THE WHITE PROPHET, VOLUME II (continued 6)

The wild insurrection in his soul had left him no time to think which course he was taking, but wandering across the Sakkara desert he had by this time come to the foot of the Sphinx.

Calm, immovable, tremendous, the great scarred face was gazing in passionless meditation into the luminous starlight, asking, as it had asked through the long yesterday of the past, as it will continue to ask through the long to-morrow of the future, the everlasting question, the question of humanity, the question of all suffering souls—

"Why?"

Why should man aim higher than he can reach? Why should he give up the joys of humanity for divine dreams that can never be realised? Why should he be a victim to the devilish powers, within and without, which are always waiting to betray and destroy him? Why should God forsake him just when he is striving to serve Him best?

"Allah! Allah! Why? Why?" he cried.

But his higher nature speedily regained its supremacy. It came to him as a flash of light in his darkness that the true explanation of his downfall was that God was punishing him for his presumption in allowing the idolatry of his people to carry him away from his first humility—to forget his proper place as a man, and to think of himself as if he were a god.

This led him to thoughts of atonement, and in a moment the image of death came to him—his own death—as a sacrifice. He began to see what he had now to do. He had to take all that had happened upon himself. He had to call his people together and to say, "I lied to you! I was a false prophet! I deceived myself, and in deceiving myself I deceived you also! The wonderful world I promised you—the Redeemer I foretold—all, all is vain!"

And then—what then? What of himself—the betrayed, the betrayer? After he had parted from the people with their broken hearts, he would deliver himself up to the authorities. He had done no wrong to the Government, but he had sinned against his followers, and he had sinned against God, and God would accept the one punishment for the other.

Yes, he would go into Cairo and say, "I am here—you want me—take me!"

His regenerated soul saw in his death not only his own salvation, but, the salvation of his people also. It was not clear to him how this was to come to pass, but death had always been a gain to great causes, and God was over all!

Under this sublime resolution his heart became almost buoyant. He turned to go back to the camp, and as he walked he thought of Helena again. The tender love which had filled his whole being for months could not be banished in an hour, and he began to tell himself that perhaps after all she had not been to blame. Love could not be ruled by a rudder like a boat. The white woman could not help but love the white man. It was a woman's way to risk everything, to sacrifice everybody, to commit sin and even crime for the man she loved—how many good women had done so!

That was the temptation to which the Rani had succumbed, and he—yes, he also—must submit to the pains of it. They were hard, they were cruel, they cut to the core, but with the idea of death before him they could now be borne.

He remembered his unbridled wrath with the Rani, his ferocious violence, and he felt ashamed. It was almost impossible to believe that he had really laid hands upon her and tried to strangle her.

He remembered how he had left her, face down on the angerib, in her misery and remorse. The picture in his mind's eye of the weeping woman in her tent made his heart bleed with pity.

He must go back to her. His people might suspect that she was the author of their trouble, and in their fury they might threaten her. He must conceal her fault. He must take her sin upon himself.

"I must cover her with my cloak," he thought.

Thus thirsting with a desire to drink the cup of his degradation to the dregs, Ishmael got back to camp. It was full of touching sights. Instead of the flare of the lights and the tumult of the excited crowds which he had left behind him, there were now only the ashes of dying fires and the melancholy moanings of the people who were sitting about them.

He made his way first to Helena's tent, and, standing by the mouth of it, he called to her.

"Rani!"

A woman who had been lying on the angerib rose to answer him. It was Zenoba.

"Alas! Your Rani has gone, O Master," she said, with mock sympathy but ill-concealed tones of triumph.

"Gone?"

"She was afraid the people might kill her, so she fled away."

"Fled away?"

"I did my best to keep her for your sake, but she loves herself more than you, and that's the truth, O Master."

Ishmael groaned and staggered, but the woman showed no pity.

"Better have contented yourself with a woman of your own people, who would have been true and faithful," she said in a bitter whisper.

Covered with shame, Ishmael turned away. He looked for Zogal.

The black Dervish was at that moment struggling to sustain the people's faith in the Master and his mission by means of a pagan superstition.

"Give me a mutton bone," he had said, and having received one, he had looked at it long and steadfastly in order to read the future.

As Ishmael came up to the smouldering fire about which Zogal and his company were squatting, the wild-eyed Dervish was saying—

"It will be well! Allah will preserve His people, and the Master will be saved! Did I not tell thee the bone never lies?"

"Zogal," said Ishmael, "sound the horn, and let the people be brought together."

The sky was dark. The stars had gone out. It was not yet midnight.

CHAPTER XI

At the next moment the melancholy notes of the great horn rang out over the dark camp, and within a few minutes an immense multitude had gathered.

It was a strange spectacle under the blank darkness of the sky. Men carrying lanterns, which cast coarse lights upward into their swarthy faces, were standing in a surging and murmuring mass, while women, like shadows in the gloom, were huddling together on the outskirts of the crowd.

They were Ishmael's faithful people, all of them, broken-hearted believers in his spiritual mission, for at the shadow of disaster those who had followed him for personal gains alone had gone.

Ishmael caused the people to be drawn up in a great square, and then, mounting a camel, he rode into the midst of them. He was seen to be in a state of great excitement.

"Brothers," he said, "we have passed through many hard days together. You have shared with me your joys and your sorrows. I have shared with you my hopes and my dreams. We are one."

Touched to the heart by his voice as much as his words, the people cried—

"May God preserve thee!"

"Nay," he cried, "may God punish me, for I have permitted myself to be deceived."

The people thought he was going to speak of the woman who was understood to have betrayed him, but he did not do so.

"Look!" he cried, pointing towards the pyramid. "We stand amid the ruins of a pagan world. Where are the Kings and Counsellors who slept in these desolate places? Gone! All gone! Have not strangers from a far country taken away their bodies to wonder at? Where is the king who built this tomb? He thought himself the equal of God, yet what was he? A man, shaped out of a little clay! And I?" he said, "I, too, have been drunk with power. I have been living in the greatness of my own strength. I have permitted myself to believe that I was the messenger of God, and therefore God—God has brought me down. He has laid me in the dust. Blessed be the name of God!"

Only the broken ejaculations of the people answered him, and he went on without pausing—

"In bringing me down He has brought down my people also. Alas for you, my brothers! You cannot go into Cairo. The armed forces of the Government are waiting there to destroy you. Therefore turn back and go home. Forgive your leader who has led you astray. And God preserve and comfort you!"

"And you, O Master?" cried a voice that rose above the confused voices of the people.

Ishmael paused for a moment, and then said—

"In times of great war and pestilence God has accepted an atonement, and perhaps He will do so now. I will go into Cairo and deliver myself to the Government. I will say, 'The man you hold was arrested instead of me. I am your true prisoner. Take me and let him—and let my poor followers—go free.'"

The anguish of the people swelled into sobs, and some of them, full of zeal, swore that they would never return to their homes without the Master, but would follow him to prison and to death.

"If you go into Cairo, so will I!" cried one.

"And I too!" cried another.

"And I!" "And I!" "And I!" cried others, each holding up his hand and stepping out as he spoke, until the square in which Ishmael sat on his camel was full of excited men.

At that moment of deep emotion, while great tears were rolling down Ishmael's cheeks and the women on the outskirts of the crowd were uttering piercing cries, a loud, delirious shout was heard, and a man was seen to be crushing his way through the people.

It was Zogal, and his wild eyes were ablaze with frenzy.

