Chapter II (1)

"El Hamdullillah! Your letter has come at last! Perhaps I wish it hadn't been Mosie who brought it, but the boy was clever in riding into the camp unobserved, and now I have sent him outside to hide in the darkness while I scribble a few lines in reply. He is to come back presently, and meantime, please God, he will keep out of the sight of that she-cat of an Arab woman.

"You are doing right, darling--I am sure you are! Naturally you must be troubled with thoughts about England and your father, but both will yet see what motives inspired you, and whatever they do now they will eventually make amends.

"Bravo, my boy, bravo! Perhaps we shall all become Quakers some day, but let the peace-people croak as they please, it is war that brings out the truly heroic virtues, and though you are trying to prevent bloodshed you are really going into battle. Go, then, and God bless you!

"What wretched ink this is--it must have got mixed with water.

"Oh yes, certainly! I will stay here to the end, and if occasion arises I will do what you desire, though I have not the faintest hope of succeeding. The fact is that even if I could persuade Ishmael not to enter Cairo the people would not under any circumstances be restrained.

"To tell you the truth, I cannot help feeling sorry for him. He really began with the highest aims and the strongest common sense, but he has become the victim of his people's idolatry, and, being made an idol, he may no longer be a man.

"I cannot help feeling sorry for the people also, for I suppose they have only tried in their blind way to realise the dream of humanity in all ages, the dream of all the holy books and all the great prophets--the dream of a millennium.

"It seems, too, as if God, who puts beautiful ideals in people's hearts, always calls for a scapegoat to pay the price of them. That is what you are to be, dear, and when I think of what you are going to do to save these poor people I begin to see for the first time what is meant by the sacrificial blood of Christ.

"I suppose this is shocking, but I don't care a pin about that. Every heroic man who risks his life for his fellow-man is doing what Christ did. You are doing it, and I don't believe the good God will ask any question about ways and means.

"There! That's something out of my eyes splash on to the very point of my pen. Don't take it as a mark of weakness, though, but as the sign-manual of Helena's heart telling you to go on without thinking about her.

"Forget what I said about my Jewish blood and Jezebel and all that nonsense. Ishmael's 'work' will not be 'finished' until he enters into Cairo, so I run no risk while I am here, you see.

"Of course I am in a fever of impatience to know what is happening on Ghezirah to-night, but you must not suppose that I am afraid. In any case, I shall stay here, having no longer the faintest thought of running away, and if there is anything to do I'll do it.

"This _may_ be the last letter I am to write to you, so good-bye, my Gordon, and God bless you again! My dear, my dear, my dear! HELENA.

"_P.S._--I suppose you are in the thick of it by this time, for I see that the illuminations on Ghezirah have already begun. My dear, my dear, my ... my----"

*CHAPTER XVI*

At eight o'clock that night the Pavilion of the Ghezirah Palace was brilliantly lit up for the "King's Dinner." A troop of British cavalry was mounted in front of it under the sparkling lights that swung from the tall palms of the garden, and a crowd of eager spectators were waiting to see the arrival of the guests.

The Consul-General came early, driving in his open carriage with two gorgeously clad saises running before him. When he stepped down at the door, in his cocked hat, laced coat, and gold-braided trousers, he was saluted like a sovereign. The band of a British regiment under the trees played some bars of the National Anthem, and the English onlookers cheered.

In the open court of the Pavilion, which was walled about by Oriental hangings, the Consul-General's own people were waiting to receive him. His old and weakened but still massive and even menacing personality showed out strongly against the shadowy forms of some of the Advisers and Under-Secretaries who stood behind him.

It was quickly seen that his manner was less brusque and masterful than usual, but that his tone was cynical and almost bitter. When his First Secretary stepped up to him and whispered that a Reuter's telegram, which had just come, announced that the Khedive had left Paris for Marseilles intending to take steamer for Egypt, he was heard to say--

"I don't care a ---- what the Khedive does or what he intends to do. Let him wait until to-morrow."

The Sirdar was one of the first of the guests to arrive, and after saying in a low tone that he had just taken the necessary steps to withdraw the ammunition from the native troops, he whispered--

"The great thing is to keep calm--not to allow yourself to lose your temper."

"I _am_ calm, perfectly calm," said the Consul-General.

Then the other guests came in quick succession, Envoys Extraordinary, Ministers-Plenipotentiary, Chancellors and Counsellors of Legation and Attaches, wearing all their orders; Barons, Counts, and Marquises--attired magnificently in a prodigious quantity of pad and tailor-work, silk stockings, white, blue, and red, coats with frogs and fur collars, stars, ribbons, silver shoe-buckles, tight breeches, and every conceivable kind of uniform and court-dress.

Among the diplomatic corps came Egyptian Ministers wearing the tarboosh and many decorations; the Turkish High Commissioner, a gorgeous and expansive person; a Prince of the Khedivial house, a long miscellaneous line of Pashas and Beys, and finally a few of the Ulema in their turbans and flowing Eastern robes.

The Consul-General received them all with smiles, and it was said afterwards that never before had he seemed to be so ceremoniously polite.

