CHAPTER XX
Meantime the General's house on the edge of the ramparts was being made ready for its new tenant. Fatimah, Ibrahim and Mosie, with a small army of Arab servants, had been there since early morning, washing, dusting, and altering the position of furniture. Towards noon the Princess had arrived in her carriage, which, with her customary retinue of gorgeously apparelled black attendants, was now standing by the garden gate. Helena had come with her, but for the first time in her life she was utterly weak and helpless. Just as a nervous collapse may follow upon nervous strain so a collapse of character may come after prolonged exercise of will. Something of this kind was happening to Helena, who stood by the window in the General's office, looking down at the city and running her fingers along the hem of her handkerchief, while the Princess, bustling about, laughed at her and rallied her.
"Goodness me, girl, you used to have some blood in your veins, but now —Mon Dieu! To think of you who went down there, and did that, and used to drive a motor-car through the traffic as calmly as if it had been a go-cart, trembling and jerking as if you had got the jumps!"
Meantime the Princess herself, full of energy, was ordering the servants about, and, by a hundred little changes, was giving to the General's office a look that almost obliterated its former appearance.
"We'll have the desk here and the sofa there … what do you say to the sofa there, my sweet?"
"Hadn't you better ask Gordon himself, Princess?" asked Helena.
"But the man isn't here, and how can I… Never mind, leave them where they are, Ibrahim. And now for the pictures – nothing makes a room look so fresh as a lot of pictures."
Ibrahim had brought up from the Agency a number of pictures which had belonged to Gordon's mother, and the Princess, using her lorgnette, proceeded to examine them.
"What's this? 'Charles George Gordon.' I know! The White Pasha. Put him over the General's desk. 'Ecce Homo.' Humph! A man couldn't wish to have a thing like this in his office, and a natural woman can't want it over her bed. Mosie! Take 'Ecce Homo' to a nice dark corner of the servants' hall."
At that moment Fatimah came from the kitchen, which had been shut up since the day after Helena's departure for the Soudan, to say that half the cooking-tins had disappeared.
"Just what I expected! Stolen by those rascally Egyptian cooks, no doubt. Rascally Egyptians! That's what I call them. Excuse the word, my dear. I speak my mind. They'd steal the kohl from your eyes – if you had any. And these are the people who are to govern the country! But I say nothing – not I, indeed! The virtue of a woman is in holding her tongue… Fatimah, now that you are here, you might make yourself useful. Dust that big picture of the naked babies. What's it called? 'Suffer little children.' Goodness! He looks as if he were giving away clothes. Helena, my moon, my beauty, you really must tell me where to put this one."
"But hadn't you better ask Gordon himself, Princess? It's to be his house, you know," repeated Helena, whereupon the Princess, wheeling round on her, said —
"Gracious me, what's come over you, girl? Here you are to be mistress of the whole place within a month, I suppose, and yet – "
"Hush, Princess!"
There were footsteps in the hall, and at the next moment, Gordon, in his frock-coat uniform, looking flushed and excited, and accompanied by Hafiz, whose chubby face was wreathed in smiles, had entered the room.
After he had shaken hands with the Princess the servants rushed upon him – Mosie, who had come behind kissing his sword, Ibrahim his hand, and Fatimah struggling with an impulse to throw her arms about his neck.
"So you've come at last, have you?" said the Princess. "Time enough, too, for here's Helena of no use to anybody. Your father has gone back to England, hasn't he? He might have come up to see me, I think. He wrote a little letter to say good-bye, though. It was just like him. I could hear him speaking. 'My goodness,' I said, 'that's Nuneham!' Well, we shall never see his equal again. No, never! He might have left Egypt with twenty millions in his pocket, and he has gone with nothing but his wages. I suppose they're slandering him all the same. Ingrates! But no matter! The dogs bark, but the camel goes along. And now that I've time, let me take a look at you. What a colour! But what are you trembling about? Goodness me, has everybody got the jumps?"
Helena was the only one in the room who had not come forward to greet Gordon, and seeing his sidelong look in her direction, the Princess began to lay plans for leaving them together.
"Ibrahim," she cried, "hang up these naked babies in the bathroom – the only place for them, it seems to me. Fatimah, go back and look if the cooking-tins are not in the kitchen cupboard."
"They're not – I've looked already," said Fatimah.