"Wait! Wait!" he cried. "Has the Master forgotten his own message? He says the soldiers of the Franks and Turks are waiting in Cairo to destroy us. But isn't God greater than armies? We are weak and defenceless, but does He always give His victory to the armed and the strong? What!" he cried again, "are you afraid that the Christians will kill us with bullets? That they will eat our flesh and drink our blood? That they will make us worship the wooden cross? If God is with us what can our enemies do? It is not they who throw the javelin—it is God! Therefore," he cried, in a voice that had risen to a scream, "if the Master is to go into Cairo we will all go with him."

In vain Ishmael tried to stop the man. His protests were drowned in the rapturous responses of the crowd. People are as easily swayed to as fro; they regain confidence as rapidly as they lose it. In a moment the Master was forgotten, and only the wild-eyed Dervish seemed to be heard.

"Did not God promise us, through the mouth of His messenger, that we should go into Cairo—and will He break His word?"

"Allah! Allah!" shouted the crowd.

"Did he not tell us God would send us a sign?"

"Allah! Allah!"

"Shall we say it will not come, and call God a liar?"

"Allah! Allah!"

"'At the hour of midnight prayers,' he said, 'the light will shine.'"

"Allah! Allah! Allah!"

"Pray for it, my brothers, pray for it," cried Zogal, and in another moment, with the delirious strength of one possessed, he had cleared a long passage through the people, and begun to lead a wild, barbaric Zikr, such as he had seen in the depths of the desert.

"The light! The light! Send the light, O Allah!" cried Zogal, striding up and down the long alley of bowing and swaying people, and tossing his sweating and foaming face up to the dark sky.

It has been truly said that everything favours those who have a special destiny—that they may become glorious against their own will and as if by the command of fate. It was so with Ishmael. At the very moment when Zogal on the desert was calling for the light which he believed God had promised, Hafiz, at the Citadel, having received the message which Helena had sent over the telephone from the house of the Princess Nazimah, was running with a powerful lantern up the winding stairway of one of the minarets of the mosque of Mohammed Ali.

"The light! The light! Send the light, O Allah!" cried the dervish, and at the next moment, while the breathless crowd about him were looking through the darkness towards the heights above Cairo, expecting to see the manifestation of God's sign in the sky, the light appeared!

In an instant the whole camp was a scene of frantic rejoicing. Men were shouting, women were lu-lu-ing, camels and asses were being saddled, tents were being struck, and everybody and everything was astir.

Oh, mysterious and divine power of destiny, that could make the fate of an entire nation hang on the accident of time and the unreasoning impulses of one poor demented man!

CHAPTER XII

Next day Ishmael entered Cairo. News of his coming had been noised abroad, and the police at their various stations had been told that beyond the necessary efforts to preserve order they were not in any way to interfere with his procession. Neither Ishmael nor any of his people were to be allowed to pose as martyrs. There was to be no resistance and no bloodshed. If possible there was to be no scene.

The guests at the King's Dinner had left the Ghezirah long before midnight. Such of them as were innocent of all participation in conspiracy (they were the majority) attributed the Consul-General's strange outbreak to an attack of mental vertigo in an old man whose health had long been failing from the pressure of public work. Nothing was allowed to occur which would give the incident a more serious significance. The bridge which had been opened was closed, and the guests had returned to their homes as usual.

In the early hours of morning they were awakened by loud shoutings in the streets. Two hundred men from Ishmael's company had galloped ahead as heralds, and, flying down every thoroughfare to reassure the population of the nature of the vast procession that was coming, they were crying—

"Peace! Peace! It is Peace!"

After that the general body of the native people, who had been on the tiptoe of expectation, were speeding along the streets. They found mounted and foot police stationed at various points, but no military and no guns.

It was a triumphant entry. The procession came in by the Gizeh Bridge, and passing down the Kasr-el-Aini into the Place Ismailyah, it turned down the broad Boulevard Abul Aziz towards the heart of the city.

The sun was rising, and the scene was a blaze of colour. Banners were swinging from the houses like ships' pendants in stormy seas. The streets seemed to be carpeted with the tarbooshes and turbans of the great, moving, surging masses of humanity that were slowly passing through them. There were brown faces that were almost white from the fatigue of the long desert march, and white faces that were burnt brown by the tropical sun. It was a swarming, shifting, variegated throng, and over all was the dazzling splendour of the Eastern sunrise.

Before the procession had gone far, it seemed as if the whole population of Cairo had come out to it. Eternal children! There is nothing they love more than to look at a great spectacle except to take part in it, and they hastened to take part in this one. Every window and balcony was soon full of faces; every housetop was alive with movement and aflame with colour. People were thronging the footpaths on either side as the pilgrims passed between.

The wives and children of the hundred emissaries who left Cairo on Ishmael's errand had come out to look for their husbands and fathers returning home. Eagerly they were scanning the faces of the pilgrims, and loud and wild were their cries of joy when they recognised their own.

Many of those who had no personal interest in the procession fell into line with it. A company of Dervishes walked by its side playing pipes and drums. Other musicians joined them with strange-looking wooden and brass instruments. Bursts of wild Arab music broke out from time to time and then stopped, leaving a sort of confused and tumultuous silence.

Carts filled with women and children, who were laughing and lu-lu-ing by turns, jolted along by the pilgrims like trundling bundles of joy. And then there were the pilgrims themselves, the vast concourse of fully forty thousand from the Soudan, from Assouan, from the long valley of the Nile, some on horses, some on camels, some on donkeys, some wearing their simple felt skull-caps and galabeahs, others in flowing robes and crimson head-dresses. The barbaric splendour and intoxicating arrogance of it all was such as the people of Cairo had never seen before.

To the great body of the Cairenes the entrance of Ishmael Ameer denoted victory. That the Government permitted it indicated their defeat. The great English lord, who had closed El Azhar, thereby damming up the chief fountain of the Islamic faith, had been beaten. Either the Powers, or God Himself, had suppressed him and rebuked England. Pharaoh had fallen. The children of Allah were crossing their Red Sea. Even as Mohammed, after being expelled from Mecca as a rebel, had returned to it as a conqueror, so Ishmael, after being cast out of Cairo as the enemy of England, was coming back as England's master and king. So louder and louder became their wild acclamations.

"Victory to Islam!"

"El Hamdullillah!"

"God has willed it!"

When Ishmael himself appeared the shouts of welcome were deafening. He had been long in coming, and the people had been waiting for him all along the line. He came at the end of the procession, and if he could have escaped from it altogether he would have done so.

In spite of all this glory, all this grandeur, a deep melancholy filled the soul of Ishmael. He was not carried away by what had happened. Nothing that had occurred since the night before had touched his pride. When the light appeared on the minaret he had not been deceived. He knew that by some unknown turn of the wheel of chance his people were to be allowed to enter Cairo, but all the same his heart was low.

The only interpretation he put upon the change in events was a mystic one. God had refused his atonement! God had taken the leadership of His people out of his hands! As punishment of his weakness in permitting himself to be betrayed, God had made him a mere follower of his own black servant! Therefore his glory was his shame! His hour of triumph was his hour of sorrow and disgrace! He was entering Cairo under the frown of the face of God!

When the camp had been ready to move he had mounted his white camel and ridden last, beset by melancholy pre-occupations. But when he came to the Gizeh Bridge and saw the crowds that were coming out to greet him, and met Zogal, who had galloped into the city and was galloping back to say that the people of Cairo were preparing a triumph for him, he made his camel kneel, and in the deep abasement of his soul he got down to walk.

He walked down the whole length of the Kasr-el-Aini with head down, like a man who was ashamed, shuddering visibly when the onlookers cheered, trembling when they commended him to God, and almost falling when they saluted him as the Deliverer and Redeemer of Islam and its people.

Although of large frame and strong muscle, he was a man of delicate organisation, and the strain his soul was going through was tearing his body to pieces. At length, as he approached the Place Ismailyah, where the crowd was dense, he stumbled and fell on one knee.