There was a delay in announcing dinner, and people were beginning to ask who else was expected, when the First Secretary was seen to approach the host and to say something which only he could hear. A moment later the venerable Chancellor of El Azhar entered the hall in his simple grey farageeyah, accompanied by a tall, strong, upright man in the ample folds of a Bedouin Sheikh, and almost immediately afterwards the guests went into the dining-hall.

Dinner was served by Arab waiters in white, and while the band in the gardens outside played selections from the latest French operas, some of the European guests consumed a prodigious deal of fermented liquor, and buzzed and twittered and fribbled in the manner of their kind. The Egyptian Ministers and Pashas were less at ease and the Ulema were obviously constrained, but the Consul-General himself, though he continued to smile and to bow, was the most preoccupied person in the room.

He passed dish after dish, eating little and drinking nothing, though his tongue wras dry and his throat was parched. From time to time he looked about him with keen eyes, as if counting up the number of those among his guests who had conspired against him. There they were, nearly all of them, his secret enemies, his unceasing revilers, his heartless and treacherous foes. But wait! Only wait! He would soon see their confusion!

The Sirdar, who sat on the left of the host, seemed to be conscious of the Consul-General's impatience, and he whispered again--

"The great thing is to be calm--perfectly calm."

"I _am_ calm," said the Consul-General, but in a tone of anger which belied his words.

Towards the end of the dinner his Secretary stepped up to the back of his chair and whispered to him that the bridge had been opened, and after that his impatience increased visibly, until the last dish had been served, the waiters had left the room, the band outside had ceased playing, and the toast-master had called silence for the first toast. Then in an instant all impatience, all nervousness, all anxiety disappeared, and the Consul-General rose to propose "The King."

Never had any one heard such a bitter, ironical, biting speech. Every word stung, every sentence cut to the bone.

He began by telling his guests how happy he was to welcome them in that historic hall, "sacred to the memory of the glories of Ismail Pasha, whose princely prodigality brought Egypt to bankruptcy." Then he assured them that he took their presence there that night as a cordial recognition of what Great Britain had done through forty hard and sleepless years to rescue the Valley of the Nile from financial ruin and moral corruption. Next, he reminded them that England was now reaping the results of the education it had given the country, and among these results were certain immature efforts to found Western institutions on Eastern soil, not to speak of secret conspiracies to embarrass, disturb, and even destroy her rule in Egypt altogether.

"But I am glad to realise," he said in a withering tone, "that all such attempts to carry the country back from civilisation to barbarism have been repelled by the best elements in the community, European and Egyptian alike, and especially by the illustrious leaders by whom I am now surrounded."

Then his eyes flashed like the eyes of an old eagle, while, amid breathless silence, in the husky voice that came from his dry throat, turning from side to side, he thanked his guests, class by class, for the help they had given to the representative of the King in putting down political and religious fanaticism.

"Gentlemen of the diplomatic corps," he said, "you are satisfied with what England has done for Egypt, and you do not wish to see her rule disturbed. Between you and ourselves there are no animosities, no selfish interests to serve, no hostile groupings, no rival combinations. Knowing that we are the joint trustees of civilisation in a backward Eastern country, nothing could induce you so to act as if you wanted Egypt for yourselves. Gentlemen, in the name of the King, I thank you!"

Turning then to the Egyptian Ministers, he said in tones of blistering irony--

"Your Excellencies, it seems idle to thank you for your loyalty to the nation by whose power you live. You are far too intelligent not to see that a man cannot set fire to his house and yet hope to preserve it from being burnt to the ground, far too sensible of your own interests to listen to the extremists who would tear to pieces the country you govern and give it back to bankruptcy and ruin. Gentlemen, in the name of the King, I thank you."

Then facing the Notables he said, with a curl of his firm lip--

"It might perhaps be thought that you, of all others, had least reason to be grateful to the Power that took the _courbash_ out of your hands, and deprived you of the advantages of forced labour; but you do not want to regain the powers you once held over the great unmoving masses of the people; you are willing to see all false ledgers showing unjust debts burnt in the public squares with your whips and instruments of the bastinado. Therefore, gentlemen, in the name of the King, I thank you."

Finally, looking down the middle table to where the Chancellor of El Azhar sat with his Bedouin friend beside him, he said--

"And your Eminences of the Ulema, I thank you also. Your enemies sometimes say that you continue to live in the Middle Ages, but you are much too keenly alive to your interests in the present hour not to realise how necessary it is to you to be assured for the future against the possible recurrence of Mahdist raids and revolutions. You know that the hydra-headed monster called fanaticism would destroy you and your class, and therefore you support with all the loyalty of your eager hearts the Power which in the interests of true religion would crush and quell it. Gentlemen, in the name of the King, I thank you."

The effect of the speech was paralysing. As, one by one, the Consul-General spoke to the classes represented by his guests, there was not a response, not a sound, nothing but silence in the room, with white faces and quivering lips on every side.

At length the Consul-General raised his glass and, in a last passage of withering sarcasm, called on the company to drink to the great sovereign of the great nation which, with the cordial sympathy and united help of the whole community, as represented by those who were there present, had done so much for civilisation and progress in the East--"The King!"

