The Weavers, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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She got to her feet tremblingly. "I will go back," she said slowly and
softly.
"Windlehurst will take you home," the Duchess rejoined eagerly. "My
carriage is at the door."
A moment afterwards Lord Windlehurst took Hylda's hands in his and held
them long. His old, querulous eyes were like lamps of safety; his smile
had now none of that cynicism with which he had aroused and chastened the
world. The pitiful understanding of life was there and a consummate
gentleness. He gave her his arm, and they stepped out into the moonlit
night. "So peaceful, so bright!" he said, looking round.
"I will come at noon to-morrow," called the Duchess from the doorway.
A light was still shining in Eglington's study when the carriage drove
up. With a latch-key Hylda admitted herself and her maid.
The storm had broken, the flood had come. The storm was over, but the
flood swept far and wide.
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE FLYING SHUTTLE
Hour after hour of sleeplessness. The silver-tongued clock remorselessly
tinkled the quarters, and Hylda lay and waited for them with a hopeless
strained attention. In vain she tried devices to produce that monotony of
thought which sometimes brings sleep. Again and again, as she felt that
sleep was coming at last, the thought of the letter she had found flashed
through her mind with words of fire, and it seemed as if there had been
poured through every vein a subtle irritant. Just such a surging,
thrilling flood she had felt in the surgeon's chair when she was a girl
and an anesthetic had been given. But this wave of sensation led to no
oblivion, no last soothing intoxication. Its current beat against her
heart until she could have cried out from the mere physical pain, the
clamping grip of her trouble. She withered and grew cold under the
torture of it all--the ruthless spoliation of everything which made life
worth while or the past endurable.
About an hour after she had gone to bed she heard Eglington's step. It
paused at her door. She trembled with apprehension lest he should enter.
It was many a day since he had done so, but also she had not heard his
step pause at her door for many a day. She could not bear to face it all
now; she must have time to think, to plan her course--the last course of
all. For she knew that the next step must be the last step in her old
life, and towards a new life, whatever that might be. A great sigh of
relief broke from her as she heard his door open and shut, and silence
fell on everything, that palpable silence which seems to press upon the
night-watcher with merciless, smothering weight.
How terribly active her brain was! Pictures--it was all vivid pictures,
that awful visualisation of sorrow which, if it continues, breaks the
heart or wrests the mind from its sanity. If only she did not see! But
she did see Eglington and the Woman together, saw him look into her eyes,
take her hands, put his arm round her, draw her face to his! Her heart
seemed as if it must burst, her lips cried out. With a great effort of
the will she tried to hide from these agonies of the imagination, and
again she would approach those happy confines of sleep, which are the
only refuge to the lacerated heart; and then the weapon of time on the
mantelpiece would clash on the shield of the past, and she was wide awake
again. At last, in desperation, she got out of bed, hurried to the
fireplace, caught the little sharp-tongued recorder in a nervous grasp,
and stopped it.
As she was about to get into bed again, she saw a pile of letters lying
on the table near her pillow. In her agitation she had not noticed them,
and the devoted Heaver had not drawn her attention to them. Now, however,
with a strange premonition, she quickly glanced at the envelopes. The
last one of all was less aristocratic-looking than the others; the paper
of the envelope was of the poorest, and it had a foreign look. She caught
it up with an exclamation. The handwriting was that of her cousin Lacey.
She got into bed with a mind suddenly swept into a new atmosphere, and
opened the flimsy cover. Shutting her eyes, she lay still for a
moment--still and vague; she was only conscious of one thing, that a
curtain had dropped on the terrible pictures she had seen, and that her
mind was in a comforting quiet. Presently she roused herself, and turned
the letter over in her hand. It was not long--was that because its news
was bad news? The first chronicles of disaster were usually brief! She
smoothed the paper out-it had been crumpled and was a little soiled-and
read it swiftly. It ran:
DEAR LADY COUSIN--As the poet says, "Man is born to trouble as the
sparks fly upward," and in Egypt the sparks set the stacks on fire
oftener than anywhere else, I guess. She outclasses Mexico as a
"precious example" in this respect. You needn't go looking for
trouble in Mexico; it's waiting for you kindly. If it doesn't find
you to-day, well, manana. But here it comes running like a native
to his cooking-pot at sunset in Ramadan. Well, there have been
"hard trials" for the Saadat. His cotton-mills were set on fire-
can't you guess who did it? And now, down in Cairo, Nahoum runs
Egypt; for a messenger that got through the tribes worrying us tells
us that Kaid is sick, and Nahoum the Armenian says, you shall, and
you shan't, now. Which is another way of saying, that between us
and the front door of our happy homes there are rattlesnakes that
can sting--Nahoum's arm is long, and his traitors are crawling under
the canvas of our tents!
