CHAPTER XXII
When Gordon had time to examine the new situation in which he found himself he saw that he was now in a worse case than before.
It had been an inexpressible relief to realise that he was not the first cause of the General's death, and therefore that conscience did not require him to go into Cairo in order to protect Ishmael from the consequences of a crime he did not commit. But no sooner had he passed this great crisis than he was brought up against a great test. What was it to him that he could save his life if he had to lose Helena?
Helena was now Ishmael's wife – betrothed to him by the most sacred pledges of Mohammedan law. If the barrier of blood which had kept him from Helena had been removed, the barrier of marriage which kept Helena from him remained.
"What can we do?" he asked himself, and for a long time he saw no answer.
In the fierce struggle that followed, honour and duty seemed to say, that inasmuch as Helena had entered into this union of her own free will – however passively acquiescing in its strange conditions – she must abide by it, and he must leave her where she was and crush down his consuming passion, which was an unholy passion now. But honour and duty are halting and timorous guides in the presence of love, and when Gordon came to think of Helena as the actual wife of Ishmael he was conscious of nothing but the flame that was burning at his heart's core.
Remembering what Helena had told him, and what he had seen since he came to that house, he reminded himself that after all the marriage was only a marriage pro formâ, a promise made under the mysterious compulsion of fate, a contract of convenience and perhaps generosity on the one side, and on the other side of dark and calculating designs which would not bear to be thought of any longer, being a result of the blind leading of awful passions under circumstances of the most irresistible provocation.
When he came to think of love he was dead to everything else. Ishmael did not love Helena, whereas he, Gordon, loved her with all his heart and soul and strength. She was everything in life to him, and though he might have gone to his death without her, it was impossible to live and leave her behind him.
Thinking so, he began to conjure up the picture of a time when Ishmael, under the influence of Helena's beauty and charm, might perhaps forget the bargain between them, and claim his rights as a husband, and then the thought of her beautiful head with its dark curling locks as it lay in his arms that day lying in the arms of the Arab, with Ishmael's swarthy face above her, so tortured him that it swept away every other consideration.
"It must not, shall not, cannot be!" he told himself.
And that brought him to the final thought that since he loved Helena, and since Helena loved him and not her husband, their position in Ishmael's house was utterly false and wrong, and could not possibly continue.
"It is not fair even to Ishmael himself," he thought.
And when, struggling with his conscience, he asked himself how he was to put an end to the odious and miserable situation, he concluded at once that he would go boldly to Ishmael and tell him the whole story of Helena's error and temptation, thereby securing his sympathy and extricating all of them from the position in which they were placed.
"Anything will be better than the present state of things," he thought, as he reflected upon the difficult and delicate task he intended to undertake.
But after a moment he saw that while it would be hard to explain Helena's impulse of vengeance to the man who had been the object of it, to tell him of the message she had sent into Cairo would be utterly impossible.
"I cannot say anything to Ishmael about that," he thought, and the only logical sequence of ideas was that he could not say anything to Ishmael at all.
This left him with only one conclusion – that inasmuch as it was impossible that he and Helena could remain any longer in that house, and equally impossible that they could leave it with Ishmael's knowledge and consent, there was nothing for them to do but to fly away.
He found it hard to reconcile himself to the idea of a secret flight. The very thought of it seemed to put them into the position of adulterers, deceiving an unsuspecting husband. But when he remembered the scene in the guest-room that day, the moment of over-powering love, the irresistible kiss, and then the crushing sense of duplicity, as Ishmael entered and without a thought of treachery knelt between them, he told himself that at any cost whatsoever he must put an end to the false position in which they lived.
"We must do it soon – the sooner the better," he thought.
Though he had lived so long with the thought of losing Helena, that kiss had in a moment put his soul and body into a flame. He knew that his love was blinding him to certain serious considerations, and that some of these would rise up later and perhaps accuse him of selfishness or disloyalty or worse. But he could only think of Helena now, and his longing to possess her made him dead to everything else.
In a fever of excitement he began to think out plans for their escape, and reflecting that two days had still to pass before the train left Khartoum by which it had been intended that he should travel in his character as Ishmael's messenger, he decided that it was impossible for them to wait for that.
