Chapter III

"Of course I did not sleep a wink last night, but I crept out of my hiding-place under the high prow of the boat when the dawn came up like a bride robed in pearly grey and blushing rosy red. By that time we were nearing Bedrasheen, and now we are moored alongside of it, and the people are beginning to land, for it seems they are to camp at Sakkara, in order to be in a position to see the light which is to shine from the minaret of Mohammed Ali.

"Such joy, such rapture! Men with the madra pole sounding the depths of the water, men with sculls pushing the boats ashore; all shouting in strident voices, or singing in guttural tones.

"Soon, very soon, their hopes will be blighted. Will they never know by whom? I wonder if anybody will tell them about that letter! Where is Mosie? I trust the Consul-General may keep him in Cairo. The boy is as true as steel, but with this woman to question him...! My God, make her meet a fate as black as her heart, the hussy!

"But why do I trouble about this? It matters nothing to me what becomes of the Arab woman, or of the Egyptians, or of the Soudanese, or even of Ishmael himself--the whole boiling of them, as you say. I know I'm heartless, but I can't help it. The only question of any consequence is what is happening to you. After all, it was I who put you where you are, and it is quite enough for me to reproach myself with that.

"What is the Government doing to you? What has your father done? What is going on among the descendants of the creeping things that came out of the Ark?

* * * * *

"I cannot see Hamid among the crowd on the land, but I hope to find him as soon as I go ashore. If I miss him in the fearful chaos, I suppose I shall have to go on to the camp, for, besides my anxiety to receive your letter, I am living under the strongest conviction that there is something for me to do for you, and that it has not been for nothing that I have gone through the bog and slush of this semi-barbaric life.

"There! You see what you've done for me! You've given me as strong a belief in the 'mystic sense' as you have yourself, and as firm a faith in fatality.

* * * * *

"No sign of Hamid yet! Never mind! Don't be afraid for me--I am all right.

"Gordon, my dear, my dear-dear, good-bye!

"HELENA."

*CHAPTER XII*

For more than three weeks the Consul-General had kept his own counsel, and not even to the Sirdar, whom he saw daily, did he reveal the whole meaning of his doings.

When the Sirdar had come to say that through the Soudan Intelligence Department in Cairo he had heard that Ishmael and his vast company had left Khartoum, and that the Inspector-General was of opinion that the pilgrimage must be stopped or it would cause trouble, the Consul-General had said--

"No! Let the man come on. We shall be ready to receive him."

Again, when the Governor at Assouan, hearing of the approach of the ever-increasing horde of Soudanese, had telegraphed for troops to keep them out of Egypt, the Consul-General had replied--

"Leave them alone, and mind your own business."

Finally when the Commandant of Police at Cairo had come with looks of alarm to say that a thousand open boats, all packed with people, were sailing down the river like an invading army, and that if the pilgrims attempted to enter the city the native police could not be relied upon to resist them, the Consul-General had said--

"Don't be afraid. I have made other arrangements."

Meantime the great man who seemed to be so calm on the outside was white hot within. Every day, while Ishmael was in the Soudan, and every hour after the Prophet had entered Egypt, he had received telegrams from his Inspectors saying where the pilgrimage was and what was happening to it. So great indeed had been the fever of his anxiety that he had caused a telegraphic tape to be fixed up in his bedroom that in the middle of the night, if need be, he might rise and read the long white slips.

A few days before the date fixed for the festivities one of the Inspectors of the Ministry of the Interior came to tell him that there were whispers of a conspiracy that had been blown upon, with hushed rumours of some bitter punishment which the Consul-General was preparing for those who had participated in it. As a consequence a number of the Notables and certain of the diplomats were rapidly leaving the country, nearly every train containing some of them. A sombre fire shone in the great man's eyes while he listened to this, but he only answered with a sinister smile--

"The air of Egypt doesn't agree with them perhaps. Let them go. They'll be lucky if they live to come back."

As soon as the Inspector was gone the Consul-General sent for his Secretary and asked what acceptances had been received of the invitations to the King's Dinner, whereupon the Secretary's face fell, and he replied that there had been many excuses.

Half the diplomats had pleaded calls from their own countries, and half the Pashas had protested with apologetic prayers that influenza or funerals in their families would compel them to decline. The Ministers had accepted as they needs must, but, with a few exceptions, the Ulema, after endless invocations to God and the Prophet, had, on various grounds, begged to be excused.

