Chapter II (2)

"Is it bad news, O Master?" he asked, but with the expressionless voice of one who knew already what the answer would be.

There was a moment of strained silence, and then Ishmael turned again to Helena, and said in the same tone of piteous helplessness as before--

"Read it to them. Let them know the worst, O Rani."

Helena could find no escape. With a fearful effort she began to read the letter aloud. But hardly had she finished the first clause of it--telling Ishmael that his messenger and missionary had been betrayed into the hands of the Government by means of a message sent into Cairo from some one who stood near to him in his own camp--than a deep groan came from the people at the mouth of the tent.

Black Zogal was there with his wild eyes, and by his side stood old Zewar Pasha with his suspicious looks.

"Who is the traitor, O Master?" asked the old man in his rasping voice, and it seemed to Helena that while he spoke every eye, except Ishmael's, was fixed upon her face.

Then a fearful thing befell. Ishmael, the man of peace, whom none had ever seen in any mood but one of tenderness and love, broke into a torrent of fierce passion.

"Allah curse him whoever he is!" he cried. "Curse him in his lying down, and in his getting up! Curse him in the morning splendour, and in the still of night! Curse him in the life that now is, and in the life that is to come!"

Helena felt as if the tent itself as well as the black and copper-coloured faces at the mouth of it were reeling around her. But it was not alone the terror of Ishmael's curse, with its unrevealed reference to herself, that created her confusion. She was thinking of Gordon. What did his arrest imply? Did it mean that he had succeeded in the perilous task he had undertaken? Or did it mean that he had failed?

When she recovered consciousness of what was going on about her she heard, above a wild tumult of voices outside, the voice of a woman and the voice of a boy. She knew that the woman was Zenoba and the boy was Mosie. At the next moment both were coming headlong into the tent, the one dragging the other through a way that had been made for them. The boy's shaven black head was bare, his caftan was torn open at the breast, and his skin was bleeding at the neck as if vindictive fingers had been clutching him by the throat. The woman's swarthy face was bathed in sweat, twitching with excitement and convulsed with evil passions.

"There!" she cried. "There he is, O Master, and if you want to know who took the letter to the English lord, ask him."

"Who is he?" asked Ishmael.

"Your Rani's servant," replied the Arab woman, with a curl of her cruel lip. "He left Khartoum for Cairo a month ago and has not been seen until to-day."

Another deep groan came from the people at the tent's mouth, and again it seemed to Helena that every eye, except Ishmael's, was looking into her face.

Meantime Mosie, thinking the groan of the people was meant for him, and that his life was in danger from their anger, had broken away from the woman's grasp and flung himself at Ishmael's feet, crying--

"Mercy, O Master! I kiss your feet. I take refuge with God and with you. Save me, and I will tell you every thing."

Ishmael, who by this time had regained his self-command, motioned to the Arab woman to stand back. Then he questioned the boy calmly, and the boy answered him in a fever of fear, gasping and sobbing at every word.

"My boy, you have come out of Cairo?"

"Yes, O Master, yes."

"You went there from Khartoum?"

"Yes, yes, O Master, yes."

"You took a letter to the English lord?"

"Yes, Master, a letter to the English lord."

"From some one in Khartoum?"

"Yes, I will tell my Master everything--from some one in Khartoum."

"What treacherous man sent you with that letter?"

"No man at all, O Master. You see, I am telling my Master everything."

"Was it a woman?"

"Yes, Master, a woman. See, I kiss your feet. I keep nothing back from my Master."

Another groan came from the people at the tent's mouth, and the black boy clutched at Ishmael's white caftan as if to protect himself from their wrath. Ishmael himself had a confused sense of something terrible that had not yet taken shape in his mind. He looked round at Helena who was standing by the angerib at the back, but her head was down and her thoughts were far away.

"What woman, then?" he asked in a sterner voice.

"No, no, I cannot tell you that," said the boy.

"Speak, boy. You shall be safe. I will protect you from all harm. What woman was it?"

"Master, do not ask me. I dare not tell you."

"Listen," said Ishmael, and his voice grew hard and hoarse. "There is a traitor in my camp, and I must find out who it is. What treacherous woman sent you into Cairo with that letter?"

The boy struggled hard. His ugly black face under his shaven poll was distorted by fear. He hesitated, began to speak, then stopped altogether.

At that moment Helena came forward as if she had suddenly awakened from a dream, and Mosie saw her for the first time since he had been dragged into the tent. In another instant all fear had gone from his face and his eyes were blazing with courage.

"Tell me, I command you," said Ishmael.

"No, no, I will _never_ tell you," said the boy.

Again a groan--this time a growl--came from the people at the tent's mouth.

"Torment would make his tongue wag," said one.

"Beat the innocent until the guilty confess--it is a good maxim, O Master," said Zewar in his rasping tones.

Black Zogal, with his wild eyes, stepped out as if to lay hold of the lad, but Ishmael waved him back.

"Wait!" he said.

He was looking at Helena again, and his face had undergone a fearful change.

"My boy," he said, still keeping his eyes on Helena, "if you do not tell me I must give you back to the people."

At that the boy broke into a paroxysm of hysterical sobs.

