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CHAPTER XVI

"GENERAL'S HOUSE,

"CITADEL, CAIRO.

"MY DEAR GORDON, – You're in for it! In that whispering gallery which people call the East, where everything is known before it happens to happen, rumours without end were coming to Cairo of what you were doing in Alexandria, but nobody in authority believed the half of it until your letters arrived at noon to-day, and now – heigho, for the wind and the rain!

"My dear Dad is going about like an old Tom with his tail up, and as for the Consul-General … whew! (a whistle, your Excellency).

"Let me take things in their order, though, so that you may see what has come to pass. I was reading your letter for the third (or was it the thirtieth?) time this afternoon when who should come in but the Princess Nazimah, so I couldn't resist an impulse to tell her what your son of Hagar had to say on the position of Eastern women, thinking it would gratify her and she would agree. But no, not a bit of it; off she went on the other side, with talk straight out of the harem, showing that the woman of the East isn't worthy of emancipation and shouldn't get it —yet.

"It seems that if the men of the East are 'beasts' the women are 'creatures.' Love? They never heard of such a thing. Husband? The word doesn't exist for them. Not 'my Master' even! Just 'Master'! Living together like school-girls and loving each other like sisters – think of that, my dear!

"And when I urged that we were all taught to love one another – all Christians, at all events – she cried, 'What! and share one man between four of you?' In short, the condition was only possible to cocks and hens, and that Eastern women could put up with it showed they were creatures – simple creatures, content and happy if their husbands (beg pardon, their Masters) gave them equal presents of dresses and jewels and Turkish delight. No, let the woman of the East keep a little longer to her harem window, her closed carriage, and the wisp of mousseline de soie she calls her veil, or she'll misuse her liberty. 'Oh, I know! I say what I think! I don't care!'

"As for your Ishmael, the Princess wouldn't have him at any price. He's just another Mahdi, and if he's championing the cause of women, the son of a duck knows how to swim. His predecessor began by denouncing slavery and ended by being the biggest slave-dealer in the Soudan. Ergo, your Ishmael, who cares neither for 'the frowns of men nor the smiles of women,' is going to finish up like Solomon or Samson either as the tyrant of a hundred women or the victim of one of them whose heart is snares and nets. 'Oh, I know! Every man is a Sultan to himself, and the tail of a dog is never straight!'

"But as for you it seems you are 'a brother of girls,' which being interpreted means you are a man to whom God has given a clean heart to love all women as his sisters, and courage and strength to fight for their protection. 'Didn't I tell you that you had the best of the bunch, my child?' (She did, Serenity!) 'But though he is a soldier and as brave as a lion he has too much of the woman in him.' In this respect you resemble, it seems, one of the Princess's own husbands, but having had a variety of them, both right- and left-handed, she found a difficulty in fixing your prototype. 'My first husband was like that – or no, it was my second – or perhaps it was one of the other ones.'

"But this being so, O virtuous one, it became my duty to get you back from Alexandria as speedily as possible. 'Love like the sparrows comes and goes! Oh, I know! I've seen it myself, my child!'

"'And listen, my moon! Don't allow your Gordon' (she calls you Gourdan) 'to go against his father. Nuneham is the greatest man in the world, but let anybody cross him —mon Dieu! If you go out as the wind you meet the whirlwind, and serve you right, too!'

"In complete agreement on this point, the Princess and I were parting in much kindness when Father came dashing into my drawing-room like a gust of the Khamseen, having just had a telephone message from the Consul-General requiring him to go down to the Agency without delay. Whereupon, with a word or two of apology to the Princess and a rumbling subterranean growl of 'Don't know what the d – that young man…' he picked up your letter to himself and was gone in a moment.

"It is now 10 P.M. and he hasn't come back yet. Another telephone message told me he wouldn't be home to dinner, so I dined alone, with only Mosie Gobs for company, but he waits on me like my shadow, and gives me good advice on all occasions.

"It seems his heart is still on fire with love for me, and having caught him examining his face in my toilet-glass this morning I was amused, and a little touched, when he asked me to-night if the Army Surgeon had any medicine to make people white.

