CHAPTER XX
As soon as the mid-day meal was over Gordon escaped to his room – the room he shared with Ishmael – and throwing himself down on the angerib with his hands clasped across his face, he tried to think out the situation in which he found himself, to gaze into the depths of his conscience, and to see where he was and what he ought to do.
So violent was the state of his soul that he sat there a long time before he could link together his memories of what had happened since he arrived in Khartoum.
"Am I dreaming?" he asked himself again and again, as one by one his thoughts rolled over him like tempestuous waves.
The first thing he saw clearly was that Ishmael was not now the same man that he had known at Alexandria; that the anxieties, responsibilities, and sufferings he had gone through as a religious leader had dissipated his strong common sense; and that as a consequence the caution whereby men guard their conduct had gone.
He also saw that Ishmael's spiritual ecstasy had reached a point not far removed from madness; that his faith in divine guidance, divine guardianship, divine intervention had become an absolute obsession.
Therefore it was hopeless to try to move him from his purpose by any appeals on the score of danger to himself or to his people.
"He is determined to go into Cairo," thought Gordon, "and into Cairo he will go."
The next thing Gordon saw, as he examined the situation before him, was that Helena was powerless to undo the work which by the cruel error of fate she had been led to do; that her act was irrevocable; that there was no calling it back, and that it would go from its consequences to the consequences of its consequences.
Helena's face appeared to him, and his heart bled for her as he thought of how she passed before him – she who had always been so bold and gay – with her once proud head bent low. He remembered her former strength and self-reliance; her natural force and grace; her fearless daring and that dash of devilry which had been for him one of her greatest charms; and then he thought of her false position in that house, brought there by her own will, held there by her own act – a tragic figure of a woman in the meshes of her own net.
"She cannot continue to live like this. It is impossible. Yet what can the end be?" he asked himself.
Hours passed like this. His head under his hot hands burned and his temples throbbed, yet no ray of light emerged from the darkness surrounding him.
But at length the man in him, the soldier and the lover, swept down every obstacle, and he told himself that he must save Helena from the consequences of her own conduct whatever the result might be.
"I must! I must!" he kept on repeating as Helena's face rose before him; and after a while this blind resolution brought him at one stride to a new idea.
Ishmael was determined to go into Cairo, but there was one way to prevent him doing so – that he, Gordon himself, should go instead!
When he first thought of that his temples beat so violently that it seemed as if they would burst, and he felt as if he had been brought to the very brink of despair. Seeing nothing before him but instant arrest the moment he entered the city, it seemed to be a pitiful end to his long journey across the desert, a poor sequel to his fierce struggle with himself, and to the mystic hopes with which he had buoyed up his heart, that immediately after he had reached Khartoum he should turn back to his death.
Work, mission, redemption – all that had so recently had a meaning for him had disappeared. But his heart rose when he remembered that if he did what he had determined to do he would break the cruel error of fate whereby Ishmael had been doomed to die for an offence he did not commit.
What was the first fact of this cruel situation? That Helena had believed Ishmael to be guilty of the death of her father. But Ishmael was innocent, whereas he, Gordon, was guilty! Could he allow an innocent man to die for his crime?
That brought him to the crisis of his conscience. It settled everything. Destiny, acting under the blind force of a poor girl's love for her father, was sending Ishmael to his death. But destiny should be defeated! He should pay his own penalty! Ishmael should be snatched from the doom that threatened him, and Helena should be saved from lifelong remorse.
"Yes, yes, I must go into Cairo instead," he told himself.
It had grown late by this time, and the bedroom had become dark when Abdullah knocked at the door and said that the Sheikhs were in the guest-room and Ishmael was asking for Omar.
Under its roof thatched with stalks of durah, lit by lamps suspended from its rafters, the Ulema and Notables of Khartoum – the same that visited the Sirdar – had gathered soon after sunset, and squatting on the divans covered by carpets and cushions, had drunk their coffee and talked in their winding, circuitous Eastern way of the business before them, and particularly of the White Lady's part in it, while they waited for Ishmael, who was still at the mosque.
