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CHAPTER VII

Down to this time Ishmael's conduct had been marked by the most determined common-sense; but now came an incident that seemed to change the trend of his mind and character.

One day a man of the Jaalin tribe arrived with a letter in the sole of his sandal.

"God give you greeting, Master," he said in his west-country dialect and a tone that seemed to foretell trouble.

With trembling fingers Ishmael tore open the letter and read that, to drown the cries of distress and to throw dust in the eyes of Europe (for so the Ulema understood the otherwise mysterious object), the Consul-General was organising a general festival of rejoicing to celebrate the – th anniversary of the British occupation of Egypt.

At this news Ishmael was overwhelmed. Helena saw his lips quiver and his cheeks grow pale as he held the crinkling paper in his trembling hands. In the absence of other explanation the cold-blooded cruelty of the scheme seemed to be almost devilish.

That day he disappeared, escaping from the importunities of his people into the desert. He did not return at night, and at sunrise next morning Black Zogal went in search of him. But the Nubian returned without him, telling some wild, supernatural tale of having come upon the Master in the midst of an angelic company. His face was shining with a celestial radiance, so that at first he could not look upon him. And when at length he was able to lift his eyes the Master, who was alone, sent him back, saying he was to tell no man what he had seen.

Four days afterwards Ishmael returned to Khartoum, and there was enough in his face to explain Black Zogal's story. His eyes, which seemed to stare, had a look of unearthly joy. This was like flame to the fuel of his people's delirium, for they did not see that under the torment of his private sufferings the dauntless courage and hope of the man had begun to turn towards madness.

He began to preach in the mosque a wild new message. The time of the end had come! Famine and pestilence, poverty and godless luxury, war and misery – were not these the signs foretold of the coming of the latter day?

Lo, the cup of the people's sufferings was full! Behold, while the children of Allah wept, men feasted and women danced! Never since the black night when the first-born of Egypt were slain had Egypt been so mocked! Egypt, the great, the ancient, the cradle of humanity – what was she now but a playground for the idle wealthy of the world!

"But – no matter!" he cried. "The world travaileth and groaneth like a woman in labour, but as a woman forgetteth her pains when the hope of her heart is born, so shall the children of God forget Pharaoh and his feastings when the Expected One is come. He is coming now, the Living, the Deliverer, the Redeemer! Wait! Watch! The time is near!"

The new message flashed like fire through Ishmael's followers. Every eventide for thirteen centuries in Islam the prayer had gone up to heaven for the advent of the divinely-appointed guide who was to redeem the world from sorrow and sin, to deliver believers from the hated bondage of the foreigner, and to re-establish the universal Caliphate; and now, in the utmost depths of their oppression and suffering, when hope had all but died out of their hearts, the true Mahdi, the Messiah, the Christ, was about to come!

The people were beside themselves with joy. They were like children of the desert who, after a long drought in which their wells have been dried up, run about in glee when the first drops of rain begin to fall. They were ready for any task, any enterprise, and Ishmael, who began to make plans for going back to Cairo (for it was there, according to his view, that the Expected One was to appear), sent letters to all corners of the country telling his messengers to return home.

Helena wrote these letters with a trembling hand. In spite of her secret errand she was surprised by a certain sympathy. The great hope, the great dream touched her pity, and gave her at the beginning some moments of compunction. But after a while she began to see it as a wicked madness, and that enabled her to steel her heart against Ishmael again.

The man who held out such crazy hopes to a credulous people might be harmless in England, but in Egypt he was a peril. Once let an ignorant and superstitious populace believe that the end of the world was coming, that a Messiah was about to appear, and human government was a dead-letter. What then? Revolution and bloodshed, for the first duty of a Government was to preserve law and order!

Helena asked herself if the time had not come at last to write to the Consul-General, or perhaps to steal away from Khartoum and return to Cairo that she might report what she had seen and learned.

After reflection she concluded that the only result of doing so would be that of punishing yet further the poor, misguided populace who had been punished enough already. It was Ishmael alone who ought to suffer, whether for his offences against his followers, his conspiracy against the Government or his crime against herself, and in order to punish him apart, she would have to separate him from his people.

How was she to do this? It seemed impossible, but fate itself assisted her.