"No, no, my Master will not do that. But see," he said, tearing wider his torn caftan so as to expose his breast, "my Master himself shall kill me."

At the next moment Helena's hand was on Ishmael's arm.

"Let the boy go," she said. "I can tell the rest."

A gloomy chill traversed Ishmael's heart. He had a sense of spiritual paralysis--as if everything in the world were crumbling and crashing down to impotent wreck and ruin.

His people at the tent's mouth were muttering among themselves. He dismissed them, sending everybody away including the boy and the Arab woman. Most of them went off grudgingly, ungraciously, for the first time reluctant to obey his will.

Then he closed up the mouth of the tent, and was once more alone with Helena.

*CHAPTER IV*

In spite of the dread with which, for more than a month, Helena had looked forward to the hour in which Ishmael should hear of his betrayal, she felt none of the terror from that cause which she had feared and expected.

She could think of nothing but Gordon. Where was he now? What were they doing to him? It seemed to be the only possible explanation of his arrest that his scheme for the salvation of the people had failed. Would he be handed over to the military authorities? Would he be tried by court-martial? And what would be the punishment of his offences as a soldier? Sinking down on the angerib she pressed her hands over her brow and over her eyes that she might think of this and shut out everything else.

Meantime the mind of Ishmael was going through a conflict as strange and no less cruel. Although the plain evidences of his senses had already told him that he had been betrayed by the woman he loved, yet the dread of discovering the traitor in his own tent, in his own wife, filled him with terror, and he tried to escape from it.

Having fastened up the tent, he walked to and fro for some moments without speaking, and then sitting down by Helena's side and taking her hand and smoothing it, he said, in his throbbing, quivering voice--

"Rani, we have eaten bread and salt together. Be faithful with me--what woman sent that letter?"

Helena hardly heard what he was saying. She was still thinking of Gordon. "They will condemn him to death," she told herself.

"Rani," said Ishmael again, "we have lived under the same roof; you have shared with me the closest secrets of my soul. Tell me--what woman sent that letter?"

Helena looked at him and tried to listen, but Gordon's doom was ringing in her ears, and it drowned all the other sounds of life.

"Rani," said Ishmael once more, "though you denied me the rights of a husband, yet you are my wife. Our lives have been united not by man but by God, and in the presence of Him, whose name be exalted--of Him who reads all hearts--I ask you--what woman sent that letter?"

Helena heard him, yet terrible as his question was, and perilous as she knew her answer must be, she felt no fear. "If I tell him," she thought. "Why not? It does not matter now."

"Rani," said Ishmael yet again, "God gives me the right to command you. I _do_ command you. What woman sent that letter?"

"_I_ did," said Helena, and though the words were spoken in a faltering whisper they seemed to Ishmael like a deafening roar.

"Allah! Allah!" he cried, leaping to his feet, for though he had expected that reply he reeled under it as under a blow.

Helena realised what her answer meant to him, and again, from the bottom of her heart, she pitied him, but at the next moment her thoughts swung back to her own trouble.

She remembered that her father had admitted that the British army in Egypt was always on active service, and she asked herself what would happen to Gordon if the military authorities lost their heads in fear of insurrection. Would they try him by Field General Court-Martial? In that case would the Court be called instantly? Would the inquiry last only a few minutes? Would the sentence be carried into immediate effect?

"O God, can it be possible that it is all over already?" she asked herself.

Meantime Ishmael, after moments of suffering which seemed hours of eternity, was again struggling to resist the only conclusion the facts had left to him. It was true that the Rani had confessed to sending the letter which had led to the arrest of his messenger, but all his heart rebelled against the inference that she had intended to betray his cause and his people. Had she not cast in her own lot with them? Had she not come from a distant country and a richer home to live in their poor house in Khartoum? And had she not endured the hardship of the desert journey in their company?

Like a man who has been shipwrecked in a whirlwind of darkness, he was groping blindly through tempestuous waves for some means of rescue. At length a sort of raft of hope came to him, a helpless, impotent thing, but he clung to it, and sitting down by Helena's side again, he said, in the same piteous voice as before--

"I see how it has been, O my Rani. You did not intend to betray my people--my poor people whose sufferings you have seen, whose faith and hopes and dreams you have shared and witnessed. It was Omar you were thinking of. Your heart has never forgiven him for taking the place you meant for your husband. You were jealous of him for my sake, and your jealousy got the better of your judgment. 'I will punish him,' you thought. 'I will make his mission of no effect.' And so you sent that letter. But you did not reflect that in destroying Omar you would be destroying my people also. It was wrong, it was cruel, but it was a woman's fault, and you have seen it and suffered for it ever since. Jealousy of Omar, perhaps hatred of Omar--that was it, was it not, O my Rani?"

His voice was breaking as he spoke, for the pitiful explanation he had lighted upon was failing to bring conviction to his own mind, yet he fixed his sad eyes eagerly on Helena's face and repeated--

"Jealousy of Omar, perhaps hatred of Omar--that was what caused you to send that letter?"

Helena could not speak. The pathos of his error was choking her. But she replied to him with a look which it required no words to interpret.

"No?" he said. "Not of Omar? Of whom, then?"

Helena could not lie. "He must know some day," she thought.