"Yes," the vivacious old Pasha had said, "no matter how great a man may be, when he undertakes an enterprise like this he should always consult ten of his friends."
"But great ones are not great in friends," said a younger Sheikh. "What if he has not got ten?"
"Then let him consult one friend ten times over."
"Nay, but if he stands so high that he has not got even one friend?"
"Then," said the old man, with a sly look over his shoulder towards the women's side of the house, "let him consult his wife, and, whatever she advises, let him do the contrary."
When Gordon in his Bedouin dress entered the guest-room, Ishmael was sitting in the midst of his people, and he called to him to take the seat by his right side.
"But where is the Rani?" he asked, looking round, whereupon Abdullah answered that she was still in her room, and the old Pasha hinted that in the emancipation of the Eastern woman perhaps women themselves would be the chief impediment.
"I know! I know!" said Ishmael. "But all the same we must turn our backs on the madness of a bygone age that woman is inferior to man, and her counsel is not to be trusted. Bring her, Abdullah."
A few minutes afterwards Helena, wearing her Indian veil but with her face uncovered, entered the guest-room with downcast eyes, followed by the Arab woman and the child.
It cut Gordon to the heart to see her look of shame and of confusion, but Ishmael saw nothing in Helena's manner except maidenly modesty under the eyes of so many men, and making a place for her on his left, he began without further delay on the business that had brought them together.
They were about to win a dear victory for God, but it was to be a white war, a bloodless revolution. The heartless festivities that were to be held in honour of the birthday of the King who lived across the seas while people perished in Egypt, were to reach their climax something more than a month hence. Therefore the great caravan of God's children who were to cross the desert by camel and horse and ass, in order that they might meet the Expected One when he appeared in Cairo, should start within a week. But the messenger of God who had to prepare the path before them must go by train, and he ought to leave Khartoum in four days.
Other preliminaries of the pilgrimage there were to arrange, and after the manner of their kind the Sheikhs talked long and leisurely, agreeing finally that Ishmael should go first into Cairo in the disguise of a Bedouin Sheikh to make sure of the success of their mission, and that Omar (Gordon) should follow him in command of the body of the people.
At length there was silence for a moment, and then Ishmael said —
"Is there anything else, my brothers?"
And at that Gordon, who had not spoken before, turned to him and answered, in the style as well as the language of the Arabs —
"Listen, I beg of you, to my words, and forgive me if what I say is not pleasing to you or yours."
"Speak, Omar Benani, speak," said Ishmael, laying his right hand, with an affectionate gesture, on Gordon's left.
There was a moment of silence, in which Gordon could distinctly hear the sound of Helena's breathing. Then lie said —
"Reverse your order, O my brother, and let me go first into Cairo."
A tingling electrical current seemed to pass through the air of the room, and again Gordon heard the sound of Helena's laboured breathing, but no one spoke except Ishmael, who said in a soft voice —
"But why, Omar, why?"
Gordon braced himself up and answered —
"First, because it best becomes a messenger of God to enter Cairo in the company of his people, not alone and in disguise."
"And next?"
"Next, because I know Cairo better than Ishmael, and all that he can do I can do, and more."
There was another moment of tense silence, and then Ishmael said —
"I listen to your sincere proposal, O my brother, but before I answer it I ask for the counsel of my friends."
Then raising his voice he cried, "Companions, you have heard what Omar Benani has said – which of us is it to be?"
At that the tense atmosphere in the room broke into eager and impetuous speech. First came, as needs must in an Eastern conclave, some gusts of questions, then certain breezes of protest, but finally a strong and unbroken current of assent.
"Master," said one of the Sheikhs, "I have eaten bread and salt with you, therefore I will not deceive you. Let Omar go first. He can do all that Ishmael can do and run no risk."
"Messenger of the Merciful," said another, "neither will I deceive you. Omar knows Cairo best. Therefore let him go first."