I'm not complaining for myself. I asked for what I've got, and,
dear Lady Cousin, I put up some cash for it, too, as a man should.
No, I don't mind for myself, fond as I am of loafing, sort of
pottering round where the streets are in the hands of a pure police;
for I've seen more, done more, thought more, up here, than in all my
life before; and I've felt a country heaving under the touch of one
of God's men--it gives you minutes that lift you out of the dust and
away from the crawlers. And I'd do it all over a thousand times for
him, and for what I've got out of it. I've lived. But, to speak
right out plain, I don't know how long this machine will run.
There's been a plant of the worst kind. Tribes we left friendly
under a year ago are out against us; cities that were faithful have
gone under to rebels. Nahoum has sowed the land with the tale that
the Saadat means to abolish slavery, to take away the powers of the
great sheikhs, and to hand the country over to the Turk. Ebn Ezra
Bey has proofs of the whole thing, and now at last the Saadat knows
too late that his work has been spoiled by the only man who could
spoil it. The Saadat knows it, but does he rave and tear his hair?
He says nothing. He stands up like a rock before the riot of
treachery and bad luck and all the terrible burden he has to carry
here. If he wasn't a Quaker I'd say he had the pride of an
archangel. You can bend him, but you can't break him; and it takes
a lot to bend him. Men desert, but he says others will come to take
their place. And so they do. It's wonderful, in spite of the holy
war that's being preached, and all the lies about him sprinkled over
this part of Africa, how they all fear him, and find it hard to be
out on the war-path against him. We should be gorging the vultures
if he wasn't the wonder he is. We need boats. Does he sit down and
wring his hands? No, he organises, and builds them--out of scraps.
Hasn't he enough food for a long siege? He goes himself to the
tribes that have stored food in their cities, and haven't yet
declared against him, and he puts a hand on their hard hearts, and
takes the sulkiness out of their eyes, and a fleet of ghiassas comes
down to us loaded with dourha. The defences of this place are
nothing. Does he fold his hands like a man of peace that he is,
and say, 'Thy will be done'? Not the Saadat. He gets two soldier-
engineers, one an Italian who murdered his wife in Italy twenty
years ago, and one a British officer that cheated at cards and had
to go, and we've got defences that'll take some negotiating. That's
the kind of man he is; smiling to cheer others when their hearts are
in their boots, stern like a commander-in-chief when he's got to
punish, and then he does it like steel; but I've seen him afterwards
in his tent with a face that looks sixty, and he's got to travel a
while yet before he's forty. None of us dares be as afraid as we
could be, because a look at him would make us so ashamed we'd have
to commit suicide. He hopes when no one else would ever hope. The
other day I went to his tent to wait for him, and I saw his Bible
open on the table. A passage was marked. It was this:
"Behold, I have taken out of thy hand the cup of trembling, even the
dregs of the cup of my fury; thou shalt no more drink it again: But
I will put it into the hand of them that afflict thee; which have
said to thy soul, Bow down, that we may go over; and thou hast laid
thy body as the ground, and as the street, to them that went over."
I'd like to see Nahoum with that cup of trembling in his hand, and
I've got an idea, too, that it will be there yet. I don't know how
it is, but I never can believe the worst will happen to the Saadat.
Reading those verses put hope into me. That's why I'm writing to
you, on the chance of this getting through by a native who is
stealing down the river with a letter from the Saadat to Nahoum, and
one to Kaid, and one to the Foreign Minister in London, and one to
your husband. If they reach the hands they're meant for, it may be
we shall pan out here yet. But there must be display of power; an
army must be sent, without delay, to show the traitors that the game
is up. Five thousand men from Cairo under a good general would do
it. Will Nahoum send them? Does Kaid, the sick man, know? I'm not
banking on Kaid. I think he's on his last legs. Unless pressure is
put on him, unless some one takes him by the throat and says: If you
don't relieve Claridge Pasha and the people with him, you will go to
the crocodiles, Nahoum won't stir. So, I am writing to you.