A few days after Abdel Kader had gone off in his humiliation, the shadow of his lanky body appeared across the threshold of the guest-room, where Ishmael was sitting with no other company than old Mahmud and Helena who was writing the usual letters while little Mosie fanned her to drive off the flies.

"The peace of God be with you, Master," he said in a low and humble voice, and then with a shy look of triumph he produced a letter which had been given to him at Haifa.

The letter was from the Chancellor of El Azhar, and it told Ishmael, after the usual Arabic salutations, that the festival of which he had already been informed was to take place on the Ghezirah (the island in front of Cairo); that the rejoicings were to begin on the anniversary of the birthday of the English King, something more than a month hence; that the British soldiers would still be in the provinces at that time, quelling disturbances and helping the district officers to enforce the payment of taxes, and that, as a consequence, the Egyptian army alone would be left in charge of the city.

"The Egyptian soldiers are Moslems, O my brother – the brothers and sons of our poor afflicted children of Allah. It needs only the right word from the right man and they will throw down their arms at the city gates and then the army of God may enter."

Ishmael read the letter aloud in his throbbing voice and his face began to shine with ecstasy. In an instant a wild scheme took shape in his mind.

He would announce a pilgrimage! With ten thousand, twenty thousand, fifty thousand of his followers he would return to Cairo to meet and greet the Expected One! The native army would not resist their co-religionists, and once within the city the struggle would be at an end! In a single hour his fifty thousand would be five hundred thousand! The Government would not turn them out; it dared not make war upon them; the whole world would cry out against a general massacre, and God Himself would not permit it to occur!

But somebody must go into Cairo in advance to prepare the way – to make sure there should be no bloodshed! Some trusty messenger, some servant of the Most High, who could kindle the souls of the Egyptian soldiers to such a blazing flame of love that not all the perils of death could make them take up arms against the children of God when they came to their gates!

While Ishmael propounded this scheme with gathering excitement and a look of frenzy, Helena sat trembling from head to foot and clutching with nervous fingers the reed pen she held in her hand, for she knew that her hour had struck at last – the hour she had waited and watched for, the hour she had come to Khartoum to meet. She held her breath and gazed intently into Ishmael's quivering face as long as he continued to speak, and then, in a voice which she could scarcely recognise as her own, she said —

"But the messenger who goes in advance into Cairo – he must be one whose wisdom as well as courage you can trust."

"True, true, most true," said Ishmael, speaking eagerly and rapidly.

"Some one whose word will carry influence with the Egyptian army."

"Please God, it shall be so," said Ishmael.

"If the soldiers are native and Moslem, the officers are British and Christian, therefore the risks they run are great."

"Great, very great, but God will protect them."

"To disobey may be to suffer imprisonment, perhaps discharge, possibly death."

"I know! I know! But God will bring them to a happy end."

"Therefore," said Helena, whose nervousness was gathering feverish strength, "the messenger who goes into Cairo in advance must be one who can make them forget the dangers of death itself."

Ishmael reflected for a moment and then, in a burst of eagerness, he said —

"The counsel is good. I will go myself!"

Helena's flushed face looked triumphant. "The man of all men," she said. "What messenger from Ishmael could be so sure as Ishmael himself?"

"Yes, please God, I will go myself," said Ishmael in a louder voice, and he began to laugh – it was the first laugh that had broken from his lips since Helena came to Khartoum. Then he paused and said —

"But the people?"

"Anybody can follow with them," said Helena. "Their loyalty is certain; they need no persuading."

"I'll go," said Ishmael, "for above all there must be no bloodshed."

Then old Mahmud, who alone of the persons present in the guest-room seemed to be untouched by the excitement of the moment, turned to Helena and said —

"But is Ishmael the only one for this enterprise, my daughter?"

"He knows every one, and every one knows him," said Helena.

"But he who knows everybody, everybody knows," the old man answered; "not the soldiers merely, but their masters also."

At that Helena's nervousness gathered itself up into a trill of unnatural laughter, and she said, "Nonsense! He can be disguised! The kufiah (headdress) of a Bedouin, covering his head and nearly all his face – what more is wanted?"

"So you are not afraid for him, my daughter?"

"Afraid? I will make the kufiah myself and with my own hands I will put it on."

