The White Prophet, Volume I (of 2)

But thinking like this about Gordon only made her remember with even more bitterness than before the man who had taken him away from her. Presently she saw that there was a kind of dishonour to Gordon in hating the Egyptian for that, and though she tried to justify herself by thinking of Gordon's mother, and of the beautiful blind faith that was doomed to death, she was compelled to go back at length to the one sure ground on which she could continue to hate Ishmael and keep a good conscience – that the man had killed her father.

So intensely did she work up her feelings on this subject that, awaking in the middle of the night after Lady Nuneham's visit, she held out her hands in bed and prayed to God to let His vengeance fall on the Egyptian.

"Punish him, O God, punish him, punish, him! My father is dead! My dear father is dead! He was so weak, so ill, so old! O God, let Thy vengeance fall on the coward who killed him! Let Thy hand be on him as long as he lives! Follow him wherever he goes! Destroy him whatever he does! Let him never know another happy hour! Let him be an exile and an outcast to the last hour of his life! O God, hear me, hear me!"

Next morning she felt ashamed of this outburst, but less because of its bitterness than its futility, and then with a sense of utter helplessness she began to feel the misery of being a woman. It was a part of the cruel scheme of nature that, however injured and outraged, a woman could do nothing. In the East, above all, she was useless – useless for all purposes of justice or vengeance or revenge.

On the Friday afternoon, having made the last preparations for her departure, she was sitting at her desk writing labels for her trunks and portmanteaus, when Mosie dashed in upon her to say that the Princess Nazimah, with sais and footmen and eunuchs, was driving up to the door. A moment later the Princess entered the room. Her plump person, redolent of perfume, was clad in a tussore silk gown, and under the latest of Paris hats her powdered face was plainly visible through the thinnest of chiffon veils.

"I hear you are leaving Egypt, so I've come to bid good-bye to you," she said, and then taking Helena by the shoulders and looking into her face she cried —

"Merciful powers, what has become of your eyes, my beauty? What have you been doing to yourself, my moon?"

"Nothing," said Helena.

"Nothing? Don't tell me. You are not sleeping, no, nor eating either. Come, sit down and tell me all about it," and sitting heavily on the sofa, with Helena beside her, she proceeded to do the talking herself.

"But, my dear creature, my good girl, this is nonsense. Excuse the word – nonsense! Good God! Is a girl to kill herself because her father dies before her? Fathers do, and why shouldn't they? Mine did. He was a beast. Excuse the word – a beast. Forty wives – or was it fifty? – but he died nevertheless."

With that she lifted her veil, used a smelling bottle, and then began again —

"I see what it is, though – your ways are not our ways, and all this comes of your religion. It makes you think about death and the grave, whereas ours tells us to think about life. Your Christianity is a funeral mute, my dear, while Islam is a dancing girl, God bless her! You groan and weep when your kindred die. We laugh and are happy, or if we are not we ought to be. I'm sure I was when my first husband died. 'Thank the Lord he's gone,' I said. It's true I hadn't lived on the best of terms with him, but then – "

"It's not my father's death only," began Helena haltingly, whereupon the Princess said —

"Yes, of course! I've heard all about it. He's gone, and I suppose you know no more than anybody else what has become of him. No?"

"No!"

"Ah, my dear, my moon, my beauty, all this wouldn't have happened if you had taken my advice. When your Gourdan began to oppose his father you should have stopped him. Yes, you could have done it. Of course you could."

"I couldn't, Princess," said Helena.

"What? You mean to say you tried to and you couldn't? You couldn't get him to give up that ridiculous holy man for a girl like … Then God have mercy upon us, what are you moaning about? Who ever heard of such a thing? A young woman like you eating her heart out for the loss of a man who prefers … well, upon my word!"

The Princess put her smelling bottle to both nostrils in quick succession, and then said —

"It's true I thought him the best of the bunch. In fact I simply lost my heart to him. But if he had been the only man in the world … Oh, I know! You think he is the only one. I thought that myself when my first husband left me. It wasn't a Mahdi in his case. Only a milliner, and I was ready to die of shame. But I didn't. I just put some kohl on my eyes and looked round for another. It's true my second wasn't much of a man, but a donkey of your own is better than a horse of somebody else's."

