Donovan Pasha And Some People Of Egypt, Complete - Gilbert Parker
In due course, the lady came to hear of the English slave-owner, who
ruled the desert-city and was making a great fortune out of the labours
of his slaves. The desert Arabs who came down the long caravan road,
white with bleached bones, to Assiout, told her he had a thousand slaves.
Against this Englishman her anger, was great. She unceasingly condemned
him, and whenever she met Dicky Donovan she delivered her attack with
delicate violence. Did Dicky know him? Why did not he, in favour with
Ismail, and with great influence, stop this dreadful and humiliating
business? It was a disgrace to the English name. How could we preach
freedom and a higher civilisation to the Egyptians while an Englishman
enriched himself and ruled a province by slavery? Dicky's invariable
reply was that we couldn't, and that things weren't moving very much
towards a higher civilisation in Egypt. But he asked her if she ever
heard of a slave running away from Kingsley Bey, or had she ever heard of
a case of cruelty on his part? Her reply was that he had given slaves the
kourbash, and had even shot them. Dicky thereupon suggested that Kingsley
Bey was a government, and that the kourbash was not yet abolished in the
English navy, for instance; also that men had to be shot sometimes.
At last she had made a direct appeal to Kingsley Bey. She sent an embassy
to him--Dicky prevented her from going herself; he said he would have her
deported straightway, if she attempted it. She was not in such deadly
earnest that she did not know he would keep his word, and that the
Consulate could not help her would have no time to do so. So, she
confined herself to an elaborate letter, written in admirable English and
inspired by most noble sentiments. The beauty that was in her face was in
her letter in even a greater degree. It was very adroit, too, very ably
argued, and the moral appeal was delicate and touching, put with an
eloquence at once direct and arresting. The invocation with which the
letter ended was, as Kingsley Bey afterwards put it, "a pitch of poetry
and humanity never reached except by a Wagner opera."
Kingsley Bey's response to the appeal was a letter to the lady, brought
by a sarraf, a mamour and six slaves, beautifully mounted and armed,
saying that he had been deeply moved by her appeal, and as a proof of the
effect of her letter, she might free the six slaves of his embassy. This
she straightway did joyfully, and when they said they wished to go to
Cairo, she saw them and their horses off on the boat with gladness, and
she shook them each by the hand and prayed Heaven in their language to
give them long plumes of life and happiness. Arrived at Cairo these
freemen of Assiout did as they had been ordered by Kingsley--found
Donovan Pasha, delivered a certain letter to him, and then proceeded,
also as they had been ordered, to a certain place in the city, even to
Ismail's stables, to await their master's coming.
This letter was now in Dicky's hand, and his mirth was caused by the
statement that Kingsley Bey had declared that he was coming to marry My
Lady--she really was "My Lady," the Lady May Harley; that he was coming
by a different route from "his niggers," and would be there the same day.
Dicky would find him at ten o'clock at the Khedivial Club.
My Lady hated slavery--and unconsciously she kept a slave; she regarded
Kingsley Bey as an enemy to civilisation and to Egypt, she detested him
as strongly as an idealistic nature could and should--and he had set out
to marry her, the woman who had bitterly arraigned him at the bar of her
judgment. All this play was in Dicky's hands for himself to enjoy, in a
perfect dress rehearsal ere ever one of the Cairene public or the English
world could pay for admission and take their seats. Dicky had in more
senses than one got his money's worth out of Kingsley Bey. He wished he
might let the Khedive into the secret at once, for he had an opinion of
Ismail's sense of humour; had he not said that very day in the presence
of the French Consul, "Shut the window, quick! If the consul sneezes,
France will demand compensation!" But Dicky was satisfied that things
should be as they were. He looked at the clock--it was five minutes to
ten. He rose from the table, and went to the smoking-room. In vain it was
sought to draw him into the friendly circles of gossiping idlers and
officials. He took a chair at the very end of the room and opposite the
door, and waited, watching.
Precisely at ten the door opened and a tall, thin, loose-knit figure
entered. He glanced quickly round, saw Dicky, and swung down the room,
nodding to men who sprang to their feet to greet him. Some of the
Egyptians looked darkly at him, but he smiled all round, caught at one or
two hands thrust out to him, said: "Business--business first!" in a deep
bass voice, and, hastening on, seized both of Dicky's hands in his, then
his shoulders, and almost roared: "Well, what do you think of it? Isn't
it all right? Am I, or am I not, Dicky Pasha?"