"Brave heart of woman!" cried Ishmael. "Stronger than the soul of man! It is my duty and I will do it!"

With that he turned to Abdel Kader, who had looked on with his staring eyes, and said —

"Go back to Cairo by the first train, and say, 'It is well – God willing he will come.'" And then, in the fever of his new purpose, he went off to the mosque.

There he first called upon the people to repeat the Shehadah, the Moslem creed, and after that he administered an oath to them – never, by the grace of God and His Prophet, to reveal what he was going to say except to true believers, and only to them on their taking a like oath of secrecy and fidelity.

The people repeated in chorus the words he spoke in a loud voice, and concluded – each man with his right hand on the Koran, and his left upraised to heaven – with a solemn Amen!

Then Ishmael told them everything – how the time had come for their deliverance from bondage and corruption to the glorious liberty of the children of God – how, as the people of the Prophet had returned from Medina to Mecca, so they were to go up from Khartoum to Cairo – how he was to go before them, and they, under another leader, were to follow him, and God would give them a great reward.

At this news the poor, unlettered people grew delirious in their excitement, each man interpreting Ishmael's message according to his own vision of the millennium. Some saw themselves turning the hated foreigner out of Egypt; others were already in imagination taking possession of Cairo and all the rich lands of the valley of the Nile; while a few, like Ishmael himself, were happy enough in the expectation of prostrating themselves at the feet of the divinely appointed guide who was to redeem the world from sorrow and sin.

As soon as prayers were over, Black Zogal ran back to old Mahmud's house with a wild story of flashes of light which he saw darting from Ishmael's head while he spoke from the pulpit.

Helena heard him. She was sitting alone in the guest-room, tortured by contending thoughts. "Am I a wicked woman?" she asked herself, remembering how easily she had taken advantage of Ishmael's fanatical ecstasy. But again she hardened her heart against Ishmael, telling herself that his simplicity was cunning, and that he was an impostor who had gone so far with his imposture that he could even impose upon himself.

How could one who had committed a crime, a cruel and cowardly crime, be anything but a villain? A madman, perhaps, but all the same a villain.

And then other thoughts thronged upon her, sweet and bitter thoughts, with memories of Gordon, of her father, of the early days in Grasmere, of the short morning of happiness in Cairo, and of the brief rift in the clouds of her life that was now plunged in perpetual night.

Thus she stifled every qualm of conscience by going back and back to the same plea, the same support —

"After all, he killed my father!"

CHAPTER VIII

In a village outside blind-walled, dead Metimmeh, with its blank and empty hovels, emblems of Mahdist massacres, two travellers were encamped. One of them was what the quick-eyed natives called a "white Egyptian," but he was dressed as a Bedouin Sheikh; the other was his servant. They were travelling south, and having been long on their journey, their camels had begun to fail them. A she-camel ridden by the Bedouin was suffering in one of its feet, and the men were resting while a doctor dressed it.

Meantime the villagers were feeding them with the best of their native bread and making a fantasia for their entertainment. The night was a little cold, and the people had built a fire, before which the travellers were sitting with the Sheikh of the village by their side.

In a broad half-circle on the other side of the fire a group of blue-shirted Arabs were squatting on the sand. A singer was warbling love-songs in a throbbing voice, a number of his comrades were beating time on the ground with sticks, and a swaggering girl, who glittered with gold coins in her hair and on her hips, was dancing in the space between. On their nut-brown faces was the flickering red light of the fire, and over their heads was the great, wide, tranquil whiteness of the moon.

In the midst of their fantasia they heard the hollow thud of a camel's tread, and presently a stranger arrived, a lanky fellow with wild eyes and a north-country accent. The Sheikh saluted him, and he made his camel kneel and got down to rest and to eat.

"The peace of God be with you!"

"And with you! What is your name?" asked the Sheikh.

"They call me Abdel Kader, and I am riding all night to catch the train from Atbara in the morning."

"It must be great news you carry in such haste, O brother."

"The greatest! When the sun rises above the horizon we see no more the stars."

It was obvious enough through his fine language that the stranger was eager to tell his story, and after calling for an oath of secrecy and fidelity he told it to the Sheikh and the Bedouin in bated breath.

