The Weavers, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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"I wonder what Windlehurst would think of it. He always had an eye for
things like that," she murmured; and then caught her breath, as she
added: "He always liked beauty." She looked at her wrinkled, childish
hands. "But sunsets never grow old," she continued, with no apparent
relevance. "La, la, we were young once!"
Her eyes were lost again in the pinkish glow spreading over the
grey-brown sand of the desert, over the palm-covered island near. "And
now it's others' turn, or ought to be," she murmured.
She looked to where, not far away, Hylda stood leaning over the railing
of the dahabieh, her eyes fixed in reverie on the farthest horizon line
of the unpeopled, untravelled plain of sand.
"No, poor thing, it's not her turn," she added, as Hylda, with a long
sigh, turned and went below. Tears gathered in her pale blue eyes. "Not
yet--with Eglington alive. And perhaps it would be best if the other
never came back. I could have made the world better worth living in if I
had had the chance--and I wouldn't have been a duchess! La! La!"
She relapsed into reverie, an uncommon experience for her; and her mind
floated indefinitely from one thing to another, while she was half
conscious of the smell of coffee permeating the air, and of the low
resonant notes of the Nubian boys, as, with locked shoulders, they
scrubbed the decks of a dahabieh near by with hempshod feet.
Presently, however, she was conscious of another sound--the soft clip of
oars, joined to the guttural, explosive song of native rowers; and,
leaning over the rail, she saw a boat draw alongside the Nefert. From it
came the figure of Nahoum Pasha, who stepped briskly on deck, in his
handsome face a light which flashed an instant meaning to her.
"I know--I know! Claridge Pasha--you have heard?" she said excitedly, as
he came to her.
He smiled and nodded. "A messenger has arrived. Within a few hours he
should be here."
"Then it was all false that he was wounded--ah, that horrible story of
his death!"
"Bismillah, it was not all false! The night before the great battle he
was slightly wounded in the side. He neglected it, and fever came on; but
he survived. His first messengers to us were killed, and that is why the
news of the relief came so late. But all is well at last. I have come to
say so to Lady Eglington--even before I went to the Effendina." He made a
gesture towards a huge and gaily-caparisoned dahabieh not far away. "Kaid
was right about coming here. His health is better. He never doubted
Claridge Pasha's return; it was une idee fixe. He believes a magic hand
protects the Saadat, and that, adhering to him, he himself will carry
high the flower of good fortune and live for ever. Kismet! I will not
wait to see Lady Eglington. I beg to offer to her my congratulations on
the triumph of her countryman."
His words had no ulterior note; but there was a shadow in his eyes which
in one not an Oriental would have seemed sympathy.
"Pasha, Pasha!" the Duchess called after him, as he turned to leave;
"tell me, is there any news from England--from the Government?"
"From Lord Eglington? No," Nahoum answered meaningly. "I wrote to him.
Did the English Government desire to send a message to Claridge Pasha, if
the relief was accomplished? That is what I asked. But there is no word.
Malaish, Egypt will welcome him!"
She followed his eyes. Two score of dahabiehs lay along the banks of the
Nile, and on the shore were encampments of soldiers, while flags were
flying everywhere. Egypt had followed the lead of the Effendina. Claridge
Pasha's star was in its zenith.
As Nahoum's boat was rowed away, Hylda came on deck again, and the
Duchess hastened to her. Hylda caught the look in her face. "What has
happened? Is there news? Who has been here?" she asked.
The Duchess took her hands. "Nahoum has gone to tell Prince Kaid. He came
to you with the good news first," she said with a flutter.
She felt Hylda's hands turn cold. A kind of mist filled the dark eyes,
and the slim, beautiful figure swayed slightly. An instant only, and then
the lips smiled, and Hylda said in a quavering voice: "They will be so
glad in England."
"Yes, yes, my darling, that is what Nahoum said." She gave Nahoum's
message to her. "Now they'll make him a peer, I suppose, after having
deserted him. So English!"
