Chapter II (5)

At this news Ishmael's tortured heart was aflame and his brain was reeling. The thought that "Omar" was not to be punished, that he was to be honoured, that he was to be made happy, filled him with passions never felt before. Behind the strongest and most spiritual soul there lurks a wild beast that seems to be ever waiting to destroy it, and in the torment of Ishmael's heart the thought came to him that, as his earthly judges were permitting the guilty one to escape, God called on him to punish the man.

Irresistible as the thought was, it brought a feeling of indescribable dread. "I must be going mad," he told himself, remembering how he had spent his life in the cause of peace. All day long he fought against a hatred that was now so fierce that it seemed as if death alone could satisfy it. His soul wrestled with it, battled for life against it, and at length conquered it, and he rose from his knees saying to himself--

"No, vengeance belongs to God! When did He ask for my hand to execute it?"

But the compulsion of great passion was driving him on, and after dismissing the thought of his own wrongs he began to think of the Rani's. Where was she now? What had become of her? He dared not ask. Ashamed, humiliated, abased, he had become so sensitive to pain on the subject of the woman whom he had betrothed, the woman who had betrayed him, the woman he still loved in spite of everything, that he was even afraid that some one might speak of her.

But in the light of what the Chancellor had said about the daughter of the General, he pictured the Rani as a rejected and abandoned woman. This thought was at first so painful that it deprived him of the free use of his faculties. He could not see anything plainly. His mind was a battlefield of confused sights, half hidden in clouds of smoke. That, after all the Rani had sacrificed for "Omar"--her husband, her happiness, and her honour--she should be cast aside for another--this was maddening.

He asked himself what he was to do. Find her and take her back? Impossible! Her heart was gone from him. She would continue to love the other man, whatever he might do to her. That was the way of all women--Allah pity and bless them!

Then a flash of illumination came to him in the long interval of his darkness. He would liberate the Rani, _and the man she loved should marry her_! No matter if she belonged to another race--he should marry her! No matter if she belonged to another faith--he should marry her! And as for himself--_his sacrifice should be his revenge_!

"Yes, that shall be my revenge," he thought.

This, in the wild fire of heart and brain, was the thought with which Ishmael had come to Gordon's door, and being shown into the soldier's room he sat for some time without looking about him. Then raising his eyes and gazing round the bare apartment, with its simple bed, its table, its shelves of military boots, its stirrups and swords and rifles, he saw on the desk under the lamp a large photograph in a frame.

It was the photograph of a woman in Western costume, and he told himself in an instant who the woman was--she was the daughter of the General who was dead.

He remembered that he had heard of her before, and that he had even spoken about her to her father when he came to warn the General that the order he was giving to Colonel Lord would lead to the injury of England in Egypt and the ruin of his own happiness. From that day to this he had never once thought of the girl, but now, recalling what the old Chancellor had said of her devotion, her fidelity, her loyalty to the man she loved, he turned his eyes from her picture lest the sight of it should touch him with tenderness and make harder the duty he had come to do.

"No, I will not look at it," he told himself, with the simplicity of a sick child.

Trying to avoid the softening effects of the photograph under the lamp, he saw another on the table by his side and yet another on the wall. They were all pictures of the same woman, and hastily as he glanced at them, there was something in the face of each that kindled a light in his memory. Was it only a part of his haunting torment that, in spite of the Western costume that obscured the woman in the photographs, her brilliant, beaming eyes were the eyes of the Rani?

A wave of indescribable tenderness broke over him for a moment, an odour of perfume, an atmosphere of sweetness and delicacy and charm, and then, telling himself that all this was gone from him for ever, and that every woman's face would henceforth remind him of her whom he had lost, the hatred in his heart against Gordon gave him the pain of an open wound.

"O God, let me forget, let me forget!" he prayed.

Then suddenly, while he was in the tempest of these contrary emotions which were whirling like hot sand in a sandstorm about his brain, he heard a footstep on the stairs, followed by a voice outside the door. It was the voice of Colonel Lord's soldier servant, and he was telling his master who was within--an Arab, a Sheikh, in white robes and a turban.

"He's coming! He's here," thought Ishmael.

With choking throat and throbbing heart he rose to his feet and stood waiting. At the next moment the door was thrown open and the man he had come to meet was in the room.

*CHAPTER XVIII*

With all his heart occupied by thoughts of his father, Gordon had hardly listened to what Hafiz had been saying about Ishmael, but walking up the hill and to the Citadel he began to think of him, and of Helena, and of the bond of the betrothal which still bound them together.

"Until that is broken there can be nothing between her and me," he told himself, and this was the thought in his mind at the moment when he reached his quarters and his servant told him who was waiting within.

"Ishmael Ameer! Is it you?" he cried, as he burst the door open, and stepping eagerly, cheerfully, almost joyfully forward, he stretched out his hand.

But Ishmael drew back, and then Gordon saw that his eyes were swollen as if by sleeplessness, that his lips were white, that his cheeks were terribly pale, and that the expression of his face was shocking.

"Why, what is this? Are you ill?" he asked.

"Omar Benani," said Ishmael, "you and I are alone, and only God is our witness. I have something to say to you. Let us sit."

