The White Prophet, Volume I (of 2)

But the General could bear no more. Rising from the desk, he said contemptuously —

"All that's very fine, very exalted, I dare say, but we are plain soldiers, you and I, and we cannot follow the flights of great minds like these Mohammedan Sheikhs. So without further argument I ask you if you are willing to carry out the order I have given you."

"It would be a crime, sir."

"Crime or no crime, it would be no concern of yours. Do you refuse to obey my order?"

"Recall your order, sir, and I shall have no reason to refuse to obey it."

"Do you refuse to obey my order?"

"It would be against my conscience, General."

"Your conscience is not in question. Your only duty is to carry out the will of your superior."

"When I accepted my commission in the army did I lose my rights as a human being, sir?"

"Don't talk to me about losing your rights. In the face of duty an officer loses father and mother, wife and child. According to the King's regulations, you are a soldier first, remember."

"No, sir; according to the King's regulations I am first of all a man."

The General bridled his gathering anger and answered —

"Of course you can ask for a written order – if you wish to avoid the danger of blame."

"I wish to avoid the danger of doing wrong, sir," said Gordon, and then, glancing towards his father, he added, "Let me feel that I'm fighting for the right. An English soldier cannot fight without that."

"Then I ask you as an English soldier if you refuse to obey my order?" repeated the General. But Gordon, still with his face towards his father, said —

"Wherever the English flag flies men say, 'Here is justice.' That's something to be proud of. Don't let us lose it, sir."

"I ask you again," said the General, "if you refuse to obey my order?"

"I have done wrong things without knowing them," said Gordon, "but when you ask me to – "

"England asks you to obey your General – will you do it?" said General Graves, and then Gordon faced back to him, and in a voice that rang through the room he said —

"No, not for England will I do what I know to be wrong."

At that the Consul-General waved his hand and said, "Let us have done," whereupon General Graves, who was now violently agitated, touched a hand-bell on the desk, and when his servant appeared, he said —

"Tell my daughter to come to me."

Not a word more was spoken until light footsteps were heard approaching and Helena came into the room, with a handkerchief in her hand, pale as if she had been crying and breathless as if she had been running hard. The three old gentlemen rose and bowed to her as she entered, but Gordon, whose face had frowned when he heard the General's command, rose and sat down again without turning in her direction.

"Sit down, Helena," said the General, and Helena sat.

"Helena, you will remember that I asked you if you could marry an officer who for disobedience to his General – and that General your father – had been court-martialled and perhaps degraded?"

In a scarcely audible voice Helena answered, "Yes."

"Then tell Colonel Lord what course you will take if by his own deliberate act that misfortune should befall him."

A hot blush mounted to Helena's cheeks, and looking at the hem of her handkerchief she said —

"Gordon knows already what I would say, father. There is no need to tell him."

Then the General turned back to Gordon. "You hear?" he said. "I presume you understand Helena's answer. For the sake of our mutual peace and happiness I wished to give you one more chance. The issue is now plain. Either you obey your General's order or you renounce all hope of his daughter – which is it to be?"

The young man swallowed his anger and answered —

"Is it fair, sir – fair to Helena, I mean – to put her to a test like that – either violent separation from her father or from me? But as you have spoken to Helena I ask you to allow me to do so also."

"No, I forbid it!" said the General.

"Don't be afraid, sir. I'm not going to appeal over your head to any love for me in Helena's heart. That must speak for itself now – if it's to speak at all. But" – his voice was so soft and low that it could hardly be heard – "I wish to ask her a question. Helena – "

"I forbid it, I tell you," said the General hotly.

There was a moment of tense silence and then Gordon, who had suddenly become hoarse, said —

"You spoke about a written order, General – give it to me."

"With pleasure!" said the General, and turning to his Military Secretary at the desk he requested him to make out an order in the Order Book according to the terms of his verbal command.

Nothing was heard in the silence of the next moment but the spasmodic scratching of Captain Graham's quill pen. The Consul-General sat motionless, and the Pasha merely smoothed one white hand over the other. Gordon tried to glance into Helena's face, but she looked fixedly before her out of her large, wide-open, swollen eyes.