"Apparently his former love was a small black maiden who works in the laundry, and he shares your view (as revealed in happier hours, your Highness) that there's nothing in the world so nice as a little girl except a big one. But I find he hasn't the best opinion of you, for when I was trying to while away an hour after dinner by playing the piano I overheard the monkey telling the cook that to see her hands (i. e. mine) run over the teeth of the music-box amazes the mind – therefore why should her husband (id est, you) spend so much time in the coffee-shop?

"Since then I've been out in the arbour trying to live over again the delicious quarter of an hour you speak of, but though the wing of night is over the city and the air is as soft as somebody's kiss is (except sometimes) it was a dreadful failure, for when I closed my eyes, thinking hearts see each other, I could feel nothing but the sting of a mosquito, and could only hear the watchman crying Wahhed! and what that was like you've only to open your mouth wide and then say it and you'll know.

"So here I am at my desk talking against time until Father comes and there's something to say. And if you would know how I am myself, I would tell you, most glorious and respected, that I'm as tranquil as can be expected considering what a fever you've put me in, for, falling on my knees before your unsullied hands, O Serenity, it seems to me you're a dunce after all, and have gone and done exactly what your great namesake did before you, in spite of his tragic fate to warn you.

"The trouble in Gordon Major's case was that the Government gave him a discretionary power and he used it, and it seems as if something similar has happened to Gordon Minor, with the same results. I hope to goodness they may send you a definite order as the consequence of their colloguing to-night, and then you can have no choice and there will be no further trouble.

"This is not to say that I think you are wrong in your view of this new Mahdi, but merely that I don't want to know anything about him. His protests against the spirit of the world may be good and beneficial, but peace and quiet are better. His predictions about the millennium may be right too, and if he likes to live on that dinner of herbs, let him. Can't you leave such people to boil their own pot without your providing them with sticks? I'm a woman, of course, and my Moslem sisters may be suffering this, that, or the other injustice, but when it comes to letting these things get in between your happiness and mine, what the dickens and the deuce and the divil do I care – which is proof of what Mosie says to the cook about the sweetness of my tongue.

"As for your 'Arab nobleman' taking me by storm, no thank you! I dare say he has red finger-nails, and if one touched the tip of his nose it would be as soft as Mosie's. I hate him anyway, and if you are ever again tempted to fight him, take my advice and fall! But look here, Mr. Charlie Gordon Lord! If you're so very keen for a fight come here and fight me– I'm game for you!

"Soberly, my dear-dear, don't think I'm not proud of you that you are the only man in all Egypt, aye, or the world, who dares stand up to your father. When God made you he made you without fear – I know that. He made you with a heart that would die rather than do a wrong – I know that too. I don't believe you are taking advantage of your position as a son, either, and when people blame your parents for bringing you up as an Arab I know it all comes from deeper down than that. I suppose it is the Plymouth rock in you, the soul and blood of the men of the Mayflower. You cannot help it, and you would fight your own father for what you believed to be the right.

"But, oh dear, that's just what makes me tremble. Your father and you on opposite sides is a thing too terrible to think about. English gentlemen? Yes, I'm not saying anything to the contrary, but British bulldogs too, and as if that were not enough you've got the American eagle in you as well. You'll destroy each other – that will be the end of it. And if you ask me what reason I have for saying so, I answer – simply a woman's, I know! I know!

* * * * *

"Father just back – dreadfully excited and exhausted – had to get him off to bed. Something fresh brewing – cannot tell what.

"I gather that your friend the Grand Cadi was at the Agency to-night – but I'll hear more in the morning.

"It's very late, and the city seems to be tossing in its sleep – a kind of somnambulant moan coming up from it. They say the Nile is beginning to rise, and by the light of the moon (it has just risen) I can faintly see a streak of red water down the middle of the river. Ugh! It's like blood, and makes me shiver, so I must go to bed.

* * * * *

"Father much better this morning. But oh! oh! oh! … It seems you are to be telegraphed for to return immediately. Something you have to do in Cairo – I don't know what. I'm glad you are to come back, though, for I hate to think of you in the same city as that man Ishmael. Let me hear from you the minute you arrive, for I may have something to say by that time, and meantime I send this letter by hand to your quarters at Kasr-el-Nil.

"That red streak in the Nile is plain enough this morning. I suppose it's only the first water that comes pouring down from the clay soil of Abyssinia, but I hate to look at it.