They must get away at once by camel if not by rail. And remembering Osman, his former guide and companion, he concluded to go over to the Gordon College and secure his aid.
Having reached this point, he asked himself if he ought not to obtain Helena's consent before going any further; but no, he would not wait even for that. And then, remembering how utterly crushed she was, a victim of storm and tempest, a bird with a broken wing, he assumed the attitude of strength towards her, telling himself she was a woman after all, and it was his duty as a man to think and to act for her.
So he set out in haste to see Osman, and when, on his way through the town, he passed (without being recognised) a former comrade in khaki, a Colonel of Lancers, whose life had been darkened by the loss of his wife through the treachery of a brother officer, he felt no qualms at all at the thought of taking Helena from Ishmael.
"Ours is a different case altogether," he said, and then he told himself that their life would be all the brighter in the future because it had had this terrible event in it.
It was late and dark when he returned from the Gordon College, and then old Mahmud's house was as busy as a fair, with people coming and going on errands relating to the impending pilgrimage, but he watched his opportunity to speak to Helena, and as soon as Ishmael, who was more than commonly animated and excited that night, had dismissed his followers and gone to the door to drive them home, he approached her and whispered in her ear —
"Helena!"
"Yes?"
"Can you be ready to leave Khartoum at four o'clock in the morning?"
For a moment she made no reply. It seemed to her an incredible happiness that they were really to go away together. But quickly collecting her wandering thoughts she answered —
"Yes, I can be ready."
"Then go down to the Post Landing. I shall be there with a launch."
"Yes, yes!" Her heart was beating furiously.
"Osman, the guide who brought me here, will be waiting with camels on the other side of the river."
"Yes, yes, yes!"
"We are to ride as far as Atbara, and take train from there to the Red Sea."
"And what then?"
"God knows what then. We must wait for the direction of fate. America, perhaps, as we always hoped and intended."
She looked quickly round, then took his face between her hands and kissed him.
"To-morrow morning at four o'clock," she whispered.
"At four," he repeated.
A thousand thoughts were flashing through her mind, but she asked no further questions, and at the next moment she went off to her own quarters.
The door of her room was ajar, and the face of the Arab woman, who was within, doing something with the clothes of the child, seemed to wear the same mocking smile as before; but Helena was neither angry nor alarmed. When she asked herself if the woman had seen or heard what had taken place between Gordon and herself, no dangers loomed before her in relation to their flight.
Her confidence in Gordon – his strength, his courage, his power to protect her – was absolute. If he intended to take her away he would do so, and not Ishmael nor all the Arabs on earth could stop him.
CHAPTER XXIII
Gordon could not allow himself to sleep that night, lest he should not be awake when the hour came to go. The room he shared with Ishmael was large, and it had one window looking to the river and another to Khartoum. Through these windows, which were open, he heard every noise of the desert town by night.
Sometimes there was the dead, measured thud of a camel's tread on the unpaved streets; sometimes the light beat of a donkey's hoofs; at intervals there were the faint and distant cries of the night watchmen from various parts of the town, intersecting the air like cross currents of wireless telegraphy, and once an hour there was the guttural voice of Black Zogal at the door of their own house, calling the confession of faith.
"There is no god but God – no god but God!"
It had been late when Ishmael came to bed, and even then, being excited and in high spirits, and finding Gordon still awake, he had talked for a long time in the darkness of his preparations for the forthcoming pilgrimage and his hopes of its progress across the desert – three and a half miles an hour, fourteen hours a day, making a month for the journey altogether. But finding that Gordon did not reply, and thinking he must be sleepy, he wished him a good night and a blessed morning, and then, with a few more words that were trustful, affectionate, warm-hearted and brotherly, he fell asleep.
It was after twelve by this time, and though Gordon intended to rise at three it seemed to him that the few hours between would never end. He listened to the measured breathing of the sleeping man and counted the cries outside, but the time passed as if with feet of lead.
