CHAPTER XXV
At ten o'clock next morning Helena was at the well by the Goods Landing where the water-women draw water in their earthen jars to water the gardens and the streets, and while standing among the gross creatures who, with their half-naked bodies and stark-naked souls, were crowding about her for what they could get, she saw Gordon coming down in his Bedouin dress with a firm, strong step.
His flickering, steel-blue eyes were as full of light as when she saw them last, but that vague suggestion of his mother which she had hitherto seen in his face was gone, and there was a look of his father which she had never observed before.
"Let us walk this way," he said, indicating a road that went down to the empty and unfrequented tongue of land that leads to the point at which the Blue Nile and the White Nile meet.
"Helena," he said, stepping closely by her side, and speaking almost in her ear, "there is something I wish to say – to ask – and everything depends on your answer – what we are to do and what is to become of us."
"What is it?" said she, with trembling voice.
"When our escape from Khartoum was stopped by the letter telling me of my mother's death, I thought at first it was only an accident – a sad, strange accident – that it should arrive at that moment."
"And don't you think so now?" she asked.
"No; I think it was a divine intervention."
She glanced up at him. "He is going to talk about the betrothal," she thought.
But he did not do so. In his intense and poignant voice he continued —
"When I proposed that we should go away together I supposed your coming here had been due to a mistake – that my coming here had been due to a mistake – that your sending that letter into Cairo and my promising to take Ishmael's place had been due to a mistake – that it had all been a mistake – a long, miserable line of mistakes."
"And wasn't it?" she asked, walking on with her eyes to the sand.
"So far as we are concerned, yes, but with God … with God Almighty mistakes do not happen."
They walked some paces in silence, and then in a still more poignant voice he said —
"Don't you believe that, Helena? Wasn't it true, what Ishmael said yesterday? Can you possibly believe that we have been allowed to go on as we have been going – both of us – without anything being meant by it? – all a cruel, stupid, merciless, Almighty blunder?"
"Well?"
"Well, think of what would have happened if we had been allowed to carry out our plan. Ishmael would have gone into Cairo as he originally intended, and he would have been seized and executed for conspiracy. What then? The whole country – yes, the whole country from end to end – would have risen in revolt. The sleeping terror of religious hatred would have been awakened. It would have been the affair of El Azhar over again – only worse, a thousand-fold worse."
Again a few steps in silence, and then —
"The insurrection would have been suppressed of course, but think of the bloodshed, the carnage! On the other hand – "
She saw what was coming, and with difficulty she walked steadily.
"On the other hand, if I go into Cairo, as I have promised to do – as I am expected to do – there can be no such result. The moment I arrive I shall be arrested, and the moment I am arrested I shall be identified and handed over to the military authorities to be tried for my offences as a soldier. There will be no religious significance in my punishment, therefore there will be no fanatical frenzy provoked by it, and consequently there can be no bloodshed. Don't you see that, Helena?"
She could not answer; she felt sick and faint. After a moment he went on in the same eager, enthusiastic voice —
"But that's not all. There is something better than that."
"Better – do you say better?"
"Something that comes closer to us at all events. Do you believe in omens, Helena? That some mystic sense tells us things of which we have no proof, no evidence?"
She bent her head without raising her eyes from the sand.
"Well, I have a sense of some treachery going on in Cairo that Ishmael knows nothing about, and I believe it was just this treachery which led to the idea of his going there at all."
She looked up into his face, and thinking he read her thought, he said quickly —
"Oh, I know – I've heard about the letters of the Ulema – that those suggestions of assassination and so forth were signed by the simple old Chancellor of El Azhar. But isn't it possible that a subtler spirit inspired them? … Helena?"
"Yes," she faltered.
"Do you remember that one day in the Citadel I said it was not really Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus, and that there was somebody in Egypt now who was doing what the High Priest of the Jews did in Palestine two thousand years ago?"
"The Grand Cadi?"
