Donovan Pasha And Some People Of Egypt, Complete - Gilbert Parker
As she staggered, stumbled, through the village, Yusef, the drunken
ghaffir, saw her. He did not dare speak to her, for had he not killed her
father, and had he not bought himself free of punishment from the Mudir?
So he ran to old Fatima and knocked upon her door with his naboot,
crying: "In the name of Allah get thee to the hut of Wassef the
camel-driver!"
Thus it was that Soada, in her agony, heard a voice say out of the
infinite distance: "All praise to Allah, he hath even now the strength of
a year-old child!"
IV
That night at sunset, as Soada lay upon the sheepskin spread for her,
with the child nestled between her arm and her breast, a figure darkened
the doorway, and old Fatima cried out:
"Mahommed Selim!"
With a gasping sound Soada gathered the child quickly to her breast, and
shrank back to the wall. This surely was the ghost of Mahommed
Selim--this gaunt, stooping figure covered with dust.
"Soada, in the name of Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful, Soada,
beautiful one!"
Mahommed Selim, once the lithe, the straight, the graceful, now bent,
awkward, fevered, all the old daring gone from him, stood still in the
middle of the room, humbled before the motherhood in his sight.
"Brother of jackals," cried old Fatima, "what dost thou here? What dost
thou here, dog of dogs!" She spat at him.
He took no notice. "Soada," he said eagerly, prayerfully, and his voice,
though hoarse, was softer than she had ever heard it. "Soada, I have come
through death to thee--Listen, Soada! At night, when sleep was upon the
barrack-house, I stole out to come to thee. My heart had been hard. I had
not known how much I loved thee--"
Soada interrupted him. "What dost thou know of love, Mahommed Selim? The
blood of the dead cries from the ground."
He came a step nearer. "The blood of Wassef the camel-driver is upon my
head," he said. "In the desert there came news of it. In the desert, even
while we fought the wild tribes, one to ten, a voice kept crying in my
ear, even as thou hast cried, 'What didst thou know of love, Mahommed
Selim!' One by one the men of Beni Souef fell round me; one by one they
spoke of their village and of their women, and begged for a drop of
water, and died. And my heart grew hot within me, and a spirit kept
whispering in my ear: 'Mahommed Selim, think of the village thou hast
shamed, of Soada thou hast wronged! No drop of water shall cheer thy soul
in dying!'"
Fatima and Soada listened now with bated breath, for this was the voice
of one who had drunk the vinegar and gall of life.
"When the day was done, and sleep was upon the barrack-house, my heart
waked up and I knew that I loved Soada as I had never loved her. I ran
into the desert, and the jackals flew before me--outcasts of the desert,
they and I. Coming to the tomb of Amshar the sheikh, by which was a well,
there I found a train of camels. One of these I stole, and again I ran
into the desert, and left the jackals behind. Hour after hour, day and
night, I rode on. But faintness was upon me, and dreams came. For though
only the sands were before me, I seemed to watch the Nile
running--running, and thou beside it, hastening with it, hastening,
hastening towards thy home. And Allah put a thorn into my heart, that a
sharp pain went through my body--and at last I fell."
Soada's eyes were on him now with a strange, swimming brilliancy.
"Mahommed--Mahommed Selim, Allah touched thine eyes that thou didst see
truly," she said eagerly. "Speak not till I have done," he answered.
"When I waked again I was alone in the desert, no food, no water, and the
dead camel beside me. But I had no fear. 'If it be God's will,' said I,
'then I shall come unto Soada. If it be not God's will, so be it: for are
we not on the cushion of His mercy, to sleep or to wake, to live or to
die?'"
He paused, tottering, and presently sank upon the ground, his hands
drooped before him, his head bent down. Old Fatima touched him on the
shoulder.
"Brother of vultures didst thou go forth; brother of eagles dost thou
return," she said. "Eat, drink, in the house of thy child and its
mother."
"Shall the unforgiven eat or drink?" he asked, and he rocked his body to
and fro, like one who chants the Koran in a corner of El Azhar,
forgetting and forgotten.
Soada's eyes were on him now as though they might never leave him again;
and she dragged herself little by little towards him, herself and the
child--little by little, until at last she touched his feet, and the
child's face was turned towards him from its mother's breast.
"Thou art my love, Mahommed Selim," she said. He raised his head from his
hands, a hunger of desire in his face.
"Thou art my lord," she added: "art thou not forgiven? The little one is
thine and mine," she whispered. "Wilt thou not speak to him?"
"Lest Allah should strike me with blindness and dry up the juice of my
veins, I will not touch thee or the child until all be righted. Food will
I not eat, nor water drink until thou art mine--by the law of the
Prophet, mine."
