The Weavers, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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"Yes, you'd do what you could, pasha," Lacey rejoined enigmatically, "but
whether it would set the Saadat on his expedition or not is a question.
But I guess, after all, he's got to go. He willed it so. People may try
to stop him, and they may tear down what he does, but he does at last
what he starts to do, and no one can prevent him--not any one. Yes, he's
going on this expedition; and he'll have the money, too." There was a
strange, abstracted look in his face, as though he saw something which
held him fascinated.
Presently, as if with an effort, he rose to his feet, took the red fez
from his head, and fanned himself with it for a moment. "Don't you forget
it, pasha; the Saadat will win. He can't be beaten, not in a thousand
years. Here he comes."
Nahoum got to his feet, as David came quickly through the small gateway
of the court-yard, his head erect, his lips smiling, his eyes sweeping
the place. He came forward briskly to them. It was plain he had not heard
the evil news.
"Peace be to thee, Saadat, and may thy life be fenced about with safety!"
said Nahoum.
David laid a hand on Lacey's arm and squeezed it, smiling at him with
such friendship that Lacey's eyes moistened, and he turned his head away.
There was a quiet elation in David's look. "We are ready at last," he
said, looking from one to the other. "Well, well," he added, almost
boyishly, "has thee nothing to say, Nahoum?"
Nahoum turned his head away as though overcome. David's face grew
instantly grave. He turned to Lacey. Never before had he seen Lacey's
face with a look like this. He grasped Lacey's arm. "What is it?" he
asked quietly. "What does thee want to say to me?"
But Lacey could not speak, and David turned again to Nahoum. "What is
there to say to me?" he asked. "Something has happened--what is it? . . .
Come, many things have happened before. This can be no worse. Do thee
speak," he urged gently.
"Saadat," said Nahoum, as though under the stress of feeling, "the
cotton-mills at Tashah and Mini are gone--burned to the ground."
For a moment David looked at him without sight in his eyes, and his face
grew very pale. "Excellency, all in one night, the besom of destruction
was abroad," he heard Nahoum say, as though from great depths below him.
He slowly turned his head to look at Lacey. "Is this true?" he asked at
last in an unsteady voice. Lacey could not speak, but inclined his head.
David's figure seemed to shrink for a moment, his face had a withered
look, and his head fell forward in a mood of terrible dejection.
"Saadat! Oh, my God, Saadat, don't take it so!" said Lacey brokenly, and
stepped between David and Nahoum. He could not bear that the stricken
face and figure should be seen by Nahoum, whom he believed to be secretly
gloating. "Saadat," he said brokenly, "God has always been with you; He
hasn't forgotten you now.
"The work of years," David murmured, and seemed not to hear.
"When God permits, shall man despair?" interposed Nahoum, in a voice that
lingered on the words. Nahoum accomplished what Lacey had failed to do.
His voice had pierced to some remote corner in David's nature, and roused
him. Was it that doubt, suspicion, had been wakened at last? Was some
sensitive nerve touched, that this Oriental should offer Christian
comfort to him in his need--to him who had seen the greater light? Or was
it that some unreality in the words struck a note which excited a new and
subconscious understanding? Perhaps it was a little of all three. He did
not stop to inquire. In crises such as that through which he was passing,
the mind and body act without reason, rather by the primal instinct, the
certain call of the things that were before reason was.
"God is with the patient," continued Nahoum; and Lacey set his teeth to
bear this insult to all things. But Nahoum accomplished what he had not
anticipated. David straightened himself up, and clasped his hands behind
him. By a supreme effort of the will he controlled himself, and the
colour came back faintly to his face. "God's will be done," he said, and
looked Nahoum calmly in the eyes. "It was no accident," he added with
conviction. "It was an enemy of Egypt." Suddenly the thing rushed over
him again, going through his veins like a poisonous ether, and clamping
his heart as with iron. "All to do over again!" he said brokenly, and
again he caught Lacey's arm.
With an uncontrollable impulse Lacey took David's hand in his own warm,
human grasp.
"Once I thought I lost everything in Mexico, Saadat, and I understand
what you feel. But all wasn't lost in Mexico, as I found at last, and I
got something, too, that I didn't put in. Say, let us go from here. God
is backing you, Saadat. Isn't it all right--same as ever?"
David was himself again. "Thee is a good man," he said, and through the
sadness of his eyes there stole a smile. "Let us go," he said. Then he
added in a businesslike way: "To-morrow at seven, Nahoum. There is much
to do."