"Take care of yourself, Gordon, dear – I'm really a shocking coward, you know. HELENA.

"P.S.– Another dream last night! Same as before exactly – that man coming between you and me."

CHAPTER XVII

Returning to Cairo by the first train the following morning, Gordon received Helena's letter and replied to it —

"Just arrived in obedience to their telegram. But don't be afraid, dearest. Nothing can happen that will injure either of us. My father cannot have wished me to arrest an innocent man. Therefore set your mind at ease and be happy. Going over to the Agency now, but hope to see you in the course of the day. Greetings to the General and all my love to his daughter.

"GORDON."

But in spite of the brave tone of this letter he was not without a certain uneasiness as he rode across to his father's house. "I couldn't have acted otherwise," he thought. And then, recalling Helena's hint of something else which it was intended he should do, he told himself that his father was being deceived and did not know what he was doing. "First of all I must tell him the truth – at all costs, the truth," he thought.

This firm resolution was a little shaken the moment he entered the garden and the home atmosphere began to creep upon him. And when Ibrahim, his father's Egyptian servant, told him that his mother, who had been less well since he went away, was keeping her bed that morning, the shadow of domestic trouble seemed to banish his stalwart purpose.

Bounding upstairs three steps at a time he called in a cheery voice at his mother's door, but almost before the faint, half-frightened answer came back to him, he was in the room, and the pale-faced old lady in her nightdress was in his arms.

"I knew it was you," she said, and then, with her thin, moist hands clasped about his neck and her head against his breast she began in a plaintive, hesitating voice, as if she were afraid of her own son, to warn and reprove him.

"I don't understand what is happening, dear, but you must never let anybody poison your mind against your father. He may be a little hard sometimes – I'm not denying that; but then he is not to be judged like other men – he is really not, you know. He would cut off his right hand if he thought it had done him a wrong, but he is very tender to those he loves, and he loves you, dear, and wants to do so much for you. It was pitiful to hear him last night, Gordon. 'I feel as if my enemy has stolen my own son,' he said. 'My own son, my own son,' he kept saying, until I could have cried, and I couldn't sleep for thinking of it. You won't let anybody poison your mind against your father – promise me you won't, dear."

Gordon comforted and kissed her, and rallied her and laughed, but he felt for a moment as if he had come back as a traitor to destroy the happiness of home.

Fatimah followed him out of the room, and winking to keep back her tears, she whispered some disconnected story of what had happened on the day on which his father received his letter.

"Oh, my eye, my soul, it was sad! We could hear his footsteps in his bedroom all night long. Sometimes he was speaking to himself. 'The scoundrels!' 'They don't know what shame is!' 'Haven't I had enough? And now he too! My son, my son!'"

Gordon went downstairs with a slow and heavy step. He felt as if everything were conspiring to make him abandon his purpose. "Why can't I leave things alone?" he thought. But just as he reached the hall the Egyptian Prime Minister, who was going out of the house, passed in front of him without seeing him, and a certain sinister look in the man's sallow face wiped out in an instant all the softening effect of the scenes upstairs. "Take care!" he thought. "Tell him the truth whatever happens."

When he entered the library he expected his father to fly out at him, but the old man was very quiet.

"Sit down – I shall be ready in a moment," he said, and he continued to write without raising his eyes.

Gordon saw that his father's face was more than usually furrowed and severe, and a voice seemed to say to him, "Don't be afraid!" So he walked over to the window and tried to look at the glistening waters of the Nile and the red wedges of Pyramids across the river.

"Well, I received your letter," said the old man after a moment. "But what was the nonsensical reason you gave me for not doing your duty?"

It was the brusque tone he had always taken with his secretaries when they were in the wrong, but it was a blunder to adopt it with Gordon, who flushed up to the forehead, wheeled round from the window, walked up to the desk, and said, beginning a little hesitatingly but gathering strength as he went on —

"My reason, Father … for not doing my … what I was sent to do … was merely that I found I could not do it without being either a rascal or a fool."

The old man flinched and his glasses fell. "Explain yourself," he said.

"I came to the conclusion, sir, that you were mistaken in this matter."

"Really!"

"Possibly misinformed – "

"Indeed!"

"By British officials who don't know what they are talking about or by native scoundrels who do."