"Of whom, then?" he repeated, in his helpless confusion.

"Yourself," she replied.

"Allah! Allah! Myself! Myself!" he said, in a breathless whisper, rising to his feet again and striding across the tent.

At the first moment after Helena's confession it seemed to Ishmael that both sun and moon had suffered eclipse and the world was in total darkness. Why had the Rani betrayed him? From what motive? For what object? He tried to follow her thoughts, and found it impossible to do so.

There was a short period of frightful silence, and then, feeling as if he wanted to cry, he drew up before Helena again, and said in a husky voice, his swarthy face trembling and twitching--

"But why, O Rani? I had done you no wrong. From the day you came to me I did all I could for you--all I could to make your nights peaceful and your mornings happy. Why has your heart been so far away from me?"

Helena felt that the time had come to tell him everything. Yet in order to do so she must begin with the death of her father, and she could not speak of that without involving Gordon. "But that is impossible," she thought, "absolutely impossible."

"Speak," said Ishmael. "When you sent your letter to the English lord, you must have known that you were dooming me to death--what had I done to deserve it?"

"I cannot tell you--I cannot, I cannot," she answered.

"It is unnecessary," said Ishmael.

In the moment of Helena's silence a terrible explanation of her conduct had come to him, and he thought he saw, as by flashes of lightning, into the dark abyss that was at his feet.

His manner, which had been gentle down to that moment, suddenly became harsh, and his voice, which had been soft, became hard.

"When did you send that letter?" he demanded.

She saw the stern closing of his lips, and for an instant she felt afraid.

"Was it before the meeting of the Sheikhs at which Omar was chosen?"

"Yes," she replied. If Gordon was to be condemned to death, it was of no consequence what became of her.

"You told the English lord that Ishmael was coming to Cairo?"

"Yes." His deep, impenetrable eyes seemed to be looking through and through her.

"With what object and in--in what disguise?"

"Yes." She knew she was dashing herself to destruction, but no matter.

"When you sent your letter you said to yourself, 'Ishmael will go into Cairo, but my letter shall go before him.' Yes?"

"Yes." In the lowest depths of her soul she felt that if he killed her now she did not care.

"And when Omar stepped into the place you had meant for me you thought, 'The letter I wrote to destroy Ishmael will destroy Omar instead'?"

"Yes."

"Was that why you tried to prevent Omar from going?"

"Yes." Tears were choking her utterance.

"Why you were unwilling to make the kufiah?"

"Yes."

"Why you fainted in the mosque?"

She bowed her head, being unable to utter another word.

"Then," said Ishmael, and his voice rose to a husky cry--"then it was love of Omar, not hatred of him, that inspired your letter?"

She made no reply. Filled as she was with shame for what she had done to Ishmael, the image of Gordon was still in her mind. Even at that moment, when terrible consequences threatened her, she could not help thinking of him. If he were tried by Field General Court-Martial to-night he might be executed in the morning!

That thought carried her back to the Citadel. She was on the drilling-ground in the dead grey light of dawn. A regiment of soldiers was drawn up in line. Six of them stood out from the rest with rifles to their shoulders. And before them, standing alone, with his back to the ramparts, was one condemned but dauntless man. "My last thoughts are about you," he was saying to her, and living in that cruel dream she burst into tears.

Again Ishmael misunderstood her weeping, and again a wave of compassion passed over him.

"It is possible I am wrong," he said. "I may be judging you unjustly. In that case tell me so, and I will kiss your feet. I will ask your pardon."

Sho could not speak. "This will end in some way," she thought.

"In the name of Heaven, speak! Tell me you do not love this man. Tell me I am wrong," he cried.

"No, you are not wrong," she said. "I do love him, and I am in despair. All you have said is true, but I cannot help it. I am a wicked woman, and my life by your side has been a deception from the first."

With that she burst into another flood of tears, and falling face downward on the angerib, she buried her head in the pillow.

"Allah! Allah!" said Ishmael, and all the blood in his body seemed to flush his heart. He was passing through the supreme phase of his agony--perhaps the cruellest that man can suffer--the agony of knowing that the woman he loved, the woman he worshipped, loved and worshipped another man.

In the cloud of maddening thoughts which sprang to his brain he imagined he read the mystery of Helena's conduct from the first. Remembering that she had called him a black man, the wild deep heart in him rose to a fever of jealous wrath.

"I see how it has been," he said. "The white man came to my tent. I welcomed him. I loved him. I trusted him. He was my brother, and he slept by my side. I made him free of my harem. I put my honour in his hands. And how did he repay me? By robbing me of the love that was my love, the heart that was my heart."

She tried to speak, to protest, but in a torrent of wrath he bore her down.

"Your white man has over-reached himself, though. 'I will outdo Ishmael in her eyes,' he thought. But he has only fallen into the pit that was dug for me. Let him perish there, and the curse of God be upon him!"

Again she tried to protest, and again in the blind hurricane of his anger he silenced her.

"And you--it was nothing to you that in betraying me you were betraying my people also--my poor people, who have suffered so much and followed me so faithfully."

His face was terrible--it had the sullen glow of the Western sky before a storm.