Laying down the water-jar, and the plate of dourha bread, old Fatima
gathered her robe about her, and cried as she ran from the house:
"Marriage and fantasia thou shalt have this hour."
The stiffness seemed to pass from her bones as she ran through the
village to the house of the Omdah. Her voice, lifting shrilly, sang the
Song of Haleel, the song of the newly married, till it met the chant of
the Muezzin on the tower of the mosque El Hassan, and mingled with it,
dying away over the fields of bersim and the swift-flowing Nile.
That night Mahommed Selim and Soada the daughter of Wassef the
camel-driver were married, but the only fantasia they held was their own
low laughter over the child. In the village, however, people were little
moved to smile, for they knew that Mahommed Selim was a deserter from the
army of the Khedive at Dongola, and that meant death. But no one told
Soada this, and she did not think; she was content to rest in the
fleeting dream.
"Give them twenty-four hours," said the black-visaged fat sergeant of
cavalry come to arrest Mahommed Selim for desertion.
The father of Mahommed Selim again offered the Mamour a feddan of land if
the young man might go free, and to the sergeant he offered a she-camel
and a buffalo. To no purpose. It was Mahommed Selim himself who saved his
father's goods to him. He sent this word to the sergeant by Yusef the
drunken ghaffir: "Give me to another sunset and sunrise, and what I have
is thine--three black donkeys of Assiout rented to old Abdullah the
sarraf."
Because with this offer he should not only have backsheesh but the man
also, the fat sergeant gave him leave. When the time was up, and Mahommed
Selim drew Soada's face to his breast, he knew that it was the last look
and last embrace.
"I am going back," he said; "my place is empty at Dongola."
"No, no, thou shalt not go," she cried. "See how the little one loves
thee," she urged, and, sobbing, she held the child up to him.
But he spoke softly to her, and at last she said: "Kiss me, Mahommed
Selim. Behold now thy discharge shall be bought from the palace of the
Khedive, and soon thou wilt return," she cried.
"If it be the will of God," he answered; "but the look of thine eyes I
will take with me, and the face of the child here." He thrust a finger
into the palm of the child, and the little dark hand closed round it. But
when he would have taken it away, the little hand still clung, though the
eyes were scarce opened upon life.
"See, Mahommed Selim," Soada cried, "he would go with thee."
"He shall come to me one day, by the mercy of God," answered Mahommed
Selim.
Then he went out into the market-place and gave himself up to the fat
sergeant. As they reached the outskirts of the village a sorry camel came
with a sprawling gallop after them, and swaying and rolling above it was
Yusef, the drunken ghaffir, his naboot of dom-wood across his knees.
"What dost thou come for, friend of the mercy of God?" asked Mahommed
Selim.
"To be thy messenger, praise be to God!" answered Yusef, swinging his
water-bottle clear for a drink.
V
In Egypt, the longest way round is not the shortest way home, and that
was why Mahommed Selim's court-martial took just three minutes and a
half; and the bimbashi who judged him found even that too long, for he
yawned in the deserter's face as he condemned him to death.
Mahommed Selim showed no feeling when the sentence was pronounced. His
face had an apathetic look. It seemed as if it were all one to him. But
when they had turned him round to march to the shed where he was to be
kept, till hung like a pig at sunrise, his eyes glanced about restlessly.
For even as the sentence had been pronounced a new idea had come into his
mind. Over the heads of the Gippy soldiers, with their pipestem legs, his
look flashed eagerly, then a little painfully--then suddenly stayed, for
it rested on the green turban of Yusef, the drunken ghaffir. Yusef's eyes
were almost shut; his face had the grey look of fresh-killed veal, for he
had come from an awful debauch of hashish.
"Allah! Allah!" cried Mahommed Selim, for that was the sound which always
waked the torpid brain of Yusef since Wassef the camel-driver's skull had
crackled under his naboot.
Yusef's wide shoulders straightened back, his tongue licked his lips, his
eyes stared before him, his throat was dry. He licked his lips again.
"Allah!" he cried and ran forward.
The soldiers thrust Yusef back. Mahommed Selim turned and whispered to
the sergeant.
"Backsheesh!" he said; "my grey Arab for a word with Yusef the ghaffir."
"Malaish!" said the sergeant; and the soldiers cleared a way for Yusef.
The palms of the men from Beni Souef met once, twice, thrice; they
touched their lips, their breasts, their foreheads, with their hands,
three times. Then Mahommed Selim fell upon the breast of Yusef and
embraced him. Doing so he whispered in his ear:
"In the name of Allah, tell Soada I died fighting the Dervishes!"
