CHAPTER III
A moment later Ishmael had torn the mouth of the tent open. An Egyptian was standing there in the turban and farageeyah of an Alim. The man, who was solemnly making his salaams, held a lantern in one hand and a letter in the other. Behind him, against the dark sky, were a number of Ishmael's own people. Their mouths were open, and fear was on their faces.
"What words are these, oh my brother?" asked Ishmael.
Without speaking, the Alim offered him the letter. It was that of the Chancellor of El Azhar, written immediately after the arrest of Gordon.
Ishmael took it, and standing under the lamp that hung from the pole of the tent he read it. For some moments he did not move or raise his eyes, but little by little his face assumed a death-like rigidity, and at length the paper crinkled in his trembling fingers.
So strong had been his faith in his mission, and so firm his conviction that God would not allow anything to interfere with its fulfilment, that it was almost impossible for him to take in the truth – that his cause was lost, that his pilgrimage was wasted, that his people could not enter Cairo, and their hope was at an end.
When at length he raised his eyes he looked with an expression of blank bewilderment into Helena's face.
"See," he said, in a tone of piteous helplessness, and he put the letter into her reluctant hand.
The blood rushed to Helena's head, stars danced before her eyes, and it was with difficulty that she could see to read. But there was little need to do so, for already she knew, as by a sense of doom, what the letter contained.
In a moment the people behind the Alim grew more and more numerous. The mouth of the tent became choked with them, and their faces were blotched with lights and shadows from the lamp within. They were talking eagerly among themselves, in low tones, full of dread. At length one of them spoke to Ishmael.
"Is it bad news, O Master?" he asked, but with the expressionless voice of one who knew already what the answer would be.
There was a moment of strained silence, and then Ishmael turned again to Helena, and said in the same tone of piteous helplessness as before —
"Read it to them. Let them know the worst, O Rani."
Helena could find no escape. With a fearful effort she began to read the letter aloud. But hardly had she finished the first clause of it – telling Ishmael that his messenger and missionary had been betrayed into the hands of the Government by means of a message sent into Cairo from some one who stood near to him in his own camp – than a deep groan came from the people at the mouth of the tent.
Black Zogal was there with his wild eyes, and by his side stood old Zewar Pasha with his suspicious looks.
"Who is the traitor, O Master?" asked the old man in his rasping voice, and it seemed to Helena that while he spoke every eye, except Ishmael's, was fixed upon her face.
Then a fearful thing befell. Ishmael, the man of peace, whom none had ever seen in any mood but one of tenderness and love, broke into a torrent of fierce passion.
"Allah curse him whoever he is!" he cried. "Curse him in his lying down, and in his getting up! Curse him in the morning splendour, and in the still of night! Curse him in the life that now is, and in the life that is to come!"
Helena felt as if the tent itself as well as the black and copper-coloured faces at the mouth of it were reeling around her. But it was not alone the terror of Ishmael's curse, with its unrevealed reference to herself, that created her confusion. She was thinking of Gordon. What did his arrest imply? Did it mean that he had succeeded in the perilous task he had undertaken? Or did it mean that he had failed?
When she recovered consciousness of what was going on about her she heard, above a wild tumult of voices outside, the voice of a woman and the voice of a boy. She knew that the woman was Zenoba and the boy was Mosie. At the next moment both were coming headlong into the tent, the one dragging the other through a way that had been made for them. The boy's shaven black head was bare, his caftan was torn open at the breast, and his skin was bleeding at the neck as if vindictive fingers had been clutching him by the throat. The woman's swarthy face was bathed in sweat, twitching with excitement and convulsed with evil passions.
"There!" she cried. "There he is, O Master, and if you want to know who took the letter to the English lord, ask him."
"Who is he?" asked Ishmael.
"Your Rani's servant," replied the Arab woman, with a curl of her cruel lip. "He left Khartoum for Cairo a month ago and has not been seen until to-day."
Another deep groan came from the people at the tent's mouth, and again it seemed to Helena that every eye, except Ishmael's, was looking into her face.
Meantime Mosie, thinking the groan of the people was meant for him, and that his life was in danger from their anger, had broken away from the woman's grasp and flung himself at Ishmael's feet, crying —
"Mercy, O Master! I kiss your feet. I take refuge with God and with you. Save me, and I will tell you every thing."
Ishmael, who by this time had regained his self-command, motioned to the Arab woman to stand back. Then he questioned the boy calmly, and the boy answered him in a fever of fear, gasping and sobbing at every word.
"My boy, you have come out of Cairo?"
"Yes, O Master, yes."
"You went there from Khartoum?"
"Yes, yes, O Master, yes."