Again the smelling bottle and then —

"Listen to me, my dear. I'm a woman of experience at all events. Have a good cry and get him out of your head. Why not? He's gone, isn't he? He can never come back to the army, and his career as a soldier is at an end. The felled tree doesn't bear any more dates, so what's the good of him anyway? Oh, I know! You needn't tell me! Love is sweet in the suckling and bitter in the weaning, and you think you can't do it, but you can. You are going back to England, I hear. So much the better! Far from the eyes, far from the heart, and quite right too. Get married as soon as possible and have some big bouncing babies. I haven't had any myself certainly, but that's different – I thought I wouldn't repeat the crime of my mother, God forgive her!"

Helena's head was down; she was hardly listening.

"Lose no time either, my sweet. Time is money, they say, and perhaps it is, though it has different prices on the Bourse, I notice. I've known days that would have been dear at two piastres and a few quarters of an hour that I wouldn't have parted with for millions of money. Perhaps you've felt like that, my beauty. But perhaps you haven't. You're only a child yet, my chicken."

"The man Ishmael has gone, hasn't he?" asked Helena.

"Yes, they've let him go, the stupids! Back to the Soudan – to Khartoum, they tell me."

"Khartoum?"

"Just like you English! Dunces! Excuse the word. I say what I think. You judge of the East by the West, and can't see that force is the only thing these people understand. I stood it for five days, boiling all over inside, and then I went down to the Agency. 'Good gracious,' I said, 'why has the Government allowed these men to slip through their fingers?' And when Nuneham said he had laid a hundred and fifty of them by the heels, I said 'Tut! Taking water by drops will never fill the water-skin. You should have laid hold of a hundred and fifty thousand, and that man Ishmael above all. But you've let him go – him and his hundred messengers – and now you'll have to take the consequences. Serve you right, too! What was the use of putting down the Arabic press if you let the Arabic preachers go unmolested?'"

"What did he say to that, Princess?"

"He said he had scotched the snake but he was not forgetting the scorpion. It's no use talking, though. Nuneham is a great man, but he has lost his nerve, and is always asking himself what they are saying about him in England. Boobies in Parliament, I suppose, and he wants to be ready to reply to them. But, goodness me, if you throw a missile at every dog that barks at you the stones in your street will be as precious as jewels soon. Oh, I know! I'm a woman of experience."

Helena was staring straight before her.

"I see what is going to happen," said the Princess. "This man will sow sedition all over the country and meantime preach peace in Khartoum and throw dust in the eyes of Europe."

"He is a scoundrel, a hypocrite – "

"Of course he is, my dear, but when people are bad they always pretend that they want to make other people better."

"Can the Government do nothing to stop him, to destroy him?"

"No, my dear. There is only one thing that can do that now."

"What?"

"A woman!"

"A woman?"

"Why not? Follow the holy man no farther than his threshold, they say. But some woman always does so. Always!"

Helena's staring eyes with their far-away look had come back to the Princess's face. The Princess was beating her hand and laughing.

"You English think woman has no power in the East. Rubbish! She is more powerful here than anywhere else. Even polygamy gives her power – for a time, at all events. While she is first favourite she rules everything, and when she ceases to be that – " the Princess laughed again, closed her eyes, and said: "She who doesn't take her revenge has an ass for uncle."

Helena's heart began to beat so violently that she could scarcely speak, but she said —

"You mean that some woman will betray this man – "

"What is more likely? They all fall that way sooner or later, my beauty. This one has taken a kind of vow of celibacy, they say, but what matter? When I was as young as you are there was nothing I loved so much as to meet with a man of that sort. It was child's play, my darling."

All the blood in Helena's body was now boiling under the poison of a new thought.

"I hear he says he will come back in glory, and then Egypt will be at his feet. Bismillah!" said the Princess, raising her eyes in mock reverence, and then laughing gaily she added —

"Perhaps – who knows? – before that time comes some woman of the harem may find her opportunity. Jealousy – envy – revenge – one may see how the world goes without eyes, my beauty!"

Helena sat motionless; she was scarcely able to breathe.

"Good luck to her, I say!" said the Princess. "She'll do more for Egypt than all the Nunehams and Sirdars put together."