"Yes! Something tells me that that subtle old scoundrel is playing a double sword game – with the Ulema and with the Government – and that his object is not only to destroy Ishmael, but, by awakening the ancient religious terror, to ruin England as well – tempt her to ruin her prestige, at all events."
They had reached the margin of the river, and he stopped.
"Well?" she faltered again.
"Well, I am a British soldier still, Helena, even though I am a disgraced one, and I want to … I want to save the good name of my country."
She could not speak – she felt as if she would choke.
"I want to save the good name of the Consul-General also. He is my father, and though he no longer thinks of me as his son, I want to save him from … from himself."
"I can do it too," he added eagerly. "At this moment I am perhaps the only man who can. I am nobody now – only a runaway and a deserter – but I can cross the line of fire and so give warning."
"But, Gordon, don't you see – "
"Oh, I know what you are going to say, Helena – I must die for it. Yes! Nobody wants to do that, if he can help it, but I can't! Listen!"
She raised her eyes to his – they seemed to be ablaze with a kind of frenzy.
"Death was the penalty of what I did in Cairo, and if I did not stay there to be court-martialled and condemned, was it because I wanted to save my life? No; I thought there was nothing left in my life that made it worth saving. It was because I wanted to give it in some better cause. Something told me I should, and when I came to Khartoum I didn't know what fate was before me, or what I had to do, but I know now. This is what I have to do, Helena – to go back to Cairo instead of Ishmael, and so save England and Egypt and my father and these poor Moslem people, and prevent a world of bloodshed."
Then Helena, who in her nervousness had been scraping her feet on the sand, said in a halting, trembling voice —
"Was this what you wanted to say to me, Gordon?"
"Yes, but now I want you to say something to me."
"What is that?" she asked, trembling.
"To tell me to go."
It was like a blow. She felt as if she would fall.
"I cannot go unless you send me, Helena – not as things stand now – leaving you here – under these conditions – in a place like this – alone. Therefore tell me to go, Helena."
Tears sprang to her eyes. She thought of all the hopes she had so lately cherished, all the dreams of the day before of love and a new life among quite different scenes – sweet scenes full of the smell of new-cut grass, the rustling of trees, the swish of the scythe, the songs of birds, and the ringing of church bells, instead of this empty and arid wilderness – and then of the ruin, the utter wreck and ruin, that everything was falling to.
"Tell me to go, Helena – tell me," he repeated.
It was crushing. She could not bear it.
"I cannot," she said. "Don't ask me to do such a thing. Just when we were going away, too … expecting to escape from all this miserable tangle and to be happy at last – "
"But should we be happy, Helena? Say we escaped to Europe, America, Australia, anywhere far enough away, and what I speak of were to come to pass, should we be happy – should we?"
"We should be together at all events, and we should be able to love each other – "
"But could we love each other with the memory of all that misery – the misery we might have prevented – left here behind us?"
"At least we should be alive and safe and well."
"Should we be well if our whole life became abominable to us, Helena? … On the other hand – "
"On the other hand, you want us to part – never to see each other again."
"It's hard – I know it's hard – but isn't that better than to become odious in each other's eyes?"
A cruel mixture of anger and sorrow and despair took possession of her, and, choking with emotion, she said —
"I have nobody but you now, yet you want me to tear my heart out – to sacrifice the love that is my only happiness, my only refuge… Oh, I cannot do it! You are asking me to send you into the jaws of death itself – that's it – the very jaws of death itself – and I cannot do it. I tell you I cannot, I cannot! There is no woman in the world who could."
There was silence for a moment after this vehement cry; then in a low tone he said —
"Every soldier's wife does as much when she sends her husband into battle, Helena."
"Ah!"
She caught her breath as if a hand from heaven had smitten her.
"Am I not going into battle now? And aren't you a soldier's daughter?"
There was another moment of silence in which he looked out on the sparkling waters of the Blue Nile and she gazed through clouded eyes on the sluggish waves of the White.
Something had suddenly begun to rise in her throat. This was the real Gordon, the hero who had won battles, the soldier who had faced death before, and she had never known him until now!