"You took a letter to the English lord?"
"Yes, Master, a letter to the English lord."
"From some one in Khartoum?"
"Yes, I will tell my Master everything – from some one in Khartoum."
"What treacherous man sent you with that letter?"
"No man at all, O Master. You see, I am telling my Master everything."
"Was it a woman?"
"Yes, Master, a woman. See, I kiss your feet. I keep nothing back from my Master."
Another groan came from the people at the tent's mouth, and the black boy clutched at Ishmael's white caftan as if to protect himself from their wrath. Ishmael himself had a confused sense of something terrible that had not yet taken shape in his mind. He looked round at Helena who was standing by the angerib at the back, but her head was down and her thoughts were far away.
"What woman, then?" he asked in a sterner voice.
"No, no, I cannot tell you that," said the boy.
"Speak, boy. You shall be safe. I will protect you from all harm. What woman was it?"
"Master, do not ask me. I dare not tell you."
"Listen," said Ishmael, and his voice grew hard and hoarse. "There is a traitor in my camp, and I must find out who it is. What treacherous woman sent you into Cairo with that letter?"
The boy struggled hard. His ugly black face under his shaven poll was distorted by fear. He hesitated, began to speak, then stopped altogether.
At that moment Helena came forward as if she had suddenly awakened from a dream, and Mosie saw her for the first time since he had been dragged into the tent. In another instant all fear had gone from his face and his eyes were blazing with courage.
"Tell me, I command you," said Ishmael.
"No, no, I will never tell you," said the boy.
Again a groan – this time a growl – came from the people at the tent's mouth.
"Torment would make his tongue wag," said one.
"Beat the innocent until the guilty confess – it is a good maxim, O Master," said Zewar in his rasping tones.
Black Zogal, with his wild eyes, stepped out as if to lay hold of the lad, but Ishmael waved him back.
"Wait!" he said.
He was looking at Helena again, and his face had undergone a fearful change.
"My boy," he said, still keeping his eyes on Helena, "if you do not tell me I must give you back to the people."
At that the boy broke into a paroxysm of hysterical sobs.
"No, no, my Master will not do that. But see," he said, tearing wider his torn caftan so as to expose his breast, "my Master himself shall kill me."
At the next moment Helena's hand was on Ishmael's arm.
"Let the boy go," she said. "I can tell the rest."
A gloomy chill traversed Ishmael's heart. He had a sense of spiritual paralysis – as if everything in the world were crumbling and crashing down to impotent wreck and ruin.
His people at the tent's mouth were muttering among themselves. He dismissed them, sending everybody away including the boy and the Arab woman. Most of them went off grudgingly, ungraciously, for the first time reluctant to obey his will.
Then he closed up the mouth of the tent, and was once more alone with Helena.
CHAPTER IV
In spite of the dread with which, for more than a month, Helena had looked forward to the hour in which Ishmael should hear of his betrayal, she felt none of the terror from that cause which she had feared and expected.
She could think of nothing but Gordon. Where was he now? What were they doing to him? It seemed to be the only possible explanation of his arrest that his scheme for the salvation of the people had failed. Would he be handed over to the military authorities? Would he be tried by court-martial? And what would be the punishment of his offences as a soldier? Sinking down on the angerib she pressed her hands over her brow and over her eyes that she might think of this and shut out everything else.
Meantime the mind of Ishmael was going through a conflict as strange and no less cruel. Although the plain evidences of his senses had already told him that he had been betrayed by the woman he loved, yet the dread of discovering the traitor in his own tent, in his own wife, filled him with terror, and he tried to escape from it.
Having fastened up the tent, he walked to and fro for some moments without speaking, and then sitting down by Helena's side and taking her hand and smoothing it, he said, in his throbbing, quivering voice —
"Rani, we have eaten bread and salt together. Be faithful with me – what woman sent that letter?"
Helena hardly heard what he was saying. She was still thinking of Gordon. "They will condemn him to death," she told herself.
"Rani," said Ishmael again, "we have lived under the same roof; you have shared with me the closest secrets of my soul. Tell me – what woman sent that letter?"
Helena looked at him and tried to listen, but Gordon's doom was ringing in her ears, and it drowned all the other sounds of life.
"Rani," said Ishmael once more, "though you denied me the rights of a husband, yet you are my wife. Our lives have been united not by man but by God, and in the presence of Him, whose name be exalted – of Him who reads all hearts – I ask you – what woman sent that letter?"
Helena heard him, yet terrible as his question was, and perilous as she knew her answer must be, she felt no fear. "If I tell him," she thought. "Why not? It does not matter now."