"You very much are," answered Dicky, thrust a cigar at him, and set him
down in the deepest chair he could find. He sprawled wide, and lighted
his cigar, then lay back and looked down his long nose at his friend.
"I mean it, too," he said after a minute, and reached for a glass of
water the waiter brought. "No, thanks, no whiskey--never touch it--good
example to the slaves!" He laughed long and low, and looked at Dicky out
of the corner of his eye. "Good-looking lot I sent you, eh?"
"Oosters, every one of 'em. Butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. I
learnt their grin, it suits my style of beauty." Dicky fitted the action
to the word. "You'll start with me in the morning to Assiout?"
"I can start, but life and time are short."
"You think I can't and won't marry her?"
"This isn't the day of Lochinvar."
"This is the day of Kingsley Bey, Dicky Pasha."
Dicky frowned. He had a rare and fine sense where women were concerned,
were they absent or present. "How very artless--and in so short a time,
too!" he said tartly.
Kingsley laughed quietly. "Art is long, but tempers are short!" he
retorted.
Dicky liked a Roland for his Oliver. "It's good to see you back again,"
he said, changing the subject.
"How long do you mean to stay?"
"Here?" Dicky nodded. "Till I'm married."
Dicky became very quiet, a little formal, and his voice took on a curious
smoothness, through which sharp suggestion pierced.
"So long?--Enter our Kingsley Bey into the underground Levantine world."
This was biting enough. To be swallowed up by Cairo life and all that it
involves, was no fate to suggest to an Englishman, whose opinion of the
Levantine needs no defining. "Try again, Dicky," said Kingsley, refusing
to be drawn. "This is not one huge joke, or one vast impertinence, so far
as the lady is concerned. I've come back-b-a-c-k" (he spelled the word
out), "with all that it involves. I've come back, Dicky."
He quieted all at once, and leaned over towards his friend. "You know the
fight I've had. You know the life I've lived in Egypt. You know what I
left behind me in England--nearly all. You've seen the white man
work. You've seen the black ooster save him. You've seen the
ten-times-a-failure pull out. Have I played the game? Have I acted
squarely? Have I given kindness for kindness, blow for blow? Have I
treated my slaves like human beings? Have I--have I won my way back to
life--life?" He spread out a hand with a little grasping motion. "Have I
saved the old stand off there in Cumberland by the sea, where you can see
the snow on Skaw Fell? Have I? Do you wonder that I laugh? Ye gods and
little fishes! I've had to wear a long face years enough--seven hard
years, seven fearful years, when I might be murdered by a slave, and I
and my slaves might be murdered by some stray brigade, under some general
of Ismail's, working without orders, without orders, of course--oh, very
much of course! Why shouldn't I play the boy to-day, little Dicky
Donovan? I am a Mahommedan come Christian again. I am a navvy again come
gentleman. I am an Arab come Englishman once more.
"I am an outcast come home. I am a dead man come to life."
Dicky leaned over and laid a hand on his knee. "You are a credit to
Cumberland," he said. "No other man could have done it. I won't ask any
more questions. Anything you want of me, I am with you, to do, or say, or
be."
"Good. I want you to go to Assiout to-morrow."
"Will you see Ismail first? It might be safer--good policy."
"I will see My Lady first. . . . Trust me. I know what I'm doing. You
will laugh as I do." Laughter broke from his lips. It was as though his
heart was ten years old. Dicky's eyes moistened. He had never seen
anything like it--such happiness, such boyish confidence. And what had
not this man experienced! How had he drunk misfortune to the dregs! What
unbelievable optimism had been his! How had he been at once hard and
kind, tyrannical and human, defiant and peaceful, daring yet submissive,
fierce yet just! And now, here, with so much done, with a great fortune
and great power, a very boy, he was planning to win the heart of, and
marry, his avowed foe, the woman who had condemned him without stint.
