PROPHET 
 
 L CAINE
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 The White Prophet
 
 Books by Hall Caine 
 
 My Story 
 The Prodigal Son 
 The Eternal City 
 The Christian 
 The Manxman 
 
 The White Prophet 
 
 The Deemster 
 
 The Bondman 
 
 The Scafjegoat 
 
 The Little Manx Nation 
 
 Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, New York 
 
 £5
 
 oil, cliildnTi ol AUali 
 
 let us be men I ' "
 
 The 
 
 White Prophet 
 
 A Novel 
 
 By Hall Caine 
 
 Author of "The Manxman," "The Deemster," "The Christian," 
 "The Eternal City," "The Prodigal Son," etc. 
 
 " / knciv that my Redeemer li-veth and that 
 He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.'"'' 
 
 Illustrations bv R. Caton Woodville 
 
 New York 
 
 D. Appleton and Company 
 
 1909
 
 Copyright, 1908, 1909, by 
 HALL C A I N E 
 
 Published, August, 1909
 
 
 AUTHOR'S NOTE 
 
 Many erroneous statements made in the press 
 during the serial publication of this story, coup- 
 ling its characters and incidents with distin- 
 guished living persons and recent public events, 
 make it necessary to say that ''The WJiite Prophet " 
 is intended to be read as a ivork of fiction only. 
 
 H. C. 
 
 Greba Castle, Isle op Man, 1909.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 FIRST BOOK 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Crescent and the Cross 3 
 
 SECOND BOOK 
 The Shadow of the Sword 145 
 
 THIRD BOOK 
 The Light of the World 253 
 
 FOURTH BOOK 
 The Coming Day 403 
 
 FIFTH BOOK 
 The Dawn 495
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 '"Oh, children of Allah, ... let us be men!'" 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 "Hurled their spears like shafts of forked lightning 
 
 over his head" 10 
 
 "'The man has gone — gone in disgrace and shame'" 128 
 
 "'Oh, Allah, Most High, Most Merciful, make lady 
 
 sleep!'" 160 
 
 "'To God we belong and to Him we must return'" 188 
 
 '"Punish him, O God, imnish him I punish him!'" 320 
 
 "'How interesting!' cried the ladies in chorus" . . 416 
 
 "She was being carried into the silence of her own 
 
 room " 513
 
 CHIEF PERSONS OF THE STORY 
 
 I^ORD NuNEHAM British Agent, Consul-General, and 
 
 Minister Plenipotentiary in Egypt 
 
 Lady Nunkham Born in Massachusetts, U. S. A. 
 
 Colonel Gordon Lord, A.A.G. . Son of Lord and Lady Nuneham, 
 
 born and brought up in Egypt 
 
 Major-General Graves .... Commanding the British Army of 
 
 Occupation in Egypt 
 
 Helena Graves Daughter of General Graves, born 
 
 in India 
 
 Sir Reginald Mannering . . . Pasha, Sirdar of the Egyptian Army, 
 
 and Governor-General of the Sou- 
 dan 
 
 Princess Nazimah Member of the Khedivial family 
 
 The Chancellor of the Arabic University of El Aziiar, Cairo 
 
 The Grand Cadi From Constantinople 
 
 Ikhmael Ameer, commonly called 
 
 "The White Prophet" . . . Born on the Libyan desert, brought 
 
 up in Khartoum
 
 FIRST BOOK 
 THE CKESCENT AND THE CROSS
 
 It was perhaps the first act of open hostility, and there 
 was really nothing in the scene or circumstance to provoke 
 an unfriendly demonstration. 
 
 On the broad racing-ground of the Khedivial Club a 
 number of the oflBcers and men of the British Army quar- 
 tered in Cairo, assisted by a detachment of the soldiers of 
 the army of Egypt, had been giving a sham fight in imita- 
 tion of the Battle of Omdurman, which is understood to 
 have been the death-struggle and the end of Mahdism. 
 
 The Khedive himself had not been there — he was away 
 at Constantinople — and his box had stood empty the whole 
 afternoon; but a kinsman of the Khedive's, with a com- 
 pany of friends, had occupied the box adjoining, and Lord 
 Nuneham, the British Consul-General, had sat in the centre 
 of the grand pavilion, surrounded by all the great ones 
 of the earth, in a sea of muslin, flowers, and feathers. 
 There had been European ladies in bright spring costumes, 
 Sheikhs in flowing robes of flowered silk, Egyptian Minis- 
 ters of State in Western dress and British Advisers and 
 rnder-Secretaries in Eastern tarbooshes, ofiicers in gold- 
 braided uniforms, foreign Ambassadors, and an infinite 
 number of pashas, beys, and effendis. 
 
 Besides these, too, there had been a great crowd of what 
 is called the common people, chiefly Cairenes — the volatile, 
 pleasure-loving people of Cairo, who care for nothing so 
 little as the atmosphere of political trouble. They had 
 stood in a thick line around the arena, all capped in crim- 
 son, thus giving to the vast ellipse the effect of an immense 
 picture framed in red. 
 
 There had been nothing in the day, either, to stimulate 
 the spirit of insurrection. It had been a lazy day, growing 
 hot in the afternoon, so that the white city of domes and 
 
 3
 
 4 THE WHITE TROPHET 
 
 minarets, as far up as to the Mokattam hills and the self- 
 conscious Citadel, had seemed to palpitate in a glistening 
 haze, while the steely ribbon of the Nile that ran between 
 was reddening in the rays of the sunset. 
 
 General Graves, an elderly man with martial bearing, 
 commanding the army in Eg:^'pt, had taken his place as 
 umpire in the judge's box in front of the pavilion; four 
 squadrons of British and Egyptian cavalry, a force of in- 
 fantry, and a grunting and ruckling camel corps, had 
 marched and pranced and bumped out of a paddock to the 
 left, and then young Colonel Gordon Lord, Assistant Ad- 
 jutant-General, who was to play the part of commandant in 
 the sham fight, had come trotting into the field. 
 
 Down to that moment there had been nothing but gaiety 
 and the spirit of fun among the spectators, who with rip- 
 ples of merry laughter had whispered " Lyttelton's," " Wau- 
 chope's," " Macdonald's," and ''Maxwell's," as the white- 
 faced and yellow-faced squadrons had taken their places. 
 Then the General had rung the big bell that was to be the 
 signal for the beginning of the battle, a bugle had been 
 sounded, and the people had pretended to shiver as they 
 smiled. 
 
 But all at once the atmosphere had changed. From 
 somewhere on the right had come the turn, turn, turn of 
 war-drums of the enemy, followed by the hoom, loom, hoom 
 of their war-horns, a melancholy note, half bellow and half 
 wail. Then everybody in the pavilion had stood up, every- 
 body's glass had been out, and a moment afterwards a line 
 of strange white things had been seen fluttering in the far 
 distance. 
 
 Were they banners? No! They were men, they were 
 the dervishes, and they were coming down in a deep white 
 line, like sheeted ghosts in battle array. 
 
 "They're here!" said the spectators, in a hushed whis- 
 per, and from that moment onward to the end there had 
 been no more laughter either in the pavilion or in the dense 
 line around the field. 
 
 The dervishes had come galloping on, a huge, disorderly 
 horde in flying white garments, some of them black as ink,
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 5 
 
 some brown as bronze, brandishing their glistening spears, 
 their swords, and their flint-locks, beating their war-drums, 
 blowing their war-horns, and shouting in high-pitched, 
 rasping, raucous voices their war-cry and their prayer, 
 "Allah! Allah! Allah!" 
 
 On and on they had come, like champing surf rolling in 
 on a reef-bound coast ; on and on, faster and faster, louder 
 and louder, on and on until they had all but hurled them- 
 selves into the British lines, and then — crash! A sheet of 
 blinding flashes, a roll of stifling smoke, and, when the air 
 cleared, a long empty space in the front line of the der- 
 vishes, and the ground strewn as with the drapery of two 
 hundred dead men. 
 
 In an instant the gap had been filled and the mighty 
 horde had come on again, but again and again, and yet 
 again they had been swept down before the solid rock of 
 the British forces like the spent waves of an angry sea. 
 
 At one moment a flag, silver white and glistening in the 
 sun, had been seen coming up behind. It had seemed to 
 float here, there, and everyT\'here, like a disembodied spirit, 
 through the churning breakers of the enemy; and while 
 the swarthy Arab who carried it had cried out over the 
 thunder of battle that it was the angel of death leading 
 them to victory or Paradise, the dervishes had screamed 
 " Allah ! Allah ! " and poured themselves afresh on to the 
 British lines. 
 
 But crash, crash, crash! the British rifles had spoken, 
 and the dervishes had fallen in long swathes like grass be- 
 fore the scythe, until the broad field had been white with 
 its harvest of the dead. 
 
 The sham fight had lasted a full hour, and until it was 
 over the vast multitude of spectators had been as one im- 
 mense creature that trembled without drawing breath. But 
 then the umpire's big bell had been rung again, the dead 
 men had leaped briskly to their feet and scampered back 
 to paddock, and a rustling breeze of laughter, half merri- 
 ment and half surprise, had swept over the pavilion and 
 the field. 
 
 This was the moment at which the atmosphere had 
 3
 
 6 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 seemed to change. Some one at the foot of the pavilion 
 had said : 
 
 " Whew ! What a battle it must have been ! " 
 
 And some one else had said: 
 
 "Don't call it a battle, sir; call it an execution." 
 
 And then a third, an Englishman in the uniform of an 
 Egj-ptian Commandant of Police, had cried: 
 
 " If it had gone the other way, though — if the Mah- 
 dists had beaten las that day at Omdurman, what would 
 have happened to Egypt then?" 
 
 " Happened ? " the first speaker had answered — he was 
 the English Adviser to one of the Egyptian Ministers. 
 " What would have happened to Egypt, you say ? Why, 
 there wouldn't have been a dog to howl for a lost master by 
 this time." 
 
 Lord Nuneham had heard the luckless words, and his 
 square-hewn jaw had grown harder and moi'e grim. Unfor- 
 tunately, the Egyptian Ministers, the Sheikhs, the pashas, 
 the beys, and effendis had heard them also, and, by the 
 mysterious law of Xature that sends messages over a track- 
 less desert, the last biting phrase had seemed to go like an 
 electric whisper through the thick line of the red-capped 
 Cairenes around the arena. 
 
 In the native mind it altered eveiything in an instant; 
 transformed the sham battle into a serious incident; made 
 it an insult, an outrage, a prearranged political innuendo, 
 something got up by the British Army of Occupation, or 
 perhaps by the Consul-Gencral himself, to rebuke the Egyp- 
 tians for the fires of disaffection that had smouldered in 
 their midst for years, and to say as by visible historiog- 
 raphy : 
 
 " See, that's what England saved Egypt from — that 
 horde of Allah-intoxicated fanatics who would have cut off 
 the heads of your Khedives, tortured and pillaged your 
 pashas, flogged your effendis, made slaves of your fellaheen, 
 or swept your whole nation into the Nile." 
 
 Every soldier on the field had distinguished himself that 
 day, the British by his bull-dog courage, the Soudanese by 
 fighting as dervishes like demons, the Egyptian by standing
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 7 
 
 his ground like a man ; but not even when young Colonel 
 Lord, the most popular Englishman in Eg-ypt, the one offi- 
 cer of English blood who was beloved by the Egyptians, 
 not even when he had come riding back to paddock after a 
 masterly handling of his men, sweating but smiling, his 
 horse blowing and spent, the people on the pavilion receiv- 
 ing him with shouts and cheers, the clapping of hands, and 
 the fluttering of handkerchiefs — not even then had the 
 Cairenes at the edge of the arena made the faintest demon- 
 stration. Their opportunity came a few minutes later, and, 
 sullen and grim under the gall of their unfounded suspi- 
 cion, they seized it in fierce and rather ugly fashion. 
 
 Hardly had the last man left the field when a company 
 of mounted police came riding down the fringe of it, fol- 
 lowed by a carriage drawn by two high-stepping horses, be- 
 tween a bodyguard of Egyptian soldiers. They drew up in 
 front of the box occupied by the kinsman of the Khedive, 
 and instantly the Cairenes made a rush for it, besieging 
 the barrier on either side, and even clambering on each 
 other's shoulders as human scaflFolding, from which to wit- 
 ness the departure of the Prince. 
 
 Then the Prince came out, a rather slack, feeble, inef- 
 fectual-looking man, and there were the ordinary saluta- 
 tions prescribed by custom. First the cry from the police 
 in Turkish and in unison, " Long live our Master ! " being 
 cheers for the Khedive whose representative the Prince was, 
 and then a cry in Arabic for the Prince himself. The 
 Prince touched his forehead, stepped into his carriage, and 
 was about to drive off when, without sign or premeditation 
 — by one of those mischievous impulses which the devil 
 himself inspires — there came a third cry, never heard on 
 that ground before. In a lusty, guttural voice, a young 
 man standing on the shoulders of another man — both, ap- 
 parently, students of law or medicine — shouted over the 
 heads of the people, " Long live Egypt ! " and in an in- 
 stant the cry was repeated in a deafening roar from every 
 side. 
 
 The Prince signalled to his bodyguard and his carriage 
 started, but all the way down the line of the enclosure.
 
 S THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 where the red-hatted Egyptians were still standing in solid 
 masses, the words cracked along like fireworks set alight. 
 
 The people on the great pavilion watched and listened, 
 and to the larger part of them, who were British subjects, 
 and to the officers. Advisers, and Under-Secretaries, who 
 were British officials, the cry was like a challenge which 
 seemed to say, " Go home to England ; we are a nation of 
 ourselves and can do without you." For a moment the air 
 tingled with expectancy, and everybody knew that some- 
 thing else was going to happen. It happened instantly, 
 with that promptness which the devil alone contrives. 
 
 Almost as soon as the Prince's company had cleared 
 away, a second carriage, that of the British Consul-General, 
 came down the line to the pavilion, with a posse of native 
 police on either side and a sais running in front. Then 
 from his seat in the centre Lord Nuneham rose and stepped 
 down to the arena, shaking hands with people as he passed, 
 gallant to the ladies as befits an English gentleman, but 
 bearing himself with a certain brusque condescension to- 
 ward the men, all trying to attract his attention — a medium- 
 sized yet massive person, with a stern jaw and steady gray 
 eyes, behind which the cool brain was plainly packed in ice, 
 a man of iron who had clearly passed through the pathway 
 of life with a firm high step. 
 
 The posse of native police cleared a way for him, and, 
 under the orders of an officer, rendered military honours, 
 but that was not enough for the British contingent in the 
 fever of their present excitement. They called for three 
 cheers for the King, whose representative the Consul-Gen- 
 eral was in Egypt, and then three more for Lord Nuneham, 
 giving, not three, but six, with a fierceness that grew more 
 frantic at every shout, and seemed to say, as plainly as 
 words could speak, " Here we are and here we stay." 
 
 The Eg>'ptians listened in silence, some of them spit- 
 ting as a sign of contempt, until the last cheer was dying 
 down, and then the lusty, guttural voice cried again, 
 " Long live Egypt ! " and once more the words rang like a 
 rip-rap down the line. 
 
 It was noticed that the stern expression of Lord Nune-
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 9 
 
 ham's face assumed a death-like rigidity, that he took out 
 a pocket-book, wrote some words, tore away a leaf, handed 
 it to a native servant, and then, with an icy smile, stepped 
 into his carriage. Meantime the British contingent were 
 cheering again with yet more deafening clamour, and the 
 rolling sound followed the Consul-General as he drove away. 
 But the shout of the Egyptians followed him, too ; and when 
 he reached the high road the one was like muffled drums 
 at a funeral far behind, while the other was like the sharp 
 crack of Maxim guns that were always firing by his side. 
 The sea of muslin, ribbons, flowers, and feathers in the 
 pavilion had broken up by this time; the light was striking 
 level in people's eyes, the west was crimsoning with sunset 
 tints, the city was red on the tips of its minarets and ablaze 
 on the bare face of its insurgent hills, and the Nile itself, 
 taking the colouring of the sky, was lying like an old ser- 
 pent of immense size which had stretched itself along the 
 sand to sleep. 
 
 n 
 
 General Graves's daughter had been at the sports that 
 day, sitting in the chair immediately behind Lord Nune- 
 ham's. Her name was Helena, and she was a fine, hand- 
 some girl in the early twenties, with coal-black hair, very 
 dark eyes, a speaking face, and a smile like eternal sunshine, 
 well grown, splendidly developed, and carrying herself in 
 perfect equipoise with natural grace and a certain swing 
 when she walked. 
 
 Helena Graves was to marry Lord Nuneham's son. Colo- 
 nel Gordon Lord, and during the progress of the sham 
 fight she had had eyes for nobody else. She had watched 
 him when he had entered the field, sitting solid on his Irish 
 horse, which was stepping high and snorting audibly; when 
 at the " Fire ! " he had stood behind the firing line, and at 
 the " Cease fire ! " galloped in front ; when he had threaded 
 his forces round and round, north, south, and west, in and 
 out as in a dance, so that they faced the enemy on every
 
 10 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 side; when somebody had blundered and his cavalry had 
 been caught in a trap, and he had had to ride without sword 
 or revolver through a clovid of dark heads that had sprung 
 up as if out of the ground; and, above all, when his horse 
 had stumbled and he had fallen, and the dei-vishes, forget- 
 ting that the battle was not a real one, had hurled their 
 spears like shafts of forked lightning over his head. At 
 that moment she had forgotten all about the high society 
 gathered in a brilliant throng around her, and had clutched 
 the Consid-General's chair convulsively, breathing so audi- 
 bly that he had heard her, and, lowering the glasses through 
 which he had watched the distant scene, had patted her 
 arm and said: 
 
 " lie's safe — don't be afraid, my child ! " 
 
 When the fight was over her eyes were radiant, her 
 cheeks were like a conflagration, and, notwithstanding the 
 ugly incident attending the departure of the Prince and 
 Lord Nuneham, her face was full of a triumphant joy as 
 she stepped down to the green, where Colonel Lord, who 
 was waiting for her, put on her motor cloak — she had come 
 in her automobile — and helped her to fix the ligrht veil, 
 which in her excitement had fallen back from her hat and 
 showed that she was still blushing up to the roots of her 
 black hair. 
 
 Splendid creature as she was. Colonel Lord was a match 
 for her. lie was one of the youngest colonels in the British 
 Army, being four-and-thirty, of more than medium height, 
 with crisp brown hair, and eyes of the flickering, steel-like 
 blue that is common among enthusiastic natures, especially 
 when they are soldiers — a man of unmistakable masculinity, 
 yet with that vague suggestion of the woman about him 
 which, sometimes seen in a manly face, makes one say, with- 
 out knowing any of the circumstances, " That man is like 
 his mother, and whatever her ruling passion is, his own 
 will be, only stronger, more daring, and perhaps more 
 dangerous." 
 
 " They're a lovely pair," the women were saying of them 
 as they stood together; and soon they were surrounded by 
 a group of peojile, some complimenting Helena, others
 
 [Page 10.; 
 
 " Hurled their spears like shafts of forked lightning over 
 
 his head."
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS H 
 
 congratulating Gordon, all condemning the demonstration 
 which had cast a certain gloom over the concluding scene. 
 
 " It was too exciting, too fascinating, but how shameful 
 that conduct of the natives! It w^as just like a premedi- 
 tated insult," said a fashionable lady, a visitor to Cairo; 
 and then an Englishman — it was the Adviser who had 
 spoken the first unlucky words — said, promptly: 
 
 " So it was — it must have been. Didn't you see how it 
 was all done at a preconcerted signal ? " 
 
 " I'm not surprised. I've always said we English in 
 Egypt are living on the top of a volcano," said a small, 
 slack, gray-headed man, a judge in the native courts; and 
 then the Commandant of Police, a somewhat pompous per- 
 son, said, bitterly: 
 
 " We saved their country from bankruptcy, their backs 
 from the lash, and their stomachs from starvation, and now 
 listen : * Long live Egypt ! ' " 
 
 At that moment a rather effusive American lady came 
 up to Helena and said: 
 
 "Don't you ever recognise your friends, dear? I tried 
 to catch your eye during the fight, but a certain officer had 
 fallen, and, of course, nobody else existed in the world." 
 
 " Let us make up our minds to it — we are not liked,'' 
 the judge was saying. " N^aturally we were popular as long 
 as we were plastering the wounds made by tyrannical mas- 
 ters; but the masters are dead and the patient is better, 
 so the doctor is found to be a bore." 
 
 At that moment an Egyptian Princess, famous for her 
 wit and daring, came down the pavilion steps. She was one 
 of the few Egyptian women w^ho frequented mixed society 
 and went about with uncovered face — a large person, with 
 plump, pallid cheeks, very voluble, outspoken, and quick- 
 tempered, a friend and admirer of the Consul-General's, 
 and a champion of the English rule. Making straight for 
 Helena, she said : 
 
 " Goodness, child, is it your face I see or the light of 
 the moon? The battle? Oh, yes, it was beautiful, but it 
 M-as terrible, and thank the Lord, it is over. But tell me 
 about yourself, dear. You are desperately in love, they say.
 
 12 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 and no wonder. I'm in love with him myself, I really am, 
 and if . , , Oh, you're there, are j'ou? Well, I'm telling 
 Helena I'm in love with you. Such strength, such courage 
 — pluch you call it, don't you?" 
 
 Helena had turned to answer the American lady, and 
 Gordon, whose eyes had been on her as if waiting for her 
 to speak, whispered to the Princess: 
 
 " Isn't she looking lovely to-day. Princess ? " 
 
 " Then why don't you tell her so ? " said the Princess. 
 
 " Hush ! " said Gordon, whereupon the Princess said : 
 
 " My goodness, what ridiculous creatures men are ! 
 What cowards, too! As brave as lions before a horde of 
 savages, but before a woman — mon Dieu!" 
 
 " Yes," said the judge, in his slow, shrill voice, " they 
 are fond of talking of the old book of Egypt, yet the valley 
 of the Nile is strewn with the tombs of Egyptians who have 
 perished under their hard task-masters, from the Pharaohs 
 to the pashas. Can't they hear the murmur of the past 
 about them? Have they no memory if they have no grati- 
 tude ? " 
 
 At the last words General Graves came up to the group, 
 looking hot and excited, and he said: 
 
 " Memory ? Gratitude ? They're a nation of ingrates 
 and fools." 
 
 " What's that ? " said the Princess. 
 
 "Pardon me. Princess. I say the demonstration of your 
 countrymen to-day is an example of the grossest ingrati- 
 tude." 
 
 "You're quite right, General. But ma'aleysh! (no mat- 
 ter). The barking of dogs doesn't hurt the clouds." 
 
 " And who are the dogs in this instance. Princess ? " said 
 a thin-faced Turco-Egyptian with a heavy moustache, who 
 had been congratulating Colonel Lord. 
 
 " Your Turco-Egyptian beauties, who would set the 
 country ablaze to light their cigarettes," said the Princess. 
 " Children I call them. Children, and they deserve the rod. 
 Yes, the rod, and serve them right. Excuse the word. I 
 know! I tell you plainly, pasha." 
 
 "And the clouds are the Consul-General, I suppose?"
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 13 
 
 "Certainly; and he's so much above them that they 
 can't even see he's the sun in their sky, the stupids." 
 
 Whereupon the pasha, who was the Egyptian Prime 
 Minister under a British Adviser, said, with a shrug and 
 a dubious smile: 
 
 " Your sentiments are beautiful, but your similes are a 
 little broken. Princess." 
 
 " Xot half so much broken as your Treasury would have 
 been if the English hadn't helped it," said the Princess; 
 and when the pasha had gone off with a rather halting 
 laugh, she said : 
 
 '^ Ma^aleysh! When angels come the devils take their 
 leave. I don't care. I say what I think. I tell the Egyp- 
 tians the English are the best friends Egypt ever had, and 
 Nunehnm is their greatest ruler since the days of Joseph. 
 But Adam himself wasn't satisfied with Paradise, and it's 
 no use talking. ' Don't throw stones into the well you drink 
 from,' I say. But serve you right, you English. You 
 shouldn't have come. He who builds on another's land 
 brings up another's child. Everybody is excited about this 
 sedition, and even the harem are asking what the Govern- 
 ment is going to do. Xuneham knows best, though. Leave 
 him alone. He'll deal with these half-educated upstarts. 
 Upstarts — that's what I call them. Oh, I know! I speak 
 plainly ! " 
 
 " I agree with the Princess," chimed the judge. " What 
 is this unrest among the Egyptians due to? The education 
 we ourselves have given them." 
 
 " Yes ; teach your dog to snap, and he'll soon bite you." 
 
 " These are the tares in the harvest we are reaping, and 
 perhaps our Western grain doesn't suit this Eastern desert." 
 
 " Should think it doesn't, indeed. ' Liberty,' ' Equality,' 
 ' Fraternity,' ' Representative Institutions ' ! If you Eng- 
 lish come talking this nonsense to the Egyptians what can 
 you expect? Socialism, is it? Well, if I am to be Prince 
 and you are to be Prince, who is to drive the donkey? Ex- 
 cuse the word ! I know ! I tell you plainly. Good-bye, my 
 dear! You are looking perfect to-day. But then you are 
 so happy. I can see when young people are in love by their 
 3
 
 14 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 eyes, and yours are shining like moons. After all, your 
 Western waj-s are best. We choose the husbands for our 
 girls, thinking the silly things don't know what is good for 
 them, and the chicken isn't ATiser than the hen; but it's the 
 young* people, not the old ones, who have to live together, 
 so why shouldn't they choose for themselves ? " 
 
 At that instant there passed from some remote comer 
 of the grounds a brougham containing two shrouded figures 
 in close white veils, and the Princess said : 
 
 " Look at that, now — that relic of barbarism ! Shutting 
 our women up like canaries in a cage, while their men are 
 enjoying the sunshine. Life is a dancing girl — let her 
 dance a little for all of us." 
 
 The Princess was about to go, when General Graves ap- 
 pealed to her. The judge had been saying: 
 
 " I should call it a religious rather than a political un- 
 rest. You may do what you will for the Moslem; but he 
 never forgets that the hand which bestows his benefits is 
 that of an infidel." 
 
 " Yes, we're aliens here, there's no getting over it," said 
 the Adviser. 
 
 And the General said : " Especially when professional 
 fanatics are always reminding the Egyptians that we are 
 not Mohammedans. By the way. Princess, have you heard 
 of the new preacher, the new prophet, the new Mahdi, as 
 they say ? " 
 
 " Prophet ! Mahdi ! Another of them ? " 
 
 " Yes, the comet that has just appeared in the firma- 
 ment of Alexandria." 
 
 " Some holy man, I suppose. Oh, I know ! Holy man, 
 indeed ! Shake hands with him and count your rings, Gen- 
 eral! Another impostor riding on the people's backs — and 
 they can't see it, the stupids ! But the camel never can see 
 his hiunp — not he! Good-bye, girl. Get married soon, and 
 keep together as long as you can. Stretch your legs to the 
 length of your bed, my dear; why shouldn't you? Say 
 good-bye to Gordon? Certainly; where is he?" 
 
 At that moment Gordon was listening, with head down, 
 to something the General was saying with intense feeling.
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 15 
 
 " The only way to deal with religious impostors who sow 
 disaffection among the people is to suppress them with a 
 strong hand. Why not? Fear of their followers? They're 
 fit for nothing but to pray in their mosques, ' Away with, 
 the English, O Lord, but give us water in due measure ! ' 
 Fight? Not for an instant. There isn't an ounce of cour- 
 age in a hundred of them, and a score of good soldiers would 
 sweep all the native Egyptians of Alexandria into the sea.'* 
 
 Then Gordon, who had not yet spoken, lifted his head 
 and answered, in a rather nervous voice: 
 
 " No, no, no, sir ! Ill usage may have made these people 
 cowards in the old days, but proper treatment since has 
 made them men, and there wasn't an Egyptian fellah on 
 the field to-day who wouldn't have followed me into the 
 jaws of death if I had told him to. As for our being aliens- 
 in religion " — the nervous voice became louder, and at the 
 same time more tremulous — " that isn't everything. "We're 
 aliens in sympathy and brotherhood, and even in common, 
 courtesy as well. What is the honest truth about us? Here 
 we are to help the Egyptians to regenerate their country, 
 yet we neither eat nor drink nor associate with them. How 
 can we hope to win their hearts while we hold them at ann's 
 length ? We've given them water — yes, water in abundance, 
 but have we given them — love ? " 
 
 The woman in Gordon had leaped out before he knew it, 
 and he had swung a little aside as if ashamed, while the 
 men cleared their throats, and the Pi-incess, notwithstand- 
 ing that she had been abusing her own people, suddenly 
 melted in the eyes, muttered to herself, " Oh, our God ! " 
 and then, reaching over to kiss Helena, whispered in her 
 ear: 
 
 " You've got the best of the bunch, my dear, and if 
 England would only send us a few more of his sort we 
 should hear less of ' Long live Egypt ! ' Now, General, you. 
 can see me to my carriage if you would like to. By-bye, 
 young people ! " 
 
 At that moment the native servant to whom the Consul- 
 General had given the note came up and gave it to Gordon,, 
 who read it and then handed it to Helena. It ran:
 
 16 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Come to me immediately. Have something to say to 
 you.-X." 
 
 " We'll drive you to the Agency in the car," said Helena, 
 and they moved away together. 
 
 In a crowded lane at the back of the pavilion people 
 were clamouring for their carriages, and complaining of 
 the idleness and even rudeness of the Arab runners, but 
 Helena's automobile was brought up instantly, and when it 
 was moving off with the General inside, Helena at the 
 wheel and Gordon by her side, the natives touched their 
 foreheads to the colonel and said, '^ Bismillah ! ^^ 
 
 As soon as the car was clear away and Gordon was alone 
 with Helena for the first time, there was one of those pri- 
 vateering passages of love between them which lovers know 
 how to smuggle through, even in public and the eye of day. 
 
 " Well ! " 
 
 " Well ! " 
 
 " Everybody has been saying the sweetest things to me 
 and you've never yet uttered a word." 
 
 " Did you really expect me to speak — there — before all 
 those people ? But it was splendid — glorious — magnificent I " 
 
 And then, the steering-wheel notwithstanding, her 
 gauntleted left hand went down to w'here his right hand was 
 waiting for it. 
 
 Crossing the iron bridge over the river, they drew vip 
 at the British Agency, a large, ponderous, uninspired edi- 
 fice, with its ambuscaded back to the city and its defiant 
 front to the Xile, and there, as Gordon got down, the Gen- 
 eral, who still looked hot and excited, said : 
 
 " You'll dine with us to-night, my boy — usual hour, you 
 know." 
 
 " With pleasure, sir," said Gordon, and then Helena 
 leaned over and whispered : 
 . " May I guess what your father is going to talk about? " 
 
 " The demonstration ? " 
 
 "Oh, no!" 
 
 " What, then ? " 
 
 " The new prophet at Alexandria." 
 
 " I wonder," said Gordon, and with a wave of the hand
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 17 
 
 he disappeared behind a screen of purple blossoms as 
 Helena and the General faced home. 
 
 Their way lay up through the old city, where groups of 
 aggressive young- students, at sight of the General's gold- 
 laced cap, started afresh the Kentish fire of their "Long 
 live Egypt ! " Up and up until they reached the threaten- 
 ing old fortress on the spur of the Mokattam hills, and then 
 through the iron-clamped gates to the wide courtyard where 
 the mosque of Mohammed Ali, with its spiky minarets, 
 stands on the edge of the ramparts like a cock getting ready 
 to crow, and drew up at the gate of a heavy-lidded house 
 which looks sleepily down on the city, the sinuous Nile, the 
 sweeping desert, the preponderating pyramids, and the last 
 saluting of the sun. Then, as Helena rose from her seat, 
 she saw that the General's head had fallen back and his 
 face, was scarlet. 
 
 " Father, you are ill." 
 
 " Only a little faint — I'll be better presently." 
 
 But he stumbled in stepping out of the car, and Helena 
 said : • 
 
 " You are ill and you must go to bed immediately, and 
 let me put Gordon off until to-morrow." 
 
 " No ; let him come. I want to hear what the Consul- 
 General had to say to him." 
 
 In spite of himself he had to go to bed, though, and half 
 an hour later, having given him a sedative, Helena was 
 saying: 
 
 " You've over-excited yourself again, father. You were 
 anxious about Gordon when his horse fell and those abom- 
 inable spears were flying about." 
 
 " Not a bit of it. I knew he would come out all right. 
 The fighting devil isn't civilised out of the British blood 
 yet, thank God! But those Egyptians at the end — the in- 
 grates ! the dastards ! " 
 
 "Father!" 
 
 " Oh, I am calm enough now — don't be afraid, girl. I 
 was sorry to hear Gordon standing up for them, though. A 
 soldier every inch of him, but how unlike his father! 
 Never saw father and son so different. Yet so much alike.
 
 18 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 too ! Fighting men, both of them. Hope to goodness they'll 
 never come to grips. Heavens ! that would be a bad day 
 for all of lis.'' 
 
 And then, drowsily, under the influence of the medi- 
 cine: 
 
 " I wonder what Nuneham wanted with Gordon ? Some- 
 thing about those graceless tarbooshes, I suppose. He'll 
 make them smart for what they've done to-day. Wonder- 
 ful man, Xuneham! Wonderful!" 
 
 ni 
 
 John Xuneham was the elder son of a financier of whose 
 earlier life little or nothing was ever learned. What was 
 known of his later life was that he had amassed a fortune 
 by Colonial speculation, bought a London newspaper, and 
 been made a baronet for services to his political party. 
 Having no inclination toward journalism, the son became 
 a soldier, rose quickly to the rank of brevet-major, served 
 several years with his regiment abroad, and at six-and- 
 twenty went to India as private secretary to the Viceroy, 
 who, quickly recognising his natural tendency, transferred 
 him to the administrative side and put him on the financial 
 staff. There he spent five years with conspicuous success, 
 obtaining rapid promotion and being frequently mentioned 
 in the Viceroy's reports to the Foreigii Minister. 
 
 Then his father died, without leaving a will, as the cable 
 of the solicitors informed him, and he returned to Eng- 
 land to administer the estate. Here a thunderbolt fell on 
 him, for he found a younger brother, with whom he had 
 nothing in common and had never lived at peace, prepar- 
 ing to dispute his right to his father's title and fortune on 
 the assumption that he was illegitimate — that is to say, was 
 born before the date of the marriage of his parents. 
 
 The allegation proved to be only too well founded, and 
 as soon as the elder brother had recovered from the shock 
 of the truth he appealed to the younger one to leave things 
 as they found them.
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS * 19 
 
 " After all, a man's eldest son is his eldest son ; let mat- 
 ters rest," he urged, but his brother was obdurate, 
 
 " Nobody knows what the circumstances may have been. 
 Is there no ground of agreement I " But his brother could 
 see none. 
 
 "You can take the inheritance, if that's what you want; 
 but let me find a way to keep the title, so as to save the 
 family and avoid scandal." But his brother was unyielding. 
 
 " For our father's sake. It is not for a man's sons to 
 rake up the dead past of his forgotten life." But the 
 younger brother could not be stirred. 
 
 " For our mother's sake. Xobody wants his mother's 
 good name to be smirched — least of all when she's in her 
 grave." But the younger brother remained unmoved. 
 
 " I promise never to marry. The title shall en^ with me. 
 It shall return to you or to your children." But the 
 younger brother would not listen. 
 
 " England is the only Christian country in the world in 
 which a man's son is not always his son. For God's sake, 
 let me keep my father's name ! " 
 
 " It is mine, and mine alone," said the younger brother, 
 and then a heavy and solitary tear, the last he was to shed 
 for forty years, dropped slowly down John iSTuneham's 
 hard-drawn face, for at that instant the well of his heart 
 ran dry. 
 
 " As you will," he said. " But if it is your pride that 
 is doing this I shall humble it, and if it is your greed I 
 shall live long enough to make it ashamed." 
 
 From that day forward he dedicated his life to one ob- 
 ject only, the founding of a family that should far eclipse 
 the family of his brother, and his first step toward that 
 end was to drop his father's surname in the register of his 
 regiment and assume his mother's name of Lord. 
 
 At that moment England, with two other European 
 Powers, had, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, en- 
 tered the fiery furnace of Egyptian affairs, though not so 
 much to withstand as to protect the worship of the golden 
 image. A line of Khedives, each seeking his own advan- 
 tage, had culminated in one more unscrupulous and tyran-
 
 20 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 nical than the rest, ■who had seized the lands of the people, 
 borrowed money upon them in Europe, wasted it in wicked 
 personal extravagance, as well as in reckless imperial ex- 
 penditure that had not yet had time to yield a return, and 
 thus brought the country to the brink of ruin, with the result 
 that England was left alone at last to occupy Egypt, much 
 as Rome occupied Palestine, and to find a man to administer 
 her affairs in a position analogous to that of Pontius Pilate. 
 It found him in John Lord, the young financial secretary 
 who had distinguished himself in India. 
 
 His task was one of immense difficulty, for, though nom- 
 inally no more than the British Consul-General, he was 
 really the ruler of the country, being representative of the 
 sovereign whose soldiers held Egypt in their grip. Eealis- 
 ing at once that he was the official receiver to a bankrupt 
 nation, he saw that his first duty was to make it solvent. 
 He did make it solvent. In less than five years Egypt was 
 able to pay her debt to Europe. Therefore Europe was sat- 
 isfied, England was pleased, and John Lord was made 
 Knight of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. 
 
 Then he married a New England girl whom he had met 
 in Cairo, daughter of a Federal General in the Civil War, 
 a gentle creature, rather delicate, a little sentimental, and 
 very religious. 
 
 During the first years their marriage was childless, and 
 the wife, seeing with a woman's sure eyes that her hus- 
 band's hope had been for a child, began to live within her- 
 self and to weep when no one could see. But at last a child 
 came and it was a son, and she was overjoyed and the 
 Consul-General was content. He allowed her to christen 
 the child by what name she pleased, so she gave him the 
 name of her great Christian hero, Charles George Gordon, 
 They called the boy Gordon, and the little mother was very 
 happy. 
 
 But her health became still more delicate, so a nurse had 
 to be looked for, and they found one in an Egyptian woman 
 — with a child of her own — who, by power of a pernicious 
 law of Mohammedan countries, had been divorced through 
 no fault of hers, at the whim of a husband who wished to
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 21 
 
 marry another wife. Thus Ilagar, with her little Ishmael, 
 became foster-mother to the Consul-General's son, and the 
 two children were suckled together and slept in the same cot. 
 
 Years passed, during which the boy grew up like a little 
 Arab in the Englishman's house, while his mother devoted 
 herself more and more to the exercises of her religion, and 
 his father, without failing in affectionate attention to 
 either of them, seemed to bury his love for both too deep in 
 his heart and to seal it with a seal, although the Egyptian 
 nurse was sometimes startled late at night by seeing the 
 Consul-General coming noiselessly into her room before 
 going to his own, to see if it was well with his child. 
 
 Meantime, as ruler of Egypt, the Consul-General wa3 
 going from strength to strength, and, seeing that the Nile 
 is the most wonderful river in the world and the father of 
 the country through which it flows, he determined that it 
 should do more than moisten the lips of the Egyptian desert 
 v/hile the vast body lay parched with thirst. Therefore he 
 took engineers up to the fork of the stream where the clear 
 and crystal Blue Nile of Khartoum, tumbling down in 
 mighty torrents from the volcanic gorges of the Abyssinian 
 hills, crosses the slow and sluggish White Nile of Omdur- 
 man, and told them to build dams, so that the water should 
 not be wasted into the sea, but spread over the arid land, 
 leaving the glorious sun of Egypt to do the rest. 
 
 The effect was miraculous. Nature, the great wonder- 
 worker, had come to his aid, and never since the Spirit of 
 God first moved upon the face of the waters had anj'thing so 
 marvellous been seen. The barren earth brought forth grass 
 and the desert blossomed like a rose. Land values in- 
 creased ; revenues were enlarged ; poor men became rich ; 
 rich men became millionaires; Egypt became a part of 
 Europe; Cairo became a European city; the record of the 
 progress of the country began to sound like a story from 
 " The Arabian Nights." and the Consul-General's annual 
 reports read like fresh chapters out of the Book of Genesis, 
 telling of the creation of a new heaven and a new earth. 
 The remaking of Egypt was the wonder of the world; the 
 faces of the Egyptians were whitened; England was happy,
 
 22 THE WHITE PROrHET 
 
 and Sir John Lord was made a baronet. His son had grone 
 to school in England by this time, and from Eton he was 
 to go on to Sandhurst and to take up the career of a soldier. 
 
 Then, thinking the Englishman's mission on foreign soil 
 was something more than to make money, the Consul- 
 General attempted to regenerate the country. He had been 
 sent out to re-establish the authority of the Khedive, yet he 
 proceeded to curtail it; to suppress the insurrection of the 
 people, yet he proceeded to enlarge their liberties. Setting 
 up a high standard of morals, both in public and private 
 life, he tolerated no trickery. Finding himself in a cock- 
 pit of corruption, he put down bribery, slavery, perjuiy, 
 and a hundred kinds of venality and intrigue. Having 
 views about individual justice and equal rights before the 
 Law, he cleansed the Law Courts, established a Christian 
 code of morals between man and man, and let the light of 
 Western civilisation into the mud-hut of the Egyptian 
 fellah. 
 
 Mentally, morally, and physically his massive personal- 
 ity became the visible soul of Egypt. If a poor man was 
 wronged in the remotest village, he said, " I'll wi-ite to 
 Lord," and the threat was enough. He became the visible 
 conscience of Egypt, too, and if a rich man was tempted to 
 do a doubtful deed he thought of " the Englishman," and 
 the doubtful deed was not done. 
 
 The people at the top of the ladder trusted him, and the 
 people at the bottom, a simple, credulous, kindly race, who 
 were such as sixty centuries of misgovernment had made 
 them, touched their breasts, their lips, and their foreheads 
 at the mention of his name, and called him " The Father of 
 Egypt." England was proud, and Sir John Lord was made 
 a peer. 
 
 When the King's letter reached him he took it to his 
 wife, who now lay for long hours every day on the couch in 
 the drawing-room, and then wrote to his son, who had left 
 Sandhurst and Avas serving with his regiment in the Sou- 
 dan, but he said nothing to anybody else, and left even his 
 secretary to learn the great news through the newspapers. 
 
 He was less reserved when he came to select his title.
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 23 
 
 and, remembering his brother, he found a fierce joy in call- 
 ing himself by his father's name, thinking he had earned 
 the right to it. Twenty-five years had passed since he had 
 dedicated his life to the founding of a family that should 
 eclipse, and even humiliate, the family of his brother, and 
 now his secret aim was realised. He saw a long line suc- 
 ceeding him — his son, and his son's son, and his son's son's 
 son, all peers of the realm, and all Nunehams. His revenge 
 was sweet ; he was very happy. 
 
 IV 
 
 If Lord ISTuneham had died then, or if he had passed 
 away from Egypt, he would have left an enduring fame as 
 one of the great Englishmen who twice or thrice in a hun- 
 dred years carve their names on the granite page of the 
 world's history; but he went on and on, until it sometimes 
 looked as if in the end it might be said of him, in the phrase 
 of the Arab proverb, that he had written his name in water. 
 
 Having achieved one object of ambition, he set himself 
 another, and having tasted power he became possessed by 
 the lust of it. Great men had been in England when he 
 first came to Egypt, and he had submitted to their instruc- 
 tions without demur, but now, wincing under the orders of 
 inferior successors, he told himself, not idly boasting, that 
 nobody in London knew his work as well as he did, and he 
 must be liberated from the domination of Downing Street. 
 The work of emancipation was delicate but not difiicult. 
 There was one power stronger than any Government where- 
 by public opinion might be guided and controlled — the 
 Press. 
 
 The British Consul-General in Cairo was in a position 
 of peculiar advantage for guiding and controlling the Press. 
 He did guide and control it. What he thought it well that 
 Europe should know about Egypt, that it knew, and that 
 only. The generally ill-informed public opinion in Eng- 
 land was corrected; the faulty praise and blame of the
 
 24 THE WHITE PKOPHET 
 
 British Press was set right ; within five years London had 
 ceased to send instructions to Cairo; and when a diplomatic 
 question created a fuss in Parliament the Consul-General 
 was heard to say: 
 
 " I don't care a rush what the Government think, and I 
 don't care a straw what the Foreign Minister says ; I have a 
 power stronger than either at my back — the public." 
 
 It was true, but it was also the beginning of the end. 
 Having attained to absolute power, he began to break up 
 from the seeds of dissolution which always hide in the heart 
 of it. Hitherto he had governed Egypt by guiding a group 
 of gifted Englishmen who, as secretaries and advisers, had 
 governed the Egyptian governors ; but now he desired to 
 govern everything for himself. As a consequence the gifted 
 men had to go, and their places were taken by subordinates 
 whose best qualification was their subservience to his strong 
 and masterful spirit. 
 
 Even that did not matter as long as his own strength 
 served him. He knew and determined everything, from the 
 terms of treaties with foreign Powers to the wages of the 
 Khedive's English coachman. With five thousand British 
 bayonets to enforce his will, he said to a man, " Do that," 
 and the man did it or left Egypt without delay. No Em- 
 peror or Czar or King was ever more powerful, no Pope 
 more infallible; but if his rule was hard it was also just, 
 and for some years yet Egypt was well governed. 
 
 " When a fish goes bad," the Arabs say, " is it first at 
 the head or at the tail ? " As Lord Nunoham grew old his 
 health began to fail, and he had to fall back on the weak- 
 lings who were only fit to carry out his will. Then an un- 
 dertone of murmuring was heard in Egypt. The Govern- 
 ment was the same, yet it was altogether different. The 
 hand was Esau's, but the voice was Jacob's. " The mill- 
 stones are grinding," said the Egyptians, " but we see no 
 flour." 
 
 The glowing fire of the great Englishman's fame began 
 to turn to ashes, and a cloud no bigger than a man's hand 
 appeared in the sky. His Advisers complained to him of 
 friction with their Ministers; his inspectors, returning
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 25 
 
 from tours in the country, gave him reports of scant cour- 
 tesy at the hands of natives, and to account for their 
 failures they worked up in his mind the idea of a vast racial 
 and religious conspiracy. The East was the East, the West 
 was the West, Moslem was Moslem, Christian was Chris- 
 tian; Egyptians cared more about Islam than they did about 
 good government, and Europeans in the Valley of the Nile, 
 especially British soldiers and officials, were living on the 
 top of a volcano. 
 
 The Consul-General listened to them with a sour smile, 
 but he believed them and blundered. He was a sick man 
 now, and he was not really living in Egypt any longer; he 
 was only sleeping at the Agency, and he thought he saw the 
 work of his lifetime in danger of being undone. So, think- 
 ing to end fanaticism by one crushing example, he gave his 
 subordinates an order like that which the ancient King of 
 Egypt gave to the midwives, with the result that five men 
 were hanged and a score were flogged before their scream- 
 ing wives and children for an offence that had not a par- 
 ticle of religious or political significance. 
 
 A cry of horror went up through Egypt. The Consul- 
 General had lost it ; his thirty years of great labour had 
 been undone in a day. 
 
 As every knife is out when the bull is down, so the place- 
 hunting pashas, the greedy Sheikhs, and the cruel governors 
 whose corruptions he had suppressed found instruments to 
 stab him, and the people who had kissed the hand they dared 
 not bite thought it safe to bite the hand they need not kiss. 
 He had opened the mouths of his enemies, and, in Eastern 
 manner, they assailed him first by parable. Once there had 
 been a great English eagle; its eyes were clear and pierc- 
 ing; its talons were firm and relentless in their grip; yet 
 it was a proud and noble bird ; it held its own against East 
 and West, and protected all who took refuge under its wing. 
 But now the eagle had grown old and weak; other birds, 
 smaller and meaner, had deprived it of its feathers and 
 picked out its eyes, and it had become blind and cruel and 
 cowardly and sly. Would nobody shoot it or shut it up 
 in a cage?
 
 26 THE WHITE PEOrHET 
 
 Rightly or wrongly, the Consul-General became con- 
 vinced that the Khedive was intriguing against him, and 
 one day he drove to the Royal palace and demanded an 
 audience. The interview that followed was not the first of 
 many stormy scenes between the real governor of Egypt 
 and its nominal ruler, and when Lord Nuneham strode out 
 with his face aflame, through the line of the quaking body- 
 guard, he left the Khedive protesting plaintively to the 
 people of his Court that he would sell up all and leave the 
 country. At that the officials put their heads together in 
 private, concluded that the present condition could not last, 
 and asked themselves how, since it was useless to expect 
 England to withdraw the Consul-General, it was possible 
 for Egypt to get i-id of him. ' 
 
 By this time Lord Nuneham, in the manner of all strong 
 men growing weak, had begun to employ spies, and one day 
 a Syrian Christian told him a secret story. He was to be 
 assassinated. The crime was to be committed in the Opera- 
 house, under the cover of a general riot, on the night of the 
 Khedive's State visit, when the Consul-General was always 
 present. As usual, the Khedive was to rise at the end of 
 the first act and retire to the saloon overlooking the square; 
 as \isual, he was to send for Lord Nuneham to follow him, 
 and the moment of the Khedive's return to his box was to 
 be the signal for a rival demonstration of English and 
 Egyptians that was to end in the Consul-General's death. 
 There was no reason to believe the Khedive himself was 
 party to the plot, or that he knew anything about it, yet 
 none the less it was necessary to stay away, to find an ex- 
 cuse — illness at the last moment, anything. 
 
 Lord Nuneham was not afraid, but he sent up to the 
 Citadel for General Graves, and arranged that a battalion 
 of infantry and a battery of artillery were to be marched 
 down to the Opera Square at a message over the telephone 
 from him. 
 
 " If anything happens you know what to do," he said, 
 and the General knew perfectly. 
 
 Then the night came, and the moment the Khedive left 
 his palace the Consul-General heard of it. A moment later
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 27 
 
 a message was received at the Citadel, and a quarter of an 
 hour afterward Lord ISTuiieham was taking his place at 
 the Opera. The air of the house tingled with excitement, 
 and everj-thing seemed to justify the Syrian's story. 
 
 Sure enough, at the end of the f.rst act the Khedive 
 rose and retired to the saloon, and sure enough at the next 
 moment the Consul-General was summoned to follow him. 
 His Highness was very gracious, very agreeable, all trace 
 of their last stormy interview being gone, and gradually 
 Lord Nuneham drew him up to the windows overlooking 
 the public square. 
 
 There, under the sparkling light of a dozen electric 
 lamps, in a solid line surrounding the Opera-house, stood a 
 battalion of infantry with the guns of the artillery facing 
 outward at every corner, and at sight of them the Khedive 
 caught his breath and said: 
 
 ""What is the meaning of this, my lord?" 
 
 " Only a little attention to your Highness," said the 
 Consul-General, in a voice that was intended to be heard 
 all over the room. 
 
 At that instant somebody came up hurriedly and whis- 
 pered to the lOiedive, who turned ashen white, ordered his 
 carriage, and went home immediately. 
 
 Next morning at eleven Lord ISTuneham, with the same 
 force drawn up in front of Abdeen Palace, went in to 
 see the Ivhedive again. 
 
 " There's a train for Alexandria at twelve," he said, 
 " and a steamer for Constantinople at five — your Highness 
 will feel better for a little holiday in Europe " ; and half an 
 hour afterward the Khedive, accompanied by several of his 
 Court officials, was on his way to the railway-station with 
 the escort, in addition to his own bodyguard, of a British 
 regiment whose band was playing the Khedivial Hymn. 
 
 He had got rid of the Khedive at a critical juncture, 
 but he had still to deal with a sovereign that would not 
 easily be chloroformed into silence. The Arabic Press, to 
 which he had been the first to give liberty, began to attack 
 him openly, to vilify him, and systematically to misrepre- 
 sent his actions, so that he who had been the great torch-
 
 28 • THE WHITE TROPHET 
 
 bearer of light iu a dark country saw himself called the 
 Great Adventurer, the Tyrant, the Assassin, the worst 
 Pharaoh Egypt had ever known — a Pharaoh surrounded by 
 a kindergarten of false prophets, obsessed by preposterous 
 fears of assassination and deluded by phantoms of fanati- 
 cism. 
 
 His subordinates told him that these hysterical tirades 
 were inflaming the whole of Egypt ; that their influence 
 was in proportion to their violence; that the huge un- 
 taught mass of the Egyptian people were listening to them; 
 that there was not an ignorant fellah possessed of one 
 ragged garment who did not go to the coffee-house at night 
 to hear them read; that the lives of British officials were in 
 peril; and that the promulgation of sedition must be stopped 
 or the British governance of the country could not go on. 
 
 A sombre fire shone in the Consul-General's eyes while 
 he heard their prophecy, but he believed it all the same; 
 and when he spoke contemptuously of incendiary articles as 
 froth, and they answered that froth could be stained with 
 blood, he told himself that if fools and ingrates, spouting 
 nonsense in Arabic, could destroy whatever germs of civ- 
 ilisation he had implanted in Egypt, the doctrine of the 
 liberty of the Press was all moonshine. 
 
 And so, after sinister efforts to punish the whole people 
 for the excesses of their journalists by enlarging the British 
 Army and makin? the country pay the expense, he found a 
 means to pass a new Press law, to promulgate it by help of 
 the Prime Minister — now Regent in the Khedive's place — 
 and to suppress every native newspaper in Egypt in one 
 day. By that blow the Egyptians were staggered into 
 silence, the British officials went about with stand-off man- 
 ners and airs of conscious triumph, and Lord Nuneham 
 himself, mistaking violence for power, thought he was mas- 
 ter of Egj'pt once more. 
 
 But low, very low on the horizon a new planet now rose 
 in the firmament. It was not the star of a Khedive jealous 
 of Xuneham's power, or of an Egyptian Minister girding 
 under the orders of his Under-Secretary, or yet of a jour- 
 nalist vilifying England and flirting with France, but that
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 29 
 
 of a simple Arab in a turban and caftan, a swarthy son of 
 the deaert whose name no man had heard before, and it 
 was rising over the dome over the mosque, within whose 
 sacred precincts neither the Consul-General nor his officials 
 could intrude, and where the march of British soldiers could 
 not be made. There a reverberation was being heard, a new 
 voice was going forth, and it was echoing and re-echoing 
 through the hushed chambers that were the heart of Islam, 
 
 When Lord Xuneham first asked about the Arab he was 
 told that the man was one Ishmael Ameer, out of the 
 Libyan desert, a carpenter's son and a fanatical, backward, 
 unenlightened person of no consequence whatever; but with 
 his sure eye for the political heavens the Consul-General 
 perceived that a planet of no common magnitude had ap- 
 peared in the Egyptian sky, and that it would avail him 
 nothing to have suppressed the open sedition of the news- 
 papers if he had only driven it underground into the 
 mosques, where it would be a hundredfold more dangerous. 
 
 If a political agitation was not to be turned into relig- 
 ious unrest, if fanaticism was not to conquer civilisation 
 and a holy war to carry the country back to its old rotten 
 condition of bankruptcy and barbarity, that man out of 
 the Libyan desert must be put down. But how and by 
 whom? He himself was old — more than seventy years old; 
 his best days were behind him, the road in front of him 
 must be all doMTihill now, and when he looked around 
 among the sycophants who said, " Yes, my lord ! " " Excel- 
 lent, my lord ! " " The very thing, my lord ! " for some one 
 to fight the powers of darkness that were arrayed against 
 him, he saw none. 
 
 It was in this mood that he had gone to the sham fight, 
 merely because he had to show himself in public, and there, 
 sitting immediately in front of the fine girl who was to be 
 his daughter soon, and feeling at one moment her quick 
 breathing on his neck, he had been suddenly caught up by 
 the spirit of her enthusiasm and had seen his son as he had 
 never seen him before. Putting his glasses to his eyes, he 
 had watched him — he and, as it seemed, the girl together. 
 Such courage, such fire, such resource, such insight, such
 
 30 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 foresight ! It must be the finest brain and firmest character 
 in Egj-pt, and it was his own flesh and blood — his own son 
 Gordon ! 
 
 Hitherto his attitude toward Gordon had been one of 
 placid affection, compounded partly of selfishness, being 
 proud that he was no fool and could forge along in his pro- 
 fession, and pleased to think of him as the next link in the 
 chain of the family he was founding; but now everything 
 was changed. The right man to put down sedition was the 
 man at his right hand. He would save England against 
 Egyptian aggression; he would save his father, too, who 
 was old and whose strength was spent; and perhaps — why 
 not? — he would succeed him some day and carry on the 
 traditions of his work in the conquest of civilisation and 
 its triumph in the dark countries of the world. 
 
 For the first time for forty years a hea\';>' and solitary 
 tear dropped slowly down the Consul-General's cheek, now 
 deeply scored with lines, but no one saw it, because few 
 dared look into his face. The man who had never unbur- 
 dened himself to a living soul wished to unburden himself 
 at last, so he scribbled his note to Gordon and then stepped 
 into the carriage that was to take him home. 
 
 Meantime he was aware that some fool had provoked a 
 demonstration, but that troubled him hardly at all, and 
 while the crackling cries of " Long live Egypt ! " were fol- 
 lowing him down the arena he was being borne along as by 
 invisible wings. 
 
 Thus the two aims in the great Proconsul's life had be- 
 come one aim, and that one aim centred in his son. 
 
 As Gordon went into the British Agency a small, wiz- 
 ened man with a pock-marked face, wearing Oriental dress, 
 came out. He was the Grand Cadi (Chief Judge) of the 
 Mohammedan Courts and representative of the Sultan of 
 Turkey in Egypt, one who had secretly hated the Consul-
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 31 
 
 General and raved against the Eng-lish rule for years; and 
 as he saluted obsequiously with his honeyed voice and 
 smiled with his crafty eyes it flashed upon Gordon — he did 
 not know why — that just so must Caiaphas, the high priest, 
 have looked when he came out of Pilate's judgment hall 
 after saying, " If thou let this man go thou art not Caesar's 
 friend." 
 
 Gordon leaped up the steps and into the house as one who 
 was at home, and, going first into the shaded drawing-room, 
 he found his mother on the couch looking to the sunset and 
 the Nile — a sweet old lady in the twilight of life, with 
 white hair, a thin face almost as white, and the pale smile 
 of a patient soul who had suffered pain. "With her, attend- 
 ing upon her, and at that moment handing a cup of chicken 
 broth to her, was a stout Egyptian woman with a good 
 homely countenance — Gordon's old nurse, Fatimah. 
 
 His mother turned at the sound of his voice, roused her- 
 self on the couch, and with that startled cry of joy which 
 has only one note in all jSTature, that of a mother meeting 
 her beloved son, she cried, " Gordon ! Gordon ! " and clasped 
 her delicate hands about his neck. Before he could prevent 
 it, his foster-mother, too, muttering in Eastern manner, 
 " Oh, my eye ! oh, my soul ! " had snatched one of his hands 
 and was smothering it with kisses. 
 
 "And how is Helena ? " his mother asked, in her low, 
 sweet voice. 
 
 " Beautiful," said Gordon, 
 
 " She couldn't help being that. But why doesn't she 
 come to see me ? " 
 
 " I think she is anxious about her father's health and is 
 afraid to leave him," said Gordon; and then Fatimah, with 
 blushes showing through her Arab skin, said : 
 
 " Take care. A house may hold a hundred men, but the 
 heart of a woman has only room for one of them." 
 
 "Ah, but Helena's heart is as wide as a well, mammy," 
 said Gordon, whereupon Fatimah said: 
 
 " That's the way, you see ! When a young man is in 
 love there are only two sorts of girls in the world — ordinary 
 girls and his girl."
 
 32 THE WHITE PEOPHET 
 
 At that moment, while the women laughed, Gordon 
 heard his father's deep voice in the hall saying, " Bid good- 
 bye to my wife before you go, Reg,"' and then the Consul- 
 General, with " Here's Gordon, also," came into the draw- 
 ing-room, followed by Sir Reginald Mannering, Sirdar of 
 the Egyptian Army, and Governor of the Soudan, who said: 
 
 " Splendid, my boy ! Not forgotten your first fight, I 
 see! Heavens, I felt as if I was back at Omdurman and 
 wanted to get at the demons again." 
 
 " Gordon," said the Consul-General, " see His Excellency 
 to the door and come to me in the librar\%" and when the 
 Sirdar was going out at the porch he whispered : 
 
 " Go easy with the Governor, my boy. Don't let any- 
 thing cross him. Wonderful man, but I see a difference 
 since I was down last year. By-bye ! " 
 
 Gordon found his father writing a letter, with his valet, 
 Ibrahim, in green caftan and red waistband, waiting by the 
 side of the desk, in a plain room, formal as an office, being 
 walled with bookcases full of blue books and relieved by two 
 pictures only, a portrait of his mother when she was younger 
 than he could remember to have seen her, and of himself 
 when he was a child and wore an Arab fez and slippers. 
 
 " The General — the Citadel," said the Consul-General, 
 giving his letter to Ibrahim, and as soon as the valet was 
 gone he wheeled his chair round to Gordon and began. 
 
 " I've been writing to your General for his formal con- 
 sent, having something I wish you to do for me." 
 
 " With pleasure, sir," said Gordon. 
 
 " You know all about the riots at Alexandria ? " 
 
 " Only what I've learned from the London papers, sir." 
 
 " Well, for some time past the people there have been 
 showing signs of effervescence. First, strikes of cabmen, 
 carters, Gods knows what — all concealing political issues. 
 Then open disorder. Europeans bustled and spat upon in 
 the streets. A Sheikh crying aloud in the public thorough- 
 fares, ' Oh, Moslems, come and help me to drive out the 
 Christians!' Then a Greek merchant warned to take care, 
 as the Arabs were going to kill the Christians that day or 
 the daj' following. Then low-class Moslems shouting in the
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 33 
 
 square of Mohammed Ali, * The last day of the Christians 
 is drawing nigh.' As a consequence, there have been con- 
 flicts. The first of them was trivial and the police scat- 
 tered the rioters with a water-hose. The second was more 
 serious and some Europeans were wounded. The third was 
 alarming and several natives had to be arrested. Well, 
 when I look for the cause, I find the usual one." 
 
 "What is it, sir?" asked Gordon. 
 
 " Egj'pt has at all times been subject to local insurrec- 
 tions. They are generally of a religious character, and are 
 set on foot by mad men who give themselves out as divinely 
 inspired leaders. But shall I tell you what it all means ? " 
 
 " Tell me, sir," said Gordon. 
 
 The Consul-General rose from his chair and began to 
 walk up and down the room with long strides and heavy 
 tread. 
 
 " It means," he said, " that the Egyptians, like all other 
 Mohammedans, are cut off by their religion from the spirit 
 and energy of the great civilised nations; that, swathed in 
 the bands of the Koran, the Moslem faith is like a mummy, 
 dead to all uses of the modern world." 
 
 The Consul-General drew up sharply, and continued: 
 "Perhaps all dogmatic religions are more or less like that, 
 but the Christian religion has accommodated itself to the 
 spirit of the ages, whereas Islam remains fixed, the religion 
 of the seventh century, born in a desert and suckled in a 
 society that was hardly better than barbarism." 
 
 He began to walk again and to talk with great anima- 
 tion. 
 
 " What does Islam mean ? It means slavery, seclusion 
 of women, indiscriminate divorce, unlimited polygamy, the 
 breakdown of the family, and the destruction of the nation. 
 Well, what happens ? Civilisation comes along, and it is 
 death to all such dark ways. What next ? The scheming 
 Sheikhs, the corrupt pashas, the tyrranical caliphs, all the 
 rascals and rogues who batten on corruption, the fanatics 
 who are opponents of the light, cry out against it. Either 
 they must lose their interests or civilisation must go. What 
 then ? Civilisation means the West ; the West moans
 
 34 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Christianity, So, 'Down wiili the Christians! Oh, Mos- 
 lems, help us to kill them ! ' " 
 
 The Consul-General stopped by Gordon's chair, put his 
 hand on his son's shoulder, and said: — 
 
 " There comes a time in the history of all our Moham- 
 medan dependencies — India, Egypt, every one of them — 
 when England has to confront a condition like that." 
 
 " And what has she to do, sir ? " 
 
 The Consul-General lifted his right fist and brought it 
 down on his left palm, and said: 
 
 " To come dowTi with a heavy hand on the lying agitators 
 and intriguers who are leading away the ignorant populace." 
 
 " I agree, sir. It is the agitators who should be punished, 
 not the poor, emotional, credulous Egyptian people." 
 
 " The Egyptian people, my boy, are graceless ingrates 
 who, under the influence of momentary passion, would brain 
 their best friend with their nabouts, and go like camels 
 before the camel-driver." 
 
 Gordon winced visibly, but only said, " Who is the camel- 
 driver in this instance, sir?" 
 
 " A certain Ishmael Ameer, preaching in the great 
 mosque at Alexandria, the ci'adle of all disaffection." 
 
 "An alim?" 
 
 " A teacher of some sort, saying England is the deadly 
 foe of Islam, and must therefore be driven out." 
 
 "Then he is worse than the journalists?" 
 
 " Yes ; we thought of the viper, forgetting the scorpion." 
 
 "But is it certain he is so dangerous?" 
 
 " One of the leaders of his own people has just been here 
 to say that if we let that man go on it will be death to the 
 rule of England in Egypt." 
 
 " The Grand Cadi ? " 
 
 The Consul-General nodded and then said : " The cun- 
 ning rogue has a grievance of his own, I find, but w'hat's 
 that to me? The first duty of a Government is to keep 
 order." 
 
 " I agree," said Gordon. 
 
 " Thf.re may be picric acid in prayers as well as in 
 bombs."
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 35 
 
 " There may." 
 
 " We have to make these fanatical preachers realise that, 
 even if the onward march of progress is but faintly heard 
 in the sealed vaults of their mosque, civilisation is standing 
 outside the walls with its laws and, if need be, its soldiers." 
 
 " You are satisfied, sir, that this man is likely to lead 
 the poor, foolish people into rapine and slaughter ? " 
 
 " I recognise a bird by its flight. This is another Mahdi 
 — I see it — I feel it," said the Consul-General, and his eyes 
 flashed and his voice echoed like a horn. 
 
 " You want me to smash the Mahdi ? " 
 
 " Exactly. Your namesake wanted to smash his pre- 
 decessor — romantic person, too fond of guiding his conduct 
 by reference to the prophet Isaiah — but he was right in that 
 and the Government was wrong, and the consequence was 
 the massacre you represented to-day." 
 
 " I have to arrest Ishmael Ameer ? " 
 
 " That's so. In open riot, if possible, and if not, 
 by means of testimony derived from his sermons in the 
 mosques." 
 
 "Hadn't we better begin there, sir? — make sure that he 
 is inciting the people to violence ? " 
 
 " As you please." 
 
 " You don't forget that the mosques are closed to me as 
 a Christian ? " 
 
 The Consul-General reflected for a moment and then 
 said, " Where's Fatimah's son, Hafiz ? " 
 
 " With his regiment at Abbassiah." 
 
 " Take him with you. Take two other Moslem witnesses 
 as well." 
 
 "I'm to bring this new prophet back to Cairo?" 
 
 "That's it; bring him here. We'll do all. the rest." 
 
 " What if there should be trouble with the people ? " 
 
 " There's a battalion of British soldiers in Alexandria. 
 Keep a force in readiness — under arms night and day." 
 
 " But if it should spread beyond Alexandria ? " 
 
 " So much the better for you. I mean," said the Consul- 
 General, hesitating for the first time, " we don't want blood- 
 shed, but if it must come to that it must, and the eyes of
 
 36 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 England will be on you. What more can a young man want? 
 Think of yourself " — he put his hand on his son's shoulder 
 again — " think of yourself as on the eve of crushing Eng- 
 land's enemies and rendering a signal service to Gordon 
 Lord as well. And now go — go up to your General and get 
 his formal consent. My love to Helena ! Fine girl, very ! 
 She's the sort of woman who might . . . yes, women are 
 the springs that move everything in this world. Bid good- 
 bye to your mother and get away. Lose no time. Write to 
 me as soon as you have anything to say. That's enough for 
 the present. I'm busy. Good day ! " 
 
 Almost before Gordon had left the library the Consul- 
 General was back at his desk — the stern, saturnine man once 
 more, with a face that seemed to express a mind inaccessible 
 to human emotions of any sort. 
 
 " As bright as a light — sees things before one says them," 
 he said to himself, as Gordon closed the door on going out. 
 "Why have I wasted myself with weaklings so long?" 
 
 Gordon kissed his pale-faced mother in the drawing-room 
 and his swarthy foster-mother in the porch, and went back 
 to his quarters in barracks — a rather bare room with bed, 
 desk, and bookcase, many riding boots on a shelf, several 
 weapons of savage warfare on the walls, a dervish's suit of 
 chain armour with a bullet-hole where the heart of the man 
 had been, a picture of Eton, his old school, and above all, 
 as became the home of a soldier, many photographs of his 
 womankind — his mother with her plaintive smile, Fatimah 
 with her humorous look, and, of course, Helena with her 
 glorious eyes, Helena, Helena, everywhere Helena. 
 
 There, taking down the receiver of a telephone, he called 
 up the headquarters of the Egyptian Army and spoke to 
 Hafiz, his foster-brother, now a captain in the native 
 cavalry. 
 
 "Is that you, Hafiz? . . . Well, look here, I want to 
 know if you can arrange to go with me to Alexandria for a 
 day or two ? , . . You can ? Good ! I wish you to help me 
 to deal with that new preacher, prophet, Mahdi. What's 
 his name, now? . . . That's it — Ishmael Ameer. He has 
 been setting Moslem against Christian, and we've got to
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 37 
 
 lay the gentleman by the heels before he gets the poor, 
 credulous people into further trouble. . . . What do you say ? 
 . . . Not that kind of man, you think? . . . jSTo? . . . You 
 surprise me. . . . Do you really mean to say? . . . Cer- 
 tainly; that's only fair. . . . Yes, I ought to know all about 
 him. . . . Your uncle? . . . Chancellor of the University? 
 . . • I know — El Azhar. . . . When could I see him? . . . 
 What day do we go to Alexandria ? To-morrow, if possible. 
 . . . To-night the only convenient time, you think? Well, 
 I promised to dine at the Citadel; but I suppose I must 
 write to Helena. . . . Oh, needs must when the devil drives, 
 old fellow. . . . To-night, then? . . . You'll come down for 
 me immediately ? Good ! By-bye ! " 
 
 With that he rang off and sat down to write a letter. 
 
 VI 
 
 Gordon Lord loved the Egyptians. Nursed on the knee 
 of an Egyptian woman, speaking Arabic as his mother- 
 tongue, lisping the songs of Arabia before he knew a word 
 of English, Egypt was under his very skin, and the spirit of 
 the Nile and of the desert was in his blood. 
 
 Only once a day in his childhood was there a break in his 
 Arab life. That was in the evening about sunset, when 
 Fatimah took him into his father's library, and the great 
 man with his stern face, who assumed toward him a singu- 
 larly cold manner, put him through a catechism which was 
 always the same: "Tutor been here to-day, boy?" "Yes, 
 sir." " Done your lessons ? " " Yes, sir." " English — 
 French — everything?" "Yes, sir." "Say good night to 
 your mother and go to bed." 
 
 Then for a few moments more he was taken into his 
 mother's boudoir, the cool room with the blinds down to 
 keep out the sun, where the lady with the beautiful, pale 
 face embraced and kissed him, and made him kneel by her 
 side while they said the Lord's Prayer together in a rustling 
 whisper, like a breeze in the garden. But, after that, off to 
 4
 
 38 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 bed with Hafiz — who, in his Arab caftan and fez, had been 
 looking furtively in at the half-open door — up two steps at 
 a time, shouting and singing in Arabic, while Fatimah, in 
 fear of the Consul-General, cried, " Hush ! Be good, now, 
 my sweet eyes ! " 
 
 In his boyhood, too, he had been half a Mohammedan, 
 going every afternoon to fetch Hafiz home from the kuttab, 
 the school of the mosque, and romping round the sacred 
 place like a little king in stocking feet, until the Sheikh in 
 charge, who pretended as long as possible not to see him, 
 came with a long cane to whip him out, always saying he 
 should never come there again — until to-morrow. 
 
 While at school in England he had felt like a foreigner, 
 wearing his silk hat on the back of his head as if it had 
 been a tarboosh, and while at Sandhurst, where he got 
 through his three years more easily — in spite of a certain 
 restiveness under discipline — he had always been looking 
 forward to his Christmas visits home — that is to say, to 
 Cairo. 
 
 But at last he came back to Egypt on a great errand, 
 •with the expedition that was intended to revenge the death 
 of his heroic namesake, having got his commission by that 
 time, and being asked for by his father's old friend, Reginald 
 Mannering, who was a colonel in the Egyptian Army. His 
 joy was wild, his excitement delirious; and even the desert 
 marches under the blazing sun and the sky of brass, killing 
 to some of his British comrades, was a long delight to the 
 Arab soul in him. 
 
 The first fighting he did, too, was done with an Egyptian 
 by his side. His great chum was a young lieutenant named 
 Ali Awad, the son of a pasha, a bright, intelligent, affec- 
 tionate young fellow who was intensely sensitive to the con- 
 tempt of British officers for the quality of the courage of 
 their Egyptian colleagues. During the hurly-burly of the 
 Battle of Omdurman both Gordon and Ali had been eager 
 to get at the enemy, but their Colonel had held them back, 
 saying, " What will your fathers say to me if I allow you to 
 go into a hell like that ? " When the dervish lines had been 
 utterly broken, though, and one coffee-coloured demon in
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 39 
 
 chain armour was stealing off with his black banner, the 
 Colonel said, " Now's your time, boys ; show what stuff you 
 are made of; bring me back that flag," and before the words 
 were out of his mouth the young soldiers were gone. 
 
 Other things happened immediately, and the Colonel had 
 forgotten his order when, the battle being over, and the 
 British and Egyptian Army about to enter the dirty and 
 disgusting city of the Caliph, he became aware that Gordon 
 Lord was riding beside him with a black banner in one hand 
 and some broken pieces of horse's reins in the other. 
 
 " Bravo ! You've got it, then ? " said the Colonel. 
 
 " Yes, sir," said Gordon, very sadly, and the Colonel saw 
 that there were tears in the boy's eyes. 
 
 " What's amiss ? " he said, and, looking round, " Where's 
 All?" 
 
 Then Gordon told him what had happened. They had 
 captured the dervish and compelled him to give up his spear 
 and rifle, but just as Ali was leading the man into the 
 English lines the demon had drawn a knife and treacherously 
 stabbed him in the back. The boy choked with sobs while 
 he delivered his comrade's last message : " Say good-bye to 
 the Colonel, and tell him Ali Awad was not a coward. I 
 didn't let go the Baggara's horse until he stuck me, and 
 then he had to cut the reins to get away. Show the bits of 
 the bridle to my Colonel and tell him I died faithful. Say 
 my salaams to him, Charlie. I knew Charlie Gordon Lord 
 would stay with me to the end." 
 
 The Colonel was quite broken down, but he only said, 
 " This is no time for crying, my boy," and a moment after- 
 ward, " What became of the dervish ? " Then, for the first 
 time, the fighting devil flashed out of Gordon's eyes, and he 
 answered : 
 
 " I killed him like a dog, sir." 
 
 It was the black flag of the Caliph himself which Gordon 
 had taken, and when the Commander-in-Chief sent home 
 his despatch he mentioned the name of the young soldier 
 who had captured it. 
 
 From that day onward for fifteen years honours fell thick 
 on Gordon Lord. Being continually on active service, and
 
 40 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 generally in staff appointments, promotions came quick, so 
 that when he went to South Africa, the graveyard of so 
 many military reputations, in those first dark days of the 
 nation's deep humiliation, when the very foundations of her 
 army's renown seemed to be giving way, he was one of the 
 young officers whose gallantry won back England's fame. 
 Though hot-tempered, impetuous, and liable to frightful 
 errors, he had the imagination of a soldier as well as the 
 bravery that goes to the heart of a nation, so that when in 
 due course, being now full colonel, he was appointed, though 
 so young, Sccond-in-Command of the Army of Occupation 
 in Cairo, no one was surprised. 
 
 All the same, he knew he owed his appointment to his 
 father's influence, and he wrote to thank him and to say 
 he was delighted to return to Cairo. Only at intervals had 
 he heard from the Consul-General, and, though his admira- 
 tion of his father knew no limit, and he thought him the 
 greatest man in the world, he always felt there was a mist 
 between them. Once, for a moment, had that mist seemed 
 to be dispelled, when, on his coming of age, his father wrote 
 a letter in which he said : 
 
 " You are twenty-one years of age, Gordon, and your 
 mother and I have been recalling the incidents of the day 
 on which you were born. I want to tell you that from this 
 day foi-ward I am no longer your father; I am your friend; 
 perhaps the best friend you will ever have. Let nothing and 
 no one come between us." 
 
 Gordon's joy on returning to Egypt was not greater than 
 that of the Egyptians on receiving him. They were waiting 
 in a crowd when he arrived at the railway station, a red sea 
 of tarbooshes, over faces he remembered as the faces of 
 boys, with the face of Hafiz, now a soldier like himself, 
 beaming by his carriage window. 
 
 It was not good form for a British officer to fraternize 
 with the Egyptians, but Gordon shook hands with everybody 
 and walked down the platform with his arm round Ilafiz's 
 shoulders, while the others who had come toward him cried, 
 " Salaam, brother ! " and laughed like children. 
 
 By his own choice, and contrary to custom, quarters had
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 41 
 
 been found for him in the barracks on the bank of the Nile, 
 and the old familiar scene from there made his heart leap and 
 tremble. It was evening when at last he was left alone, and 
 throwing the window wide he looked out on the river, which 
 flowed like liquid gold in the sunset, with its silent boats, 
 that looked like birds with outstretched wings, floating down 
 without a ripple, and the violet blossom of the island on the 
 other side spreading odours in the warm spring air. 
 
 He was watching the traffic on the bridge — the camels, 
 the cameleers, the donkeys, the blue-shirted fellaheen, the 
 women with tattooed chins and children astraddle on their 
 shoulders, the water-carriers with their bodies twisted by 
 their burdens, the Bedouins with their lean, lithe, swarthy 
 forms and the rope round the head-shawls which descended 
 to their shoulders — when he heard the toot of a motor- 
 car and saw a white automobile threading its way through 
 the crowd. The driver was a girl, and a scarf of white 
 chiffon which she had bound about her head instead of a 
 hat was flying back in the light breeze, leaving her face 
 framed within, with big black eyes and a firm but lovely 
 mouth. 
 
 An officer in general's uniform was sitting at the back 
 of the car, but Gordon was conscious of the man's presence 
 without actually seeing him, so much was he struck by the 
 spirit of the girl, which suggested a proud strength and self- 
 reliance, coupled with a certain high gaiety, full of energy 
 and grace. 
 
 Gordon leaned out of his window to get a better look at 
 her, and, quick as the glance was, he thought she looked up 
 at him as the motor glided by. At the next instant she had 
 gone, and it seemed to him that in one second, at one stride, 
 the sun had gone, too. 
 
 That night he dined at the British Agency, but he did 
 not stay late, thinking his father, who looked much older, 
 seemed preoccupied, and his mother, who appeared to be more 
 delicate than ever, was over-exciting herself; but early next 
 morning he rode up to the Citadel to pay his respects to his 
 General in command, and there a surprise awaited him. 
 General Graves was ill and unable to see him, but his
 
 42 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 daughter came to offer his apologies — and she was the driver 
 of the automobile. 
 
 The impression of strength and energy which the girl 
 had made on him the evening before was deepened by this 
 nearer view. She was fairly tall, and as she swung into 
 the room her graceful, round form seemed to be poised from, 
 the hips. This particularly struck him, as he told himself 
 at that first moment that here was a girl who might be a 
 soldier, with the passionate daring and chivalry of women 
 like Joan of Arc and the Rani of Jhansi. 
 
 At the next moment he had forgotten all about that, and 
 under the caressing smile which broke from her face and 
 fascinated him, he was feeling as if for the first time in his 
 life he was alone with a young and beautiful woman. They 
 talked a long time, and he was startled by an unexpected 
 depth in her voice, while his own voice seemed to him to 
 have suddenly disappeared. 
 
 " You like the Egyptians, yes ? " she asked. 
 
 " I love them," said Gordon, " And coming back here is 
 like coming home. In fact, it is coming home. I've never 
 been at home in England, and I love the desert, I love the 
 Nile, I love everything and everybody." 
 
 She laughed — a fresh, ringing laugh, that was one of 
 her great charms — and told him about herself and her female 
 friends — the Khediviah, who was so sweet, and the Princess 
 Nazimah, who was so amusing, and finally about the Sheikh 
 who for two years had been teaching her Arabic. 
 
 " I should have known you by your resemblance to your 
 mother," she said. " But you are like your father, too ; and 
 then I saw you yesterday — passing the barracks, you re- 
 member." 
 
 "So you really did . , . I thought our eyes " 
 
 His ridiculous voice was getting out of all control, so he 
 cleared his throat and got up to go, but the half smile that 
 parted her lips and brightened her beautiful eyes seemed to 
 say as plainly as words could speak, "Why leave so soon?" 
 
 He lingered as long as he dared, and when ho took up 
 his cap and riding-whip she threw the same chiffon scarf 
 over her head and walked with him through the garden to
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 43 
 
 the gate. There they parted, and when, a little ashamed of 
 himself, he held her soft, white hand somewhat too long and 
 pressed it slightly he thought an answering pressure came 
 back from her. 
 
 In three weeks they were engaged. 
 
 The General trembled v/hen he heard what had hap- 
 pened, protested he was losing the only one he had in the 
 world, asked what was to become of him when Helena had 
 to go away with her husband, as a soldier's wife should, 
 but finally concluded to go on half-pay and follow her, and 
 then said to Gordon : " Speak to your father. If he is 
 satisfied, so am I." 
 
 The Consul-General listened passively, standing with his 
 back to the fireplace, and after a moment of silence he said : 
 
 " I've never believed in a man marrying for rank or 
 wealth. If he has any real stuff in him he can do better 
 than that. I didn't do it myself and I don't expect my son 
 to do it. As for the girl, if she can do as well for her hus- 
 band as she has done for her father, she'll be worth more 
 to you than any title or any fortune. But see what your 
 mother says. I'm busy. Good day ! " 
 
 His mother said very little; she cried all the time he 
 was telling her, but at last she told him there was not any- 
 body else in the world she would give him up to except 
 Helena, because Helena was gold — pure, pure gold. 
 
 Gordon was writing to Helena now: 
 
 " Dearest Helena : Dreadfully disappointed I cannot 
 dine with you to-night, having to go to Alexandria to-mor- 
 row and finding it necessary to begin preparations im- 
 mediately. 
 
 " You must really be a witch — your prediction proved to 
 be exactly right — it was about the new Mahdi, the new 
 prophet, my father wished to speak with me. 
 
 " The Governor thinks the man is making mischief, in- 
 citing the people to rebellion by preaching sedition ; so, with 
 the General's consent, I am to smash him with.out delay. 
 
 " Hafiz is to go with me to Alexandria, and, strangely 
 enough, he tells me over the telephone that the new prophet,
 
 44 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 as far as he can learn, is not a firebrand at all; but I am 
 just off to see his uncle, the Chancellor of the University, 
 and he is to tell me everything about him. 
 
 " Therefore, think of me to-night as penned up in the 
 thick atmosphere of El Azhar, tete-d-tete with some sallow- 
 faced fossil with pock-marked cheeks perhaps, when I hoped 
 to be in the fragrant freshness of the Citadel, looking into 
 somebody's big, black eyes, you know. 
 
 " But really, my dear Nell, the way you know things 
 without learning them is wonderful, and seems to indicate 
 an error of Nature in not making you a diplomatist, which 
 would have given you plenty of scope for your uncanny gift 
 of second sight. 
 
 " On second thought, though, I prefer you as you are, 
 and am not exactly dying to see you turned into a man. 
 
 " M aa-es-S alamah ! I kiss your hand I 
 
 " Gordon. 
 
 " P.S. — Your father would get a letter from the Consul- 
 General suggesting my task, but, of course, I must go up 
 for his formal order, and you might tell him I expect to be 
 at the Citadel about tea-time to-morrow, which will enable 
 me to kill two birds with one stone, you know, and catch 
 the evening train as well. 
 
 " Strange if it should turn out that this new Mahdi is 
 a wholesome influence after all, and not a person one can 
 conscientiously put down ! I have always suspected that 
 the old Mahdi was a good man at the beginning, an enemy 
 created by our own errors and excesses. Is history repeat- 
 ing itself? I wonder! And, if so, what will the Consul- 
 General say ? I wonder ! I wonder ! " 
 
 Gordon was sealing and addressing his letter when his 
 soldier sen-ant brought in ITafiz, a bright young Egyptian 
 officer, whose plump face seemed to be all smiles. 
 
 " Halloa ! Here you are ! " cried Gordon ; and then, giv- 
 ing his letter to his servant, he said: "Citadel — General's 
 house, you know. . . . And now, Hafiz, my boy, let's bs 
 off."
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 45 
 
 VII 
 
 El Azhar is a vast edifice that stands in the midst of 
 the Arab quarter of Cairo like a fortress on an island rock, 
 being surrounded by a tangled maze of narrow, dirty, un- 
 paved streets, with a swarming population of Mohamme- 
 dans of every race; and the Christian who crosses its rather 
 forbidding portals feels that he has passed in an instant 
 out of the twentieth century and a city of civilisation into 
 scenes of Bible lands and the earliest years of recorded 
 time. 
 
 It is a thousand years old and the central seat of Moslem 
 learning, not for Egypt only, but for the whole of the king- 
 doms and principalities of the Mohammedan world, sending 
 out from there the water of spiritual life that has kept 
 the Moslem soul alive through centuries of persecution and 
 pain. 
 
 As you approach its threshold a monotonous cadence 
 comes out to you, the murmur of the mass of humanity 
 within, and you feel like one who stands at the mouth of 
 some great subterranean river whose waters have flowed 
 with just that sound on just that spot since the old world 
 itself was young. 
 
 It was not yet full sunset when the two young soldiers 
 reached El Azhar, and after yellow slippers had been tied 
 over their boots at the outer gate they entered the dim, 
 bewildering place of vast courts and long corridors with 
 lov7 roofs supported by a forest of columns, and floors cov- 
 ered by a vast multitude of men and boys, who were squat- 
 ting on the ground in knots and circles, all talking to- 
 gether, teachers and pupils, and many of them swaying 
 rhythmically to and fro to a monotonous chanting of the 
 Koran, whose verses they were learning by heart. 
 
 Picking their way through the classes on the floor, the 
 young soldiers crossed an open quadrangle and ascended 
 many flights of stairs until they reached the Chancellor's 
 room in the highest roof, where the droning murmur in 
 the courts below could be only faintly heard, and the clear 
 5
 
 46 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 voice of the muezzin struck level with their faces when he 
 came out of a minaret near by and sent into the upper air, 
 north, south, east, and west, his call to evening prayers. 
 
 They had hardly entered this silent room, with its thick 
 carpets on which their slippered feet made no noise, when 
 the Chancellor came to welcome them. He was a striking 
 figure, type of the grave and dignified Oriental such as 
 might have walked out of the days of the Prophet Samuel, 
 with his venerable face, long white beard, high forehead, 
 refined features, graceful robes, and very soft voice. 
 
 " Peace be on you ! " they said. 
 
 " And on you, too ! Welcome ! " he said, and motioned 
 them to sit on the divans that ran round the walls. 
 
 Then Hafiz explained the object of their visit — how Gor- 
 don was ordered to Alexandria to suppress the riots there, 
 and if need be to arrest the preacher who was supposed to 
 have provoked them. 
 
 " I have already told him," said Hafiz, " that so far as 
 I know Ishmael Ameer is no firebrand, but hearing through 
 the mouth of one of our own people that he is another 
 Mahdi, threatening the rule of England in Egypt " 
 
 " Oh, peace, my son," said the Chancellor, " Ishmael 
 Ameer is no ]Mahdi. He claims no divinity." 
 
 " Then tell me, Sheikh," said Gordon, " tell me what 
 Ishmael Ameer is, that I may know what to do when it 
 becomes my duty to deal with him." 
 
 Leisurely the Chancellor took snuff, leisurely he opened 
 a folded handkerchief, dusted his nostrils, and then, in his 
 soft voice, said : 
 
 " Ishmael Ameer is a Ivoranist — that is to say, one who 
 takes the Koran as the basis of belief and keeps an open 
 mind about tradition." 
 
 " I know," said Gordon. " We have people like that 
 among Christians — people who take the Bible as the basis 
 of faith and turn their backs on dogma." 
 
 " Ishmael Ameer reads the Koran by the spirit, not the 
 letter." 
 
 "We have people like that, too— the letter killeth, you 
 know, the spirit maketh alive."
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 47 
 
 " Ishmael Ameer thinks Islam should advance with ad- 
 vancing progress." 
 
 " There again we are with you, O Sheikh. We have 
 people of the same kind in Christianity'." 
 
 " Ishmael Ameer thinks slavery, the seclusion of women, 
 divorce, and polygamy are as much opposed to the teaching 
 of Mohammed as to the progress of society." 
 
 "Excellent! My father says the same thing. ^Yallahi! 
 (I assure you.) Or rather, he holds that Islam can never 
 take its place as the religion of great progressive nations 
 until it rids itself of these evils." 
 
 " Ishmael Ameer thinks the corruptions of Islam are the 
 work of the partisans of the old barbaric ideas who are 
 associating the cause of religion with their own interests 
 and passions." 
 
 " Splendid ! Do you know the Consul-General is always 
 saying that, sir? " 
 
 " Ishmael Ameer believes that, if God wills it — praise 
 be to be Him, the Exalted One! — the day is not distant 
 when an appeal to the Prophet's own words will regenerate 
 Islam, and banish the caliphs and sultans whose selfish- 
 ness and sensuality keep it in bondage to the powers of 
 darkness." 
 
 " Really," said Gordon, rising impetuously to his feet, 
 " if Ishmael Ameer says this, he is the man Egypt, India — 
 the whole Mohammedan world — is waiting for. No wonder 
 men like the Cadi are trying to destroy him, though that's 
 only an instinct of self-preseiwation — but my father, the 
 Consul-General . . . What is there in all this to create . . . 
 Why should such teaching set Moslem against Christian ? " 
 
 "Ishmael Ameer, oh, my brother," the Chancellor con- 
 tinued, with the same soft voice, " thinks Islam is not the 
 only faith that has departed from the spirit of its founder." 
 
 "True!" 
 
 " If Islam for its handmaidens has divorce and polyg- 
 amy, Christianity has drunkenness and prostitution." 
 
 "No doubt; certainly." 
 
 " Coming out of the East, out of the desert, Ishmael 
 Ameer sees in the Christianitv of the West a contradiction
 
 48 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 of every priuciple for which your great Master fought and 
 suffered." 
 
 Gordon sat down again. 
 
 " His was a religion of peace, but while your Christian 
 Church prays for unity and concord among the nations, 
 your Christian States are daily increasing the instruments 
 of destruction. His was a religion of poverty, but while 
 your Christian priests are saying, ' Blessed are the meek,' 
 your Christian communities are struggling for wealth and 
 trampling upon the poor in their efforts to gain it. Ish- 
 mael Ameer believes that if your great Master came back 
 now he would not recognise in the civilisation known by 
 his name the true posterity of the little, faithful church 
 he founded on the shores of the Lake of Galilee." 
 
 " All this is true — too true," said Gordon ; " yet under 
 all that . . . doesn't Ishmael Ameer see that under all 
 that . . ." 
 
 " Ishmael Ameer sees," said the Chancellor, " that the 
 thing known to the world as Christian civilisation is little 
 better than an organised hypocrisy, a lust of empire in na- 
 tions, and a greed of gold in men, destroying liberty, moral- 
 ity, and truth. Therefore he warns his followers against 
 a civilisation which comes to the East with religion in one 
 hand and violence and avarice in the other." 
 
 " But surely he sees," said Gordon, " what Christian 
 civilisation has done for the world, what science has done 
 for progress, what England, for example, has done for 
 Egypt ? " 
 
 " Ishmael Ameer thinks," replied the Chancellor in the 
 same slow, soft voice, " that the essential qualities of na- 
 tional greatness are moral, not material; that man does not 
 live by bread alone ; that it is of little value to Egypt if her 
 bams are full, if the hearts of her children are empty; that 
 Egypt can afford to be patient, for she is old and eternal; 
 that many are the events which have passed before the eyes 
 of the crouching Sphinx; that the life of man is three score 
 and ten years, but when Egypt reviews her past she looks 
 back on three score and ten centuries." 
 
 There was silence for a moment, during which the muez-
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 49 
 
 zin's voice was heard again, calling the first hour of night, 
 and then Gordon, visibly agitated, said: 
 
 " You think Ishmael Ameer a regenerator, a reformer, a 
 redeemer of Islam; and if his preaching prevailed it would 
 send the Grand Cadi back to his Sultan — isn't that so?" 
 But the Chancellor made no reply. 
 
 " It would also send England out of Egypt — wouldn't 
 it ? " said Gordon, but still the Chancellor gave no sign. 
 
 " It would go farther than that, perhaps ; it would drive 
 Western civilisation out of the East — wouldn't that be the 
 end of it ? " said Gordon, and then the Chancellor replied : 
 
 " It would drive a corrupt and ungodly civilisation out 
 of the world, my son." 
 
 " I see," said Gordon. " You think the mission of Ish- 
 mael Ameer transcends Egypt, transcends even Europe, and 
 says to humanity in general, * What you call civilisation is 
 killing religion, because the nations — Christian and Mos- 
 lem alike — have sold themselves to the lust of empire and 
 the greed of gold.' Isn't that what you mean ? " 
 
 The Chancellor bowed his gray head and, in a scarcely 
 audible voice, said, " Yes." 
 
 " You think, too," said Gordon, whose breathing was now 
 quick and loud, '' that Ishmael Ameer is an apostle of the 
 soul of Islam — perhaps of the soul of religion itself, without 
 respect of creed; one of the great men who come once in a 
 hundred years to call the world back from a squalid and 
 sordid materialism, and are ready to live — aye. and to die, 
 for their faith — the Savonarolas, the Luthers, the Gamal-ed- 
 Deens — perhaps the Mohammeds, and " — dropping his voice 
 — " in a sense, the Christs ? " 
 
 But the Egyptian soul, like the mirage of the Egyptian 
 desert, recedes as it is approached, and again the Chan- 
 cellor made no reply. 
 
 "Tell me, O Sheikh," said Gordon, rising to go, "if 
 Ishmael Ameer came to Cairo, would you permit him to 
 preach in El Azhar ? " 
 
 " He is an alim (a doctor of the Koran) ; I could not 
 prevent him." 
 
 " But would you lodge him in your own house ? "
 
 50 THE WHITE PKOPHET 
 
 '' Yes." 
 
 *' That is enough for me. Now I must go to Alexandria 
 and see him for myself." 
 
 " May God guide you, oh, my son," said the Chancellor, 
 and a moment afterward his soft voice was saying farewell 
 to the two young soldiers at the door. 
 
 " Let us walk back to barracks, Hafiz," said Gordon. 
 "My head aches a little, somehow." 
 
 VIII 
 
 It was night by this time, the courts and corridors of 
 El Azhar were empty, and even the tangled streets out- 
 side wore less loud than before with the guttural cries of a 
 swarming population; but a rumbling murmur came from 
 the mosque of the University, and the young soldiers stood 
 a moment at the door to look in. There, under a multi- 
 tude of tiny lanterns, stood long rows of men in stocking 
 feet and Eastern costume, rising and kneeling in unison, 
 at one moment erect and at the next with foreheads to the 
 floor, while the voice of the Iman echoed in the arches of 
 the mosque and the voices of the people answered him. 
 
 Then, through narrow alleys full of life, lit only by 
 the faint gleam of uncovered candles, with native women, 
 black-robed and veiled, passing like shadows through a 
 moving crowd of men, the young soldiers came to the quar- 
 ter of Cairo that is nicknamed the " Fish Market," where 
 the streets are brilliantly lighted up, where the names over 
 the shops are English and French, Greek and Italian, and 
 where girls with painted faces lean out of the windows of 
 upper stories and smile down at men who sit at tables in 
 front of the cafes opposite, drinking wine, smoking cigar- 
 ettes, and playing dominoes. The sound of music and 
 dancing came from the open windows behind the girls, who 
 glittered with gold brocade and diamonds, and among the 
 men were young Egyptians in the tarboosh and British sol- 
 diers in khaki, who looked up at the women in the flare of 
 the coarse light and laughed.
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 51 
 
 At the gate of the Kasr el Nil barracks the young men 
 parted. 
 
 " Tell me, Ilafiz/' said Gordon, " if a soldier is ordered 
 to act in a way he believes to be wrong, what is he to do ? " 
 
 " His duty, I suppose," said Ilafiz. 
 
 " His duty to what — his commander or his conscience ? " 
 
 " If a soldier is imder orders I suppose he has no con- 
 science." 
 
 " I wonder ! " said Gordon, and, promising to write to 
 Hafiz in the morning, he went up to his quarters. 
 
 The room was in darkness, save for the moonlight with 
 its gleam of mellow gold, which seemed to vibrate from the 
 river outside, and Gordon stood by the window with a dull 
 sense of headache, looking at the old Nile, that had seen 
 so many acts in the drama of humanity and still flowed 
 so silently, until he became conscious of a perfume he knew, 
 and then, switching on the light, he found a letter in a 
 scented envelope lying on his desk. It was from Helena, 
 and it was written in her bold, upright hand, with the gay 
 raillery, the passionate tenderness, and the fierce earnest- 
 ness which he recognised as her chief characteristics : 
 
 "Mister, most glorious and respected, the illustrious 
 Colonel Lord, owner of Serenity and Virtue, otherwise my 
 dear old Gordon: 
 
 " It was wrong of you not to come to dinner, for though 
 father over-excited himself at Ghezirah to-day and I have 
 had to pack him off to bed, I made every preparation to 
 receive you, and here I am in my best bib and tucker, wear- 
 ing the crown of pink blossom which my own particular 
 Sultan says suits my gipsy hair, and nobody to admire it 
 but my poor little black boy, Mosie — who is falling in love 
 with me, I may tell you, and is looking at me now with his 
 scrubby face all blubbered up like a sentimental hippo- 
 potamus. 
 
 " I am not surprised that the Consul-General talked 
 about the new 'holy man,' and I do not wonder that he 
 ordered you to arrest him. but I am at a loss to know why 
 you should take counsel with that old fossil at El Azhar, and 
 you can tell Master Hafiz I mean to dust his jacket for sug-
 
 52 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 gesting it, knowing your silly old heart is like wax and they 
 have only to recite something out of the ' noble Koran,' 
 and you'll be as weak as — well, as a woman. 
 
 " As for holy men generally, I agree with the Princess 
 that they are holy humbugs, which is the title I would give 
 to a good many of the genus at home as well as here. So 
 I say with your namesake of glorious memory (who wasn't 
 an ogre, goodness knows). Smash the Mahdi! 
 
 " A thousand to one he is some ugly, cross-eyed old 
 fanatic who would destroy every germ of civilisation in 
 Egypt and carry the country back to barbarity and ruin, so 
 I say again, Smash the Mahdi! 
 
 " As for your ' conscience,' I cry, marry-come-up, by 
 what right does it push its nose where it isn't wanted, see- 
 ing it is the conscience of the Consul-General that will be 
 damned if the "work is wrong and wicked, and there won't 
 be so much as a plum of Paradise for yours if it is right and 
 good, so once again I say, Smash the Mahdi! 
 
 " Moreover, and furthermore, and by these presents, I 
 rede ye beware of resisting the will of your father; for if you 
 do, as sure as I'm a ' witch,' and ' know things without 
 learning them,' I have a * mystic sense ' there will be trou- 
 ble; and nobody can say where it will end, or how many 
 of us may be involved in it. So again, and yet again, I 
 say, Smash the Mahdi! 
 
 " The Consul-General's letter has come, but I shall not 
 read it to father until morning; and meantime, if I ever 
 pass through your imagination, think of me as poor Ruth 
 sitting on the threshing-floor with Boaz and dreaming of 
 Zion — that is to say, of stuffy old El Azhar, where somebody 
 ■who ought to know better is now talking to an old frump in 
 petticoats instead of to me. 
 
 ^'Inshallah! The slave of your Virtues. 
 
 " Helena. 
 
 " P.S. — Dying for to-morrow afternoon, dear. 
 "P.P.S, — Important — Smash the Mahdi!"
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CKOSS 53 
 
 IX 
 
 Helena Graves was everything' to her father, for the 
 General's marriage had been unhappy and it had come to 
 a tragic end. His vpife, the daughter of a Jewish merchant 
 in Madras, had been a woman of strong character and great 
 beauty but of little principle, and they had been married 
 v/hile he was serving as senior major with a battalion of 
 his regiment in India, and there Helena, their only child, 
 had been born. 
 
 Things had gone tolerably between them until the major 
 returned to England as lieutenant-colonel commanding the 
 battalion of his regiment at home, and then, in their little 
 military town, they had met and become intimate with the 
 Lord-Lieutenant of the county, a nobleman, a bachelor, a 
 sportsman, a bi'eeder of race-horses, and a member of the 
 Government. 
 
 The end of that intimacy had been a violent scene, in 
 which the husband, in his ungovernable rage, had flung 
 the nobleman on the ground and trampled on him, torn 
 the jewels out of his wife's breast and crushed them under 
 his heel,* and then, realising the bankruptcy his life had 
 come to, had gone home and had brain-fever. 
 
 Helena, like her father, was passionate and impetuous, 
 and her mother had neglected and never really loved her. 
 With the keen eyes of a child who is supposed to see noth- 
 ing, she had seen from the first what was going on at home, 
 and all her soul had risen against her mother and her 
 mother's lover with a hatred which no presents could ap- 
 pease. Being now a girl of eighteen, well grown and 
 developed, and seeing with what treachery and cruelty her 
 father had been stricken down, her heart went out to him, 
 and she became a woman in one day. 
 
 When the brain-fever was gone the General, weak both 
 in body and mind, was ordered rest and change. Somebody 
 suggested the Lake country, as his native air, so Helena, 
 who did everything for him, took him to a furnished cot-
 
 54 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 tage in Grasmere, a sweet place bowered in roses, with its 
 face to the sedgy lake, and with the beautiful river, the 
 Eotha, laughing and babbling by the garden at the back. 
 
 There he recovered bodily strength, but it was long be- 
 fore his mind returned to him, and meantime he had 
 strange delusions. Something, perhaps, in the place of their 
 retreat brought ghosts of the past out of a world of shad- 
 ows, for he thought he was a boy again and Helena was 
 his mother, who was thirty years dead and buried in the 
 little churchyard lower down the stream, where the Eotha 
 was deep and flowed with a solemn hush. 
 
 Helena played up to his pathetic delusion, took the 
 tender endearments that were meant for the grandmother 
 she had never known, and as his young days came to the 
 surface with the beautiful persistence of old memories in 
 the human mind she fell in with them as if they had been 
 her own. Thus on Sunday morning, when the bells rang, 
 she would walk with him to church, holding his hand in 
 her hand as if she were the mother and he the child. 
 
 It was very sweet to look upon, for in the sleep of the 
 General's brain he was very happy, and only to those who 
 saw that the brave girl, with her eyes of light and her lips 
 of dew, was giving away her youth to her old father, was it 
 charged with feeling too deep for tears. 
 