"So be it, in God's name!" said Yusef. "A safe journey to you, brother of
giants."
Next morning at sunrise, between two dom-palms, stood Mahommed Selim; but
scarce a handful of the soldiers sent to see him die laughed when the
rope was thrown over his head. For his story had gone abroad, and it was
said that he was mad--none but a madman would throw away his life for a
fellah woman. And was it not written that a madman was one beloved of
Allah, who had taken his spirit up into heaven, leaving only the
disordered body behind?
If, at the last moment, Mahommed Selim had but cried out: "I am mad; with
my eyes I have seen God!" no man would have touched the rope that hanged
him up that day.
But, according to the sacred custom, he only asked for a bowl of water,
drank it, said "Allah!" and bowed his head three times towards Mecca--and
bowed his head no more.
Before another quarter was added to the moon, Yusef, the drunken ghaffir,
at the door of Soada's hut in Beni Souef, told old Fatima the most
wonderful tale, how Mahommed Selim had died on his sheepskin, having
killed ten Dervishes with his own hand; and that a whole regiment had
attended his funeral.
This is to the credit of Yusef's account, that the last half of his
statement was no lie.
ON THE REEF OF NORMAN'S WOE
"It was the schooner Hesperus
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter
To bear him company.
-------------------
Such was the wreck of the Hesperus
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman's woe!"
Only it was not the schooner Hesperus, and she did not sail the wintry
sea. It was the stern-wheeled tub Amenhotep, which churned her way up and
down the Nile, scraping over sand banks, butting the shores with gaiety
embarrassing--for it was the time of cholera, just before the annual rise
of the Nile. Fielding Bey, the skipper, had not taken his little
daughter, for he had none; but he had taken little Dicky Donovan, who had
been in at least three departments of the Government, with advantage to
all.
Dicky was dining with Fielding at the Turf Club, when a telegram came
saying that cholera had appeared at a certain village on the Nile.
Fielding had dreaded this, had tried to make preparation for it, had
begged of the Government this reform and that--to no purpose. He knew
that the saving of the country from an epidemic lay with his handful of
Englishmen and the faithful native officials; but chiefly with the
Englishmen. He was prepared only as a forlorn hope is prepared, with
energy, with personal courage, with knowledge; and never were these more
needed.
With the telegram in his hand, he thought of his few English assistants,
and sighed; for the game they would play was the game of Hercules and
Death over the body of Alcestis.
Dicky noted the sigh, read the telegram, drank another glass of claret,
lighted a cigarette, drew his coffee to him, and said: "The Khedive is
away--I'm off duty; take me."
Fielding looked surprised, yet with an eye of hope. If there was one man
in Egypt who could do useful work in the business, it was little Dicky
Donovan, who had a way with natives such as no man ever had in Egypt; who
knew no fear of anything mortal; who was as tireless as a beaver, as
keen-minded as a lynx is sharp-eyed. It was said to Dicky's discredit
that he had no heart, but Fielding knew better. When Dicky offered
himself now, Fielding said, almost feverishly: "But, dear old D., you
don't see--"
"Don't I?--Well, then,
"'What are the blessings of the sight?--
Oh, tell your poor blind boy!'"
What Fielding told him did not alter his intention, nor was it Fielding's
wish that it should, though he felt it right to warn the little man what
sort of thing was in store for them.
"As if I don't know, old lime-burner!" answered Dicky coolly.
In an hour they were on the Amenhotep, and in two hours they were on the
way--a floating hospital--to the infected district of Kalamoun. There the
troubles began. It wasn't the heat, and it wasn't the work, and it wasn't
the everlasting care of the sick: it was the ceaseless hunt for the
disease-stricken, the still, tireless opposition of the natives, the
remorseless deception, the hopeless struggle against the covert odds.
With nothing behind: no support from the Government, no adequate
supplies, few capable men; and all the time the dead, inert,
dust-powdered air; the offices of policeman, doctor, apothecary, even
undertaker and gravedigger, to perform; and the endless weeks of it all.
A handful of good men under two leaders of nerve, conscience and ability,
to fight an invisible enemy, which, gaining headway, would destroy its
scores of thousands!
At the end of the first two months Fielding Bey became hopeless.
"We can't throttle it," he said to Dicky Donovan. "They don't give us the
ghost of a chance. To-day I found a dead-un hid in an oven under a heap
of flour to be used for to-morrow's baking; I found another doubled up in
a cupboard, and another under a pile of dourha which will be ground into
flour."