"And the exceptions, who are they?" asked the Consul-General.

"The Chancellor of El Azhar, his guest the Sheikh Omar Benani, the Grand Mufti, and----"

"Good! All goes well," said the Consul-General. "Make a list of the refusals and let me have it on the day of the dinner."

Before that day there was much to do, and on the day immediately preceding it the British Agency received a stream of visitors. The first to come by appointment was the English Adviser to the Ministry of Justice.

"I wish you," said the Consul-General, "to summon the new Special Tribunal to hold a court in Cairo at ten o'clock to-morrow night."

"Ten o'clock to-morrow night? Did your lordship say ten?" asked the Adviser.

"Don't I speak plainly?" replied the Consul-General, whereupon the look of bewilderment on the Adviser's face broke up into an expression of embarrassment, and his desire to ask further questions was crushed.

The next visitor to come by appointment was the British Adviser to the Minister of the Interior, the tall young Englishman on whose red hair the red fez sat so strangely.

"I wish you," said the Consul-General, "to arrange that the gallows be got out and set up after dark to-morrow night in the square in front of the Governorat."

"The square in front of the Governorat?" repeated the Adviser in tones of astonishment. "Does your lordship forget that public execution within the city is no longer legal?"

"Damn it, I'll make it legal," replied the Consul-General, whereupon the red head under the red fez bowed itself out of the library without waiting to ask who was to be hanged.

The next visitor to come to the Agency by appointment was the burly Commandant of Police.

"You still hold your warrant for the arrest of Ishmael Ameer?" asked the Consul-General.

"I do, my lord."

"Then come to Ghezirah to-morrow night, and be ready to receive my orders."

Then came the Colonel who, since the death of General Graves, had been placed in temporary command of the Army of Occupation.

"Is everything in order?"

"Everything, my lord."

"All your regiments now in the country can arrive at Calioub by the last train to-morrow night?"

"All of them."

"Then wait there yourself until you hear from me. I shall speak to you over the telephone from Ghezirah. On receiving my message you will cause fifty rounds of ammunition to be issued to your men, and then march them into the city and line them up in the principal thoroughfares. Let them stay there as long as they may be required to do so--all night if necessary; and if there is unrest or armed resistance on the part of the populace, of the native army, or of people coming into the town, you will promptly put it down. You understand?"

"I understand, my lord."

"But wait for my telephone call. Don't let one man stir out of barracks until you receive it. Mind that. Good-bye!"

The better part of the day was now gone, yet so great had been the Consul-General's impatience that he had not even yet broken his fast, although Fatimah, who alone was permitted to do so, had repeatedly entered his room to remind him that his meals were ready.

At sunset he went up to the roof of his house. Every day for nearly a week he had done this, taking a telescope in his hand that he might look down the river for the mighty octopus of demented people who were soon to come. Yesterday he had seen them for the first time--a vast flotilla of innumerable native boats with white, three-cornered sails, stretching far down the Nile, as a flight of birds of passage might stretch along the sky.

Now the people were encamped on the desert between Bedrasheen and Sakkara, a sinuous line of speckled white and black on the golden yellow of the sand, looking like a great serpent encircling the city on the south. As a serpent they fascinated the Consul-General when he looked at them, but not with fear, so sure was he that, by the machinery he had set to work, the vermin would soon be trampled into the earth.

There they were, he thought, an armed force, the scourings of the Soudan, under the hypnotic sway of a fanatic-hypocrite, waiting to fall on the city and to destroy its civilisation. In every saddle-bag a rifle; in every gebah a copy of the Koran; in every heart a spirit of hatred and revenge.

Since the Grand Cadi had told him of the conspiracy to establish an Arab Empire the Consul-General's mind had evolved developments of the devilish scheme. The practical heart of the matter was Pan-Islamism, a combination of all the Moslem peoples to resist the Christian nations. Therefore in the great historical drama which he was soon to play he would be seen to be the saviour not only of England and of Europe and of civilisation, but even of Christianity itself!

It would be a life and death struggle, in which cruel things could not fail to be done, but the issues were world-great, and therefore he would not shrink. He who wanted the end must not think too much about the means.

Ishmael? The gallows in the square of the Governorat? Why not? The man might have begun as a mere paid emissary of the Khedive, but having developed the Mahdist malady, a belief in his own divinity, he meant to throw off his allegiance to his master and proclaim himself Caliph. Therefore they must hang him--hang him before the eyes of his followers, and fling his "divine" body into the Nile!

