Part 24

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.

*CHAPTER IX*

Early that morning Abdullah had entered Ishmael's room while the Master was still sleeping, for a messenger from Metimmeh, coming by train, had brought an urgent letter.

Ishmael read the letter and rose immediately, and when Helena met him in the guest-room half-an-hour afterwards, she saw that he was excited and disturbed.

"Rani," he said, "I have been thinking about our plan and have certain doubts about it. Better let it rest for a few days at all events."

Helena asked why, and she was told that a stranger was coming whose counsel might be wise, for he knew Cairo, the Government, and the Egyptian army, and he had asked Ishmael to wait until he arrived before committing himself to any course.

"Who is he?" she asked.

"One who loves the people and has suffered sorely for his love of them."

"What is his name?"

"They call him Sheikh Omar Benani."

At that moment she learned no more than that the stranger was a Bedouin chief of great fame and influence, that he had rested at Metimmeh the night before, but was now coming on to Khartoum as fast as a camel could carry him.

"He may be here to-night, to-morrow at latest," said Ishmael, "so let us leave things where they are until our brother arrives."

This news threw Helena into a fever of excitement. She saw the possibility of her scheme coming to nought. The Bedouin who was now on his way might destroy it.

She was afraid of this Bedouin. If he knew Cairo, the Government, and the Egyptian army, he must also know that the plan which Ishmael had proposed to himself was impossible. That being so, he would advise Ishmael against it. His influence with Ishmael would be greater than her own, and as a consequence her plan would fail. Then all she had hoped for, all she had come for, all she had sacrificed so much for, would be lost and wasted.

What was she to do? There was only one thing possible--to cause Ishmael to commit himself to her plan before the Bedouin arrived in Khartoum.

Again fate assisted her. The same train that brought the Bedouin's letter brought another messenger from Cairo. He was an immensely tall Dinka, who had been employed to avert suspicion. As soon as he was alone with Ishmael and his household he slipped off his sandal and tearing open the undersole produced a very small letter.

It was from the Ulema of El Azhar, and gave further particulars of the forthcoming festivities, with one hint of amazing advice that certainly could not have come from men of the world.

The Consul-General had decided to give his annual dinner in honour of the King's Birthday not as usual at the British Agency, but in the Pavilion of the Ghezirah Palace, on the island in front of the city. All the authorities would be there that night, housed under one roof. The British army would still be in the provinces, and the Egyptian army alone would be left in defence of the town. Therefore, to prevent the possibility of bloodshed, there was only one thing to do--turn the key on the Pavilion, in order to imprison the persons in command, and then open the bridge that crossed the Nile, that Ishmael's following, with the consent of the native soldiers, might enter Cairo unopposed!

It was a plot whereof the counterpart could only have been found in the history of Abu Moslim and "Al Mansour," and perhaps for that reason alone it took Ishmael's heart by storm. But it required immediate confirmation, for if the secret scheme was to be carried out, the arrangements were matters of urgency and the reply must be received at once.