Then she looked round at Helena and said —

"I've shocked you, haven't I, nay dear? Women in the West don't do these things, do they? No, they are civilised, and when they have been wronged by men they take them into the courts and make them pay. Faugh! There can be no red blood in women's veins in your countries."

The Princess rummaged in her bag for her powder puff, used it vigorously, put away her smelling bottle, and then rose to go, saying —

"I don't mean you, my sweet. Your mother was Jewish, wasn't she? – and it was a Jewish woman who destroyed the captain of the Assyrians and smote off his head with his own falchion. Women can't fight their battles with swords, though. But," laughing and patting Helena's hand again, "what has Allah given them such big black eyes for? Adieu, my dear! Adieu!"

Helena stood in the middle of the floor where the Princess had left her and slowly looked around. For a long time she remained there thinking. Was woman so utterly helpless as she had supposed? And when she was deeply wronged, when her dear ones were torn from her, when she was a victim of cruel violence and heartless hypocrisy, and the law failed her, and the State – having its own ends to serve – tried to shuffle her off, was she not justified in using against her enemy the only weapons which God had given her?

At that she grew hot and then cold, and then a sense o£ shame came over her and she covered her face with her hands. "What am I thinking of?" she asked herself, and the floor seemed to slide from under her feet. The thought which the Princess had put into her mind was treason to her love for Gordon. That love was a sacred thing to her, and it would always remain so, even though she might never see Gordon again. Love itself was sacred, and she who gave it away for any gain of vengeance or revenge was a bad woman.

Helena sat down with her elbows on the desk and her chin resting on her hands and stared out of the window. After a while a kind of relief came to her. She began to recall some of the Princess's parting words. "She will do more for Egypt than all the Nunehams and Sirdars put together." That seemed to justify the thought that had taken possession of her. She began to feel herself the champion of justice, and to find the good conscience for which she sought.

This man Ishmael, who had killed her father, and by hypocritical pretences had deceived Gordon and caused him to be carried away from her, was an impostor who would turn England out of Egypt by playing on the fanaticism of an ignorant populace. He was another Mahdi, who, with words of peace in his mouth, would devastate the country and sow the very sands of its deserts with blood. When law failed to defeat an enemy like that, and the machinery of civilised government proved to be impotent against him, were there any means, any arts, which it was not proper to use?

Love? It was quite unnecessary to think about that. This man pretended to be an emancipator of the Eastern woman. Therefore a woman might go to him and offer to help him, and while helping him she might possess herself of all his secrets. "Follow the holy man no farther than his threshold," said the Arabs. She would do it nevertheless, and in doing it she would be serving England and Egypt, and even the world.

Thus she fought with herself in a fierce effort to hold on to her good conscience. But staring out of the window she felt as if something from the river were stretching out its evil hands to her. The red streak in the rising Nile was now wider than before, and it looked more than ever like blood.

Ishmael Ameer would not know her. During the single moment in which she had stood in the same room with him he had never so much as looked in her direction. The Sirdar and the British officers of the Soudan had not yet seen her. If there were any danger of their asking questions the Consul-General could set them at rest. "I can do it," she thought. "I can, and I will."

The black boy, who had been creeping in and out of her room, looking more and more miserable as he found her always in the same position, now approached her and said, pointing to the labels under her elbows —

"Mosie tie them on to boxes, lady?"

She looked round at him, and the utter slavishness in his little soul touched her pity. It also stirred her caution, for she told herself that she might need the boy's help, and that he would die for her if need be.

"Mosie," she said, "would you like to go away with me?"

Mosie, in his delirious joy, could hardly believe his ears.

"Lady take Mosie to England with her?"

"No, to your own country – to the Soudan."

Mosie first leapt off the floor as if he wanted to fly up to the ceiling and then began to make himself big, saying Mosie was a good boy, lie was lady's own boy from one hand to the other, and what would have become of lady if she had gone away without him?

"Then bring up two cabs immediately, one for the luggage and the other for ourselves, and don't say a word to anybody," said Helena, who had risen to consult a railway time-table and was now tearing up her labels.

Hugging himself with delight, the black boy shot away instantly. Helena heard his joyous laughter as it rippled like a river along the garden path, and then she sat down at the desk to write to the Consul-General.