She did not understand why Hylda's hands trembled so, why so strange a
look came into her face, but, in an instant, the rare and appealing eyes
shone again with a light of agitated joy, and suddenly Hylda leaned over
and kissed her cheek.
"Smell the coffee," she said with assumed gaiety. "Doesn't fair-and-sixty
want her breakfast? Sunrise is a splendid tonic." She laughed feverishly.
"My darling, I hadn't seen the sun rise in thirty years, not since the
night I first met Windlehurst at a Foreign Office ball."
"You have always been great friends?" Hylda stole a look at her.
"That's the queer part of it; I was so stupid, and he so clever. But
Windlehurst has a way of letting himself down to your level. He always
called me Betty after my boy died, just as if I was his equal. La, la,
but I was proud when he first called me that--the Prime Minister of
England. I'm going to watch the sun rise again to-morrow, my darling. I
didn't know it was so beautiful, and gave one such an appetite." She
broke a piece of bread, and, not waiting to butter it, almost stuffed it
into her mouth.
Hylda leaned over and pressed her arm. "What a good mother Betty it is!"
she said tenderly.
Presently they were startled by the shrill screaming of a steamer
whistle, followed by the churning of the paddles, as she drove past and
drew to the bank near them.
"It is a steamer from Cairo, with letters, no doubt," said Hylda; and the
Duchess nodded assent, and covertly noted her look, for she knew that no
letters had arrived from Eglington since Hylda had left England.
A half-hour later, as the Duchess sat on deck, a great straw hat tied
under her chin with pale-blue ribbons, like a child of twelve, she was
startled by seeing the figure of a farmer-looking person with a shock of
grey-red hair, a red face, and with great blue eyes, appear before her in
the charge of Hylda's dragoman.
"This has come to speak with my lady," the dragoman said, "but my lady is
riding into the desert there." He pointed to the sands.
The Duchess motioned the dragoman away, and scanned the face of the
new-comer shrewdly. Where had she seen this strange-looking English
peasant, with the rolling walk of a sailor?
"What is your name, and where do you come from?" she asked, not without
anxiety, for there was something ominous and suggestive in the old man's
face.
"I come from Hamley, in England, and my name is Soolsby, your grace. I
come to see my Lady Eglington."
Now she remembered him. She had seen him in Hamley more than once.
"You have come far; have you important news for her ladyship? Is there
anything wrong?" she asked with apparent composure, but with heavy
premonition.
"Ay, news that counts, I bring," answered Soolsby, "or I hadn't come this
long way. 'Tis a long way at sixty-five."
"Well, yes, at our age it is a long way," rejoined the Duchess in a
friendly voice, suddenly waving away the intervening air of class, for
she was half a peasant at heart.
"Ay, and we both come for the same end, I suppose," Soolsby added; "and a
costly business it is. But what matters, so be that you help her ladyship
and I help Our Man."
"And who is 'Our Man'?" was the rejoinder. "Him that's coming safe here
from the South--David Claridge," he answered. "Ay, 'twas the first thing
I heard when I landed here, me that he come all these thousand miles to
see him, if so be he was alive." Just then he caught sight of Kate Heaver
climbing the stair to the deck where they were. His face flushed; he
hurried forward and gripped her by the arm, as her feet touched the upper
deck. "Kate-ay, 'tis Kate!" he cried. Then he let go her arm and caught a
hand in both of his and fondled it. "Ay, ay, 'tis Kate!" "What is it
brings you, Soolsby?" Kate asked anxiously.
"'Tis not Jasper, and 'tis not the drink-ay, I've been sober since, ever
since, Kate, lass," he answered stoutly. "Quick, quick, tell me what it
is!" she said, frowning. "You've not come here for naught, Soolsby."
Still holding her hand, he leaned over and whispered in her ear. For an
instant she stood as though transfixed, and then, with a curious muffled
cry, broke away from him and turned to go below.