Only one idea shaped itself clearly through the storm that raged in Gordon's brain – to secure his happiness with Helena he must make himself unhappy in every other relation of life – to save himself from degradation as a soldier he must degrade himself as a man.

Presently through the whirling mist of his half-consciousness he was aware that the Military Secretary had ceased writing, and that the General was offering him a paper.

"Here it is," the General was saying, with a certain bitterness. "Now you may set your mind at ease. If there are any bad consequences, you can preserve your reputation as an officer. And if there are any complaints from the War Office or anywhere else, you can lay the blame on me. You can go on with your duty without fear for your honour, and when – "

But Gordon, whose gorge had risen at every word, suddenly lost control of himself, and getting up with the paper in his hand he said —

"No, I will not go on. Do you suppose I have been thinking of myself? Take back your order. There is no obedience due to a sinful command, and this command is sinful. It is wicked, it is mad, it is abominable. You are asking me to commit murder – that's it – murder – and I will not commit it. There's your order – take it back and damn it!"

So saying, he crushed the paper in his hands and flung it on the desk.

At the next instant everybody in the room had risen. There was consternation on every face, and the General, who was choking with anger, was saying in a half-stifled voice —

"You are no fool – you know what you have done now. You have not only refused to obey orders – you have insulted your General and been guilty of deliberate insubordination. Therefore you are unworthy of bearing arms – give me your sword."

Gordon hesitated for a moment, and the General said —

"Give it me – give it me."

Then with a rapid gesture Gordon unbuckled his sword from the belt and handed it to the General.

The General held it in both his hands, which were vibrating like the parts of an engine from the moving power within, while he said, in the same half-stifled voice as before —

"You have had the greatest opportunity that ever came to an English soldier and – thrown it away. You have humiliated your father, outraged the love of your intended wife, and insulted England. Therefore you are a traitor!"

Gordon quivered visibly at that word, and seeing this, the General hurled it at him again.

"A traitor, I say. A traitor who has consorted with the enemies of his country." With that he drew the sword from its scabbard, broke it across his knee, and flung the fragments at Gordon's feet.

Helena turned and fled from the room in agony at the harrowing scene, and the Consul-General, unable to bear the sight of it, rose and walked to the window, his face broken up with pain as no one had ever seen it before.

Then the General, who had been worked up to a towering rage by his own words and acts, lost himself utterly, and saying —

"You are unfit to wear the decorations of an English soldier. Take them off, take them off!" he laid hold of Gordon's medals – the Distinguished Service Order, the South African Medal with its four clasps, the British Soudan Medal, the Medjidieh, and the Khedive's star – and tore them from his tunic, ripping pieces of the cloth away with them, and threw them on the ground.

Then in a voice like the scream of a wild bird, he cried —

"Now go! Go back to your quarters and consider yourself under arrest. Or take my advice and be off altogether. Quit the army you have dishonoured and the friends you have disgraced and hide your infamous conduct in some foreign land. Leave the room at once!"

Gordon had stood through this gross indignity bolt upright and without speaking. His face had become deadly white and his colourless lower lip had trembled. At the end, while the old General was taking gusts of breath, he tried to say something, but his tongue refused to speak. At length he staggered rather than walked to the door, and with his hand on the handle he turned and said quietly, but in a voice which his father never forgot —

"General, the time may come when it will be even more painful to you to remember all this than it has been to me to bear it."

Then he stumbled out of the room.

CHAPTER XXIV

Out in the hall he had an impulse to turn towards Helena's room on the right, but through his half-blind eyes he saw Helena herself on the left, standing by the open entrance to the garden, with her handkerchief at her mouth.

"Helena!"

She made a little nervous cry, but stifling it in her throat she turned hotly round on him.

"You told me that love was above everything," she said, "and this is how you love me!"

Torn as he was to his heart's core, outraged as he believed himself to be, he made a feeble effort to excuse himself.

"I couldn't help it, Helena, – it was impossible for me to act otherwise."