He spoke in a low, tremulous tone, rather with his breath than with his voice, and Gordon, after looking at him for an instant, and seeing the smouldering fire of madness that was in the man's face, threw off his greatcoat and sat down.

There was a moment in which neither spoke, and then Ishmael, still speaking in a scarcely audible voice, said--

"Omar Benani, I am a son of the Beni Azra. Honour is our watchword. When a traveller in the Libyan desert, tired and weary, seeks the tent of one of my people, the master takes him in. He makes him free of all that he possesses. Sometimes he sends the stranger into the harem itself that the women may wash his feet. He leaves him there to rest and to sleep. He puts his faith, his honour, the most precious thing God has given him, into his hands. But," said Ishmael, with suppressed fire flashing in his eyes, "if the stranger should ever wrong that harem, if he should ever betray the trust reposed in him, no matter who he is or where he flies to, the master will follow him and _kill him_!"

Involuntarily, seeing the error that Ishmael had fallen into, Gordon rose to his feet, whereupon Ishmael, mistaking the gesture, held up his hand.

"No," he said, "not that! I have not come to do that. I put _my_ honour in _your_ hands, Omar Benani. I made you free of my family. Could I have done more? You were my brother, yet you outraged the sacred rights of brotherhood. You tore open the secret chamber of my heart. You deceived me, and robbed me and betrayed me, and you are a traitor. But I am not here to avenge myself. Sit, sit. I will tell you what I have come for."

Breathless and bewildered, Gordon sat again, and after another moment of silence, Ishmael, with the light of a wild sorrow in his face, said--

"Omar Benani, there is one who has sacrificed everything for you. She has broken her vows for you, sinned for you, suffered for you. That woman is my wife, and by all the rights of a husband I could hold her. But her heart is yours, and therefore ... therefore I _intend to give her up_."

Involuntarily Gordon rose to his feet again, and again Ishmael held up his hand.

"But if I liberate her," he said, "if I divorce her, you must marry her. _That_ is what I have come to say."

Utterly amazed and dumbfounded, Gordon could not at first find words to speak, whereupon Ishmael, mistaking his silence, said--

"You need not be afraid of scandal. My people know something about the letter that was sent into Cairo, but neither my people nor yours know anything of the motives that inspired it. Therefore nobody except ourselves will understand the reason for what is done."

He paused as if waiting for a reply, and then said in a voice that quavered with emotion--

"Can it be possible that you hesitate? Do you suppose I am offering to you what I do not wish to keep for myself? I tell you that if that poor girl could say that her feeling for me was the same as before you came between us.... But no, that is impossible! God, who is on high, looks down on what I am doing, and He knows that it is right."

Gordon, still speechless with astonishment, twisted about to the desk, which was behind him, and stretched out his hand as if with the intention of taking up the photograph; but at that action, Ishmael, once more mistaking his meaning, flashed out on him in a blaze of passion.

"Don't tell me you cannot do it. You must, and you shall! No matter what pledges you may have made--you shall marry her. No matter if she is of another race and faith--you shall marry her. She may be an outcast now, but you shall find her and save her. Or else," he cried, in a thundering voice, rising to his feet, and lifting both arms above Gordon's head with a terrible dignity, "the justice of God shall overtake you, His hand shall smite you, His wrath shall hurl you down."

Seeing that all the wild blood of the man's race was aflame, Gordon leapt up, and laying hold of Ishmael's upraised arms he brought them, by a swift wrench, down to his sides.

The two men were then face to face, the Arab with his dusky cheeks and flashing black eyes, the Englishman with his glittering grey eyes and lips set firm as steel. There was another moment of silence while they stood together so, and then Gordon, liberating Ishmael's arms, said, in a commanding voice--

"I have listened to you. Now you shall listen to me. Sit down."

More than the strength of Gordon's muscles, the unblanched look in his face compelled Ishmael to obey. Then Gordon said--

"You believe you have been deceived and wronged, and you have been deceived and wronged, but not in the way you think. The time has come for you to learn the truth--the whole truth. You shall learn it now. Look at this," he said, snatching up the photograph from the desk and holding it out to Ishmael.

Ishmael tried to push the photograph away.

"Look at it, I say. Do you know who that is?"

At the next moment Ishmael was trembling in every limb, and without voice, almost without breath, he was stammering, as he held the photograph in his hand--

"The Rani?"

"Yes, and no," said Gordon. "That is the daughter of our late General."

It seemed to Ishmael that Gordon had said something, but he tried in vain to realise what it was.

"Tell me," he stammered, "tell me."

Then, rapidly but forcibly, Gordon told him Helena's story, beginning with the day on which Ishmael came to the Citadel--how she had concluded, not without reason, that he had killed her father, he being the last person to be seen with him alive, and how, finding that the law and the Government were powerless to punish him, she had determined to avenge her father's death herself.

Ishmael listened with mouth open, fixing on Gordon a bewildered eye.

"Was that why she came to Khartoum?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Why she prompted me to come into Cairo?"

"Yes."

"Why she wrote that letter?"

"Yes."