"With twenty ghaffirs I beat five cane and dourha fields this morning,"
said Dicky. "Found three cases. They'd been taken out of the village
during the night."
"Bad ones?"
"So so. They'll be worse before they're better. That was my morning's
flutter. This afternoon I found the huts these gentlemen call their
homes. I knocked holes in the roofs per usual, burnt everything that
wasn't wood, let in the light o' heaven, and splashed about limewash and
perchloride. That's my day's tot-up. Any particular trouble?" he added,
eyeing Fielding closely.
Fielding fretfully jerked his foot on the floor, and lighted his pipe,
the first that day.
"Heaps. I've put the barber in prison, and given the sarraf twenty lashes
for certifying that the death of the son of the Mamour was el aadah--the
ordinary. It was one of the worst cases I've ever seen. He fell ill at
ten and was dead at two, the permis d'inhumation was given at four, and
the usual thing occurred: the bodywashers got the bedding and clothing,
and the others the coverlet. God only knows who'll wear that clothing,
who'll sleep in that bed!"
"If the Lord would only send them sense, we'd supply sublimate
solution--douche and spray, and zinc for their little long boxes of
bones," mused Dicky, his eyes half shut, as he turned over in his hands
some scarabs a place-hunting official had brought him that day. "Well,
that isn't all?" he added, with a quick upward glance and a quizzical
smile. His eyes, however, as they fell on Fielding's, softened in a
peculiar way, and a troubled look flashed through them; for Fielding's
face was drawn and cold, though the eyes were feverish, and a bright spot
burned on his high cheek-bones.
"No, it isn't all, Dicky. The devil's in the whole business. Steady,
sullen opposition meets us at every hand. Norman's been here--rode over
from Abdallah--twenty-five miles. A report's going through the native
villages, started at Abdallah, that our sanitary agents are throwing
yellow handkerchiefs in the faces of those they're going to isolate."
"That's Hoskai Bey's yellow handkerchief. He's a good man, but he blows
his nose too much, and blows it with a flourish. . . . Has Norman gone
back?"
"No, I've made him lie down in my cabin. He says he can't sleep, says he
can only work. He looks ten years older. Abdallah's an awful place, and
it's a heavy district. The Mamour there's a scoundrel. He has influenced
the whole district against Norman and our men. Norman--you know what an
Alexander-Hannibal baby it is, all the head of him good for the best sort
of work anywhere, all the fat heart of him dripping sentiment--gave a
youngster a comfit the other day. By some infernal accident the child
fell ill two days afterwards--it had been sucking its father's old
shoe--and Norman just saved its life by the skin of his teeth. If the
child had died, there'd have been a riot probably. As it is, there's talk
that we're scattering poisoned sweetmeats to spread the disease. He's
done a plucky thing, though. . . ." He paused. Dicky looked up
inquiringly, and Fielding continued. "There's a fellow called Mustapha
Kali, a hanger-on of the Mudir of the province. He spread a report that
this business was only a scare got up by us; that we poisoned the people
and buried them alive. What does Norman do? He promptly arrests him,
takes him to the Mudir, and says that the brute must be punished or he'll
carry the matter to the Khedive."
"Here's to you, Mr. Norman!" said Dicky, with a little laugh. "What does
the Mudir do?"
"Doesn't know what to do. He tells Norman to say to me that if he puts
the fellow in prison there'll be a riot, for they'll make a martyr of
him. If he fines him it won't improve matters. So he asks me to name a
punishment which'll suit our case. He promises to give it 'his most
distinguished consideration.'"
"And what's your particular poison for him?" asked Dicky, with his eyes
on the Cholera Hospital a few hundred yards away.
"I don't know. If he's punished in the ordinary way it will only make
matters worse, as the Mudir says. Something's needed that will play our
game and turn the tables on the reptile too."
"A sort of bite himself with his own fangs, eh?" Dicky seemed only idly
watching the moving figures by the hospital.
"Yes, but what is it? I can't inoculate him with bacilli. That's what'd
do the work, I fancy."
"Pocket your fancy, Fielding," answered Dicky. "Let me have a throw."
"Go on. If you can't hit it off, it's no good, for my head doesn't think
these days: it only sees, and hears, and burns."
Dicky eyed Fielding keenly, and then, pouring out some whiskey for
himself, put the bottle on the floor beside him, casually as it were.
Then he said, with his girlish laugh, not quite so girlish these days:
"I've got his sentence pat--it'll meet the case, or you may say, 'Cassio,
never more be officer of mine.'"