England can do it. The lord, your husband, can do it. England will
have a nasty stain on her flag if she sees this man go down without
a hand lifted to save him. He is worth another Alma to her
prestige. She can't afford to see him slaughtered here, where he's
fighting the fight of civilisation. You see right through this
thing, I know, and I don't need to palaver any more about it. It
doesn't matter about me. I've had a lot for my money, and I'm no
use--or I wouldn't be, if anything happened to the Saadat. No one
would drop a knife and fork at the breakfast-table when my obit was
read out--well, yes, there's one, cute as she can be, but she's lost
two husbands already, and you can't be hurt so bad twice in the same
place. But the Saadat, back him, Hylda--I'll call you that at this
distance. Make Nahoum move. Send four or five thousand men before
the day comes when famine does its work and they draw the bowstring
tight.
Salaam and salaam, and the post is going out, and there's nothing in
the morning paper; and, as Aunt Melissa used to say: "Well, so much
for so much!" One thing I forgot. I'm lucky to be writing to you
at all. If the Saadat was an old-fashioned overlord, I shouldn't be
here. I got into a bad corner three days ago with a dozen Arabs--
I'd been doing a little work with a friendly tribe all on my own,
and I almost got caught by this loose lot of fanatics. I shot
three, and galloped for it. I knew the way through the mines
outside, and just escaped by the skin of my teeth. Did the Saadat,
as a matter of discipline, have me shot for cowardice? Cousin
Hylda, my heart was in my mouth as I heard them yelling behind me--
and I never enjoyed a dinner so much in my life. Would the Saadat
have run from them? Say, he'd have stayed and saved his life too.
Well, give my love to the girls!
Your affectionate cousin,
Tom LACEY.
P.S.-There's no use writing to me. The letter service is bad. Send
a few thousand men by military parcel-post, prepaid, with some red
seals--majors and colonels from Aldershot will do. They'll give the
step to the Gyppies. T.
Hylda closed her eyes. A fever had passed from her veins. Here lay her
duty before her--the redemption of the pledge she had made. Whatever her
own sorrow, there was work before her; a supreme effort must be made for
another. Even now it might be too late. She must have strength for what
she meant to do. She put the room in darkness, and resolutely banished
thought from her mind.
The sun had been up for hours before she waked. Eglington had gone to the
Foreign Office. The morning papers were full of sensational reports
concerning Claridge Pasha and the Soudan. A Times leader sternly
admonished the Government.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
JASPER KIMBER SPEAKS
That day the adjournment of the House of Commons was moved "To call
attention to an urgent matter of public importance"--the position of
Claridge Pasha in the Soudan. Flushed with the success of last night's
performance, stung by the attacks of the Opposition morning papers,
confident in the big majority behind, which had cheered him a few hours
before, viciously resenting the letter he had received from David that
morning, Eglington returned such replies to the questions put to him that
a fire of angry mutterings came from the forces against him. He might
have softened the growing resentment by a change of manner, but his
intellectual arrogance had control of him for the moment; and he said to
himself that he had mastered the House before, and he would do so now.
Apart from his deadly antipathy to his half-brother, and the gain to
himself--to his credit, the latter weighed with him not so much, so set
was he on a stubborn course--if David disappeared for ever, there was at
bottom a spirit of anti-expansion, of reaction against England's
world-wide responsibilities. He had no largeness of heart or view
concerning humanity. He had no inherent greatness, no breadth of policy.
With less responsibility taken, there would be less trouble, national and
international--that was his point of view; that had been his view long
ago at the meeting at Heddington; and his weak chief had taken it,
knowing nothing of the personal elements behind.