CHAPTER XIII

Gordon, in the meantime, living on the heights of his new resolve, had been waiting impatiently for the opportunity of departure. No prisoner looking forward to the hour of his escape ever suffered more from the slow passage of time. He lost all appetite for food, sleep deserted him, and as the week went on he was in an ever-increasing fever of excitement. On the Tuesday he received through Michael a letter from Hafiz saying —

"We must be careful. I'll tell you why. I was right about the trackers. That beast Macdonald, having sworn that he would find you if you were above ground, and being sure that you were still in Cairo and that the people were concealing you, employed the services of a couple of serpents from the Soudan. These human reptiles, with green eyes like the eyes of boa-constrictors, had no difficulty in tracing your footsteps to a side street in the neighbourhood of El Azhar, but there your footsteps failed them as absolutely as if you had sunk into the earth.

"Perplexed and baffled, they were on the point of giving up the search when in the soft mud of the disgusting thoroughfare they found the marks of horses' hoofs and of the hoops of wheels, and from these they concluded that you had been carried off in a conveyance of some sort. But track of the carriage was lost the moment they reached the paved way which passes through the Mousky, and now they are again bewildered.

"In this extremity, however, they have thought of another device for your discovery which is – what do you think? To watch me! Under the impression that I know where you are, they are dogging my footsteps every moment I am off duty. No matter! I'll beat the beasts! As a bloodhound is nothing but a nose, so a tracker is nothing but an eye, and he has hardly as much brain as would stuff a mushroom. Therefore wait! Trust yourself to Hafiz! Why not? You cannot depend on a better man."

Next day, Wednesday, the doctor, with his bright face and cheery voice, came again to dress the wounded finger.

"Wonderful!" he cried. "Almost healed already! That's what youth and decent living do for a man."

"I have no money at present, Doctor," said Gordon, "but I expect to receive some very soon, and before I go your fee will be paid."

"Of course it will – when I ask for it. But 'go'? Not yet, I think."

The streets were like a sackful of eyes, and every eye seemed to be looking for Gordon – either to attack or to protect him.

"But wait! Things don't seem to be going too smoothly for the Government."

Cables at the clubs made it clear that England was not very pleased with the turn events had taken in Cairo. There had been questions in Parliament, and the Foreign Minister was at his wits' end to defend the Consul-General. Mention of Gordon himself too, and some of the Liberal Opposition up in arms for him.

"So wait, I say! Who knows? You may walk out without danger by-and-by."

Thursday passed heavily with Gordon, who was alone all day long save for the visits of old Michael when bringing the food which went away untouched, but towards midnight Hafiz arrived with his eyes full of mischief and his fat cheeks wreathed in smiles.

"Look!" he said, "that's the way to beat the brutes," and holding up one foot he pointed to a native yellow slipper which he wore over his military boots. He had made a circuit of six miles to get there, though – it was like taking a country walk in order to cross the street.

"But no matter! Trust yourself to Hafiz."

He carried a small bundle under his arm, and throwing it on a chair he said —

"Your Bedouin clothes, my boy – you'll find them all right, I think."

Gordon caught the flame of his eagerness, and was asking a dozen questions at once when Hafiz said —

"A moment, old chap! Let us speak of everything in its place. First," taking a roll of bank notes out of his pocket, "here's your money – short of what I've spent for you. Tommy got it. Couldn't get anything else, though."

Thinking civilian clothes might be useful, Hafiz had told Gordon's soldier servant to smuggle a suit out also, but it had been found impossible to do so.

"That comes of taking up your quarters in a barracks instead of at the Club or at a private house, as Staff Officers always do," said Hafiz, and when Gordon gave some hint of explanation he added, "Oh, I know! You wanted to make common cause with the men, but now you have to pay the price of it."

"What about the man to go with me?" asked Gordon.

"I've got him. You remember the two Sheikhs who went with us to Alexandria. It's one of them."

His name was Osman. He had been tutor to the Khedive's children, but he wished to become a teacher of Mohammedan law in the college at Khartoum, so the journey suited his book exactly.

"And the camels?"

"I've got them also. Young ones, too, with ripping big humps! They'll want their humps before they've crossed that desert."

"Where and when am I to meet them, Hafiz?"

