Chapter III

"It has happened! I knew it would! I have seen it coming, and it has come--without any help from Black Zogal's crazy imagination, either. There was only one thing wanted to complete the faith of these people in Ishmael's 'divinity'--a miracle, and it has been performed!

"I suppose it really belongs to the order of things that happen according to natural law--magnetism, suggestion, God knows what--but my pen positively jibs at recording it, so surely will it seem as if I had copied it out of a Book I need not name.

"This afternoon our vast human tortoise was trudging along, and a halt was being called to enable stragglers to come up, when a funeral procession crossed our track on its way to a graveyard on the stony hillside opposite.

"The Sheikh of a neighbouring village had lost his only child, a girl twelve years of age, and behind the blind men chanting the Koran, the hired mourners with their plaintive wail and the body on a bare board, the old father walked in his trouble, rending his garments and tearing off his turban.

"It was a pitiful sight; and when the mourners came up to Ishmael and told him the Sheikh was a God-fearing man who had not deserved this sorrow, I could see that he was deeply moved, for he called on the procession to stop, and making his camel kneel, he got down and tried to comfort the old man, saying, 'May the name of God be upon thee!'

"Then thinking, as it seemed to me, to show sympathy with the poor father, he stepped up to the bier and took the little brown hand which, with its silver ring and bracelet, hung over the board, and held it for a few moments while he asked when the child had died and what she had died of, and he was told she had died this morning, and the sun had killed her.

"All at once I saw Ishmael's hand tremble and a strange contraction pass over his face, and at the next moment, in a quivering voice, he called on the bearers to put down the bier. They did so, and at his bidding they uncovered the body, and I saw the face. It was the face of the dead! Yes, the dead, as lifeless and as beautiful as a face of bronze.

"At the next instant Ishmael was on his knees beside the body of the girl, and asking the father for her name. It was Helimah.

"'Helimah! Your father is waiting for you! Come,' said Ishmael, touching the child's eyes and smoothing her forehead, and speaking in a soft, caressing voice.

"Gordon, as I am a truthful woman, I saw it happen. A slight fluttering of the eyelids, a faint heaving of the bosom, and then the eyes were open, and at the next moment the girl was standing on her feet!

"God! what a scene it was that followed. The Sheikh on his knees kissing the hem of Ishmael's caftan, the men prostrating themselves before him, and the women tearing away the black veils that covered their faces, and crying, 'Blessed be the woman that bore thee!'

"It has been what the Arabs call a red day, and at that moment the setting sun catching the clouds of dust raised by the camels made the whole world one brilliant, fiery red. What wonder if these poor, benighted people thought the Lord of Heaven Himself had just come down!

"We left the village loaded with blessings (Black Zogal galloping frantically in front), and when we came to the next town--Berber, with its miles of roofless mud-huts, telling of Dervish destruction--crowds came out to salute Ishmael as the 'Guided One,' 'The true Mahdi,' and 'The Deliverer,' bringing their sick and lame and blind for him to heal them, and praying of him to remain.

"Oh, my dear Gordon, it is terrifying! Ishmael is no longer the messenger, the forerunner; he is now the Redeemer he foretold! I really believe _he_ is beginning to believe it! This is the pillar of fire that is henceforth to guide us on our way. Already our numbers are three times what they were when we left Khartoum. What is to happen when thirty thousand persons, following a leader they believe to be divine, arrive in Cairo and are confronted by five thousand British soldiers?

"No! It is not bloodshed I am afraid of--I know you will prevent that. But what of the awful undeceiving, the utter degradation, the crushing collapse?

"And I? Don't think me a coward, Gordon--it isn't everybody who was born brave like you--but when I think of what I have done to this man, and how surely it will be found out that I have betrayed him, I tell myself that the moment I touch the skirts of civilisation I must run away.

"But meanwhile our pilgrimage is moving on--to its death, as it seems to me--and I am moving on with it as a slave--the slave of my own actions. If this is Destiny, it is wickedly cruel, I will say that for it; and if it is God, I think He might be a jealous God without making the blundering impulse of one poor girl the means of wrecking the hopes of a whole race of helpless people. Of course it acts as a sop to my conscience to remember what you said about God never making mistakes, but I cannot help wishing that in His inscrutable wisdom He could have left me out.

"Oh, my dear-dear! Where are you now, I wonder? What are you doing? What is being done to you? Have you seen your father, the Princess, and the Grand Cadi? I suppose I must not expect news until we reach Assouan. You promised to write to me, and you will--I know you will. Good-night, dearest! My love, my love, my only love! But I must stop. We are to make a night journey. The camp is in movement, and my camel is waiting. Adieu!

"HELENA."

*CHAPTER VII*

"SERAI FUM EL KHALIG,
"CAIRO.

"Salaam aleykoum! Ten days have passed, my dear Helena, since I wrote my last letter, and during that time I have learned all that is going on here, having in my assumed character of Ishmael in disguise interviewed nearly the whole of the Ulema, including that double-dyed dastard, the Grand Cadi.

"Under the wing--the rather fluttered one--of the good old Chancellor of El Azhar I saw the oily reprobate in his own house, and in his honeyed voice he made pretence of receiving me with boundless courtesy. I was his 'beloved friend in God,' 'the reformer of Islam,' called to the task of bringing men back to the Holy Koran, to the Prophet, and to eternal happiness. On the other hand, my father was 'the slave of power,' the 'evil-doer,' the 'adventurer,' and the 'great assassin,' who was led away by worldly things, and warring against God.