"You have wrecked my hopes in the hour of their fulfilment. You have made dust and ashes of the expectations of my people. You have uncovered my nakedness, and made me a thing to point the finger at and to scorn. You have turned my heart to stone."

Then the wild anguish of the jealous man became united to the fierce wrath of the fanatic, and going nearer to Helena, and leaning over her, he said--

"Worse than that--a hundredfold worse--you have made the plans and promises of God of no avail. You have allowed the Evil One to enter into your heart, and to use your guilty passions to defeat the schemes of the Most High. Therefore," he said, raising his quivering voice until it rang through the tent like a tortured cry--"therefore, as the instrument of Satan you have no right to live. I say you have no right even to live. And I ... I, who have loved you ... I, whose heart has been wrapped about you like the rope about the wheel of the well ... I, whom you have betrayed and destroyed, and ... and my people with me ... it is I ... yes, it is I who must ... who must----"

Helena heard him stammering and sobbing over her. At the same time she felt that his trembling, ferocious hands were laying hold of her. She felt that the long Eastern veil that had hung down her back was being wrapped around her throat. She felt that its folds were growing tighter and yet tighter, and that she was being strangled and was losing consciousness.

Then suddenly she became aware that Ishmael's formidable grasp had slackened, that he had stepped back from the angerib on which she lay, and was saying to himself in a tremulous whisper--

"Allah! Allah! what is this I am doing? Allah! Allah! Allah!"

And at the next moment she realised that in horror of his own impulse he had turned and fled out of the tent.

*CHAPTER V*

Being left alone, Helena's emotions were so strange, so bewildering, so overpowering that she could not immediately make out clearly what she felt. The most contradictory thoughts and feelings crowded upon her.

First came a sense of suffocating shame, due to Ishmael's hideous misconception of her relation to Gordon, which put her into the position of an unfaithful wife. But would the truth have been any better--that she was not an Indian Rani, not a Muslemah, that she and Gordon had known and loved each other before Ishmael came into their lives, and that a desire to punish him for coming between them had been the impulse that had taken her to Khartoum?

Next came a sense of her utter degradation during the recent scene, in which her lips had been sealed and she had been compelled to submit to Ishmael's just and natural wrath.

Then came a sense of abject humiliation with the thought that Ishmael had been right from the beginning and she had been wrong, and therefore she had merited all that had come to her. "If he had killed me I could have forgiven him," she told herself.

Finally (perhaps from, some deep place in her Jewish blood) came the feeling that after all it was not so much Ishmael who had been shaming her for her treachery as the Almighty who had been punishing her for attempting to take His vengeance out of His hand. "Vengeance is Mine," saith the Lord, and her impious act had deserved the penalty that had overtaken it.

But against all this, opposing it, fighting it, conquering it, triumphing over it, was the memory of her love for Gordon. "I loved him, and I could not have acted otherwise," she thought.

More plainly than ever, she now saw that her love for Gordon had been the first cause and origin of all she had done. This single-hearted devotion left her nothing else to think about. It wiped out Ishmael and his troubles,and all the troubles of his people. "I may be selfish and cruel, but I cannot help it," she told herself again and again, as she continued to lie, where Ishmael had left her, face down on the angerib, shaken with sobs.

After a while she heard a step approaching. The Arab woman had entered the tent.

"So you are there, oh my beauty," said Zenoba, with a bitter ring in her voice.

Without raising her head to look, Helena knew that the usual obsequious smiles had gone from the woman's face, and that her eyes were full of undisguised contempt. In another moment all the impulses of hatred which had scoured through her jealous soul for months fell on Helena in bitter reproaches.

"I knew it would come to this. I always told him so, but he would not listen. 'Ask pardon of God, Zenoba,' he said. Now he will have to ask pardon of me."

Helena could hardly control herself, but with an effort she submitted in silence, and let the woman have her way.

"Anybody might have seen what was going on from the moment the white Christian came to Khartoum. But no, it was no use talking. When a man looks at a woman he sees her eyes, not her heart, and is blind to those that love and serve him."

Helena's own heart was beating violently and paintully, but she compelled herself to lie still. "It's no more than I deserve," she thought.

And then the Arab woman lashed her to the bone with reports of what the people in the camp were saying. All that had happened might have been foreseen. He who had tried to emancipate women had been the first to suffer for it. Good women did not wish to be emancipated, and the bad women who let their veils fall, and meddled with the affairs of men, only wanted to imitate the evil ways of the women of the West. "Our mothers did not do it, and neither shall our wives," said some, while others declared that it was better to have a thousand enemies outside your house than one within.

The camp was utterly disorganised, utterly demoralised. Instead of the singing and rejoicing of an hour ago there was now wailing and lamentation; instead of prayer and praise there was cursing and swearing. Some of the people, in a state of panic, were saying that the soldiers of the Christian government would soon be upon them; that they would be shot dead with bullets; that they would be carried into Cairo as prisoners and crucified in the public streets; that the Christians would eat their flesh and suck their blood; that those who were not slain would be walking skeletons and talking images, and made to worship the wooden cross instead of their own God, their Allah. As a consequence many were packing their baggage hurriedly and turning the heads of their camels to the south. Boats were being unmoored at Bedrasheen, and boat-loads were preparing to push off.

