Kitabı oku: «The White Prophet, Volume I (of 2)», sayfa 10

CHAPTER XXV

Helena returned to her father's room, and found the two old men getting ready to go. In the Pasha's face there were traces of that impulse to smile which comes to shallow natures in the presence of another person's troubles. But the face of the Consul-General was a tragic sight. The square-set jaw hung low, and the eyes were heavy as with unshed tears. It was easy to see that the iron man was deeply moved – that the depths of his ice-bound soul were utterly broken up.

Only in short, disjointed sentences did he speak at all. It was about his enemies – the corrupt, cruel, and hypocritical upholders of the old dark ways. They had bided their time; they had taken their revenge; they had hit him at last where he could least bear a blow; they had struck him in the face with the hand of his only son.

"There is no shame left in them," he said, and then he turned to Helena as if intending to say some word of sympathy. He wanted to tell her that he had hoped for other things, and would have been happy if they had come to pass. But when he saw the girl standing before him with her red eyes and pale cheeks, he hesitated, grasped her hand, held it for a moment, and then walked away without a word.

The Military Secretary accompanied the Consul-General and the Pasha to their carriages, and so father and daughter were left together. The General, labouring under the most painful of all senses, the sense of having done an unworthy thing, walked for some minutes about the room, and talked excitedly, while Helena sat on the sofa in silence, and, resting her chin on her hand, looked fixedly before her.

"Well, well, it's all over, thank God! It couldn't be helped, either! It had to be! Better as it is, too, than if it had come later on… How hot I am! My throat is like fire. Get me a drink of water, girl."

"Let me give you your medicine, father. It's here on the desk," said Helena.

"No, no! Water, girl, water! That's right! There! … He has gone, I suppose? Has he gone? Yes? Good thing too! Hope I'll never see him again! I never will – never! … How my head aches! No wonder either!"

"You're ill, father – let me run for the doctor."

"Certainly not. I'm all right. Sit down, girl. Sit down and don't worry… You mustn't mind me. I'm a bit put out – naturally! It's hard for you, I know, but don't cry, Helena!"

"I'm not crying, father – you see I'm not."

"That's right! That's right, dear! It's hard for you, I say, but then it isn't easy for me either. I liked him. I did, I confess it. I really liked him, and to … to do that was like cutting off one's own son. But … give me another drink of water, Helena … or perhaps if you think you ought to run … no, give me the medicine and I'll be better presently."

She poured out a dose and he drank it off.

"Now I'll lie down and close my eyes. I soon get better when I lie down and close my eyes, you know. And don't fret, dear. Think what an escape you've had! Merciful heavens! A traitor! Think if you had married a traitor! A man who had sold himself to the enemies of England! I was proud of you when you showed him that – come what would – you must stand by your country. Splendid! Just what I expected of you, Helena! Splendid!"

After a while his excited speech and gusty breathing softened down to silence and to something like sleep, and then Helena sat on a stool beside the sofa and covered her face with her hands. A hot flush mounted to her pale cheeks when she remembered that it had not been for England that she had acted as she had, but first for her father and next for herself.

Perhaps she ought to have told Gordon why she could not leave her father. If she had done so he might have acted otherwise. But the real author of the whole trouble had been the Egyptian. How she hated that man! With all the bitterness of her tortured heart she hated him!

As for Gordon, traitor or no traitor, he had been above them all! Far, far above everybody! Even the Consul-General, now she came to think of it, had been a little man compared with his son.

With her face buried in both hands and the tears at last trickling through her fingers, she saw everything over again, and one thing above all – Gordon standing in silence while her father insulted and degraded him.

The General opened his eyes, and seeing Helena at his feet he tried to comfort her, but every word he spoke went like iron into her soul.

"I'm sorry for you, Helena – very sorry! We must bear this trouble together, dear. Only ourselves again now, you know, just as it was five years ago at home. Your dark hour, this time, darling, but I'll make it up to you. Come, kiss me, Helena," and, drying her weary eyes, she kissed him.

