The Weavers, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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When Luke Claridge first read this letter years before, he had put it
from him sternly. Now he heard it with a soft emotion. He took the letter
from Faith at last and put it in his pocket. With no apparent relevancy,
and laying his hand on Faith's shoulder, he said:
"We have done according to our conscience by Davy--God is our witness,
so!"
She leaned her cheek against his hand, but did not speak.
In Soolsby's hut upon the hill David sat talking to the old chair-maker.
Since his return he had visited the place several times, only to find
Soolsby absent. The old man, on awaking from his drunken sleep, had been
visited by a terrible remorse, and, whenever he had seen David coming,
had fled into the woods. This evening, however, David came in the dark,
and Soolsby was caught.
When David entered first, the old man broke down. He could not speak, but
leaned upon the back of a chair, and though his lips moved, no sound came
forth. But David took him by the shoulders and set him down, and laughed
gently in his face, and at last Soolsby got voice and said:
"Egyptian! O Egyptian!"
Then his tongue was loosened and his eye glistened, and he poured out
question after question, many pertinent, some whimsical, all frankly
answered by David. But suddenly he stopped short, and his eyes sank
before the other, who had laid a hand upon his knee.
"But don't, Egyptian, don't! Don't have aught to do with me. I'm only a
drunken swine. I kept sober four years, as she knows--as the Angel down
yonder in the Red Mansion knows; but the day you came, going out to meet
you, I got drunk--blind drunk. I had only been pretending all the time. I
was being coaxed along--made believe I was a real man, I suppose. But I
wasn't. I was a pillar of sand. When pressure came I just broke
down--broke down, Egyptian. Don't be surprised if you hear me grunt. It's
my natural speech. I'm a hog, a drink-swilling hog. I wasn't decent
enough to stay sober till you had said 'Good day,' and 'How goes it,
Soolsby?' I tried it on; it was no good. I began to live like a man, but
I've slipped back into the ditch. You didn't know that, did you?"
David let him have his say, and then in a low voice said: "Yes, I knew
thee had been drinking, Soolsby." He started. "She told you--Kate
Heaver--"
"She did not tell me. I came and found you here with her. You were
asleep."
"A drunken sweep!" He spat upon the ground in disgust at himself.
"I ought never have comeback here," he added. "It was no place for me.
But it drew me. I didn't belong; but it drew me."
"Thee belongs to Hamley. Thee is an honour to Hamley, Soolsby."
Soolsby's eyes widened; the blurred look of rage and self-reproach in
them began to fade away.
"Thee has made a fight, Soolsby, to conquer a thing that has had thee by
the throat. There's no fighting like it. It means a watching every hour,
every minute--thee can never take the eye off it. Some days it's easy,
some days it's hard, but it's never so easy that you can say, 'There is
no need to watch.' In sleep it whispers and wakes you; in the morning,
when there are no shadows, it casts a shadow on the path. It comes
between you and your work; you see it looking out of the eyes of a
friend. And one day, when you think it has been conquered, that you have
worn it down into oblivion and the dust, and you close your eyes and say,
'I am master,' up it springs with fury from nowhere you can see, and
catches you by the throat; and the fight begins again. But you sit
stronger, and the fight becomes shorter; and after many battles, and you
have learned never to be off guard, to know by instinct where every
ambush is, then at last the victory is yours. It is hard, it is bitter,
and sometimes it seems hardly worth the struggle. But it is--it is worth
the struggle, dear old man."
Soolsby dropped on his knees and caught David by the arms. "How did you
know-how did you know?" he asked hoarsely. "It's been just as you say.
You've watched some one fighting?"
"I have watched some one fighting--fighting," answered David clearly, but
his eyes were moist.
"With drink, the same as me?"
"No, with opium--laudanum."
"Oh, I've heard that's worse, that it makes you mad, the wanting it."
"I have seen it so."
"Did the man break down like me?"
"Only once, but the fight is not yet over with him."
"Was he--an Englishman?"
David inclined his head. "It's a great thing to have a temptation to
fight, Soolsby. Then we can understand others."
"It's not always true, Egyptian, for you have never had temptation to
fight. Yet you know it all."
"God has been good to me," David answered, putting a hand on the old
man's shoulder. "And thee is a credit to Hamley, friend. Thee will never
fall again."
"You know that--you say that to me! Then, by Mary the mother of God, I
never will be a swine again," he said, getting to his feet.
"Well, good-bye, Soolsby. I go to-morrow," David said presently.
Soolsby frowned; his lips worked. "When will you come back?" he asked
eagerly.