Overwhelmed with the terrible enlightenment, Ishmael fumbled his beads and muttered, "Allah! Allah!"

Then Gordon told his own story--how he, too, acting under the impulse of an awful error, had fled to the Soudan, leaving an evil name behind him rather than kill his dear ones by the revelation of what he believed to be the truth; how, finding the pit that had been dug for the innocent man, he had thought it his duty as the guilty one to step into it himself; and how, finally, being appeased on that point, he had determined to come into Cairo in Ishmael's place in order to save both him from the sure consequences of his determined fanaticism and his father from the certain ruin that must follow upon the work of liars and intriguers.

By this time Ishmael was no longer pale but pallid. His lips were trembling, his heart was beating audibly. Again without voice, almost without breath, he stammered--

"When you offered to take my place you knew that the Rani ... Helena ... had sent that letter?"

Gordon bowed without speaking.

"You knew, too, that you might be coming to your death?"

Once more Gordon bowed his head.

"Coming to your death, that I ... that I might live?"

Gordon stood silent and motionless.

"Allah! Allah!" mumbled Ishmael, who was now scarcely able to hear or see.

Last of all, Gordon returned to the story of Helena, showing how she had suffered for the impulse of vengeance that had taken possession of her; how she had wanted to fly from Ishmael's camp, but had remained there in the hope of helping to save his people, and how at length she _had_ saved them by going to the Consul-General to prove that the pilgrims were not an armed force, and by ordering the light that had led them into the city.

Ishmael was deeply moved. With an effort, he said--

"Then ... then she was yours from the first, and while I hated you because I thought you had come between us, it was really I ... I who ... Allah! Allah!"

Gordon having finished, a silence ensued, and then Ishmael, looking at the photograph which was still in his trembling hands, said, in a pitiful voice--

"God sees all, and when He tears the scales from our eyes--what are we? The children of one Father fighting in the dark!"

Then he rose to his feet, a broken man, and approaching Gordon, he tried to kneel to him; but in a moment Gordon had prevented him, and was holding out his hand.

Nervously, timidly, reluctantly, he took it, and said, in a voice that had almost gone--

"God will reward thee for this, my brother--for kissing the hand of him who came to smite thy face."

With that he turned and staggered towards the door. Gordon opened it, and at the same moment called to his servant--

"Orderly, show the Sheikh to the gate, please."

"Yes, Colonel."

"No, I beg of you, no," said Ishmael, and, while Gordon stood watching him, he went heavily down the stairs.

*CHAPTER XIX*

That night at the house of the Chancellor of El Azhar Ishmael was missing. Owing to the state of his health the greatest anxiety was experienced, and half the professors and teachers of the University were sent out to search. They scoured the city until morning without finding the slightest trace of him. Then the servant who had attended upon him remembered that shortly before his disappearance he had asked if the English Colonel who had lately been pardoned by his King still lived on the Citadel.

This led to the discovery of his whereabouts, and to some knowledge of his movements. On leaving Gordon's quarters he had crossed the courtyard of the fortress to the mosque of Mohammed Ali. It was then dark, and only the Sheikh in charge had seen him when, after making his ablutions, he entered by the holy door.

It was certain that he had spent the entire night in the mosque. The muezzin, going up to the minaret at midnight, had seen a white figure kneeling before the kibleh. Afterwards, when traditions began to gather about Ishmael's name, the man declared that he saw a celestial light descending upon the White Prophet as of an angel hovering over him. There was a new moon that night, and perhaps its rays came down from the little window that looks towards Mecca.

The muezzin also said that at sunrise, when he went up to the minaret again, the Prophet was still there, and that an infinite radiance was then around him as of a multitude of angels in red and blue and gold. There are many stained glass windows in the mosque of Mohammed Ali, and perhaps the rising sun was shining through them.

Certainly Ishmael was kneeling before the kibleh at eleven o'clock in the morning when the people began to gather for prayers. It was Friday, and the last of the days kept in honour of the birthday of the Prophet, therefore there was a great congregation.

The Khedive was present. He had come early, with his customary bodyguard, and had taken his usual place in the front row close under the pulpit. The carpeted floor of the mosque was densely crowded. Rows and rows of men, wearing tarbooshes and turbans and sitting on their haunches, extended to the great door. The gallery was full of women, most of them veiled, but some of them with uncovered faces.

The sun, which was hot, shone through the jewelled windows and cast a glory like that of rubies and sapphires on the alabaster pillars and glistening marble walls. Three muezzins chanted the call to prayers, two from the minarets facing towards the city, the other from the minaret overlooking the inner square of the Citadel where a British sentinel in khaki paced to and fro.

While the congregation assembled, one of the Readers of the mosque, seated in a reading-desk in the middle, read prayers from the Koran in a slow, sonorous voice, and was answered by rather drowsy cries of "Allah! Allah!" But there was a moment of keen expectancy and the men on the floor rose to their feet, when the voice of the muezzin ceased and the Reader cried--

"God is Most Great! God is Most Great! There is no god but God. Mohammed is His Prophet. Listen to the preacher."

Then it was seen that the white figure that had been prostrate before the kibleh had risen, and was approaching the pulpit. People tried to kiss his hand as he passed, and it was noticed that the Khedive put his lips to the fringe of the Imam's caftan.