 But at length the stricken man came out of the twilight 
 land and his dream faded away. Helena had to play their 
 little American organ every evening that he might sing a 
 hymn to it, for that was what his mother had always done 
 when she was putting her boy to bed and thinking, like a 
 soldier's wife, of his father who was away at the wars. It 
 was always the same hymn, and one breathless evening, 
 when the sun had gone down and the vale was still, thej 
 had come to: 
 
 "Hide ine, O my Saviour, hide, 
 Till tlifi storms of life be past — " 
 
 and then his voice stopped suddenly, and he shaded his eyes 
 as if something were blinding them. 
 
 At that moment the past which had been dead so long
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 55 
 
 seemed to rise from its grave with all its mournful inci- 
 dents — his wife and his shattered home — and Helena was 
 not his mother but his daughter, and he was not a happy 
 boy but an old soldier with a broken life behind him. 
 
 Seeing by the look in his eyes that he was coming to 
 himself, Helena tried to comfort him, and when he gasped, 
 " Who is it ? " she answered, in a voice she tried to render 
 cheerful. " It is I ; it is Helena. Don't you know me, 
 father ? " And then the years rolled back upon him like a 
 flood and he sobbed on her shoulder. 
 
 The awakening had been painful, but it was not all 
 pain. If he had lost a wife he had gained a daughter, and 
 she was the strongest, stanchest creature in the world. For 
 her sake he must begin again. Having had so much shadow 
 in her young life she must now have sunshine. Thus Hel- 
 ena became her father's idol, the one thing on earth to 
 him, and he was more to her than a father usually is to a 
 daughter, because she had seen him in his weakness and 
 mothered him back to strength. 
 
 Two years after the breakdown they were in London, 
 and there Helena met Lord Nuneham on one of his few 
 Tisits to England. The great Proconsul, who had heard what 
 she had done, was most favourably impressed by her, and as 
 she talked to him he said to himself, " This girl has the 
 blood of the great women of the Bible, the Deborahs who 
 were mothers in Israel, aye, and the Jaels who revenged 
 her." At that time the post of Major-General to the Brit- 
 ish Army in Egypt was shortly to become vacant, and by 
 Lord Nuneham's influence it was offered to Graves. Six 
 months later father and daughter arrived in Cairo. 
 
 It had been an exciting time, but Helena had managed 
 everything, and the General had borne up manfully until 
 they took possession of the house assigned to them, a reno- 
 vated old palace on the edge of the Citadel. Then in a 
 moment he had collapsed and fallen from his chair to the 
 floor. Helena had lifted him in her strong arms, laid him 
 on the couch, and sent his aide-de-camp for the medical 
 officer in charge. 
 
 Consciousness came back quickly, and Helena laughed
 
 56 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 through the tears that had gathered in her great eyes, but 
 the Surgeon continued to look grave. 
 
 " Has the General ever had attacks like this before ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 " Never that I know of," said Helena. 
 
 " He must be kept quiet. I'll see him in the morning." 
 
 Next day the medical officer had no doubts of his diag- 
 nosis — heart disease, quite unmistakably. The news had to 
 be broken to the General, and he bore it bravely, but, think- 
 ing of Helena, he made one request — that nothing should 
 be said on the subject. If the fact were known at the War 
 Office he might be retired, and there could be no necessity 
 for that until the Army was put on active service. 
 
 " But isn't the Army always on active service in Egypt, 
 sir?" said the Surgeon. 
 
 " Technically, perhaps — not really," said the General. 
 " In any case, I'm not afraid, and I ask you to keep the 
 matter quiet." 
 
 " As you please, sir." 
 
 " You and I and Helena must be the only ones to know 
 anything about it." 
 
 " Very well, but you must promise to take care. Any 
 undue excitement, any over-exertion, any outburst of anger 
 even " 
 
 "It shall not occur; I give you my word for it," said 
 the General. 
 
 But it had occurred, not once but frequently, during 
 the twelve months following. It occurred after Gordon 
 asked for Helena, and again last night, the moment the 
 General reached his bedroom on his return from the Khe- 
 divial Club. 
 
 He was better next morning, and then Helena took up 
 the letter from Lord Nuneham. " Read it," said the Gen- 
 eral, and Helena read: 
 
 "Dear General: Gordon is here, and I will send him up 
 to tell you what I think it necessary to do in order to put 
 an end to the riots at Alexandria and make an example of 
 the ringleaders.
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 57 
 
 " The chief of them is the Arab preacher, Ishmael Ameer, 
 and I propose that we bring him up to Cairo immediately, 
 try him. by special tribunal, and despatch him without delay 
 to our new penal settlement in the Soudan. 
 
 " For that purpose (as the local police are chiefly native, 
 and therefore scarcely reliable, and your colonel on the spot 
 might hesitate to act on his own initiative in the possible 
 event of a rising of the man's Moslem followers) I propose 
 that you send some one from Cairo to take command, and 
 therefore suggest Gordon, your first staff officer, and the most 
 proper person (always excepting yourself) to deal with a 
 situation of such gravity. 
 
 " Yours in haste, 
 
 " NUNEHAM." 
 
 While Helena was reading the letter the General could 
 hardly restrain his excitement. 
 
 " Just as I thought ! " he said. " I knew the Consul- 
 General would put down that new Mahdi. Wonderful man, 
 ISTuneham ! And what a chance for Gordon ! By Gad, he'll 
 have all Europe talking about him. He deserves it, though. 
 Ask the staff. Ask the officers. Ask the men. I see what 
 Nuneham's aiming at — making Gordon his successor ! Well 
 why not? Why not Gordon Lord, the Consul-General ? I 
 ask, why not? Good for Egypt and good for England, too. 
 Am I wrong ? " 
 
 Then, remembering to whom he was addressing these 
 imperative challenges, he laughed and said : " Ah, of course ! 
 I congratulate you, my child! I'll live to see you proud 
 and happy yet, Helena. Now go — I'm going to get up." 
 
 And when Helena warned him that he was over-exciting 
 himself again, he said : " Not a bit of it, I'm all right 
 now; but I must write to Alexandria immediately and see 
 Gordon at once. Coming up this afternoon, you say ? That 
 will do. Splendid fellow ! Fine as his father ! Father and 
 son — both splendid ! "
 
 58 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 When Gordon reached the General's house at five o'clock 
 that day there was for a while a clash of opposing wills. 
 Thinking of Helena's peremptory advice, Smash the Mahdil 
 he was determined to tell her what the Chancellor of El 
 Azhar had said of Ishmael Ameer, and she was resolved 
 that he should say nothing about him. So, while Gordon 
 stood by the shaded window, looking down on the city below, 
 which still lay hot under the sun's fierce eye, Helena talked 
 of his mother, her father, and of the Princess Nazimah, 
 who had invited her, in a funnj- letter, to join the ladies' 
 council for the emancipation of Egyptian women and the 
 abolition of polygamy, saying, among other things, " The 
 needle carries but one thread, my dear, and the heart cannot 
 carry two." But at length she said : 
 
 " When do you leave for Alexandria ? " 
 
 " To-night at half -past six. My servant is to take my 
 bag to the railway station, and Hafiz and two other Mos- 
 lems are to meet me there." 
 
 " Good gracious ! No time to lose, then. Mosie ! " she 
 cried, and a small black boy with large, limpid eyes, wear- 
 ing a scarlet caftan and blue waistband, came into the 
 room. 
 
 " Tea, Mosie, quick ! Tell the cook the Colonel has to 
 catch a train." 
 
 The black boy kissed her hand and went bounding out, 
 whereupon she talked again to prevent Gordon from talking. 
 
 " Didn't I tell you that boy was falling in love with 
 me? I found him fighting in the market-place. That was 
 a week ago, since when he has adopted me, and now he is 
 always kissing my hand or the hem of my gown, as who 
 would say — ' I have none but her, and I love her like my 
 eyes.' A most dear little human dog, and I do believe — yes, 
 T really do believe — if I wished it he would go to his death 
 for me." 
 
 Gordon, who was gloomy and dejected, and had been
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 59 
 
 drumming on the window-pane without listening, then 
 said: 
 
 " Helena, can you imagine what it is to a soldier to 
 feel that he is on the wrong side in battle? If he is to 
 fight well he ought to feel that he is fighting for his coun- 
 try, his flag, and — ^justice. But when the position is the 
 reverse of that ; when, for example " 
 
 But at that moment the General came into the room 
 and welcomed Gordon with a shout. 
 
 " Just been writing to Alexandria telling Jenkinson to 
 keep a force in readiness for you night and day," he said. 
 " Only way, my boy ! Force is the one thing the Easterns 
 understand. Of course, we don't want bloodshed, but if 
 these rascals are telling the people that the power is not in 
 our hands, or that England will not allow us to use it, we 
 must let them see — we can't help it. Glorious commission, 
 Gordon ! I congratulate you ! My job, though, and there's 
 only one man I could give it up to — only one man in the 
 world." 
 
 And then Gordon, who had been biting his underlip, 
 said, " I almost wish you could do it yourself, General," 
 
 " Why, what the deuce " 
 
 " Gordon has been taking counsel with the Chancellor 
 of El Azhar," said Helena, " and the old silly seems to have 
 given him ' the eye,' or talked nonsense out of the noble 
 Koran." 
 
 " Not nonsense, Helena, and not out of the Koran, but 
 out of the book of life itself," said Gordon, and after the 
 black boy had brought in the tea he told them what the 
 Chancellor had said. 
 
 " So you see," he said, " the preaching of this new 
 prophet has nothing to do with England in Egypt — nothing 
 more, at least, than with England in India, or South Af- 
 rica, or even Canada itself. It transcends all that, and is 
 teaching for the world, for humanity. Isn't it true, too? 
 Take what he says about the lust of empire, and look at the 
 conduct of the Christian countries. They are praying in 
 their churches ' that it may please Thee to give to all 
 nations unity, peace, and concord,' yet they are increasing
 
 60 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 their armaments every day, what for — defence? Certainly! 
 But "what does that mean ? — fear of aggression. So while in 
 our Kings' speeches and our Presidents' messages, in our 
 newspapers and even in our pulpits we keep up the pretence 
 that we are at peace with the world, we are always, according 
 to the devil's code of honour, preparing, for the time when 
 two high-spirited nations may find it convenient to fly at 
 each other's throats. Peace with the world! Lies, sir; all 
 lies, and barefaced hypocrisy ! The nations never are at 
 peace with the world, never have been, never want to be." 
 
 The General tried to protest, but Gordon, who was now 
 excited, said: 
 
 " Oh, I know — I'm a soldier, too, sir, and I don't want to 
 see my country walked upon. It may be all right, all nec- 
 essary to the game of empire, but, for Heaven's sake, let 
 us call it by its proper name — Conquest, not Christianity 
 — and put away the cant and quackery of being Christian 
 countries." 
 
 Again the General tried to protest, but Gordon did not 
 hear. 
 
 " Think of it ! Kaisers and Kings and Presidents asking 
 God's blessing on their Ministers of "War! Bishops and 
 Archbishops praying for more battleships! Christians? 
 Followers of Christ ? Why, in the name of God, do they not 
 tear the scales from their eyes and stand revealed to them- 
 selves as good, upright, honest, honourable Pagans, bent on 
 the re-paganisation of the world and the destruction of 
 Christian civilisation? I'm a soldier, yes, but I hope to 
 Heaven I'm not a hypocrite, and show me the soldier worth 
 his salt who is not at heart a man of peace." 
 
 The General's face was growing scarlet, but Gordon saw 
 nothing of that. 
 
 " Then take what this new preacher says about the greed 
 of wealth — isn't that true, too? We pretend to believe that 
 ' it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle 
 than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God,' yet 
 we are nearly all trying, struggling, fighting, scrambling to 
 be rich." 
 
 He laughed out loud and then said:
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 61 
 
 " Look at America — I'm half an American myself, sir, 
 so I've a right to say it — where a man may become a mil- 
 lionaire by crushing out everybody else and appropriating 
 the gifts of nature which God meant for humanity. But 
 America is a Christian country, too, and its richest men 
 build, of their abundance, churches in which to glorify the 
 widow's mite ! Is the man to be silenced who warns the world 
 that such sordid and squalid materialism is swallowing up 
 religion, morality, and truth? Such a man may be the very 
 soul of a country, yet what do we do with him? We hang 
 him, or stone him, or crucify him — that's what we do with 
 him, sir." 
 
 Gordon, who had been walking up and down the room 
 and talking in an intense and poignant voice, stopped sud- 
 denly and said : 
 
 " General, did you ever reflect upon the way in which 
 Jesus Christ was brought to his death ? " 
 
 " Good gracious, man, what has that subject to do with 
 this ? " said the General. 
 
 " A good deal, I think, sir. Did you ever ask yourself 
 who it was that betrayed Jesus ? " 
 
 " Judas Iscariot, I suppose." 
 
 "No, sir; Judas was only the cat's-paw, scorned through 
 all the ages and burnt in a million effigies, but nearly as 
 innocent of the death of his Master as you or I. The real 
 betrayer was the high priest of the Jews. He was the head 
 of the bad system which Christ came to wipe out, and he 
 saw that if he did not destroy Jesus, Jesus would destroy 
 him. What did he do? He went to the Governor, the 
 Consul-General of the Roman Occupation, and said : ' This 
 man is setting himself up against Caesar. If you let him 
 go you are not Caesar's friend.' " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "That's what the High Priest of Islam is doing in 
 Egypt now. As I was going into the Ag-ency yesterday 
 I met the Grand Cadi coming out. You know what he is, 
 sir — the most fanatical supporter of the old dark ways — 
 slavery, divorce, polygamy, all the refuse of bad Mohamme- 
 danism? "
 
 62 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 "Well, well?" 
 
 " Well, my father told me the Grand Cadi had said, ' If 
 you let Ishmael Ameer go on it will be death to the rule 
 of England in Eg^'pt.' " 
 
 " And what does it all come to ? " 
 
 " It comes to this, sir — that if the Chancellor of El 
 Azhar has told me the truth — if, I say, if — when we take 
 Ishmael Ameer, and shut him up in prison for life with noth- 
 ing but a desert around him, we shall be doing something 
 that bears an ugly resemblance to what the Romans did in 
 Palestine." 
 
 Then the General, who had not once taken his eyes off 
 Gordon, rose in visible agitation and said: 
 
 " Gordon Lord, you astonish me ! If Avhat you say means 
 anything, it means that this man Ishmael is not only 
 preaching sedition, but is justified in doing so. That's 
 what you mean ? Am I wrong ? " 
 
 In his excitement he spoke so rapidly that he stam- 
 mered, and Helena cried, "Father!" 
 
 " Leave me alone, Helena. I'm calm ; but when a man 
 talks of . . . When you talk of conquest you mean Eng- 
 land in Egypt — yes, you do — and you refuse to see that 
 we have to hold high the honour of our country, and to 
 protect our dominions in the East." 
 
 His voice sounded choked, but he went on : 
 
 " More than that, when you compare our Lord's trial 
 and death with that of this — this half-educated Arab out 
 of the desert — this religious Don Quixote who is a menace, 
 not only to government but to the very structure of civilised 
 society — it's shocking, it's blasphemous, and I will not lis- 
 ten to it." 
 
 The General was going out in white anger when he 
 stopped at the door and said : 
 
 " Gordon Lord, I take leave to think this man an im- 
 postor — a scheming impostor, and if you want my view of 
 how to deal with him, and with the credulous simpletons 
 who are turning sedition into crime and crime into bloody 
 anarchy, I give it to you — martial law, sir, and no damned 
 nonsense ! "
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 63 
 
 Save for one word, Helena had not yet spoken, but now 
 with tightly compressed lips, and such an expression on her 
 face as Gordon had never before seen there, she said : 
 
 " I hate that man ! I hate him ! I hate him ! " 
 
 Her eyes blazed and she looked straight into Gordon's 
 face, as she said : " I hate him because you are allowing 
 yourself to be influenced in his favour against your own 
 father and your own country. An Englishman's duty is to 
 stand by England, whatever she is and whatever she does*. 
 And the duty of an English soldier is to fight for her and 
 ask no questions. She is his mother, and to inquire of 
 himself whether she is right or "wrong, when her enemies 
 are upon her, is not worthy of a son." 
 
 The colour rushed to Gordon's face and he dropped his 
 head. 
 
 " As for this man's teaching, it may transcend Egypt, 
 but it includes it, and these people will take out of it only 
 what they want, and what they want is an excuse to resist 
 authority and turn their best friends out of the country. 
 As for you," she said, with new force, " your duty is to go 
 to Alexandria and bring this man back to Cairo. It begins 
 and ends there, and has nothing to do with anything else." 
 
 Then Gordon raised his head and answered : " You are 
 right, Helena. You are always right. A son is not the 
 judge of his father. And where would England be to-day 
 if her soldiers had always asked themselves whether she was 
 in the right or the wrong? I thought England would be 
 sinning against the light if she sent Ishmael Ameer to the 
 Soudan and so stifled a voice that might be the soul of 
 the East ; but I know nothing about him except what his 
 friends have told me. . . . After all, grapes don't grow 
 on pine trees, and the only fruit we see is . . . I'll see the 
 man for myself, Helena, and if I find he is encouraging the 
 rioters ... if even in his sermons in the mosques . . . 
 Hafiz and the ]\Ioslems are to tell me what he says in them. 
 . . . They must tell me the truth, though . . . Whatever 
 the consequences . . . they must tell me the truth. They 
 shall — my God, they must!^'
 
 64 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 XI 
 
 The clock struck six, and Gordon rose to go. Helena 
 helped him to belt up the sword he had taken off and to 
 put on his military great-coat. Then she threw a lace 
 scarf over her head and went out with him into the garden, 
 that they might bid good-bye at the gate. 
 
 The sun was going down by this time, the odourless air 
 of the desert was cooler and fresher than before, and all 
 Nature was full of a soothing and blissful peace. 
 
 " Don't go yet ; you have a few minutes to spare still. 
 Come," said Helena, and taking his hand she drew him to a 
 blossom-thatched arbour which stood on the edge of the 
 ramparts. 
 
 There, with the red glow on their faces as on the face 
 of the great mosque which stood in conscious grandeur by 
 their side, they looked out in silence for some moments on 
 the glittering city, the gleaming Nile, the yellow desert, and 
 all the gloi-y of the sky. 
 
 It was just that mysterious moment between day and 
 night when the earth seems to sing a silent song which 
 only the hvunan heart can hear, and, stirred by an emotion 
 she could scarcely understand, Helena, who had been so 
 brave until now, began to tremble and break down, and the 
 woman in her to appear. 
 
 " Don't think me foolish," she said, " but I feel — I feel 
 as if — as if this were the last time you and I were to be 
 together." 
 
 " Don't unman me, Helena," said Gordon. " The work 
 I have to do in Alexandria may be dangerous, but don't 
 tell me you are afraid " 
 
 " It isn't that. I shouldn't be fit to be a soldier's daugh- 
 ter or to become — to become a soldier's wife if I were afraid 
 of that. No, I'm not afraid of that, Gordon. I shall never 
 allow myself to be afraid of that, but " 
 
 "But what, Helena?" 
 
 "I feel as if something has broken between you and me, 
 and we shall never be the same to each other after to-night.
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 65 
 
 It frightens me. You are so near, yet you seem so far 
 away. Coming out of the house a moment ago I felt as if 
 I had to take farewell of you, here and now." 
 
 Without more ado Gordon took her firmly in his arms, 
 and with one hand on her forehead that he might look full 
 in her face, he said: 
 
 " You are not angry with me, Helena, for what I said 
 to your father just now ? " 
 
 " No, oh, no. You were speaking out of your heart, and 
 perhaps it was partly that " 
 
 " You didn't agree with me, I know that quite well, but 
 you love me still, Helena ? " 
 
 " Don't ask me that, dear." 
 
 " I must ; I am going away, so speak out, I entreat you. 
 You love me still, Helena ? " 
 
 " I am here. Isn't that enough ? " she said, putting her 
 arms about his neck and laying her head on his breast. 
 
 He kissed her, and there was silence for some momenta 
 more. Then in a sharp, agitated whisper she said: 
 
 " Gordon, that man is coming between us." 
 
 " Ishmael Ameer ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " What utter absurdity, Helena ! " 
 
 "No, I'm telling you the truth. That man is coming 
 between us. I know it — I feel it — something is speaking 
 to me — warning me. Listen! Last night I saw it in a 
 dream. I cannot remember what happened, but he was 
 there, and you and I. and your father and mine, and 
 then " 
 
 " My dear Nell, how foolish ! But I see what has hap- 
 pened. When did you receive the Princess Nazimah'a 
 letter?" 
 
 "Last night — just before going to bed." 
 
 " Exactly ! And you were brooding over what she said 
 of the needle carrying only one thread ? " 
 
 " I was thinking of it — yes." 
 
 "You were also thinking of what you had said yourself 
 in your letter to me — that if I resisted my father's will the 
 results might be serious for all of us ? "
 
 66 THE T\^ITE PROPHET 
 
 " That, too, perhaps." 
 
 " There you are, then — there's the stuff of your dream, 
 dear. But don't you see that whatever a man's opinions 
 and sympathies may be, his affections are a different matter 
 altogether — that love is above everything- else in a man's 
 life — yes, everything — and that even if this Ishmael Ameer 
 were to divide me from my father or from your father — 
 which God forbid ! — he could not possibly separate me from 
 you?" 
 
 She looked up into his eyes and said — there was a smile 
 on her lips now — " Could nothing separate you and me? " 
 
 " Nothing in this world," he answered. 
 
 Her trembling lips fluttered up to his, and again there 
 was a moment of silence. The sun had gone down, the stars 
 had begun to appear, and under the mellow gold of mingled 
 night and day the city below, lying in the midst of the 
 desert, looked like a great jewel on the soft bosom of the 
 world. 
 
 " You must go now, dear," she whispered. 
 
 " And you will promise me never to think these ugly 
 thoughts again ? " 
 
 " ' Love is above everything.' I shall only think of that. 
 Good-bye ! " 
 
 "Good-bye!" he said, and he embraced her passionately. 
 At the next moment he was gone. 
 
 Shadows from the wing of night had gathered over the 
 city by this time, and there came up from the heart of it a 
 surge of indistinguishable voices, some faint and far away, 
 some near and loud, the voices of the muezzins calling from 
 a thousand minarets to evening prayers — and then came 
 another voice from the glistening crest of the great mosque 
 on the ramparts, clear as a clarion and winging its way 
 through the upper air over the darkening mass below: 
 
 " God is Most Great! God is Most Great! " 
 
 
 ■^EZ^ 
 
 ^:V 
 
 ■^2- 
 
 AL-LA-nUAK-BAK. AL-LA - - nu AK-BAR.
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 67 
 
 XII 
 
 At half-past six Gordon was at the railway-station. He 
 found his soldier-seiwant halfway down the platform, on 
 which blue-shirted porters bustled to and fro, holding open 
 the door of a compartment labelled " Reserved." He found 
 Hafiz, also, and with him were two pale-faced Egyptians, 
 in the dress of Sheikhs, who touched their foreheads as 
 Gordon approached. 
 
 " These are the men you asked for," said Hafiz. 
 
 Gordon shook hands with the Egyptians, and then, stand- 
 ing between them, with one firm hand on the shoulder of 
 each and the light of an electric arc lamp in their faces, 
 he said: 
 
 " You know what you've got to do, brothers ? " 
 
 " We know," the men answered. 
 
 " The future of Egypt, perhaps of the East, may depend 
 upon what you tell me — you will tell me the truth ? " 
 
 " We will tell you the truth. Colonel." 
 
 " If the man we are going to see should be condemned 
 on your report and on my denunciation, you may suffer 
 at the hands of his followers. Protect you as I please, you 
 may be discovered, followed, tracked down — you have no 
 fear of the consequences ? " 
 
 " We have no fear, sir." 
 
 " You are prepared to follow me into any danger ? " 
 
 " Into any danger." 
 
 "To death, if need be?" 
 
 " To death, if need be, brother." 
 
 " Step in, then," said Gordon. 
 
 At the next moment there was the whistle of the locomo- 
 tive, and then, slowly, rhythmically, with its heavy, volcanic 
 throb shaking the platform and rumbling in the glass roof, 
 the train moved out of the station on its way to Alexandria.
 
 68 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 XIII 
 
 IsHMAEL Ameer was the son of a Libyan carpenter and 
 boat builder, who, shortly before the daj's of the Mahdi, had 
 removed with his family to Ivhartoum. His earliest mem- 
 ory was of the solitary figure of the great white pasha on 
 the roof of the palace, looking up the jSI^ile for the relief 
 army that never arrived, and of the same white-headed Eng- 
 lishman, with the pale face, who, walking to and fro on the 
 sands outside the palace garden, patted his head and smiled. 
 
 His next memory was of the morning after the fall of 
 the desert city, when, awakened by the melancholy moan of 
 the great onbeya, the elephant's horn that was the trumpet 
 of death, he heard the hellish shrieks of the massacre that 
 was going on in the streets, and saw his mother lying dead 
 in front of the door of the inner closet in which she had 
 hidden her child, and found his father's body on the outer 
 threshold. 
 
 He was seven years of age at this time, and being' adopted 
 by an uncle, a merchant in the town, who had been rich 
 enough to buy his own life, he was sent in due course first 
 to the little school of the mosque in Khartoum, and after- 
 ward, at eighteen, to El Azhar, in Cairo, where, with other 
 poor students, he slept in the stifling rooms under the flat 
 roof, and lived on the hard bread and the jars of cheese and 
 butter which were sent to him from home. 
 
 Within four years he had passed the highest examina- 
 tion at the Arabic University, taking the rank of alim (doc- 
 tor of Koranic divinity), which entitled him to teach and 
 preach in any quarter of the Mohammedan world, and then, 
 equally by reason of his rich voice and his devout mind, he 
 was made Reader in the mosque of El Azhar. 
 
 Morality was low among the governing classes at that 
 period, and when it occurred that the Grand Cadi, who was 
 a compound of the Eastern voluptuary and the libertine of 
 the Parisian boulevards, marrying for the fourth time, made 
 a feast that went on for a week, in which the days were 
 spent in eating and drinking and the nights in carousing
 
 THE CRESCENT AXD THE CROSS 69 
 
 of an unsaintly character, the orgy so shocked the young 
 alim from the desert that he went down to the great man's 
 house to protest. 
 
 " IIow is this, your Eminence ? " he said, stoutly. " The 
 Koran teaches temperance, chastity, and contempt of the 
 things of the world — yet you, who are a tower and a light 
 in Islam, have darkened our faces before the infidel." 
 
 So daring an outrage on the authority of the Cadi had 
 never been committed before, and Ishmael was promptly 
 flung into the streets; but the matter made some noise and 
 led, in the end, to the expulsion of all the governors (the 
 Ulema) of the University except the one man who, being 
 the first cause of the scandal, was also the representative of 
 the Sultan, and therefore could not be charged. 
 
 Meantime Ishmael, returning no more to El Azhar, had 
 settled himself on an island far up the river, and there, prac- 
 tising extreme austerities, he gathered a great reputation for 
 holiness, and attracted attention throughout the valley of the 
 Nile by breathing out threatenings and slaughter — not so 
 much against the leaders of his own people, who were de- 
 grading Islam, as against the Christians under whose hated 
 bondage, as he believed, the whole Mohammedan world was 
 going mad. 
 
 So wide was the appeal of Ishmael's impeachment, and so 
 vast became his following, that the government (now Anglo- 
 Egyptian), always sure that after sand-storms and sand-flies 
 holy men of all sorts were the most pernicious products of 
 the Soudan, thought it necessary to put him down, and 
 for this purpose they sent two companies of Arab camel 
 police, promising a reward to the one that should capture 
 the new prophet. 
 
 The two camel corps set out on different tracks, but 
 each resolving to take Ishmael by night, they entered his 
 village at the same time by opposite ends, met in the dark- 
 ness, and fought and destroyed one another, so that when 
 morning dawned they saw their leaders on both sides lying 
 dead in the crimsoning light. 
 
 The gruesome incident had the effect of the supernatural 
 on the Arab intellect, and when Ishmael and his followers, 
 6
 
 70 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 with nothing but a stick in one hand and the Koran in the 
 other, came down with a roar of voices and the sand whirling 
 in the wind, the native remnant turned tail and fled before 
 the young prophet's face. 
 
 Then the Governor-General, an agnostic with a contempt 
 for " mystic senses " of all kinds, sent a ruckling, swearing, 
 unbelieving company of British infantry, and they took 
 Ishmael without further trouble, brought him up to Khar- 
 toum, put him on trial for plotting against the Christian 
 Governor of his province, and imprisoned him in a com- 
 pound outside the town. 
 
 But soon the Government began to see that, though they 
 had crushed Ishmael, they could not crush Ishmaelism, and 
 they lent an ear to certain of the leaders of his own faith, 
 judges of the Mohammedan law courts, who, having put 
 their heads together, had devised a scheme to wean him from 
 his asceticism, and so destroy the movement by destroying 
 the man. The scheme was an old one, the wiles of a woman, 
 and they knew the very woman for the purpose. 
 
 This was a girl named Adila, a Copt, only twenty years 
 of age, and by no means a voluptuous creature, but a little, 
 winsome thing, very sweet and feminine, always freshly clad 
 and walking barefoot on the hot sand with an erect con- 
 fidence that was beautiful to see. 
 
 Adila had been the daughter of a Christian merchant at 
 Assouan, and there, six years before, she had been kidnapped 
 by a Bisharin tribe, who, answering her tears with rough 
 comfort, promised to make her a queen. 
 
 In their own way they did so, for, those being the dark 
 days of Mahdism, they brought her to Omdurman and put 
 her up to auction in the open slave-market, where the black 
 eunuch of the Caliph, after thrusting his yellow fingers 
 into her mouth to examine her teeth, bought her, among 
 other girls, for his master's harem. 
 
 There, with forty women of varying ages, gathered by 
 concupiscence from all quarters of the Soudan, she was 
 mewed up in the close atmosphere of two sealed chambers 
 in the Caliph's crudely gorgeous palace, seeing no more of 
 her owner than his coffee-coloured countenance as he passed
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 71 
 
 once a day through the curtained rooms, and signalled to 
 one or other of their bedecked and beringleted occupants to 
 follow him do^\Ti a hidden stairway to his private quarters. 
 At such moments of inspection Adila would sit trembling 
 and breathless, in dread of being seen, and she found her 
 companions only too happy to help her to hide herself from 
 the attentions they were seeking for themselves. 
 
 This lasted nearly a year, and then came a day when 
 the howling in the streets outside, the wailing of shells 
 overhead, and the crashing of cannon-ball in the dome of 
 the Mahdi's tomb, told the imprisoned women, who were 
 creeping together in corners and clinging to each other in 
 terror, that the English had come at last, and the Caliph 
 had fallen and fled. 
 
 When Adila was set at liberty by the English Sirdar, she 
 learned that, in grief at the loss of their daughter, her par- 
 ents had died, and so, ashamed to return to Assouan, after 
 being a slave-girl in Omdurman, she took service with a 
 Greek widow who kept a bakery in Khartoum. It was there 
 the Sheikhs of the law courts found her, and they proceeded 
 to coax and flatter her, telling her she had been a good girl 
 who had seen much sorrow, and therefore ought to know 
 some happiness now, to which end they had found a husband 
 to marry her, and he was a fine, handsome man, young and 
 learned and rich. 
 
 At this, Adila, remembering the Caliph, and thinking 
 that such a person as they pictured could only want her as 
 the slave of his bed, turned sharply upon them and said, 
 " When did I ask you to find me a man ? " and the Sheikhs 
 had to go back discomfited. 
 
 Meantime Ishmael, raving against the Christians, who 
 were corrupting Mohammedans while he was lying help- 
 less in his prison, fell into a fever, and the Greek mistress 
 of Adila, hearing who had been meant for her handmaiden, 
 and fearing the girl might think too much of herself, began 
 to taunt and mock her. 
 
 "They told you he was rich, didn't they?" said the 
 widow. "Well, he has no bread but what the Government 
 gives him, and he is in chains and he is dying, and you
 
 72 THE WHITE PKOPHET 
 
 would only have had to nurse him and bury him. That's 
 all the husband you would have got, my girl, so perhaps you 
 are better off where you are." 
 
 But the widow's taunting went wide, for as soon as Adila 
 had heard her out she went across to the Mohammedan 
 court-house and said: 
 
 " Why didn't you tell me it was Ishmael Ameer you 
 meant ? " 
 
 The Sheikhs answered with a show of shame that they 
 had intended to do so eventually, and if they had not done 
 so at first it was only out of fear of frightening her. 
 
 "He's sick and in chains, isn't he?" said Adila. 
 
 They admitted that it was true. 
 
 " He may never come out of prison alive — isn't that so ? " 
 
 They could not deny it. 
 
 " Then I want to marrj^ him," said Adila. 
 
 "What a strange girl you are!" said the Sheikhs, but 
 without more ado the contract was made while Ishmael was 
 so sick that he knew little about it, the marriage document 
 was drawn up in Ishmael's name, Adila signed it, half her 
 dowry was paid to her, and she promptly gave the money 
 to the poor. . 
 
 Xext day Ishmael was tossing on his angerib in the 
 mud-hut which served for his cell when he saw his Soudan- 
 ese guard come in, followed by four women, and the first 
 of them was Adila, carrying a basketful of cakes, such as 
 are made in that country for a marriage festival. One mo- 
 ment she stood over him as he lay on his bed with what 
 seemed to be the dews of death on his forehead, and then, 
 putting her basket on the ground, she slipped to her knees by 
 his side and said : 
 
 "I am Adila. I belong to you now and have come to 
 take care of you." 
 
 " Why do you come to me? " he answered. " Go away. I 
 don't want you." 
 
 " But we are married and I am your wife, and I am 
 here to nurse you until you are well," she said. 
 
 " I shall never be well," he replied. " 1 am dying and 
 will soon be dead. W^hy should you waste your life on me.
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 73 
 
 my girl? Go away and God bless you! Praise to His 
 name ! " 
 
 With that she kissed his hand and her tears fell over it, 
 but after a moment she wiped her eyes, rose to her feet, 
 and, turning briskly to the other women, she said: 
 
 " Take your cakes and be off with you — I'm going to 
 stay." 
 
 XIV 
 
 Three weeks long-er Ishmael lay in the grip of his fever, 
 and day and night Adila tended him, moistening his parched 
 lips and cooling his hot forehead, while he raged against his 
 enemies in his strong delirium, crying, " Down with the 
 Christians ! Drive them away ! Kill them ! " Then the 
 thunging and roaring in his poor brain ceased, and his 
 body was like a boat that had slid in an instant out of a 
 stormy sea into a quiet harbour. Opening his eyes, with 
 his face to the red wall, in the cool light of a breathless 
 morning, he heard behind him the soft and mellow voice of 
 a woman who seemed to be whispering to herself or to 
 Heaven, and she was saying: 
 
 " Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that tres- 
 pass against us, and lead us not into temptation but de- 
 liver us from evil, for Thine is the kingdom, the power, 
 and the glory. Amen." 
 
 " What is that ? " he asked, closing his eyes again ; and at 
 the next moment the mellow voice came from somewhere 
 above his face : 
 
 " So you are better ? Oh, how good that is ! I am Adila, 
 Don't you remember me ( " 
 
 " What was that you were saying, my girl ? " 
 
 "That? Oh, that was the prayer of the Lord Isa 
 (Jesus)." 
 
 "The Lord Isa?" 
 
 " Don't you know ? Long ago my father told me about 
 Him, and I've not forgotten it even yet. He was only a 
 poor man, a poor Jewish man, a carpenter, but He was so
 
 74 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 good that He loved all the world, especially sinful women 
 when they were sorry, and little, helpless children. He never 
 did harm to his enemies either, but people were cruel and 
 they crucified Him. And now He is in heaven, sitting at 
 God's right hand, with Mary, His mother, beside Him." 
 
 There was silence for a moment, and then : 
 
 " Say His prayer again, Adila." 
 
 So Adila, with more constraint than before, but still 
 softly and sweetly, began afresh: 
 
 " Our Father Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name; 
 Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in 
 heaven; give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us 
 our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against 
 us ; and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from 
 evil; for Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory. 
 Amen." 
 
 Thus the little Coptic woman, in her soft and mellow 
 voice, said her Lord's Prayer in that mud-hut on the edge 
 of the desert, with only the sick man to hear her, and he 
 was a prisoner and in chains; but long before she had fin- 
 ished Ishmael's face was hidden in his bedclothes and he 
 was crj'ing like a child. 
 
 There were three weeks more of a painless and dreamy 
 convalescence, in which Adila repeated other stories her 
 father had told her, and Ishmael saw Christianity for the 
 first time as it used to be, and wondered to find it a faith 
 so sweet and so true, and, above all, save for the character 
 of Jesus, so like his own. 
 
 Then a new set of emotions took possession of him, and 
 with returning strength he began to see Adila with fresh 
 eyes. He loved to look at her soft, round form, and he 
 found the air of his gloomy prison full of perfume and light 
 when she walked with her beautiful erect bearing and smil- 
 ing blue eyes about his bed. Hitherto she had slept on a 
 mattress which she had laid out on the ground by the side 
 of his angerib, but now he wished to change places, and 
 when nothing would avail with her to do so he would stretch 
 out his arm at night until their hands met and clasped, and 
 thus linked together they would fall asleep.
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 75 
 
 At length he -would awake in the darkness, not being 
 able to sleep for thinking of her, and finding one night that 
 she was awake, too, he said in a tremulous voice : 
 
 " Will you not come on to the angerib, Adila ? " 
 
 " Should I ? " she whispered, and she did. 
 
 Next day the black Soudanese guard that had been set 
 to watch him reported to the Mohammedan Sheikhs that the 
 devotee had been swallowed up in the man, whereupon the 
 Sheikhs, with a chuckle, reported the same to the Govern- 
 ment, and then Ishmael with certain formalities was set 
 free. 
 
 At the expense of his uncle a house was found for him 
 outside the town, for, in contempt of his weakness in being 
 tricked, as his people believed, by a Coptic slave-girl, his 
 following had gone and he and Adila were to be left alone. 
 Little they recked of that, though, for in the first sweet joys 
 of husband and wife they were very happy, talking in deli- 
 cious whispers and with the frank candour of the East of 
 the child that was to come. He was sure it would be a 
 girl, so they agreed to call it Ayesha (Mary), she for the 
 sake of the sinful soul who had washed her Master's feet 
 with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head, 
 and he in memory of the poor Jewish woman, the mother of 
 Isa, whose heart had been torn with grief for the sorrows 
 of her son. 
 
 But when at length came their day of days, at the height 
 of their happiness a bolt fell out of a cloudless sky, for 
 though God gave them a child, and it was a girl. He took 
 the mother in place of it. 
 
 She made a brave end, the sweet Coptic woman, only 
 thinking of Ishmael and holding his hand to cheer him. It 
 was noon, the sun was hot outside, and in the cool shade 
 of the courtyard three Moslems chanted the Islamee la II- 
 laha, for so much they could do even for the infidel, while 
 Ishmael sat within on one side of his wife's angerib, with 
 his uncle, seventy years of age now, on the other. She was 
 too weak to speak to her husband, but she held up her mouth 
 to him like a child to be kissed. A moment later the old man 
 closed her eyes, and said:
 
 76 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Be comforted, my son — death is a black camel that 
 kneels at the gate of all." 
 
 There were no women to wail outside the house that 
 night, and next day, when Adila had to be buried, it was 
 neither in the Mohammedan cemetery with those who had 
 " received direction," nor in the Christian one with Eng- 
 lish soldiers who had fallen in fight, that the slave-wife of 
 a prisoner could be laid, but out in the open desert where 
 there was nothing save the sand and the sky. 
 
 They laid her with her face to Jerusalem, wrapped in a 
 cocoa-nut mat, and i)ut a few thorns over her to keep off 
 the eagles, and when this was done they would have left 
 her, saying she would sleep cool in her soft bed, for a warm 
 wind was blowing and the sun was beginning to set, but 
 Ishmael would not go. 
 
 In his sorrow and misery, his doubt and darkness, he 
 was asking himself whether, if his poor Coptic wife was 
 doomed to hell as an unbeliever, he could ever be happy in 
 heaven. The moon had risen when at length they drew him 
 away, and even then in the stillness of the lonely desert 
 he looked back again and again at the dark patch on the 
 white waste of the wilderness in which he was leaving her 
 behind him. 
 
 Xext morning he took the child from the midwife's arms, 
 and, carrj-ing it across to his uncle, he asked him to take 
 care of it and bring it up, for he was leaving Khartoum 
 and did not know how long he might be away. Where was 
 he going to ? lie could not say. Had he any money ? Xone, 
 but God would provide for him. 
 
 " Better stay in the Soudan and marry another woman, 
 a believer," said his uncle, and then Ishmael answered, in a 
 quivering voice : 
 
 " Xo, no, by Allah I One wife I had, and if she was a 
 Christian and was once a slave, I loved her, and never — 
 never — shall another woman take her place." 
 
 He was ten years away, and only at long intervals did 
 anybody hear of him, and it was sometimes from Mecca, 
 sometimes from Jerusalem, sometimes from liome, and 
 finally from the depths of the Libyan desert. Then he re-
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 77 
 
 appeared at Alexandria, and, entering a little mosque, he 
 exercised his right as alim and went up into the pulpit to 
 preach. 
 
 His teaching was like fire, and men were like fuel before 
 it. Day by day the crowds increased that came to hear him, 
 until Alexandria seemed to be aflame, and he had to remove 
 to the large mosque of Abou Abbas in the square of the 
 same name. 
 
 Such was the man whom Gordon Lord was sent to arrest. 
 
 XV 
 
 " Headquarters, Caracol Attarin, Alexandria. 
 
 " My dearest Helena : I have seen my man and it is 
 all a mistake! I can have no hesitation in saying so — a 
 mistake! Wallahi! Ishmael Ameer is not the cause of the 
 riots which are taking place here — never has been, never 
 can be. And if his preaching should ever lead by any in- 
 direct means to sporadic outbursts of fanaticism the fault 
 will be ours — ours, and nobody else's. 
 
 " Colonel Jenkinson and the Commandant of Police met 
 me on my arrival. It seems my coming had somehow got 
 wind, but the only effect of the rumour had been to increase 
 the panic, for even the conservative elements among the 
 Europeans had made a run on the gunsmiths' shops for 
 firearms and — could you believe it? — on the chemists' for 
 prussic acid, to be used by their women in case of the worst. 
 
 " Next morning I saw my man for the first time. It 
 was outside Abou Abbas, on the toe of the East port, where 
 the native population, with quiet Eastern greeting, of hands 
 to the lips and forehead, were following him from his lodg- 
 ing to the mosque. 
 
 "My dear girl, he is not a bit like the man you im- 
 agined. Young — as young as I am, at all events — tall, very 
 tall (his head showing above others in a crowd), with clean- 
 cut face, brown complexion, skin soft and clear, hands like 
 a woman's, and large, beaming black eyes as frank as a
 
 78 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 child's. His dress is purely Oriental, being white through- 
 out, save for the red slippers under the caftan and the 
 tip of the tarboosh above the turban. No mealy-mouthed 
 person, though, but a spontaneous, passionate man, careless 
 alike of the frowns of men and the smiles of women, a 
 real type of the Arab out of the desert, uncorrupted by the 
 cities, a man of peace, perhaps, but full of deadly fire and 
 dauntless energy. 
 
 " My dear Helena, I liked my first sight of Ishmael 
 Ameer, and thinking I saw in him some of the barbarous 
 virtues we have civilised away, some of the fine old stuff 
 of the Arab nobleman who would light his beacon to guide 
 you to his tent even if you were his worst enemy, I could 
 
 not help but say to myself, ' By , here's a man I want 
 
 to fight ! ' 
 
 " As soon as he had gone intp the mosque I sent Hafiz 
 and the two Egyptians after him by different doors, with 
 strict injunctions against collusion of any kind, and then 
 went off to the police headquarters in the Governorat to 
 await their report. Hafiz himself was the first to come to 
 me, and he brought a circumstantial story. Not a word of 
 sedition, not a syllable about the Christians, good, bad, or 
 indifferent! Did the man flatter the Moslems? Exactly 
 the reverse ! Never had Hafiz heard such a rating of a con- 
 gregation even from a Mohammedan preacher. 
 
 " The sermon had been on the degradation of woman in 
 the East, which the preacher had denounced as a disgrace to 
 their humanity. Christians believed it to be due to their 
 faith, but what had degraded woman in Mohammedan 
 countries was not the Mohammedan religion but the peo- 
 ple's own degradation. 
 
 " * I dreamt last night,' he said, ' that in punishment of 
 your offences against woman God lifted the passion of love 
 out of the heart of man. What a chaos ! A cockpit of sel- 
 fishness and sin ! Woman is meant to sweeten life, to bind 
 its parts together — will you continue to degrade her? Fools, 
 are you wiser than God, trying to undo what He has 
 done ? ' 
 
 " Such was Ishmael's sermon, as Hafiz reported it, and
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 79 
 
 ■when the Egyptians came their account was essentially the 
 same; but just at the moment when I was asking myself 
 what there could be in teaching like this to set Moslem 
 against Christian, tinkle-tinkle went the bell of the tele- 
 phone, and the Commandant of Police, who had been listen- 
 ing with a supercilious smile, seemed to take a certain joy 
 in telling me that his inspector in the quarter of Abou 
 Abbas was calling for reinforcements because a fresh dis- 
 turbance had broken out there. 
 
 " In three minutes I was on the spot, and the first thing 
 I saw was the white figure of Ishmael Ameer lashing his 
 way through a turbulent crowd, whereupon the Command- 
 ant, who was riding by my side, said, ' See that ? Are you 
 satisfied now, sir?' to which I answered, 'Don't be a fool,' 
 with a stronger word to drive it home, and then made for 
 the middle of the throng. 
 
 " It was all over before I got there, for Christians and 
 Moslems alike were flying before Ishmael's face, and, with- 
 out waiting for a word of thanks, he was gone, too, and in 
 another moment the square was clear, save for a dozen 
 men, native and European, whom the police had put under 
 arrest. 
 
 " With these rascals I returned to the Governorat and 
 investigated the riot, which turned out to be a very petty 
 affair, originating in an effort on the part of a couple of 
 low-class Greeks to attend to the Scriptural injunction to 
 spoil the Egyptians by robbing a shop (covered only by a 
 net) while its native owner was in the mosque. 
 
 " Next morning came a letter from Ishmael Ameer, be- 
 ginning, ' In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Mer- 
 ciful,' but otherwise written without preamble or circum- 
 locution, saying he was aware that certain incidents in con- 
 nection with his services had assumed an anti-Christian 
 aspect, and begging to be permitted, in the interests of 
 peace and in order to give a feeling of security to Euro- 
 peans, to preach openly at noon the next day in the square 
 of Mohammed Ali. 
 
 " I need not tell you, my dear Helena, that everybody 
 at the Governorat thought the letter a piece of appalling
 
 80 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 effrontery, and, of course, the Commandant — who is one of 
 the good Christians, with a rooted contempt for anything 
 in a turban (forgetting that Jesus Christ probably wore 
 one) — made himself big with phrases out of Blue Books 
 about the only way to suppress disorder being to refuse to 
 let sedition show its head. But I have never been afraid of 
 a mob, and, thinking the situation justified the experiment, 
 I advised the Governor to let the man come. 
 
 " One thing I did, though, my dear Helena, and that 
 was to dictate a pretty stiff reply, saying I should be present 
 myself with a battalion of soldiers, and if, instead of pacify- 
 ing the people, he aggravated their hostility, I shovild make 
 it my personal business to see that he would be the first 
 to suffer. 
 
 " That night all the world and his wife declared that I 
 was fishing in troubled waters, and I hear that some brave 
 souls fled panic-stricken by the last train to Cairo, where 
 they are now, I presume, preferring their petitions at the 
 Agency; but next morning (that is to say, this morning) the 
 air was calmer, and the great square, when I reached it, was 
 as quiet as an inland sea. 
 
 " It was a wonderful sight, however, with the First Suf- 
 folk lining the east walls, and the Second Berkshire lining 
 the west ; and the overflowing Egyptian and European popu- 
 lace between, standing together yet apart, like the hosts of 
 Pharaoh and of Israel with the Red Sea dividing them. 
 
 " I rode up with Jenkinson a little before tAvelve, and I 
 think the people saw that, though we had permitted this 
 unusual experiment in the interests of peace, we meant busi- 
 ness. A space had been kept clear for Ishmael at the foot 
 of the statue of the great Khedive, and hardly had the last 
 notes of the midday call to prayers died away when our 
 man arrived. He was afoot, quite unattended, walking with 
 an active step and that assured nobility of bearing which 
 belongs to the Arab blood alone. He bowed to me, with a 
 simple dignity that had not a particle either of fear or 
 defiance, and agaio. Heaven knows why, I said to myself, 
 * By , I want to fight that man ! ' 
 
 " Then he stepped on to the angerib that had been placed
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 81 
 
 for him as a platform and began to speak. His first words 
 were a surprise, being in English, and faultlessly spoken : 
 
 " ' The earth and the sky are full of trouble, God has 
 afflicted us; praise to His name,' he began, and then, point- 
 ing to the warships that were just visible in the bay, he 
 cried : 
 
 " ' Men who are watching the heavens and who speak 
 with authority tell us that great conflicts are coming among 
 the nations of the world. Why is it so? What is dividing 
 us? Is it race? We are the sons of one Father. Is it 
 faith? It is the work of religion not only to set men free, 
 but to bind them together. Our Prophet says : " Thou shalt 
 love thy brother as thyself, and never act toward him but 
 as thou wouldst that he should act toward thee." The Gos- 
 pel of Jesus Christ and the Law of Moses say the same. 
 The true Christian is the true Moslem — the true Moslem 
 is the true Jew. All that is right in religion includes itself 
 in one commandment — love one another! Then, why war- 
 fare between brethren so near akin ? ' 
 
 " His voice, my dear Helena, was such as I had never 
 in my life heard before. It throbbed with the throb that 
 is peculiar to the voice of the Arab singer and seems to go 
 through you like an electric current. His sermon, too, 
 which was sometimes in English, sometimes in Arabic, the 
 two languages so intermingled that the whole vast congre- 
 gation of the cosmopolitan seaport seemed to follow him 
 at once, was not like preaching at all, but vehement, enthu- 
 siastic, extempore prayer. 
 
 " I have sent a long account of it to the Consul-General, 
 so I dare say you will see what it contained. It was the 
 only preaching I have ever heard that seemed to me to de- 
 serve the name of inspiration. Sedition? In one passage 
 alone did it so much as skirt the problem of England in 
 Egypt, and then there was a spirit in the man's fiery words 
 that was above the finest patriotism. Speaking of the uni- 
 versal hope of all religions, the hope of a time to come 
 when the Almighty will make all the faiths of the world 
 one faith, and all the peoples of the world one people, he 
 said:
 
 82 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " ' In visions of the night I see that promised day, and 
 what is our Egj'pt then? She, the oldest of the nations, 
 who has seen so many centuries of persecution and shame, 
 trodden under the heel of hard taskmasters, and buried in 
 the sands of her deserts, what is she? She is the meeting- 
 place of nations, the hand-clasp of two worlds, the inter- 
 preter and the peacemaker between East and West. We 
 can never be a great nation — let us be a good one. Is it 
 not enough? Look around! We stand amid ruins half as 
 old as the earth itself — is it not worth waiting for?' 
 
 " Then in his last word, speaking first in Arabic and 
 afterward in English, he cried: 
 
 " ' men of many races, be brothers one to another ! 
 God is Most Great! God is Most Great! Take hands, O 
 sons of one Father, believers in one God ! Pray to Him who 
 changes all things but Himself changeth not ! God is Most 
 Great! God is Most Great! Let Allahu-Akbar sound for 
 ever through your souls ! ' 
 
 " The effect was overwhelming. Even some of the low- 
 class Greeks and Italians were sobbing aloud, and our poor 
 Egyptian children were like people possessed. Hungry, out 
 of work, many of them wearing a single garment, and that 
 a ragged one — ^yet a new magnificence seemed to be given 
 to their lives. Something radiant and glorious seemed to 
 glimmer in the distance, making their present sufferings 
 look small and mean. 
 
 " And I ? I don't know, my dear Helena, how I can 
 better tell you what I felt than by telling you what I did. 
 I was looking down from the saddle at my First Suffolk and 
 my Second Berkshire, standing in line with their poor little 
 rifles, when something gripped me by the throat, and I 
 signed to the officers, shouted ' Back to your quarters ! ' and 
 rode off, without waiting to see what would happen, because 
 I knew. 
 
 " I have written both to the General and to my father, 
 telling them I have not arrested Ishmael Ameer and don't 
 intend to do so. If this is quackery and spiritual leger- 
 demain to cover sedition and conspiracy, I throw up the 
 sponge and count myself among the fools. But Ishmael
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 83 
 
 Ameer is one of the flame-bearers of the world. Let who 
 will put him down — I will not. 
 
 " My dearest Helena, I've written all this about the new 
 prophet and not a word about yourself, though I've been 
 feeling the quivering grip of your hand in mine every mo- 
 ment of the time. The memory of that delicious quarter 
 of an hour in the garden has sweetened the sulphurous air 
 of Alexandria for me, and I'm in a fever to get back. 
 ' Smash the Mahdi ! ' you said, thinking if I didn't obey my 
 father and yours I should offend both and so lead to trouble 
 between you and me. But the Consul-General is a just man, 
 if he is a hard one, and I should not deserve to be his son 
 if I did not dare to warn him when he was going to do 
 wrong. Neither should I deserve to be loved by the bravest 
 girl alive if I hadn't the pluck to stand up for the right. 
 
 " Good night, sweetheart ! It's two in the morning, the 
 town is as quiet as a desert village, and I am going to 
 turn in. Gordon. 
 
 " P. S. — Forgot to say Ishmael Ameer is to go up to Cairo 
 shortly, so you'll soon see him for yourself. But Heaven 
 help me, what is to become of Gordon Lord when you've once 
 looked on this son of the wilderness? 
 
 " P. P. S. — Not an arrest since yesterday ! " 
 
 XVI 
 
 " General's House, Citadel, Cairo. 
 
 " My dear Gordon : You're in for it ! In that whisper- 
 ing gallery which people call the East, where everything is 
 known before it happens to happen, rumours without end 
 were coming to Cairo of what you were doing in Alexandria, 
 but nobody in authority believed the half of it until your 
 letters arrived at noon to-day, and now — heigho, for the 
 wind and the rain ! 
 
 " My dear dad is going about like an old Tom with his 
 tail up, and as for the Consul-General — whew! (a whistle, 
 your Excellency).
 
 84 THE WHITE PKOPHET 
 
 " Let me take things in their order, though, so that you 
 may see what has come to pass. I was reading your letter 
 for the third (or was it the thirtieth?) time this aftei-noon, 
 when who should come in but the Princess Nazimah, so I 
 couldn't resist an impulse to tell her what your son of Hagar 
 had to say on the position of Eastern women, thinking it 
 would gratify her and she would agree. But no, not a bit 
 of it; oif she went on the other side, with talk straight out 
 of the harem, showing that the woman of the East isn't 
 worthy of emancipation and shouldn't get it — yet. 
 
 " It seems that if the men of the East are ' beasts,' the 
 women are 'creatures.' Love? They never heard of such 
 a thing. Husband ? The word doesn't exist for them. Not 
 my master, even ! Just master ! Living together like school- 
 girls and loving each other like sisters — think of that, my 
 dear ! 
 
 " And when I urged that we were all taught to love one 
 another — all Christians, at all events — she cried: 'What! 
 And share one man between four of you ? ' In short, the 
 condition was only possible to cocks and hens, and that 
 Eastern women could put up with it showed they were crea- 
 tures — simple creatures, content and hap})y if their hus- 
 bands (beg pardon, their masters) gave them equal presents 
 of dresses and jewels and Turkish delight. No, let the 
 woman of the East keep a little longer to her harem win- 
 dow, her closed carriage, and her wisp of mousseline de sole 
 she calls her veil, or she'll misuse her liberty. ' Oh, I know. 
 I say what I think. I don't care.' 
 
 " As for your Ishmael, the Princess wouldn't have him 
 at any price. He's just another Mahdi, and if he's cham- 
 pioning the cause of women the son of a duck knows how 
 to swim. His predecessor began by denouncing slavery and 
 ended by being the biggest slave-dealer in the Soudan. 
 Ergo, your Ishmael, who cares neither for ' the frowns of 
 man nor the smiles of woman,' is going to finish up like 
 Solomon or Samson, either as the tyrant of a hundred 
 women or the victim of one of them whose heart is snares 
 and nets. * Oh, I know. Every man is a sultan to himself, 
 and the tail of a dog is never straight.'
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 85 
 
 " But as for you, it seems you are ' a brother of girls/ 
 which being" interpreted means you are a man to whom God 
 has given a clean heart to love all women as his sisters, and 
 courage and strength to fight for their protection. ' Didn't 
 I tell you that you had the best of the bunch, my child ? ' 
 (She did. Serenity.) ' But though he is a soldier and as 
 brave as a lion, he has too much of the woman in him.' 
 In this respect you resemble, it seems, one of the Prin- 
 cess's own husbands, but having had a variety of them, 
 both right and left-handed, she found a difficulty in fix- 
 ing your prototype. ' My first husband was like that — or 
 no, it was my second — or perhaps it was one of the other 
 ones.' 
 
 " But this being so, virtuous one, it became my duty 
 to get you back from Alexandria as speedily as possible. 
 * Love, like the sparrows, comes and goes. Oh, I know. 
 I've seen it myself, my child.' 
 
 " ' And listen, my moon. Don't allow your Gordon ' (she 
 calls you Gourdan) ' to go against his father. Nuneham is 
 the greatest man in the world, but let anybody cross him — 
 V1071 Dieu! If you go out as the wind you meet the whirl- 
 wind, and serve you right, too.' 
 
 " In complete agreement on this point, the Princess and 
 I were parting in much kindness when father came dashing 
 into my drawing-room like a gust of the Khamseen, having 
 just had a telephone message from the Consul-General re- 
 quiring him to go down to the Agency without delay. 
 Whereupon, with a word or two of apology to the Princess 
 and a rumbling subterranean growl of ' Don't know what the 
 d that young man . . . ' he picked up your letter to him- 
 self and was gone in a moment. 
 
 " It is now 10 P.M. and he hasn't come back yet. An- 
 other telephone message told me he wouldn't be home to 
 dinner, so I dined alone, with only Mosie Gobs for company, 
 but he waits on me like my shadow, and gives me good 
 advice on all occasions. 
 
 " It seems his heart is still on fire with love for me, and, 
 having caught him examining his face in my toilet-glass 
 this morning, I was amused, and a little touched, when he
 
 86 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 asked me to-night if the Army Surgeon had any medicine 
 to make people white. 
 
 " Apparently, his former love was a small black maiden 
 who works in the laundry, and he shares your view (as re- 
 vealed in happier hours, your Highness) that there's noth- 
 ing in the world so nice as a little girl except a big one. 
 But I find he hasn't the best opinion of you, for when I 
 was trying to while away an hour after dinner by playing 
 the piano I overheard the monkey telling the cook that to 
 see her hands (i. e., mine) run over the teeth of the music- 
 box amazes the mind — therefore, why should her husband 
 (id est, you) spend so much time in the cojffee-shop ? 
 
 " Since then I've been out in the arbour trying to live 
 over again the delicious quarter of an hour you speak of, 
 but though the wing of night is over the city and the air 
 is as soft as somebody's kiss is (except sometimes), it was 
 a dreadful failure, for when I closed my eyes, thinking 
 hearts see each other, I could feel nothing but the sting of 
 a mosquito, and could only hear the watchman crying 
 * Wahhed ! ' and what that was like you've only to open your 
 mouth wide and then say it, and you'll know. 
 
 " So here I am at my desk talking against time until 
 father comes, and there's something to say. And if you 
 would know how I am myself, I would tell you, most glo- 
 rious and respected, that I'm as tranquil as can be expected 
 considering what a fever you've put me in, for, falling on 
 my knees before your unsullied hands, O Serenity, it seems 
 to me you're a dunce after all, and have gone and done 
 exactly what your great namesake did before you, in spite 
 of his tragic fate to warn you. 
 
 " The trouble in Gordon major's case was that the Gov- 
 ernment gave him a discretionary power and he used it, and 
 it seems as if something similar has happened to Gordon 
 minor, with the same results. I hope to goodness they may 
 send you a definite order as the consequence of their col- 
 loguing to-night, and then you can have no choice, and there 
 will be no further trouble. 
 
 " That is not to say that I think you are wrong in your 
 view of this new Mahdi, but merely that I don't want to
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 87 
 
 know anything about him. His protests against the spirit 
 of the world may be good and beneficial, but peace and quiet 
 are better. His predictions about the millennium may be 
 right, too, and if he likes to live on that dinner of herbs 
 let him. Can't you leave such people to boil their own pot 
 without you providing them with sticks? I'm a woman, of 
 course, and my Moslem sisters may be suffering this, that, 
 or the other injustice, but when it comes to letting these 
 things get in between your happiness and mine, what the 
 dickens, and the deuce, and the divil do I care? — which is 
 proof of what Mosie said to the cook about the sweetness 
 of my tongue. 
 
 " As for your ' Arab nobleman ' taking me by storm, no, 
 thank you! I dare say he has red finger-nails, and if one 
 touched the tip of his nose it would be as soft as Mosie's. 
 I hate him any^vay, and if you are ever again tempted to 
 fight him, take my advice and fall I But look here, Mr. 
 Charlie Gordon Lord ! If you're so very keen for a fight 
 come here and fight me — I'm game for you! 
 
 " Soberly, my dear — dear, don't think I'm not proud of 
 you that you are the only man in all Egypt, aye, or the world, 
 who dares stand up to your father. When God made you 
 he made you without fear — I know that. He made you with 
 a heart that would die rather than do a wrong — I know that, 
 too. I don't believe you are taking advantage of your 
 position as a son, either; and when people blame your par- 
 ents for bringing you up as an Arab I know it all comes 
 from deeper down than that. I suppose it is the Plymouth 
 Rock in you, the soul and blood of the men of the May- 
 floiver. You cannot help it, and you would fight your own 
 father for what you believed to be the right. 
 
 " But, oh, dear, that's just what makes me tremble. Tour 
 father and you on opposite sides is a thing too terrible to 
 think about. English gentlemen ? Yes, I'm not saying any- 
 thing to the contrary, but British bulldogs, too, and, as if 
 that were not enough, you've got the American eagle in 
 you as well. You'll destroy each other — that will be the 
 end of it. And if you ask me what reason I have for saying 
 so, I answer — simply a woman's, I Tcnow! I know!
 
 88 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Father just back — dreadfully excited and exhausted — 
 had to get him off to bed. Something fresh brewing — can- 
 not tell what. 
 
 " I gather that your friend, the Grand Cadi, was at the 
 Agency to-night — but I'll hear more in the morning. 
 
 " It's very late and the city seems to be tossing in its 
 sleep — a kind of somnambulant moan coming up from it. 
 They say the Nile is beginning to rise, and by the light of 
 the moon (it has just risen) I can faintly see a streak of 
 red water down the middle of the river. Ugh! It's like 
 blood and makes me shiver, so I must go to bed. 
 
 " Father much better this morning. But, oh ! oh ! oh ! 
 ... It seems you are to be telegraphed for to return imme- 
 diately. Something you have to do in Cairo — I don't know 
 what. I'm glad you are to come back, though, for I hate 
 to think of you in the same city as that man Ishmael. Let 
 me hear from you the minute you arrive, for I may have 
 something to say by that lime, and meantime I send this 
 letter by hand to your quarters at Kasr el Nil. 
 
 " That red streak in the Nile is plain enough this morn- 
 ing. I suppose it's only the first water that comes pouring 
 down from the clay soil of Abyssinia, but I hate to look 
 at it. 
 
 " Take care of yourself, Gordon, dear — I'm really a shock- 
 ing coward, you know. IIelp:na. 
 
 "P. S. — Another dream last night! Same as before ex- 
 actly — that man coming between you and me." 
 
 XVII 
 
 Returning to Cairo by the first train the following morn- 
 ing, Gordon received Helena's letter and replied to it: 
 
 " Just arrived in obedience to their telegram. But don't 
 be afraid, dearest. Nothing can happen that will injure 
 either of us. My father cannot have wished me to arrest 
 an innocent man. Therefore set your mind at ease and be 
 happy. Going over to the Agency now, but hope to see you
 
 THE CRESCENT AXD THE CROSS 89 
 
 in the course of the day. Greetings to the General and all 
 my love to his daughter. Gordon." 
 
 But in spite of the brave tone of this letter, he was not 
 without a certain uneasiness as he rode across to his father's 
 house. " I couldn't have acted otherwise," he thought. 
 And then, recalling Helena's hint of something else which 
 it was intended he should do, he told himself that his father 
 was being deceived and did not know what he was doing. 
 " First of all I must tell him the truth — at all costs, the 
 truth," he thought. 
 
 This firm resolution was a little shaken the moment he 
 entered the garden and the home atmosphere began to creep 
 upon him. And when Ibrahim, his father's Egyptian ser- 
 vant, told him that his mother, who had been less well since 
 he went away, was keeping her bed that morning, the shadow 
 of domestic trouble seemed to banish his stalwart purpose. 
 
 Bounding upstairs three steps at a time, he called in a 
 cheery voice at his mother's door, but almost before the 
 faint, half-frightened answer came back to him he was in 
 the room, and the pale-faced old lady in her nightdress was 
 in his arms. 
 
 " I knew it was you," she said, and then, with her thin, 
 moist hands clasped about his neck, and her head against 
 his breast, she began in a plaintive, hesitating voice, as if 
 she were afraid of her own son, to warn and reprove him. 
 
 " I do not understand what is happening, dear, but you 
 must never let anybody poison your mind against your 
 father. He may be a little hard sometimes — I'm not deny- 
 ing that — but then he is not to be judged like other men — 
 he is really not, you know. He would cut off his right hand 
 if he thought it had done him a wrong, but he is very tender 
 to those he loves, and he loves you, dear, and wants to do 
 so much for you. It was pitiful to hear him last night, Gor- 
 don. *I feel as if my enemy has stolen my own son,' he 
 said. * My own son, my own son,' he kept saying, until I 
 could have cried, and I couldn't sleep for thinking of it. 
 You won't let anybody poison your mind against your father 
 — promise me you won't, dear."
 
 90 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Gordon comforted and kissed her, and rallied her and 
 laughed, but he felt for a moment as if he had come back 
 as a traitor to destroy the happiness of home. 
 
 Fatimah followed him out of the room, and, winking to 
 keep back her tears, she whispered some disconnected story 
 of what had happened on the day on which his father re- 
 ceived his letter. 
 
 " Oh, my eye, my soul, it was sad ! We could hear his 
 footsteps in his bedroom all night long. Sometimes he was 
 speaking to himself. ' The scoundrels ! ' ' They don't know 
 what shame is ! ' ' Haven't I had enough ? And now he, too ! 
 My son, my son ! ' " 
 
 Gordon went downstairs with a slow and heavy step. He 
 felt as if everything were conspiring to make him abandon 
 his purpose. " Why can't I leave things alone ? " he thought. 
 But just as he reached the hall the Egyptian Prime Min- 
 ister, who was going out of the house, passed in front of him 
 without seeing him, and a certain sinister look in the man's 
 sallow face Aviped out in an instant all the softening effect 
 of the scenes upstairs. " Take care ! " he thought. " Tell 
 him the truth, whatever happens." 
 
 When he entered the library he expected his father to 
 fly out at him, but the old man was very quiet. 
 
 " Sit down — I shall be ready in a moment," he said, and 
 he continued to write without raising his eyes. 
 
 Gordon saw that his father's face was more than usually 
 furrowed and severe, and a voice seemed to say to him, 
 " Don't be afraid ! " So he walked over to the window and 
 tried to look at the glistening waters of the Nile and the 
 red wedges of Pyramids across the river. 
 
 " Well, I received your letter," said the old man, after a 
 moment. " But what was the nonsensical reason you gave 
 me for not doing your duty?" 
 
 It was the brusque tone he had always taken with his 
 secretaries when they were in the wrong, but it was a 
 blunder to adopt it with Gordon, who flushed up to the 
 forehead, wheeled round from the window, walked up to 
 the desk, and said, beginning a little hesitatingly, but gath- 
 ering strength as he went on :
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 91 
 
 "My reason, father ... for not doing my . , . what I 
 was sent to do . . . was merely that I found I could not do 
 it without being either a rascal or a fool." 
 
 The old man flinched and his glasses fell. " Explain 
 yourself," he said. 
 
 " I came to the conclusion, sir, that you were mistaken 
 in this matter." 
 
 "Eeally!" 
 
 " Possibly misinformed " 
 
 " Indeed ! " 
 
 " By British officials who don't know what they are talk- 
 ing about, or by native scoundrels who do." 
 
 Not for forty years had anybody in Egypt spoken to the 
 Consul-General like that, but he only said: 
 
 " Don't stand there like a parson in a pulpit. Sit down 
 and tell me all about it." Whereupon Gordon took a seat 
 by the desk. 
 
 " The only riot I witnessed in Alexandria, sir, was due 
 simply to the bad feeling which always exists between the 
 lowest elements of the European and Egyptian inhabitants. 
 Ishmael Ameer had nothing to do with it. On the contrary, 
 he helped to put it down." 
 
 " You heard what he had said in the mosques ? " 
 
 "I had one of his sermons reported to me, sir, and it 
 was teaching such as would have had your own sympathy, 
 being in line with what you have always said yourself about 
 the corruptions of Islam and the necessity of uplifting the 
 Egyptian woman as a means of raising the Egyptian man." 
 
 " So you decided, it seems " 
 
 " I decided, father, that to arrest Ishmael Ameer as one 
 who was promulgating sedition and inciting the people to 
 rebellion would be an act of injustice which you could not 
 wish me to perpetrate in your name." 
 
 The Consul-General put up his glasses, looked for a let- 
 ter which lay on the desk, glanced at it, and said : 
 
 " I see you say that before you arrived in Alexandria it 
 "was known that you were to come." 
 
 " That is so, sir." 
 
 " And that after the riot you counselled the Governor
 
 92 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 to consent to the man's request that he should preach in 
 public." 
 
 " I did, sir. I thought it would be a good experiment to 
 try the effect of a little moral influence." 
 
 " Of course, the experiment was justified ? " 
 
 " Perfectly justified — the people dispersed quietly and 
 there has not been a single arrest since." 
 
 " But you had a battalion of soldiers on the spot ? " 
 
 " I had — it was only right to be ready for emergencies." 
 
 The old man laughed bitterly. " I'm surprised at you. 
 Don't you see how you've been hoodwinked ? The man was 
 Avarned of your coming — warned from Cairo, from El Azhar, 
 which I find you were so foolish as to visit before you left 
 for Alexandria. Everything was prepared for you. A trick, 
 an Eastern trick, and you were so simple as to be taken in. 
 I'm ashamed of you — ashamed of you before my servants, 
 my secretaries." 
 
 Gordon coloured up to his flickering steel-blue eyes and 
 said: 
 
 " Father, I must ask you to begin by remembering that 
 I am no longer a child and not quite a simpleton. I know 
 the Egyptians. I know them better than all your people 
 put together." 
 
 " Better than your father himself, perhaps ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir, better than my father himself, because — be- 
 cause I love them, whereas you — you have hated them from 
 the first. They've never deceived me yet, sir, and, with 
 your permission, I'm not going to deceive them." 
 
 The passionate words were hotly, almost aggressively 
 spoken, but in some unfathomable depth of the father's 
 heart the old man was fjroud of his son at that moment — 
 strong, fearless, and right. 
 
 " And the sermon in public — was that also on the cor- 
 ruption of Islam?" 
 
 " Xo, sir, it was about the spirit of the world — the greed 
 of wealth which is making people forget in these days that 
 the tme welfare of a nation is moral, not material." 
 
 " Anything else ? " 
 
 " Yes — the hope of a time when the world will have so
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 93 
 
 far progressed toward peace that arms will be laid down and 
 a Redeemer will come to proclaim a universal brotherhood." 
 
 " That didn't strike you as ridiculous — to see one unlet- 
 tered man trying to efface the laws of civilised society — 
 asking sensible people to turn their backs on the facts of 
 life in order to live in a spiritual hot-house of dreams ? " 
 
 " No, father, that did not strike me as ridiculous, be- 
 cause " 
 
 " Because what — what, now ? " 
 
 " Because John the Baptist and Jesus Christ did pre- 
 cisely the same thing." 
 
 There was silence for a moment, and then the old man 
 said : 
 
 " In this golden age that is to come, he predicts, I am 
 told, a peculiar place for Egypt — is that so ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir. He holds that in the commonwealth of the 
 world Egypt, by reason of her geographical position, will 
 become the interpreter and peacemaker between the East and 
 the West — that that's what she has lived so long for." 
 
 " Yet it didn't occur to you that this was sedition in 
 its most seductive form, and that the man who promulgated 
 it was probably the most dangerous of the demagogues — the 
 woi'st of the Egyptians who prate about the natives govern- 
 ing themselves and the English being usurping foreigners." 
 
 " ISTo, sir, that didn't occur to me at all, because I felt 
 that a Moslem people had a right to their own ideals, and 
 also because I thought " 
 
 "Well? Well?" 
 
 " That the man who imagines that the soul of a nation 
 can be governed by the sword — whoever he is. King, Kaiser, 
 or — or Czar — is the worst of tyrants." 
 
 The old autocrat flinched visibly. The scene was be- 
 coming tragic to him. For forty years he had been fighting 
 his enemies, and he had beaten them, and now suddenly his 
 own son was standing up as his foe. After a moment of 
 silence he rose and said, with stony gravity: 
 
 " Very well ! Having heard your views on Ishmael 
 Ameer, and incidentally on myself, and all I have hitherto at- 
 tempted to do in Egypt, it only remains to me to tell you
 
 94 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 what I intend to do now. You know that this man is cona- 
 ing on to Cairo? " 
 
 Gordon bowed. 
 
 " You are probably aware that it is intended that he 
 shall preach at El Azhar?" 
 
 " I didn't know that, sir, but I'm not surprised to 
 hear it." 
 
 " Well, El Azhar has to be closed before he arrives." 
 
 " Closed '( " 
 
 " That is what I said — closed, shut up, and its students 
 and professors turned into the streets." 
 
 " But there are sixteen thousand of them — from all parts 
 of the Mohammedan world, sir." 
 
 " That's Avhy ! The Press as a medium of disaffection 
 was bad enoiigh, but El Azhar is worse. It is a hotbed of 
 rebellion, and a word spoken there goes, as by wireless teleg- 
 raphy, all over Egypt. It is a secret society, and as such it 
 must be stopped." 
 
 " But have you reflected " 
 
 " Do I do anything without reflection ? " 
 
 " Closed, you say ? The University ? The mosque of 
 mosques ? It is impossible ! You are trifling with me." 
 
 "Have you taken leave of your senses, sir?" 
 
 " I beg your pardon, father. I only wish to prevent you 
 from doing something you will never cease to regret. It's 
 dangerous work to touch the religious beliefs of an Eastern 
 people — you know that, sir, better than I do. And if you 
 shut up their University, their holy of holies, you shake 
 the foundations of their society. It's like shutting up St. 
 Peter's in Rome, or St. Paul's in London." 
 
 " Both events have happened," said the old man, resuming 
 his seat. 
 
 " Father, I beg of you to beware. Trust me, I know these 
 people. No Christian nation nowadays believes in Chris- 
 tianity as these Moslems believe in Islam. We don't care 
 enough for our faith to fight for it. But these dusky mil- 
 lions will die for their religion. And then there's Ishmael 
 Ameer — you must see for yourself what manner of man he 
 is — careless alike of comfort or fame, a fanatic, if you like.
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 95 
 
 but he has only to call to the people and they'll follow him. 
 All the wealth and well-being you have bestowed on them 
 will go to the winds and they'll follow him to a man." 
 
 The Consul-General's lip curled again, and he said, 
 quietly, " You ask me to believe that at the word of this man 
 without a penny and with his head full of worthless noise, the 
 blue-shirted fellaheen will leave their comfortable homes 
 and their lands " 
 
 " Aye, and their wives and children, too — everything they 
 have or ever hope to have ! And if he promises them noth- 
 ing but danger and death, all the more they'll go to him." 
 
 " Then we must deal with him also." 
 
 " You can't — you can't do anything with a man like that 
 — a man who wants nothing and is afraid of nothing — ex- 
 cept kill him, and you can't do that either." 
 
 The Consul-General did not reply immediately, and, com- 
 ing closer, Gordon began to plead with him. 
 
 '■ Father, believe me, I know what I am saying". Don't 
 be blind to the storm that is brewing, and so undo all the 
 good you have ever done. For Egypt's sake, England's, your 
 own, don't let damnable scoundrels like the Grand Cadi and 
 the Prime Minister play on you like a pipe." 
 
 It was Gordon who had blundered now, and the con- 
 sequences were cruel. The ruthless, saturnine old man 
 rose again, and on his square-hewn face there was an icy 
 smile. 
 
 " That brings me," he said, speaking very slowly, " from 
 what I have done to what you must do. The Ulema of El 
 Azhar have received an order to close the University. It 
 went to them this morning through the President of the 
 Council, who is acting as Regent in the absence of the Khe- 
 dive. If they refuse to go, it will be your duty to turn them 
 out." 
 
 " Mine ? " 
 
 " Yours ! The Governor of the city and the Command- 
 ant of Police will go with you, but, where sixteen thousand 
 students and a disaffected population have to be dealt with, 
 the military will be required. If you had brought Ishmael 
 Ameer back from Alexandria this step might have been
 
 96 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 unnecessary, but now instead of one man you may have to 
 arrest hundreds." 
 
 " But if they resist — and they -oill — I iiuow they will " 
 
 " In that case they will come under a special tribunal as 
 persons assaulting the members of the British Army of 
 Occupation, and be despatched without delay to the Soudan." 
 
 "But surely " 
 
 " The Ulema are required to signify their assent by to- 
 morrow morning, and we are to meet at the Citadel at four 
 in the afternoon. You will probably be required to be 
 there." 
 
 " But, father " 
 
 " We left something to your discretion before, hoping to 
 give you an opportunity of distinguishing yourself in the 
 eyes of England, but in this case your orders will be definite, 
 and your only duty will be to obey." 
 
 " But will you not permit me to " 
 
 " That will do for the present. I'm busy. Good day ! " 
 
 Gordon went out dazed and dumbfounded. He saw noth- 
 ing of Ibrahim, who handed him his linen-covered cap in 
 the hall, or of the page-boy at the porch who gave him his 
 reins and held down his stirrup. When he came back to 
 consciousness he was riding by the side of the Nile, where 
 the bridge was open, and a number of boats with white 
 sails, like a flight of great sea-gulls, were sweeping through. 
 
 At the next moment he was at the entrance to his own 
 quarters, and found a white motor-car standing there. It 
 was Helena's car, and, leaping from the saddle, he went 
 bounding up the stairs. 
 
 XVIII 
 
 Helena was at his door, with an anxious and perplexed 
 face, talking to his soldier servant. At the next instant 
 they were in each other's arms, and their troubles were 
 gone. Her smile seemed to light up his room more than 
 all its wealth of sunlight, and nothing else was of the small-
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 97 
 
 est consequence. But after a moment she drew out a letter 
 and said: 
 
 " I told father you were back, and he dictated a mes- 
 sage to you. He was going to send it by his A.D.C., but I 
 asked to be allowed to bring it myself and he consented. 
 Here it is, dear." 
 
 Gordon opened and read the General's letter. It was a 
 formal request that he should be in attendance at the Cita- 
 del at four the following day to receive urgent and impor- 
 tant instructions. 
 
 "You know what it refers to, Helena?" 
 
 " Yes, I know," she answered. 
 
 The look of perplexity had returned to her face, and for 
 some minutes they stood arm in arm by the open window, 
 looking down at the Nile in a dazed and dreamy way. 
 
 " What are you going to do, Gordon ? " 
 
 "I don't know— yet." 
 
 " It will be an order now, and as an officer you can do 
 nothing but obey." 
 
 " I suppose not, dear." 
 
 " There are so many things calling for your obedience, too 
 ■ — honour, ambition, everything a soldier can want, you know." 
 
 " I know ! I know ! " 
 
 She crept closer and said, " Then there's something else, 
 dear." 
 
 " What else, Helena ? " 
 
 " Haven't I always told you that sooner or later that 
 man would come between us ? " 
 
 "Ishmael?" 
 
 " Yes. Last night my father said . . . but I hate to 
 mention it." 
 
 " Tell me, dear, tell me." 
 
 " He said : ' You couldn't marry a man who had dis- 
 obeyed and been degraded ? ' " 
 
 " Meaning that if I refused to obey orders, you and I 
 perhaps ... by arrangement between your father and mine, 
 maybe " 
 
 " That is what I understood him to mean, dear, and 
 therefore I came to see you."
 
 98 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 He flushed crimson for a moment and then began to 
 laugh. 
 
 " No, no ! I'll never believe that of them. It would be 
 monstrous — impossible ! " 
 
 But the questioning look in Helena's eyes remained and 
 he tried to reassure her. So many things might happen to 
 remove the difficulty altogether. The Ulema might take 
 the order of the Government as a protest -against the visit 
 of Ishmael Ameer, and send him instructions not to come 
 to Cairo. 
 
 " He's here already, dear," said Helena. 
 
 As she drove down from the Citadel she had crossed a 
 crowd of natives coming from the direction of the railway 
 station, and some one had said it was a procession in honour 
 of the new prophet, who had just arrived from Alexandria. 
 
 " Then you've seen him yourself, Helena ? " 
 
 " I saw a man in a white dress on a white camel, but I 
 didn't look — I had somebody else to think about." 
 
 He was carried away by the singleness of her love, and 
 with a score of passionate expressions he kissed her beautiful 
 white hands and did his best to comfort her. 
 
 " iSTever mind, dear! Don't be afraid! The Governors 
 of El Azhar may agree to close their doors — temporarily, at 
 all events. Anyhow, we'll muddle through somehow." 
 
 She made him promise not to go near the " new Mahdi," 
 and then began to draw on her long, yellow driving gloves. 
 
 " I suppose the gossips of Cairo would be shocked if they 
 knew I had come to see you," she said. 
 
 " It's not the first time you've boon here, though. You're 
 here always — see!" he said, and wilh his arm about her 
 waist he took her round his room to look at her portraits 
 that hung on the walls. It was Helena here, Helena there, 
 Helena everywhere, but since that was the first time the 
 real Helena had visited his quarters, she must drink his 
 health in them. 
 
 She would only drink it in water, and when she had done 
 so she had to slip off her glove again and dip her finger into 
 the same glass that he might drink her own health as well. 
 In spite of the shadow of trouble which hung over them
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 99 
 
 they were very happy. A world of warm impulses coursed 
 through their veins, and they could hardly permit them- 
 selves to part. It was sweet to stand by the window again 
 and look down at the dazzling Nile. For them the old river 
 flowed, for them it sang its sleepy song. They looked into 
 each other's eyes and smiled without speaking. It was just 
 as if their hearts saw each other and were satisfied. 
 
 At length she clasped her arms about his neck, and he 
 felt the warm glow of her body. 
 
 " You think that still, Gordon ? " 
 
 "What, dearest?" 
 
 " That love is above everything ? " 
 
 " Everything in the world," he whispered, and then she 
 kissed him of herself, and nothing else mattered — nothing 
 on earth or in heaven. 
 
 XIX 
 
 When Helena had gone the air of his room seemed to be 
 more dumb and empty than it had ever been before ; but the 
 bell of the telephone rang immediately, and Hafiz spoke to 
 him. 
 
 Hafiz had just heard from his uncle that the Ulema 
 were to meet at eight o'clock to consider what course they 
 ought to adopt. The Chancellor was in favour of submis- 
 sion to superior force, but some of his colleagues of the 
 reactionary party — the old stick-in-the-muds made in Mecca 
 — not being able to believe the Government could be in 
 earnest, were advocating revolt, even resistance. 
 
 " Hadn't you better go up to El Azhar to-night, Gordon, 
 and tell them the Government means business? They'll 
 believe you, you know, and it may save riot, perhaps blood- 
 shed." 
 
 " I hadn't intended to go there again, Hafiz, but if you 
 think I can do any good " 
 
 "You can — I'm sure you can. Let me call for you at 
 eight, and we'll go up together." 
 
 " Can't see why we shouldn't. . . . But wait ! Ishmael 
 Ameer is in Cairo. Will he be there, think you?"
 
 100 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Don't know — should think it very likely." 
 
 *' Well, it can't be helped. Eight o'clock, then ! By- 
 bye ! " said Gordon, and with that he rang off and wrote 
 to Plelena, telling her what he was going to do. He was 
 going to break his word to her again, but it was only in 
 the interests of peace and with the hope of j^reventing 
 trouble. 
 
 " Don't suppose these people can influence nie a hair's 
 breadth, dearest," he wrote, " and, above all, don't be angry." 
 
 At eight o'clock Ilafiz came for him, and, dressed in 
 mufti, they walked up to the University. With more than 
 usual ceremony they were taken to the Chancellor's room 
 in the roof, and there, in a tense, electrical atmosphere, the 
 Ulema were already assembled — a group of eight or nine 
 rugged and imkempt creatures in their farageeyah (a loose 
 gray robe, like that of a monk), squatting on the divans 
 about the walls. All the members of the Board of El Azhar 
 were present, and the only stranger there, except themselves, 
 Avas Ishmael Ameer, who sat, in his spotless white dress and 
 with his solemn face, on a chair beside the door. 
 
 In silence, and with many sweeping salaams from floor 
 to forehead, Gordon was received by the company, and at 
 the request of the Chancellor he explained the object of 
 his visit. It Avas not oflicial, and it was scarcely proper, 
 but it was intended to do good. There were moments when, 
 passion being excited, there was a serious risk of collision 
 between governors and governed. This was one of them, 
 liightly or wrongly, the Consul-General was convinced that 
 the University of Cairo was likely to become a centre of 
 sedition. Could they not agree to close it for a time, at all 
 events ? 
 
 At that the electrical atmosphere of the room broke into 
 rumblings of thimder. The order of the Government was 
 an outrage on the Mohammedan religion, which England 
 had pledged herself to respect. El Azhar was one of the 
 three holy places of the Islamic world, and to close it was 
 to take the bread of life from the Moslems. " The Govern- 
 ment might as well cut our throats at once and have done 
 with it," said some one.
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 101 
 
 From denouncing the order of the Government, the 
 Ulema went on to denounce the Government itself. It was 
 eating the people! It was like wolves trying to devour 
 them ! " Are we to be body and soul under the heel of 
 the infidel ? " they asked themselves. 
 
 After that they denounced Lord Nuneham. He was the 
 slave of power! He was drunk with the strong drink of 
 authority! The University was their voice — he had de- 
 prived them of every other — and now he was trying to 
 strike them dumb ! When somebody, remembering that they 
 were speaking before the Consul-General's son, suggested 
 that if he was doing a bad act it might be with a good con- 
 science, an alim with an injured eye and a malignant face 
 cried : " No, by Allah ! The man who usurps the place of 
 God becomes a devil, and that's what Nuneham is and long 
 has been." 
 
 Listening to their violence Gordon had found himself 
 taking his father's part, and at this moment his anger had 
 risen so high that he was struggling against an impulse to 
 take the unkempt creature by the throat and fling him out 
 of the room, when the soft voice of the Chancellor began to 
 plead for peace. 
 
 " Mohammed — to him be prayer and peace — always yielded 
 to superior force; and who are we that we should be too proud 
 to follow his example ? " 
 
 But at that the reactionary party became louder and 
 fiercer than before. " Our Prophet," cried one, " has com- 
 manded us not to seek war and not to begin it. But he 
 has also told us that if war is waged against Islam we are 
 to resist it under penalty of being ourselves as unbelievers, 
 and to follow up those who assail us without pity and with- 
 out remorse. Therefore, if the English close our holy El 
 Azhar they will be waging war on our religion, and, by the 
 Most High God, we will fight them to the last man, woman, 
 and child." 
 
 At that instant Hafiz, who had been trembling in an 
 obscure seat by the door, rose to his feet and said, in a 
 nervous voice, addressing his uncle: 
 
 " Eminence, may I say something ? " 
 8
 
 102 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Speak, son of my sister," said the Chancellor. 
 
 " It is about Colonel Lord," said Hafiz. " If you refuse 
 to close El Azhar, an order to force you to do so will be 
 issued to the military and Colonel Lord will be required to 
 carry it into effect." 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " He is the friend of the Muslemeen, your Eminence, but 
 if you resist him he will be compelled to kill you." 
 
 " Wouldn't it be well to say ' With God's permission ? ' " 
 said the man with the injured eye, whereupon Hafiz wheeled 
 round on him and answered, hotly : 
 
 " lie has the bayonets and he has the courage, and if you 
 fight him there won't be so much as a rat among you that 
 will be left alive." 
 
 There was a moment of tense and breathless silence, and 
 then Hafiz, now as nervous as before, said quietly : " On the 
 other hand, if he refuses to obey his orders he will lose his 
 place and rank as a soldier. Which of these do you wish 
 to see, your Eminence ? " 
 
 There was another moment of breathless silence, and 
 then Ishmael Ameer, who had not spoken before, said in his 
 quivering voice : 
 
 " Let us call on God to guide us, my brothers — in tears 
 and in fervent prayer, all night long in the mosque, until 
 His light shines on us and a door of hope has opened." 
 
 XX 
 
 As Gordon returned to barracks the air of the native 
 section of the city seemed to tingle with excitement. The 
 dirty, unpaved streets with their overhanging tenements 
 were thronged. Framed portraits of Ishmael Ameer, with 
 candles burning in front of them, were standing on the 
 counters of nearly all the cafes and the men squatting on 
 the benches about were chanting the Koran. One man, 
 generally a blind man, with his right hand before his ear, 
 would be reciting the text, and at the close of every Surah 
 the others would be crying " Allah I Allah ! "
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 103 
 
 In the densest quarter, where the streets were narrowest 
 and most full of ruts, the houses most wretched and the 
 windows most covered with cobwebs, a company of dervishes 
 were walking in procession, bearing their ragged banners 
 and singing their weird Arab music to the accompaniment 
 of pipes and drums, while boys parading beside them were 
 carrying tin lamps and open flares. Before certain of the 
 houses they stopped, and for some minutes they swayed their 
 bodies to an increasing chorus of " Allah ! Allah ! Allah ! " 
 
 Gordon saw what had happened. With, the coming of 
 the new teacher a wave of religious feeling had swept over 
 the city. Dam it up suddenly, and what scenes of fanatical 
 frenzy might not occur. 
 
 Back in his room, with the window down to shut out the 
 noises of the river and the bridge, he tried to come to a 
 conclusion as to what he ought to do the following day 
 if the Ulema decided to resist. They would resist ; he had 
 no doubt about that, for where men were under the influ- 
 ence of gusts of religious passion they might call on God, 
 but God's answer was always the same. 
 
 If the Ulema were to decide not to close their sacred 
 place they would intend to die in defence of it, and, seeing 
 the issue from the Moslem point of view, that El Azhar 
 was the centre of their spiritual life, Gordon concluded that 
 they would be justified in resisting. If they were justified 
 the order to evict them would be wicked, and the act of 
 eviction would be a crime. " I can't do it ! " he told him- 
 self. " I can't and I won't ! " 
 
 This firm resolve relieved him for a moment, and then 
 he began to ask himself what would happen if he refused 
 to obey. The bad work would be done all the same, for 
 somebody else would do it. " What then will be the result ? " 
 he thought. 
 
 The first result would be that he himself would suffer. 
 He would be tried for insubordination, and, of course, de- 
 graded and punished. As a man he might be in the right, 
 but as a soldier he would be in the wrong. He thought of 
 his hard-fought fights and of the honours he had won, and 
 his head went round in a whirl.
 
 104 THE WHITE PEOPHET 
 
 The next result would be that he would bring disgrace 
 on his father as well. His refusal to obey orders would 
 become known, and if the consequences he expected should 
 come to pass he would seem to stand up as the first of his 
 father's accusers. He, his father's only son, would be the 
 means of condemning him in the eyes of England, of 
 Europe, of the world ! In his old age, too, and after all he 
 had done for Egypt ! 
 
 Then, above all, there was Helena ! The General would 
 side with the Consul-General, and Helena would be required 
 to cast in her lot with her father or with him. If she sided 
 with him she would have to break with her father; if she 
 sided with her father she would have to part from him. 
 In either case the happiness of her life would be wasted — 
 he would have wasted it, and he would have wasted his own 
 happiness as well. 
 
 This thought seemed to take him by the throat and stifle 
 him. He leaped from the bed on which he had been lying 
 in restless pain and threw open the window. The river and 
 the bridge were quiet by that time, but through the breath- 
 less night air there came the music of a waltz. It was the 
 last dance of the visiting season at an hotel near by — a 
 number of British officers were dancing on the edge of the 
 volcano. 
 
 Gordon shut the window and again threw himself on 
 the bed. At length the problem that tormented him seemed 
 to resolve itself into one issue. His father did not realise 
 that the Moslems would die rather than give up possession 
 of their holy place, and that in order to turn them out of 
 it he would have to destroy them — slaughter them. A man 
 could not outrage the most sacred of human feelings with- 
 out being morally blind to what he was doing. His father 
 was a great man — a thousand times greater than he himself 
 could ever hope to be — but in this case he was blind and 
 somebody had to open his eyes. 
 
 "I'll go and bring him to reason," he thought. "He 
 may insult me if he likes, but no matter! " 
 
 The last cab had rattled home and the streets were silent 
 when Gordon reached the entrance to the Agency. Then he
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 105 
 
 saw that it was late, for the house was in darkness, and 
 not even the window of the library showed a light. The 
 moon was full, and he looked at his watch. Good heavens 1 
 It was two o'clock! 
 
 The house dog heard his footsteps on the gravel path, 
 and barked and bounded toward him; then, recognising him, 
 it began to snuffle and to lick his hands. At the same 
 moment a light appeared in an upper window. It was the 
 window of his mother's room, and at sight of it his reso- 
 lution began to ebb away, and he was once more seized with 
 uncertainty. 
 
 Strife between himself and his father would extinguish 
 the last rays of his mother's flickering life. He could see 
 her looking at him with her pleading and frightened eyes. 
 
 " Am I really going to kill my mother — that, too ? " he 
 thought. 
 
 He was as far as ever from knowing what course he 
 ought to take to-morrow, but the light in his mother's win- 
 dow, filtering through the lace curtains that were drawn 
 across it, was like a tear-dimmed, accusing eye, and with a 
 new emotion he was compelled to turn away. 
 
 XXI 
 
 As two o'clock struck on the soft cathedral bell of a 
 little clock by the side of her bed, Fatimah rose with a 
 yawn, switched on the electric light, and filled a small glass 
 from a bottle on the mantelpiece. 
 
 " Time to take your medicine, my lady," she said, in a 
 sleepy voice. 
 
 Her mistress did not reply immediately, and she asked : 
 
 " Are you asleep ? " 
 
 But her lady, who was wide awake, whispered : " Hush ! 
 Do you hear Rover ? Isn't that somebody on the path ? " 
 
 Fatimah listened as well as she could through the drums 
 of sleep that were beating in her ears, and then she an- 
 swered :
 
 106 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 "No; I hear nothing." 
 
 " I thought it was Gordon's footstep," said the old lady, 
 raising herself in bed to take the medicine that Fatimah 
 was holding out to her. 
 
 " It's strange ! Gordon's step is exactly like his grand- 
 father's." 
 
 " Don't spill it, my lady," said Fatimah, and with a 
 trembling hand the old lady drank off her dose. 
 
 " He's like his grandfather in other things, too. I re- 
 member when I was a girl there was a story of how he 
 struck one of his soldiers in the Civil War, thinking the 
 man was guilty of some offence. But afterward he found 
 the poor fellow was innocent and had taken the blow for his 
 brother without saying a word. Father never forgave him- 
 self for that — never ! " 
 
 " Shall I put on the eiderdown ? The nights are cold 
 if the days are hot, you know." 
 
 " Yes — no — just as you think best, nurse. . . . I'm sure 
 Gordon will do what is right, whatever happens. I'm sorry 
 for his father, though. Did you hear what he said when 
 he came to bid me good night : ' They think they've caught 
 me now that they've caught my son, but let them wait — 
 we'll see.' " 
 
 " Hush ! " said Fatimah, and she pointed to the wall of 
 the adjoining room. From the other side of it came the 
 faint sound of measured footsteps. 
 
 " He's walking again — can't sleep, I suppose," said Fati- 
 mah, in a drowsy whisper, 
 
 "Ah, well!" said the old lady, after listening for a mo- 
 ment; and then Fatimah put out the light and went back 
 to her bed. 
 
 "God bless my boy!" said a tremulous voice in the 
 darkness. 
 
 After that there was a sigh, and then silence — save for 
 the hollow thud of footsteps in the adjoining room.
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 107 
 
 XXII 
 
 Before Gordon was out of bed next morning Hafiz rang 
 him up on the telephone. He had just heard from his uncle, 
 the Chancellor, that as a result of their night-long delibera- 
 tion and prayer the Ulema had decided to ask the Consul- 
 General to receive Ishmael Ameer and listen to a sug- 
 gestion. 
 
 "What will it be?" asked Gordon. 
 
 " That the Government should leave El Azhar alone on 
 condition that the Ulema consent to open it, and all the 
 mosques connected with it, to public and police inspection, 
 so as to dissipate the suspicion that they are centres of 
 sedition." 
 
 " Splendid ! To make the mosques as free as Christian 
 churches is a splendid thought — an inspiration. But if the 
 Government will not agree, what then ? " 
 
 " Then the order to close El Azhar will be resisted. 
 ' Only over our dead bodies,' they say, * shall the soldiers 
 enter it.' " 
 
 Gordon went about his work that morning like a man 
 dazed and dumb, but after lunch he dressed himself care- 
 fully in his full staff uniform, with his aiguilettes hanging 
 from his left shoulder, his gold and crimson sash, his sword 
 and his white be-spiked helmet. He put on all his medals and 
 decorations, too — his Distinguished Service Order; his 
 King's and South African War Medal with four clasps; his 
 British Soudan Medal; his Medjidieh, and his Khedive's 
 Medal with four clasps. It was not for nothing that he 
 did this, nor merely because he was going to an official con- 
 ference, but with a certain pride as of a man who had won 
 the right to consideration. 
 
 Taking a cab by the gate of the barracks, he drove 
 through the native quarters of the city and saw crowds 
 surging through the streets in the direction of El Azhar. 
 The atmosphere seemed to tingle with the spirit of revo- 
 lution, and seeing the sublime instinct of humanity which 
 leads people in defence of their faith to the place where
 
 108 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 danger is greatest, he felt glad and proud that what was 
 best in him was about to conquer. 
 
 Arriving at the Citadel he found Helena's black boy- 
 waiting for him at the door of the General's house with a 
 message from his mistress, saying the gentlemen had not 
 arrived and she wished to see him. The city below lay 
 bright under the warm soolham of the afternoon sun, and 
 the swallows were swirling past the windows of Helena's 
 sitting-room, but Helena herself was under a cloud. 
 
 " I see what it is — you are angry with me for going to 
 El Azhar last night," said Gordon. 
 
 " No, it isn't that, though I think you might have kept 
 faith with me," she answered. " But we have no time to 
 lose, and I have something to say to you. In the first place, 
 I want you to know that Colonel Macdonald, your Deputy 
 Assistant Adjutant, has been ordered to stand by. He will 
 be only too happy to take your place if necessary." 
 
 "He's welcome!" said Gordon. 
 
 Her brows were contracted, her lips set. She fastened 
 her eyes on him and said : 
 
 " Then there is something else I wish to tell you." 
 
 "What is it, Helena?" 
 
 " When my father asked me if I could marry a man 
 who had disobeyed and been degraded, I said . . . But it 
 doesn't matter what I said. My father has hardly ever 
 spoken to me since. It has been the first cloud that has 
 come between us — the very first. But when I answered him 
 as I did there was something I had forgotten." 
 
 "What was it, dearest?" 
 
 "I cannot tell you what it was — I can only tell you 
 what it comes to." 
 
 " What does it come to, Helena ? " 
 
 " That whatever happens to-day I can never leave my 
 father — never as long as he lives." 
 
 " God forbid that you should be tempted to do so — but 
 why?" 
 
 " That is what I cannot tell you. It is a secret." 
 
 " I can think of no secret that I could not share with 
 you, Helena."
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 109 
 
 " Nor I with you — if it were my own — but this isn't." 
 
 " I cannot understand you, dear." 
 
 " Say it is somebody's else's secret, and that his life, his 
 career, depends upon it. Say it couldn't be told to you 
 without putting you in a false position, involving you in 
 responsibilities which you have no right to bear." 
 
 " You puzzle me, bewilder me, Helena." 
 
 "Then trust me, dear; trust me for the present, at all 
 events, and some day you shall know everything," she said, 
 whereupon Gordon, who had not taken his eyes off her, said : 
 
 " So what it really comes to is this — that whatever course 
 your father takes to-day I must take it also, under pain of 
 a violent separation from you ! Isn't that it, Helena ? 
 Isn't it? And, if so, isn't it like sending a man into battle 
 ■with his hands tied and his eyes blindfolded ? " 
 
 She dropped her head, but made no reply. 
 
 " That is not what I expected of you, Helena. The 
 Helena who has been living in my mind is a girl who 
 would say to me at a moment like this, * Do what you be- 
 lieve to be right, Gordon, and whether you are degraded to 
 the lowest rank or raised to the highest honour, I will be 
 with you — I will stand by your side ! " 
 
 Her eyes flashed and she drew herself up. 
 
 " So you think I couldn't say that — that I didn't say 
 anything like it when my father spoke to me? But if you 
 have been thinking of me as a girl like that, I have been 
 thinking of you as a man who would say, * I love you, and 
 do you know what my love means ? It means that my love 
 for you is above everything and everj'body in the world.' " 
 
 " And it is, Helena, it is." 
 
 " Then why," she said, with her eyes fixed on his, " why 
 do you let this Egyptian and his interests come between 
 us? If you take his part after what I have just told you, 
 will it not be the same thing in the end as choosing him 
 against me? " 
 
 " Don't vex me, Helena. I've told you before that your 
 jealousy of this man is nonsense." 
 
 The word cut her to the quick and she drew herself up 
 
 again. 
 
 9
 
 110 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Very Avell," she said, with a new force, " if it's jealousy 
 and if it's nonsense you must make your account with it. 
 I said I couldri't tell you why I cannot leave my father — 
 now 1 xvonH. You must choose between us. It is either 
 that man or me." 
 
 " You mean that if the General decides against Ishmael 
 Ameer you will follow your father, and that I — whatever 
 my conscience may say — I must follow you ? " 
 
 Her eyes blazed and she answered, " Yes." 
 
 "Good God, Helena! What is it you want me to be? 
 Is it a man or a manikin ? " 
 
 At that moment the young lieutenant who was the Gen- 
 eral's aide-de-camp came in to say that the Consul-General 
 and the Prime Minister had arrived, and required Colonel 
 Lord's attendance. 
 
 " Presently," said Gordon, and as soon as the lieutenant 
 had gone he turned to Helena again. 
 