Desolation was over the whole camp. The hopes of the people were in the dust. Some of the women were kneeling on the ground and throwing the sand over their heads and faces. Some of the men were heaping insults on Ishmael's name--their former love and reverence being already gone. "Where are the promises he made us?" they were asking. "Is it for this that he brought us from our homes?"

Others were calling and searching for the Master. His tent was empty. He was nowhere to be seen. Had he deserted them in their hour of trouble?

"Where is he?" they were crying. "What has become of him?" No one knew. Even Black Zogal could not say. And then some were crying, "Ela'an abu, abu, abu!" (Cursed be his father, and his father's father, and his father's father's father!)

But worse, far worse, because more fierce and terrible than the people's anger against Ishmael, was their wrath against the "White Woman." It was she who had betrayed them. But for her evil influence and secret schemes, they might have inherited Egypt and all the rich lands and treasures of the Valley of the Nile. Listen! They were gathering about the tent, and murmuring and shouting excitedly. Hark! That was Zogal's voice--he was persuading them to go away.

"But they'll come back, oh my beauty," said Zenoba. "Better get away before they return and tear you to pieces as a hungry jackal tears a dog."

With that merciless word the bitter-hearted woman took herself off, leaving Helena still lying face down on the angerib in her agony of mingled anger and shame.

Being once more left alone in the tent, Helena continued to know what was going on in the camp. The wailing of the women, who were throwing sand over their heads, seemed as if it would never cease. At length some of them began to sing. They sang songs of sorrow which contrasted strangely with the songs of victory which the men had sung before. The weird and monotonous but moving notes that are peculiar to Arab music sounded like dirges in the depth of night.

The people were in despair. Their consoling and inspiring idea of divine guidance was gone, and the hope that had sustained their souls through the toils of the desert march was dead. The myth of Ishmael's divinity had already disappeared; the Master was no longer the Redeemer, the Mahdi, the Christ. All that had been a hideous illusion, a mirage of the soul, without reason or reality.

It was terrible; it was horrible; it was almost as if the whole people had died an hour ago in "the sure and certain hope," and then suddenly awakened in the other world to find that there was no God, no heaven, no reward for the pains of this life, and all they had looked for and expected had been the shadow of a dream.

Listening to this as she lay on the angerib, and thinking she was partly to blame for it, Helena asked herself if there was anything she could do to save Ishmael and his people.

"O God, is there _nothing_ I can do?" she thought.

At first there came no answer to this question. Do what she would to fix her mind on the people's sufferings and Ishmael's downfall, her mind swung back to its old subject, and once again she thought of Gordon and his arrest.

Things in that regard were plainer to her now. The idea of a Field General Court-Martial, which had made her chill with fear, had been the figment of an over-excited brain. Whatever had happened to Gordon's efforts in the interests of peace--whether they had failed or succeeded--his own trial would take the ordinary course. A military court of the usual kind would have to be summoned, its sentence would have to be confirmed, and only the King could confirm it.

All this would take time, and therefore there was no need for panic. But meantime what was Gordon's position? He had been arrested in mistake for Ishmael, and consequently he would, one way or another, be liable to punishment for Ishmael's offence. That was to say, for the offence she had attributed to Ishmael. Yet Gordon had done no wrong, he had intended no evil.

"Is there nothing I can do?--nothing at ail?" she asked herself again.

Suddenly a light dawned on her. If the Consul-General could be made to see what Gordon's motives had really been--to save England, to save Egypt, to save the good name of his own father--and if he could be made to realise that Ishmael's aim was not rebellion, and his followers not an armed force, but merely a vast concourse of religious visionaries--what then?

Then as a just man, if a stern and hard one, he would be compelled to see that his own son was not punished, and perhaps--who could say?--he might even permit Ishmael's people to enter Cairo.

Vague, undefined, and unconsidered as this idea was, Helena leapt at it as a solution of all their difficulties, and when she asked herself how she was to bring conviction to the Consul-General's mind, she remembered Gordon's letters.

Nothing could be better. Being written before the event, and intended for her eyes only, they must be convincing to anybody whatever, and absolutely irresistible to a father. Private? No matter! Intimate and affectionate and full of the closest secrets of the soul? Never mind! Sho would share them with one who was flesh of Gordon's flesh, for his heart must be with her, and the issue was life or death.

Yes, she would go into Cairo, see the Consul-General, show him Gordon's letters, and prove and explain everything. Thus she who had been the first cause of the people's sufferings, of Ishmael's downfall, and of Gordon's arrest, would be Gordon's, Ishmael's, and the people's deliverer! Yes, she, she, she!

But wait! Had she not promised Gordon that she would remain in the camp, whatever happened? She had; but that promise was annulled by this time, while this great errand must be precisely what she had been sent there for, and by flying away now she would be fulfilling her destiny in a wider and deeper sense than even Gordon himself could have conceived.

"I'll go at once," she thought, and she sprang up from the angerib to carry out her purpose.

As she did so she saw a little ugly black face, all blubbered over with tears, on the ground beside her. It was Mosie, and he was kissing the hem of her skirt and saying--

"Mosie very sorry. He not know. Will lady ever forgive Mosie?"