As the Consul-General stepped down from the roof Ibrahim met him with a letter from the Grand Cadi saying he found himself suspected by his own people, and therefore begged to be excused from attendance at the King's Dinner, but sent this secret message to warn his Excellency that by the plotting of his enemies the Kasr-el-Nil bridge which connected Ghezirah with Cairo would be opened immediately after the beginning of the festival.

"The fox!" thought the Consul-General, but interpreting in his own way the dim purpose of the plot--that it was intended to imprison him on the island while Ishmael's followers entered the city--he merely added to his order for his carriage an order for his steam-launch as well.

Daylight had faded by this time, and as soon as darkness fell the Consul-General received a line of other visitors--strange visitors such as the British Agency had never seen before. They were women, Egyptian women, the harem, shrouded figures in black satin and the yashmak, the wives of the Ministers who had felt compelled to accept their invitations, but were in fear of the consequences of having done so.

Unexampled, unparalleled event, never before known in an Eastern country, the women, disregarding the seclusion of their sex, had come to plead for their husbands, to make tacit admission of a conspiracy, but to say, each trembling woman in her turn, "My husband is not in it," and to implicate other men who were.

The Consul-General listened with cold, old-fashioned courtesy to everything they had to say, and then bowed them out without many words. Instinctively Ibrahim had darkened the Agency as soon as they began to come, so that veiled they passed in, veiled they passed out, and they were gone before anybody else was aware.

The dinner-hour was now near, and leaving the library with the intention of going up to dress, the Consul-General came upon two men who were sitting in an alcove of the hall. They were Reuter's reporters, who for the past ten years had been accustomed to come for official information. Rising as the Consul-General approached, they asked him if he had anything to say.

"Be here at ten o'clock to-morrow night and I shall have something to give you," he said. "It will be something important, so keep the wires open to receive it."

"The wires to London, my lord?"

"To London, Paris, Berlin--everywhere! Good-night!"

Going upstairs with a flat and heavy step but a light and almost joyous heart, the Consul-General remembered his letter of resignation, and thought of the hubbub in Downing Street the day after to-morrow when news of the conspiracy, and of how he had scotched it, fell like a thunderbolt on the "fossils of Whitehall."

In the conflagration that would blaze heaven-high in England it would be seen at last how necessary a strong authority in Egypt was, and then--what then? He would be asked to use his own discretion, unlimited power be reposed in him; he would hoist the Union Jack over the Citadel, annex the country to the British Crown, cast off all futile obligations to the Sultan, and so end for ever the present ridiculous, paradoxical, suicidal situation.

While Ibrahim helped him to dress for dinner, he was partly conscious that the man was talking about Mosie and repeating some bewildering story which the black boy had been telling downstairs of Helena's "marriage to the new Mahdi."

This turned his thoughts in another direction, and for a few short moments the firm and stern, but not fundamentally hard and cruel man, became aware that all his fierce and savage and candid ferocity that day had been no more than the wild ejaculation of a heart that was broken and trembling because it was bereaved.

It was Gordon again--always Gordon! Where was "our boy" now? What was happening to him? Could it be possible that he was so far away that he would not hear of the weltering downfall, so soon to come, of the "charlatan mummer" whose evil influence had brought his bright young life to ruin?

*CHAPTER XIII*

That night the Sirdar dined with the Consul-General, and as soon as the servants had gone from the dining-room he said--

"Nuneham, I have something to tell you."

"What is it?" asked the Consul-General.

"Notwithstanding three weeks of the closest observation, I have found no trace of insubordination in the Egyptian army, but nevertheless, in obedience to your warning, I have taken one final precaution. I have given orders that the ammunition with which every soldier is entrusted shall be taken from him to-morrow evening, so that if Ishmael Ameer comes into Cairo at night with any hope of----"

"My dear Mannering," interrupted the Consul-General with his cold smile, "would it surprise you to be told that Ishmael Ameer is already in Cairo?"

"Already? Did you say----"

"That he has been here for three weeks, that he came by the same train as yourself, wearing the costume of a Bedouin Sheikh, and that----"

"But, my dear Nuneham, this is incredible," said the Sirdar, with his buoyant laugh. "It is certainly true that a Bedouin Sheikh travelled in the same train with me from the Soudan, but that he was Ishmael Ameer in disguise is of course utterly unbelievable."

"Why so?"