 " Helena," he said, " there is not a moment to lose. Re- 
 member, this is the last time I can see you before I am 
 required to act one way or the other. God knows what may 
 happen before I come out of that room. Will you send 
 me into it without any choice ? " 
 
 She was breathing hard and biting her under lip. 
 
 " Your happiness is dearer to me than anything else in 
 life, dear; but I am a man, not a child, and if I am to 
 follow your father in order not to lose you, I must know 
 why. Will you tell me ? " 
 
 Without raising her eyes, Helena answered, " No ! " 
 
 " Very well ! " he said. " In that case it must be as the 
 fates determine." And, straightening his sword-belt, he 
 stepped to the door. 
 
 Helena looked up at him and in a fluttering voice called, 
 " Gordon ! " 
 
 He turned, with his hand on the handle. " What is it? " 
 
 For one instant she had an impulse to break her promise 
 and tell him of her father's infirmity, but at the next mo- 
 ment she thought of the Egyptian and her pride and jealousy 
 conquered. 
 
 "What is it, Helena?"
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS HI 
 
 " Nothing," she said, and fled into her bedroom. 
 
 Gordon looked after her until she had disappeared, and 
 then — hot, angry, nervous, less able than before to meet the 
 ordeal before him — he turned the handle of the door and 
 entered the General's ofiice. 
 
 XXIII 
 
 The Consul-General, the General, and the Egyptian pasha 
 in his tarboosh were sitting in a half-circle. The General's 
 Military Secretary, Captain Graham, was writing at the 
 desk, and his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Robson, was standing 
 beside it. Nobody was speaking as Gordon entered, and the 
 air of the room had the dumb emptiness which goes before 
 a storm. The General signalled to Gordon to sit, requested 
 his aide-de-camp to step out but wait in his own office, and 
 then said, speaking in a jerky, nervous way: 
 
 " Gordon, I have an order of the utmost importance to 
 give you, but before I do so your father has something to 
 say." 
 
 With that he took a seat by the side of the desk, while the 
 Consul-General, without changing the direction of his ej'es, 
 said, slowly and deliberately : 
 
 " I need hardly tell you, Gordon, that the explanation I 
 am about to make would be quite unnecessary in the case of 
 an ordinary officer receiving an ordinary command, but I 
 have decided to make it to you out of regard to the fact of 
 who you are and what your relation to the General is to be." 
 
 Gordon bowed without speaking. He was struggling to 
 compose himself, and something was whispering to him, 
 " Above all things, be calm ! " 
 
 " I regret to say the Ulema have ignored the order which 
 His Excellency sent to them," said the Consul-General, in- 
 dicating the pasha. 
 
 " Ignored ? " 
 
 " That's what it comes to, though it's true they asked 
 me to receive the man Ishmael Ameer and to consider a 
 suggestion."
 
 112 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 "You did, sir?" 
 
 " I did. The man came, I saw him, and heard what he 
 had to say — and now I am more than ever convinced that 
 he is a public peril." 
 
 " A peril ? " 
 
 " First, because he advises officers and men to ab- 
 stain from military sei'vice on the ground that war is 
 incompatible with religion. That is opposed to the exist- 
 ing order of society, and therefore harmful to good gov- 
 ernment." 
 
 " I agree," said the General, swinging restlessly in his 
 revolving chair. 
 
 " Kext, because he tells the Egyptian people that where 
 the authority of the law is opposed to what he is pleased to 
 consider the commandments of God, they are to obey God 
 and not the Government. That is to make every man a law 
 to himself and to cause the rule of the Government to be 
 defied." 
 
 The pasha smiled and bowed his thin face over his hands, 
 which were clasped at his breast. 
 
 " Finally, because he says openly that in the time to come 
 Egypt will be a separate State with a peculiar mission, and 
 that means Nationalism and the end of the rule of England 
 in the Valley of the Nile." 
 
 Gordon made an effort to speak, but his father waved him 
 aside. 
 
 " I am not here to argue with you about the man's teach- 
 ing, but merely to define it. lie is one of the mischievous 
 people who, taking no account of the religious principles 
 which lie at the root of civilisation, would use religion to 
 turn the world back to barbarism. What is true in his doc- 
 trines is not new, and what is new is not true. As for his 
 reforms of polygamy, divorce, seclusion of women, and so 
 forth, I have no use for the people who, in Cairo or in 
 London, are for ever correcting the proof-sheets of the Al- 
 mighty by reading their holy book as they please, whether 
 it is the Koran or the Bible. And as for his prophecies, there 
 are such things as mental strong drinks, and a man like this 
 is providing them."
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 113 
 
 " You spoke of a suggestion, sir," said Gordon, who was 
 still struggling to keep calm. 
 
 " His suggestion," said the Consul-General, with icy com- 
 posure — " his suggestion was an aggravation of his offence. 
 He proposed that we should leave El Azhar unmolested on 
 condition that the Ulema opened it to the public. That 
 meant that the Government must either countenance his 
 sedition or suppress it by the stupid means of discussing his 
 principles in courts of law." 
 
 The pasha smiled and the General laughed, and then in 
 a last word the Consul-General said, quietly : 
 
 " General Graves will now tell you what we require you 
 to do." 
 
 The General, still jerky and nervous, then said: 
 
 " All the necessary preparations have been made, Gordon. 
 The — the Governor of the city will call you up at your quar- 
 ters, and on — on receiving his message you will take a 
 regiment of cavalry, which is ready here in the Citadel, and 
 one battalion of infantry, which is under arms at Kasr el 
 Nil, and accompany him to El Azhar. There — as — as com- 
 mander of the troops, you — at the request of the Governor 
 — you will take such military steps as in your opinion will 
 be required to enter the University — and — and clear out its 
 students and professors. You will cause ten rounds of am- 
 munition to be issued to the men, and you will have ab- 
 solute discretion as to the way you go to work, and as to 
 the amount of force necessary to be used, but you — of 
 course, you will be responsible for everything that is done — 
 or not done — in carrying out your order. I — I ask you to 
 attend to this matter at once, and to report to me to-night 
 if possible." 
 
 When the General's flurried words were spoken there was 
 silence for a moment, and then Gordon, trying in vain to 
 control his voice, said, haltingly : 
 
 " You know I don't want to do this work. General, and 
 if it must be done I beg of you to order some one else to 
 do it." 
 
 " That is impossible," replied the General. " You are the 
 proper person for this duty, and to give it to another officer
 
 114 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 would be to — to strengthen the party of rebellion by saying 
 in so many words that there is disaffection in our own 
 ranks." 
 
 '' Then permit me to resign my appointment on your 
 staff, sir. I don't want to do so — God knows I don't. My 
 rank as a soldier is the one thing in the world I'm proudest 
 of, but I would rather resign it " 
 
 '' Resign it if you please — if you are so foolish. Send 
 in your papers; but until they are accepted you are my 
 officer, and I must ask you to obey my order." 
 
 Gordon struggled hard with himself, and then said, 
 boldly: 
 
 " General, you must pardon me if I tell you that you 
 don't know what you are asking me to do." 
 
 The three old men looked sharply round at him, but he 
 was now keyed up and did not care. 
 
 " No, sir — none of you ! You think you are merely ask- 
 ing me to drive out of El Azhar a number of rebellious stu- 
 dents and their teachers. But you are really asking me to 
 kill hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them." 
 
 " Fudge ! Fiddlesticks ! " cried the General, and then, 
 forgetting the presence of the pasha, he said : " These peo- 
 ple are Egyptians — miserable, pigeon-livered Egyptians! Be- 
 fore you fire a shot they'll fly away to a man. But even 
 if they stay, the responsibility will be their own — so what 
 the dev " 
 
 " That's just where we join issue. General," said Gordon. 
 " There isn't a worm that hasn't a right to resent a wrong, 
 and this will be a wrong, and the people will be justified in 
 resenting it." 
 
 The General, who was breathing hard, turned to the 
 Consul-General and said, " I'm sorry, my lord, very sorry, 
 but you see " 
 
 There was a short silence, and then the Consul-General, 
 still calm on the outside as a frozen lake, said, " Gordon, 
 I presume you know what you will be doing if you refuse to 
 obey your General's order?" 
 
 Gordon did not answer, and his father, in a biting note, 
 continued:
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 115 
 
 " I dare say you suppose you are following the dictates 
 of conscience, and I don't question your sincerity. I'm be- 
 ginning to see that this Empire of ours is destined to be 
 destroyed in the end by its humanitarians, its philanthro- 
 pists, its foolish people who are bewitched by good inten- 
 tions." 
 
 The sarcasm was cutting Gordon to the bone, but he did 
 not reply, and presently the old man's voice softened. 
 
 " I presume you know that if you refuse to obey your 
 General's order you will be dealing a blow at your father — 
 dishonouring him, accusing him. Your refusal will go far. 
 There will be no hushing it up. England as well as Egypt 
 will hear of it." 
 
 A deep flush overspread the Proconsul's face. 
 
 " For forty years I've been doing the work of civilisation 
 in this country. I think progress has received a certain im- 
 petus. And now, when I am old and my strength is not 
 what it was once, my son — my only son — is pulling the lever 
 that is to bring my house down over my head." 
 
 The old man's voice trembled and almost broke. 
 
 " You've not thought of that, I suppose ? " 
 
 Gordon's emotions almost mastered him. " Yes, sir," he 
 said, " I have thought of it, and it's a great grief to me to 
 oppose you. But it would be a still greater grief to help 
 you — to help you to undo all the great work you have ever 
 done in Egypt. Father, believe me, I know what I'm saying. 
 There will be bloodshed, and as sure as that happens there 
 will be an outciy all over the Mohammedan world. The 
 prestige of England will suffer — in India — in Europe — 
 America — everywhere. And you, father, you alone will be 
 blamed." 
 
 At that the General rose in great wrath, but the Consul- 
 General interposed. 
 
 " One moment, please ! I am anxious to make allow- 
 ances for fanaticism, and at a moment of tension I could 
 wish to avoid any act that might create a conflagration. 
 Therefore," he said, turning to Gordon, " if you are so sure 
 that there will be bloodshed, I am willing to hold my hand, 
 on one condition — that the man Ishmael, the mouthpiece of
 
 116 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 the sedition we wisli to suppress, should leave Egypt with- 
 out delay." 
 
 Gordon did not reply immediately, and his father con- 
 tinued : " Why not ? It is surely better that one man should 
 go than that the whole nation should suffer. Send him out, 
 drive him out, walk him over the frontier, and for the pres- 
 ent I am satisfied." 
 
 " Father," said Gordon, " what you ask me to do is im- 
 possible. The Egj'ptians believe Ishmael to be one of the 
 prophets who are sent into the world to keep the souls of 
 men alive. He is like the Mahdi to them, and — who knows? 
 — they may come to think of him as the Redeemer, the 
 Christ, who is to pacify the world. Right or wrong, they 
 think of him already as a living protest against that part 
 of Western civilisation which is the result of force and 
 fraud. Therefore, to drive him out of the country would be 
 the same thing to them as to drive out religion. In their 
 view it would be a sin against humanity — a sin against 
 God." 
 
 But the General could bear no more. Rising from the 
 desk, he said, contemptuously: 
 
 " All that's very fine, very exalted, I dare say, but we are 
 plain soldiers, you and I, and we cannot follow the flights 
 of great minds like these Mohammedan Sheikhs. So with- 
 out further argument I ask you if you are willing to carry 
 out the order I have given you." 
 
 " It would be a crime, sir." 
 
 " Crime or no crime, it would be no concern of yours. 
 Do you refuse to obey my order?" 
 
 " Recall your order, sir, and I shall have no reason to 
 refuse to obey it." 
 
 " Do you refuse to obey my order ? " 
 
 " It would be against my conscience. General." 
 
 "Your conscience is not in question. Your only duty is 
 to carry out the will of yoiir superior." 
 
 "When I accepted my commission in the army did I lose 
 my rights as a human being, sir?" 
 
 " Don't talk to me about losing yoiir rights. In the face 
 of duty an officer loses father and mother, wife and child.
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 117 
 
 According to the King's regulations, you are an officer first, 
 remember." 
 
 "No, sir; according to the King's regulations I am first 
 of all a man." 
 
 The General bridled his gathering anger and answered: 
 " Of course, you can ask for a written order — if you wish 
 to avoid the danger of blame." 
 
 " I wish to avoid the danger of doing wrong, sir," said 
 Gordon, and then, glancing toward his father, he added : 
 " Let me feel that I'm fighting for the right. An English 
 soldier cannot fight without that." 
 
 " Then I ask you as an English soldier if you refuse to 
 obey my order?" repeated the General. But Gordon, still 
 with his face toward his father, said : 
 
 " Wherever the English flag flies men say, * Here is 
 justice.' That's something to be proud of. Don't let us 
 lose it, sir." 
 
 " I ask you again," said the General, " if you refuse to 
 obey my order ? " 
 
 " I have done wrong things without knowing them," said 
 Gordon, " but when you ask me to " 
 
 " England asks you to obey your General — will you do 
 it?" said General Graves; and then Gordon faced back to 
 him, and in a voice that rang through the room he said : 
 
 "No; not for England will I do what I know to be 
 wrong." 
 
 At that the Consul-General waved his hand and said, 
 " Let us have done " ; whereupon General Graves, who was 
 now violently agitated, touched a hand-bell on the desk, and 
 when his servant appeared he said : 
 
 " Tell my daughter to come to me." 
 
 Not a word more was spoken until light footsteps were 
 heard approaching, and Helena came into the room with a 
 handkerchief in her hand, pale as if she had been crying, 
 and breathless as if she had been running hard. The three 
 old gentlemen rose and bowed to her as she entered, but 
 Gordon, whose face had frowned when he heard the Gen- 
 eral's command, rose and sat down again without turning 
 in her direction.
 
 lis THE WHITE TROPHET 
 
 " Sit down, Helena," said the General ; and Helena sat, 
 
 " Helena, you will remember that I asked you if you 
 could marry an officer who, for disobedience to his General 
 — and that General your father — had been court-martialled 
 and perhaps degraded ? " 
 
 In a scarcely audible voice Helena answered, " Yes." 
 
 " Then tell Colonel Lord Avhat course you will take if, 
 by his own deliberate act, that misfortune should befall 
 him." 
 
 A hot blush mounted to Helena's cheeks, and, looking at 
 the hem of her handkerchief, she said : 
 
 " Gordon knows already what I would say, father. There 
 is no need to tell him." 
 
 Then the General turned back to Gordon. " You hear ? " 
 he said. " I presume you understand Helena's answer. For 
 the sake of our mutual peace and happiness I wished to give 
 you one more chance. The issue is now plain. Either you 
 obey your General's order or you renounce all hope of his 
 daughter — which is it to be ? " 
 
 The young man swallowed his anger, and answered : " Is 
 it fair, sir — fair to Helena, I mean — to put her to a test 
 like that — either violent separation from her father or from 
 me? But as you have spoken to Helena, I ask you to allow 
 me to do so also." 
 
 " No ; I forbid it," said the General. 
 
 "Don't be afraid, sir. I'm not going to appeal over your 
 head to any love for me in Helena's heart. That must speak 
 for itself now — if it's to speak at all. But " — his voice was 
 so soft and low that it could hardly be heard — " I wish to 
 ask her a question. Helena " 
 
 " I forbid it, I tell you," said the General, hotly. 
 
 There was a moment of tense silence, and then Gordon, 
 who had suddenly become hoarse, said : " You spoke about a 
 written order, General. Give it to me." 
 
 "With pleasure!" said the General, and, turning to his 
 Military- Secretary at the desk, he requested him to make 
 out an order in the Order Book according to the terms of his 
 verbal command. 
 
 Nothing was heard in the silence of the next moment but
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 119 
 
 the spasmodic scratching of Captain Graham's quill pen. 
 The Consul-General sat motionless, and the pasha merely 
 smoothed one white hand over the other. Gordon tried to 
 glance into Helena's face, but she looked fixedly before her 
 out of her large, wide-open, swollen eyes. 
 
 Only one idea shaped itself clearly through the storm 
 that raged in Gordon's brain: to secure his happiness with 
 Helena he must make himself unhappy in every other rela- 
 tion in life — to save himself from degradation as a soldier 
 he must degrade himself as a man. 
 
 Presently, through the whirling mist of his half -con- 
 sciousness, he was aware that the Military Secretary had 
 ceased writing, and that the General was offering him a paper. 
 
 " Here it is," the General was saying, with a certain bit- 
 terness. " Now you may set your mind at ease. If there 
 are any bad consequences you can preserve your reputation 
 as an officer. And if there are any complaints from the War 
 Office, or anywhere else, you can lay the blame on me. You 
 can go on with your duty without fear for your honour, and 
 when " 
 
 But Gordon, whose gorge had risen at everj' word, sud- 
 denly lost control of himself, and, getting up with the paper 
 in his hand, he said : 
 
 " ISTo, I will not go on. Do you suppose I have been 
 thinking of myself? Take back your order. There is no 
 obedience due to a sinful command, and this command is 
 sinful. It is wicked, it is mad, it is abominable. You are 
 asking me to commit murder — that's it — murder — and I will 
 not commit it. There's your order — take it back, and damn 
 it!" 
 
 So saying, he crushed the paper in his hands and flung 
 it on the desk. 
 
 At the next instant everybody in the room had risen. 
 There was consternation on every face, and the General, 
 who was choking with anger, was saying, in a half-stifled 
 voice : 
 
 " You are no fool — you know what you have done now. 
 You have not only refused to obey orders — you have insulted 
 your General and been guilty of deliberate insubordination.
 
 120 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Therefore you are unworthy of bearing arms. Give me your 
 sword.'' 
 
 Gordon hesitated for a moment, and the General said: 
 
 " Give it me — give it me I " 
 
 Then witli a rapid gesture Gordon unbuckled his sword 
 from the belt and handed it to the General. 
 
 The General held it in both his hands, which were vi- 
 brating like the parts of an engine from the moving power 
 ■within, while he said, in the same half-stifled voice as before: 
 
 " You have had the greatest opportunity that ever came 
 to an English soldier and — thrown it away. You have hu- 
 miliated your father, outraged the love of your intended 
 wife, and insulted England. Therefore you are a traitor ! " 
 
 Gordon quivered visibly at that word, and, seeing this, 
 the General hurled it at him again. 
 
 " A traitor, I say. A traitor who has consorted with the 
 enemies of his country." "With that he drew the sword from 
 its scabbard, broke it across his knee, and flung the frag- 
 ments at Gordon's feet. 
 
 Helena turned and fled from the room in agony at the 
 harrowing scene, and the Consul-General, unable to bear the 
 sight of it, rose and walked to the window, his face broken 
 up with pain as no one had ever seen it before. 
 
 Then the General, who had been worked up to a towering 
 rage by his own words and acts, lost himself utterly, and 
 saying : " You are unfit to wear the decorations of an 
 English soldier. Take them off — take them off!" he laid 
 hold of Gordon's medals — the Distinguished Service Order, 
 the South African Medal with its four clasps, the British 
 Soudan Medal, the Medjidieh, and the Khedive's star — and 
 tore them from his tunic, ripping pieces of the cloth away 
 with them, and threw them on the ground. 
 
 Then, in a voice like the scream of a wild bird, he cried : 
 " Xow go ! Go back to your quarters and consider yourself 
 under arrest. Or take my advice and be off altogether. Quit 
 the army you have dishonoured and the friends you have 
 disgraced, and hide your infamous conduct in some foreign 
 land. Leave the room at once ! " 
 
 Gordon had stood through this gross indignity bolt up-
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 121 
 
 right, and without speaking. His face had become deathly- 
 white and his colourless lower lip had trembled. At the 
 end, while the old General was taking gusts of breath, he 
 tried to say something, but his tongue refused to speak. At 
 length he staggered rather than walked to the door, and, with 
 his hand on the handle, he turned, and said, quietly, but in 
 a voice which his father never afterward forgot : 
 
 " General, the time may come when it will be even more 
 painful to you to remember all this than it has been to me 
 to bear it." 
 
 Then he stumbled out of the room. 
 
 XXIV 
 
 Out in the hall he had an impulse to turn toward 
 Helena's room on the right; but through his half-blind eyes 
 he saw Helena herself on the left, standing by the open en- 
 trance to the garden, with her handkerchief at her mouth. 
 
 " Helena ! " 
 
 She made a little nervous crj', but stifling it in her throat 
 she turned hotly round on him. 
 
 " You told me that love was above everything," she said, 
 " and this is how you love me ! " 
 
 Torn as he was to his heart's core, outraged as he be- 
 lieved himself to be, he made a feeble effort to excuse himself. 
 
 " I couldn't help it, Helena — it was impossible for me to 
 act otherwise." 
 
 " Oh, I know ! I know ! " she said. " You were doing 
 what you thought to be right. But I am no match for you. 
 You have duties that are higher than your duty to me." 
 
 Her tone cut him to the quick, and he tried to speak, but 
 could not. Like a drowning man he stretched out his hand 
 to her, but she made no response. 
 
 "It was not to be, I see that now," she said, while her 
 eyes filled and her bosom heaved. " I am not worthy of you. 
 But I loved you and I thought you loved me, and I believed 
 you when you told me that nothing could come between us."
 
 122 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Again he tried to speak, to explain, to protest, but his 
 tongue would not utter a sound. 
 
 " If you had really loved me you would have been ready 
 to . . . even to . . . But I was mistaken and I am pun- 
 ished, and this is how it is to end ! "' 
 
 " Helena, for God's sake — " he began, but he could bear 
 no more. He did not see that the girl's love was fighting 
 with her pride. The hideous injustice of it all was work- 
 ing like madness in his brain, and after a moment he turned 
 to go. 
 
 As he walked across the garden the ground under his 
 feet sounded hollow in his ears, like the ground above a new- 
 covered grave. When he reached the gate he thought he 
 heard Helena calling in a pleading, sobbing voice: 
 
 " Gordon ! " 
 
 But when he turned to look back she had disappeared. 
 
 Then, bareheaded, without helmet or sword, with every 
 badge of rank and honour gone, he pulled the gate open and 
 staggered into the square. 
 
 XXV 
 
 Helena returned to her father's room and found the two 
 old men getting ready to go. In the pasha's face there were 
 traces of that impulse to smile which comes to shallow 
 natures in the presence of another person's troubles. But 
 the face of the Consul-General was a tragic sight. The 
 square-set jaw hung low, and the eyes were heavy as with 
 unshed tears. It was easy to see that the iron man was 
 deeply moved — that the depths of his ice-bound soul were 
 iitterly broken up. 
 
 Only in short, disjointed sentences did he speak at all. 
 It was about his enemies — the corrupt, cruel, and hypo- 
 critical upholders of the old, dark ways. They had bided 
 their time; they had taken their revenge; they had hit him 
 at last where he could least bear a blow; they had struck 
 him in the face with the hand of his only son.
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 123 
 
 " There is no shame left in them," he said, and then he 
 turned to Helena as if intending to say some word of sym- 
 pathy. He wanted to tell her that he had hoped for other 
 things, and would have been happy if they had come to pass. 
 But when he saw the girl standing before him with her red 
 eyes and pale cheeks he hesitated, grasped her hand, held it 
 for a moment, and then walked away without a word. 
 
 The Military Secretary accompanied the Consul-General 
 and the pasha to their carriages, and so father and daughter 
 were left together. The General, labouring under the most 
 painful of all senses, the sense of having done an unworthy 
 thing, walked for some minutes about the room and talked 
 excitedly, while Helena sat on the sofa in silence, and, rest- 
 ing her chin on her hand, looked fixedly before her. 
 
 "Well, well, it's all over, thank God! It couldn't be 
 helped, either. It had to be. Better as it is, too, than if 
 it had come later on. . . . How hot I am ! My throat is like 
 fire. Get me a drink of water, girl." 
 
 " Let me give you your medicine, father. It's here on 
 the desk," said Helena. 
 
 "No, no! Water, girl, water! That's right. There! 
 . . . He has gone, I suppose? Has he gone? Yes? Good 
 thing, too. Hope I'll never see him again. I never will — 
 never! . . . How my head aches! No wonder, either." 
 
 "You're ill, father; let me run for the doctor." 
 
 " Certainly not. I'm all right. Sit down, girl — sit down 
 and don't worry. . . . You mustn't mind me. I'm a bit put 
 out — naturally. It's hard for you, I know, but don't cry, 
 Helena." 
 
 " I'm not crying, father — you see I'm not." 
 
 " That's right ! That's right, dear ! It's hard for you, 
 I say, but then it isn't easy for me, either. I liked him; 
 I did — I confess it. I really liked him, and to ... to do 
 that was like cutting off one's own son. But . . . give me 
 another drink of water, Helena ... or, perhaps, if you 
 think you ought to run . . . no, give me the medicine, and 
 I'll be better presently." 
 
 She poured out a dose and he drank it off. 
 
 " Now I'll lie down and close my eyes. I soon get better
 
 124 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 when I lie down and close my eyes, you know. And don't 
 fret, dear. Think what an escape you've had! Merciful 
 heavens! A traitor! Think if you had married a traitor! 
 A man who had sold himself to the enemies of England ! I 
 was proud of you when you showed him that, come what 
 would, you must stand by your country. Splendid! Just 
 what I expected of you, Helena. Splendid ! " 
 
 After a while his excited speech and gusty breathing 
 softened down to silence and to something like sleep, and 
 then Helena sat on a stool beside the sofa and covered her 
 face with her hands. A hot flush mounted to her pale cheeks 
 when she remembered that it had not been for England that 
 she had acted as she had, but first for her father and next 
 for herself. 
 
 Perhaps she ought to have told Gordon why she could not 
 leave her father. If she had done so he might have acted 
 otherwise. But the real author of the whole trouble had been 
 the Egyptian. How she hated that man ! With all the bit- 
 terness of her tortured heart she hated him. 
 
 As for Gordon, traitor or no traitor, he had been above 
 them all ! Far, far above everybody ! Even the Consul-Gen- 
 eral, now she came to think of it, had been a little man com- 
 pared with his son. 
 
 With her face buried in both hands and the tears at 
 last trickling through her fingers, she saw everything over 
 again, and one thing above all — Gordon standing in silence 
 while her father insulted and degraded him. 
 
 The General opened his eyes, and seeing Helena at his 
 feet he tried to comfort her, but every word he spoke went 
 like iron into her soul. 
 
 " I'm sorry for you, Helena — very sorry ! We must bear 
 this trouble together, dear. Only ourselves again now, you 
 know, just as it was five years ago at home. Your dark hour 
 this time, darling; but I'll make it up to you. Come, kiss 
 me, Helena," and, drj'ing her weary eyes, she kissed him. 
 
 The afternoon sun was then reddening the alabaster walls 
 of the mosque outside, and they heard a surging sound as 
 of a crowd approaching. A moment later little black Mosie 
 ran in to say that the new Mahdi was coming, and almost
 
 THE CRESCENT AXD THE CROSS 125 
 
 before the General and Helena could rise to their feet a tall 
 man in white Oriental costume entered the room. He came 
 in slowly, solemnly, and with head bent, saying : 
 
 " Excuse me, sir, if I come without ceremony " 
 
 " Ishmael Ameer?" asked the General. 
 
 " My name is Ishmael — you are the Commander of the 
 British forces. May I speak with you alone?" 
 
 The General stood still for a moment, measuring his man 
 from head to foot, and then said : 
 
 " Leave us, Helena." 
 
 Helena hesitated, and the General said, " I'm better now 
 — leave us." 
 
 With that she went out reluctantly, turning at the door 
 to look at her enemy, who stood in his great height in the 
 middle of the floor and never so much as glanced in her di- 
 rection. 
 
 XXVI 
 
 Both men continued to stand during the interview that 
 followed — the one in his white robes, by the end of the sofa, 
 resting two tapering fingers upon it, the other in his Gen- 
 eral's uniform by the side of the desk, except when, in the 
 heat of his anger, he strode with heavy step and the jingling 
 of spurs across the space between. 
 
 " Now, sir, now," said the General. " I have urgent work 
 to do, and not much time to give you. What is it ? " 
 
 " I come," said Ishmael, who was outwardly very calm, 
 though his large black eyes were full of fire and light, "I 
 come to speak to you about the order to close El Azhar." 
 
 " Then you come to the wrong place," said the General, 
 sharply. "You should go to the Agency— the British 
 Agency." 
 
 "I have seen the English lord already. He refuses to 
 withdraw his order. Therefore I am here to ask you— for- 
 give me — I am here to ask you not to obey it." 
 
 The General tried to laugh. "Wonderful!" he said. 
 "Your Eastern ideas of discipline are wonderful! Please
 
 126 THE WHITE TEOrHET 
 
 understand, sir, I am here as the instrument of authority — 
 that, and that only." 
 
 " An instrument has its responsibility," said Ishmael. 
 " If there were no instruments to do evil deeds, would evil 
 deeds be done ? It is not your fault, sir, that the order has 
 been issued, but it will be your fault if it is carried into 
 effect." 
 
 " Really ! " said the General, again trying to laugh. 
 " Permit me to tell you, sir, that in this case there will be 
 no fault in question, either of mine or anybody' else's. El 
 Azhar is a hotbed of sedition, and it is high time the Govern- 
 ment cleared it out." 
 
 " El Azhar," said Ishmael, " is the heart of the Moslem 
 faith. Take their religion away from them and the Moslems 
 have nothing left. You are a Christian, and when your 
 great Master was on earth He fed the souls of the people 
 first." 
 
 " Yes, and he whipped the rascals out of the temple, and 
 that's what the Government is going to do now — to drive 
 out the pretentious impostors who are putting a lying spirit 
 into the mouth of the people and making it impossible to 
 govern them." 
 
 The Egyptian showed no anger. " I am here only to 
 plead for the people, sir. Do not harden your heart against 
 them. Do not send armed men among an unarmed popu- 
 lace. It will be slaughter." 
 
 " Tell them to submit to the Government, and there will 
 be no harm done to anyone. It's their duty, isn't it ? What- 
 ever the Government may be, isn't it their duty to submit 
 to it?" 
 
 " Yes," said Ishmael. " We who are Moslems are taught 
 by the Prophet — blessed be his name — that even if a 
 negro slave is appointed to rule over us we ought to obey 
 him." 
 
 "Deuce take it, sir, what do you mean by that?" said 
 the General. 
 
 " But government is a trust from God," said the Egyp- 
 tian, " and at the day of Resurrection the Most High will 
 ask you what you have done to Ilis children."
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 127 
 
 " Damn it, sir, have you come here to preach me a ser- 
 mon ? " 
 
 " I have come to plead with you for justice — the justice 
 you look for from your Saviour. Be merciful to the vfeak. 
 He taught, and it is for the weak I appeal to you. He was 
 meek and lowly — will you forget His precepts ? ' Love one 
 another ' — will you make strife between man and man ? He 
 is dead — shall it be said that His spirit has died out among 
 those who call Him their Redeemer?" 
 
 The General brought his fist heavily down on the desk 
 as if to command silence. 
 
 " Listen here, sir," he said. " If you imagine for one 
 moment that this tall talk will have any effect upon me, 
 let me advise you to drop it. Being a plain soldier who has 
 received a plain conunand, I shall take whatever military 
 steps are necessary to see it faithfully carried out, and if 
 the precious leaders of the people, playing on their credulity 
 and fanaticism, should instigate rebellion, I shall have the 
 honour — understand me plainly — I shall have the honour 
 to lodge them in safe quarters, whosoever they are and what- 
 soever their pretensions may be." 
 
 The Egyptian's eyes showed at that moment that he was 
 a man capable of wild frenzy, but he controlled himself and 
 answered : 
 
 " I am not here to defend myself, sir. You can take me 
 now if you choose to do so. But if I cannot plead with you 
 for the people, let me plead with you for yourself — your 
 family." 
 
 The General, who had turned away from Ishmael, swung 
 round on him. 
 
 "My family?" 
 
 " ' He that troubleth his own house,' saith the Koran, 
 * shall inherit the wind.' Will you, my brother, allow your 
 daughter to be separated from the brave man who loves her ? 
 A woman is tender and sweet; all she wants is love; and 
 love is a sacred thing, sir. Your daughter is your flesh and 
 blood — Avill you make her unhappy? I see a day when you 
 are dead — will it comfort you in the grave that two who 
 should be together are apart ? "
 
 128 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " They're apart already, so that's over and done with," 
 said the General. " But listen to me again, sir. My girl 
 needs none of your pity. She has done her duty as a sol- 
 dier's daughter, and cut off the traitor whom you, and men 
 like you, appear to have corrupted. Look here — and here," 
 he cried, pointing to the broken sword and the medals, which 
 were still lying where he had flung them on the floor. " The 
 man has gone — gone in disgrace and shame. That's what 
 you've done for him, if it's any satisfaction to you to know 
 it. As for my daughter," he said, raising his voice in his 
 gathering wrath and striding iip to Ishmael with heavy steps 
 and the jingling of his spurs — "as for my daughter, Helena 
 — I will ask you to be so good as to keep her name out of it. 
 Do you hear ? Keep her name out of it, or else " 
 
 At that moment the men heard the door open and a 
 woman's light footsteps behind them. It was Helena coming 
 into the room. 
 
 " Did you call me, father ? " she asked. 
 
 " No. Go back immediately." 
 
 She looked doubtfully at the two men, who were now 
 face to face as if in the act of personal quarrel, hesitated, 
 seemed about to speak, and then went out slowly. 
 
 There was silence for a moment after she was gone, and 
 then Ishmael said : 
 
 " Do I understand you to say, sir, that Colonel Lord has 
 gone in disgrace ? " 
 
 "Yes; for consorting with the enemies of his country 
 and refusing to obey the order of his General." 
 
 " Lost his place and rank as a soldier? " 
 
 " Soon will, and then he will be alone and have you to 
 thank for it." 
 
 The Egyptian drew himself up to his full height and an- 
 swered : " You are wrong, sir. He who has no one has God, 
 and if that brave man has suffered rather than do an evil 
 act, will God forget him? No!" 
 
 " God will do as He thinks best without considering 
 either you or mo, sir," said the General. " But I have some- 
 thing to do, and I will ask you to leave me. ... Or wait 
 one moment! Lest you should carry away the impression
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 129 
 
 that because Colonel Lord has refused to obey his General's 
 order the order will not be obeyed, wait and see." 
 
 He touched the bell, and called for his aide-de-camp. 
 
 " Tell Colonel Macdonald to come to me immediately," 
 said the General, and when the aide-de-camp had gone he 
 turned to his desk for papers. 
 
 The Egyptian, who had never moved from his place by 
 the sofa, now took one step forward and said in a low, 
 quivering voice, " General, I have appealed to you on behalf 
 of my people and on your own behalf, but there is one thing 
 more." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " Your country." 
 
 The General made an impatient gesture, and the Egyp- 
 tian said, "Hear me, I beg, I pray! Eeal as life, real as 
 death, real as wells of water in a desert place, is their re- 
 ligion to the Muslemeen, and if you lay so much as your 
 finger upon it your Government will die." 
 
 He raised his hand and with one trembling finger pointed 
 upward. "Do you think your swords will govern them? 
 What can your swords do to their souls? By the Most High 
 God, 1 swear to you that I have only to speak the word, and 
 the rule of England in Egypt will end." 
 
 At that moment Colonel Macdonald, a large man in 
 khaki, a Highlander, with a ruddy face and a glass in his 
 left eye, opened the door and stood by it, while the General, 
 whose own face was scarlet with anger, said : 
 
 " So ! So that's how you talked to Colonel Lord, I pre- 
 sume — how you darkened the poor devil's understanding! 
 Xow see — see what effect your threats have upon me. Step 
 forward. Colonel Macdonald." 
 
 The Colonel saluted and stepped up to the General, who 
 repeated to him word for word the order he had given to 
 Gordon, and then said: 
 
 "You will arrest all who resist you, and if any resist 
 with violence you will compel obedience — you understand?" 
 
 " Perfectly," said the Colonel, and saluting again he left 
 the room. 
 
 "Now, sir, you can go," said the General to Ishmael,
 
 130 THE WHITE TEOPHET 
 
 ■whereupon the Egyptian, whose face had taken on an ex- 
 treme pallor, replied : 
 
 " Very well. I have warned you and you will not hear 
 me. But I tell you that at this moment Israfil has the 
 trumpet to his mouth, and is only waiting for God's order 
 to blow it ! I tell you, too, that I see you — you — on the Day 
 of Judgment, and there are black marks on your face." 
 
 " Silence, sir ! " said the General, bringing his clenched 
 fist heavily down on the desk. Then he struck the bell and 
 in a choking voice called first for his servant and afterward 
 for his aide-de-camp. " Robson ! See this man out of the 
 Citadel ! This damnable, presumptuous braggart ! Robson ! 
 Where are you ? " But the servant did not appear and the 
 aide-de-camp did not answer. 
 
 " Xo matter," said the Egyptian. " I will go of myself. 
 I will try to forget the hard words you have said of me. I 
 will not retort them upon you. You are a Christian, and it 
 was a Christian who said, * Resist not evil.' That is a com- 
 mandment as binding upon us as upon you. God's will be 
 done ! " 
 
 With that Ishmael went out as he had entered, slowly, 
 solemnly, with head bent and eyes on the ground. 
 
 XXVII 
 
 The General was now utterly exhausted. Being left alone 
 he leaned against the desk, intending to wait until his 
 breathing had become more regular and he could reach the 
 sofa. Standing there he heard the surging noise of the 
 crowd that had been waiting outside for their Arab prophet, 
 and were now going away with hiin. He wanted to call 
 Helena, but restrained himself, remembering how often she 
 had warned liim. 
 
 " Robson ! " he called again, but again the aide-de-camp 
 did not answer — ^he must have gone off on some errand for 
 Colonel Macdonald. 
 
 The General took up his medicine and gulped down a
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 131 
 
 large dose, drinking from the neck of the bottle, and then 
 sank on to the sofa. 
 
 Some minutes passed, and he began to feel better. The 
 sunset was deflected into his face from the alabaster walls 
 of the mosque outside, but he could not get up to pull down 
 the blind of his window. So he closed his eyes and thought 
 of what had happened. 
 
 It seemed to him that Gordon had been to blame for 
 everything. But for Gordon's monstrous conduct they would 
 have been spared this trouble — Lord Xuneham's crushing 
 blow, his own humiliating action, so wickedly forced upon 
 him, and, above all, Helena's sorrow. 
 
 In the delirium of his anger against Gordon he felt as 
 if he would choke. Thinking of Helena and her ruined hap- 
 piness, he wondered why he had let Gordon off so lightly, 
 and he wanted to follow and punish him. 
 
 Then he heard the door open, and, thinking Helena was 
 coming into the room, he rose to his feet and faced around, 
 when before him, with a haggard face, stood Gordon himself. 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 When Gordon Lord, after parting with Helena, had 
 left the Citadel, his mental anguish had been so intense as to 
 deaden all his faculties. His reason was clogged, his ideas 
 were obscure, he could not see or hear properly. Passing the 
 sentry in his lodge by the gate, he did not notice the man's 
 bewildered stare or acknowledge his abbreviated salute. The 
 whole event of the last hour had overwhelmed him as with a 
 terrible darkness, and in this darkness he plodded on until 
 he came into the streets, dense with people and clamorous 
 with all the noises of an Eastern city — the clapping of water- 
 carriers, the crying of lemonade-sellers, the braying of don- 
 keys, and the ruckling of camels. 
 
 "Where am I going?" he asked himself at one moment, 
 and when he remembered that he was going back to his 
 quarters, for that was what he had been ordered to do, that
 
 132 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 lie Blight be under arrest and in due course tried by court- 
 martial, he told himself that he had been tried and con- 
 demned and punished already. At that thought, though 
 clouded and obscure, he bit his lip until it bled, and thought, 
 "No, I cannot go back to quarters — I will not!" 
 
 At the next moment a certain helplessness came over him, 
 and up from the deep place where the strongest man is as 
 a child, by the pathetic instinct that keeps the boy alive in 
 him to the last dark day of his life and in the hour of death, 
 came a desire to go home — to his mother. But when he 
 thought of his mother's pleading voice as she begged him to 
 keep peace with his father, and then, by some juggling twist 
 of torturing memory, of the first evening after his return to 
 Egypt, when he wore his medals and she fingered them on 
 his breast with a pride that no queen ever had in the jewels 
 in her crown, he said to himself, " No, I can never go home 
 again." 
 
 His mind was oscillating among these agonising thoughts 
 when he became aware that he was walking in the Esbekiah 
 district, the European quarter of Cairo, where the ooze of 
 the gutter of the city is flung up under the public eye ; and 
 there under the open piazza, containing a line of drinking- 
 places, in an atmosphere that was thick with tobacco smoke, 
 the reek of alcohol, the babel of many tongues, the striking 
 of matches, and the popping of corks, he sat down at a table 
 and called for a glass of brandy. 
 
 The brandy seemed to clear his faculties for a moment, 
 and his aimless and wandering thoughts began to concen- 
 trate themselves. Then the scene in the General's office came 
 back to him — the drawing of his sword from its scabbard, 
 the breaking of it across the knee, the throwing of the 
 wretched fragments at his feet, the ripping away of his med- 
 als, and the trampling of them underfoot. The hideous mem- 
 ory of it all, so illegal, so un-English, made his blood boil, 
 and when his beaten brain swung back to the scenes in which 
 he won his honours at the risk of his life — Omdurman, 
 Ladysmith, Pretoria — the rank injustice he had suffered al- 
 most stifled him with rage, and he swore and struck the 
 table.
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 133 
 
 All his anger was against the General, not against his 
 father, of whom he had hardly thought at all ; but the cruel- 
 lest agony he passed through came at the moment when his 
 wrath rose against Helena. As he thought of her he became 
 dizzy; his brain reeled with a dance of ideas in which no 
 picture lasted longer than an instant, and no emotion would 
 stay. At one moment he was seeing her as he saw her first, 
 with her big eyes, black as a sloe, the joyous smile that was 
 one of her greatest chaiTQS, the arched brow, the silken 
 lashes, the gleam of celestial fire, the " Don't go yet " that 
 came in her look, and then the quickening pulse, the thrill 
 that passed through him, and the mysterious voice that whis- 
 pered, " It is She ! " 
 
 Without knowing it he groaned aloud as he thought of 
 the ruin all this had come to; and at the next moment he 
 was in the midst of another memorj- — a memory of the 
 future as he had imagined it would be. They were to be 
 married soon, and then, realising one of the dreams of his 
 life, they were to visit America, for his mother's blood called 
 to him to go there, to see the great new world — yes, but above 
 all to stand, with Helena's quivering hand in his, on that 
 rock at Plymouth where a handful of fearless men and 
 women had landed on a bleak and hungry coast, afraid of 
 no fate, for God was with thenv and in two short centuries 
 had peopled a vast continent and created one of the might- 
 iest empires of the earth. Remembering this as a vanished 
 dream, his wretched soul was on the edge of a vortex of mad- 
 ness, and he laughed outright with a laugh that shivered the 
 air around him. 
 
 Then he was conscious that somebody was speaking to 
 him. It was a young girl in a gaudy silk dress, with a pasty 
 face, lips painted very red, eyebrows darkened, a flower in her 
 full bosom, which was covered with transparent lace, and a 
 little satchel swinging on her wrist. 
 
 "Overdoing it a bit, haven't you, dear?" she said in 
 French, and she smiled at him, a poor sidelong smile, out of 
 her crushed and ciumpled soul. 
 
 At the same moment he became aware that three men at 
 a table behind him were winking at the girl and joking at 
 10
 
 134 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 his expense. One of them, a little, fat American Jew with 
 puflFy cheeks, chewing the end of a cigar, was saying : 
 
 " Guess a man don't have no use for a hat in a climate 
 like this — sun so soft, and only ninety-nine in the shade." 
 
 Whereupon an Englishman, with a ripped and ragged 
 mouth and a miscellaneous nose, half pug and half Roman, 
 answered : 
 
 " Been hanging himself up on a nail by the breast of his 
 coat, too, you bet." 
 
 Putting his hand to his hair and looking down at the 
 torn cloth of his tunic, Gordon realised for the first time 
 that he was bareheaded, having left his helmet at the Cita- 
 del, and that to the unclean consciousness of the people about 
 him he was drunk. 
 
 At that moment he started up suddenly, and coming into 
 collision with the American, who was swinging on the back 
 legs of his chair, he sent him sprawling on the ground, where 
 he yelled : 
 
 " Here, I say, you blazing " 
 
 But the third man at the table, a dragoman in a fez, 
 whispered : 
 
 " Hush ! I know that gentlemans. Leave him alone, sirs, 
 please. Let him go." 
 
 W^ith heart and soul aflame, Gordon walked away, in- 
 tending to take the first cab that came along and then for- 
 getting to do so. One wild thought now took possession of 
 him and expelled all other thoughts. He must go back to 
 the Citadel and accuse the General of his gross injustice. 
 He must say what he meant to say when he stood by the door 
 as he was going out. The General should hear it — he should, 
 and, by , he must! 
 
 The brandy was working in his brain by this time, and 
 in the blind leading of passion everj'thing that happened on 
 the way seemed to fortify his resolve. The streets of the 
 native city were now surging with people, as a submerged 
 mine surges with the water that runs through it. He knew 
 where they were going — they were going to El Azhar — 
 and when he came near to the great mosque he had to fight 
 his way through a crowd that was coming from the opposite
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 135 
 
 direction, with the turbaned head of a very tall man in the 
 midst of the multitude, who were chanting verses from the 
 Koran and crying in chorus, " La ilaha illa-llah ! " 
 
 At sight of this procession, knowing what it meant, that 
 the Moslems were going to the doomed place to defend it 
 or die, a thousand confused forms danced before Gordon's 
 eyes. His impatience to reach the Citadel became feverish 
 and he began to run, but again he was kept back. This 
 time it was a troop of cavalry, who were trotting hard 
 toward El Azhar. He saw his deputy, Macdonald, with his 
 blotchy face and his monocle, but he was himself seen by 
 no one, and in the crush he was almost ridden down. 
 
 The Citadel, when he reached it, seemed to be deserted, 
 even the sentry standing with his back to him in the sentry- 
 box as he hurried through. There was nobody in the square 
 of the mosque or yet at the gate to the General's garden, 
 which was open, and the door of the house, when he came 
 to it, was open, too. With the hot blood in his head, his 
 teeth compressed and his nostrils quivering, he burst into the 
 General's office and came face to face with the old soldier as 
 he was rising from the sofa. Thus in the blind swirl of 
 circumstance the two men met at the moment when the 
 heart of each was full of hatred for the other. 
 
 They were brave men both of them, and never for one in- 
 stant had either of them known what it was to feel afraid. 
 They were not afraid now, but they had loved each other 
 once, and up from what deep place in their souls God alone 
 can say there came a wave of feeling that fought with their 
 hate. The General no longer wanted to punish Gordon, but 
 only that Gordon should go away, while Gordon's rage, which 
 was to have thundered at the General, broke into an agonis- 
 ing cry. 
 
 " What are you doing here ? Didn't I order you to your 
 quarters ? Do you wish me to put you under close arrest ? 
 Get off!" 
 
 " Xot yet. You and I have to settle accounts first. You 
 have behaved like a tyrant. A tyrant — that's the only word 
 for it ! HI was guilty of insubordination, you were guilty 
 of outrage. You had a right to arrest me and to order that
 
 136 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 I should be court-martialled. But what right had you to 
 condemn me before 1 was tried, and punish me before I was 
 sentenced? Before or after, what right had you to break my 
 sword and tear off my medals ? Degradation is obsolete in 
 the British Army. What right had you to degrade me? Be- 
 fore my father, too, and before Helena ! What right had 
 jou?" 
 
 " Leave my house instantly ! Leave it ! Leave it ! " said 
 the General, his voice coming thick and hoarse. 
 
 " Xot till you hear what I've come to tell you," said Gor- 
 don, and then — who knows on what inherited cell of his brain 
 imprinted? — he repeated the threat his father had made 
 forty years before: 
 
 " I've come to tell you that I'll go back to my quarters 
 and you shall court-martial me to-morrow if you dare. Be- 
 fore that England may know, by what is done to-night, that 
 I refused to obey your order because I'm a soldier — not a 
 murderer. But if she never knows," he cried, in his broken 
 voice, " and you try me and condemn me and degrade me 
 even to the ranks, I'll get up again — do you hear me ? — I'll 
 get up again and win back all I've lost and more — until I'm 
 your own master and you'll have to obey me / " 
 
 The General's face became scarlet, and, lifting his hand 
 as if to strike Gordon, he cried, in a choking voice : 
 
 " Go, before I do something ..." 
 
 But Gordon, in the delirium of his rage, heard nothing 
 except the sound of his own quivering voice. 
 
 " More than that," he said, " I'll win back Helena. She 
 was mine, and you have separated her from me, and broken 
 her heart as well as my own. Was that the act of a father, 
 or of a robber and a tyrant ? But she will come back to me, 
 and when you are dead and in your grave we shall be to- 
 g-ether, because . . . Stop that! Stop it, I say!" 
 
 The General, unable to command himself any longer, had 
 snatched up the broken sword from the floor, and was mak- 
 ing for Gordon as if to smite him. 
 
 " Stand away! You are an old man and I am not a cow- 
 ard. Drop that, or, by God, you " 
 
 But the General, losing himself utterly, flung himself on
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 137 
 
 Gordon with the broken sword, his voice gone in a husky 
 growl and his breath coming in hoarse gusts. 
 
 The struggle was short but terrible. Gordon, in the 
 strength of his young manhood, first laid hold of the Gen- 
 eral by the upper part of the breast to keep him off, and then, 
 feeling that his hand was wounded, he gripped at the old 
 man's throat with fingers that clung like claws. At the next 
 moment he snatched the sword from the General, and at the 
 same instant, with a delirious laugh, he flung the man him- 
 self away. 
 
 The General fell heavily with a deep groan and a gurgling 
 cry. Gordon, with a contemptuous gesture, threw the broken 
 sword on to the floor, and then, with the growl of a wild 
 creature, he turned to go. 
 
 " Fight me — would you, eh ? Kill me, perhaps ! We've 
 settled accounts at last — haven't we ? " 
 
 But hearing no answer he turned at the door to look back 
 and saw the General lying where he had fallen, outstretched 
 and still. At that sight the breath seemed to go out of his 
 body at one gasp. His head turned giddy, and the red gleams 
 of the sunset, which were deflected into the room, appeared 
 to his half-blind eyes to cover everything with blood. 
 
 XXIX 
 
 Gordon stood with his mouth open, the brute sense struck 
 out of him by the dead silence. Then he said, " Get up ! 
 Why don't you get up ? " hardly knowing what he was saying. 
 
 He got no answer, and a horrible idea began to take shape 
 in his mind. Though so hot a moment ago, he shivered and 
 his teeth began to chatter. He looked around him for a 
 moment in the dazed way of a man awakening from a night- 
 mare, and then stepped up on tiptoe to where the General lay. 
 
 Raising his head, he looked at him and found it hard to 
 believe that what he vaguely feared had happened. There 
 was no sign of injury anywhere. The eyes were open, and 
 they looked fixedly at him with so fierce a stare that they 
 seemed to jump out of their sockets.
 
 138 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Stunned — that's all — stunned by the fall,"' he thought, 
 and, seeing a bottle of brandy on the shelf of the desk, he 
 got up and poured a little into the medicine glass, and then, 
 tneeling and lifting the General's head again, he forced the 
 liquor through the tightly compressed lips. 
 
 It ran out as it went in, and then, with gathering fear 
 and fumbling fingers, Gordon unbuttoned the General's 
 frock-coat and laid a trembling hand over his heart. At one 
 moment he thought he felt a beat, but at the next he knew 
 it was only the throb of his own pulse. 
 
 At that the world seemed for a moment to be blotted out, 
 and when he came to himself again he was holding the Gen- 
 eral in his arms and calling to him. 
 
 "General! General! Speak to me! For God's sake, 
 speak to me ! " 
 
 In the torrent of his remorse he was kissing the Gen- 
 eral's forehead and crj-ing over his face, but there was no 
 response. 
 
 Then a great trembling shook his whole body, and drop- 
 ping the head gently back to the floor he rose to his feet. 
 The General was dead, and he knew it. 
 
 He had seen death a hundred times before, but only on 
 the battle-field, amid the boom of cannon, the wail of shell, 
 the snap of rifles, and the oaths of men, but now it filled him 
 with terror. 
 
 The silence was awful. A minute ago the General had 
 been a living man, face to face with him, and the room 
 had been ringing with the clashing of their voices; but now 
 this breathless hush, this paralysing stillness, in which the 
 very air seemed to be dead, for something was gone as by 
 the stroke of an almighty hand, and there was nothing left 
 but the motionless figure at his feet. 
 
 " What have I done ? " he asked, and when he told him- 
 self that in his headstrong wrath he had killed a man, his 
 head spun round and round. He who had refused to obey 
 orders because he would not commit murder was guilty of 
 murder himself ! What devil out of hell had ordered things 
 so that, as the very consequence of refusing to commit a 
 crime, he had become a criminal?
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 139 
 
 "God have pity upon me and tell me it is not true," he 
 thought. 
 
 But he knew it was true, and when he told himself that 
 the man he had killed was his General, his pain increased 
 tenfold. The General had loved him and favoured him, been 
 proud of him and upheld him, and never, down to the com- 
 ing of this trouble, had their friendship been darkened by a 
 cloud. 
 
 " Oh, forgive me ! God forgive me ! " he thought. 
 
 In his blind misery, which hardly saw itself yet for what 
 it was, the impulse came to him to carry the burden of his 
 sin, too heav:^' for himself, to Helena, that she might help 
 him to bear it ; and he had taken some steps toward the door 
 leading to her room when it struck him as a blow on the 
 brain that she was the daughter of the dead man, and he 
 M'as going to her for comfort after killing her father. 
 
 At that thought he stopped and laid hold of the desk for 
 support, being so weak that he could scarcely keep on his 
 legs. He remembered Helena's love for the General, how 
 much of her young life she had given to him, and how the 
 quarrel that had divided himself from her had come of her 
 determination not to leave her father as long as he lived. 
 And now he had killed him — he! he! he! 
 
 Beads of sweat started from his forehead, but after a 
 moment he told himself that, if he could not expect comfort 
 from Helena, it was his duty to comfort her — to break the 
 news to her. He saw himself doing so. " Helena, listen, 
 dear; be brave." "What is it?" "Your father — is — is 
 dead." " Dead ? " " "Worse — a thousandfold worse — he is 
 murdered." " Murdered ? " " It was all in the heat of blood 
 — the man didn't know what he was doing." " Who was it ? 
 Who was it ? " " Don't you see, Helena ? It was I." 
 
 He had tiirned again to the door leading to Helena's 
 room when another blow from an invisible hand seemed to 
 fall upon him. He saw Helena's eyes fixed on his face in the 
 intensity of her hate, and he heard her voice driving him 
 away. "Go; let me never see you again." That was more 
 than he could bear, and staggering to the sofa he sat down. 
 
 Some minutes passed. The red glow in the room deep-
 
 140 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 ened to a dull brown, and at one moment there was a groan 
 in the gathering gloom. He heard it and looked up, but 
 there was nobody there, and then he realised that it was he 
 who had groaned. At another moment his mind occupied 
 itself with lesser things. He saw that one finger of his left 
 hand was badly wounded, and he bound it up in his hand- 
 kerchief. Then he looked at himself in a mirror that hung 
 on the wall in front of the sofa, but he could not see his face 
 distinctly — eyes, nose, and mouth being blurred. He did not 
 attempt to escape. Never for an instant did it occur to him 
 to run away. 
 
 The sun went down behind the black pyramids across the 
 Nile, and after a while the dead silence of the evening of the 
 Eastern day was broken by the multitudinous cries of the 
 muezzin, which came up from the city below like a deep 
 ground swell on a rugged coast. 
 
 After that Gordon knelt again by the General's body, 
 trj-ing to believe he was not dead. The eyes were still open, 
 but all the light was gone out of them, and seeing their 
 stony stare the thought came to him that the General's soul 
 was with him in the room. The stupor of his senses had 
 suddcnlj^ given way to a supernatural acuteness, and at one 
 moment he imagined he felt the touch of a hand on his 
 shoulder. 
 
 At the next instant he was plainly conscious of a door 
 opening and closing in the inner part of the house, and of 
 light and rapid footsteps approaching. He knew what had 
 occurred — Helena had been out on the terrace or in the 
 parade ground and had just come back. 
 
 She was now in the next room, breathing hard as if she 
 had been running. He could hear the rustling of her skirt 
 and her soft step as she walked toward the door of the 
 General's office. 
 
 At the next moment there came a knock, but Gordon held 
 his breath and made no answer. 
 
 Then "Father! " in a tremulous voice, full of fear, as if 
 Helena knew what had happened. 
 
 Still Gordon made no reply, and the frightened voice 
 came again.
 
 THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 141 
 
 " Are you alone now ? May I come in ? " 
 
 Then Gordon felt an impulse to throw the door open and 
 confess everything, saying: "I did it, Helena, but I didn't 
 intend to do it. He threw himself upon me, and I flung him 
 off and he fell, and that is the truth, as God is my witness." 
 
 But he could not do this, because he was afraid. He who 
 had never before known fear, he who had stood in the firing 
 line when hordes of savage men had galloped down with 
 fanatical cries — he was trembling now at the thought of 
 meeting a woman's face. 
 
 So, treading softly, he stole out of the room by the outer 
 door, the door leading to the gate, and as he closed it behind 
 him he felt that the door of hope, also, was now for ever 
 closed between Helena and him. 
 
 But going through the garden he had to pass the arbour, 
 and at sight of that a wave of tender memories swept over 
 him, and in pity of Helena's position he wanted to return. 
 She would be in her father's room by this time, standing 
 over his dead body, and alone in her great grief. 
 
 " I will go back," he thought. " She has no one else. She 
 may curse me, but I cannot leave her alone. I will go back 
 —I will— I must ! " 
 
 That was what his soul was saying to itself, but at the 
 same time his body was carrying him away — through the 
 open gate and across the deserted square, swiftly, stealthily, 
 like a criminal leaving the scene of his crime. 
 
 The day was now gone, the twilight was deep, and as he 
 passed under the outer port of the Citadel in the dead silence 
 of the unquickened air, a voice like that of an accusing 
 angel, telling of judgment to come, fell upon his ear. It was 
 the voice of the last of the muezzin on the minaret of the 
 Mohammedan mosque calling to evening prayer: 
 
 " God is Most Great ! God is Most Great ! " 
 
 AL-LA-T -BAR. AL-LA - - HU AK-BAR. 
 
 11
 
 and f
 
 SECOND BOOK 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD
 
 When Helena had left the General and Ishmacl Ameer 
 together, the signs she knew so well of illness in her fathers 
 face suggested that she should run at once for the medical 
 officer. One moment she stood in the room adjoining the 
 General's office, listening to the muffled rumble that came 
 from the other side of the wall, the short snap of her 
 father's impatient voice and the deep boom of the Egyp' 
 tian's, and then she hurried into the outer passage to pii> 
 on her hat. There she met the General's aide-de-camp who, 
 seeing her excitement, asked if there was anything he could 
 do for her, but she answered " No," and then, 
 
 " Yes, I think you might go over to the Colonel " (mean- 
 ing the Colonel commanding the Citadel) " and tell him 
 this man is here with a crowd of his followers." 
 
 " He must know it already, but I'll go with pleasure," 
 said the young Lieutenant; at the next moment there were 
 three hasty beats on the General's bell followed by a sum- 
 mons from the General's servant, but the aide-de-camp had 
 disappeared. 
 
 Helena went out by the back of the house, and seeing 
 her cook and the black boy as she passed the kitchen quar- 
 ters, an impulse came to her to send somebody else on her 
 errand, lest anything should happen in her absence; but 
 telling herself that nobody but herself and the doctor must 
 know the secret of her father's condition, she hurried along. 
 
 Her way was through the unoccupied courts of the old 
 palace, down a flight of long steps, through an old gateway 
 whereof the iron-clamped door always stood open, across a 
 disused drawbridge, and so on to the open parade ground. 
 The Army Surgeon's quarters were on the farther side of 
 it and never before had it seemed so broad. 
 
 When she reached her destination the Surgeon was out 
 on his evening round of the hospital, so she wrote a hur- 
 
 145
 
 146 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 ried note asking him to come to the General's house imme- 
 diately, sent his assistant in search of him, and then turned 
 back. 
 
 Eeturniug hurriedly by the " married quarters," she was 
 detained for some moments by a soldier's wife, a young 
 thing, almost a child, who stood at the door of her house 
 with a red woollen shawl about her shoulders, a baby in 
 long clothes in her arms, and a look of radiant happiness 
 in her round face. 
 
 "YeVe not seen 'im yet, have ye, Miss?" said the little 
 mother, and then, holding out her baby to be admired, " Only 
 six weeks old and 'e weighs ten pounds. Colonel says as 
 'ow e's a credit to the r^'ment and I'm agoin' to shorten 
 'im soon. To-morrow I'm 'avin' 'im photoed to send to 
 mother. She lives in Clerkenwell, Miss, and she ain't likely 
 to show 'is photo to nobody in our court. Oh, no ! " 
 
 Helena did her best to play up to the pride of the little 
 Cockney mother, and was turning to go when the girl said : 
 "But my Harry tells me as 'ow you're to be married 
 yourself soon, so I wish ye joy, and many of 'em." 
 
 " Good-bye, Mrs. Dimmock," said Helena, but the young 
 thing was not done yet. With a look of wondrous wisdom 
 she said : 
 
 " They're a deal of trouble, Miss, but there ain't no love 
 in the house without 'cm. As mother says, they keeps the 
 pot a-boilin'," and she was ducking down her head to kiss 
 the child as Helena hurried away. 
 
 In the bright light of the young mother's life and the 
 breadth of shadow that lay upon her own, Helena thought 
 of Gordon and her anger rose against him again; but at 
 the next moment she saw him in her mind's eye as she had 
 seen him last, going out of the garden, a broken, bankrupt 
 man, and then her eyes filled and it was as much as she 
 could do to see her way. 
 
 In the quickening flow of her emotion this riot in her 
 heart between anger with Gordon and with herself only led 
 to deeper hatred of the Egyptian, and even the memory 
 of his dignity and largeness in the single moment in which 
 she had looked' upon him made her wrath the more intense.
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 147 
 
 A vague fear, an indefinite forewarning, hardly able yet 
 to assume a shape, was beginning to take possession of her. 
 She recalled the scene she had left behind her in the Gen- 
 eral's office, the two men face to face, as if in the act of 
 personal quarrel, and told herself that if anything happened 
 to her father as the result of the excitement caused by the 
 meeting, the Egyptian would be the cause of it. 
 
 In her impatience to be back she began to run. IIow 
 broad the parade ground was ! The air, too, was so close 
 and lifeless. The sun had nearly set, the arms of night 
 were closing round the day, but still the sky was a hot 
 dark red like the inside of a transparent shell that had a 
 smouldering fire outside of it. 
 
 At one moment she heard harsh and jarring voices that 
 seemed to come from the square of the mosque in front of 
 the house. Perhaps the Egyptian and his people were going 
 off with their usual monotonous chanting of "Allah!" 
 " Allah! " She was glad to reach the cool shade and silence 
 of the empty courts of the old palace, but coming to the gate- 
 way she found it closed. 
 
 A footstep was dying away within, so she knocked and 
 called, and after a moment an old soldier, a kind of care- 
 taker of the Citadel, opened the gate to her. 
 
 " Beg pardon. Miss ! Lieutenant Robson told me to shut 
 up everything immediately," he said, but Helena did not 
 wait for further explanation. 
 
 There was nobody in sight when she passed the kitchen 
 quarters, and when she entered the house a chill silence 
 seemed to strike to the very centre of her life. 
 
 Then followed one of those mystic impulses of the 
 human heart which nobody can understand. In her creep- 
 ing fear of what might have happened during her absence 
 she was at first afraid to go into her father's room. If she 
 had done so, there and then, and without an instant's hesi- 
 tation, she must have found Gordon kneeling over her 
 father's body. But in dread of learning the truth she tried 
 to keep back the moment of certainty, and in a blind agony 
 of doubt she stood still and tried to think. 
 
 The voices of the men were no longer to be heard
 
 148 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 through the wall and the deep rumble of the crowd outside 
 had died away, therefore the Egyptian must have gone. 
 Had her father gone, too? She remembered that he was in 
 uniform and took a step back into the hall to see if his cap 
 hung on the hat-rail. The cap was there. Had he gone 
 into his bedroom? She crossed to the door. The door was 
 open and the room was empty. 
 
 Hardly able to analyse her unlinked ideas, but with a 
 gathering dread of the unknown, she found herself stepping 
 on tiptoe toward the General's office. Then she thought 
 she heard a faint cry within, a feeble, interrupted moan, 
 and in an unsteady voice she called. 
 
 There was no answer. She called again, and still there 
 was no reply. Then girding up her heart to conquer her 
 vague fear, which hardly knew itself yet for what it was, 
 she opened the door. 
 
 The room was almost dark. She took one step into the 
 gloom, breathing rapid breath, then stopped and said: 
 
 " Father ! Are you here, Father ? " 
 
 There was no sound, so she took another step into the 
 room, thinking to switch on the light over the desk and at 
 the same time to reach the sofa. As she did so she 
 stumbled against something, and her breath was struck out 
 of her in an instant. 
 
 She stooped in the darkness to see what it was that lay 
 at her feet, and at the next moment she needed no light 
 to tell her. 
 
 "Father! Father!" she cried, and in the dead silence 
 that followed the voice of the muezzin came from with- 
 out. 
 
 She was lying prostrate over her father's body when the 
 door was burst open as by a gust of wind and the Army 
 Surgeon came into the room. Without a word he knelt and 
 laid his hand over the heart of the fallen man, while Helena, 
 who rose at the same instant, watched him in the awful 
 thraldom of fear. 
 
 Then young Lieutenant Robson came in hurriedly, 
 switching on the light and saying something, but the Sur- 
 geon silenced him with the lifting of his left hand. There
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 149 
 
 was one of those blank moments in which time itself seems 
 to stand still, while the Surgeon was on his knees and 
 Helena stood aside with whitening lips and with eyes that 
 had a wild stare in them. Then, lifting his face that was 
 stamped with the heaviness of horror, and told before he 
 spoke what he was going to say, the Surgeon rose and, 
 turning to Helena, said in a nervous voice : 
 
 " I regret, I deeply regret to tell you " 
 
 "Gone?" asked Helena, and the Surgeon bowed his 
 head. 
 
 She did not cry or utter a sound. Only the trembling 
 of her white lips showed what she felt, but all the cheer of 
 life had died out of her face, and in a moment it had 
 become hard and stony. 
 
 There was an instant of silence and then the Surgeon 
 and the young Lieutenant, casting sidelong looks at Helena, 
 began to whisper together. At sight of her tearless eyes 
 a certain fear had fallen on them which the presence of 
 death could not create. 
 
 " Take her away," whispered the Surgeon, and then the 
 Lieutenant, whose throat was hard and whose eyes were dim, 
 approached her and said with the sadness of sympathy: 
 
 " May I help you to your room, please ? " 
 
 Helena shook her head and stood immovable a moment 
 longer, and then with a firm step she walked away. 
 
 II 
 
 All the moral cowardice that had paralysed Gordon 
 Lord was gone the moment he left the Citadel, and as soon 
 as he reached the streets of the city the power of life came 
 back to him. There in tumultuous swarms the native peo- 
 ple were swinging along in one direction, uttering the 
 monotonous cries of the Moslems when they are deeply 
 moved. Into this maelstrom of emotion Gordon was swept 
 before he knew it, and hardly conscious of where he was 
 going, he followed where he was led.
 
 150 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 He felt — without knowiiig why — the lust of violence which 
 comes to the soldier in battle who wants to run away until 
 the moment when the first shot has been fired, and then — 
 all fear and moral conscience gone in an instant — forges 
 his path with shouts and oaths to where danger is greatest 
 and death most sure. 
 
 In the thickening darkness he saw a great glow coming 
 from a spot in front of him, as of many lanterns and torches 
 burning together. Toward this spot he pushed his way, 
 calling to the people in their own tongue to let him pass or 
 sweeping them aside and ploughing through. In his deli- 
 rious excitement his strength seemed to be supernatural 
 and men were flung away as if they had been children. 
 
 At length he reached a place where a narrow lane, open- 
 ing on to a square, was blocked by a line of soldiers, who 
 were coming and going with the glare of the torchlight on 
 their faces. Here the monotonous noises of the crowd 
 behind him were pierced by sharp cries, mingled with 
 screams. Perspiration was pouring down Gordon's neck by 
 this time and he stopped to see where he was. He was at 
 the big gate of El Azhar. 
 
 On leaving the Citadel, Colonel Macdonald had taken 
 two sqtiadrons with him, telling the Lieutenant-Colonel com- 
 manding the regiment to follow with the rest. 
 
 " Half of these will be enough for this job and we'll 
 clear the rascals out like rats," he said. 
 
 The Governor of the city, a small man in European 
 dress, acting on the order of the Minister of the Interior 
 as Regent in the absence of the lOiedivc, had met him at the 
 University. They found the gate shut and barred against 
 them, and when the Governor called for it to be opened 
 there was no reply. Then the Colonel said : 
 
 " Omar Bey, have I your permission to force an 
 entrance ? " 
 
 Whereupon the Governor, in whom the wine of life was 
 chiefly vinegar, answered promptly: 
 
 " Colonel, I request you to do so." 
 
 A few minutes afterward a stout wooden beam was 
 brought up from somewhere and six or eight of the soldiers
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 151 
 
 laid hold of it and began to use it on the closed gate as a 
 battering ram. The gate was a strong one, clamped with 
 iron, but it was being crunched by the blows that fell on 
 it when some of the students within clambered on to the 
 top of the walls and hurled down stones on the heads of the 
 soldiers. 
 
 One of them was a young boy of not more than fourteen 
 years, and while others protected themselves by hiding 
 behind the coping stones, he exposed his whole body to the 
 troops by standing on the very crest of the parapet. The 
 windows of the houses around were full of faces and from 
 one that was nearly opposite to the gate came the shrill 
 cry of a woman, calling to the boy to go back. But in the 
 clamour of the noises he heard nothing or in the fire of his 
 spirit he did not heed, for he continued to hurl down every- 
 thing that came to his hand, until Colonel Macdonald com- 
 manded the troops to dismount with rifles, and said: 
 
 " Stop that young devil up there ! " 
 
 At the next moment there was the crack of a dozen rifles, 
 and then the boy on the parapet swayed aside, lurched for- 
 ward, and fell into the street. The Colonel was giving 
 orders that he should be taken up and carried away when 
 the woman's cry was heard again, this time in a frenzied 
 shriek, and at the next instant the soldiers had to make 
 way for the mightiest thing* on earth, an outraged mother 
 in the presence of her dead. 
 
 The woman, who had torn the black veil from her face, 
 lifted the boy's head on to her breast and cried : " My God ! 
 My good God ! My boy ! Ali ! AH ! " But just then the 
 gate gave way with a crash and the Colonel ordered one of 
 the squadrons to ride into the courtyard of the mosque, 
 where five thousand of the students and their professors 
 could be seen squinning in dense masses like ants on an 
 upturned ant-hill. 
 
 The soldiers were forcing their horses through the 
 crowds and beating with the flat of their swords when two 
 or three shots were fired within, and it became certain that 
 some of the students were using firearms. At that the bull- 
 dog in the British Colonel got the better of the man and
 
 152 THE ^yHITE PROPHET 
 
 he wanted to shout a command to his men to use the edge 
 of their weapons and clear the place at any cost, but the 
 shrill cry of the mother over her dead boy drowned his thick 
 voice. 
 
 " He is dead ! They have killed him ! My only child ! 
 His father died last week. God took him, and now I have 
 nobody. Ali, come back to me ! AH ! Ali ! " 
 
 " Take that yelping b away," shouted the Colonel, 
 
 ripping out an oath of impatience, and that was the moment 
 when Gordon came up. 
 
 What he did then he could never afterward remember, 
 but what others saw was that with the spring of a tiger he 
 leaped up to Macdonald, laid hold of him by the collar of 
 his khaki jacket, dragged him from the saddle, flung him 
 headlong on to the ground and stamped on him as if he 
 had been a poisonous snake. 
 
 In another moment there would have been no more Mac- 
 donald, but just then, while the soldiers, recognising their 
 first staff ofiicer, stood dismayed, not knowing what it was 
 their duty to do, there came over the sibilant hiss of the 
 crowd the loud clangour of the hoofs of galloping horses, 
 and the native people laid hold of Gordon and carried him 
 away. 
 
 His great strength was now gone, and he felt himself 
 being dragged out of the hard glare of the light into the 
 shadow of a side street where he was thrust into a carriage, 
 and held down in it by somebody who was saying: 
 
 "Lie still, my brother! Lie still! Lie still!" 
 
 For one instant longer he heard deafening shouts 
 through the carriage glass, over the rumble of the moving 
 •wheels, and then a blank darkness fell on him for a time 
 and he knew no more. 
 
 When he recovered consciousness his mind had swung 
 back, with no memory of anything between, to the mo- 
 ment when he was leaving the General's house, and he was 
 saying to himself again: ''I must go back. She may 
 curse me, but I cannot leave her alone. I cannot — I will 
 not." 
 
 Then he was aware of a voice — it was the quavering
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 153 
 
 voice of an old man and seemed to come out of a toothless 
 mouth — saying : 
 
 " Be careful, Michael ! His poor hand is injured. We 
 must send for the Surgeon." 
 
 He opened his eyes and saw that he was being carried 
 through a quiet courtyard where he could hear the footsteps 
 of the men who bore him and see by the light of a smoking 
 lantern the fagade of a church. Then he heard the same 
 quavering voice say : 
 
 " Take him up to the salamlik, my brother," and then 
 there was a jerk and a jolt and he lost consciousness again. 
 
 He was lying on a bed in a dimly lighted room when 
 memory returned and the events of the day unrolled them- 
 selves before him. He made an effort to raise himself on 
 his elbows, but in his weakness he fell back, and after a 
 while he dropped into a delirious sleep. In this sleep he 
 saw first his mother and then Helena, and then Helena and 
 again his mother — everything and everybody else being 
 quite blotted out. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Soox after sunset Lady Xuneham had taken her last 
 dose of medicine, and had got into bed, when the Consul- 
 General came into her room. He had the worn and jaded 
 look by which she knew that the day had gone heavily with 
 him, and she waited for him to tell her how and why. With 
 a face full of the majesty of suffering he told her what had 
 happened, describing the scene in the General's office and 
 all the circumstances whereby matters had been brought to 
 such a tragic pass. 
 
 " It was pitiful," he said. " The General went too far — 
 much too far — and the sight of Gordon's white face and 
 trembling lips was more than I could bear." 
 
 His voice thickened as he spoke, and it seemed to the 
 mother at that moment as if the pride of the father in his 
 son. which he had hidden so many years in the sealed cham-
 
 154 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 ber of his iron soul, had only come up at length that she 
 might see it die. 
 
 " It's all over now, I suppose, and we must make the 
 best of it. lie promised so well, though ! Alwaj's did — ever 
 since he was a boy. If one's children could only remain 
 children! The pity of it! Good-uight! Good-night, 
 Janet!" 
 
 She had listened to him without speaking and without 
 a tear coming into her eyes, and she answered his good- 
 night in a low but steady voice. Soon afterward the gong 
 sounded in the hall, and as she lay in her bed she knew that 
 he would be dining alone — one of the great men of the 
 world and one of the loneliest. 
 
 Meantime Fatimah, tidying up the room for the night 
 and sniffling audibly, was talking as much to herself as to 
 her mistress. At one moment she was excusing the Consul- 
 General, at the next she was excusing Gordon. Lady Nune- 
 ham let her talk on and gave no sign until darkness fell 
 and the moment came for the Egyptian woman also to get 
 into her bed. Then the old lady said: 
 
 " Open the door of this room, Fatimah," pointing to a 
 room on her right. 
 
 Fatimah did so, without saying a word, and then she 
 lay down, blowing her nose demonstratively as if trying to 
 drown other noises. 
 
 From her place on her pillow the old lady could now see 
 into the adjoining chamber and through its two windows 
 on to the Nile. A bright moon had risen, and she lay a 
 long time looking into the silvery night. 
 
 Somewhere in the dead waste of the early morning the 
 Egyptian woman thought she heard somebody calling her, 
 and rising in alarm she found that her mistress had left 
 her bed and was speaking in a toneless voice in the next 
 room. 
 
 "Fatimah! Are you awake? Isn't the boy very restless 
 to-night ? He throws his arms out in his sleep and uncov- 
 ers little Ilafiz, too." 
 
 She was standing in her night dress and lace night-cap 
 with the moon shining in her face by the side of one of the
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 155 
 
 two beds the room contained, tug-ging at its eiderdown 
 coverlet. Her eyes had the look of eyes that did not see, 
 but she stood up firmly and seemed to have become younger 
 and stronger — so swiftly had her spirit carried her back in 
 sleep to the woman she used to be. 
 
 " Oh, my heart, no," said Fatimah. " Gordon hasn't 
 slept in this room for nearly twenty years — nor Hafiz 
 neither." 
 
 At the sound of Fatimah's husky voice and the touch of 
 her moist fingers the old lady awoke. 
 
 " Oh, yes, of course," she said, and after a moment, in a 
 sadder tone, " Yes, yes." 
 
 " Come, my heart, come," said Fatimah, and taking her 
 cold and nerveless hand, she led her, now a weak old woman 
 once more, back to her bed, for the years had rolled up like 
 a tidal wave and the spell of her sweet dream was broken. 
 
 On a little table by the side of her bed stood a portrait 
 of Helena in a silver frame, and she took it up and looked 
 at it for a moment, and then the light which Fatimah had 
 switched on was put out again. After a little while there 
 was a sigh in the darkness, and after a little while longer 
 a soft, tremulous : 
 
 "Ah, well!" 
 
 IV 
 
 Helena was still in her room when the Consul-General, 
 who had been telephoned for, held an inquiry into the cir- 
 cumstances of the General's death. She was sitting with 
 her hands clasped in her lap and her eyes looking fixedly 
 before her, hardly listening, hardly hearing, while the black 
 boy darted in and out with broken and breathless messages 
 which contained the substance of what was said. 
 
 The household servants could say nothing except that, 
 following in the wake of the new prophet when he left the 
 Citadel, they had left the house by the side gate of the 
 garden without being aware of anything- that had happened 
 in the General's office. The Surgeon testified to the finding 
 of the General's body and the aide-de-camp explained that
 
 156 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 the last time lie saw his chief alive was when he was ordered 
 to call Colonel Macdonnld. 
 
 "Who was with him at that moment?" asked the 
 Consul-General. 
 
 " The Egyptian, Ishmael Ameer." 
 
 " Was there anything noticeable in their appearance and 
 demeanour ? " 
 
 " The General looked hot and indignant." 
 
 " Did you think there had been angry words between 
 them?" 
 
 " I certainly thought so, my lord." 
 
 Other witnesses there were, such as the soldier servant 
 at the door, who made a lame excuse for leaving his post 
 for a few minutes while the Egyptian was in the General's 
 office, and the sentry at the gate of the Citadel, who said 
 no one had come in after Colonel Macdonald and the cavalry 
 had passed out. Then some question of calling Helena herself 
 was promptly quashed by the Consul-General, and the 
 inquiry closed. 
 
 Hardly had the black boy delivered the last of his mes- 
 sages when there was a timid knock at Helena's door, and 
 the Army Surgeon came into the room. He was a small 
 man with an uneasy manner, married, and having a family 
 of grown-up girls who were understood to be a cause of 
 anxiety to him. 
 
 " I regret — I deeply regret to tell you, Miss Graves, that 
 your father's death has been due to heart-failure, the result 
 of undue excitement. You will do me the justice — I am 
 sure you will do me the justice to remember that I repeat- 
 edly warned the General of the danger of over-exciting 
 himself, but unfortunately his temperament was such " 
 
 The Consul-General's deep voice in the adjoining room 
 seemed to interrupt the Surgeon, and making a visible call 
 on his resolution he came closer to Helena and said: 
 
 " I have not mentioned my previous knowledge of 
 organic trouble. Lord Nuneham asked some searching ques- 
 tions, Vjut the promise I made to your father " 
 
 Again the Consul-General's voice interrupted him, and 
 with a flicker of fear on his face he said:
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 157 
 
 " Now that things have turned out so unhappily it 
 might perhaps be awkward for me if — In short, my dear 
 Miss Graves, I think I may rely on you not to — Thank 
 you, thank you ! " he said, as Helena, understanding his 
 anxiety, shook her head. 
 
 " I thought it would relieve you to receive my assurance 
 that death was due to natural causes only — purely natural. 
 It's true I thought for a moment that perhaps there had 
 also been violence " 
 
 "Violence?" said Helena. 
 
 "Don't let me alarm you. It was only a passing im- 
 pression and I should be sorry, very sorry " 
 
 But just at that moment, when a new thought was pass- 
 ing through the stormy night of Helena's mind like a shaft 
 of deadly lightning, the Chaplain of the Forces came into 
 the room and the Surgeon left it. 
 
 The Chaplain was a well-nurtured person who talked 
 comfort out of a full stomach with the expansiveness which 
 sometimes comes to clergy who live long amongst soldiers. 
 
 "I have come to say, my dear young lady, that I place 
 myself entirely at your service. With your permission I 
 will charge myself with all the sad and necessary duties. 
 So sudden! So unexpected! How true that in the midst 
 of life we are in death ! " 
 
 There was more coin from the same mint, and then the 
 shaft of deadly lightning as before. 
 
 " It is perhaps the saddest fact of death in this Eastern 
 climate that burial follows so closely after it. As there 
 seems to be no sufficient reason to believe that the General's 
 death has been due to any but natural causes, it will prob- 
 ably be to-morrow. I say it will probably " 
 
 " Sufficient ? " said Helena, and with a new poison at 
 her heart she hurried away to her father's room. 
 
 She found the General where they had placed him, on 
 his own bed and in his uniform. His eyes were now closed, 
 his features were composed, and everything about him was 
 suggestive of a peaceful end. 
 
 While she was standing by the bed in the gloomy, echo- 
 less chamber, the Consul-General came in and stood beside
 
 158 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 her. Thoiigh he faintly simulated his natui'al composure 
 he was deeply shaken. For a moment he looked down at 
 his dead friend in silence, while his eyelids blinked and his 
 lips trembled. Then he took Helena's hand, and drawing 
 her aside he said : 
 
 " This is a blow to all of us, my child, but to you it is 
 a great and terrible one." 
 
 She did not reply, but stood with her dry eyes looking 
 straight before her. 
 
 " I have made strict inquiry and I am satisfied — entirely 
 satisfied — that your father died by the visitation of God." 
 
 Still she did not speak and after a moment he spoke 
 again. 
 
 " It is true that the man Ishmael Ameer was the last 
 to be with him, but what happened at their interview it 
 would be useless to ask — dangerous, perhaps, in the present 
 state of public feeling." 
 
 She listened with complete self-possession and strong 
 hold of her feelings, though her bosom heaved and her 
 breathing was audible. 
 
 " So let us put away painful thoughts, Helena. After 
 all, your father's end was an enviable one, and harder for 
 us than for him, you know." 
 
 He looked steadily for a moment at her averted face and 
 then said, in a husky voice: 
 
 " I'm sorry Lady Nuneham is so much of an invalid that 
 she cannot come to see you. This is the moment when a 
 mother " 
 
 He stopped without finishing what he had intended to 
 say, and then he said : 
 
 " I'm still more sorry that one who " 
 
 Again he stopped, and then in a low, smothered, scarcely 
 audible voice, he said, hurriedly : 
 
 " But that is all over now. Good-night, my child ! God 
 help you ! " 
 
 Helena was standing where the Consul-General had left 
 her, fighting hard against a fearful thought which had only 
 vaguely taken shape in her mind, when the black boy came 
 back with his mouth full of news.
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 159 
 
 The bell of the telephone had rung furiously for the 
 English lord and he had gone away hurriedly, his horses 
 galloping through the g'ate; there had been a riot at El 
 Azhar; a boy had been shot; a hundred students had been 
 killed with swords; the cavalry were clearing the streets, 
 and the people were trooping in thousands into the great 
 mosque of the Sultan Hakim, where the new prophet was 
 preaching to them. 
 
 Helena listened to the terrible story as to some far-off 
 event which in the tempest of her own trouble did not con- 
 cern her, and then she sent the boy away. Gordon had 
 been right — plainly right — from the first, but what did it 
 matter now? 
 
 Some hours passed, and again and again the black boy 
 came back to the room with fresh news and messages, first 
 to say that her supper was served, next that her bedroom 
 was ready, and finally, with shamefaced looks and a face 
 blubbered over with tears, to explain the cause of his ab- 
 sence from the house when the tragic incident happened. 
 He had followed the crowd out of the Citadel, and only 
 when he found himself at the foot of the hill had he thought. 
 " Who is to take care of lady while Mosie is away ? " Then 
 he had run back fast, very fast, but he was too late — it was 
 all over. 
 
 "Will lady ever forgive Mosie? Will lady like Mosie 
 any more ? " 
 
 Helena comforted the little twisted and tortured soul 
 witli some words of cheer and then sent him to bed. But 
 with a sad longing in h.is big eyes and the look of a dumb 
 creature that wanted to lick her hand, he came back to say 
 he could not sleep in his own room because death was in 
 the house, and might he sit on the floor where lady was and 
 keep her company? 
 
 Touched by the tender bit of human nature that was 
 tearing the big little soul of the black boy who worshipped 
 her, Helena went back to her own bedroom, and then a grin 
 of delight passed over Mosie's ugly face, and he said : 
 
 " Never mind ! It's nothing ! Lady will forget all 
 about it to-morrow. !N"ow lady will lie down and sleep."
 
 160 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Helena put out the light in her room, and sitting by the 
 open window she looked long into the moonlight that lay 
 over the city. At one moment she heard the clatter of 
 horses' hoofs — Macdonald's cavalry were returning to the 
 Citadel after their efforts in the interests of peace and 
 order. At intervals she heard the ghafirs (watchmen) who 
 cried "Wahhed!" (God is One) in the silent streets below. 
 Constantly she looked across to the barracks that stood at 
 the edge of the glistening Xile, and at every moment the 
 cruel core in her heart grew yet more hard. 
 
 Why had not Gordon come to her? He must know of 
 her father's death by this time — why was he not there? 
 Why had he not written to her at all events? It was true 
 they had parted in anger, but what of that? He had never 
 loved her or he would be with her now. She had done well 
 to drive him away from her, and thank God she would 
 never see him again ! 
 
 The moon died out, a cold breath passed thi'ough the 
 air, the city seemed to yawn in its sleep, the dawn came 
 with its pale pink streamers and with its joyous birds — the 
 happy, heart-breaking children of the air — twittering in the 
 eaves, and then the pride and hatred of her wounded heart 
 broke down utterly. 
 
 She wanted Gordon now as she had never wanted him 
 before. She wanted the sound of his voice, she wanted the 
 touch of his hand, she wanted to lay her head on his breast 
 like a child and hear him tell her that it would all be well. 
 
 She found a hundred excuses for him in as many min- 
 utes. He was a prisoner — how could he leave his quarters? 
 They might be keeping him under close arrest — how could 
 he get away? Perhaps they had never even told him of her 
 father's death — how could he write to her about it? 
 
 In the fever of her fresh thought she decided that she 
 herself would tell him, and in the tumult of her confused 
 brain she never doubted that he would come to her. Regu- 
 lations? They would count for nothing. He was brave, he 
 was fearless, he would find a way. Already she could see 
 him flinging open the door of her room, and she could feel 
 herself flying into his arms.
 
 *'. 
 
 r;aS&*- 
 
 •JJ 
 
 — _>fcA^ ^ ^ _ _ , . 
 
 [Page 101.] 
 
 "'Oh, Allah, Most High, Most Merciful, make lady sleep!'"
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 161 
 
 Thus with a yearning and choking heart, in the vacant 
 stiUness of the early dawn, she sat down to write to Gordon. 
 This is what she wrote: 
 
 " Six o'clock, Sunday morning. 
 
 " Dearest: The greatest sorrow I have ever known — God, 
 our good God, has taken my beloved father. 
 
 " He loved you and was always so proud of you. He 
 thought there was nobody like you. I try to think how it 
 all happened at the end, and I cannot. 
 
 " Forgive me for what I said yesterday. It seems you 
 were right about everything, and everybody else was wrong. 
 But that doesn't matter now — nothing matters. 
 
 " I want you. I have nobody else. I am quite alone. 
 God help me ! Come to me soon " 
 
 Unconsciously she was speaking the words aloud as she 
 wrote them, and sobbing as she wrote. Suddenly she be- 
 came aware of another voice in the adjoining room. She 
 thought it might be Gordon's voice, and catching her breath 
 she rose to listen. Then in a muffled, broken, tear-laden 
 tone, these words came to her through the wall : 
 
 " Allah, most High, most Merciful, make lady sleep. 
 Make lady sleep, O Allah, most High, most Merciful ! " 
 
 Her black boy had been lying all night like a dog on the 
 mat behind her door. 
 
 Before Gordon opened his eyes that morning he heard 
 the tinkling of cymbals and the sweet sound of the voices 
 of boys singing in a choir, and he felt for a moment as if 
 he were carried back to his school at Eton, where the morn- 
 ing dawned on green fields to the joyous carolling of birds. 
 
 Then he looked and saw that he was lying in a little 
 yellow-curtained room which was full of the gentle rays of 
 the early sun, and opened on a garden in a quiet courtyard, 
 with one date tree in the middle and the fagade of a Chris- 
 tian Church at the opposite side. In the disarray of his
 
 162 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 senses he could not at first remember what had happened 
 to him and he said aloud: 
 
 "Where am I?" 
 
 Then a cheery voice by his side said : " Ah, you are 
 awake?" and an elderly man Avith a good, simple, homely 
 face looked down at him and smiled. 
 
 "What place is this?" asked Gordon. 
 
 " This?" said the good man. " This is the house of the 
 Coptic Patriarch. And I am Michael, the Patriarch's serv- 
 ant. He brought you home in his carriage last night. Out 
 of the riots in the streets, you know. But I must tell him 
 3'ou are awake. ' Tell me the moment he opens his eyes, 
 Michael,' he said. No time to lose, though. Listen! 
 They're at matins. He'll be going into church soon. Lie 
 still ! I'll be back presently." 
 
 Then Gordon remembered everything. The events of 
 the night before rose before him in a moment and he drank 
 of memory's very dregs. He had closed his eyes again with 
 a groan when he heard shuffling footsteps coming into the 
 room, and a husk.y, kindly voice, interrupted by gusty 
 breathing, saying cheerfully : 
 
 "God be praised! Michael tells me you are awake and 
 well." 
 
 The Coptic Patriarch was a little man in a black turban 
 and a kind of black cassock, very old, nearly ninety years 
 of age, and with a saintly face in which the fires of life 
 had kindled no evil passions. 
 
 " Don't speak yet, my son. Don't exhaust yourself. 
 The Surgeon said you were to have rest — rest and sleep 
 above all things. He came last night to dress your poor 
 hand. It was wounded in the cruel fight at El Azhar. I 
 was passing at the moment and the people put you into my 
 carriage. ' Save him, for the love of God,' they said. ' He 
 is our brother and he will be taken.' So I brought you 
 home, seeing you were hurt and not knowing what else to 
 do with you. But now I am glad and thankful, having read 
 the newspapers this morning and learned that you were in 
 great peril — No, no, my son — lie still." 
 
 Gordon made an effort to raise himself on his elbow, but
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 163 
 
 resting his weight on his left hand and finding it was closely 
 bandaged and gave him pain, he was easily pushed back to 
 his pillow, 
 
 " Lie still until the Surgeon comes. Michael has gone 
 for him. He will be here immediately. A good man — make 
 yourself sure about that. He will be secret. He will say 
 nothing." 
 
 Then there came through the open window the sound of 
 footsteps on the gravel path of the garden, and the old 
 Patriarch, leaning over Gordon, said in the same husky, 
 kindly whisper: 
 
 " They are coming, and I must go into chui'ch. But 
 don't be afraid. You did bravely and nobly, and no harm 
 shall come to you while you are here." 
 
 Hardly knowing what to understand, but choking with 
 confusion and shame, Gordon heard the old man's shuffling 
 step going out of the room, and, a moment afterward, the 
 firm tread of the Surgeon coming into it. 
 
 The Surgeon, who was a middle-aged man, a Copt, with 
 a bright face and a hearty manner, took Gordon's right arm 
 t© feel his pulse, and said : 
 
 "Better! Much better! Last night the condition was 
 so serious that I found it necessary to inject morphia. 
 There was the hand, too, you know. The third finger had 
 been badly hurt, and I was compelled to take the injured 
 part away. This morning, however " 
 
 But Gordon's impatience could restrain itself no longer. 
 " Doctor," he said, clutching at the Surgeon's sleeve, " close 
 the door and tell me what has happened." 
 
 The Surgeon repeated the reports which appeared in the 
 English newspapers — about the clearing out of El Azhar, 
 the shooting of the boy, the killing of a hundred students 
 by the sword and the imprisonment of nearly four hundred 
 others. And then, thinking that the drug he had adminis- 
 tered was still beclouding his patient's brain, he spoke of 
 Gordon's own share in the bad work of the night before — 
 how he had refused to obey instructions and been ordered 
 under open arrest to return to his own quarters ; how he had 
 defied authority, and, making his way to the University, had
 
 164 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 perpetrated a violent personal attack on the officer com- 
 manding the troops there. 
 
 " I know nothing about it, you know, but what Colonel 
 Macdonald has communicated to the press — contrary, I 
 should think, to Army regulations and all sense of hon- 
 our and decency — but he says you have been guilty of a 
 three-fold offence, first mutiny, next desertion, and finally 
 gross assault on an officer while in the execution of his 
 duty." 
 
 Gordon had hardly listened to this part of the Surgeon's 
 story, but his face betrayed a feverish eagerness when the 
 Surgeon said : 
 
 " There is something else, but I hardly know whether I 
 ought to tell you." 
 
 " What is it ? " asked Gordon, though he knew full well 
 what the Surgeon was about to say. 
 
 " It occurred last night, too, but the Consul-General has 
 managed to keep it out of the morning newspapers. I feel 
 I ought to tell you, though, and if I could be sure you would 
 take it calmly " 
 
 " Tell me." 
 
 " General Graves is dead. He was found dead on the 
 floor of his office. His daughter found him." 
 
 Gordon covered his face and asked, in a voice which he 
 tried in vain to render natural, " What do they say he 
 died of?" 
 
 "God!" said the Surgeon. "That's what the Moham- 
 medans call it, and I don't know that science can find a 
 better name." 
 
 Suffocating with the sickness of fear, Gordon said: 
 "What about his daughter?" 
 
 " Bearing herself with a strange stoicism, they say. 
 Not a tear on her face, they tell me. But if I know any- 
 thing of human nature she is suffering all the more for that, 
 poor girl ! " 
 
 Gordon threw off the counterpane and rose in bed. " I'm 
 better now," he said. " Let me get up. I must go out." 
 
 "Impossible!" said the Surgeon. "You are far too 
 weak to go into the streets. Besides, you would never reach
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 165 
 
 your destination. Macdonald would take care of that. 
 Haven't. I told you? He has given it out that the penalty 
 of military law for the least of your offences is — well, 
 death ! " 
 
 Gordon dropped back in bed and the Surgeon continued: 
 " But if you have a message to send to any one, why not 
 write it? Michael will see that it reaches safe hands. I'll 
 send him in. He's cooking some food for you and I'll tell 
 him to bring paper and pens." 
 
 With that the Surgeon left him, and a moment later the 
 serving-man's cheery face came into the room behind a 
 smoking basin of savoury broth. 
 
 "Here it is! You're to drink it at once," he said, and 
 then, taking a writing pad from under his arm-pit, he laid 
 it with pens and ink on a table by the bed, saying the Doctor 
 had told him he was to deliver a letter. 
 
 Gordon replied that he would ring when he was ready, 
 whereupon Michael said: "Good! You'll take your broth 
 first. It will put some strength into you," and he smiled and 
 nodded his simple face out of the room. 
 
 In vain Gordon tried to write to Helena. His first im- 
 pulse was to tell her all, to make a clean breast of every- 
 thing : " Dearest Helena : I am in the deepest sorrow and 
 shame, but I cannot live another hour without letting you 
 know that your dear father " 
 
 But that was impossible. At a moment when one great 
 blow had fallen on her it was impossible to inflict another. 
 If she suffered now when she thought her father had died 
 by the hand of God, how much more would she suffer if 
 she heard that his death had been due to violence, to foul 
 play, to the hand of the man who said he loved her? 
 
 Destroying his first attempt, Gordon began again : " My 
 poor, dear Helena: I am inexpressibly shocked and grieved 
 by the news of " 
 
 But that was impossible also. Its hypocrisy of conceal- 
 ment seemed to blister his very soul. He tried again and 
 yet again, but not a word would come that was not cruel or 
 false. Then a great trembling came over him as he realised 
 that being what he was to Helena, and she being what she 
 12
 
 166 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 was to her father, he was struck dumb before her as by the 
 hand of heaven. 
 
 Hours passed, and, though the day was bright, a deep, 
 impenetrable darkness seemed to close around him. At cer- 
 tain moments he was vaguely conscious of noises in the 
 streets outside, a great scuttling and scurrying of feet, a 
 loud clamour of tongues chopping and ripping the air, the 
 barking and bleating of a mob in full flight, and then the 
 clattering of horses' hoofs and the whistling and shouting 
 of soldiers. 
 
 Michael came back of himself at last, having waited in 
 vain to be summoned, and he was full of news. All busi- 
 ness in Cairo had been suspended, the Xotables had met in 
 the Opera Square to condemn the action of the British Army, 
 a vast multitude of Egyptians had joined them, and they had 
 gone up to the house of the Grand Cadi to ask him to call 
 on the Sultan to protest to England. 
 
 "Well, well?" said Gordon. 
 
 " The Cadi was afraid, and hearing the crowd were 
 coming, he barricaded his doors and windows." 
 
 " And then ? " 
 
 "They wrecked his house, shouting: 'Down with the 
 Turks ! ' ' Long live Egypt ! ' But the Cadi himself was 
 inside, sir, speaking on the telephone to the officer command- 
 ing on the Citadel, and they came galloping up and took 
 a hundred and fifty prisoners." 
 
 In spite of his better feelings Gordon felt a certain joy 
 in the bad news Michael brought him. He had been right ! 
 Everj'body would see that he had been right! What, then, 
 was his duty? His duty was to deliver himself up and say: 
 " Here I am ! Court-martial me now if you will — if you 
 dare ! " 
 
 Plain, practical sense seemed to tell him that he ought 
 to go to the Agency, where his father (the highest British 
 authority in Egypt, even though a civil one), seeing the 
 turn events had taken, the chaos into which affairs had fallen, 
 and the ruin which Macdonald's brutality threatened, and 
 having witnessed the utterly illegal circumstances which 
 had attended his arrest, would place him in command, pend- 
 
 i
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 167 
 
 ing instructions from the War Office, and trust to his in- 
 fluence with the populace to restore peace. He could do it^ 
 too. Why not? 
 
 But the General? A sickening pang of hope shot 
 through him as he told himself that no one knew he had 
 killed the General, that even if he had done so it had only- 
 been in self-defence, that the veriest poltroon would have 
 done what he did, and that the mind that counted such an 
 act as crime was morbid and diseased. 
 
 Helena ? She thought her father had died by the visi- 
 tation of God — why could he not leave her at that ? She 
 was suffering, though, and it was for him to comfort 
 her. He would fly to her side. All their differences 
 would be over now. She, too, would see that he had 
 been right and that her jealousy had been mistaken and 
 then death with its mighty wing would sweep away every- 
 thing else. 
 
 Thus in the blind labouring of hope he threw off the 
 counterpane again and got out of bed, whereupon Michael, 
 whose garrulous tongue had been going ever since he came 
 into the room, first asking for the letter which the Surgeon 
 had told him to deliver, then protesting in plaintive tones 
 that the broth was untouched and now it was cold, laid 
 hold of him and said: 
 
 " Xo, brother, no ! You cannot get up to-day. Doctor 
 says you must not, and if you attempt to do so I am. to 
 tell the Patriarch." 
 
 But Michael's voice only whistled by Gordon's ear like 
 the wind in a desert sand-storm, and seeing that Gordon 
 was determined to dress, the good fellow fled off to fetch 
 his master. 
 
 Hardly had Michael gone when the barrenness of his 
 hope was borne down on Gordon's mind, and he was asking 
 himself by what title he could go out as a champion of the 
 right, being so deeply in the wrong. Even if everything 
 happened as he expected, if his threefold offence against the 
 letter of military law were overlooked in the light of his 
 obedience to its spirit, if the Consul-General were able to 
 place him in command, pending instructions from the War
 
 168 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Office, and if he were capable of restoring order in Cairo by 
 virtue of his influence with the inhabitants — what then ? 
 
 What of his conscience, which had clamoured so loud, 
 in relation to his own conduct ? Could he continue to plead 
 extenuation of his own offence on the ground of the General's 
 unjustifiable and unsoldierly conduct? Or to tell himself 
 that what he had done in the General's house had been in 
 self-defence? Had it been in self-defence that he had re- 
 turned to the Citadel after he was ordered to his own 
 quarters ? Or that he had hurled hot and insulting words at 
 the General, such as no man could listen to without loss of 
 pride or even self-respect ? 
 
 " No, no, by God, no," he thought. 
 
 And then Helena ? With what conscience could he com- 
 fort her in her sufferings, being himself the cause of them? 
 With what sincerity could his tongue speak if his pen 
 refused to write? And if he juggled himself into deceiving 
 her, could he go on, as his affections would tempt him to 
 do — now more than ever since her father was gone and she 
 was quite alone — to carry out the plans he had made for 
 them before these fearful events befell? 
 
 " Impossible ! utterly impossible ! " he told himself. 
 
 A grim vision rose before him of a shameful life, cor- 
 rupted by hypocrisy and damned by deceit, in which he was 
 married to Helena, having succeeded to her father's rank 
 and occupying his house, his room, his office, with one sight 
 standing before his eyes always — the sight of the General's 
 body lying on the floor where he had flung it. 
 
 " O God, save me from that," he thought. 
 
 Gordon dropped back to the bed and sat on the edge of 
 it, doubled up, and with his hands covering his face. How 
 long he sat there he never knew, for his mind was dead- 
 ened to all sense of time, and only at intervals of lucidity 
 was he partly conscious of what was going on outside the 
 little pulseless place in which he was hidden away while the 
 world went on without him. 
 
 At one moment he heard the bells of the Coptic Cathe- 
 dral ringing for evensong; then the light pattering as of 
 rain when the people passed over the pavement into the
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 169 
 
 church; and then suddenly there came a sound that seemed 
 to beat on his very soul. 
 
 It was the firing of the guns at the Citadel, and as a 
 soldier he knew what they were — they were the minute-guns 
 for the General's funeral. Boom — boom! He could see what 
 was taking place as plainly as if his eyes beheld it, the 
 square of the mosque lined up with troops — two battalions 
 of Infantry, one regiment of Cavalry and two batteries of 
 Artillery. Boom — hoom! The coffin on the gun-carriage 
 covered with the silken Union Jack and with the General's 
 sword and his plumed white helmet on the top of all. 
 Boom — hoom! The General's charger immediately behind 
 the body, with his spurred boots in the stirrups reversed. 
 Boom — boom — boom! The officers of the Army of Occupa- 
 tion drawn up by the door of the General's house, every one of 
 them that could be spared from duty except himself, who 
 ought, above all others, to be there. Then the carriages of 
 the Consul-General and of the Egyptian Prime Minister, 
 and then Boom — boom — boom — boom! as the cortege moved 
 away, to the slow skirling of the funeral march, through 
 the square of the mosque and under the gate of the old 
 fortress. 
 