"Keep your mouth shut, lass, till proper time," he called after her, as
she descended the steps hastily again. Then he came slowly back to the
Duchess.
He looked her in the face--he was so little like a peasant, so much more
like a sailor here with his feet on the deck of a floating thing. "Your
grace is a good friend to her ladyship," he said at last deliberately,
"and 'tis well that you tell her ladyship. As good a friend to her you've
been, I doubt not, as that I've been to him that's coming from beyond and
away."
"Go on, man, go on. I want to know what startled Heaver yonder, what you
have come to say."
"I beg pardon, your grace. One doesn't keep good news waiting, and 'tis
not good news for her ladyship I bring, even if it be for Claridge Pasha,
for there was no love lost 'twixt him and second-best lordship that's
gone."
"Speak, man, speak it out, and no more riddles," she interrupted sharply.
"Then, he that was my Lord Eglington is gone foreign--he is dead," he
said slowly.
The Duchess fell back in her chair. For an instant the desert, the
temples, the palms, the Nile waters faded, and she was in some middle
world, in which Soolsby's voice seemed coming muffled and deep across a
dark flood; then she recovered herself, and gave a little cry, not unlike
that which Kate gave a few moments before, partly of pain, partly of
relief.
"Ay, he's dead and buried, too, and in the Quaker churchyard. Miss
Claridge would have it so. And none in Hamley said nay, not one."
The Duchess murmured to herself. Eglington was dead--Eglington was
dead--Eglington was dead! And David Claridge was coming out of the
desert, was coming to-day-now!
"How did it happen?" she asked, faintly, at last.
"Things went wrong wi' him--bad wrong in Parliament and everywhere, and
he didn't take it well. He stood the world off like-ay, he had no temper
for black days. He shut himself up at Hamley in his chemical place, like
his father, like his father before him. When the week-end came, there he
was all day and night among his bottles and jars and wires. He was after
summat big in experiment for explosives, so the papers said, and so he
said himself before he died, to Miss Claridge--ay, 'twas her he deceived
and treated cruel, that come to him when he was shattered by his
experimenting. No patience, he had at last--and reckless in his chemical
place, and didn't realise what his hands was doing. 'Twas so he told her,
that forgave him all his deceit, and held him in her arms when he died.
Not many words he had to speak; but he did say that he had never done any
good to any one--ay, I was standing near behind his bed and heard all,
for I was thinking of her alone with him, and so I would be with her, and
she would have it so. Ay, and he said that he had misused cruel her that
had loved him, her ladyship, that's here. He said he had misused her
because he had never loved her truly, only pride and vainglory being in
his heart. Then he spoke summat to her that was there to forgive him and
help him over the stile 'twixt this field and it that's Beyond and Away,
which made her cry out in pain and say that he must fix his thoughts on
other things. And she prayed out loud for him, for he would have no
parson there. She prayed and prayed as never priest or parson prayed, and
at last he got quiet and still, and, when she stopped praying, he did not
speak or open his eyes for a longish while. But when the old clock on the
stable was striking twelve, he opened his eyes wide, and when it had
stopped, he said: 'It is always twelve by the clock that stops at noon.
I've done no good. I've earned my end.' He looked as though he was
waiting for the clock to go on striking, half raising himself up in bed,
with Miss Faith's arm under his head. He whispered to her then--he
couldn't speak by this time. 'It's twelve o'clock,' he said. Then there
came some words I've heard the priest say at Mass, 'Vanitas,
Vanitatum,'--that was what he said. And her he'd lied to, there with him,
laying his head down on the pillow, as if he was her child going to
sleep. So, too, she had him buried by her father, in the Quaker
burying-ground--ay, she is a saint on earth, I warrant."
For a moment after he had stopped the Duchess did not speak, but kept
untying and tying the blue ribbons under her chin, her faded eyes still
fastened on him, burning with the flame of an emotion which made them
dark and young again.