Zogal, who was behind, leapt from the ass he was riding and lifted the Master in his arms, but it was seen that he could not stand. There was a moment's hesitation, in which the black man seemed to ask himself what he ought to do, and at the next instant he had thrown his white cloak over the donkey's back and lifted Ishmael into the saddle.

Meantime the people in the streets, in the balconies, on the housetops, were waiting for the new prophet. They expected to see him coming into Cairo as a conqueror—in a litter, perhaps, covered with gold and fringed with jingling coins and cowries—the central figure of a great procession such as would remind them of the grandeur of the Mahmal, the holy carpet returning from Mecca.

When at length he came his appearance gave a shock. His face was pale, his head was down, and he was riding on an ass!

But truly everything favours him who has the great destiny. After the spectators had recovered from their first shock at the sight of Ishmael, his humility touched their imagination. Remembering how he had left Cairo, and seeing how meekly he was returning to it, their acclamations became deafening.

"Praise be to God!"

"May God preserve thee!"

"May God give thee long life!"

And then some one who thought he saw in the entrance of Ishmael into Cairo a reproduction of the most triumphant if the most tragic incident in the life of the Lord of the Christians, shouted—

"Seyidna Isa! Seyidna Isa!" (Our Lord Jesus!)

In a moment the name was taken up on every side, and resounded in joyous accents down the streets. The belief of a crowd is created not by slow processes of reason but by quick flashes of emotion, and instantly the surging mass of Eastern children had accepted the idea that Ishmael Ameer was a reincarnation of that "divine man of Judæa" whom he had taught them to reverence, that "son of Mary" whom the Prophet himself had placed high among the children of men.

To make the parallel complete, people rushed out of the houses and spread their coats on the ground in front of him, and some, pushing their adoration to yet greater lengths, climbed the trees that lined the Boulevard and tearing away branches and boughs flung them before his feet.

The Dervishes ran ahead crying the new name in frantic tones, while a company of grave-looking men walked on either side of Ishmael, chanting the first Surah: "Praise be to God, the Lord of all creatures," and the muezzins in the minarets of the mosques (blind men nearly all, who could see nothing of the boiling, bubbling, gorgeous scene below) chanted the profession of faith: "There is no god but God! God is Most Great! God is Most Great!" Men shouted with delight, women lu-lu-ed with joy, and the thousands of voices that clashed through the air sounded like bells ringing a joyful peal.

Nothing could have exceeded the savage grandeur of Ishmael's return to Cairo; but Ishmael himself, the white figure sitting sideways on an ass, continued to move along with a humbled and chastened soul. He was a sad man, with his own secret sorrow; a bereaved man, a betrayed man, with a heart that was torn and bleeding.

When he remembered that in spite of his betrayal, his predictions were being fulfilled, he told himself that that was by God's doing only, not by his in any way. When he heard the divine name by which the people greeted him he felt as if he were being burned to the very marrow. He was crushed by their mistaken worship. He knew himself now for a poor, weak, blind, deceived, and self-deluded man, whom the Almighty had smitten and brought low. Therefore he made no response to the frantic acclamations. Every step of the road as he passed along was like a purgatorial procession, and his suffering was written in lines of fire on his downcast face.

"O Father, spare me, spare me," he prayed as the people shouted by his side.

Once he made an effort to dismount, but Zogal, thinking the Master's strength was failing, put an arm about him and held him in his seat.

It took the whole morning for the procession to pass through the city. Unconsciously, as the blood flows back to the heart, it went up through the Mousky to El Azhar. All the gates of the University, which had been so long closed, were standing open. Who had opened them no one seemed to know. The people crowded into the courtyard, and in a little while the vast place was full. A platform had been raised at the further side, and on this Ishmael was placed with the chief of the Ulema beside him.

By one of those accidents which always attach themselves to great events it chanced that the day of Ishmael's return to Cairo was also the first of the Mouled-en-Naby—the nine days of rejoicing for the birthday of the Prophet. This fact was quickly seized upon as a means for uniting to the beautiful Moslem custom for "attaining the holy satisfaction" the opportunity of celebrating the victory for Islam which Ishmael was thought to have attained. Therefore the Sheikh Seyid-el-Bakri, descendant of the Prophet, and head of the Moslem confraternities, determined to receive his congregations in El Azhar, where Ishmael might share in their homage. They came in thousands, carrying their gilded banners which were written over with lines from the Koran, ranged themselves, company after company, in half-circles before the dais, salaamed to those who sat on it, chanted words to the glory of God and His Prophet, and then stepped up to kiss the hands and sometimes the feet of their chief and his companions.

Ishmael tried to avoid their homage, but could not do so. Mechanically he uttered the usual response, "May God repeat upon you this feast in happiness and benediction," and then fell back upon his own reflections.

Notwithstanding the blaze and blare of the scene about him, his mind was returning to Helena. Where was she? What fate had befallen her? At length, unable to bear any longer the burden of his thoughts, and the purgatory of his position, he got up and stole away through the corridors at the back of the mosque.

When darkness fell, the native quarters of Cairo were illuminated. Lamps were hung from the poles which project from the minarets of the mosques. Ropes were swung from minaret to minaret, and from these, also, lamps were suspended. In the poorer streets people were going about with open flares in iron grills, and in the better avenues rich men were walking behind their lantern-bearers. Blind beggars in the cafés were reciting the genealogy of the Prophet, and at the end of every passage other blind beggars were crying, "La ilaha illa-llah!"

Late at night, when the vast following which Ishmael had brought into the city had to be housed, messengers ran through the streets asking for lodgings for the pilgrims, and people answered from their windows and balconies, "I'll take one," "I'll take two." Twenty thousand slept in the courtyard and en the roofs of El Azhar; the rest in the houses round about.

The trust in God, which had seemed to be slain the night before, awoke to a new life, and when at length the delirious city lay down to sleep, the watchmen walked through the deserted thoroughfares crying, "Wahhed! Wahhed!" (God is One!)

In the dead, hollow, echoing hours of early morning a solitary coach passed through the streets in the direction of the outlying stations of the railway to Port Said. Its blinds were down. It was empty. But on the box seat beside the coachman sat a nervous, watchful person with an evil face, wearing the costume of a footman.

It was the Grand Cadi. He had been the supreme orthodox authority of the Moslem faith, sent from Constantinople as representative and exponent of the spiritual authority vested in the Sultan of Turkey as the Caliph of Islam, but he was stealing out of Cairo like a thief.

CHAPTER XIII

A general Court-Martial was fixed for the following morning, and Helena was for going to it just as she was, in the mixed Eastern and Western costume which she had worn on the desert, but the Princess would not hear of that. She must wear the finest gown and the smartest Paris hat that could be obtained in Cairo, in order that Gordon might see her at her best.

"He may be a hero," said the Princess, "but he is a man, too, God bless him, and he'll want to see the woman he loves look lovely."

So the milliners and dressmakers were set to work immediately, and bound by endless pledges.

"Of course they'll promise you the stars at noonday," said the Princess, "but if they don't come up to the scratch they get no money. Keep your cat hungry and she'll catch the rat, you know."

In due time the costume was ready, and when Helena had put it on—a close-fitting silver-grey robe and a large black hat—the Princess stood off from her and said—

"Well, my moon, my sweet, my beauty, if he doesn't want to live a little longer after he has seen you in that, he's not fit to be alive!"

But at the last moment Helena called for a thick dark veil.

"I've no right to sap away his courage," she said; and the Princess, who had heard everything that Helena had to tell, and had swung round to Gordon's side entirely, could say no more.