 The firing ceased, and in the dumb emptiness of the air 
 Gordon saw another sight that tore at his heart still more 
 terribly. It was a room in the General's house, dark and 
 blind with curtains drawn, and Helena sitting there, alone 
 for the first time, and no one to comfort her. Seeing this, 
 and thinking of the barrier that was between them, of the 
 blood that was dividing them, and that they could never 
 again come together, all his manhood went down at last 
 and he burst into tears like a boy. 
 
 " Forgive me, Helena ! I am alone, too ! Forgive me, 
 forgive me ! " 
 
 Then over the sound of his own voice he heard the inno- 
 cent voices of the choir boys singing their evening hymn: 
 " Remove my sin from before Thy sight, O God ! " and at 
 the next moment he was conscious of an old and wrinkled 
 hand being laid on his bare arm and of somebody by his 
 side who was saying huskily:
 
 170 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Peace, my son ! God is merciful ! " 
 Then the sharp rattle of three volleys of musketry com- 
 ing from far away. 
 
 The body of the General had been committed to the grave. 
 
 VI 
 
 Helena had been in the act of sending out her letter 
 "when the General's aide-de-camp came in with news of the 
 doings of the night before — the riot at El Azhar, Gordon's 
 assault on Colonel Macdonald, and then his disappearance, 
 before the troops could recover from their surprise, as sud- 
 denly and unaccountably as if he had been swallowed up 
 by the earth. 
 
 " Of course Macdonald acted like a brute," said the 
 young Lieutenant, " and the Colonel did exactly what might 
 have been expected of him under the circumstances. He 
 would have done the same if the offender had been the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief himself. But now he has to pay the pen- 
 alty and it cannot be a light one. Macdonald is scouring 
 the city to find him — every nook and corner of the Moham- 
 medan quarter. He has two motives for doing so, too — 
 ambition and revenge." 
 
 As Helena tore up her letter and dropped it bit by bit 
 into the waste-paper basket, she felt as if the last of her 
 hopes dropped with it. But they rose again with the 
 thought that though Gordon might be in danger he could 
 not be afraid, and that his love for her was so great, so 
 unconquerable, that it would bring him back to her now, in 
 her time of trouble, in the teeth of death itself. 
 
 " He'll come — I'm sure he'll come," she thought. 
 
 In this confidence she sat in the semi-darkness of her 
 room during the preparations for the military funeral, hear- 
 ing all that was being done outside with that supernatural 
 acuteness which comes to the bereaved — the marching of 
 troops, the rolling of the gun-carriage, and the arrival of 
 friends, as well as the soul-crushing booming of the minute- 
 
 I
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 171 
 
 gun. She was waiting to be told that Gordon was there, and 
 was listening for his name as her black boy darted in and 
 out with whispered news of Egyptian Ministers, English ■ 
 Advisers, inspectors and judges, and finally the Consul-Gen- 
 eral himself. 
 
 When the last moment came, and the band of the Guards 
 had begun to play " Toll for the Brave," and it was certain 
 that Gordon had not come, her heart sank low; but then 
 she told herself that if he ran the risk of arrest, that was 
 reason enough why he should not show himself at the 
 fortress. 
 
 " He will be at the chapel instead," she thought, and 
 though she had not intended to be present at the funeral 
 she now determined that she would do so. 
 
 She was put into a carriage with the Consul-General, 
 and sat by his side without speaking, merely looking 
 through the windows at the crowds that stood in the streets, 
 quietly, silently, but without much grief on their faces, and 
 listening to the slow squirling of the " Dead March " and 
 the roll of the muffled drums over the dull rumbling of the 
 closed coach. 
 
 When they reached the cemetery in the desolate quarter 
 of old Cairo, and the band stopped and the drumming 
 ceased, and she stepped out of the carriage, and the breath- 
 ing silence of the open air was broken by the tremendous 
 words, " I am the Resurrection and the Life," she was sure, 
 as she took the arm of the Consul-General and walked with 
 him over the crackling gravel to the door of the chapel, that 
 the moment she crossed its threshold the first person she 
 would see would be Gordon. 
 
 Her heart sank lower than ever when she realised that 
 he was not there, and after she had taken her seat and the 
 chill chapel had filled up behind her and the service began, 
 she tried in vain, save at moments of poignant memory, to 
 fix her mind on the awful errand that had brought her. 
 
 " He will be at the graveside," she thought. No one 
 would arrest him at a place like that. English soldiers were 
 English gentlemen, and if the Arab nobleman in the desert 
 could allow the enemy who had stumbled into his tent at
 
 172 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 night to get clear away in the morning, Gordon would be 
 allowed to stand by the grave of his friend and General and 
 BO one would know he was there. 
 
 When the short service was over and the Consul-General 
 drew her hand through his arm again, and they walked 
 together over the gravel and through the grass to the open 
 grave behind the rosebushes that grew near to the wall, 
 she thoug'ht she knew she had only to raise her eyes from 
 the ground and she would see Gordon standing there, 
 shaken with sobs. 
 
 She knew, too, that the moment she saw him she would 
 break down altogether, so she kept her head low as long 
 as she could. But when the troops had formed in a rect- 
 angle, and the Chaplain had taken his place and the last 
 words had been spoken, and through a deeper hush the bugle 
 Lad led the voices of the soldiers with: 
 
 " Father, in thy sacred keeping 
 Leave me now thy servant sleeping," 
 
 and she looked up at last and saw that Gordon had not 
 come at all, she felt as if something that was soft and tender 
 within her had broken and something that was hard and 
 bitter had taken its place. 
 
 While the volleys were being fired over the grave the 
 officers of the army came up to her one by one — brave men 
 all of them, but many of them hardly able at that moment 
 to speak or see. Still she did not weep, and when the 
 Consul-General with twitching lips said, " Let us go," she 
 gave him her hand again, though it was limp and nerveless 
 now, and, under her long black glove, as cold as snow. 
 
 The blinds were drawn up in her room when she returned 
 to the Citadel, and with eyes that did not see she was star- 
 ing out on its far view of the city, the Nile, the pyramids 
 and the rolling waves of the desert beyond, when a knock 
 came to the door and the Consul-General entered. He was 
 clearly much afi'ected. His firm mouth, which often looked 
 as if it had been cast in bronze, seemed now to be blown 
 in foam.
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 173 
 
 " Helena," lie said, " the time has come to speak plainly, 
 I am sori-y. It is quite unavoidable." 
 
 After the first salutation she continued to stand by a 
 chair and to stare out of the window. 
 
 " Gordon has gone. I can no longer have any doubt 
 about that. Others, with other motives, have been trying 
 to find him and have failed. I have been trying, with better 
 purposes perhaps, but no better results." 
 
 His voice was hoarse; he was struggling to control it. 
 
 " I am now satisfied that when he left this house after 
 the scene — the painful, perhaps unsoldierly scene of his — 
 his degradation, he took the advice your father gave him 
 — to fly from Egypt and hide his shame in some other 
 country." 
 
 He paused for a moment and then said : 
 
 "It was scarcely proper advice, perhaps; but who can 
 be hot and cold, wise and angry in a moment? Whatever 
 the merits of your father's counsel, I think Gordon made 
 up his mind to follow it. Only as the conduct of a despair- 
 ing man who knew that all was over can I explain his last 
 appearance at El Azhar." 
 
 Again he paused for a moment, and then, after clearing 
 his throat, he said: 
 
 " I do not think we shall see him again. I do not think 
 I wish to see him. A military court would probably hold 
 him responsible for the blood that has been shed during the 
 past twenty-four hours, thinking the encouragement he gave 
 the populace had led them to rebel. Therefore its judgment 
 upon his ofFences as a soldier could hardly be less than — 
 than the most severe." 
 
 His voice was scarcely audible as he added: 
 
 " That would be harder for me to bear than to think 
 of him as dead. Therefore, whatever others may be doing — 
 his mother or — or yourself, I am cherishing no illusions. 
 My son is gone. His career is at an end. Let us — please 
 let us say no more on the subject." 
 
 Helena did not reply. Her bosom was stirred by her rapid 
 breathing, but she continued to stare out of the window. 
 After a moment the Consul-General said more calmly: 
 13
 
 174 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Have you any plans for the future ? " 
 
 Helena shook her head. 
 
 "No desire to remain in Egypt?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 ^* Any relatives or friends in England ? " 
 
 " None." 
 
 "Urn! All the same, I think it will he best for you to 
 return home." 
 
 Helena bowed without speaking. 
 
 " The sooner the better, perhaps." 
 
 " Very Avell." 
 
 " This is Sunday. There is a steamship from Alexan- 
 dria on Saturday — will it suit you to sail by that ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " One of my secretaries shall make arrangements and 
 see you safely aboard. Meantime, have no anxieties. Eng- 
 land will take care of your father's daughter." 
 
 Then he rose, and taking her ice-cold hand, he said : 
 
 " I think that is all. I'll come up on Saturday morning 
 to see you off. Good-bye for the present." And then, in 
 the same hoarse voice as before, looking steadfastly into 
 her face for a moment, "God bless you, my girl!" 
 
 For some minutes Helena did not move from the spot on 
 which Lord Nuneham left her. A sense of double bereave- 
 ment had fallen on her for the first time with a crushing 
 blow. That some day she would lose her father was an 
 idea to which her mind had long been accustomed, but never 
 for one moment until then — not even in the bitter hour in 
 which they had parted at the door — had she allowed herself 
 to believe that a time would come when she would have to 
 live on without Gordon. It was here now. The past and 
 the future alike were closed to her. A black curtain had 
 fallen about her life. If Gordon could not return without 
 the risk of arrest what right had she to expect him to come 
 back to her at all? He was gone. He was lost to her. She 
 was alone. 
 
 The city, which had been lying hot in the quivering sun, 
 began to grow red and hazy, and in the gathering twilight 
 Helena became conscious of criers in the streets below.
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 175 
 
 The black boy, who was always bustling about her, inter- 
 preted their cries. They were crying the funeral of the 
 students who had fallen at El Azhar. It was to take place 
 that night. Ishmael Ameer called on the people to gather 
 in the great market-place of Mohammed AH and walk up 
 by torchlight to the Arab cemetery outside the town. 
 
 "Would lady like Mosie go and see? Then Mosie come 
 back and tell lady everything," said the black boy, and in 
 the hope of being alone Helena allowed him to go. 
 
 But hardly had the boy gone when a timid knock came 
 to her door and the Army Surgeon entered the room. The 
 man's thin lips were twitching gnd he was clearly ill at 
 ease. 
 
 " Excuse me," he said, " but hearing you were soon to 
 leave for home — I thought it only fair to myself — In fact, 
 I have come to make an explanation." 
 
 " What is it ? " asked Helena, without a trace of interest 
 in her tone. 
 
 The Surgeon gnawed the ends of his moustache for an 
 instant, and then, looking uneasily at Helena, he said: 
 
 " When you come to turn things over in your mind you 
 may perhaps think I was to blame in keeping your dear 
 father's secret. His condition, however, was not so serious 
 but that under ordinary circumstances — I say ordinary cir- 
 cumstances — he might have lived five years, ten years, even 
 fifteen. The truth is, though " 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " I want to prove the sincerity of my friendship, 
 Miss Graves. I am sure you prefer that I should speak 
 plainly." 
 
 " The truth is — what ? " asked Helena, who was now 
 listening with strained attention. 
 
 " That — that your dear father's death — I am now fully 
 convinced of it — was due — partly due at all events — to cir- 
 cumstances that — that were not ordinary." 
 
 Helena's pale face turned white, but she made no answer, 
 and after a moment the Surgeon said: 
 
 "It would have been cruel to tell you this last night, 
 immediately after the shock of your bereavement, but —
 
 176 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 but now that you are going away — Besides, I spoke to 
 Lord Nuneham. I mentioned my surmises. But you know 
 what he is — a great man, undoubtedly a great man, but 
 incapable of taking counsel. Always has been, always will 
 be; we all of us find it so." 
 
 Helena, seized with an undefinable fear, was speechless, 
 but the Surgeon's blundering tongue went on : 
 
 " ' Better not speak of it,' said Lord Nuneham. ' Drop 
 it ! Don't let us weaken our case against the man and rouse 
 popular fury by an accusation we cannot possibly bring 
 home. Wait ! We'll get hold of him to better purpose by 
 and by.'" 
 
 Helena's heart was beating violently, but she only said, 
 with laboured breathing : 
 
 " Can't we dispense with all this ? You have come to 
 tell me that my father did not die from natural causes — 
 isn't that it?" 
 
 " Yes — that is to say — pardon me — we are alone ? " 
 
 Helena bowed impatiently. 
 
 " Then, to tell you the truth — I am satisfied that vio- 
 lence — as a contributing cause at all events — I looked at 
 him again this morning when — at the last moment in fact 
 — and the marks were even plainer than before." 
 
 "Marks?" 
 
 " Marks of a man's hand about the throat." 
 
 " A man's hand? " said Helena, with her lips rather than 
 with her voice. 
 
 " I thought at first it might have been the General's own 
 hand, but there was one peculiarity w^hich forbade that 
 inference." 
 
 " Tell me." 
 
 " It was the left hand, and while the thumb and the first, 
 second, and fourth fingers were plainly indicated, there was 
 no impression made by the third." 
 
 "So?" 
 
 " So I concluded that the marks about the throat must 
 have been made by somebody who had lost the third finger 
 of his left hand." 
 
 Helena gazed a long time blankly into the Surgeon's
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 177 
 
 face, until at length, frozen by fear, having said all, he tried 
 to convey the impression that he had said nothing. 
 
 " Miss Graves, I have given you pain, I feel I have. 
 And mind, I do not say certainly that the hand at your 
 father's throat was the cause of his death. It may have 
 been used merely to push him off. But if the person seen 
 last in the General's company was apparently quarrelling 
 with him — please understand, I make no accusations. 
 I have never met Ishmael Ameer. And even if it should 
 be found that he had this peculiarity — of the third finger, 
 I mean — In any case, the Consul-General will not hear 
 of an indictment, so I'm sure — I'm sure I can rely on your 
 discretion. But hearing you were going home, I felt I could 
 not allow you to think that I had permitted your dear 
 father " 
 
 The Surgeon went stammering on for some time longer, 
 but Helena did not listen, and when at last the man backed 
 himself out of her room, hugging his shallow soul with the 
 flattering thought that in following his selfish impulse he 
 had done well, she did not hear him go. 
 
 She was now sure of a fact which she had hitherto only 
 half suspected. The Egyptian had killed her father! 
 Killed him, there was no other word for it, not merely by 
 the excitement his presence engendered, but by actual vio- 
 lence. The authorities knew it, too, they knew it perfectly, 
 but they were afraid — afraid in the absence of conclusive 
 evidence to risk the breakdown of a charge against one 
 whom the people in their blindness worshipped. 
 
 The sky had grown blue and luminous by this time, the 
 stars had come out in the distant depths of the heavens, 
 and from the market-place below the ramparts of the Cita- 
 del there came up into the clear air the thick murmuring 
 of the vast multitude that had gathered there, with ten 
 thousand smoking torches, to follow the new prophet to the 
 Arab cemetery beyond the town. 
 
 When Helena thought of the Egyptian again it was with 
 an intensity of hatred she had never felt before. He had 
 not only killed her father but he had been the first cause 
 of the devilish entanglement which had led to Gordon's dis-
 
 178 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 grace. Yet he was to escape punishment for these offences, 
 he was to go on until some sin against the State had 
 brought him into the meshes of its Ministers, while her 
 father was in his grave and Gordon was in banishment and 
 she — she was sent home in her womanish helplessness and 
 shame ! 
 
 " O God ! is there no one to punish this man ? " she 
 thought, in the dark searching of her soul, while her finger- 
 nails were digging trenches in her palms and from the hard 
 clenching of her teeth her lips were bleeding. 
 
 Then suddenly, in the delirium of her hatred of the 
 Egyptian and the tragic tangle of her eri'or, while she was 
 standing alone in her desolate room, with the " Allah ! " 
 " Allah ! " of Ishmael's followers surging up from below, a 
 new feeling — a feeling she had never felt before — stirred in 
 the depths of her abased and outraged soul. 
 
 "Shall I go back to England?" she asked herself. 
 "Shall I?" 
 
 VII 
 
 As soon as Lord Nunehara reached the Agency, he went 
 up to his wife's room. The sweet old lady was sitting in 
 her dressing-gown with her face to the windows on the west, 
 while the Egyptian woman was combing out her thin white 
 hair and binding it up for the niglit. The sun was gone, 
 but the river and the sky were shining like molten gold, 
 and a faint reflected glow shone on her soft, pale cheeks. 
 
 " Ah, is it you, John ? " she said in a nervous voice, and 
 while he was taking a seat she looked at him with her deep, 
 slow, weary eyes as if waiting for an answer to a question 
 she was afraid to ask. 
 
 " Helena is going home, Janet," said the old man after 
 a moment. 
 
 "Poor girl!" 
 
 " There is a steamship on Saturday. I thought it better 
 she should sail by that." 
 
 "Poor thing! Poor darling!"
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 179 
 
 " Her will seems to be quite gone — she agrees to evcrj'- 
 thing." 
 
 " Poor Helena ! " 
 
 " I don't think she has shed a tear since her father died. 
 It is extraordinary. She startles me, almost frightens me. 
 Either she is a girl of astonishing character or else " 
 
 " She has had a great shock, poor child ! Only yesterday 
 at this time her father was with her, and now " 
 
 " True — quite true ! " 
 
 A hush fell upon all. Even Fatimah's comb was quiet. 
 It was almost as if a spirit were passing through the room. 
 At length the old lady said: 
 
 " Any news of " 
 
 " None." 
 
 " Would you tell me if there were ? " 
 
 " If you asked me — ^yes." 
 
 " My poor boy ! " 
 
 " Hafiz has inquired everywhere. Nobody knows any- 
 thing about him." 
 
 " He will come back, though, I am sure he will," said 
 Lady Nuneham with a nervous trill, and then a strange con- 
 traction passed over the Consul-General's face, and he rose 
 to go. 
 
 " We'll not speak about that again, Janet," he said, but 
 full of the sweetest and bitterest emotion that comes to 
 the human heart — the emotion of a mother when she thinks 
 of the son that is lost to her — the old lady did not hear. 
 
 " I remember that his grandfather — it was in the early 
 days of the civil war, I think — He had done something 
 against his General, I suppose " 
 
 She had been speaking for some moments when Fatimah, 
 who was standing behind, reached round to her ear and 
 said : 
 
 "His lordship has gone, my lady," and then there was 
 a sudden and deep silence. 
 
 The molten gold died out of the river and the sky, and 
 in the luminous blue twilight the old lady got into bed. 
 
 " Fatimah," she said, " do you think Doctor would allow 
 me to go up to the Citadel one day this week?"
 
 180 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Why not, if the carriage were closed and the blinds 
 down ? " 
 
 " And, Fatimah ? " 
 
 " What is it, oh, my heart ? " 
 
 " What do you think the Consul-General meant when he 
 said Helena frip^htened him?" 
 
 " I think he meant that she's one of the girls who do 
 things when they're in trouble — drown themselves, take 
 poison or something." 
 
 " My poor Helena ! My poor Gordon ! " 
 
 There was the rustling whisper of a prayer at the pillow, 
 and then, for the weary and careworn old lady, another 
 day slid into another night. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Meantime Gordon, with a heart filled with darkness, sat 
 huddled up on his bed in the little guest-room of the Coptic 
 Cathedral. On a table at his left a small green-shaded lamp 
 was burning, and on a chair at his right sat the saintly old 
 Patriarch, gently patting his bare arm and trying in vain 
 to comfort him. 
 
 " Yes, God is merciful, my son, and it is just because 
 we are such guilty creatures that our Lord came to de- 
 liver us." 
 
 " But you don't know, father, you don't know," said 
 Gordon. 
 
 " Know what, my son ? " 
 
 " You don't know w-hat reason I have to reproach my- 
 self," said Gordon; and then, catching by the sure instinct 
 of a pure heart some vague sense of Gordon's position, the 
 old man began to talk of confession, wherein the soul of 
 man lays down its sins before God and begins to feel as if 
 it had wings. 
 
 " On receiving the penitent's confession," he said, " it 
 is the duty of the Coptic priest to take his sin upon him- 
 self just as if it were his own, and if T, my son "
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 181 
 
 " But you can't I It's impossible ! God forbid it," said 
 Gordon, and then the saintly old soul, allowing that there 
 were sacred places in the heart of man which only God's 
 eye should see, spoke of atonement, whereby he that is 
 guilty of any sin may begin his journey toward repentance, 
 and be numbered at last, if his penitence be true, among 
 the living who live in God's peace. 
 
 " Why should any of us, my son, no matter how foul 
 the stain of sin we have contracted, live in the dread of 
 miscarrying for ever while we have energy to atone ? " said 
 the good old man in his worn and husky voice, and then 
 the tides of Gordon's troubled mind, which had ebbed and 
 flowed like the sea on a desolate shore under the blank dark- 
 ness of a starless night, seemed to be suddenly brightened 
 by a light from the morning. 
 
 " Father," he said, " could you send for somebody ? " 
 
 " Indeed I could — who is it ? " asked the Patriarch. 
 
 " Captain Hafiz Ali of the Egyptian Army. He can be 
 found at headquarters. Say that some one he knows well 
 wishes to see him at once." 
 
 " I'll tell Michael to take the message immediately," said 
 the Patriarch, and his shuffling old feet went off on his 
 errand. 
 
 The new light that had dawned on Gordon's mind was 
 the same as he had seen before and yet it was now quite 
 different. He would deliver himself up, as he had first in- 
 tended to do, but in humility, not in pride, in submission 
 to the will of God, not defiance of the power of man. A 
 reclaiming voice seemed to say to him : " Atone for your 
 crime! Confess everything! Die — on the gallows if need 
 be! Better suffer the pains of death than the furies of 
 remorse! Give your own life for the life you have taken, 
 no matter by what impulse of self-defence or devilish acci- 
 dent of fate ! " 
 
 Hafiz would carry his message to headquarters, or per- 
 haps help him to go there, and the good old Patriarch would 
 explain why he had not gone before. 
 
 " It is the only way now. the only hope," he thought. 
 
 Within half an hour Hafiz arrived hot and breathless, as
 
 182 THE \YHITE PROPHET 
 
 if he had been nnminpr. One moment he stood near the 
 door, "while his lip lagged low and his cheerful face dark- 
 ened at sight of Gordon's white cheeks, and then he gushed 
 out into words which tried their best to be brave but were 
 tragic with tears. 
 
 " I knew it," he said, " I've said so all day long. ' He's 
 lying ill somewhere or he would show up now whatever the 
 consequences.' You're wounded, aren't you ? Let me see." 
 
 " It's nothing," said Gordon. " Xothing at all. Sit 
 down, old fellow." 
 
 And then Hafiz sat on the right of the bed, holding Gor- 
 don's hand in his hand, and told him what had happened 
 during the day — how Macdonald and his bloodhounds had 
 been out in pursuit of him, expecting- to arrest and court- 
 martial him, and how he also had been searching for him 
 since yesterday, but with the hope of helping him to escape. 
 
 " High and low we've looked everywhere — everywhere 
 except here — and who would have thought of a place like 
 this ? " said Hafiz. " So much the better, though ! You'll 
 stay here until you are well and I can get you safely away. 
 I will, too! You'll see I will ! " 
 
 It was hard to listen to the good fellow's schemes for 
 his escape and tell him at once of his intention to give 
 himself up, so Gordon asked one by one the questions that 
 were uppermost in his mind, little thinking that Hafiz's 
 answers would break up his purpose and stifle for ever the 
 cry of the voice of his tortured heart. 
 
 "The General is buried, isn't he?" he said, turning his 
 face away as he spoke, and when Hafiz answered " Yes," that 
 he had died by the hand of God and been buried that after- 
 noon, and that ever;\'body was saying that he had been a 
 good man and a great soldier and Egypt would never again 
 see his equal, Gordon asked himself what after all would 
 be the worth of an atonement which offered as an equivalent 
 for a life like the General's a life such as his own, which 
 was no longer of any use to him or to any one. 
 
 And again, when he asked, in a voice that was breath- 
 less with fear, how his father was, and Hafiz answered that 
 the iron man whose name had been a terror in Egypt for
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 183 
 
 SO many years, though calm on the outside still, was break- 
 ing up like a frozen lake from below; that he had been call- 
 ing him over the telephone all day long, and entreating him 
 to find his son that he might tell him to deliver himself up 
 immediately, in spite of everything, lest he should be 
 charged with desertion and be liable to death, Gordon sick- 
 ened with a sense of the shame into which he was about to 
 plunge his father in his last days by the confession he in- 
 tended to make and the fate he meant to meet. 
 
 And again, when with deepening emotion he asked about 
 his mother — was she worse for the disgrace that had over- 
 taken himself ? — and Hafiz told him " ISTo," that though sit- 
 ting in a sort of bewilderment, waiting for God's light in the 
 darkness that had fallen on her life, she was yet living in 
 a beautiful, blind hope that he would come back to justify 
 himself, and meantime sending messages to him saying, 
 " Tell him his mother is sure he only did what he believed 
 to be right, because her boy could not do what was wrong," 
 Gordon's heart knocked hard at his breast with the thought 
 that the brave atonement to which he had set his face would 
 surely kill his mother before it had time to kill him. 
 
 And when, last of all, in the sore pain of a wounded 
 tenderness, he asked about Helena — was she well and was 
 she asking after him ? — and Hafiz again answered " No," but 
 that he had seen her at the General's funeral (where he 
 could not trust himself to speak to her for pity of the dumb 
 trouble in her pale face), and that, leaning on the arm of 
 the Consul-General, she had lifted her tearless eyes as if 
 looking for somebody she could not see, and that she was 
 to go back to England soon, very soon, on Saturday, with- 
 out any one for company, being alone in the world now, 
 then Gordon broke down altogether, for he saw himself fol- 
 lowing her on her lonely journey home with a cruel and 
 needless blow that would ruin the little that was left of her 
 peace. 
 
 "On Saturday, you say?" 
 
 "Yes, by the English steamer from Alexandria," said 
 Hafiz, and then, eagerly, as if by a sudden thought, 
 "Gordon?"
 
 184 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " W^hy shouldn't you go with her ? " 
 
 Gordon shook his head. 
 
 " But why ? You'll be better by that time, and even if 
 you're not — You can't stay here for ever, and if you should 
 fall into Maedonald's hands — Besides, it's better in any 
 case to let the War Office deal with you. They'll know 
 everything before you reach London and they'll see you've 
 been in the right. You'll get justice there, Gordon, Avhereas 
 here — Then there's Helena, too — she's expecting you to 
 join her — I'm sure she is — why shouldn't she, being friend- 
 less in Egypt now and without any one to go to even at 
 home? And if the worst comes to the worst, and you have 
 to leave the Army, which God forbid, you'll be together at all 
 events — she'll be with you, anyway " 
 
 " No, no, my boy, no," cried Gordon, but Hafiz, full of 
 his new hope, was not to be denied. 
 
 "You think it's impossible, but it isn't. Wallahi! Leave 
 it to me. I'll arrange everything. Trust me," he said, and 
 in the warmth of his new resolve and the urgency of another 
 errand, he got up to go. 
 
 The hundred and fifty Notables who had been arrested 
 that morning before the Grand Cadi's house had been tried 
 in the afternoon by a Special Tribunal, and despatched in 
 the evening as dangerous rebels to the penal settlement in 
 the Soudan. In protest against this injustice as well as 
 in lamentation for the loss of the students who had fallen 
 at El Azhar, Ishmael Ameer had called upon the people of 
 Cairo to follow him in procession to the Arabic cemetery 
 outside the city, that there, Avithout violence or offence, they 
 might appeal from the barbarity of man to the judgment 
 seat of God. 
 
 "They've gone with him, too," said Hafiz, "tens of 
 thousands of them, so that the streets are deserted and half 
 the shops shut up. Oh, they've not done with Ishmael yet 
 — you'll see they have not ! I must find out what he's doing, 
 though, and come back and tell you what's going on. Mean- 
 time I'll say nothing about you — about knowing where you 
 are, I mean — nothing to the Consul-General, nothing to my
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 185 
 
 mother, nothing to anybody. Good-bye, old fellow! Leave 
 youi'self to mc. I'll see you throus-h." 
 
 When Hafiz went off with a rush of spirits, Gordon, being 
 left alone, sank to a still deeper depression than before. He 
 felt as if he were thrown back again on that desolate shore 
 where the tides of his mind ebbed and flowed under the 
 blank darkness of a starless sky. 
 
 The proud atonement whereby he had expected to wipe 
 out his crime had fallen utterly to ashes. It looked like 
 nothing better now than a selfish impulse to escape from a 
 life that had become a burden to him by killing his father's 
 honour, his mother's trust, and the last hope of Helena's 
 happiness. 
 
 " No, I cannot deliver myself up. It is impossible," he 
 thought. 
 
 But if death itself was denied to him what was there left 
 to him in life? His career as a soldier was clearly at an end. 
 his father's house was for ever closed to him, and his days 
 with Helena were over. Without work, without home, with- 
 out love, what could he do, where could he go? 
 
 " Then, what can I do ? Where can I go ? " he asked 
 himself. 
 
 Suddenly he remembered what the General had said in 
 that delirious moment when with bitter taunts he had told 
 him to fly to some foreign country where men would know 
 nothing of his disgrace. Cruel and unjust as that sentence 
 had seemed to him then, it appeared to be all that was left 
 to him now, when work and home and love alike were gone 
 from him. 
 
 " Yes, I'll go away," he thought, with a choking sob. 
 *' I'll bury myself as far from humanity as possible." 
 
 Yet at the next moment the hand of iron was on his heart 
 again, and he told himself that though he might fly from the 
 sight of man he could not escape from the eye of God, and 
 to be alone with that was more than a guilty man could bear 
 and live. 
 
 " But why can't I go to America ? " he asked himself. 
 
 It was his mother's home and a country to which some- 
 thing in his blood had always been calling him. But no!
 
 186 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 That refuge also was denied to him, for though he might 
 hide in New York or Boston or Philadelphia or Chicago or 
 San Francisco, better than in the trackless desert itself, yet 
 in the very pulse of life he Avould still be alone, with a mind 
 that must always be rambling through the ways of the past, 
 seeing nothing in the happiness of other men but cruel 
 visions of what might have come to him also, but for one 
 blind moment of headstrong passion. 
 
 "Is life, then, to be utterly closed to me?" he thought. 
 
 Was he neither to die for his crime nor live for his 
 repentance? Had God Almighty set His face against both? 
 
 He thought of Helena as she would be in England, alone 
 like himself, cut off for the rest of her life from every hap- 
 piness except the bitter one of her memory of their few 
 short days together, thinking ill of him as she needs must 
 for leaving her in her sore need, while all the time his heart 
 was yearning for love of her, and he would have given his 
 soul to be by her side, but for the barrier of blood which 
 seemed to separate them for ever now. 
 
 And then in the bitterness of his remorse and the depths 
 of his abased penitence, thinking the Almighty Himself must 
 be against him, he began to pray — never having prayed 
 since the days when his mother held him at her knee. 
 
 " O God, have pity upon me! " he cried, as he sat huddled 
 up on his bed. " I only intended to do what was right, yet 
 I have plunged everybody I love into trouble. What can I 
 do? W^here can I go? Let it be anything and anywhere! 
 O Lord, speak to me, lead me, deliver me, tell me what I 
 ought to do, tell me, tell me ! " 
 
 The green-shaded lamp on the table had gone out by this 
 time, the darkness of the night had gone and a dim gleam 
 of saffron-tinted light from the dawn had begun to filter 
 through the yellow window curtains of the room. 
 
 Then suddenly the silence of the little pulseless place was 
 broken by the sound of eager footsteps running over the 
 gravel path of the courtyard and leaping up the stone stair- 
 case of the house. 
 
 It was Hafiz returning from the cemetery.
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 187 
 
 IX 
 
 The Mohammedan cemetery of Cairo lies to the north- 
 east of the city, outside the Bab en-Xasr (the Gate of 
 Victory), on the fringe of the desert and down a dusty road 
 that leads to a group of tomb-mosques of the Caliphs, now 
 old and falling into decay. 
 
 No more forlorn and desolate spot ever lay under the 
 zealous blue of the sky. Xot a tree, not a blade of grass, not 
 a rill of water, not a bird singing in the empty air. Only 
 an arid waste, dotted over by an irregular encampment of 
 the narrow mansions of the dead, the round hummocks of 
 blistered clay, each with its upright stone, its shahed 
 capped with turban or tarboosh. The barren nakedness and 
 savage aridity of the place make it a melancholy spectacle by 
 day, but in the silence of night, under the moon's quiet eye, 
 or with the darkness flushed by the white light of the stars, 
 the wild desolation of the city of the dead is an awesome 
 sight to see. Such was the spot in which the people of 
 Cairo had concluded to pass their Xight of Lamentation — 
 such was their Gethsemane. 
 
 When tidings of their intention passed through the town 
 there were rumblings of thunder in the ever-lowering diplo- 
 matic atmosphere. The Consul-General heard it and sent 
 for the Commandant of Police. 
 
 " This gathering of great numbers of natives outside the 
 walls," he said, " looks like a ruse for an organised attack 
 on the European inhabitants. Therefore let your plans for 
 their protection be put into operation without delay. As 
 the ostensible object of the demonstration is a funeral, you 
 cannot stop it, but see that a sufficient body of police goes 
 with it and that your entire force is in readiness." 
 
 After that he called up the officer who was now in com- 
 mand of the Army of Occupation, and advised that troops 
 at Kasr el Nil, at the Citadel, and particularly at the bar- 
 racks of Abbassiah should be strictly confined and kept in 
 readiness for all emergencies. 
 
 " If all goes well to-night," he said, " give your men an
 
 188 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 airing in the streets in the morning. Let their bands go 
 with them, so that when the turbulent gentlemen who are 
 organising all this hubbub take their walks abroad they 
 may meet one of your companies coming along. If they 
 turn aside to avoid it let them meet another and another. 
 — And wait ! " said the old man, while his brow con- 
 tracted and his lip stiffened. " The man Ishmael Ameer 
 has escaped us thus far. He has been lying low and allow- 
 ing others to get into trouble. But he seems to be putting 
 his head into the noose this time. Follow him, watch him; 
 don't be afraid.'' 
 
 The bodies of the students who were to be buried that 
 night had been lying in the mosque of the Sultan Hasan 
 at the foot of the Citadel, and as soon as word came that 
 the Imams had recited the prayer for the dead, asking, 
 " Give your testimony respecting them — were they faith- 
 ful?" and being answered, "Aye, faithful unto death," the 
 cortege started. 
 
 First a group of blind men at slow pace chanting the 
 first Surah of the Koran ; then the biers, a melancholy line of 
 them, covered with red and green cloths and borne head 
 foremost ; then schoolboys singing, in shrill voices, passages 
 from a poem describing the last judgment; then companies 
 of Fikees, reciting the profession of faith; then the female 
 relatives of the dead, shrouded black forms Avith dishevelled 
 hair, sitting in carriages or squatting on carts, wailing in 
 their woe, and finally, Ishmael Ameer himself and his vast 
 and various following. 
 
 Never had any one seen so great a concourse, not even 
 on the day when the sacred carpet came from Mecca. There 
 were men and women, rich and poor, great and small, re- 
 ligious fraternities with half-furled banners and dervishes 
 with wrapped-up flags. Sheikhs in robes and beggars in rags. 
 Boys carried lamps, women carried candles, and young men 
 carried torches and open flares which sent coils of smoke 
 into the windless air. 
 
 Their way lay down the broad boulevard of Mohammed 
 Ali, across the wide square of the Bab-el-Khalk, past the 
 Govemorat and the Police Headquarters. As they walked
 
 To God we belong and to llini wc in\ist return
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 189 
 
 at slow pace they chanted the Surah which says : " O Allah ! 
 There is no strength nor power but in God! To God we 
 belong and to him we must return ! " The shops were shut, 
 and the muezzin called from the minarets as the procession 
 went by the mosques. 
 
 Thus like a long sinuous stream, sometimes flowing deep 
 and still, sometimes rumbling in low tones, sometimes 
 breaking into sharp sounds, they passed through the narrow 
 streets of the city and out by the Bab en-Nasr to the 
 Mohammedan cemetery beyond the walls. 
 
 As Hafiz approached this place the deep multitudinous 
 hum of many tongues that came up from it was like the 
 loud sighing of the wind. Calm as the night was it was 
 the same as if a storm had broken over that spot, while the 
 desert around lay sleeping under the unclouded moon. 
 Through a thick haze that floated over the ground there 
 were bubbles and flashes of light, the red and white flames 
 of the lamps and torches spurting and steaming like electrical 
 apparitions from a cauldron. 
 
 A cordon of mounted police surrounded the cemetery, 
 and a few were riding inside of it. The funerals were over, 
 and the people were squatting in groups on the bare sand. 
 Hafiz could hear the solemn chanting of the Fikees as they 
 passed their beads through their fingers and recited to the 
 spirits of the dead. Some of the dervishes were dancing 
 and some of the women were swaying their bodies to a slow, 
 monotonous, hypnotic movement that seemed to act on 
 them like a drug. 
 
 A number of the Ulema, professors of El Azhar and 
 teachers of the Koran, were passing from group to group, 
 comforting and counselling the people. Behind each of 
 them was a little crowd of followers, and where the crowd 
 of such followers was greatest there always was the erect 
 white figure and pale face of Ishmael Ameer. He stood in 
 his gTeat stature above the heads of the tallest of the men 
 about him, and as he passed from company to company he 
 left hope and inspiration behind him, for his lips seemed 
 to be touched with fire. 
 
 " Night has fallen on us. oh, my brothers ! " he said in
 
 190 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 his throbbing voice. " Our path is desolate, we are encom- 
 passed by sorrows, we envj- the dead who are in their graves. 
 Oh, ye people of the tombs, you have passed on before us. 
 Peace be to you ! Peace be to us also ! A woman is here 
 who has lost her husband — the camel of her house is gone! 
 A mother is here who has lost her son — the eye of her heart 
 is blind ! Oh, Thou most merciful of those that show mercy, 
 comfort and keep them and send them safely to thy Para- 
 dise! Sleep, oh, servants of God, in the arms of the 
 Mighty and Compassionate ! " 
 
 "Poor me, poor my children, poor all the people!" cried 
 the women who crouched at his feet. 
 
 " Oppressors have risen against us, God ! but let us 
 not cry to Thee for vengeance against them. They are 
 Christians and it was a Christian who said: 'Father, for- 
 give them, for they know not what they do.' " 
 
 " La ilaha illa-llah ! " cried the men, but their faces were 
 dark and stern. 
 
 " Oh, sons of Adam," cried Ishmael, " shall the children 
 of one Father fight before His face? To-night the lamps 
 are lit to the Lord on the rock at Mecca. To-night, too, 
 the lamps are burning to God on the Calvary at Jerusalem. 
 So it has been for a thousand years. So it will be for a 
 thousand more. Father, forgive them for they know not 
 what they do." 
 
 At that a great shout went up from the clamorous billow 
 of human beings about him, and " Oh, children of Allah," 
 he cried, " religion is the bread of our souls, and the stran- 
 gers who have come to us from the West are trj'ing to take 
 it away. Let us fight to preserve it ! Let us draw the sword 
 of our spirit against a black devouring world ! By the life 
 of our God, let iis be men ! By the tombs of our fathers, let 
 us be living souls! By the beard of the Prophet — praise to 
 his name! — let us no longer be mere machines for the 
 making of gold for Europe! Better the mud hut of the 
 fellah with the spirit of God within than the palace of the 
 rich man with the devil's arms on the doorpost. If we 
 cannot be free in the city, let us go out to the desert — out 
 from the empire of man to the empire of Allah! And if
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 191 
 
 we must leave behind our gorgeous mosques, built on the 
 bones of slaves and cemented with the blood of conquest, 
 we shall worship in a vaster and more magnificent temple, 
 the dome whereof is the sky." 
 
 By this time the excitement of the people amounted to 
 frenzy. " Allah ! " " Allah ! " they shouted as they followed 
 Ishmael from group to group in an ever-increasing crowd 
 that was like a boiling, surging, rushing river, flashing in 
 fierce brilliance under the light of the lamps and torches. 
 
 " Brothers," said Ishmael ag'ain, " your homes are here, 
 and your wives and children. I am going out into the des- 
 ert and you cannot all follow me. But give me one hundred 
 men and your enemies will afflict you no more. One hun- 
 dred men to carry into every town and village the word of 
 the message of God, and the reign of Mammon will be at 
 an end. Our Prophet — praise to his name ! — was driven out 
 of Mecca as a slave, but he returned to it as a conqueror. 
 We are driven out of Cairo in disgrace, but we shall come 
 back in glory. So the years pass and repeat themselves," 
 he cried, and then, in triumphant tone, " Yes, by Allah ! " 
 
 The emotional Egyptian people were now like children 
 possessed, and the fever in Ishmael's own face seemed to 
 have consumed the natural man. 
 
 " I ask for martyrs, not for soldiers," he cried. " Shall 
 not the reward of him who suffers daily for his brethren's 
 sake be equal to that of the man who dies in battle? I ask 
 for the young man and the strong, not the weak and the 
 old. Difficulty is before us, and danger, and perhaps death. 
 I ask for sinners, not saints. Though you are as pure as the 
 sands of the seashore, like the sands of the shore you may 
 be fruitless. But are you sin-laden and suffering? Do the 
 ways of life seem to be closed to you? Does the sweet light 
 of morning bring you no joy? Are you praying for the 
 darkness of death to cover you? Is your repentance deep? 
 In the bitterness of your soul are you calling upon God for 
 a way of redemption? Then come to me, my brothers! 
 Your purification is here! A pilgrimage is before you that 
 will cleanse you of all sin." 
 
 " Allah! " " Allah! " " Allah! " cried the people with one
 
 192 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 voice, and the cry of their thousand throats in that desolate 
 place was like the quake of breakers on cavernous rocks. 
 
 It was one of those moments of life when by a spon- 
 taneous impulse humanity shows how divine is the heart 
 of man. In an instant more than five hundred men, some 
 of them looked upon as low and base, leaped out in answer 
 to IshmacFs call and were struggling, quarrelling, almost 
 fighting to go with him. 
 
 For two hours thereafter the professors and teachers 
 were busy selecting one hundred from the five, telling them 
 what they had to do and where they had to go, each man 
 to his allotted place, while the mounted police rode round 
 and through them in a vain effort to find out what was being 
 said. 
 
 The night was now laear to morning, the lamps and 
 torches were dying out, and a dun streak, like an arrow's 
 barb, was shooting up into the darkness of the sky. In this 
 vague fore-dawn the hundred chosen men were drawn up 
 before the tomb of a sheikh, and Ishmael, standing on the 
 dome of it, with his tall figure against the uncertain light, 
 spoke to them and to the vast company of the people that 
 had gathered about. 
 
 " Brothers," he said, " you offer yourselves as messengers 
 of the Compassionate to carry His word to the uttermost 
 ends of this country and as far as the tongue you speak is 
 spoken. You have been told what to say and you will say 
 it without fear. You are no rebels against the State, but 
 if the commandments of the Government are against the 
 commandments of God, you are to tell the people to obey 
 God and not the Government." 
 
 At that word the sea of faces seemed to flash white under 
 the heaviness of the sky, but Ishmael only looked down at 
 the hundred men who stood below and said calmly: 
 
 " You are soldiers of God, therefore you will carry no 
 weapons of the devil with you on your journey. Do you 
 expect to conquer by the sword? Stand back, this pil- 
 grimage is not yours ! Do you wish to drive the English 
 out of Egy-pt, to establish Khedive or Sultan, to found 
 Kingdom or Empire? Go home! This work is not for
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 193 
 
 you ! Only one enemy will you drive out and that is the 
 devil ! Only one Sultan will you establish and that is 
 God!" 
 
 The mass of moving heads seemed to sway for a mo- 
 ment, and then amid the deep breathing of the people 
 Ishmael said : 
 
 " You will take nothing with you on your way, neither 
 purse nor scrip nor second coat. In the city or the village 
 or the desert the Merciful will make your beds, the Com- 
 passionate will provide for you. Where the Muslemeeh is, 
 there is your brother — greet him, he will welcome you. 
 Where his house is there is your home — enter it, it will 
 shelter you. But you are slaves of God, therefore look for 
 no ease and comfort. Burning heat by day, w-eary marches 
 by night, hunger and thirst, and toil and pain — these only 
 are the allurements God offers to his servants — these and 
 glory!" 
 
 At that last word a loud shout broke from the people, 
 but when Ishmael spoke again the burden of a great awe 
 seemed to fall upon them. 
 
 " Say farewell to one another and to your wives and 
 children. If God wills it you will come back. If He does 
 not will it you will go on, never more to look in each other's 
 faces." 
 
 Then in a louder, shriller voice than before, he cried : 
 
 " But fear nothing ! The battle is not yours but God's ! 
 You will be purified by your pilgrimage, your sins will be 
 forgiven you, and when death comes that stands at the 
 foot of life's account, Paradise will wait for you and the 
 arms of the Merciful be open ! In the name of the Com- 
 passionate, Peace ! " 
 
 "Peace! Peace!" cried the vast mass in a voice that 
 seemed to ring through the empty dome of the sky. 
 
 The men who had been standing before Ishmael now 
 prostrated themselves with their faces to the east, and then 
 rising to their feet they embraced each other. A subdued 
 murmur passed thi'ough the people, and at the next moment 
 the crowd parted in many places, leaving long, wide ways 
 that went out from the foot of the tomb. Down these paths
 
 194 THE WHITE TROPHET 
 
 the men passed in twos and threes as if going in different 
 directions, some north, some south, some east, some west. 
 
 Thus the hundred messengers set out on their pilgrim- 
 age, each his own way and none knowing if they should 
 ever meet again. Though the eager, emotional Egyptian 
 people were ready to sob at sight of them, yet they kept 
 back their cries. Some of the women held out their children 
 to be kissed by their husbands as they passed, but they dried 
 their own eyes lest the men should see them weep. 
 
 The dawn was coming up by this time in a thin streak 
 of pink across the' eastern sky, and the people watched the 
 men as they passed away — beyond the ruined tombs of the 
 Caliphs, toward the barracks of the soldiers at Abbassiah 
 and over the reddening crest of the Mokattam hills — until 
 they could be seen no more. 
 
 Then slowly as the great mass of the crowd had opened, 
 it closed again, and while women sobbed and men broke 
 down in tears, the tall figure of Ishmael, forgotten for a 
 moment, was seen standing in the mystic light of the dawn 
 above the multitude of moving heads, and his throbbing 
 voice was heard pealing over them. 
 
 " Oh, children of God," he cried, " be comforted ! Go 
 back to your homes and wait! Be patient! Is not that 
 what Islam means? Shed no tears for those who have gone 
 away from you. As sure as the sun will rise your brethren 
 will return. Look! Already it is gilding the fringes of 
 the clouds; it is sending away the spirits of darkness; it 
 is approaching the gates of morning! Even so in life or in 
 death, in the spirit or in the flesh those who have left you 
 will return, and when they come back our Egypt will be 
 God's." 
 
 With that, amid an answering cry from the people, he 
 stepped down from the tomb. Tlieii the crowd parted as 
 before and he passed through them toward the town in the 
 direction of the Bab en-Xasr, the Gate of Victory. There 
 was no shouting or waving of banners as he went away, but 
 only the silent. Eastern greeting of hands to the lips and 
 forehead, with hardly a noise as loud as the sound of human 
 breath.
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 195 
 
 The sun was now rising above the yellow Mokattam hills, 
 the daj' was reddening over the desert, the gleaming streak 
 of the Nile was shooting out of the mist, and in the radi- 
 ance of morning the crowd began to break up and return 
 to the city. Their eyes were shining with a new light, a 
 new joy, a new hope. They had come out to mourn and 
 they were going back rejoicing. 
 
 Hafiz was among the first to go. With a mouth full of 
 a fresh message he was flying back to Gordon. As he passed 
 through the echoing streets he met the band of one of the 
 British battalions and it was playing a march from the 
 latest opera. 
 
 Gordon, lying in his bed, heard the voice of Hafiz in 
 the hall. 
 
 *' Only me, Michael ! All right ! Don't get up yet." 
 
 At the next moment Hafiz himself, pufiing and blowing, 
 and with the cool air of morning in his clothes, came dash- 
 ing into the room. 
 
 " Halloa ! Thought I was never coming back, I suppose I 
 Couldn't tear myself away — had to see it through — only 
 just over. Tell you what, though — I do believe — yes, I 
 do really believe that brute of a Macdonald has set the 
 trackers on to you ! Coming down by El Azhar, behold two 
 damned blacks — Soudanese, I mean — poking their noses 
 into the soft ground as if looking for footsteps. But no 
 matter! We'll dish the devil yet!" 
 
 Thus the good fellow, after the night-long flight of his 
 spirit among sacred things, was giving way to the natural 
 man, with chuckles and crows and shouts of joy and even 
 harmless oaths that had no bitterness behind them. 
 
 " Lord God, you should have seen it, Gordon. Just like 
 one of the * Xights of the Prophet,' only bigger — yes, by 
 my soul, bigger! " 
 
 Then, sitting on the side of the bed, he described the 
 doings of the night — how Ishmael had passed from group to
 
 196 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 group, comforting the mourners and laying a soothing hand 
 on every mother's sorrow, evei-y father's grief. 
 
 " Can't tell what the deuce it is in the man — ^whether 
 it's tlie prophet or the poet or the diviner — but he doesn't 
 need that anybody should tell him anything, because he 
 knows." 
 
 It was not at first that Gordon, coming out of the long 
 night of his sufferings, caught the contagion of Hafiz's good 
 spirits, but his weary, bloodshot eyes began to shine when 
 Hafiz described Ishmael's appeal to the people to leave 
 everything behind them and go with him into the desert — 
 out of the empire of man into the empire of Allah. 
 
 " It was thrilling! Wallahi! You had to hear it, though. 
 It was not so n^nch what he said as something in the man 
 himself that set all your nervee tingling." 
 
 And when Hafiz went on to tell of Ishmael's appeal 
 for help, not to the saints, the men whom God had 
 cleansed from all sin, the souls that were as pure as the 
 sands of the seashore and as fruitless, but to the sin- 
 ners, the sin-laden and sin-stained, to whom the peace of 
 life and the repose of death were both denied, he felt 
 Gordon's hand clutching at his own and his whole body 
 quivering. 
 
 " Sinners, not saints — did he say that, Hafiz ? " 
 " Yes! ' Come to me, my brothers,' he said. ' Your puri- 
 fication is here. A pilgrimage is before you that will cleanse 
 you from all sin.' They took him at his word, too. Good 
 Lord! You never saw such scrambling! Such a crew! 
 Sinners, by Jove ! Some of them the most notorious scoun- 
 drels in Cairo — rich rascals who have been living for them- 
 selves all their lives and beggaring everybody about them. 
 Assassins, too, or men who have been suspected of being 
 so. Yet there they were, fighting for a chance of going out 
 to starvation and danger and death." 
 
 Gordon's eyes were running over by this time, but they 
 were glistening, too, like the sun when it shines through a 
 cloud of rain. 
 
 " Open the curtains, Hafiz," he said, and when Hafiz had 
 done so it was almost as if an angel of hope had parted
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 197 
 
 them and come sweeping with a stream of sunlight into the 
 room. 
 
 Then Hafiz told of the going away of the hundred mes- 
 sengers, of Ishmael's triumphant prediction that they would 
 come back, and finally of the return of the people to their 
 homes with the flow as of a great tide, filled with a new 
 spirit, comforted, changed, transformed, transfigured. 
 
 " And Ishmael himself ? " asked Gordon. 
 
 " He has gone also," said Hafiz. 
 
 " Where has he gone ? " 
 
 " That was kept quiet, but the Chancellor was there, and 
 I got it out of him — he has gone to Khartoum." 
 
 " Khartoum ? " 
 
 " That's where he comes from — where he lived in his 
 youth at all events. He has to take the early train for 
 Upper Egypt, so he'll be on his way already. Oh, something 
 is going to happen ! Wait — you'll see ! Couldn't find out 
 exactly what the men were told to do, but Government has 
 its work cut out for it." 
 
 " There was to be no resistance to the rule of England 
 — do you say he said that, Hafiz ? " 
 
 " That's true. ' Do you wish to drive England out of 
 Egypt? Go home,' he said; 'this pilgrimage is not yours. 
 Do you expect to conquer by the sword ? Stand back ! This 
 work is not for you.' All the same there'll be a mighty stir 
 at the Ministry of the Interior. Omdehs and Moudirs and 
 all the miscellaneous blackguards will be watching Ishmael 
 and his men. So much the better for us, my boy. Now's 
 your time! Now's your opportunity!" 
 
 While Gordon listened a great burden seemed to fall 
 from him. A sort of electric revelation appeared to suffuse 
 the path that had been so obscure a few moments before. His 
 prayers seemed to be answered; the bright glory of a new 
 hope seemed to be born within him and he thought he saw 
 his way at last. 
 
 Though his career as a soldier was at an end; though 
 
 his father, his mother and Helena were gone from him; 
 
 though he had lost everything he had loved and been proud 
 
 of; though the ways of life seemed to be for ever closed to 
 
 14
 
 198 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 him and the world had no use for him any longer, and he 
 was beaten and broken and alone, there was One who was 
 with him still — there was God! 
 
 " With our God is forgiveness," and in the immensity 
 and majesty of His compassion the Almighty had willed it 
 that he, even he, might yet do something. 
 
 He would join the forces of the new prophet! 
 
 Why not? Their cause was a good one. It was not 
 a crusade of Egypt against England, but of right against 
 wrong, of justice against injustice, of belief against unbe- 
 lief, of God against the world. 
 
 Hold! A traitor to his church and country? 
 
 Xo, for this was the great universal war — the war of an 
 empire that had no boundaries, the holy war that had been 
 waged all the earth over and all the ages through — the war 
 of religion and truth against the powers of darkness and 
 death. 
 
 So thinking God's hand was leading him, he saw himself 
 — white man, and Christian, and British soldier though he 
 was — following Ishmael Ameer into the desert, working by 
 his side, and then coming back at last when his sin had been 
 forgiven and his redemption won. 
 
 "Yet wait! What about my father?" he thought, but 
 could not think of his father at the same time that he 
 thought of his return. He remembered his mother, though, 
 and saw himself taking her in his arms and saying : " Mother, 
 I've come back to you, as you always said I would. I only 
 meant to do what was right and if I did what was wrong 
 God has pardoned me." 
 
 And then far off, very far, hardly daring to see itself 
 yet, in his awakened soul there was a hope of Helena. 
 Somehow and somewhere he would meet her again — he 
 knew not how or where or when, but Heaven knew every- 
 thing and the end would be with God. 
 
 Thus with a labouring and quivering heart, and with 
 bleared eyes that were running over, he sat on his bed, look- 
 ing into the stream of sunlight that was pouring into the 
 room, and feeling with an immense joy that God had mani- 
 fested His will at last. Meantime Hafiz, still tuning his
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 199 
 
 speech to the spirit of the natural man, was chueklinp: and 
 crowing over his new chance of getting Gordon out of the 
 country. 
 
 " Damn it all, man, we'll beat them yet, if you'll only 
 leave yourself to me. And you will, I know you will ! " 
 
 " Hafiz," said Gordon, " you thought last night you could 
 help me to get away from here — do you still think you 
 could?" 
 
 "Certainly! Isn't that what I'm saying?" 
 
 " Do you think you could do it now ? " 
 
 " Why not — that is to say, if you are well enough — it's 
 your hand, isn't it?" 
 
 " That's nothing — only a sore finger, you know." 
 
 " God ! A sore finger, and old Michael says it's gone — 
 half of it anj'way! But if it had been half your arm it 
 wouldn't have stopped you — I know that quite well. So if 
 you're game I'm ready. The sooner the better, too! The 
 dear old Patriarch will close his eyes, and as for 
 Michael " 
 
 " What day is this, Hafiz ? " said Gordon — he had lost 
 count of them. 
 
 " Monday — that's the worst of it. The steamer doesn't 
 sail until Saturday, and you'll have to stay in Alexandria 
 until — Or wait! Why not take a foreign boat? The French 
 one to Marseilles, or — let me think — the Italian boat to 
 Messina. The very thing! She sails on Wednesday. You 
 can join the English at ISTaples. Splendid! Better than 
 joining her at Alexandria. There's Helena, you know." 
 
 "Helena?" 
 
 " A woman's a woman after all, my boy. Mind, I don't 
 say Helena would give you away, but she might — not hav- 
 ing seen you since her father's death and then coming so 
 unexpectedly upon you at Alexandria — at the ship's side 
 perhaps. Better not risk it. Get out of the country before 
 you meet her — away from that brute of a Macdonald and 
 all the tags and bobs of the Intelligence Department." 
 
 " I'll want a disguise of some sort, Hafiz." 
 
 " Good idea ! " said Hafiz, slapping his knee. " You 
 can't set foot in the streets of Cairo without being recog-
 
 200 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 nised. Then if I'm right about the trackers — but we'll not 
 talk about that. Something Eastern, eh? What do you say 
 to a Coptic priest? Old Michael could lend us a black gown 
 and a black turban. Or no, a Bedouin going- to ISTaples for 
 ammunition! Why, it happens every day! Splendid cos- 
 tume ! Covers your head and nearly all your face, you know 
 — Oh, we'll lick him, the big, bloated, blithering — Ha, ha ! 
 Effendi thinks he holds the field, and he is walking about 
 the city like a leopard among dogs. But wait I We'll see ! " 
 
 Then getting up from the side of the bed and walking 
 to and fro in the room, Hafiz laughed out loud in his sav- 
 ag"© joy at the thought of defeating Macdonald, until Gordon 
 said : 
 
 " I shall want a man to go with me. Can you find me 
 a man, Hafiz ? " and at that the good fellow's spirits 
 dropped suddenly and his laughing mouth began to lag. 
 
 "A man? To go with you? Well, I — I thought of doing 
 that myself, Gordon — as far as the boat, I mean — just to 
 see the last of you — not knowing when I may — But perhaps 
 you're right. I might cause you to be suspected and then — 
 Yes, I must give that up, I suppose." 
 
 " That's all right, Hafiz — we'll meet again somewhere," 
 said Gordon, and when Hafiz's face had brightened afresh 
 he added : 
 
 " I'll want camels, Hafiz — two good strong camels." 
 
 " Camels ? Why, what the deuce — Ah, of course ! What 
 a fool I am! Every station watched! Wonder I never 
 thought of that before! The jackals are all along the line, 
 and if you had gone by train, damn it, man, where should 
 we have been ? In Macdonald's mouse traps in no time 1 
 Oh, yes, camels, of course. I'll get you camels. Good ones, 
 too. Bedouins always have good camels. Ha, ha ! Effen- 
 di will go to the place he is fit for, and God increase the 
 might of Islam ! " 
 
 " I'll want money, too, Hafiz." 
 
 " Don't trouble about that. I've got a little myself — all 
 you'll want to get away." 
 
 " I'll want a good deal, Hafiz. There's a bundle of bank 
 notes in the top drawer of my desk at the barracks. You'll
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 201 
 
 find the key in my trousers' pocket, and if you can only 
 contrive " 
 
 " Of course I can. Your soldier boy has been asking- 
 after you ever since you went away. He'll manage it. 
 Macdonald's bloodhounds are beating about the barracks of 
 course, but Tommy — trust Tommy to get the money for 
 you — In your trousers' pocket, you say ? — All rig-ht ! Here's 
 the key! — Let me see now — you'll want your berth booked — 
 to Messina, I mean. I'll do that myself and give you what- 
 ever's left — I must keep out of people's way until after 
 Wednesday, though. ISTo calling at the Agency — ^not if I 
 know it ! My mother must be told I've been sent off some- 
 where, and as for the Consul-General and the telephone — 
 I'll break the blessed receiver, that's what I'll do ! — Xever 
 mind about my not seeing you off. Lord alive, that's noth- 
 ing! Hope to get leave before long and then I'll slip over 
 to England. So I'll not be saying good-bye to you when 
 you go away, Gordon — not altogether, you know — not for 
 good, I mean. And if all goes well with you and 
 Helena " 
 
 But the chuckling and the crowing and the laughing out 
 loud in savage exultation at the thought of beating Mac- 
 donald were beginning to break down, and then Gordon, 
 unable to keep back the truth any longer, said in a voice 
 that chilled the ear of Hafiz: 
 
 " Hafiz, old fellow ! " 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " I don't intend to go back to England." 
 
 " You don't intend to go back " 
 
 " Xo." 
 
 " Then where the — where are you going to, Charlie ? " 
 
 " I'm going to Khartoum." 
 
 XI 
 
 During the earlier hours of the Xight of Lamentation 
 Helena sat in her room looking over bundles of old letters 
 and tying them up with ribbon. The letters were nearly
 
 202 THE WHITE PEOPHET 
 
 all from Gordon, but being written under different condi- 
 tions and meant to be read in happier hours, every phiy- 
 ful passage in them stung and every word of affection 
 scorched. 
 
 She was waiting for the black boy to come back from 
 the demonstration and thinking out a course of conduct. 
 Instead of returning to England she was to remain in 
 Cairo, and by help of the new evidence she was to compel 
 the law to arrest and convict the guilty man. It was her 
 right to do so, and since the authorities, thinking of other 
 things, were shirking their responsibility, it was her duty, 
 her solemn and sacred duty. 
 
 What did State considerations matter to her? ^Nothing! 
 She remembered the predicament of the Army Surgeon 
 without compunction, and even when she thought of the 
 position of the Consul-General she did not care. Her father 
 was dead, Gordon was lost to her, she was a woman and 
 she was alone, and nothing else was of the smallest conse- 
 quence. Thus seeing to the bottom of her own misery, she 
 had now no pity for anybody else. 
 
 At midnight the black boy had not returned, and being 
 worn out with sleeplessness, and assured by her other serv- 
 ants that Mosie was well able to take care of himself, she 
 w'ent to bed. But the moonlight filtered through the white 
 window blind and she lay for some time with wide-open 
 eyes thinking what she would do next day. She would go 
 down to the Ministry of the Interior and set the law in 
 motion. There would be no time to lose, for if Ishmael 
 escaped the consequences of to-night's proceedings he might 
 leave Cairo without delay. 
 
 She slept a few hours only and when she awoke the sun 
 was flocking w'ith fiery bars a window that faced to the 
 east. While she lay on her back with her arm under her 
 head, looking at the ceiling, and working herself up into a 
 still greater hatred of Ishmael, there came a timid knock at 
 the door and the black boy entered the room. He was 
 breathless and dishevelled and full of apologies. 
 
 "Lady angry with Mosie? Mosie stop all night to tell 
 lady everything," he said, and then he told her what had
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 203 
 
 happened in the Mohaninaedan cemetery — a wild, disordered, 
 delirious story of the departure of the hundred men. 
 
 "But the prophet himself — what has become of him?" 
 asked Helena, raising her head from her pillow. 
 
 " White Prophet gone," said Mosie. 
 
 " Gone ? " 
 
 " Mosie follow him to station. White Prophet go by 
 train, lady." 
 
 " By train ? " 
 
 " Yes, lady. White Prophet go by train to Upper 
 Egypt," said Mosie, and then Helena heard no more. 
 
 Her head fell back to her pillow and she covered her eyes 
 with her hands. The guilty man was gone, the authorities 
 had allowed him to go, and if the evil-doer was to be pun- 
 ished there was nothing left but personal vengeance. 
 
 In the delirium of her hatred of the Egyptian and the 
 tragic tangle of her awful error, every tender impulse of 
 her heart was now dead. Overwhelmed as by a new burden 
 and haunted by a dark responsibility — that of seeing God's 
 vengeance brought down upon her father's murderer — she 
 saw herself at one moment prompting Gordon to kill Ish- 
 mael. Why not ? There was no other way. Gordon should 
 kill Ishmael Ameer because Ishmael Ameer had killed her 
 father ! 
 
 At the next moment the recollection that Gordon had 
 gone took her back once more to the bitterest part of her 
 suffering. She had always thought that when God made 
 Gordon He had made him without fear, yet he had run away 
 from the consequences of being court-martialled. It was 
 intensely painful to her to despise Gordon, but do what she 
 would she could not help feeling a growing contempt for 
 him. If he had only stood up to his punishment she would 
 have been proud of him, and even if he had been drummed 
 out of the Army, or any fate had befallen him less terrible 
 than death, he would have found her standing by his side. 
 
 But he had fled, he had left her, and being useless to all 
 purposes of righteous vengeance, a woman without a man 
 behind her, she could do nothing now but go back to 
 England.
 
 204 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 During- the next three days she was kept busy by the 
 mechanical preparations for her departure. There was not 
 much she had to do, for the contents of the General House 
 belonged to the Army, and beyond her own and her father's 
 personal possessions there was little to pack up, yet the 
 black boy was always beside her, with a helping hand but 
 a lagging lip and many plaintive lamentations. 
 
 " Lady not want Mosie any more now — no ? " 
 
 On the Thursday he came running into Helena's room 
 to say that Lady Nuneham, with her Egyptian maid, had 
 come to call on her. 
 
 Helena met Gordon's mother at the door, the sweet old 
 soul with her pale, spiritual face, suffering visibly but bear- 
 ing herself bravely as she stepped out of her closely cur- 
 tained carriage and crossed the g-arden path, under the 
 white heat of the noonday sun, with one arm through 
 Fatimah's, and the other trembling hand on the ebony handle 
 of a walking stick. 
 
 As soon as she reached the hall the old lady lifted her 
 veil and stretched out her arms to Helena and kissed her, 
 and then patted her shoulder with her mittened hand as if 
 Helena had been a child and she had come to comfort her. 
 
 " My poor Helena ! It's hard for you, I know, but if 
 God sends the cross He sends the strength to carry it. I've 
 always found it so, my dear," she said, and when she was 
 seated on the sofa with Helena beside her, she began to 
 talk of her own father, how they had been everything to 
 each other, and when he had died she had thought she could 
 not live without him, but God had been good — He had sent 
 her her husband and then " 
 
 But that was a blind alley down which she could walk 
 no farther, for there was one name that was trembling on 
 the lips of both women and neither of them could yet bring 
 herself to speak it. 
 
 " When my mother died, too — I was married then and 
 living here in Cairo, but mother couldn't leave the old 
 home in Massachusetts where I was brought up as a child 
 — poor mother, she used to play blind-man's-buff in the hall 
 with me, I remember, for we were far away from other peo-
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 205 
 
 pie and I had no little playmates — when she died I thought 
 I should have died, too, but God was good to me again — 
 He sent me my own child, my boy, my " 
 
 It was just as if all roads converged to one centre, and 
 to escape from it the old lady began to talk of little things, 
 asking simple questions and giving motherly advice, while 
 Helena held down her head and drew the hem of her hand- 
 kerchief through her fingers. 
 
 "You are sailing on Saturday, are you not?" 
 
 " Yes, on Saturday." 
 
 " You must take good care of yourself, dearest. It is 
 hot in Cairo, but it may be cool in Alexandria and even 
 cold on the sea. Put some warm clothing on, dear, some 
 nice warm underclothing, you know." 
 
 She was sure to meet pleasant people on the steamer and 
 they would see her safely into the train at Marseilles. It 
 would be such an agreeable break to travel overland through 
 Paris, and when she reached London " 
 
 " Have you anybody to meet you in London, Helena ? "^ 
 
 Still drawing the hem of her handkerchief through her 
 fingers, Helena shook her head. 
 
 " I'm sorry for that, dear, very sorry." 
 
 Landing in London was so trying, so bewildering, es- 
 pecially if you were a woman. Such crowds, such confu- 
 sion ! It always made her feel so helpless. And then she 
 had the Consul-General to look after her, and once Gordon 
 had come to meet her, too. He was at the Staff College at 
 that time, and before she alighted from the carriage she had 
 seen him forging his way down the platform, and he kissed 
 his hand to her. 
 
 But the sweet old thing could bear up no longer, and 
 while Helena pressed her handkerchief to her lips, she said : 
 
 " Oh, Helena, how happy we might have been ! It's 
 wrong of me, I know it's wrong, but I can't reconcile myself 
 to it even yet. 'Why is my life prolonged?' I have often 
 thought, and then I have told myself it was because God 
 intended that I should live to see my dear children happy. 
 Ah, my darling, it would have been so beautiful ! My chil- 
 dren and perhaps mj"^ children's children. If I could only 
 15
 
 206 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 have seen them all together once! It -would have been so 
 easy to go then. But now my son is gone — I don't know 
 what has become of him — and my daughter — my sweet 
 daughter that was to be '' 
 
 Helena sank to her knees. " Mother ! " she said, and 
 burying her face in Lady Xuneham's shoulder, she felt, for 
 the first time in her life, that a mother's heart was beating 
 against her own. 
 
 After a while the old lady, whose arms had been about 
 Helena's neck, began to stroke her forehead and the top of 
 her head, and to say in a calmer voice : 
 
 " It was wrong of me to repine, dear. Happiness does 
 not depend on us. It depends on God, and we should leave 
 everything to Him. He will do what is best. I'm sure He 
 will." 
 
 Then in a nervous way she attempted to defend Gordon. 
 They were not to be too hard on him. No doubt he thought 
 he was doing what was right. 
 
 " And he was, too, wasn't he ? In a sense at least. Don't 
 you think so, Helena ? " 
 
 Helena could not answer, but she made a helpless motion 
 with her head. 
 
 They were not to suppose he meant to forsake them 
 either, and if he had fled away he was not thinking of him- 
 self only — they might be sure of that. He never did — 
 never had done — never once since he was a child. 
 
 " You couldn't give him a handful of sweets when he 
 was a boy but he asked for another for Hafiz." 
 
 Perhaps he was thinking of his father — that if he gave 
 himself up and there was an inquiry, a court-martial, the 
 Consul-General would suffer in his influence in Egypt and 
 his esteem in England. Perhaps he was thinking of Helena 
 herself — that it might seem as if her father's death had 
 been hastened by the painful scene with himself. And per- 
 haps he was thinking a little of his mother, too — of the 
 pain she would suffer at sight of her husband and her son 
 at war before the world. 
 
 However this might be he would come back. She knew 
 he would. Oh, yes, she knew quite well he would come back.
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 207 
 
 For four days she had asked God, and He had answered her 
 at last. 
 
 " ' Help me, O God, for Christ's sake ! ' I said. ' Will 
 my dear son come back to me? Shall I see him again? O 
 God, give me a sign ? ' And He did, my dear. Yes, it was 
 just before dawn this morning. ' Janet ! ' said a voice, and 
 I was not afraid. 'Be patient, Janet! All will be well!'" 
 
 Helena dared not look up, being afraid to penetrate by 
 so much as a glance the sanctity of the sweet old lady's soul. 
 
 " So you see it's wrong to repine, dear. Everything will 
 work out for the best. You are going to England, but that 
 doesn't matter in the least. We'll all come together again 
 yet. And when my dear ones are united, my sweet daughter 
 and my boy — my brave, brave boy " 
 
 The old lady's voice was quivering with the excitement 
 of her joy, when Fatimah, who had stood aside in silence, 
 stepped fon\'ard and said : 
 
 " Better go home now, my lady. His lordship will be 
 waiting for his lunch." 
 
 Lady Nuneham took Helena's head between her hands 
 and kissed her on the forehead, then dropped her veil and 
 rose to her feet by help of Fatimah's arm on the one side 
 and her stick on the other. 
 
 " Good-bye for the present, Helena ! Be sure you write 
 as soon as you get to England. Take good care of yourself 
 on the voyage, dear. And don't forget to put on some nice 
 warm underclothing, you know. Good-bye ! " 
 
 Helena saw her back to the door, the sweet, helpless old 
 child, living by the life of her beautiful love. As she passed 
 down the path she waved her delicate hand in its silken 
 mitten, and Helena said farewell to her with her eyes, know- 
 ing she would see her no more. 
 
 XII 
 
 After a while Helena began to think tenderly of Gordon 
 and to conjure up the beautiful moments of their love — the 
 moment in the harbour before he set off for Alexandria, the
 
 208 THE WHITE PKOPHET 
 
 moment in his quarters when she had to slip off her glove 
 and dip her finger in the glass from whieh he drank her 
 Lealth, and above all the moment of their first meeting, 
 when he said he loved Egypt and the Egyptians and every- 
 thing and everybody, and they laughed and looked into 
 each other's eyes, and smiled without speaking, and he took 
 her hand and kept on holding it, and a world of warm im- 
 pulses coursed through her veins, and something whispered 
 to her, " It is he ! " 
 
 But thinking like this about Gordon only made her 
 remember with even more bitterness than before the man 
 who had taken him away from her. Presently she saw that 
 there was a kind of dishonour to Gordon in hating the 
 Egyptian for that, and though she tried to justify herself 
 by thinking of Gordon's mother, and of the beautiful blind 
 faith that was doomed to death, she was compelled to go 
 back at length to the one sure ground on which she could 
 continue to hate Ishmael and keep a good conscience — that 
 the man had killed her father. 
 
 So intensely did she work up her feelings on this sub- 
 ject that, awaking in the middle of the night after Lady 
 Nuneham's visit, she held out her hands in bed and prayed 
 to God to let his vengeance fall on the Egyptian. 
 
 "Punish him, O God, punish him, punish him! My 
 father is dead ! My dear father is dead ! He was so weak, 
 so ill, so old ! O God, let Thy vengeance fall on the cow- 
 ard who killed him! Let thy hand be on him as long as 
 he lives ! Follow him wherever he goes ! Destroy him what- 
 ever he does ! Let him never know another happy hour ! 
 Let him be an exile and an outcast to the last hour of his 
 life ! God, hear me, hear me ! " 
 
 Xext morning she felt ashamed of this outburst, but less 
 because of its bitterness than its futility, and then with a 
 sense of utter helplessness she began to feel the misery of 
 being a woman. It was a part of the cruel scheme of 
 nature that however injured and outraged, a woman could 
 do nothing. In the East, above all, she was useless — useless 
 to all purposes of justice or vengeance or revenge. 
 
 On the Friday afternoon, having made the last prepa-
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 209 
 
 rations for her departure, she was sitting' at her desk, writ- 
 ing hibels for her trunks and portmanteaus, when Mosie 
 dashed in upon her to say that the Princess Naziinah, with 
 outriders and footmen and eunuchs, was driving up to the 
 door. A moment later the Princess entered the room. Her 
 plump person, redolent of perfume, was clad in a tussore 
 silk gown, and under the latest of Paris hats her powdered 
 face was plainly visible through the thinnest of chiffou 
 veils. 
 
 " I hear you are leaving Egypt, so I've come to bid 
 good-bye to you," she said, and then taking Helena by the 
 shoulders and looking into her face she cried : 
 
 " Merciful powers, what has become of your eyes, my 
 beauty ? What have you been doing to yourself, my moon ? "" 
 
 " Nothing," said Helena. 
 
 "Nothing? Don't tell me. You are not sleeping, no, nor 
 eating neither. Come, sit down and tell me all about it," 
 and sitting heavily on the sofa, with Helena beside her, she 
 proceeded to do the talking herself. 
 
 " But my dear creature, my good girl, this is nonsense. 
 Excuse the word — nonsense! Good God! Is a girl to kill 
 herself because her father dies before her? Fathers do, and 
 why shouldn't they? Mine did. He was a beast. Excuse 
 the word — a beast. Forty wives — or was it fifty — but he 
 died, nevertheless." 
 
 With that she lifted her veil, used a smelling bottle,, 
 and then began again : 
 
 " I see what it is, though — your ways are not our ways,. 
 and all this comes of your religion. It makes you think 
 about death and the grave, whereas ours tells us to think 
 about life. Your Christianity is a funeral mute, my dear, 
 while Islam is a dancing girl, God bless her! You groan 
 and weep when your kindred die. We laugh and arc happy,. 
 or if we are not we ought to be. I'm sure I was when my 
 first husband died. ' Thank the Lord he's gone,' I said. It's 
 true I hadn't lived on the best of terms with him, but 
 then " 
 
 " It's not my father's death only," began Helena halt- 
 ingly, whereupon the Princess said:
 
 210 THE WHITE rROPHET 
 
 "Yes, of course! I've heard all about it. He's gone, 
 and I suppose you know no more than anybody else what 
 has become of him. No ? " 
 
 " No ! " 
 
 "Ah, my dear, my moon, my beauty, all this wouldn't 
 have happened if you had taken my advice. When your 
 Gordon began to oppose his father you should have stopped 
 him. Yes, you could have done it. Of course you could." 
 
 "I couldn't, Princess," said Helena. 
 
 "What? You mean to say you tried to and you 
 couldn't ? You couldn't get him to give up that ridiculous 
 holy man for a girl like — Then God have mercy upon us, 
 what are you moaning about? Who ever heard of such a 
 thing? A young woman like you eating her heart out for 
 the loss of a man who prefers — well, upon my word ! " 
 
 The Princess put her smelling bottle to both nostrils in 
 quick succession and then said: 
 
 " It's true I thought him the best of the bunch. In fact 
 I simply lost my heart to him. But if he had been the only 
 man in the world— oh, I know! You think he is the only 
 one. I thought that myself when my first husband left me. 
 It wasn't a Mahdi in his case. Only a milliner, and I was 
 ready to die of shame. But I didn't. I just put some kohl 
 on my eyes and looked round for another. It's true my sec- 
 ond wasn't much of a man, but a donkey of your own is 
 better than a horse of somebody else's." 
 Again the smelling bottle, and then : 
 
 " Listen to me, my dear. I'm a woman of experience at 
 all events. Have a good cry and get him out of your head. 
 Why not? lie's gone, isn't he? He can never come back 
 to the Army, and his career as a soldier is at an end. The 
 felled tree doesn't bear any more dates, so what's the good 
 of him anyway? Oh, I know! You needn't tell me! Love 
 is sweet in the suckling and bitter in the weaning, and you 
 think you can't do it, but you can. You are going back to 
 England, I hear. So much the better! Far from the eyes, 
 far from the heart, and quite right, too. Get married as 
 soon as possible and have some big bouncing babies. I 
 haven't had any myself certainly, but that's diflfercnt — I
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 211 
 
 thought I wouldn't repeat the crime of my mother, God 
 forgive her ! " 
 
 Helena's head was down — she was hardly listening. 
 
 " Lose no time either, my sweet. Time is money, they 
 say, and perhaps it is, though it has different prices on the 
 bourse, I notice. I've known days that would have been 
 dear at two piastres and a few quarters of an hour that I 
 wouldn't have parted with for millions of money. Perhaps 
 you've felt like that, my beauty. But perhaps you haven't. 
 You're only a child yet, my chicken." 
 
 "The man Ishmael has gone, hasn't he?" asked Helena. 
 
 " Yes, they've let him go, the stupids ! Back to the 
 Soudan — to Khartoum they tell me." 
 
 "Khartoum?" 
 
 " Just like you English ! Dunces ! Excuse the word. I 
 say what I think. You judge of the East by the West, and 
 can't see that force is the only thing these people under- 
 stand. I stood it for five days, boiling all over inside, and 
 then I went down to the Agency. ' Good gi-acious,' I said, 
 'why has the Government allowed these men to slip through 
 their fingers ? ' And when Nuneham said he had laid a hun- 
 dred and fifty of them by the heels, I said ' Tut ! ' Taking 
 water by drops will never fill the water-skin. You should 
 have laid hold of a hundred and fifty thousand and that 
 man Ishmael above all. But you've let him go — him and 
 his hundred messengers — and now yoii'll have to take the 
 consequences. Serve you right, too! What was the use of 
 putting down the Arabic press if you let the Arabic preach- 
 ers go unmolested ? '" 
 
 "What did he say to that. Princess?" 
 
 " He said he had scotched the snake but he was not for- 
 getting the scorpion. It's no use talking, though. Nune- 
 ham is a great man, but he has lost his nerve and is always 
 asking himself what they are saying about him in Eng- 
 land. Boobies in Parliament, I suppose, and he wants to 
 be ready to reply to them. But goodness me, if you throw 
 a missile at every dog that barks at you the stones in your 
 street will be as precious as jewels soon. Oh, I know ! I'm 
 a woman of experience."
 
 212 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Helena was staring straight before her. 
 
 " I see what is going to happen," said the Princess. 
 " This man will sow sedition all over the country and mean- 
 time preach peace in Khartoum and throw dust in the eyes 
 of Europe." 
 
 " He is a scoundrel, a hypocrite " 
 
 " Of course he is, my dear, but when people are bad they 
 always pretend that they want to make other people better." 
 
 " Can the Government do nothing to stop him, to destroy 
 him ?" 
 
 " No, my dear. Thei'e is only one thing that can do 
 that now." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " A woman ! " 
 
 " A woman ? " 
 
 " Why not ? Follow the holy man no farther than his 
 "threshold, they say. But some woman always does so. 
 Always ! " 
 
 Helena's staring eyes with their far-away look had come 
 "back to the Princess's face. The Princess was beating her 
 hand and laughing. 
 
 " You English think woman has no power in the East. 
 Rubbish ! She is more powerful here than anywhere else. 
 Even polygamy gives her power — for a time at all events. 
 While she is first favourite she rules everything, and when 
 she ceases to be that — " The Princess laughed again, closed 
 lier eyes, and said : " She who doesn't take her revenge has 
 an ass for uncle." 
 
 Helena's heart began to beat so violently that she could 
 scarcely speak, but she said: 
 
 " You mean that some woman will betray this man " 
 
 "What is more likely? They all fall that way sooner or 
 later, my beauty. This one has taken a kind of vow of celi- 
 bacy, they say, but what matter? When I was as young as 
 you are there was nothing I loved so much as to meet with 
 a man of that sort. It was child's play, my darling." 
 
 All the blood in Helena's body was now boiling under 
 the poison of a new thought. 
 
 " I hear he says he will come back in glory and then
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 213 
 
 Egypt will be at his feet. Bismillah!" said the Princess, 
 raising her eyes in mock reverence, and then laughing gaily 
 she added: 
 
 " Perhaps — who knows ? — before that •time comes some 
 woman of the harem may find her opportunity. Jealousy — 
 envy — revenge — one may see how the world goes without 
 eyes, my beauty ! " 
 
 Helena sat motionless; she was scarcely able to breathe. 
 
 " Good luck to her, I say ! " said the Princess. " She'll 
 do more for Egypt than all the ISTunehams and Sirdars put 
 together." 
 
 Then she looked round at Helena and said : 
 
 " I've shocked you, haven't I, my dear ? Women in the 
 West don't do these things, do they? No, they are civilised, 
 and when they have been wronged by men they take them 
 into the courts and make them pay. Faugh ! There can 
 be no red blood in women's veins in your countries." 
 
 The Princess rummaged in her bag for her powder puff, 
 used it vigorously, put away her smelling bottle, and then 
 rose to go, saying: 
 
 " I don't mean you, my sweet. Your mother was Jewish 
 — wasn't she? — and it was a Jewish woman who destroyed 
 the captain of the Assyrians and smote off his head with her 
 own falchion. Women can't fight their battles with swords, 
 though. But," laughing and patting Helena's hand again, 
 "what has Allah given them such big black eyes for? 
 Adieu, my dear! Adieu!" 
 
 Helena stood in the middle of the floor where the Prin- 
 cess had left her and slowly looked around. Eor a long time 
 she remained there thinking. Was woman so utterly help- 
 less as she had supposed? And when she was deeply 
 wronged, when her dear ones were torn from her, when she 
 was a victim of cruel violence and heartless hypocrisy, and 
 the law failed her, and the State, having its own ends to 
 serve, tried to shufile her off, was she not justified in using 
 against her enemy the only weapons which God had given 
 her? 
 
 At that she grew hot and then cold, and then a sense of 
 shame came over her and she covered her face with her
 
 214 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 hands. " What am I thinking of ? " she asked herself, and 
 the floor seemed to slide from under her feet. The thought 
 which the Princess had put into her mind was treason to 
 her love for Gordon. That love was a sacred thing to her, 
 and it would always remain so, even though she might never 
 see Gordon again. Love itself was sacred, and she who gave 
 it away for any gain of vengeance or revenge was a bad 
 woman. 
 
 Helena sat down with her elbows on the desk and her 
 chin resting on her hands and stared out of the Avindow. 
 After a while a kind of relief came to her. She began to 
 recall some of the Princess's parting words. " She will do 
 more for Egypt than all the Nunehams and Sirdars put 
 together." That seemed to justify the thought that had 
 taken possession of her. She began to feel herself the cham- 
 pion of justice and to find the good conscience for which 
 she sought. 
 
 This man Ishmael, who had killed her father, and by 
 hypocritical pretences had deceived Gordon and caused him 
 to be carried away from her, was an impostor who would 
 turn England out of Egypt by playing on the fanaticism 
 of an ignorant populace. He was another Mahdi who, with 
 words of peace in his mouth, would devastate the country 
 and sow the very sands of its deserts with blood. When law 
 failed to defeat an enemy like that, and the machinery of 
 civilised government proved to be impotent against him, 
 were there any means, any arts, which it was not proper 
 to use? 
 
 Love? It was quite unnecessary' to think about that. 
 This man pretended to be an emancipator of the Eastern 
 woman. Therefore a woman might go to him and offer to 
 help him, and while helping him she might possess herself 
 of all his secrets. " Follow the holy man no farther than 
 his threshold," said the Arabs. She would do it nevertheless, 
 and in doing it she would be serving England and Egypt 
 and even the world. 
 
 Thus she fought with herself in a fierce effort to hold 
 on to her good conscience. But, staring out of the window, 
 she felt as if something from the river were stretching out
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 215 
 
 its evil hands to her. The red streak in the rising Nile was 
 now wider than before, and it looked more than ever like 
 blood. 
 
 Ishmael Ameer would not know her. During the single 
 moment in which she had stood in the same room with him 
 he had never so much as looked in her direction. The 
 Sirdar and the British officers of the Soudan had not yet 
 seen her. If there were any danger of their asking ques- 
 tions the Consul-General could set them at rest. " I can 
 do it," she thought. " I can and I will." 
 
 The black boy, who had been creeping in and out of her 
 room, looking more and more miserable as he found her 
 always in the same position, now approached her and said, 
 pointing to the labels under her elbows : 
 
 " Mosie tie them onto boxes, lady ? " 
 
 She looked round at him and the utter slavishness in 
 his little soul touched her pity. It also stirred her caution 
 for she told herself that she might need the boy's help and 
 that he would die for her if need be. 
 
 " Mosie," she said, " would you like to go away with 
 me?" 
 
 Mosie, in his delirious joy, could hardly believe his ears. 
 
 " Lady take Mosie to England with her ? " 
 
 " No, to your own country, to the Soudan." 
 
 Mosie first leaped off the floor as if he wanted to flj- up 
 to the ceiling, and then began to make himself big, saying 
 Mosie was a good boy, he was lady's own boy from one hand 
 to the other, and what would have become of lady if she had 
 gone away without him? 
 
 " Then bring up two cabs immediately, one for the lug- 
 gage and the other for ourselves, and don't say a word 
 to anybody," said Helena, who had risen to consult a rail- 
 way time-table and was now tearing up her labels. 
 
 Hugging himself with delight, the black boy shot away 
 instantly. Helena heard his joyous laughter as it rippled 
 like a river along the garden path, and then she sat down 
 at the desk to write to the Consul-General.
 
 216 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 XIII 
 
 Gordon, in the meantime, living on the heights of his 
 new resolve, had been waiting impatiently for the oppor- 
 tunity of departure. Xo prisoner looking foru-ard to the 
 hour of his escape ever suffered more from the slow passage 
 of time. He lost all appetite for food, sleep deserted him, 
 and as the week went on he was in an increasing fever of 
 excitement. On Tuesday he received through Michael a 
 letter from Hafiz saying: 
 
 " "We must be careful. I'll tell you why. I was right 
 about the trackers. That beast Macdonald, having sworn 
 that he would find you if you were above ground, and being 
 sure that you were still in Cairo and that the people were 
 concealing you, employed the services of a couple of ser- 
 pents from the Soudan. These human reptiles, with green 
 eyes like the eyes of boa-constrictors, had no difficulty in 
 tracing your footsteps to a side street in the neighbourhood 
 of El Azhar, but there your footsteps failed them as abso- 
 lutely as if you had sunk into the earth. 
 
 " Perplexed and baffled, they were on the point of giving 
 up the search when in the soft mud of the disgusting thor- 
 oughfare they found the marks of horses' hoofs and of the 
 hoops of wheels, and from these they concluded that you had 
 been carried off in a conveyance of some sort. But track of 
 the carriage was lost the moment they reached the paved 
 way which passes through the Muski, and now they are again 
 bewildered. 
 
 " In this extremity, however, they have thought of 
 another device for your discovery, which is — what do you 
 think? — to watch me! Under the impression that I know 
 where you are, they are dogging my footsteps every moment 
 I am off duty. Xo matter! I'll beat the beasts! As a 
 bloodhound is nothing but a nose, so a tracker is nothing 
 but an eye, and he has hardly as much brain as you could 
 push into a mushroom. Therefore wait! Trust yourself to 
 Hafiz! Why not? You cannot depend on a better man."
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 217 
 
 Next day, Wednesday, the doctor, with his bright face 
 and cheery voice, came again to dress the wounded finger. 
 
 " Wonderful ! " he cried. " Almost healed already ! 
 That's what youth and decent living does for a man." 
 
 "I have no money at present, doctor," said Gordon, 
 *' but I exi^ect to receive some very soon, and before I go 
 your fee will be paid." 
 
 " Of course it will — when I ask for it. But ' go ' ? Xot 
 yet, I think." 
 
 The streets were like a sackful of eyes and every eye 
 seemed to be looking for Gordon — either to attack or to 
 protect him. 
 
 " But wait ! Things don't seem to be going too smoothly 
 for the Government." 
 
 Cables at the clubs made it clear that England was not 
 very pleased with the turn events had taken in Cairo. 
 There had been questions in Parliament and the Foreign 
 Minister at his wits' end to defend the Consul-General. 
 Mentions of Gordon himself, too, and some of the Liberal 
 Opposition up in arms for him. 
 
 " So wait, I say ! Who knows ? You may walk out with- 
 out danger by and by." 
 
 Thursday passed heavily with Gordon, who was alone 
 all day long save for the visits of old Michael when bringing 
 the food, which went away untouched, but toward midnight 
 Hafiz arrived, with his eyes full of mischief and his fat 
 cheeks wreathed in smiles. 
 
 " Look ! " he said, " that's the way to beat the brutes," 
 and holding up one foot he pointed to a native yellow slip- 
 per which he wore over his military boots. He had made a 
 circuit of six miles to get there, though — it was like taking 
 a country walk in order to cross the street. 
 
 "But no matter! Trust yourself to Hafiz." 
 
 He carried a small bundle under his arm, and throwing 
 it on a chair, he said : 
 
 " Your Bedouin clothes, my boy — you'll find them all 
 right, I think." 
 
 Gordon caught the flame of his eagerness and was asking 
 a dozen questions at once, when Hafiz said :
 
 218 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " A moment, old chap ! Let us speak of everything in 
 its place. First," taking a roll of bank notes out of his 
 pocket, " here's your money — short of what I've spent for 
 you. Tommy got it. Couldn't get anything else, though." 
 
 Thinking civilian clothes might be useful, Hafiz had told 
 Gordon's soldier servant to smuggle a suit out, also, but it 
 had been found impossible to do so. 
 
 " That comes of taking up your quarters in a barracks 
 instead of at the club or at a private house, as staff officers 
 always do," said Hafiz, and when Gordon gave some hint of 
 explanation he added : " Oh, I know ! You wanted to make 
 common cause with the men, but now you have to pay the 
 price of it." 
 
 "What about the man to go with me?" asked Gordon. 
 
 " I've got him. You remember the two Sheikhs who 
 went with us to Alexandria ? It's one of them." 
 
 His name was Osman. He had been tutor to the IQie- 
 dive's children, but ho wished to become a teacher of Mo- 
 hammedan law in the college at Khartoum, so the journey 
 suited his book exactly. 
 
 "And the camels?" 
 
 " I've got them also. Young ones, too, with ripping big 
 humps! They'll want their humps before they've crossed 
 that desert;" 
 
 " Where and when am I to meet them, Hafiz ? " 
 
 " At the first village beyond the fort on the Gebel Mokat- 
 tam at eleven o'clock to-morrow night. But I'll come for 
 you at ten and see you safely started." 
 
 Gordon looked up in alarm. 
 
 " Don't be afraid for me. Leave everything to Hafiz. 
 You can't depend on a better man." 
 
 " I'm sure T can't," said Gordon, and then in a lower 
 tone, "But, Hafiz?" 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 "What about Helena?" 
 
 " Packed up and ready to go. The Consul-General's 
 Secretary booked her berth to-day, and she sails, as I said 
 she would, on Saturday." 
 
 Next day, Friday, the hours went by with feet of lead.
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 219 
 
 but Gordon's impatience to get away from Cairo had now 
 begun to abate. More easily could he have reconciled him- 
 self to go if Helena had gone before him, but to leave her 
 behind, if only for a few hours, was like cowardice. Little 
 by little his spirit fell from the elevation on which it had 
 lived for the better part of a week, and in the face of his 
 flight he felt ashamed. 
 
 Toward nightfall, nevertheless, he began to make prepara- 
 tions for his departure, and, opening the bundle of clothes 
 which Ilafiz had left for him, he found that they consisted 
 of a Bedouin's outer garments only, caftan, skull-cap, kufiah 
 (head-shawl), and head- rope, but no underclothing and no 
 slippers. This seemed for a moment like an insurmountable 
 difficult}', but at the next instant, with the sense of a higher 
 power ruling everything, he saw the finger of God in it, com- 
 pelling him to wear his soldier's clothes and military boots 
 beneath his Bedouin costixme, lest leaving them behind him 
 might lead to trouble for the good people who had befriended 
 him. 
 
 By ten o'clock he had finished his dressing and then the 
 door of his room was opened by a man in the flowing silk 
 garments of a Sheikh, with the light of a smile on his 
 chubby face and a cautionary finger to his lip. 
 
 "Here I am — are you ready?" 
 
 It was Hafiz, tingling with excitement but chuckling 
 with joy, and having looked at Gordon in his head-shawl 
 descending to his shoulders, with the head-rope coiled about 
 it, he said : 
 
 " Marvellous! Your own father wouldn't know you." 
 
 The disguise was none too good, though, for the trackers 
 were keenly on the trail that night, having got it into their 
 heads that Gordon would try to leave Egypt with Helena in 
 the morning. 
 
 " So the sooner we are on the safe side of the Gebel 
 Mokattam the better, my boy — one moment, though." 
 
 " What is it ? " 
 
 " Remember — your name is Omar — Omar Benani." 
 
 " Omar Benani." 
 
 The last moment having come, Gordon, who seemed now
 
 220 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 to catch at every straw that would delay his departure, was 
 unwilling to leave the house that had been his refuge without 
 bidding farewell to the Patriarch. Hafiz tried to dissuade 
 him from doing so, saying that the Patriarch, who knew all, 
 wished to be blind to what was going on. But Gordon was 
 not to be gainsaid, and after a while Michael was called and 
 he led the way to the Patriarch's room. 
 
 The old man had just finished his frugal supper of spin- 
 ach and egg, and was lifting his horn-rimmed spectacles 
 from his nose to wipe his rheumy eyes with his red-print 
 handkerchief when Michael opened the door. 
 
 " A poor traveller asks your blessing, Patriarch," said 
 Michael, and then Gordon, in his Bedouin costume, stepped 
 forward and knelt at the old priest's feet. 
 
 The Patriarch rose and stood for a moment with a look 
 of perplexity on his wrinkled face. Then, lending himself 
 to the transparent deception, the saintly old man laid his 
 bony hand, trembling visibly, on Gordon's head, and speak- 
 ing in a faltering voice, with breath that came quickly 
 through his toothless jaws, he said : 
 
 " God bless you, my son, and send you safely to your 
 journey's end and to your own place and people." 
 
 But seeing at the next instant how pathetic was the 
 error which in his momentary confusion he had unwittingly 
 made, he corrected himself and added : 
 
 " Fear not, my son, neither in the days of thy life, nor 
 in the hour of death, for God will go Avith thee and He will 
 bring thee hack." 
 
 A moment later Gordon, with Hafiz by his side, had 
 passed out of the echoing harbour of the little cathedral 
 close into the running tides of the streets without. 
 
 XIV 
 
 The Coptic Cathedral stands in the midst of the most 
 ancient part of Cairo and it is coiled about by a cobweb of 
 close and narrow thoroughfares. Through these thorough- 
 fares, which are lit by tin lanterns and open candles only.
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 221 
 
 and dense with a various throng of native people — hawkers, 
 pedlars, water-carriers, fruit-sellers, the shrouded black 
 forms of women gliding noiselessly along, and the blue fig- 
 ures of men lounging at coffee-stalls or squatting at the 
 open mouths of shops — Gordon in his Bedouin costume 
 walked with a long, slow step and the indifference to 
 danger which he had learned in war, while Hafiz, who 
 was now quivering with impatience and trembling with the 
 dread of detection, slackened his speed to keep pace with 
 him. 
 
 " Can't we go faster? " whispered Hafiz, but Gordon did 
 not seem to hear. Slowly, steadily, with a rhythmic stride 
 that might have come out of the desert itself, he pushed his 
 way through the throng of town-dwellers, always answering 
 the pious ejaculations of the passers-by and returning their 
 Eastern greetings. 
 
 Before Hafiz was aware of the direction they were tak- 
 ing they had passed out of the dim-lit native streets, where 
 people moved like shadows in a mist, into the coarse flare 
 of the Esbekiah (the European) quarter, where multitudes 
 of men in Western dress sat drinking at tables on the pave- 
 ment, while girls in gold brocade and with painted faces 
 smiled down at them from upper windows. 
 
 "Why should we go this way?" said Hafi^; in Arabic, 
 but still Gordon made no reply. 
 
 Two mounted police who were standing at guard by the 
 entrance to a dark alley craned forward to peer into their 
 faces, and a group of young British officers, smoking ciga- 
 rettes on the balcony of a hotel, watched them while they 
 passed and broke into a subdued trill of laughter when they 
 ■were gone. 
 
 " Are we not exposing ourselves unnecessarily ? " whis- 
 pered Hafiz ; but Gordon only gripped the hand that hung by 
 his side and went on without speaking. 
 
 Presently they crossed the Opera Square and turned 
 down an avenue that led to the Nile, and then Hafiz's im- 
 patience could contain itself no longer. 
 
 " We are going in the wrong direction," he whispered. 
 " It's nearly eleven o'clock and Osman is waiting for us."
 
 222 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Come on," said Gordon, and he continued to walk 
 steadily fon\ard. 
 
 At length it dawned on Hafiz that, in spite of all possi- 
 ble consequences, Gordon intended to go to the Agency 
 before he left Cairo, and having assured himself that this 
 was so, he began to pour out a running whisper of passion- 
 ate entreaties. 
 
 " But, Gordon ! My dear Gordon ! This is madness. 
 It cannot be done," he said. 
 
 " It must ! " said Gordon. 
 
 " The trackers will be there if they are anywhere." 
 
 " Hush ! " 
 
 " It is the one place they'll keep watch upon to-night." 
 
 "I can't help that," said Gordon without stopping, and 
 Hafiz had no choice but to follow on. 
 
 A few minutes later the good fellow, whose heart was 
 now panting in his throat, walked close to Gordon's side 
 and whispered in a breaking voice: 
 
 " If you have any message to send to your mother I'll 
 take it — I'll take it after you are gone." 
 
 " I must see her myself," said Gordon, and then Hafiz 
 could say no more. 
 
 They passed through populous places into thoroughfares 
 that were less and less crowded, and came out at last by 
 the barracks on the banks of the Nile. , There the broad 
 street was empty and silent, and the white moonlight lay 
 over the river, which flowed like liquid steel. Under the 
 dark window of his own quarters Gordon paused for a mo- 
 ment, for it was the spot on which he had first seen Helena. 
 He could see it still as he saw it then, with its tide of clam- 
 orous traffic from the bridge — the camels, the cameleers, the 
 blue-shirted fellaheen, the w^omen with tattooed chins and 
 children astride on their shoulders, and then the girl driv- 
 ing the automobile, with the veil of white chiffon about her 
 head and the ruddy glow of the sunset kissing her upturned 
 face as she lifted her eyes to look at him. 
 
 Hafiz was choking with emotion by this time, but his 
 sense of Gordon's danger came uppermost again when they 
 turned into the road that led to the Consul-General's house
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 223 
 
 and caught sight of a group of men who were standing at 
 the gate. 
 
 " There they are," he whispered. " What did I tell you ? 
 Let us go back, Gordon, I implore you! I entreat you! 
 By all you love and who love you " 
 
 " Come on," said Gordon again, and, though quaking 
 with fear, Hafiz continued to walk by his side. 
 
 There were only three men at the gate of the Agency 
 and two of them were the native porters of the house, but 
 the third w^as a lean and lank Soudanese, who carried by a 
 cord about his neck a small round lantern whereof the light 
 was turned against his breast. A cold glitter in the black 
 man's eyes was like the gleam of a dagger to Hafiz, but 
 Gordon paid no heed to it. He saluted the porters, saying he 
 had come to see Ibrahim, the Consul-General's servant, and 
 then without waiting for permission, he walked through. 
 
 Hafiz followed him into the garden, where the moonlight 
 lay over the silent trees and made blotches of shadow on 
 the path. 
 
 " Stay here," he said, and leaving Hafiz in the darkness 
 he stepped up to the door. 
 
 Ibrahim himself opened it, and the moment he had done 
 so, Gordon entered the outer hall. 
 
 " Tell Fatimah I come from her son and wish to see her 
 at once," he said. 
 
 Ibrahim looked searchingly at the stranger and a shade 
 of doubt and anger crossed his face. 
 
 " I can't do that, my man," he answered. 
 
 " Why can't you ? " asked Gordon. 
 
 " I won't," said Ibrahim. 
 
 There was a little lodge at the right of the hall where 
 visitors to the Consul-General wrote their names in a book. 
 Into this lodge Gordon drew Ibrahim- by the arm and whis- 
 pered a few hasty words in his ear. The man's lips whitened 
 and quivered in an instant and he began to stutter and 
 stammer in his fright. 
 
 " Are 5'ou, then — can it be — is it really " 
 
 "Hush! Yes. Ibrahim," said Gordon. "I wish to see 
 my mother."
 
 224 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Ibrahim began to wring his hands. It was impossible. 
 Yes, impossible. Quite impossible. Her ladyship was ill. 
 
 "111?" 
 
 " She went up to the Citadel yesterday, sir, and eame 
 home utterly exhausted." 
 
 " Do you mean that my mother is very ill — dangerously 
 ill, Ibrahim?" 
 
 " I don't know, sir. I can't say, sir. I fear she is, sir," 
 
 " Then all the more I wish to see her," said Gordon. 
 
 But again Ibrahim wrung his hands. The doctor had 
 been there four times that day and ordered absolute rest 
 and quiet. Only Fatimah was permitted to enter the pa- 
 tient's room — except the Consul-General and he went up to 
 it every hour. 
 