Not for forty years had anybody in Egypt spoken to the Consul-General like that, but he only said —

"Don't stand there like a parson in a pulpit. Sit down and tell me all about it," whereupon Gordon took a seat by the desk.

"The only riot I witnessed in Alexandria, sir, was due simply to the bad feeling which always exists between the lowest elements of the European and Egyptian inhabitants. Ishmael Ameer had nothing to do with it. On the contrary he helped to put it down."

"You heard what he had said in the mosques?"

"I had one of his sermons reported to me, sir, and it was teaching such as would have had your own sympathy, being in line with what you have always said yourself about the corruptions of Islam, and the necessity of uplifting the Egyptian woman as a means of raising the Egyptian man."

"So you decided, it seems – "

"I decided, Father, that to arrest Ishmael Ameer as one who was promulgating sedition, and inciting the people to rebellion, would be an act of injustice which you could not wish me to perpetrate in your name."

The Consul-General put up his glasses, looked for a letter which lay on the desk, glanced at it, and said —

"I see you say that before you arrived in Alexandria it was known that you were to come."

"That is so, sir."

"And that after the riot you counselled the Governor to consent to the man's request that he should preach in public."

"I did, sir – I thought it would be a good experiment to try the effect of a little moral influence."

"Of course the experiment was justified?"

"Perfectly justified – the people dispersed quietly, and there has not been a single arrest since."

"But you had a battalion of soldiers on the spot?"

"I had – it was only right to be ready for emergencies."

The old man laughed bitterly. "I'm surprised at you. Don't you see how you've been hoodwinked? The man was warned of your coming – warned from Cairo, from El Azhar, which I find you were so foolish as to visit before you left for Alexandria. Everything was prepared for you. A trick, an Eastern trick, and you were so simple as to be taken in. I'm ashamed of you – ashamed of you before my servants, my secretaries."

Gordon coloured up to his flickering steel-blue eyes and said —

"Father, I must ask you to begin by remembering that I am no longer a child and not quite a simpleton. I know the Egyptians. I know them better than all your people put together."

"Better than your father himself, perhaps?"

"Yes, sir, better than my father himself because – because I love them, whereas you – you have hated them from the first. They've never deceived me yet, sir, and, with your permission, I'm not going to deceive them."

The passionate words were hotly, almost aggressively spoken, but in some unfathomable depth of the father's heart the old man was proud of his son at that moment – strong, fearless, and right.

"And the sermon in public – was that also on the corruptions of Islam?"

"No, sir, it was about the spirit of the world – the greed of wealth which is making people forget in these days that the true welfare of a nation is moral, not material."

"Anything else?"

"Yes – the hope of a time when the world will have so far progressed towards peace that arms will be laid down and a Redeemer will come to proclaim a universal brotherhood."

"That didn't strike you as ridiculous – to see one unlettered man trying to efface the laws of civilised society – asking sensible people to turn their backs on the facts of life in order to live in a spiritual hothouse of dreams?"

"No, Father, that did not strike me as ridiculous, because – "

"Because – what – what now?"

"Because John the Baptist and Jesus Christ did precisely the same thing."

There was silence for a moment, and then the old. man said-

"In this golden age that is to come, he predicts, I am told, a peculiar place for Egypt – is that so?"

"Yes, sir. He holds that in the commonwealth of the world, Egypt, by reason of her geographical position, will become the interpreter and peacemaker between the East and the West – that that's what she has lived so long for."

"Yet it didn't occur to you that this was sedition in its most seductive form, and that the man who promulgated it was probably the most dangerous of the demagogues – the worst of the Egyptians who prate about the natives governing themselves and the English being usurping foreigners?"

"No, sir, that didn't occur to me at all, because I felt that a Moslem people had a right to their own ideals, and also because I thought – "

"Well? Well?"

"That the man who imagines that the soul of a nation can be governed by the sword – whoever he is, King, Kaiser, or – or Czar – is the worst of tyrants."

The old autocrat flinched visibly. The scene was becoming tragic to him. For forty years he had been fighting his enemies, and he had beaten them, and now suddenly his own son was standing up as his foe. After a moment of silence he rose and said, with stony gravity —

"Very well! Having heard your views on Ishmael Ameer, and incidentally on myself and all I have hitherto attempted to do in Egypt, it only remains to me to tell you what I intend to do now. You know that this man is coming on to Cairo?"