He turned towards the gate with Lacey, where the horses waited. Mahommed
Hassan met them as they prepared to mount. He handed David a letter. It
was from Faith, and contained the news of Luke Claridge's death.
Everything had come at once. He stumbled into the saddle with a moan.
"At last I have drawn blood," said Nahoum to himself with grim
satisfaction, as they disappeared. "It is the beginning of the end. It
will crush him-I saw it in his eyes. God of Israel, I shall rule again in
Egypt!"
CHAPTER XXIX
THE RECOIL
It was a great day in the Muslim year. The Mahmal, or Sacred Carpet, was
leaving Cairo on its long pilgrimage of thirty-seven days to Mecca and
Mahomet's tomb. Great guns boomed from the Citadel, as the gorgeous
procession, forming itself beneath the Mokattam Hills, began its slow
march to where, seated in the shade of an ornate pavilion, Prince Kaid
awaited its approach to pay devout homage. Thousands looked down at the
scene from the ramparts of the Citadel, from the overhanging cliffs, and
from the tops of the houses that hung on the ledges of rock rising
abruptly from the level ground, to which the last of the famed Mamelukes
leaped to their destruction.
Now to Prince Kaid's ears there came from hundreds of hoarse throats the
cry: "Allah! Allah! May thy journey be with safety to Arafat!" mingling
with the harsh music of the fifes and drums.
Kaid looked upon the scene with drawn face and lowering brows. His
retinue watched him with alarm. A whisper had passed that, two nights
before, the Effendina had sent in haste for a famous Italian physician
lately come to Cairo, and that since his visit Kaid had been sullen and
depressed. It was also the gossip of the bazaars that he had suddenly
shown favour to those of the Royal House and to other reactionaries, who
had been enemies to the influence of Claridge Pasha.
This rumour had been followed by an official proclamation that no
Europeans or Christians would be admitted to the ceremony of the Sacred
Carpet.
Thus it was that Kaid looked out on a vast multitude of Muslims, in which
not one European face showed, and from lip to lip there passed the word,
"Harrik--Harrik--remember Harrik! Kaid turns from the infidel!"
They crowded near the great pavilion--as near as the mounted Nubians
would permit--to see Kaid's face; while he, with eyes wandering over the
vast assemblage, was lost in dark reflections. For a year he had
struggled against a growing conviction that some obscure disease was
sapping his strength. He had hid it from every one, until, at last,
distress and pain had overcome him. The verdict of the Italian expert was
that possible, but by no means certain, cure might come from an operation
which must be delayed for a month or more.
Suddenly, the world had grown unfamiliar to him; he saw it from afar; but
his subconscious self involuntarily registered impressions, and he moved
mechanically through the ceremonies and duties of the immediate present.
Thrown back upon himself, to fight his own fight, with the instinct of
primary life his mind involuntarily drew for refuge to the habits and
predispositions of youth; and for two days he had shut himself away from
the activities with which David and Nahoum were associated. Being deeply
engaged with the details of the expedition to the Soudan, David had not
gone to the Palace; and he was unaware of the turn which things had
taken.
Three times, with slow and stately steps, the procession wound in a
circle in the great square, before it approached the pavilion where the
Effendina sat, the splendid camels carrying the embroidered tent wherein
the Carpet rested, and that which bore the Emir of the pilgrims, moving
gracefully like ships at sea. Naked swordsmen, with upright and shining
blades, were followed by men on camels bearing kettle-drums. After them
came Arab riders with fresh green branches fastened to the saddles like
plumes, while others carried flags and banners emblazoned with texts and
symbols. Troops of horsemen in white woollen cloaks, sheikhs and Bedouins
with flowing robes and huge turbans, religious chiefs of the great sects,
imperturbable and statuesque, were in strange contrast to the shouting
dervishes and camel-drivers and eager pilgrims.
At last the great camel with its sacred burden stopped in front of Kaid
for his prayer and blessing. As he held the tassels, lifted the
gold-fringed curtain, and invoked Allah's blessing, a half-naked sheikh
ran forward, and, raising his hand high above his head, cried shrilly:
"Kaid, Kaid, hearken!"
Rough hands caught him away, but Kaid commanded them to desist; and the
man called a blessing on him; and cried aloud:
"Listen, O Kaid, son of the stars and the light of day. God hath exalted
thee. Thou art the Egyptian of all the Egyptians. In thy hand is power.