Hafiz came to take the ladies to the Citadel, and as he was leaving them at the gate to go to Gordon in his quarters, Helena gave him the letter she had written at Sakkara.

"Tell him I mean all I say—every word of it," she whispered.

The Court-Martial was held in one of the rooms of the palace of Mohammed Ali—up a wide stone staircase across a bare court, through a groined archway, beyond a great hall which in former days had seen vast assemblies, and past a door labelled "Minister of War," into a gorgeously decorated chamber, overlooking a garden with its patch of green shut in by high stone walls. It had once been the harem of the great Pasha.

The room was already full when Helena and the Princess arrived, but places were found for them near the door. This position suited Helena perfectly, but to the Princess it was a deep disappointment, and as a consequence nothing pleased her.

"All English and all soldiers! Not an Egyptian among them," she said. "After what he has done for them, too! Ingrates! Excuse the word. That's what I call them."

At that moment Hafiz entered, and the Princess, touching him on the arm, said—

"Here, you come and sit on the other side of her and keep up her heart, the sweet one."

Hafiz did as he was told, and as soon as he was seated beside Helena he whispered—

"I've just left him."

"How is he?"

"Firm as a rock. He sent you a message."

"What is it?"

"'Tell her,' he said, 'that great love conquers death.'"

"Ah!"

At the next moment Helena's hand and Hafiz's found each other in a fervent clasp, and sweetheart and foster-brother sat together so until the end of the inquiry.

Presently the Judges of the Court entered and took their places at the table that had been prepared for them—one full Colonel and four Lieutenant-Colonels of mature age, from different British regiments.

"They look all right, but white hairs are no proof of wisdom," muttered the Princess.

Then the accused was called, and amid breathless silence Gordon entered with a firm step, attended by the officer who had him in charge. His manner was calm, and though his face was pale almost to pallor, his expression betrayed neither fear nor bravado. His appearance made a deep impression, and the President told him to sit. At the same moment it was observed that the Sirdar came in by a door at the farther end of the room and took a seat immediately in front of him.

The Court was then sworn and the charge was read. It accused the prisoner of three offences under the Army Act; first, that being a person subject to military law he had disobeyed the lawful command of a superior in such a way as to show a wilful disregard of authority (A.A. 9, 1); second, that he had been guilty of acts and conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline (A.A. 40); third, that he had deserted his Majesty's service while on active service (A.A. 12, 13).

"He heard it all yesterday morning," whispered Hafiz to Helena, whose nervous fingers were tightening about his own.

The charges having been read out to the accused, he was called upon to plead.

"Are you guilty or not guilty?" asked the President.

There was a moment of breathless silence, and then, in a measured voice without a break or a tremor, Gordon said—

"I do not wish to plead at all."

A subdued murmur passed through the room, and Hafiz whispered again—

"He wanted to plead Guilty, and the Sirdar had all he could do to prevent him."

"Enter a plea of 'Not guilty' on the record," said the President.

Then addressing Gordon, the President asked if he was represented by counsel. Gordon shook his head. Did he desire to conduct his own defence? Again Gordon shook his head. The President conferred for a moment with the other members of the Court and then said—

"It is within the power of the Court to appoint a properly qualified person to act as counsel for the accused, and in this case the Court desires to do so. Is there any officer here who wishes to undertake the task of Defender?"

In a moment it was plainly evident that the sympathies of Gordon's brother-officers were with him. Twenty men in uniform had leapt to their feet and were holding up their hands.

"Lord God, how they love him!" whispered Hafiz, and Helena had to hold down her head lest she should be seen to cry.

The Defender selected was a young Captain of Cavalry who had brought a brilliant reputation from the Staff College, and in a moment he was in the midst of his duties.

"Does the accused desire a short adjournment of the Court in order to instruct his Defender?" asked the President.

Once more Gordon, who had stood passively during these proceedings, shook his head, and then, without further preliminaries, the trial began. The Prosecutor rose to make his opening address. He was an Artillery Officer of high reputation.

"He'll make it no worse than he can help," whispered Hafiz.

In simple words the Prosecutor stated his case, confining himself to the briefest explanation of the facts he was about to prove, and then he called the first of his witnesses. This was the Military Secretary, Captain Graham, who had been present at the prisoner's interview with the late General Graves.

"Not a bad chap—he'll do no more than he must," whispered Hafiz.

Replying to the Prosecutor's questions, the Military Secretary said that Gordon had refused to obey the order of his superior given personally by that officer in the execution of his office, and that his refusal had been deliberate and distinct, and such as showed an intention to defy and resist authority.

"I object," said the officer who filled the post of Judge Advocate, and after he had shown that the latter part of the witness's answer was not evidence but inference which the Court alone could draw, the objection was allowed.

The Defender then rose to cross-examine the first witness, and in a few minutes the Military Secretary was made to prove, first, that the prisoner had tried to show his superior that the order he was giving him was contrary to humanity and likely to lead to an irreparable result; next, that when executed by another officer, it had led to an irreparable result, including bloodshed and loss of life; and, finally, that after the order had been disobeyed by the accused the most inexcusable and disgraceful and even illegal and unsoldierly insults had been inflicted upon him by his General.

"That's true! My God, that's true! Illegal and unsoldierly!" whispered Hafiz, forgetting to whom he was talking; and Helena, in the riot of her dual love, for her father and for Gordon, could do nothing but hold down her head.

Then the Prosecutor called Colonel Macdonald.

"A brute—he'll do his dam'dest," whispered Hafiz.

Amid scarcely suppressed murmurs Colonel Macdonald, speaking with manifest bitterness, proved the assault upon himself, and then went on to say that it was unprovoked, it was brutal, and it was conduct unbecoming the character of an officer and a gentleman.

"A lie like that has no legs to walk on," whispered Hafiz.

"No, but it has wings to fly with, though," said the Princess.

"Hush!" said Helena.

Again, like a flash of light, the Judge Advocate had leapt up to protest against an inference which the Court alone was entitled to draw, and again the objection was upheld and the inference was expunged.

Amid obvious excitement among the soldiers in Court, the Defender then rose to cross-examine the second witness, and in a moment Macdonald's freckled face had become scarlet, as he was compelled to admit that, at the instant before he was assaulted, he had ordered the shooting of a boy (who fell dead from the walls of El Azhar) and was then swearing at the boy's mother who was weeping over her son.

"Ah, his rage will be at the end of his nose now," whispered the Princess.

Finally, the Prosecutor called the officer who was temporarily commanding the Army of Occupation to show that the accused, after disobeying the order of his late General, had disappeared from Cairo and had not been seen since the riot at El Azhar until his capture two days before.

The evidence for the prosecution being now finished, the Court prepared itself for the defence. There was a certain appearance of anxious curiosity on the faces of the Judges, and a tingling atmosphere of expectancy among the spectators.

Then came a surprise. The young Defender, who had been holding a whispered conference with Gordon, turned to the President and said—

"I regret to say that the accused has decided not to call any witnesses in defence."

"But perhaps," said the President, turning to Gordon, "you wish to give evidence for yourself. Do you?"

There was another moment of breathless silence, and then Gordon, after looking slowly round the room, in the direction of the place in which Helena sat with her head down, said calmly—

"No."

At that the murmuring among the spectators could hardly be suppressed. It was now plainly evident that Gordon's brother officers were with him to a man. They had been counting on an explanation that would at least palliate his conduct if it could not excuse his offences. The disappointment was deep, but the sympathy was still deeper. Could it be possible that Gordon meant to die?

"Lift up your veil, child," whispered the Princess, but Helena shook her head.