 " It would be a shock to her, sir. It might kill her, sir. 
 Wallahi! I beg of you not to attempt it, sir." 
 
 Ibrahim was right, plainly right, but never until that 
 moment had Gordon known the full bitterness of the cup 
 he had to drink from. Because his mother was ill, danger- 
 ously ill, dying perhaps, therefore he must not see her — he 
 of all others! He was going far and might never see 
 her again. Was another blank wall to be built about 
 his life? It was monstrous, it was impossible, it should 
 not be! 
 
 In the agony of his revolt a wild thought came to him 
 — he would see his father! "Why not? Back to his memory 
 across the bridge of so many years came the words which 
 his father had written to him when he came of age: "You 
 are twenty-one years of age, Gordon, and your mother and 
 I have beeen recalling the incidents of the day on which 
 you were bom — From this day forward I am no longer 
 your father; I am your friend; perhaps the best friend you 
 ■will ever have; let nothing and no one come between us." 
 Then why not? What was there to be afraid of? 
 
 " Ibrahim," said Gordon, " where is the Consul-General 
 now?" 
 
 "In the library with his secretary, sir," replied Ibrahim. 
 
 " Then tell him — " began Gordon, but just at that mo- 
 ment there was a flat and deadened step on the soft carpet
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 225 
 
 of the landing above, and then a cold voice that chilled his 
 ear came from the upper hall. 
 
 " Ibrahim ! " 
 
 It was the Consul-General himself with a letter in his 
 hand. 
 
 "Hush!" said Ibrahim, and, leaving the lodge, he walked 
 up the three or four steps to meet his master. 
 
 " Take this to the office of the Commandant of Police — 
 take it yourself and see it safely delivered." 
 
 " Yes, my lord." 
 
 " If the Commandant has gone home for the night you 
 will ask for his Deputy and say my answer is : ' Yes, I let 
 nothing come between me and the law. If you suspect that 
 the person you refer to is still in Cairo, you will deal with 
 him as you would deal with anybody else.' You understand 
 me?" 
 
 "Yes, my lord," said Ibrahim, but he was staring stu- 
 pidly at the letter as if he had lost his wits. 
 
 " Who is that in the lodge with you ? " asked the Consul- 
 General, and then Ibrahim, fumbling the letter until it 
 almost fell out of his fingers, seemed unable to reply. 
 
 The wild thought had gone from Gordon by this time 
 and he said in a voice which he did not recognise as his own, 
 " Tell Fatimah that her brother will come again to see her," 
 and then, feeling ashamed of his sorry masquerade, and less 
 than a servant in his father's house, he stumbled out into 
 the garden. 
 
 Hafiz was waiting for him there and he was in a state 
 of still greater terror than before. The moment Gordon had 
 gone a light footstep, trying to make itself noiseless, had 
 come crackling over the gravel from the direction of the 
 gate. It was that of the Soudanese and he had crept along 
 the path like a serpent, half doubled up and with his eyes 
 and his lantern to the ground. After a while he had re- 
 turned to where he came from, and Hafiz had followed him, 
 walking stealthily in the shadow of the trees, in order to 
 hear what he had to say. " Your Bedouin is a child of 
 Cairo and his boots were made in England," he had said, 
 and then chuckling to himself he had hurried away.
 
 226 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Are you wearing your military boots, Gordon ? Did 
 you forget the slippers? Or was it Osman who forgot 
 them? It can't be helped, though. The man was a tracker 
 — I told you so — and now he has gone for the others and we 
 shall be followed by the whole troop of them. Let us 
 be off." 
 
 But still Gordon was in no hurry to go. The sense 
 of stealing like a stranger from a spot that was dear 
 to him by a thousand memories seemed to be more than 
 he could bear. Leaving Ilafiz on the path, he went round 
 the house until he reached a place from which he could 
 see the light in his mother's window. His mother, his 
 sweet and sainted mother, innocent of everything, yet the 
 victim of all ! God forgive him ! Was it worth while to 
 go away at all ? A gentle breeze had risen by this time 
 and Hafiz was starting at every leaf that rustled over his 
 head. 
 
 When at length they had left the Agency they were 
 goipg in the right direction, but Gordon was once more 
 choosing the lighter and more crowded thoroughfares. 
 Again the hawkers, the pedlars, the water-carriers, the 
 shrouded black forms of women and the blue figures of men. 
 Again the salutations, the pious ejaculations, the silent 
 Eastern greetings. It was almost as if Gordon were tempt- 
 ing Providence, as if he were trying to leave time for the 
 trackers to overtake him. 
 
 " Every moment we lose fills me with fear. Can't we go 
 faster now?" whispered Hafiz in English, but Gordon con- 
 tinued to walk with the same even stop. 
 
 " I know it might look like fright and arouse suspicion, 
 but still " 
 
 As often as he dared to do so Hafiz looked back to see 
 if they were pursued. 
 
 " Nothing in sight yet — God has delivered us thus far 
 — but must we walk so slow?" 
 
 In the agony of his impatience every noise in the streets 
 was like the sound of a pursuer. If a boy shouted to his 
 playmate he shuddered ; if a hawker yelled over his tray he 
 trembled. When they had passed out of the busy thorough-
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 227 
 
 fares into the darker streets, where watchmen call to each 
 other through the hours of the night, the cry of a ghafir far 
 ahead (" Wahhed ! ") seemed to Ilafiz like the bay of a blood- 
 hound, and the answer of another close behind was like the 
 shrill voice of some one who was pouncing upon his 
 shoulders. 
 
 " It would be a pity to be taken now — at the last mo- 
 ment, too," he whispered, and he strained his ear to catch 
 the faintest sound of footsteps behind them. 
 
 After that no more was said until they came to the open 
 space under the heights of the Citadel where one path goes 
 up to the Mokattam hills and another crosses the arid land 
 that lies on the east bank of the ISTile. Then suddenly 
 Hafiz, who had been panting and gasping, began to laugh 
 and crow. 
 
 " I know what we've got to do," he said. " Good Lord 
 alive, why didn't I think of it before?" 
 
 With that he stooped and whipped off the slippers he 
 wore over his boots and called on Gordon to hold up his 
 foot. 
 
 "What for?" asked Gordon. 
 
 " I have a reason — a good one. Hold up ! The other 
 one ! Quick ! " 
 
 In a moment the slippers he had taken off his own boots 
 had been pulled over Gordon's. 
 
 " Eight ! And now, my dear Gordon, you and I are 
 going to part company." 
 
 "Here?" said Gordon. 
 
 " Yes, here," said Hafiz, and then, pointing with one 
 hand to the hill and with the other to the waste, he said : 
 " You are going that way — I am going this." 
 
 "Why so?" 
 
 " Why ? Do you ask me why ? Because the trackers 
 are after us — because they may be here at any moment — 
 because they know there are two of us, but when they find 
 we have separated they'll follow up the man who wears the 
 military boots." 
 
 " Hafiz ! " 
 
 " Well, I wear them, don't I? "
 
 228 THE WHITE PEOPHET 
 
 " Do you mean it, Hafiz — that you are going to turn the 
 trackers onto yourself ? " 
 
 " Why shouldn't I ? Lord God, what can they do to 
 me? If they catch me I'll only laugh in their dirty black 
 faces. I'll give them a run before that, though. Bedrashen, 
 Sakkara, Mena, Gizoh — a man wants some fun after a 
 night like this, you know." 
 
 He was laughing as if he were beside himself with 
 excitement. 
 
 " By that time you'll be far away from here, please 
 God ! Six hours at least — I'll see it's six, Gordon — six 
 hours' start on good camels — across the desert, too — and not 
 a black devil of them all to know what the dickens has 
 become of you." 
 
 His fear was as gi'eat as ever, but it had suddenly 
 become heroic. 
 
 "Hafiz!" said Gordon. His voice was faltering and he 
 was holding out both hands, but Hafiz, unable to trust him- 
 self, was pretending not to hear or see. 
 
 " Ko time to lose, though ! Time is life, brother, and 
 you mustn't stay here a moment longer. Over the hill — 
 first village beyond the fort — Osman will be waiting for 
 you." 
 
 " Hafiz ! " 
 
 " Can't wait for farewells, Gordon. Besides, you're not 
 going for good, you know. Lord no, not a bit of it ! You'll 
 come back some day — Ishmael too — and then there'll be the 
 deuce to pay by some of them." 
 
 He was running a few paces away, then stepping back 
 again. 
 
 " Why don't you go ? I'm going, anyway ! It's a race 
 for life or death to-niglit, my boy! Such fun! I'll beat 
 the brutes! Didn't I tell you to leave everything to Hafiz? 
 I said you couldn't depend on a better man." 
 
 " Hafiz ! " 
 
 " Good-night, old chap ! Good-night. Charlie ! Charlie 
 Gordon Lord has been a good old chum to me, but damn 
 it all, I'm going to be quits with him! " 
 
 With that he went bounding away, laughing and crying-
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 229 
 
 and swearing and sobbing at the same time, and in a mo- 
 ment he had disappeared in the darkness. 
 
 XV 
 
 Being left alone, Gordon looked i;p at the Citadel and 
 saw that a light was burning in the window of Helena's 
 sitting room. That sight brought back the choking sense 
 of shame which he had felt some days before at the thought 
 of leaving Helena behind him. 
 
 " I cannot go without seeing her," he thought. " It is 
 impossible — utterly impossible." 
 
 Then back to his mind, as by flashes of mental light- 
 ning, came one by one the reasons which he had forged for 
 not seeing Helena, but they were all of no avail. In vain 
 did he ask himself Avhat he was to say to her, how he was 
 to account for his past silence, and what explanation he 
 was to give of his present flight. There was no answer to 
 these questions, yet all the same an irresistible impulse 
 seemed to draw him up to Helena's side. He must see her 
 again, no matter at what risk. He must take her in his 
 arms once more, no matter at what cost. 
 
 " I must, I must," he continued to say to himself, while 
 the same animal instinct which had carried him away from 
 the Citadel on the night of the crime was now carrying him 
 back to it. 
 
 Almost before his mind had time to tell him where he 
 was going he found himself ascending the hill that leads 
 up to the Bab-el-Gedid. The sight of the gate of the 
 Citadel suggested fresh considerations that might have 
 acted as Avarnings, but he paid no heed to them. It was 
 nothing to him in his present mood that he was like a man 
 who was putting his head into a noose, walking deliberately 
 into a trap, marching straight into the camp of the enemy 
 whose first interest it was to destroy him. The image of 
 Helena and the sense of her presence so near to him left 
 little else to think about. 
 
 The gate was still open, for it was not yet twelve o'clock, 
 16
 
 230 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 aud in deference to the ritual of the Moslem faith, the 
 muezzin, who lived outside the walls, was permitted to pass 
 through that he might chant the midnight call to prayers 
 from the minaret of the mosque inside the fortress. 
 
 " Goin' to sing 'is bloomin' song, I suppose," thought 
 the sentry, a private of a Middlesex regiment, when Gordon, 
 as one having authority, walked boldly through the gate- 
 way. 
 
 Being now within the Citadel, Gordon began to be be- 
 sieged by thoughts of the trackers who would surely keep 
 watch upon the General's house also, if, as Hafiz had said, 
 there was a suspicion that Helena and he intended to go 
 away together. But again the vision of Helena rose before 
 him and all other considerations were swept away. 
 
 " To leave Cairo while Helena remains in it would be 
 cowardly," he told himself, and emboldened by this thought 
 he walked fearlessly across the square of the mosque and 
 round the old arsenal to the gate of the General's house 
 without caring whom he met there. 
 
 He met no one. The gate was standing wide and the 
 door of the house itself, when he came to it, was open also 
 and there was nobody anj-where about. "With a gathering 
 sense of shame such as he had never felt before he stood 
 there for a moment, wondering what course he ought to 
 take, whether to ring for a servant or to walk through as 
 he had been wont to do before the dread events befell. Sud- 
 denly the walls of the house within resounded to a peal of 
 raucous laughter, followed by a burst of noisy voices in 
 coarse and clamorous talk. 
 
 Utterly bewildered, he stepped forward in the direction 
 of Helena's boudoir and then he realised that that was the 
 room the voices came from. After a moment of uncer- 
 tainty he knocked, Avhereupon somebody shouted to him in 
 Arabic to enter, and then he opened the door. 
 
 Helena's servants, being paid off, and required to leave 
 the house in the morning, had invited certain of their 
 friends and made a feast for them. Squatting on the floor, 
 around a huge brass tray, which contained a lamb roasted 
 whole and various smaller dishes, they were now regaling
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 231 
 
 themselves after the manner of their kind with the last 
 contents of the General's larder, washed down by many 
 pious speeches and by stories less devotional. 
 
 "A little more, oh, my brother?" 
 
 " No ; thanks be to God, I have eaten well." 
 
 " Then by the beard of the Prophet — on whom prayer and 
 praise — coffee and cigarettes and the tale of the little danc- 
 ing girl." 
 
 At the height of their deafening merriment the door of 
 the room opened and a man in Bedouin dress sto9d upon 
 the threshold, and then there was silence. 
 
 Gordon stood for a moment in amazement at sight of 
 this coarse scene on a spot associated with so many delicate 
 memories. Then he said : 
 
 "You don't happen to know if — if the boy Mosie is 
 about ? " 
 
 " Gone ! " shouted several voices at once. 
 
 "Gone?" 
 
 "Yes, gone, O Sheikh," said one of the men — he was 
 the cook — pausing to speak with a piece of meat between 
 his finger and thumb, halfway to his mouth. "Mosie has 
 gone to England with the lady Helena. They left here at 
 six o'clock to catch the night train to Alexandria, so as to 
 be in good time for to-morrow's steamer." 
 
 Gordon stood a moment longer, looking down at the 
 grinning faces about the tray, and then, with various apol- 
 ogies and after many answering salaams, he closed the door 
 behind him, whereupon he heard the buzz of renewed con- 
 versation within the room, followed by another but more 
 subdued burst of laughter. 
 
 Alone in the corridor, he asked himself why, since 
 Helena was gone, he had been brought back to this place. 
 Was it for punishment, for penance? It must have been 
 so. "All that had to be expiated," he told himself, and 
 then he turned to go. 
 
 But walking through the outer hall he had to pass the 
 door of the General's oiEce, and thinking it would be a sort 
 of penance to enter the room itself, he persuaded himself to 
 do so.
 
 232 THE ^VHITE PROPHET 
 
 The room seemed naked and dead now, being denuded 
 of the little personal things that had made it live. It was 
 dark, too, save for a ray of light that came from a lamp 
 outside, but the first thing that met Gordon's eyes was the 
 spot on which the General fell. He forced himself to look 
 at that spot; for some moments he compelled himself to 
 stand by it, though his hair rose from his crown and beads 
 of perspiration broke from his forehead. 
 
 " All that had to be expiated," he told himself again, 
 and again he turned to go. 
 
 But back in the hall he was on the spot where he had 
 last parted from Helena and there a new penance awaited 
 him. He remembered that in the hideous moment when he 
 had tried in vain to reply to her reproaches he had been 
 telling himself that if she loved him as he loved her she 
 would be trying to see things with his eyes. That thought 
 had helped him to leave her then, but it brought him no 
 comfort now. Why had he not seen that the girl's love was 
 fighting Avith her pride ? Why had he not followed her into 
 the house when in her pleading, sobbing voice she had 
 called after him? 
 
 " Yes, everything had to be expiated," he told himself, 
 and once more he turned to go. . 
 
 But passing through the garden he caught sight of the 
 arbour on the edge of the ramparts, and it seemed to him. 
 that the deepest penance of all would be to stand for an in- 
 stant on that loved spot. Giving himself no quarter, abat- 
 ing nothing of the bitterness of his expiation, drinking to 
 the dregs the cup that fate had forced to his lips, he entered 
 the arbour and there the image of the girl he had loved, the 
 girl he still loved, rose most vividly of all before him. 
 
 He could almost feel her bodily presence by his side — 
 the gleam of her eyes, the odour of her hair, the heaving 
 of her bosom. He could see the caressing smile that broke 
 from her face, he could hear the freshness of her ringing 
 laugh. Her proud strength and self-reliance; her energy 
 and grace ; her passionate daring and chivalry and the gay 
 raillery that was her greatest charm — everything that was 
 Helena appeared to be about him now.
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 233 
 
 "Love is above everything — 1 shall only think of that," 
 she had said. 
 
 The moon was shining, the leaves were rustling, the 
 silvery haze of night-dew was in the near air, while the 
 lights of the city were blinking below and the river was 
 flowing silently beyond. How often on such a night had 
 he walked on the ramparts with Helena leaning closely on 
 his arm and springing lightly by his side! It almost 
 seemed as if he had only to turn his head and he would see 
 her there, with her light scarf over her head and crossed 
 under her chin and thrown over her shoulders. 
 
 " Could nothing separate you and me ? " she had asked, 
 and he had answered, " Nothing in this world." 
 
 His grief was crushing. It was of that kind, unequalled 
 for bitterness and sweetness combined, which comes to the 
 strong man who has been robbed of the woman he loves by 
 a fate more cruel than death. Helena was not dead, and 
 when he thought of her on her way to England while he 
 was a homeless wanderer in the desert, shut out from love 
 and friendship, the practice of his profession, and the prog- 
 ress of the world, the pain of his position was almost more 
 than he could bear. 
 
 After a while he was brought back to himself by another 
 burst of raucous laughter — the laughter of the servants in- 
 side the house — and at the next moment he saw a light 
 running along the ground in the dark market-place below 
 — the light of the trackers who were going off on the wrong 
 scent with a company of mounted police in the direction 
 taken by Hafiz. 
 
 XVI 
 
 Gordon left the Citadel unchallenged and unobserved 
 and in less than half an hour he was climbing the yellow 
 road — white now in the moonlight — that goes up to the 
 Mokattam hills. By this time he was beginning to see the 
 meaning of that night's experience. Unconsciously he had 
 been putting Providence to the proof. Unwittingly he had
 
 234 THE WIIlTf: PROPHET 
 
 been asking the fates to say if the path he had marked out 
 for himself had been the right one when he had decided to 
 follow Ishmael Ameer to Khartoum, to work by his side, 
 and to come back at last when his sin had been forgiven 
 and his redemption won. 
 
 Providence had decided in his favour. If destiny had 
 determined that he should not leave Cairo he might have 
 been taken a hundred times. Because he had not been 
 taken it was clear to him that it was intended that he 
 should go. 
 
 He had tried to see his mother, and if he could have 
 done so he must have stayed with her at all hazards, since 
 she was so ill and perhaps so near to death. He had tried 
 to see Helena, also, and if she had not gone to England 
 already he must have clung to her at all costs and in spite 
 of all consequences. On the other hand he had seen his 
 father and heard from his very lips that nothing — not even 
 the liberty or yet the life of his own son — could stand be- 
 tween him and his duty to the law. 
 
 What did it mean that he should be so cut off, so 
 stripped naked, so deprived of his place as son and lover 
 and soldier and man that all that had hitherto stood to him 
 as himself, as Gordon Lord, was gone? It meant that 
 another existence was before him; another work, another 
 mission. Destiny was carrying him away from his former 
 life and he had only to go forward without fear. 
 
 Thus once again on the heights of his great resolve he 
 pushed on with a quick step, not daring to look back lest 
 the sense of seeing things for the last time should be more 
 than he could bear, lest the thought of leaving the city he 
 loved, the people who loved him, his men and his brother 
 officers, his mother and the rnemoiy of his happiness with 
 Helena, his father and the consciousness of having wrecked 
 the hopes of a lifetime, should drag him back at the last 
 moment. 
 
 In the midst of these emotions he was startled by a loud 
 sharp voice that was without and not within him. 
 
 " Enta min ? " (Who are you ?) 
 
 Then he realised that he had reached the fort on the
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 235 
 
 top of the hill, and that the Egyptian sentry at the gate 
 was challenging him. For a moment he stood speechless, 
 trying in vain to remember the name by which he was 
 henceforward to be known. 
 
 "Who are you?" cried the sentry again, and then Gor- 
 don answered: 
 
 " Omar." 
 
 "Omar — what?" cried the sentry. 
 
 Again Gordon was speechless for a moment. 
 
 " Answer," cried the sentry, and he raised his rifle to 
 his shoulder. 
 
 " Omar Benani the Bedouin," said Gordon at last, and 
 then the sentry lowered his gun. 
 
 " Pass, Omar Benani. All's well!" 
 
 But Gordon had a still greater surprise in store for him. 
 As he was going on he became aware that the Egyptian 
 soldier was walking by his side and speaking in a low tone. 
 
 " Have thoy taken him ? " he was saying. 
 
 " Taken whom ? " asked Gordon, 
 
 " Our English brother — the Colonel — Colonel Lord. 
 Have they arrested him ? " 
 
 It was not at first that Gordon could command his voice 
 to reply, but at length he said : 
 
 " Not yet — not when I came out of Cairo." 
 
 " El Hamdullillah (Praise be to God) ! " said the sentry, 
 and then in a louder voice he cried : 
 
 "Peace to you, O brother!" whereupon Gordon an- 
 swered as well as he could for the thickening of his throat 
 which seemed to stifle him. 
 
 " And to you ! " 
 
 More sure than ever now that God's hand was leading 
 him, he walked on with a quicker step than before, and 
 presently he saw in the distance a dark group which he rec- 
 ognised as Osman and the camels. 
 
 "Allah be praised, you've come at last," whispered 
 Osman. 
 
 He was a bright and intelligent young Egyptian and 
 for the last hour he had lived in a fever of alarm, thinking 
 Gordon must have fallen into the hands of the police.
 
 236 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " They got wind that you were hiding at the Coptic 
 Patriarch's house," he said, " and were only waiting for 
 the permission of the Agency to raid it at eleven o'clock." 
 
 " I left it at ten," said Gordon. 
 
 " Thank God for that, sir," said Osnian. " The Prophet 
 must have taken a love for you to carry you off so soon. 
 We must start away now, though," he whispered. " It's 
 past twelve and the village is fast asleep!" 
 
 "Is everything ready?" asked Gordon. 
 
 " Everything — water, biscuits, dates, durah, rifles " 
 
 "Rifles?" 
 
 "Why not, sir? Two good Bedouin flintlocks. Even 
 if we never have occasion to use them they'll help us to 
 divert suspicion." 
 
 " Let us be off, then," said Gordon. 
 
 " Good," said Osman. " If we can only get away quietly 
 our journey will be as white as milk." 
 
 In the shadow of a high wall the camels sat munching 
 their food under their saddles covered with green cloth and 
 decorated with fringes of cowries, and with their sahharahs 
 (square boxes for provisions) hanging on either side. They 
 were restive when they had to rise and it was as much as 
 Osman could do to keep them from grunting, being so fresh 
 and so full of corn. But he held their mouths closed until 
 they were on their feet and then mounted his own camel 
 by climbing on its neck. A moment afterward the good 
 creatures were gliding" swiftly away into the obscurity of 
 the night, Avith their upturned steadfast faces, their noise- 
 less tread and swinging motion. 
 
 Both men were accustomed to camel riding and both 
 knew the track before them, therefore they lost no time in 
 getting under way. The first village was soon left be- 
 hind, and as they came near to other hamlets the howling 
 of dogs warned them of their danger and they skirted 
 round and quickened their pace. 
 
 A little beyond Ilelwan they came upon a Bedouin 
 camp with its long irregular dark tents and an open fire 
 around which a company of men sat talking, but Gordon 
 pushed forward with his flintlock swung across his saddle-
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 237 
 
 bow, -while Osman, thinking to avoid suspicion, hung back 
 for a moment to exchange news and greetings. 
 
 Then on and on they went, up and down the yellow hillg,. 
 across sandy plains that were still warm with the heat of 
 the day, and over rocky gorges that seemed to echo a hun- 
 dred times to the softest footfall. 
 
 In less than three hours they were out on the open des- 
 ert, lonely and grand, without a soul or yet a sound, save; 
 the faint thud of the camel's tread on the sand and the dice- 
 like rattle of the cowries that hung from the saddles. 
 
 "Allah l-halasna! God has delivered us," said Osman 
 at last, as he wiped the cold sweat of fear from his forehead. 
 
 But never for a moment had Gordon felt afraid. No 
 more now than before did he know what fate was before 
 him, but if a pillar of fire had appeared in the dark blue 
 sky he could not have been more sure that — sinful man as 
 lie was — God's light was leading him. 
 
 He had fallen in the dark, but he was about to rise 
 again. God's wrath had burned against him, but he was 
 soon to be forgiven. After the emotions and experiences of 
 that night he knew of a certainty that the path he had 
 chosen was the path which it was intended that he should 
 take. Somewhere — he knew not where — and somehow — he 
 knew not how — Heaven had uses for him still. 
 
 As he rode over the sandy waste it became fixed in his 
 mind that being rejected by all the world now, and stripped 
 of everything that man holds dear, it was meant by God 
 that he should offer his life in some great cause. That 
 thought did not terrify him at all. It delighted and in- 
 spired him, and stirred every passion of the soldier in his 
 soul. 
 
 To be, perhaps, a link between East and West, to carry 
 the white man's burden into the black man's country for 
 higher ends than greed of wealth or lust of empire, he 
 would die, if need be, a thousand deaths. 
 
 How did he come to think of this as the fate before 
 
 him? Who can know? Who can say? There are moments 
 
 when man feels the influence of invisible powers which it 
 
 is equally impossible to explain and to control. Such a 
 
 17
 
 238 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 moment was this to Gordon. He was flying away as a 
 homeless fugitive, yet he was going with a full heart and 
 a high resolve. Somewhere his great hour waited for him 
 — somewhere and somehow — he could only follow and obey. 
 But meanwhile there was nothing before him except the 
 rolling waves of the desert, nothing about him except the 
 silence of immensity, and nothing above him but the un- 
 clouded glory of the moon. 
 
 xvn 
 
 As midnight had struck on the soft cathedral bell of 
 the clock in Lady Nuneham's room the old lady had raised 
 herself in bed and looked round with bright and joyful 
 eyes. 
 
 "Fatimah?" 
 
 " Yes, my heart," said Fatimah, rising hurriedly from 
 the chair in which she had been knitting and stepping up 
 to the bedside. 
 
 " Has he gone, Fatimah ? " 
 
 " Has who gone, oh, my lady ? " 
 
 The bright eyes looked at the Egyptian woman with a 
 reproving smile. 
 
 " Why, you know quite well, Fatimah, You saw him 
 yourself, didn't you?" 
 
 " You mean his lordship ? " 
 
 "No, no, but " 
 
 The old lady paused, looked round again and said: 
 
 "Can it be possible that you didn't see him, Fatimah?" 
 
 " See whom, my lady ? " 
 
 " Why, Gordon ! " 
 
 Fatimah made an upward gesture with her hand. 
 
 "When, my heart?" 
 
 " Just now — not a moment ago." 
 
 Fatimah raised both hands and seemed for a moment 
 unable to speak. 
 
 " He knocked at the door — I knew his knock immedi-
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 239 
 
 ately. Then he said outside, * Don't be afraid ' — I know 
 his voice, too. And then he opened the door and came in, 
 and I thought at first it was a Bedouin, for he wore East- 
 ern clothes, but he whispered, ' Mother,' and it was Gordon 
 himself." 
 
 " Oh, my dear eyes, you have been dreaming," said 
 Fatimah, whereupon the old lady looked reproachfully at 
 her and said: 
 
 " How can you say that, Fatimah ? I clasped my arms 
 around his neck, and he put his arms about me and kissed 
 me, and then " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 The old lady thought for a moment, " I think I must 
 have fainted," she said. " I cannot remember what hap- 
 pened then." 
 
 " Oh, my lady, oh, my heart, you have been sleeping for 
 nearly an hour," said Fatimah. 
 
 " Sleeping ? " 
 
 " Yes, but a little after eleven o'clock you were resting 
 and threw out your arms, and I covered them up again." 
 
 The joyful gleam had now gone from the old lady's 
 eyes, and a troubled look had taken the place of it. 
 
 " Dc you say that Gordon has not been here, Fatimah?" 
 
 " Alas ! no, my lady." 
 
 " Has nobody been ? " 
 
 " Nobody at all, my lady, since his lordship was i;p 
 last." 
 
 ■' But I could have been sure that " 
 
 She stopped; a smile crossed her bewildered face and 
 she said in a soft, indulgent voice : 
 
 " My poor Fatimah ! I wear you out. I wear out 
 everybody. You must have dozed off at that moment 
 and so " 
 
 " Oh, no, my lady, no ! Wallahi! I've not closed my eyes 
 since yesterday." 
 
 " How strange! " 
 
 " But Ibrahim ought to know if anybody has come up- 
 stairs. Should I call him, my lady ? " 
 
 " Yes — no — that is to say — wait ! "
 
 240 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 There was silence for a moment, and then, all the sweet 
 illusion being gone, the old lady said in a sadder tone: 
 
 " Perhaps you are right, Fatimah. But it was so dear 
 to think that— Hush ! '' 
 
 She had heard her husband's footsteps on the stairs, 
 and she began to straighten her lace cap with her delicate 
 white fingers. 
 
 The Consul-General had gone through a heavy and try- 
 ing day. In the morning he had received from the Secre- 
 tary of State for Foreign Affairs a despatch which was 
 couched in terms more caustic than had been addressed to 
 him from London at any time during his forty years in 
 Egypt. He had spent the nig'ht in dictating an answer to 
 this despatch, and his reply, though framed in diplomatic 
 form, had been no less biting and severe. 
 
 Having finished his work in some warmth, he was now 
 on his way to bed, and thinking of the humiliation to 
 which he had been exposed in England by the late disturb- 
 ance in Cairo he was blaming his son for the worst of it. 
 Every step of his heavy foot as he went upstairs was like 
 a word or a blow against Gordon. It was Gordon who had 
 encouraged the people to rebel; it was Gordon's name that 
 was being used (because it was his own name also) by pes- 
 tilent prattlers in Parliament to support the accusation 
 that he had outraged (contrary to the best traditions of 
 British rule) the religious instincts of an Eastern people; 
 therefore it was Gordon who had poisoned the source of his 
 authority in Egypt and the fount of his influence at home. 
 
 In this mood he entered his wife's room, and there 
 Fatimah, who had been frightened for all her brave show 
 of unbelief, fell at once to telling him of her mistress's 
 delusion. 
 
 " But this is wrong of you, Janet, very, very wrong," 
 said the Consul-General with a frown. " These visions and 
 dreams are doing more than anything else to destroy your 
 health, and they will kill you if you continue to encourage 
 them. Gordon is gone. You must make up your mind 
 to it." 
 
 "Is it quite certain that he is gone, dear?" said the old
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 241 
 
 lady, who was now nervously plucking at the counterpane. 
 " For instance, Fatimah told me to-day that there was a 
 story in town " 
 
 " Fatimah has no business to repeat such idle rumours," 
 said the Consul-General sharply. He was walking to and 
 fro in the room with a face that was hard and furrowed. 
 
 " As for the story you speak of, they sent it up to me as 
 late as ten o'clock to-night, saying Gordon was being shel- 
 tered in a certain place and asking what steps they were 
 to take with respect to him." 
 
 The old lady fixed her frightened eyes on her husband's 
 face and began to ask in a whisper: 
 
 " And what did you " 
 
 "The rumour was groundless," said the Consul-General. 
 " I've just heard so from the Commandant of Police. Gor- 
 don was not there. There was no sign that he ever had 
 been." 
 
 The old lady wept silently, and the Consul-General con- 
 tinued to Avalk to and fro at the foot of her bed as if he 
 were trying to avoid her face. 
 
 " You still think he left Cairo on the night of the riot, 
 dear?" 
 
 "I trust he did. I trust, too, that he is far from here 
 by this time — on his way to America, India, Australia, any- 
 where. And as he has broken the law and his career is at 
 an end, I think the kindest thing we can do is to hope that 
 he may never come back again." 
 
 The old lady tried to speak, but her voice failed her. 
 
 " More than that," continued the Consul-General, " as 
 he deliberately took sides against us, I also think it is our 
 duty — our strict and bounden duty — to dismiss all further 
 thought of him." 
 
 Saying this with heat and emphasis, he caught sight of 
 his wife's wet eyes and his conscience began to accuse him. 
 
 "I don't say it is easy to do," he said, taking a chair 
 by the side of the bed. " Perhaps it is the reverse of easy 
 — especially for you — for his mother." 
 
 At that the sweet old woman wished to take the part 
 of her absent son — to say that if he had taken the wrong
 
 242 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 course and allowed himself to be led away by some one, lie 
 could not have counted on any gain in doing so and must 
 lia%'e been moved by the most unselfish motives — but her 
 tears prevented her and still she could not speak. 
 
 " Why should we continue to think of him if he never 
 thinks of us — of either of us ? " asked the Consul-General. 
 
 He was calmer now and was speaking with less anger. 
 
 " Was he thinking of you when he took the step which 
 broke up your health like this? Was he thinking of me 
 when he took the side of my enemies — of one of my ene- 
 mies at all events — perhaps the worst of them — and left me 
 to the mercy of — in my old age, too — a childless man ? " 
 
 There was a moment in which nothing was spoken, and 
 then in a voice that quivered perceptibly the Consul- 
 General said : 
 
 " Let us trifle with ourselves no longer, Janet. Our son 
 has gone. He has abandoned us. We have to think no 
 more about him." 
 
 After that there was a long silence, during which the 
 Consul-General sat with his head down and his eyes tightly 
 closed. Then a voice came softly from the bed: 
 
 " John ! " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "It is harder for you, dear.'' 
 
 The old man turned his head aside. 
 
 " You wanted a son so much, you know." 
 
 Fatimah, who had been sitting out of sight, now stepped 
 into the boys' room and closed the door noiselessly behind 
 her, leaving the two old people alone together, with the 
 sanctities of their married life on which no other eye 
 should look. 
 
 " I thought at first that God was not going to give me 
 any children, but when my child came, and it was a boy, 
 how happy we both were ! " 
 
 The old man closed his eyes still more tightly and stiff- 
 ened his iron lip. 
 
 " Foolish people used to think in those days that you 
 didn't love our little one because you couldn't pay much 
 heed to him. But Fatimah was telling me only to-night
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 243 
 
 that you never went to bed without going into her room to 
 see if it was well with our child." 
 
 The tears were now forcing themselves through the old 
 man's eyelids. 
 
 " And when our dear boy had the fever, and he was so 
 ill that we had to shave his little head, you never went to 
 bed at all — not until the crisis came, and then — don't you 
 remember? — just when we thought the wings of death were 
 over us, he opened his beautiful blue eyes and smiled. I 
 think that was the happiest moment of all our lives, 
 dear." 
 
 She was on her husband's side at last — thinking for 
 him — seeing everything from his point of view. 
 
 " Then all the years afterward you worked so hard, and 
 won such high honours and such a great name, only to 
 leave them behind to our son, and now — now " 
 
 The Consul-General laid one of his wrinkled hands on 
 the counterpane, and in a moment the old lady had put her 
 delicate white hand on top of it. 
 
 " Yes, it's harder for you, dear." 
 
 " No, Janet, no ! — But it's hard for both of us." 
 
 There was another moment of silence, and then, press- 
 ing the hand that lay under her hand, the old lady said : 
 
 " I think I know now what people feel when they are 
 old and their children die before them. They feel that they 
 ought to be more to each other than they have ever been 
 before, and keep together as long as they can." 
 
 The Consul-General drew his hand away and covered 
 his face with it. He was asking himself why, through so 
 many years, he had buried his love for his wife so deep in 
 his heart and sealed it as with a seal. Presently a more 
 cheerful voice came from the bed: 
 
 " John ! " 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " I'm going to get up to-morrow." 
 
 " Xo, no ! " 
 
 " But I must ! Mohammed " (the cook) " is so forget- 
 ful when there's no mistress about — I must see that he 
 gives you good food, you know. Besides, it must be lonely
 
 244 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 to eat your meals by yourself — I must make it a rule to 
 go down to lunch at all events." 
 
 " That is nothing, Janet. You are weak and ill — the 
 doctor will not permit you to disturb yourself." 
 
 At that there was a sigh, and then in a faltering voice 
 the old lady said: 
 
 " You must forgive me, dear — I've not been what I 
 ought to have been to you." 
 
 " Xo, Janet, no, it is I " 
 
 He could not utter another word, but he rose to his 
 feet, and, clasping his wife in his arms, he kissed her on 
 her wrinkled forehead and her whitened hair more fer- 
 vently than he had ever done in their youth. 
 
 At the next moment the old lady was speaking about 
 Helena. The Consul-General would see her oil in the 
 morning and he was to give all her motherly love to her. 
 He was also to warn her to take good care of herself on 
 the voyage and not to be anxious or to repine. 
 
 " Tell her to remember what I said, dear. She is going 
 back to England, but that doesn't matter in the least. God 
 keeps all His promises, and he M'ill keep His promise in 
 this case, too — I'm sure he will. Tell her that, deai\" 
 
 The Consul-General answered " Yes " and " Yes " to all 
 her messages, but he did not hear them. Bent almost 
 double, with the light of his wearied eyes almost extinct, he 
 stumbled out of the room. He was no longer angry with 
 Gordon, but he was choking with hatred and scorn and, 
 above all, with jealousy of the man who had robbed him of 
 his son, the man who had robbed his wife of her only pride 
 and joy and left them hopeless and old and lone. 
 
 At the door of his bedroom one of his secretaries was 
 waiting for him with a paper in his hand. 
 
 "Well, well, what is it now?" he asked. 
 
 "An important telegram from the Soudan, sir," said 
 the Secretary. " Ishmael Ameer has turned up in Khar- 
 toum." 
 
 Then the austere calm of the stern old man deserted 
 him for a moment, and the pent-up agony of the broken 
 and bankrupt hopes of a lifetime broke into a shout:
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 245 
 
 "Damn him! Damn him! Tell the Sirdar to kill him 
 like a dog," he cried, and his Secretary fled in a fright. 
 
 XVIII 
 
 Hours passed before the Consul-General slept. He was 
 telling himself that there were now two reasons why he 
 should suppress and destroy the man Ishmael Ameer. 
 
 First because " this madman, this fanatic, this false 
 prophet," under the cloak of religion and the mantle of 
 prophecy, was a cover for the corruption and the self-seek- 
 ing which in the name and the guise of Nationalism were 
 trying to drive England out of the valley of the Nile; be- 
 cause he was the rallying point of the retrograde forces 
 which were doing their best to destroy whatever seeds of 
 civilisation had been implanted in the country during forty 
 sleepless years; because he was trying to turn prosperity 
 back to bankruptcy, order back to anarchy, and the helpless 
 millions of the unmoving and the uncomplaining peasantry 
 back to slavery and barbarity ; because, in a word, he was the 
 head centre of the schools and nurseries of sedition which 
 were undoing the hard labour of his lifetime and striving 
 to wipe his name out of Egypt as utterly as if he had 
 never been. 
 
 This was the first of the Consul-General's two reasons 
 why he should suppress and destroy Ishmael Ameer, and 
 the second was still more personal and more intimate. 
 
 His second reason was because " this madman, this 
 fanatic, this false prophet" had stepped in between him 
 and the one hope of his life — the hope of founding a fam- 
 ily. That hope had been a secret which he believed he had 
 never betrayed to any one, not even to his wife, but all the 
 more on that account it had been sweet and sacred. Born 
 in a moment of fierce anger and in a spirit of revenge, it 
 had grown to be his master passion. It had cheered his 
 darkest hours, brightened his heaviest labour, exalted his 
 drudgery into duty, given joy to his success and wings to 
 his patriotism itself.
 
 246 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 That, at the end of his life of hard work, and as the 
 reward and the crown of it, he should see the name he had 
 made for himself among the great names of the British 
 nation, and that his son should succeed to it, and his son's 
 son, and his son's son's son, being all peers of the realm and 
 all Xunehams — this had been the cherished aspiration of 
 his soul. 
 
 But now his high-built hope was in the dust. By rob- 
 bing him of his son — his only son — " this madman, this 
 fanatic, this false prophet" had turned his one aim to 
 ashes. When he was old, too, and his best powers were 
 spent, and his life was behind him, and there was nothing 
 before him but a few short years of failing strength and 
 then — the end. 
 
 " Damn him ! Damn him ! " he cried again in the dark- 
 ness as he rolled about in his bed. 
 
 But when he tried to think out some means, some swift 
 and silent tribunal, perhaps, by which he could destroy and 
 suppress the man Ishmael, who had laid waste his own life 
 and was joining with the worst elements in Egypt to make 
 the government of the country impossible, he had to tell 
 himself how powerless after all was the machinery of 
 Western civilisation against the hypocritical machinations 
 of Eastern fanaticism. 
 
 On the one side the clogs and impediments of represen- 
 tative government, and on the other the subtlety, secrecy, 
 duplicity and deceit of men like Ishmael Ameer. If he could 
 only scotch these troubles once for all by a short and sharp 
 military struggle — how different the results would be! 
 
 But with every act of his life watched from Whitehall 
 and with operations of frightful urgency kept back by cable ; 
 dogged by foreign diplomats who, professing to be Eng- 
 land's friends, were yet waiting to find their opportunity 
 in the hour of England's need; vilified by boobies in Par- 
 liament who did not know the difference between the East 
 and the West, between the Muski and the Mile End Road, 
 and were constantly sending the echo of their parrot-like 
 prattle down the Mediterranean to add to the difficulties of 
 his position in Cairo; scolded by Secretaries of State who
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 247 
 
 •were appointed to their places for no better reason than 
 their power to command votes; jibed at by journalists at 
 home who could not see that a free press and a foreign 
 occupation were things that could never exist together, and 
 preached at by religious milksops in the pulpit w4io were 
 so simple as to suppose that the black man and the white 
 man were one flesh, that all men were born free and equal 
 and that it was possible to govern great nations accord- 
 ing to the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount — what 
 could he do against the religious delirium of an ignorant 
 Eastern populace who were capable of mistaking a mani- 
 fest impostor, practising his spiritual legerdemain, for a 
 Prophet, a Redeemer, a Mahdi, a Messiah, a Christ? 
 Nothing ! 
 
 He had found that out to his bitter disappointment 
 during the past few days when working with Western 
 machinery he had tried in vain to catch the man Ishmael 
 in some seditious expression that would enable the Govern- 
 ment to lay him openly by the heels. 
 
 " Fools ! Fools ! Fools ! " 
 
 Why could not people see that all this vapouring unrest 
 in Eastern dominions was a religious question from first 
 to last, that it was Islamism against Christianity, slavery 
 against liberty, corruption against purity, the backwash of 
 retrogression against the flowing tide of progress, and that 
 to fight the secret methods of the mosque and the insidious 
 crimes of a vicious superstition with any weapons less swift 
 and sure than the rifle and the rope was to be weak and 
 wicked? 
 
 " If I could only permit myself to meet Eastern needs 
 by Eastern means," he thought, "subtlety by subtlety, 
 secrecy by secrecy, duplicity by duplicity, treachery by 
 treachery, deceit by deceit ! " 
 
 " And why not ? '' he asked himself suddenly. " In a 
 desperate case like this, why not? In the face of anarch- 
 ical conspiracy and menace to public safety, why not? 
 Before the catastrophe comes, why not?" he asked himself 
 again and again during the long hours in which he lay 
 awake.
 
 248 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " It is a case of civilisation on the one side and a return 
 to barbarism on the other. Why not? Why not?" 
 
 And that, with the cruel memory of his wasted hopes, 
 was the last thought present to his mind before he slept. 
 
 It was late when he awoke in the morning, and then, 
 remembering that he had promised to call on Helena before 
 her departure, he rang the bell that he might order his car- 
 riage to take him up to the Citadel. Ibrahim answered it, 
 and brought him a number of letters. The first of them 
 to come to hand was a letter from Helena herself. It was 
 written with many signs of haste, and some of emotion, 
 and it ran: 
 
 " Dear Lord Nuneham : Do not come up to see me off to- 
 morrow morning, and please forgive me for all the unneces- 
 sary trouble I have given you. I cannot go back to England 
 — I really cannot — it is impossible. There is nothing for me 
 there but a useless and lonely life — Oh, how lonely and how 
 full of bitter and cruel memories ! 
 
 " On the other hand, there seems to be something I can 
 do in Egypt, and though it is not the kind of work a woman 
 could choose for herself, I cannot and I will not shrink 
 from it. 
 
 " To tell you the truth at once I am on the point of tak- 
 ing the night train en route for Khartoum, but that is a 
 secret which I am revealing to nobody else, so I beseech you 
 to say nothing about it. I also beseech you not to follow me 
 or to send after me or to inquire about me in any way, and 
 lest the Sirdar and his officers should recognise me on my 
 arrival in the Soudan (though I shall try to make it difficult 
 for them to do so), I beg of you to ask them to forget that 
 they have ever seen me before and to leave me entirely alone." 
 
 The Consul-General dropped the hand that held the 
 letter and thought, " What on earth does the girl intend to 
 do, I wonder? " 
 
 " You may ask me why I am going to Khartoum, and I 
 find it hard to answer you, but you will remember that an-
 
 THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD 249 
 
 other person is reported to have gone there already, and 
 perhaps you will put the two facts together. That person is 
 neither your friend nor mine. He has wrecked my life and 
 darkened your happiness. He has also been an evil influence 
 in the country, and, thus far, you have tried in vain to pun- 
 ish him. Let me help you to do so. I can — I am sure I can 
 — and before I have finished with the man who has injured 
 both of us I shall have done some service to England and 
 to Egypt as well. 
 
 " Don't think I am mad or that I am idly boasting, and 
 please don't despise my help because I am only a woman. In 
 the history of the world women have saved nations even 
 when kings and armies have failed. And if that has hap- 
 pened in the past may it not happen in the future also? 
 It can, and it shall.'' 
 
 Again the Consul-General dropped the hand that held 
 the letter and he looked fixedly before him for a moment. 
 
 " Dear Lord Nuneham, I know what you are thinking. 
 You are thinking that if I am not mad, and if I am not 
 boasting, I am cruel and revengeful and vindictive. I am 
 sorry if you are thinking that, sir, but if so I cannot help 
 it. I have lost my father and I have lost Gordon, and I am 
 alone and my heart is torn. Oh, if you knew hoAV much this 
 means to me you would not judge me too harshly. When I 
 think of my father in his grave and of Gordon in disgrace 
 — at the ends of the earth perhaps — never to be seen or heard 
 of any more — I feel that anything is justified — anything — 
 that will punish the man who has brought things to this 
 pass." 
 
 The Consul-General removed his spectacles, wiped away 
 the moisture that had gathered on them, put them back 
 and resumed the reading of the letter. 
 
 " Sometimes I tell myself I might have saved Gordon if I 
 had been less proud and hard — if I had told him more and 
 allowed him to feel that I could see things from his side also. 
 But it is too late to think of that. I can think of nothing
 
 250 THE WHITE PKOPHET 
 
 now but how to degrade and destroy the man who deceived 
 and misled him, and is deceiving and misleading these poor 
 Egyptian people also, and will end, as such men always end, 
 in sowing the sand of their deserts with blood. 
 
 " But don't be afraid that I shall permit myself to do 
 anything unwomanly, or that I shall ever be false for a 
 moment to the love — the wronged and outraged love — which 
 prompts me. Gordon is gone, I have lost him, but I can 
 never do that — never ! 
 
 " I know exactly how far I intend to go and I shall go no 
 farther. I also know exactly what I intend to do, and I shall 
 do it without fear or remorse. 
 
 " Good-bye, or rather au revoir! You will hear from me, 
 or perhaps see me again before long, I think, and then — 
 then your enemy and mine and Gordon's, as well as Eng- 
 land's and Egypt's, will be in your hands. 
 
 " Helena Graves. 
 
 " P.S. — Please don't speak about this to Lady Xuneham. 
 Give her my fondest, truest love and let her believe that I 
 have gone home to England. It would only make her un- 
 happy to be told Avhat I intend to do, and she might even 
 think me a wicked woman. You will not do that, I hope 
 — will you ? " 
 
 The letter dropped on to the counterpane out of the 
 Consul-General's hand and again he looked fixedly before 
 him. After a moment his wearied old eyes began to gleam 
 with light and fire. 
 
 " What did I say when I saw her first ? " he thought. 
 " This girl has the blood of the great women of the Bible — 
 the Deborahs who were mothers in Israel, aye, and the Jaels 
 who revenged her."
 
 THIRD BOOK 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD
 
 A MIXED Eastern and Western city lying in the midst of 
 a wide waste of grim desert, with a fierce sun blazing down 
 on it by day and a rain of stars over it by night; a strip of 
 verdure with slender palms and red and yellow blossoms, 
 stretching for some three miles along the banks of the Nile, 
 where the great river is cleft in twain as by the sweep of a 
 giant's hand, and one arm goes up through the brown and 
 yellow wilderness to the Abyssinian hills and the other to 
 the lakes of the Equator — such is Khartoum. 
 
 The city had changed since Ishmael Ameer spent his 
 youth there. Lifeless and vacant then, it had risen out of 
 the dust of its own decay. On the river's front a line of 
 western buildings, a college, a barrack and a palace over 
 which the white Crescent and the Union Jack crackled in 
 the breeze together ; at the back of these a great open mar- 
 ket, with rows of booths and shanties, a native quarter with 
 lines of mud-brick houses, and a handsome mosque; and be- 
 hind all this an encampment of the tribes in tents, fronting 
 a horizon of sand, empty and silent as the sea. 
 
 When Ishmael returned to the city of his boyhood British 
 officials of the Anglo-Egyptian Government, wearing the 
 Crescent on their pith helmets, were walking in the wide 
 streets with Soudanese blacksmiths, Arab carpenters, and 
 women of many races, some veiled in white, others in black, 
 and yet others nearly naked of body as well as face. Two 
 battalions of British soldiers, a British Sirdar, a British 
 Inspector-General, and British Governors of provinces were 
 there as signs and symbols of the change that had been 
 wrought since Khartoum was shrivelled up in a blast of 
 fire. 
 
 Ishmael's fame had gone before him, from Alexandria and 
 from Cairo, and both the British and the native population 
 
 253
 
 254 THE WHITE PEOPHET 
 
 of Khartoum looked for his coming with a keen curiosity. 
 The British saw a man taller and more powerful than the 
 common, with the fiery, flashing black eyes that they associ- 
 ated with their fears of the fanatic; but the natives, to their 
 disappointment, recognised a face they knew, and they said 
 among themselves: "Isn't this Ishmael Ameer, the nephew 
 of old ]\Iahmud and the son of the boat-builder? " And that 
 was a discovery' which for a while dispelled some of the 
 marvel as well as the mystery which had hitherto surrounded 
 the new prophet's identity. 
 
 Ishmael made his home in his uncle's house on the fringe 
 of the native quarter, a large Arab dwelling with one face 
 to the desert and another to the white river and the forts 
 of Omdurman. Besides the old uncle himself, now more 
 than fourscore, a God-fearing man devoted to his nephew, 
 the household consisted of Ishmael's little daughter, Ayesha, 
 a sweet child of ten, who sang quaint little Soudanese songs 
 all day long, and had the animal grace of the gazelle; an 
 Arab woman, Ayesha's nurse, Zenoba, a voluptuous person, 
 with cheeks marked by three tribal slits, wearing massive 
 gold ear-rings and hair twisted into innumerable thin ring- 
 lets; and Abdullah, a Soudanese servant, formerly a slave. 
 
 Before Ishmael had been long in Khartoum most of the 
 British officials had made up their minds about his per- 
 sonal character. He was one of those complex beings whom 
 they recognised as essentially Eastern — that mixture of 
 hypocrisy and spirituality, of sincerity and quackery, which 
 they believed to be most dangerous of all in its effects upon 
 a fanatical populace. The natives, on the other hand, began 
 to see that, though a spontaneous and passionate man, out- 
 spoken and vehement in his dealings with the strong and 
 the rich, he was very tender to the old and to the erring, 
 that he was beloved of children, and trusted by the outcast 
 and the poor. 
 
 Before many days- had passed the Moslems of Khartoum 
 asked him to lecture to them, and in the evenings he would 
 sit on an angerib which Abdullah brought out of the house, 
 with a palm net spread over it, and speak to the people who 
 squatted on the ground about him. Clad in his white caftan
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 255 
 
 and Mecca skull-cap, with its white muslin turban bound 
 round it, the British Inspectors would see him there on the 
 edge of the desert surrounded by a multitude of Arabs, olive 
 and walnut, and of Soudanese, brown and black, holding his 
 hearers by the breathless intensity with which he uttered 
 himself. 
 
 Yet he did not flatter them. On the contrary, no man 
 had ever so condemned the evils which they had come to 
 regard as part and parcel of their faith. All the Arab soul 
 and blood of the man seemed to be afire and his w^onderful 
 voice, throbbing over their heads, far away to the silent 
 desert beyond, carried such denunciations of the corrup- 
 tions of Islam as the people had never heard before. 
 
 " Beware of slavery," he said. " What says the Koran ? 
 * Righteousness is to him who f reeth the slave.' Beware of 
 sorcery, of spells, of magic, of divinations — they are of the 
 devil." 
 
 Teaching like this might drive away the dominant races, 
 but it brought the subject ones, and among others that at- 
 tached themselves to Ishmael was a half-witted Nubian (an 
 Ethiopian of the Bible), known as Black Zogal, who from 
 that time forward followed him about by day and lay like 
 a dog at the door of his house by night, crying the confes- 
 sion of faith at the end of every hour. 
 
 After condemning slavery and sorcery Ishmael came to 
 closer quarters — he denounced polygamy and divorce. 
 
 " Beware of polygamy," he said. " It pulls down the 
 pillars of the house. ISTo man would permit another man to 
 join with him in love for his wife. Why, therefore, ask a 
 woman to allow another woman to join with her in love for 
 her husband? 
 
 " Beware of divorce, for it brings sorrow and shame. 
 What says the Prophet, to w^hom be prayer and peace? ' Of 
 all lawful things hated of God, divorce is the most hateful.' 
 
 " Brothers," he cried, " I see a house that is full of 
 light. There is a new wife there. She is very happy. But 
 in the upper rooms I hear children weeping. They are 
 weeping for their mother who has been put away. She has 
 done no wrong, she has committed no crime, but while the
 
 256 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 guests feast and the new wife counts her jewels, the mother's 
 heart is bleeding for the children she may see no more." 
 
 " O men," he cried again in his throbbing voice, " night 
 is for sleep, and your children slumber, but in their dreams 
 their mother comes to them. She embraces them and they 
 dry their tears. But they awake in the morning and she is 
 gone. Where is your father's heart, ye men of righteous- 
 ness? Has all justice died out of you? Shame on you! 
 May heaven punish you as you deserve ! Divorce shakes the 
 throne of Islam ! Wipe it out that your faces may be whit- 
 ened before the world ! " 
 
 After condemning polygamy and divorce Ishmael came to 
 closer quarters still — he denounced the seclusion and the 
 degradation of women. 
 
 " Remove the veil from your women," he said. " At the 
 beginning it was the badge of shame. What says the Koran ? 
 ' O Prophet ! speak to thy wives and thy daughters that 
 they let their wrappers fall so that they may not be af- 
 fronted.' 
 
 " Dismiss the madness of a bygone age that woman is 
 inferior to man. We are all children of one Mother. What 
 says the Prophet ? ' Paradise lies under the feet of mothers.' 
 The proverb of our people says, ' The threshold weeps for 
 forty days when a girl is born,' but I tell you the stars sing 
 for joy and the dry wells of the desert spring afresh. Man's 
 dominion over woman is the product of darkness — put it 
 away. Oh, my brothers, Avoman's suffering in the world is 
 so great that if she does not cry aloud the mountains them- 
 selves v;ill groan." 
 
 If Ishmael's teaching offended certain of the men, it at- 
 tracted great multitudes of the women, many of whom laid 
 aside their veils to come to him, and among others that 
 came were a number of black girls from Omdurman who were 
 known to have been the paramours of British and Egyptian 
 soldiers at Khartoum. Ilis bearing toward these girls had 
 that shy tenderness which is peculiar to the pure-minded 
 man in his dealings with erring women, and when some of 
 his followers gi-nmbled at his intercourse with such notori- 
 ous sinners he told them a story of the Lord Isa (Jesus).
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 257 
 
 It was the story of His visit to the rich man's house and 
 of the sinful woman who did not cease to wash His feet witli 
 her tears and to dry them with the hair of her head. 
 
 " Shall I be less charitable than the Lord of the Chris- 
 tians?" he asked, and the choking pathos of his story si- 
 lenced everybody. 
 
 In his preaching he turned for ever to the prophets — the 
 prophet Abraham, the prophet Moses, the prophet Moham- 
 med, and above all, the prophet Isa. He called Jesus the 
 divine teacher of Judaea, one of the great brother souls. 
 
 "Only a poor Jewish man," he said, with a memory of his 
 own that none might share, " only a poor carpenter, but per- 
 haps the greatest and noblest spirit save one that ever lived 
 in the world." 
 
 Thus evening after evening when the blazing sun had 
 gone down, Ishmael sat on the angerib in front of his uncle's 
 house and taught the ever-increasing crowds that squatted 
 before him on the brown and yellow sand. The heat and 
 flame of his teaching burned itself into the wild Arab souls 
 of the great body of his hearers, but there were some among 
 his own people who asked : 
 
 " Isn't this the Ishmael Ameer who denounced the Chris- 
 tians as the corrupters of our faith ? " 
 
 And there were others who answered : 
 
 " Yes, the same Ishmael Ameer that married the Coptic 
 woman who lies buried on the edge of the desert." 
 
 And meantime the British Inspectors, suspecting some 
 hidden quackery and fatuity, some fanatical intrigue mas- 
 querading as religious liberalism, were whispering among 
 themselves : 
 
 " This is a new kind of religious game — what the deuce 
 does it mean, I wonder ? " 
 
 II 
 
 "Within a month an immense concourse of people had 
 gathered about Ishmael at Khartoum. They came first from 
 Omdurman and the little shipbuilding village of Ivhogali,
 
 258 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 on the other side of the Blue I^ile, which sent daily through 
 the desert air a ceaseless noise of the hammering of rivets; 
 then they came from Kordofan and still farther south, and 
 from Berber and yet farther north. 
 
 A few who had means lodged in the houses of the native 
 quarter, but the larger number encamped in tents on the 
 desert side of old Mahmud's house. Men, women, and chil- 
 dren, they flocked in thousands to see the holy man of Khar- 
 toum and to drink of the river of his words. They began to 
 see in him a man sent from God, to call him " Master," and 
 to speak of him as the " White Prophet." 
 
 At that the Governor of the city, a British Colonel, be- 
 gan to be alarmed, and with certain of his Inspectors he 
 went over to see Ishmacl. 
 
 " What can these people want here ? " he asked. " "What 
 bread is there for them in this wilderness ? " 
 
 " The bread of life," Ishmael answered, and the Christian 
 Governor went away silenced, though unsatisfied. 
 
 During Ishmael's first weeks in Khartoum his house was 
 open, and anybody might come and go in it ; but somewhat 
 later it was observed that he was daily receiving messengers, 
 agents, emissaries, and missionaries of some sort in secret. 
 They came and went by camel, by boat and by train, and 
 rumour had it that they communicated with every quarter 
 of Egypt and the Soudan. Ishmael appeared to spend the 
 morning of every day in his house receiving and despatch- 
 ing these people. What did it mean ? The British Inspect- 
 ors suspected the existence of a vast network of fanatical 
 conspiracy, but only the members of Ishmael's own house- 
 hold knew what was going on. 
 
 Meantime at noon every day Ishmael, exercising his 
 right as an alim, lectured in the mosque. What he said in 
 that sealed chamber no Christian might know, and never an 
 echo of his message there was permitted to escape from its 
 hushed and guarded vaxilts. But still after sunset he sat on 
 the angerib in front of his uncle's house and taught the ex- 
 cited crowds that were eager to catch a word of his inspired 
 doctrine. 
 
 His lectures took a new subject. They denounced the
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 259 
 
 spirit of the age. It was irreligious, for it put a premium 
 on selfishness. It was idolatrous, for it provoked to the 
 worship of wealth. 
 
 " Oh, my brothers," cried Ishmael, " when Mohammed, 
 — to him be prayer and peace! — arose in Mecca, men wor- 
 shipped the black wooden idols of the Koreish. To his 
 earnest soul this was a darkness, a mockery, an abomination. 
 There was only one god, and that was God. God was great, 
 and there was nothing else great. Therefore he went out 
 from Mecca that he might gather strength to assail the black 
 wooden idols of the Koreish, and when he returned he broke 
 them in pieces. 
 
 " That was thirteen centuries ago, oh, my brothers, and 
 behold ! darkness covers the earth again. Men are now wor- 
 shipping the yellow idols of a corrupt civilisation. Mos- 
 lems and Christians alike are bending the knee to the golden 
 calf. It is idolatry as rank as the Prophet destroyed, and 
 tenfold more damnable because it is done in the name of 
 God." 
 
 With that he called on his people to renounce the things 
 of this world. Its prizes were not the prizes that could en- 
 rich them. Time and its shows rested on Eternity. The 
 things of the other world were the only true realities. Why 
 struggle for the semblance and form of things and neglect 
 the substance and essence? This poor earth of ours was the 
 threshold of heaven — let them forget the affairs of this life 
 and fix their minds on the life to come. 
 
 The people listened to Ishmael with bated breath. Ig- 
 norant, unlettered, wild creatures as they were, sons and 
 daughters of the desert, they knew what application of his 
 words they were intended to make. 
 
 But the authorities were perplexed. Just as sure as be- 
 fore of the presence of a far-reaching fanatical conspiracy, 
 and that Ishmael's teaching meant opposition to the Govern- 
 ment, some of them said: 
 
 " This is the doctrine of the Mahdi, and it will end as it 
 ended before, in destruction and desolation — let us put it 
 down before the storm breaks." 
 
 But others said :
 
 260 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " It is the Gospel of Christ — what the dickens are we to 
 do with it?" 
 
 Meantime Ishmael's own people had begun to see him 
 not as a poet, a dreamer, but as a prophet with a mighty 
 mission. In moments of rapture he told them of a new 
 order that was coming, a great day when all the religions 
 of the world would be united, when all faiths would be one 
 faith, all races one race, all nations one nation, when East 
 and West would be one world, and there would be only one 
 God in it, one King and one Law. 
 
 They saw him with tears in his eyes looking over the 
 desert as he foretold the conquest of the world for God, and 
 listening eagerly to his predictions of a better and happier 
 day, they began to see something Godlike in himself, to re- 
 gard him as a God-inspired man, a man sent down from the 
 skies with a message. 
 
 " Our souls lie beneath his sheepskin," they would say, 
 and then they would tell each other stories of supernatural 
 appearances that surrounded the new prophet — how while 
 he preached, celestial lights floated about his head, and when 
 he rode on his milk-white camel into the desert of an after- 
 noon, as it was his habit to do, flights of angels were seen to 
 descend and attend him. 
 
 The creation of this kind of myth led to trouble, for 
 among Ishmael's secret enemies were certain of the Ulema 
 of Khartoum, who, jealous of his great influence with 
 the people and suspecting him of an attempt to change 
 the immutable law of Islam, conceived the trick of get- 
 ting him to avow himself as a re-incarnation of the Mahdi 
 in order that they might betray him to the Government. 
 So three of the meanest of them came one morning to 
 old Mahmud's house, and sitting in the guest-room, un- 
 der its thatch of cornstalks, began to flatter Ishmael and 
 say: 
 
 " From the moment I beheld you I knew that you were 
 the messenger of God — the Expected One." 
 
 " Yes, indeed, Mohammed Ahmed is dead, but Ishmael 
 Ameer is alive! " 
 
 Ishmael listened to them for a moment in silence, and
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 261 
 
 then with a flash of firo out of his big black eyes he clapped 
 his hands and cried : 
 
 " Zogal ! Abdullah ! Turn these men out of the house," 
 and in another moment his two black giants had swept out 
 the spies like rats. 
 
 But the crowds continued to come to IQiartoum from 
 north, south, east, and west, and at length, in fear that 
 many might die of want, the Governor of the city went up 
 to Ishmacl again and said : 
 
 " Send these people back to their homes, or they'll die of 
 starvation." 
 
 Whereupon Ishmael looked at him and answered: 
 
 " Colonel, you are a Christian, and when your divine 
 Master was on earth a great multitude came to him in a 
 desert place, and his disciples said, ' Send these people away 
 that they may return to their villages and buy themselves 
 food.' And then your Master answered them, ' They need 
 not depart ; give ye them to eat.' " 
 
 Thus Ishmael was irresistible. There was nothing and 
 nobody that seemed to have the power to touch him. 
 
 ni 
 
 " To every sun its moon ; to every man a woman." 
 
 Wise and powerful as Ishmael was, people began to whis- 
 per that there was a woman who ruled him. He submitted 
 everything to her judgment, and was guided and even gov- 
 erned by her counsel. 
 
 Who was this w-oman? A Soudanese? No! An Egyp- 
 tian? Xo! Humour had it that she was a stranger, totally 
 unknown to Ishmael down to the moment of his coming 
 back to the Soudan — a Muslemah (Mohammedan lady) from 
 India, the sister of a reigning prince of the Punjab, who, 
 having been educated under British rule, and therefore 
 Western influences, had revolted against the captivity of the 
 zenana, and broken away from her own people. 
 
 Attracted by the face of the new prophet as an eman- 
 18
 
 262 THE \M11TE PROPHET 
 
 cipator of women and a reformer of bad Mohammedan cus- 
 toms, this woman had, according to report, followed him 
 from Alexandria and Cairo to Khartoum, where she had 
 settled herself with a black boy as her servant at the house 
 of the Greek widow — the same that had formerly been the 
 mistress of Ishmael's first wife, Adila. 
 
 The black boy called his mistress " The Lady," and most 
 of the people about her knew her by the same name, but 
 some called her the Sit, the Khatoun (the White Lady), and 
 others the Emireh, and the Kani (the Queen, the Princess), 
 in recognition of what they believed to be her rank and 
 wealth. 
 
 It was in the early days of Ishmael's return to Khar- 
 toum, when women of all classes were coming to him un- 
 veiled, that he met with the " Princess " first. Sitting alone 
 in the late afternoon on the bank of a broad stretch of land 
 which was flooded by the high Nile, and looking across its 
 glistening waters to where the sky was red behind the shat- 
 tered dome of the Mahdi's tomb in Omdurman, he saw a 
 young and beautiful woman approaching him. 
 
 She seemed to him to be a splendid creature under those 
 southern skies — tall, well-developed, with shining coal-black 
 hair, long black lashes and brilliant eyes, and a mouth that 
 was full of fire and movement. Her dress was such as is 
 worn by Parsee ladies both in the East and in the West, 
 having nothing more noticeably Oriental than a silken scarf 
 which was bound about her head as a turban, and a light, 
 silver-edged muslin veil that fell back on her shoulders. 
 
 She came up to him with a certain air of timidity, as 
 of one who might be afraid to be thought immodest, or, per- 
 haps, of being recognised, yet with the proud bearing of a 
 woman who had passed through life with a high step and 
 would not shrink from any consequences. 
 
 He rose to receive her, and she looked at him for a 
 moment without speaking — almost as if she had for an in- 
 stant lost the power of speech, being at last face to face with 
 a man whom she had long thought of and long sought. 
 
 On his side, too, there was a momentary silence and a 
 look of enthusiastic admiration which he tried in vain to
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 263 
 
 control. The lady seemed to see this in an instant, and an 
 expression, of joy which she could not restrain shone in her 
 face. 
 
 Then, gathering confidence, she began to tell him the 
 object of her visit to Khartoum — how, hearing so much 
 about him, she had wished to see him for herself, and now 
 begged to be allowed to serve him in any way whatever that 
 lay within her power. 
 
 He listened to her with the same expression of enthusi- 
 astic admiration in his face, and it would have been ob- 
 vious to an observer that the lady was congratulating her- 
 self upon the power of the impression she had made. But 
 at the next moment he set her a very humble task, namely, 
 that of seeing to the welfare of the women who were em- 
 plo5'ed at sixpence a day by the Government to draw and 
 carry water for the public streets. 
 
 The lady looked surprised and a little chagrined, but 
 finding it impossible to recede from the unconditional offer 
 she had made she went away to the work that had been 
 given to her. 
 
 It was ugly and thankless work enough, for the water- 
 women of Khartoum were among the coarsest and most de- 
 graded of their sex, being chiefly of the black tribes from 
 south of Kordofan, going about bare from the waist up- 
 ward and herding like animals in the brown huts that were 
 beyond the barracks outside the town. 
 
 After a little while the " Princess " came to Ishmael again, 
 and this time he was sitting with old Mahmud, his uncle, in 
 the guest-room which divided the women's side from the 
 men's side in their house. 
 
 She was dressed still more attractively than before, in a 
 gold-embroidered bodice and a clinging diaphanous gown, 
 and was attended by her black boy. Ishmael salaamed and 
 the old man struggled to his feet as, with a certain air of 
 embarrassment, she stepped forward and begged to be 
 pardoned if what she came to ask should displease the 
 Master. 
 
 Ishmael looked at her with the same expression of en- 
 thusiastic ecstasy which she had observed before, and said:
 
 264 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " 'No, no, my sister cannot displease me. What is the 
 request she wishes to make ? " 
 
 Then she told him that the work he had given her was 
 good and necessary, but was there nothing she could do for 
 himself? She had been educated in India by English 
 governesses and could read English, French, and German — 
 could she act as his translator or interpreter? Having lived 
 so long among Arabs of the higher classes, she had also 
 taught hei-self to write as well as speak Arabic — could she 
 Bot serve him as his secretary? 
 
 Ishmael remembered his busy mornings with the mes- 
 sengers, agents, emissaries, and missionaries who came to 
 him from all corners of Egypt and the Soudan, bringing 
 many letters and foreign newspapers; and before he had 
 time to reflect on what he was doing he had answered : 
 
 " Yes, such help is exactly what I need." 
 
 If any eyes less dim than old Mahmud's had been there 
 at that moment they would have seen a look of triumph in 
 the lady's face which she vainly struggled to conceal. But 
 at the next moment it was full of humility and gratitude 
 as she bowed herself out and promised to come again the 
 following day. 
 
 Hardly had the lady gone when Ishmael's simple nature 
 began to recover itself from the spell of her sex and beauty, 
 but the old uncle's admiration was quite ungovernable, and 
 he began to hint at the possibility of yet more intimate re- 
 lations between his nephew and the devoted young Mus- 
 lemah. 
 
 " I have always told you that yoia ought to marry again 
 — a good woman and a believer," he said, whereupon Ish- 
 mael, with the ecstasy created by the " Princess's " loveliness 
 still shining in his eyes, answered: 
 
 " No ! I have always said, ' No, no, by Allah ! One wife 
 I had, and, though she was a Christian and had been a slave, 
 I loved her, and never, never shall another woman take her 
 place!" 
 
 " Ah, well, God knows best what to do with us," said 
 the old man. " But life is a passing shadow and youth a 
 departing guest."
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 265 
 
 Next morning the white lady came according to ap- 
 pointment and Ishmael set her to read some European news- 
 papers containing accounts of recent doings in Cairo. 
 
 She was translating these newspapers aloud when Ish- 
 mael's little daughter Ayesha came bounding into the house, 
 followed by her nurse, the Arab woman, Zenoba — the child 
 barefoot as her mother used to be, and with her mother's 
 beautiful erect confidence as she moved about, lightly clad, 
 with her middle small-girt by a scarlet sash over her pure 
 white shirt — the woman in her blue habareh and with a 
 silver ring in her nose. 
 
 Ishmael presented both of them to the lady, whereupon 
 the child by an instinctive impulse ran over to her and 
 kissed her hand and held it, but the Arab woman only bowed 
 with a look of mistrust, and, as long as she remained in the 
 guest-room, continued to watch her furtively out of the side- 
 long slits of her eyes. 
 
 The Arab woman's obvious mistrust made more impres- 
 sion upon Ishmael than his daughter's spontaneous liking, 
 for as soon as he was alone with the lady again, he began 
 to talk to her of the gravity of the task he had undertaken 
 and of the need for caution and even secrecy with respect 
 to all his doings. 
 
 The lady's brilliant eyes glistened under their long black 
 lashes as she listened to him, and she answered his warnings 
 with assuring words, until, coming to closer quarters, he 
 proposed that for his people's sake rather than his own she 
 should take an oath of fidelity to him and to his cause. 
 
 At that she looked startled, and could with difficulty con- 
 ceal her agitation. And when he went on to recite the terms 
 of the oath to her — solemn terms, taking God and his 
 prophet to witness that she would never reveal anything 
 which came to her knowledge within the Avails of that house 
 — she seemed to be stifling with a sense of fear and shame. 
 
 Xot as such, however, did Ishmael's unsuspecting nature 
 recognise the lady's embarrassment, but setting it down to 
 the heat of the day, for the khamseen, the hot wind, was 
 blowing, he clapped his hands for water. 
 
 The Arab woman brought it in, although it was Ab-
 
 266 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 dullah's task to do so, and she ling:ered long in the room 
 and looked searchingly at the lady while Ishmael again re- 
 cited his oath. 
 
 The lady did not at first respond, but continued to look 
 out at the open door on to the slow waters of the White 
 Nile, and there was silence in the air both within and with- 
 out, save for the far-off hammering from the dockyards 
 across the river. 
 
 At length she asked in a tremulous voice : 
 
 " Master, is this necessary ? " 
 
 Ishmael reflected for a moment, and then said: 
 
 " No, it is not necessary, and we shall do without it. 
 What says the Lord of the Christians ? ' Swear not at all, 
 neither by heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by the earth, 
 for it is his footstool.' " 
 
 With that the lady drew a long breath of relief and 
 went on with her foreign newspapers. 
 
 IV 
 
 Hardly had the " Princess " gone for the day when the 
 Arab woman, Zenoba, with all her dusky face contracted 
 into lines of jealousy, came to Ishmael to warn him. 
 
 "Forgive me, O Master!" she said, "if the thing T say 
 displeases you." 
 
 "What is it, O Zenoba?" asked Ishmael. 
 
 " Is it well to trust the secrets of God and of His people 
 to two tongues and four eyes ? " 
 
 Ishmael's face darkened visibly, but he held himself in 
 check, and answered with dignity: 
 
 " Zenoba, ask pardon of God for a suspicious mind. The 
 least of all noble traits is to keep a secret, the greatest is to 
 forget that you have confided it." 
 
 The Arab woman was stung by the rebuke, but assuming 
 the meekest expression of face she changed her course en- 
 tirely. 
 
 " Master, T beg of you to listen to me until I have done," 
 
 1ft
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WOELD 267 
 
 she said, and tlicn she began to talk of the visits of the 
 ■white lady. 
 
 The lady was young and beautiful. Evil minds were 
 many. If she was to come to Ishmael's house every day 
 and to be closeted alone with him, what would people say? 
 
 " Forgive me, O Master ! it is nothing to me, and I have 
 no right to speak," said the Arab woman, with the agony 
 of a jealous spirit imprinted on every feature of her face. 
 " I only wish to put you on your guard against the slander- 
 ous tongues that would love to injure you." 
 
 Ishmael listened to her with the look of a man who had 
 never once reflected on the interpretation that might be put 
 upon his conduct, and then he said : 
 
 " You are right, O Zenoba ! and I thank you for remind- 
 ing me of something I had permitted myself to forget." 
 
 When the white lady came next day Ishmael began to 
 speak to her about her position in his house. 
 
 " My sister," he said, " I have been thinking this is not 
 good. The thoughts of the world are evil, and if you con- 
 tinue to come here according to the agreement we made 
 together your pure name will be tarnished." 
 
 The lady's brows contracted slightly, for it flashed upon 
 her that Ishmael was about to send her away. But that was 
 not his intention, and in the winding way of Eastern ex- 
 planations he proceeded to propound his plan. 
 
 " When the Prophet — to him be prayer and peace ! — lost 
 his first wife, Khadija, the mother of Islam, and took a 
 second wife it was a widow, well stricken in years, and with- 
 out wealth or beauty. Why did the Prophet marry her? 
 That he might care for her and protect her and shield her 
 from every ill." 
 
 The lady looked on the ground and listened. A strange 
 sensation of joy mingled with fear took possession of her, 
 for she saw what Ishmael was going to say. 
 
 " If the Prophet did this for her who was so far removed 
 from the slanders of evil tongues, shall not his servant do as 
 much for one who is young and beautiful ? " 
 
 The lady's head began to swim, and the ground to sway 
 under her feet as if she were on a rolling ship at sea, but
 
 268 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Ishmael saw nothing in her agitation but modesty, and he 
 went on in a soft voice to tell her what he wished to do. 
 
 He wished to marry her, that is to say, to betroth him- 
 self to her, to make her his wife, his spiritual wife, his wife 
 in name only — never to be claimed of him as a husband, for, 
 besides his consecration to the great task he had undertaken 
 for God, there was a vow he had made to the memory of 
 one who was dead, and both forbade him ever to think again 
 of the joys of the life of a man. 
 
 The lady was now totally unable to conceal her agitation, 
 and taking out her handkerchief she kept running her 
 trembling fingers along the hem. She was asking herself 
 what she could do, how she could reply, for she could plainly 
 see that the Oriental in Ishmael had never for one instant 
 allowed him to think that if he were willing to give her 
 the protection of his name she could have any possible ob- 
 jection. 
 
 It was the still hour of noon, and pale with fear she sat 
 silent for a moment looking into the palpitating air that 
 floated over the glistening waters of the Nile. Then assum- 
 ing, as well as she could, an expression of humility and con- 
 fusion, she said, while her heart was beating violently: 
 
 " Master, it is too much honour — I can hardly think 
 of it." 
 
 He could see by her face how hard she fought with her- 
 self, but still taking her agitation for maidenly modesty he 
 dropped his voice and whispered : 
 
 " Do not decide at once. Wait a little. Go away now, 
 and think of what I have said." 
 
 He held out his hand to help her to her feet, and she 
 went off with an unsteady step, first stopping, then going 
 quickly, as if she had an impulse to speak again and could 
 not do so, because of the feeling, akin to terror, which 
 seemed to stifle her. 
 
 If any one, following the white lady to hor lodging in 
 the Greek widow's house, had been able to look into the 
 depths of her soul, he would have found a tragic struggle 
 going on there, A score of conflicting voices were clamour- 
 ing to be heard at once. " What am I doing? " " Where am
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 269 
 
 I ? " " Am I myself, or some one else ? " " Don't take on this 
 fearful responsibility to such a man." " But I must do so, 
 or I can do nothing." "I must go on or else go back." 
 " But isn't this going too far? " " Nonsense, this is no mar- 
 riage: it is merely a nominal union — a betrothal. I shall 
 only be his wife pro forma. According to an alien faith, 
 too, a faith that does not bind my conscience." " It must be 
 done — it shall ! " 
 
 When the white lady returned to Ishmael's house on 
 the following day it was wath a firm, decided step, as if she 
 were lifted up and sustained by some invisible power. With 
 a strange light in her eyes and an expression in her face 
 that he had never seen there before, she told him that she 
 agreed to his proposal. 
 
 He received her consent with a glad cry, and clapping 
 his hands to summon his household he announced the good 
 news to them Avith a bright look and a happy voice. 
 
 The old uncle was overjoyed, and little Ayesha leaped 
 into the lady's arms and kissed her, but Zenoba, with a 
 face full of confusion, drew Ishmael aside and began to 
 stammer out objections and difficulties. The house was 
 small, there was no separate room for the white lady. Then 
 her black boy — there was not even a corner that could be 
 occupied by him. 
 
 " Put the Rani in the room with the child, and let the 
 boy sleep on the mat at her door," said Ishmael, and without 
 more ado he went on to make arrangements for the wedding. 
 
 The arrangements were few, for Ishmael determined that 
 the marriage should be concluded immediately and con- 
 ducted without any kind of pomp. 
 
 But in order that all his world might know what he was 
 doing he invited the Cadi of Khartoum to make the contract, 
 and then, having sent the lady to her lodging, he set out 
 to fetch her back on the milk-white camel he usually rode 
 himself. 
 
 It was Sunday, and the sun had gone down in a blaze of 
 
 red as he walked by the camel's side through the native 
 
 quarter of the town with the white lady — the Rani, the 
 
 Princess — wearing a gold-edged muslin shawl over her head 
 
 19
 
 270 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 and descending to her shoulders, riding on the crimson sad- 
 dle fringed with cowries. 
 
 By the time they reached old Mahmud's house it was 
 full of guests in wedding garments, gorgeous in crimson 
 curtains hanging over all the walls, and illuminated by 
 countless lamps both large and small. 
 
 But the ceremony was of the simplest. 
 
 First, the Fatihah (the first chapter of the Koran), re- 
 cited by the whole company standing, and then the bride 
 and bridegroom on the ground, face to face, grasping each 
 other's hands. 
 
 Down to this moment the white lady had been sus- 
 tained by the same invisible power, as if clad in an impene- 
 trable armour of defiance which no other emotion could 
 pierce; but when the Cadi stepped forward and placed a 
 handkerchief over the clasped hands and began to say some 
 words of prayer, she felt faint, and could scarcely breathe. 
 
 With a struggle, nevertheless, she recovered herself when 
 the Cadi, leaning over her, told her in a low voice to repeat 
 after him the words that he should speak : 
 
 " I betroth myself to thee — to serve thee and to submit 
 to thee " 
 
 " I betroth myself to thee — to sei-ve — to serve thee — and 
 to — to submit to thee " 
 
 With an effort she got the words spoken, feeling numb 
 at her heart and with a sense of darkness coming over her, 
 but being spurred at last by sight of the Arab woman's glit- 
 tering eyes watching her intently. 
 
 But when the Cadi turned from her to Ishmael, and the 
 bridegroom, in his throbbing voice, said loudly: 
 
 " And I accept thy betrothal and take thee under my 
 care, and bind myself to afford thee my protection, as ye 
 who are here bear witness," she felt as if the tempest of 
 darkness had overwhelmed her and she were falling, falling, 
 falling into a bottomless abyss. 
 
 When the lady came to herself again the Arab woman 
 was holding a dish of water to her mouth, and her own 
 black boy, with big tears like beads dropping out of his 
 eyes, was fanning her with a fan of ostrich feathers.
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 271 
 
 But now the people, who had been saying among them- 
 selves, in astonishment at such maimed rites, " Is this a 
 widow or a divorced woman ? " being determined not to be 
 done out of such marriage fetes as they considered only 
 decent, had begun to gather in front of the house, the men 
 in their brown skull caps and blue galabiahs, the married 
 women in their black silk habarahs with silver rings in their 
 noses, and the unmarried girls in their white scarves with 
 coins in their hair and with big silver anklets. 
 
 And while the Sheikhs and Notables within, sitting on 
 the dikkahs around the guest-room, listened to a blind man's 
 chanting of the Koran, the peasant people, squatting on the 
 sand under the stars, employed themselves after their own 
 fashion with the beating of drums, big and little, the play- 
 ing of pipes, and the singing of love songs. And through 
 and among them as they huddled together, with their faces 
 to the illuminated house of joy, and both the bride and the 
 bridegroom before them, a water-carrier, a Sakka, went 
 about with his water-skin and a brass cup, distributing 
 drinks of water; a girl, with jingling jewels, squirted scent; 
 and Abdullah and Black Zogal, showing their shining white 
 teeth in their happiness and pride, handed round sweet- 
 meats and cups of thick coffee. 
 
 Meantime the white lady sat, with her flushed face un- 
 covered and her gold-edged veil thrown back, where Ishmael 
 had placed her, near to the threshold, in order that, contrary 
 to bad custom, the people might see her; and the child, with 
 its sweet olive-brown face, sat by her side, almost on her 
 lap, amusing herself by holding her hand and drawing off 
 and putting on a beautiful diamond ring which she wore on 
 the third finger of her left hand. 
 
 That innocent action of the sweet child seemed to tor- 
 ture the lady at certain moments, and never more than 
 when one of the male singers, sitting close beneath her. sang 
 a camel-boy's song of love. He was far away on the desert, 
 but the soft eyes of the gazelle recalled the timid looks of 
 his beloved. And when he reached the oasis in the midst 
 of the wilderness, the song of the bird in the date tree 
 brought back the voice of his darling.
 
 272 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 As soon as the singer finished, the women on the ground 
 made their shrill quavei-iiig cry of joy, the zaghareet, and 
 then the white lady drew her hand away from the child 
 with an abrupt and almost angry gesture. 
 
 After that she sat for a long hour without stirring, 
 merely gazing out on the people in front of the house as if 
 she saw and comprehended nothing. A taste of bitterness 
 was in her mouth, and as often as she was recalled to herself 
 by some question addressed to her she looked as if she 
 wished to disappear from sight altogether. 
 
 At length she thought her torture was at an end, for the 
 Cadi rose and said in a loud voice: 
 
 " If your friend is sweet do not eat him up," whereupon 
 the tom-toms were silenced and with a laugh everybody rose, 
 and then, all standing, the whole company chanted the 
 Patihah: 
 
 " Praise be to God, the Lord of all creatures, the most 
 merciful, the King of the Day of Judgment. Thee do 
 we worship and of Thee do we beg assistance. Direct 
 us in the right way, in the way of those to whom Thou 
 hast been gracious ; not of those against whom Thou art 
 incensed, nor of those who go astray." 
 
 The solemn words died away like a receding wave on the 
 outskirts of the crowd, and then the people broke up and 
 went back to their houses and tents, leaving Ishmacl and 
 his household together. A little later the household also 
 separated for the night, the child, now very sleepy, being 
 carried to bed by her nurse, and old Mahmud shuffling off 
 to his room after saying to the white lady : 
 
 " An old man's blessing can do you no harm, my daugh- 
 ter; therefore God bless you and bring you joyful increase." 
 
 The white lady was now alone with Ishmael, and her 
 agitation increased tenfold. 
 
 " Let us sit again for a while," he said in a soft voice, 
 and leading her to one of the wooden benches, covered with 
 carpet, which faced the open front of the house, he placed 
 himself beside her. 
 
 There the moon was on their faces, and from time to
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 273 
 
 time there was a silvery rain of southern stars. They sat 
 for a -while in silence, she with a sense of shame, he with a 
 momentary thrill of passion that came up from the place 
 where he was no longer a prophet but a man. 
 
 She felt that he was tr^-ing to look into her face with his 
 lustrous black eyes, and she wished to turn away from him. 
 This brought the colour of hot blood into her cheeks and 
 only made her the more beautiful. 
 
 A sense of physical fear began to take possession of her, 
 and a storm of thoughts and memories came in rapid suc- 
 cession. She could not express even to her own mind 
 the intricacies of her emotions. This man was an Orien- 
 tal, and she believed him to be capable of treachery and 
 guilty of violence. Yet she was his wife, according to 
 his own view, and what at this moment, when they were 
 alone, was the worth of the pledge whereby she (for her 
 own purposes) had consented to be his wife in name only, 
 his betrothed ! 
 
 Her nervousness increased every moment. When he 
 touched her arm, she recoiled slightly and felt her skin 
 creep. He seemed to be conscious of this, for he sat by her 
 side a little longer without speaking. 
 
 The silence of night was on the desert and along the 
 moon track across the river as far as to the ruined dome of 
 the Mahdi's tomb, which seemed so threatening and so near. 
 
 At length, in a soft voice, he said, " Come," and held 
 out his hand to help her to rise. 
 
 She rose, trembling all over with fright and a sort of 
 physical humiliation — she who had always been so proud, 
 so strong, so brave. 
 
 He led her to the women's side of the house, without 
 speaking a word until they got there, and then, almost in a 
 whisper, he said : 
 
 " You sleep here with little Ayesha. May your night be 
 happy and yoiir morning good ! " 
 
 She looked up at him as he recommended her to God, 
 and was amazed at the calm, luminous face that now met 
 her own. At the next moment he was gone. 
 
 It was an immense relief to find herself in her bedroom.
 
 274 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 where a little open lamp was burning, and there was no 
 sound but the soft and measured breathing of the child, who 
 was asleep in bed. 
 
 At the first moment the sleeping child was like a great 
 protector, but when she became calmer and began to think 
 of this she felt the more ashamed. 
 
 " What impossible, terrible thing has happened ? " she 
 thought, and then she asked herself again, " Am I really 
 myself, or some one else ? " 
 
 " Oh, what have I done ? " she thought, and a sense of 
 sin took possession of her, which was almost like that which 
 a good woman feels when she has committed adultery. 
 
 " It is terrible, but it is inevitable," she thought, and 
 then she fought against the sentiment of shame which op- 
 pressed her by telling herself that Ishmael was a crafty 
 hypocrite, whose soft words were a sham, whose religion was 
 a lie, whose wicked deeds deserved punishment at any price 
 whatever. 
 
 " But no, I cannot think of that now," she thought, and 
 after a while she turned the light bedclothes aside, and, put- 
 ting out the lamp, got into bed by the side of the child, 
 who was smelling sweet with the soft odours of sleep. 
 
 She lay a long time motionless, with her eyes open, and 
 still the horror of what she had done weighed on her like a 
 nightmare. Then she covered her eyes with her hands, and 
 the image of another filled her with emotions that were at 
 once sweet and bitter. With a woman's sense of injustice 
 she was blaming the absent one for the position of shame 
 in which she found herself. 
 
 "Why did he choose this man instead of me?" she 
 thought, and then, at last, in the fiercest fire of jealousy and 
 hatred, weeping bitter tears in the darkness, she reconciled 
 her tormented conscience to everything she had done, every- 
 thing she intended to do, by saying to herself with quiver- 
 ing lips : 
 
 "He killed my father!'' 
 
 At that moment she was startled by a voice outside that 
 broke sharp and harsh upon the silence of the night: 
 
 " There is no god but God ! There is no god but God ! "
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 275 
 
 It was Black Zogal, the half-witted Xubian, crying" the 
 confession of faith at the door of Ishmael's house. 
 
 The Lady, the White Lady, the Eani, the Princess, was 
 Helena Graves. 
 
 V 
 
 While Ishmael's followers had been squatting on the 
 sands to celebrate his betrothal the Sirdar had been having 
 a dinner-party in the palace, composed of the chief officers 
 of his military government and the cream of the British 
 society at Khartoum. 
 
 Toward ten o'clock the large after-dinner group of ladies 
 in low-cut corsage, showing white arms and shoulders, and 
 officers in full-dress uniform, had come out on to the terrace 
 with its open arches and its handsome steps sweeping down 
 to the silent garden. 
 
 Below were the broad lawns, the mimosa trees filling the 
 night air with perfume, the trembling sycamores and the 
 tall dates, sleeping under the great deep heaven with its 
 stars. Behind was the lamp-lit palace from which native 
 servants in gold-embroidered crimson were carrying silver 
 trays laden with decanters and glasses and small cups and 
 saucers. 
 
 It was almost the spot on which " the martyr of the 
 Soudan" fell under the lances of the dervishes, yet one of 
 the Sirdar's servants, Abdullahi, with three cross-cuts on his 
 cheeks, his tribal mark as a son of the bloodthirsty Baggara, 
 and with the pleasantest of smiles on his walnut-coloured 
 face, was drawing corks, pouring out whisky and soda-water, 
 and striking matches to light the men's cigarettes. 
 
 The company was full of the gaiety and animation which 
 comes after a pleasant dinner, with a little of the excite- 
 ment which follows when people have partaken of wine. 
 The eyes of the ladies sparkled and the faces of the men 
 smiled, and both talked freely and laughed a good deal. 
 
 The conversation was made up of triiles until one of the
 
 276 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 ladies — it was the wife of the Governor of the city, clad in 
 the lightest of lace chiffon gowns and shod in yellow satin 
 slippei"s — inquired the meaning of the sounds of rejoicing, 
 the blowing of pipes and the beating of tom-toms, which had 
 come through the wide-open windows of the palace from the 
 direction of the native quarter. 
 
 To this question the Inspector-General of the Soudan — 
 an English Pasha, whose gold-laced tunic was half covered 
 with medals — replied that the new prophet, who had lately 
 arrived in Khartoum, had that day taken to himself a wife. 
 
 "How interesting! ^' cried the ladies in chorus, with a 
 note of laughter that was intended to belie the word, and 
 then the lady in the yellow slippers turned to the Inspector- 
 General and said : 
 
 " Of course he has as many as the Mahdi already — but 
 who is the new one, I wonder ? " 
 
 " 'No, he has only one wife at present — runs 'em tandem, 
 I hear — and the new bride is the beautiful person in Parsee 
 costume who arrived here about the same time as himself." 
 
 " The Mohammedan Rani, you mean ? My husband tells 
 me she is perfectly lovely. But they say she will never let 
 a European get a glimpse of her face — puts down her Parsee 
 veil, I suppose — so goodness knows how he knows, you 
 know." 
 
 "Perhaps your husband is a privileged person, my dear! " 
 said one of the other ladies, whereupon there was a trill of 
 laughter and the little feet in satin slippers were beaten 
 upon the floor. 
 
 " But a Rani ! Think of that ! Who can she be, I won- 
 der?" said another of the ladies, and then the mistress of 
 the palace, Lady Mannering, hinted that she believed the 
 Sirdar knew something about her. 
 
 " Oh, tell us ! Tell us ! " cried a dozen female voices at 
 once; but the Sirdar, a shrewd and kindly autocrat who had 
 been smoking a cigarette in silence, merely answered: 
 
 " Time will tell you, perhaps." Then turning to the In- 
 spector-General he said: 
 
 " She has married the man, you say ? " 
 
 " That's so, your E.xcellency."
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 277 
 
 " There must be some mistake about that, surely," 
 
 The company broke up late, and the ladies went off in 
 light wraps and the men bare-headed through the soft, re- 
 verberant air of the southern night. But the Sirdar had 
 asked certain of his officers to remain for a few moments, 
 and among them were the Inspector-General, the Financial 
 Secretary, and the Governor of the town. To the latter 
 came his Zabit, a police officer, whose duty it was to report 
 to his chief early and late, and as soon as the men had 
 seated themselves the Sirdar said : 
 
 " Any further news about this man Ishmael Ameer? " 
 
 " None, your Excellency," said the Governor. 
 
 " You've discovered nothing about his object in coming 
 here?" 
 
 "Nothing at all." 
 
 " He is not sowing dissension between Moslems and 
 Christians?" 
 
 " No ! On the contrary he professes to be opposed to all 
 that, sir." 
 
 " Then you see no reason to think that he is likely to be 
 a danger to the public peace ? " 
 
 " Unfortunately no, sir, no ! " 
 
 The Sirdar laughed. " He hasn't yet given * divine ' 
 sanction for your removal, Colonel ? " 
 
 " Not that I know of at all events." 
 
 " Then you and your wife may sleep in peace for the 
 present, I suppose." 
 
 There was a little general laughter, and then the In- 
 spector-General, a sceptic with a contempt for holy men of 
 all kinds, said : 
 
 " All the same, your Excellency, I should make short 
 work of this pseudo-Messiah." 
 
 " "Without plain cause we cannot," said the Sirdar, who 
 was the friend of all faiths and the enemy of none. " In- 
 deed, a broad-minded Mohammedan such as this man is said 
 to be might possibly be of service in directing the religion 
 of the Soudan." 
 
 " Yes, sir, but too many of these religious celebrities are 
 contaminated by Mahdism."
 
 278 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Surely Mahdism is dead, my dear fellow." 
 
 " Not yet, sir ! Only yesterday I saw a man kneeling by 
 the Mahdi's tomb — so hard do religions die! As for this 
 man Ishmael, he may be preaching peace while he is gath- 
 ering his followers, but wait till they're numerous enough 
 to fight, and you'll see what he will do. Besides, isn't there 
 evidence enough already that the tranquillity of the Soudan 
 has been disturbed ? " 
 
 " What evidence do you mean i " 
 
 " I mean — my informers all over the country tell me the 
 people are no longer pleading poverty as an excuse for re- 
 mission of taxation — they are boldly refusing to pay." 
 
 The Financial Secretary corroborated this statement, 
 saying that the taxes due on the land and the date trees 
 had not yet been collected, and that he had heard from 
 Cairo that the same difficulty was being met with in Egypt 
 in respect of the taxes on berseem and wheat. 
 
 " You mean," said the Sirdar, " that a conspiracy of 
 passive resistance to the Government has been set afoot ? " 
 
 " It looks like it, sir," said the Inspector-General. " A 
 pretty insidious kind of conspiracy it is, too, and I think all 
 the signs are that Ishmael Ameer is at the head of it." 
 
 There was silence for some minutes, during which the 
 Sirdar was telling himself that if this was so the rule of 
 England in Egypt was face to face with a most subtle 
 enemy — subtler far than the Mahdi and immeasurably more 
 dangerous. 
 
 " Well, the first thing we've got to do is to find out the 
 truth," he said, and with that he gave the Zabit an order 
 to summon the Ulema of Khartoum, the Cadi, the Notables 
 and Sheikhs to a meeting in the palace. 
 
 " Let it be soon," he said. 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " And secret." 
 
 " Certainly, your Excellency." 
 
 The Governor and the Financial Secretary went off with 
 the police officer, but for some minutes longer the Inspeetor- 
 Geiaeral remained with the Sirdar. 
 
 " If the man were likely to cause a disturbance," said
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 279 
 
 the Sirdar, " it would be easy to deal with him, but he's not. 
 Public security is in no present danger. On the contrary, 
 everything I hear of the man's teaching is calculated to pro- 
 mote peace." 
 
 " As to that, sir, if you believe all he says, he is the 
 prince of peace himself, and his Islam isn't Islam at all as 
 we know it, but something quite different." 
 
 " If he were claiming ' divine ' authority and telling 
 people to resist the Government " 
 
 " Oh, he is far too clever for that, sir, and his conspiracy 
 is the deep-laid plan of a subtle impostor, not the unpre- 
 meditated action of a lunatic." 
 
 " All I hear about his personal character is good," said 
 the Sirdar. " He is tender to children, charitable to the 
 poor, and weeps like a woman at a story of distress." 
 
 The Inspector-General laughed. 
 
 "Pepper in his finger-nails — the hoary old trick, sir! 
 Good-night, Sirdar!" 
 
 " Good-night, Colonel ! " And the Inspector-General de- 
 scended the steps. 
 
 Being left alone, the Sirdar walked for a long hour to 
 and fro on the terrace, trying to see what course he ought 
 to take in dealing with a religious leader who differed so 
 dangerously from the holy men that vpere more trouble- 
 some but hardly more deadly than the sand-flies of the 
 desert. 
 
 At midnight he found himself standing on the very spot 
 on •which General Gordon met his death, and in an instant, 
 as by a flash of mental lightning, he saw the scene that had 
 been enacted there only a few years before — the gray dawn, 
 the mad rush of the howling dervishes in their lust of blood, 
 up from the dim garden to the top of these steps, on which 
 stood, calmly waiting for them, the fearless soul who had 
 waited for his own countrymen in vain. " Where is your 
 Master, the Mahdi ? " he cried. Then a barbarous shriek, the 
 flash of a score of lances, and the martyr of the Soudan fell. 
 
 Was this to be another such revolt, more subtle if not 
 more bloody, turning England out of the Valley of the Nile 
 by making it impossible for her to meet the expense of
 
 280 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 governing the country, and thereby uprooting the seeds of 
 civilisation that had been sown in the Soudan through so 
 many toilsome years? 
 
 On the other hand, was it the beginning of a great spir- 
 itual revolution that was intended by God to pass over the 
 whole face of the world? It might even be that, though 
 the Soudan was only a brown and barren wilderness, for 
 had not all great faiths and all great prophets sprung out 
 of the desert — ^Moses, Mohammed, Christ ! 
 
 This brought the Sirdar back to a memory that had 
 troubled him deeply for many weeks — the memory of the 
 disgrace that had fallen in Cairo on his comrade of long 
 ago the son of his old friend Xunehara, young Gordon Lord. 
 
 Then it dawned upon him for the first time that, how- 
 ever serious his oifence as a soldier, the son of his friend 
 had done no moi-e and no less than his great namesake did 
 before him when he resisted authority because authority 
 was in the wrong! 
 
 Good God! could it be possible that young Gordon was 
 in the right after all, and that this movement of the man 
 Ishmael was the beginning of a world-wide revolt against 
 the materialism, the selfishness, the venality, and the op- 
 pression of a corrupt civilisation that mocked religion by 
 taking the name of Ilim who came to earth to destroy such 
 evils ? 
 
 If that was so, could any Christian country in these 
 days dare to repeat the appalling error of the Roman Em- 
 pire in Palestine two thousand years ago — the error of try- 
 ing .to put down moral forces by physical ones ? 
 
 The Sirdar laughed when he thought of that, so grotesque 
 seemed the mysterious law of the mind by which he had 
 coupled an olive-faced Arab like Ishmael Ameer with 
 Christ ! 
 
 The southern night was silent. Not a sound came up 
 from the moonlit garden except the croaking of frogs in 
 the pond. Presently a voice that was like a wave of wind 
 came sweeping through the breathless air: 
 
 " There is no god but God! There is no god but God! " 
 
 The Sirdar shuddered, and turned into the house.
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 281 
 
 VI 
 
 Being betrothed to Ishmael, and therefore in effect hig 
 wife, Helena had now no diflficulty in reading the secret he 
 had so carefully hidden from British eyes. Every morning 
 she sat with him in the guest-room while he received his 
 messengers and agents, and if they demurred at her pres- 
 ence, being distrustful of her because she was a woman, he 
 would say: 
 
 " Have no fear. My wife is myself. Think of her as you 
 think of me." 
 
 Thus little by little she realised what the plan of his 
 opposition to the Government had been, when, in Cairo, 
 after the closing of El Azhar, he had sent out his hundred 
 emissaries. It was to tell the people in every village of 
 Egypt and the Soudan to pay no taxes until their faith was 
 free and the Government took its hand off the central seat 
 of their religion. 
 
 She also realised that the people had obeyed Ishmael and 
 had suffered as the consequence. Agents were coming every 
 day with secret letters and messages concealed in their tur- 
 bans, telling of the pains and penalties already endured by 
 those who had boldly refused to pay the taxes due at that 
 season of the year. 
 
 At first these lamentations were couched after Eastern 
 manner in the language of metaphor. Pharaoh was laying 
 intolerable burdens upon the people — what were they to do? 
 God had once sent Moses, a man of prayer, to plead with 
 Pharaoh to loosen his hand — would He not do so again? 
 
 But as the people's sufferings increased, the metaphors 
 were dropped and the injustices they laboured under were 
 stated in plain terms. Hitherto, when a summons had been 
 taken out against a man for the nonpayment of his taxes, 
 the magistrate might remit or cancel or postpone, but now 
 there was nothing but summary execution everywhere, with 
 the result that stock and crops were being sold up by the 
 police, and neither the Mudirs (the Governors) nor their
 
 282 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 sarrafs (cashiers) cared what price was realised so long as 
 the amount of the taxes was met. 
 
 " Is there no redress, no remedy, no appeal ? What are 
 we to do ? " asked the people in the messages that came in 
 the turbans. 
 
 " Be patient ! " replied Ishmael. " It is written, ' God 
 is with the patient.' " 
 
 A hundred times Helena wrote this answer, at Ishmael's 
 dictation, on pieces of paper hardly bigger than a large post- 
 age stamp, and it was hidden away in some secret place in 
 the messenger's clothes. 
 
 As time went on the messages became more urgent and 
 painful. The law said that at times of distraint the clothes 
 of the debtor, his implements of cultivation, and the cattle 
 he employed in agriculture were to be exempt from seizure, 
 but the district officers were seizing everything by which the 
 people worked, and yet requiring them to pay taxes just 
 the same. 
 