A whirlwind of sensation and emotion seemed to race through her soul and body. She felt hot, she felt cold, she felt ashamed, and then all at once she felt as if she were being lifted out of herself by the spirit of the man beside her. At length she said, trying to speak calmly —
"You are right, quite right; you are always right, Gordon. If you feel like that about going into Cairo you must go. It is your duty. You have received your orders."
"Helena!" he cried, in a burst of joy.
"You mustn't think about me, though. I'm sorry for what I said a while ago, but I'm better now. I have always thought that if the time ever came to me to see my dearest go into battle, I should not allow myself to be afraid."
"I was sure of you, Helena, quite sure."
"This doesn't look like going into battle, perhaps, but it may be something still better – going to save life, to prevent bloodshed."
"Yes, yes!" he said; and struggling to control herself, Helena continued —
"You mustn't think about leaving me here, either. Whatever happens in this place, I shall always remember that you love me, so … so nothing else will matter."
"Nothing – nothing!"
"And though it may be hard to think that you have gone to your death, and that I … that in a sense I have been the cause of it – "
"But you haven't, Helena! Your hand may have penned that letter, but a higher Power directed it."
She looked at him with shining eyes, and answered in a firmer voice and with a proud lift of her beautiful head —
"I don't know about that, Gordon. I only know that you want to give your life in a great cause. And though they have degraded you and driven you out and hunted you down like a dog, you are going to die like a man and an Englishman."
"And you tell me to do it, Helena?"
"Yes, for I'm a soldier's daughter, and in my heart I'm a soldier's wife as well, and I shouldn't be worthy to be either if I didn't tell you to do your duty, whatever the consequences to me."
"My brave girl!" he cried, clutching at her hand.
Then they began to walk back.
As they walked they encouraged each other.
"We are on the right road now, Helena."
"Yes, we are on the right road now, Gordon."
"We are doing better than running away."
"Yes, we are doing better than running away."
"The train leaves Khartoum this evening, and I suppose they want to say farewell to me in the mosque at sunset… You'll be strong to the last and not break down when the time comes for me to go?"
"No, I'll not break down … when the time comes for you to go."
But for all her brave show of courage, her eyes were filling fast and the tears were threatening to fall.
"Better leave me now," she whispered. "Let me go back alone."
He was not sorry to let her go ahead, for at sight of her emotion his own was mastering him.
"Will she keep up to the end?" he asked himself.
CHAPTER XXVI
As the hours of the day passed on, Helena became painfully aware that her courage was ebbing away.
Unconsciously Ishmael was adding to her torture. Soon after the midday meal he called on her to write to his dictation a letter which Gordon was to take into Cairo…
"One more letter, O Rani, only one, before our friend and brother leaves us."
It was to the Ulema, telling them of the change in his plans and begging them to be good to Gordon.
"Trust him and love him. Receive him as you would receive me, and believe that all he does and says is according to my wish and word."
Helena had to write this letter. It was like writing Gordon's death-warrant.
Later in the day, seeing her idle, nibbling the top of the reed pen which she held in her trembling fingers, Ishmael called for the kufiah.
"Where is the kufiah, O Rani – the kufiah that was to disguise the messenger of God from his enemies?"
And when Helena, in an effort to escape from that further torture, protested that in Gordon's case a new kufiah was not essential, because he wore the costume of a Bedouin already, Ishmael replied —
"But the kufiah he wears now is white, and every official in Khartoum has seen it. Therefore another is necessary, and let it be of another colour."
At that, with fiendish alacrity, the Arab woman ran off for a strip of red silken wool, and Helena had to shape and stitch it.
It was like stitching Gordon's shroud.
The day seemed to fly on the wings of an eagle, the sun began to sink, the shadows to lengthen on the desert sand, and the time to approach for the great ceremony of the leave-taking in the mosque. Helena was for staying at home, but Ishmael would not hear of it.