He drew over a piece of paper lying on the piano--for there was a piano
on the Amenhotep, and with what seemed an audacious levity Fielding
played in those rare moments when they were not working or sleeping; and
Fielding could really play! As Dicky wrote he read aloud in a kind of
legal monotone:
The citizen Mustapha Kali having asserted that there is no cholera,
and circulated various false statements concerning the treatment of
patients, is hereby appointed as hospital-assistant for three
months, in the Cholera Hospital of Kalamoun, that he may have
opportunity of correcting his opinions.
--Signed Ebn ben Hari, Mudir of Abdallah.
Fielding lay back and laughed--the first laugh on his lips for a
fortnight. He laughed till his dry, fevered lips took on a natural
moisture, and he said at last: "You've pulled it off, D. That's masterly.
You and Norman have the only brains in this show. I get worse every day;
I do--upon my soul!"
There was a curious anxious look in Dicky's eyes, but he only said: "You
like it? Think it fills the bill, eh?"
"If the Mudir doesn't pass the sentence I'll shut up shop." He leaned
over anxiously to Dicky and gripped his arm. "I tell you this pressure of
opposition has got to be removed, or we'll never get this beast of an
epidemic under, but we'll go under instead, my boy."
"Oh, we're doing all right," Dicky answered, with only apparent
carelessness. "We've got inspection of the trains, we've got some sort of
command of the foreshores, we've got the water changed in the mosques,
we've closed the fountains, we've stopped the markets, we've put
Sublimate Pasha and Limewash Effendi on the war-path, and--"
"And the natives believe in lighted tar-barrels and a cordon sanitaire!
No, D., things must take a turn, or the game's lost and we'll go with it.
Success is the only thing that'll save their lives--and ours: we couldn't
stand failure in this. A man can walk to the gates of hell to do the
hardest trick, and he'll come back one great blister and live, if he's
done the thing he set out for; but if he doesn't do it, he falls into the
furnace. He never comes back. Dicky, things must be pulled our way, or we
go to deep damnation."
Dicky turned a little pale, for there was high nervous excitement in
Fielding's words; and for a moment he found it hard to speak. He was
about to say something, however, when Fielding continued.
"Norman there,"--he pointed to the deck-cabin, "Norman's the same. He
says it's do or die; and he looks it. It isn't like a few fellows
besieged by a host. For in that case you wait to die, and you fight to
the last, and you only have your own lives. But this is different. We're
fighting to save these people from themselves; and this slow, quiet,
deadly work, day in, day out, in the sickening sun and smell-faugh! the
awful smell in the air--it kills in the end, if you don't pull your game
off. You know it's true."
His eyes had an eager, almost prayerful look; he was like a child in his
simple earnestness. His fingers moved over the maps on the table, in
which were little red and white and yellow flags, the white flags to mark
the towns and villages where they had mastered the disease, the red flags
to mark the new ones attacked, the yellow to indicate those where the
disease was raging. His fingers touched one of the flags, and he looked
down.
"See, D. Here are two new places attacked to-day.
"I must ride over to Abdallah when Norman goes. It's all so hopeless!"
"Things will take a turn," rejoined Dicky, with a forced gaiety. "You
needn't ride over to Abdallah. I'll go with Norman, and what's more I'll
come back here with Mustapha Kali."
"You'll go to the Mudir?" asked Fielding eagerly. He seemed to set so
much store by this particular business.
"I'll bring the Mudir too, if there's any trouble," said Dicky grimly;
though it is possible he did not mean what he said.
Two hours later Fielding, Dicky, and Norman were in conference, extending
their plans of campaign. Fielding and Norman were eager and nervous, and
their hands and faces seemed to have taken on the arid nature of the
desert. Before they sat down Dicky had put the bottle of whiskey out of
easy reach; for Fielding, under ordinary circumstances the most
abstemious of men, had lately, in his great fatigue and overstrain,
unconsciously emptied his glass more often than was wise for a campaign
of long endurance. Dicky noticed now, as they sat round the table, that
Norman's hand went to the coffee-pot as Fielding's had gone to his glass.
What struck him as odd also was that Fielding seemed to have caught
something of Norman's manner. There was the same fever in the eyes,
though Norman's face was more worn and the eyes more sunken. He looked
like a man that was haunted. There was, too, a certain air of
helplessness about him, a primitive intensity almost painful. Dicky saw
Fielding respond to this in a curious way--it was the kind of fever that
passes quickly from brain to brain when there is not sound bodily health
commanded by a cool intelligence to insulate it. Fielding had done the
work of four men for over two months, and, like most large men, his
nerves had given in before Dicky's, who had done six men's work at least,
and, by his power of organisation and his labour-saving intelligence,
conserved the work of another fifty.