 " What are we to say ? " asked the messengers. 
 
 " Say nothing," answered Ishmael. " Suifer and be strong. 
 Not for the first time on the banks of the Nile have people 
 been required to make bricks without straw. But God will 
 avenge you. Wait ! " 
 
 This message, also, Helena wrote a hundred times, wish- 
 ing it had been more explicit, but Ishmael committed his 
 signature to no compromising statement, no evidence of con- 
 spiracy, and that deepened Helena's conviction of his cun- 
 ning and duplicity. 
 
 The intensity of her feeling against Ishmael did not abate 
 by coming to close quarters. Day by day, as she sat in the 
 guest-room, she poisoned her mind and hardened her heart 
 against him. She even found herself taking the side of his 
 people in the sufferings he continued to impose upon them. 
 She was sure, too, that in addition to his plan of passive 
 resistance he had some active scheme of vengeance against 
 the Government. What was it? She must wait and see. 
 
 After a while letters began to arrive from Cairo. They 
 were from the Chancellor of El Azhar and contained the 
 messages of the Ulema.
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WOULD 283 
 
 The Ulema had appealed to the representatives of the 
 Powers, who had answered them that they could do nothii.g 
 unless it became clear to all the world that the action (;f 
 England was imperilling the peace of Egypt, and thereby 
 the lives of the Europeans. What were they to say? 
 
 " Fools ! " cried Ishmael. " Don't you see that they want 
 you to rebel? Grasp every hand that is held out to you in 
 good-will, but fly from the finger that would point you into 
 the fire." 
 
 Helena thought she saw light at last. Having expelled 
 England from Egypt by making it impossible for her to 
 govern the country, Ishmael intended to establish, like the 
 Mahdi, an entirely worldly and temporal power, with him- 
 self at the head of it. 
 
 The second letter from the Ulema at Cairo contained a 
 still more serious message. Having met and concluded that 
 the action of the Government justified the proclamation of 
 a Jehad, a holy war, on the just ground that the unbelievers 
 were trying to expel them from their country, they had sol- 
 emnly sworn on the Koran to turn England out of Egj-pt 
 or die in the attempt. 
 
 To this letter Ishmael sent an instant answer, saying: 
 
 "No! What will it profit you to turn England out of 
 Egypt while she holds the Soudan and the sources of the 
 Nile? Oh, blind and weak! If you have forgotten your 
 souls, have you no thoughts for your stomachs ? " 
 
 Then came further letters from the Chancellor of El 
 Azhar, saying that the fellaheen were being evicted from 
 their houses and lands, and that their sufferings were now so 
 dire that no counsels could keep them from revolt. Even the 
 young women were calling upon the young men to fight, say- 
 ing they were not half the men their fathers had been, or they 
 would conquer or die for the homes that were being taken 
 from them and for the religion of God and his prophet. 
 
 To this message also Ishmael returned a determined 
 answer. 
 
 " War is mutual deceit," he said. " Avoid it ! Fly from 
 it! I will countenance no warfare! That is my unalter- 
 able mind ! Hear it, for God's sake ! "
 
 284 THE WHITE PKOPHET 
 
 But hardly had Ishmael's answer gone from Khartoum 
 when messengers began to arrive from all parts of Egypt, 
 saying that the fellaheen had already risen in various places 
 and that battalions of the British Army had been sent out 
 to suppress them; that the people had been put down with 
 loss of life and suffering, and that many were now trooping 
 into the cities, homeless and hopeless, and crying in their 
 despair, " How long, O Lord, how long ? " 
 
 It was a black day in Khartoum when this news came, 
 for among Ishmael's immediate following there were not a 
 few who had lost members of their own families. Some of 
 these, that night when all was still, went out into the desert, 
 far away from the tents, and sang a solemn dirge for the 
 dead. It was a melancholy sight in that lonesome place, for 
 they were chiefly women, and their voices under the deep- 
 blue sky with its stars made a most touching lamentation, 
 like that of the sobbing of the sea. 
 
 Helena heard it, and, with her heart still poisoned against 
 Ishmael, it made her yet more bitter against him, as against 
 one who for his owm ends was holding the poor, weak peo- 
 ple under their cruel fate by the spell of superstitious hopes 
 and fears. 
 
 Knowing the Moslem ethics of warfare, that it is only 
 wicked when it is likely to fail, she convinced herself that 
 Ishmael was merely biding his time for the execution of 
 some violent scheme, and remembering his own secret (the 
 secret of the crime he thought he had hidden from every- 
 body), the idea took possession of her that he was laying 
 some personal plot against the Consul-General. 
 
 One day a lanky fellow, with a short-cut Moslem beard, 
 arrived by train, and, after the usual Arabic salutations, 
 produced a letter. It ran : 
 
 " The bearer of this is Abdel Kader, and he is our envoy 
 to you with a solemn message which is too secret to com- 
 mit to paper. Trust him. He is honest and his word is 
 true. Your friends, who wait for you in Cairo with out- 
 stretched arms " 
 
 And then followed the names not only of many of the 
 Ulema of Cairo, but of most of the Notables as well.
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 285 
 
 Abdel Kader proved to be a sort of Arab Don Quixote, 
 full of fine language and grand sentiments. Much of this 
 he expended upon Ishmael in the secrecy of the carefully 
 guarded guest-room before he came to the substance of his 
 message, which was to say that as a great doctor of Moslem 
 law, Gamal-ed-Deen, had upheld assassination itself as a last 
 means of righting the wrongs of the people, the leaders had 
 reluctantly concluded that the English lord (Lord ISTune- 
 ham) must be removed in order that his heavy foot might 
 be lifted from the necks of the oppressed. To this end they 
 had decided that he should be assassinated some day as he 
 passed in his carriage on his afternoon drive over the Kasr 
 el Xil bridge, but lacking a person capable of taking the 
 lead in such an affair, they appealed to Ishmael to return 
 to Cairo for this purpose. 
 
 Having discharged himself of the burden of his message, 
 the Arab Don Quixote was proceeding with many large 
 words that were intended to show how safely this act of 
 righteous vengeance might be executed by one whom the 
 law dare not touch for fear of the people, when Ishmael, 
 who had listened breathlessly, burst out on him and cried : 
 
 " No, no, I tell you, no ! Return to them that sent you, 
 and say, ' Ishmael Ameer is no murderer.' Say, too, that 
 the world has no use for patriots who would right the people 
 by putting them in the wrong. Away with you ! Away ! " 
 
 At that he rose up and went out of the guest-room with a 
 flaming face, leaving the envoy to strike his forehead and 
 to curse the daj' that had brought him. 
 
 Helena, who alone, save old Mahmud, had been present 
 at this interview, found herself utterly shaken at the end 
 of it by a storm of conflicting feelings, and from that time 
 forward her heart was constantly being surprised by emo- 
 tions which she had hitherto struggled to suppress. 
 
 Day by day, as messengers came thronging into Khar- 
 toum with sadder and yet sadder stories of the people's suf- 
 ferings — how, living under the shadow of the sword, impov- 
 erished by the law and by the cruel injustice of the native 
 ofiicers, the Omdehs and the sarrafs, sold up and evicted 
 from their homes, they were tramping the deserts, men,
 
 286 THE \Y1I1TE rKOrilET 
 
 women, and children, hungry and naked and with nothing 
 of their own except the sand and the sky — Helena saw that 
 Ishmael's face grew paler and paler, as if his sleep had left 
 him, and under the burden of his responsibility for what 
 had befallen the country as the consequence of its obedience 
 to his will, his heart was bleeding and his life ebbing away. 
 
 " Master, is there no help for us ? " the messengers would 
 ask, with tears in their half-witted eyes. " You are our 
 father, we are your children — what are we to do? We are 
 sheep without a shepherd — will you not lead us ? " 
 
 To all such pleading Ishmael would show a brave face 
 and say: 
 
 " Not yet ! Wait ! The clouds that darken your sky 
 will lift. Be patient! The arm of our God is long! Never 
 despair! Allah feeds the worm that lies between the stones. 
 Will He not feed you also ? Yet better your bodies should 
 starve than your souls should perish ! Hold fast to the 
 faith ! Your children and your children's children will bless 
 you!" 
 
 But sometimes in the midst of his comforting his voice 
 would fail, and, like Joseph, whose bowels yearned over his 
 brethren, he would stop suddenly and hasten away to his 
 room, lest he should break down altogether. 
 
 Helena saw all this, and it was as much as she could do 
 to withstand it, when one night she was awakened in the 
 small hours by Mosie, who was whispering through the door 
 of her bedroom: 
 
 " Lady, lady. Master sick ; come to him." 
 
 Then she walked across to the men's side of the house 
 and heard Ishmael, in his own room, calling God to forgive 
 him, and crying like a child. 
 
 At that moment, in spite of herself, Helena felt a wave 
 of pity take possession of her, but at the next, being back in 
 her bedroom, she remembered her own secret, and asked her- 
 self again : 
 
 " What pity had he for me when he hilled my father? "
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 287 
 
 VII 
 
 Down to this time Ishmael's conduct had been marked 
 by the most determined common sense; but now came an 
 incident that seemed to change the trend of his mind and 
 character. 
 
 One day a man of the Jaalin tribe arrived with a letter 
 in the sole of his sandal. 
 
 " God give you greeting, Master," he said in his West- 
 country dialect and a tone that seemed to foretell trouble. 
 
 With trembling fingers Ishmael tore open the letter and 
 read that to drown the cries of distress and to throw dust 
 in the eyes of Europe (for so the Ulema understood the 
 otherwise mysterious object, the Consul-General was organ- 
 ising a general festival of rejoicing to celebrate the th 
 
 anniversary of the British occupation of Egypt. 
 
 At this news Ishmael was overwhelmed. Helena saw his 
 lips quiver and his cheeks grow pale as he held the crinkling 
 paper in his trembling hands. In the absence of other ex- 
 planation the cold-blooded cruelty of the scheme seemed to 
 be almost devilish. 
 
 That day he disappeared, escaping from the importuni- 
 ties of his people into the desert. lie did not return at 
 night, and at sunrise next morning Black Zogal went in 
 search of him. But the ISTubian returned without him. tell- 
 ing some Avild supernatural tale of having come upon the 
 master in the midst of an angelic company. His face was 
 shining with a celestial radiance, so that at first he could 
 not look upon him. And when at length he was able to lift 
 his eyes, the master, who was alone, sent him back, saying 
 he was to tell no man what he had seen. 
 
 Four days afterward Ishmael returned to Ivhartoum, and 
 there was enough in his face to explain Black Zogal's story. 
 His eyes, which seemed to stare, had a look of unearthly 
 joy. This was like flame to the fuel of his people's delirium, 
 for they did not see that, under the torment of his private 
 sufferings, the dauntless courage and hope of the man had 
 begun to turn toward madness.
 
 288 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 He began to preach in the mosque a wild, new message. 
 The time of the end had come! Famine and pestilence, 
 poverty and godless luxury, war and misery — were not these 
 the signs foretold of the coming of the latter day? 
 
 Lo, the cup of the people's sufferings was full ! Behold, 
 while the children of Allah wept, men feasted and women 
 danced ! Kever since the black night when the first-born of 
 Egypt were slain had Egypt been so mocked ! Egypt, the 
 great, the ancient, the cradle of humanity — what was she 
 now but a playground for the idle wealthy of the world? 
 
 " But, no matter! " he cried. " The world travaileth and 
 groaneth like a woman in labour; but as a woman forgets 
 her pains when the hope of her heart is born, so shall the 
 children of God forget Pharaoh and his feastings when the 
 Expected One is come. He is coming now, the. Living, the 
 Deliverer, the Redeemer ! Wait ! Watch ! The time is 
 near ! " 
 
 The new message flashed like fire through Ishmael's fol- 
 lowers. Every eventide for thirteen centuries the prayer 
 had gone up to heaven in Islam for the advent of the 
 divinely appointed guide who was to redeem the world from 
 sorrow and sin, to deliver believers from the hated bondage 
 of the foreigner, and to re-establish the universal Caliphate; 
 and now, in the utmost depths of their oppression and suf- 
 fering, when hope had all but died out of their hearts, the 
 true Mahdi, the Messiah, the Christ was about to come! 
 
 The people were beside themselves with .ioy. They were 
 like children of the desert who, after a long drought in which 
 their wells have been dried up, run about in glee when the 
 first drops of rain begin to fall. They were ready for any 
 task, any enterprise, and Ishmael, who began to make plans 
 for going back to Cairo (for it was there, according to his 
 view, that the Expected One was to appear), sent them with 
 letters to all corners of the country, telling his messengers 
 to return home. 
 
 Helena wrote these letters with a trembling hand. In 
 spite of her secret errand she was surprised by a certain sym- 
 pathy. The great hope, the great dream touched her pity 
 and gave her at the beginning some moments of compunc-
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 289 
 
 tiou. But after a while she began to see it as a wicked 
 madness, and that enabled her to steel her heart against 
 Ishmael again. 
 
 The man who held out such crazy hopes to a credulous 
 people might be harmless in England, but in Egypt he was 
 a peril. Once let an ignorant and superstitious populace 
 believe that the end of the world was coming, that a Messiah 
 was about to appear, and human government was a dead 
 letter. What then? Revolution and bloodshed, for the first 
 duty of a government was to preserve law and order ! 
 
 Helena asked herself if the time had not come at last to 
 write to the Consul-General, or perhaps to steal away from 
 Khartoum and return to Cairo that she might report what 
 she had seen and learned. 
 
 After reflection she concluded that the only result of 
 doing so would be that of punishing yet further the poor, 
 misguided people who had been punished enough already. 
 It was Ishmael alone who ought to suffer, whether for his 
 oflFences against his followers, his conspiracy against the Gov- 
 ernment, or his crime against herself, and in order to punish 
 him apart she would have to separate him from his people. 
 
 How was she to do this? It seemed impossible; but fate 
 itself assisted her. 
 
 A few days after Abdel Kader had gone off in his hu- 
 miliation the shadow of his lanky body appeared across the 
 threshold of the guest-room, where Ishmael was sitting with 
 no other company than old Mahmud and Helena, who was 
 writing the usual letters while little Mosie fanned her to 
 drive off the flies. 
 
 " The peace of God be with you, Master," he said in a 
 low and humble voice, and then, with a shy look of triumph, 
 he produced a letter which had been given to him at Haifa. 
 
 The letter was from the Chancellor of El Azhar. and it 
 told Ishmael, after the usual Arabic salutations, that the 
 festival of which he had already been informed was to take 
 place on the Ghezirah (the island in front of Cairo) ; that the 
 rejoicings were to begin on the anniversary of the birthday of 
 the English King, something more than a month hence; 
 that the British soldiers would still be in the provinces at
 
 290 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 that time, quelling disturbances and helping the district 
 officers to enforce the payment of taxes, and that, as a con- 
 sequence, the Egyptian Army alone would be left in charge 
 of the city. 
 
 " The Egyptian soldiers are Moslems, oh, my brother — 
 the brothers and sons of our poor afflicted children of Allah. 
 It needs only the right word from the right man, and they 
 will throw down their arms at the city gates and the army 
 of God may enter." 
 
 Ishmael read the letter aloud in his throbbing voice, and 
 his face began to shine with ecstasy. In an instant a wild 
 scheme took shape in his mind. 
 
 He would announce a pilgrimage! With ten thousand, 
 twenty thousand, fifty thousand of his followers he would 
 return to Cairo to meet and greet the Expected One! The 
 native army would not resist their co-religionists, and once 
 within the city, the struggle would be at an end! In a single 
 hour his fifty thousand would be five hundred thousand ! The 
 Government would not turn them out ; it dare not make 
 war upon them; the whole world would cry out against a 
 general massacre, and God Himself would not permit it to 
 occur. 
 
 But somebody must go into Cairo in advance to prepare 
 the way — to make sure there should be no bloodshed. Some 
 trusty messenger, some sei-vant of the Most High, who could 
 kindle the souls of the Egyptian soldiers to such a blazing 
 flame of love that not all the perils of death could make 
 them take up arms against the children of God when they 
 came to their gates! 
 
 While Ishmael propounded this scheme, with gathering 
 excitement and a look of frenzy, Helena sat trembling from 
 head to foot and clutching with nervous fingers the reed 
 pen she held in her hand, for she knew that her hour had 
 struck at last — the hour she had waited and watched for, 
 the hour she had come to Khartoum to meet. She held her 
 breath and gazed intently into Ishmael's quivering face as 
 long as he continued to speak, and then, in a voice which 
 bhe could scarcely recognise as her own, she said : 
 
 " But the messenger who goes in advance into Cairo —
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 291 
 
 he must be one whose wisdom as well as courage you can 
 trust." 
 
 " True, true, most true," said Ishmael, speaking eagerly 
 and rapidly. 
 
 " Some one whose word will carry influence with the 
 Egyptian army." 
 
 " Please God, it shall be so," said Ishmael. 
 
 " If the soldiers are native and Moslem, the ofiicers are 
 British and Christian, therefore the risks they run are 
 great." 
 
 " Great, very great ; but God will protect them." 
 
 " To disobey may be to suffer imprisonment, perhaps dis- 
 charge, possibly death." 
 
 " I know ! I know ! But God will bring them to a 
 happy end." 
 
 " Therefore," said Helena, whose nervousness was gath- 
 ering feverish strength, " the messenger who goes into Cairo 
 in advance must be one who can make them forget the dan- 
 gers of death itself." 
 
 Ishmael reflected for a moment, and then, in a burst of 
 eagerness, he said: 
 
 "The counsel is good. I will go myself T^ 
 
 Helena's flushed face looked triumphant. " The man of 
 all men," she said. " What messenger from Ishmael could 
 be so sure as Ishmael himself ? " 
 
 " Yes, please God, I will go myself," said Ishmael in a 
 louder voice, and he began to laugh — it was the first laugh 
 that had broken from his lips since Helena came to Khar- 
 toum. Then he paused and said : 
 
 "But the people?" 
 
 " Anybody can follow with them," said Helena. " Their 
 loyalty is certain; they need no persuading." 
 
 " I'll go," said Ishmael, " for above all there must be no 
 bloodshed." 
 
 Then old Mahmud, who alone of the persons present in 
 the guest-room seemed to be untouched by the excitement 
 of the moment, turned to Helena and said : 
 
 " But is Ishmael the only one for this enterprise, my 
 daughter? "
 
 292 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " He knows eveiy one and every one knows him," said 
 Helena. 
 
 " But he who knows everybody, everybody knows," the 
 old man answered ; " not the soldiers merely, but their mas- 
 ters also." 
 
 At that Helena's nervousness gathered itself up into a 
 trill of unnatural laughter, and she said: "Nonsense! He 
 can be disguised. The kufiah " (head-dress) " of a Bedouin, 
 covering his head and nearly all his face — what more is 
 wanted?" 
 
 " So you are not afraid for him, my daughter ? " 
 
 "Afraid? I will make the kufiah myself, and with my 
 own hands I will put it on." 
 
 " Brave heart of woman ! " cried Ishmael. " Stronger 
 than the soul of man ! It is my duty and I will do it ! " 
 
 With that he turned to Abdel Kader, who had looked on 
 with his staring eyes, and said: 
 
 " Go back to Cairo by the first train, and say, ' It is 
 well — God willing, he will come.' " And then, in the fever 
 of his new purpose, he went off to the mosque. 
 
 There he first called upon the people to repeat the She- 
 hada, the Moslem creed, and after that he administered an 
 oath to them — never, by the grace of God and His Prophet, 
 to reveal what he was going to say except to true believers, 
 and only to them on their taking a like oath of secrecy and 
 fidelity. 
 
 The people repeated in chorus the words he spoke in a 
 loud voice, and concluded — each man with his right hand 
 on the Koran and his left upraised to heaven — with a sol- 
 emn " Amen ! " 
 
 Then Ishmael told them everything — how the time had 
 come for their deliverance from bondage and corruption to 
 the glorious liberty of the children of God ; how, as the peo- 
 ple of the Prophet had returned from Medina to Mecca, so 
 they were to go up from Khartoum to Cairo; how he was 
 to go before them, and they, under another leader, were to 
 follow him, and God would give them a great reward. 
 
 At this news the poor, unlettered people grew delirious 
 in their excitement, each man interpreting Ishmael's mes-
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 293 
 
 sage according to his own vision of the millennium. Some 
 saw themselves turning the hated foreigner out of Egypt ; 
 others were already in imagination taking possession of 
 Cairo and all the rich lands of the valley of the Nile; while 
 a few, like Ishmael himself, were happy enough in the expec- 
 tation of prostrating themselves at the feet of the divinely 
 appointed guide who was to redeem the world from sorrow 
 and sin. 
 
 As soon as prayers were over Black Zogal ran back to 
 old Mahmud's house with a wild story of flashes of light 
 which he saw darting from Ishmael's head while he spoke 
 from the pulpit. 
 
 Helena heard him. She was sitting alone in the guest- 
 room, tortured by conflicting thoughts. " Am I a wicked 
 woman ? " she asked herself, remembering how easily she had 
 taken advantage of Ishmael's fanatical ecstasy. But then 
 she hardened her heart against Ishmael again, telling her- 
 self that his simplicity was cunning and that he was an 
 impostor who had gone so far with his imposture that he 
 could even impose upon himself. 
 
 How could one who had committed a crime, a cruel and 
 cowardly crime, be anything but a villain ? A madman, per- 
 haps, but all the same a villain ! 
 
 And then other thoughts thronged upon her, sweet and 
 bitter thoughts, with memories of Gordon, of her father, of 
 the early days in Grasmere, of the short morning of happi- 
 ness in Cairo, and of the brief lift in the clouds of her life 
 that was now plunged in perpetual night. 
 
 Thus she stifled every qualm of conscience by going back 
 and back to the same plea, the same support : 
 
 "After all, he killed my father!" 
 
 VIII 
 
 In a village outside blind-walled, dead Metimmeh, with 
 
 its blank and empty hovels, emblems of Mahdist massacres, 
 
 two travellers were encamped. One of them was what the 
 
 quick-eyed natives called a "white Egyptian," but he was 
 
 20
 
 294 THE WHITE PEOPHET 
 
 dressed as a Bedouin Sheikh; the other was his servant. 
 They were travelling south, and having been long on their 
 journey, their camels had begun to fail them. A she camel, 
 ridden by the Bedouin, was suffering in one of its feet, and 
 the men were resting while a doctor dressed it. 
 
 Meantime the villages were feeding them with the best 
 of their native bread and making a fantasia for their enter- 
 tainment. The night was a little cold, and the people had 
 built a fire, before which the travellers were sitting with 
 the Sheikh of the village by their side. 
 
 In a broad half-circle on the other side of the fire a 
 group of blue-shirted Arabs were squatting on the sand. A 
 singer was warbling love-songs in a throbbing voice, a num- 
 ber of his comrades were beating time on the ground with 
 sticks, and a swaggering girl, who glittered with gold coins 
 in her hair and on her hips, was dancing in the space be- 
 tween. On their nut-brown faces was the flickering red 
 light of the fire and over their heads was the great, wide, 
 tranquil whiteness of the moon. 
 
 In the midst of their fantasia they heard the hollow thud 
 of a camel's tread, and presently a stranger arrived, a lanky 
 fellow, with wild eyes and a North-country accent. The 
 Sheikh saluted him, and he made his camel kneel and got 
 down to rest and to cat. 
 
 " The peace of God be with you ! " 
 
 " And with you ! What is your name ? " asked the 
 Sheikh. 
 
 " They call me Abdcl Kader, and I am riding all night 
 to catch the train from Atbara in the morning." 
 
 " It must be great news you carry in such haste, O 
 brother! " 
 
 " The greatest ! When the sun rises above the horizon 
 we see no more the stars." 
 
 It was obvious enough, through all his fine language, 
 that the stranger was eager to tell his story, and after call- 
 ing for an oath of secrecy and fidelity he told it to the 
 Sheikh and the Bedouin in bated breath. 
 
 The time of the end had come! A pilgrimage had been 
 proclaimed ! Ishmael Ameer was to go up to Cairo secretly.
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 295 
 
 and his people were to follow him ; the Egyptian Army were 
 to help them to enter the city, the hated foreigner was to 
 be flung out of the country, and Egypt was to be God's ! 
 
 The Sheikh of the village was completely carried away 
 by the stranger's news, but the Bedouin listened to it with 
 unconcealed alarm. 
 
 "Is this the plan of Ishmael Ameer?" he asked. 
 
 " It is," said the stranger; " and God bring it to a happy 
 end." 
 
 " Did anybody put it into his head? " asked the Bedouin. 
 
 "Yes, a woman, his wife, and God bless and reward 
 her!" 
 
 " His wife, you say ? " 
 
 " Wallahi ! "' said the stranger ; and then, with many fine 
 sentiments and much flowery speech, he told of the lady, 
 the White Lady, the Kani, the Princess, who had lately 
 been married to Ishmael Ameer and had now so much power 
 over him. 
 
 " What says the old saw ? " said the stranger. " ' He who 
 eats honey risks the sting of bees,' but no danger in this 
 case." 
 
 And then followed more fine sentiments on the sweet- 
 ness and wisdom of woman in general and of the Rani in 
 particular. 
 
 " Well, he who lives long sees much," said the Bedouin, 
 with increasing uneasiness ; and turning to the Sheikh, he 
 asked if he might have the loan of a fresh camel in the 
 place of the one that was disabled. 
 
 " Certainly ; but my brother is not leaving me to-night ? " 
 asked the Sheikh. 
 
 " I must," said the Bedouin. 
 
 " But the night is with us," said the Sheikh. 
 
 " And so is the moon, and the tracks are clear," said the 
 Bedouin. " But one thing you can do for me, O Sheikh — 
 send a letter into Khartoum by the train that goes up from 
 Metimmeh in the morning." 
 
 That was agreed to, and then, by the light of a large 
 tin lamp which his servant held before him as he sat on 
 the sand, the Bedouin wrote a hurried message to Ishmael
 
 296 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Ameer, saying who he was and why he was making his jour- 
 ney, and asking that nothing should be done until they came 
 together. 
 
 By this time the fantasia was over, the fire had died 
 down, the camels had been brought up, the flowery stranger 
 had started afresh on his northward way, and the Sheikh 
 and his people were standing ready to say farewell to the 
 two travellers, who were facing south. 
 
 " God take you safely to your journey's end, O brother! " 
 said the Sheikh. Then with a grunt the camels knelt and 
 rose, and at the next moment, amid a chorus of pious ejacu- 
 lations, into the glistening moon track across the sand the 
 Bedouin and his man disappeared. 
 
 The Bedouin was Gordon. He was thinner and more 
 bronzed, yet not less well than when he left Cairo, for he 
 had the strength of a soldier inured to hardship. But 
 Osman, his servant and guide, having lived all his life in 
 the schoolroom and the library, had dwindled away like their 
 camels, which were utterly debilitated and had lost their 
 humps. 
 
 Their journey had been long, for they had missed their 
 way, being sometimes carried off by mirages and sometimes 
 impeded by mountain ranges that rose sheer and sharp across 
 their course. And often in the face of such obstacles, with 
 his companion and his camels failing before his eyes, Gor- 
 don's own spirit had also failed, and he had asked himself 
 why, since he knew of no use that heaven could have for 
 him there, he continued to trudge along through this bare 
 and barren wilderness. 
 
 But doubt and uncertainty were now gone. He was in 
 a fever of impatience to reach Khartoum that he might put 
 an end to Ishmael's scheme. That scheme was madness, and 
 it could only end in disaster. Carried into execution it 
 would be another Arab insurrection, and would lead to like 
 failure and as much bloodshed. 
 
 The Englishman and the British soldier in Gordon, no 
 less than the friend of the Egyptian people, rebelled against 
 Ishmael's plot. Tt was political mutiny against England, 
 which Ishmael in Cairo had protested was no part of his
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 297 
 
 spiritual plan. What influence had since played upon him 
 to make him change the object of his mission? Who was 
 this white woman, this Kani, this princess who had put an 
 evil motive into his mind? Was she acting in the folly of 
 good faith, or was she deceiving and betraying him? His 
 wife, too! What could it mean? 
 
 In Gordon's impatience only one thing was clear to him 
 ■ — that for England's sake, and for Egypt's also, he must 
 reach Khartoum without delay. He must show Ishmael how 
 impossible was his scheme, how dangerous, how deadly, how 
 certain to lead to his own detection and perhaps death. 
 
 " We are thirty hours from Omdurman — can we do it in 
 a day and a night, Osman ? " he said, as soon as the camels 
 swung away. 
 
 " God willing, we will," said OsAian, in a voice that be- 
 trayed at once his weakness and his devotion. 
 
 They rode all night, first in the breathless moonlight 
 with its silvery shimmering haze, then in a strong wind 
 that made the clouds sail before the stars and the camels 
 beneath them feel like ships that were riding through a 
 running sea, and last of all in the black hour before the 
 dawn, when it was difficult to see the tracks and the beasts 
 stumbled in the darkness. 
 
 The morning grew gray, and they were still riding. But 
 Osman's strength was failing rapidly, and when, half an 
 hour afterward, the sun in its rising brightness began to 
 flush with pink the stony heights of distant hills, they drew 
 rein, made their camels kneel, and dismounted. 
 
 They were then near to a well, from which a group of 
 laughing girls, with bare bronzed arms and shoulders, were 
 drawing water in pitchers and carrying it away on their 
 heads. While Osman loosened the saddles of the camels 
 and fed the tired creatures with durah, Gordon asked one 
 of the girls for a drink, and she held her pitcher to his lips, 
 saying, with a smile, " May it give thee health and pros- 
 perity ! " 
 
 After half an hour's rest, having filled their water-skins 
 alad being refreshed with biscuits and dates, they readjusted 
 the saddles of the camels, mounted and rose, and started
 
 298 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 again, making their salaams to the young daughters of the 
 desert who stood grouped together in the morning sunshine 
 and looked after them with laughing eyes. 
 
 The clear, vivifying, elastic desert air breathed upon 
 their faces, and their camels, strengthened by rest and food, 
 swung away with better speed. All day long they continued 
 to ride without stopping. Gordon's impatience increased 
 every hour as he reflected upon the probable consequence of 
 the scheme with which the unknown woman had inspired 
 Ishmael, and Osman, being told of the danger, forgot his 
 weakness in the fervour of his devotion. 
 
 The shadows lengthened along the sea-flat sand while 
 they passed over wastes without a bush or a scrub or a sign 
 of life, but just as the sun was setting they entered the 
 crater-like valley of Kerreri, with its clumps of mimosa 
 and its far view of the innumerable islands of the Nile. 
 
 This was the scene of Gordon's first battle, the battle of 
 Omdurman, and a score of tender and thrilling memories 
 came crowding upon him from the past. Yonder was the 
 thicket in which he had taken the Caliph's flag, the spot 
 where he had left Ali : " Show the bits of the bridle to my 
 Colonel and tell him I died faithful. Say my salaams to 
 him, Charlie. I knew Charlie Gordon Lord would stay with 
 me to the end." 
 
 How different the old battlefield was to-day! Instead 
 of the deafening roar of cannon, the wail of shell, the fren- 
 zied shouts of the dervishes, and the swathes of sheeted 
 dead, there was only the grim solitude of stony hills and 
 yellow sand, with here and there some white and glistening 
 bones over which the vultures circled in the silent air. 
 
 Night had fallen when they entered Omdurman. and the 
 change in the town, too, struck a chill into Gordon's heated 
 spirit. No longer the dirty, disgusting Mahdist's capital, 
 it was deodorised, swept, and sweet. Could it be possible 
 that he was opposing the forces which had brought this civ- 
 ilising change? 
 
 When the travellers reached the ferry the last boat for 
 Khartoum had gone, and, the Nile being high, they had no 
 choice but to remain in Omdurman until morning.
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 299 
 
 "Ma 'aleysh! All happens as God ordains," said Osman. 
 But Gordon's impatience could scarcely contain itself, so 
 eager was he to undo the work of the woman who had done 
 so much ill. 
 
 They lodged in a kahn of the old slave market, which 
 was now full of peaceful people sitting about coflFee-stalls 
 lit by lanterns and candles, where formerly the air was tense 
 with the frenzied gallopings of the wild Baggarah and the 
 melancholy boom of the great ombeya, the fearful trumpet 
 of death. 
 
 Before going to bed Gordon wrote another letter to Ish- 
 mael, saying he had got so far and expected to meet him 
 in the morning. Then, being unable as yet to sleep under 
 a roof, after sleeping so long on the desert, he dragged his 
 angerib into the open and stretched himself under the stars. 
 
 There, gazing up into the great vault of heaven, a mem- 
 ory came back to him which had never once failed to come 
 when he lay down to sleep — the memory of Helena. Every 
 night on his long desert journey, whatever the discomfort 
 of his bed, if it was only the hole between two stones which 
 the Arab shepherds build to protect themselves from the 
 wind, his last thought had been of her. 
 
 She was gone, she was lost to him, she would be in Eng- 
 land by this time, and he was exiled from home for ever; 
 but in the twilight moments of the heart and mind that go 
 between the waking sense and sleep she was with him still. 
 
 And now, lying on his angerib in Omdurman, he could 
 see her radiant eyes and hear her deep, melodious voice, 
 and catch the note of the gay raillery that was perhaps her 
 greatest charm. Though he had done this ever since he left 
 Cairo, he felt to-night as if the sweet agony of it all would 
 break his heart. 
 
 He looked up at the stars and found pleasure in think- 
 ing that the same sky was over Helena in England. Then 
 he looked across at Khartoum and saw that all the windows 
 of the Palace were lit up, as for a dance. 
 
 A mystic sense of some impending event came over him. 
 What could it be? he wondered. Then he remembered the 
 word of Osman, who was now breathing heavily at his side.
 
 300 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " il/a 'aleysh! All happens as God ordains," he thought. 
 And then, sending a last greeting to Helena in England, 
 he turned over and fell asleep. 
 
 IX 
 
 Early that morning Abdullah had entered Ishmael's room 
 while the Master was still sleeping, for a messenger from 
 Metimmeh, coming by train, had brought an urgent letter. 
 
 Ishmael read the letter and rose immediately, and when 
 Helena met him in the guest-room half an hour afterward 
 she saw that he was excited and disturbed. 
 
 " Rani," he said, " I have been .thinking about our plan, 
 and have certain doubts about it. Better let it rest for a 
 few days, at all events." 
 
 Helena asked why, and she was told that a stranger was 
 coming whose counsel might be wise, for he knew Cairo, 
 the Government, and the Egj-ptian Army, and he had asked 
 Ishmael to wait until he arrived before committing himself 
 to any course. 
 
 "Who is he?" she asked. 
 
 " One who loves the people and has suffered sorely for 
 his love of them." 
 
 " What is his name ? " 
 
 " They call him Sheikh Omar Benani." 
 
 At that moment she learned no more than that the 
 stranger was a Bedouin chief of great fame and influence, 
 that he had rested at Metimmeh the night before, but was 
 now coming on to Khartoum as fast as a camel could 
 carry him. 
 
 " He may be here to-night — to-morrow at latest," said 
 Ishmael ; " so let us leave things where they are until our 
 brother arrives." 
 
 This news threw Helena into a fever of excitement. She 
 saw the possibility of her scheme coming to naught. The 
 Bedouin who was now on his way might destroy it. 
 
 She was afraid of this Bedouin. If he knew Cairo, the 
 Government, and the Egyptian Army, he must also know
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 301 
 
 that the plan which Ishmael had proposed to himself was 
 impossible. That being so, he would advise Ishmael against 
 it. His influence with Ishmael would be greater than her 
 own, and as a consequence her plan would fail. Then all 
 she had hoped for, all she had come for, all she had sacri- 
 ficed so much for, would be lost and wasted. 
 
 What was she to do ? There was only one thing possible 
 — to cause Ishmael to commit himself to her plan before 
 the Bedouin arrived in Khartoum. 
 
 Again fate assisted her. The same train that brought 
 the Bedouin's letter brought another messenger from Cairo, 
 He was an immensely tall Dinka, who had been employed 
 to avert suspicion. As soon as he was alone with Ishmael 
 and his household he slipped off his sandal and, tearing 
 open the undersole, produced a very small letter. 
 
 It was from the Ulema of El Azhar, and gave further 
 particulars of the forthcoming festivities, with one hint of 
 amazing advice that certainly could not have come from 
 men of the world. 
 
 The Consul-General had decided to give his annual din- 
 ner in honour of the King's birthday not as usual at the 
 British Agency, but in the Pavilion of the Ghezirah Palace, 
 on the island in front of the city. All the authorities would 
 be there that night, housed under one roof. The British 
 Army would still be in the provinces, and the Egyptian 
 Army alone would be left in defence of the town. There- 
 fore, to prevent the possibility of bloodshed, there was only 
 one thing to do — turn the key on the Pavilion, in order to 
 imprison the persons in command, and then open the bridge 
 that crossed the Nile, that Ishmael's following, with the con- 
 sent of the native soldiers, might enter Cairo unopposed ! 
 
 It was a plot whereof the counterpart could only have 
 been found in the history of Abu Moslim and " Al Man- 
 sour,"- and perhaps for that reason alone it took Ishmael's 
 heart by storm. But it required immediate confirmation, for 
 if the secret scheme was to be carried out the arrangements 
 were matters of urgency and the reply must be received at 
 once. 
 
 There were some moments of tense silence after Ishmael 
 21
 
 302 THE WHITE TROPHET 
 
 had read the letter, for already he had begun to hesitate, 
 to talk again of waiting for the Bedouin, who knew Egypt 
 better than any one in the Soudan and was wise and brave 
 and learned in war. But Helena, seeing her advantage, be- 
 gan to speak, with a flushed face and a trembling tongue, 
 of the train that was to leave Khartoum for Cairo that 
 morning and of the interval of four days before the departure 
 of another one. 
 
 " There can be no time to lose," she said, with a stifling 
 sense of duplicity, " especially if the Ulema are to arrange 
 for your own arrival as well." 
 
 At length Ishmael, no longer the man he used to be, 
 strong above all in common sense, but an enthusiast living 
 in a world of dream, was swept away by the Ulema's scheme. 
 Seeing only one sure way to avoid bloodshed — that of shut- 
 ting up the British ofiicials in the midst of their festivities, 
 while the bridge that crossed the Nile was opened and his 
 followers took peaceful possession of the city — he called on 
 Helena to write his reply. It ran : 
 
 " To his Serenity the Chancellor of El Azhar from the 
 slave of God, Ishmael Ameer : Good news ! In the- interests 
 of peace I agree, though liking not for other reasons your 
 plan of imprisoning Pharaoh and his people in their Pavil- 
 ion, lest it should be said of us, * Behold the true believer 
 resorts to the tricks of the infidels, who trust not in the good 
 arm of God, praise be to Him, the Exalted One ! " 
 
 " Nevertheless, I send you this word of greeting, giving 
 my consent and saying, ' Shortly I go down to Cairo myself 
 to call upon our brothers under arms to our very great Lord, 
 the lOiedive, to refuse, when the day of our deliverance 
 comes, to shed the blood of the children of the Most High.' " 
 
 Having dictated this letter, and added the usual Arabic 
 salutations, he signed it, and then, full of a fresh enthusi- 
 asm, he went off to midday prayers in the mosque, where 
 with greater fervour than before he delivered his new mes- 
 sage about the coming of the end. 
 
 Helena was now alone, for the Dinka had gone in with 
 Abdullah to eat and to rest. The signed letter lay before 
 her, and she knew that her time had come. In great haste
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 303 
 
 she made a copy of the letter, and without waiting to think 
 what she was doing she added Ishmael's name to it. Then, 
 hiding the original in her bosom, she called for the Diiika, 
 gave him the copy, and hurried him off to the train, which 
 was leaving innnediately. After that, with a sense of mingled 
 shame and triumph, she wrote to the Consul-General. Her 
 excitement was so great that she could hardly hold the pen 
 or frame coherent sentences. This was what she wrote: 
 
 "Dear Lord Nuneham: You will remember that in the 
 letter I wrote to you before I left Cairo I told you that I 
 should write again, and that when I wrote, your enemy and 
 mine and Gordon's, as well as England's and Egypt's, would 
 be in your hands. 
 
 " I am now fulfilling my promise, and you shall judge for 
 yourself whether I am justifying my word. Ishmael Ameer, 
 at the instigation of the Ulema, is about to return to Cairo. 
 His object is to organise a meeting among the soldiers of the 
 Egyptian Army, so that a vast multitude of his followers, 
 coming behind him, may take possession of the city, 
 
 " This is to be done during the forthcoming festivities, 
 and it is to reach its climax on the night of the King's 
 Birthday. Proof enclosed. It is the original of a letter to 
 the Chancellor of El Azhar, a copy having been sent instead. 
 
 " Ishmael will travel by train — probably within a week — 
 and he will wear the disguise of a Bedouin Sheikh. I leave 
 you to wait and watch for him. 
 
 "Did I not say I was not idly boasting? In haste, 
 
 " Helena Graves. 
 
 " P.S. — I send this by my boy, Mosie. Please keep him 
 in Cairo until you hear from me again." 
 
 When she had finished her letter she paused for a mo- 
 ment and looked fixedly before her. Although she said 
 nothing her lips moved as if she were interrogating the 
 empty air. She was asking herself again, " Am I cruel and 
 revengeful and vindictive ? " And she was replying to her- 
 self as she had replied before : " If so, I cannot help it. I
 
 304 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 have lost my father and I have lost Gordon, and I am alone 
 and my heart is torn." 
 
 Strengthened by this thought she took Ishmael's letter 
 from her bosom and folded it inside her own. But while 
 she was in the act of putting both into an envelope she 
 paused again, for a new and more startling memory had 
 flashed upon her. It was the memory of the marks upon 
 her father's throat and of the missing finger print which 
 had somehow formed so fatal an evidence of Ishmael's guilt. 
 
 How had it happened that she had forgotten this fact 
 until now — that during all the time she had been in Khar- 
 toum she had never once remembered to verify it — that even 
 at the moment she could not say whether the third finger 
 of Ishmael's left hand was intact or not ? 
 
 But no matter ! It was not a fact of the greatest con- 
 sequence, and in any case she was too far gone to think of 
 it now. 
 
 She sealed her envelope and addressed it and then called 
 for Mosie. The black boy came running at the sound of 
 her agitated voice. 
 
 " Mosie," she said in a breathless whisper, " you have 
 always said that you loved me so much that you would lay 
 down your life for me." The black boy showed his shining 
 white teeth as if from ear to ear. " Do you think you could 
 find your way back to Cairo alone and deliver a letter to 
 the English lord ? " 
 
 " Let lady try me," said Mosie, who was ablaze with ex- 
 citement in an instant. 
 
 Then she told him how he was to go — by train to Haifa, 
 by Government boat to Shellal, by train again from As- 
 souan to his journey's end, travelling always in compart- 
 ments occupied by natives. She also gave him strict injunc- 
 tions against speaking to any one, either in Khartoum or on 
 the way, or in Cairo until he came to the British Agency. 
 There he was to ask for the Consul-General and give into 
 his hands — his only — ^her private letter. 
 
 " The train leaves in half an hour, Mosie, so you'll have 
 to be quick," she whispered. 
 
 " Yes, lady, yes, yes," said Mosie at every word, and in
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 305 
 
 his eagerness to be gone he almost snatched the letter out 
 of her hand. 
 
 " No ; give me one of your sandals," she said ; and when 
 he had whipped it off, she took her scissors and lifting the 
 inner sole she hid her letter underneath. 
 
 Then she hurried into her room, and returning with a 
 small canvas bag, which contained nearly all the money 
 she had left in the world, she gave it to the black boy and 
 sent him off. 
 
 After that she sat down, for her heart was beating vio- 
 lently and she could scarcely breathe. At the same moment 
 she caught sight of her face in a hand glass that stood on 
 the table at which she wrote, and the features looked so 
 strange that they scarcely seemed to be her own. 
 
 If anybody with the eye of the spirit could have gazed 
 at that moment into the deepest recesses of her soul — 
 harder to look into than the obscurity of the sea — he would 
 have seen a battlefield of contending passions. She was re- 
 flecting for the first time on the whole meaning of what she 
 had done. She had condemned Ishmael Ameer to death ! 
 Or at least, at the very least, to lifelong imprisonment in 
 Damietta or Torah! 
 
 When she put it so the furnace of her conscience seemed 
 to consume her, and in order to live with herself she had 
 to oppose that thought with thoughts of Gordon — Gordon 
 gone, she knew not where, an exile, an outcast, his brilliant 
 young life wasted, never to be seen again. 
 
 This relieved the riot in her brain, and to ease her heart 
 still further she made herself believe that what she had done 
 had not been to revenge herself, but to avenge Gordon, whom 
 Ishmael's evil influence had destroyed. 
 
 " Serves him right," she thought. " Let him go to Dami- 
 etta ! W^hat better does he deserve ? " 
 
 At that moment Ayesha, Ishmael's little daughter, came 
 running with bare feet into the house, and seeing Helena
 
 306 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 she leaped into her arais and kissed her. The kiss of the 
 child seemed like a blow — it made her dizzy. 
 
 At the next moment, while Ayesha was mumbling affec- 
 tionate play-words which Helena did not hear, and Zenoba, 
 the Arab nurse, stood beating her impatient foot upon the 
 ■floor, there came from outside the murmur of a crowd. It 
 was the crowd of Ishmael's followers bringing him home 
 from the mosque. 
 
 They were calling upon God and His Prophet to bless 
 .him, touching his white caftan as if it were divine and 
 "virtue were coming out of him. 
 
 He dismissed them with words of rebuke — gentler and 
 more indulgent than before, perhaps — and entering the house 
 he called for food. 
 
 A few minutes afterward Ishmael and Helena and old 
 JMahmud were sitting in the guest-room together, drinking 
 new milk and eating soft bread. 
 
 "But where is your boy, O Rani?" asked Ishmael, who 
 missed the great fan of ostrich feathers. 
 
 Helena made a halting excuse. Mosie had been trouble- 
 some — she had sent him back to where he came from — Cairo. 
 
 " Cairo ? " asked the Arab woman, with a glance of sus- 
 picion. 
 
 Helena looked confused, but Ishmael saw nothing. He 
 was more than usually excited, enthusiastic, and full of 
 great hopes. After a while he talked of the Bedouin who 
 was coming. 
 
 " Our brother is not, in fact, a Bedouin," he said. 
 
 "Not a Bedouin?" 
 
 " Neither is he a Moslem. He is a Christian, and indeed 
 an Englishman." 
 
 " An Englishman ? " 
 
 " Ah, yes ; but he is one who loves the Moslems and has 
 gone through shame and degradation rather than do them 
 a wrong." 
 
 Helena was afraid to ask further questions. She could 
 only listen, terrified by a vague apprehension. 
 
 " Truly, O lady, he who loveth all the children of God, 
 him God loveth," said Ishmael. " This brave man was a
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 307 
 
 soldier, and if he has suffered rather than do an evil act, ■ 
 will God forget him? No!" 
 
 Helena shuddered. The idea that was taking shape in 
 her mind seemed incredible. Ishmael was speaking in the 
 softest tones, yet his voice seemed like the subterranean 
 sounds that precede great shocks of earthquake. 
 
 " He is coming. Be good to him, my Rani, If we could 
 take his heart out and weigh it we should find it gold." 
 
 Helena was struck with a sort of stupor. " Am I dream- 
 ing?" she asked herself. "What am I thinking about?" 
 It was one of those mysterious moments on the eve of the 
 great events of life when murmurs come from we know not 
 where. 
 
 The long hours of that day passed in a sort of dark con- 
 fusion. At last the sun set, and the moon rose over the 
 desert, the golden southern moon, in the purple of the 
 Eastern sky, and lit up the wilderness of sand as with a 
 softer sun. 
 
 It grew late and Helena rose to go to her room. As she 
 did so she almost fell from dizziness, and Ishmael helped 
 her to the door of the women's quarters. She had seen his 
 lustrous eyes upon her with the expression that had made 
 her tremble on the night of the betrothal; but again, in the 
 same scarcely audible voice, he said : 
 
 " God give you a good morning ! " and putting, for the 
 first time, his lips to her hand, he went away. 
 
 When she was alone a long hour passed in silence. The 
 bedroom was in a state of perfect calm, yet a frightful 
 tumult was going on in her brain. Could it be possible that 
 he who was coming was 
 
 No! The wild irony of that thought was too terrible. 
 
 That at the very moment when she thought she was- 
 avenging Gordon for the injury he had suffered at the hands 
 of Ishmael — that at that moment, by some sinister eccen- 
 tricity of destiny, he — he himself 
 
 In the midst of her hideous pain a sweet and joyous 
 sound fell upon her ear. It was the voice of the child, who 
 had awakened for a moment from her peaceful sleep : 
 
 " Will you not come into bed. Rani ? "
 
 o08 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Yes, yes, dear, i:)resGntly," she answered, and at the 
 next moment the child's equal and tranquil breathing, so 
 gentle, so calm, fell on her ear again. 
 
 Innocence is the most formidable of all spectacles that 
 can confront an uneasy conscience, and when at length 
 Ilelena got into bed, and the child, in the blind mists of 
 sleep, put her arms about her neck, she had to justify her- 
 self by thinking that in everything she had done, every- 
 thing she had tried to do, she had been moved by the inci- 
 dents of the most irresistible provocation. 
 
 "After all, he killed my father!''^ she thought. 
 
 But nevertheless she felt again, as she was dropping off 
 to sleep, that she was falling, falling, falling over the edge 
 of a yawning precipice. 
 
 XI 
 
 When Helena awoke next morning she was immediately 
 conscious of a great commotion both within and without 
 the house. After a moment Zenoba came into the bedroom 
 and began to tell her what had happened. 
 
 " Have you not heard, O Rani ? " said the Arab woman 
 in her oily voice. " No ? You sleep so late, do you ? When 
 everybody is up and doing, too ! Well, the Master has news 
 that the great Bedouin is at Omdurman, and he is sending 
 the people down to the river to bring him up. The stranger 
 is to be received in the mosque, I may tell you. Yes, indeed, 
 in the mosque, although he is English and a Christian." 
 
 Then Ayesha came skipping into the room in wild ex- 
 citement. 
 
 " Rani ! Rani ! " she cried. " Get up and come with 
 US. We are going now — this minute — everybody ! " 
 
 Helena excused herself — she felt unwell and would stay 
 in bod that day; so the child and the nurse went off with- 
 out her. 
 
 Yet left alone she could not rest. The feverish uncer- 
 tainty of the night before returned with redoubled force, 
 and after a while she felt compelled to rise.
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 309 
 
 Going into the guest-room she found the house empty 
 and the camp in front of it deserted. She was standing by 
 the door, hardly knowing what to do, when the strange sound 
 which she had heard on the night of the betrothal came from 
 a distance: 
 
 " Lu-lu-lu-u-u ! " 
 
 It was the zaghareet, the women's cry of joy, and it 
 was mingled with the louder shouts of men. The stranger 
 was coming, the people were bringing him on. Who would 
 he be ? Helena's anxiety was almost more than her brain 
 and nerves could bear. She strained her eyes in the direc- 
 tion of the jetty, past the Abbas Barracks and the Mongers 
 Fort. 
 
 The moments passed like hours, but at length the crowd 
 appeared. x\t first sight it looked like a forest of small 
 trees approaching. The forest seemed to sway and to send 
 out monotonous sounds, as if moved by a moaning wind. 
 But looking again, Helena saw what was happening — the 
 people were carrying green palm branches and strewing them 
 on the yellow sand in front of the great stranger. 
 
 He was riding on a white camel, Ishmael's camel, and 
 Ishmael was riding beside him. Long before he came near 
 to her Helena saw him, straining her sight to do so. He 
 was wearing the ample robes of a Bedouin and his face was 
 almost hidden by the sweeping shawl (the kufiah) which cov- 
 ered his head and neck. 
 
 But it was he ! It was Gordon ! Helena could not mis- 
 take him. One glance was enough. Without looking a 
 second time she ran back to her bedroom and covered her 
 eyes and ears. 
 
 For a time the voices of the people followed her through 
 the deadening walls. 
 
 "Lu-lu-u-u!" cried the women. 
 
 " La ilaha illa-llah ! La ilaha illa-llah ! " shouted the 
 men. 
 
 But after a while the muffled sounds died away, and 
 Helena knew that the great company had passed on to the 
 mosque. It was like a dream, a mirage of the mind. It 
 had come, and it was gone, and in the dazed condition of
 
 310 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 her senses she could almost persuade herself that she had 
 imagined everything. 
 
 Her impatience would not permit her to remain in the 
 house. She, too, must go to the mosque, although she had 
 never been there before. So, putting on her Indian veil, 
 she set out hurriedly. When she came to herself again she 
 was in the gallery, people were making way for her, and she 
 was dropping into a place. Then she realised that she was 
 sitting between Zenoba and little Ayesha. 
 
 The mosque was a large, four-square edifice, full of col- 
 umns and arches, and with a kind of inner court that was 
 open to the sky and had minarets at every corner. The 
 gallery looked down on this court, and Helena saw below her, 
 half in shadow, half in sunshine, the heads of a great con- 
 course of men in turbans, tarbooshes, and brown felt skull- 
 caps, all kneeling in rows on bright red carpets. In the 
 front row, with his face toward the Kibleh (the niche to- 
 ward Mecca), Ishmael knelt in his white caftan, and by 
 his side, with all eyes upon him, as if every interest centred 
 on that spot, knelt the stranger in Bedouin dress. 
 
 It was Friday and prayers were proceeding, now surging 
 like the sea, now silent like the desert, sometimes started, 
 as it seemed, by the voice of the unseen muezzin on the 
 minarets above, then echoed by the men on the carpets below, 
 but Helena hardly heard them. Of one thing only was she 
 conscious — that by the tragic play of destiny he was there 
 while she was here. 
 
 After a while she became aware that Ishmael had risen 
 and was beginning to speak, and she tried to regain com- 
 posure enough to listen to what he said. 
 
 " My brothers," he said, " it is according to the precepts 
 of the Prophet — peace to his name! — to receive the Chris- 
 tian in our temples if he comes with the good-will of good 
 Moslems and with a heart that is true to them. You know, 
 oh, my brothers, whether I am a Moslem or not, and I pray 
 to the Most Merciful to bless all such Christians as the one 
 who is here to-day." 
 
 More of the same kind Ishmael said, but Helena found 
 it hard, in the tumult of her brain, to follow him. She
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 311 
 
 saw that both the women about her and the men below were 
 seized with that religious fervour which comes to the hu- 
 man soul when it feels that something grand is being done. 
 It was as though the memory of a thousand years of hatred 
 between Moslem and Christian, with all its legacy of cruelty 
 and barbarity, had been wiped out of their hearts by the 
 stranger on whom their eyes were fixed — as though by some 
 great act of self-sacrifice and brotherhood he had united 
 East and West — and this fact of his presence at their 
 prayers was the sign and symbol of an eternal truce. 
 
 The sublime spectacle seemed to capture all their souls, 
 and when Ishmael turned toward the stranger at last and 
 laid his hand on his head and said, " May God and His 
 prophet bless you for what you have done for us and ours," 
 the emotions of the people were raised to the highest pitch, 
 and they rose to their feet as one man, and holding up their 
 lands they cried, the whole congregation together, in a 
 voice that was like the breaking of a great wave: 
 
 " You are now one of us, and we are of you, and we 
 are brothers ! " 
 
 By this time the women in the gallery were weeping 
 audibly, and Helena, from quite other causes, was scarcely 
 able to control her feelings. "Why did I come here?" she 
 asked herself, and then, seeing that the Arab woman was 
 watching her through the slits of her jealous eyes, she got 
 up and pushed her way out of the mosque. 
 
 Back in her room, lying face down upon the bed, she 
 sought in vain to collect her faculties sufiiciently to follow 
 and comprehend the course of events. Yes, it was Gordon. 
 He had come to join Ishmael. Why had she never thought 
 of that as a probable sequel to what had occurred in Cairo? 
 Had he not been turned out by his own ? — in effect, cashiered 
 from the Army? Forbidden his father's house? And had 
 she not herself driven him away from her ? What sequel was 
 more natural? More plainly inevitable? 
 
 Then she grew hot and cold at a new and still more 
 terrifying thought — Gordon would come there! How could 
 she meet him? How look into his face? A momentary 
 impulse to deny her own identity was put aside immedi-
 
 312 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 ately. Impossible ! Useless ! Then how could she account 
 to Gordon for her presence in that house? Ishmael's "wife! 
 According to Mohammedan law and custom not only be- 
 trothed but married to him ! 
 
 When she put her position to herself so, the thread of 
 her thoughts seemed to snap in her brain. She could not 
 disentangle the knot of them. A sense of infidelity to Gor- 
 don, to the very spirit of love itself, brought her for a mo- 
 ment the self-reproach and the despair of a woman who has 
 sinned. 
 
 In the midst of her pain she heard the light voices of 
 people returning to the house, and at the next moment 
 Ayesha and Zenoba came into her room. The child was 
 skipping about, full of high spirits, and the Arab woman 
 was almost bitterly merry. 
 
 " Rani will be happy to hear that the Master is bring- 
 ing the stranger home," said Zenoba. 
 
 Helena turned and gazed at the woman with a stupefied 
 expression. What she had foreseen as a terrifying possi- 
 bility was about to come to pass! She opened her mouth 
 as if to speak, but said nothing. 
 
 Meantime the Arab woman, in a significant tone that 
 was meant to cut to the quick, went on to say that this 
 was the highest honour the Moslem could show the unbe- 
 liever, as well as the greatest trust he could repose in him. 
 
 " Have you never heard of that in your country, O 
 Eani ? Xo? It is true, though. Quite true!" 
 
 People supposed that every Moslem guarded his house so 
 jealously that no strange man might look upon his wife, 
 but among the Arabs of the desert, when a traveller, tired 
 and weary, sought food and rest, the Sheikh would some- 
 times send him into his harem and leave him there for three 
 days, with full permission to do as he thought well. 
 
 "But he must never wrong that harem, O lady! If he 
 does the Arab husband will kill him! Yes, and the faith- 
 less wife as well!" 
 
 So violent was the conflict going on Avithin her that 
 Helena hardly heard the woman's words, though the jealous 
 spirit behind them was piercing her heart like needles. She
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 313 
 
 became conscious of the great crowd returning, and it was 
 making the same uluhition as before, mingled with the same 
 shouts. At the next moment there came a knock at the bed- 
 room door, and Abdullah's voice, crying: 
 
 " Lady ! Lady ! " 
 
 Helena reeled a little in rising to reply, and it was with 
 difficulty that she reached the door. 
 
 " Master has brought Sheikh Omar Benani back and is 
 calling for the lady. What shall I say?" 
 
 Helena fumbled the hem of her handkerchief in her fin- 
 gers as she was wont to do in moments of great agitation. 
 She was asking herself what would happen if she obeyed 
 Ishmael's summons. Would Gordon see through her motive 
 in being there? If so, would he betray her to Ishmael ? 
 
 Already she could hear a confused murmur in the guest- 
 room, and out of that murmur her memory seemed to grasp 
 back, as from a vanishing dream, the sound of a voice that 
 had been lost to her. 
 
 She felt as if she were suffocating. Her breathing was 
 coming rapidly from the depth of her throat. Yet the 
 Arab woman was watching her, and while a whirlwind was 
 going on within she had to preserve a complete tranquillity 
 without. 
 
 " Say I am coming," she said. 
 
 The supreme moment had arrived. With a great effort 
 she gathered up all her strength, drew her Indian shawl 
 over her head in such a way that it partly concealed her 
 face, and then, pallid, trembling, and with downcast eyes, 
 she walked out of the room. 
 
 XII 
 
 Gordon had that day experienced emotions only less 
 poignant than those of Helena. In the early morning, after 
 parting with Osman, the devoted comrade of his desert jour- 
 ney, he had encountered the British Sub-Governor of Om- 
 durman, a young captain of cavalry who had once served
 
 314 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 under himself, and now spoke to him, in his assumed char- 
 acter as a Bedouin, with a certain air of command. 
 
 This brought him some twinges of wounded pride, which 
 were complicated by qualms of conscience, as he rode through 
 the streets, past the silversmiths' shops, where grave-looking 
 Arabs sold bracelets and necklets; past the weaving quarter, 
 where men and boys were industriously driving the shuttle 
 through the strings of their flimsy looms; past the potter's 
 bazaar and the grain market, all so sweet and so free from 
 their former smell of sun-dried filth and warm humanity 
 packed close together. 
 
 " Am I coming here to oppose the power that in so few 
 years has turned order into chaos?" he asked himself; but 
 more personal emotions came later. 
 
 They came in full flood when the ferry steamer by which 
 he crossed the river approached the bank on the other side, 
 and he saw standing there, near to the spot on which the 
 dervishes landed on the black night of the fall of Khartoum, 
 a vast crowd of their sons and their sons' sons who were 
 waiting to receive him. 
 
 Again came qualms of conscience, when out of this crowd 
 stepped Ishmael Ameer, who kissed him on both cheeks and 
 led him forward to his own camel amid the people's shouts 
 of welcome. Was he, as a British soldier, throwing in his 
 lot with the enemies of his country? As an Englishman 
 and a Christian, was he siding with the adversaries of re- 
 ligion and civilisation? 
 
 The journey through the town to the mosque, with the 
 lu-luing and the throwing of palm branches before his cam- 
 el's feet, was less of a triumphant progress than an abject 
 penance. lie could hardly hold up his head. The sight of 
 the bronze and black faces about him, shouting for him — for 
 him of another race and creed — making that act his glory 
 which had led to his crime — this was almost more than he 
 could bear. 
 
 But when he reached the mosque; when he found him- 
 self, unbeliever though he was, kneeling in front of the 
 Kibleh; when Ishmael laid his hand on his head and called 
 on God to bless him, and the people cried with one voice,
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 315 
 
 " You are one of us and we are brothers," the sense of hu- 
 man sympathy swept down every other emotion and he felt 
 as if at any moment he might burst into tears. 
 
 And then, when prayers were over and Ishmael brought 
 up his uncle, and the patriarchal old man, with a beard like 
 a flowijig fleece, said he was to lodge at his house, and 
 finally, v/hen Ishmael led him home and took him to his 
 own chamber and called to Abdullah to set up another an- 
 gerib, saying they were to sleep in the same room, Gordon's 
 twinges of pride and qualms of conscience were swallowed 
 up in one great wave of human brotherhood. 
 
 But both came back with a sudden bound when Ishmael 
 began to talk of his wife, and to send the servant to fetch 
 her. They were sitting in the guest-room by this time, 
 waiting for the lady to come to them, and Gordon felt him- 
 self moved by the inexplicable impulse of anxiety he had felt 
 before. Who was this Mohammedan woman who had 
 prompted Ishmael to a scheme that must so surely lead to 
 disaster? Did she know what she was doing? Was she be- 
 traying him? 
 
 Then a door on the women's side of the house opened 
 slowly and he saw a woman enter the room. He did not 
 look into her face. His distrust of her, whereof he was 
 now half ashamed, made him keep his head down while he 
 bowed low during the little formal ceremony of Ishmael's 
 presentation. But instantly a certain indefinite memory of 
 height and step and general bearing made his blood flow fast, 
 and he felt the perspiration breaking out on his forehead. 
 
 A moment afterward he raised his eyes, and then he felt 
 as if his hair rose upright. He was like a man who has 
 been made colour-blind by some bright light. He could not 
 at first believe the evidence of his senses — that she who ap- 
 peared to be there was actually before him. 
 
 He did not speak or utter a sound, but his embarrass- 
 ment was not observed by Ishmael, who was clapping his 
 hands to call for food. During the next few minutes there 
 was a little confusion in the room — Black Zogal and Ab- 
 dullah were laying a big brass tray on trestles and cover- 
 ing it with dishes. Then came the ablutions and the sitting
 
 316 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 down to eat — Gordon at the head of the table, with Ishmael 
 on his right and old Mahmud on his left, and Helena next 
 to Ishmael. 
 
 The meal began with the beautiful Eastern custom of 
 the host handing the first mouthful of food to his guest as a 
 pledge of peace and brotherhood, faith and trust. This kept 
 Gordon occupied for the moment, but Helena had time for 
 observation. In the midst of her agitation she could not help 
 seeing that Gordon had grown thinner, that his eyes were 
 bloodshot and his nostrils pinched as if by physical or moral 
 suffering. After a while she saw that he was looking across 
 at her with increasing eagerness, and under his glances she 
 became nervous and almost hysterical. 
 
 Gordon on his part had now not the shadow of a doubt 
 of Helena's identity, but still he did not speak. He, too, 
 noticed a change — Helena's profile had grown more severe, 
 and there were dark rims under her large eyes. He could 
 not help seeing these signs of the pain she had gone through, 
 though his mind was going like a windmill under constantly 
 changing winds. Why was she there? Could it be that the 
 great sorrow which fell upon her at the death of her father 
 had made her fly to the consolation of religion? 
 
 He dismissed that thought the instant it came to him, 
 for behind it, close behind it, came the recollection of He- 
 lena's hatred of Ishmael Ameer and of the jealousy which 
 had been the first cause of the separation between them- 
 selves. " Smash the Mahdi ! " she had said, not altogether 
 in play. Then why was she there? Great God, could it be 
 possible — that after the death of the General — she had 
 
 Gordon felt at that moment as if the world were reeling 
 round him. 
 
 Helena, glancing furtively across the table, was sure she 
 could read Gordon's thoughts. W^ith the certainty that he 
 knew what had brought her to Khartoum, she felt at first 
 a crushing sense of shame. What a fatality! If anybody 
 had told her that she would be overwhelmed with confusion 
 by the very person she had been trying to avenge, she would 
 have thought him mad, yet that was precisely what Provi- 
 dence had permitted to come to pass.
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 317 
 
 The sense of her blindness and helplessness in the hands 
 of destiny was so painful as to reach the point of tears. 
 When Gordon spoke in reply to Ishmael's or old Mahmud's 
 questions the very sound of his voice brought back mem- 
 ories of their happy days together, and, looking back on the 
 past of their lives and thinking where they were now, she 
 wanted to run away and cry. 
 
 All this time Ishmael saw nothing, for he was talking 
 rapturously of the great hope, the great expectation, the 
 near approach of the time when the people's sufferings would 
 end. A sort of radiance was about him, and his face shone 
 with the joy and the majesty of the dreamer in the full 
 flood of his dream. 
 
 When the meal was over, the old man, who had been too 
 busy with his food to see anything else, went off to his 
 siesta, and then, the dishes being removed and the servants 
 gone, Ishmael talked in lower tones of the details of his 
 scheme — how he was to go into Cairo in advance, in the 
 habit of a Bedouin such as Gordon wore, in order to win 
 the confidence of the Egyptian Army, so that they should 
 throw down the arms which no man ought to bear, and thus 
 permit the people of the pilgrimage, coming behind, to take 
 possession of the city, the citadel, the arsenal, and the en- 
 gines of war, in the name of God and His Expected One. 
 
 All this he poured out in the rapturous language of one 
 who saw no impediments, no dangers, no perils from chance 
 or treachery, and then, turning to where Helena sat with 
 her face aflame and her eyes cast down, he gave her the 
 credit of everything that had been thought of, everything 
 that was to be done. 
 
 " Yes, it was the Rani who suggested it," he said ; " and 
 when the triumph of peace is won, God will write it on her 
 forehead." 
 
 The afternoon had passed by this time, and the sun, 
 which had gone far round to the west, was glistening like 
 hammered gold along the river, in the line of the forts of 
 Omdurman. It was near to the hour for evening prayers, 
 and Helena was now trembling under a new thought — the 
 thought that Ishmael would soon be called out to speak to
 
 o 
 
 18 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 the people who gathered in the evening in front of the 
 house, and then she and Gordon would be left alone. 
 
 When she thought of that she felt a desire which she 
 had never felt before and never expected to feel — a desire 
 that Ishmael might remain to protect her from the shock 
 of the first word that would be spoken when he was gone. 
 
 Gordon on his part, too, was feeling a thrill of the heart 
 from his fear of the truth that must fall on him the mo- 
 ment he and Helena were left together. 
 
 But Black Zogal came to the open door of the guest- 
 room, and Ishmael, who was still on the heights of his 
 fanatical rapture, rose to go. 
 
 " Talk to him, Eani ! Tell him everything ! About the 
 kufiah you intend to make, and all the good plan you pro- 
 pose to prevent bloodshed." 
 
 The two unhappy souls, still sitting at the empty table, 
 heard his sandalled footsteps pass out behind them. 
 
 Then they raised their eyes, and for the first time looked 
 into each other's faces. 
 
 XIII 
 
 When they began to speak it was in scarcely audible 
 whispers : 
 
 " Helena ! " 
 
 " Gordon ! " 
 
 "Why are you here, Helena? What have you come for? 
 You disliked and distrusted Ishmael Ameer when you heard 
 about him first. You used to say you hated him. What 
 does it all mean? " 
 
 Helena did not answer immediately. 
 
 " Tell me, Helena. Don't let me go on thinking these 
 cruel thoughts. Why are you here with Ishmael in Khar- 
 toum?" 
 
 Still Helena did not answer. She was now sitting with 
 her eyes down, and her hands tightly folded in her lap. 
 There was a moment of silence while he waited for her to
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 319 
 
 speak, and in that silence there came the muffled sound of 
 Ishmael's voice outside, reciting the Fatihah : 
 
 "Praise be to God, the Lord of all creatures " 
 
 When the whole body of the people had repeated the sol- 
 emn words there was silence in the guest-room again, and 
 then, in the same hushed whisper as before, but more eagerly, 
 more impetuously, Gordon said: 
 
 " He says you put this scheme into his mind, Helena. 
 If so, you must know quite well what it will lead to. It 
 will lead to ruin — inevitable ruin — bloodshed — perhaps great 
 bloodshed." 
 
 Helena found her voice at last. A spirit of defiance 
 took possession of her for a moment, and she said firmly.: 
 
 " Ko, it will never come to that. It will all end before 
 it goes so far." 
 
 "You mean that he will be — will be taken? ^^ 
 
 " Yes, he will be taken the moment he sets foot in Cairo. 
 Therefore the rest of the plan will never be carried out, 
 and consequently there will be no bloodshed." 
 
 "Do you know that, Helena?" 
 
 Her lips were compressed; she made a silent motion 
 of her head. 
 
 " How do you know it ? " 
 
 " I have written to your father." 
 
 "You have — written — to my father?" 
 
 " Yes," she said, still more firmly. " He will know 
 everything before Ishmael arrives, and act as he thinks 
 best." 
 
 " Helena ! Hel " 
 
 But he was struck breathless both by what she said and 
 by the relentless strength with which she said it. There 
 was silence again for some moments, and once more in the 
 silence the voice of Ishmael came from without: 
 
 " There are three holy books, oh, my brothers — the book of 
 Moses and the Hebrew prophets ; the book of the Gospel 
 of the Lord Jesus, and the plain book of the Koran. In 
 the first of these it is written : ' I know that my Kedeemer 
 liveth and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the 
 earth.' "
 
 320 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Gordon reached over to -where Helena sat at the side of 
 the table, with her eyes fixed steadfastly before her, and, 
 touching her arm, he said in a whisper so low that he 
 seemed to be afraid the very air would hear: 
 
 " Then — then — you are sending him to his death!''' 
 
 She shuddered for an instant, as if cut to the quick; 
 then she braced herself up. 
 
 " Isn't that so, Helena ? Isn't it ? " 
 
 With her lips still firmly compressed she made the same 
 silent motion of her head. 
 
 " Is that what you came here to do ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " To possess yourself of his secrets, and then " 
 
 " There was no other way," she answered, biting her 
 under lip. 
 
 " Helena ! Can it be possible that you have deliber- 
 ately " 
 
 He stopped, as if afraid to utter the word that was 
 trembling on his tongue, and then said, in a softer voice : 
 
 " But why, Helena ? Why ? " 
 
 The spirit of defiance took possession of her again, and 
 she said: 
 
 " Wasn't it enough that he came between you and me, 
 and that our love " 
 
 " Love ! Helena ! Helena ! Can you talk of our love 
 here — now? " 
 
 She dropped her head before his flashing eyes, and again 
 he reached over to her and said, in the same breathless 
 whisper : 
 
 " Is this love — for me — to become the wife of another 
 man — Helena, what are you saying?" 
 
 She did not speak; only her hard breathing told how 
 much she suflFered. 
 
 " Then think of the other man ! His wife ! When a 
 woman becomes a man's wife they are one. And to marry 
 a man in order to — to — Oh, it is impossible! I cannot 
 believe it of you, Helena ! " 
 
 Suddenly, without warning, she burst into tears, for 
 something in the tone of his voice, rather than the strength
 
 [Page 208. J 
 •••Piini>li liiiii, O God, punisli liiiu ! puuisli him I ' "
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 321 
 
 of his words, had made her feel the shame of the position 
 she occupied in his eyes. 
 
 After a moment she recovered herself, and, in wild anger 
 at her own weakness, she flamed out at him, saying that if 
 she was Ishmael's wife it was in name only; that if she had 
 married Ishmael it was only as a matter of form, at best a 
 betrothal, in order to meet his own wish and to make it 
 possible for her to go on with her purpose. 
 
 " As for love — our love — it is not I who have been false 
 to it. No, never for one single moment — although — in spite 
 of everything — for even when you were gone — when you 
 had abandoned me — in the hour of my trouble, too — and I 
 had lost all hope of you — I " 
 
 " Then why, Helena ? You hated Ishmael and wished to 
 put him down while you thought he was coming between 
 you and me. But why — when all seemed to be over be- 
 tween us " 
 
 Her lips were twitching and her eyes were ablaze. 
 
 " You ask me why I wished to punish him ? " she said. 
 " Very well, I will tell you. Because — " she paused, hesi- 
 tated, breathed hard, and then said, " because he killed my 
 father!" 
 
 Gordon gasped, his face became distorted, his lips grew 
 pale, he tried to speak, but could only stammer out broken 
 exclamations. 
 
 "Great God! Hele " 
 
 " Oh, you may not believe it, but I know," said Helena. 
 
 And then, with a rush of emotion, in a torrent of hot 
 words, she told him how Ishmael Ameer had been the last 
 man seen in her father's company; how she had seen them 
 together and they were quarrelling; how her father had 
 been found dead a few minutes after Ishmael had left him; 
 how she had found him ; how other evidence gave proof, 
 abundant proof, that violence, as a contributory means at 
 least, had been the cause of her father's death; and how 
 the authorities knew this perfectly, but were afraid, in the 
 absence of conclusive evidence, to risk a charge against one 
 whom the people in their blindness worshipped. 
 
 " So I was left alone — quite alone — for you were gone,
 
 322 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 too — and therefore I vowed that if there was no one else, 
 1 would punish him ! " 
 
 " And that is what you " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Oh, God ! Oh, God ! " 
 
 Gordon hid his face in his hands, being made speechless 
 by the awful strength of the blind force which had gov- 
 erned her life and led her on to the tragic tangle of her 
 error. But she misunderstood his feeling, and with flash- 
 ing, almost blazing, eyes, though sobs choked her voice for 
 a moment, she turned on him and said : 
 
 " Why not ? Think of what my father had been to me, 
 and say if I was not justified. Xobody ever loved me as 
 he did — nobody. He was old, too, and weak, for he was ill, 
 though nobody knew it. And then this — this barbarian — 
 this hypocritical — Oh, when I think of it I have such a 
 feeling of physical repulsion for the man that I can scarcely 
 sit by his side ! " 
 
 Saying this she rose to her feet, and, standing before 
 Gordon, as he sat w-ith his face covered by his hands, she 
 said with intense bitterness, as if exulting in the righteous- 
 ness of her vengeance : 
 
 " Let him go to Damietta, or to death itself, if need be ! 
 Doesn't he deserve it? Doesn't he? Uncover your face 
 and tell me. Tell me if — if — tell me if " 
 
 She w^as approaching Gordon as if to draw away his 
 hands, when she began to gasp and stammer as though she 
 had experienced a sudden electric shock. Her eyes had 
 fallen on the third finger of his left hand, and they fixed 
 themselves upon it with the fascination of fear. She saw 
 that it was shorter than the rest, and that, since she had 
 seen it before, it had been injured and amputated. 
 
 Her breath, which had been labouring heavily, seemed to 
 stop altogether, and there was silence once more in which 
 the voice of Ishmael came again : 
 
 " When the Deliverer comes, will He find peace on the 
 earth? Will He find war? Will He find corruption and the 
 worship of false gods? Will He find hatred and vengeance? 
 Beware of vengeance, oh, my brothers ! It corrupts the heart;
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 323 
 
 it pulls down the pillars of the soul ! Vengeance belongs to 
 God, and when men take it out of His hands He writes 
 black marks upon their faces." 
 
 The two unhappy people sitting together in the guest- 
 room seemed to hear their very hearts beat. At length Gor- 
 don, making a great call on his resolution, began to speak: 
 
 " Helena ! " 
 
 "\Yell?" 
 
 " It is all a mistake — a fearful, frightful mistake." 
 
 She listened without drawing breath — a vague foreshad- 
 owing of the truth coming over her. 
 
 " Ishmael Ameer did not kill your father." 
 
 Her lips trembled convulsively; she grew paler and paler 
 every moment. 
 
 " I know he did not, Helena, because " — he covered his 
 face again — " because I know who did." 
 
 " Then who — who was it ? " 
 
 " He did not intend to do it, Helena." 
 
 "Who was it?" 
 
 " It was all in the heat of blood." 
 
 "Who was " 
 
 He hesitated, then stammered out : " Don't you see, He- 
 lena? — it was I." 
 
 She had known in advance what he was going to say, 
 but not until he had said it did the whole truth fall on 
 her. Then in a moment the world itself seemed to reel. 
 A moral earthquake, upheaving everything, had brought 
 all her aims to ashes. The mighty force which had guided 
 and sustained her soul — the sense of doing a necessary and 
 a righteous thing — had collapsed without an instant's warn- 
 ing. Another force, the powerful, almost brutal force of 
 fate, had broken it to pieces. 
 
 "My God! My God! What has become of me?" she 
 thought, and without speaking she gazed blankly at Gor- 
 don as he sat with his eyes hidden by his injured hand. 
 
 Then in broken words, with gasps of breath, he told her 
 what had happened, beginning with the torture of his sepa- 
 ration from her at the door of the General's house. 
 
 " You said I had not really loved you — that you had
 
 324 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 been mistaken and were punished, and — and that was the 
 end." 
 
 Going away with the memory of these words in his mind, 
 his wretched soul had been on the edge of a vortex of mad- 
 ness, in which all its anger, all its hatred, had been directed 
 against the General. In the blind leading of his passion, 
 torn to the heart's core, he had then returned to the Citadel 
 to accuse the General of injustice and tyranny. 
 
 " * Helena was mine,' I said, ' and you have taken her 
 from me, and broken her heart as well as my own. Is that 
 the act of a father ? ' " 
 
 Other words he had also said in the delirium of his rage, 
 mad and insulting words such as no father could bear, and 
 then the General had snatched up the broken sword from 
 the floor and fallen on him, hacking at his hand — see! 
 
 "I didn't want to do it, God knows I did not, for he 
 was an old man and I was no coward; but the hot blood 
 was in my head, and I laid hold of him by the throat to 
 hold him off." 
 
 He uncovered his face — it was full of humility and pain. 
 
 " God forgive me, I didn't know my strength. I flung 
 him away; he fell. I had killed him — my General, my 
 friend ! " 
 
 Tears filled his eyes. In her eyes also tears were gath- 
 ering. 
 
 " Then you came to the door and knocked. ' Father ! ' 
 you said. * Are you alone ? May 1 come in ? ' Those were 
 your words, and how often I have heard them since ! In 
 the middle of the night, in my dreams, oh, God, how many 
 times ! " 
 
 He dropped his head and stretched a helpless arm along 
 the table. 
 
 " I wanted to open the door and say, ' Helena, forgive 
 me, I didn't mean to do it, and that is the truth, as God 
 is my witness ! ' But I was afraid — I fled away." 
 
 She was now sitting with her hands clasped in her lap 
 and her eyelids tightly closed. 
 
 " Next day I wanted to go back to you, but I dared not 
 do so. I wanted to comfort you—] could not. I wanted
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 325 
 
 to give myself up to justice — it was impossible. There was 
 nothing for me to do except to fly away." 
 
 The tears were rolling down his thin face to his pinched 
 nostrils. 
 
 " But I could not fly from myself or from — from my 
 love for you. They told me you had gone to England. 
 * Where is she to-night ? ' I thought. If I had never really 
 loved you before, I loved you now. And you were gone! 
 I had lost you for ever ! " 
 
 Emotion choked his voice; tears were forcing themselves 
 through her closed eyelids. There was another moment of 
 silence, and then nervously, hesitatingly, she put out her 
 hand to where his hand was lying on the table and clasped it. 
 
 The two unhappy creatures, like wrecked souls about to 
 be swallowed up in a tempestuous ocean, saw one raft of 
 hope — their love for each other, which had survived all the 
 storms of their fate. 
 
 But just as their hands were burning, as if with fever, 
 and quivering in each other's clasp, like the bosom of a 
 captured bird, a voice from without fell on their ears like 
 a trumpet from the skies. It was the voice of the muezzin 
 calling to evening prayers from the minaret of the neigh- 
 bouring mosque: 
 
 -^^r^ 
 
 -(2- 
 
 e 
 
 :^-*- 
 
 -(S^^^^s- 
 
 -^-»- 
 
 £tE^ 
 
 V 
 
 AL - LA IIU AK - BAR. AL - LA - - HU AK-BAR. 
 
 God is Most Great! God is Most Great! 
 
 It seemed to be a supernatural voice, the voice of an 
 accusing angel, calling them back to their present position. 
 Ishmael — Helena — the betrothal ! 
 
 Their hands separated and they rose to their feet. One 
 moment they stood with bowed heads at opposite sides of 
 the table, listening to the voice outside, and then, without 
 a word more, they went their different ways — he to his room, 
 she to hers. 
 
 Into the empty guest-room a moment afterward came 
 22
 
 326 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 the rumbling and rolling sound of the voices of the people 
 repeating the Fatihah after Ishmael: 
 
 " Praise be to God, the Lord of all creatures ! . . . Direct 
 us in the right way, Lord! . . . not the way of those 
 who go astray." 
 
 XIV 
 
 That day the Sirdar had held his secret meeting of the 
 Ulema, the Sheikhs and Rotables of lOiartoum. Into a 
 room on the ground floor of the Palace, down a dark, 
 arched corridor, in which British soldiers stood on guard, 
 they had been introduced one by one — a group of six or 
 eight unkempt creatures of varying ages, and of differing 
 degrees of intelligence, nearly all wearing the farageeyah, 
 the loose gray robe as of a Moslem monk. 
 
 They sat awkwardly on the chairs w^hich had been 
 ranged for them about a mahogany table, and while they 
 waited they talked in whispers. There was a tense, electri- 
 cal atmosphere among them, as of internal dissension, the 
 rumbling of a sort of subterranean thunder. 
 
 But this subsided instantly, when the voice of the Ser- 
 jeant outside, and the clash of saluting arms, announced 
 the coming of the Sirdar. The Governor-General, who was 
 in uniform and booted and spurred as if returning from 
 a ride, was accompanied by his Inspector-General, his Fi- 
 nancial Secretary, the Governor of the town and various 
 minor officers. 
 
 He was received by the Sheikhs, all standing, with 
 sweeping salaams from floor to forehead, a circle of smiles 
 and looks of complete accord. 
 
 The Sirdar, with his ruddy and cheerful face, took his 
 seat at the head of the table and began by asking, as if 
 casually, who was the stranger that had arrived that day 
 in Khartoum. 
 
 " A Bedouin," said the Cadi. " One whom Ishmael Ameer 
 loves and Avho loves him." 
 
 "Yet a Bedouin, you say?" asked the Sirdar, in an in-
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 327 
 
 credulous tone, and with a certain elevation of the eye- 
 brows. 
 
 " A Bedouin, O Excellency ! " repeated the Cadi, where- 
 upon the others, without a word of further explanation, 
 bent their turbaned heads in assent. 
 
 Then the Sirdar explained the reason for which he had 
 called them together. 
 
 " I am given to understand," he said, " that the idea 
 is abroad that the Government has been trying to intro- 
 duce changes into the immutable law of Islam, which 
 forms an integral part of your Moslem religion and is 
 therefore rightly regarded with a high degree of venera- 
 tion by all followers of the Prophet. If anybody is telling 
 you this, or if any one is saying that there is any prejudice 
 against you because you are Mohammedans, he is a wicked 
 and mischievous person, and I beg of you to tell me who 
 he is." 
 
 Saying this, the Sirdar looked sharply round the table, 
 but met nothing there but blank and expressionless faces. 
 Then turning to the Cadi, who, as Chief Judge of the Mo- 
 hammedan law-courts, had been constituted spokesman, he 
 asked pointedly what Ishmael Ameer was saying. 
 
 " Nothing, O Excellency ! " said the Cadi ; " nothing 
 that is contrary to the Sharia — the religious law of Islam." 
 
 " Is he telling the people to resist the Government ? " 
 
 The grave company about the table silently shook their 
 heads. 
 
 " Do you know if he has anything to do with a conspir- 
 acy to resist the payment of taxes ? " 
 
 The grave company knew nothing. 
 
 " Then what is he doing, and why has he come to Kliar- 
 toum? Pasha, have you no explanation to make to me?" 
 asked the Sirdar, singling out a vivacious old gentleman, 
 with a short, white, carefully oiled beard — a person of 
 doubtful repute who had once been a slave-dealer and was 
 now living patriarchally, under the protection of the Gov- 
 ernment, with his many wives and concubines. 
 
 The old black sinner cast his little glittering eyes 
 around the room and then said :
 
 328 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " If you ask nie, O ^Master, I say, Ishmael Ameer is put- 
 ting down polygamy and divorce and ought himself to be 
 put down." 
 
 At that there was some clamour among the Ulema, and 
 the Sirdar thought he saw a rift through which he might 
 discover the truth, but the Pasha was soon silenced, and in a 
 moment there was the same unanimity as before. 
 
 "Then what is he?" asked the Sirdar. Whereupon a ven- 
 erable old Sheikh, after the usual Arabic compliments and 
 apologies, said that having seen the new teacher with his 
 own eyes and talked with him, he had now not the slightest 
 doubt that Ishmael was a man sent from God, and there- 
 fore that all who resisted him, all who tried to put him 
 down, would perish miserably. 
 
 At these words the electrical atmosphere which had been 
 held in subjection seemed to burst into flame. In a moment 
 six tongues were talking together. One Sheikh, with wild 
 eyes, told of Islunael's intercourse with angels. Another 
 knew a man who had seen him riding with the Prophet in 
 the desert. A third had spoken to somebody who had seen 
 angels, in the form of doves, descending upon him from 
 the skies, and a fourth was ready to swear that one day 
 while Ishmael was preaching in the mosque people heard 
 a voice from heaven crying, " Hear him I He is my mes- 
 senger ! " 
 
 " W'hat was he preaching about?" said the Sirdar. 
 
 " The last days, the coming of the Deliverer," said the 
 Sheikh with the wild eyes, in an awesome whisper. 
 
 "What Deliverer?" 
 
 " The Shaidna Isa — the Lord Jesus — the White Christ 
 that is to come." 
 
 "Is this to be soon?" 
 
 "Soon, O Excellency! very soon." 
 
 After this outburst there was a moment of tense and 
 breathless silence, during which the Sirdar sat with his 
 serious eyes fixed on the table, and his officers, standing 
 behind, glanced at each other and smiled. 
 
 A moment afterward the Sirdar put an end to the 
 interview.
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WOKLD 329 
 
 " Tell your people,"' he said, " that the Government 
 has no wish to interfere with your religious beliefs and 
 feelings, Avhatever they may be; but tell them also, that it 
 intends to have its orders obej-ed, and that any suspicion 
 of conspiracy, still more rebellion, will be instantly put 
 down." 
 
 The group of unkempt creatures went off with sweep- 
 ing salaams, and then the Sirdar dismissed his officers also, 
 saying : 
 
 " Bear in mind that you are the recognized agents of a 
 just and merciful Government, and whatever^your personal 
 opinions may be of these Arabs and their superstitions, 
 please understand that you are to give no anti-Islamic colour 
 to your British feelings. At the same time remember that 
 we have worked for the redemption of the Soudan from a 
 state of savagery, and we cannot allow it to be turned back to 
 barbarism in the name of religion." 
 
 Both the Ulema and the other British officials being 
 gone, the Sirdar was alone with his Inspector-General. 
 
 "Well?" he said. 
 
 "Well?" repeated the Inspector-General, biting the 
 ends of his close-cropped mustache. " What more did you 
 expect, sir? Naturally the man's own people were not 
 going to give him away. They nearly did so, though. You 
 heard what old Zewar Pasha said?" 
 
 " Tut ! I take no account of that," said the Sirdar. 
 " The brothers of Christ Himself would have put Him down, 
 too — locked Him up in an asylum, I dare say." 
 
 " That's exactly what I would do with Ishmael Ameer 
 anyway," said the Inspector-General. " Of course he per- 
 forms no miracles, and is attended by no angels. His re- 
 moval to Torah, and his inability to free himself from a 
 government jail, would soon dispel the belief in his super- 
 natural agencies." 
 
 " But how can we do it ? Under what pretext ? We 
 can't imprison a man for preaching the second coming of 
 Christ. If we did, our jails would be pretty full at home, 
 I'm thinking." 
 
 The Inspector-General laughed. " Your old error, dear
 
 330 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Sirdar. You can't apply the same principles to East and 
 West." 
 
 " And your old Parliamentary cant, dear Pasha ! I'm 
 sick to death of it." 
 
 There was a moment of strained silence and then the 
 Inspector-General said : 
 
 " Ah, well, I know these holy men, with their sham inspi- 
 rations and their so-called heavenly messages. They de- 
 velop bj- degrees, sir. This one has begun by proclaiming 
 the advent of the Lord Jesus, and he will end by hoisting 
 a flag and claiming to be the Lord Jesus himself." 
 
 " When he does that, Colonel, we'll consider our position 
 afresh. Meantime it may do us no mischief to remember 
 that if the family of Jesus could have dealt with the 
 Founder of our own religion as you would deal with this 
 olive-faced Arab, there would probably be no Christianity 
 in the world to-day." 
 
 The Inspector-General shrugged his shoulders and rose 
 to go. 
 
 " Good-night, sir." 
 
 " Good-night, Colonel," said the Sirdar, and then he sat 
 down to draft a despatch to the Consul-General: 
 
 " Nothing to report since the marriage, betrothal, or 
 whatever it was, of the ' Rani ' to the man in question. 
 Undoubtedly he is laying a strong hold on the imagination 
 of the natives and acquiring the allegiance of large bodies 
 of workers; but I cannot connect him with any conspiracy 
 to persuade people not to pay taxes or with any organised 
 scheme that is frankly hostile to the continuance of Brit- 
 ish rule. 
 
 " Will continue to watch him, but find myself at fear- 
 ful odds owing to difference of faith. It is one of the dis- 
 advantages of Christian governments among people of alien 
 race and religion that methods of revolt are not always 
 visible to the naked eye, and God knows what is going on 
 in the sealed chambers of the mosque. 
 
 " That only shows the danger of curtailing the liberty 
 of the vernacular press, whatever the violence of its spo-
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 331 
 
 radic and muddled anarchy. Leave the press alone, I say. 
 Instead of chloroforming it into silence give it a tonic if 
 need be, or you drive your trouble underground. Such is 
 the common sense and practical wisdom of how to deal 
 with sedition in a Mohammedan country, let some of the 
 logger-headed dunces who write leading articles in Eng- 
 land say what they will. 
 
 " If this man should develop supernatural pretensions 
 I shall know what to do. And withovit that, whether he 
 claim divine inspiration or not, if his people should come 
 to regard him as divine, the very name and idea of his 
 divinity may become a danger and I suppose I shall have 
 to put him under arrest." 
 
 Then remembering that he was addressing not only the 
 Consul-General, but a friend, the Sirdar wrote: 
 
 "'Art Thou a King?' Strange that the question of 
 Pontius Pilate is precisely what we may find in our own 
 mouths soon! And stranger still, almost ludicrous, even 
 farcical and hideously ironical, that though for two thou- 
 sand years Christendom has been spitting on the pusillan- 
 imity of the old pagan, the representative of a Christian 
 Empire will have to do precisely what he did. 
 
 " Short of Pilate's situation, though, I see no right to 
 take this man, so I am not taking him. Sorry to tell you 
 so, but I cannot help it. 
 
 " Our love from both to both. Trust Janet is feeling 
 better. No news of our poor boy, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Our boy " had for thirty years been another name for 
 Gordon. 
 
 XV 
 
 Gra%t as was the gathering in the Sirdar's Palace at 
 Khartoum there was a still graver gathering that day in 
 the British Agency at Cairo — the gathering of the wings 
 of Death. 
 
 Lady Nuneham was nearing her end. Since Gordon's
 
 332 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 disgrace and disappearance she had been visibly fading 
 away under a burden too heavy for her to bear. 
 
 The Consul-General had been trying hard to shut his 
 eyes to this fact. More than ever before he had immersed 
 himself in his work, being plainly impelled to fresh effort 
 by hatred of the man who had robbed him of his son. 
 
 Through the Soudan Intelligence Department in Cairo 
 he had watched Ishmael's movements in Khartoum, expect- 
 ing him to develop the traits of the Mahdi and thus throw 
 himself into the hands of the Sirdar. 
 
 It was a deep disappointment to the Consul-General 
 that this did not occur. The same report came to him 
 again and again. The man was doing nothing to justify 
 his arrest. Although surrounded by fanatical folk whose 
 minds were easily inflamed, he was not trying to upset 
 Governors or giving divine sanction for the removal of 
 officials. 
 
 But meantime some mischief was manifestly at work 
 all over the country. From day to day Inspectors had 
 been coming in to say that the people were not paying 
 their taxes. Convinced that this was the result of con- 
 spiracy the Consul-General had shown no mercy. 
 
 " Sell them up," he had said, and the Inspectors, taking 
 their cue from his owti spirit but exceeding his orders, had 
 done his work without remorse. 
 
 Week by week the trouble had deepened, and when dis- 
 turbances had been threatened he had asked the British 
 Army of Occupation, meaning no violence, to go out into 
 the country and show the people England's power. 
 
 Then grumblings had come down on him from the rep- 
 resentatives of foreign nations. If the people were so dis- 
 contented with British rule that they were refusing to pay 
 their taxes there would be a deficit in the Egyptian treas- 
 ury — how then were Egypt's creditors to be paid? 
 
 " Time enough to cross the bridge when you come to it, 
 gentlemen," said the Consul-General, in his stinging tone 
 and with a curl of his iron lip. 
 
 If the worst came to the worst England would pay, but 
 England should not be asked to do so, because Egypt must 
 
 I
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 333 
 
 meet the cost of her own Government. Hence more dis- 
 training and some inevitable violence in suppressing the 
 riots that resulted from evictions. 
 
 Finally came a hubbub in Parliament, with the cus- 
 tomary " Christian " prattlers prating again. Fools ! 
 They did not know what a subtle and secret conspiracy he 
 had to deal with while they were crying out against his 
 means of killing it. 
 
 He must kill it ! This form of passive resistance, this 
 attack on the Treasury, was the deadliest blow that had 
 ever yet been aimed at England's power in Egypt. 
 
 But he must not let Europe see it ! He must make be- 
 lieve that nothing was happening to occasion the least 
 alarm. Therefore to drown the cries of the people who 
 were suffering, not because they were poor and could not 
 pay, but because they were perverse and would not, he must 
 organise some immense demonstration. 
 
 Thus came to the Consul-General the schemes of the 
 
 great festival of the th anniversary of the British 
 
 occupation of Egypt. It would do good to foreign pow- 
 ers, for it would make them feel that, not for the first time, 
 England had been the torch-bearer of light in a dark coun- 
 try. It would do good to the Egyptians, too, for it would 
 force their youngsters (born since Tel-el-Kebir) to realise 
 the strength of England's arm. 
 
 Thus had the Consul-General occupied himself while his 
 wife was fading away. But at length he had been compelled 
 to see that the end was near, and toward the close of every 
 day he had gone to her room and sat almost in silence, with 
 bowled head, in the chair by her side. 
 
 The great man who for forty years had been the virtual 
 ruler of countless millions, had no wisdom that told him 
 what to say to a dying woman; but at last, seeing that her 
 pallor had become whiteness, and that she was sinking rap- 
 idly and hungering for the consolations of her religion, he 
 asked her if she would like to take the sacrament. 
 
 " It is just what I wish, dear," she answered, with the 
 nervous smile of one who had been afraid to ask. 
 
 At heart the Consul-General had been an agnostic all 
 23
 
 334 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 his life, looking upon religion as no better than a civilising 
 superstition, but all the same he went downstairs and sent 
 one of his Secretaries for the Chaplain of St. Mary's — the 
 English Church. 
 
 The moment he had gone out of the door Fatimah, 
 under the direction of the dying woman, began to pre- 
 pare the bedroom for the reception of the clergyman 
 by laying a side-table with a fair white cloth, a large 
 prayer-book, and two silver candlesticks containing new 
 candles. 
 
 While the Egyptian nurse did this the old lady looked 
 on with her deep, slow, weary eyes, and talked in whispers, 
 as if the wings of the august Presence that was soon to 
 come were already rustling in the room. When all was 
 done she looked very happy. 
 
 " Everything is nice and comfortable now," she said, as 
 she lay back to wait for the clergyman. 
 
 But even then she could not help thinking the one 
 thought that made a tug at her resignation. It was about 
 Gordon. 
 
 " I am quite ready to die, Fatimah," she said, " but I 
 should have loved to see my dear Gordon once more." 
 
 This was what she had been waiting for, praying for, 
 eating her heart and her life out for, 
 
 " Only to see and kiss my boy ! It would have been so 
 easy to go then." 
 
 Fatimah, who was snuffling audibly, as she straightened 
 the eiderdown coverlet over the bod, began to hint that if 
 her " sweet eyes " could not see her son she could send him 
 a message. 
 
 " Perhaps I know somebody who could see it reaches 
 him, too," said Fatimah, in a husky whisper. 
 
 The old lady understood her instantly. 
 
 " You mean Ilafiz ! I always thought as much. Bring 
 me my writing-case, quick ! " 
 
 The writing-case was brought and laid open before her, 
 and she made some effort to write a letter, but the power 
 of life was low in her, and after a moment the shaking pen 
 dropped from her fingers.
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 335 
 
 " Ma^aleysh, my lady!" said Fatimah soothingly. "Tell 
 me what you wish to say. I will remember everything." 
 
 Then the dying mother sent a few touching words as her 
 last message to her beloved son. 
 
 " Wait ! Let me think. My head is a little — ^just a lit- 
 tle — Yes, this is what I wish to say, Fatimah. Tell my 
 boy that my last thoughts were about him. Though I am. 
 sorry he took the side of the false prophet, say I am certain 
 he did what he thought was right. Be sure you tell him I 
 die happy, because I know I shall see him again. If I am 
 never to see him in this world I will do so in the world to 
 come. Say I shall be waiting for him there. And tell him. 
 it will not seem long." 
 
 "Could you sign your name for him, my heart?" said 
 Fatimah, in her husky voice. 
 
 " Yes, oh, yes, easily," said the old lady, and then with 
 an awful effort she wrote : 
 
 " Your ever-loving Mother." 
 
 At that moment Ibrahim in his green caftan, carrying- 
 a small black bag, brought the English Chaplain into the 
 room. 
 
 " Peace be to this house," said the clergyman, iising the 
 words of his Church ritual, and the Egyptian nurse, think- 
 ing it was an Eastern salutation, answered, " Peace ! " 
 
 The Chaplain went into the " boys' room " to put on his 
 surplice, and when he came out of it robed in white, and 
 began to light the candles and prepare the vessels which he 
 placed on the side-table, the old lady was talking to Fa- 
 timah in nervous w'hispers : 
 
 " His lordship ? " " Yes ! " " Do you think, my lady " 
 
 She wanted the Consul-General to be present and 
 was half afraid to send for him; but just at that in- 
 stant the door opened again, and her pale, spiritual face 
 lit up with a smile as she saw her husband come into the 
 room. 
 
 The clergyman was now ready to begin, and the old 
 lady looked timidly across the bed at the Consul-General, 
 as if there were something she wished to ask and dare not. 
 
 " Yes, I will take the sacrament with you, Janet," said
 
 336 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 the old man, and then the old lady's face shone like the 
 face of an angel. 
 
 The Consul-General took the chair by the side of the 
 bed and the chaplain began the service: 
 
 " Almighty, ever-living God, Maker of mankind. Who 
 dost correct those Thou dost love " 
 
 All the time the tremendous words reverberated 
 through the room the dying woman was praying fervently, 
 her liiJS moving to her unspoken words and her eyes shin- 
 ing as if the Lord of Life she had always loved was with 
 her now and she was giving herself to Him — her soul, her all. 
 
 The Consul-General was praying, too — praying for the 
 first time to the God he did not know and had never 
 looked to : 
 
 " If Thou art God, let her die in peace. It is all I ask 
 —all I wish." 
 
 Thus the two old people took the sacrament together, 
 and when the Communion Service came to a close, the old 
 lady looked again at the Consul-General and asked, with a 
 little confusion, if they might sing a hymn. 
 
 The old man bent his head, and a moment later the 
 ■Chaplain, after a whispered word from the dying woman, 
 began to sing: 
 
 " Sun of my soul, Thou Saviour clear, 
 It is not night if Thou be near . . ." 
 
 At the second bar the old lady joined him in her break- 
 ing, cracking voice, and then the Consul-General, too, 
 albeit his throat was choking him, forced himself to sing 
 "v\'ith her. 
 
 " ^^'hen the soft dews of kindly sleep 
 My weaned eyelids gently steep . . ." 
 
 It was as much as the Consul-General could do to sing 
 •of a faith he did not feel, but he felt tenderly to it for his 
 -wife's sake now, and with a great effort he went on with 
 Ler to the end : 
 
 " If some poor wandering child of thine 
 Have spurned to-day the voice divine . . ."
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 337 
 
 The light of another -world was in the old lady's eyes 
 when all was over, and she seemed to be already halfway 
 to heaven. 
 
 XVI 
 
 All the same there was a sweet humanity left in her, 
 too, and when the Chaplain was gone and the side-table 
 had been cleared, and she was left alone with her old hus- 
 band, there came little gleams of the woman who wanted 
 to be loved to the last. 
 
 " How are you now ? " he asked. 
 
 " Better, so much better," she said, smiling upon him, 
 and caressing with her wrinkled hand the other wrinkled 
 hand that lay on the eiderdown quilt. 
 
 The great Consul-General, sitting on the chair by the 
 side of the bed, felt as helpless as before, as ignorant as 
 ever of what millions of simple people know — how to talk 
 to those they love when the wings of death are hovering 
 over them; but the sweet old lady, with the wisdom and the 
 courage which God gives to His own on the verge of eter- 
 nity, began to speak in a lively and natural voice of the 
 end that was coming and w^iat was to follow it. 
 
 He was not to allow any of his arrangements to be in- 
 terfered with, and, above all, the festivities appointed for 
 the King's Birthday were not to be disturbed. 
 
 " They must be necessary or you would not have them, 
 especially now," she said, " and I shall not be happy if I 
 know that on my account they are not coming off." 
 