The afternoon sun was then reddening the alabaster walls of the mosque outside, and they heard a surging sound as of a crowd approaching. A moment later little black Mosie ran in to say that the new Mahdi was coming, and almost before the General and Helena could rise to their feet a tall man in white Oriental costume entered the room. He came in slowly, solemnly, and with head bent, saying —

"Excuse me, sir, if I come without ceremony."

"Ishmael Ameer?" asked the General.

"My name is Ishmael – you are the Commander of the British forces. May I speak with you alone?"

The General stood still for a moment, measuring his man from head to foot, and then said —

"Leave us, Helena."

Helena hesitated, and the General said, "I'm better now – leave us."

With that she went out reluctantly, turning at the door to look at her enemy, who stood in his great height in the middle of the floor and never so much as glanced in her direction.

CHAPTER XXVI

Both men continued to stand during the interview that followed – the one in his white robes by the end of the sofa, resting two tapering fingers upon it, the other in his General's uniform by the side of the desk, except when in the heat of his anger he strode with heavy step and the jingling of spurs across the space between.

"Now, sir, now," said the General. "I have urgent work to do, and not much time to give you. What is it?"

"I come," said Ishmael, who was outwardly very calm, though his large black eyes were full of fire and light, "I come to speak to you about the order to close El Azhar."

"Then you come to the wrong place," said the General sharply. "You should go to the Agency – the British Agency."

"I have seen the English lord already. He refuses to withdraw his order. Therefore I am here to ask you – forgive me – I am here to ask you not to obey it."

The General tried to laugh. "Wonderful!" he said. "Your Eastern ideas of discipline are wonderful! Please understand, sir, I am here as the instrument of authority – that and that only."

"An instrument has its responsibility," said Ishmael. "If there were no instruments to do evil deeds would evil deeds be done? It is not your fault, sir, that the order has been issued, but it will be your fault if it is carried into effect."

"Really!" said the General, again trying to laugh. "Permit me to tell you, sir, that in this case there will be no fault in question, neither of mine nor anybody else's. El Azhar is a hotbed of sedition, and it is high time the Government cleared it out."

"El Azhar," said Ishmael, "is the heart of the Moslem faith. Take their religion away from them and the Moslems have nothing left. You are a Christian, and when your great Master was on earth He fed the souls of the people first."

"Yes, and He whipped the rascals out of the temple, and that's what the Government is going to do now – to drive out the pretentious impostors who are putting a lying spirit into the mouth of the people and making it impossible to govern them."

The Egyptian showed no anger. "I am here only to plead for the people, sir. Do not harden your heart against them. Do not send armed men among an unarmed populace. It will be slaughter."

"Tell them to submit to the Government and there will be no harm done to any one. It's their duty, isn't it? Whatever the Government may be, isn't it their duty to submit to it?"

"Yes," said Ishmael. "We who are Moslems are taught by the Prophet (blessed be his name!) that even if a negro slave is appointed to rule over us we ought to obey him."

"Deuce take it, sir, what do you mean by that?" said the General.

"But Government is a trust from God," said the Egyptian, "and at the Day of Resurrection the Most High will ask you what you have done to His children."

"Damn it, sir, have you come here to preach me a sermon?"

"I have come to plead with you for justice – the justice you look for from your Saviour. 'Be merciful to the weak,' He taught, and it is for the weak I appeal to you. He was meek and lowly – will you forget His precepts? 'Love one another' – will you make strife between man and man? He is dead – shall it be said that His spirit has died out among those who call Him their Redeemer?"

The General brought his fist heavily down on the desk as if to command silence.

"Listen here, sir," he said. "If you imagine for one moment that this tall talk will have any effect upon me, let me advise you to drop it. Being a plain soldier who has received a plain command, I shall take whatever military steps are necessary to see it faithfully carried out, and if the precious leaders of the people, playing on their credulity and fanaticism, should instigate rebellion, I shall have the honour – understand me plainly – I shall have the honour to lodge them in safe quarters, whosoever they are and whatsoever their pretensions may be."