David smiled. "There is so much to do, they may not let me come--not
soon. I am going into the desert again."
Soolsby was shaking. He spoke huskily. "Here is your place," he said.
"You shall come back--Oh, but you shall come back, here, where you
belong."
David shook his head and smiled, and clasped the strong hand again. A
moment later he was gone. From the door of the but Soolsby muttered to
himself:
"I will bring you back. If Luke Claridge doesn't, then I will bring you
back. If he dies, I will bring you--no, by the love of God, I will bring
you back while he lives!"
...........................
Two thousand miles away, in a Nile village, women sat wailing in dark
doorways, dust on their heads, black mantles covering their faces. By the
pond where all the people drank, performed their ablutions, bathed their
bodies and rinsed their mouths, sat the sheikh-el-beled, the village
chief, taking counsel in sorrow with the barber, the holy man, and
others. Now speaking, now rocking their bodies to and fro, in the evening
sunlight, they sat and watched the Nile in flood covering the wide wastes
of the Fayoum, spreading over the land rich deposits of earth from the
mountains of Abyssinia. When that flood subsided there would be fields to
be planted with dourha and onions and sugar-cane; but they whose strong
arms should plough and sow and wield the sickle, the youth, the
upstanding ones, had been carried off in chains to serve in the army of
Egypt, destined for the far Soudan, for hardship, misery, and death,
never to see their kindred any more. Twice during three months had the
dread servant of the Palace come and driven off their best like sheep to
the slaughter. The brave, the stalwart, the bread-winners, were gone; and
yet the tax-gatherer would come and press for every impost--on the
onion-field, the date-palm, the dourha-field, and the clump of
sugar-cane, as though the young men, the toilers, were still there. The
old and infirm, the children, the women, must now double and treble their
labour. The old men must go to the corvee, and mend the banks of the Nile
for the Prince and his pashas, providing their own food, their own tools,
their own housing, if housing there would be--if it was more than
sleeping under a bush by the riverside, or crawling into a hole in the
ground, their yeleks their clothes by day, their only covering at night.
They sat like men without hope, yet with the proud, bitter mien of those
who had known good and had lost it, had seen content and now were
desolate.
Presently one--a lad--the youngest of them, lifted up his voice and began
to chant a recitative, while another took a small drum and beat it in
unison. He was but just recovered from an illness, or he had gone also in
chains to die for he knew not what, leaving behind without hope all that
he loved:
"How has the cloud fallen, and the leaf withered on the tree,
The lemon-tree, that standeth by the door.
The melon and the date have gone bitter to the taste,
The weevil, it has eaten at the core
The core of my heart, the mildew findeth it.
My music, it is but the drip of tears,
The garner empty standeth, the oven hath no fire,
Night filleth me with fears.
O Nile that floweth deeply, hast thou not heard his voice?
His footsteps hast thou covered with thy flood?
He was as one who lifteth up the yoke,
He was as one who taketh off the chain,
As one who sheltereth from the rain,
As one who scattereth bread to the pigeons flying.
His purse was at his side, his mantle was for me,
For any who passeth were his mantle and his purse,
And now like a gourd is he withered from our eyes.
His friendship, it was like a shady wood
Whither has he gone?--Who shall speak for us?
Who shall save us from the kourbash and the stripes?
Who shall proclaim us in the palace?
Who shall contend for us in the gate?
The sakkia turneth no more; the oxen they are gone;
The young go forth in chains, the old waken in the night,
They waken and weep, for the wheel turns backward,
And the dark days are come again upon us--
Will he return no more?
His friendship was like a shady wood,
O Nile that floweth deeply, hast thou not heard his voice?
Hast thou covered up his footsteps with thy flood?
The core of my heart, the mildew findeth it!"
Another-an old man-took up the strain, as the drum kept time to the beat
of the voice with its undulating call and refrain:
"When his footsteps were among us there was peace; War entered not the
village, nor the call of war. Now our homes are as those that have no
roofs. As a nest decayed, as a cave forsaken, As a ship that lieth broken
on the beach, Is the house where we were born. Out in the desert did we
bury our gold, We buried it where no man robbed us, for his arm was
strong. Now are the jars empty, gold did not avail To save our young men,
to keep them from the chains. God hath swallowed his voice, or the sea
hath drowned it, Or the Nile hath covered him with its flood; Else would
he come when our voices call. His word was honey in the prince's ear Will
he return no more?"