The time of the end had come! A pilgrimage had been proclaimed! Ishmael Ameer was to go up to Cairo secretly and his people were to follow him; the Egyptian army were to help them to enter the city, the hated foreigner was to be flung out of the country, and Egypt was to be God's!

The Sheikh of the village was completely carried away by the stranger's news, but the Bedouin listened to it with unconcealed alarm.

"Is this the plan of Ishmael Ameer?" he asked.

"It is," said the stranger, "and God bring it to a happy end!"

"Did anybody put it into his head?" asked the Bedouin.

"Yes, a woman, his wife, and God bless and reward her!"

"His wife, you say?"

"Wallahi!" said the stranger, and then, with many fine sentiments and much flowery speech, he told of the lady, the White Lady, the Rani, the Princess, who had lately been married to Ishmael Ameer and had now so much power over him.

"What says the old saw?" said the stranger. "'He who eats honey risks the sting of bees,' but no danger in this case."

And then followed more fine sentiments on the sweetness and wisdom of woman in general and of the Rani in particular.

"Well, he who lives long sees much," said the Bedouin, with increasing uneasiness; and, turning to the Sheikh, he asked if he might have the loan of a fresh camel in the place of the one that was disabled.

"Certainly, but my brother is not leaving me to-night?" asked the Sheikh.

"I must," said the Bedouin.

"But the night is with us," said the Sheikh.

"And so is the moon, and the tracks are clear," said the Bedouin. "But one thing you can do for me, O Sheikh – send a letter into Khartoum by the train that goes up from Metimmeh in the morning."

That was agreed to; and, by the light of a large tin lamp which his servant held before him as he sat on the sand, the Bedouin wrote a hurried message to Ishmael Ameer, saying who he was and why he was making his journey, and asking that nothing should be done until they came together.

By this time the fantasia was over, the fire had died down, the camels had been brought up, the flowery stranger had started afresh on his northward way, and the Sheikh and his people were standing ready to say farewell to the two travellers who were facing south.

"God take you safely to your journey's end, O brother," said the Sheikh. Then, with a grunt, the camels knelt and rose, and at the next moment, amid a chorus of pious ejaculations, into the glistening moon-track across the sand the Bedouin and his man disappeared.

The Bedouin was Gordon. He was thinner and more bronzed, yet not less well than when he left Cairo, for he had the strength of a soldier inured to hardship. But Osman, his servant and guide, having lived all his life in the schoolroom and the library, had dwindled away like their camels which were utterly debilitated and had lost their humps.

Their journey had been long, for they had missed their way, being sometimes carried off by mirages and sometimes impeded by mountain ranges that rose sheer and sharp across their course. And often in the face of such obstacles, with his companion and his camels failing before his eyes, Gordon's own spirit had also failed, and he had asked himself why, since he knew of no use that Heaven could have for him there, he continued to trudge along through this bare and barren wilderness.

But doubt and uncertainty were now gone. He was in a fever of impatience to reach Khartoum that he might put an end to Ishmael's scheme. That scheme was madness, and it could only end in disaster. Carried into execution it would be another Arabi insurrection, and would lead to like failure and as much bloodshed.

The Englishman and the British soldier in Gordon, no less than the friend of the Egyptian people, rebelled against Ishmael's plot. It was political mutiny against England, which Ishmael, in Cairo, had protested was no part of his spiritual plan. What influence had since played upon him to make him change the object of his mission? Who was this white woman, this Rani, this Princess who had put an evil motive into his mind? Was she acting in the folly of good faith or was she deceiving and betraying him? His wife, too! What could it mean?

In Gordon's impatience only one thing was clear to him – that for England's sake, and for Egypt's also, he must reach Khartoum without delay. He must show Ishmael how impossible was his scheme, how dangerous, how deadly, how certain to lead to his own detection and perhaps death.

"We are thirty hours from Omdurman – can we do it in a day and a night, Osman?" he said, as soon as the camels swung away.

"God willing, we will," said Osman, in a voice that betrayed at once his weakness and his devotion.

They rode all night, first in the breathless moonlight with its silvery shimmering haze, then in a strong wind that made the clouds to sail before the stars and the camels beneath them to feel like ships that were riding through a running sea, and last of all in the black hour before the dawn, when it was difficult to see the tracks, and the beasts stumbled in the darkness.