Gordon bowed.

"You are probably aware that it is intended that he shall preach at El Azhar?"

"I didn't know that, sir, but I'm not surprised to hear it."

"Well, El Azhar has to be closed before he arrives."

"Closed?"

"That is what I said – closed, shut up, and its students and professors turned into the streets."

"But there are sixteen thousand of them – from all parts of the Mohammedan world, sir."

"That's why! The press as a medium of disaffection was bad enough, but El Azhar is worse. It is a hotbed of rebellion, and a word spoken there goes, as by wireless telegraphy, all over Egypt. It is a secret society, and as such it must be stopped."

"But have you reflected – "

"Do I do anything without reflection?"

"Closed, you say? The University? The mosque of mosques? It is impossible! You are trifling with me."

"Have you taken leave of your senses, sir?"

"I beg your pardon, Father. I only wish to prevent you from doing something you will never cease to regret. It's dangerous work to touch the religious beliefs of an Eastern people – you know that, sir, better than I do. And if you shut up their University, their holy of holies, you shake the foundations of their society. It's like shutting up St. Peter's in Rome or St. Paul's in London."

"Both events have happened," said the old man, resuming his seat.

"Father, I beg of you to beware. Trust me, I know these people. No Christian nation nowadays believes in Christianity as these Moslems believe in Islam. We don't care enough for our faith to fight for it. But these dusky millions will die for their religion. And then there's Ishmael Ameer – you must see for yourself what manner of man he is – careless alike of comfort or fame; a fanatic if you like, but he has only to call to the people and they'll follow him. All the wealth and well-being you have bestowed on them will go to the winds, and they'll follow him to a man."

The Consul-General's lip curled again and he said quietly —

"You ask me to believe that at the word of this man without a penny, and with his head full of worthless noise, the blue-shirted fellaheen will leave their comfortable homes and their lands – "

"Aye, and their wives and children too – everything they have or ever hope to have! And if he promises them nothing but danger and death all the more they'll go to him."

"Then we must deal with him also."

"You can't – you can't do anything with a man like that – a man who wants nothing and is afraid of nothing – except kill him, and you can't do that either."

The Consul-General did not reply immediately, and, coming closer, Gordon began to plead with him.

"Father, believe me, I know what I'm saying. Don't be blind to the storm that is brewing, and so undo all the good you have ever done. For Egypt's sake, England's, your own, don't let damnable scoundrels like the Grand Cadi and the Prime Minister play on you like a pipe."

It was Gordon who had blundered now, and the consequences were cruel. The ruthless, saturnine old man rose again, and on his square-hewn face there was an icy smile.

"That brings me," he said, speaking very slowly, "from what I have done to what you must do. The Ulema of El Azhar have received an order to close the University. It went to them this morning through the President of the Council, who is acting as Regent in the absence of the Khedive. If they refuse to go it will be your duty to turn them out."

"Mine?"

"Yours! The Governor of the City and the Commandant of Police will go with you, but where sixteen thousand students and a disaffected population have to be dealt with the military will be required. If you had brought Ishmael Ameer back from Alexandria this step might have been unnecessary, but now instead of one man you may have to arrest hundreds."

"But if they resist – and they will – I know they will – "

"In that case they will be tried by Special Tribunal as persons assaulting members of the British Army of Occupation, and be dispatched without delay to the Soudan."

"But surely – "

"The Ulema are required to signify their assent by to-morrow morning, and we are to meet at the Citadel at four in the afternoon. You will probably be required to be there."

"But, Father – "

"We left something to your discretion before, hoping to give you an opportunity of distinguishing yourself in the eyes of England, but in this case your orders will be definite, and your only duty will be to obey."

"But will you not permit me to – "

"That will do for the present. I'm busy. Good-day!"

Gordon went out dazed and dumbfounded. He saw nothing of Ibrahim who handed him his linen-covered cap in the hall, or of the page-boy at the porch who gave him his reins and held down his stirrup. When he came back to consciousness he was riding by the side of the Nile where the bridge was open, and a number of boats with white sails, like a flight of great sea-gulls, were sweeping through.

At the next moment he was at the entrance to his own quarters, and found a white motor-car standing there. It was Helena's car, and leaping from the saddle, he went bounding up the stairs.