They could not help themselves--they rose, a lame, halting, half-terrified company, getting up irregularly, with trembling hands and pallid cheeks, and repeated after the toast-master in nervous, faltering, broken voices, "The King!"

After the speaker sat down there was a subdued murmur which rose by degrees to a sort of muffled growl. The Consul-General heard it, and his keen eyes flashed around the company. Down to this moment he had done no more than he intended to do, but now, carried away by the excitement created within himself by his own speech, he wished to throw off all disguise, and fling out at everybody.

"Better be calm, though," he thought, remembering the Sirdar's advice, and at the next moment the Sirdar himself, whom he had missed from his side, returned and said, in a whisper--

"Afraid I must go. Just heard that some of the Egyptian soldiers have been knocking down the officers who were sent to remove their ammunition."

At that news, which appeared to confirm predictions and to be the beginning of everything he had been led to expect, the Consul-General lost all control of himself.

"Wait! Wait a little and we'll go together," he whispered back, and then, calling for silence, he rose to his feet again and faced full upon his guests.

"Your Highness, your Eminences, your Excellencies, and Gentlemen," he said in a loud voice, "I have one more toast. I have given you the health of the King, and now I give you 'Confusion to his Enemies.'"

If a bomb had fallen in the dining-hall it could scarcely have made more commotion. The Consul-General saw this and smiled.

"Yes, gentlemen, I say his enemies, and when I speak of the King's enemies, I refer to his enemies in Egypt, his enemies in this room."

The sensation produced by these words was compounded of many emotions. To such of the guests as were entirely innocent of conspiracy it seemed plainly evident that a kind of mental vertigo had seized the Consul-General. One of them looked round for a doctor, another rose from his seat with the intention of stepping up to the speaker, while a third took out his gold pencil-case and began to scribble a note to the Sirdar, asking him, as the best friend of their host, to remove the Consul-General from the room.

On the other hand, the persons who were actually participating in conspiracy had, by operation of that inscrutable instinct which compels guilty men to expose themselves, risen to their feet, and were loudly shouting their protests.

"Untrue!" "Disgraceful!" "False!" "Utterly false!"

"False, is it?" said the Consul-General. "We shall see."

Then glancing over them one by one as they stood about him, his eye fixed itself first upon a foreign representative whose breast was covered with decorations, and he said--

"Baron, did you not say in the Salon of a certain Princess that out of your Secret Service money you were providing arms for the Egyptian populace?"

The Baron gave a start of surprise, made some movement of the lips as if trying to reply, and sank back to his seat. Then the Consul-General turned to one of two Egyptian Ministers who, with faces as red as their tarbooshes, were standing side by side, and said--

"Pasha, will you deny that as recently as yesterday you sent somebody to me in secret to say that while you were innocent of conspiracy against British rule, your colleague, who stands at your right, was deeply guilty?"

The Pasha stammered out some confused words and collapsed.

Then the Consul-General faced down to one of the Ulema, the Grand Mufti, who, in his white turban and graceful robes, was trying his best to smile, and said--

"Your Eminence, can it be possible that you were not present at the house of the Chancellor of El Azhar when a letter was sent to a certain visionary mummer then in the Soudan, asking him to return to Cairo in order to draw off the allegiance of the Egyptian army?"

The smile passed in a flash from the Grand Mufti's face, and he, too, dropped back to his seat. Then one by one the others who had been standing, slithered down to their places, as if each of them was in fear that some secret he had whispered in the salon, the harem or the mosque, would in like manner be blurted from the housetops.

The Consul-General swept the whole company with a look of triumph and said--

"You see, gentlemen, I know everything, and it is useless to deny. In order to overthrow the authority of England in Egypt you have condescended to the arts of anarchists--you have joined together to provoke rebellion against law and order."

All this time the Sirdar's face had been stamped with an expression of sadness, and now he was seen to be addressing the Consul-General in a few low-toned words, but his warning, if such it were, seemed to be quite unheeded. With increasing excitement and intense bitterness the Consul-General turned hotly upon the foreign representatives and said--

"Gentlemen of the diplomatic corps, joint trustees with me of peace and civilisation in a backward country, you thought you were using the unrest of the Egyptians to serve your own ends, but listen, and I will tell you what you were really doing."

Then, more fiercely than ever, his face aflame, his hoarse voice breaking into harsh cries, he disclosed his knowledge of the Egyptian plot as he understood it to be--how the final aim, the vast and luminous fact to which all Moslem energies were directed, was the establishment of an Arab Empire which should have for its first purpose to resist the Christian nations; how this Empire had originated in the mind of the Khedive, who wished to put himself at the head of it; and how, since it was necessary in an Eastern country to give a religious colour to political intriguing, Ishmael Ameer, the mock Mahdi, the fanatic-hypocrite, had been employed to intimidate the British authorities by bringing up the scourings of the Soudan to their very doors.

This fell on the whole company, innocent and guilty, like a thunderclap.

The great Proconsul, the strong and practical intellect which had governed the State so long, had been deceived on the main issue, had been fooled, and was fighting a gigantic phantom!