"Nay, my Rani," he said. "In the courtyard after prayers we must say farewell to Omar, and you must clothe him in the new kufiah that is to hide him from his foes. Did you not promise to do as much for me? And shall it be said that you grudge the same honour to my friend and brother?"
Half-an-hour afterwards, Ishmael having gone off hand in hand with Gordon, and old Mahmud and Zenoba and Ayesha and the two black servants having followed him, Helena put on a veil for the first time since coming to Khartoum, and made her way to the mosque.
The streets of the town, as she passed through them, seemed to be charged with an atmosphere of excitement that was little short of frenzy; but the courtyard, when she had crossed the threshold, was like the scene of some wild phantasmagoria.
A crowd of men and women, squatting about the walls of the open space, were strumming on native drums, playing on native pipes, and uttering the weird, monotonous ululation that is the expression of the Soudanese soul in its hours of joy.
A moment later Helena was in the gallery, the people had made way for her, and she was sitting as before by the Arab woman and the child. Overhead was a brazen, blood-red Southern sky; below were a thousand men on crimson carpets, some in silks, some in rags, all moving and moaning like tumultuous waves in a cavern of the sea.
The Reader, in the middle of the mosque, was chanting the Koran, the muezzin in the minaret was calling to prayers, the men on the floor were uttering their many-throated responses, and the very walls of the mosque itself seemed to be vibrating with religious fervour.
A moment after Helena had taken her seat Ishmael entered, followed by Gordon, and the people gathered round them to kiss their hands and garments. Helena felt her head reel, she wanted to cry out, and it was with difficulty she controlled herself.
Then the Reader stood up in his desk and recited an invocation, and the people repeated it after him.
"God is Most Great!"
"God is Most Great!"
"There is no god but God! …
"Mohammed is His Prophet! …
"Listen to the preacher! …
"Amen!"
"Amen!"
After that Ishmael rose from his knees before the Kibleh, took the wooden sword at the foot of the pulpit, ascended to the topmost step, and, after a preliminary prayer, began to preach.
Never had Helena seen him so eager and excited, and every passage of his sermon seemed to increase both his own ecstasy and the emotion of his hearers.
Helena hardly heard his words, so far away were her thoughts and so steadfastly were her eyes fixed on the other figure in front of the Kibleh, but a general sense of their import was beating on her brain as on a drum.
All religions began in poverty and ended in corruption.
It had been so with Islam, which began with the breaking of idols and went on to the worship of wealth, the quest of power, the lust of conquest – Caliphs seeking to establish their claim not by election and the choice of God but by theft and murder.
It had been so with Christianity, which began in meekness and humility and went on to pride and persecution – Holy Fathers exchanging their cells for palaces and their poverty for pomp, forgetting the principle of their great Master, whose only place in their midst was in pictured windows, on vaporous clouds, blessing with outstretched arms a Church which favoured everything he fought against and a world which practised everything he condemned.
"What is the result, O my brothers? War, wealth, luxury, sensuality, slavery, robbery, injustice, and oppression!
"Listen to the word of the Holy Koran: 'And Pharaoh made proclamation among his people, saying, Is not this Kingdom of Egypt mine and the rivers thereof?'
"But not in Egypt only, nor alone under the Government of the King who lives across the seas, but all the world over, wheresoever human empires are founded, wheresoever men claim the earth and the fruits of the earth and the treasures that lie in the bowels of the earth – impoverishing the children of men to obtain them, or destroying their souls that they may deck and delight their bodies – there the Pharaohs of this world are saying, 'Is not this Kingdom of Egypt mine and the rivers thereof?'
"But the earth and the fruits of the earth and the treasures of the earth are God's, my brothers, and He is coming to reclaim them, and to right the wrongs of the oppressed, to raise up the downtrodden, and to comfort the broken-hearted."
The mosque seemed to rock with the shouts which followed these words, and as soon as the cries of the people had subsided, the voice of Ishmael, now louder and more tremulous than before, rang through its vaults again.