"So, it's all over," she said, as though to herself. "They were all
alike, from old Broadbrim, the grandfather, down to this one, and back to
William the Conqueror."
"Like as peas in a pod," exclaimed Soolsby--"all but one, all but one,
and never satisfied with what was in their own garden, but peeking,
peeking beyond the hedge, and climbing and getting a fall. That's what
they've always been evermore."
His words aroused the Duchess, and the air became a little colder about
her-after all, the division between the classes and the masses must be
kept, and the Eglingtons were no upstarts. "You will say nothing about
this till I give you leave to speak," she commanded. "I must tell her
ladyship."
Soolsby drew himself up a little, nettled at her tone. "It is your
grace's place to tell her ladyship," he responded; "but I've taken ten
years' savings to come to Egypt, and not to do any one harm, but good, if
so be I might."
The Duchess relented at once. She got to her feet as quickly as she
could, and held out her hand to him. "You are a good man, and a friend
worth having, I know, and I shall like you to be my friend, Mr. Soolsby,"
she said impulsively.
He took her hand and shook it awkwardly, his lips working. "Your grace, I
understand. I've got naught to live for except my friends. Money's
naught, naught's naught, if there isn't a friend to feel a crunch at his
heart when summat bad happens to you. I'd take my affydavy that there's
no better friend in the world than your grace."
She smiled at him. "And so we are friends, aren't we? And I am to tell
her ladyship, and you are to say 'naught.'
"But to the Egyptian, to him, your grace, it is my place to speak--to
Claridge Pasha, when he comes." The Duchess looked at him quizzically.
"How does Lord Eglington's death concern Claridge Pasha?" she asked
rather anxiously. Had there been gossip about Hylda? Had the public got a
hint of the true story of her flight, in spite of all Windlehurst had
done? Was Hylda's name smirched, now, when all would be set right? Had
everything come too late, as it were?
"There's two ways that his lordship's death concerns Claridge Pasha,"
answered Soolsby shrewdly, for though he guessed the truth concerning
Hylda and David, his was not a leaking tongue. "There's two ways it
touches him. There'll be a new man in the Foreign Office--Lord Eglington
was always against Claridge Pasha; and there's matters of land betwixt
the two estates--matters of land that's got to be settled now," he
continued, with determined and successful evasion.
The Duchess was deceived. "But you will not tell Claridge Pasha until I
have told her ladyship and I give you leave? Promise that," she urged.
"I will not tell him until then," he answered. "Look, look, your grace,"
he added, suddenly pointing towards the southern horizon, "there he
comes! Ay, 'tis Our Man, I doubt not--Our Man evermore!"
Miles away there appeared on the horizon a dozen camels being ridden
towards Assouan.
"Our Man evermore," repeated the Duchess, with a trembling smile. "Yes,
it is surely he. See, the soldiers are moving. They're going to ride out
to meet him." She made a gesture towards the far shore where Kaid's men
were saddling their horses, and to Nahoum's and Kaid's dahabiehs, where
there was a great stir.
"There's one from Hamley will meet them first," Soolsby said, and pointed
to where Hylda, in the desert, was riding towards the camels coming out
of the south.
The Duchess threw up her hands. "Dear me, dear me," she said in distress,
"if she only knew!"
"There's thousands of women that'd ride out mad to meet him," said
Soolsby carefully; "women that likes to see an Englishman that's done his
duty--ay, women and men, that'd ride hard to welcome him back from the
grave. Her ladyship's as good a patriot as any," he added, watching the
Duchess out of the corners of his eyes, his face turned to the desert.
The Duchess looked at him quizzically, and was satisfied with her
scrutiny. "You're a man of sense," she replied brusquely, and gathered up
her skirts. "Find me a horse or a donkey, and I'll go too," she added
whimsically. "Patriotism is such a nice sentiment."