After others had answered in the same way Ishmael turned to Mahmud, his uncle, whereupon the old man wiped his rheumy eyes and said —
"Your life is in God's hand, O son of my brother, and man cannot escape his destiny. If it is God's will that you should be the first to go into Cairo you will go, and God will protect you. But speaking for myself, I should think it a shame and a humiliation that the father of his people should not enter the city with his children. If Omar says he can do as much as you, believe him – the white man does not lie."
No sooner had the old man concluded than the whole company with one voice shouted that they were all of the same opinion, whereupon Ishmael cried —
"So be it, then! Omar it shall be! And do not think for one moment that I grudge your choice."
"El Hamdullillah!" shouted the company, as from a sense of otherwise inexpressible relief.
Meantime Gordon was conscious only of Helena's violent agitation. Though he dared not look at her, he seemed to see her feverish face and the expression of terror in her lustrous eyes. At length, when the shouts of the Sheikhs had subsided, he heard her tremulous voice saying hurriedly to Ishmael —
"Do not listen to them."
"But why, my Rani?" Ishmael asked in a whisper.
She tried to answer him and could not. "Because … because – "
"Because – what?" asked Ishmael again.
"Oh, I don't know – I can't think – but I beg you, I entreat you not to let Omar go into Cairo."
Her agitated voice caused another moment of silence, and then Ishmael said in a soft, indulgent tone —
"I understand you, O my Rani. This may be the task of greatest danger, but it is the place of highest honour too, and you would fain see no man except your husband assigned to it. But Omar is of me and I am of him, and there can be no pride nor jealousy between us."
And then, taking Gordon by the right hand, while with his left he was holding Helena, he said —
"Omar, my friend, my brother!"
"El Hamdullillah!" cried the Sheikhs again, and then one by one they rose to go.
Helena rose too, and with her face aflame and her breath coming in gusts she hurried back to her room. The Arab woman followed her in a moment, and with a mocking smile in her glinting eyes, she said —
"How happy you must be, O lady, that some one else than your husband is to go into that place of danger!"
But Helena could bear no more.
"Go out of the room this moment! I cannot endure you! I hate you! Go, woman, go!" she cried.
Zenoba fled before the fury in her lady's face, but at the next moment Helena had dropped to the floor and burst into a flood of tears.
When she regained possession of herself, the child, Ayesha, was embracing her and, without knowing why, was weeping over her wet cheeks.
CHAPTER XXI
Now that Gordon was to take Ishmael's place, Helena found herself deeper than ever in the toils of her own plot. She could see nothing but death before him as the result of his return to Cairo. If his identity were discovered, he would die for his own offences as a soldier. If it were not discovered, he would be executed for Ishmael's conspiracies as she had made them known.
"Oh, it cannot be! It must not be! It shall not be!" she continued to say to herself, but without seeing a way to prevent it.
Never for a moment, in her anxiety to save Gordon from stepping into the pit she had dug for Ishmael, did she allow herself to think that, being the real cause of her father's death, he deserved the penalty she had prepared for the guilty man. Her mind had altered towards that event since the man concerned in it had changed. The more she thought of it the more sure she became that it was a totally different thing, and in the strict sense hardly a crime at all.
In the first place, she reminded herself that her father had suffered from an affection of the heart which must have contributed to his death, even if it had not been the principal cause of it. How could she have forgotten that fact until now?
Remembering her father's excitement and exhaustion when she saw him last, she could see for the first time, by the light of Gordon's story, what had afterwards occurred – the burst of ungovernable passion, the struggle, the fall, the death.
Then she told herself that Gordon had not intended to kill her father, and whatever he had done had been for love of her. "Helena was mine, and you have taken her from me, and broken her heart as well as my own." Yes, love for her and the torment of losing her had brought Gordon back to the Citadel after he had been ordered to return to his quarters. Love for her, and the delirium of a broken heart, had wrung out of him the insults which had led to the quarrel that resulted in her father's death.
In spite of her lingering tenderness for the memory of her father, she began to see how much he had been to blame for what had happened – to think of the gross indignity, the frightful shame, the unmerciful and even unlawful degradation to which in his towering rage he had subjected Gordon. The scene came back to her with horrible distinctness now – her father crying in a half-stifled voice, "You are a traitor! A traitor who has consorted with the enemies of his country!" and then tearing Gordon's sword from its scabbard and breaking it across his knee.
