The White Prophet, Volume I (of 2)

Gordon went downstairs with a slow and heavy step. He felt as if everything were conspiring to make him abandon his purpose. "Why can't I leave things alone?" he thought. But just as he reached the hall the Egyptian Prime Minister, who was going out of the house, passed in front of him without seeing him, and a certain sinister look in the man's sallow face wiped out in an instant all the softening effect of the scenes upstairs. "Take care!" he thought. "Tell him the truth whatever happens."

When he entered the library he expected his father to fly out at him, but the old man was very quiet.

"Sit down – I shall be ready in a moment," he said, and he continued to write without raising his eyes.

Gordon saw that his father's face was more than usually furrowed and severe, and a voice seemed to say to him, "Don't be afraid!" So he walked over to the window and tried to look at the glistening waters of the Nile and the red wedges of Pyramids across the river.

"Well, I received your letter," said the old man after a moment. "But what was the nonsensical reason you gave me for not doing your duty?"

It was the brusque tone he had always taken with his secretaries when they were in the wrong, but it was a blunder to adopt it with Gordon, who flushed up to the forehead, wheeled round from the window, walked up to the desk, and said, beginning a little hesitatingly but gathering strength as he went on —

"My reason, Father … for not doing my … what I was sent to do … was merely that I found I could not do it without being either a rascal or a fool."

The old man flinched and his glasses fell. "Explain yourself," he said.

"I came to the conclusion, sir, that you were mistaken in this matter."

"Really!"

"Possibly misinformed – "

"Indeed!"

"By British officials who don't know what they are talking about or by native scoundrels who do."

Not for forty years had anybody in Egypt spoken to the Consul-General like that, but he only said —

"Don't stand there like a parson in a pulpit. Sit down and tell me all about it," whereupon Gordon took a seat by the desk.

"The only riot I witnessed in Alexandria, sir, was due simply to the bad feeling which always exists between the lowest elements of the European and Egyptian inhabitants. Ishmael Ameer had nothing to do with it. On the contrary he helped to put it down."

"You heard what he had said in the mosques?"

"I had one of his sermons reported to me, sir, and it was teaching such as would have had your own sympathy, being in line with what you have always said yourself about the corruptions of Islam, and the necessity of uplifting the Egyptian woman as a means of raising the Egyptian man."

"So you decided, it seems – "

"I decided, Father, that to arrest Ishmael Ameer as one who was promulgating sedition, and inciting the people to rebellion, would be an act of injustice which you could not wish me to perpetrate in your name."

The Consul-General put up his glasses, looked for a letter which lay on the desk, glanced at it, and said —

"I see you say that before you arrived in Alexandria it was known that you were to come."

"That is so, sir."

"And that after the riot you counselled the Governor to consent to the man's request that he should preach in public."

"I did, sir – I thought it would be a good experiment to try the effect of a little moral influence."

"Of course the experiment was justified?"

"Perfectly justified – the people dispersed quietly, and there has not been a single arrest since."

"But you had a battalion of soldiers on the spot?"

"I had – it was only right to be ready for emergencies."

The old man laughed bitterly. "I'm surprised at you. Don't you see how you've been hoodwinked? The man was warned of your coming – warned from Cairo, from El Azhar, which I find you were so foolish as to visit before you left for Alexandria. Everything was prepared for you. A trick, an Eastern trick, and you were so simple as to be taken in. I'm ashamed of you – ashamed of you before my servants, my secretaries."

Gordon coloured up to his flickering steel-blue eyes and said —

"Father, I must ask you to begin by remembering that I am no longer a child and not quite a simpleton. I know the Egyptians. I know them better than all your people put together."

"Better than your father himself, perhaps?"

"Yes, sir, better than my father himself because – because I love them, whereas you – you have hated them from the first. They've never deceived me yet, sir, and, with your permission, I'm not going to deceive them."

The passionate words were hotly, almost aggressively spoken, but in some unfathomable depth of the father's heart the old man was proud of his son at that moment – strong, fearless, and right.

"And the sermon in public – was that also on the corruptions of Islam?"