The Egyptian's eyes showed at that moment that he was a man capable of wild frenzy, but he controlled himself and answered —

"I am not here to defend myself, sir. You can take me now if you choose to do so. But if I cannot plead with you for the people let me plead with you for yourself – your family."

The General, who had turned away from Ishmael, swung round on him.

"My family?"

"He that troubleth his own house, saith the Koran, shall inherit the wind. Will you, my brother, allow your daughter to be separated from the brave man who loves her? A woman is tender and sweet; all she wants is love; and love is a sacred thing, sir. Your daughter is your flesh and blood – will you make her unhappy? I see a day when you are dead – will it comfort you in the grave that two who should be together are apart?"

"They're apart already, so that's over and done with," said the General. "But listen to me again, sir. My girl needs none of your pity. She has done her duty as a soldier's daughter, and cut off the traitor whom you, and men like you, appear to have corrupted. Look here – and here," he cried, pointing to the broken sword and the medals which were still lying where he had flung them on the floor. "The man has gone – gone in disgrace and shame. That's what you've done for him, if it's any satisfaction to you to know it. As for my daughter," he said, raising his voice in his gathering wrath and striding up to Ishmael with heavy steps and the jingling of his spurs, "As for my daughter, Helena, I will ask you to be so good as to keep her name out of it – do you hear? Keep her name out of it, or else – "

At that moment the men heard the door open and a woman's light footsteps behind them. It was Helena coming into the room.

"Did you call me, father?" she asked.

"No; go back immediately."

She looked doubtfully at the two men, who were now face to face as if in the act of personal quarrel, hesitated, seemed about to speak, and then, went out slowly.

There was silence for a moment after she was gone, and then Ishmael said —

"Do I understand you to say, sir, that Colonel Lord has gone in disgrace?"

"Yes, for consorting with the enemies of his country and refusing to obey the order of his General."

"Lost his place and rank as a soldier?"

"Soon will, and then he will be alone and have you to thank for it."

The Egyptian drew himself up to his full height and answered, "You are wrong, sir. He who has no one has God, and if that brave man has suffered rather than do an evil act, will God forget him? No!"

"God will do as He thinks best without considering either you or me, sir," said the General. "But I have something to do and I will ask you to leave me… Or wait one moment! Lest you should carry away the impression that because Colonel Lord has refused to obey his General's order the order will not be obeyed – wait and see."

He touched the bell and called for his Aide-de-camp.

"Tell Colonel Macdonald to come to me immediately," said the General, and when the Aide-de-camp had gone he turned to his desk for papers.

The Egyptian, who had never moved from his place by the sofa, now took one step forward and said in a low, quivering voice —

"General, I have appealed to you on behalf of my people and on your own behalf, but there is one thing more."

"What is it?"

"Your country."

The General made an impatient gesture, and the Egyptian said, "Hear me, I beg, I pray! Real as life, real as death, real as wells of water in a desert place, is their religion to the Muslemeen, and if you lay so much as your finger upon it your Government will die."

He raised his hand and with one trembling finger pointed upwards. "Do you think your swords will govern them? What can your swords do to their souls? By the Most High God I swear to you that I have only to speak the word and the rule of England in Egypt will end."

At that moment Colonel Macdonald, a large man in khaki, a Highlander, with a ruddy face and a glass in his left eye, opened the door and stood by it, while the General, whose own face was scarlet with anger, said —

"So! So that's how you talked to Colonel Lord, I presume – how you darkened the poor devil's understanding! Now see – see what effect your threats have upon me. Step forward, Colonel Macdonald."

The Colonel saluted and stepped up to the General, who repeated to him word for word the order he had given to Gordon, and then said —

"You will arrest all who resist you, and if any resist with violence you will compel obedience – you understand?"

"Perfectly," said the Colonel, and saluting again he left the room.

"Now, sir, you can go," said the General to Ishmael, whereupon the Egyptian, whose face had taken on an extreme pallor, replied —

"Very well! I have warned you and you will not hear me. But I tell you that at this moment Israfil has the trumpet to his mouth and is only waiting for God's order to blow it! I tell you, too, that I see you – you – on the Day of Judgment, and there are black marks on your face."