Taking the wooden sword from the attendant, Ishmael ascended the pulpit steps. When he had reached the top of them he was in the full stream of the sunlight, and for the first time his face was clearly seen.

His cheeks were hollow and very pale; his lips were bloodless; his black eyes were heavy and sunken, and his whole appearance was that of a man who had passed through a night of sleepless suffering. Even at sight of him, and before he had spoken, the congregation were deeply moved.

"Peace be upon you, O children of the Compassionate," he began, and the people answered according to custom--

"On you be peace, too, O servant of Allah."

Then the people sat, and, sitting himself, Ishmael began to preach.

It was said afterwards that he had never before spoken with so much emotion or so deeply moved his hearers; that he was like one who was speaking out of the night-long travail of his soul; and that his words, which were often tumultuous and incoherent, were not like sentences spoken to listeners, but like the secrets of a suffering heart uttering themselves aloud.

Beginning in a low, tired voice, that would barely have reached the limits of the mosque but for the breathlessness of the people, he said that God had brought them to a new stage in the progress of humanity. Islam was rising out of the corruption of ages. Egypt was having a new birth of freedom. God had whitened their faces before the world, and in His wisdom He had willed it that the oldest of the nations should not perish from the earth.

"Ameen! Ameen!" replied a hundred vehement voices, whereupon Ishmael rose from his seat and raised his arm.

It was an hour of glory, but let them not be vainglorious. Let them not think that with their puny hands they had won these triumphs. Allah alone did all.

"Beware of boasting," he cried, "it is the strong drink of ignorance. Beware of them that would tell you that by any act of yours you have humbled the pride or lowered the strength of the great nation under whose arm we live. Only God has changed its heart. He has given it to see that the true welfare of a people is moral, not material. And now, steadily, calmly, out of the spirit that has always inspired its laws, its traditions and its faith, it shows us mercy and justice."

"Ameen! Ameen!" came again, but less vehemently than before.

Then speaking of Gordon without naming him, Ishmael reminded his people that some of the great nation's own sons had helped them.

"One there is who has been our warmest friend," he cried. "To him, the pure of heart, the high of soul, although he is a soldier and a great one, may Peace herself award the crown of life! Christian he may be, but may God place His benediction upon him to all eternity! May the God of the East bless him! May the God of the West bless him! May his name be inscribed with blessings from the Koran on the walls of every mosque!"

This reference, plainly understood by all, was received with loud and ringing shouts of "Allah! Allah!"

Then Ishmael's sermon took a new direction. For thirteen centuries the children of men, forgetting their prophets, Mohammed and Jesus and Moses, had been given over to idolatry. They had worshipped a god of their own fashioning. That god was gold. Its temples were great cities given up to material pursuits, and under them were the dead souls of millions of human beings. Its altars were vast armies which spilled the rivers of blood which had to be sacrificed to its lust. As men had become rich they had become barbarous, as nations had become great they had become pagan. Islam and Christianity alike had had to fight against some of the powers of darkness which called themselves civilisation and progress. But a new era had begun, and the human heart was raising its face to God.

"Once again a voice has gone out from Mecca, from Nazareth, from Jerusalem, saying, 'There is no god but God.' Once again a voice has gone out from the desert, crying, 'Thou shalt have no other god but Me!'"

At this the people were carried out of themselves with excitement, and loud shouts again rang through the mosque.

Then Ishmael spoke of the future. The world had been in labour, in the throes of a new birth, but the end was not yet. Had he promised them that the Kingdom of Heaven would come when they entered Cairo? Let him bend his knee in humility and ask pardon of the Merciful. Had he said the Redeemer would appear? Let him fall on his face before God. Not yet! Not yet!

"But," he cried, leaning out of the pulpit, with a look of inspiration in his upturned eyes, "I see a time coming when the worship of wealth will cease, when the governments of the nations will realise that man does not live by bread alone; when the children of men will see that the things of the spirit are the only true realities, worth more than much gold and many diamonds, and not to be bartered away for the shows of life; when the scourge of war will pass away; when, divisions of faith will be no more known; when all men, whether black or white, will be brothers, and in the larger destiny of the human race the world will be One.

"That time is near, O brothers," cried Ishmael, "and many who are with us to-day will live to witness it."

"You, Master, you!" cried a voice from below, whereupon Ishmael paused for a perceptible moment, and then said, in a sadder voice--

"No; with the eyes of the body I shall not see that time."

Loud shouts of affectionate protest came from the people.

"God forbid it!" they cried.

"God _has_ forbidden it," said Ishmael. "I pass out of your lives from this day forward. Our paths part. You will see me no more."

Again came loud shouts of protest--not unusual in a mosque--with voices calling on Ishmael to remain and lead the people.

"My work here is done," he answered. "The little that God gave me to do is finished. And now He calls me away."

"No, no!" cried the people.

"Yes, yes," replied Ishmael; and then in simple, touching words he told them the story of the Prophet Moses--how, by reason of his sin, he was forbidden to enter the Promised Land.

"Many of us have our promised land which we may never enter," he said. "This is mine, and here I may not stay."