II
On her wide veranda, a stone's-throw from the banks of the Nile, My Lady
sat pen in hand and paper-pad upon her knee. She had written steadily for
an hour, and now she raised her head to look out on the swift-flowing,
muddy water, where broad khiassas floated down the stream, laden with
bersim; where feluccas covered the river, bearing natives and donkeys;
where faithful Moslems performed their ablutions, and other faithful
Moslems, their sandals laid aside, said their prayers with their faces
towards Mecca, oblivious of all around; where blue-robed women filled
their goolahs with water, and bore them away, steady and stately; where a
gang of conscripts, chained ankle to ankle, followed by a crowd of
weeping and wailing women, were being driven to the anchorage of the
stern-wheeled transport-steamer. All these sights she had seen how many
hundred times! To her it was all slavery. The laden khiassas represented
the fruits of enforced labour; the ablutions and prayers were but signs
of submission to the tyranny of a religion designed for the benefit of
the few at the expense of the many, a creed and code of gross
selfishness--were not women only admitted to Heaven by the intercession
of their husbands and after unceasing prayer? Whether beasts of burden,
the girl with the goolah, women in the harem, or servants of pleasure,
they were all in the bonds of slavery, and the land was in moral
darkness. So it seemed to her.
How many times had she written these things in different forms and to
different people--so often, too often, to the British Consul at Cairo,
whose patience waned. At first, the seizure of conscripts, with all that
it involved, had excited her greatly. It had required all her
common-sense to prevent her, then and there, protesting, pleading, with
the kavass, who did the duty of Ismail's Sirdar. She had confined
herself, however, to asking for permission to give the men cigarettes and
slippers, dates and bread, and bags of lentils for soup. Even this was
not unaccompanied by danger, for the Mahommedan mind could not at first
tolerate the idea of a lady going unveiled; only fellah women, domestic
cattle, bared their faces to the world. The conscripts, too, going to
their death--for how few of them ever returned?--leaving behind all hope,
all freedom, passing to starvation and cruelty, at last to be cut down by
the Arab, or left dying of illness in the desert, they took her gifts
with sullen faces. Her beautiful freedom was in such contrast to their
torture, slavery of a direful kind. But as again and again the kavasses
came and opened midnight doors and snatched away the young men, her
influence had grown so fast that her presence brought comfort, and she
helped to assuage the grief of the wailing women. She even urged upon
them that philosophy of their own, which said "Malaish" to all
things--the "It is no matter," of the fated Hamlet. In time she began to
be grateful that an apathetic resignation, akin to the quiet of despair,
was the possession of their race. She was far from aware that something
in their life, of their philosophy, was affecting her understanding. She
had a strong brain and a stronger will, but she had a capacity for
feeling greater still, and this gave her imagination, temperament,
and--though it would have shocked her to know it--a certain credulity,
easily transmutable into superstition. Yet, as her sympathies were, to
some extent, rationalised by stern fact and everlasting custom, her
opposition to some things became more active and more fervid.
Looking into the distance, she saw two or three hundred men at work on a
canal, draining the property of Selamlik Pasha, whose tyrannies,
robberies, and intrigues were familiar to all Egypt, whose palaces were
almost as many as those of the notorious Mouffetish. These men she saw
now working in the dread corvee had been forced from their homes by a
counterfeit Khedivial order. They had been compelled to bring their own
tools, and to feed and clothe and house themselves, without pay or
reward, having left behind them their own fields untilled, their own
dourha unreaped, their date-palms, which the tax-gatherer confiscated.
Many and many a time--unless she was prevented, and this at first had
been often--she had sent food and blankets to these poor creatures who,
their day's work done, prayed to God as became good Mahommedans, and,
without covering, stretched themselves out on the bare ground to sleep.
It suggested that other slavery, which did not hide itself under the
forms of conscription and corvee. It was on this slavery her mind had
been concentrated, and against it she had turned her energies and her
life. As she now sat, pen in hand, the thought of how little she had
done, how futile had been all her crusade, came to her. Yet there was,
too, a look of triumph in her eyes. Until three days ago she had seen
little result from her labours. Then had come a promise of better things.
From the Englishman, against whom she had inveighed, had been sent an
olive branch, a token--of conversion? Had he not sent six slaves for her
to free, and had she not freed them? That was a step. She pictured to
herself this harsh expatriated adventurer, this desert ruler, this
slave-holder--had he been a slave-dealer she could herself have gladly
been his executioner--surrounded by his black serfs, receiving her
letter. In her mind's eye she saw his face flush as he read her burning
phrases, then turn a little pale, then grow stern.