"More than once my hands itched to take the hypocrite from behind by the ample folds of his Turkish garments and fling him like vermin down the stairs, but I was there to hear what he was doing, so I smothered a few strong expressions which only the recording angel knows anything about, and was compelled to sit and listen.

"My dear Helena, it is even worse than I expected. Some of the double-dealing Egyptian Ministers, backed by certain of the diplomatic corps, but inspired by this Chief Judge in Islam, have armed a considerable part of the native populace, in the hope that the night when England, in the persons of her chief officials, is merry-making on the island of Ghezirah, and the greater part of the British force is away in the provinces quelling disturbances and keeping peace, the people may rise, the Egyptian army may mutiny, and Ishmael's followers may take possession of the city.

"All this and more, with many suave words about the 'enlightening help of God,' and the certainty of 'a bloodless victory,' in which the Almighty would make me glorious and the English would be driven out of Egypt, the crafty scoundrel did not hesitate to propound as a means whereby the 'true faith might be established all over Europe, _Rome and London_!'

"Since my interview with the Grand Cadi I have learned of a certainty, what I had already surmised, that the Consul-General has been made aware of the whole plot, and is taking his own measures to defeat it. Undoubtedly the first duty of a Government is to preserve order and to establish authority, and I know my father well enough to be sure that at any cost he will set himself to do both. But what will happen?

"Mark my word, the British army will be ordered back to the Capital--perhaps on the eve of the festival--and as surely as it enters the city on the night of the King's Birthday there will be massacre in the streets, for the Egyptian soldiers will rebel, and the people who have been provided with arms from the Secret Service money of England's enemies will rise, thinking the object of the Government is to prevent the entrance of Ishmael and his followers.

"Result--a holy war; and as that is the only kind of war that was ever yet worth waging, it will put Egypt in the right and England in the wrong.

"Does Ishmael expect this? No; he thinks he is to make a peaceful entry into Cairo when he comes to establish his World State, his millennium of universal faith and empire. Do the Ulema expect it? No; they think the Army of Occupation will be far away when their crazy scheme is carried into effect. Does my father expect it? Not for one moment, so sure is he--I know it perfectly, I have heard him say it a score of times--that the Egyptian soldier will not fight alone, and that Egyptian civilians can be scattered by a water-hose.

"Heaven help him! If ever a man was preparing to draw a sword from its scabbard it is my father at this moment, but it is only because he is played upon and deceived by this son and successor of Caiaphas the damned. I'll go and open his eyes to the Grand Cadi's duplicity. I'll say, 'Bring your oily scoundrel face to face with me, and see what I will say. If he denies it, you must choose for yourself which of us you will believe--your own son, who has nothing to gain by coming back to warn you, or this reptile who is fighting for the life of his rotten old class.'

"The thing is hateful to me, and if there were any other possible way of stopping the wretched slaughter I should not go, for I know it will end in the Consul-General handing me over to the military authorities to be court-martialled for my former offences, and, as you may say, it is horrible to put a father, with a high sense of duty, into the position of being compelled to cut off his own son.

"Meanwhile I am conscious that the police continue to watch me, and I am just as much a prisoner as if I were already within the walls of a jail. For their own purposes they are leaving me at liberty, and I believe they will go on doing so until after the night of the King's Birthday. After that, God knows what will happen.

"I am writing late, and I must turn in soon, so good-night, and God bless and preserve you, my own darling--mine, mine, mine, and nobody else's, remember that! Hafiz continues to protest that the Prophet has a love for you, and will bring out everything for the best. I think so too--I really do, so you must not be frightened about anything I have said in this letter.

"There is only one thing frightens me, and that is the damnable trick memory plays me when it rakes up all you told me of the terms of your betrothal to Ishmael. I can bear it pretty well during the day, but in that dead grey hour of the early morning, when the moonlight slinks into the dawn, before the sparrows begin to chop the air and the Arabs to rend it, I find myself thinking that though Ishmael, when he proposed marriage to you, may have been thinking of nothing but how to protect your good name, being a pure-minded man who had consecrated his life to a spiritual mission, yet the constant presence of a beautiful woman by his side must sooner or later sweep away his pledge.

"He wouldn't be a man if it didn't, and, the prophet notwithstanding, Ishmael is that to his finger-tips. But heaven help me! I daren't let my mind dwell on this subject, or I should have to fly back to you and leave my task here unfulfilled. So as often as I shut my eyes and see you trudging through the desert in Ishmael's caravan, I tell myself that Providence has something for you to do there--must have--though what the deuce it is, I don't yet see.

"No matter! _D.V._ I'll know some day, and meantime I'll nail my colours to the mast of your strength and courage, knowing that the bravest girl in the world belongs to me, and wherever she is, she is _mine_, and always will be. GORDON.

"_P.S._--I am now dispatching my two letters to Assouan by Hamid Ibrahim--the second of the two Sheikhs who went with me to Alexandria--and if you find you can send me an answer, for God's sake, do! I am hungering and thirsting and starving and perishing for a letter from you--a line, a word, a syllable, the scratch of your pen on a piece of paper. Send it, for heaven's sake!

"I hear that hundreds of native boats are going up to Assouan to bring you down the Nile, so look out for my next letter when you get to Luxor--I may have something to tell you by that time."

*CHAPTER VIII*