For David and Lacey the morning had broken upon a new earth. Whatever of
toil and tribulation the future held in store, this day marked a step
forward in the work to which David had set his life. A way had been
cloven through the bloody palisades of barbarism, and though the dark
races might seek to hold back the forces which drain the fens, and build
the bridges, and make the desert blossom as the rose, which give liberty
and preserve life, the good end was sure and near, whatever of rebellion
and disorder and treachery intervened. This was the larger, graver issue;
but they felt a spring in the blood, and their hearts were leaping,
because of the thought that soon they would clasp hands again with all
from which they had been exiled.
"Say, Saadat, think of it: a bed with four feet, and linen sheets, and
sleeping till any time in the morning, and, If you please, sir,
breakfast's on the table.' Say, it's great, and we're in it!"
David smiled. "Thee did very well, friend, without such luxuries. Thee is
not skin and bone."
Lacey mopped his forehead. "Well, I've put on a layer or two since the
relief. It's being scared that takes the flesh off me. I never was
intended for the 'stricken field.' Poetry and the hearth-stone was my
real vocation--and a bit of silver mining to blow off steam with," he
added with a chuckle.
David laughed and tapped his arm. "That is an old story now, thy
cowardice. Thee should be more original.
"It's worth not being original, Saadat, to hear you thee and thou me as
you used to do. It's like old times--the oldest, first times. You've
changed a lot, Saadat."
"Not in anything that matters, I hope."
"Not in anything that matters to any one that matters. To me it's the
same as it ever was, only more so. It isn't that, for you are you. But
you've had disappointment, trouble, hard nuts to crack, and all you could
do to escape the rocks being rolled down the Egyptian hill onto you; and
it's left its mark."
"Am I grown so different?"
Lacey's face shone under the look that was turned towards him. "Say,
Saadat, you're the same old red sandstone; but I missed the thee and
thou. I sort of hankered after it; it gets me where I'm at home with
myself."
David laughed drily. "Well, perhaps I've missed something in you. Thee
never says now--not since thee went south a year ago, 'Well, give my love
to the girls.' Something has left its mark, friend," he added teasingly;
for his spirits were boyish to-day; he was living in the present. There
had gone from his eyes and from the lines of his figure the melancholy
which Hylda had remarked when he was in England.
"Well, now, I never noticed," rejoined Lacey. "That's got me. Looks as if
I wasn't as friendly as I used to be, doesn't it? But I am--I am,
Saadat."
"I thought that the widow in Cairo, perhaps--" Lacey chuckled. "Say,
perhaps it was--cute as she can be, maybe, wouldn't like it, might be
prejudiced."
Suddenly David turned sharply to Lacey. "Thee spoke of silver mining just
now. I owe thee something like two hundred thousand pounds, I
think--Egypt and I."
Lacey winked whimsically at himself under the rim of his helmet. "Are you
drawing back from those concessions, Saadat?" he asked with apparent
ruefulness.
"Drawing back? No! But does thee think they are worth--"
Lacey assumed an injured air. "If a man that's made as much money as me
can't be trusted to look after a business proposition--"
"Oh, well, then!"
"Say, Saadat, I don't want you to think I've taken a mean advantage of
you; and if--"
David hastened to put the matter right. "No, no; thee must be the judge!"
He smiled sceptically. "In any case, thee has done a good deed in a great
way, and it will do thee no harm in the end. In one way the investment
will pay a long interest, as long as the history of Egypt runs. Ah, see,
the houses of Assouan, the palms, the river, the masts of the dahabiehs!"
Lacey quickened his camel's steps, and stretched out a hand to the
inviting distance. "'My, it's great," he said, and his eyes were blinking
with tears. Presently he pointed. "There's a woman riding to meet us, Saa
dat. Golly, can't she ride! She means to be in it--to salute the
returning brave."