She saw him, after a sleepless night, haunted by her warnings, her appeal
to his English manhood. She saw him rise, meditative and relenting, and
send forthwith these slaves for her to free. Her eye glistened again, as
it had shone while she had written of this thing to the British Consul at
Cairo, to her father in England, who approved of her sympathies and
lamented her actions. Had her crusade been altogether fruitless, she
asked herself. Ismail's freed Circassian was in her household, being
educated like an English girl, lifted out of her former degradation, made
to understand "a higher life"; and yesterday she had sent away six
liberated slaves, with a gold-piece each, as a gift from a free woman to
free men. It seemed to her for a moment now, as she sat musing and
looking, that her thirty years of life had not been--rather, might not
be-in vain.
There was one other letter she would write--to Donovan Pasha, who had not
been ardent in her cause, yet who might have done so much through his
influence with Ismail, who, it was said, liked him better than any
Englishman he had known, save Gordon. True, Donovan Pasha had steadily
worked for the reduction of the corvee, and had, in the name of the
Khedive, steadily reduced private corvee, but he had never set his face
against slavery, save to see that no slave-dealing was permitted below
Assouan. Yet, with her own eyes she had seen Abyssinian slaves sold in
the market-place of Assiout. True, when she appealed to him, Donovan
Pasha had seen to it that the slave-dealers were severely punished, but
the fact remained that he was unsympathetic on the large issue. When
appealed to, the British Consul had petulantly told her that Donovan
Pasha was doing more important work. Yet she could only think of England
as the engine of civilisation, as an evangelising power, as the John the
Baptist of the nations--a country with a mission. For so beautiful a
woman, of so worldly a stock, of a society so in the front of things, she
had some Philistine notions, some quite middle-class ideals. It was like
a duchess taking to Exeter Hall; but few duchesses so afflicted had been
so beautiful and so young, so much of the worldly world--her father was
high in the household of an illustrious person. . . . If she could but
make any headway against slavery--she had as disciples ten Armenian
pashas, several wealthy Copts, a number of Arab sheikhs, and three
Egyptian princes, sympathetic rather than active--perhaps, through her
father, she might be able to move the illustrious person, and so, in
time, the Government of England.
It was a delightful dream--the best she had imagined for many a day. She
was roused from it by the scream of a whistle, and the hoonch-hoonch of a
sternwheel steamer. A Government boat was hastening in to the bank,
almost opposite her house. She picked up the field-glass from the
window-sill behind her, and swept the deck of the steamer. There were two
figures in English dress, though one wore the tarboosh. The figure
shorter and smaller than the other she recognised. This was Donovan
Pasha. She need not write her letter to him, then. He would be sure to
visit her. Disapprove of him as she did from one stand-point, he always
excited in her feelings of homesickness, of an old life, full of
interests--music, drama, art, politics, diplomacy, the court, the
hunting-field, the quiet house-party. He troubled her in a way too, for
his sane certainty, set against her aspiring credulity, arrested, even
commanded, her sometimes.
Instinctively she put out her hand to gather in flying threads of hair,
she felt at the pearl fastening of her collar, she looked at her brown
shoes and her dress, and was satisfied. She was spotless. And never had
her face shone--really shone--to such advantage. It had not now the
brilliant colours of the first years. The climate, her work in hospital
building, her labours against slavery, had touched her with a little
whiteness. She was none the less good to see.
Who was this striding along with Donovan Pasha, straight towards her
house? No one she had ever seen in Egypt, and yet in manner like some one
she had seen before--a long time before. Her mind flashed back through
the years to the time when she was a girl, and visited old friends of her
father in a castle looking towards Skaw Fell, above the long valley of
the Nidd. A kind of mist came before her eyes now.
When she really saw again, they were at the steps of the veranda, and
Donovan Pasha's voice was greeting her. Then, as, without a word but with
a welcoming smile, she shook hands with Dicky, her look was held, first
by a blank arrest of memory, then by surprise.
Dicky turned for his office of introduction but was stayed by the look of
amusement in his friend's face, and by the amazed recognition in that of
My Lady. He stepped back with an exclamation, partly of chagrin. He saw
that this recognition was no coincidence, so far as the man was
concerned, though the woman had been surprised in a double sense. He
resented the fact that Kingsley Bey had kept this from him--he had the
weakness of small-statured men and of diplomatic people who have
reputations for knowing and doing. The man, all smiling, held out his
hand, and his look was quizzically humorous as he said:
"You scarcely looked to see me here, Lady May?" Her voice trembled with
pleasure. "No, of course. When did you come, Lord Selden? . . . Won't you
sit down?"