After the Prosecutor had summed up his evidence, the Defender addressed the Court for the defence. He pleaded extenuating circumstances, first on the ground that the order given to the accused, though not in opposition to the established customs of the army or the laws of England, was calculated to do irreparable injury and had done such injury, and next on the ground of outrageous provocation.

When the Defender had finished, the President announced that his Excellency the Sirdar had volunteered to give evidence in proof of the prisoner's honourable record, and that the Court had decided to hear him.

The Sirdar was then sworn, and in strong, affecting, soldierly words, he said the accused had rendered great services to his country; that he had received many medals and distinctions; that he was as brave a man as ever stood under arms, and one of the young officers who made an old soldier proud to belong to the British army.

There is no company more easily moved to tears than a company of soldiers, and when the Sirdar sat down there was not a dry eye in that assembly of brave men.

After a pause the President announced that the Court would be closed to consider the finding, but in order to assist the Judges in doing so it would be desirable that they should know more of the conditions under which the accused was arrested. Therefore the following persons would be asked to remain:—

His Excellency the Sirdar.

The Commandant of Police.

Captain Hafiz Ahmed of the Egyptian Army.

Helena, with the other spectators, was passing out of the room when the Sirdar touched her on the shoulder and said, haltingly—

"Have you perhaps got ... can you trust me with those letters for a little while?"

By some impulse, hardly intelligible to herself, Helena had brought Gordon's letters with her, and after a moment's hesitation she took them out of her pocket and gave them to the Sirdar, saying, very faintly, but very sweetly—

"Yes, I can trust them to you."

Then with the Princess she went out into the great hall and sat there on a window-seat, while the Court was closed. There was a sad and solemn expression in her face, and seeing this, even through her dark veil, the officers, who were pacing to and fro, moved by that delicacy which is the nobler part of an English gentleman's reserve—respect for the intimacies that are sacred to another person—merely bowed to her as they passed.

The strain was great, for she knew what was going on behind the closed door of the Court-room. The Judges were trying to find in the circumstances of Gordon's arrest some excuse for his desertion. She could see the Sirdar and Hafiz struggling to show that, however irregular and reprehensible from a disciplinary standpoint, Gordon's had been the higher patriotism; that, coming back under those strange conditions and in that strange disguise, he had deliberately returned to die. And she could see the Court powerfully moved by that plea, yet helpless to take account of it.

Half-an-hour passed; an hour; nearly two hours, and then a young officer came up to tell Helena that the Court was about to re-open.

"I think—I hope they intend to recommend him to mercy," he said, blunderingly, and at the next moment he felt as if he would like to cut his tongue out. But Helena was unhurt. She held up her head for the first time that day, and, to the Princess's surprise, when they re-entered the room, and the officers made way for her, she pushed through to the front and took a seat, back to the wall, immediately before the Sirdar and almost face to face with Gordon.

There was that tense atmosphere in the Court which always precedes a sentence, but there was also a sort of humid air, as if the Angel of Pity had passed through the place and softened it to tears.

Gordon was told to rise, and then the President, obviously affected, proceeded to address him. He might say at once that the Judges regretted to find themselves unable to take account of the moral aspects of the case. Nothing but its military aspects came within their cognisance. That being so, the Court, notwithstanding the able and ingenious defence, could find no excuse for insubordination—the first duty of a soldier was to obey. In like manner they could find no excuse for a savage personal attack by an officer in uniform upon another officer in the exercise of his office—it was conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline. Finally, the Court could find no excuse for desertion—it was an act of great offence to the flag which a soldier was sworn to serve.

"Under these circumstances," continued the President, "the Court have no alternative but to find you guilty of the crimes with which you have been charged, and though it is within the Court's discretion to mitigate the penalty of your offences, they have decided, after anxious deliberation, remembering the grave fact that the force in Egypt is on active service, not to exercise that right, but, out of regard to your high record as a soldier and the great provocation which you certainly suffered, to content themselves with recommending you to mercy, thus leaving the issue to a higher authority. Therefore, whatever the result of that recommendation, it is now my duty, my very painful duty, to pronounce upon you, Charles George Gordon Lord, the full sentence prescribed by military law—death."

There was a solemn silence until the President's last word was spoken, when all eyes were turned towards. Gordon.

He bore himself with absolute self-possession. There was a slight quivering of the eyelids, and a quick glint of the steel-grey eyes in the direction of the opposite side of the Court—nothing more.

Then a thrilling incident occurred. Helena, whose head had been down, was seen to rise in her seat, and to raise her thick dark veil. One moment she stood there, back to the wall, with her magnificent pale face all strength and courage, looking steadily across at the prisoner as if nobody else were present in the room. Then, as quietly as she had risen, she sank back to her place.

Oh, sublime power of love! Oh, pitiful impotence of words! Everybody felt the thousand inexpressible things which that simple act was meant to convey.

Gordon was the first to feel them, and when his guard touched him on the arm he turned and went out with a step that rang on the marble floor—firm as a rock.

As the Court broke up, one of the officers was heard to whisper hoarsely—

"She's worthy of him—what more is there to say?"

At the last moment the Sirdar turned to her and whispered—

"You must lend me these letters a little longer, my dear. And remember what I said before—there's still the Secretary of State, and there's still the King."

CHAPTER XIV

The strength in Helena's face was not belied by the will behind it. Within an hour she was at work to save Gordon's life. Going to the officer who had acted as Judge Advocate, she learned that the sentence would not go to headquarters for confirmation until after two days. In those two days she achieved wonders.

First, she approached the President of the Court and made sure that the recommendation to mercy would go to London by the same mail that carried the report of the proceedings.

Next she visited the Lieutenant-Colonel of every regiment of the Army of Occupation and secured his signature and the signatures of his fellow-officers to a petition asking for the commutation of the sentence.

Two days and two nights she spent in this work, and everybody at Abbassiah and at the Citadel knew what the daughter of the late General was doing. A woman is irresistible to a soldier; a beautiful woman in distress is overpowering; all the Army was in love with Helena; every soldier was her slave.

When on the evening of the second day she returned to the house of the Princess, she found three "Tommies," two in khaki and one in Highland plaid, waiting for her in the hall. They produced a thick packet of foolscap, badly disfigured by finger-prints and smelling strongly of tobacco, containing four thousand signatures to her appeal.

Perhaps her greatest triumph, however, was with Colonel Macdonald.

"I must have his help, too," she said to the Princess, whereupon her Highness put a finger to her nose and answered—

"If you must, my heart, you must, but remember—when you want a dog's service address him as 'Sir.'"

She did. With a blush she told the Colonel (it was a dear, divine falsehood) that Gordon had said he had had no personal animosity against him, and was sorry if at a moment of undue excitement he had behaved badly.

The curmudgeon took the apology according to his kind, saying that in his opinion an officer who struck a brother-officer publicly and before his men deserved to be shot or drummed out of the army, but still, if Colonel Lord was ashamed of what he had done——

Helena's eyes flashed with anger, but she compelled herself to smile and to say—

"He is, I assure you he is." And before the big Highlander knew what he was doing he had written to headquarters at Helena's dictation, to say that inasmuch as his own quarrel with Colonel Gordon Lord had been composed, that count in the offence might, so far as he was concerned, be wiped out.

The sweet double-face told him how good and noble and even Christ-like this was of him, and then, marching off with the letter, said to herself, "The brute!"

Meantime Hafiz, acting through his uncle the Chancellor, got the Ulema of El Azhar to send a message to the Foreign Minister saying, with many Eastern flourishes, that what General Graves had ordered Gordon to do, what his subordinate had done, was a deep injury to the religious susceptibilities of the Mohammedan people.