And now the sheikh-el-beled spoke. "It hath been so since Nahoum Pasha
passed this way four months agone. He hath changed all. War will not
avail. David Pasha, he will come again. His word is as the centre of the
world. Ye have no hope, because ye see the hawks among the starving
sheep. But the shepherd will return from behind the hill, and the hawks
will flee away.
". . . Behold, once was I in the desert. Listen, for mine are the words
of one who hath travelled far--was I not at Damascus and Palmyra and
Bagdad, and at Medina by the tomb of Mahomet?"
Reverently he touched the green turban on his head, evidence of his
journey to Mahomet's tomb. "Once in the desert I saw afar off an oasis of
wood and water, and flying things, and houses where a man might rest. And
I got me down from my camel, and knelt upon my sheepskin, and gave thanks
in the name of Allah. Thereupon I mounted again and rode on towards that
goodly place. But as I rode it vanished from my sight. Then did I mourn.
Yet once again I saw the trees, and flocks of pigeons and waving fields,
and I was hungry and thirsty, and longed exceedingly. Yet got I down,
and, upon my sheep-skin, once more gave thanks to Allah. And I mounted
thereafter in haste and rode on; but once again was I mocked. Then I
cried aloud in my despair. It was in my heart to die upon the sheep-skin
where I had prayed; for I was burned up within, and there seemed naught
to do but say malaish, and go hence. But that goodly sight came again. My
heart rebelled that I should be so mocked. I bent down my head upon my
camel that I might not see, yet once more I loosed the sheep-skin.
Lifting up my heart, I looked again, and again I took hope and rode on.
Farther and farther I rode, and lo! I was no longer mocked; for I came to
a goodly place of water and trees, and was saved. So shall it be with us.
We have looked for his coming again, and our hearts have fallen and been
as ashes, for that he has not come. Yet there be mirages, and one day
soon David Pasha will come hither, and our pains shall be eased."
"Aiwa, aiwa--yes, yes," cried the lad who had sung to them.
"Aiwa, aiwa," rang softly over the pond, where naked children stooped to
drink.
The smell of the cooking-pots floated out from the mud-houses near by.
"Malaish," said one after another, "I am hungry. He will come
again-perhaps to-morrow." So they moved towards the houses over the way.
One cursed his woman for wailing in the doorway; one snatched the lid
from a cooking-pot; one drew from an oven cakes of dourha, and gave them
to those who had none; one knelt and bowed his forehead to the ground in
prayer; one shouted the name of him whose coming they desired.
So was David missed in Egypt.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE TENTS OF CUSHAN
"I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction, and the curtains
of the Land of Midian did tremble."
A Hurdy-Gurdy was standing at the corner, playing with shrill insistence
a medley of Scottish airs. Now "Loch Lomond" pleaded for pennies from the
upper windows:
"For you'll tak' the high road,
and I'll tak' the low road,
And I'll be in Scotland before ye:
But I and my true love will never meet again,
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond!"
The hurdy-gurdy was strident and insistent, but for a long time no
response came. At last, however, as the strains of "Loch Lomond" ceased,
a lady appeared on the balcony of a drawing-room, and, leaning over a
little forest of flowers and plants, threw a half-crown to the sorry
street-musician. She watched the grotesque thing trundle away, then
entering the house again, took a 'cello from the corner of the room and
tuned the instrument tenderly. It was Hylda.
Something of the peace of Hamley had followed her to London, but the
poignant pain of it had come also. Like Melisande, she had looked into
the quiet pool of life and had seen her own face, its story and its
foreshadowings. Since then she had been "apart." She had watched life
move on rather than shared in its movement. Things stood still for her.
That apathy of soul was upon her which follows the inward struggle that
exhausts the throb and fret of inward emotions, leaving the mind
dominant, the will in abeyance.
She had become conscious that her fate and future were suspended over a
chasm, as, on the trapeze of a balloon, an adventurous aeronaut hangs
uncertain over the hungry sea, waiting for the coming wind which will
either blow the hazardous vessel to its doom or to safe refuge on the
land.
She had not seen David after he left Hamley. Their last words had been
spoken at the Meeting-house, when he gave Faith to her care. That scene
came back to her now, and a flush crept slowly over her face and faded
away again. She was recalling, too, the afternoon of that day when she
and David had parted in the drawing-room of the Cloistered House, and
Eglington had asked her to sing. She thought of the hours with Eglington
that followed, first at the piano and afterwards in the laboratory, where
in his long blue smock he made experiments. Had she not been conscious of
something enigmatical in his gaiety that afternoon, in his cheerful yet
cheerless words, she would have been deeply impressed by his appreciation
of her playing, and his keen reflections on the merits of the composers;
by his still keener attention to his subsequent experiments, and his
amusing comments upon them. But, somehow, that very cheerless
cheerfulness seemed to proclaim him superficial. Though she had no
knowledge of science, she instinctively doubted his earnestness even in
this work, which certainly was not pursued for effect. She had put the
feeling from her, but it kept returning. She felt that in nothing did he
touch the depths. Nothing could possess him wholly; nothing inherent
could make him self-effacing.