"No, sir, it was about the spirit of the world – the greed of wealth which is making people forget in these days that the true welfare of a nation is moral, not material."

"Anything else?"

"Yes – the hope of a time when the world will have so far progressed towards peace that arms will be laid down and a Redeemer will come to proclaim a universal brotherhood."

"That didn't strike you as ridiculous – to see one unlettered man trying to efface the laws of civilised society – asking sensible people to turn their backs on the facts of life in order to live in a spiritual hothouse of dreams?"

"No, Father, that did not strike me as ridiculous, because – "

"Because – what – what now?"

"Because John the Baptist and Jesus Christ did precisely the same thing."

There was silence for a moment, and then the old. man said-

"In this golden age that is to come, he predicts, I am told, a peculiar place for Egypt – is that so?"

"Yes, sir. He holds that in the commonwealth of the world, Egypt, by reason of her geographical position, will become the interpreter and peacemaker between the East and the West – that that's what she has lived so long for."

"Yet it didn't occur to you that this was sedition in its most seductive form, and that the man who promulgated it was probably the most dangerous of the demagogues – the worst of the Egyptians who prate about the natives governing themselves and the English being usurping foreigners?"

"No, sir, that didn't occur to me at all, because I felt that a Moslem people had a right to their own ideals, and also because I thought – "

"Well? Well?"

"That the man who imagines that the soul of a nation can be governed by the sword – whoever he is, King, Kaiser, or – or Czar – is the worst of tyrants."

The old autocrat flinched visibly. The scene was becoming tragic to him. For forty years he had been fighting his enemies, and he had beaten them, and now suddenly his own son was standing up as his foe. After a moment of silence he rose and said, with stony gravity —

"Very well! Having heard your views on Ishmael Ameer, and incidentally on myself and all I have hitherto attempted to do in Egypt, it only remains to me to tell you what I intend to do now. You know that this man is coming on to Cairo?"

Gordon bowed.

"You are probably aware that it is intended that he shall preach at El Azhar?"

"I didn't know that, sir, but I'm not surprised to hear it."

"Well, El Azhar has to be closed before he arrives."

"Closed?"

"That is what I said – closed, shut up, and its students and professors turned into the streets."

"But there are sixteen thousand of them – from all parts of the Mohammedan world, sir."

"That's why! The press as a medium of disaffection was bad enough, but El Azhar is worse. It is a hotbed of rebellion, and a word spoken there goes, as by wireless telegraphy, all over Egypt. It is a secret society, and as such it must be stopped."

"But have you reflected – "

"Do I do anything without reflection?"

"Closed, you say? The University? The mosque of mosques? It is impossible! You are trifling with me."

"Have you taken leave of your senses, sir?"

"I beg your pardon, Father. I only wish to prevent you from doing something you will never cease to regret. It's dangerous work to touch the religious beliefs of an Eastern people – you know that, sir, better than I do. And if you shut up their University, their holy of holies, you shake the foundations of their society. It's like shutting up St. Peter's in Rome or St. Paul's in London."

"Both events have happened," said the old man, resuming his seat.

"Father, I beg of you to beware. Trust me, I know these people. No Christian nation nowadays believes in Christianity as these Moslems believe in Islam. We don't care enough for our faith to fight for it. But these dusky millions will die for their religion. And then there's Ishmael Ameer – you must see for yourself what manner of man he is – careless alike of comfort or fame; a fanatic if you like, but he has only to call to the people and they'll follow him. All the wealth and well-being you have bestowed on them will go to the winds, and they'll follow him to a man."

The Consul-General's lip curled again and he said quietly —

"You ask me to believe that at the word of this man without a penny, and with his head full of worthless noise, the blue-shirted fellaheen will leave their comfortable homes and their lands – "

"Aye, and their wives and children too – everything they have or ever hope to have! And if he promises them nothing but danger and death all the more they'll go to him."

"Then we must deal with him also."

"You can't – you can't do anything with a man like that – a man who wants nothing and is afraid of nothing – except kill him, and you can't do that either."