"Because a week after I left Khartoum I heard that Ishmael was still living there, and because every other day since then has brought us advices from our Governors saying the man was coming across the desert with his people."

"My dear friend," said the Consul-General, "in judging of the East one must use Eastern weights and measures. The race that could for fourteen centuries accept the preposterous tradition that it was not Jesus Christ who was crucified but some one else who took on His likeness and died instead of Him, is capable of accepting for itself and imposing upon others a substitute for this White Prophet."

"But you bewilder me," said the Sirdar. "Isn't the man Ishmael at this moment lying encamped, with fifty thousand of his demented people, on the desert outside Cairo?"

"No," said the Consul-General.

And then in his slow, deep, firm voice, grown old and husky, he unburdened himself for the first time--telling of Helena's departure for Khartoum on her errand of vengeance; of her letter from there announcing Ishmael's intention of coming into Cairo in advance of his people in order to draw off the allegiance of the Egyptian army; of Ishmael's arrival and his residence at the house of the Chancellor of El Azhar; of the visit of the Princess Nazimah and her report of the conspiracy of the diplomatic corps, and finally of the Grand Cadi's disclosure of the Khedive's plot for the establishment of an Arab Empire.

"So you see," said the Consul-General, with an indulgent smile, "that all the bad concomitants of an Oriental revolution are present, and that while you, my dear friend, have been holding your hand in the Soudan for fear of repeating the error of two thousand years ago--troubling yourself about Pontius Pilate and moral forces versus physical ones, and giving me the benefit of all the catchwords of your Christian socialism and Western democracy--a conspiracy of gigantic proportions has been gathering about us."

The Sirdar's usually ruddy face whitened, and he listened with a dumb, vague wonder while the Consul-General went on, with bursts of bitter humour, to describe one by one the means he had taken to defeat the enemies by whom they were surrounded.

"So you see, too," he said at last, lifting unconsciously his tired voice, "that by this time to-morrow we shall have defeated the worst conspiracy that has ever been made even in Egypt--meted out sternly retributive justice to the authors of it; put an end to all forms of resistance, whether passive or active, silenced all chatter about Nationalism and all prattle about representative institutions, destroyed the devilish machinery of this accursed Pan-Islamism, crushed the Khedive, and wiped out his fanatic-hypocrite and charlatan-mummer, Ishmael Ameer."

The Consul-General had spoken with such intensity, and the Sirdar had listened so eagerly, that down to that moment neither of them had been aware that another person was in the room. It was Fatimah, who was standing, with the death-like rigidity of a ghost, near to the door, in the half-light of the shaded electric lamps.

The Sirdar saw her first, and with a motion of his hand he indicated her presence to the Consul-General, who, with a face that was pale and stern, turned angrily round and asked the woman what she wanted, whereupon Fatimah, with trembling lips and a quivering voice, as if struggling with the spirit of falsehood, said she had only come to ask if the Sirdar intended to sleep there that night and whether she was to make up a bed for him.

"No, certainly not! Why should you think so? Go to bed yourself," said the Consul-General, and with obvious relief the woman turned to go.

"Wait!" he cried. "How long have you been in the room?"

"Only a little moment, oh my lord," replied Fatimah.

After that the two men went to the library, but some time passed before the conversation was resumed. The Sirdar lit a cigar and puffed in silence, while the Consul-General, who did not smoke, sat in an arm-chair with his wrinkled hands clasped before his breast. At length the Sirdar said--

"And all this came of Helena's letter from Khartoum?"

"Was suggested by it," said the Consul-General.

"You told me she was there, but I could not imagine what she was doing--what her errand was. Good heavens, what a revenge! It makes one shiver! Carries one back to another age!"

"A better age," said the Consul-General. "A more natural and less hypocritical age at all events."

"The age of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, perhaps--the age of a hot and consuming God."

"Yes, a God of wrath, a God of anger, a God who _did_ something, not the pale, meek, forgiving, anaemic God of our day--a God who does nothing."

"The God of our day is at least a God of mercy, of pity, and of love," said the Sirdar.

"He is a lay figure, my friend, who permits wrong without avenging it--in short, no God at all, but an illogical, inconsequential, useless creature."

The Sirdar made no further resistance, and the Consul-General went on to defend Helena's impulse of vengeance by assailing the Christian spirit of forgiveness.