Yet she wondered, too, if she was right, when she saw his fox-terrier
watching him, ever watching him with his big brown eyes as he buoyantly
worked, and saw him stoop to pat its head. Or was this, after all, mere
animalism, mere superficial vitality, love of health and being? She
shuddered, and shut her eyes, for it came home to her that to him she was
just such a being of health, vitality and comeliness, on a little higher
plane. She put the thought from her, but it had had its birth, and it
would not down. He had immense vitality, he was tireless, and abundant in
work and industry; he went from one thing to another with ease and
swiftly changing eagerness. Was it all mere force--mere man and mind? Was
there no soul behind it? There in the laboratory she had laid her hand on
the terrier, and prayed in her heart that she might understand him for
her own good, her own happiness, and his. Above all else she wanted to
love him truly, and to be loved truly, and duty was to her a daily
sacrifice, a constant memorial. She realised to the full that there lay
before her a long race unilluminated by the sacred lamp which, lighted at
the altar, should still be burning beside the grave.
Now, as she thought of him, she kept saying to herself: "We should have
worked out his life together. Work together would have brought peace. He
shuts me out--he shuts me out."
At last she drew the bow across the instrument, once, twice, and then she
began to play, forgetful of the world. She had a contralto voice, and she
sang with a depth of feeling and a delicate form worthy of a
professional; on the piano she was effective and charming, but into the
'cello she poured her soul.
For quite an hour she played with scarce an interruption. At last, with a
sigh, she laid the instrument against her knee and gazed out of the
window. As she sat lost in her dream--a dream of the desert--a servant
entered with letters. One caught her eye. It was from Egypt--from her
cousin Lacey. Her heart throbbed violently, yet she opened the
official-looking envelope with steady fingers. She would not admit even
to her self that news from the desert could move her so. She began to
read slowly, but presently, with a little cry, she hastened through the
pages. It ran:
THE SOUDAN.
DEAR LADY COUSIN,
I'm still not certain how I ought to style you, but I thought I'd
compromise as per above. Anyway, it's a sure thing that I haven't
bothered you much with country-cousin letters. I figure, however,
that you've put some money in Egypt, so to speak, and what happens
to this sandy-eyed foundling of the Nile you would like to know. So
I've studied the only "complete letter-writer" I could find between
the tropic of Capricorn and Khartoum, and this is the contemptible
result, as the dagos in Mexico say. This is a hot place by reason
of the sun that shines above us, and likewise it is hot because of
the niggers that swarm around us. I figure, if we get out of this
portion of the African continent inside our skins, that we will have
put up a pretty good bluff, and pulled off a ticklish proposition.
It's a sort of early Christian business. You see, David the Saadat
is great on moral suasion--he's a master of it; and he's never
failed yet--not altogether; though there have been minutes by a
stop-watch when I've thought it wouldn't stand the strain. Like the
Mississippi steamboat which was so weak that when the whistle blew
the engines stopped! When those frozen minutes have come to us,
I've tried to remember the correct religious etiquette, but I've not
had much practise since I stayed with Aunt Melissa, and lived on
skim-milk and early piety. When things were looking as bad as they
did for Dives, "Now I lay me down to sleep," and "For what we are
about to receive," was all that I could think of. But the Saadat,
he's a wonder from Wondertown. With a little stick, or maybe his
flute under his arm, he'll smile and string these heathen along,
when you'd think they weren't waiting for anybody. A spear took off
his fez yesterday. He never blinked--he's a jim-dandy at keeping
cool; and when a hundred mounted heathens made a rush down on him
the other day, spears sticking out like quills on a porcupine--2.5
on the shell-road the chargers were going--did he stir? Say, he
watched 'em as if they were playing for his benefit. And sure
enough, he was right. They parted either side of him when they were
ten feet away, and there he was quite safe, a blessing in the storm,
a little rock island in the rapids--but I couldn't remember a proper
hymn of praise to say.