"Then go and look again. Mosie, you want to inspect my horses – I can see you do."
"No, lady, I have i'spected them."
"Then i'spect them a second time. Off you go! … where's my lorgnette? Oh, dear me. I fancy I must have left it in the boudoir."
"Let me go for it, Princess," said Helena.
"Certainly not! Why should you? Do you think I'm a cripple that I can't go myself? Hafiz Effendi, where are your manners that you don't open this door for me? That's better. Now, the inner one."
At the next moment Gordon and Helena were left together. Helena was still standing by the window looking down at the city which seemed to lie dazed under the midday sun. Gordon stepped up and stood by her side. It was hard to realise that they were there again. But in spite of their happiness there was a little cloud over both. They knew what caused it.
While they stood together in silence they could hear the low reverberation of the voices of the people who were praying within the mosque.
"They are chanting the first Surah," said Gordon.
"Yes, the first Surah," said Helena.
Their hands found each other as they stood side by side.
"I saw Ishmael last night. He came to my quarters," said Gordon in a low tone.
"Well?" asked Helena faintly.
"It was most extraordinary. He came to tell me that … to compel me to – "
"Hush!"
There was a soft footstep behind them. It was the step of some one walking in Oriental slippers. Without turning round they knew who it was.
It was Ishmael. Notwithstanding his dusky complexion, his face was very pale – almost as white as his turban. His eyes looked weary, their light was almost extinct. Perhaps his sermon had exhausted him. It was almost as if there was no life left in him except the life of the soul. But he smiled – it was the smile of a spectre – as he stepped forward and held out his hand
Gordon's heart shuddered for pity. "Are you well?" he asked.
"Oh yes."
"But you look tired."
"It's nothing," said Ishmael; and then, with a touching simplicity, he added, "I have been troubled in my heart, but now I am at peace and all is well."
They sat, Ishmael on the sofa, Helena on a chair at his right, Gordon on a chair at his left, the window open before them, the city slumbering below.
Ishmael's face, though full of lines of pain, continued to smile, and his voice, though hoarse and faint, was cheerful. He had come to tell them that he was going away.
"Going away?" said Gordon.
"Yes, my work here is done, and when a man's work is done he stands outside of life. So I am going back."
"Back? You mean back to Khartoum?" asked Helena timidly.
"Perhaps there, too. But back to the desert. I am a son of the desert. Therefore what other place can be so good for me?"
"Are you going alone?"
"Yes! Or rather, no! When a man has lived, has laboured, he has always one thing – memory. And he who has memory can never be quite alone."
"Still you will be very lone – "
Ishmael turned to her with an almost imperceptible smile.
"Perhaps, yes, at first, a little lonely, and all the more so for the sweet glimpse I have had of human company."
"But this is not what you intended to … what you hoped to – "
"No! It's true I nourished other dreams for a while – dreams of living a human life after my work was done. It would have been very sweet, very beautiful. And now to go away, to give it up, never more to have part and lot in … never again to see those who … Yes, it's hard, a little hard."
Helena turned her head aside and looked out at the window.
"But that is all over now," said Ishmael. "Love is the crown of life, but it is not for all of us. Your great Master knew that as He knew everything. Some men have to be eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake. How true! How right!"
His pallid face struggled to smile as he said this.
"And then what does our Prophet say (to him be prayer and peace)? 'The man who loves and never attains to the joy of his love, but renounces it for another who has more right to it, is as one who dies a martyr.'"
Still looking out at the window, Helena tried to say she would always remember him, and hoped he would be very happy.
"Thank you! That also will be a sweet memory," he said. "But happy moments are rare in the lives of those who are called to a work for humanity."
Then, coming gently to closer quarters, he told them he was there to say good-bye to them. "I had intended to write to you," he said, turning again to Helena, "but it is better so."
Then, facing towards Gordon, he said —
"I must confess that I have not always loved you. But I have been in the wrong, and I ask your pardon. It is God who governs the heart. And what does your divine Master say about that, too? 'Whom God hath joined together let not man put asunder.' That is the true word about love and marriage – the first, and the last, and the only one."
Then he rose, and both Helena and Gordon rose with him. One moment he stood between them without speaking, and then, stooping over Helena's hand and kissing it, he said, in a scarcely audible whisper —
"I divorce thee! I divorce thee! I divorce thee!"