The protests of the people ceased; they listened without breathing.

"Yet Moses was taken up into a high mountain, and from there he saw what lay before his people; and from a high mountain of my soul I see the Promised Land which lies before you. But to me a voice has come which says, 'Enter thou not!'"

The people were now deeply moved.

"We are all sinners," Ishmael continued.

"Not thou, O Master," cried several voices at once.

"Yes, I more than any other, for I have sinned against you and against the Merciful."

Then, raising his arms as if in blessing, he cried--

"O slaves of God, be brothers one to another! If you think of me when I am gone, think of me as of one who saw the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth as plainly as his eyes behold you now. If I leave you I leave this hope, this comforter, behind me. Think that Azrael, the angel of death, has spread his wings over the desert track that hides me from your eyes. And pray for me--pray for me with the sinner's prayer, the sinner's cry."

Then, in deep, tremulous tones which seemed to be the inner voice of the whole of his being, he cried--

"O Thou who knowest every heart and hearest every cry, look down and hearken to me now! One sole plea I make--my need of Thee! One only hope I have--to stand at Thy mercy-gate and knock! Penitent, I kneel at Thy feet! Suppliant, I stretch forth my hands! Save me, O God, from every ill!"

The words of the prayer were familiar to everybody in the mosque, but so deep was their effect as Ishmael repeated them in his trembling, throbbing voice, that it seemed as if nobody present had ever heard them before.

The emotion of the people wras now very great. "Allah! Allah! Allah!" they cried, and they prostrated themselves with their faces to the floor.

When the cold, slow, sonorous voice of the Reader began again, and the vast congregation raised their heads, the pulpit was empty and Ishmael was gone.

*CHAPTER XX*

Meantime the General's house on the edge of the ramparts was being made ready for its new tenant. Fatimah, Ibrahim and Mosie, with a small army of Arab servants, had been there since early morning, washing, dusting, and altering the position of furniture. Towards noon the Princess had arrived in her carriage, which, with her customary retinue of gorgeously apparelled black attendants, was now standing by the garden gate. Helena had come with her, but for the first time in her life she was utterly weak and helpless. Just as a nervous collapse may follow upon nervous strain so a collapse of character may come after prolonged exercise of will. Something of this kind was happening to Helena, who stood by the window in the General's office, looking down at the city and running her fingers along the hem of her handkerchief, while the Princess, bustling about, laughed at her and rallied her.

"Goodness me, girl, you used to have some blood in your veins, but now--_Mon Dieu_! To think of you who went down _there_, and did _that_, and used to drive a motor-car through the traffic as calmly as if it had been a go-cart, trembling and jerking as if you had got the jumps!"

Meantime the Princess herself, full of energy, was ordering the servants about, and, by a hundred little changes, was giving to the General's office a look that almost obliterated its former appearance.

"We'll have the desk here and the sofa there ... what do you say to the sofa there, my sweet?"

"Hadn't you better ask Gordon himself, Princess?" asked Helena.

"But the man isn't here, and how can I.... Never mind, leave them where they are, Ibrahim. And now for the pictures--nothing makes a room look so fresh as a lot of pictures."

Ibrahim had brought up from the Agency a number of pictures which had belonged to Gordon's mother, and the Princess, using her lorgnette, proceeded to examine them.

"What's this? 'Charles George Gordon.' I know! The White Pasha. Put him over the General's desk. 'Ecce Homo.' Humph! A man couldn't wish to have a thing like this in his office, and a natural woman can't want it over her bed. Mosie! Take 'Ecce Homo' to a nice dark corner of the servants' hall."

At that moment Fatimah came from the kitchen, which had been shut up since the day after Helena's departure for the Soudan, to say that half the cooking-tins had disappeared.

"Just what I expected! Stolen by those rascally Egyptian cooks, no doubt. Rascally Egyptians! That's what I call them. Excuse the word, my dear. I speak my mind. They'd steal the kohl from your eyes--if you had any. And these are the people who are to govern the country! But I say nothing--not I, indeed! The virtue of a woman is in holding her tongue.... Fatimah, now that you are here, you might make yourself useful. Dust that big picture of the naked babies. What's it called? 'Suffer little children.' Goodness! He looks as if he were giving away clothes. Helena, my moon, my beauty, you really must tell me where to put this one."

"But hadn't you better ask Gordon himself, Princess? It's to be his house, you know," repeated Helena, whereupon the Princess, wheeling round on her, said--

"Gracious me, what's come over you, girl? Here you are to be mistress of the whole place within a month, I suppose, and yet----"

"Hush, Princess!"

There were footsteps in the hall, and at the next moment, Gordon, in his frock-coat uniform, looking flushed and excited, and accompanied by Hafiz, whose chubby face was wreathed in smiles, had entered the room.

After he had shaken hands with the Princess the servants rushed upon him--Mosie, who had come behind kissing his sword, Ibrahim his hand, and Fatimah struggling with an impulse to throw her arms about his neck.