Besides this, the Sirdar sent a secretary with Gordon's letters, and reams of written explanations of his conduct to the permanent head of the War Office, a friend—a firm disciplinarian but a man of strong humanity. Why had the prisoner refused to plead? Because he did not wish to accuse his dead General. Why had he made no explanation of his desertion and of his conduct at the time of his arrest? Because he did not wish to impeach his father. Why had he intercepted an order of the Army? Because he had been inspired solely by a desire to prevent the tumultuous effusion of blood, and he had prevented it.

Finally, as a technical point of the highest importance, could it be deemed that the troops in Egypt were on active service when there was no such declaration to that effect as Section 189(2) of the Army Act required?

Within two days everything was done, and then there was nothing left but to await results. Helena wanted to go up to see Gordon, but she was afraid to do so. When sorrow is shared it is lessened, but suspense that is divided is increased.

After five days the Sirdar began to hear from London and to send his news to Helena over the telephone. The matter was to be submitted to his Majesty personally—had she any objection to the King seeing Gordon's letters? So very intimate? Well, what of that? The King was a good fellow, and there was nothing in the world that touched him so nearly as a beautiful woman, except a woman in love and in trouble.

Then came two days of grim, unbroken silence and then—a burst of great news.

In consideration of Colonel Lord's distinguished record as a soldier and his unblemished character as a man; out of regard to the obvious purity of his intentions and the undoubted fact that the order he disobeyed had led to irreparable results; remembering the great provocation he had received and not forgetting the valuable services rendered by his father to England and to Egypt, the King had been graciously pleased to grant him a free pardon under the Great Seal!

This coming first as a private message from the head of the War Office, threw the Sirdar into an ecstasy of joy. He called up the Consul-General immediately, and repeated the glad words over the telephone, but no answer came back to him except the old man's audible breathing as it quivered over the wires.

Then he thought of Helena, but with a soldier's terror of tears in the eyes of a woman, even tears of joy, he decided to let Hafiz carry the news to her.

"Tell her to go up to the Citadel and break the good tidings to Gordon," he said, speaking to Egyptian headquarters.

Nothing loath, Hafiz went bounding along to the house of the Princess and blurted out his big message, expecting that it would be received with cries of delight, but to his bewilderment, Helena heard it with fear and trembling, and, becoming weak and womanish all at once, she seemed to be about to faint.

Hafiz, with proper masculine simplicity, became alarmed at this, but the Princess began to laugh.

"What!" she cried. "You that have been as brave as a lion with her cub while your man's life has been in danger, to go mooing now—now—like a cow with a sick calf!"

Helena recovered herself after a moment, and then Hafiz delivered the Sirdar's mandate, that she was to go up to the Citadel and break the good news to Gordon.

"But I daren't, I daren't," she said, still trembling.

"What!" cried the Princess again. "Not go and get the kisses and hugs that ... Well, what a dunce I was to have that silver grey of yours made so tight about the waist! For two pins I would put on your black veil and go up myself and take all the young man has to give a woman."

Helena smiled (a watery smile) and declared she would go if Hafiz would go with her. Hafiz was ready, and in less than half-an-hour they were driving up to the Citadel in the Princess's carriage with the footmen and saises and eunuch which her Highness, for all her emancipation, thought necessary to female propriety in public.

Everything went well until they reached the fortress, and then, going up the stone staircase to Gordon's quarters, Helena began to tremble more than ever.

"Oh! Oh! I daren't! I must go home," she whispered.

"Lord, no! not now," said Hafiz. "Remember,—up there is some one who thinks he is going to die, while here are we who know he isn't, and that life will be doubly sweet if it's you that takes it back to him. Come, sister, come!"

"Give me your arm, then," said Helena, and, panting with emotion and perilously near to the point of tears, she went up, on shaking limbs, to a door at which two soldiers, armed to the teeth, were standing on guard.

At that moment Gordon, in the officer's bright room which had been given to him as a cell, was leaning on the sill of the open window looking steadfastly down at some object in the white city below. During the past six days he had known what was being done on his behalf, and the desire for life, which he had thought dead in him, had quickened to suspense and pain.

To ease both feelings he had smoked innumerable cigarettes and made pretence of reading the illustrated papers which his brother-officers had poured in upon him, out of their otherwise dumb and helpless sympathy. But every few minutes of every day he had leaned out of the window to look first, with a certain pang, at the heavy-lidded house which contained his father; next, with a certain sense of tears, at a green spot covered with cypress trees which contained all that was left of his mother, and finally, with a certain yearning, at the trellised Eastern palace of the Princess Nazimah, which contained Helena.

This is what he was doing at the moment when Helena and Hafiz were ascending the stairs, and just as he was asking himself for the hundredth time why Helena did not come to see him, he heard his guard's gruff tones mingled with a woman's mellow voice.

A deep note among the soft ones sent all the blood in his body galloping to his heart, and turning round he saw the door of his room open and Helena herself on the threshold.

One moment she stood there, with her sweet, care-worn face growing red in her passion of joy, and then she rushed at him and fell on his breast, throwing both arms about his neck, and crying—

"Such news, Gordon! Oh, my Gordon, I bring you such good, good news! Such news, dear! Such news, oh such good news!"

Thus trying to tell her tidings at a breath, she told him nothing, but continued to laugh and sob and kiss, and say what good news she brought him.

Yet words were needless, and before Hafiz, whose fat wet face was shining like a round window on an April day, could whisper "the King's Pardon," Gordon, like the true lover he was, had said, and had meant it—

"But you bring me nothing so good as yourself, dearest—nothing!"

CHAPTER XV

Helena was with Gordon the following morning when one of the guard came in hurriedly and announced, amid gusts of breath, that the Consul-General was coming upstairs.

Not without a certain nervousness Gordon rose to receive his father, but he met him at the door with both hands outstretched. The old man took one of them quietly, with the air of a person who was struggling hard to hold himself in check. He took Helena's hand also, and when she would have left the room he prevented her.

"No, no," he said; "sit down, my child—resume your seat."

It seemed to Gordon that his father looked whiter and feebler, yet even firmer of will than ever, like a lion that had been shot and was dying hard. His lips were compressed as he took the chair which Gordon offered him, and when he spoke his voice was hard and a little bitter.

"First, let me give you good news," he said.

"Is it the Pardon?" asked Gordon.

"No, something else—perhaps, in a sense, something better," said the old man.

He had received an unofficial message from the War Office to say that the King, taking no half measures, intended to promote Gordon to the rank of Major-General, and appoint him to the command of the British Forces in Egypt.

Helena could hardly contain her joy at this fresh proof of good fortune, but Gordon made no demonstration. He watched the pained expression in the old man's face, and felt sure that something else was coming.

"It's a remarkable, perhaps unparalleled instance of clemency," continued the Consul-General, "and under the circumstances it may be said to open up as momentous a mission as was ever confided to a military commander."

"And you, father?" asked Gordon, not without an effort.

The old man laughed. A flush overspread his pale face for a moment. Then he said—

"I? Oh, I ... I am dismissed."

"Dismissed?"

Gordon had gasped. Helena's lips had parted.

"That's what it comes to—stated in plain words and without diplomatic flourishes. True, I had sent in my resignation, but ... the long and the short of it is that after a debate on the Address, and the carrying of an amendment, Downing Street has agreed that the time has come to associate the people of Egypt with the government of the country."

"Well, sir?"

"Well, as that is a policy against which I have always set my face, a policy I have considered premature, perhaps suicidal, the Secretary of State has cabled that, being unable to ask me to carry into effect a change that is repugnant to my principles, he is reluctantly compelled to accept my resignation."

Gordon could not speak, but again the old man tried to laugh.