"Oh, I know! I know!" she said. "You were doing what you thought to be right. But I am no match for you. You have duties that are higher than your duty to me."

Her tone cut him to the quick, and he tried to speak but could not. Like a drowning man he stretched out his hand to her, but she made no response.

"It was not to be, I see that now," she said, while her eyes filled and her bosom heaved. "I am not worthy of you. But I loved you and I thought you loved me, and I believed you when you told me that nothing could come between us."

Again he tried to speak, to explain, to protest, but his tongue would not utter a sound.

"If you had really loved me you would have been ready to … even to… But I was mistaken and I am punished, and this is how it is to end!"

"Helena, for God's sake – " he began, but he could bear no more. He did not see that the girl's love was fighting with her pride. The hideous injustice of it all was working like madness in his brain, and after a moment he turned to go.

As he walked across the garden the ground under his feet sounded hollow in his ears like the ground above a new-covered grave. When he reached the gate he thought he heard Helena calling in a pleading, sobbing voice —

"Gordon!"

But when he turned to look back she had disappeared. Then bareheaded, without helmet or sword, with every badge of rank and honour gone, he pulled the gate open and staggered into the square.

CHAPTER XXV

Helena returned to her father's room, and found the two old men getting ready to go. In the Pasha's face there were traces of that impulse to smile which comes to shallow natures in the presence of another person's troubles. But the face of the Consul-General was a tragic sight. The square-set jaw hung low, and the eyes were heavy as with unshed tears. It was easy to see that the iron man was deeply moved – that the depths of his ice-bound soul were utterly broken up.

Only in short, disjointed sentences did he speak at all. It was about his enemies – the corrupt, cruel, and hypocritical upholders of the old dark ways. They had bided their time; they had taken their revenge; they had hit him at last where he could least bear a blow; they had struck him in the face with the hand of his only son.

"There is no shame left in them," he said, and then he turned to Helena as if intending to say some word of sympathy. He wanted to tell her that he had hoped for other things, and would have been happy if they had come to pass. But when he saw the girl standing before him with her red eyes and pale cheeks, he hesitated, grasped her hand, held it for a moment, and then walked away without a word.

The Military Secretary accompanied the Consul-General and the Pasha to their carriages, and so father and daughter were left together. The General, labouring under the most painful of all senses, the sense of having done an unworthy thing, walked for some minutes about the room, and talked excitedly, while Helena sat on the sofa in silence, and, resting her chin on her hand, looked fixedly before her.

"Well, well, it's all over, thank God! It couldn't be helped, either! It had to be! Better as it is, too, than if it had come later on… How hot I am! My throat is like fire. Get me a drink of water, girl."

"Let me give you your medicine, father. It's here on the desk," said Helena.

"No, no! Water, girl, water! That's right! There! … He has gone, I suppose? Has he gone? Yes? Good thing too! Hope I'll never see him again! I never will – never! … How my head aches! No wonder either!"

"You're ill, father – let me run for the doctor."

"Certainly not. I'm all right. Sit down, girl. Sit down and don't worry… You mustn't mind me. I'm a bit put out – naturally! It's hard for you, I know, but don't cry, Helena!"

"I'm not crying, father – you see I'm not."

"That's right! That's right, dear! It's hard for you, I say, but then it isn't easy for me either. I liked him. I did, I confess it. I really liked him, and to … to do that was like cutting off one's own son. But … give me another drink of water, Helena … or perhaps if you think you ought to run … no, give me the medicine and I'll be better presently."

She poured out a dose and he drank it off.

"Now I'll lie down and close my eyes. I soon get better when I lie down and close my eyes, you know. And don't fret, dear. Think what an escape you've had! Merciful heavens! A traitor! Think if you had married a traitor! A man who had sold himself to the enemies of England! I was proud of you when you showed him that – come what would – you must stand by your country. Splendid! Just what I expected of you, Helena! Splendid!"