It was the Mohammedan form of divorcement, and all that was necessary to set Helena free. When he raised his head his face was still smiling – a pitiful, heart-breaking smile.
Then, still holding Helena's hand, he reached out for Gordon's also, and said —
"I give her back to thee, my brother. And do not think I give what I would not keep. Perhaps – who knows? – perhaps I loved her too."
Helena was deeply affected. Gordon found it impossible to look into Ishmael's face. They felt his wearied eyes resting upon them; they felt their hands being brought together; they felt Ishmael's hand resting for a moment on their hands; and then they heard him say —
"Maa-es-salamah! Be happy! Keep together as long as you can. And never forget we shall meet some day."
Then, in a voice so low that they could scarcely hear it, he said —
"Peace be with you both! Peace!" – and passed out of the room.
They stood where he had left them in the middle of the room, with faces to the ground and their hands quivering in each other's clasp until the sound of his footsteps had died away. Then Gordon said —
"Shall we go into the garden, Helena?"
"Yes," she replied in a whisper.
They went out hand in hand, and walked to the arbour on the edge of the ramparts. There, on that loved spot, the past rolled back on them like billows of the soul. The bushes seemed to have grown, the bougainvillea was more purple than before, the air was full of the scent of blossom, and everything was turning to love and to song.
They did not speak, but they put their arms about each other, and looked down on the wide panorama below – the city, the Nile, the desert, the Pyramids, and that old, old Sphinx whose scarred face had witnessed so many incidents in the story of humanity, and was now witnessing the last incident of one story more.
How long they stood there in their great happiness they never knew, but they were called back to themselves by a shrill, clear voice that came from a minaret behind them —
"God is Most Great! God is Most Great!"
Then, turning in the direction of the voice, they saw a white figure on a white camel ascending the yellow road that leads up to the fort on the top of the Mokattam hills and onward to the desert.
"Look," said Gordon. "Is it – ?"
Without speaking, Helena bent her head in assent.
With hands still clasped and quivering, they watched the white figure as it passed away. It stopped at the crest of the hill, and looked back for a moment; then turned again and went on. At the next moment it was gone.
And then once more came the voice from the minaret, like the voice of an angel winging its way through the air —
Music fragment
EPILOGUE
Lord Nuneham lived ten years longer, but never, after the first profound sensation caused by his retirement, was he heard of again. The House of Lords did not see him; he was never found on any public platform, and no publisher could prevail upon him to write the story of his life.
He bought a majestic but rather melancholy place in Berkshire, one of the great historic seats of an extinguished noble family, and there, under the high elms and amid the green and cloudy landscape of his own country, he lived out his last years in unbroken obscurity.
It has been well said that deep tragedy is the school of great men, but there was one ray of sunshine to brighten Lord Nuneham's solitude. On a table, by his bedside, in a room darkened by rustling leaves, stood two photographs in silver frames. They were of two boys, one dark like his mother, the other fair like his father, both bright and strong and clear-eyed. Down to the end the old man never went to bed without taking up these pictures and looking at them, and as often as he did so, a faint smile would pass over his seamed and weary face.
After a while the world forgot that he was alive, and when he died the public seemed to be taken by surprise. "I thought he died ten years ago," said somebody.
Gordon held his post as General in command of the British army in Egypt for four successive terms, his appointment being renewed, first by the wish of the War Office, and afterwards at the request of the Egyptian Government. The civil occupation having become less active since his father's time (the new Consul-General being a pale shadow of his predecessor), the military occupation became more important, and except for his subjection to headquarters, Gordon appeared to stand in the position of a military autocrat. But in the difficult and delicate task of maintaining order in a foreign country without exasperating the feelings of the native people, he showed great tact and sympathy. While allowing the utmost liberty to thought, whether political or religious, he never for a moment permitted it to be believed that the Government could be defied with impunity in matters affecting peace, order, life, and property.
For this the best elements honoured him, and when the poor and illiterate, who were sometimes the victims of extremists whose only aim was to throw flaming torches into pits of inflammable gas, saw that he was just as ready to put down lawlessness among Europeans as among Egyptians, they loved as well as trusted him. His life in Egypt lessened the gulf which Easterns always find between Christians and Christianity, and whenever he had to return to England, the streets of Cairo would be red with the tarbooshes of the people who ran to the railway-station to see him off. "Maa-es-salamah, brother!" they would say, with the simplicity of children, and then, "Don't forget we will be waiting for you to come back."