"Rani," said Ishmael yet again, "God gives me the right to command you. I do command you. What woman sent that letter?"
"I did," said Helena, and though the words were spoken in a faltering whisper they seemed to Ishmael like a deafening roar.
"Allah! Allah!" he cried, leaping to his feet, for though he had expected that reply he reeled under it as under a blow.
Helena realised what her answer meant to him, and again, from the bottom of her heart, she pitied him, but at the next moment her thoughts swung back to her own trouble.
She remembered that her father had admitted that the British army in Egypt was always on active service, and she asked herself what would happen to Gordon if the military authorities lost their heads in fear of insurrection. Would they try him by Field General Court-Martial? In that case would the Court be called instantly? Would the inquiry last only a few minutes? Would the sentence be carried into immediate effect?
"O God, can it be possible that it is all over already?" she asked herself.
Meantime Ishmael, after moments of suffering which seemed hours of eternity, was again struggling to resist the only conclusion the facts had left to him. It was true that the Rani had confessed to sending the letter which had led to the arrest of his messenger, but all his heart rebelled against the inference that she had intended to betray his cause and his people. Had she not cast in her own lot with them? Had she not come from a distant country and a richer home to live in their poor house in Khartoum? And had she not endured the hardship of the desert journey in their company?
Like a man who has been shipwrecked in a whirlwind of darkness, he was groping blindly through tempestuous waves for some means of rescue. At length a sort of raft of hope came to him, a helpless, impotent thing, but he clung to it, and sitting down by Helena's side again, he said, in the same piteous voice as before —
"I see how it has been, O my Rani. You did not intend to betray my people – my poor people whose sufferings you have seen, whose faith and hopes and dreams you have shared and witnessed. It was Omar you were thinking of. Your heart has never forgiven him for taking the place you meant for your husband. You were jealous of him for my sake, and your jealousy got the better of your judgment. 'I will punish him,' you thought. 'I will make his mission of no effect.' And so you sent that letter. But you did not reflect that in destroying Omar you would be destroying my people also. It was wrong, it was cruel, but it was a woman's fault, and you have seen it and suffered for it ever since. Jealousy of Omar, perhaps hatred of Omar – that was it, was it not, O my Rani?"
His voice was breaking as he spoke, for the pitiful explanation he had lighted upon was failing to bring conviction to his own mind, yet he fixed his sad eyes eagerly on Helena's face and repeated —
"Jealousy of Omar, perhaps hatred of Omar – that was what caused you to send that letter?"
Helena could not speak. The pathos of his error was choking her. But she replied to him with a look which it required no words to interpret.
"No?" he said. "Not of Omar? Of whom, then?"
Helena could not lie. "He must know some day," she thought.
"Of whom, then?" he repeated, in his helpless confusion.
"Yourself," she replied.
"Allah! Allah! Myself! Myself!" he said, in a breathless whisper, rising to his feet again and striding across the tent.
At the first moment after Helena's confession it seemed to Ishmael that both sun and moon had suffered eclipse and the world was in total darkness. Why had the Rani betrayed him? From what motive? For what object? He tried to follow her thoughts, and found it impossible to do so.
There was a short period of frightful silence, and then, feeling as if he wanted to cry, he drew up before Helena again, and said in a husky voice, his swarthy face trembling and twitching —
"But why, O Rani? I had done you no wrong. From the day you came to me I did all I could for you – all I could to make your nights peaceful and your mornings happy. Why has your heart been so far away from me?"
Helena felt that the time had come to tell him everything. Yet in order to do so she must begin with the death of her father, and she could not speak of that without involving Gordon. "But that is impossible," she thought, "absolutely impossible."
"Speak," said Ishmael. "When you sent your letter to the English lord, you must have known that you were dooming me to death – what had I done to deserve it?"
"I cannot tell you – I cannot, I cannot," she answered.
"It is unnecessary," said Ishmael.
In the moment of Helena's silence a terrible explanation of her conduct had come to him, and he thought he saw, as by flashes of lightning, into the dark abyss that was at his feet.
His manner, which had been gentle down to that moment, suddenly became harsh, and his voice, which had been soft, became hard.
"When did you send that letter?" he demanded.
She saw the stern closing of his lips, and for an instant she felt afraid.
"Was it before the meeting of the Sheikhs at which Omar was chosen?"
"Yes," she replied. If Gordon was to be condemned to death, it was of no consequence what became of her.
"You told the English lord that Ishmael was coming to Cairo?"
"Yes." His deep, impenetrable eyes seemed to be looking through and through her.
"With what object and in – in what disguise?"
"Yes." She knew she was dashing herself to destruction, but no matter.