"So you've come at last, have you?" said the Princess. "Time enough, too, for here's Helena of no use to anybody. Your father has gone back to England, hasn't he? He might have come up to see me, I think. He wrote a little letter to say good-bye, though. It was just like him. I could hear him speaking. 'My goodness,' I said, 'that's Nuneham!' Well, we shall never see his equal again. No, never! He might have left Egypt with twenty millions in his pocket, and he has gone with nothing but his wages. I suppose they're slandering him all the same. Ingrates! But no matter! The dogs bark, but the camel goes along. And now that I've time, let me take a look at you. What a colour! But what are you trembling about? Goodness me, has _everybody_ got the jumps?"

Helena was the only one in the room who had not come forward to greet Gordon, and seeing his sidelong look in her direction, the Princess began to lay plans for leaving them together.

"Ibrahim," she cried, "hang up these naked babies in the bathroom--the only place for them, it seems to me. Fatimah, go back and look if the cooking-tins are not in the kitchen cupboard."

"They're not--I've looked already," said Fatimah.

"Then go and look again. Mosie, you want to inspect my horses--I can see you do."

"No, lady, I _have_ i'spected them."

"Then i'spect them a second time. Off you go! ... where's my lorgnette? Oh, dear me. I fancy I must have left it in the boudoir."

"Let me go for it, Princess," said Helena.

"Certainly not! Why should you? Do you think I'm a cripple that I can't go myself? Hafiz Effendi, where are your manners that you don't open this door for me? That's better. Now, the inner one."

At the next moment Gordon and Helena were left together. Helena was still standing by the window looking down at the city which seemed to lie dazed under the midday sun. Gordon stepped up and stood by her side. It was hard to realise that they were there again. But in spite of their happiness there was a little cloud over both. They knew what caused it.

While they stood together in silence they could hear the low reverberation of the voices of the people who were praying within the mosque.

"They are chanting the first Surah," said Gordon.

"Yes, the first Surah," said Helena.

Their hands found each other as they stood side by side.

"I saw Ishmael last night. He came to my quarters," said Gordon in a low tone.

"Well?" asked Helena faintly.

"It was most extraordinary. He came to tell me that ... to compel me to----"

"Hush!"

There was a soft footstep behind them. It was the step of some one walking in Oriental slippers. Without turning round they knew who it was.

It was Ishmael. Notwithstanding his dusky complexion, his face was very pale--almost as white as his turban. His eyes looked weary, their light was almost extinct. Perhaps his sermon had exhausted him. It was almost as if there was no life left in him except the life of the soul. But he smiled--it was the smile of a spectre--as he stepped forward and held out his hand

Gordon's heart shuddered for pity. "Are you well?" he asked.

"Oh yes."

"But you look tired."

"It's nothing," said Ishmael; and then, with a touching simplicity, he added, "I have been troubled in my heart, but now I am at peace and all is well."

They sat, Ishmael on the sofa, Helena on a chair at his right, Gordon on a chair at his left, the window open before them, the city slumbering below.

Ishmael's face, though full of lines of pain, continued to smile, and his voice, though hoarse and faint, was cheerful. He had come to tell them that he was going away.

"Going away?" said Gordon.

"Yes, my work here is done, and when a man's work is done he stands outside of life. So I am going back."

"Back? You mean back to Khartoum?" asked Helena timidly.

"Perhaps there, too. But back to the desert. I am a son of the desert. Therefore what other place can be so good for me?"

"Are you going alone?"

"Yes! Or rather, no! When a man has lived, has laboured, he has always one thing--memory. And he who has memory can never be quite alone."

"Still you will be very lone----"

Ishmael turned to her with an almost imperceptible smile.

"Perhaps, yes, at first, a little lonely, and all the more so for the sweet glimpse I have had of human company."

"But this is not what you intended to ... what you hoped to----"

"No! It's true I nourished other dreams for a while--dreams of living a human life after my work was done. It would have been very sweet, very beautiful. And now to go away, to give it up, never more to have part and lot in ... never again to see those who ... Yes, it's hard, a little hard."

Helena turned her head aside and looked out at the window.

"But that is all over now," said Ishmael. "Love is the crown of life, but it is not for all of us. Your great Master knew that as He knew everything. Some men have to be eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake. How true! How right!"

His pallid face struggled to smile as he said this.

"And then what does our Prophet say (to him be prayer and peace)? 'The man who loves and never attains to the joy of his love, but renounces it for another who has more right to it, is as one who dies a martyr.'"

Still looking out at the window, Helena tried to say she would always remember him, and hoped he would be very happy.

"Thank you! That also will be a sweet memory," he said. "But happy moments are rare in the lives of those who are called to a work for humanity."

Then, coming gently to closer quarters, he told them he was there to say good-bye to them. "I had intended to write to you," he said, turning again to Helena, "but it is better so."

Then, facing towards Gordon, he said--

"I must confess that I have not always loved you. But I have been in the wrong, and I ask your pardon. It is God who governs the heart. And what does your divine Master say about that, too? 'Whom God hath joined together let not man put asunder.' That is the true word about love and marriage--the first, and the last, and the only one."

Then he rose, and both Helena and Gordon rose with him. One moment he stood between them without speaking, and then, stooping over Helena's hand and kissing it, he said, in a scarcely audible whisper--

"I divorce thee! I divorce thee! I divorce thee!"