The Consul-General did not reply immediately, and, coming closer, Gordon began to plead with him.

"Father, believe me, I know what I'm saying. Don't be blind to the storm that is brewing, and so undo all the good you have ever done. For Egypt's sake, England's, your own, don't let damnable scoundrels like the Grand Cadi and the Prime Minister play on you like a pipe."

It was Gordon who had blundered now, and the consequences were cruel. The ruthless, saturnine old man rose again, and on his square-hewn face there was an icy smile.

"That brings me," he said, speaking very slowly, "from what I have done to what you must do. The Ulema of El Azhar have received an order to close the University. It went to them this morning through the President of the Council, who is acting as Regent in the absence of the Khedive. If they refuse to go it will be your duty to turn them out."

"Mine?"

"Yours! The Governor of the City and the Commandant of Police will go with you, but where sixteen thousand students and a disaffected population have to be dealt with the military will be required. If you had brought Ishmael Ameer back from Alexandria this step might have been unnecessary, but now instead of one man you may have to arrest hundreds."

"But if they resist – and they will – I know they will – "

"In that case they will be tried by Special Tribunal as persons assaulting members of the British Army of Occupation, and be dispatched without delay to the Soudan."

"But surely – "

"The Ulema are required to signify their assent by to-morrow morning, and we are to meet at the Citadel at four in the afternoon. You will probably be required to be there."

"But, Father – "

"We left something to your discretion before, hoping to give you an opportunity of distinguishing yourself in the eyes of England, but in this case your orders will be definite, and your only duty will be to obey."

"But will you not permit me to – "

"That will do for the present. I'm busy. Good-day!"

Gordon went out dazed and dumbfounded. He saw nothing of Ibrahim who handed him his linen-covered cap in the hall, or of the page-boy at the porch who gave him his reins and held down his stirrup. When he came back to consciousness he was riding by the side of the Nile where the bridge was open, and a number of boats with white sails, like a flight of great sea-gulls, were sweeping through.

At the next moment he was at the entrance to his own quarters, and found a white motor-car standing there. It was Helena's car, and leaping from the saddle, he went bounding up the stairs.

CHAPTER XVIII

Helena, with an anxious and perplexed face, was at his door, talking to his soldier-servant. At the next instant they were in each other's arms, and their troubles were gone. Her smile seemed to light up his room more than all its wealth of sunlight, and nothing else was of the smallest consequence. But after a moment she drew out a letter and said —

"I told Father you were back, and he dictated a message to you. He was going to send it by his A.D.C., but I asked to be allowed to bring it myself and he consented. Here it is, dear."

Gordon opened and read the General's letter. It was a formal request that he should be in attendance at the Citadel at four the following day to receive urgent and important instructions.

"You know what it refers to, Helena?"

"Yes, I know," she answered.

The look of perplexity had returned to her face, and for some minutes they stood arm-in-arm by the open window, looking down at the Nile in a dazed and dreamy way.

"What are you going to do, Gordon?"

"I don't know – yet."

"It will be an order now, and as an officer you can do nothing but obey."

"I suppose not, dear."

"There are so many things calling for your obedience, too – honour, ambition, everything a soldier can want, you know."

"I know! I know!"

She crept closer and said, "Then there's something else, dear."

"What else, Helena?"

"Haven't I always told you that sooner or later that man would come between us?"

"Ishmael?"

"Yes. Last night my father said … but I hate to mention it."

"Tell me, dear, tell me."

"He said, 'You couldn't marry a man who had disobeyed and been degraded.'"

"Meaning that if I refused to obey orders, you and I perhaps … by arrangement between your father and mine, maybe – "

"That is what I understood him to mean, dear, and therefore I came to see you."

He flushed crimson for a moment and then began to laugh.

"No, no! I'll never believe that of them. It would be monstrous – impossible!"

But the questioning look in Helena's eyes remained, and he tried to reassure her. So many things might happen to remove the difficulty altogether. The Ulema might take the order of the Government as a protest against the visit of Ishmael Ameer, and send him instructions not to come to Cairo.