It was never quite dark, and through the luminous dark blue of the southern night, fretted with stars, nearly everything outside could be dimly seen. Of all lights that is the one most conducive to thought, and in spite of himself Gordon could not help thinking. The obstinate questions which he had been able to crush down during the day were now rising to torment him.
"What will happen when this household which is now asleep awakes in the morning?" he asked himself.
He knew quite well what would happen. He would soon be missed. Helena would be missed too, and it would be concluded that they had gone together. But after he had banished the picture which rose to his mind's eye of the confusion that would ensue on the discovery of their flight, he set himself to defend it.
It was true that he was breaking the pledge he had made to the people when he undertook to go into Cairo, but he had made his promise under a mistake as to his own position, and therefore it was not incumbent upon him to keep it, now that he knew the truth.
It was true that Helena was breaking the betrothal which she had entered into with Ishmael, but she, too, had acted under an error, and therefore her marriage was not binding upon her conscience.
But do what he would to justify himself, he could not shake off a sense of deceit and even of treachery. He thought of Ishmael, and how he had heaped kindness and honour upon him since he came to Khartoum. He thought of Helena, and of the shame with which her flight would overwhelm the man who considered himself her husband.
"Go on!" something seemed to say in a taunting whisper. "Fly away! Seek your own happiness and think of nothing else! This is what you came to Khartoum for! This is what your great hopes and aims amount to! Leave this good man in the midst of the confusion you have brought upon him! Let him go into Cairo, innocent though he is, and die by the cruel error of fate! That's good! That's brave! That's worthy of a man and a soldier!"
Against thoughts like these he tried to set the memory of old Mahmud's words at the meeting of the Sheikhs: "Man cannot resist his destiny. If God wills that you should go into Cairo you will go, and God will protect you!"
But there was really only one way to reconcile himself to what he intended to do, and that was to think of Helena and to keep her beautiful face constantly before him. She was on the other side of the wall, and she would be awake now – the only other person in the house who was not asleep – thinking of him and waiting for the hour when they were to escape.
The luminous dark blue of the air died into the soft red of the early dawn, the "Wahhed!" of the night watchmen became less frequent, and the call of Black Zogal stopped altogether. It was now three o'clock, and Gordon, who had not undressed, rose to a sitting position on his bed.
This brought him face to face with Ishmael, whose angerib was on the opposite side of the room. The Arab was sleeping peacefully. He, too, had lain down in his clothes, having to rise early, but he had unrolled his turban, leaving nothing on his head but his Mecca skullcap, which made him look like the picture of a saintly Pope. The dim light that was filtering through the windows rested on him as he lay in his white garments under a white sheepskin. There was a look of serenity, of radiance, almost of divinity, in his tranquil face.
Gordon felt as if he were a thief and a murderer – stealing from and stabbing the man who loved and trusted him. He had an almost irresistible impulse to waken Ishmael there and then, and tell him plainly what he was about to do. But the thought of Helena came back again, and he remembered that that was quite impossible.
At length he rose to go. He was still wearing Hafiz's slippers, but he found himself stepping on his toes to deaden the sound of his tread. When he got to the door he opened it carefully so as to make no noise; but just at that moment the sleeping man stirred and began to speak.
In the toneless voice of sleep, but nevertheless with an accent of affection which Gordon had never heard from him before, Ishmael said —
"Rani! My Rani!"
Gordon stood and listened, not daring to move. After a moment all was quiet again. There was no sound in the room but Ishmael's measured breathing as before.
How Gordon got out at last he never quite knew. When he recovered his self-possession he was in the guest-room, drawing aside the curtain that covered the open doorway, and feeling the cool, fresh, odourless desert air on his hot face and in his nostrils.
He saw Black Zogal stretched out at the bottom of the wooden steps, fast asleep and with his staff beside him. The insurgent dawn was sweeping up, but all was silent both within and without. Save for the Nubian's heavy snoring there was not a sound about the house.
Feeling his throat to be parched, he turned back to the water-niche for a drink, and while he was lifting the can to his lips his eye fell on a letter which had been left for him there, having come by the train which arrived late the night before, and then been specially delivered after he had gone to bed.
The letter, which was in a black-bordered envelope, was addressed —
"SHEIKH OMAR BENANI,
"In the care of ISHMAEL AMEER."