The disconcerting factor in the present bitter questioning in the House
was, that it originated on his own side. It was Jasper Kimber who had
launched the questions, who moved the motion for adjournment. Jasper had
had a letter from Kate Heaver that morning early, which sent him to her,
and he had gone to the House to do what he thought to be his duty. He did
it boldly, to the joy of the Opposition, and with a somewhat sullen
support from many on his own side. Now appeared Jasper's own inner
disdain of the man who had turned his coat for office. It gave a lead to
a latent feeling among members of the ministerial party, of distrust, and
of suspicion that they were the dupes of a mind of abnormal cleverness
which, at bottom, despised them.
With flashing eyes and set lips, vigilant and resourceful, Eglington
listened to Jasper Kimber's opening remarks.
By unremitting industry Jasper had made a place for himself in the House.
The humour and vitality of his speeches, and his convincing advocacy of
the cause of the "factory folk," had gained him a hearing. Thickset,
under middle size, with an arm like a giant and a throat like a bull, he
had strong common sense, and he gave the impression that he would wear
his heart out for a good friend or a great cause, but that if he chose to
be an enemy he would be narrow, unrelenting, and persistent. For some
time the House had been aware that he had more than a gift for criticism
of the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs.
His speech began almost stumblingly, his h's ran loose, and his grammar
became involved, but it was seen that he meant business, that he had that
to say which would give anxiety to the Government, that he had a case
wherein were the elements of popular interest and appeal, and that he was
thinking and speaking as thousands outside the House would think and
speak.
He had waited for this hour. Indirectly he owed to Claridge Pasha all
that he had become. The day in which David knocked him down saw the
depths of his degradation reached, and, when he got up, it was to start
on a new life uncertainly, vaguely at first, but a new life for all that.
He knew, from a true source, of Eglington's personal hatred of Claridge
Pasha, though he did not guess their relationship; and all his interest
was enlisted for the man who had, as he knew, urged Kate Heaver to marry
himself--and Kate was his great ambition now. Above and beyond these
personal considerations was a real sense of England's duty to the man who
was weaving the destiny of a new land.
"It isn't England's business?" he retorted, in answer to an interjection
from a faithful soul behind the ministerial Front Bench. "Well, it wasn't
the business of the Good Samaritan to help the man that had been robbed
and left for dead by the wayside; but he did it. As to David Claridge's
work, some have said that--I've no doubt it's been said in the Cabinet,
and it is the thing the Under-Secretary would say as naturally as he
would flick a fly from his boots--that it's a generation too soon. Who
knows that? I suppose there was those that thought John the Baptist was
baptising too soon, that Luther preached too soon, and Savonarola was in
too great a hurry, all because he met his death and his enemies
triumphed--and Galileo and Hampden and Cromwell and John Howard were all
too soon. Who's to be judge of that? God Almighty puts it into some men's
minds to work for a thing that's a great, and maybe an impossible, thing,
so far as the success of the moment is concerned. Well, for a thing that
has got to be done some time, the seed has to be sown, and it's always
sown by men like Claridge Pasha, who has shown millions of
people--barbarians and half-civilised alike--what a true lover of the
world can do. God knows, I think he might have stayed and found a cause
in England, but he elected to go to the ravaging Soudan, and he is
England there, the best of it. And I know Claridge Pasha--from his youth
up I have seen him, and I stand here to bear witness of what the working
men of England will say to-morrow. Right well the noble lord yonder knows
that what I say is true. He has known it for years. Claridge Pasha would
never have been in his present position, if the noble lord had not
listened to the enemies of Claridge Pasha and of this country, in
preference to those who know and hold the truth as I tell it here to-day.
I don't know whether the noble lord has repented or not; but I do say
that his Government will rue it, if his answer is not the one word
'Intervention!' Mistaken, rash or not, dreamer if you like, Claridge
Pasha should be relieved now, and his policy discussed afterwards. I
don't envy the man who holds a contrary opinion; he'll be ashamed of it
some day. But"--he pointed towards Eglington--"but there sits the
minister in whose hands his fate has been. Let us hope that this speech
of mine needn't have been made, and that I've done injustice to his
patriotism and to the policy he will announce."
"A set-back, a sharp set-back," said Lord Windlehurst, in the Peers'
Gallery, as the cheers of the Opposition and of a good number of
ministerialists sounded through the Chamber. There were those on the
Treasury Bench who saw danger ahead. There was an attempt at a
conference, but Kimber's seconder only said a half-dozen words, and sat
down, and Eglington had to rise before any definite confidences could be
exchanged. One word only he heard behind him as he got up. It was the
word, "Temporise," and it came from the Prime Minister.