Gordon's love for the Egyptians never failed him, and he was entirely happy in his home, where Helena developed the summer bloom of beautiful womanhood, and where the light, merry sound of the voices of her two young boys was always ringing like music through the house.
It must be confessed that for a while Egypt had a hard and almost tragic time. After the Consul-General's departure she went through a period of storm and stress. There were both errors and crimes. These were the inevitable results of progressive stages of self-rule; and even anarchy, the travail of a nation's birth, was not altogether unknown. During the earlier years there were some to regret the absence of the mailed fist of Lord Nuneham, and to question the benefit of quasi-Western institutions in an Eastern country. But the atmosphere cleared at last, the sinister anticipations were falsified, a bold and magnanimous policy brought peace, and the destinies of Egypt were firmly united to those of the country that had given her a new lease of life and liberty.
England never regretted what she had done on that day, when, true to her high traditions, she decided that a great nation had no longer any right to govern, with absolute and undivided authority, another race living under another sky. And her reward seems likely to come in a way that might have been least expected. As "God chooseth His fleshly instruments and with imperfect hearts doeth His perfect work," He seems to have put it into the hearts of the Arab people to sink their tribal differences and to act at the prompting of the gigantic myth with which the Grand Cadi deceived the Consul-General.
Indeed, those who gaze into the future as into a crystal say that the time is near when the long drama of dissension that has been played between Arabs and Turks will end in the establishment of a vast Arabic Empire, extending from the Tigris and the Euphrates Valley to the Mediterranean, and from the Indian Ocean to Jerusalem, with Cairo as its capital, the Khedive as its Caliph, and England as its lord and protector. No one can foreshadow the future, but this was Napoleon's greatest dream, and the nation that can realise it will hold the peace of the world in the palm of its almighty hand.
And Ishmael?
After he left Cairo he was never seen again by any one who could positively identify him. Some say he returned to the home of his childhood on the Libyan desert, and that he died there; others that he went back to Khartoum and thence to the heart of the Sahara, and that he is still alive. However this may be, it is certain that his disappearance has had the effect of death, that it has deepened the impression of his life, and that a huge shadow of him remains on those among whom he lived and laboured.
It was said on the day of his departure that Black Zogal, who followed him to the last with the fidelity of a human dog, kept close at his heels until he came to the top of the Mokattam Hills, where the Master sent him back after strictly charging him to tell no one which way he was going. Since then, however, Zogal has given it out (with every appearance of believing his own story) that he saw Ishmael ascend to heaven from the Gebel Mokattam in a blinding whirlwind of celestial light, a flight of angels carrying him away.
A Saint's House has been built for Black Zogal on the spot on which he says he saw the ascent; the half-crazy Soudanese inhabits it, and its outer walls are almost covered with the small flags which devotees have brought and fixed to them in their childlike effort to show reverence.
Nothing could exceed the boundless affection which is still felt for Ishmael by those who came into immediate contact with him. He seems to have inspired them with a love which survives absence and could even conquer death. Everybody who ever spoke to him has a story to tell of his wisdom, his power, and his tenderness. The number of his "miracles" has increased tenfold, and though not described as sinless, he is always talked of as if he were divine.
His Mouled (his birthday, a conjectural date) is celebrated by ceremonies which almost outrival the "Nights of the Prophet." About the Saint's House on the Mokattam Hills a huge encampment of tents is made, and there, under the blaze of thousands of dazzling lights, the Dervishes hold their Zikrs amid scenes of frantic excitement due to exhibitions of hypnotic suggestion which even include the gift of tongues, while more serious-minded Sheikhs repeat a long record of Ishmael's genealogy. This is a very circumstantial story, with a vague resemblance to something which Christians speak of with bated breath – how, when his mother, who was a virgin, was bearing him, an angel appeared to her in a dream and said, "You carry the Lord of Man," and how, when the child was delivered, three great Sheikhs came from Mecca to pay reverence to him, having seen a star in the sky which told them where he was to be born.