But thou art mortal even as I. Behold, O Kaid, in the hour that I was
born thou wast born, I in the dust without thy Palace wall, thou amid the
splendid things. But thy star is my star. Behold, as God ordains, the
Tree of Life was shaken on the night when all men pray and cry aloud to
God--even the Night of the Falling Leaves. And I watched the falling
leaves; and I saw my leaf, and it was withered, but only a little
withered, and so I live yet a little. But I looked for thy leaf, thou who
wert born in that moment when I waked to the world. I looked long, but I
found no leaf, neither green nor withered. But I looked again upon my
leaf, and then I saw that thy name now was also upon my leaf, and that it
was neither green nor withered; but was a leaf that drooped as when an
evil wind has passed and drunk its life. Listen, O Kaid! Upon the tomb of
Mahomet I will set my lips, and it may be that the leaf of my life will
come fresh and green again. But thou--wilt thou not come also to the lord
Mahomet's tomb? Or"--he paused and raised his voice--"or wilt thou stay
and lay thy lips upon the cross of the infidel? Wilt thou--"
He could say no more, for Kaid's face now darkened with anger. He made a
gesture, and, in an instant, the man was gagged and bound, while a sullen
silence fell upon the crowd. Kaid suddenly became aware of this change of
feeling, and looked round him. Presently his old prudence and subtlety
came back, his face cleared a little, and he called aloud, "Unloose the
man, and let him come to me." An instant after, the man was on his knees,
silent before him.
"What is thy name?" Kaid asked.
"Kaid Ibrahim, Effendina," was the reply.
"Thou hast misinterpreted thy dream, Kaid Ibrahim," answered the
Effendina. "The drooping leaf was token of the danger in which thy life
should be, and my name upon thy leaf was token that I should save thee
from death. Behold, I save thee. Inshallah, go in peace! There is no God
but God, and the Cross is the sign of a false prophet. Thou art mad. God
give thee a new mind. Go."
The man was presently lost in the sweltering, half-frenzied crowd; but he
had done his work, and his words rang in the ears of Kaid as he rode
away.
A few hours afterwards, bitter and rebellious, murmuring to himself, Kaid
sat in a darkened room of his Nile Palace beyond the city. So few years
on the throne, so young, so much on which to lay the hand of pleasure, so
many millions to command; and yet the slave at his door had a surer hold
on life and all its joys and lures than he, Prince Kaid, ruler of Egypt!
There was on him that barbaric despair which has taken dreadful toll of
life for the decree of destiny. Across the record of this day, as across
the history of many an Eastern and pagan tyrant, was written: "He would
not die alone." That the world should go on when he was gone, that men
should buy and sell and laugh and drink, and flaunt it in the sun, while
he, Prince Kaid, would be done with it all.
He was roused by the rustling of a robe. Before him stood the Arab
physician, Sharif Bey, who had been in his father's house and his own for
a lifetime. It was many a year since his ministrations to Kaid had
ceased; but he had remained on in the Palace, doing service to those who
received him, and--it was said by the evil-tongued--granting certificates
of death out of harmony with dark facts, a sinister and useful figure.
His beard was white, his face was friendly, almost benevolent, but his
eyes had a light caught from no celestial flame.
His look was confident now, as his eyes bent on Kaid. He had lived long,
he had seen much, he had heard of the peril that had been foreshadowed by
the infidel physician; and, by a sure instinct, he knew that his own
opportunity had come. He knew that Kaid would snatch at any offered
comfort, would cherish any alleviating lie, would steal back from science
and civilisation and the modern palace to the superstition of the
fellah's hut. Were not all men alike when the neboot of Fate struck them
down into the terrible loneliness of doom, numbing their minds? Luck
would be with him that offered first succour in that dark hour. Sharif
had come at the right moment for Sharif.
Kaid looked at him with dull yet anxious eyes. "Did I not command that
none should enter?" he asked presently in a thick voice.
"Am I not thy physician, Effendina, to whom be the undying years? When
the Effendina is sick, shall I not heal? Have I not waited like a dog at
thy door these many years, till that time would come when none could heal
thee save Sharif?"
"What canst thou give me?"
"What the infidel physician gave thee not--I can give thee hope. Hast
thou done well, oh, Effendina, to turn from thine own people? Did not
thine own father, and did not Mehemet Ali, live to a good age? Who were
their physicians? My father and I, and my father's father, and his
father's father."
"Thou canst cure me altogether?" asked Kaid hesitatingly.
"Wilt thou not have faith in one of thine own race? Will the infidel love
thee as do we, who are thy children and thy brothers, who are to thee as
a nail driven in the wall, not to be moved? Thou shalt live--Inshallah,
thou shalt have healing and length of days!"