Helena's heart leapt up at sight of the boy. She wanted his help immediately, and his unexpected appearance at that moment was like an assurance from heaven that what she intended to do ought to be done.

Comforting the lad and drying his eyes, she asked him in breathless whispers a number of questions. Where was the donkey on which he had ridden into the camp? it was near by, tethered. Did he know the way to the railway-station at Bedrasheen? He did. Could he lead her there through the darkness? He could. It was now half-past nine--would there be a train to Cairo soon? Yes, for the Alim had just gone to catch one that was to go to Boukq Daorour at ten o'clock.

"The very thing," said Helena. "Bring your donkey to the back of the tent and wait there until I come."

"Yes, yes," said the boy, now ablaze with eagerness, and kissing both her hands alternately, he shot out on his errand.

Then Helena picked up a little locked handbag which contained Gordon's precious letters, added her own letter to them, and after extinguishing the lamp that hung from the pole, stepped out of the tent.

A few minutes later, mounted on a donkey that was led by a boy, a woman, looking like an Egyptian with her black skirt drawn over the back of her head and closely clipped under her nose, was picking her way through the darkness.

All was quiet by this time. The weeping and wailing had at last come to an end, and from the vast encampment there rose nothing but the deep, somnambulent moan that ascends from a great city when it is falling asleep. The fires were smouldering out, and the people, such of them as remained, were lying, some in their tents, others outstretched on the sand, all weary and heart-broken in the misery of their dead hope, their dead dream, their dead faith.

A kind of soulless silence hung in the air. Even the call of the Night-watchman ("God is One!") was no more to be heard. Only the braying of donkeys at intervals, the ruckling of camels, and the barking of dogs.

There was no moon, but the stars were thick, and one of them was falling.

*CHAPTER VI*

Taking his steam-launch, which had been moored to the boat-landing of the Ghezirah Palace, the Consul-General returned home immediately after Gordon's arrest. He did not wait to say what was to be done with the prisoner, or to tell his officials what further steps, if any, were to be taken to prevent the expected insurrection. One overwhelming event had wiped everything else out of his mind. His plans had been frustrated; he had been degraded, made a laughing-stock, and by Gordon--his own son.

As his launch skimmed across the river in the darkness he could hear in the back-wash of the propeller the guffaws of the diplomatic corps, and in the throbbing of the engine the choking laughter of the whole world.

His mind was going like a weaver's shuttle, and he was asking himself by what sinister development of fate this devilish surprise had been brought about. He could find no answer. In the baffling mystery of events only one thing seemed clear--that Gordon, when he disappeared from Cairo after the affair of El Azhar, had not gone to America or India or Australia, as everybody had supposed, but straight to the man Ishmael's camp, and that he had allowed himself to be used by that charlatan mummer to further his intrigues. Against his own father, too! His father, who had been thinking of him every day, every night, and nearly all night, and was now, by his instrumentality, made an object of derision and contempt.

"Fool! Fool! Fool!" thought the Consul-General, and his anger against Gordon burnt in his heart like a fierce and consuming fire.

On reaching the Agency he went upstairs to his room and rang violently for Fatimah. Somebody within his own household had become aware of his plans and revealed them to his enemies. He had little doubt of the identity of the traitor, for he remembered Fatimah's unexpected appearance in the dining-room the night before, and her confusion and lame excuse when the Sirdar observed her presence.

Fatimah answered her bell cheerfully as one who had nothing to fear, but the moment she saw the Consul-General's face, with the deep folds in his forehead and the hard and implacable lines about his mouth, she dropped on her knees before he had uttered a word.

"What is this you have been doing, woman?" he demanded, in a stern voice, whereupon Fatimah made no attempt at disguise.

"I couldn't help it, O Master," she said, breaking into tears. "I would have given him my eyes. He was the same as my own son, and I had suckled him at my breast. Can a woman deny anything to her own?"

The Consul-General looked down at her for a moment in silence, and his drooping lower lip trembled. Then, with a gesture of impatience, he said--

"Get away to your room at once," and opening the door for her he closed and locked it when she was gone.

But the momentary spasm of tenderness towards Gordon which had come to the Consul-General at sight of the foster-mother's love disappeared at the next instant. The only excuse he could find for his son's conduct in duping his ignorant Egyptian nurse was that perhaps he had himself been duped.

After the first plans had been formed in Khartoum and Helena's letter had been dispatched, the "fanatic-hypocrite" had probably discovered that his intrigue had become known in Cairo. Then he had put Gordon into the gap, and Gordon had been so simple, so innocent, so stupid as to be deceived! There was small comfort in this reading of the riddle, and the Consul-General's fury and shame increased tenfold.

"Fool! Fool! Fool," he thought, and taking from the mantelpiece the portrait of the boy in the Arab fez, he looked at it for a moment and then flung it back impatiently. It fell to the floor.

Some minutes passed in which the infuriated man was unconscious of his surroundings, for great anger wipes out time and place, and then he became aware that there was a knock at the door of his room.

"Who's there?" he cried.

It was Ibrahim. He had come to tell his Excellency that two reporters from Reuter's Agency were below by appointment and wished to hear what his Excellency had to give them.

"Nothing. Send them away," said the Consul-General.