In the course of years a great body of Ishmael's "Sayings" have been gathered up. Some of them are authentic, but most of them are out of the wisdom of the ages, and not a few are directly borrowed from the Christian gospels which the Moslems, as a whole, do not know. Whatever their sources, they are deeply treasured. Women chant them to the children at their knees, and men lisp them, with their last breath and then die with brave faces.
Besides the impression he has produced upon the people, which is strong and likely to be enduring, Ishmael seems to have an almost unaccountable fascination for Arabic scholars and theologians. A number of the professors at El Azhar are already deep in metaphysical disputations about the inner significance of the words attributed to him, and it is whispered that the venerable Chancellor (now nearly a hundred years of age) is compiling a book, half biography and half commentary, that is full of mystical meanings.
More extraordinary still, it seems probable that a large and gorgeous mosque will be built in Ishmael's honour, and that he who loved best to worship in that temple of the open desert whereof the dome is the sky, he who cared so little about dogmatic theology that he never even wrote a line, may, by the wild irony of fate, become the founder of a sect in Islam which will teach everything he fought against and practise everything he condemned.
Chief among the subjects of disputation is Ishmael's expectation of a Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, though the Ulema, less concerned with the spirit than with the letter of the prophet's hope, are divided as to the source of it. Some say it is plainly indicated in the Koran and the traditions; others, more widely read, say it is borrowed from the Hebrew Bible, while a few refer it to a vague and misty antiquity.
Hardly less interesting to the theologians is the question of Ishmael's identity. Nearly all agree that there was an element of the supernatural about him, so hard is it to attribute to men of ordinary human passions the great movements that affect the world. But while there are those who believe him to have been the Mahdi, sent expressly to earth to destroy Anti-Christ, that is to say, the Consul-General, an influential group hold to the opinion that he was, and is, Seyidna Isa – our Lord Jesus.
About this latter view there gathers a strange and not unimpressive theory – that Jesus (who, according to the Islamic faith, did not die on the cross) reappears at intervals among different races – now among the Jews, now among the Indians, now among the Arabs – and that He will continue to make these manifestations until the world is ready for the greatest happiness obtainable by man – the establishment of the Kingdom of God.
But not all the disputations of the wise heads of El Azhar can rob the humble of the object of their veneration. Ishmael came from the people, and with the people he will always remain. His blameless life, his touching history, his deep humanity, his simple teaching, and above all his lofty hopes, have made him Sultan of a vast empire of souls – the empire of the poor, the oppressed, the down-trodden, and the broken-hearted. From the central heart of the East his spirit came as a ray of sunlight, inspiring men in the dark places to live nobly, to die bravely, and to keep up their courage to the last.
And what of Ishmael's influence in the West?
Nothing! European historians have written since his time without saying a word about him. One of them, who devotes long chapters to accounts of the bombardment of Alexandria, the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, the craven flight of Arabi and his theatrical scene with the Khedive in Abdeen Square, and yet other chapters to the building of the Assouan dam and the construction of the Cape-to-Cairo railway, dismisses Ishmael's pilgrimage from Khartoum in five lines of a section dealing with "Mahdism and Sedition in the Soudan."
And indeed, so hard do we find it, in spite of our civilisation and Christianity, to believe that the things of the spirit may be more helpful in sustaining our steps and shaping our destinies than any forces we can weigh, measure, and calculate, that it is difficult to think of any real welcome in the cities of the West for one whose only teaching was that great wealth is an inheritance taken by force from the Almighty; that property beyond the proper needs of civilised human life is pillage; and that God so loves the world that He will come in person to govern it and to save mankind from its suffering and the consequences of its sins.
Certainly the mere thought of any one holding these opinions, least of all an Arab, the son of a boat-builder, born on the Libyan desert, brought up in the depths of the Soudan, educated in the stagnant schools of El Azhar, wearing sandals and a turban, and probably eating with his fingers – the mere thought of such a one, in the present year of grace, forcing his way into the Cathedrals and Parliament Houses of Westminster, Washington, Rome, Berlin, and Paris, where Archbishops officiate in embroidered copes and Ministers prepare budgets towards the re-paganisation of the world, would at least provoke a smile.
Nevertheless there are some who think that the world is not ruled by its great men but by its great ideas; that these ideas are few and very old; that when humanity needs to renew itself it has only to go back to them; and that it is not so often in the "sick hurry" of civilised communities as out of the calm solitude of the desert that we hear the sublime but simple notes of the World's One Voice.