"Is this news to you, gentlemen of the diplomatic corps? Ask your friends, the Ulema! Is it news to you, too, gentlemen of El Azhar? Ask your Grand Cadi! But that is not all. You have had no scruples, no shame! In hitting at England you have not hesitated to hit at England's servant--myself. You have hit me where I could least bear the blow. By lies, by hypocrisies, by false pretences you have got hold of my son, my only son, my only relative, all that was left to me ... the one in whom my hopes in life were centred and----"

Here the old man's voice faltered, and it was afterwards remembered that at this moment the Bedouin Sheikh rose in obvious agitation, made some steps forward, and then stopped.

At the next instant the Consul-General had recovered himself, and, with increasing strength and still greater ferocity, was hurling his last reproaches upon his enemies.

"But you are mistaken, gentlemen. I may be old but I am not yet helpless. In the interests not only of England but of Europe I have made all necessary preparations to defeat your intrigues, and now--now I am about to put them into execution."

Saying this he left his seat and directed his steps towards the door. Nearly the whole of the company rose at the same moment, and all stood aside to let him pass. Nobody spoke, nobody made a gesture. In that room there were now no longer conspirators and non-conspirators. There were only silent spectators of a great tragedy. Everybody felt that an immense figure was passing from the world's stage, and none would have been more surprised if the Pyramid of Gizeh had crumbled before their eyes.

On reaching the door the Consul-General stopped and spoke again, but with something of his old courageous calm.

"I understand," he said, "that it was part of the plan that to-night at midnight, while the British army was expected to be on the Delta, and I and my colleagues were to be held prisoners on Ghezirah, the horde of armed fanatics now lying outside on the desert were to enter and occupy the city. That was a foolish scheme, gentlemen, such as could only have been conceived in the cobwebbed brains of El Azhar. But whatever it was I must ask you to abide by its consequences. In the interests of peace and of your own safety you will remain on this island until to-morrow, and in the morning you shall see ... what you shall see!"

Then saying something in a low voice to the Commandant of Police who was standing near, he passed out of the dining-hall and the door was closed behind him.

*CHAPTER XVII*

A few minutes afterwards the military band in the garden was playing again, red and white rockets were shooting into the dark sky from the grounds of the Khedivial Sports Club, and the Consul-General was entering the little insular telephone office of Ghezirah, which was under the same roof as the Pavilion.

"Call me up the Colonel commanding at Abbassiah and ask him to hold the line."

"Yes, my lord."

While the attendant put in the plug of his machine and waited for a reply, the Consul-General walked nervously to and fro between the counter and the door. He was expecting the Commandant of Police to come to him in a moment with news of the arrest of Ishmael Ameer. Without this certainty (though he had never had an instant's doubt of it) he could not allow himself to proceed to the last and most serious extremity.

"Not got him yet?"

"Not yet, my lord," said the attendant, and he plugged his machine afresh.

The Consul-General resumed his restless perambulation. He was by no means at ease about the unpremeditated developments of the scene in the dining-hall, but he had always intended to make sure that his enemies were safely housed on the island, and thereby cut off from the power of making further mischief, before he ordered the army into the city. The plugging of the machine was repeated.

"Not got him even yet, boy?"

"Cannot get an answer from the Central in Cairo, my lord."

"Try yet another line. Quick!"

The Consul-General thought the Commandant was long in coming, but no doubt the police staff had removed the supposed "Bedouin" to a private room, so that in making his arrest, and in stripping off his disguise to secure evidence of his identity, there might be no unnecessary commotion, no vulgar sensation. The plugging of the machine ceased.

"Got him at last?"

"No, my lord. Think there must be something wrong with the wires."

"The wires?"

"They seem to have been tampered with."

"You mean--cut?"

"Afraid they are, my lord."

"Then the island--so far as the telephone goes--the island is isolated?"

"Yes, my lord."

The old man's face, which had been flushed, became deadly pale, and his stubborn lower lip began to tremble.

"Who can have done this? Who? Who?"

The attendant, terrified by the fierce eye that looked into his face, was answering with a vacant stare and a shake of the head when the Sirdar entered the office, accompanied by the Commandant of Police, and both were as white as if they had seen a ghost.

"Well, what is it now?" demanded the Consul-General, whereupon the Sirdar answered--

"The Commandant's men have got him, but----"

"But--what?"

"It is not Ishmael Ameer."

"Not Ishma ... you say it is not Ish----"

The Consul-General stopped, and for a long moment he stared in silence into the blanched faces before him. Then he said sharply, "Who is it?"

The Commandant dropped his head and the Sirdar seemed unwilling to reply.

"Who is it, then?"

"It is ... it is a British officer."

"A British ... you say a British----"

"A Colonel."

The old man's lips moved as if he were repeating the word without uttering it.

"His tunic was torn where his decorations had been. He looked like ... like a man who might have been degraded."

The Consul-General's face twitched, but in a fierce, almost ferocious voice he said, "Speak! Who is it?"

There was another moment of silence, which seemed to be eternal, and then the Sirdar replied--

"Nuneham, it is your own son."