It was the Mohammedan form of divorcement, and all that was necessary to set Helena free. When he raised his head his face was still smiling--a pitiful, heart-breaking smile.

Then, still holding Helena's hand, he reached out for Gordon's also, and said--

"I give her back to thee, my brother. And do not think I give what I would not keep. Perhaps--who knows?--perhaps I loved her too."

Helena was deeply affected. Gordon found it impossible to look into Ishmael's face. They felt his wearied eyes resting upon them; they felt their hands being brought together; they felt Ishmael's hand resting for a moment on their hands; and then they heard him say--

"Maa-es-salamah! Be happy! Keep together as long as you can. And never forget we shall meet some day."

Then, in a voice so low that they could scarcely hear it, he said--

"Peace be with you both! Peace!"--and passed out of the room.

They stood where he had left them in the middle of the room, with faces to the ground and their hands quivering in each other's clasp until the sound of his footsteps had died away. Then Gordon said--

"Shall we go into the garden, Helena?"

"Yes," she replied in a whisper.

They went out hand in hand, and walked to the arbour on the edge of the ramparts. There, on that loved spot, the past rolled back on them like billows of the soul. The bushes seemed to have grown, the bougainvillea was more purple than before, the air was full of the scent of blossom, and everything was turning to love and to song.

They did not speak, but they put their arms about each other, and looked down on the wide panorama below--the city, the Nile, the desert, the Pyramids, and that old, old Sphinx whose scarred face had witnessed so many incidents in the story of humanity, and was now witnessing the last incident of one story more.

How long they stood there in their great happiness they never knew, but they were called back to themselves by a shrill, clear voice that came from a minaret behind them--

"God is Most Great! God is Most Great!"

Then, turning in the direction of the voice, they saw a white figure on a white camel ascending the yellow road that leads up to the fort on the top of the Mokattam hills and onward to the desert.

"Look," said Gordon. "Is it----?"

Without speaking, Helena bent her head in assent.

With hands still clasped and quivering, they watched the white figure as it passed away. It stopped at the crest of the hill, and looked back for a moment; then turned again and went on. At the next moment it was gone.

And then once more came the voice from the minaret, like the voice of an angel winging its way through the air--

*EPILOGUE*

Lord Nuneham lived ten years longer, but never, after the first profound sensation caused by his retirement, was he heard of again. The House of Lords did not see him; he was never found on any public platform, and no publisher could prevail upon him to write the story of his life.

He bought a majestic but rather melancholy place in Berkshire, one of the great historic seats of an extinguished noble family, and there, under the high elms and amid the green and cloudy landscape of his own country, he lived out his last years in unbroken obscurity.

It has been well said that deep tragedy is the school of great men, but there was one ray of sunshine to brighten Lord Nuneham's solitude. On a table, by his bedside, in a room darkened by rustling leaves, stood two photographs in silver frames. They were of two boys, one dark like his mother, the other fair like his father, both bright and strong and clear-eyed. Down to the end the old man never went to bed without taking up these pictures and looking at them, and as often as he did so, a faint smile would pass over his seamed and weary face.

After a while the world forgot that he was alive, and when he died the public seemed to be taken by surprise. "I thought he died ten years ago," said somebody.

Gordon held his post as General in command of the British army in Egypt for four successive terms, his appointment being renewed, first by the wish of the War Office, and afterwards at the request of the Egyptian Government. The civil occupation having become less active since his father's time (the new Consul-General being a pale shadow of his predecessor), the military occupation became more important, and except for his subjection to headquarters, Gordon appeared to stand in the position of a military autocrat. But in the difficult and delicate task of maintaining order in a foreign country without exasperating the feelings of the native people, he showed great tact and sympathy. While allowing the utmost liberty to thought, whether political or religious, he never for a moment permitted it to be believed that the Government could be defied with impunity in matters affecting peace, order, life, and property.

For this the best elements honoured him, and when the poor and illiterate, who were sometimes the victims of extremists whose only aim was to throw flaming torches into pits of inflammable gas, saw that he was just as ready to put down lawlessness among Europeans as among Egyptians, they loved as well as trusted him. His life in Egypt lessened the gulf which Easterns always find between Christians and Christianity, and whenever he had to return to England, the streets of Cairo would be red with the tarbooshes of the people who ran to the railway-station to see him off. "Maa-es-salamah, brother!" they would say, with the simplicity of children, and then, "Don't forget we will be waiting for you to come back."

Gordon's love for the Egyptians never failed him, and he was entirely happy in his home, where Helena developed the summer bloom of beautiful womanhood, and where the light, merry sound of the voices of her two young boys was always ringing like music through the house.

It must be confessed that for a while Egypt had a hard and almost tragic time. After the Consul-General's departure she went through a period of storm and stress. There were both errors and crimes. These were the inevitable results of progressive stages of self-rule; and even anarchy, the travail of a nation's birth, was not altogether unknown. During the earlier years there were some to regret the absence of the mailed fist of Lord Nuneham, and to question the benefit of quasi-Western institutions in an Eastern country. But the atmosphere cleared at last, the sinister anticipations were falsified, a bold and magnanimous policy brought peace, and the destinies of Egypt were firmly united to those of the country that had given her a new lease of life and liberty.