But seeing this, she also saw her own share in what had occurred. At the moment of Gordon's deepest humiliation she had driven him away from her. Her pride had conquered her love, and instead of flinging herself into his arms as she ought to have done, whether he was in the right or in the wrong, when everybody else was trampling upon him, she had insulted him with reproaches and turned her back upon him in his disgrace.
That scene came back to her, too – Gordon at the door of the General's house, with his deadly white face and trembling lips, stammering out, "I couldn't help it, Helena – it was impossible for me to act otherwise," and then, bareheaded as he was, and with every badge of rank and honour gone, staggering across the garden to the gate.
When she thought of all this now it seemed to her that, if anybody had been to blame for her father's death, it was not Gordon, but herself. His had been the hand, the blind hand only, but the heart that had wrought the evil had been hers.
"Oh, it cannot be! it shall not be!" she continued to say to herself, and just as she had tried to undo her work with Ishmael when he was bent on going into Cairo, so she determined to do the same with Gordon, now that he had stepped into Ishmael's place. Her opportunity came soon.
A little before mid-day of the day following the meeting of the Sheikhs, she was alone in the guest-room, sitting at the brass table that served her as a desk – Ishmael being in the camp, Zenoba and the child in the town, and old Mahmud still in bed – when Gordon came out of the men's quarter and walked towards the door as if intending to pass out of the house.
He had seen her as he came from his bedroom, with one of her hands pressed to her brow, and a feeling of inexpressible pity and unutterable longing had so taken possession of him, with the thought that he was soon to lose her – the most precious gift life had given him – that he had tried to steal away.
But instinctively she felt his approach, and with a trembling voice she called to him, so he returned and stood by her side.
"Why are you doing this?" she said. "You know what I mean. Why are you doing it?"
"You know quite well why I am doing it, Helena. Ishmael was determined to go to his death. There was only one way to prevent him. I had to take it."
"But you are going to death yourself – isn't that so?"
He did not answer. He was trying not to look at her.
"Or perhaps you see some way of escape – do you?"
Still he did not speak – he was even trying not to hear her.
"If not, why are you going into Cairo instead of Ishmael?"
"Don't ask me that, Helena. I would rather not answer you."
Suddenly the tears came into her eyes, and after a moment's silence she said —
"I know! I understand! But remember your father. He loves you. You may not think it, but he does – I am sure he does. Yet if you go into Cairo you know quite well what he will do."
"My father is a great man, Helena. He will do his duty whatever happens – what he believes to be his duty."
"Certainly he will, but all the same, do you think he will not suffer! And do you wish to put him into the position of being compelled to cut off his own son? Is that right? Can anything – anything in the world – make it necessary?"
Gordon did not answer her, but under the strain of his emotion he tightened his lips, and his pinched nostrils began to dilate like the nostrils of a horse.
"Then remember your mother, too," said Helena. "She is weak and ill. It breaks my heart to think of her as I saw her last. She believes that you have fled away to some foreign country, but she is living in the hope that time will justify you, and then you will be reconciled to your father, and come back to her again. Is this how you would come back? … Oh, it will kill her! I'm sure it will!"
She saw that Gordon's strong and manly face was now utterly discomposed, and she could not help but follow up her advantage.
"Then think a little of me too, Gordon. This is all my fault, and if anything is done to you in Cairo it will be just the same to me as if I had done it. Do you wish me to die of remorse?"
She saw that he was struggling to restrain himself, and turning her beautiful wet eyes upon him and laying her hand on his arm, she said —
"Don't go back to Cairo, Gordon! For my sake, for your own sake, for our love's sake – "
But Gordon could bear no more, and he cried in a low, hoarse whisper —
"Helena, for heaven's sake, don't speak so. I knew it wouldn't be easy to do what I intended to do, and it isn't easy. But don't make it harder for me than it is, I beg, I pray."
She tried to speak again, but he would not listen.