He did not glance at David. If he had done so, he would have seen that
David's face had taken on a strange look, just such a look as it wore
that night in the monastery when he saw Hylda in a vision and heard her
say: "Speak, speak to me!"
There had shot into David's mind the conviction that the woman riding
towards them was Hylda. Hylda, the first to welcome him back, Hylda--Lady
Eglington! Suddenly his face appeared to tighten and grow thin. It was
all joy and torture at once. He had fought this fight out with
himself--had he not done so? Had he not closed his heart to all but duty
and Egypt? Yet there she was riding out of the old life, out of Hamley,
and England, and all that had happened in Cairo, to meet him. Nearer and
nearer she came. He could not see the face, but yet he knew. He quickened
his camel and drew ahead of Lacey. Lacey did not understand, he did not
recognise Hylda as yet; but he knew by instinct the Saadat's wishes, and
he motioned the others to ride more slowly, while he and they watched
horsemen coming out from Assouan towards them.
David urged his camel on. Presently he could distinguish the features of
the woman riding towards him. It was Hylda. His presentiment, his
instinct had been right. His heart beat tumultuously, his hand trembled,
he grew suddenly weak; but he summoned up his will, and ruled himself to
something like composure. This, then, was his home-coming from the far
miseries and trials and battle-fields--to see her face before all others,
to hear her voice first. What miracle had brought this thing to pass,
this beautiful, bitter, forbidden thing? Forbidden! Whatever the cause of
her coming, she must not see what he felt for her. He must deal fairly by
her and by Eglington; he must be true to that real self which had emerged
from the fiery trial in the monastery. Bronzed as he was, his face showed
no paleness; but, as he drew near her, it grew pinched and wan from the
effort at self-control. He set his lips and rode on, until he could see
her eyes looking into his--eyes full of that which he had never seen in
any eyes in all the world.
What had been her feelings during that ride in the desert? She had not
meant to go out to meet him. After she heard that he was coming, her
desire was to get away from all the rest of the world, and be alone with
her thoughts. He was coming, he was safe, and her work was done. What she
had set out to do was accomplished--to bring him back, if it was God's
will, out of the jaws of death, for England's sake, for the world's sake,
for his sake, for her own sake. For her own sake? Yes, yes, in spite of
all, for her own sake. Whatever lay before, now, for this one hour, for
this moment of meeting he should be hers. But meet him, where? Before all
the world, with a smile of conventional welcome on her lips, with the
same hand-clasp that any friend and lover of humanity would give him?
The desert air blew on her face, keen, sweet, vibrant, thrilling. What he
had heard that night at the monastery, the humming life of the land of
white fire--the desert, the million looms of all the weavers of the world
weaving, this she heard in the sunlight, with the sand rising like surf
behind her horse's heels. The misery and the tyranny and the unrequited
love were all behind her, the disillusion and the loss and the undeserved
insult to her womanhood--all, all were sunk away into the unredeemable
past. Here, in Egypt, where she had first felt the stir of life's passion
and pain and penalty, here, now, she lost herself in a beautiful, buoyant
dream. She was riding out to meet the one man of all men, hero, crusader,
rescuer--ah, that dreadful night in the Palace, and Foorgat's face! But
he was coming, who had made her live, to whom she had called, to whom her
soul had spoken in its grief and misery. Had she ever done aught to shame
the best that was in herself--and had she not been sorely tempted? Had
she not striven to love Eglington even when the worst was come, not alone
at her own soul's command, but because she knew that this man would have
it so? Broken by her own sorrow, she had left England, Eglington--all, to
keep her pledge to help him in his hour of need, to try and save him to
the world, if that might be. So she had come to Nahoum, who was binding
him down on the bed of torture and of death. And yet, alas! not herself
had conquered Nahoum, but David, as Nahoum had said. She herself had not
done this one thing which would have compensated for all that she had
suffered. This had not been permitted; but it remained that she had come
here to do it, and perhaps he would understand when he saw her.