*CHAPTER XVIII*

"_From the Slave of the Most High, Abdul Ali, Chancellor of El Azhar, to Ishmael Ameer, the Messenger of God--Praise be to Him, the Exalted One!_

"A word in haste to say that he who came here as your missionary and representative has within the hour been arrested by the officials of the Government, having, so far as we can yet learn and surmise, been most treacherously and maliciously betrayed into their hands by means of a letter to the English lord from one who stands near to you in your camp.

"In sadness and tears, with faces bowed to the earth and ashes on our heads, we send our sympathy to you and to your stricken followers, entreating you on our knees, in the name of the Compassionate, not to attempt to carry out your design of coming into Cairo, lest further and more fearful calamities should occur.

"This by swift and trusty messenger to your hands at Sakkara.--The Slave of your Virtues,

"ABDUL ALI."

END OF FOURTH BOOK

*FIFTH BOOK*

THE DAWN

*CHAPTER I*

The day that Ishmael had looked for, longed for, prayed for--the day that was to see the fulfilment not only of his spiritual hopes but of his rapturous dream of bliss, the day of his return to Cairo--had come at last.

But the Ishmael Ameer who was returning to Cairo was by no means the same man as the Ishmael who had gone away. In a few short months he had become a totally different person. Two forces had changed him--two forces which in their effect were one.

By the operation of the first of these forces he had become more of a mystic; by the operation of the second he had become more of a man; by the operation of both together he had become a creature who was controlled by his emotions alone.

When he left Cairo he had been a man of elevated spirit but of commanding common sense. He had looked upon himself as one whose sole work was to call men back to God and to righteousness. But little by little the tyranny of outward events, the pressure of responsibility, and, above all, the heartfelt and prostrate but dim and perverted adulation of his followers, had led him to believe that he was a being apart, specially directed by the Almighty and even permitted to be His mouthpiece.

Insensibly Ishmael had come to look upon himself as a "Son of God." When he first saw that the crowds who came to him from east and west were beginning to believe that he was the Redeemer, the Deliverer, the Expected One whom he foretold, he was shocked, and he protested. But when he perceived that this belief helped him to comfort and console and direct them, he ceased to deny; and when he realised that it was necessary to his people's confidence that they should think that he who guided them was himself guided by God, he permitted himself, by his silence, to acquiesce.

From allowing others to believe in his divinity, he had come to believe in it himself. His burning, boundless influence over his people had seemed to his deep heart to be only intelligible as a thing given to him from Heaven, and then the "miracle" in the desert, the raising of the Sheikh's daughter from the dead, had swept down the last of his scruples. God had given him supernatural powers and made him the mouthpiece of His will.

And now, at the end of his pilgrimage, if he did not accept the idea that he was in very fact the Redeemer who was to bring in the golden age, the Kingdom of God, he succumbed to a delusion that was nearly akin to it--that just as the lord of the Christians, being condemned by the Roman Governor, had permitted another to take his form and face and bodily presence and to die on the cross instead of him, so the Messiah, the Mahdi, the Christ who was to come, was now using him as His substitute to lead and control His poor, oppressed, and helpless people until the time came for Him to appear in His own person.

Such was the operation of the force that had made Ishmael more of a mystic; and the force that had made him more of a man had been playing in the same way upon his heart.

It had played upon him through Helena.

When Helena entered into his life and he betrothed himself to her, he honestly believed that he was doing no more than protecting her good name. For some time afterwards he continued to deceive himself, but the constant presence of a beautiful woman by his side produced its effect, and little by little he came to know that his heart was touched.

As soon as he became conscious of this he remembered the vow he had made when his Coptic slave-wife died, that no other woman should take her place, and he also reminded himself of his mission, his consecration to the welfare of humanity. But the more he tried to crush his affection for Helena, the more it grew.

He was like a boy in the first beautiful morning light of love. The moment he was alone, after parting from Helena at the door of her sleeping-room, he would kiss the hand that had touched her hand, and find a tingling joy in stepping afresh over the places on which her feet had trod. A glance from her beaming eyes made his pulse beat rapidly, and when, one day, he saw her combing out her hair, with her round white arm bare to the elbow, his breathing came quick and loud.

His passion was like a flower which had sprung up in the parched place of the desert of his desolate soul, and everything that Helena did seemed to water it. Reading her conduct by the only light he had, he thought she loved him. Had she not followed him from India, breaking from her own people to live by his side? Had she not betrothed herself to him without a thought of any other than spiritual joys?

Her pride in him, too, was no less than her affection. Had she not proposed that he should go into Cairo in advance, because that being the place of the greatest danger was the place of highest honour also? In her womanly jealousy for her husband's rank, had she not resisted and resented the substitution of another when it was decided by the Sheikhs that "Omar" should go instead? And, notwithstanding her illness at Khartoum, had she not insisted on following him across the desert and, weak as she was, enduring the pains of his pilgrimage in order to continue by his side?

Allah bless and cherish her! Was there anything in the world so good as a sweet, unselfish, devoted woman?