"Silence, sir!" said the General, bringing his clenched fist heavily down on the desk. Then he struck the bell, and in a choking voice called first for his servant and afterwards for his Aide-de-camp. "Robson! See this man out of the Citadel! This damnable, presumptuous braggart! Robson! Where are you?" But the servant did not appear and the Aide-de-camp did not answer.

"No matter," said the Egyptian. "I will go of myself. I will try to forget the hard words you have said of me. I will not retort them upon you. You are a Christian, and it was a Christian who said 'Resist not evil.' That is a commandment as binding upon us as upon you. God's will be done."

With that Ishmael went out as he had entered, slowly, solemnly, with head bent and eyes on the ground.

CHAPTER XXVII

The General was now utterly exhausted. Being left alone he leaned against the desk, intending to wait until his breathing had become more regular and he could reach the sofa. Standing there, he heard the surging noise of the crowd that had been waiting outside for their Arab prophet and were now going away with him. He wanted to call Helena, but restrained himself, remembering how often she had warned him.

"Robson!" he called again but again the Aide-de-camp did not answer – he must have gone off on some errand for Colonel Macdonald.

The General took up his medicine and gulped down a large dose, drinking from the neck of the bottle, and then sank on to the sofa.

Some minutes passed and he began to feel better. The sunset was deflected into his face from the alabaster walls of the mosque outside, but he could not get up to pull down the blind of his window. So he closed his eyes and thought of what had happened.

It seemed to him that Gordon had been to blame for everything. But for Gordon's monstrous conduct they would have been spared all this trouble – Lord Nuneham's crushing blow, his own humiliating action, so wickedly forced upon him, and above all, Helena's sorrow.

In the delirium of his anger against Gordon he felt as if he would choke. Thinking of Helena and her ruined happiness, he wondered why he had let Gordon off so lightly, and he wanted to follow and punish him.

Then he heard the door open, and thinking Helena was coming into the room, he rose to his feet and faced around, when before him, with a haggard face, stood Gordon himself.

CHAPTER XXVIII

When Gordon Lord, after parting with Helena, had left the Citadel, his mental anguish had been so intense as to deaden all his faculties. His reason was clogged, his ideas were obscure, he could not see or hear properly. Passing the sentry in his lodge by the gate, he did not notice the man's bewildered stare or acknowledge his abbreviated salute. The whole event of the last hour had overwhelmed him as with a terrible darkness, and in this darkness he plodded on, until he came into the streets, dense with people and clamorous with all the noises of an Eastern city – the clapping of water-carriers, the crying of lemonade-sellers, the braying of donkeys, and the ruckling of camels.

"Where am I going?" he asked himself at one moment, and when he remembered that he was going back to his quarters – for that was what he had been ordered to do, that he might be under arrest and in due course tried by court-martial – he told himself that he had been tried and condemned and punished already. At that thought, though clouded and obscure, he bit his lip until it bled, and muttered, "No, I cannot go back to quarters – I will not!"

At the next moment a certain helplessness came over him, and up from the deep place where the strongest man is as a child, by the pathetic instinct that keeps the boy alive in him to the last dark day of his life and in the hour of death, came a desire to go home – to his mother. But when he thought of his mother's pleading voice as she begged him to keep peace with his father, and then, by some juggling twist of torturing memory, of the first evening after his return to Egypt, when he wore his medals and she fingered them on his breast with a pride that no queen ever had in the jewels in her crown, he said to himself, "No, I can never go home again."

His mind was oscillating among these agonising thoughts when he became aware that he was walking in the Esbekiah district, the European quarter of Cairo, where the ooze of the gutter of the city is flung up under the public eye; and there under the open piazza, containing a line of drinking places, in an atmosphere that was thick with tobacco smoke, the reek of alcohol, the babel of many tongues, the striking of matches, and the popping of corks, he sat down at a table and called for a glass of brandy.