 And then, with the sweet childishness which the feeble- 
 ness of illness brings, she talked of the last King's Birth- 
 day, and of the ball they had given in honour of it. 
 
 That had been in their own hoiise, and the dancing had 
 been in the drawing-room, and the Consul-General had told 
 Ibrahim to set the big green arm-chair for her in the al- 
 cove, and sitting there she had seen everything. What a 
 spectacle! Such gorgeous uniforms! Such glittering or- 
 ders! Such beautiful toilettes! Ministers Plenipotentiary, 
 Egyptian Ministers, ladies, soldiers!
 
 338 THE \^TIITE PROPHET 
 
 The old lady's pale face filled with light as she thought 
 of all this, but the Consul-General dropped his head, for 
 he knew well what was coming next. 
 
 '* And, John, don't you remember? Gordon was there 
 that night, and Helena — dear Helena! How lovely they 
 looked! Among all those lovely people, dear. He was 
 wearing every one of his medals that night, you know. So 
 tall, so brave-looking, a soldier every inch of him, and such 
 a perfect English gentleman! Was there ever anything in 
 the world so beautiful? And Helena, too! She wore a 
 silvery silk, and a kind of coif on her beautiful black hair. 
 Oh, she was the loveliest thing in all the room, I thought! 
 And when they led the cotillon — don't you remember they 
 led the cotillon, dear? — I could have cried, I was so proud 
 of them." 
 
 The Consul-General continued to sit with his head 
 down, listening to the old lady and saying nothing, yet see- 
 ing the scene as she depicted it and feeling again the ting- 
 ling pride which he, too, had felt but permitted nobody 
 that night to knoM^ 
 
 After a moment the beaming face on the bed became 
 clouded over as if that memory had brought other memo- 
 ries less easy to bear — dreams of happy days to come, of 
 honours, and of children. 
 
 " Ah, well, God knows best," she said in a tremulous 
 voice, releasing the Consul-General's hand and ceasing to 
 speak. 
 
 The old man felt as if he would have to hurry out of 
 the room without uttering another word, but as well as he 
 could he controlled himself and said: 
 
 " You are agitating yourself, Janet. You must lie quiet 
 now." 
 
 " Yes, I must lie quiet now, and think of — of other 
 things," she answered. 
 
 He was stepping away when she called on him to turn 
 her on her right side, for that was how she always slept, 
 and upon the Egyptian nurse coming hurrying up to help, 
 she said: 
 
 " No, no, not you, Fatimah — his lordship."
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 339 
 
 Then the Consul-General put his arms about her — feel- 
 ing how thin and wasted she was and how little of her was 
 left to die — and turning her gently round he laid her back 
 on the pillow which Fatimah had in the meantime shaken 
 out. 
 
 While he did so her dim eyes brightened again, and 
 stretching her white hands out of her silk nightdress, she 
 clasped them about his neck with the last tender effort of 
 the woman who wanted to be fondled to the last. 
 
 The strain of talking had been too much for her, and 
 after a few minutes she sank into a restless doze in which 
 the perspiration broke out on her forehead and her face 
 acquired an expression of pain, for sleep knows no pre- 
 tences. But at length her features became more composed 
 and her breathing more regular, and then the Consul-Gen- 
 eral, who had been standing aside, mute with anguish, said 
 in a low tone to Fatimah: 
 
 " She is sleeping quietly now," and then he turned 
 to go. 
 
 Fatimah followed him to the head of the stairs and said 
 in her husky whisper: 
 
 " It will be all over to-night, though — you'll see it will." 
 
 For a moment he looked steadfastly into the woman's 
 eyes, and then, without answering her, he walked heavily 
 down the stairs. 
 
 Back in the library, he stood for some time with his 
 face to the empty fireplace. Over the mantelpiece there 
 hung a little picture, in a black-and-gilt frame, of a bright- 
 faced boy in an Arab fez. It was more than he could do to 
 look at that portrait now, so he took it off its brass nail 
 and laid it face down on the marble mantel-shelf. 
 
 Just at that moment one of his Secretaries brought in 
 a despatch. It was the despatch from the Sirdar, sent in 
 cipher but now written out at length. The Consul-General 
 read it without any apparent emotion and put it aside 
 without a word. 
 
 The hours passed slowly; the night was very long; the 
 old man did not go to bed. Not for the first time he was 
 asking himself searching questions about the mystery of
 
 340 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 life and death, but the great enigma was still baffling him. 
 Could it be possible that while he had occupied himself 
 with the mere shows and semblance of things, calling them 
 by great names, Civilisation and Progress, that simple soul 
 upstairs had been grasping the eternal realities? 
 
 There were questions that cut deeper even than that, 
 and now they faced him one by one. Was it true that he 
 had married merely in the hope of having some one to 
 carry on his name and thus fulfil the aspirations of his 
 pride? Had he for nearly forty years locked his heart 
 away from the woman who had been starving for his love, 
 and was it only by the loss of the son who was to have 
 been the crown of his life that they were brought together 
 in the end? 
 
 Thus the hoofs of the dark hours beat heavily on the 
 great Proconsul's brain, and in the awful light that came 
 to him from an open grave the triumphs of the life behind 
 him looked poor and small and mean. 
 
 But meantime the palpitating air of the room upstairs 
 was full of a different spirit. The old lady had apparently 
 awakened from her restless sleep, for she had opened her 
 eyes and was talking in a bright and happy voice. Her 
 cheeks were tinged with the glow of health and her whole 
 face was filled with light. 
 
 " I knew I should see them," she said. 
 
 "See whom, my heart?" asked Fatimah; but without 
 answering her, the old lady, with the same rapturous ex- 
 pression, went on talking. 
 
 '' I knew I should, and I have ! I have seen both of 
 them ! " 
 
 " Whom have you seen, my lady ? " asked Fatimah 
 again; but once more the dying woman paid no heed to 
 her. 
 
 " I saw them as plainly as I see you now, dear. It was 
 in a place I did not know. The sun was so hot, and the 
 room was so close. There was a rush roof and divans all 
 round the walls. But Gordon and Helena were there to- 
 gether, sitting at opposite sides of a table and holding each 
 other's hands."
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 341 
 
 " Allah ! Allah ! " muttered Fatimah, with upraised 
 hands. 
 
 The old lady seemed to hear her, for an indulgent smile 
 passed over her radiant face and she said in a tone of ten- 
 der remonstrance : 
 
 "Don't be foolish, Fatimah! Of course I saw him. 
 The Lord said I should, and He never breaks His promises. 
 * Help me, God ! for Christ's sake,' I said. ' Shall I see 
 my dear son again? O God! give me a sign.' And He did! 
 Yes, it was in the middle of the night. * Janet,' said a 
 voice, and I was not afraid. ' Be patient, Janet. You shall 
 see your dear boy before you die.' " 
 
 Her face was full of happy visions. The life of this 
 world seemed to be no longer there. A kind of life from 
 the other world appeared to reanimate the sinking woman. 
 The near approach of eternity illumined her whole being 
 with a supernatural light. She was dying in a flood of joy. 
 
 "Oh, how good the Lord is! It is so easy to go now! 
 — John, you must not think I suffer any longer, because I 
 don't. I have no pain now, dear — none whatever." 
 
 Then she clasped her wasted hands together in the atti- 
 tude of prayer and said in a rustling whisper : 
 
 " To-night, Lord Jesus ! Let it be to-night ! " 
 
 After that her rapturous voice died down, and her 
 ecstatic eyes gently closed, but an ineffable smile contin- 
 ued to play on her faintly tinted face, as if she were look- 
 ing on the wings that were waiting to bear her away. 
 
 The Doctor came in at that moment and was told what 
 had occurred. 
 
 "Delirium, of course," he said. A change had come; the 
 crisis was approaching. If the same thing happened at the 
 supreme moment the patient was not to be contradicted; 
 her delusion was to be indulged. 
 
 It did not happen. 
 
 In the early hours of the morning the Consul-General 
 was called upstairs. There was a deep silence in the bed- 
 room, as if the air had suddenly become empty and void. 
 The day was breaking, and through the windows that 
 looked over to the Nile the white sails of a line of boats
 
 342 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 that were gliding by seemed like the passing of angels' 
 ■wings. Sparrows were twittering in the eaves, and through 
 the windows to the east the first streamers of the sunrise 
 were rising in the sky. 
 
 The Consul-General approached the bed and looked 
 down at the pallid face on the pillow. He wanted to stoop 
 and kiss it, but he felt as if it would be a profanation to 
 do so now. His own face was full of the majesty of suffer- 
 ing, for the sealed chambers of his iron soul had been 
 broken open at last. 
 
 With his hands clasped behind his back he stood for 
 some minutes quite motionless. Then laying one hand on 
 the brass head-rail of the bed, he leaned over his dead wife 
 and spoke to her as if she could hear. 
 
 " Forgive me, Janet ! Forgive me," he said in a low 
 voice that was like a sob. 
 
 Did she hear him? Who can say she did not? Was it 
 only a ray from the sunrise that made the Egyptian woman 
 think that over the dead face of the careworn and weary 
 one, whose sweet soul was even then winging its way to 
 heaven, there passed the light of a loving smile? 
 
 XVII 
 
 Within three days the softening effects on the Consul- 
 General of Lady Nuneham's death were lost. Out of his 
 very bereavement and the sense of being left friendless and 
 alone he became a harder and severer man than before. 
 His Secretaries were more than ever afraid of him, and his 
 servants trembled as they entered his room. 
 
 It heightened his anger against Gordon to believe that 
 by his conduct he had hastened his mother's end. In his 
 absolute self-abasement there were moments when he 
 would have found it easier to forgive Gordon if he had 
 been a prodigal, a wastrel, prompted to do what he had 
 done by the grossest selfishness; but deep down in some ob- 
 scure depths of the father's heart the worst suffering came
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 343 
 
 of the certainty that his son had been moved by that tragic 
 earnestness which belongs only to the greatest and noblest 
 souls. 
 
 Still more hardening and embittering to the Consul- 
 General thaxi the memory of Gordon was the thought of 
 Ishmael. It intensified his anger against the Egyptian to 
 feel that having first by his " visionary mummery," by his 
 " manoeuvring and quackery," robbed him of his son, he 
 had now, by direct consequence, robbed him of his wife 
 also. 
 
 All the Consul-General's bull-necked strength, all his 
 force of soul, was roused to fury when he thought of that. 
 He was old and tired and he needed rest, but before he 
 permitted himself to think of retirement, he must crush 
 Ishmael Ameer. 
 
 Not that he allowed himself to recognise his vindictive- 
 ness. Shutting his eyes to his personal motive, he believed 
 he was thinking of England only. Ishmael was the head- 
 centre of an anarchical conspiracy which was using secret 
 and stealthy weapons that were more deadly than bombs; 
 therefore Ishmael must be put down, he must be trampled 
 into the earth, and his movement must be destroyed. 
 
 But how ? 
 
 Within a few hours after Lady Nuneham's funeral the 
 Grand Cadi came by night, and, with many vague accusa- 
 tions against " the Arab innovator," repeated his former 
 warning : 
 
 " I tell you again, O Excellency ! if you permit that man 
 to go on it will be death to the rule of England in Egypt." 
 
 " Then prove what you say, prove it, prove it ! " cried the 
 Consul-General, raising his impatient voice. 
 
 But the suave old Moslem judge either could not or 
 would not do so. Indeed, being a Turkish official, accus- 
 tomed to quite different procedure, he was at a loss to un- 
 derstand why the Consul-General wanted proof. 
 
 " Arrest the offender first and you'll find evidence 
 enough afterward," he said. 
 
 An English statesman could not act on lines like those, 
 so the Consul-General turned back to the despatches of the
 
 344 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Sirdar. The last of them — the one received during the 
 dark hours preceding his wife's death — contained signifi- 
 cant passages : 
 
 " If this man should develop supernatural pretensions I 
 shall know what to do." 
 
 Ha ! There was hope in that ! The charlatan element 
 in Ishmael Ameer might carry him far if only the temp- 
 tation of popular idolatry were strong enough. 
 
 Once let a man deceive himself with the idea that he 
 was divine — nay, once let his followers delude themselves 
 with the notion of his divinity — and a civilised government 
 would be bound to make short work of him. "Whosoever 
 and whatsoever he might be, that man must die! 
 
 A sudden cloud passed over the face of the Consul- 
 General as he glanced again at the Sirdar's despatch and 
 saw its reference to Christ. 
 
 " How senseless everybody is becoming in this world ! " 
 he thought. 
 
 Pontius Pilate! Pshaw! When would religious hypoc- 
 risy open its eyes and see that according to all the laws of 
 civilised states, the Roman Governor had done right? 
 Jesus claimed to be divine. His people were ready to recog- 
 nise Him as King; and whether His Kingdom was of this 
 world or another, what did it matter? If His pretensions 
 had been permitted they would have led to wild, chaotic, 
 shapeless anarchy. Therefore Pilate crucified Jesus, and, 
 scorned though he had been through all the ages, he had 
 done no more than any so-called " Christian " governor 
 would be compelled to do to-day. 
 
 " Jesus of Xazareth, the King of the Jews." Why 
 would not people understand that these words were written 
 not in derision but in self-defence? There could have been 
 only one authority in Palestine then, and there could be 
 only one authority in Egypt now. 
 
 " If this visionary mummer, with his empty quackeries, 
 should develop the idea that he is divine, or yet the mes- 
 senger of divinity, I will hang him like a dog!" thought 
 the Consul-General.
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 345 
 
 xvin 
 
 Five days after the death of Lady Nuneham the Consul- 
 General was reading at his breakfast the last copy of the 
 Times to arrive in Cairo. It contained an anticipatory 
 announcement of a forthcoming Mansion House Banquet 
 in honour of the King's birthday. The Foreign Minister 
 was expected to speak on the " unrest in the East, with 
 special reference to the affair of El Azhar." 
 
 The Consul-General's face frowned darkly, and he be- 
 gan to picture the scene as it would occur : The gilded 
 hall; the crowd of distinguished persons eating in public; 
 the mixed odours of many dishes; the pop of champagne 
 corks; the smoke of cigars; the buzz of chatter like the 
 gobbling of geese on a green; and then the Minister, with 
 his hand on his heart, uttering timorous apologies for his 
 Proconsul's policy, and pouring out pompous platitudes as if 
 he had newly discovered the decalogue ! 
 
 The Consul-General's gorge rose at the thought. Oh, 
 when would these people who stayed comfortably at home 
 and lived by the votes of the factory-hands of Lancashire 
 and Yorkshire, and hungered for the shouts of the mob, 
 understand the position of men like himself, who, in for- 
 eign lands, among alien races, encompassed by secret con- 
 spiracies, were spending their strength in holding high the 
 banner of Empire? 
 
 " Having chosen a good man, why can't they leave him 
 alone ? " thought the Consul-General. 
 
 And then, his personal feelings getting the better of his 
 patriotism, he almost wished that the charlatan element in 
 Ishmael Ameer might develop speedily; that he might 
 draw off the allegiance of the native soldiers in the Soudan 
 and break out, like the Mahdi, into open rebellion. That 
 would bring the Secretary of State to his senses, make him 
 realise a real danger and see in the everlasting " affair of 
 El Azhar " if not light, then lightning.
 
 346 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 The door of the breakfast room opened and Ibrahim 
 entered. 
 
 " Well, what is it ? " demanded the Consul-General with 
 a frown. 
 
 Ibrahim answered in some confusion that a small boy 
 was in the hall, asking to see the English lord. He said he 
 brought an urgent message, but would not tell what it was 
 or where it came from. Ilad been there three times before, 
 slept last night on the ground outside the gate and could 
 not be driven away — would his lordship see the lad? 
 
 "What is his race? Egyptian?" 
 
 " Nubian, my lord." 
 
 " Ever seen the boy before ? " 
 
 "No — yes — that is to say — well, now that your lordship 
 mentions it, I think — yes, I think he came here once with 
 Miss Hel — I mean General Graves's daughter." 
 
 " Bring him up immediately," said the Consul-General. 
 
 At the next moment a black boy stepped boldly into the 
 room. It was Mosie. His clothes were dirty, and his 
 pudgy face was like a block of dark soap splashed with 
 stale lather, but his eyes were clear and alert and his man- 
 ner was eager. 
 
 " Well, my boy, what do you want ? " asked the Consul- 
 General. 
 
 Mosie looked fearlessly up into the stern face with its 
 iron jaw, and tipped his black thumb over his shoulder to 
 where Ibrahim, in his gorgeous green caftan, stood timidly 
 behind him. 
 
 At a sign from the Consul-General, the Egyptian serv- 
 ant left the room, and then, quick as light, Mosie slipped 
 ofF his sandal, ripped open its inner sole, and plucked out 
 a letter stained with grease. 
 
 It was the letter which Helena had written in Khar- 
 toum. 
 
 The Consul-General read it rapidly, with an eagerness 
 which even he could not conceal. So great, indeed, was his 
 excitement that he did not see that a second paper (Ish- 
 mael's letter to the Chancellor of El Azhar) had fallen to 
 the floor until Mosie picked it up and held it out to him.
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 347 
 
 " Good boy," said the Consul-General — the cloud had 
 passed and his face bore an expression of joy. 
 
 Instantly apprehending the dim purport of Helena's 
 hasty letter, the Consul-General saw that what he had pre- 
 dicted and half hoped for was already coming to pass. It 
 was to be open conspiracy now, not passive conspiracy any 
 longer. The man Ishmael was falling a victim to the most 
 fatal of all mental maladies. The Mahdist delusion was 
 taking possession of him and he was throwing himself into 
 the Government's hands. 
 
 Hurriedly ringing his bell, the Consul-General com- 
 mitted Mosie to Ibrahim's care, whereupon the small black 
 boy in his soiled clothes, with his dirty face and hands, 
 strutted out of the room in front of the Egyptian servant, 
 looking as proud as a peacock and feeling like sixteen feet 
 tall. Then the Consul-General called for one of his Secre- 
 taries and sent him for the Commandant of Police. 
 
 The Commandant came in hot haste. He was a big and 
 rather corpulent Englishman, wearing a blue-braided uni- 
 form and a fez — naturally a blusterous person with his own 
 people, but as soft-voiced as a woman and as obsequious 
 as a slave before his chief. 
 
 " Draw up your chair. Commandant — closer — now listen," 
 said the Consul-General. 
 
 And then in a low tone he repeated what he had already 
 learned from Helena's letter, and added what he had in- 
 stantly divined from it — that Ishmael Ameer was to return 
 to Cairo; that he was to come back in the disguise of a 
 Bedouin Sheikh; that his object was to draw off the alle- 
 giance of the Egyptian Army in order that a vast horde 
 of his followers might take possession of the city; that this 
 was to be done during the period of the forthcoming fes- 
 tivities, while the British Army was still in the provinces, 
 and that the conspiracy was to reach its treacherous cli- 
 max on the night of the King's birtliday. 
 
 The Commandant listened with a gloomy face, and, 
 looking timidly into the flashing eyes before him, he asked 
 if his Excellency could rely on the source of his infor- 
 mation.
 
 348 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Absolutely ! Infallibly ! " said the Consul-General. 
 
 " Then," said the Commandant nervouslj% " I presume 
 the festivities must be postponed ? " 
 
 " Certainlj' not, sir." 
 
 " Or perhaps your Excellency intends to have the 
 British Army called back to Cairo ? " 
 
 " Xot that, either." 
 
 " At least you will arrest the ' Bedouin.' " 
 
 " Not yet, at all events." 
 
 The policy to be pursued was to be something quite 
 different. 
 
 Everything was to go on as usual. Sports, golf, cricket, 
 croquet, tennis-tournaments, polo-matches, race-meetings, 
 automobile-meetings, " all the usual fooleries and frivoli- 
 ties " — with crowds of sight-seers, men in flannels, and 
 ladies in beautiful toilettes — were to be encouraged to pro- 
 ceed. The police-bands were to play in the public gardens, 
 the squares, the streets, everywhere. 
 
 " Say nothing to anybody. Give no sign of any kind. 
 Let the conspiracy go on as if we knew nothing about it. 
 But " 
 
 "Yes, my lord? Yes?" 
 
 " Keep an eye on the * Bedouin.' Let every train that 
 arrives at the railway-station and every boat that comes 
 down the river be watched. As soon as you have spotted 
 your man see where he goes. He may be a fanatical fool, 
 miscounting his ' divine ' influence with the native soldier, 
 but he cannot be working alone. Therefore find out who 
 visit him, learn all their movements, let their plans come 
 to a head, and, when the proper time arrives, in one hour, at 
 one blow, we will crush their conspiracy and clap our hands 
 upon the whole of them." 
 
 " Splendid ! An inspiration, my lord ! " 
 
 " I've always said it would some day be necessary to 
 forge a special weapon to meet special needs, and the time 
 has come to forge it. Meantime undertake nothing hur- 
 riedly. Make no mistakes, and see that your men make 
 
 none." 
 
 Certainly, my lord."
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 349 
 
 "Investigate every detail for yourself, and, above all, 
 hold your tongue and guard your information with invio- 
 lable secrecy." 
 
 " Surely, my lord." 
 
 " You can go now. I'm busy. Good-morning ! " 
 
 "Wonderful man!" thought the Commandant, as he 
 went out at the porch. " Seems to have taken a new lease 
 of life! Wonderful!" 
 
 The Consul-General spent the whole of that day in 
 thinking out his scheme for a " special weapon," and when 
 night came and he went upstairs — through the great echo- 
 ing house that was like the bureau of a department of State 
 now, being so empty and so cheerless, and past the dark 
 and silent room whereof the door was always closed — he 
 felt conscious of a firmer and lighter step than he had 
 known for years. 
 
 Fatimah was in his bedroom, for she had constituted 
 herself his own nurse since his wife's death. She was nail- 
 ing up on the wall the picture of the little boy in the Arab 
 fez, and, having her own theory about why he had taken it 
 down in the library, she said: 
 
 " There ! It will be company for your lordship and no- 
 body will ask questions about it here." 
 
 When Fatimah had gone the Consul-General could not 
 but think of Gordon. He always thought of him at that 
 hour of the night, and the picture of his son that rose 
 in his mind's eye was always the same. It was a picture of 
 Gordon's deathly white face and trembling lower lip, as he 
 stood bolt upright while his medals were being torn from 
 his breast, and then said, in that voice which his father 
 could never forget : " General, the time may come when it 
 will be more painful to you to remember all this than it 
 has been for me to bear it." 
 
 Oh, that Gordon could be here now and see for himself 
 what a sorry charlatan, what a self-deceived quack and 
 conspirator, was the man in whose defence he had allo-wed 
 his own valuable life to rush down to a confused welter of 
 wreck and ruin! 
 
 As the Consul-General got into bed he was thinking of
 
 350 THE AYHITE PROPHET 
 
 Helena. What a glorious, courageous, resourceful woman 
 she was ! It carried his mind back to biblical days to find 
 anything equal to her daring and her success. But what 
 was the price she had paid for them? He remembered 
 something the Sirdar had said of " a marriage, a sort of 
 betrothal," and then he recalled the words of her first let- 
 ter : " I know exactly how far I intend to go and I shall go 
 no farther. I know exactly what I intend to do and I shall 
 do it without fear or remorse."' 
 
 What had happened in the Soudan? What was hap- 
 pening there now? • In what battle-whirlwind had that 
 splendid girl's magnificent victory been won? 
 
 XIX 
 
 Meantime Helena in Khartoum was feeling like a mis- 
 erable traitress. 
 
 She had condemned an innocent man to death! Ish- 
 mael had not killed her father, yet she had taken such steps 
 that the moment he entered Cairo he would be walking to 
 his doom ! 
 
 One after another, sweet and cruel memories crowded 
 upon her, and in the light of the awful truth, as Gordon 
 had revealed it, she began to see Ishmael with quite difFer- 
 ent eyes. All she had hitherto thought evil in his charac- 
 ter now looked like good ; what she had taken for hypocrisy 
 was sincerity; what she had supposed to be subtlety was 
 simplicity. His real nature was a rebuke to every one of 
 her preconceived ideas. The thought of his tenderness, his 
 modesty, his devotion, and even the unselfishness which had 
 led to their betrothal, cut her to the quick. Yet she had 
 doomed him to destruction. The letter she had written to 
 the Consul-General was his death-warrant. 
 
 That night she could fix her mind on nothing except the 
 horror of her position, but next morning she set herself to 
 think out schemes for stopping the consequences of her 
 own act.
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 351 
 
 The black boy was gone; it was not possible to over- 
 take him; there was no other train to Egypt for four 
 days, but there was the telegraph; she could make use 
 of that. 
 
 " I'll telegraph to the Consul-General to pay no atten- 
 tion to my letter," she thought. 
 
 Useless ! The Consul-General would ask himself search' 
 ing questions and take his precautions just the same. 
 
 "I'll telegraph that my letter is a forgery," she thought. 
 
 Madness! The Consul-General would ask himself how, 
 if it was a forgery, she could know anything about it. 
 
 " I'll go across to the Sirdar and tell him everything, 
 and leave him to act for both of us as he thinks best ! " 
 
 Impossible ! How could she explain her position to the 
 Sirdar without betraying Gordon's identity and thereby 
 leading to his arrest? 
 
 That settled everything. There was no escape from the 
 consequences of her conduct, no way to put an end to the 
 network of dangers by which she had surrounded Ishmael. 
 Mosie was now far on his way to Cairo; he carried to the 
 Consul-General not only her own letter, but also the original 
 of Ishmael's letter to the Chancellor of El Azhar. The 
 hideous work was done. 
 
 Two days passed during which her over-excited feelings 
 seemed to paralyse all her powers of thought. Then a new 
 idea took possession of her and she set herself to undo what 
 she had done with Ishmael himself. Little by little, in 
 tremvdous tones, and with a still deeper sense of duplicity 
 than before, she began to express halting doubts of the 
 success of their enterprise. 
 
 " I have been thinking about it," she said nervously, 
 " and now I fear " 
 
 " What do you fear, O Rani ? " asked Ishmael. 
 
 " I fear," said Helena, trembling visibly, " that the mo- 
 ment the Government learn from the Sirdar, as they needs 
 must, that the great body of your people have left Khar- 
 toum, and are travelling north, they will recall the British 
 Army to protect the capital and thus " 
 
 But Ishmael interrupted her with a laugh.
 
 352 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " If the day of the Kedeemer has come," he said, " will 
 human armies hinder Him ? No ! " 
 
 It was useless! Ishmael was now more than ever an 
 enthusiast, a fanatic, a visionary. His spiritual ecstasy 
 swept away every obstacle, and made him blind to every 
 danger. 
 
 Helena felt like a witch who was trying to undo the 
 effects of her charm. She could not undo them. She could 
 not destroy the potency of the spell she herself had raised, 
 and the effort to do so put her into a fever of excitement. 
 
 Two days more passed like this, and still Helena was in 
 the toils of her own actions. From time to time she saw 
 Gordon as he sat at meals or moved about the house. He 
 did not speak to her, and she dropped her head in shame 
 as often as they came close together. But at length she 
 caught a look in his face which seemed to her to say : " Are 
 you really going to let an innocent man walk into the jaws 
 of death?" 
 
 That brought her wavering mind to a quick conclusion. 
 Gordon was waiting for her to speak. She must speak! 
 She must confess everything ! She must tell Ishmael what 
 she had done, and by what tragic tangle of error she had 
 done it. At any cost, no matter what, she must put an end 
 to the false situation in which she lived, and thus redeem 
 herself in Gordon's eyes and in her own. 
 
 At noon that day, being Friday, Ishmael lectured in the 
 mosque, delivering a still more fervent and passionate mes- 
 sage. The kingdom of heaven which the Lord Isa had fore- 
 told was soon to come ! When it came, God would lend them 
 legions of angels, if need be, to protect the oppressed and to 
 uphold the downtrodden ! Therefore let the children of God 
 fear nothing from the powers and principalities of the 
 world! Their pilgrimage was safe! No harm could come 
 to them, for however their feet might slip, the arms of the 
 Compassionate would bear them up! 
 
 As Ishmael's ecstasy had increased so had the devotion 
 of his people, and when he returned home they followed 
 him in a dense crowd through the streets, shouting the 
 wildest acclamations:
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 353 
 
 " Out of the waj^ ! The Master is coming ! The Mes- 
 senger is here! Allah! El Ilamdullillah ! " 
 
 Helena heard them, but she did not hear Ishmael re- 
 prove them, as in earlier days he had been wont to do. 
 
 She was standing in the guest-room, and the noise of the 
 approaching crowd had brought Gordon from his bedroom, 
 at the moment when Islimael, surrounded by a group of his 
 people, stepped into the house. 
 
 Ishmael was in a state of excitement amounting to ex- 
 altation, and after holding out hands both to Helena and 
 Gordon he turned to his followers to dismiss them. 
 
 " Go back now," he said, " and to-night, two hours after 
 sunset, let the TJlema and the Notables come to me that we 
 may decide on the details of our pilgrimage." 
 
 " Allah ! El Hamdullillah ! " cried the people. 
 
 More than ever they were like creatures possessed. 
 Hungry and ragged as many of them were, the new mag- 
 nificence that was to be given to their lives appeared to be 
 already shining in their eyes. 
 
 Helena saw this, and her heart was smitten with re- 
 morse at thought of the cruel confession she had decided 
 to make. She could not make it in sight of the hopes it 
 must destroy. But neither could she look into Gordon's 
 searching face and remain silent, and as soon as the crowd 
 had gone, she made an efFort to speak. 
 
 " Ishmael," she said, trembling all over, " there is some- 
 thing I wish to say — if it will not displease you." 
 
 " Nothing the Rani can say will displease me," said Ish- 
 mael. 
 
 He was looking at her with the expression of enthusi- 
 astic admiration which she had seen in his eyes before. It 
 was hard to go on. 
 
 " Tour intentions are now known to everybody," she 
 said. " You have not hidden them from any of your own 
 people. That has been very trustful, very noble, but 
 still " 
 
 " Still — what, my sister? " 
 
 " If somebody — should betray your scheme to the Gov- 
 ernment, and — and the moment you set foot in Cairo "
 
 354 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Again Ishmael interrupted her with a laugb. 
 
 " Impossible ! " he said, smiling upon her with his 
 bright and joyous eyes. "Islam has only one heart, one 
 soul, one mind." 
 
 And then taking her quivering hand and leading her to 
 the door, he pointed to the camp outside and said : 
 
 " Look ! Ten thousand of our poor unhappy people are 
 there. They have come to me from the tyrannies of cruel 
 taskmasters and been true to me through the temptations 
 of hunger and thirst. Some of them are from Cairo and 
 are waiting to return home. All are the children of Islam 
 and are looking for the coming of the Expected who brings 
 peace and joy. Is there one of them who will betray me 
 now? Not one! Treachery would injure me, but it would 
 hurt the betrayer more." 
 
 Then with the same expression of enthusiastic admira- 
 tion and in a still tenderer and softer voice, he began to 
 laugh and to rally her, saying he knew well what was going 
 on in his sweet sister's mind — that though her brave spirit 
 had devised the plan they had adopted, yet now that the 
 time was near for carrying it into execution her womanly 
 heart was failing her and affectionate anxiety for his own 
 safety was making her afraid. 
 
 " But have no fear at all," he said, standing behind her 
 and smoothing her check with a light touch of his taper- 
 ing fingers. " If this is God's work will God forget me ? 
 No!" 
 
 With a sense of stifling duplicity Helena made one 
 more effort and said : 
 
 " Still, who knows, there may be some one " 
 
 "None, O Kani ! " 
 
 " But don't you know " 
 
 " I don't want to know anything except one thing — 
 that God guides and directs me." 
 
 Again he laughed and asked where was the kufiah (the 
 Bedouin head-dress) which she had promised to make for 
 his disguise. 
 
 "Get to work at it quick," he said; "it will be wanted 
 soon, my sister."
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 355 
 
 And then clappinj? his hands for the midday meal, he 
 went into his room to prepare for it, leaving Gordon and 
 Helena for some moments alone together. 
 
 Gordon had been standing aside in the torment of a 
 hundred mixed emotions, and now he and Helena spoke in 
 whispers. 
 
 " He is determined to go into Cairo," she said. 
 
 " Quite determined." 
 
 "Oh, is there no way to prevent him?" 
 
 " None now — unless " 
 
 " Unless — what ? " she asked eagerly. 
 
 " Let us — let us wait and see," said Gordon, and then 
 Abdullah came in to lay the table. 
 
 XX 
 
 As soon as the midday meal was over Gordon escaped 
 to his own room — the room he shared with Ishmael — and 
 throwing himself down on the angerib with his hands 
 clasped across his face, he tried to think out the situation 
 in which he found himself, to gaze into the depths of his 
 conscience and to see where he was and what he ought 
 to do. 
 
 So violent was the state of his soul that he sat there a 
 long time before he could link together his memories of 
 what had happened since he arrived in Khartoum. 
 
 "Am I dreaming?" he asked himself again and again, 
 .as one by one his thoughts rolled over him like tempestu- 
 ous waves. 
 
 The first thing he saw clearly was that Ishmael was not 
 now the same man that he had seen at Alexandria; that 
 the anxieties, responsibilities, and sufferings he had gone 
 through as a religious leader had dissipated his strong com- 
 mon-sense; and that as a consequence the caution whereby 
 men guard their conduct had gone. 
 
 He also saw that Ishmael's spiritual ecstasy had reached 
 a point not far removed from madness; that his faith in
 
 356 THE WHITE PEOPHET 
 
 divine guidance, divine guardianship, divine intervention 
 had become an absolute obsession. 
 
 Therefore it was hopeless to try to move him from his 
 purpose by any appeals on the score of danger to himself 
 or to his people. 
 
 " He is determined to go into Cairo," thought Gordon, 
 " and into Cairo he will go." 
 
 The next thing Gordon saw, as he examined the situa- 
 tion before him, was that Helena was powerless to undo 
 the work which by the cruel error of fate she had been led 
 to do; that her act was irrevocable; that there was no call- 
 ing it back, and that it would go from its consequences to 
 the consequences of its consequences. 
 
 Helena's face appeared before him, and his heart bled 
 for her as he thought of how she passed before him — she 
 who had always been so bold and gay — with her once proud 
 head bent low. He remembered her former strength and 
 self-reliance; her natural force and grace; her fearless 
 daring and that dash of devilry which had been for him 
 one of her greatest charms, and then he thought of her 
 false position in that house, brought there by her own will, 
 held there by her own act — a tragic figure of a woman in. 
 the meshes of her own net. 
 
 " She cannot continue to live like this. It is impossi- 
 ble. Yet what can the end be? " he asked himself. 
 
 Hours passed like this. His head under his hot hands 
 burned and his temples throbbed, yet no ray of light 
 emerged from the darkness surrounding him. 
 
 But at length the man in him, the soldier and the lover, 
 swept down every obstacle, and he told himself that he 
 must save Helena from the consequences of her own con- 
 duct, whatever the result might be. 
 
 " I must ! I must ! " he kept on repeating as Helena's 
 face rose before him; and after a while this blind resolu- 
 tion brought him at one stride to a new idea. 
 
 Ishmael was determined to go into Cairo, but there was 
 one way to prevent him doing so — that he, Gordon himself, 
 should go instead ! 
 
 When he first thought of that his temples beat so vio-
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 357 
 
 lently that it seemed as if they would burst, and he felt as 
 if he had been brought to the very brink of despair. See- 
 ing nothing before him but instant arrest the moment he 
 entered the city, it seemed to be a pitiful end to his long 
 journey across the desert, a poor sequel to his fierce strug- 
 gle with himself, and to the mystic hopes with which he 
 had buoyed up his heart, that immediately after he had 
 reached Khartoum he should turn back to his death. 
 
 Work, mission, redemption — all that had so recently 
 had a meaning for him had disappeared. But his heart 
 rose when he remembered that if he did what he had de- 
 termined to do, the cruel error of fate would be broken 
 whereby Ishmael had been doomed to die for an offence he 
 did not commit. 
 
 What was the first fact of this cruel situation? That 
 Helena had believed Ishmael to be guilty of the death of 
 her father. But Ishmael was innocent, whereas he, Gor- 
 don, was guilty! Could he allow an innocent man to die 
 for his crime? 
 
 That brought him to the crisis of his conscience. It 
 settled everything. Destiny, acting under the blind force 
 of a poor girl's love for her father, was sending Ishmael to 
 his death. But destiny should be defeated ! He should pay 
 his own penalty! Ishmael should be snatched from the 
 doom that threatened him, and Helena should be saved 
 from lifelong remorse. 
 
 " Yes, yes, I must go into Cairo instead," he told himself. 
 
 It had grown late by this time and the bedroom had be- 
 come dark when Abdullah knocked at the door and said 
 that the Sheikhs were in the guest-room and Ishmael was 
 asking for Omar. 
 
 Under its roof thatched with stalks of durah, lit by 
 lamps suspended from its rafters, the Ulema and Notables 
 of Khartoum — the same that visited the Sirdar — had gath- 
 ered soon after sunset, and squatting on the divans covered 
 by carpets and cushions, had drunk their coffee and talked 
 in their winding, circuitous Eastern way of the business be- 
 fore them and particularly of the White Lady's part in it, 
 while they waited for Ishmael, who was still at the mosque. 
 24
 
 358 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Yes," the vivacious old Pasha had said, " no matter how 
 great a man may be, when he undertakes an enterprise like 
 this he should always consult ten of his friends." 
 
 " But great ones are not great in friends," said a 
 younger Sheikh. "What if he has not got ten?" 
 
 " Then let him consult one friend ten times over." 
 
 " Nay, but if he stands so high that he has not got even 
 one friend ? " 
 
 " Then," said the old man, with a sly look over his shoul- 
 der toward the women's side of the house, " let him consult 
 his wife and whatever she advises let him do the contrary." 
 
 When Gordon in his Bedouin dress entered the guest- 
 room, Ishmael was sitting in the midst of his people, and 
 he called to him to take the seat by his right side. 
 
 " But where is the Rani ? " he asked, looking round, 
 whereupon Abdullah answered that she was still in her 
 room, and the old Pasha hinted that in the emancipation 
 of the Eastern woman perhaps women themselves would be 
 the chief impediment. 
 
 " I know ! I know ! " said Islmiael. " But all the same 
 we must turn our backs on the madness of a bygone age 
 that woman is inferior to man, and her counsel is not to 
 be trusted. Bring her, Abdullah." 
 
 A few minutes afterward Helena, wearing her Indian veil 
 but with her face uncovered, entered the guest-room with 
 downcast eyes, followed by the Arab woman and the child. 
 
 It cut Gordon to the quick to see her look of shame and 
 of confusion, but Ishmael saw nothing in Helena's manner 
 except maidenly modesty under the eyes of so many men, 
 and making a place for her on his left, he began without 
 further delay on the business that had brought them 
 together. 
 
 They were about to win a dear victory for God, but it 
 was to be a white war, a bloodless revolution. The heart- 
 less festivities that were to be held in honour of the birth- 
 day of the King who lived across the seas while people per- 
 ished in Egypt, were to reach their climax something more 
 than a month hence. Therefore the great caravan of God's 
 children who were to cross the desert by camel and horse
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 359 
 
 and ass, in order that they might meet the Expected One 
 when he appeared in Cairo, should start within a week. 
 But the messenger of God who had to prepare the path, 
 before them must go by train, and he ought to leave Khar- 
 toum in four days. 
 
 Other preliminaries of the pilgrimage there were to ar- 
 range, and after the manner of their kind the Sheikhs 
 talked long and leisurely, agreeing finally that Ishmael 
 should go first into Cairo in the disguise of a Bedouin 
 Sheikh to make sure of the success of their mission, and 
 that Omar (Gordon) should follow him in command of the 
 body of the people. 
 
 At length there was silence for a moment and then Ish- 
 mael said: 
 
 " Is there anything else, my brothers ? " 
 
 And at that Gordon, who had not spoken before, turned 
 to him and answered, in the style as well as the language 
 of the Arabs. 
 
 " Listen, I beg of you, to my words, and forgive me if 
 what I say is not pleasing to you or yours." 
 
 " Speak, Omar Benani, speak," said Ishmael, laying his 
 right hand, with an affectionate gesture, on Gordon's left. 
 
 There was a moment of silence in which Gordon could 
 distinctly hear the sound of Helena's breathing. Then he 
 said: 
 
 " Reverse your order, oh, my brother, and let me go first 
 into Cairo." 
 
 A tingling electrical current seemed to pass through the 
 air of the room, and again Gordon heard the sound of He- 
 lena's laboured breathing, but no one spoke except Ishmael, 
 who said, in a soft Toice : 
 
 "But why, Omar, why?" 
 
 Gordon braced himself up and answered: 
 
 " First, because it best becomes a messenger of God to 
 enter Cairo in the company of his people, not alone and in 
 disguise." 
 
 " And next ? " 
 
 "Next, because I know Cairo better than Ishmael, and 
 all that he can do I can do, and more."
 
 360 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 There was another moment of tense silence, and then 
 Ishmael said : 
 
 "I listen to your sincere proposal, oh, my brother, but 
 before I answer it I ask for the counsel of my friends." 
 
 Then raising his voice, he cried : " Companions, you 
 have heard what Omar Benani has said — which of us is it 
 to be?" 
 
 At that the electrical atmosphere in the room broke into 
 eager and impetuous speech. First came, as needs must in 
 an Eastern conclave, some guests of questions, then certain 
 breezes of protest, but finally a strong and unbroken current 
 of assent. 
 
 " Master," said one of the Sheikhs, " I liave eaten bread 
 and salt with you, therefore I will not deceive you. Let 
 Omar go first. lie can do all that Ishmael can do and run 
 no risk." 
 
 " Messenger of the Merciful," said another, " neither wiU. 
 I deceive you. Omar knows Cairo best. Therefore let h.im 
 go first." 
 
 After others had answered in the same way Ishmael 
 turned to Mahmud, his uncle, whereupon the old man wiped 
 his rheumy eyes and said: 
 
 " Your life is in God's hand, son of my brother, and 
 man camiot escape his destiny. If it is God's will that you 
 should be the first to go into Cairo, you will go and God 
 will protect you. But speaking for myself, I should think 
 it a shame and a humiliation that the father of his people 
 should not enter the city with his children. If Omar says 
 he can do as much as you, believe him — the white man does 
 not lie." 
 
 No sooner had the old man concluded than the whole 
 company with one voice shouted that they were all of the 
 same opinion, whereupon Ishmael cried: 
 
 "So be it then! Omar it shall be! And do not think 
 for one moment that I grudge your choice." 
 
 " El Hamdullillah ! " shouted the company, as from a 
 sense of otherwise inexpressible relief. 
 
 Meantime Gordon was conscious only of Helena's vio- 
 lent agitation. Though he dared not look at her he seemed
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 361 
 
 to see her feverish face, and the expression of terror in her 
 lustrous eyes. At length, when the shouts of the Sheikhs 
 had subsided, he heard her tremulous voice saying hur- 
 riedly to Ishmael: 
 
 " Do not listen to them." 
 
 " But why, my Rani ? " Ishmael asked in a whisper. 
 
 She tried to answer him and could not. " Because — 
 because " 
 
 " Because — what ? " asked Ishmael again. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know — I can't think — but I beg you, I in- 
 treat you, not to let Omar go into Cairo." 
 
 Her agitated voice made another moment of silence,, 
 and then Ishmael said in a soft, indulgent tone : 
 
 "I understand you, oh, my Rani! This may be the task 
 of greatest danger, but it is the place of highest honour, 
 too, and you would fain see no man except your husband 
 assigned to it. But Omar is of me and I am of him, and 
 there can be no pride or jealousy between us." 
 
 And then taking Gordon by the right hand, while with, 
 his left he was holding Helena, he said : 
 
 " Omar, my friend, my brother ! " 
 
 " El Hamdullillah ! " cried the Sheikhs again, and then 
 one by one they rose to go. 
 
 Helena arose, too, and with her face aflame and her 
 breath coming in gusts she hurried back to her room. The 
 Arab woman followed her in a moment, and with a mock- 
 ing smile in her glinting eyes she said : 
 
 " How happy you must be, O lady, that some one else 
 than your husband is to go into that place of danger ! " 
 
 But Helena could bear no more. 
 
 " Go out of the room this moment ! I cannot endure 
 you ! I hate you ! Go, woman, go ! " she cried. 
 
 Zenoba fled before the fury in her lady's face, but at 
 the next moment Helena had dropped to the floor and burst 
 into a flood of tears. 
 
 "When she gained possession of herself again the child, 
 Ayesha, was embracing her and, without knowing why, was 
 weeping over her wet cheeks.
 
 362 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 XXI 
 
 Now that Gordon was to take Ishmael's place, Helena 
 found herself deeper than ever in the toils of her own plot. 
 She could see nothing but death before him as the result 
 of his return to Cairo. If his identity were discovered he 
 would die for his own offences as a soldier. If it were not 
 discovered he would be executed for Ishmael's conspiracies 
 as she had made them known. 
 
 " Oh, it cannot be ! It must not be ! It shall not be ! " 
 she continued to say to herself, but without seeing a way 
 to prevent it. 
 
 Xever for a moment in her anxiety to save Gordon from 
 stepping into the pit she had dug for Ishmael did she allow 
 herself to think that being the real cause of her father's 
 death, he deserved the penalty she had prepared for the 
 guilty man. Her mind had altered toward that event since 
 the man concerned in it had changed. The more she 
 thought of it the more sure she became that it was a to- 
 tally different thing from the thing she had proposed — in 
 the strict sense hardly a crime at all. 
 
 In the first place she reminded herself that her father 
 had suffered from an affection of the heart which must 
 have contributed to his death even if it had not been the 
 principal cause of it. How could she have forgotten that 
 fact until now? 
 
 Remembering her father's excitement and exhaustion 
 when she saw him last, she could see for the first time, by 
 the light of Gordon's story, what had afterward occurred — 
 the burst of ungovernable passion, the struggle, the fall, 
 the death. 
 
 Then she told herself that Gordon had not intended to 
 kill her father, and whatever he did had been done for love 
 of her. " Helena was mine, and you have taken her from 
 me, and broken her heart as well as my own." Yes, love 
 for her and the torment of losing her, had brought Gordon 
 back to the Citadel after he had been ordered to return to 
 his quarters. Love for her and the delirium of a broken
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 363 
 
 heart had rung out of him the insults which had led to the 
 quarrel which resulted in her father's death. 
 
 In spite of her lingering tenderness for the memory of 
 her father, she began to see how much he had been to 
 blame for what had happened — to think of the gross indig- 
 nity, the frightful shame, the unmerciful and even unlaw- 
 ful degradation to which in his towering rage he had sub- 
 jected Gordon. The scene came back to her with horrible 
 distinctness now — her father crying in a half-stifled voice : 
 " You are a traitor ! A traitor who has consorted with the 
 enemies of his country," and then ripping Gordon's sword 
 from its scabbard and breaking it across his knee. 
 
 But seeing this, she also saw her own share in what had 
 occurred. At the moment of Gordon's deepest humiliation 
 she had driven him away from her. Her pride had con- 
 quered her love, and instead of flinging herself into his 
 arms as she ought to have done, whether he was in the right 
 or in the wrong, when everybody else was trampling upon 
 him, she had insulted him with reproaches and turned her 
 back upon him in his disgrace. 
 
 That scene came back to her, too — Gordon at the door 
 of the General's house, with his deathly white face and 
 trembling lips, stammering out : " I couldn't help it, Helena 
 — it was impossible for me to act otherwise," and then, 
 bareheaded as he was and with every badge of rank and 
 honour gone, staggering across the garden to the gate. 
 
 When she thought of all this now, it seemed to her that 
 if anybody had been to blame for her father's death it was 
 not Gordon but herself. His had been the hand, the blind 
 hand only, but the heart that had wrought the evil had been 
 hers. 
 
 " Oh ! it cannot be, it shall not be ! " she continued to 
 say to herself, and just as she had tried to undo her work 
 with Ishmael when he was bent on going into Cairo, so she 
 determined to do the same with Gordon, now that he had 
 stepped into Ishmael's place. 
 
 Her opportunity came soon. 
 
 A little before midday of the day following the meeting 
 of the Sheikhs, she was alone in the guest-room, sitting at
 
 364 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 the brass table that sei-ved her as a desk — Ishmael being 
 in the camp, Zenoba and the child in the town, and old 
 Mahmud still in bed — when Gordon came out of the men's 
 quarter and walked toward the door as if intending to pass 
 out of the house. 
 
 He had seen her as he came from his bedroom, with 
 one of her hands pressed to her brow, and a feeling of in- 
 expressible pity and unutterable longing had so taken pos- 
 session of him, with the thought that he was soon to lose 
 her — the most precious gift life had given him — that he 
 had tried to steal away. 
 
 But instinctively she felt his approach, and with a 
 trembling voice she called to him, so he returned and stood 
 by her side. 
 
 " Why are you doing this ? " she said. " You know what 
 I mean. Why are you doing it ? " 
 
 " You know quite well why I am doing it, Helena. Ish- 
 mael was determined to go to his death. There was only 
 one way to prevent him. I had to take it." 
 
 " But you are going to death yourself — isn't that so ? " 
 
 He did not answer. He was trying not to look at her. 
 
 " Or perhaps you see some way of escape — do you ? " 
 
 Still he did not speak — ^he was even trying not to hear 
 her. 
 
 " If not, why are you going into Cairo instead of Ish- 
 mael?" 
 
 " Don't ask me that, Helena. I would rather not answer 
 you." 
 
 Suddenly the tears came into her eyes, and after a mo- 
 ment's silence she said : 
 
 " I know ! I understand ! But remember your father. 
 He loves you. You may not think it, but he does, I am 
 sure he does. Yet if you go into Cairo you know quite well 
 what he will do." 
 
 " My father is a great man, Helena. He will do his 
 duty whatever happens — what he believes to be his duty." 
 
 " Certainly he will, but all the same do you think he 
 will not suffer? And do you wish to put him into the posi- 
 tion of being compelled to cut off his own son? Is that
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 305 
 
 right? Can anything — anytliing in the world — make it 
 necessary ? " 
 
 Gordon did not answer her, but under the strain of his 
 emotion he tightened his lips and his pinched nostrils be- 
 gan to dilate like the nostrils of a horse. 
 
 " Then remember your mother, too," said Helena. " She 
 is weak and ill. It breaks my heart to think of her as I saw 
 her last. She believes that you have fled away to some for- 
 eign country, but she is living in the hope that time will 
 justify you, and then you will be reconciled to your father, 
 and come back to her again. Is this how you would come 
 back ?— Oh, it will kill her ! I'm sure it will ! " 
 
 She saw that Gordon's strong and manly face was now 
 utterly discomposed and she could not help but follow up 
 her advantage. 
 
 " Then think a little of me, too, Gordon. This is all my 
 fault, and if anything is done to you in Cairo it will be 
 just the same to me as if I had done it. Do you wish me 
 to die of remorse ? " 
 
 She saw that he was struggling to restrain himself, and 
 turning her beautiful wet eyes upon him and laying her 
 hand on his arm, she said: 
 
 " Don't go back to Cairo, Gordon ! For my sake, for 
 your own sake, for our love's sake " 
 
 But Gordon could bear no more, and he cried in a low, 
 hoarse whisper : 
 
 " Helena, for Heaven's sake, don't speak so. I knew it 
 wouldn't be easy to do what I intended to do, and it isn't 
 easy. But don't make it harder for me than it is, I beg, I 
 pray." 
 
 She tried to speak again, but he would not listen. 
 
 " When you sent the message into Cairo that doomed 
 Ishmael to death, you thought he had killed your father. 
 If he had really done so he would have deserved all you did 
 to him. But he hadn't, whereas I had — do you think I can 
 let an innocent man die for my crime ? " 
 
 " But, Gordon — " she began, and again he stopped her. 
 
 " Don't speak about it, Helena. For Heaven's sake, 
 don't! I've fought this battle with myself before and I 
 25
 
 366 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 can't fight it over again. With your eyes upon me, too, 
 your voice in my ears, and your presence by my side." 
 
 He was trying to move away and she was still clinging 
 to his arm. 
 
 "Don't speak about our love, either. All that is over 
 now. You must know it is. There is a barrier between us 
 that can never " 
 
 His voice was breaking and he was struggling to tear 
 himself away from her, but she leaped to her feet and 
 cried : 
 
 " Gordon, you shall hear me, you must ! " and then he 
 stopped short and looked at her. 
 
 " You think you were the cause of my father's death, 
 but you were not," she said. 
 
 His mouth opened, his lips trembled, he grew deathly 
 
 pale. 
 
 "You think, too, that there is a barrier of blood be- 
 tween us, but there is no such thing." 
 
 " Take care of what you are saying, Helena." 
 
 " What I am saying is the truth, Gordon — it is God's 
 truth." 
 
 He looked blankly at her for a moment in silence ; then 
 laid hold of her violently by both arms, gazed closely into 
 her face and said in a low, trembling voice: 
 
 " Helena, if you knew what it is to live for months un- 
 der the shadow of a sin — an awful sin — an unpardonable 
 gin— surely you wouldn't— But why don't you speak? 
 Speak, girl, speak! " 
 
 Then Helena looked fearlessly back into his excited face 
 
 and said: 
 
 " Gordon, do you remember that you came to ray room 
 in the Citadel before you went into that — that fatal inter- 
 view ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes ! How can I forget it? " 
 
 " Do you also remember what I told you then — that 
 whatever happened that day I could never leave my 
 father?" 
 
 " Yes, certainly, yes." 
 
 " Do you remember that you asked me why and I said
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 367 
 
 I couldn't tell you because it was a secret — somebody else's 
 secret ^ " 
 
 " Well ? " His pulses were beating violently ; she could 
 feel them throbbing on her arms. 
 
 " Gordon," she said, " do you know what that secret 
 was? I can tell you now. Do you know what it was?" 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 " That my father was suffering from heart-disease and 
 had already received his death-warrant." 
 
 She waited for Gordon to speak, but he was almost 
 afraid to breathe. 
 
 " He didn't know his condition until we arrived in 
 Egypt, and then perhaps he ought to have resigned his 
 commission, but he had been out of the service for two 
 years, and the temptation to remain was too much for him, 
 so he asked me to promise to say nothing about it." 
 
 Gordon released her arms and she sat down again. He 
 stood over her breathing fast and painfully. 
 
 " I thought you ought to have been told at the time 
 •when we became engaged, but my father said : ' No ! Why 
 put him in a false position and burden him with responsi- 
 bilities he ought not to bear?'" 
 
 Helena's own voice was breaking now, and as Gordon 
 listened to it he was looking down at her flushed face, 
 which was thinner than before but more beautifuV than 
 ever in his eyes and a hundredfold more touching than 
 when it first won his heart. 
 
 " I tried to tell you that day, too, before you went into 
 the General's office, so that you might see for yourself, 
 dear, that if you separated yourself from my father I — I 
 couldn't possibly follow you, but there was my promise and 
 then — then my pride and — and something you said that 
 pained and wounded me " 
 
 " I know, I know, I know," he said. 
 
 " But now," she continued, rising to her feet again, 
 " now," she repeated, in the same trembling voice, but with 
 a look of joy and triumph, " now that you have told me 
 what happened after your return to the Citadel, I see quite 
 clearly — I am sure — perfectly sure — that my dear father
 
 36S THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 died not by your hand at all but by the hand and the will 
 of God." 
 
 " Helena ! Helena ! " cried Gordon, and in the tempest 
 of his love and the overwhelming sense of his boundless re- 
 lief, he Hung his arms about her and covered her face 
 with kisses. 
 
 One long moment of immeasurable joy they were per- 
 mitted to know, and then the hand of fate snatched at 
 them again. 
 
 From their intoxicating happiness they were awakened 
 by a voice. It was only the voice of the muezzin calling 
 to midday prayers, but it seemed to be reproaching them, 
 separating them, tearing them asunder, reminding them 
 of where they were now and what they were, and that God 
 was over them. 
 
 -#?^=^fe^^^=^=^h==^=^ 
 
 - ;; J- ^ ^rT- r ^'f"^ - 
 
 
 ^""^ r-^^^n^ 
 
 AL-LA-IIU AK-BAR. AL LA - - UU AK-BAR. 
 
 God is Most Great! God is Most Great! 
 
 Their lips parted ; their arms fell away from each 
 other, and, irresistibly, simultaneously, as if by an impulse 
 of the same heart, they dropped to their knees to pray for 
 pardon. 
 
 The voice of the muezzin ceased, and in the silence of 
 the following moment they heard a soft footstep coming 
 behind. 
 
 It was Ishmael. He did not speak to either of them, 
 but seeing them on their knees, at the hour of midday 
 prayers, he stepped up and knelt between. 
 
 XXII 
 
 WiTEX Gordon had time to examine the new situation in 
 which he found himself he saw that he was now in a worse 
 case than before. 
 
 It had been an inexpressible relief to realise that he was
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 369 
 
 not the first cause of the General's death, and therefore 
 that conscience did not require him to go into Cairo in 
 order to protect Ishmael from the consequences of a crime 
 he did not commit. But no sooner had he passed this great 
 crisis than he was brought up against a great test. What 
 was it to him that he could save his life if he had to lose 
 Helena ? 
 
 Helena was now Ishmael's wife — betrothed to him by 
 the most sacred pledges of Mohammedan law. If the bar- 
 rier of blood which had kept him from Helena had been 
 removed, the barrier of marriage which kept Helena from 
 him remained. 
 
 "What can we do?" he asked himself, and for a long 
 time he saw no answer. 
 
 In the fierce struggle that followed, honour and duty- 
 seemed to say that inasmuch as Helena had entered into 
 this union of her own free will — however passively acqui- 
 escing in its strange conditions — she must abide by it, and 
 he must leave her where she was and crush down his con- 
 suming passion, which was an unholy passion now. But 
 honour and duty are halting and timorous guides in the 
 presence of love, and when Gordon came to think of 
 Helena as the actual wife of Ishmael, he was conscious of 
 nothing but the flame that was burning at his heart's core. 
 
 Kemembering what Helena had told him, and what he 
 had seen since he came to that house, he reminded himself 
 that after all the marriage was only a marriage pro forma, 
 a promise made under the mysterious compulsion of Fate, 
 a contract of convenience and perhaps generosity on the 
 one side, and on the other side of dark and calculating de- 
 signs -which would not bear to be thought of any longer, 
 being a result of the blind leading of awful passions under 
 circumstances of the most irresistible provocation. 
 
 When he came to think of love he was dead to every- 
 thing else. Ishmael did not love Helena, whereas he, Gor- 
 don, loved her with all his heart and soul and strength. 
 She was everything in life to him, and thougii he might 
 have gone to his death without her it was impossible to live 
 and leave her behind him.
 
 370 THE WHITE TROPHET 
 
 Thinking: so, he began to conjure up the picture of a 
 time wlien Tshinael, under the influence of Helena's beauty 
 and charm, might perliaps forget the bargain between 
 them, and claim his rights as a husband ; and then the 
 thought of hor beautiful head, with its dark curling locks, 
 as it lay in his arms that day, lying in the arms of the 
 Arab, with Ishmael's swarthy face above her, so tortured 
 him that it swept away every other consideration. 
 
 " It must not, shall not, cannot be ! " he told himself. 
 
 And that brought him to the final thought that since 
 he loved Helena, and since Helena loved him and not her 
 husband, their position in Ishmael's house was utterly false 
 and wrong and could not possibly continue. 
 
 " It is not fair even to Ishmael himself," he thought. 
 
 And when, struggling with his conscience, he asked 
 himself how he was to put an end to the odious and mis- 
 erable situation, he concluded at once that he would go 
 boldly to Ishmael and tell him the whole story of Helena's 
 error and temptation, thereby securing his sympathy and 
 extricating all of them from the position in which they 
 were placed. 
 
 " Anything will be better than the present state of 
 things," he thought, as he reflected upon the difficult and 
 delicate task he intended to undertake. 
 
 But after a moment he saw that while it would be hard 
 to explain Helena's impulse of vengeance to the man who 
 had been the object of it, to tell him of the message she 
 had sent into Cairo would be utterly impossible. 
 
 " I cannot say anything to Ishmael about that," he 
 thought, and the only logical sequence of ideas was that 
 he could not say anything to Ishmael at all. 
 
 This left him with only one conclusion — that inasmuch 
 as it was impossible that he and Helena could remain any 
 longer in that house, and equally impossible that they 
 could leave it with Ishmael's knowledge and consent, there 
 was nothing for them to do but to fly away. 
 
 He found it hard to reconcile himself to the idea of a 
 secret flight. The very thought of it seemed to put them 
 into the position of adulterers, deceiving an unsuspecting
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 371 
 
 husband. But when he remembered the scene in the guest- 
 room that day, the moment of overpowering love, the irre- 
 sistible kiss, and then the crushing sense of duplicity, as 
 Ishmael entered and without a thought of treachery knelt 
 between them, he told himself that at any cost whatsoever 
 he must put an end to the false position in which they 
 lived. 
 
 " We must do it soon — the sooner the better," he 
 thought. 
 
 Though he had lived so long with the thought of losing 
 Helena, that kiss had in a moment put his soul and body 
 into a flame. He knew that his love was blinding him to 
 certain serious considerations, and that some of these 
 would rise up later and perhaps accuse him of selfishness 
 or disloyalty or worse. But he could only think of Helena 
 now, and his longing to possess her made him dead to 
 everything else. 
 
 In a fever of excitement he began to think out plans 
 for their escape and reflecting that two days had still to 
 pass before the train left Khartoum by which it had been 
 intended that he should travel in his character as Ishmael's 
 messenger, he decided that it was impossible for them to 
 wait for that. 
 
 They must get away at once by camel if not by rail. 
 And remembering Osman, his former guide and companion, 
 he concluded to go over to the Gordon College and secure 
 his aid. 
 
 Having reached this point he asked himself if he ought 
 not to obtain Helena's consent before going any further, 
 but no, he would not wait even for that. And then, re- 
 membering how utterly crushed she was, a victim of storm 
 and tempest, a bird with a broken wing, he assumed the 
 attitude of strength toward her, telling himself she was a 
 woman after all, and it was his duty as a man to think and 
 to act for her. 
 
 So he set out in haste to see Osman, and when, on his 
 way through the town, he passed (without being recog- 
 nised) a former comrade in khaki, a Colonel of Lancers, 
 whose life had been darkened by the loss of his wife
 
 372 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 through the treachery of a brother officer, he felt no 
 quahns at all at the thought of taking Helena from Ish- 
 mael. 
 
 " Ours is a different case altogether," he said, and then 
 he told himself that their life would be all the brighter in 
 the future because it had had this terrible event in it. 
 
 It was late and dark when he returned from the Gordon 
 College, and then old Malimud's house was as busy as a fair 
 with people coming and going on errands relating to the 
 impending pilgrimage, but he watched his opportunity to 
 speak to Helena, and as soon as Ishmael, who was more 
 than commonly animated and excited that night, had dis- 
 missed his followers and gone to the door to drive them 
 home, he approached her and whispered in her ear : 
 
 " Helena ! " 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " Can you be ready to leave Khartoum at four o'clock 
 in the morning ? " 
 
 For a moment she made no reply. It seemed to her an 
 incredible happiness that they were really to go away to- 
 gether. But quickly collecting her wandering thoughts 
 she answered: 
 
 " Yes, I can be ready." 
 
 " Then go down to the Post Landing. I shall be there 
 with a launch." 
 
 " Yes, yes ! " Her heart was beating furiously. 
 
 " Osman, the guide who brought me here, will be wait' 
 ing with camels on the other side of the river." 
 
 " Yes, yes, yes ! " 
 
 " We are to ride as far as Atbara, and take train from 
 there to the Red Sea." 
 
 "And what then?" 
 
 " God knows wliat then. We must wait for the direc- 
 tion of fate. America, perhaps, as we always hoped and 
 
 intended, 
 
 jj 
 
 She looked quickly round, then took his face between 
 her hands and kissed him. 
 
 " To-morrow morning at four o'clock," she whispered. 
 " At four," he repeated.
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 373 
 
 A thousand thoughts were flashing through her mind 
 but she asked no further questions, and at the next moment 
 she went off to her own quarters. 
 
 The door of her room was ajar, and the face of the 
 Arab woman, who was within, doing something with the 
 clothes of the child, seemed to wear the same mocking 
 smile as before; but Helena was neither angry nor alarmed. 
 When she asked herself if the woman had seen or heard 
 what had taken place between Gordon and herself no dan- 
 gers loomed before her in relation to their flight. 
 
 Her confidence in Gordon — his strength, his courage, 
 his power to protect her — was absolute. If he intended to 
 take her away he would do so, and not Ishmael or all the 
 Arabs on earth would stop him. 
 
 XXIII 
 
 Gordon did not allow himself to sleep that night, lest 
 he should not be awake when the hour came to go. The 
 room he shared with Ishmael was large and it had one 
 window looking to the river and another to Khartoum. 
 Through these windows, which were open, he heard every 
 noise of the desert town by night. 
 
 Sometimes there was the dead measured thud of a 
 camel's tread on the unpaved streets; sometimes the light 
 jolt of a donkey's hoofs; at intervals there were the faint 
 and distant cries of the night-watchmen from various parts 
 of the town, intersecting the air like cross currents of wire- 
 less telegraphy, and once an hour there was the sharp gut- 
 tural voice of Black Zogal at the door of their own house, 
 calling the confession of faith. 
 
 " There is no god but God — no god but God ! " 
 
 It had been late when Ishmael came to bed, and even 
 then, being excited and in high spirits, and finding Gordon 
 still awake, he had talked for a long time in the darkness 
 of his preparations for the forthcoming pilgrimage and his 
 hopes of its progress across the desert — three and a half
 
 374 THE WHITE TROPHET 
 
 miles an hour, fourteen hours a day, making a month for 
 the journey altogether. But finding that Gordon did not 
 reply, and thinking he must be sleepy, he wished him a good- 
 night and a blessed morning, and then, with a few more 
 words that were trustful, affectionate, warm-hearted and 
 brotherly, he fell asleep. 
 
 It was after twelve by this time, and though Gordon in- 
 tended to rise at three it seemed to him that the few hours 
 between would never end. He listened to the measured 
 breathing of the sleeping man and counted the cries outside, 
 but the time passed as if with feet of lead. 
 
 It was never quite dark and through the luminous dark- 
 blue of the southern night, fretted with stars, nearly every- 
 thing outside could be dimly seen. Of all lights, that is the 
 one most conducive to thought, and in spite of himself 
 Gordon could not help thinking. The obstinate questions 
 which he had been able to crush down during the day were 
 now rising to torment him. 
 
 " \Miat will happen when this household, which is now 
 asleep, awakes in the morning ? " he asked himself. 
 
 He knew quite well what would happen. He would soon 
 be missed. Helena would be missed, too, and it would be 
 concluded that they had gone together. But after he had 
 banished the picture which rose to his mind's eye of the 
 confusion that would ensue on the discovery of their flight, 
 he set himself to defend it. 
 
 It was true that he was breaking the pledge he had made 
 to the people when he undertook to go into Cairo, but he 
 had made his promise under a mistake as to his own position, 
 and therefore it was not incumbent upon him to keep it now 
 that he knew the truth. 
 
 It was true that Helena was breaking the betrothal which 
 she had entered into with Ishmael, but she, too, had acted 
 under an error, and therefore her marriage was not binding 
 upon her conscience. 
 
 But do what he would to justify himself he could not 
 shake off a sense of deceit and even of treachery. He 
 thought of Ishmael and how he had heaped kindness and 
 honour upon him since he came to Khartoum. He thought
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 375 
 
 of Helena and of the shame with which her flight would 
 overwhelm the man who considered himself her husband. 
 
 " Go on ! " something seemed to say in a taunting whis- 
 per. " Fly away ! Seek your own happiness and think of 
 nothing else! This is what you came to Khartoum for! 
 This is what your great hopes and aims amount to ! Leave 
 this good man in the midst of the confusion you have 
 brought upon him! Let him go into Cairo, innocent though 
 he is, and die by the cruel error of fate! That's good! 
 That's brave ! That's worthy of a man and a soldier ! " 
 
 Against thoughts like these he tried to set the memory 
 of old Mahmud's words at the meeting of the Sheikhs: 
 *' Man cannot resist his destiny. If God wills that you 
 should go into Cairo you will go and God will protect you ! " 
 
 But there was really only one way to reconcile himself 
 to what he intended to do, and that was to think of Helena 
 and to keep her beautiful face constantly before him. She 
 was on the other side of the wall, and she would be awake 
 now — the only other person in the house who was not 
 asleep — thinking of him and waiting for the hour when they 
 were to escape. 
 
 The luminous dark blue of the air died into the soft 
 red of early dawn, the " Wahhed " of the night-watchmen 
 became less frequent, and the call of Black Zogal stopped 
 altogether. It was now three o'clock and Gordon, who had 
 not undressed, rose to a sitting position on his bed. 
 
 This brought him face to face with Ishmael, whose 
 angerib was on the opposite side of the room. The Arab 
 was sleeping peacefully. He, too, had lain down in his 
 clothes, having to rise early, but he had unrolled his turban, 
 leaving nothing on his head but his Mecca skull-cap. which 
 made him look like the picture of a saintly Pope. The dim 
 light that was filtering through the windows rested on him 
 as he lay in his white garments under a white sheepskin. 
 There was a look of serenity, of radiance, almost of divin- 
 ity in his tranquil face. 
 
 Gordon felt as if he were a thief and a murderer — steal- 
 ing from and stabbing the man who loved and trusted him. 
 He had an almost irresistible impulse to waken Ishmael
 
 37G THE WHITE TROPHET 
 
 there and then and tell him plainly what he was about to 
 do. But the thought of Helena came back again, and he re- 
 membered that that was quite impossible. 
 
 At length he rose to go. He was still wearing Hafiz's 
 slippers, but he found himself stepping on his toes to deaden 
 the sound of his tread. When he got to the door he opened 
 it carefully so as to make no noise; but just at that moment 
 the sleeping man stirred and began to speak. 
 
 In the toneless voice of sleep but nevertheless with an 
 accent of affection w^hich Gordon had never heard from him 
 before, Ishmael said : 
 
 "Eani! J/i/Eani!" 
 
 Gordon stood and listened, not daring to move. After 
 a moment all was quiet again. There was no sound in the 
 room but Ishmael's measured breathing as before. 
 
 How Gordon got out at last he never quite knew. When 
 he recovered his self-possession he was in the guest-room, 
 drawing aside the curtain that covered the open doorway 
 and feeling the cool, fresh, odourless desert air on his hot 
 face and in his nostrils. 
 
 He saw Black Zogal stretched out at the bottom of the 
 wooden steps, fast asleep and with his staff beside him. 
 The insurgent dawn was sweeping up, but all was silent both 
 within and without. Save for the Nubian's heavy snoring 
 there was not a sound about the house. 
 
 Feeling his throat to be parched, he turned back to the 
 water-niche for a drink, and while he was lifting the can to 
 his lips his eye fell on a letter which had been left for him 
 there, having come by the train which arrived late last night 
 and then been specially delivered after he had gone to bed. 
 
 The letter, which was in a black-bordered envelope, was 
 addressed: 
 
 " SiiEiKH Omar Benani in the care of Ishmael Ameer." 
 
 At first sight the handwriting struck him like a familiar 
 face, but before he had time to recognise it, he was conscious 
 of a crushing sense of fatality, a vague but almost heart- 
 breaking impression that while he had been spending the 
 long black hours of the night in building up hopes of flying
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE , WORLD 377 
 
 away with Helena, this little packet of sealed paper had all 
 the time been waiting outside his door to tell him they 
 could not go. 
 
 He took it and opened it with trembling fingers and read 
 it at a glance as one reads a picture. It was from Hafiz 
 and it told him that his mother was dead. 
 
 Then all the pent-up pain and shame of the night rolled 
 over him like a breaking wave, and he dropped down onto 
 the nearest seat- and wept like a child. 
 
 XXIV 
 
 Contrary to Gordon's surmise Helena had slept soundly, 
 with the beautiful calm confidence of one who relied ab- 
 solutely upon him and thought her troubles were over; but 
 she awoke at half-past three as promptly as if an alarm 
 clock had awakened her. 
 
 The arms of Ayesha were then closely encircling her 
 neck and it was with difiiculty that she liberated herself 
 without awakening the child also, but as soon as she had 
 done so she could not resist an impulse to kiss the little one, 
 so boundless was her happiness and so entirely at that mo- 
 ment had she conquered the sense that Ishmael's innocent 
 daughter had been a constant torture to her. 
 
 Then dressing rapidly in her usual mixed Eastern and 
 Western costume, and throwing a travelling cloak over her 
 shoulders instead of her Indian veil, but giving no thought 
 to the other belongings which she must leave behind, she 
 stepped lightly out of the sleeping-room. 
 
 The moment she entered the guest-room she heard a 
 moan, and before realising where it came from, she said: 
 
 "Who's there?" 
 
 Then Gordon lifted his tear-stained face to her face, and, 
 without speaking, held out the letter which hung from his 
 helpless hand. 
 
 She took it and read it with a sense of overwhelming 
 disaster, while Gordon, with that access of grief which at the
 
 378 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 first moment of a great sorrow the presence of a loved one 
 brings, heaped reproaches upon himself, as if all that he 
 had done at the hard bidding of his conscience had been a 
 sin and a crime. 
 
 "Poor mother! My poor, dear mother! It was I who 
 made her last days unhappy." 
 
 Half an hour went by in this way, and the time for going 
 passed. Helena dared not tell him that their opportunity 
 for flight was slipping away — it seemed like an outrage to 
 think of that now — so she stood by his side, feeling power- 
 less to comfort him and dazed by the blow that had shattered 
 their hopes. 
 
 Then Black Zogal, being awakened by the sound of 
 Gordon's weeping, came in with his wild eyes, and after him 
 came Abdullah, and then Zenoba, who, gathering an idea of 
 trouble, went off to awaken Ishmael and old Mahmud, so 
 that in a little while the whole of the Arab household were 
 standing round Gordon as he sat doubled up on the edge of 
 a divan. 
 
 When Ishmael heard what had happened he was deeply 
 moved, and sitting down by Gordon's side he took one of 
 his hands and smoothed it, while in that throbbing voice 
 which went to the heart of everybody, and with a look of 
 suifering in his swarthy face and luminous black eyes, he 
 spoke some sjonpathetic words. 
 
 " All life ends in death, my brother. This world is a 
 place of going, not of staying. The mystery of pain — who 
 can fathom it ? Life would be unbearable but for one 
 thought — that God is over all. He rules everything for the 
 best. Yes, believe me, everything. I have had my hours of 
 sorrow, too, but I have always found it so." 
 
 After a while Gordon was able to control his grief, and 
 then Ishmael asked him if he would not read aloud his let- 
 ter. With some reluctance Gordon did so, but it required 
 all his self-control to repeat his mother's message. 
 
 Leaving out the usual Arabic salutations, he began where 
 Hafiz said : 
 
 " With a heavy heart I have to tell you, my most dear 
 brother, that your sweet and saintly mother died this morn-
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 379 
 
 ing. She had boon sinking ever since you went away, but 
 the end came so quickly that it took us all by surprise." 
 
 Gordon's voice thickened and Ishmael said: 
 
 " Take your time, brother." 
 
 " She had the consolation of her religion and I think 
 she passed in peace. There was only one thing clouded her 
 closing hours. On her death-bed she was constantly ex- 
 pressing an earnest hope that you might all be reunited — 
 you and she and your father and Helena, who are now so far 
 apart." 
 
 " Take time, oh, my brother," said Ishmael, and seeing 
 that Helena also was moved, he took her hand too, as if to 
 strengthen her. 
 
 Thus he sat between them, comforting both, while Gor- 
 don in a husky voice struggled on. 
 
 " Not long before she died she wished to send you a 
 message, but the power of life was low in her and she could 
 not write, except to sign her name (as you see below), and 
 then she did not know where you were to be found. But 
 my mother promised her that I should take care that what- 
 ever she said should come to your hands, and these were 
 the words she sent : ' Tell my boy that my last thoughts 
 were about him. Though I am sorry he took the side of 
 the false — the false prophet ' " 
 
 " Go on, brother, go on," said Ishmael in his soft voice. 
 
 " — say I am certain he did what he thought was right. 
 Be sure you tell him I died happy, because — because I know 
 I shall see him again. If I am never to see him in this 
 world I will do so in the world to come. Say — say I shall 
 be waiting for him there. And tell him it will not seem 
 long." 
 
 It was with difficulty that Gordon came to the end, for 
 his eyes were full of tears and his throat was parched and 
 tight, and he would have broken down altogether but for 
 the sense of Helena's presence by his side. 
 
 Ishmael was now more deeply moved than before. 
 
 " How she must have loved you ! " he said, and then he 
 began to speak of his own mother and what she had done for 
 him.
 
 380 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " She was only a poor, ignorant woman, perhaps, but 
 she died to save me, and I loved her with all my heart." 
 
 At that the two black servants, Abdullah and Zogal, who 
 had been standing before Gordon in silence, tried to utter 
 some homely words of comfort, and old Mahmud, wiping his 
 wet eyes, said : 
 
 " May God be merciful to your mother, my son, and 
 forgive her all her sins.'' 
 
 " She was a saint — she never had any," replied Gordon, 
 whereupon the Arab nurse, who alone of all that household 
 had looked on at this scene with dry and evil eyes, said bit- 
 terly : 
 
 " Nevertheless she died as a Christian and an unbeliever, 
 therefore she cannot look for mercy." 
 
 Then Helena's eyes flashed like fire into the woman's 
 face, and Gordon felt the blood rush to his head, but Ishmael 
 was before them both. 
 
 " Zenoba, ask pardon of God," he said, and before the 
 thunder of his voice and the majesty of his glance the Arab 
 woman fell back. 
 
 " Heed her not, my brother," said Ishmael, turning back 
 to Gordon, and then he added : 
 
 " We all serve under the same General, and though some 
 of us wear uniform of red, and some of brown, and some of 
 blue, he who serves best is the best soldier. In the day of 
 victory will our General ask us the colour of our garments ? 
 No!" 
 
 At that generous word Gordon burst into tears once 
 more, but Ishmael said : 
 
 " Don't weep for one who has entered into the ways of 
 Paradise." 
 
 When Gordon had regained his composure Ishmael asked 
 him if he would read part of the letter again, but knowing 
 what part it would be — the part about himself — he tried to 
 excuse himself, saying he was not fit to read any more. 
 
 " Then the Rani will read," said Ishmael, and far as 
 Helena would have fled from the tragic ordeal she could not 
 escape from it. So in her soft and mellow voice she read 
 on without faltering until she came to her own name, and
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 381 
 
 then she stopped and the tears began to trickle down her 
 cheeks. 
 
 "Go on," said Ishmael; "don't be afraid of what fol- 
 lows." 
 
 And when Helena came to " false prophet " he turned 
 to Gordon and said: 
 
 " Your dear mother didn't know how much I love you — 
 But she knows now," he added, " for the dead know all." 
 
 There was no further interruption until Helena had fin- 
 ished, and then Ishmael said: 
 
 " She didn't know, either, what work the Merciful had 
 waiting- for you in Khartoum. Perhaps you did not know 
 yourself. Something called you to come here. Something 
 drew you on. Which of us has not felt like that ? But 
 God guides our hearts — the Merciful makes no mistakes." 
 
 Nobody spoke, but Gordon's eyes began to shine with a 
 light which Helena, who was looking at him, had never seen 
 in them before. 
 
 " All the same," continued Ishmael, " you hear what your 
 mother says, and it is not for me to keep you against your 
 will. If you wish to go back now none shall reproach you. 
 Speak, Omar, do you wish to leave me ? " 
 
 There was a moment of tense silence in which Gordon 
 hesitated and Helena waited breathlessly for his reply. 
 Then with a great effort Gordon answered: 
 
 " No." 
 
 " El Hamdullillah ! " cried the two black sei'vants, and 
 then Ishmael sent Zogal into the town and the camp to 
 say that the faithful would bid farewell to Omar in the 
 mosque the following night. 
 
 That evening after sunset, instead of preaching his 
 usual sermon to the people squatting on the sand in front 
 of his house, Ishmael read the prayers for the dead, while 
 Gordon and Helena and a number of the Sheikhs sat on the 
 divans in the guest-room. 
 
 When the service was over, and the company was break- 
 ing up, the old men pressed Gordon's hand as they were 
 passing out and said : 
 
 " May God give you compensation ! "
 
 382 THE WHITE PEOPHET 
 
 As soon as they were gone Gordon approached Helena 
 and whispered hurriedly: 
 
 "I must speak to you soon — where can it be?" 
 
 " I ought to go to the water-women's well by the Goods 
 Landing to-morrow morning," said Helena. 
 
 "At what hour?" 
 
 " Ten." 
 
 " I shall be there," said Gordon. 
 
 His eyes were still full of the strange wild light. 
 
 XXV 
 
 At ten o'clock next morning Helena was at the well by 
 the Goods Landing where the water-women draw water in 
 their earthern jars to water the gardens and the streets, and 
 while standing among the gross creatures who, with their 
 half-naked bodies and stark-naked souls, were crowding 
 about her for what they could get, she saw Gordon coming 
 down in his Bedouin dress with a firm, strong step. 
 
 His flickering steel-blue eyes were as full of. light as 
 when she saw them last, but that vague suggestion of his 
 mother which she had hitherto seen in his face was gone, 
 and there was a look of his father which she had never ob- 
 served before. 
 
 " Let us walk this way," he said, indicating a road that 
 went down the empty and unfrequented tongue of land that 
 leads to the point at which the blue Xile and the white 
 Nile meet. 
 
 " Helena," he said, stepping closely by her side, and 
 speaking almost in her ear, " there is something I wish to 
 say — to ask — and everything depends on your answer — what 
 we are to do and what is to become of us." 
 
 "What is it?" said she, with trembling voice. 
 
 " When our escape from Khartoum was stopped by the 
 letter telling me of my mother's death, I thought at first it 
 was only an accident — a sad, strange accident that it should 
 arrive at that moment."
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 383 
 
 "And don't you think so now?" she asked. 
 
 " No, I think it was a divine intervention." 
 
 She glanced up at him. " He is going to talk about the 
 betrothal," she thought. 
 
 But he did not do so. In his intense and poignant voice 
 he continued: 
 
 " When I proposed that we should go away together, I 
 supposed your coming here had been due to a mistake — that 
 my coming here had been due to a mistake — that your 
 sending that letter into Cairo and my promising to take 
 Ishmael's place had been due to a mistake — that it had all 
 been a mistake — a long, miserable line of mistakes." 
 
 " And wasn't it ? " she asked, walking on with her eyes 
 to the sand. 
 
 " So far as we are concerned, yes, but with God — with 
 God Almighty, mistakes do not happen." 
 
 They walked some paces in silence, and then in a still 
 more poignant voice he said : 
 
 " Don't you believe that, Helena ? Wasn't it true — what 
 Ishmael said yesterday? Can you possibly believe that we 
 have been allowed to go on as we have been going — both 
 of us — without anything being meant by it ? All a cruel, 
 stupid, merciless, Almighty blunder?" 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " Well, think of what would have happened if we had 
 been allowed to carry out our plan. Ishmael would have 
 gone into Cairo as he originally intended, and he would 
 have been seized and executed for conspiracy. What then? 
 The whole country — yes, the whole country from end to end 
 — would have risen in revolt. The sleeping terror of re- 
 ligious hatred would have been awakened. It would have 
 been the affair of El Azhar over again — only worse, a 
 thousandfold worse." 
 
 Again a few steps in silence, and then : 
 
 " The insurrection would have been suppressed of course, 
 but think of the bloodshed, the carnage! On the other 
 hand " 
 
 She saw what was coming and with difficulty she walked 
 steadily.
 
 384 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " On the other hand if I go into Cairo as I have prom- 
 ised to do — as I am expected to do — there can be no such 
 result. The moment I arrive I shall be arrested, and the 
 moment 1 am arrested, I shall be identified and handed over 
 to the military authorities to be tried for my offences as a 
 soldier. There will be no religious significance in my 
 punishment, therefore there will be no fanatical frenzy pro- 
 voked by it and consequently there can be no bloodshed. 
 Don't you see that, Helena ? " 
 
 She could not answer; she felt sick and faint. After a 
 moment he went on in the same eager, enthusiastic voice : 
 
 " But that's not all. There is something better than 
 that." 
 
 "Better — do you say better?" 
 
 " Something that comes closer to us at all events — 
 Do you believe in omens, Helena ? That some mystic sense 
 tells us things of which we have no proof, no evidence ? " 
 
 She bent her head without raising her eyes from the sand. 
 
 " Well, I have a sense of some treachery going on in 
 Cairo that Ishmael knows nothing about, and I believe it 
 was just this treachery which led to the idea of his going 
 there at all." 
 
 She looked up into his face, and thinking he read her 
 thought, he said quickly : 
 
 " Oh, I know — I've heard about the letters of the Ulema 
 — that those suggestions of assassination, and so forth, were 
 signed by the simple old Chancellor of El Azhar. But isn't 
 it possible that a subtler spirit inspired them? — Helena?" 
 
 "Yes," she faltered. 
 
 " Do you remember that one day in the Citadel I said 
 it was not really Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus, and 
 that there was somebody in Egypt now M-ho was doing what 
 the High Priest of the Jews did in Palestine two thousand 
 years ago ? " 
 
 "The Grand Cadi?" 
 
 " Yes ! Something tells me that that subtle old scoundrel 
 is playing a double-sword game — with the Ulema and with 
 the Government — and that his object is not only to destroy 
 Ishmael, but, by awakening the ancient religious terror, to
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 385 
 
 ruin England as well — tempt her to ruin her prestige at all 
 events." 
 
 They had reached the margin of the river and he stopped. 
 
 " Well ? " she faltered again. 
 
 " Well, I am a British soldier still, Helena, even though 
 I am a disgraced one, and I want to — I want to save the 
 good name of my country." 
 
 She could not speak — she felt as if she would choke. 
 
 " I want to save the good name of the Consul-General 
 also. He is my father, and though he no longer thinks of 
 me as his son, I want to save him from — from himself." 
 
 " I can do it, too," he added eagerly. " At this moment 
 I am perhaps the only man who can. I am nobody now — 
 only a runaway and a deserter — but I can cross the line of 
 fire and so give warning." 
 
 " But, Gordon, don't you see " 
 
 " Oh, I know what you are going to say, Helena. I 
 must die for it, yes ! Xobody wants to do that, if he can 
 help it, but I can't ! Listen ! " 
 
 She raised her eyes to his — they seemed to be ablaze with 
 a kind of frenzy. 
 
 " Death was the penalty of what I did in Cairo, and if 
 I did not stay there to be court-martialled and condemned, 
 was it because I wanted to save my life? No, I thought 
 there was nothing left in my life that made it worth saving. 
 It was because I wanted to give it in some better cause. 
 Something told me I should, and when I came to Khartoum 
 I didn't know what fate was before me, or what I had to do, 
 but I know now. This is what I have to do, Helena — to 
 go back to Cairo instead of Ishmael and so save England 
 and Egypt and my father and these poor Moslem people and 
 prevent a world of bloodshed." 
 
 Then Helena, who in her nervousness had been scraping 
 her feet on the sand, said in a halting, trembling voice : 
 
 " Was this what you wanted to say to me, Gordon? " 
 
 " Yes, but now I want you to say something to we." 
 
 " What is that ? " she asked, trembling. 
 
 " To tell me to go." 
 
 It was like a blow. She felt as if she would fall. •
 
 386 THE WHITE TEOPHET 
 
 " I cannot go unless you send me, Helena — not as things 
 stand now — leaving you here — under these conditions — in a 
 place like this — alone. Therefore tell me to go, Helena." 
 
 Tears sprang to her eyes. She thought of all the hopes 
 she had so lately cherished, all the dreams of the day before 
 of love and a new life among quite difPerent scenes — sweet 
 scenes full of the smell of new-cut grass, the rustling of 
 trees, the swish of the scythe, the songs of birds and the 
 ringing of church bells instead of this empty and arid wilder- 
 ness — and then of the ruin, the utter wreck and ruin, that 
 everything was falling to. 
 
 " Tell me to go, Helena — tell me," he repeated. 
 
 It was crushing. She could not bear it. 
 
 " I cannot," she said. " Don't ask me to do such a 
 thing. Just when we were going away, too — expecting to 
 escape from all this miserable tangle and to be happy at 
 last " 
 
 " But should we be happy, Helena ? Say we escaped to 
 Europe, America, Australia, anywhere far enough away, 
 and what I speak of were to come to pass, should we be 
 happy — should we ? " 
 
 " We should be together at all events, and we should be 
 able to love each other " 
 
 " But could w'e love each other with the memory of all 
 that misery — the misery we might have prevented — left here 
 behind us ? " 
 
 " At least we should be alive and safe and well." 
 
 " Should we be well if our whole life became abominable 
 to us, Helena ? — On the other hand " 
 
 " On the other hand you want us to part — never to see 
 each other again ? " 
 
 " It's hard — I know it's hard — but isn't that better than 
 to become odious in each other's eyes ? " 
 
 A cruel mixture of anger and sorrow and despair took 
 possession of her, and, choking with emotion, she said: 
 
 " I have nobody but you now, yet you want me to tear 
 my heart out — to sacrifice the love that is my only happi- 
 ness, my only refuge — Oh, I cannot do it ! You are asking 
 rae to send you into the jaws of death itself — that's it — the
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 387 
 
 very jaws of death itself — and I cannot do it. I tell you I 
 cannot, I cannot! There is no woman in the world who 
 could." 
 
 There was silence for a moment after this vehement cry, 
 then in a low tone he said : 
 
 " Every soldier's wife does as much when she sends her 
 husband into battle, Helena." 
 
 " Ah ! " 
 
 She caught her breath as if a hand from heaven had 
 smitten her. 
 
 "Am I not going into battle now? And aren't you a 
 soldier's daughter?" 
 
 There was another moment of silence in which he 
 looked out on the sparkling waters of the Blue Nile and 
 she gazed through clouded eyes on the sluggish waves of the 
 White. 
 
 Something had suddenly begun to rise in her throat. 
 This was the real Gordon, the hero who had won battles, 
 the soldier who had faced death before, and she had never 
 known him until now! 
 
 A whirlwind of sensation and emotions seemed to race 
 through her soul and body. She felt hot, she felt cold, she 
 felt ashamed, and then all at once she felt as if she were 
 being lifted out of herself by the spirit of the man beside 
 her. At length she said, trying to speak calmly: 
 
 " You are right, quite right, you are always right, Gor- 
 don. If you feel like that about going into Cairo you must 
 go. It is your duty. You have received your orders." 
 
 " Helena ! " he cried in a burst of joy. 
 
 " You mustn't think about me, though. I'm sorry for 
 what I said awhile ago, but I'm better now. I have always 
 thought that if the time ever came to me to see my dearest 
 go into battle, I should not allow myself to be afraid." 
 
 " I was sure of you, Helena, quite sure." 
 
 " This doesn't look like going into battle, perhaps, but 
 it may be something still better — going to save life, to pre- 
 vent bloodshed." 
 
 " Yes, yes ! " he said, and struggling to control herself, 
 she continued:
 
 388 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " You mustn't think about leaving me here, either. 
 AYhatever happens in this place I shall always remember 
 that you love me, so — so nothing else will matter." 
 
 " Nothing — nothing ! '" 
 
 " And though it may be hard to think that you have 
 gone to your death, and that I — that in a sense I have been 
 the cause of it " 
 
 " But you haven't, Helena ! Your hand may have penned 
 that letter, but a higher Power directed it." 
 
 She looked at him with shining eyes and answered in 
 a firmer voice, and with a proud lift of her beautiful 
 head: 
 
 " I don't know about that, Gordon. I only know that 
 you want to give your life in a great cause. And though 
 they have degraded you and driven you out and hunted you 
 down like a dog, you are going to die like a man and an 
 Englishman." 
 
 " And you tell me to do it, Helena ? " 
 
 " Yes, for I'm a soldier's daughter, and in my heart I'm 
 a soldier's wife as well, and I shouldn't be worthy to be 
 either if I didn't tell you to do your duty, whatever the 
 consequences to me." 
 
 " My brave girl ! " he cried, clutching at her hand. 
 
 Then they began to walk back. 
 
 As they walked they encouraged each other. 
 
 " We are on the right road now, Helena." 
 
 " Yes, we are on the right road now, Gordon." 
 
 " We are doing better than running away." 
 
 " Yes, we are doing better than running away." 
 
 " The train leaves Khartoum this evening and I sup- 
 pose they want to say farewell to me in the mosque at sun- 
 set — You'll be strong to the last and not break down when 
 the time comes for me to go?" 
 
 " No, I'll not break down — when the time comes for you 
 to go." 
 
 But for all her brave show of courage her eyes were 
 filling fast and the tears were threatening to fall. 
 
 " Better leave me now," she whispered. " Let me go back 
 alone."
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 3S9 
 
 He was not sorry to let her go ahead, for at sight of 
 her emotion his own was mastering him. 
 
 '' Will she keep up to the end ? " he asked himself. 
 
 XXVI 
 
 As the hours of the day passed on, Helena became pain- 
 fully aware that her courage was ebbing away. 
 
 Unconsciously Ishmael was adding to her torture. Soon 
 after the midday meal he called on her to write to his dic- 
 tation a letter which Gordon was to take into Cairo. 
 
 " One more letter, O Rani ! only one, before our friend 
 and brother leaves us." 
 
 It was to the Ulema, telling them of the change in his 
 plans and begging them to be good to Gordon. 
 
 " Trust him and love him. Receive him as you would 
 receive me, and believe that all he does and says is accord- 
 ing to my wish and word." 
 
 Helena had to write this letter. It was like writing 
 Gordon's death-warrant. 
 
 Later in the day, seeing her idle, nibbling the top of the 
 reed pen Avhich she held in her trembling fingers, Ishmael 
 called for the kufiah. 
 
 " Where is the kutiah, O Rani ! — the kufiah that was to 
 disguise the messenger of God from his enemies?" 
 
 And when Helena, in an effort to escape from that 
 further torture, protested that in Gordon's case a new kufiah 
 was not essential, because he wore the costume of a Bedouin 
 already, Ishmael replied : 
 
 " But the kufiah he wears now is white and every official 
 in Khartoum has seen it. Therefore another is necessary, 
 and let it be of another colour." 
 
 At that, with fiendish alacrity, the Arab woman ran off 
 for a strip of red silken wool and Helena had to shape and 
 stitch it. 
 
 It was like stitching Gordon's shroud. 
 
 The day seemed to fly on the wings of an eagle, the sun 
 26
 
 390 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 began to sink, the shadows to lengthen on the desert sand, 
 and the time to approach for the great ceremony of the 
 leave-taking in the mosque. Helena was for staying at 
 home, but Ishmael would not hear of it. 
 
 " N'ay, my Rani," he said. " In the court-yard after 
 prayers we must say farewell to Omar, and you must clothe 
 him in the new kufiah that is to hide him from his foes. 
 Did you not promise to do as much for me? And shall it 
 be said that you grudge the same honour to my friend and 
 brother?" 
 
 Half an hour afterward, Ishmael having gone off hand 
 in hand with Gordon, and old Mahmud and Zenoba and 
 Ayesha and the two black servants having followed him, 
 Helena put on a veil for the first time since coming to 
 Khartoum, and made her way to the mosque. 
 
 The streets of the town as she passed through them 
 seemed to be charged with an atmosphere of excitement 
 that was little short of frenzy, but the court-yard, when she 
 had crossed the threshold, was like the scene of some wild 
 [phantasmagoria. 
 
 A crowd of men and women, squatting about the walls 
 of the open space, were strumming on native drums, playing 
 on native pipes and uttering the weird, monotonous ulula- 
 tion that is the expression of the Soudanese soul in its hours 
 of joy. 
 
 A moment later Helena was in the gallery, the people 
 had made way for her, and she was sitting as before by the 
 Arab woman and the child. Overhead was a brazen, blood- 
 red, southern sky; below were a thousand men on crimson 
 carpets, some in silks, some in rags, all moving and moaning 
 like tumultuous waves in a cavern of the sea. 
 
 The Reader in the middle of the mosque was chanting 
 the Koran, the muezzin in the minaret was calling to pray- 
 ers, the men on the floor were uttering their many-throated 
 responses, and the very walls of the mosque itself seemed to 
 be vibrating with religious fervour. 
 
 A moment after Helena had taken her seat Ishmael en- 
 tered, followed by Gordon, and the people gathered round 
 them to kiss their hands and garments. Helena felt her
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 391 
 
 head reel, she wanted to cry out, and it was with difficulty 
 she controlled herself. 
 
 Then the Reader stood up in his desk and recited an 
 invocation and the people repeated it after him: 
 
 " God is Most Great ! " 
 
 " God is Most Great ! " 
 
 " There is no god but God ! " 
 
 " Mohammed is His Prophet ! " 
 
 " Listen to the preacher ! " 
 
 " Amen ! " 
 
 " Amen ! " 
 
 After that Ishmael rose from his knees before the Kibleh, 
 took the wooden sword at the foot of the pulpit, ascended 
 to the topmost step, and, after a preliminary prayer, began 
 to preach. 
 
 Never had Helena seen him so eager and excited, and 
 every passage of his sermon seemed to increase both his 
 own ecstasy and the emotion of his hearers. 
 
 Helena hardly heard his words, so far away were her 
 thoughts and so steadfastly were her eyes fixed on the other 
 figure in front of the Kibleh, but a general sense of their 
 import was beating on her brain as on a drum. 
 
 All religions began in poverty and ended in corruption. 
 
 It had been so with Islam, which began with the break- 
 ing of idols and went on to the worship of wealth, the quest 
 of power, the lust of conquest — Caliphs seeking to establish 
 their claim not by election and the choice of God, but by 
 theft and murder. 
 
 It had been so with Christianity, which began in meek- 
 ness and humility and went on to pride and persecution — • 
 Holy Fathers exchanging their cells for palaces, and their 
 poverty for pomp, forgetting the principle of their great 
 Master, whose only place in their midst was in pictured 
 windows, on vaporous clouds, blessing with outstretched 
 arms a Church which favoured everything he fought against 
 and a world which practised everything he condemned. 
 
 " What is the result, oh, my brothers ? War, wealth, lux- 
 ury, sensuality, slavery, robbery, injustice and oppression! 
 
 " Listen to the word of the Holy Koran : < And Pharaoh
 
 392 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 made proclamation among liis people, saying. Is not this 
 Kingdom of Egypt mine and the rivers thereof?' 
 
 " But not in Egypt only, nor alone under the Govern- 
 ment of the King who lives across the seas, but all the world 
 over, wheresoever human empires are founded, wheresoever 
 men claim the earth and the fruits of the earth and the 
 treasures that lie in the bowels of the earth — impoverishing 
 the children of men to obtain them or destroying their souls 
 that they may deck and delight their bodies — there the 
 Pharaohs of this world are saying, ' Is not this Kingdom of 
 Egypt mine and the rivers thereof ? ' 
 
 " But the earth and the fruits of the earth and the 
 treasures of the earth are God's, my brothers, and He is 
 coming to reclaim them, and to right the wrongs of the 
 oppressed, to raise up the downtrodden and to comfort the 
 broken-hearted." 
 
 The mosque seemed to rock with the shouts which fol- 
 lowed these words, and as soon as the cries of the people had 
 subsided, the voice of Ishmael, now louder and more tremu- 
 lous than before, rang through its vaults again. 
 
 " Deep in the heart of man, my brothers, is the expecta- 
 tion of a day when the Almighty will send his Messenger 
 to purify and pacify the world and to banish intolerance 
 and wrong. The Jews look for the Messiah, the Christians 
 for the divine man of Judaea, and we that are Moslems for 
 the Mahdi and the Christ. 
 
 " In all climes and ages, amid all sorrows and sufferings, 
 sunk in the depths of ignorance, sold into slavery, the poor- 
 est of the poor, the most miserable among the most miser- 
 able of the world, humanity has yet cherished that great 
 expectation. Heal as life, real as death, real as wells of 
 water in a desert land to man on his earthly pilgrimage, is 
 the hope of a Deliverer from oppression and injustice — and 
 who shall say it is vain and false? It is true, my brothers, 
 true as the sky rolling overhead. Our Deliverer is coming! 
 He is coming soon I He is coming 7iow!" 
 
 Ishmael's tremulovis voice had by this time broken into 
 hysterical sobs and the responses of his hearers had risen 
 to delirious cries.
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 393 
 
 More of the same kind followed which Helena did not 
 hear, but suddenly she was awakened to full consciousness 
 of what was going on about her by hearing Ishmael speak of 
 Gordon and the people answering him with rapturous shouts : 
 
 " He is not of our race, yet no doubt enters into our 
 hearts of his fidelity." 
 
 " El Hamdullillah ! " 
 
 " He is not of our faith, yet he will be true to God and 
 his people." 
 
 " Allah ! " " Allah ! " 
 
 " For us he has left his home, his country, and his 
 kindred." 
 
 "Allah!" "Allah!" "Allah!" 
 
 " For us he is going into the place of danger." 
 
 "Allah!" "Allah!" "Allah!" 
 
 " What says the Lord in the Holy Koran ? — ' They 
 therefore who had left their country and suifered for my 
 sake, I will surely bring them into gardens watered by rivers 
 — a reward of God.' " 
 
 "Allah!" "Allah!" "Allah!" 
 
 " The Lord bless the white man to whom the black man 
 is a brother ! Bless him in the morning splendour ! Bless 
 him in the still of night ! Bless him with children — the eye 
 of the heart of man ! Bless him with the love of woman — 
 the joy and the crown of life ! " 
 
 " Allah ! " " Allah ! " " Allah ! " 
 
 " And may the Lord of majesty and might, Who has 
 hitherto covered his head in battle, protect and preserve him 
 now ! " 
 
 At this last word the whole company of men on the floor 
 below — men in silks and men in rags — rose to their feet as 
 if they had been one being animated by one heart, and 
 raising their arms to heaven, cried : 
 
 "Allah!" "Allah!" "Allah!" "Allah!" 
 
 Helena felt as if some one had taken her by the throat. 
 To see these poor, emotional. Eastern children, with their 
 brown and black faces, streaming with tears and full of the 
 love of Gordon, shouting down God's blessing upon him, 
 was stifling her.
 
 394 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 It was like singing: liis dirge before lie was dead. 
 
 During the next few minutes Helena was vaguely aware 
 that Ishmael had come down from the pulpit; that the 
 Reader was reciting prayers again; that the men on the 
 crimson carpets were bowing, kneeling, prostrating them- 
 selves and putting their foreheads to the floor; and finally 
 that the whole congregation was rising and surging out of 
 the mosque. 
 
 When she came to herself once more somebody by her 
 side — it was Zenoba — was touching her shoulder and saying : 
 
 " The Master is in the court -yard and he is calling for 
 you — come ! " 
 
 The scene ovitside was even more tumultuous. Instead 
 of the steady solemnity of the service within the mosque, 
 there was the tum-tumming of the drums, the screeling of 
 the pipes, and the lu-luing of the women. 
 
 The great enclosure was densely crowded, but a space 
 had been cleared in the centre of the court -yard, where the 
 Ulcma of Khartoum, in their gray farageeyahs, were ranged 
 in a wide half-circle. In the mouth of this half-circle 
 Gordon was standing in his Bedouin dress with Ishmael by 
 his side. 
 
 Silence was called and then Ishmael gave Gordon his 
 last instructions and spoke his last words of farewell. 
 