During the journey Ishmael's love for Helena grew hour by hour until it filled his whole being, and made his wild heart a globe of infinite radiance and hope. Her beauty, her gifts of mind as well as of body, took complete possession of him. Whenever he saw her, everything brightened up. Whenever he turned on his camel, and caught sight of her dromedary at the tail of the caravan, he became excited. Whenever evil things befell, he had only to think of the Rani and his troubles died away. All that was good and beautiful in the world seemed to centre in the litter that held her by day and in the tent that covered her by night.

Then, in spite of his mission and the burden of his work, he began to remember that all this loveliness, all this sweetness, belonged _to him_. The Rani was _his wife_, and he could not help but think of the possibility of nearer relations between them.

When this thought first came to him he repelled it as a species of treachery. Had he not pledged himself to a spiritual union? Would it not be wrong to break that pledge--wrong to the Rani, wrong to his own higher nature, wrong to God?

But, nevertheless, the temptation to claim the rights of a husband became stronger day by day, and he struggled to reconcile his faith with his affection. He reminded himself that renunciation was no part of Islam, that it was a Christian error, that "monkery" had been condemned by the Prophet, that it was contrary to the clear law of nature, and that as soon as his task was finished it was his duty to live a human life, with woman and with children.

This seemed to solve the Sphinx-like problem of existence, but when he tried to talk of it to the Rani, in order to break the ground with her, his tongue would not utter the words that were in his heart, and something made him stop in confusion and hasten away.

Yet his self-denial only intensified his desire. Keeping away from Helena by day, he was with her in his dreams by night. One rapturous, incredible, almost impossible and even terrible dream of bliss was always stirring within him. A little longer, only a little longer. The hour in which he would lay down his task as leader, as prophet, would be the hour in which he would take up his new life as a man.

That hour was now near. He was outside the gates of Cairo. Nothing would, nothing could, intervene at this last stage to prevent him from entering the city, and once within, his work would be at an end. O God, how good it was to live!

All that day at Sakkara, Ishmael had been in the highest state of religious exaltation, and when night came he walked about the camp as if demented both in heart and brain.

The camp stretched from the hanks of the Nile at Bedrasheen over the black ruins of Memphis to the broad sands before the Step Pyramid, and everywhere the people sat in groups about their fires, eating, drinking, playing their pipes, tambourines and drums, and singing, to tunes that were like wild dance music, their songs of rejoicing.

They were singing about himself, his wise words, his miracles, his miraculous birth (born of a virgin), his good looks, which made all women love him, and his divinity, which would save him from death. Ishmael heard this, yet he had no misgivings, no fear of what the coming day would bring forth. A sort of spiritual lightning blinded him to possible danger, and his heart swelled with love for his people. God bless them! God bless everybody! Bless East and West, white man and black man, sons of one Father, soon to be united in one hope, one love, one faith!

Ishmael felt as if he wanted to take the whole world in his arms. Above all, he wanted to take the Rani in his arms. It was not that the lower man, the animal man, was conquering the higher man, the spiritual man, but that both body and soul were aflame, that a sense of fierce joy filled his whole being at the thought of entering into a new life, and that he wished to find physical expression for it.

Before he was aware of what he was doing, he was walking in the direction of Helena's tent. Striding along in the darkness, which was slashed here and there with shafts of light from the camp fires, he approached the tent from the back, the mouth being towards the city. Close behind it, he stumbled upon some one who was crouching there. It was a boy, and he rose hastily and hurried away without speaking, being followed immediately by a woman who seemed to have been watching him.

Ishmael's heart was beating so violently by this time that he had only a confused impression of having seen this, and at the next instant, treading softly on the silent sand, he was in front of the tent, looking at Helena, who was within.

She was sitting on her camp-bed, her angerib, writing on a pad that rested upon her lap, by the light of a lamp which hung from the pole that upheld the canvas. Though her face was down, Ishmael could see that it was suffused by a rosy blush, and when at one moment she raised her head, her bright and shining eyes seemed to him to be wet with tears, but full, nevertheless, of joy and love.

Ishmael thought he knew what she was doing. She was thinking of him, and writing, as she loved to do, the immortal story of his pilgrimage, happy in the near approach of his great triumph.

Standing in the darkness to look at her, he could hardly restrain himself any longer. He wanted to burst in upon her and to be alone with her.

Behind and about him were the lights of the camp and its many sounds of rejoicing, but he did not see or hear them now. His heart was afire. He was intoxicated with love. What had been for so long his almost unconquerable dream of bliss was about to be fulfilled.

"Rani!" he whispered, in a quivering voice, and then, plunging into the tent, he caught her up in his arms.

*CHAPTER II*

Half blind with tears which belied her brave words, Helena had been writing the letter to Gordon which Mosie was waiting to take away. She had told him not to think of her, for she was quite able to take care of herself whatever happened. Then wiping the tears from her eyes, she had smiled as she told him to forget the nonsense she had written about Jezebel and her Jewish blood, and to remember that until Ishmael's work was "finished" and he entered Cairo she ran no risk by remaining in his camp.