The brandy seemed to clear his faculties for a moment, and his aimless and wandering thoughts began to concentrate themselves. Then the scene in the General's office came back to him – the drawing of his sword from its scabbard, the breaking of it across the knee, the throwing of the wretched fragments at his feet, the ripping away of his medals and the trampling of them under foot. The hideous memory of it all, so illegal, so un-English, made his blood to boil, and when his beaten brain swung back to the scenes in which he had won his honours at the risk of his life – Omdurman, Ladysmith, Pretoria – the rank injustice he had suffered almost stifled him with rage, and he swore and struck the table.

All his anger was against the General, not against his father, of whom he had hardly thought at all, but the cruellest agony he passed through came at the moment when his wrath rose against Helena. As he thought of her he became dizzy; his brain reeled with a dance of ideas, in which no picture lasted longer than an instant, and no emotion would stay. At one moment he was seeing her as he saw her first, with her big eyes, black as a sloe, the joyous smile that was one of her greatest charms, the arched brow, the silken lashes, the gleam of celestial fire, the "Don't go yet" that came into her look, and then his quickening pulse, the thrill that passed through him, and the mysterious voice that whispered, "It is She!"

Without knowing it he groaned aloud as he thought of the ruin all this had come to, and at the next moment he was in the midst of another memory – a memory of the future as he had imagined it would be. They were to be married soon, and then, realising one of the dreams of his life, they were to visit America, for his mother's blood called to him to go there, to see the great new world – yes, but above all to stand, with Helena's quivering hand in his, on that rock at Plymouth, where a handful of fearless men and women had landed on a bleak and hungry coast, afraid of no fate, for God was with them, and in two short centuries had peopled a vast continent and created one of the mightiest empires of the earth. Remembering this as a vanished dream, his wretched soul was on the edge of a vortex of madness, and he laughed outright with a laugh that shivered the air around him.

Then he was conscious that somebody was speaking to him. It was a young girl in a gaudy silk dress, with a pasty face, lips painted very red, eyebrows darkened, a flower in her full bosom which was covered with transparent lace, and a little satchel swinging on her wrist.

"Overdoing it a bit, haven't you, dear?" she said in French, and she smiled at him, a poor sidelong smile, out of her crushed and crumpled soul.

At the same moment he became aware that three men at a table behind him were winking at the girl and joking at his expense. One of them, a little fat American Jew with puffy cheeks, chewing the end of a cigar, was saying —

"Guess a man don't have no use for a hat in a climate like this – sun so soft, and only ninety-nine in the shade."

Whereupon an Englishman with a ripped and ragged mouth and a miscellaneous nose, half pug and half Roman, answered —

"Been hanging himself up on a nail by the breast of his coat, too, you bet."

Putting his hand to his hair and looking down at the torn cloth of his tunic, Gordon realised for the first time that he was bareheaded, having left his helmet at the Citadel, and that to the unclean consciousness of the people about him he was drunk.

At that moment he started up suddenly, and coming into collision with the American, who was swinging on the back legs of his chair, he sent him sprawling on the ground, where he yelled —

"Here, I say, you blazing – "

But the third man at the table, a dragoman in a fez, whispered —

"Hush! I know that gentleman. Leave him alone, sirs, please. Let him go."

With heart and soul aflame, Gordon walked away, intending to take the first cab that came along and then forgetting to do so. One wild thought now took possession of him and expelled all other thoughts. He must go back to the Citadel and accuse the General of his gross injustice. He must say what he meant to say when he stood by the door as he was going out.

The General should hear it – he should, and by – he must!

The brandy was working in his brain by this time, and in the blind leading of passion everything that happened on the way seemed to fortify his resolve. The streets of the native city were now surging with people, as a submerged mine surges with the water that runs through it. He knew where they were going – they were going to El Azhar – and when he came to the great mosque he had to fight his way through a crowd that was coming from the opposite direction, with the turbaned head of a very tall man showing conspicuously in the midst of the multitude, who were chanting verses from the Koran and crying in chorus, "La ilaha illa-llah."