"Of course the pill is gilded," he continued, clasping his blue-veined hands in front of his breast. "The Foreign Secretary told Parliament that my resignation (on the ground of age and ill health, naturally) was the heaviest blow that had fallen on English public life within living memory. He also said that while other methods might be necessary for the future, none could have been so good as mine in the past. And then the King——"

"Yes, father?"

A hard, half-ironical smile passed over the old man's face.

"The King has been graciously pleased to grant me an Earldom, and even to make me a Knight of the Garter."

There was a moment's painful silence, and then the Consul-General said—

"So I go home immediately."

"Immediately?"

"By to-night's train to take the P. & O. to-morrow,"' said the old man, bowing over his clasped hands.

"To-morrow?"

"Why not? My Secretaries can do without me. Why should I linger on a stage on which I am no longer a leading actor but only a supernumerary? Better make my exit with what grace I can."

Under the semi-cynical tone Gordon could see his father's emotion. He found it impossible to utter a word.

"But I thought I would come up before going away and bring you the good news myself, though it is almost like a father who is deposed congratulating the son who is to take his place."

"Don't say that, sir," said Gordon.

"Why shouldn't I? And why should I gird at my fortune? It's strange, nevertheless, how history repeats itself. I came to Egypt to wipe out the misrule of Ismail Pasha, and now, like Ismail, I leave my son behind me."

There was a moment of strained silence and then—

"I have often wondered what took place at that secret meeting between Ismail and Tewfik, when we made the son Khedive and sent the father back to Constantinople. Now I think I know."

The old man's emotion was cutting deep. Gordon could scarcely bear to look at him.

"I wish you well, Gordon, and only hope these people may be more grateful to you than they have been to me. God grant it!"

Gordon could not speak.

"I confess I have no faith in the proposed change. I think all such concessions are so many sops to sedition. I also think that to have raised the masses of a subject race from abject misery to well-being, and then to allow them to fall back to their former condition, as they surely will, and to become the victims of the worst elements among themselves, is not only foolish but utterly wrong and wicked."

The old man rose, and in the intensity of his feelings, began to pace to and fro.

"They talk about the despotism of the One-Man rule," he said. "What about the despotism of their Parliaments, their Congresses, their Reichstags—the worst despotisms in the world. Fools! Why can't they see that the difference between the democracy of Europe and America, and the government proper to the ancient, slavish, and slow-moving civilisation of the East is fundamental?"

The old man's lips stiffened and then he said—

"But perhaps I am only an antiquated person, behind the new age and the new ideas. If so, I'm satisfied. I belong to the number of those who have always thought it the duty of great nations to carry the light of civilisation into dark continents, and I am not sorry to be left behind by the cranks who would legislate for all men alike. Pshaw! You might as well tailorise for all men alike, and put clothes of the same pattern on all mankind."

Again the old man laughed.

"It's part and parcel of the preposterous American doctrine that all men are born free and equal—the doctrine that made the United States enfranchise as well as emancipate their blacks. May the results be no worse in this case!"

There was another moment of strained silence and then the Consul-General said—

"I suppose they'll say the man Ishmael has beaten me."

He made a contemptuous but almost inaudible laugh, and then added, "Let them—they're welcome; time will tell. Anyhow I do not lament. When a man is old his useless life must burn itself out. That's only natural. And after all, I've seen too much of power to regret the loss of it."

Still Gordon could not speak. He was feeling how great his father was in his downfall, how brave, how proud, how splendid.

The old man walked to the window and looked out. with fixed eyes. After a moment he turned back and said—

"All the same, Gordon, I am glad of what has happened for your sake—sincerely glad. You've not always been with me, but you've won, and I do not grudge you your victory. Indeed," he added, and here his voice trembled perceptibly, "I am a little proud of it. Yes, proud! An old man cannot be indifferent to the fact that his son has won the hearts of twelve millions of people, even though—even though he himself may have lost them."

Gordon's throat was hurting him and Helena's eyes were full of tears. The old man, too, was struggling to control his voice.

"You thought Nunehamism wasn't synonymous with patriotism. Perhaps you were right. You believed yourself to be the better Englishman of the two. I don't say you were not. And it may be that in her present mind England will think that one secret withheld from me has been revealed to you—namely, that an alien race can only be ruled by ... by love. Yes, I'm glad for your sake, Gordon; and as for me—I leave myself to Time and Fate."

The old man's pride in his son's success was fighting hard with his own humiliation. After a while Gordon recovered strength enough to ask his father what he meant to do in England.

"Who can say?" answered the Consul-General, lifting one hand with a gesture of helplessness. "I have spent the best years of my life in Egypt. What is England to me now? Home? No, exile."

He had moved to the window again, and following the direction of his eyes Gordon could see that he was looking towards the cypress trees which shaded the English cemetery of Cairo.

A deep and profound silence ensued, and, feeling as if his mother's spirit were passing through the room, Gordon dropped his head and tears leapt to his eyes.

It was the first time father and son had been together since the tenderest link that had bound them had been broken, but while both were thinking of this, neither of them could trust himself to speak of it.

"Janet, your dream has come true! How happy you would have been!" thought the Consul-General, while Gordon, unable to unravel the intricacies of his emotions, was saying to himself, "Mother! My sweet mother!"

The last moment came, and it was a very moving one. Up from some hidden depths of the old man's oceanic soul there came a certain joy. In spite of all that he in his blindness had done to prevent it, by the operation of the inscrutable powers that had controlled his destiny, the great hope of his life was about to be realised. Gordon and Helena had been brought together, and as he looked at them, standing side by side when they rose to bid farewell to him, the man so brave and fearless, the girl so beautiful and superb, he thought, with a thrill of the heart, that, whatever might happen to himself—old, worn-out, fallen perhaps, his life ended—yet would his line go on in the time to come, pure, clean, and strong, and the name of Nuneham be written high in the history of his country.

Holding out a hand to each, he looked steadily into their faces for a moment, while he bade his silent good-bye. Not a word, not the quiver of an eyelid. It was the English gentleman coming out top in the end, firm, stern, heroic.

Before Gordon and Helena seemed to be aware of it, the old man was gone, and they heard the rumble of the wheels of his carriage as it passed out of the courtyard.

CHAPTER XVI

At nightfall the great Proconsul left Cairo. He knew that all day long the telegraphic agencies had been busy with messages from London about his resignation. He also knew that after the first thunderclap of surprise the Egyptian population had concluded that he had been recalled—recalled in disgrace, and at the petition of the Khedive to the King.

It did not take him long to prepare for his departure. In the course of an hour Ibrahim was able to pack up the few personal effects—how few!—which during the longest residence gather about the house of a servant of the State.

Perhaps the acutest of his feelings on leaving Egypt came to him as he drove in a closed carriage out of the grounds of the Agency, and looked up for the last time at the windows of the room that used to be occupied by his wife. At that moment he felt something of the dumb desolation which rolls over the strongest souls when, after a lifetime of comradeship, the asundering comes and they long for the voice that is still.

Poor Janet! He must leave all that remained of her behind him under the tall cypress trees on the edge of the Nile. Yet no, not all, for he was carrying away the better part of her—her pure soul and saintly memory—within him. None the less, that moment of parting brought the old man nearer than he had ever been to the sense of tears in mortal things.

The Sirdar had accompanied him, but though the fact of his intended departure had become known, having been announced in all the evening papers, there was nobody at the station to bid adieu to him—not a member of the Khedive's entourage; not one of the Egyptian Ministers, not even any of the Advisers and Under-Secretaries whom he had himself created.

Never had there lived a more self-centred and self-sufficient man, but this fact cut him to the quick. He had done what he believed to be his duty in Egypt, and feeling that he was neglected and forgotten at the end, the ingratitude of those whom he had served went like poison into his soul.