There's no getting away from the fact that he's got a will or
something, a sort of force different from most of us, or perhaps any
of us. These heathen feel it, and keep their hands off him. They
say he's mad, but they've got great respect for mad people, for they
think that God has got their souls above with Him, and that what's
left behind on earth is sacred. He talks to'em, too, like a father
in Israel; tells 'em they must stop buying and selling slaves, and
that if they don't he will have to punish them! And I sit holding
my sides, for we're only two white men and forty "friendlies"
altogether, and two revolvers among us; and I've got the two! And
they listen to his blarneying, and say, "Aiwa, Saadat! aiwa,
Saadat!" as if he had an army of fifty thousand behind him.
Sometimes I've sort of hinted that his canoe was carrying a lot of
sail; but my! he believes in it all as if there wasn't a spear or a
battle-axe or a rifle within a hundred miles of him. We've been at
this for two months now, and a lot of ground we covered till we got
here. I've ridden the gentle camel at the rate of sixty and seventy
miles a day--sort of sweeping through the land, making treaties,
giving presents, freeing slaves, appointing governors and sheikhs-
el-beled, doing it as if we owned the continent. He mesmerised 'em,
simply mesmerised 'em-till we got here. I don't know what happened
then. Now we're distinctly rating low, the laugh is on us somehow.
But he--mind it? He goes about talking to the sheikhs as though we
were all eating off the same corn-cob, and it seems to stupefy them;
they don't grasp it. He goes on arranging for a post here and a
station there, and it never occurs to him that it ain't really
actual. He doesn't tell me, and I don't ask him, for I came along
to wipe his stirrups, so to speak. I put my money on him, and I'm
not going to worry him. He's so dead certain in what he does, and
what he is, that I don't lose any sleep guessing about him. It will
be funny if we do win out on this proposition--funnier than
anything.
Now, there's one curious thing about it all which ought to be
whispered, for I'm only guessing, and I'm not a good guesser; I
guessed too much in Mexico about three railways and two silvermines.
The first two days after we came here, everything was all right.
Then there came an Egyptian, Halim Bey, with a handful of niggers
from Cairo, and letters for Claridge Pasha.
From that minute there was trouble. I figure it out this way: Halim
was sent by Nahoum Pasha to bring letters that said one thing to the
Saadat, and, when quite convenient, to say other things to Mustafa,
the boss-sheikh of this settlement. Halim Bey has gone again, but
he has left his tale behind him. I'd stake all I lost, and more
than I ever expect to get out of Mexico on that, and maybe I'll get
a hatful out of Mexico yet. I had some good mining propositions
down there. The Saadat believes in Nahoum, and has made Nahoum what
he is; and on the surface Nahoum pretends to help him; but he is
running underground all the time. I'd like to help give him a villa
at Fazougli. When the Saadat was in England there was a bad time in
Egypt. I was in Cairo; I know. It was the same bad old game--the
corvee, the kourbash, conscription, a war manufactured to fill the
pockets of a few, while the poor starved and died. It didn't come
off, because the Saadat wasn't gone long enough, and he stopped it
when he came back. But Nahoumhe laid the blame on others, and the
Saadat took his word for it, and, instead of a war, there came this
expedition of his own.
Ten days later.--Things have happened. First, there's been awful
sickness among the natives, and the Saadat has had his chance. His
medicine-chest was loaded, he had a special camel for it--and he has
fired it off. Night and day he has worked, never resting, never
sleeping, curing most, burying a few. He looks like a ghost now,
but it's no use saying or doing anything. He says: "Sink your own
will; let it be subject to a higher, and you need take no thought."
It's eating away his life and strength, but it has given us our
return tickets, I guess. They hang about him as if he was Moses in
the wilderness smiting the rock. It's his luck. Just when I get
scared to death, and run down and want a tonic, and it looks as if
there'd be no need to put out next week's washing, then his luck
steps in, and we get another run. But it takes a heap out of a man,
getting scared. Whenever I look on a lot of green trees and cattle
and horses, and the sun, to say nothing of women and children, and
listen to music, or feel a horse eating up the ground under me, 2.10
in the sand, I hate to think of leaving it, and I try to prevent it.
Besides, I don't like the proposition of going, I don't know where.
That's why I get seared. But he says that it's no more than turning
down the light and turning it up again. They used to call me a
dreamer in Mexico, because I kept seeing things that no one else had
thought of, and laid out railways and tapped mines for the future;
but I was nothing to him. I'm a high-and-dry hedge-clipper
alongside. I'm betting on him all the time; but no one seems to be
working to make his dreams come true, except himself. I don't
count; I'm no good, no real good. I'm only fit to run the
commissariat, and see that he gets enough to eat, and has a safe
camel, and so on.