"He's here already, dear," said Helena.

As she drove down from the Citadel she had passed through a crowd of natives coming from the direction of the railway station, and some one had said it was a procession in honour of the new prophet who had just arrived from Alexandria.

"Then you've seen him yourself, Helena?"

"I saw a man in a white dress on a white camel, but I didn't look at him. – I had somebody else to think about."

He was carried away by the singleness of her love, and with a score of passionate expressions he kissed her beautiful white hands and did his best to comfort her.

"Never mind, dear! Don't be afraid! The Governors of El Azhar may agree to close their doors – temporarily, at all events. Anyhow, we'll muddle through somehow."

She made him promise not to go near the "new Mahdi," and then began to draw on her long yellow driving gloves.

"I suppose the gossips of Cairo would be shocked if they knew I had come to see you," she said.

"It's not the first time you've been here, though. You're here always – see!" he said, and with his arm about her waist he took her round his room to look at her portraits that hung on the walls. It was Helena here, Helena there, Helena everywhere, but since that was the first time the real Helena had visited his quarters she must drink his health there.

She would only drink it in water, and when she had done so, she had to slip off her glove again and dip her finger into the same glass that he might drink her own health as well. In spite of the shadow of trouble which hung over them they were very happy. A world of warm impulses coursed through their veins, and they could hardly permit themselves to part. It was sweet to stand by the window again and look down at the dazzling Nile. For them the old river flowed, for them it sang its sleepy song. They looked into each other's eyes and smiled without speaking. It was just as if their hearts saw each other and were satisfied.

At length she clasped her arms about his neck, and he felt the warm glow of her body.

"You think that still, Gordon?"

"What, dearest?"

"That love is above everything?"

"Everything in the world," he whispered, and then she kissed him of herself and nothing else mattered – nothing on earth or in heaven.

CHAPTER XIX

When Helena had gone the air of his room seemed to be more dumb and empty than it had ever been before; but the bell of the telephone rang immediately, and Hafiz spoke to him.

Hafiz had just heard from his uncle that the Ulema were to meet at eight o'clock to consider what course they ought to adopt. The Chancellor was in favour of submission to superior force, but some of his colleagues of the reactionary party – the old stick-in-the-muds made in Mecca – not being able to believe the Government could be in earnest, were advocating revolt, even resistance.

"Hadn't you better go up to El Azhar to-night, Gordon, and tell them the Government means business? They'll believe you, you know, and it may save riot, perhaps bloodshed."

"I hadn't intended to go there again, Hafiz, but if you think I can do any good – "

"You can – I'm sure you can. Let me call for you at eight and we'll go up together."

"Can't see why we shouldn't… But wait! Ishmael Ameer is in Cairo – will he be there, think you?"

"Don't know – should think it very likely."

"Well, it can't be helped. Eight o'clock, then! By-bye!" said Gordon, and with that he rang off and wrote to Helena, telling her what he was going to do. He was going to break his word to her again, but it was only in the interests of peace, and with the hope of preventing trouble.

"Don't suppose these people can influence me a hair's-breadth, dearest," he wrote, "and above all don't be angry."

At eight o'clock Hafiz came for him, and, dressed in mufti, they walked up to the University. With more than usual ceremony they were taken to the Chancellor's room in the roof, and there in a tense, electrical atmosphere, the Ulema were already assembled – a group of eight or nine rugged and unkempt creatures in their farageeyahs (a loose grey robe like that of a monk), squatting on the divans about the walls. All the members of the Board of El Azhar were present, and the only stranger there, except themselves, was Ishmael Ameer, who sat, in his spotless white dress and with his solemn face, on a chair beside the door.

In silence, and with many sweeping salaams from floor to forehead, Gordon was received by the company, and at the request of the Chancellor he explained the object of his visit. It was not official, and it was scarcely proper, but it was intended to do good. There were moments when, passion being excited, there was a serious risk of collision between governors and governed. This was one of them. Rightly or wrongly the Consul-General was convinced that the University of Cairo was likely to become a centre of sedition – could they not agree to close it for a time at all events?

