CHAPTER X
When Ishmael left Helena's tent he did not return to his own. In the torment of his soul he sought the solitude of the desert. For two hours he walked on the sand without knowing where he was going. The night was dark, save for an innumerable army of stars, an eastern night, still and fragrant, but the unhappy man was wandering in it like a creature accursed, a prey to the most terrible upheaval of the soul, the most bitter and sorrowful reflections.
His first thoughts were about Helena – that all the sweetness, all the loveliness which had been his joy by day and his dream by night belonged not to him, but to another.
"I am nothing to her," he told himself, and greater grief than he felt at that thought seemed to surpass the bounds of possibility.
But there was worse behind. At the next moment of his anguish he remembered that not only did Helena not love him, but he was repulsive to her. "Don't you see you are hateful and odious to me – that you are a black man, and I am a white woman?"
This was more than heartrending – it was physically excruciating, like poison creeping under the skin. But it had its spiritual torture also. He who had built his life on the belief that the sons and daughters of men were all children of one Father, had found out in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, within his own camp, in his own tent, that Nature gave the lie to his faith, and that he – he himself – was only as a black man to the white woman whom he called his wife.
"I thought that where love was there could be neither race nor colour, but I was wrong, quite wrong," he told himself again, and it seemed as if everything that had built up his soul was crumbling away.
But even worse than all this was the thought that Helena had betrayed him – she who had seemed to sacrifice so much. Pitiful delusion! Cruel snare!
It was maddening to think of the merely human side of his betrayal – that between the guilty wife and her lover he was only the husband who had to be got rid of – but the spiritual aspect was still more terrible. He who had allowed himself to believe that he was specially guided by God, that the Merciful had made him His messenger, had been deceived and duped, and was no more than a poor, weak, helpless man, who had been led away by his love for a woman.
The shame of his betrayal was stifling, the sense of his downfall was crushing, but still more painful was the consciousness of the penalty which his people would have to pay for the pride and blind love which had misled him. They had followed him across the desert, suffering all the pains of the long and toilsome journey, buoyed up by the hopes with which he had inspired them; they had trusted and loved and looked up to him, hardly distinguishing between his word and the word of God, and now – their leader was deceived, their hopes were dead, the mirage of their dreams had disappeared.
Thinking of this in the agony of his despair, he asked himself why God had permitted it to come to pass that not himself only, but the whole body of his people should suffer. "Why, O God, why?" he cried, lifting up his arms to the sky.
For some moments a cloud passed between him and the faith which had so long sustained him. He began to deplore his lofty mission, and to remember with regret his earlier days in Khartoum with the simple girl who loved him and lay on the angerib in his arms. He had been humble then – content to be a man; and recalling one by one the touching memories of his life with Adila – in their prison, brightened by rays of love, in their poor desert home, illuminated more than a palace by the expectation of the child that was to come – his heart failed him, and he wanted to curse the destiny which had led him to a greatness wherein all was vain.
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.