She had got thus far when she thought she heard a step on the sand outside, but raising her eyes to look and seeing nothing except the red and white stars from the rockets that rained through the air at Ghezirah, she resumed her letter, telling herself, as she did so, that if the worst came to the worst and matters reached an unexpected crisis with Ishmael, she could defeat him again, as she had done before, by diplomacy, by finesse, and by woman's wit.

"I suppose you are in the thick of it by this time, for I see that the illuminations at Ghezirah have already begun. My dear, my dear, my----"

Her last word was not yet written when she heard Ishmael's tremulous whisper of the name he knew her by, and, starting up as if she had received an electric shock, she saw the Egyptian coming into her tent with the glittering eyes of one who was about to accomplish some joyous task. At the next moment, before she knew what was happening, she found herself clasped in his arms.

"My life! My heart! My eyes! My own!" he was saying in hot and impetuous whispers, and, raising her face to his face, he was kissing her on the lips.

She struggled to liberate herself, but felt like a helpless child in his strong, irresistible grasp.

"Leave me! Let me go!" she said, with heat and anger, but he did not seem to hear her or to be conscious of her resistance.

"Oh, how glad I am!" he said. "Our journey is at an end! Our new life is about to begin! How happy we shall be!"

All the blood in Helena's body rushed to her cheeks, and, putting up her hands between their faces, she demanded angrily--

"What do you mean by this? What are you doing?"

Yet still he did not hear her, for his passion was overpowering him, its intoxicating voice was ringing through his whole being, and he continued to pour into her ears a torrent of endearing words.

"Yes, yes, our new life is about to begin! It is to begin to-night--now!"

Helena was overwhelmed with fear, but suddenly, by the operation of an instinct which she did not comprehend, she smiled up into Ishmael's smiling face--a feeble, frightened, involuntary smile--and, pointing to the open mouth of the tent, she said, with a sense of mingled cunning and confusion--

"Be careful! Look!"

Ishmael loosened his hold of her, and, stepping back to the tent's mouth, he began to close and button it.

While he did so, Helena watched him and asked herself what she ought to do next. Cry for help? It would be useless. There were none to hear her except Ishmael's own people, and they worshipped him and looked upon her as his wife, his property, his slave, his chattel. Escape? Impossible! More than ever impossible for what (at her own direction) he was doing now.

"Then what am I to do?" she asked herself, and before she had found an answer Ishmael, having sealed up the tent, was returning with outstretched arms, as if with the intention of embracing and kissing her again.

She read in his great wild eyes the light of a passion which she had never seen in a man's face before, but she put on a bold front in spite of the terror which possessed her, thrust out her right hand to keep him off, looked him full in the face, and cried--

"No, no! You shall not! On no account! No!"

At that he dropped his outstretched arms, but, still smiling his joyous smile, he continued to approach her, saying, as he did so, in a tone of affectionate surprise and remonstrance--

"Why, what is this, O my Rani? Have we not joined hands under the handkerchief? Are you not my wife? Am I not your husband? It is true that I pledged myself to renunciation. But renunciation is wrong. It is against religion--against God."

He came nearer. She could feel his hot breath upon her face. It made her shiver with the race-feeling she had experienced before.

"And then, how can I continue to deny myself?" he said. "I am like one who has been dying of hunger in the sight of food. You are my joy, my flower, my treasure. God has given you to me. You are mine."

With that he threw his irresistible arms about her again, and, bringing his glittering eyes close to her eyes, he whispered--

"My Rani! My wife!"

Helena knew that the hour she had looked forward to with dread had come at length; she saw that the diplomacy, the finesse, the woman's wit she had counted upon to save her, were useless to quell the passion which flashed from Ishmael's eyes and throbbed in his voice, and she made one last and violent effort to escape from his arms.

"Let me go! Let me go!" she cried.

"Am I doing wrong?" he said. "No, no! I would not harm you for all the kingdoms of the world. But every wife must submit to her husband."

"No, no, no!" she cried, in tones of repulsion and loathing.

"Yes, yes, yes!" he replied, still more tenderly, still more passionately. "But if she is a good woman she has her modesty, her shield of shame. That is only right, only natural. It makes her the more sweet, the more dear, the more charming----"

Helena felt his arms tightening about her; she knew that he was lifting her off her feet, and realised that she was beins carried across the tent.

Then she remembered the assurances she had given to Gordon, the promises she had made to herself; and hardly conscious of what she did until it was done, or what she was saying until it was said, she brought her open hands heavily down upon his face, and cried in a fury of wrath and scorn--

"Let me go, I tell you! You shall! You must! Can't you see that you are hateful and odious to me--that you are a black man and I am a white woman?"

At the next moment she felt Ishmael's arms relax, and she found herself on her feet. A sense of immense, immeasurable relief came over her. A sense of triumph, too, for what she had said she would do she had done.

When she recovered herself sufficiently to look at Ishmael again, he was standing apart from her and his head was down. He could no longer deceive himself. A whirlwind of chaotic darkness had swept over him. The storm of his passion was gone.

Helena saw that he was deeply wounded, and, notwithstanding the aversion he had inspired in her a moment before, she pitied him from the bottom of her heart.

"I am sorry for what I said just now," she murmured in a low tone. "It was hateful of me, and I ask your pardon."