After a while his excited speech and gusty breathing softened down to silence and to something like sleep, and then Helena sat on a stool beside the sofa and covered her face with her hands. A hot flush mounted to her pale cheeks when she remembered that it had not been for England that she had acted as she had, but first for her father and next for herself.

Perhaps she ought to have told Gordon why she could not leave her father. If she had done so he might have acted otherwise. But the real author of the whole trouble had been the Egyptian. How she hated that man! With all the bitterness of her tortured heart she hated him!

As for Gordon, traitor or no traitor, he had been above them all! Far, far above everybody! Even the Consul-General, now she came to think of it, had been a little man compared with his son.

With her face buried in both hands and the tears at last trickling through her fingers, she saw everything over again, and one thing above all – Gordon standing in silence while her father insulted and degraded him.

The General opened his eyes, and seeing Helena at his feet he tried to comfort her, but every word he spoke went like iron into her soul.

"I'm sorry for you, Helena – very sorry! We must bear this trouble together, dear. Only ourselves again now, you know, just as it was five years ago at home. Your dark hour, this time, darling, but I'll make it up to you. Come, kiss me, Helena," and, drying her weary eyes, she kissed him.

The afternoon sun was then reddening the alabaster walls of the mosque outside, and they heard a surging sound as of a crowd approaching. A moment later little black Mosie ran in to say that the new Mahdi was coming, and almost before the General and Helena could rise to their feet a tall man in white Oriental costume entered the room. He came in slowly, solemnly, and with head bent, saying —

"Excuse me, sir, if I come without ceremony."

"Ishmael Ameer?" asked the General.

"My name is Ishmael – you are the Commander of the British forces. May I speak with you alone?"

The General stood still for a moment, measuring his man from head to foot, and then said —

"Leave us, Helena."

Helena hesitated, and the General said, "I'm better now – leave us."

With that she went out reluctantly, turning at the door to look at her enemy, who stood in his great height in the middle of the floor and never so much as glanced in her direction.

CHAPTER XXVI

Both men continued to stand during the interview that followed – the one in his white robes by the end of the sofa, resting two tapering fingers upon it, the other in his General's uniform by the side of the desk, except when in the heat of his anger he strode with heavy step and the jingling of spurs across the space between.

"Now, sir, now," said the General. "I have urgent work to do, and not much time to give you. What is it?"

"I come," said Ishmael, who was outwardly very calm, though his large black eyes were full of fire and light, "I come to speak to you about the order to close El Azhar."

"Then you come to the wrong place," said the General sharply. "You should go to the Agency – the British Agency."

"I have seen the English lord already. He refuses to withdraw his order. Therefore I am here to ask you – forgive me – I am here to ask you not to obey it."

The General tried to laugh. "Wonderful!" he said. "Your Eastern ideas of discipline are wonderful! Please understand, sir, I am here as the instrument of authority – that and that only."

"An instrument has its responsibility," said Ishmael. "If there were no instruments to do evil deeds would evil deeds be done? It is not your fault, sir, that the order has been issued, but it will be your fault if it is carried into effect."

"Really!" said the General, again trying to laugh. "Permit me to tell you, sir, that in this case there will be no fault in question, neither of mine nor anybody else's. El Azhar is a hotbed of sedition, and it is high time the Government cleared it out."

"El Azhar," said Ishmael, "is the heart of the Moslem faith. Take their religion away from them and the Moslems have nothing left. You are a Christian, and when your great Master was on earth He fed the souls of the people first."

"Yes, and He whipped the rascals out of the temple, and that's what the Government is going to do now – to drive out the pretentious impostors who are putting a lying spirit into the mouth of the people and making it impossible to govern them."

The Egyptian showed no anger. "I am here only to plead for the people, sir. Do not harden your heart against them. Do not send armed men among an unarmed populace. It will be slaughter."

"Tell them to submit to the Government and there will be no harm done to any one. It's their duty, isn't it? Whatever the Government may be, isn't it their duty to submit to it?"

"Yes," said Ishmael. "We who are Moslems are taught by the Prophet (blessed be his name!) that even if a negro slave is appointed to rule over us we ought to obey him."