"When you sent your letter you said to yourself, 'Ishmael will go into Cairo, but my letter shall go before him.' Yes?"
"Yes." In the lowest depths of her soul she felt that if he killed her now she did not care.
"And when Omar stepped into the place you had meant for me you thought, 'The letter I wrote to destroy Ishmael will destroy Omar instead'?"
"Yes."
"Was that why you tried to prevent Omar from going?"
"Yes." Tears were choking her utterance.
"Why you were unwilling to make the kufiah?"
"Yes."
"Why you fainted in the mosque?"
She bowed her head, being unable to utter another word.
"Then," said Ishmael, and his voice rose to a husky cry – "then it was love of Omar, not hatred of him, that inspired your letter?"
She made no reply. Filled as she was with shame for what she had done to Ishmael, the image of Gordon was still in her mind. Even at that moment, when terrible consequences threatened her, she could not help thinking of him. If he were tried by Field General Court-Martial to-night he might be executed in the morning!
That thought carried her back to the Citadel. She was on the drilling-ground in the dead grey light of dawn. A regiment of soldiers was drawn up in line. Six of them stood out from the rest with rifles to their shoulders. And before them, standing alone, with his back to the ramparts, was one condemned but dauntless man. "My last thoughts are about you," he was saying to her, and living in that cruel dream she burst into tears.
Again Ishmael misunderstood her weeping, and again a wave of compassion passed over him.
"It is possible I am wrong," he said. "I may be judging you unjustly. In that case tell me so, and I will kiss your feet. I will ask your pardon."
Sho could not speak. "This will end in some way," she thought.
"In the name of Heaven, speak! Tell me you do not love this man. Tell me I am wrong," he cried.
"No, you are not wrong," she said. "I do love him, and I am in despair. All you have said is true, but I cannot help it. I am a wicked woman, and my life by your side has been a deception from the first."
With that she burst into another flood of tears, and falling face downward on the angerib, she buried her head in the pillow.
"Allah! Allah!" said Ishmael, and all the blood in his body seemed to flush his heart. He was passing through the supreme phase of his agony – perhaps the cruellest that man can suffer – the agony of knowing that the woman he loved, the woman he worshipped, loved and worshipped another man.
In the cloud of maddening thoughts which sprang to his brain he imagined he read the mystery of Helena's conduct from the first. Remembering that she had called him a black man, the wild deep heart in him rose to a fever of jealous wrath.
"I see how it has been," he said. "The white man came to my tent. I welcomed him. I loved him. I trusted him. He was my brother, and he slept by my side. I made him free of my harem. I put my honour in his hands. And how did he repay me? By robbing me of the love that was my love, the heart that was my heart."
She tried to speak, to protest, but in a torrent of wrath he bore her down.
"Your white man has over-reached himself, though. 'I will outdo Ishmael in her eyes,' he thought. But he has only fallen into the pit that was dug for me. Let him perish there, and the curse of God be upon him!"
Again she tried to protest, and again in the blind hurricane of his anger he silenced her.
"And you – it was nothing to you that in betraying me you were betraying my people also – my poor people, who have suffered so much and followed me so faithfully."
His face was terrible – it had the sullen glow of the Western sky before a storm.
"You have wrecked my hopes in the hour of their fulfilment. You have made dust and ashes of the expectations of my people. You have uncovered my nakedness, and made me a thing to point the finger at and to scorn. You have turned my heart to stone."
Then the wild anguish of the jealous man became united to the fierce wrath of the fanatic, and going nearer to Helena, and leaning over her, he said —
"Worse than that – a hundredfold worse – you have made the plans and promises of God of no avail. You have allowed the Evil One to enter into your heart, and to use your guilty passions to defeat the schemes of the Most High. Therefore," he said, raising his quivering voice until it rang through the tent like a tortured cry – "therefore, as the instrument of Satan you have no right to live. I say you have no right even to live. And I … I, who have loved you … I, whose heart has been wrapped about you like the rope about the wheel of the well … I, whom you have betrayed and destroyed, and … and my people with me … it is I … yes, it is I who must … who must – "
Helena heard him stammering and sobbing over her. At the same time she felt that his trembling, ferocious hands were laying hold of her. She felt that the long Eastern veil that had hung down her back was being wrapped around her throat. She felt that its folds were growing tighter and yet tighter, and that she was being strangled and was losing consciousness.
Then suddenly she became aware that Ishmael's formidable grasp had slackened, that he had stepped back from the angerib on which she lay, and was saying to himself in a tremulous whisper —
"Allah! Allah! what is this I am doing? Allah! Allah! Allah!"
And at the next moment she realised that in horror of his own impulse he had turned and fled out of the tent.