A TYRANT AND A LADY (continued 2)

Donovan Pasha went with her to the room with the mud floor where Kingsley Bey was confined.

“I owe it all to you,” she said as they hastened across the sun-swept square. “Ah, but you have atoned! You have done it all at once, after these long years.”

“Well, well, the time is ripe,” said Dicky piously. They found Kingsley Bey reading the last issue of the French newspaper published in Cairo. He was laughing at some article in it abusive of the English, and seemed not very downcast; but at a warning sign and look from Dicky, he became as grave as he was inwardly delighted at seeing the lady of Assiout.

As Kingsley Bey and the Ambassadress shook hands, Dicky said to her: “I’ll tell him, and then go.” Forthwith he said: “Kingsley Bey, son of the desert, and unhappy prisoner, the prison opens its doors. No more for you the cold earth for a bed—relieved though it be by a sleeping-mat. No more the cake of dourha and the balass of Nile water. Inshallah, you are as free as a bird on the mountain top, to soar to far lands and none to say thee nay.”

Kingsley Bey caught instantly at the meaning lying beneath Dicky’s whimsical phrases, and he deported himself accordingly. He looked inquiringly at the Ambassadress, and she responded:

“We come from the Khedive, and he bids us carry you his high considerations—”

“Yes, ‘high considerations,’ he said,” interjected Dicky with his eye towards a fly on the ceiling.

“And to beg your company at dinner to-night.”

“And the price?” asked Kingsley, feeling his way carefully, for he wished no more mistakes where this lady was concerned. At Assiout he had erred; he had no desire to be deceived at Cairo. He did not know how he stood with her, though her visit gave him audacious hopes. Her face was ruled to quietness now, and only in the eyes resolutely turned away was there any look which gave him assurance. He seemed to hear her talking from the veranda that last day at Assiout; and it made him discreet at least.

“Oh, the price!” murmured Dicky, and he seemed to study the sleepy sarraf who pored over his accounts in the garden. “The price is ‘England, home, and beauty.’ Also to prop up the falling towers of Khedivia—ten thousand pounds! Also, Gordon.”

Kingsley Bey appeared, as he was, mystified, but he was not inclined to spoil things by too much speaking. He looked inquiry.

At that moment an orderly came running towards the door—Dicky had arranged for that. Dicky started, and turned to the lady. “You tell him. This fellow is coming for me. I’ll be back in a quarter of an hour.” He nodded to them both and went out to the orderly, who followed his footsteps to the palace.

“You’ve forgiven me for everything—for everything at Assiout, I mean?” he asked.

“I have no desire to remember,” she answered. “About Gordon—what is it?”

“Ah, yes, about Gordon!” She drew herself up a little. “I am to go to England—for the Khedive, to ask Gordon to save the Soudan.”

“Then you’ve forgiven the Khedive?” he inquired with apparent innocence.

“I’ve no wish to prevent him showing practical repentance,” she answered, keenly alive to his suggestion, and a little nettled. “It means no more slavery. Gordon will prevent that.”

“Will he?” asked Kingsley, again with muffled mockery.

“He is the foe of slavery. How many, many letters I have had from him! He will save the Soudan—and Egypt too.”

“He will be badly paid—the Government will stint him. And he will give away his pay—if he gets any.”

She did not see his aim, and her face fell. “He will succeed for all that.”

“He can levy taxes, of course.”

“But he will not-for himself.”

“I will give him twenty thousand pounds, if he will take it.”

“You—you!—will give him—” Her eyes swam with pleasure. “Ah, that is noble! That makes wealth a glory, to give it to those who need it. To save those who are down-trodden, to help those who labour for the good of the world, to—” she stopped short, for all at once she remembered-remembered whence his money came. Her face suffused. She turned to the door. Confusion overmastered her for the moment. Then, anger at herself possessed her. On what enterprise was she now embarked? Where was her conscience? For what was she doing all this? What was the true meaning of her actions? Had it been to circumvent the Khedive? To prevent him from doing an unjust, a despicable, and a dreadful thing? Was it only to help the Soudan? Was it but to serve a high ideal, through an ideal life—through Gordon?

It came upon her with embarrassing force. For none of these things was she striving. She was doing all for this man, against whose influence she had laboured, whom she had bitterly condemned, and whose fortune she had called blood-money and worse. And now...

She knew the truth, and it filled her heart with joy and also pain. Then she caught at a straw: he was no slave-driver now. He had—

“May I not help you—go with you to England?” he questioned over her shoulder.

“Like Alexander Selkirk ‘I shall finish my journey alone,’” she said, with sudden but imperfectly assumed acerbity.

“Will you not help me, then?” he asked. “We could write a book together.”

“Oh, a book!” she said.

“A book of life,” he whispered.

“No, no, no—can’t you see?—oh, you are playing me like a ball!”

“Only to catch you,” he said, in a happier tone.

“To jest, when I am so unhappy!” she murmured.

“My jest is the true word.”

She made a last rally. “Your fortune was made out of slave labour.”

“I have given up the slaves.”

“You have the fortune.”

“I will give it all to you—to have your will with it. Now it is won, I would give it up and a hundred times as much to hear you say, ‘Come to Skaw Fell again.”’

Did he really mean it? She thought he did. And it seemed the only way out of the difficulty. It broke the impasse.

It was not necessary, however, to spend the future in the way first suggested to her mind. They discussed all that at Skaw Fell months later.

Human nature is weak and she has become a slavedriver, after all. But he is her only slave, and he hugs his bondage.