The morning grew grey and they were still riding. But Osman's strength was failing rapidly, and when, half an hour afterwards, the sun in its rising brightness began to flush with pink the stony heights of distant hills, they drew rein, made their camels kneel, and dismounted.

They were then near a well, from which a group of laughing girls, with bare bronze arms and shoulders, were drawing water in pitchers and carrying it away on their heads. While Osman loosened the saddles of the camels and fed the tired creatures with durah, Gordon asked one of the girls for a drink, and she held her pitcher to his lips, saying with a smile, "May it give thee health and prosperity!"

After half-an-hour's rest, having filled their water-skins and being refreshed with biscuits and dates, they readjusted the saddles of the camels, mounted and rose and started again, making their salaams to the young daughters of the desert who stood grouped together in the morning sunshine and looked after them with laughing eyes.

The clear, vivifying, elastic desert air breathed upon their faces; and their camels, strengthened by rest and food, swung away with better speed. All day long they continued to ride without stopping. Gordon's impatience increased every hour as he reflected upon the probable consequences of the scheme with which the unknown woman had inspired Ishmael, and Osman, being told of the danger, forgot his weakness in the fervour of his devotion.

The shadows lengthened along the sea-flat sand while they passed over wastes without a bush or a scrub or a sign of life, but just as the sun was setting they entered the crater-like valley of Kerreri with its clumps of mimosa and its far view of the innumerable islands of the Nile.

This was the scene of Gordon's first battle, the battle of Omdurman, and a score of tender and thrilling memories came crowding upon him from the past. Yonder was the thicket in which he had taken the Khalifa's flag, the spot where he had left Ali: "Show the bits of the bridle to my Colonel and tell him I died faithful. Give my salaams to him, Charlie. I knew Charlie Gordon Lord would stay with me to the end."

How different the old battlefield was to-day! Instead of the deafening roar of cannon, the wail of shell the frenzied shouts of the dervishes, and the swathes of sheeted dead, there was only the grim solitude of stony hills and yellow sand, with here and there some white and glistening bones over which the vultures circled in the silent air.

Night had fallen when they entered Omdurman, and the change in the town, too, struck a chill into Gordon's heated spirit. No longer the dirty, disgusting Mahdist capital, it was deodorised, swept, and sweet. Could it be possible that he was opposing the forces which had brought this civilising change?

When the travellers reached the ferry the last boat for Khartoum had gone, and, the Nile being high, they had no choice but to remain in Omdurman until morning.

"Ma'aleysh! All happens as God ordains," said Osman. But Gordon's impatience could scarcely contain itself, so eager was he to undo the work of the woman who had done so much ill.

They lodged in a khan of the old slave-market, which was now full of peaceful people sitting about coffee-stalls lit by lanterns and candles, where formerly the air was tense with the frenzied gallopings of the wild Baggara, and the melancholy boom of the great ombeya, the fearful trumpet of death.

Before going to bed Gordon wrote another letter to Ishmael, saying he had got thus far and expected to meet him in the morning. Then, being unable, as yet, to sleep under a roof, after sleeping so long on the desert, he dragged his angerib into the open and stretched himself under the stars.

There, gazing up into the great vault of heaven, a memory came back to him which had never once failed to come when he lay down to sleep – the memory of Helena. Every night on his long desert journey, whatever the discomfort of his bed, if it were only the hole between stones which the Arab shepherds build to protect themselves from the wind, his last thought had been of her.

She was gone, she was lost to him, she would be in England by this time, and he was exiled from home for ever, but in the twilight moments of the heart and mind that go between the waking sense and sleep she was with him still.

And now, lying on his angerib in Omdurman, he could see her radiant eyes and hear her deep, melodious voice, and catch the note of the gay raillery that was perhaps her greatest charm. Though he had done this ever since he left Cairo he felt to-night as if the sweet agony of it all would break his heart.

He looked up at the stars and found pleasure in thinking that the same sky was over Helena in England. Then he looked across at Khartoum and saw that all the windows of the Palace were lit up as for a dance.

A mystic sense of some impending event came over him. What could it be? he wondered. Then he remembered the word of Osman, who was now breathing heavily at his side.

"Ma'aleysh! All happens as God ordains," he thought. Then, sending a last greeting to Helena in England, he turned over and fell asleep.