"There was at least something natural and logical as well as majestic and magnificent in the old ideal of Jehovah, but your new ideal of Jesus is contrary to nature and opposed to the laws of life. 'Love your enemies.' 'Do good to them that hate you.' 'If a man smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.' 'Resist not evil!' 'If any man take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also!' Impossible! Fatal! If this is Christianity, I am no Christian. When I am hit, I hit back. When I am injured, I demand justice. The only way! Any other would lead to the triumph of the worst elements in humanity. And what I do everybody else does--everybody--though the hypocrisy of the modern world will not permit people to admit it."

The Consul-General had risen and was tramping heavily across the room.

"Is there one man alive who will dare to say that he actually orders his life according to the precepts of Christ? If so, he is either a liar or a fool. As for the nations, look at the facts. Christianity has been two thousand years in the world, yet here we are competing against each other in the building of warships, the imposition of tariffs, the union of trades. Why not? I say, why not?"

The Consul-General drew up and waited, but getting no answer he continued--

"Civilisation requires it--I say requires it. What holds the world together and preserves peace among the nations is not Christianity but cast-iron and gunpowder. Yet what vexes me and stirs my soul is to hear people praying in their churches for peace and concord, while all the time they know that 'peace and concord' is an impossible ideal, that Christianity in its first sense is dead, and that Jesus as a practical guide to life--as a practical guide to life, mind you--has _failed_."

Then the Sirdar lifted his eyes and said--

"Do you know, my dear Nuneham, I once heard somebody else talk like that, though from the opposite standpoint--of sympathy, not contempt."

"Who was it?"

"Your own son."

"Humph!"

The Consul-General frowned and there was silence again for some moments. When the conversation was resumed it concerned the dangers of the Arab Empire, which, according to the Grand Cadi, the Khedive (with the help of Ishmael) expected to found.

"What would it mean?" said the Consul-General. "The utter annihilation of the unbeliever. Does not the word 'Ghazi' signify a hero who slays the infidel? Does not every Mollah, when he recites the Khuttab in the mosque, invoke divine wrath on the non-Moslem? What then? The establishment of an Arab Empire would mean the revolt of the whole Eastern world against the Western world, and a return to all the brutality, all the intolerance of the farrago of moribund nonsense known as the Sacred Law."

The Sirdar made no reply, and after a moment the Consul-General said--

"Then think of the spectacle of a conquering Mohammedan army in Cairo! If the Citadel and the Arsenal of the capital could be occupied by that horde outside, it would not be merely England's power in Egypt that would be ended, or the English Empire as a world force that would be injured--it would be Western civilisation itself that would in the end be destroyed. The Mohammedans in India would think that what their brethren in Cairo had done they might do. The result would be incalculable chaos, unlimited anarchy, the turning back of the clock ten centuries."

The Consul-General returned to his seat, saying--

"No, no, my friend, a catastrophe so appalling as that cannot be left to chance, and if it is necessary to blow these fifty thousand fanatics out of the mouths of guns rather than lay the fate of the world open to irretrievable ruin, I ... _I will do it_."

"But all this depends on the truthfulness of the Grand Cadi's story--isn't it so?" asked the Sirdar.

The Consul-General bent his head.

"And the first test of its truthfulness is whether or not these thousands of Ishmael's followers are an armed force?"

Again the Consul-General bent his head.

"Well," said the Sirdar, rising and throwing away his cigar, "I am bound to tell you that I see no reason to think they are. More than that, I will not believe that when our boy took his serious step he would have sided with this White Prophet if he had suspected that the man's aims included an attack upon England's power in Egypt, and I cannot imagine for a moment that he could be fool enough not to know."

Again the Consul-General frowned, but the Sirdar went on firmly.

"I believe he thought and knew that Ishmael Ameer's propaganda was purely spiritual, the establishment of an era of universal peace and brotherhood, and that is a world-question having nothing to do with England or Egypt, or Arab Empires, except so far as----"

But the Consul-General, who was cut to the quick by the Sirdar's praise of Gordon, could bear no more.

"Only old women of both sexes look for an era of universal peace," he said testily.

"In that case," replied the Sirdar, "the old women are among the greatest of mankind--the Hebrew prophets, the prophets of Buddhism, of Islam, and of Christianity. And if that is going too far, then Abraham Lincoln and John Bright, and, to come closer home, your own son, as brave a man as ever drew a sword, a soldier too, the finest young soldier in the King's service, one who might have risen to any height if he had been properly handled, instead of being----"

But the old man, whose nostrils were swelling and dilating like the nostrils of a broken-winded horse, leapt to his feet and stopped him.