"Deuce take it, sir, what do you mean by that?" said the General.

"But Government is a trust from God," said the Egyptian, "and at the Day of Resurrection the Most High will ask you what you have done to His children."

"Damn it, sir, have you come here to preach me a sermon?"

"I have come to plead with you for justice – the justice you look for from your Saviour. 'Be merciful to the weak,' He taught, and it is for the weak I appeal to you. He was meek and lowly – will you forget His precepts? 'Love one another' – will you make strife between man and man? He is dead – shall it be said that His spirit has died out among those who call Him their Redeemer?"

The General brought his fist heavily down on the desk as if to command silence.

"Listen here, sir," he said. "If you imagine for one moment that this tall talk will have any effect upon me, let me advise you to drop it. Being a plain soldier who has received a plain command, I shall take whatever military steps are necessary to see it faithfully carried out, and if the precious leaders of the people, playing on their credulity and fanaticism, should instigate rebellion, I shall have the honour – understand me plainly – I shall have the honour to lodge them in safe quarters, whosoever they are and whatsoever their pretensions may be."

The Egyptian's eyes showed at that moment that he was a man capable of wild frenzy, but he controlled himself and answered —

"I am not here to defend myself, sir. You can take me now if you choose to do so. But if I cannot plead with you for the people let me plead with you for yourself – your family."

The General, who had turned away from Ishmael, swung round on him.

"My family?"

"He that troubleth his own house, saith the Koran, shall inherit the wind. Will you, my brother, allow your daughter to be separated from the brave man who loves her? A woman is tender and sweet; all she wants is love; and love is a sacred thing, sir. Your daughter is your flesh and blood – will you make her unhappy? I see a day when you are dead – will it comfort you in the grave that two who should be together are apart?"

"They're apart already, so that's over and done with," said the General. "But listen to me again, sir. My girl needs none of your pity. She has done her duty as a soldier's daughter, and cut off the traitor whom you, and men like you, appear to have corrupted. Look here – and here," he cried, pointing to the broken sword and the medals which were still lying where he had flung them on the floor. "The man has gone – gone in disgrace and shame. That's what you've done for him, if it's any satisfaction to you to know it. As for my daughter," he said, raising his voice in his gathering wrath and striding up to Ishmael with heavy steps and the jingling of his spurs, "As for my daughter, Helena, I will ask you to be so good as to keep her name out of it – do you hear? Keep her name out of it, or else – "

At that moment the men heard the door open and a woman's light footsteps behind them. It was Helena coming into the room.

"Did you call me, father?" she asked.

"No; go back immediately."

She looked doubtfully at the two men, who were now face to face as if in the act of personal quarrel, hesitated, seemed about to speak, and then, went out slowly.

There was silence for a moment after she was gone, and then Ishmael said —

"Do I understand you to say, sir, that Colonel Lord has gone in disgrace?"

"Yes, for consorting with the enemies of his country and refusing to obey the order of his General."

"Lost his place and rank as a soldier?"

"Soon will, and then he will be alone and have you to thank for it."

The Egyptian drew himself up to his full height and answered, "You are wrong, sir. He who has no one has God, and if that brave man has suffered rather than do an evil act, will God forget him? No!"

"God will do as He thinks best without considering either you or me, sir," said the General. "But I have something to do and I will ask you to leave me… Or wait one moment! Lest you should carry away the impression that because Colonel Lord has refused to obey his General's order the order will not be obeyed – wait and see."

He touched the bell and called for his Aide-de-camp.

"Tell Colonel Macdonald to come to me immediately," said the General, and when the Aide-de-camp had gone he turned to his desk for papers.

The Egyptian, who had never moved from his place by the sofa, now took one step forward and said in a low, quivering voice —

"General, I have appealed to you on behalf of my people and on your own behalf, but there is one thing more."

"What is it?"

"Your country."

The General made an impatient gesture, and the Egyptian said, "Hear me, I beg, I pray! Real as life, real as death, real as wells of water in a desert place, is their religion to the Muslemeen, and if you lay so much as your finger upon it your Government will die."