That high green terrace of Cumberland, the mist on Skaw Fell, the sun out
over the sea, they were in her eyes. So much water had gone under the
bridges since!
"I was such a young girl then--in short frocks--it was a long time ago, I
fear," she added, as if in continuation of the thought flashing through
her mind. "Let me see," she went on fearlessly; "I am thirty; that was
thirteen years ago."
"I am thirty-seven, and still it is thirteen years ago."
"You look older, when you don't smile," she added, and glanced at his
grey hair.
He laughed now. She was far, far franker than she was those many years
ago, and it was very agreeable and refreshing. "Donovan, there, reproved
me last night for frivolity," he said.
"If Donovan Pasha has become grave, then there is hope for Egypt," she
said, turning to Dicky with a new brightness.
"When there's hope for Egypt, I'll have lost my situation, and there'll
be reason for drawing a long face," said Dicky, and got the two at such
an angle that he could watch them to advantage. "I thrive while it's
opera boufe. Give us the legitimate drama, and I go with Ismail."
The lady shrank a little. "If it weren't you, Donovan Pasha, I should say
that, associated with Ismail, as you are, you are as criminal as he."
"What is crime in one country, is virtue in another," answered Dicky. "I
clamp the wheel sometimes to keep it from spinning too fast. That's my
only duty. I am neither Don Quixote nor Alexander Imperator."
She thought he was referring obliquely to the corvee and the other thing
in which her life-work was involved. She became severe. "It is
compromising with evil," she said.
"No. It's getting a breakfast-roll instead of the whole bakery," he
answered.
"What do you think?" she exclaimed, turning to Kingsley.
"I think there's one man in Egypt who keeps the boiler from bursting," he
answered.
"Oh, don't think I undervalue his Excellency here," she said with a
little laugh. "It is because he is strong, because he matters so much,
that one feels he could do more. Ismail thinks there is no one like him
in the world."
"Except Gordon," interrupted Kingsley.
"Except Gordon, of course; only Gordon isn't in Egypt. And he would do no
good in Egypt. The officials would block his way. It is only in the
Soudan that he could have a free hand, be of real use. There, a man, a
real man, like Gordon, could show the world how civilisation can be
accepted by desert races, despite a crude and cruel religion and low
standards of morality."
"All races have their social codes--what they call civilisation,"
rejoined Kingsley. "It takes a long time to get custom out of the blood,
especially when it is part of the religion. I'm afraid that expediency
isn't the motto of those who try to civilise the Orient and the East."
"I believe in struggling openly for principle," she observed a little
acidly.
"Have you succeeded?" he asked, trying to keep his gravity. "How about
your own household, for instance? Have you Christianised and civilised
your people--your niggers, and the others?"
She flushed indignantly, but held herself in control. She rang a bell. "I
have no 'niggers,'" she answered quietly. "I have some Berberine
servants, two fellah boatmen, an Egyptian gardener, an Arab cook, and a
Circassian maid. They are, I think, devoted to me."
A Berberine servant appeared. "Tea, Mahommed," she said. "And tell Madame
that Donovan Pasha is here. My cousin admires his Excellency so much,"
she added to Kingsley, laughing. "I have never had any real trouble with
them," she continued with a little gesture of pride towards the
disappearing Berberine.
"There was the Armenian," put in Dicky slyly; "and the Copt sarraf. They
were no credit to their Christian religion, were they?"
"That was not the fault of the religion, but of the generations of
oppression--they lie as a child lies, to escape consequences. Had they
not been oppressed they would have been good Christians in practice as in
precept."
"They don't steal as a child steals," laughed Dicky.
"Armenians are Oriental through and through. They no more understand the
Christian religion than the Soudanese understand freedom."
He touched the right note this time. Kingsley flashed a half-startled,
half-humorous look at him; the face of the lady became set, her manner
delicately frigid. She was about to make a quiet, severe reply, but
something overcame her, and her eyes, her face, suddenly glowed. She
leaned forward, her hands clasped tightly on her knees--Kingsley could
not but note how beautiful and brown they were, capable, handsome,
confident hands--and, in a voice thrilling with feeling, said:
"What is there in the life here that gets into the eyes of Europeans and
blinds them? The United States spent scores of thousands of lives to free
the African slave. England paid millions, and sacrificed ministries and
men, to free the slave; and in England, you--you, Donovan Pasha, and men
like you, would be in the van against slavery. Yet here, where England
has more influence than any other nation--"