"Why will you continue to talk about my son?" he cried. "Do you wish to torture me? He allowed himself to become a tool in the hands of my enemies, yet you are accusing me of destroying his career and driving him away. You are--you know you are!"

"Ah, well! God grant everything may go right to-morrow," said the Sirdar after a while, and with that he rose to go.

It was now very late, and when Ibrahim, in the hall, with sleepy eyes, hardly able to keep himself from yawning, opened the outer door, the horses of the Sirdar's carriage, which had been waiting for nearly an hour, were heard stamping impatiently on the gravel of the drive.

At the last moment the old man relented.

"Reg," he said, and his voice trembled, "forgive me if I have been rude to you. I have been hard hit and I must make a fight. I need not explain. Good-night!" And he had gone back to the library before the Sirdar could reply.

But after a while the unconquerable spirit and force of the man enabled him to regain his composure, and before going to bed he went up on to the roof to take a last look at the enemy he was about to destroy. There it lay in the distance, more than ever like a great serpent encircling the city on the south, for there was no moon, the night was very dark, and the dying fires of the sinuous camp at Sakkara made patches of white and black like the markings of a mighty cobra.

Fatimah was at his bedroom door, waiting to bring his hot water and to ask if he wanted anything else.

"Yes, I want you to go to bed," he replied, but the Egyptian woman, still dallying about the room and speaking with difficulty, wished to know if it was true, as the black boy had said, that Miss Helena was in Khartoum and that she had betrothed herself to the White Prophet.

"I don't know and I don't care--go to bed," said the Consul-General.

"Poor Gordon! My poor boy! _Wah_! _Wah_! Everything goes wrong with him. Yet he hadn't an evil thought in his heart."

"Go to bed, I tell you!"

It was even longer than usual before the Consul-General slept.

He thought of Helena. Where was she now? He had been telling himself all along that to save appearances she might find it necessary to remain for a while in Ishmael's camp, but surely she might have escaped by this time. Could it be possible that she was kept as a prisoner? Was there anything he ought to do for her?

Then he thought of the speech he was to make in proposing the King's health the following day, and framed some of the stinging, ironical sentences with which he meant to lash his enemies to the bone.

Last of all he thought of Gordon, as he always did when he was dropping off to sleep, and the only regret that mingled with his tingling sense of imminent triumph was that his son could not be present at the King's Dinner to see--what he would see!

"Oh, if I could have him there to-morrow night--what I would give for it!" he thought.

At length the Consul-General slept and his big desolate house was silent. If any human eye could have looked upon him as he lay on his bed that night, the old man with his lips sternly set, breathing fitfully, only the tired body overcome, the troubled brain still working, it would have been a pitiful thing to think that he who was the virtual master of millions appeared to be himself the sport of those inscrutable demons of destiny which seem to toss us about like toys.

His power, his pride, his life-success--what had he gained by them? His wife dead; his son in revolt against him; alone, enfeebled, duped, and self-deluded.

God, what a little thing is man! He who for forty years had guided the ship of State, before whose word Ministers and even Khedives had trembled, could not see into the dark glass of the first few hours before him.

Peace to him--until to-morrow!

*CHAPTER XIV*

"SERAI FUM EL KHALIG,
"CAIRO.

"MY DEAREST HELENA,--I am going to that dinner! Yes, as Ishmael Ameer in the disguise of the Sheikh Omar Benani, chief of the Ababdah, I am to be one of my father's guests.

"This is the morning of the day of the festivities, and from Hafiz, by the instrumentality of one who would live or die or give her immortal soul for me, I have at length learned all the facts of my father's _coup_.

"Did you ever hear of the incident of the Opera House? Well, this incident is to be a replica of that, though the parts to be played in the drama are in danger of being differently cast.

"As this is the last letter I shall be able to send to you before an event which may decide one way or other the fate of England in Egypt, my father's fate, Ishmael's, and perhaps yours and mine, I must tell you as much as I dare commit to paper.

"The British army, as I foresaw from the first, is being brought back to Cairo. It is to come in to-night as quietly as possible by the last trains arriving at Calioub. The Consul-General is to go to Ghezirah as if nothing were about to happen, but at the last moment, when his enemies have been gathered under one roof--Ministers, Diplomats, Notables, Ulema--when the operation of their plot has begun, and the bridge is drawn and the island is isolated, and Ishmael and his vast following are making ready to enter the city, my father is to speak over the telephone to the officer commanding at Abbassiah, and then the soldiers, with fifty rounds of ammunition, are to march into Cairo and line up in the streets.