A moment afterwards there was another knock at the door.

"Who's there now?" cried the Consul-General.

It was his First Secretary. The Adviser to the Ministry of Justice had come to say that the Special Tribunal had been summoned and the Judges were waiting for further instructions.

"Tell them there will be no sitting to-night," said the Consul-General.

A little later there was yet another knock at the door. It was the Secretary again. The Adviser to the Ministry of the Interior had called him up on the telephone to say that, according to instructions, the gallows had been set up in the Square in front of the Governorat, and now he wished to know----

"Tell the men to take it down again at once, and don't come up again," said the Consul-General in a voice that was hoarse with wrath and thick with shame.

These interruptions had been like visitations of the spirits of the dead to a tormented murderer, and it was some time before the Consul-General could bring his mind back to the mystery before him. When he was able to do so he asked himself how it had come to pass that if Gordon had been in Khartoum, and if he had been duped into taking Ishmael's place, Helena had not informed him of the change? Where had she been? Where was she now? What had become of her? Could it be possible that she, too, by her love for Gordon, had been won over to the side of his enemies?

Thinking of that as a possible explanation of the devilish tangle of circumstance by which he was surrounded, the Consul-General's wrath against Gordon rose to a frenzy of madness. Fierce and wild imprecations broke from his mouth, such as had never passed his lips before, and then, suddenly remembering that they were directed against his own flesh and blood, his own son, he cried, in the midst of his fury and passion--

"No, no! God forgive me! Not that!"

Ibrahim knocked at the door again. The Grand Cadi had come, and begged the inestimable privilege of approaching his Excellency's honourable person.

"Say I can't see him," said the Consul-General, and then sitting down on a sofa in an alcove of the room he tried his best to compose himself.

In the silence of the next few minutes he was conscious of the ticking of the telegraph tape that was unrolling itself by his side, and to relieve his mind of the burden that oppressed it, he stretched out his hand for the long white slip.

It reported a debate on the Address to the Crown at the opening of a new session of Parliament. Somebody, a rabid, irresponsible Radical, had proposed as an Amendment that the time had come to associate the people of Egypt with the government of the country and the Foreign Minister was making his reply.

"This much I am willing to admit," said the Minister, "that there are two cardinal errors in the governing of alien races--to rule them as if they were Englishmen, and to repress their aspirations by blowing them out of the mouth of a gun."

The Consul-General rose to his feet in a new flood of anger. But for Gordon he would have silenced all such babbling. To-morrow morning was to have seen Downing Street in confusion, and in the conflagration that was to have blazed heaven-high on the report of the Egyptian conspiracy and how he had crushed it, he was to have found himself the saviour of civilisation.

But now--what now? Duped by his own son, who had taken sides against him, he was about to become the laughing-stock of all Europe.

"Fool! Fool! Fool!" he cried, and in the cruel riot of anger and love that was going on within him he felt for the first time in his life as if he wanted to burst into tears.

Another knock came to the door. It was Ibrahim again, to say that the Grand Cadi, who sent his humble salaams, had said he would wait, and now the Sirdar had come and he wished to see his Excellency immediately.

"Tell the Sirdar I can see no one to-night," said the Consul-General.

"But his Excellency says his business is urgent and he must come upstairs if your Excellency will not come down."

The Consul-General reflected for a moment and then replied--

"Tell the Sirdar I will be down presently."

*CHAPTER VII*

Besides the Grand Cadi with his pock-marked cheeks and base eyes, and the Sirdar with his ruddy face (suddenly grown sallow), the plump person of the Commandant of Police was waiting in the library.

The Grand Cadi in his turban and silk robes sat in the extreme corner of the room, opposite to the desk; the Sirdar, in his full-dress uniform, stood squarely on the hearth-rug with his back to the empty fireplace, and the Commandant, in his gold-braided blue, stood near to the door.

No one spoke. There was a tense silence such as pervades a surgeon's consulting-room immediately before a serious operation.

When the Consul-General came in, still wearing his court-dress, it was plainly apparent to those who had seen him as recently as half-an-hour before that he was a changed man. Although perfectly self-possessed and as firm and implacable as ever, there was an indefinable something about his eyes, his mouth, and his square jaw which seemed to say that he had gone through a great struggle with his own heart and conquered it--perhaps killed it--and that henceforth his affections were to be counted as dead.

The Sirdar saw this at a glance, and thereby realised the measure of what he had come to do. He had come to fight this father for his own son.

Answering the salute of the Commandant, the salutation of the Sirdar, and the salaam of the Cadi with the curtest bow, the old man stepped forward to his desk, and seating himself in the revolving chair behind it, he said brusquely--

"Well, what is the matter now?"

"Nuneham," said the Sirdar, with an oblique glance in the direction of the Cadi, "the Commandant and I wish to speak to you in private on a personal and urgent matter."

"Does it concern my son?" asked the Consul-General sharply.

"I do not say it concerns your son," said the Sirdar, with another oblique glance at the Cadi. "I only say it is personal and urgent and therefore ought to be discussed in private."

"Humph! We'll discuss it here. I'll have no secrets on that subject."

"In that case," said the Sirdar, "you must take the consequences."

"Go on, please."