She was still panting, and she had to pause for breath, but he did not reply, and after a moment she began to excuse herself, saying falteringly--

"But you must see that ... that there could never have been anything between you and me, because ... because----"

Raising his eyes, he looked not into her face but at the veil that was fixed to her hair, and she found it difficult to go on.

"Did you not say yourself," she said, "that marriage was not joining hands under a handkerchief, or repeating words after a Cadi, but a sacrament of love, mutual love, and that everything else was sin? Therefore----"

"Well?"

"Therefore if ... if I do not love you----"

"And you do not?"

"No."

"Allah! Allah!" he muttered, in a voice that seemed to come up out of the depths of his soul, and at the next moment he sank down on to the angerib which was close behind him.

But hardly had he done so when he leapt to his feet again, and in a voice that rang with wrath he said--

"Then why did you betroth yourself to me? I put no constraint upon you. If you had told me that your heart was far from me, I should have gone no further. But I gave you time to consider, and you came to me of your own free will. Why was this? Answer me. I have a right to know that, at all events."

It came into her mind to reply that when they were betrothed he did not ask her if she loved him, and she did not understand that she was to belong to him. But what was the use of defending herself? On what ground could she justify her conduct?

"Or if," he said, and his voice shook with the intensity of his emotion--"if it was after our betrothal that your heart left me--if something I said or did lost me your love--why did you follow me from Khartoum? You might have stayed there. I was willing to leave you behind me. Why did you follow me over the desert? Why did you come with my company? Why are you here now?"

She found it impossible to answer him, and feeling how deeply she had wronged him, yet how impossible, how unthinkable, how inconceivable it was that she could have acted otherwise than she had, in the light of her great and undying love for Gordon, she clasped her hands in front of her face and burst into a flood of tears.

Her tears drove away his anger in a moment, for he mistook the cause of them, and, deeply and incurably wounded as he was, a wave of sympathy and compassion passed over him. Drawing her hands from her face and holding them in his own, he looked steadfastly into her wet eyes, and said in a softer voice--

"I see how it has been, O my Rani. You followed the teacher, not the man; the message, not the poor soiled volume it was written in, and perhaps you were right--quite right."

Every word he uttered went like iron into Helena's soul.

"I thought a woman lived by her heart alone," he said, "and that when she betrothed herself it must be for love, not from any higher and nobler motive, but it seems I was wrong--quite wrong. I thought, too," he said, "that where love was," and here his voice thickened and almost broke, "there was neither black nor white, neither race nor caste; but it seems I was wrong in that also. Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me!"

He lifted her hands in his own long and delicate ones and put them to his lips, and then gently let them fall.

"But God knows best what is good for us," he said, "and perhaps ... perhaps He has sent me this as a warning and a punishment, lest ... lest I forget ... in the love of home and wife and children, the task the great task He has laid upon me. In-sha-allah! In-sha-allah!"

With that he turned to leave the tent, a shaken and agitated and totally different man from the man who had entered it; and Helena, notwithstanding that she was deeply moved, again felt a sense of immense, immeasurable relief.

But at the next moment a feeling akin to terror seized her, for while Ishmael was unbuttoning the canvas at the tent's mouth there came, over the dull rumble of many sounds outside, a clear, sharp voice, crying--

"Ishmael Ameer! Ishmael Ameer! Urgent news! Where are you?"

Helena's heart stood still. She seemed to know in advance what was coming. The hour of Ishmael's downfall had arrived, and he was to hear that he had been betrayed. She had escaped from her physical danger--what, now, of her moral peril?

*CHAPTER III*

A moment later Ishmael had torn the mouth of the tent open. An Egyptian was standing there in the turban and farageeyah of an Alim. The man, who was solemnly making his salaams, held a lantern in one hand and a letter in the other. Behind him, against the dark sky, were a number of Ishmael's own people. Their mouths were open, and fear was on their faces.

"What words are these, oh my brother?" asked Ishmael.

Without speaking, the Alim offered him the letter. It was that of the Chancellor of El Azhar, written immediately after the arrest of Gordon.

Ishmael took it, and standing under the lamp that hung from the pole of the tent he read it. For some moments he did not move or raise his eyes, but little by little his face assumed a death-like rigidity, and at length the paper crinkled in his trembling fingers.

So strong had been his faith in his mission, and so firm his conviction that God would not allow anything to interfere with its fulfilment, that it was almost impossible for him to take in the truth--that his cause was lost, that his pilgrimage was wasted, that his people could not enter Cairo, and their hope was at an end.

When at length he raised his eyes he looked with an expression of blank bewilderment into Helena's face.

"See," he said, in a tone of piteous helplessness, and he put the letter into her reluctant hand.

The blood rushed to Helena's head, stars danced before her eyes, and it was with difficulty that she could see to read. But there was little need to do so, for already she knew, as by a sense of doom, what the letter contained.

In a moment the people behind the Alim grew more and more numerous. The mouth of the tent became choked with them, and their faces were blotched with lights and shadows from the lamp within. They were talking eagerly among themselves, in low tones, full of dread. At length one of them spoke to Ishmael.