"Deep in the heart of man, my brothers, is the expectation of a day when the Almighty will send His Messenger to purify and pacify the world and to banish intolerance and wrong. The Jews look for the Messiah, the Christians for the divine man of Judæa, and we that are Moslems for the Mahdi and the Christ.
"In all climes and ages, amid all sorrows and sufferings, sunk in the depths of ignorance, sold into slavery, the poorest of the poor, the most miserable among the most miserable of the world, humanity has yet cherished that great expectation. Real as life, real as death, real as wells of water in a desert land to man on his earthly pilgrimage is the hope of a Deliverer from oppression and injustice – and who shall say it is vain and false? It is true, my brothers, true as the sky rolling overhead. Our Deliverer is coming! He is coming soon! He is coming now!"
Ishmael's tremulous voice had by this time broken into hysterical sobs, and the responses of his hearers had risen to delirious cries.
More of the same kind followed which Helena did not hear, but suddenly she was awakened to full consciousness of what was going on about her by hearing Ishmael speak of Gordon and the people answering him with rapturous shouts.
"He is not of our race, yet no doubt enters into our hearts of his fidelity."
"El Hamdullillah!"
"He is not of our faith, yet he will be true to God and His people."
"Allah! Allah!"
"For us he has left his home, his country, and his kindred."
"Allah! Allah! Allah!"
"For us he is going into the place of danger."
"Allah! Allah! Allah!"
"What says the Lord in the Holy Koran? – 'They therefore who had left their country and suffered for My sake I will surely bring them into gardens watered by rivers – a reward of God.'"
"Allah! Allah! Allah!"
"The Lord bless the white man to whom the black man is a brother! Bless him in the morning splendour! Bless him in the still of night! Bless him with children – the eye of the heart of man! Bless him with the love of woman – the joy and the crown of life!"
"Allah! Allah! Allah!"
"And may the Lord of majesty and might who has hitherto covered his head in battle protect and preserve him now!"
At this last word the whole company of men on the floor below – men in silks and men in rags – rose to their feet, as if they had been one being animated by one heart, and raising their arms to heaven, cried —
"Allah! Allah! Allah! Allah!"
Helena felt as if some one had taken her by the throat. To see these poor, emotional Eastern children, with their brown and black faces, streaming with tears and full of love for Gordon, shouting down God's blessing upon him, was stifling her.
It was like singing his dirge before he was dead.
During the next few minutes Helena was vaguely aware that Ishmael had come down from the pulpit; that the Reader was reciting prayers again; that the men on the crimson carpets were bowing, kneeling, prostrating themselves and putting their foreheads to the floor; and finally that the whole congregation was rising and surging out of the mosque.
When she came to herself once more, somebody by her side – it was Zenoba – was touching her shoulder and saying —
"The Master is in the Courtyard and he is calling for you – come!"
The scene outside was even more tumultuous. Instead of the steady solemnity of the service within the mosque there were the tum-tumming of the drums, the screeling of the pipes, and the lu-luing of the women.
The great enclosure was densely crowded, but a space had been cleared in the centre of the courtyard, where the Ulema of Khartoum, in their grey farageeyahs, were ranged in a wide half-circle. In the mouth of this half-circle Gordon was standing in his Bedouin dress with Ishmael by his side.
Silence was called, and then Ishmael gave Gordon his last instructions and spoke his last words of farewell.
"Tell our brothers, the Ulema of Cairo," he said, "that we are following close behind you, and when the time comes to enter the city we shall be lying somewhere outside their walls. Let them therefore put a light on their topmost height – on the minaret of the mosque of Mohammed Ali – after the call to prayers at midnight – and we shall take that as a sign that the Light of the World is with you, that the Expected One has appeared, and that we may enter in peace, injuring no man, being injured by none, without malice towards any, and with charity to all."
Then seeing Helena as she came out of the mosque, veiled and with her head down, he called on her to come forward.
"Now do as you have always designed and intended," he said. "Cover our friend and forerunner with the kufiah you have made for him, that until his work is done and the time has come to reveal himself, he may, like the angel of the Lord, be invisible to his foes."