At first sight the handwriting struck him like a familiar face, but before he had time to recognise it he was conscious of a crushing sense of fatality, a vague but almost heart-breaking impression that while he had been spending the long, black hours of the night in building up hopes of flying away with Helena, this little packet of sealed paper had all the time been waiting outside his door to tell him they could not go.
He took it and opened it with trembling fingers, and read it at a glance as one reads a picture. It was from Hafiz, and it told him that his mother was dead.
Then all the pent-up pain and shame of the night rolled over him like a breaking wave, and he dropped down on the nearest seat and wept like a child.
CHAPTER XXIV
Contrary to Gordon's surmise, Helena had slept soundly, with the beautiful calm confidence of one who relied absolutely upon him and thought her troubles were over; but she awoke at half-past three as promptly as if an alarum-clock had wakened her.
The arms of Ayesha were then closely encircling her neck, and it was with difficulty that she liberated herself without awakening the child, but as soon as she had done so she could not resist an impulse to kiss the little one, so boundless was her happiness and so entirely at that moment had she conquered the sense that Ishmael's innocent daughter had been a constant torture to her.
Then dressing rapidly in her usual mixed Eastern and Western costume, and throwing a travelling cloak over her shoulders instead of her Indian veil, but giving no thought to the other belongings which she must leave behind, she stepped lightly out of the sleeping room.
The moment she entered the guest-room she heard a moan, and before realising where it came from, she said —
"Who's there?"
Then Gordon lifted his tear-stained face to her face, and, without speaking, held out the letter which hung from his helpless hand.
She took it and read it with a sense of overwhelming disaster, while Gordon, with that access of grief which, at the first moment of a great sorrow, the presence of a loved one brings, heaped reproaches upon himself, as if all that he had done at the hard bidding of his conscience had been a sin and a crime.
"Poor mother! My poor, dear mother! It was I who made her last days unhappy."
Half-an-hour went by in this way, and the time for going passed. Helena dared not tell him that their opportunity for flight was slipping away – it seemed like an outrage to think of that now – so she stood by his side, feeling powerless to comfort him, and dazed by the blow that had shattered their hopes.
Then Black Zogal, being awakened by the sound of Gordon's weeping, came in with his wild eyes, and after him came Abdullah, and then Zenoba, who, gathering an idea of trouble, went off to awaken Ishmael and old Mahmud, so that in a little while the whole of the Arab household were standing round Gordon as he sat doubled up on the edge of a divan.
When Ishmael heard what had happened he was deeply moved, and sitting down by Gordon's side he took one of his hands and smoothed it, while in that throbbing voice which went to the heart of everybody, and with a look of suffering in his swarthy face and luminous black eyes, he spoke some sympathetic words.
"All life ends in death, my brother. This world is a place of going, not of staying. The mystery of pain – who can fathom it? Life would be unbearable but for one thought – that God is over all. He rules everything for the best. Yes, believe me, everything. I have had my hours of sorrow too, but I have always found it so."
After a while Gordon was able to control his grief, and then Ishmael asked him if he would not read his letter aloud. With some reluctance Gordon did so, but it required all his self-control to repeat his mother's message.
Leaving out the usual Arabic salutations he began where Hafiz said —
"With a heavy heart I have to tell you, my most dear brother, that your sweet and saintly mother died this morning. She had been sinking ever since you went away, but the end came so quickly that it took us all by surprise."
Gordon's voice thickened, and Ishmael said —
"Take your time, brother."
"She had the consolations of her religion, and I think she passed in peace. There was only one thing clouded her closing hours. On her deathbed she was constantly expressing an earnest hope that you might all be re-united – you and she and your father and Helena, who are now so far apart."
"Take time, O my brother," said Ishmael, and seeing that Helena also was moved, he took her hand too, as if to strengthen her.
Thus he sat between them, comforting both, while Gordon in a husky voice struggled on —
"Not long before she died she wished to send you a message, but the power of life was low in her, and she could not write, except to sign her name (as you see below), and then she did not know where you were to be found. But my mother promised her that I should take care that whatever she said should come to your hands, and these were the words she sent: 'Tell my boy that my last thoughts were about him. Though I am sorry he took the side of the false … the false prophet – '"
"Go on, brother, go on," said Ishmael in his soft voice.