He paused at a gesture from Kaid, for a slave had entered and stood
waiting.
"What dost thou here? Wert thou not commanded?" asked Kaid.
"Effendina, Claridge Pasha is waiting," was the reply.
Kaid frowned, hesitated; then, with a sudden resolve, made a gesture of
dismissal to Sharif Bey, and nodded David's admittance to the slave.
As David entered, he passed Sharif Bey, and something in the look on the
Arab physician's face--a secret malignancy and triumph--struck him
strangely. And now a fresh anxiety and apprehension rose in his mind as
he glanced at Kaid. The eye was heavy and gloomy, the face was clouded,
the lips once so ready to smile at him were sullen and smileless now.
David stood still, waiting.
"I did not expect thee till to-morrow, Saadat," said Kaid moodily at
last.
"The business is urgent?"
"Effendina," said David, with every nerve at tension, yet with outward
self-control, "I have to report--" He paused, agitated; then, in a firm
voice, he told of the disaster which had befallen the cotton-mills and
the steamer.
As David spoke, Kaid's face grew darker, his fingers fumbled vaguely with
the linen of the loose white robe he wore. When the tale was finished he
sat for a moment apparently stunned by the news, then he burst out
fiercely:
"Bismillah, am I to hear only black words to-day? Hast thou naught to say
but this--the fortune of Egypt burned to ashes!"
David held back the quick retort that came to his tongue.
"Half my fortune is in the ashes," he answered with dignity. "The rest
came from savings never made before by this Government. Is the work less
worthy in thy sight, Effendina, because it has been destroyed? Would thy
life be less great and useful because a blow took thee from behind?"
Kaid's face turned black. David had bruised an open wound.
"What is my life to thee--what is thy work to me?"
"Thy life is dear to Egypt, Effendina," urged David soothingly, "and my
labour for Egypt has been pleasant in thine eyes till now."
"Egypt cannot be saved against her will," was the moody response. "What
has come of the Western hand upon the Eastern plough?" His face grew
blacker; his heart was feeding on itself.
"Thou, the friend of Egypt, hast come of it, Effendina."
"Harrik was right, Harrik was right," Kaid answered, with stubborn gloom
and anger. "Better to die in our own way, if we must die, than live in
the way of another. Thou wouldst make of Egypt another England; thou
wouldst civilise the Soudan--bismillah, it is folly!"
"That is not the way Mehemet Ali thought, nor Ibrahim. Nor dost thou
think so, Effendina," David answered gravely. "A dark spirit is on thee.
Wouldst thou have me understand that what we have done together, thou and
I, was ill done, that the old bad days were better?"
"Go back to thine own land," was the surly answer. "Nation after nation
ravaged Egypt, sowed their legions here, but the Egyptian has lived them
down. The faces of the fellaheen are the faces of Thotmes and Seti. Go
back. Egypt will travel her own path. We are of the East; we are Muslim.
What is right to you is wrong to us. Ye would make us over--give us
cotton beds and wooden floors and fine flour of the mill, and cleanse the
cholera-hut with disinfectants, but are these things all? How many of
your civilised millions would die for their prophet Christ? Yet all Egypt
would rise up from the mud-floor, the dourha-field and the mud-hut, and
would come out to die for Mahomet and Allah--ay, as Harrik knew, as
Harrik knew! Ye steal into corners, and hide behind the curtains of your
beds to pray; we pray where the hour of prayer finds us--in the street,
in the market-place, where the house is building, the horse being shod,
or the money-changers are. Ye hear the call of civilisation, but we heap
the Muezzin--"
He stopped, and searched mechanically for his watch. "It is the hour the
Muezzin calls," said David gently. "It is almost sunset. Shall I open the
windows that the call may come to us?" he added.
While Kaid stared at him, his breast heaving with passion, David went to
a window and opened the shutters wide.
The Palace faced the Nile, which showed like a tortuous band of blue and
silver a mile or so away. Nothing lay between but the brown sand, and
here and there a handful of dark figures gliding towards the river, or a
little train of camels making for the bare grey hills from the ghiassas
which had given them their desert loads. The course of the Nile was
marked by a wide fringe of palms showing blue and purple, friendly and
ancient and solitary. Beyond the river and the palms lay the grey-brown
desert, faintly touched with red. So clear was the sweet evening air that
the irregular surface of the desert showed for a score of miles as
plainly as though it were but a step away. Hummocks of sand--tombs and
fallen monuments gave a feeling as of forgotten and buried peoples; and
the two vast pyramids of Sakkarah stood up in the plaintive glow of the
evening skies, majestic and solemn, faithful to the dissolved and
absorbed races who had built them. Curtains of mauve and saffron-red were
hung behind them, and through a break of cloud fringing the horizon a
yellow glow poured, to touch the tips of the pyramids with poignant
splendour. But farther over to the right, where Cairo lay, there hung a
bluish mist, palpable and delicate, out of which emerged the vast
pyramids of Cheops; and beside it the smiling inscrutable Sphinx faced
the changeless centuries. Beyond the pyramids the mist deepened into a
vast deep cloud of blue and purple, which seemed the end to some mystic
highway untravelled by the sons of men.