What happened after that Helena never quite knew – only that a way had been made for her through the throng of wild-eyed people and that she was standing by Gordon's side.
Down to that instant she had intended to bear herself bravely for Gordon's sake if not for her own, but now a hundred cruel memories came in a flood to sap away her strength – memories of the beautiful moments of their love, of the little passages of their life together that had been so tender and so sweet. In vain she tried to recover the spirit with which he had inspired her in the morning, to think how much better it was that he should die gloriously than live in disgrace, to feel the justice, the necessity, the inevitableness of what he was going to do.
It was impossible. She could think of nothing but that she was seeing Gordon for the last time, that he was leaving her behind him, among these Allah-intoxicated Arabs, that he was going away, not into battle – with its chance of victory and its hope of life – but to death, certain death, perhaps shameful death, and that, say what he would about Fate and Destiny or the will of God, she herself was sending him to his doom.
She felt that the tears were running down her cheeks under her thin white veil, and that Gordon must see them, but she could not keep them back; and though she had promised not to break down, she knew that at that last moment, in the face of the death that was about to separate them, the dauntless heroine of the morning was nothing better than a poor, weak, heart-broken woman.
Meantime the drums and the pipes and the lu-luing had begun again, and she was conscious that under the semi-savage din Gordon was speaking to her and comforting her.
"Keep up! Be brave! Nobody knows what may happen. I'll write. You shall hear from me again."
He had taken off the white kufiah which he had hitherto worn, and she could see his face. It was calm – the calmest face in all that vast assembly.
The sight of his face strengthened her, and suddenly a new element entered into the half-barbaric scene – an element that was half human and half divine. These poor, half-civilised people thought Gordon was going to risk his life for them; but he was going to die – deliberately to die for them – to save them from themselves, from the consequences of their fanaticism, the panic of their rulers, and the fruits of the age-long hatred that had separated the black man from the white.
Helena felt her bosom heave, her nerves twitch, her fingers dig trenches in her palms, and her thoughts fly up to scenes of sacrifice which men talk of with bated breath.
"If he can do it, why can't I?" she asked herself, and taking the red kufiah, which the Arab woman was thrusting into her hands, with a great effort she put it on Gordon – over his head and under his chin and across his shoulders and about his waist.
It was like clothing him for the grave.
Every eye had been on her, and when her work was done, Ishmael, who was now weeping audibly, demanded silence and called on the Ulema to recite the first Surah —
"Praise be to God, the Lord of all creatures – "
When the weird chanting had come to an end the hoarse voices of the people broke afresh into loud shouts of "Allah! Allah! El Hamdullillah!"
In the midst of the wild maëlstrom of religious frenzy which followed – the tum-tumming of the drums, the screeling of the pipes, and the ululation of the women – Helena felt her hand grasped, and heard Gordon speaking to her again.
"Don't faint! Don't be afraid! Don't break down at the last moment."
"I'm not afraid," she answered, but whether with her voice or only with her lips she never knew.
Still the drums, the pipes, the zaghareet, and the delirious cries of "Allah!" And to show Gordon that she felt no fear, that she was not going to faint or to break down, Helena also, in the fierce tension of the moment, cried —
"Allah! El Hamdullillah!"
"That's right! That's brave! God bless you!" whispered the voice by her side. And again a moment later —
"God bless and protect you!"
After that she heard no more. She saw the broad gate of the Courtyard thrown open – she saw a long streak of blood-red sand outside – she saw Gordon turn away from her – she saw Ishmael embrace and kiss him – she saw the surging mass of hot and streaming black and brown faces close about him – and then a loud wind seemed to roar in her ears, the earth seemed to give way under her feet, the brazen sky seemed to reel about her head, and again she felt as if she were falling, falling, falling into a bottomless abyss.
When she recovered consciousness the half-barbaric scene was over, and she was being carried into the silence of her own room in the arms of Ishmael, who with many words of tender endearment was laying her gently on her bed.