"'Say I am certain he did what he thought was right. Be sure you tell him I died happy, because … because I know I shall see him again. If I am never to see him in this world I shall do so in the world to come. Say … say I shall be waiting for him there. And tell him it will not seem long.'"
It was with difficulty that Gordon came to the end, for his eyes were full of tears and his throat was parched and tight, and he would have broken down altogether but for the sense of Helena's presence by his side.
Ishmael was now more deeply moved than before.
"How she must have loved you!" he said, and then he began to speak of his own mother, and what she had done for him.
"She was only a poor, ignorant woman perhaps, but she died to save me, and I loved her with all my heart."
At that the two black servants, Abdullah and Zogal, who had been standing before Gordon in silence, tried to utter some homely words of comfort, and old Mahmud, wiping his wet eyes, said —
"May God be merciful to your mother, my son, and forgive her all her sins."
"She was a saint – she never had any," replied Gordon, whereupon the Arab nurse, who alone of all that household had looked on at this scene with dry and evil eyes, said bitterly —
"Nevertheless she died as a Christian and an unbeliever, therefore she cannot look for mercy."
Then Helena's eyes flashed like fire into the woman's face, and Gordon felt the blood rush to his head, but Ishmael was before them both.
"Zenoba, ask pardon of God," he said, and before the thunder of his voice and the majesty of his glance the Arab woman fell back.
"Heed her not, my brother," said Ishmael, turning back to Gordon; and then he added —
"We all serve under the same General, and though some of us wear uniform of red, and some of brown, and some of blue, he who serves best is the best soldier. In the day of victory will our General ask us the colour of our garments? No!"
At that generous word Gordon burst into tears once more, but Ishmael said —
"Don't weep for one who has entered into the joys of Paradise."
When Gordon had regained his composure Ishmael asked him if he would read part of the letter again, but knowing what part it would be – the part about the prophet – he tried to excuse himself, saying he was not fit to read any more.
"Then the Rani will read," said Ishmael, and far as Helena would have fled from the tragic ordeal she could not escape from it. So in her soft and mellow voice she read on without faltering until she came to her own name, and then she stopped and tears began to trickle down her cheeks.
"Go on," said Ishmael; "don't be afraid of what follows."
And when Helena came to "false prophet," he turned to Gordon and said —
"Your dear mother didn't know how much I love you. But she knows now," he added, "for the dead know all."
There was no further interruption until Helena had finished, and then Ishmael said —
"She didn't know, either, what work the Merciful had waiting for you in Khartoum. Perhaps you did not know yourself. Something called you to come here. Something drew you on. Which of us has not felt like that? But God guides our hearts – the Merciful makes no mistakes."
Nobody spoke, but Gordon's eyes began to shine with a light which Helena, who was looking at him, had never seen in them before.
"All the same," continued Ishmael, "you hear what your mother says, and it is not for me to keep you against your will. If you wish to go back now none shall reproach you. Speak, Omar; do you wish to leave me?"
There was a moment of tense silence, in which Gordon hesitated and Helena waited breathlessly for his reply. Then with a great effort Gordon answered —
"No."
"El Hamdullillah!" cried the two black servants; and then Ishmael sent Zogal into the town and the camp to say that the faithful would bid farewell to Omar in the mosque the following night.
That evening after sunset, instead of delivering his usual lecture to the people squatting on the sand in front of his house, Ishmael read the prayers for the dead, while Gordon and Helena and a number of the Sheikhs sat on the divans in the guest-room.
When the service was over, and the company was breaking up, the old men pressed Gordon's hand as they were passing out and said —
"May God give you compensation!"
As soon as they were gone Gordon approached Helena and whispered hurriedly —
"I must speak to you soon – where can it be?"
"I ought to go to the water-women's well by the Goods Landing to-morrow morning," said Helena.
"At what hour?"
"Ten."
"I shall be there," said Gordon.
His eyes were still full of the strange wild light.