At sight of this procession, knowing what it meant – that the Moslems were going to the doomed place, to defend it or to die – a thousand confused forms danced before Gordon's eyes. His impatience to reach the Citadel became feverish, and he began to run, but again at the foot of the hill on which the fortress stands he was kept back. This time it was by a troop of cavalry who were trotting hard towards El Azhar. He saw his deputy, Macdonald, with his blotchy face and his monocle, but he was himself seen by no one, and in the crush he was almost ridden down.

The Citadel, when he reached it, seemed to be deserted, even the sentry standing with his back to him in the sentry-box as he hurried through. There was nobody in the square of the mosque or yet at the gate to the General's garden, which was open, and the door of the house, when he came to it, was open too. With the hot blood in his head, his teeth compressed, and his nostrils quivering, he burst into the General's office and came face to face with the old soldier as he was rising from the sofa. Thus in the blind swirl of circumstance the two men met at the moment when the heart of each was full of hatred for the other.

They were brave men both of them, and never for one instant had either of them known what it was to feel afraid. They were not afraid now, but they had loved each other once, and up from what deep place in their souls God alone can say, there came a wave of feeling that fought with their hate. The General no longer wanted to punish Gordon, but only that Gordon should go away, while Gordon's rage, which was to have thundered at the General, broke into an agonising cry.

"What are you doing here? Didn't I order you to your quarters? Do you wish me to put you under close arrest? Get off!"

"Not yet. You and I have to settle accounts first. You have behaved like a tyrant. A tyrant – that's the only word for it! If I was guilty of insubordination, you were guilty of outrage. You had a right to arrest me, and to order that I should be court-martialled, but what right had you to condemn me before I was tried and punish me before I was sentenced? Before or after, what right had you to break my sword and tear off my medals? Degradation is obsolete in the British Army – what right had you to degrade me? Before my father, too, and before Helena – what right had you?"

"Leave my house instantly; leave it, leave it!" said the General, his voice coming thick and hoarse.

"Not till you hear what I've come to tell you," said Gordon, and then he repeated the threat – who knows on what inherited cell of his brain imprinted – which his father had made forty years before.

"I've come to tell you that I'll go back to my quarters and you shall court-martial me to-morrow if you dare. Before that, England may know by what is done to-night that I refused to obey your order because I'm a soldier, not a murderer. But if she never knows," he cried, in his breaking voice, "and you try me and condemn me and degrade me even to the ranks, I'll get up again – do you hear me? – I'll get up again, and win back all I've lost and more – until I'm your own master and you'll have to obey me."

The General's face became scarlet, and lifting his hand as if to strike Gordon, he cried, in a choking voice —

"Go, before I do something – "

But Gordon in the delirium of his rage heard nothing except the sound of his own quivering voice.

"More than that," he said, "I'll win back Helena. She was mine, and you have separated her from me and broken her heart as well as my own. Was that the act of a father, or of a robber and a tyrant? But she will come back to me, and when you are dead and in your grave we shall be together, because … Stop that! Stop it, I say!"

The General, unable to command himself any longer, had snatched up the broken sword from the floor and was making for Gordon as if to smite him.

"Stand away! You are an old man and I am not a coward. Drop that, or by God you – "

But the General, losing himself utterly, flung himself on Gordon with the broken sword, his voice gone in a husky growl and his breath coming in hoarse gusts.

The struggle was short but terrible. Gordon in the strength of his young manhood first laid hold of the General by the upper part of the breast to keep him off, and then, feeling that his hand was wounded, he gripped at the old man's throat with fingers that clung like claws. At the next moment he snatched the sword from the General, and at the same instant, with a delirious laugh, he flung the man himself away.

The General fell heavily with a deep groan and a gurgling cry. Gordon, with a contemptuous gesture, threw the broken sword on the floor, and then with the growl of a wild creature he turned to go.

"Fight me – would you, eh! Kill me, perhaps! We've settled accounts at last – haven't we?"

But hearing no answer he turned at the door to look back and saw the General lying where he had fallen, outstretched and still. At that sight the breath seemed to go out of his body at one gasp. His head turned giddy, and the red gleams of the sunset which were deflected into the room appeared to his half-blind eyes to cover everything with blood.