England never regretted what she had done on that day, when, true to her high traditions, she decided that a great nation had no longer any right to govern, with absolute and undivided authority, another race living under another sky. And her reward seems likely to come in a way that might have been least expected. As "God chooseth His fleshly instruments and with imperfect hearts doeth His perfect work," He seems to have put it into the hearts of the Arab people to sink their tribal differences and to act at the prompting of the gigantic myth with which the Grand Cadi deceived the Consul-General.

Indeed, those who gaze into the future as into a crystal say that the time is near when the long drama of dissension that has been played between Arabs and Turks will end in the establishment of a vast Arabic Empire, extending from the Tigris and the Euphrates Valley to the Mediterranean, and from the Indian Ocean to Jerusalem, with Cairo as its capital, the Khedive as its Caliph, and England as its lord and protector. No one can foreshadow the future, but this was Napoleon's greatest dream, and the nation that can realise it will hold the peace of the world in the palm of its almighty hand.

And Ishmael?

After he left Cairo he was never seen again by any one who could positively identify him. Some say he returned to the home of his childhood on the Libyan desert, and that he died there; others that he went back to Khartoum and thence to the heart of the Sahara, and that he is still alive. However this may be, it is certain that his disappearance has had the effect of death, that it has deepened the impression of his life, and that a huge shadow of him remains on those among whom he lived and laboured.

It was said on the day of his departure that Black Zogal, who followed him to the last with the fidelity of a human dog, kept close at his heels until he came to the top of the Mokattam Hills, where the Master sent him back after strictly charging him to tell no one which way he was going. Since then, however, Zogal has given it out (with every appearance of believing his own story) that he saw Ishmael ascend to heaven from the Gebel Mokattam in a blinding whirlwind of celestial light, a flight of angels carrying him away.

A Saint's House has been built for Black Zogal on the spot on which he says he saw the ascent; the half-crazy Soudanese inhabits it, and its outer walls are almost covered with the small flags which devotees have brought and fixed to them in their childlike effort to show reverence.

Nothing could exceed the boundless affection which is still felt for Ishmael by those who came into immediate contact with him. He seems to have inspired them with a love which survives absence and could even conquer death. Everybody who ever spoke to him has a story to tell of his wisdom, his power, and his tenderness. The number of his "miracles" has increased tenfold, and though not described as sinless, he is always talked of as if he were divine.

His Mouled (his birthday, a conjectural date) is celebrated by ceremonies which almost outrival the "Nights of the Prophet." About the Saint's House on the Mokattam Hills a huge encampment of tents is made, and there, under the blaze of thousands of dazzling lights, the Dervishes hold their Zikrs amid scenes of frantic excitement due to exhibitions of hypnotic suggestion which even include the gift of tongues, while more serious-minded Sheikhs repeat a long record of Ishmael's genealogy. This is a very circumstantial story, with a vague resemblance to something which Christians speak of with bated breath--how, when his mother, who was a virgin, was bearing him, an angel appeared to her in a dream and said, "You carry the Lord of Man," and how, when the child was delivered, three great Sheikhs came from Mecca to pay reverence to him, having seen a star in the sky which told them where he was to be born.

In the course of years a great body of Ishmael's "Sayings" have been gathered up. Some of them are authentic, but most of them are out of the wisdom of the ages, and not a few are directly borrowed from the Christian gospels which the Moslems, as a whole, do not know. Whatever their sources, they are deeply treasured. Women chant them to the children at their knees, and men lisp them, with their last breath and then die with brave faces.

Besides the impression he has produced upon the people, which is strong and likely to be enduring, Ishmael seems to have an almost unaccountable fascination for Arabic scholars and theologians. A number of the professors at El Azhar are already deep in metaphysical disputations about the inner significance of the words attributed to him, and it is whispered that the venerable Chancellor (now nearly a hundred years of age) is compiling a book, half biography and half commentary, that is full of mystical meanings.

More extraordinary still, it seems probable that a large and gorgeous mosque will be built in Ishmael's honour, and that he who loved best to worship in that temple of the open desert whereof the dome is the sky, he who cared so little about dogmatic theology that he never even wrote a line, may, by the wild irony of fate, become the founder of a sect in Islam which will teach everything he fought against and practise everything he condemned.

Chief among the subjects of disputation is Ishmael's expectation of a Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, though the Ulema, less concerned with the spirit than with the letter of the prophet's hope, are divided as to the source of it. Some say it is plainly indicated in the Koran and the traditions; others, more widely read, say it is borrowed from the Hebrew Bible, while a few refer it to a vague and misty antiquity.

Hardly less interesting to the theologians is the question of Ishmael's identity. Nearly all agree that there was an element of the supernatural about him, so hard is it to attribute to men of ordinary human passions the great movements that affect the world. But while there are those who believe him to have been the Mahdi, sent expressly to earth to destroy Anti-Christ, that is to say, the Consul-General, an influential group hold to the opinion that he was, and is, Seyidna Isa--our Lord Jesus.