To escape from the sense of it he began to talk with a bitter raillery which in a weaker man would have expressed itself in tears, and seemed indeed to have tears—glittering, frozen tears—behind it.

"Do you know, my dear Reg," he said, "I feel to-night as if I might be another incarnation of your friend Pontius Pilate. Like him, I am being withdrawn, you see, and apparently for the same reason. And—who knows?—perhaps like him too, I am destined to earn the maledictions of mankind."

The Sirdar found the old man's irony intensely affecting, and therefore he made no protest.

"Well, I'm not ashamed of the comparison, if it means that against all forms of anarchy I have belonged to the party of order, though of course there will be some wise heads that will see the finger of Heaven in what has happened."

The strong man, with his fortunes sunk to zero, was defiant to the very end and last hour of calamity. But standing on the platform by the door of the compartment that had been reserved for him, he looked round at length and said—all his irony, all his raillery suddenly gone—

"Reg, I have given forty years of my life to those people and there is not one of them to see me off."

The Sirdar tried his best to cheer him, saying—

"England remembers, though, and if—" but the old man looked into his face and his next words died on his lips.

The engine was getting up steam, and its rhythmic throb was shaking the glass roof overhead when Gordon and Hafiz, wearing their military greatcoats, came up the platform. They had carefully timed it to arrive at the last moment. A gleam of light came into the father's face at the sight of his son. Gordon stepped up, Hafiz fell back, Lord Nuneham entered the carriage.

"Well, good-bye, old friend," said the old man, shaking hands warmly with the Sirdar. "I may see you again—in my exile in England, you know."

Then he turned to Gordon and took his outstretched hand. Father and son stood face to face for the last time. Not a word was spoken. There was a long, firm, quivering hand-clasp—and that was all. At the next moment the train was gone.

The Sirdar stood watching it until it disappeared, and then he turned to Gordon, and, thinking of the England the Consul-General had loved, the England he had held high, he said, speaking of him as if he were already dead—

"After all, my boy, your father was one of the great Englishmen."

Gordon could not answer him, and after a while they shook hands and separated. The two young soldiers walked back to the Citadel, through the native streets. The "Nights of the Prophet" were nearly over, and the illuminations were being put out.

Hafiz talked about the Khedive—he had just arrived at Kubbeh; then about Ishmael—the Prophet had shut himself up in the Chancellor's house and was permitting nobody to see him.

"His Highness has asked Ishmael to be Imam to-morrow morning, but it is thought that he is ill—it is even whispered that he is going mad." said Hafiz.

Gordon did not speak until they reached the foot of the hill. Then he said—

"I must go up and lie down. Good-night, old fellow! God bless you!"

CHAPTER XVII

Half-an-hour earlier, Gordon's guard, now transformed into his soldier servant, had been startled by the appearance of an Egyptian, wearing the flowing white robes of a Sheikh, and asking in almost faultless English for Colonel Lord.

"The Colonel has gone to the station to see his lordship off to England, but I'm expecting him back presently," said the orderly.

"I'll wait," said the Sheikh, and the orderly showed, him into Gordon's room.

"Looks like a bloomin' death's-head! Wonder if he's the bloomin' Prophet they're jawrin' about!"

Since coming into Cairo Ishmael had been a prey to thoughts that were indeed akin to madness. Perhaps he was seized by one of those nervous maladies in which a man no longer belongs to himself. Certainly he suffered the pangs of heart and brain which come only to the purest and most spiritual souls in their darkest hours, and seem to make it literally true that their tortured spirits descend into hell.

Now that his anxiety for his followers was relaxed and their hopes had in some measure been realised, his mind swung back to the sorrowful decay and ruin that had fallen upon himself. It was no longer the shame of the prophet but the bereavement of the man that tormented him. His lacerated heart left him no power of thinking or feeling anything but the loss of Helena.

Again he saw her beaming eyes, her long black lashes, and her smiling mouth. Again he heard her voice, and again the sweet perfume of her presence seemed to be about him. That all this was lost to him for ever, that henceforth he had to put away from him all the sweetness, all the beauty, all the tenderness of a woman's life linked with his, brought him a paroxysm of pain in which it seemed as if his heart would break and die.

He recalled the promises he had made to himself, of taking up the life of a man when his work was done. His work was done now—in some sort ended, at all events—but the prize he had promised himself had been snatched away. She was gone, she who had been all his joy. An impassable gulf divided them. The infinite radiance of hope and love that was to have crowned his restless and stormy life had disappeared. Henceforth he must walk through the world alone.

"O God, can it be?" he asked himself, with the startled agony of one who awakes from single-pillowed sleep and remembers that he is bereaved.

If anything had been necessary to make his position intolerable, it came with the thought that all this was due to the treachery of the man he had loved and trusted, the man he had believed to be his friend and brother, the one being, besides the woman, who had gone to his heart of hearts. The Rani had confessed to him that she loved "Omar," and notwithstanding that all his life he had struggled to liberate himself from the prejudices of his race, yet now, in the melancholy broodings of his Eastern brain, he could not escape from the conclusion that the only love possible between a man and the wife of another was guilty love.

When he thought of that both body and soul seemed to be afire, and he became conscious of a feeling about "Omar" which he had never experienced before towards any human creature—a feeling of furious and inextinguishable hatred.

He began to be afraid of himself, and just as a dog will shun its kind and hide itself from sight when it feels the poison of madness working in its blood, so Ishmael, under the secret trouble which he dared reveal to none, shut himself up in his sleeping-room in the old Chancellor's house.

It was a small and silent chamber at the back, overlooking a little paved courtyard containing a well, and bounded by a very high wall that shut off sight and sound of the city outside. Once a day an old man in a blue galabeah came into the court to draw water, and twice a day a servant of the Sheikhs came into the room with food. Save for these two, and the old Chancellor himself at intervals, Ishmael saw no one for nine days, and in the solitude and semi-darkness of his self-imposed prison a hundred phantoms were bred in his distempered brain.

On the second day after his retirement the Chancellor came to tell him that his emissary, his missionary, "Omar Benani," had been identified on his arrest, that in his true character as Colonel Lord he was to be tried by his fellow-officers for his supposed offences as a soldier at the time of the assault on El Azhar, and that the only sentence that could possibly be passed upon him would be death. At this news, which the Chancellor delivered with a sad face, Ishmael felt a fierce but secret joy.

"God's arm is long," he told himself. "He allowed the man to escape while his aims were good, but now he is going to punish him for his treachery and deceit."

Three days afterwards the old Chancellor came again to say that Colonel Lord had been tried and condemned to death, as everybody had foreseen and expected, but nevertheless the sympathy of all men was with him, because he was seen to have acted from the noblest motives, withstanding his own father for what he believed to be the right, and exposing himself to the charge of being a bad son and a poor patriot in order to prevent bloodshed; that he had indeed prevented bloodshed by preventing a collision of the British and Native armies; that it had been by his efforts that the pilgrimage had been able to enter Cairo in peace; and that in recognition of the great sacrifice made by the Christian soldier for the love of humanity, the Ulema were joining with others in petitioning his King to pardon him.

At this news a chill came over Ishmael. His heart grew cold as stone, and when the Chancellor was gone, he found himself praying—

"Forbid it, O God, forbid it! Let not Thy justice be taken out of Thine awful hand."

Four days later the old Chancellor came yet again to say that the King's Pardon had been granted; that Colonel Lord was free; that the people were rejoicing; that everybody attributed the happy issue of the Christian's case mainly to zealous efforts on his behalf of the woman who loved him, the daughter of the dead General whose unwise command had been the cause of all his trouble; and finally that it was expected that these two would soon heal their family feud by marriage.

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.