Suddenly there swept over David a wave of feeling such as had passed over
Kaid, though of a different nature. Those who had built the pyramids were
gone, Cheops and Thotmes and Amenhotep and Chefron and the rest. There
had been reformers in those lost races; one age had sought to better the
last, one man had toiled to save--yet there only remained offensive
bundles of mummied flesh and bone and a handful of relics in tombs fifty
centuries old. Was it all, then, futile? Did it matter, then, whether one
man laboured or a race aspired?
Only for a moment these thoughts passed through his mind; and then, as
the glow through the broken cloud on the opposite horizon suddenly faded,
and veils of melancholy fell over the desert and the river and the palms,
there rose a call, sweetly shrill, undoubtingly insistent. Sunset had
come, and, with it, the Muezzin's call to prayer from the minaret of a
mosque hard by.
David was conscious of a movement behind him--that Kaid was praying with
hands uplifted; and out on the sands between the window and the river he
saw kneeling figures here and there, saw the camel-drivers halt their
trains, and face the East with hands uplifted. The call went on--"La
ilaha illa-llah!"
It called David, too. The force and searching energy and fire in it stole
through his veins, and drove from him the sense of futility and
despondency which had so deeply added to his trouble. There was something
for him, too, in that which held infatuated the minds of so many
millions.
A moment later Kaid and he faced each other again. "Effendina," he said,
"thou wilt not desert our work now?"
"Money--for this expedition? Thou hast it?" Kaid asked ironically.
"I have but little money, and it must go to rebuild the mills, Effendina.
I must have it of thee."
"Let them remain in their ashes."
"But thousands will have no work."
"They had work before they were built, they will have work now they are
gone."
"Effendina, I stayed in Egypt at thy request. The work is thy work. Wilt
thou desert it?"
"The West lured me--by things that seemed. Now I know things as they
are."
"They will lure thee again to-morrow," said David firmly, but with a
weight on his spirit. His eyes sought and held Kaid's. "It is too late to
go back; we must go forward or we shall lose the Soudan, and a Mahdi and
his men will be in Cairo in ten years."
For an instant Kaid was startled. The old look of energy and purpose
leaped up into his eye; but it faded quickly again. If, as the Italian
physician more than hinted, his life hung by a thread, did it matter
whether the barbarian came to Cairo? That was the business of those who
came after. If Sharif was right, and his life was saved, there would be
time enough to set things right.
"I will not pour water on the sands to make an ocean," he answered. "Will
a ship sail on the Sahara? Bismillah, it is all a dream! Harrik was
right. But dost thou think to do with me as thou didst with Harrik?" he
sneered. "Is it in thy mind?"
David's patience broke down under the long provocation. "Know then,
Effendina," he said angrily, "that I am not thy subject, nor one beholden
to thee, nor thy slave. Upon terms well understood, I have laboured here.
I have kept my obligations, and it is thy duty to keep thy obligations,
though the hand of death were on thee. I know not what has poisoned thy
mind, and driven thee from reason and from justice. I know that, Prince
Pasha of Egypt as thou art, thou art as bound to me as any fellah that
agrees to tend my door or row my boat. Thy compact with me is a compact
with England, and it shall be kept, if thou art an honest man. Thou mayst
find thousands in Egypt who will serve thee at any price, and bear thee
in any mood. I have but one price. It is well known to thee. I will not
be the target for thy black temper. This is not the middle ages; I am an
Englishman, not a helot. The bond must be kept; thou shalt not play fast
and loose. Money must be found; the expedition must go. But if thy
purpose is now Harrik's purpose, then Europe should know, and Egypt also
should know. I have been thy right hand, Effendina; I will not be thy old
shoe, to be cast aside at thy will."
In all the days of his life David had never flamed out as he did now.
Passionate as his words were, his manner was strangely quiet, but his
white and glistening face and his burning eyes showed how deep was his
anger.