"In the first place, the Commandant finds himself in a predicament."

"What is it?"

"The warrant he holds is for the arrest of Ishmael Ameer, but the prisoner he has taken to-night is ... another person."

"Well?"

"The Commandant wishes to know what he is to do."

"What is it his duty to do?"

"That depends on circumstances, and the circumstances in the present case are peculiar."

"State them precisely, please."

The Sirdar hesitated, glanced again at the Cadi, this time with an expression of obvious repugnance, and then said--

"The peculiar circumstances in this case are, my dear Nuneham, that though the prisoner cannot possibly be held under the warrant by which he was arrested, he is wanted by the military courts for other offences."

"Therefore----"

"Therefore the Commandant has come with me to ask you whether the man he has taken to-night is to be handed over to the military authorities or----"

"Or what?"

"Or allowed to go free."

The Consul-General swung his chair round until he came face to face with the Sirdar, and said, with withering bitterness--

"So you have come to me--British Agent and Consul-General--to ask if I will connive at your prisoner's escape! Is that it?"

The Sirdar flinched, bit the ends of his moustache for a moment, and then said, with a faint tremor in his voice--

"Nuneham, if the prisoner is handed over to the authorities he will be court-martialled."

"Let it be so," said the Consul-General.

"As surely as he is court-martialled his sentence will be death."

The old man swung his chair back and answered huskily: "If his offences deserve it, what matter is that to me?"

"His offences," said the Sirdar, "were insubordination, refusal to obey the orders of his General, and----"

"Isn't that enough?" asked the Consul-General, whereupon the Sirdar drew himself up and said--

"I plead no excuses for insubordination. I am myself a soldier. I think discipline is the backbone of the army. Without that everything must fall into chaos. But the General who exacts stern compliance with military discipline on the part of his officers has it for his sacred duty to see that his commands are just and that he does not provoke disobedience by outrageous and illegal insults."

The old man's face twitched visibly, but still he stood firm.

"Provoked or not provoked, your prisoner disobeyed the orders of his recognised superior--what more is there to say?"

"Only that he acted from a sense of right, and that he was right----"

"What?"

"I say he _was_ right, as subsequent events proved, and if his conscience----"

"Conscience! What has a soldier to do with conscience? My servant Ibrahim, perhaps, any fellah, may have a right to exercise what he is pleased to call his conscience, but the first and only duty of an English soldier is to obey."

"Then God help England! If an English soldier is only a machine, a human gun-waggon, with no right to think about anything but his rations and his pay, and how to use his rifle, he is a butcher and a hireling, not a hero. No, no, some of the greatest soldiers and sailors have resisted authority when authority has been in the wrong. Nelson did it, and General Gordon did it, and if this one----"

But the old man burst out again in a quivering voice--

"Why do you come to tell me this? What has it got to do with me? The case before us is perfectly clear. By some tangle of devilish circumstances the wrong man has been arrested to-night. But your prisoner is wanted by the military authorities for other offences. Very well, let him be handed over to them."

The Sirdar now saw that he had not only to fight the father for his own flesh and blood, but the man for himself. He looked across the room to where the Grand Cadi sat in smug silence, with his claw-like hands clasped before his breast, and then, as if taking a last chance, he said--

"Nuneham, the prisoner is your son."

"All the more reason why I should treat him as I should treat anybody else."

"Your only son."

"Humph!"

"If anything happens to him--if he dies before you--your family will come to an end when you are gone."

The old man trembled. The Sirdar was cutting him in the tenderest place--ploughing deep into his lifelong secret.

"Your name will be wiped out. _You_ will have wiped it out, Nuneham."

The old man was shaking like a rock which vibrates in an earthquake. To steady his nerves he took a pen and held it firmly in the fingers of both hands.

"If you tell the Commandant to hand him over to the military authorities, it will be the same in the court of your conscience as if you had done it. _You will have cut off your own line_."

The old man fought hard with himself. It was a fearful struggle.

"More than that, it will be the same--it will be the same when you come to think of it--as if with that pen in your hands you had signed your own son's death-warrant."

The pen dropped, as if it had been red-hot, from the old man's trembling fingers. Still he struggled.

"If my son is a guilty man, let the law deal with him as it would deal with any other," he said, but his voice shook--it could scarcely sustain itself.

The Sirdar saw that, deep under the frozen surface. the heart of the old man was breaking up; he knew that the shot that killed Gordon would kill the Consul-General also; and he felt that he was now pleading for the life of the father as well as of the son.

"It's not as if the boy were a prodigal, a wastrel," he said. "He is a gentleman, every inch of him, and if he has gone wrong, if he has acted improperly, it has only been from the highest impulses. He has sincerity and he has courage, and they are the noblest virtues of the soul."

The old man's head was down, but he was conscious that the Cadi's cruel eyes were upon him.

"He's a soldier, too. In some respects the finest young soldier in the army, whoever the next may be. He saw his first fighting with me, I remember. It was at Omdurman. He had taken the Khalifa's flag. The Dervish who carried it had treacherously stabbed his comrade, and when he came up with fire and tears in his eyes and said, 'I killed him like a dog, sir,' 'My God,' I said to myself, 'here is a soldier born.'"