"Such is my father's _coup_, and to make sure of the complete success of it--that Ishmael's following is on the move, and that no conspirator (myself above all) escapes--he has given orders to the Colonel not to stir one man out of the barracks until he receives his signal. Well, my work to-night is to see that he never receives it.

"Already you will guess what I am going to do. I must go to the dinner in order to do it, for both the central office of the telephone and the office of the telegraph are now under the roofs of the Ghezirah Palace and Pavilion.

"I hate to do the damnable thing, but it must be done. It must, it must! There is no help for it.

"I cannot tell you how hard it is to me to be engaged in a secret means to frustrate my father's plans--it is like fighting one's own flesh and blood, and is not fair warfare. Neither can I say what a struggle it has been to me as an English soldier to make up my mind to intercept an order of the British army--it is like playing traitor, and I can scarcely bear to think of it.

"But all the same I _know_ it is necessary. I also know _God_ knows it is necessary, and when I think of that my heart beats wildly.

"It is necessary to prevent the massacre which I know (and my father does not) would inevitably ensue; necessary to save my father himself from the execration of the civilised world; necessary to save Ishmael from the tragic consequences of his determined fanaticism; necessary to save England from the possible loss of her Mohammedan dominions, from being faithless to her duty as a Christian nation, and from the divine judgment which will overtake her if she wantonly destroys her great fame as the one Western power that seems designed by Providence to rule and to guide the Eastern peoples; and necessary above all to save the white man and the black man from a legacy of hatred that would divide them for another hundred years and put back the union of races and faiths for countless centuries.

"If I am not a vain fool this is what I (_D.V._) have got to do, so why in the name of God need I trouble myself about the means by which I do it? And if I am the only man who can, I must, or I shall be a coward skulking out of his plain responsibility, and a traitor not only to England but to humanity itself.

"God does not promise me success, but I believe I shall succeed. Indeed I am so sure of success that I feel as if all the recent events of my life have been leading up to this one. What I felt when I left Cairo for Khartoum, and again when I left Khartoum for Cairo--that everything had been governed by higher powers which could not err--I feel now more than ever.

"If I had delivered myself up to the authorities after your father's death my life would have been wasted and thrown away. Nay, if I had obeyed orders over the blunder of El Azhar I should not have been where I am now--between two high-spirited men who are blindly making for each other's ruin, and the destruction of all they stand for.

"This reconciles me to everything that has happened, and if I have to pay the penalty of playing buffer I am ready to do so. I have great trust that God will bring me out all right, but if that is not His plan, then so be it. I am willing to give my life for England, whatever name she may know me by when she comes to see what I have done, and I am willing to die for these poor Egyptians, because I was born and brought up among them, and I cannot help loving them.

"Death has no terrors for me anyway. I think the experiences of the past months have taught me all that death has to teach. In fact I feel at this moment exactly as I have felt at the last charge in battle, when, fighting against frightful odds, it has not been a case of every man for himself, but of God for us all.

"Besides I feel that on the day of your father's death I died to myself--to my selfish hopes of life, I mean--and if God intends to crush me in order that I may save my country and these people whom I love and who love me I really wish and long for Him to do so.

"But _In-sha-allah_! It will be as God pleases, and I believe from the bottom of my heart that He is working out His wonderful embroidery of events to a triumphant issue. So don't be afraid, my dear Helena, whatever occurs to-night. I may be taken, but (_D.V._) I shall not be taken in disgrace. In any case I feel that my hour has come--the great hour that I have been waiting for so long.

"This may be the last letter I shall write to you, so I am sending it by Mosie, lest Hamid should find a difficulty in getting into your camp. I hope to God you may get it, for I want you to know that my last thoughts are about yourself.

"Upon my soul, dear, I believe the end will be all right, but if it is to be otherwise, and we are to be separated, and our lives in this world are to be wasted, remember that deep love bridges death.

"Remember, too, what you said to me at Khartoum. 'I am a soldier's daughter,' you said, 'and in my heart I am a soldier's wife as well, and I shouldn't be worthy to be either if I didn't tell you to do your duty, whatever the consequences to me.'

"Good-bye, my dear, my dear! If anything happens you will know what to do. I trust you without fear. I have always trusted you. I can say it now, at this last moment--never, dearest, never for one instant has the shadow of a doubt of you entered into my heart. My brave girl, my love, my life, my Helena!