Eglington was in no mood for temporising. Attack only nerved him. He was
a good and ruthless fighter; and last night's intoxication of success was
still in his brain. He did not temporise. He did not leave a way of
retreat open for the Prime Minister, who would probably wind up the
debate. He fought with skill, but he fought without gloves, and the House
needed gentle handling. He had the gift of effective speech to a rare
degree, and when he liked he could be insinuating and witty, but he had
not genuine humour or good feeling, and the House knew it. In debate he
was biting, resourceful, and unscrupulous. He made the fatal mistake of
thinking that intellect and gifts of fence, followed by a brilliant
peroration, in which he treated the commonplaces of experienced minds as
though they were new discoveries and he was their Columbus, could
accomplish anything. He had never had a political crisis, but one had
come now.
In his reply he first resorted to arguments of high politics, historical,
informative, and, in a sense, commanding; indeed, the House became
restless under what seemed a piece of intellectual dragooning. Signs of
impatience appeared on his own side, and, when he ventured on a solemn
warning about hampering ministers who alone knew the difficulties of
diplomacy and the danger of wounding the susceptibilities of foreign and
friendly countries, the silence was broken by a voice that said
sneeringly, "The kid-glove Government!"
Then he began to lose place with the Chamber. He was conscious of it, and
shifted his ground, pointing out the dangers of doing what the other
nations interested in Egypt were not prepared to do.
"Have you asked them? Have you pressed them?" was shouted across the
House. Eglington ignored the interjections. "Answer! Answer!" was called
out angrily, but he shrugged a shoulder and continued his argument. If a
man insisted on using a flying-machine before the principle was fully
mastered and applied--if it could be mastered and applied--it must not be
surprising if he was killed. Amateurs sometimes took preposterous risks
without the advice of the experts. If Claridge Pasha had asked the advice
of the English Government, or of any of the Chancellories of Europe, as
to his incursions into the Soudan and his premature attempts at reform,
he would have received expert advice that civilisation had not advanced
to that stage in this portion of the world which would warrant his
experiments. It was all very well for one man to run vast risks and
attempt quixotic enterprises, but neither he nor his countrymen had any
right to expect Europe to embroil itself on his particular account.
At this point he was met by angry cries of dissent, which did not come
from the Opposition alone. His lips set, he would not yield. The
Government could not hold itself responsible for Claridge Pasha's relief,
nor in any sense for his present position. However, from motives of
humanity, it would make representations in the hope that the Egyptian
Government would act; but it was not improbable, in view of past
experiences of Claridge Pasha, that he would extricate himself from his
present position, perhaps had done so already. Sympathy and sentiment
were natural and proper manifestations of human society, but governments
were, of necessity, ruled by sterner considerations. The House must
realise that the Government could not act as though it were wholly a free
agent, or as if its every move would not be matched by another move on
the part of another Power or Powers.
Then followed a brilliant and effective appeal to his own party to trust
the Government, to credit it with feeling and with a due regard for
English prestige and the honour brought to it by Claridge Pasha's
personal qualities, whatever might be thought of his crusading
enterprises. The party must not fall into the trap of playing the game of
the Opposition. Then, with some supercilious praise of the "worthy
sentiments" of Jasper Kimber's speech and a curt depreciation of its
reasoning, he declared that: "No Government can be ruled by clamour. The
path to be trodden by this Government will be lighted by principles of
progress and civilisation, humanity and peace, the urbane power of
reason, and the persuasive influence of just consideration for the rights
of others, rather than the thunder and the threat of the cannon and the
sword!"
He sat down amid the cheers of a large portion of his party, for the end
of his speech had been full of effective if meretricious appeal. But the
debate that followed showed that the speech had been a failure. He had
not uttered one warm or human word concerning Claridge Pasha, and it was
felt and said, that no pledge had been given to insure the relief of the
man who had caught the imagination of England.
The debate was fierce and prolonged. Eglington would not agree to any
modification of his speech, to any temporising. Arrogant and insistent,
he had his way, and, on a division, the Government was saved by a mere
handful of votes--votes to save the party, not to indorse Eglington's
speech or policy.