"At the first village beyond the fort on the Gebel Mokattam at eleven o'clock to-morrow night. But I'll come for you at ten and see you safely started."

Gordon looked up in alarm.

"Don't be afraid for me. Leave everything to Hafiz. You can't depend on a better man."

"I'm sure I can't," said Gordon, and then in a lower tone, "But, Hafiz?"

"Well?"

"What about Helena?"

"Packed up and ready to go. The Consul-General's secretary booked her berth to-day, and she sails, as I said she would, on Saturday."

Next day, Friday, the hours went by with feet of lead, but Gordon's impatience to get away from Cairo had now begun to abate. More easily could he have reconciled himself to go if Helena had gone before him, but to leave her behind, if only for a few hours, was like cowardice. Little by little his spirit fell from the elevation on which it had lived for the better part of a week, and in the face of his flight he felt ashamed.

Towards nightfall, nevertheless, he began to make preparations for his departure, and, opening the bundle of clothes which Hafiz had left for him, he found that they consisted of a Bedouin's outer garments only, caftan, skull-cap, kufiah (head-shawl), and head-rope, but no underclothing and no slippers. This seemed for a moment like an insurmountable difficulty, but at the next instant, with the sense of a higher power ruling everything, he saw the finger of God in it, compelling him to wear his soldier's clothes and military boots beneath his Bedouin costume, lest leaving them behind him might lead to trouble for the good people who had befriended him.

By ten o'clock he had finished his dressing, and then the door of his room was opened by a man in the flowing silk garments of a Sheikh, with the light of a smile on his chubby face and a cautionary finger to his lip.

"Here I am – are you ready?"

It was Hafiz, tingling with excitement but chuckling with joy, and having looked at Gordon in his head-shawl descending to his shoulders, with the head-rope coiled about it, he said —

"Marvellous! Your own father wouldn't know you!"

The disguise was none too good though, for the trackers were keenly on the trail that night, having got it into their heads that Gordon would try to leave Egypt with Helena in the morning.

"So the sooner we are on the safe side of the Gebel Mokattam the better, my boy… One moment, though."

"What is it?"

"Remember – your name is Omar – Omar Benani."

"Omar Benani."

The last moment having come, Gordon, who seemed now to catch at every straw that would delay his departure, was unwilling to leave the house that had been his refuge without bidding farewell to the Patriarch. Hafiz tried to dissuade him from doing so, saying that the Patriarch, who knew all, wished to be blind to what was going on. But Gordon was not to be gainsaid, and after a while Michael was called and he led the way to the Patriarch's room.

The old man had just finished his frugal supper of spinach and egg, and he was lifting his horn-rimmed spectacles from his nose to wipe his rheumy eyes with his red-print handkerchief when Michael opened the door.

"A poor traveller asks your blessing, Patriarch," said Michael, and then Gordon, in his Bedouin costume, stepped forward and knelt at the old priest's feet.

The Patriarch rose and stood for a moment with a look of perplexity on his wrinkled face. Then, lending himself to the transparent deception, the saintly old man laid his bony hand, trembling visibly, on Gordon's head, and speaking in a faltering voice, with breath that came quickly through his toothless jaws, he said —

"God bless you, my son, and send you safely to your journey's end and to your own place and people."

But seeing at the next instant how pathetic was the error which in his momentary confusion he had unwittingly made, he corrected himself and added —

"Fear not, my son, neither in the days of thy life, nor in the hour of death, for God will go with thee and He will bring thee back."

A moment later Gordon, with Hafiz by his side, had passed out of the echoing harbour of the little cathedral close into the running tides of the streets without.

CHAPTER XIV

The Coptic Cathedral stands in the midst of the most ancient part of Cairo, and it is coiled about by a cobweb of close and narrow thoroughfares. Through these thoroughfares, lit by tin lanterns and open candles only, and dense with a various throng of native people – hawkers, pedlars, water-carriers, fruit-sellers, the shrouded black forms of women gliding noiselessly along and the blue figures of men lounging at coffee-stalls or squatting at the open mouths of shops – Gordon in his Bedouin costume walked with a long, slow step and the indifference to danger which he had learned in war, while Hafiz, who was now quivering with impatience, and trembling with the dread of detection, slackened his speed to keep pace with him.