"May the great God of Heaven bless and protect you!

"GORDON.

"_P.S._--Oh, how the deuce did I forget? There is something for you to do--something important--and I had almost sent off my letter without saying anything about it.

"Do you remember that on the day I left Khartoum it was ordered by Ishmael that after the call of the muezzin to midnight prayers, a light was to be set up in the minaret of the mosque of Mohammed Ali as a sign that he might enter the city in peace?

"Well, if I fail and the British army comes into Cairo Ishmael must be kept out of it. He may be stubborn--a man who thinks God guides and protects him and makes a special dispensation for him is not easy to dissuade--but if the light does not appear he _must_ be restrained.

"That is your work with Ishmael--why you are with him still. I knew it would be revealed to us some day. Once more, my dear, my dear, God bless and protect you!"

*CHAPTER XV*

"UNDER THE PYKAMIDS.

"MY DEAR GORDON,--Your letter has not yet reached me. What has happened? Has your messenger been caught? Who was it? Was it Hamid?

"Not having heard from you, I was of course compelled to come on with the camp and therefore I am with it still. We are under the shadow of the pyramids, with the mud-built village of Sakkara by our side and Cairo in front of us, beyond the ruins of old Memphis and across a stretch of golden sand.

"This is, it seems, the day of 'the King's Dinner,' and at sunset when the elephant-horn was blown for the last time we gathered for prayers under a sea-blue sky on the blood-red side of the Step Pyramid.

"It was a splendid, horrible, inspiring, depressing, devilish, divine spectacle. First, Ishmael recited from the Koran the chapter about the Prophet's great vision (the Surat er Russoul, I think), while the people on their knees in the shadow, with the sun slanting over their heads, shouted their responses. Then in rapturous tones he spoke, and though I was on the farthest verge of the vast crowd I heard nearly all he said.

"They had reached their journey's end, and had to thank God who had brought them so far without the loss of a single life. Soon they were to go into Cairo, the Mecca of the new world, but they were to enter it in the spirit of love, not hate, of peace, not war, doing violence to none and raising no rebellion. What said the Holy Koran? 'Whosoever among Moslems, Christians or Jews believe in God and in another life shall be rewarded.'

"Therefore let no man think they were come to turn the Christians out of Egypt. They were there on a far higher errand--to turn the devil out of the world! The intolerance and bitterness of past ages had been the product of hatred and darkness. The grinding poverty and misery of the present age was the result of a false faith and civilisation. But they were come to bring universal peace, universal brotherhood, and universal religion to all nations and races and creeds--one State, one Faith, one Law, one God!

"Cairo was the gate to the East. It was also the gate to the West. He who held the keys of that gate was master of the world. Who, then, should hold them but God's own, His Guided One, His Expected One, His Christ?

"More and yet more of this kind Ishmael said in his thrilling, throbbing voice, and of course the people greeted every sentence with shouts of joy. And then finally, pointing to the minarets of the mosque of Mohammed Ali, far off on the Mokattam hills, he told them that at midnight, after the call to prayers, a light was to shine there, and they were to take it for a sign that they might enter Cairo without injury to any and with goodwill towards all.

"'Watch for that light, O my brothers! It will come! As surely as the sun will rise on you to-morrow, that light will shine on you to-night!'

"It is now quite dark and the camp is in a delirious state of excitement. The scene about my tent is simply terrifying. At one side there is an immense Zikr, with fifty frantic creatures crying 'Allah!' to a leader who in wild guttural tones is reciting the ninety-nine attributes of God. At the other side there is a huge fire at which a group of men, having slaughtered a sheep, are boiling it in a cauldron, with many pungent herbs, that they may feast and rejoice together in honour of the coming day. People are sitting in circles and singing hymns of victory; tambourines, kettle-drums, and one-stringed lutes are being played everywhere, and strolling singers are going about from fire to fire making up songs that describe Ishmael's good looks, and good deeds, and his 'divinity'--the wildest ditty being the most applauded.

"Where Ishmael himself is I do not know, but he must indeed be carried away by religious ecstasy if he is not trembling at the mere thought of to-morrow morning. What is to happen if these 'Allah-intoxicated Arabs' have to meet five thousand British bayonets? Or, supposing you can obviate that, what is to occur when they are compelled to realise that all their high-built hopes are in the dust? O God! O God!