to his education. From the Negress, who was his nurse and the general servant of the house, he had learnt to talk her native language. She had been carried off, when ten years old, by a slave-raiding party, and sold to an Egyptian trader at Khartoum; been given by him to an Atbara chief, with whom he had dealings; and, five years later, had been captured in a tribal war by the Jaalin. Two or three times she had changed masters, and finally had been purchased by an Egyptian officer, and brought down by him to Cairo. At his death, four years afterwards, she had been given her freedom, being now past fifty, and had taken service with Gregory Hilliard and his wife. Her vocabulary was a large one, and she was acquainted with most of the dialects of the Soudan tribes.

From the time when her husband was first missing, Mrs. Hilliard cherished the idea that, some day, the child might grow up and search for his father; and, perhaps, ascertain his fate beyond all doubt. She was a very conscientious woman, and was resolved that, at whatever pain to herself, she would, when once certain of her husband's death, go to England and obtain recognition of his boy by his family. But it was pleasant to think that the day was far distant when she could give up hope. She saw, too, that if the Soudan was ever reconquered, the knowledge of the tribal languages must be of immense benefit to her son; and she therefore insisted, from the first, that the woman should always talk to him in one or other of the languages that she knew.

Thus Gregory, almost unconsciously, acquired several of the dialects used in the Soudan. Arabic formed the basis of them all, except the Negro tongue. At first he mixed them up, but as he grew, Mrs. Hilliard insisted that his nurse should speak one for a month, and then use another; so that, by the time he was twelve years old, the boy could speak in the Negro tongue, and half a dozen dialects, with equal facility.

His mother had, years before, engaged a teacher of Arabic for him. This he learned readily, as it was the root of the Egyptian and the other languages he had picked up. Of a morning, he sat in the school and learned pure Arabic and Turkish, while the boys learned English; and therefore, without an effort, when he was twelve years old he talked these languages as well as English; and had, moreover, a smattering of Italian and French, picked up from boys of his own age, for his mother had now many acquaintances among the European community.

While she was occupied in the afternoon, with her pupils, the boy had liberty to go about as he pleased; and indeed she encouraged him to take long walks, to swim, and to join in all games and exercises.

"English boys at home," she said, "have many games, and it is owing to these that they grow up so strong and active. They have more opportunities than you, but you must make the most of those that you have. We may go back to England some day, and I should not at all like you to be less strong than others."

As, however, such opportunities were very small, she had an apparatus of poles, horizontal bars, and ropes set up, such as those she had seen, in England, in use by the boys of one of the families where she had taught, before her marriage; and insisted upon Gregory's exercising himself upon it for an hour every morning, soon after sunrise. As she had heard her husband once say that fencing was a splendid exercise, not only for developing the figure, but for giving a good carriage as well as activity and alertness, she arranged with a Frenchman who had served in the army, and had gained a prize as a swordsman in the regiment, to give the boy lessons two mornings in the week.

Thus, at fifteen, Gregory was well grown and athletic, and had much of the bearing and appearance of an English public-school boy. His mother had been very particular in seeing that his manners were those of an Englishman.

"I hope the time will come when you will associate with English gentlemen, and I should wish you, in all respects, to be like them. You belong to a good family; and should you, by any chance, some day go home, you must do credit to your dear father."

The boy had, for some years, been acquainted with the family story, except that he did not know the name he bore was his father's Christian name, and not that of his family.

"My grandfather must have been a very bad man, Mother, to have quarreled with my father for marrying you."

"Well, my boy, you hardly understand the extent of the exclusiveness of some Englishmen. Of course, it is not always so, but to some people, the idea of their sons or daughters marrying into a family of less rank than themselves appears to be an almost terrible thing. As I have told you, although the daughter of a clergyman, I was, when I became an orphan, obliged to go out as a governess."

"But there was no harm in that, Mother?"

"No harm, dear; but a certain loss of position. Had my father been alive, and had I been living with him in a country rectory, your grandfather might not have been pleased at your father's falling in love with me, because he would probably have considered that, being, as you know by his photograph, a fine, tall, handsome man, and having the best education money could give him, he might have married very much better; that is to say, the heiress of a property, or into a family of influence, through which he might have been pushed on; but he would not have thought of opposing the marriage on the ground of my family. But a governess is a different thing. She is, in many cases, a lady in every respect, but her position is a doubtful one.

"In some families she is treated as one of themselves. In others, her position is very little different from that of an upper servant. Your grandfather was a passionate man, and a very proud man. Your father's elder brother was well provided for, but there were two sisters, and these and your father he hoped would make good marriages. He lived in very good style, but your uncle was extravagant, and your grandfather was over indulgent, and crippled himself a good deal in paying the debts that he incurred. It was natural, therefore, that he should have objected to your father's engagement to what he called a penniless governess. It was only what was to be expected. If he had stated his objections to the marriage calmly, there need have been no quarrel. Your father would assuredly have married me, in any case; and your grandfather might have refused to assist him, if he did so, but there need have been no breakup in the family, such as took place.

"However, as it was, your father resented his tone, and what had been merely a difference of opinion became a serious quarrel, and they never saw each other, afterwards. It was a great grief to me, and it was owing to that, and his being unable to earn his living in England, that your father brought me out here. I believe he would have done well at home, though it would have been a hard struggle. At that time I was very delicate, and was ordered by the doctors to go to a warm climate, and therefore your father accepted a position of a kind which, at least, enabled us to live, and obtained for me the benefit of a warm climate.

"Then the chance came of his going up to the Soudan, and there was a certainty that, if the expedition succeeded, as everyone believed it would, he would have obtained permanent rank in the Egyptian army, and so recovered the position in life that he had voluntarily given up, for my sake."

"And what was the illness you had, Mother?"

"It was an affection of the lungs, dear. It was a constant cough, that threatened to turn to consumption, which is one of the most fatal diseases we have in England."

"But it hasn't cured you, Mother, for I often hear you coughing, at night."

"Yes, my cough has been a little troublesome of late, Gregory."

Indeed, from the time of the disaster to the expedition of Hicks Pasha, Annie Hilliard had lost ground. She herself was conscious of it; but, except for the sake of the boy, she had not troubled over it. She had not altogether given up hope, but the hope grew fainter and fainter, as the years went on. Had it not been for the promise to her husband, not to mention his real name or to make any application to his father unless absolutely assured of his death, she would, for Gregory's sake, have written to Mr. Hartley, and asked for help that would have enabled her to take the boy home to England, and have him properly educated there. But she had an implicit faith in the binding of a promise so made, and as long as she was not driven, by absolute want, to apply to Mr. Hartley, was determined to keep to it.

A year after this conversation, Gregory was sixteen. Now tall and strong, he had, for some time past, been anxious to obtain some employment that would enable his mother to give up her teaching. Some of this, indeed, she had been obliged to relinquish. During the past few months her cheeks had become hollow, and her cough was now frequent by day, as well as by night. She had consulted an English doctor, who, she saw by the paper, was staying at Shepherd's Hotel. He had hesitated before giving a direct opinion, but on her imploring him to tell her the exact state of her health, said gently: