The White Prophet, Volume I (of 2)

"Only me, Michael! All right! Don't get up yet."

At the next moment Hafiz himself, puffing and blowing, and with the cool air of morning in his clothes, came dashing into the room.

"Halloa! Thought I was never coming back, I suppose! Couldn't tear myself away – had to see it through – only just over. Tell you what, though – I do believe … yes, I do really believe that brute of a Macdonald has set the trackers on to you! Coming down by El Azhar, behold, two damned blacks – Soudanese, I mean – poking their noses into the soft ground as if looking for footsteps. But no matter! We'll dish the devil yet!"

Thus the good fellow, after the nightlong flight of his spirit among sacred things, was giving way to the natural man, with chuckles and crows and shouts of joy and even harmless oaths that had no bitterness behind them.

"Lord God! you should have seen it, Gordon! Just like one of the 'Nights of the Prophet,' only bigger – yes, by my soul, bigger!"

Then, sitting on the side of the bed, he described the doings of the night – how Ishmael had passed from group to group, comforting the mourners and laying a soothing hand on every mother's sorrow, every father's grief.

"Can't tell what the deuce it is in the man – whether it's the prophet or the poet or the diviner – but he doesn't need that anybody should tell him anything, because he knows."

It was not at first that Gordon, coming out of the long night of his sufferings, caught the contagion of Hafiz's good spirits, but his weary, bloodshot eyes began to shine when Hafiz described Ishmael's appeal to the people to leave everything behind them and go with him into the desert – out of the empire of man into the empire of Allah.

"It was thrilling! Wallahi! You had to hear it, though! It was not so much what he said as something in the man himself that set all your nerves tingling."

And when Hafiz went on to tell of Ishmael's appeal for help, not to the saints, the men whom God had cleansed of all sins, the souls that were as pure as the sands of the sea-shore and as fruitless, but to the sinners, the sin-laden and sin-stained, to whom the peace of life and the repose of death were both denied, he felt Gordon's hand clutching at his own and his whole body quivering.

"Sinners, not saints – did he say that, Hafiz?"

"Yes! 'Come to me, my brothers,' he said. 'Your purification is here. A pilgrimage is before you that will cleanse you from all sin.' They took him at his word too. Good Lord! You never saw such scrambling! Such a crew! Sinners, by Jove! Some of them the most notorious scoundrels in Cairo – rich rascals who have been living for themselves all their lives and beggaring everybody about them. Assassins too, or men who have been suspected of being so. Yet there they were, fighting for a chance of going out to starvation and danger and death."

Gordon's eyes were running over by this time, but they were glistening too, like the sun when it shines through a cloud of rain.

"Open the curtains, Hafiz," he said, and when Hafiz had done so it was almost as if an angel of hope had parted them and come sweeping with a stream of sunlight into the room.

Then Hafiz told of the going away of the hundred messengers, of Ishmael's triumphant prediction that they would come back, and finally of the return of the people to their homes with the flow as of a great tide, filled with a new spirit, comforted, changed, transformed, transfigured.

"And Ishmael himself?" asked Gordon.

"He has gone also," said Hafiz.

"Where has he gone?"

"That was kept quiet, but the Chancellor was there, and I got it out of him – he has gone to Khartoum."

"Khartoum?"

"That's where he comes from – where he lived in his youth, at all events. He has to take the early train for Upper Egypt, so he'll be on his way already. Oh, something is going to happen! Wait! You'll see! Couldn't find out exactly what the men were told to do, but Government has its work cut out for it."

"There was to be no resistance to the rule of England – do you say he said that, Hafiz?"

"That's true. 'Do you wish to drive England out of Egypt? Go home,' he said, 'this pilgrimage is not yours. Do you expect to conquer by the sword? Stand back! This work is not for you.' All the same there'll be a mighty stir at the Ministry of the Interior. Omdehs and Moudirs and all the miscellaneous blackguards will be watching Ishmael and his men. So much the better for us, my boy. Now's your time! Now's your opportunity!"

While Gordon listened a great burden seemed to fall from him; a sort of electric revelation appeared to suffuse the path that had been so obscure a few moments before. His prayers seemed to be answered; the bright glory of a new hope seemed to be born within him and he thought he saw his way at last.

Though his career as a soldier was at an end; though his father, his mother and Helena were gone from him; though he had lost everything he had loved and been proud of; though the ways of life seemed to be for ever closed to him and the world had no use for him any longer, and he was beaten and broken and alone, there was One who was with him still – there was God!

"With our God is forgiveness," and in the immensity and majesty of His compassion, the Almighty had willed it that he, even he, might yet do something.

He would join the forces of the new prophet!

Why not? Their cause was a good one. It was not a crusade of Egypt against England, but of right against wrong, of justice against injustice, of belief against unbelief, of God against the world.

Hold! A traitor to his Church and country?

No, for this was the great universal war – the war of an empire that had no boundaries, the holy war that had been waged all the earth over and all the ages through – the war of religion and truth against the powers of darkness and death.

So thinking God's hand was leading him, he saw himself – white man and Christian and British soldier though he was – following Ishmael Ameer into the desert, working by his side, and then coming back at last when his sin had been forgiven and his redemption won.

"Yet wait! What about my father?" he thought.

But he could not think of his father at the same time as he thought of his return. He remembered his mother, though, and saw himself taking her in his arms and saying, "Mother, I've come back to you, as you always said I would. I only meant to do what was right, and if I did what was wrong, God has pardoned me."

And then far off, very far, hardly daring to see itself yet, in his awakened soul there was a hope of Helena. Somehow and somewhere he would meet her again – he knew not how or where or when, but Heaven knew everything, and the end would be with God.

Thus with a labouring and quivering heart, and with clouded eyes that were running over, he sat on his bed, looking into the stream of sunlight that was pouring into the room, and feeling with an immense joy that God had manifested His will at last.

Meanwhile Hafiz, still tuning his speech to the spirit of the natural man, was chuckling and crowing over his new chance of getting Gordon out of the country.

"Damn it all, man, we'll beat them yet, if you'll only leave yourself to me. And you will, I know you will!"

"Hafiz," said Gordon, "you thought last night you could help me to get away from here – do you still think you could?"

"Certainly! Isn't that what I'm saying?"

"Do you think you could do it now?"

"Why not … that is to say, if you are well enough … It's your hand, isn't it?"

"That's nothing – only a sore finger, you know."

"God! A sore finger, and old Michael says it's gone – half of it, anyway! But if it had been half your arm it wouldn't have stopped you – I know that quite well. So if you're game I'm ready. The sooner the better too! The dear old Patriarch will close his eyes, and as for Michael – "

"What day is this, Hafiz?" said Gordon – he had lost count of time.

"Monday – that's the worst of it. The steamer doesn't sail until Saturday, and you'll have to stay in Alexandria until … Or wait! Why not take a foreign boat? The French one to Marseilles, or – let me think – the Italian boat to Messina. The very thing! She sails on Wednesday. You can join the English ship at Naples. Splendid! Better than joining her at Alexandria. There's Helena, you know.

"Helena?"

"A woman's a woman after all, my boy. Mind I don't say Helena would give you away, but she might – not having seen you since her father's death and then coming so unexpectedly upon you at Alexandria – at the ship's side, perhaps. Better not risk it. Get out of the country before you meet her – away from that brute of a Macdonald and all the tags and bobs of the Intelligence Department."

"I'll want a disguise of some sort, Hafiz."

"Good idea!" said Hafiz, slapping his knee. "You can't set foot in the streets of Cairo without being recognised. Then if I'm right about the trackers … but we'll not talk about that. Something Eastern, eh? What do you say to a Coptic priest? Old Michael could lend us a black gown and a black turban. Or no, a Bedouin, going to Naples for ammunition! Why, it happens every day! Splendid costume! Covers your head and nearly all your face, you know … Oh, we'll lick him, the big, bloated, blithering … Ha, ha! Effendi thinks he holds the field, and he is walking about the city like a leopard among dogs. But wait! We'll see!"

Then getting up from the side of the bed and walking to and fro in the room, Hafiz laughed out loud in his savage joy at the thought of defeating Macdonald, until Gordon said —

"I shall want a man to go with me. Can you find me a man, Hafiz?" and thereupon the good fellow's spirits dropped suddenly and his laughing mouth began to lag.

"A man? To go with you? Well, I … I thought of doing that myself, Gordon … as far as the boat I mean … just to see the last of you … not knowing when I may … But perhaps you're right. I might cause you to be suspected, and then … Yes, I must give that up, I suppose."

"That's all right, Hafiz – we'll meet again somewhere," said Gordon, and when Hafiz's face had brightened afresh he added —

"I'll want camels, Hafiz – two good, strong camels."

"Camels? Why, what the deuce… Ah, of course! What a fool I am! Every station watched! Wonder I never thought of that before! The jackals are all along the line, and if you had gone by train, damn it, man! where should we have been? In Macdonald's mousetraps in no time! Oh, yes, camels, of course. I'll get you camels. Good ones, too. Bedouins always have good camels. Ha, ha! Effendi will go to the place he is fit for, and God increase the might of Islam!"

"I'll want money too, Hafiz."

"Don't trouble about that. I've got a little myself – all you'll want to get away."

"I'll want a good deal, Hafiz. There's a bundle of bank notes in the top drawer of my desk at the barracks. You'll find the key in my trousers' pocket, and if you can only contrive – "

"Of course I can. Your soldier boy has been asking after you ever since you went away. He'll manage it. Macdonald's bloodhounds are beating about the barracks, of course, but Tommy – trust Tommy to get the money for you… In your trousers' pocket, you say? … All right. Here's the key! … Let me see, now – you'll want your berth booked – to Messina, I mean. I'll do that myself and give you whatever's left … I must keep out of people's way until after Wednesday, though! No calling at the Agency – not if I know it! My mother must be told I've been sent off somewhere, and as for the Consul-General and the telephone – I'll break the blessed receiver, that's what I'll do! … Never mind about my not seeing you off. Lord alive, that's nothing! Hope to get leave before long, and then I'll slip over to England. So I'll not be saying good-bye to you when you go away, Gordon – not altogether, you know – not for good, I mean. And if all goes well with you and Helena – "

But the chuckling and the crowing and the laughing out loud in savage exultation at the thought of beating Macdonald were beginning to break down, and then Gordon, unable to keep back the truth any longer, said in a voice that chilled the ear of Hafiz —

"Hafiz, old fellow!"

"Well?"

"I don't intend to go back to England."

"You don't intend to go back – "

"No."

"Then where the … where are you going to, Charlie?"

"I'm going to Khartoum."

CHAPTER XI

During the earlier hours of the Night of Lamentation Helena sat in her room looking over bundles of old letters and tying them up with ribbon. The letters were nearly all from Gordon, but being written under different conditions and meant to be read in happier hours, every playful passage in them stung and every word of affection scorched.

She was waiting for the black boy to come back from the demonstration, and thinking out a course of conduct. Instead of returning to England she was to remain in Cairo, and by help of the new evidence she was to compel the law to arrest and convict the guilty man. It was her right to do so, and since the authorities, thinking of other things, were shirking their responsibility, it was her duty, her solemn and sacred duty.

What did State considerations matter to her? Nothing! She remembered the predicament of the Army surgeon without compunction, and even when she thought of the position of the Consul-General she did not care. Her father was dead, Gordon was lost to her, she was a woman and she was alone, and nothing else was of the smallest consequence. Thus seeing to the bottom of her own misery, she had now no pity for anybody else.

At midnight the black boy had not returned, and being worn out with sleeplessness, and assured by her other servants that Mosie was well able to take care of himself, she went to bed. But the moonlight filtered through the white window-blind, and she lay for some time with wide-open eyes thinking what she would do next day. She would go down to the Ministry of the Interior and set the law in motion. There would be no time to lose, for if Ishmael escaped the consequences of to-night's proceedings he might leave Cairo without delay.

She slept a few hours only, and when she awoke the sun was flecking with fiery bars a window that faced to the east. While she lay on her back with her arm under her head, looking at the ceiling, and working herself up into a still greater hatred of Ishmael, there came a timid knock at the door and the black boy entered the room. He was breathless and dishevelled and full of apologies.

"Lady angry with Mosie? Mosie stop all night to tell lady everything," he said, and then he told her what had happened in the Mohammedan cemetery – a wild, disordered, delirious story of the departure of the hundred men.

"But the prophet himself – what has become of him?" asked Helena, raising her head from her pillow.

"White Prophet gone," said Mosie.

"Gone?"

"Mosie follow him to station. White Prophet go by train, lady."

"By train?"

"Yes, lady. White Prophet go by train to Upper Egypt," said Mosie, and then Helena heard no more.

Her head fell back to her pillow and she covered her eyes with her hands. The guilty man was gone, the authorities had allowed him to go, and if the evil-doer was to be punished there was nothing left but personal vengeance.

Every tender impulse of her heart was now dead. Overwhelmed as by a new burden, and haunted by a dark responsibility – that of seeing God's vengeance brought down upon her father's murderer – she saw herself at one moment prompting Gordon to kill Ishmael. Why not? There was no other way. Gordon should kill Ishmael Ameer because Ishmael Ameer had killed her father!

At the next moment the recollection that Gordon had gone took her back once more to the bitterest part of her suffering. She had always thought that when God made Gordon He had made him without fear, yet he had run away from the consequences of being court-martialled. It was intensely painful to her to despise Gordon, but do what she would she could not help feeling a growing contempt for him. If he had only stood up to his punishment she would have been proud of him, and even if he had been drummed out of the army, or any fate had befallen him less terrible than death, he would have found her standing by his side.

But he had fled, he had left her, and being useless for all purposes of righteous vengeance, a woman without a man behind her, she could do nothing now but go back to England.

During the next three days she was kept busy by the mechanical preparations for her departure. There was not much she had to do, for the contents of the General's house belonged to the army, and beyond her own and her father's personal possessions there was little to pack up, yet the black boy was always beside her, with a helping hand but a lagging lip and many plaintive lamentations.

"Lady not want Mosie any more now – no?"

On the Thursday he came running into Helena's room to say that Lady Nuneham, with her Egyptian maid, had come to call on her.

Helena met Gordon's mother at the door, the sweet old soul with her pale, spiritual face, suffering visibly, but bearing herself bravely as she stepped out of her closely curtained carriage and crossed the garden path, under the white heat of the noonday sun, with one arm through Fatimah's, and a trembling hand on the ebony handle of a walking-stick.

As soon as she reached the hall the old lady lifted her veil and stretched out her arms to Helena and kissed her, and then patted her shoulder with her mittened hand as if Helena had been a child and she had come to comfort her.

"My poor Helena! It's hard for you, I know, but if God sends the cross He sends the strength to carry it. I've always found it so, my dear," she said, and when she was seated on the sofa with Helena beside her, she began to talk of her own father, how they had been everything to each other, and when he had died she had thought she could not live without him, but God had been good – He had sent her her husband and then —

But that was a blind alley down which she could walk no further, for there was one name that was trembling on the lips of both women and neither of them could yet bring herself to speak it.

"When my mother died, too – I was married then and living here in Cairo, but mother couldn't leave the old home in Massachusetts where I was brought up as a child … Poor mother, she used to play Blind-man's-buff in the hall with me, I remember, for we were far away from other people and I had no little playmates … when she died I thought I should have died too, but God was good to me again – He sent me my own child, my boy, my – "

It was just as if all roads converged to one centre, and to escape from it the old lady began to talk of little things, asking simple questions and giving motherly advice, while Helena held down her head and drew the hem of her handkerchief through her fingers.

"You are sailing on Saturday, are you not?"

"Yes, on Saturday."

"You must take good care of yourself, dearest. It is hot in Cairo, but it may be cool in Alexandria and even cold on the sea. Put some warm clothing on, dear – some nice warm underclothing, you know."

She was sure to meet pleasant people on the steamer and they would see her safely into the train at Marseilles. It would be such an agreeable break to travel overland, through Paris, and when she reached London —

"Have you anybody to meet you in London, Helena?"

Still drawing the hem of her handkerchief through her fingers, Helena shook her head.

"I'm sorry for that, dear, very sorry."

Arriving in London was so trying, so bewildering, especially to a woman. Such crowds, such confusion! It always made her feel so helpless. And then she had the Consul-General to look after her, and once Gordon had come to meet her too. He was at the Staff College at that time, and before she alighted from the carriage she had seen him forging his way down the platform, and he kissed his hand to her —

But the sweet old thing could bear up no longer, and while Helena pressed her handkerchief to her lips, she said —

"O Helena, how happy we might have been! It's wrong of me, I know it's wrong, but I can't reconcile myself to it even yet. 'Why is my life prolonged?' I have often thought, and then I have told myself it was because God intended that I should live to see my dear children happy. Ah, my darling, it would have been so beautiful! My children and perhaps my children's children. If I could only have seen them all together once! It would have been so easy to go then. But now my son is gone – I don't know what has become of him – and my daughter – my sweet daughter that was to be – "

Helena sank to her knees. "Mother!" she said, and burying her face in Lady Nuneham's shoulder, she felt, for the first time in her life, that a mother's heart was beating against her own.

After a while the old lady, whose arms had been about Helena's neck, began to stroke her forehead and the top of her head and to say in a calmer voice —

"It was wrong of me to repine, dear. Happiness does not depend on us. It depends on God, and we should leave everything to Him. He will do what is best. I'm sure He will."

Then in a nervous way she attempted to defend Gordon. They were not to be too hard on him. No doubt he thought he was doing what was right.

"And he was, too, wasn't he? In a sense at least. Don't you think so, Helena?"

Helena could not answer, but she made a helpless motion with her head.

They were not to suppose he meant to forsake them either, and if he had fled away he was not thinking of himself only – they might be sure of that. He never did – never had done – never once since he was a child.

"You couldn't give him a handful of sweets when he was a boy but he asked for another for Hafiz."

Perhaps he was thinking of his father – that if he gave himself up and there was an inquiry, a court-martial, the Consul-General would suffer in his influence in Egypt and his esteem in England. Perhaps he was thinking of Helena herself – that it might seem as if her father's death had been hastened by the painful scene with himself. And perhaps he was thinking a little of his mother, too – of the pain she would suffer at sight of her husband and her son at war before the world.

However this might be, he would come back. She knew he would. Oh yes, she knew quite well he would come back. For four days she had asked God, and He had answered her at last.

"'Help me, O God, for Christ's sake!' I said. 'Will my dear son come back to me? Shall I see him again? O God, give me a sign.' And He did, my dear. Yes, it was just before dawn this morning. 'Janet!' said a voice, and I was not afraid. 'Be patient, Janet! All will be well!'"

Helena dared not look up, being afraid to penetrate by so much as a glance the sanctity of the old lady's soul.

"So you see it's wrong to repine, dear. Everything will work out for the best. You are going to England, but that doesn't matter in the least. We'll all come together again yet. And when my dear ones are united, my sweet daughter and my boy, my brave, brave boy – "

The old lady's voice was quivering with the excitement of her joy, when Fatimah, who had stood aside in silence, stepped forward and said —

"Better go home now, my lady. His lordship will be waiting for his lunch."

Lady Nuneham took Helena's head between her hands and kissed her on the forehead, then dropped her veil and rose to her feet by help of Fatimah's arm on the one side and her stick on the other.

"Good-bye for the present, Helena! Be sure you write as soon as you get to England. Take good care of yourself on the voyage, dear. And don't forget to put on some nice warm underclothing, you know. Good-bye!"

Helena saw her to the door, the sweet, helpless old child, living by the life of her beautiful love. As she passed down the path she waved her delicate hand in its silken mitten, and Helena said farewell to her with her eyes, knowing she would see her no more.

CHAPTER XII

After a while Helena began to think tenderly of Gordon, and to conjure up the beautiful moments of their love – the moment in the arbour before he set off for Alexandria, the moment in his quarters when she had to slip off her glove and dip her finger in the glass from which he drank her health, and above all, the moment of their first meeting, when he said he loved Egypt and the Egyptians, and everything and everybody, and they laughed and looked into each other's eyes, and smiled without speaking, and he took her hand and kept on holding it, and a world of warm impulses coursed through her veins, and something whispered to her, "It is he!"