"When you sent the message into Cairo which doomed Ishmael to death you thought he had killed your father. If he had really done so he would have deserved all you did to him. But he hadn't, whereas I had. Do you think I can let an innocent man die for my crime?"
"But, Gordon – " she began, and again he stopped her.
"Don't speak about it, Helena. For heaven's sake, don't! I've fought this battle with myself before, and I can't fight it over again – with your eyes upon me too, your voice in my ears, and your presence by my side."
He was trying to move away, and she was still clinging to his arm.
"Don't speak about our love, either. All that is over now. You must know it is. There is a barrier between us that can never – "
His voice was breaking and he was struggling to tear himself away from her, but she leapt to her feet and cried —
"Gordon, you shall hear me – you must!" and then he stopped short and looked at her.
"You think you were the cause of my father's death, but you were not," she said.
His mouth opened, his lips trembled, he grew deadly pale.
"You think, too, that there is a barrier of blood between us, but there is no such thing."
"Take care of what you are saying, Helena."
"What I am saying is the truth, Gordon – it is God's truth."
He looked blankly at her for a moment in silence, then laid hold of her violently by both arms, gazed closely into her face, and said in a low, trembling voice —
"Helena, if you knew what it is to live for months under the shadow of a sin – an awful sin – an unpardonable sin – surely you wouldn't … But why don't you speak? Speak, girl, speak!"
Then Helena looked fearlessly back into his excited face and said —
"Gordon, do you remember that you came to my room in the Citadel before you went in to that … that fatal interview?"
"Yes, yes! How can I forget it?"
"Do you also remember what I told you then, that whatever happened that day I could never leave my father?"
"Yes, certainly, yes."
"Do you remember that you asked me why, and I said I couldn't tell you because it was a secret – somebody else's secret?"
"Well?" His pulses were beating violently; she could feel them throbbing on her arms.
"Gordon," she said, "do you know what that secret was? I can tell you now. Do you know what it was?"
"What?"
"That my father was suffering from heart-disease, and had already received his death-warrant."
She waited for Gordon to speak, but he was almost afraid to breathe.
"He didn't know his condition until we arrived in Egypt, and then perhaps he ought to have resigned his commission, but he had been out of the service for two years, and the temptation to remain was too much for him, so he asked me to promise to say nothing about it."
Gordon released her arms and she sat down again. He stood over her, breathing fast and painfully.
"I thought you ought to have been told at the time when we became engaged, but my father said, 'No! Why put him in a false position, and burden him with responsibilities he ought not to bear?'"
Helena's own voice was breaking now, and as Gordon listened to it he was looking down at her flushed face, which was thinner than before but more beautiful than ever in his eyes, and a hundredfold more touching than when it first won his heart.
"I tried to tell you that day, too, before you went into the General's office, so that you might see for yourself, dear, that if you separated yourself from my father I … I couldn't possibly follow you, but there was my promise, and then … then my pride and … and something you said that pained and wounded me – "
"I know, I know, I know," he said.
"But now," she continued, rising to her feet again, "now," she repeated, in the same trembling voice, but with a look of joy and triumph, "now that you have told me what happened after your return to the Citadel, I see quite clearly – I am sure – perfectly sure – that my dear father died not by your hand at all, but by the hand and the will of God."
"Helena! Helena!" cried Gordon, and in the tempest of his love and the overwhelming sense of boundless relief he flung his arms about her and covered her face with kisses.
One long moment of immeasurable joy they were permitted to know, and then the hand of fate snatched at them again.
From their intoxicating happiness they were awakened by a voice. It was only the voice of the muezzin calling to mid-day prayers, but it seemed to be reproaching them, separating them, tearing them asunder, reminding them of where they were now, and what they were, and that God was over them.
Music fragment
Their lips parted, their arms fell away from each other, and irresistibly, simultaneously, as if by an impulse of the same heart, they dropped to their knees to pray for pardon.
The voice of the muezzin ceased, and in the silence of the following moment they heard a soft footstep coming behind.
It was Ishmael. He did not speak to either of them, but seeing them on their knees, at the hour of mid-day prayers, he stepped up and knelt between.