At that the electrical atmosphere of the room broke into rumblings of thunder. The order of the Government was an outrage on the Mohammedan religion, which England had pledged herself to respect. El Azhar was one of the three holy places of the Islamic world, and to close it was to take the bread of life from the Moslems. "The Government might as well cut our throats at once and have done with it," said some one.

From denouncing the order of the Government the Ulema went on to denounce the Government itself. It was eating the people! It was like wolves trying to devour them! "Are we to be body and soul under the heel of the infidel!" they asked themselves.

After that they denounced Lord Nuneham. He was the slave of power! He was drunk with the strong drink of authority! The University was their voice – he had deprived them of every other – and now he was trying to strike them dumb! When somebody, remembering that they were speaking before the Consul-General's son, suggested that if he were doing a bad act it might be with a good conscience, an Alim with an injured eye and a malignant face cried, "No, by Allah! The man who usurps the place of God becomes a devil, and that's what Nuneham is and long has been."

Listening to their violence, Gordon had found himself taking his father's part, and at this moment his anger had risen so high that he was struggling against an impulse to take the unkempt creature by the throat and fling him out of the room, when the soft voice of the Chancellor began to plead for peace —

"Mohammed (to him be prayer and peace!) always yielded to superior force, and who are we that we should be too proud to follow his example?"

But at that the reactionary party became louder and fiercer than before. "Our Prophet," cried one, "has commanded us not to seek war and not to begin it. But he has also told us that if war is waged against Islam we are to resist it under penalty of being ourselves as unbelievers, and to follow up those who assail us without pity and without remorse. Therefore, if the English close our holy El Azhar, they will be waging war on our religion, and by the Most High God, we win fight them to the last man, woman, and child."

At that instant Hafiz, who had been trembling in an obscure seat by the door, rose to his feet and said in a nervous voice, addressing his uncle —

"Eminence, may I say something?"

"Speak, son of my sister," said the Chancellor.

"It is about Colonel Lord," said Hafiz. "If you refuse to close El Azhar, an order to force you to do so will be issued to the military, and Colonel Lord will be required to carry it into effect."

"Well?"

"He is the friend of the Muslemeen, your Eminence, but if you resist him he will be compelled to kill you."

"Wouldn't it be well to say 'With God's permission'?" said the man with the injured eye, whereupon Hafiz wheeled round on him and answered hotly —

"He has the bayonets and he has the courage, and if you fight him there won't be so much as a rat among you that will be left alive."

There was a moment of tense and breathless silence, and then Hafiz, now as nervous as before, said quietly —

"On the other hand, if he refuses to obey his orders he will lose his place and rank as a soldier. Which of these do you wish to see, your Eminence?"

There was another moment of breathless silence, and then Ishmael Ameer, who had not spoken before, said in his quivering voice —

"Let us call on God to guide us, my brothers – in tears and in fervent prayer, all night long in the mosque, until His light shines on us and a door of hope has opened."

CHAPTER XX

As Gordon returned to barracks the air of the native section of the city seemed to tingle with excitement. The dirty, unpaved streets with their overhanging tenements were thronged. Framed portraits of Ishmael Ameer, with candles burning in front of them, were standing on the counters of nearly all the cafés, and the men squatting on the benches about were chanting the Koran. One man, generally a blind man, with his right hand before his ear, would be reciting the text, and at the close of every Surah the others would cry "Allah! Allah!"

In the densest quarter, where the streets were narrowest and most full of ruts, the houses most wretched, and the windows most covered with cobwebs, a company of dervishes were walking in procession, bearing their ragged banners, and singing their weird Arab music to the accompaniment of pipes and drums, while boys parading beside them were carrying tin lamps and open flares. Before certain of the houses they stopped, and for some minutes they swayed their bodies to an increasing chorus of "Allah! Allah! Allah!"

Gordon saw what had happened. With the coming of the new teacher a wave of religious feeling had swept over the city. Dam it up suddenly, and what scenes of fanatical frenzy might not occur!