 " Tell our brothers, the Ulema of Cairo," he said, " that 
 we are following close behind you, and when the time comes 
 to enter the city we shall be lying somewhere outside their 
 walls. Let them therefore put a light on their topmost 
 height — on the minaret of the mosque of Mohammed Ali — 
 after the call to prayers at midnight — and we shall take that 
 as a sign that the light of the world is with you, that the 
 Expected One has appeared, and that we may enter in peace, 
 injuring no man, being injured by none, without malice 
 toward any and with charity to all." 
 
 Then seeing Helena as she came out of the mosque, veiled 
 and with her head down, he called on her to come forward. 
 
 " Xow do as you have always designed and intended," he 
 said. " Cover our friend and forerunner with the kufiah you 
 have made for him, that until his work is done and the time
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 395 
 
 has come to reveal himself, he may, like the angel of the 
 Lord, be invisible to his foes." 
 
 What happened after that Helena never quite knew — 
 only that a way had been made for her through the throng 
 of wild-eyed people and that she was standing by Gordon's 
 side. 
 
 Down to that instant she had intended to bear herself 
 bravely for Gordon's sake if not for her own, but now a 
 hundred cruel memories came in a flood to sap away her 
 strength — memories of the beautiful moments of their love, 
 of the little passages of their life together that had been so 
 tender and so sweet. In vain she tried to recover the spirit 
 with which he had inspired her in the morning, to think how 
 much better it was that he should die gloriously than live 
 in disgrace, to feel the justice, the necessity, the inevitable- 
 ness of what he was going to do. 
 
 It was impossible. She could think of nothing but that 
 she was seeing Gordon for the last time, that he was leaving 
 her behind him, among these Allah-intoxicated Arabs, that 
 he was going away, not into battle — with its chance of 
 victory and its hope of life — but to death, certain death, 
 perhaps shameful death, and that — say what he would abovit 
 Pate and Destiny or the will of God — she herself was send- 
 ing him to his doom. 
 
 She felt that the tears were running down her cheeks 
 under her thin white veil, and that Gordon must see them, 
 but she could not keep them back, and though she had 
 promised not to break down she knew that at that last 
 moment, in the face of the death that was about to separate 
 them, the dauntless heroine of the morning was nothing bet- 
 ter now than a poor, weak, heart-broken woman. 
 
 Heantime the drums and the pipes and the lu-luing had 
 begun again and she was conscious that under the semi- 
 savage din Gordon was speaking to her and comforting her. 
 
 " Keep up ! Be brave ! Nobody knows what may happen. 
 I'll write. You shall hear from me again." 
 
 He had taken off the white kufiah which he had hitherto 
 worn and she could see his face. It was calm — the calmest 
 man's face in all that vast assembly.
 
 390 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 The sight of his face strengthened her, and suddenly a 
 new element entered into the half-barbaric scene — an 
 element that was half human and half divine. These poor 
 half-civilised people thought Gordon was going to risk his 
 life for them, that he was going to die — deliberately to die 
 for them — to save them from themselves, from the con- 
 sequences of their fanaticism, the panic of their rulers, and 
 the fruits of the age-long hatred that had separated the 
 black man from the white. 
 
 Helena felt her bosom heave, her nerves twitch, her 
 fingers dig trenches in her palms, and her thoughts fly up 
 to scenes of sacrifice which men talk of with bated breath. 
 
 " If he can do it why can't I ? " she asked herself, and, 
 taking the red kufiah, which the Arab woman was thrusting 
 into her hands, with a great effort she put it onto Gordon 
 — over his head and under his chin and across his shoulders 
 and about his waist. 
 
 It was like clothing him for the grave. 
 
 Every eye had been on her and when her work was done, 
 Ishmael, who was now weeping audibly, demanded silence 
 and called on the Ulema to recite the first Surah : 
 
 " Praise be to God, the Lord of all creatures " 
 
 When the weird chanting had come to an end the hoarse 
 voices of the people broke afresh into loud shouts of " Al- 
 lah!" "Allah!" "El Hamdullillah!" 
 
 In the midst of the wild maelstrom of religious frenzy 
 which followed — the tum-tumming of the drums, the screel- 
 ing of the pipes and the ululation of the women — Helena 
 felt her hand grasped, and heard Gordon speaking to her 
 again : 
 
 " Don't faint ! Don't be afraid ! Don't break down at 
 the last moment." 
 
 " I'm not afraid," she answered, but whether with her 
 voice or only with her lips she never knew. 
 
 Still the drums, the pipes, the zaghareet and the delirious 
 cries of " Allah ! " And to show Gordon that she felt no 
 fear, that she was not going to faint or to break down, 
 Helena also, in the fierce tension of the moment, cried : 
 
 " Allah ! El Ilamdullillah ! "
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 397 
 
 "That's right! That's brave! God bless you!" whis- 
 pered the voice by her side. And again a moment later : 
 
 " God bless and protect you ! " 
 
 After that she heard no more. She saw the broad gate 
 of the court-yard thrown open — she saw a long streak of 
 blood-red sand outside — she saw Gordon turn away from her 
 — she saw Ishmael embrace and kiss him — she saw the surg- 
 ing mass of hot and streaming black and brown faces close 
 about him — and then a loud wind seemed to roar in her ears, 
 the earth seemed to give way under her feet, the brazen 
 sky seemed to reel about her head, and again she felt as if 
 she were falling, falling, falling into a bottomless abyss. 
 
 When she recovered consciousness the half-barbaric scene 
 was over, and she was being carried into the silence of her 
 own room in the arms of Ishmael, who with many words of 
 tender endearment was laying her gently on her bed. 
 
 XXVII 
 
 That day, under the two crackling flags, the Crescent 
 and the Union Jack, Lady Mannering had given a party in 
 the garden of the Palace of the Sirdar. 
 
 The physiognomy of the garden had changed since " the 
 martyr of the Soudan " walked in it. Where scraggy mimosa 
 bushes and long camel grasses had spurted up through 
 patches of sand and blotches of baking earth there were 
 the pleasant lawns, the sycamores, the date-trees and the blue 
 streams of ruiming water. And where the solitary soldier, 
 with his daily whitening head had paced to and fro his 
 face to the ground, smoking interminable cigarettes, there 
 was a little group of officers of the military administration, 
 with their charming wives and daughters, a Coptic priest, 
 a Greek priest, a genial old Protestant clergyman, and a 
 number of European visitors, chiefly English girls, wearing 
 the lightest of white summer costumes and laughing and 
 chattering like birds. 
 
 In pith helmets and straw hats Lady Mannering's guests 
 27
 
 398 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 strolled about in the sunshine 9? drank tea at tables that 
 were set under the cool shadow of spreading trees, while, at 
 a little distance, the band of a black regiment, the Tenth 
 Soudanese (sons and grandsons of the very men who in the 
 gray dawn of a memorable morning had rushed in a wild 
 horde into those very grounds for their orgy of British 
 blood), played selections from the latest comic operas of 
 London and New York. 
 
 The talk was the same all over the gardens — of the new 
 Mahdi and his doings. 
 
 " Married to an Indian Princess, you say ! " 
 
 " Oh, yes 1 Quite an emancipated person, too ! A sort 
 of thirty-second cousin of the Rani of Jhansi. It seems she 
 was educated by an English governess, kicked over the 
 traces, became a sort of semi-religious suffragette and fol- 
 lowed her holy man to Egypt and the Soudan." 
 
 "How very droll! It is too amusing!" 
 
 The Sirdar, who had gone indoors some time before, re- 
 turned to the garden dressed for a journey. 
 
 "Going away, your Excellency?" 
 
 " Yes, for a few weeks — to the lower Nile." 
 
 His ruddy, good-natured face was less bright than usual 
 and his manner was noticeably less buoyant. A few of his 
 principal officials gathered about him and he questioned 
 them one by one. 
 
 " Any fresh news, Colonel ? " he said, addressing the 
 Governor of the city. 
 
 " No, sir. A sort of sing-song to-day in honour of the 
 Bedouin Sheikh — that's all I hear about." 
 
 But the Financial Secretary spoke of further difficulties 
 in the gathering of taxes — the land tax, the animal tax and 
 the tax on the date-trees not having yet come in — and then 
 the Inspector-General repeated an opinion he had previously 
 expressed that everything gave evidence of a projected pil- 
 grimage, presumably in a northerly direction and almost 
 certainly to Cairo. 
 
 The Governor of the city corroborated this, and added 
 that his Zabit, his police officer, had said that Ishmael 
 Ameer, on passing to the mosque that day, had been saluted
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 399 
 
 in the streets by a screaming multitude as the " Messenger '* 
 and the " Anointed One." 
 
 " It's just as I say," said the Inspector-General. " These 
 holy men develop by degrees. This one will hoist his flag 
 as soon as he finds himself strong enough — unless we stop 
 him before he goes farther and the Soudan is lost to civilisa- 
 tion." 
 
 " Well, we'll see what Nuneham says," said the Sirdar, 
 and at that moment his Secretary came to say that the 
 launch was ready at the boat-landing to take him across the 
 river to the train. 
 
 The Sirdar said good-bye to his guests, to his officers and 
 to his wife, and as he left the garden of the palace the 
 Soudanese band, sons of the Mahdi's men, played the num- 
 ber which goes to the words — 
 
 " They never proceed to follow that light. 
 But always follow nie." 
 
 Half an hour afterw-ard, while the Sirdar's black body- 
 guard were ranged up on the platform of the railway station, 
 and his black servant was packing his luggage into his com- 
 partment, the Governor-General was standing by the door 
 of the carriage giving his last instructions to his General 
 Secretary. 
 
 " Telegraph to the Consul-General and say — ^but please 
 make a note of it." 
 
 " Yes, sir," said the Secretary, taking out his pocket-book 
 and preparing to write. 
 
 " Think it best to go down myself to deal personally with 
 matter of suspected mutiny in native army. Must admit 
 increasing gravity of situation. Man here is undoubtedly 
 acquiring name and influence of Mahdi, so time has come 
 to consider carefully what we ought to do. Signs of in- 
 tended pilgrimage, probably in northerly direction, enormous 
 numbers of camels, horses and donkeys having been gathered 
 up from various parts of country and immense quantities 
 of food stuffs being bought for desert journey. Am leaving 
 to-night and hope to arrive in four days."
 
 400 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Four days," repeated the Secretary, as he came to an 
 end. 
 
 At that moment a tall man in the costume of a Bedouin 
 walked slowly up the platform. His head and most of his 
 face were closely covered by the loose woollen shawl which 
 the sons of the desert wear, leaving only his eyes, his nose, 
 and part of his mouth visible. As he passed the Sirdar he 
 looked sharply at him; then, pushing forward with long 
 strides until he came to the third-class compartments, he 
 stepped into the first of them, which was full of coloured 
 peojjle, strident with high-pitched voices and pungent with 
 Eastern odours. 
 
 " Who was that ? " asked the Sirdar. 
 
 " I don't know, sir," replied the Secretary. " I thought 
 at first it was their Bedouin Sheikh, but I see I was mis- 
 taken." 
 
 Then came the whistle of the locomotive and its slow, 
 rhythmic, volcanic throb. The guard saluted and the Sirdar 
 got into his carriage. 
 
 " Well, good-bye, Graham ! Don't forget the telegram." 
 
 " I'll send it at once — In cypher, sir ? " 
 
 " In cypher, certainly." 
 
 At the next moment the Sirdar and Gordon Lord, travel- 
 ling in the same train, were on their way to Cairo.
 
 FOURTH BOOK 
 THE COMING DAY
 
 The Consul-General had taken a firm grasp of affairs. 
 Every morning his Advisers and Under-Secretaries visited 
 him, and it seemed as if they could not come too often or 
 say too much. He who rules the machine of State becomes 
 himself a machine, and it looked as if Lord Nuneham were 
 ceasing to be a man. 
 
 Within a week after the day on which he received 
 Helena's letter he was sitting in his bleak library walled 
 with Blue Books, with the Minister of the Interior and the 
 Adviser to the same department. The Minister was the 
 sallow-faced Egyptian Pasha whom he had made Regent on 
 the departure of the Khedive ; the Adviser was a tall young 
 Englishman with bright-red hair on which the red tarboosh 
 sat strangely. They were discussing the " special weapon " 
 which had been designed to meet special needs. The Consul- 
 General's part of the discussion was to expound, the Ad- 
 viser's was to applaud, the Minister's was to acquiesce. 
 
 The special weapon was a decree. It was to be known 
 as the Law of Public Security, and it was intended to em- 
 power the authorities to establish a Special Tribunal to deal 
 with all crimes, offences and conspiracies committed or con- 
 ceived by natives against the State. It was to be called 
 at any time and in any place on the request of the Agent 
 and the Consul-General of Great Britain; its sentences, 
 which were to be pronounced forthwith, were not to be sub- 
 ject to appeal ; and it was to inflict such penalties as it 
 might consider necessary, including the death penalty, with- 
 out being bound by the provisions of the penal code. 
 
 "Drastic!" said the Pasha, with a sinister smile. 
 
 " Necessary," said the Consul-General, with a frown. 
 
 The Pasha became silent again while the virtual ruler 
 of Egypt went on to say that the state of the country de- 
 
 403
 
 404 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 manded that the Government should be armed with special 
 powers to meet widespread fanaticism and secret conspiracy. 
 
 " Xo one deplores more than I do," he said, " that the 
 existing law of the land is not sufficient to deal with the 
 new perils by which we are threatened, but it is not, and 
 therefore we must make it stronger." 
 
 " Certainly, my lord," said the red-headed figure in the 
 fez, and again the sinister face of the Pasha smiled. 
 
 " And now tell me, Pasha," said the Consul-General, 
 " how long a time will it take to pass this law through the 
 Legislative Council and the Council of Ministers?" 
 
 The Pasha looked up out of his small shrewd eyes and 
 answered : 
 
 " Just as long or as short as your lordship desires." 
 
 And then the Consul-General, who was wiping his spec- 
 tacles, put them deliberately onto his nose, looked deliber- 
 ately into the Pasha's face, and deliberately replied: 
 
 " Then let it be done without a day's delay, your Ex- 
 cellency." 
 
 A few minutes afterward, without too much ceremony, 
 the Consul-General had dismissed his visitors and was tear- 
 ing open a number of English newspapers which Ibrahim 
 had brought into the room. 
 
 The first of them, the Times, contained a report of the 
 Mansion House Dinner, headed " Unrest in the East, Im- 
 portant Speech by Foreign ^Minister." 
 
 The Consul-General found the beginning full of plati- 
 tudes. Egypt had become the great gate between the Eastern 
 and Western hemispheres. It was essential for the industry 
 and enterprise of mankind that that gate should be kept 
 open, and therefore it was necessary that Egypt should be 
 under a peaceful, orderly, and legal Government. 
 
 Then, lowering the lights, the Minister had begun to 
 speak to slow music. While it was the duty of Government 
 to preserve order, it was also the duty of a Christian nation 
 in occupation of a foreign country to govern it in the inter- 
 ests of the inhabitants, and, speaking for himself, he 
 thought the executive authority would be strengthened, not 
 weakened, by associating the people with the work of govern-
 
 THE COMING DAY 405 
 
 ment. However this might be, the public could at least be 
 sure that as long as the present Ministry remained in power 
 it would countenance no policy on the part of its representa- 
 tives that would outrage the moral, social, and, above all, 
 religious sentiments of a Moslem people. 
 
 The Consul-General flung down the paper in disgust. 
 
 " Fossils of Whitehall ! Dunces of Downing Street ! " 
 
 For some minutes he tramped about the room, telling 
 himself again that he didn't care a straw what any Govern- 
 ment and any Foreign Minister might say, because he had 
 a power stronger than either at his back — the public. 
 
 This composed his irritated nerves and presently he took 
 up the other newspapers. Then came a shock. Without an 
 exception the journals accepted the Minister's speech as a 
 remonstrance addressed to him, and reading it so they 
 sympathised with it. 
 
 One of them saw that Lord Nuneham, however pure and 
 beneficent his intentions might be, had no right to force his 
 ideals upon an alien race. Another hinted that he was 
 destroying England's prestige in her Mohammedan domin- 
 ions, and, if permitted to go on, he would not only endan- 
 ger the peace of Egypt but also the safety of our Indian 
 Empire. And a third, advocating the establishment of rep- 
 resentative institutions, said that the recent arbitrary action 
 of the Consul-General showed in glaringly dangerous col- 
 ours the faults of the One-Man Rule which we granted to 
 the King's representative while we denied it to the King 
 himself. 
 
 The great Proconsul was, for some moments, utterly 
 shaken — the sheet-anchor of his public life was gone. But 
 within half an hour he had called for his first Secretary and 
 was dictating a letter to the Premier, who was also the 
 Minister of Foreign Affairs. 
 
 " Having read the report of your lordship's speech at the 
 Mansion House," he said, " I find myself compelled to tell 
 you that so great a difference between your lordship's views 
 and mine makes it difficult for me to remain in Egypt. 
 
 " I take the view that nine-tenths of these people are 
 still in swaddling clothes and that any attempt to associate
 
 406 THE WHITE TROPHET 
 
 them with the work of government would do a grave in- 
 justice to the inarticulate masses for whom we rule the 
 country. 
 
 " I also take the view that Egypt is honeycombed with 
 agitators, who, masquerading as religious reformers, are 
 sowing sedition against British rule, and that the only way 
 to deal with such extremists is by stern repression. 
 
 " Taking these views and finding them at variance with 
 those of your lordship, I respectfully beg to tender my res- 
 ignation of the post of H. M.'s Agent, Consul-General and 
 Minister Plenipotentiary which I have held through so many 
 long and laborious years, and at the same time to express 
 the hope that my successor may be a man qualified by 
 knowledge and experience of the East to deal with these 
 millions of Orientals who, accustomed for seven thousand 
 years to the dictation of imperial autocrats, are so easily 
 inflamed by fanatics and yield so readily to the wily arts 
 of spies and secret conspirators." 
 
 Having finished dictating his letter, the Consul-General 
 asked when the next mail left for England, whereupon the 
 Secretary, whose voice was now as tremulous as his hand 
 had been, replied that there would be no direct post for 
 nearly a week. 
 
 " That will do. Copy out the letter and let me have it 
 to sign." 
 
 With a frightened look the Secretary turned to go. 
 
 " Wait ! Of course you will observe absolute secrecy 
 about the contents of it ? " 
 
 With a tremulous promise to do so the Secretary left the 
 room. 
 
 Then the Consul-General took up a calendar that had 
 been standing on his desk and began to count the days. 
 
 " Five — ten — fifteen, and five days more before I can re- 
 ceive a reply — it's enough," he thought. 
 
 England's eyes would be opened by that time and the 
 public would see how much the Government knew about 
 Egypt. Accept his resignation ? They dare not ! It would 
 do them good, though — serve as a rebuke, and strengthen 
 his own hands for the work he had now to do.
 
 THE COMIXG DAY 407 
 
 What was that work ? To destroy the man who had 
 robbed him of his son. 
 
 II 
 
 Early the next morning the Consul-General received a 
 letter from the Princess Xazimah, saying she had something 
 to communicate and proposed to come to tea with him. At 
 five o'clock she came, attended by sais, footmen, outriders 
 and even eunuch, but wearing the latest of Paris hats and 
 the lightest of chiffon veils. 
 
 Tea was laid on the shady veranda overlooking the 
 fresh verdure of the garden, with its wall of purple bougain- 
 villea, and thinking to set the lady at ease the Consul- 
 General had told Fatimah, instead of Ibrahim, to serve it. 
 But hardly had they sat down when the Princess said in 
 French : 
 
 " Send that woman away. I don't trust women. I'm a 
 woman myself and I know too much of them." 
 
 A few minutes afterward she said, " Xow you can give 
 me a cigarette. Light it. That will do. Thank you ! " Then 
 squatting her plump person in a large cane-chair she pre- 
 pared to speak, while the Consul-General, who was in his 
 most silent mood, composed himself to listen. 
 
 " I suppose you were surprised when this woman who 
 blossomed out of a harem wrote to say that she was coming 
 to take tea with you ? Here she is, though, and now she 
 has something to say to you." 
 
 Then puff, puff, puff from the scarlet lips, while the 
 powdered face grew hard, and the eyes, heavily shaded with 
 kohl, looked steadfastly forward. 
 
 " I have always suspected it, but I discovered it for 
 certain only yesterday. And "u-here did I discover it ? In 
 my own salon ! " 
 
 " What did you discover in your own salon. Princess ? " 
 asked the Consul-General in his tired voice. 
 
 " Conspiracy ! " 
 
 Trained as was the Consul-General's face to self-com- 
 mand, it betrayed surprise and alarm.
 
 408 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Yes, conspiracy against you and against England. 
 " You mean, perhaps, that the man Ishmael Ameer- 
 
 " Rubbish ! Ishmael indeed ! He is in it certainly. In 
 a country like Egypt the holy man always is. Religion and 
 politics are twins here — Siamese twins you may say, for you 
 couldn't get a slip of paper between them — What's that ? 
 The Mahdist movement political? Perhaps it was, but 
 politics on the top of religion — the monkey on the donkey's 
 back, you know. Always so in the East. The only way to 
 move the masses is to make an appeal to their religious pas- 
 sions. They know that, and they've not scrupled to use their 
 knowledge, the rascals ! Rascals, that's what I call them. 
 Excuse the word. I say wdiat I think, Nuneham." 
 
 ''They? Who are they, Princess?" 
 
 " The corps diplomatique.'''' 
 
 Again the stern face expressed surprise. 
 
 "Yes, the corps dip-lo-ma-t'ique! ^' with a dig on every 
 syllable. " Half a dozen of them were at my house yester- 
 day and they were not ashamed to let me know what they 
 are doing." 
 
 " And what are they doing. Princess ? " 
 
 " Helping the people to rebel ! " 
 
 Then throwing away her cigarette the Princess rose to 
 her feet and pacing to and fro on the veranda, with a firm 
 tread that had little of the East and not much of the woman, 
 she repeated the story she had heard in her salon — how 
 Ishmael Ameer was to return to Cairo, with twenty, thirty, 
 forty thousand of his followers and some fantastic dream 
 of establishing a human society that should be greater, 
 nobler, wider and more God-like than any that had yet dwelt 
 on this planet; how the diplomats laughed at the ridicu- 
 lous hallucination but were nevertheless preparing to sup- 
 port it in order to harass the Government and dishonour 
 England. 
 
 "But how?" 
 
 " By finding arms for the people to fight with if you 
 attempt to keep their Prophet out! Ask your Inspectors! 
 Ask your police ! See if rifles bought with foreign money 
 are not coming into Cairo every day."
 
 THE COMIXG DAY 409 
 
 By this time it was the Consul-General who was pacing 
 up and down the veranda, while the Princess, who sat to 
 smoke another cigarette, repeated the opinions of the for- 
 eign representatives one by one — Count This, who was old 
 and should know better if white hairs brought wisdom; 
 Baron That, who was as long as a palm-tree but without a 
 date, and the Marquis of So-and-So. 
 
 " They tell me because I'm a Turk, but a Turk need not 
 be a traitor, so I'm telling you." 
 
 The iron face of the Consul-General grew white and 
 rigid, but, saying nothing, he continued to pace to and fro. 
 
 " Why don't you turn them all out ? They are making 
 nothing but mischief. The head of the idle man is the 
 house of the devil and the best way is to pull it down. Why 
 not ? Capitulations ( Pooh ! While the meat hangs above 
 the dogs will quarrel below. Dogs, that's what I call them. 
 Excuse the word. I speak what I think." 
 
 "And the Egyptians — what are they doing?" 
 
 "What are they always doing? Conspiring with your 
 enemies to turn you out of the country on the ground that 
 you are trampling on their religious liberty." 
 
 "Which of them?" 
 
 " All of them — pashas, people, effendis, officials, your 
 own Ministers — everybody." 
 
 "Everybody?" 
 
 " Everybody ! The stupids ! They can't see farther than 
 the ends of their noses, or realise that they would only be 
 exchanging one master for fourteen. What would Egypt 
 be then ? A menagerie with all the gates of the cages open. 
 Oh, I know! I say what I think! I'm their Princess, but 
 they can take my rank to-morrow if they wish to." 
 
 The second cigarette was thrown away, and a powder 
 puff and small mirror were taken from a silver bag that 
 hung by the lady's wrist. 
 
 " But serve you right, you English ! You make the same 
 mistake everj'where. Education! Civilisation! Judicial 
 reform! Rubbish! The Koran tells the Moslem what to 
 believe and what to do, so what does he want with your 
 progress ? "
 
 410 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 The powder puff made dabs at the white cheeks, but the 
 lady continued to talk. 
 
 " Your Western institutions are thrown away on him. 
 It's like a beautiful wife married to a blind husband — a 
 waste ! " 
 
 The sun began to set behind the wall of purple creeper 
 and the lady rose to go. 
 
 " Xo news of your Gordon yet ? No ? He was the best 
 of the bunch and I simply lost my heart to him. You should 
 have kept him more in hand, though — You couldn't ? You, 
 the greatest man in — Well, there's something to say for 
 the Eastern way of bringing up boys, it seems." 
 
 Passing through the drawing-room the Princess came 
 upon the portrait of Helena which used to stand by Lady 
 Nuneham's bed. 
 
 "Ah, the moon! The beauty! Bismillah! What did 
 Allah give her such big black eyes for? Back in England, 
 isn't she? My goodness, there was red blood in that girl's 
 veins, Xuneham! God have mercy upon me, yes! You 
 should have heard her talk of your Ishmael ! " 
 
 The Princess put the portrait to her lips and kissed it, 
 then closed her eyes and said with a voluptuous laugh : 
 
 " Ah, mon Dieu, if this had only been a Muslemah, you 
 wouldn't have had much trouble with your Mahdi ! " 
 
 Hardly had the Consul-General returned to his library 
 after the departure of the Princess when his Secretary 
 brought him a telegram from the Sirdar — the same that he 
 had dictated at Khartoum, telling of the intended visit to 
 Cairo, of the preparations for Ishmael's projected pilgrim- 
 age, and of the danger that was likely to arise from the 
 growing belief in the Prophet's " divine " inspiration. 
 
 " So our friend is beginning to understand the man at 
 last," he said with an expression of bitter joy. " Meet him 
 on his arrival. Tell him I have much to say." 
 
 That night when the Consul-General went up to his bed- 
 room — the room in which alone the machine became the 
 man — he was thinking, as usual, of Gordon. 
 
 " Such power, such fire, such insight, such resource ! My 
 own son, too, and worth all the weaklings put together ! Oh,
 
 THE COMING DAY 411 
 
 that he could be here now — now when every hand seems to 
 be raised against his father! But where is he? What is he 
 doing? Only God can say." 
 
 Then the Consul-General remembered what the Princess 
 had said about Helena. Ah, if those two could have car- 
 ried on his line — what a race! So pure, so clean, so strong! 
 But that was past praying for now, and woe to the day when 
 they had said to him, " A man-child is born to you." 
 
 After that the Consul-General thought of Ishmael and 
 then the bitterness of his soul almost banished sleep. He 
 had known from the first that the man could not be work- 
 ing alone; he had known, too, that some of England's allies 
 were her secret enemies, but a combination of Eastern mum- 
 mery with Western treachery was more than he had reck- 
 oned upon. 
 
 " No matter ! I'll master both of them ! " he thought. 
 
 A great historical tragedy should be played before the 
 startled audience of disunited Europe whose international 
 jealousies were conspiring with religious quackeries to make 
 the government of Egypt impossible, and when the curtain 
 fell on that drama, England would be triumphant, he would 
 himself be vindicated and the " fossils of Whitehall " would 
 be ashamed. 
 
 Last of all he thought of the Egyptian Ministers. These 
 were the ingrates he had made and worked with, but they 
 were no fools and it was difiicult to understand why they 
 were throwing in their lot with a visionary mummer, who 
 was looking for a Millenium. 
 
 " I am at a loss to know what to think of a world in 
 which such empty quackery can be supported by sane peo- 
 ple," he thought. 
 
 There was one sweeter thought left, though, and as the 
 Consul-General dropped off to sleep he told himself that, 
 thanks to Helena, he would soon have Ishmael in his hands, 
 and then he would kill him as he would kill a dangerous 
 and demented dog.
 
 412 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 III 
 
 During the next few days the Consul-General was closely 
 occupied. The Law of Public Security being promulgated, 
 he called upon the Minister of the Interior to call upon the 
 Commandant of Police to issue a warrant for the arrest of 
 Ishmael Ameer. 
 
 " But where is Ishmael Ameer?" asked the Minister, 
 
 When this was reported to the Consul-General his stern 
 face smiled and he said: 
 
 " Let him wait and see." 
 
 Early one morning his Secretary came to his room to 
 say that the Sirdar had arrived from Khartoum, and had 
 gone on to headquarters, but would give himself the pleasure 
 of calling upon his lordship before long. 
 
 " Tell him it must be soon — there is much to do," said 
 the Consul-General. 
 
 Later the same day the Commandant of Police came 
 with a knowing smile on his ruddy face to say that the 
 " Bedouin " had reached Cairo, and that he had been fol- 
 lowed to the Serai Fum el Khalig, the palace of the Chan- 
 cellor of El Azhar, where he had already been visited by 
 the Grand Mufti, some of the Ministers, certain of the 
 Diplomatic Corps, and nearly the whole of the Ulema. 
 
 " W^as he alone ? " asked the Consul-General. 
 
 " Quite alone, your lordship, and now he is as safely 
 in our hands as if he were already under lock and key." 
 
 "Good I What did you say his address was?" 
 
 " Serai Fum el Khalig." 
 
 " Palace Fum el Khalig," repeated the Consul-General, 
 making a note on a marble tablet which stood on his desk. 
 
 Later still — very late — the Grand Cadi came with the 
 same news. The suave old Moslem judge was visibly ex- 
 cited. His pale, lymphatic, pock-marked cheeks, his earth- 
 coloured lips, his base eyes and his nose as sharp as a beak, 
 gave him more than ever the appearance of a fierce and 
 sagacious bird of prey. After exaggerated bows he began
 
 THE COMIXG DAY 413 
 
 to speak in the oily, half-smothered voice of one who lives 
 in constant fear of being overheard. 
 
 " Your Excellency will remember that when on former 
 occasions I have had the inestimable privilege of approach- 
 ing your honourable person in order to warn you that if 
 you did not put down a certain Arab innovator the result 
 would be death to the rule of England in Egypt, your Ex- 
 cellency has demanded proofs." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " I am now in a position to provide them." 
 
 " State the case precisely," said the Consul-General. 
 
 " Your Excellency will be interested to hear that a per- 
 son of some consequence has arrived in Cairo." 
 
 Trained to self-control, the Consul-General conquered 
 an impulse to say, " I know," and merely said, " Who 
 is he?" 
 
 " He calls himself Sheikh Omar Benani. and is under- 
 stood to be the wise and wealthy head of the great tribe of 
 the Ababdah Bedouins, who inhabit the country that lies 
 east of Assuan to the Red Sea." 
 
 '^Well?" 
 
 " The man who calls himself Omar Benani is — Ishmael 
 Ameer." 
 
 At that the base eyes glanced up with a look of triumph, 
 but the Consul-General's face remained immovable. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " No doubt your Excellency is asking yourself why he 
 comes in this disguise, and if your Excellency will deign 
 to give me your attention I will tell you." 
 
 " I am listening." 
 
 " Ishmael Ameer pretends to be a reformer, intent upon 
 the moral and intellectual regeneration of Islam, and he 
 preaches the coming of a golden age in which unity, peace 
 and brotherhood are to reign throughout the earth." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " With this ridiculous and impracticable propaganda he 
 has appealed to many wild and ardent minds, so that a vast 
 following of half-civilised people, whom he has gathered up 
 in the Soudan, are to start soon — may have started already —
 
 414 THE WHITE TROPHET 
 
 for this city, which they believe to be the Mecca of the new 
 world.'' 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " Ishmael Ameer pretends to have come to Cairo in ad- 
 vance of his followers to prepare for that Millennium." 
 
 " And what has he really come for ? " 
 
 "To establish a political State." 
 
 Down to that moment the Consul-General had been lean- 
 ing back in his chair in the attitude of one who was listen- 
 ing to something he already knew, but now he sat up sharply. 
 
 " Is this a fact ? " 
 
 " It is a fact, your Excellency. And if your Excellency 
 will once more deign to grant me your attention, I will put 
 you in possession of a secret." 
 
 " Go on," said the Consul-General. 
 
 Instinctively the suave old judge drew his legs up on his 
 chair and fingered his amber beads. 
 
 " Your Excellency will perhaps remember that owing to 
 differences of opinion with the Khedive — may Allah bless 
 him I — you were compelled to require that for a while he 
 should leave the country." 
 
 " Well i " 
 
 " He went to Constantinople with the intention of lay- 
 ing his grievances against England before His Serenity the 
 Sultan — may the Merciful give him long life!" 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " The Sultan is a friend of England, your Excellency — 
 the Khedive was turned away." 
 
 "And then?" 
 
 " Then he went to Paris, as your Excellency is probably 
 aware." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " Perhaps your Excellency supposes that he occupied him- 
 self with the frivolities of the gay capital of France — din- 
 ner, theatres, dances, races ? But no ! He had two enemies 
 now, England and Turkey, and he presumed to think he 
 could punitih both." 
 
 "How? In what way?" 
 
 ""By founding a secret society for the conquest of Syria,
 
 THE COMING DAY 415 
 
 Palestine, and Arabia, and the establishment of a great 
 Arab Empire with himself as its Caliph and Cairo as its 
 capital." 
 
 " Well ? What happened ? " 
 
 "Need I say what happened, your Excellency? By 
 means of his great wealth he was able to send out hundreds 
 of paid emissaries to every part of the Arabic world, and 
 Ishmael Ameer was the first of them." 
 
 The Consul-General was at length startled out of all his 
 composure. 
 
 " Can you prove this ? " he said. 
 
 " Your Excellency, if I say anything I can always prove 
 it." 
 
 •The Consul-General's brow grew more and more severe, 
 
 " And his name — his assumed name — what did you say 
 it was?" 
 
 " Sheikh Omar Benani." 
 
 " Sheikh Omar Benani," repeated the Consul-General, 
 making another note on his marble tablet. 
 
 " That is enough for the present," he said. " I have 
 something to do to-night. I must ask your Eminence to ex- 
 cuse me." 
 
 After the Grand Cadi had gone, with many sweeping 
 salaams, various oily compliments, and that cruel gleam in 
 his base eyes which proceeds only from base souls, the Con- 
 sul-General rang sharply for his Secretary. 
 
 " We have not yet made out our invitations for the 
 King's Dinner — let us do so now," he said. 
 
 He threw a sheet of paper across the table to his Sec- 
 retary, who prepared to make notes. 
 
 " First, the Diplomatic Corps — every one of them." 
 
 " Yes, my lord." 
 
 " Next, our Egyptian Ministers and the leading mem- 
 bers of the Legislative Council." 
 
 " Yes, my lord." 
 
 " Next, the more prominent Pashas and Notables." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Of course our own people as usual, and finally " 
 
 "Yes?"
 
 416 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Finally the Ulema of El Azhar." 
 
 The Secretary looked up in astonishment. 
 
 " Oh, I know," said the Consul-General. " They have 
 never been invited before, but this is a special occasion." 
 
 " Quite so, my lord." 
 
 The Consul-General fixed .his eyeglass and took up his 
 marble tablet. 
 
 " In writing to the Chancellor of El Azhar at the Palace 
 Fum el Khalig," he said, " enclose a card for the Sheikh 
 Omar Benani." 
 
 " Sheikh Omar Benani." 
 
 " Say that hearing that one so highly esteemed among 
 his own people is at present on a visit to Cairo, I shall be 
 honoured by his company." 
 
 " Yes, my lord." 
 
 " That will do. Good-night ! " 
 
 " Good-night, my lord." 
 
 It was early morning before the Consul-General went to 
 bed. The Grand Cadi's story, being so exactly what he 
 wanted to believe, had thrown him entirely off his guard. 
 It appeared to illuminate everything that had looked dark 
 and mysterious — the sudden advent of Ishmael, the growth 
 of his influence, the sending out of his emissaries, his pro- 
 jected pilgrimage and the gathering up of camels and horses 
 in such enormous quantities as even the Government could 
 not have commanded in time of war. 
 
 It accounted for Ishmael's presence in Cairo, and his 
 mission (as described by Helena) of drawing oif the al- 
 legiance of the Egyptian Army. It accounted, too, for the 
 treachery of the Ministers, Pashas, and Rotables, who were 
 too shrewd and too selfish (whatever the riff-raff of the 
 Soudan might be) to risk their comfortable incomes for a 
 religious chimera. 
 
 Yes, the Khedive's money and the substantial prospect 
 of establishing a vast Arab Empire, not the vague hope 
 of a spiritual Millennium, had been the power that worked 
 these wonders. 
 
 It vexed him to think that his old enemy whom he had 
 banished had been more powerful in exile than at home,
 
 [Page 276.] 
 "'How i)iteresting\' cried the ladies in chorus."
 
 THE COMIXG DAY 417 
 
 and it tortured him to reflect that Ishmael had developed, 
 with the religious malady of the Mahdi, his political mania 
 as well. 
 
 But no matter! He would ho more than a match for all 
 these forces, and when his great historical drama came to 
 be played before the eyes of astonished humanity, it would 
 be seen that he had saved, not England only, but Europe 
 and perhaps civilisation itself. 
 
 Thus, for three triumphant hours, the Consul-General 
 saw himself as a patriot trampling on the enemies of his 
 country, but hardly had he left the library and begun to 
 climb the stairs of his great, empty, echoing house, switch- 
 ing off the lights as he ascended, and leaving darkness behind 
 him, than the statesman sank back on the man — the broken, 
 bereaved human being — and he recognised his motives for 
 what they were. 
 
 A few minutes after he had reached his bedroom, Fati- 
 mah entered it with a jug of hot water and found him sit- 
 ting with his head in his hands, looking fixedly at the 
 portrait in the black and gilt frame of the little lad in an 
 Arab fez. 
 
 " Ah, everybody loved that boy," she said, whereupon the 
 old man raised his head and dismissed her brusquely. 
 
 " You ought to be in bed by this time — go at once," he 
 said. 
 
 " Dear heart, so ought your lordship," said the Egyptian 
 woman. 
 
 The Consul-General could dismiss Fatimah, but there was 
 some one he could not get rid of — the manly, magnificent, 
 heart-breaking young figure that always lived in his mind's 
 eye — with its deadly white face, its trembling lower lip and 
 its quivering voice which said, " General, the time may 
 come when it will be even more painful to you to remember 
 all this than it has been to me to bear it." 
 
 Where was he now? What was he doing? His son, his 
 only son, all that was left to him ! 
 
 There was only one way to lay that ghost, and the Con- 
 sul-General did so by telling himself with a sort of fierce 
 joy that wherever Gordon might be he must soon hear that
 
 418 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Ishmael, in a pitiful and tricky disguise, had been dis- 
 covered in Cairo, and then he would see for himself what 
 an arrant schemer and unscrupulous charlatan was the per- 
 son for whom he had sacrificed his life. 
 
 With that bitter-sweet thought the lonely old man forced 
 back the tears that had been gathering in his eyes and went 
 to bed. 
 
 IV 
 
 Serai Fum el Khalig, Cairo. 
 
 My dearest Helena: Here I am, you see, and I am not 
 arrested, although I travelled in the same train with the 
 Sirdar, met him face to face on the platform at Khartoum, 
 again on the platform at Atbara, again on the landing-place 
 at Shelal, and finally in the station at Cairo, where he was 
 received on his arrival by his ofiicers of the Egyptian Army, 
 by my father's first Secretary, and by the Commandant of 
 Police. 
 
 I was asking myself what this could mean, whether your 
 black boy had reached his destination and if your letter 
 had been delivered, when suddenly I became aware that I 
 was being observed, watched and followed to this house, and 
 by that I knew that in this land of mystery my liberty was 
 to be allowed to me a little longer for reasons I have still 
 to fathom. 
 
 This is the home of the Chancellor of El Azhar, and I 
 have delivered Ishmael's letter announcing the change of 
 plan whereby I have come into Cairo instead of himself, 
 but I have pledged the good old man to secrecy on that 
 subject, for the present at all events, giving him my confi- 
 dent assurance that in common with the best of the Ulema, 
 he is being wickedly deceived and made an innocent instru- 
 ment for the destruction of his own cause. 
 
 My dear Helena, I was right. My vague suspicions of 
 that damnable intriguer, the Grand Cadi, were justified. 
 Already I realise that after fruitless efforts to inveigle
 
 THE COMING DAY 419 
 
 Ishmael into schemes of anarchical rebellion, it was he 
 who conceived the conspiracy which has taken our friend 
 by storm in the form of a passive mutiny of the Egyptian 
 Army. The accursed scoundrel knows well it cannot be 
 passive, that somewhere and somehow it will break into 
 active resistance, but that is precisely what he desires. As 
 I told you, it is the old trick of Caiaphas over again, and 
 that is the lowest, meanest, dirtiest thing in history. 
 
 Query, Is he playing the same game with the Consul- 
 General? I am sure he is, and when I think that England 
 and my father may be in as much danger as Egypt and Ish- 
 mael from the man's devilish machinations, I am more than 
 ever certain that Providence had a purpose in bringing me 
 to Cairo, and I feel reconciled to the necessity of living 
 here in this threefold disguise, being one thing to Ishmael, 
 another to the Grand Cadi & Co., and a third to the Gov- 
 ernment and police. I feel reconciled, too, or almost recon- 
 ciled, to the necessity of leaving you where you are, for 
 the present at all events, although it rips me like a sword- 
 cut as often as I think of it. 
 
 I have sent for Hafiz and expect to hear through him 
 what is happening at the Agency, but I am hoping he will 
 not come until morning, for to-night I can think of nothing 
 but ourselves. When I left you at Khartoum, I felt that 
 higher powers were constraining and controlling me, and 
 that I was only yielding at last to an overwhelming sense 
 of fatality. I thought I had made every possible effort, 
 had exhausted every means and had nothing to reproach 
 myself with, but hardly had I got away into the desert, 
 when a hand seemed to grasp me at the back of my neck 
 and to say, " Why did you leave her behind ? " 
 
 In Ishmael's house, and in that atmosphere of delirious 
 ecstasy in the mosque, it was easy to think it necessary for 
 you to remain or my purpose in going away must from 
 the first be frustrated, but awakening in the morning in my 
 native compartment, with men and boys lying about on 
 sacks, the sandy daylight filtering through the closed shut- 
 ters of the carriage and the train full of the fetid atmos- 
 phere of exhausted sleep, I could not help but protest to
 
 420 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 myself that, at any cost whatever, I should have found a 
 way to bring you with me. 
 
 Thank God, if I have left you behind in that trying and 
 false position it is with no Caliph, no corrupt and con- 
 cupiscent fanatic, but a man of the finest and purest in- 
 stincts, who is too much occupied with his spiritual mission, 
 praise the Lord! to think of the beautiful woman by his 
 side, so I tell myself it was the will of Providence, and 
 there is nothing to do now but to leave ourselves in the 
 hands of fate. 
 
 Good-night, dearest ! D. V., I'll w^ite again to-morrow. 
 
 n 
 
 Have just seen Hafiz. The dear old fellow came racing 
 up here at six o'clock this morning, with his big round 
 face, like the aurora borealis, shining in smiles and tears. 
 Heavens, how he laughed and cried and swore and sweated! 
 
 He thought his letter about my mother's death had 
 brought me back, and when I gave him a hint of my real 
 errand he nearly dropped in terror. It seems that among 
 my old colleagues in Cairo, my reputation is now of the 
 lowest, being that of a person who was bribed — God knows 
 by whom — to do what I did. As a consequence it will go ill 
 with me, according to Hafiz, if I should be discovered, but 
 as that is pretty certain to happen in any case, I am not too 
 much troubled, and find more interest in the fact that your 
 boy Mosie is staying at the Agency and that consequently 
 my father must have received your letter. 
 
 My dear Helena, my " mystic sense " has been right 
 again. The Grand Cadi continues to pay secret visits to 
 the Consul-General. That much Hafiz could say out of his 
 intercourse with his mother, and it is sufiicient to tell me 
 that, by keeping a running sore open with my father, the 
 scoundrel counts on destroying not only Ishmael, but Eng- 
 land, by leading her to such resistance as will result in 
 bloodshed and thus dishonour her in the ej-es of the civil- 
 ised world and leave Egypt a cockpit in which half the
 
 THE COMING DAY 421 
 
 foreign Powers will fight for themselves, no matter who 
 may suffer. 
 
 What should I do ? God knows ! I have an almost un- 
 conquerable impulse to go straight to my father and open 
 his eyes to what is going on. He is enveloped by intrigues 
 and surrounded by enemies in high places — his Egyptian 
 Ministers, the creatures of his own creation; some of the 
 foreign diplomats, the European leeches who suck his blood 
 while they pretend to be his friends, and above all this ras- 
 cally Cadi, with his sleek face and double-sword game. 
 
 But what can I say? What positive fact can I yet 
 point to? Will my father believe me if I tell him that 
 Ishmacl's following which is coming up to Cairo is not, 
 as he thinks, an armed force ? That the Grand Cadi & Co. 
 are a pack of lying intriguers, each one playing for his 
 own hand ? 
 
 My father is a great man who probably does not need 
 and would certainly resent my compassion, but. Lord God, 
 how I pity him ! Alone, in his old age, after all he has 
 done for Egypt ! As for his Secretaries and Advisers, he 
 has not brought them up to help him, and I would enlarge 
 the Biblical warning about not putting one's trust in princes 
 to include parA-enues as well. 
 
 My dear Helena, where are you now, I wonder? What is 
 happening to you ? What occurred after I left Khartoum ? 
 These are the questions which during half the day and 
 nearly the whole of the night are hammering, hammering, 
 hammering on my brain. Ishmael was to follow me in a 
 few days, so I suppose you are on the desert by this time. 
 The desert! In the midst of that vast horde! The scour- 
 ings of a whole continent! Poor old Hafiz had something 
 like a fit when I told him you were not in England but in 
 the Soudan, yet as a fatalist he feels bound to believe 
 that everything wi^l work out for the best and he asks me 
 to send his high regard to you. 
 
 It gives one a strange sensation, and is almost like see- 
 ing things from another state of existence, to be here in 
 Cairo, walking about unrecognised amid the familiar sights 
 and hearing the gun fired from the Citadel every day; but 
 28
 
 422 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 the sharpest twinge comes of the hacking thought of where 
 you are and what circumstances surround you. In fact, 
 memory is always playing some devilish trick with me and 
 raking up thoughts of the condition in which I found you 
 in Khartoum. 
 
 Helena, my dear Helena, I have an immense faith in 
 your strength and your courage. You are mine, mine, mine 
 — remember that! I do — I have to — all the time. That is 
 what sets me at ease in my dark hours and gives sleep, as 
 the Arabs say, to my eyelids. For the rest, we must resign 
 ourselves and continue to wait for the direction of fate. 
 The fact that I was not arrested in the character of Ishmael 
 immediately on my arrival in Cairo makes me think Hafiz 
 may be right — that, D. V., one way or another, God knows 
 how, everything is working out for the best. It's damned 
 easy to say that, I know, but, upon my soul, dearest, I 
 believe it. So keep up heart, my poor old girl, and God 
 bless you! Gordon. 
 
 P. S. I'll hold this letter back until I think you must 
 be nearing Assouan, and then send it, D. V., by safe hands 
 to be delivered to you there. 
 
 P. P. S. I open my envelope to tell you of a new de- 
 velopment ! I am invited with the Chancellor of El Azhar 
 to the Consul-General's dinner in honour of the King's 
 Birthday. This in the character of Sheikh Omar Benani, 
 who is, it seems, the chief of the tribe of the Ababdah, in- 
 habiting the wild country between Assouan and the Red 
 Sea, a person with a great reputation for wealth and wisdom 
 and a man whose word is truth. 
 
 What does it mean? One thing certainly — that acting 
 on the information contained in your letter the authorities 
 are mistaking me for Ishmael Ameer, and proposing some 
 scheme to capture me. But why don't they take me without 
 further ado? What unfathomable reason can there be for 
 the delay in doing so? Intrigue on intrigue! I must wait 
 and see. 
 
 Meantime I am asking myself where the real Ishmael is
 
 THE COMING DAY 423 
 
 and what he is doing now ? Is the belief in his " divine " 
 guidance increasing? Is he acquiring the influence of a 
 Mahdi? If so, God help him! God help his people! God 
 help nay father! God help everybody! 
 
 But sit tight, my girl! Something good is going to 
 happen to us ! I feel it, I know it ! All my love to you, 
 Helena! Maa-es-salamah! 
 
 V 
 
 Khartoum. 
 
 Hy dear, dear Gordon: Gone! You are actually gone! 
 I can hardly believe it. It must be like this to awaken 
 from chloroform after losing one's right hand, only it must 
 be something out of my heart in this instance, for though 
 I have not shed a tear since you went away and do not in- 
 tend to shed one, I have a wild sense of weeping in the 
 desolate chambers of my soul. 
 
 "Writing to you ? Certainly I am. Gordon, do you know 
 what you have done for me? You have given me faith in 
 your " mystic senses," and by virtue of certain of my own 
 I am now sure that you are not dead, and that you are not 
 going to die, so I am writing to you out of the chaos that 
 envelops me, having no one here to speak to, literally no 
 one, and being at present indifferent to the mystery of 
 what is to become of my letter. 
 
 It seems I fainted in the mosque after that wild riot 
 of barbaric sounds, and did not come back to full conscious- 
 ness until next morning, and then I found the Arab woman 
 and the child attending on me in my room. Xaturally I 
 thought I might have been delirious and I was in terror lest 
 I had betrayed myself, so I asked what I had been saying 
 in my sleep, whereupon Zenoba protested that I had said 
 nothing at all, but Ayesha, the sweet little darling, said 
 I had been calling upon the great White Pasha (meaning 
 General Gordon), whose picture (his statue) was by the 
 Palace gates. What an escape ! 
 
 Of course my first impulse was to run away, but at the
 
 424 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 next moment I saw that to do so would be to defeat your 
 own scheme in going", and that as surely as it had been your 
 duty to go into Cairo, it was mine to remain in Khartoum. 
 But all the same I felt myself to be a captive — as surely a 
 captive as any white woman who was ever held in the 
 Mahdi's camp — and it did not sweeten my captivity to re- 
 member that I had first become a prisoner of my own free 
 will. 
 
 If I am a captive, I am under no cruel tyrant, though, 
 and Ishmael's kindness is killing me. I was certainly wrong 
 about him in Cairo, and his character is precisely the re- 
 verse of what I expected. Little Ayesha tells me that dur- 
 ing the night I lay unconscious her father did not sleep 
 at all, but kept coming into the guest-room every hour to 
 ask for news of me, and now he knocks at my door a dozen 
 times a day, asking if I am better, and saying, " To-morrow, 
 please God, you Avill be well.'' It makes me wretched, and 
 brings me dreadfully near to the edge of tears, remember- 
 ing what I have done to him and how certainly his hopes 
 will be destroyed. 
 
 Katurally his people have taken his cue and last night 
 Black Zogal gathered up a crowd of half-crazy creatures 
 like himself, to say a prayer for me at the Saint's house, 
 which is just outside my window. 
 
 " Thou knowest our White Lady, O Father Gabreel, 
 that she is betrothed to our Master, and that his heart 
 is low and his bread is bitter because she is sick. Make 
 her well if it please God, Father Gabreel!" Thus the 
 simple-hearted children of the desert called down God's 
 spirit to their circle of fire for me, and after loud cries of 
 *' Allah ! " " Allah ! " going on for nearly an hour, they 
 seemed to be content, for Zogal said : 
 
 " Abu Gabreel hears, oh, my brothers, and to-morrow, 
 please God, our sister will be well." 
 
 I had been reaching up in bed to listen, and when all 
 was over I wanted to lay down my head and howl. 
 
 The time has come for the people to start on their pil- 
 grimage, but Ishmael insists upon postponing the journey 
 until I am quite recovered. Meantime Zenoba is trying to
 
 THE COMING DAY 425 
 
 make mischief, and to-day when the door of my room was 
 ajar, I heard her hinting to Lshniael that the White Lady 
 was not really ill but only pretending to be — a bit of 
 treachery for which she got no thanks, being as sharply 
 reproved as she was on the morning of your mother's letter. 
 
 That woman makes a wild cat of me. I can't help it — I 
 hate her! Of course I see through her, too. She is in 
 love with Ishmael, and though I ought to pity her pangs 
 of jealousy there are moments when I want to curse her 
 religion and the dawn of the day of her birth and her 
 mother and her grandmother. 
 
 There ! You see I have caught the contagion of the 
 country; but I am really a little weak and out of heart 
 to-night, dear, so perhaps I had better say good-night I 
 Good-night, my dearest! 
 
 II 
 
 Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I could not bear to play the hypo- 
 crite any longer, so I got up to-day and told Ishmael I 
 was well and therefore he must not keep back his pilgrim- 
 age any longer. Such joy! Such rejoicing! It would 
 break my heart if I had any here, but having sent all I 
 possess to Cairo, I could do nothing but sit in the guest- 
 room and look on at the last of the people's preparations 
 for the desert journey — tents and beds being packed, and 
 camels and horses and donkeys brought in to a continuous 
 din of braying and grunting and neighing. 
 
 We are to start away to-morrow morning, and this after- 
 noon when that fact was announced to me, I was so terrified 
 by the idea of being dragged over the desert like a slave, 
 that I asked Ishmael to leave me behind. His face fell, but 
 — would you believe it ? — he agreed, saying I was not strong 
 enough to travel and Zenoba should stay to nurse me. At 
 that I speedily repented of my request and asked him to 
 allow me to go, whereupon his face lightened like a child's, 
 and with joy he agreed again, saying the Arab woman 
 should go to take care of me, for Ayesha was a big girl now 
 and needed a nurse no longer. This was jumping out of
 
 426 THE \VHITE PROPHET 
 
 the frying-pan into the fire and I protested that I was quite 
 able to look after myself, but, out of his anxiety for nay 
 health, Ishmael would not be gainsaid and the Arab woman 
 said, " I'll watch over you like my eyes, my sister." I am 
 sure she will, the vixen! 
 
 ni 
 
 We have left Khartoum and are now on the desert. The 
 day had not yet dawned when we were awakened by a tattoo 
 of pipes and native drums — surely the weirdest sound in 
 the darkness that ever fell on mortal ear, creeping into the 
 pores and getting under the very skin. Then came a din, 
 a roar, a clamour — the grunting and gurgling and braying 
 of five thousand animals and as much shouting and bellow- 
 ing of human tongues as went to the building of the tower 
 of Babel. 
 
 The sun was rising and there was a golden belt of cloud 
 in the eastern sky by the time we were ready to go. They 
 had brought a litter on a dromedary for me, and I was al- 
 most the last to start. It was hard to part from the child, 
 for though her sweet innocence had given me many a stab 
 and I felt sometimes as if she had been created to tor- 
 ture me, I had grown to love her, and I think she loved me. 
 She stood as Ave rode away with a big tear ready to drop onto 
 her golden cheek and looked after me with her gazelle-like 
 eyes. Sweet little Ayesha, creature of the air and the 
 desert, I shall see her no more ! 
 
 Crossing the Mahdi's open-air mosque at Omdurman, 
 where we said morning prayers, we set our faces northward 
 over the wild halfa grass and clumps of mimosa scrub, and 
 as soon as we were out in the open desert, with its vast sky, 
 I saw how gigantic was our caravan. The great mass of 
 men and animals seemed to stretch for miles across the yel- 
 low sand, and looked like an enormous tortoise creeping 
 slowly along. 
 
 We camped at sunset in the Wadi Bishara, the signal 
 for the bivouac being the blowing of a great elephant's horn 
 which had a thrilling effect in that lonesome place. But
 
 THE COMING DAY 427 
 
 more thrilling? still was the effect of evening prayers, -whicli 
 began as soon as the camels and horses and donkeys had 
 been unsaddled and their gruntings and brayings and gur- 
 glings as well as the various noises of humanity had ceased. 
 
 The afterglow was flaming along the flat sand, giv- 
 ing its yellow the look of bronze, when all knelt with their 
 faces to the east — Ishmael in front with sixty or seventy 
 rows of men behind him. It was really very moving and 
 stately to see, and made me understand what was meant by 
 somebody who said he could never look upon Moham- 
 medans at prayers, and I think of the millions of hearts 
 which at the same hour were sending their great chorus 
 of praise to God, without wishing to be a Moslem. I did 
 not wish to be that, but with the odious Arab woman always 
 watching me, I found myself fingering my rosary and pre- 
 tending to be a good Muslemah, though in reality I was 
 repeating the Lord's prayer. 
 
 It is dark night now, the fires at which the people baked 
 their durah and cooked their asida are dying down, and half 
 the camp is already asleep in this huge wild wilderness, 
 under its big white stars. 
 
 I must try to sleep, too, so good-night, dearest, and God 
 bless you! I don't know what is to be the end of all this, 
 or where I am to despatch my letter or when you are to 
 receive it, but I am sure you are alive and listening to me — 
 and what should I do if I could not talk to you ? 
 
 Helena. 
 
 VI 
 
 SotJDAx Desert (Somewhere). 
 
 It is ten days, my dear Gordon, since I wrote my last 
 letter and there has never been an hour between when I 
 dared pretend to this abomination of Egypt (she is now 
 snoring on the angerib by my side, sweetheart) that I must 
 while away an hour by writing in my " Journal." 
 
 Such a time! Boil and bubble, toil and trouble! Every
 
 428 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 morning before daybreak the wild peal of the elephant's 
 horn, then the whole camp at prayers, with the rising sun 
 in our faces, then the striking of tents and the ruckling, 
 roaring, gurgling and grunting of camels which resembles 
 nothing so much as a stj-ful of pigs in extremis; then twelve 
 hours of trudging through a forloni and lifeless solitude 
 with only a rest for the midday meal ; then the elephant's 
 horn again and evening prayers, with the savage sun be- 
 hind us, and then settling down to sleep in some blank and 
 numb and soundless wilderness — such is our daily story. 
 
 My goodness, Ishmael is a wonderful person ! But all 
 the same the " divine " atmosphere that is gathering about 
 him is positively frightening. I suspect Black Zogal of 
 being the author and " only begetter " of a good deal of 
 this idolatry. He gallops on a horse in front of us, cry- 
 ing, " There is no god but God," and " The Messenger of 
 God is coming," with the result that crowds of people are 
 waiting for Ishmael at every village, with their houses swept, 
 their straw mats laid down, and their carpets spread on 
 the divans, all eager to entertain him, to open their secret 
 granaries to feed his followers or at least to kiss the hem 
 of his caftan. 
 
 Every day our numbers increase and we go off from the 
 greater towns to the beating of copper war drums, the blow- 
 ing of antelope horns, and sometimes to the cracking of 
 rifles. It is all very crude in its half-savage magnificence, 
 but it is almost terrifying, too, and the sight of this emo- 
 tional creature, so liable to spasms of religious ecstasy, 
 riding on his milk-white camel through these fiercely fanati- 
 cal people like a God, makes one tremble to think of the 
 time that will surely come when they find out, and he finds 
 out, that after all he is nothing but a man. 
 
 What sights, what scenes! The other day there was a 
 fearful sand-storm, in which a fierce cloud came sweeping 
 out of the horizon, big with flame and wrath, and it fell on 
 us like a mountain of hell. As long as it lasted the people 
 lay flat on the sand or crouched under their kneeling camels, 
 and when it was over they rose in the dead blankness with 
 the red sand on their faces and sent up, as with one voice,
 
 THE COMING DAY 429 
 
 a cry of lamentation and despair. But Ishmael only smiled 
 and said, " Let us thank God for this day, oh, my brothers," 
 and ■svhen the people asked him why, he answered, " Because 
 we can never know anything so bad again." 
 
 That simple word set every face shining, and as soon as 
 we reached the next village — Black Zogal as usual having 
 gone before us — lo, we heard a story of how Ishmael had 
 commanded a sand-storm to pass over our heads without 
 touching us — and it had! 
 
 Another day we had stifling heat, in which the glare of 
 the sand made our eyes ache and the air burn like the 
 breath of a furnace. The water in the water-bottles became 
 so hot that we dared not pour it on to the back of our hands, 
 and even some of the camels dropped dead under the blazing 
 eye of the sun. 
 
 And when at length the sun sank beneath the horizon 
 and left us in the cool dark night, the people could not sleep 
 for want of water to bathe their swelling eyelids and to 
 moisten their cracking throats, but Ishmael walked through 
 their tents and comforted them, telling them it was never 
 intended that man should always live well and comfortably, 
 yet God, if He willed it, would bring them safely to their 
 journey's end. 
 
 After that the people lay down on the scorching sand 
 as if their thirst had suddenly been quenched, and next day 
 on coming to the first village we heard that in the middle 
 of a valley of black and blistered hills, Ishmael smote with 
 his staff a metallic rock that was twisted into the semblance 
 of a knotted snake, and a well of ice-cold water sprang out 
 of it, and everybody drank of it and then " shook his fist 
 at the sun." 
 
 Nearly all last week our people were in poor heart by 
 reason of the mirages which mocked and misled them, show- 
 ing an enchanted land on the margin of the sky, with beauti- 
 ful blue lakes and rivers and green islands and shady groves 
 of palm, and sweet, long emerald grasses that quivered 
 beneath a refreshing breeze, but when, from their monoto- 
 nous track on the parched and naked desert, the poor souls 
 
 would go in search of these phantoms, thev would find noth- 
 29
 
 430 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 ing but a great lone land, in the fulness of a still deeper 
 desolation. 
 
 Then they would fling themselves down in despair and 
 ask why they had been brought out into the wilderness to 
 die, but Ishmael, with the same calm smile as before, would 
 tell them that the life of this world was all a mirage, a 
 troubled dream, a dream in a sleep, that the life to come was 
 the awakening, and that he whose dream was most disturbed 
 was nearest the gates of Paradise. 
 
 Eesult : At the next town we came to we were told that 
 when we were in the middle of the wilderness Ishmael had 
 made an oasis to spring up around us, with waving trees 
 and rippling water, and the air full of the songs of birds, 
 the humming of bees and the perfume of flowers, and we 
 all fell asleep in it and when we awoke in the morning we 
 believed we had been in heaven ! 
 
 Good-night, my dear — dear! Oh, to think that all this 
 wilderness divides us! But ma'aleysh! In another hour I 
 shall be asleep and then — then I shall be in your arms. 
 
 II 
 
 Oh, my ! Oh, my ! Two incidents have happened to-day, 
 dearest, that can hardly fail of great results. Early in the 
 morning we came upon the new convict settlement — a rough- 
 bastioned place built of sun-dried bricks in the middle of 
 the Soudan desert. It contains the hundred and fifty Nota- 
 bles Avho were imprisoned by the Special Tribunal for 
 assaults on the Army of Occupation when they were defend- 
 ing the house of your friend, the Grand Cadi. How Ishmael 
 discovered this I do not know, but what he did was like 
 another manifestation of the "mystic sense." 
 
 Stopping the caravan, with an unexpected blast of the 
 elephant's horn, he caused ten rows of men to be ranged 
 around the prison, and after silence had been proclaimed, 
 he called on them to say the first Surah : " Praise be to 
 God, the Lord of all creatures." 
 
 It had a weird eff'ect in that lonesome place, as of a 
 great monotonous wave breaking on a bar far out at sea.
 
 THE COMING DAY 431 
 
 but what followed was still more eerie. After a breathless 
 moment in which everybody seemed to listen and hold his 
 breath, there came the deadened and muffled sound of the 
 same words repeated by the prisoners within the walls: 
 "Praise be to God, the Lord of all creatures!" 
 
 When this was over Ishmael cried, " Peace, brothers ! 
 Patience! The day of your deliverance is near! The Ke- 
 deemer is coming! All your wrongs will be righted, all 
 your bruises will be healed ! Peace ! " 
 
 And then there came from within the prison walls the 
 muffled answer, " Peace ! " 
 
 The second of the incidents occurred about midday, when 
 crossing a lifeless waste of gloomy volcanic sand, we came 
 upon a desert graveyard with those rounded hillocks of clay 
 which make one think that the dead beneath must be strug- 
 gling in their sleep. 
 
 At a word from Ishmael all the men of our company who 
 belonged to that country stepped out from the caravan, and, 
 riding round and round the cemetery, shouted the names 
 of their kindred who were buried there : " Ali ! " " Abdul ! " 
 "Mohammed!" " Mahmud ! " "Said!" 
 
 After that Ishmael himself rode forward, and addressing 
 the dead as if they could hear, he cried, " Peace to you, oh, 
 people of the graves! Wait! Lie still! The night is 
 passing ! The daylight dawns ! " 
 
 It was thrilling! Strange, simple, primitive, crude in 
 its faith perhaps, but such love and reverence for the dead 
 contrasted only too painfully with the vandalism of our 
 " Christian " vultures (yclept Egyptologists) who rifle the 
 graves of the old Egyptians for their jewels and mummy 
 beads and then leave their bones in tons to bleach on the 
 bare sand — a condition that is sufficient of itself to account 
 for Jacob's prayer, " Bury me not, I pray thee, in the land 
 of Egypt." 
 
 And so say all of us! But seriously, my dear Gordon, 
 I quite expect to find at the next stopping place a story of 
 how Ishmael recited the Fatihah and the walls of a prison 
 fell down before him, and how he spoke to the dead and they 
 replied.
 
 432 THE WHITK 'prophet 
 
 III 
 
 It has happened ! I knew it would ! I have seen it 
 coming and it has come — without any help from Black 
 Zogal's crazy imagination, either. There was only one thing 
 wanted to comi)lete the faith of these people in Ishmael's 
 " divinity " — a miracle, and it has been performed ! 
 
 I suppose it really belongs to the order of things that 
 happen according to natural law — magnetism, suggestion, 
 God knows what — but my pen iDositively jibs at recording 
 it, so surely will it seem as if I had copied it out of a 
 Book I need not name. 
 
 This afternoon our vast human tortoise was trudging 
 along and a halt was being called to enable stragglers to 
 come up, when a funeral procession crossed our track on its 
 way to a graveyard on the stony hillside opposite. 
 
 The Sheikh of a neighbouring village had lost his only 
 child, a girl twelve years of age, and behind the blind men 
 chanting the Koran, the hired mourners with their plaintive 
 wail and the body on a bare board, the old father walked in 
 his trouble, rending his garments and tearing off his turban. 
 
 It was a pitiful sight, and when the mourners came up 
 to Ishmael and told him the Sheikh was a God-fearing man 
 who had not deserved this sorrow, I could see that he was 
 deeply moved, for he called on the procession to stop, and 
 making his camel kneel, he got down, and tried to comfort 
 the old man, saying : " May the name of God be upon 
 thee ! " 
 
 Then thinking, as it seemed to me, to show sympathy 
 with the poor father, he stepped up to the bier and took the 
 little brown hand which, with its silver ring and bracelet, 
 hung over the board, and held it for a few moments while 
 he asked when the child had died and what she had died of, 
 and he was told she had died this morning and the sun 
 had killed her. 
 
 All at once I saw Ishmael's hand tremble and a strange 
 contraction pass over his face, and at the next moment in a 
 quivering voice he called on the bearers to put down the 
 bier. They did so and at his bidding they uncovered the
 
 THE COMING DAY 433 
 
 body and I saw the facp. It was the face of the dead ! Yes, 
 the dead, as lifeless and as beautiful as a face of bronze. 
 
 At the next instant Ishmael was on his knees beside the 
 body of the girl and asking the father for her name. It 
 was Helimah. 
 
 "Helimah! Your father is waiting for you! Come," 
 said Ishmael, touching the child's eyes and smoothing her 
 forehead, and speaking in a soft, caressing voice. 
 
 Gordon, as I am a truthful woman, I saw it happen. 
 A slight fluttering of the eyelids, a faint heaving of the 
 bosom, and then the eyes were open and at the next moment 
 the girl was standing on her feet ! 
 
 God, what a scene it was that followed ! The Sheikh on 
 his knees kissing the hem of Ishmael's caftan, the men 
 prostrating themselves before him, and the women tearing 
 away the black veils that covered their faces and crying, 
 " Blessed be the woman that bore you ! " 
 
 It has been what the Arabs call a red day, and at that 
 moment the setting sun, catching the clouds of dust raised 
 by the camels, made the whole world one brilliant fiery red. 
 What wonder if these poor, benighted people thought the 
 Lord of Heaven himself liad just come down? 
 
 We left the village loaded with blessings (Black Zogal 
 galloping frantically in front), and when we came to the 
 next town — Berber with its miles of roofless mud-huts, telling 
 of dervish destruction — crowds came out to salute Ishmael 
 as the " Guided One," " The True Mahdi," and " The Deliv- 
 erer," bringing their sick and lame and blind for him to 
 heal them and praying of him to remain. 
 
 Oh, my dear Gordon, it is terrifying! Ishmael is no 
 longer the messenger, the forerunner; he is now the Re- 
 deemer he foretold! I believe really lie is beginning to 
 believe it! This is the pillar of fire that is henceforth to 
 guide us on our way. Already our numbers are three times 
 what they were when we left Khartoum. What is to hap- 
 pen when thirty thousand persons, following a leader they 
 believe to be divine, arrive in Cairo and are confronted by 
 five thousand British soldiers? 
 
 Xo ! It is not bloodshed I am afraid of — I know you
 
 434 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 will prevent that. But what of the awful undeceiving, the 
 utter degradation, the crushing collapse? 
 
 And I ? Don't think me a coward, Gordon — it isn't every- 
 body who was born brave like you — but when I think of 
 what I have done to this man, and how surely it will be 
 found out that I have betrayed him, I tell myself that the 
 moment I touch the skirts of civilisation I must run away. 
 
 But meantime our pilgrimage is moving on — to its death, 
 as it seems to me — and I am moving on with it as a slave — 
 the slave of my own actions. If this is Destiny it is wicked- 
 ly cruel, I will say that for it ; and if it is God, I think 
 He might be a jealous God without making the blundering 
 impulse of one poor girl the means of wrecking the hopes 
 of a whole race of helpless people. Of course it acts as a 
 sop to my conscience to remember what you said about God 
 never making mistakes, but I cannot help wishing that in 
 His inscrutable wisdom He could have left me out. 
 
 Oh, my dear — dear! Where are you now, I wonder? 
 What are you doing? What is being done to you? Have 
 you seen your father, the Princess and the Grand Cadi? 
 I suppose I must not expect news until we reach Assouan. 
 You promised to write to me, and you will — I know you 
 will. Good-night, dearest ! My love, my love, my only love ! 
 But I must stop. We are to make a night journey. The 
 camp is in movement and my camel is waiting. Adieu ! 
 
 Helena. 
 
 vn 
 
 Serai Fum El Khalig, Cairo. 
 
 Salaam aleyhoum! Ten days have passed, my dear 
 Helena, since I wrote my last letter, and during that time 
 I have learned all that is going on here — having, in my 
 assumed character of Ishmael in disguise, interviewed nearly 
 the whole of the Ulema, including that double-dyed dastard, 
 the Grand Cadi. 
 
 Under the wing — the rather fluttered one — of the good 
 old Chancellor of El Azhar, 1 saw the oily reprobate in his
 
 THE COMING DAY 435 
 
 own house, and in his honeyed voice he made pretence of 
 receiving me with boundless courtesy. I was his " beloved 
 friend in God," " the reformer of Islam," called to the task 
 of bringing men back to the Holy Koran, to the Prophet, 
 and to eternal happiness. On the other hand, my father was 
 " the slave of power," the " evil doer," the " adventurer," and 
 the "great assassin," who was led away by worldly things 
 and warring against God. 
 
 More than once my hands itched to take the hypocrite 
 from behind by the ample folds of his Turkish garments 
 and fling him like vermin down the stairs, but I was there 
 to hear what he was doing, so I smothered a few strong ex- 
 pressions which only the recording angel knows anything 
 about, and was compelled to sit and listen. 
 
 My dear Helena, it is even worse than I expected. Some 
 of the double-dealing Egyptian Ministers, backed by certain 
 of the diplomatic coi-ps, but inspired by this Chief Judge 
 in Islam, have armed a considerable part of the native popu- 
 lace, in the hope that the night when England, in the per- 
 sons of her chief officials, is merrymaking on the island of 
 Ghezirah, and the greater part of the British force is away 
 in the provinces, quelling disturbances and keeping peace, 
 the people may rise, the Egyptian Army may mutiny, and 
 Ishmael's followers may take possession of the city. 
 
 All this, and more, with many suave words about the 
 " enlightening help of God " and the certainty of " a blood- 
 less victory," in which the Almighty would make me glori- 
 ous, and the English would be driven out of Egypt, the 
 crafty scoundrel did not hesitate to propound as a means 
 whereby the true faith might be established all over Europe, 
 Rome, and London." 
 
 Since my interview with the Grand Cadi I have learned 
 of a certainty, what I had already surmised, that the Con- 
 sul-General has been made aware of the whole plot, and is 
 taking his own measures to defeat it. Undoubtedly the first 
 duty of a government is to preserve order and to establish 
 authority, and I know my father well enough to be sure that, 
 at any cost, he will set himself to do both. But what will 
 happen ?
 
 436 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Mark my word — the British Army will be ordered back 
 to the Capital — perhaps on the eve of the festival — and as 
 surely as it enters the city on the night of the King's 
 Birthday there will be massacre in the streets, for the 
 Egyptian soldiers will rebel, and the people who have been 
 provided with arms from the secret service money of Eng- 
 land's enemies will rise, thinking the object of the Govern- 
 ment is to prevent the entrance of Ishmael and his fol- 
 lowers. 
 
 Result — a holy war, and as that is the only kind of war 
 that was ever yet worth waging, it will put Egypt in the right 
 and England in the wrong. 
 
 Does Ishmael expect this? No, he thinks he is to make 
 a peaceful entry into Cairo when he comes to establish his 
 AVorld State, his millennium of universal faith and empire. 
 Do the Ulema expect it? No, they think the Army of Oc- 
 cupation will be far away when their crazy scheme is carried 
 into effect. Does my father expect it ? Not for one moment, 
 so sure is he — I know it perfectly, I have heard him say it 
 a score of times — that the Egyptian soldier will not fight 
 alone, and that Egyptian civilians can be scattered by a 
 water hose. 
 
 Heaven help him ! If ever a man was preparing to draw 
 a sword from its scabbard it is my father at this moment, 
 but it is only because he is played upon and deceived by 
 this son and successor of Caiaphas, the damned. I'll go 
 and open his eyes to the Grand Cadi's duplicity. I'll say, 
 " Bring your oily scoundrel face to face with me and see 
 what I will say. If he denies it you must choose for your- 
 self which of us you will believe — your own son, who has 
 nothing to gain by coming back to warn you, or this reptile, 
 who is fighting for the life of his rotten old class." 
 
 The thing is hateful to me, and if there were any other 
 possible way of stopping the Avretched slaughter, I should 
 not go, for I know it will end in the Consul-Gcneral handing 
 me over to the military authorities to be court-martialled 
 for my former offences, and, as you may say, it is horrible 
 to put a father, with a high sense of duty, into the position 
 of being compelled to cut off his own son.
 
 THE COMIXG DAY 437 
 
 Mcanuhile, T am conscious that the police continue to 
 watch me, and I am just as much a prisoner as if I were 
 already within the walls of jail. For their own purposes 
 they are leaving me at liberty, and I believe they will go on 
 doing so until after the night of the King's Birthday. After 
 that God knows what will happen. 
 
 I am writing late and I must turn in soon, so good-night 
 and God bless and preserve you, my own darling — mine, 
 mine, mine, and nobody else's — remember that ! Hafiz con- 
 tinues to protest that the Prophet has a love for you, and 
 will bring out everything for the best. I think so, too — 
 I really do, so you must not be frightened about anything 
 I have said in this letter. 
 
 There is only one thing frightens, and that is the 
 damnable trick memory plays me when it rakes up all you 
 told me of the terms of your betrothal to Ishmael. I can 
 bear it pretty weir during the day, but in that dead gray 
 hour of the early morning when the moonlight slinks into 
 the dawn, before the sparrows begin to chop the air and 
 the Arabs to rend it, I find myself thinking that though 
 Ishmael, when he proposed marriage to you, may have been 
 thinking of nothing but how to protect your good name, 
 being a pure-minded man who had consecrated his life to a 
 spiritual mission, yet the constant presence of a beautiful 
 woman by his side must sooner or later sweep away his 
 pledge. 
 
 He wouldn't be a man if it didn't, and, the prophet not- 
 withstanding, Ishmael is that to his finger tips. But heaven 
 help me ! I daren't let my mind dwell on this subject or I 
 should have to fly back to you and leave my task here unful- 
 filled. So as often as I shut my eyes and see you trudg- 
 ing through the desert in Ishmael's camp I tell myself that 
 Providence has something for you to do there — must have 
 — though what the deuce it is I don't yet see. 
 
 No matter ! D. V. I'll know some day, and meantime 
 I'll nail my colours to the mast of your strength and cour- 
 age, knowing that the bravest girl in the world belongs to 
 me, and wherever she is she is mine and always will be. 
 
 GORDOK.
 
 438 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 P. S. I am now despatching my two letters to Assouan 
 by Hamid Ibrahim — the second of the two Sheikhs who 
 went with me to Alexandria — and if you find you can send 
 me an answer — for God's sake do. I am hungering and 
 thirsting and starving and perishing for a letter from you, 
 a line, a word, a syllable, the scratch of your pen on a piece 
 of paper. Send it, for heaven's sake! 
 
 I hear that hundreds of native boats are going up to 
 Assouan to bring you down the Xile, so look out for my 
 next letter when you get to Luxor — I may have something 
 to tell you by that time. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Nubian Desert (Axywhere). 
 
 Oh, my Gordon: Such startling developments! Ishmael's 
 character has made a new manifestation. It concerns me, 
 and I hardly know whether I ought to speak of it. Yet 
 I must — I cannot help myself. 
 
 I find there is something distinctly masculine in his in- 
 terest in me! In Khartoum (in spite of certain evidences 
 to the contraiy) I Avas always fool enough to suppose that 
 it was without sex — what milksops call Platonic — as if any 
 such relation between a man and a woman ever was or ever 
 will be! 
 
 Oh, I know what you arc saying! "That foolish young 
 woman thinks Ishmael is falling in love with her." But 
 wait, sir, only wait and listen. 
 
 We left Berber at night and rode four hours in the 
 moonlight. Goodness ! What ghosts the desert is full of — 
 ghosts of pyramids that loom large and then fade away! 
 Such mysterious lights ! Such spectral watch-towers stand- 
 ing on spectral heights ! It was what the Arabs call " a 
 white night," and besides the moon in its splendour there 
 was a vast star-strewn sky. Sometimes we heard the hyena's 
 cry, sometimes the jackal's ululation, and through the sil- 
 ver shimmering haze we could see the wild creatures scuttling 
 away from us.
 
 THE COMING DAY 439 
 
 Thus on and on went our weary caravan — the camels 
 like great swans with their steady upturned heads, slither- 
 ing as if in slippers along the noiseless sand, and many of 
 the tired people asleep on them. But I could not sleep, and 
 Ishmael, who was very much awake, rode by my side and 
 talked to me. 
 
 It was about love, and included one pretty story of a 
 daughter of the Bedawee who married a Sultan — how she 
 scorned the silken clothes he gave her, and would not live 
 in his palace — saying she was no fellaha to sleep in houses — 
 and made him come out into the desert with her and dwell 
 in a tent. I thought there was a certain self- reference in 
 the story, but that was not all by any means. 
 
 At midnight we halted by a group of wells, and while 
 our vast army of animals was being watered, my tent was 
 set up outside the camp so that I might rest without noise. 
 I suppose I had been looking faint and pale, for just as I 
 was listening to the monotonous voice of a boy who, at 
 a fire not far away, was singing both himself and me to 
 sleep, Ishmael came with a dish of medida, saying, " Drink 
 this — it will do you good." 
 
 Then he sat down, and, with that paralysing plainness 
 of speech which the Easterns have, began to talk of love 
 again, especially in relation to the duty of renunciation, 
 quoting in that connection " the lord of the Christians," 
 who had said, " There be eunuchs, which have made them- 
 selves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake." 
 
 It was more than embarrassing from the beginning, but 
 it became startling and almost shocking when he went on 
 to talk about Jesus in relation to Mary Magdalene (whom 
 he supposed to be the sister of Martha) and of the home 
 at Bethany as the only place in which he found the solace 
 of female society, and how he had to turn his back on the 
 love of woman for his work's sake. 
 
 We are so accustomed to think of Jesus' inaccessibility 
 to human affection as if it were a merit in him to be supe- 
 rior to love, that it made my skin creep to hear this person 
 of another faith talk like that. But I shivered a good deal 
 more when he came to closer quarters and said that renun-
 
 440 THE WHITK PROPHET 
 
 ciation was the duty of every one on whom God had laid 
 a great mission until his task teas finished, and then . . . 
 then it was just as much his duty to live as a man! 
 
 He went away quite calmly, commending me to God, but 
 he left me in a state of terror, and though I was nearly 
 worn to death by the double journey I did not sleep a 
 wink that night, for thinking of that accursed day of 
 the betrothal, and what would happen if he ever broke 
 his promise and came to me to claim the rights of a 
 husband. 
 
 The next day or two passed without any serious incident 
 except that Ishmael, who had grown a pair of haunting, 
 imploring eyes, was always riding his camel by its halter 
 and nose-rein at the side of my litter, and talking constantly 
 on the same subject. But then came an event of thrilling 
 interest. Can I— shall I— must I tell you about it ? Yes, I 
 can, I shall, I must ! 
 
 Out here on the desert I always feel as if I were travel- 
 ling in Bible lands, and if our caravan were to come upon 
 " Abram the Hebrew " and Rachel and Rebecca flying away 
 with some Bedouin Jacob I should not be the least sur- 
 prised, so it seemed natural enough that yesterday, in the 
 country of the Bisharin Arabs, we lit upon Laban, living 
 as a patriarch among his people. 
 
 There were his sons and his sons' sons, big, brawny boys, 
 strong and clean of limb, and with their loins well girt, but 
 hardly anything else covered, and there were " the souls born 
 of his house " in their felt skull caps and blue galabeahs. 
 But what most concerned me were his two splendid daugh- 
 ters. Xo corsetted women out of Bond Street, sir, but 
 superbly fine and majestic young females, tall and straight, 
 with big bosoms like pomegranates, ringletted black hair, 
 clear oval faces, the olive skin of the purest Arab blood, and 
 large black eyes that shone like gems. 
 
 Such a woman, I thought, must Ruth have been when 
 she lay at the feet of Boaz, but lo ! it never occurred to me 
 that the people's faith in Ishmael's "divinity" did not for- 
 bid their ascribing to him the attributes of a man. Shall 
 I go on? Yes, I will, for already you know that your
 
 TllK CUMING DAY 441 
 
 Helena, your lady-love, is no mealy-mouthed miss — never 
 was and never can be. 
 
 Well, last night, late, while I was looking at the shadowy 
 forms of the camels coming and going in the light of the 
 dying fires, I saw Laban, who had been pouring hospitalities 
 upon us, leading one of his daughters, whose head was low, 
 to Ishmael's tent. It was like something horrible out of 
 the Old Testament, but I had to watch — I simply could not 
 help it — and after a while I saw Laban and Rachel going 
 away together, and then the old man's head as well as the 
 girl's was down. 
 
 Act one being finished last night, act two began to-day. 
 We are in the middle of the Xubian desert now, and as the 
 heat is great under the red wrath of the fiery mountains 
 on either side, we have to rest for three hours in the middle 
 of every day. Well, at noon to-day Ishmael came to my tent 
 and talked of love again. It was a heavenly passion. Surely 
 God had created it. Yet the Christians had made " mock- 
 ery," and were thus rebuking the Almighty and claiming 
 to be wiser than He. The union of man and woman with- 
 out love was sin. That was what made so many Moslem 
 marriages sinful. Marriage was not betrothal, not the join- 
 ing of hands under a handkerchief, not the repeating of 
 prayers after a Cadi ; marriage was the sacrament of love, 
 and love being present and nothing else intervening, re- 
 nunciation was icrong; it was against the spirit of Islam, 
 and no matter who he might be, a man should live as a man. 
 
 I don't know what I said, or whether I said anything, 
 but I do know that the blood left my heart and seemed 
 long in making its way back again. My skin was creeping, 
 and I had a feeling which I had never known before — a feel- 
 ing of repulsion — the feeling of the white woman about the 
 black man. Ishmael is not black by any means, but I felt 
 exactly as if he were, for I could see quite well what was 
 going on in his mind. He was thinking of his journey's 
 end, of the day when his work would be finished, and he 
 was promising himself the realization of his love. 
 
 That shall never, never be! No, not under any circum- 
 stances ! My God, no, not for worlds of worlds ! Good-
 
 442 THE WHITE TROPHET 
 
 night, Gordon ! I may be betrothed to this man, but there 
 is no law of nature that binds me to him. I belong to you, 
 just as Rachel belonged to Jacob, and whatever I may be 
 in my religion I am no trinitarian in my love at all events. 
 Good-bye, dearest ! Don't let what I have said alarm you. 
 Oh, I know what you are saying 7ioii' : " That foolish young 
 woman expects me to hear her when I am in Cairo and she 
 is in the middle of the N'ubian desert." But you do, I am 
 sure you do. And I hear you also, I hear your voice at 
 this moment as clearly as I hear it when I awake in the 
 middle of the night and it rings through my miserable tent 
 and makes me wildly hysterical. So don't be alarmed, I can 
 take care of myself, I tell you ! My love, my love, my love ! 
 
 II 
 
 Mercy! I don't know who did it, or by whose orders it 
 was done, but last night Ishmael's tent, which has hitherto 
 been set up at a distance, was placed mouth to mouth with 
 mine. More than that, the odious Arab woman, who has 
 always afflicted me with her abominable presence, was no- 
 where to be seen. I was feeling one of your " mystic senses " 
 that something was going to happen, when late, very late, 
 the last of the fires having died down and the camp being 
 asleep. T heard Ishmael calling to me in a whisper: 
 
 "Kani!" 
 
 I did not answer — I could not have done so if I had 
 tried, for my heart was thumping like an anvil. 
 
 " Rani ! " he whispered again, and again I did not reply. 
 I knew he knew I was awake, and after a moment of silence 
 that seemed eternal, he said: 
 
 "By and by, then! When we come to Cairo and my 
 mission is at an end." 
 
 O God! what tears of anger and despair I shed when 
 he was gone and all was quiet. And now I ask myself if I 
 can bear this strain any longer. After all Tshmael is only an 
 Oriental, and perhaps, in spite of himself, and the pledge 
 he gave to me, the natural man is coming to the top. Then 
 I am his wife, and he has rights in me, according to his
 
 THE COMING DAY 443 
 
 own view and the laws of his religion! I am in his camp, 
 too, and we arc in the middle of the desert ! 
 
 How did it happen — that betrothal^ Are these things 
 ordained? Gordon, you talk about Destiny, but why don't 
 you see that what took me to Khartoum was not really the 
 desire to avenge my father (though I thought it was) but 
 to revenge myself for the loss of yourself. So you — you — 
 you were the real cause of my hideous error, and if you 
 had loved me as I loved you I could never have been put to 
 that compulsion. 
 
 .... Forgive me, dear ! I am feeling wicked, but I shall 
 soon get over it. I have not been sleeping well lately, and 
 there are dark rims under my eyes, and I am a fright in every 
 w^ay. ... I feel calm already, so good-night, dearest! We 
 cannot be far from civilisation now, therefore there can 
 be no need to i-un away from here. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! We camped last night on 
 the top of a stony granite hill, and this morning we can 
 see the silver streak of the Nile with the sweet, green ver- 
 dure along its banks, and the great dam at Assouan with 
 its cascades of falling water. Such joy! Such a frenzy 
 of gladness! The people are capering about like demented 
 children. Just so must the children of Israel have felt when 
 God brought them out of the wilderness and they saw the 
 promised land before them. 
 
 Black Zogal galloped into the town at daybreak and 
 has just galloped back, bringing a great company of Sheikhs 
 and Notables. Egyptians, chiefly, who have come up the 
 Nile to meet us, but many are Bedouins from the wild East 
 country running to the Red Sea. Such fine faces and 
 stately figures! Most of them living in tents, but all dressed 
 like princes. They are saluting Ishmael as the " Deliverer," 
 the " Guided One," the " Redeemer," and even the " Lord 
 Isa," and lie is not reproving them! 
 
 But 'I cannot think of Ishmael now. I feel as if I were 
 coming out of chaos and entering into the world. If any-
 
 444 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 thing has happened to you I shall know it soon. Shall I be 
 able to control myself? I shall! I must! 
 
 Oh, how my heart beats and swells ! I can scarcely 
 breathe. But you are alive, 1 am sure you are, and I shall 
 iiear from you presently. I shall also escape from this false 
 position and sleep at last, as the Arabs say, with both eyes 
 shut. I must stop. My tent has to be struck. The camp 
 is already in movement. 
 
 One word. We were plunging into Assouan, through the 
 cool bazaars with their blazing patches of sunlight and sud- 
 den blots of shadow, when I saw your Sheikh sidling up to 
 me. He slipped your letter into my hand and is to come 
 back in a moment for mine. I am staying at a Khan. Oh, 
 God bless and love you! El HamdvlUUaJi ! My dear, my 
 dear, my dear! Helena. 
 
 IX 
 
 The Kile (between- Assouan and Luxor). 
 
 Oh, my dear, dearest Gordon: Mohammed's rapture when 
 he received from the angel the " holy Koran " was a mild 
 emotion compared to mine when I read your letter. Perhaps 
 I ought to be concerned about the contents of it, but I am 
 not — not a bit of me! Having found out what the Grand 
 Cadi is doing, you will confound his " knavish tricks." 
 
 Never mind, my dear old boy, what the officials are say- 
 ing. They'll soon see whether you have been a bad English- 
 man, and in any case you cannot compete with the descen- 
 dants of all the creeping things that came out of the Ark. 
 
 Don't worry about me, either. Unparalleled as my posi- 
 tion is, I am quite capable of taking care of myself, for I 
 find that in the decalogue you delivered to your devoted 
 slave on the day she saw you first, there was one firm and 
 plain commandment, " Thou shalt have no other love but 
 me." I dare say, being a woman, I am faithless to the first 
 instinct of my sex in telling you this, -but I have no time
 
 THE COMING DAY 445 
 
 for " female " fooleries, however delicious, and be bothered 
 to them, anyway ! 
 
 As you see, I did not run away from Ishmael's camp on 
 reaching the railway terminus, and the reason was that you 
 said you were writing to me again at Luxor. Hence, I was 
 compelled to come on, for of course I would not have lost 
 that letter, or let it go astray, for all the value of the 
 British Empire. 
 
 I was delighted with my day at Assouan, though, with its 
 glimpses of a green, riotous, prodigal, ungovernable Xature, 
 after the white nakedness of the wilderness, with its flash- 
 light peep at civilised frivolities, its hotels for European 
 visitors, its orchestras playing " When we are mar-ried," 
 its Egyptian dragomans with companies of tourists trailing 
 behind them, its dahabeahs and steam launches, and above 
 all its groups of English girls, maddeningly pretty and full 
 of the intoxication of life, yet pretending to be consumed 
 by a fever of self-culture, and devoured by curiosity about 
 mummies and tombs. 
 
 It's no use — these pink-white faces after the brown and 
 black are a joy to behold, and when I came upon a bunch 
 of them chattering and laughing like linnets ("Frocks up, 
 children ! " as they crossed a puddle made by the watermen) 
 I could hardly help kissing them all round, they looked so 
 sweet and so homelike. 
 
 You were right about the boats. A whole fleet was wait- 
 ing for us, which was a mercy, for the animals were utterly 
 done up after the desert journey, and next morning we 
 embarked under the strenuous supervision of a British Bim- 
 bashi, who looked as large as if he had just won the battle 
 of Waterloo. 
 
 Of course the people were following Ishmael like a swarm 
 of bees, and, much to my discomfiture, I came in for a 
 share of reflected glory from a crowd of visitors who were 
 evidently wondering whether I was a reincarnation of Lady 
 Hester Stanhope, or the last Circassian slave-wife of the 
 Ameer of Afghanistan. One horrible young woman cocked 
 her camera and snapped me. American, of course, a sort 
 of half countrywoman of yours, sir, shockingly stylish, good-
 
 446 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 looking and attractive, with frills and furbelows that gave 
 a far view of Regent Street and the Rue de la Paix, and 
 made me feel so dreadfully shabby in my Eastern dress and 
 veil that I wanted to slap her. 
 
 We are now two days down the river, five hundred to a 
 thousand boat-loads of us, our peaked white sails looking 
 like a vast flight of seagulls, and our slanting bamboo masts 
 like an immense field of ripe corn swaying in the wind. 
 It is a wonderful sight, this flotilla of feluccas going slowly 
 down the immemorial stream, and when one thinks of it in 
 relation to its object, it is almost magnificent — a nation 
 going up to its millennium! 
 
 They have rigged up a sort of cabin for me in the 
 bow of one of the high-prowed boats, with shelter and shade 
 included, so that I still have some seclusion in which to 
 write my " Journal," in spite of this pestilent Arab woman 
 who is always watching me. In the hold outside there must 
 be a hundred men at least, and at the stern there are a 
 few women who bake durah cakes on a charcoal stove, mak- 
 ing it a marvel to me that they do not set fire to the 
 boat a dozen times a day. 
 
 The wind being fair and the river in full flood — seven 
 men's height above the usual level, and boiling and bubbling 
 and tearing down like a torrent — we sail from daylight to 
 dark, but at night we are hauled up and moored to the bank, 
 so that the people may go ashore to sleep if they are so 
 minded. 
 
 Oh, these delicious mornings ! Oh, these white enchant- 
 ing nights ! The wide, smooth, flowing water, reflecting the 
 tall palms, the banks, the boats themselves; in the morning 
 a soft brown, at noon a cool green, at sunset a glowing 
 rose, at night a pearly gray ! Then the broad blue sky with 
 its blaze of lemon and yellow and burnished gold as the sun 
 goes down; the rolling back of the darkness as the dawn 
 appears, and the sweeping up of the crimson wings of day ! 
 If I dare only give myself up to the delight of it! But I 
 daren't, I daren't, having something to do here, so my 
 dear one says, though what the deuce and the dickens it is 
 (except to stay until I receive that letter) I cannot conceive.
 
 THE COMING DAY 447 
 
 II 
 
 The people are in great spirits now, all their moaning 
 and murmuring being turned to gladness, and as we glide 
 along they squat in the boats and sing. Strangely enough, 
 in a country where religion counts for so much, there is 
 hardly anything answering to sacred music, but there are 
 war-songs in abundance, full of references to the " filly 
 foal " and of invocations to the God of Victory. These 
 songs the men sing to something like three notes, accom- 
 panied by the beat of their tiny drums, and if the natives, 
 who stand on the banks to listen, convey the warlike words 
 to their Moudirs it cannot be a matter for much surprise 
 that the Government thinks an army is coming down the 
 Xile and that your father finds it necessary to prepare to 
 " establish authority." 
 
 As for Ishmael, he is in a state of ecstasy that is bor- 
 dering on frenzy. lie passes from boat to boat, teaching and 
 preaching early and late. Of course it is always the same 
 message — the great hope, the Deliverer, the Redeemer, the 
 Christ, the Kingdom or Empire that is to come, but just 
 as he drew his lessons from the desert before so now he 
 draws them from the Nile. 
 
 The mighty river, mother of Egypt, numbered among 
 the deities in olden days, born in the heights and flowing 
 down to the ocean, rising and falling and bringing fertility, 
 suckling the land, sustaining it, the great waterway from 
 Xorth to South, the highway for humanity — what is it but 
 a symbol of the golden age so soon to begin, when all men 
 will be gathered together as the children of one Mother, 
 with one God, one Law, one Faith! 
 
 It becomes more and more terrifying. I am sure the 
 people are taking their teaching literally, for they are like 
 children in their delirious joy; and when I think how surely 
 their hopes are doomed to be crushed, I ask myself what 
 is to happen to Ishmael when the day of their disappoint- 
 ment comes. They will kill him — T am sure they will ! 
 
 Gordon, I go through hell at certain moments. It was 
 good of you to tell me I need not charge myself with every-
 
 448 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 thing that is happening, but I am hysterical when I think 
 that although this hoi)e may be only a dream, a vain dream, 
 and I had nothing to do with creating it, it is through me 
 that it is to be so ruthlessly destroyed. 
 
 Then there is that masculine development in Ishmael's 
 relation to me, and the promise he has made himself that 
 as soon as his task is finished he will live the life of a 
 man ! 
 
 Thank God, we are close to Luxor now, and when I get 
 that letter I shall be free to escape. Have you seen your 
 father, I wonder? If so, what has happened? Oh, my dear 
 — dear! It is four years — days I mean — since I heard from 
 you — what an age in a time like this! My love — all, all 
 my love! Helena. 
 
 X 
 
 Cairo. 
 
 My dearest Helena : El Hamdullillah ! Hamid brought 
 me the letter you gave him at Assouan, and I nearly fell on 
 his neck and kissed him. He also told me you were look- 
 ing " stout and well," and added, with an expression of as- 
 tonishment, that you were " the sweetest and most beau- 
 tiful woman in the world." Of course you are — what the 
 deuce did he expect you to be? 
 
 I am not ashamed to say that while I read your letter 
 I was either laughing like a boy or crying like a baby. 
 What wonder? Helena was speaking to me! I could see 
 her very eyes, hear her very voice, feel her very hand. No 
 dream this time, no dear, sweet, murderous make-believe, 
 but Helena herself, actually Helena ! 
 
 I am not surprised, dearest, at what you tell me of the 
 development of the masculine side of Ishmael's interest in 
 you. It was what T feared and foresaw, yet how I am to 
 stay here, now that I know it has come to pass, heaven 
 alone can say! I suppose I must, or else everything I have 
 come for, lived for, hoped for, and fought for will be wasted 
 and thrown away. Thank God, I have always hitherto 
 been able, even in my blackest hours, to rely on your love
 
 THE COIVUNG DAY 449 
 
 and courage, and I shall continue to do so, and to tell my- 
 self that if you are in Ishmael's camp it must be for some 
 good and useful purpose, although I know that in the dead 
 waste of every blessed night 1 shall have some damnable 
 pricks from the green-eyed monster, not to speak of down- 
 right fear and honest conscience. 
 
 Neither am I at all surprised at what you say of the 
 growth of the ^fahdist element in and around Ishmael, 
 though that is a pity in itself, and a deadly misfortune 
 in relation to the Government. Of course it is the old 
 wretched story over again — the moment a man arises who 
 has anything of the divine in him, an apostle of the soul 
 of humanity, a flame-bearer in a realm of darkness, the 
 world jumps on him, body and soul, and he finds he has 
 brought not peace but a sword. The Governments of the 
 world do not want the divine, for the simple reason that the 
 divine begets divided authority, which begets divided alle- 
 giance, which begets riot and insurrection, so down with 
 the divine, hang it, quarter it, crucify it, which is precisely 
 what they have been doing with it for two thousand years at 
 all events. 
 
 That, too, is a reason why I cannot carry out my first 
 intention of going to my father, and another is that I 
 see only too plainly now that he is playing for a coup. Not 
 that I believe for a moment that like the authorities under 
 arbitrary governments (Eussian for example) my father 
 would use provocation, even if it were the only means by 
 which peaceful work and life seemed possible, but I fear 
 he is becoming a sort of conscientious collaborator of the 
 accursed Grand Cadi, by acquiescing in conspiracy and per- 
 mitting it to go on until it has reached a head, in order 
 to crush it with one blow. 
 
 God forgive me if I am judging my own father, but I 
 cannot help it. There is such a thing as being " drunk with 
 power," as the Arabs say, and everything points to the 
 fact that the Consul-General counts on making one sur- 
 prising and overwhelming effort to suppress this unrest. 
 That he did not take me (in my character of Ishmael) on 
 my arrival in Cairo points to it, and that he has invited
 
 450 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 me to the dinner in honour of the King's Birthday puts it 
 beyond the shadow of a doubt. 
 
 How do I know that? I'll tell you how. Do you re- 
 member that when Ishmacl's return was first proposed it was 
 suggested that he should enter the city while the Consul- 
 General and his officials were feasting on the Ghezirah, the 
 bridge of their island being drawn and the key of the Pavil- 
 ion being turned on them? Well, that was the scheme of 
 the Cadi, and I have reason to believe that having obtained 
 Ishmael's consent to it, he straightway revealed it to my 
 father. 
 
 What is the result ? The Consul-General has invited the 
 conspirators to join him at his festivities, so that while 
 they think they are to hold him prisoner on Ghezirah until 
 Ishmael's followers have entered Cairo, he will in fact be 
 holding them, the whole boiling of them, including myself, 
 especially myself, thus arresting his enemies in a bunch 
 at the very moment when their rebellion is being put down 
 on the other side of the iSTile. There is something tragic 
 in the idea that if I go to that dinner my father may find 
 that there has been one gigantic error in his calculations, 
 and I hate the thought of going, but if I go I go, and (D. V.) 
 I shall not shrink. 
 
 Good-night, dearest! "Where is she now?" I ask my- 
 self for the nine-hundredth time, and for the nine-hundred- 
 and-first time I answer, " Wherever she is she is mine and 
 nobody else's." In-sha-allah! 
 
 n 
 
 Whew ! It's comic, and if I were not such a ridiculously 
 tragic ijerson I should like to scream with laughter. The 
 Ulema are at a loss to know what to do about the invitation 
 to the King's dinner, and have been putting their turbaned 
 heads together like frightened chickens in a storm. !Never 
 having been invited to such functions before, they suspect 
 treachery, think their conspiracy has got wind, and are for 
 excusing themselves on the ground of a general epidemic
 
 THE COMING DAY 451 
 
 ainuiig grandmothers, which will require them to be present 
 at funerals in various parts of the country. 
 
 On the other hand, Caiaphas, who is giving himself the 
 airs of a hero — a hero, mind you — counsels courage, saying 
 that if there is any suspicion of conspiracy the only way 
 to put it out of countenance is to accept the Consul-Gen- 
 eral's invitation, which is of the nature of a command, and 
 that this argument applies especially to me (that is to say, 
 Ishmael), who might otherwise expose myself to the in- 
 ference that I am not the wise and wealthy chief of the 
 Ababdah, but another person who dare not permit himself 
 to be seen. The fox ! All the same I may find that it suits 
 my book to go to the King's dinner. 
 
 ra 
 
 The day of the festivities is approaching and already the 
 preparations have begun. Placards on the walls announcing 
 a military tattoo, officials flying about the town, workmen 
 hanging up lanterns for the illumination of the public gar- 
 dens, and police bands in the squares playing " God Save " 
 and " the Girl I Left," and meantime Ishmael with his vast 
 following coming up the Nile, full of the great Hope, the 
 great Expectation! 
 
 Talk about Nero fiddling while Eome burned, that was an 
 act of no particular callousness compared to the infectious 
 merriment of the European population, though many of 
 them know nothing about the tidal wave that is sweeping 
 down, the English press having been forbidden to mention 
 it, and the one strong man in Egypt waiting calmly at the 
 Agency until the moment comes to dam it. 
 
 Of course the official classes are aware of what is hap- 
 pening, and their attitude toward the mighty flood that is 
 coming on is a wonderful example of our British pluck and 
 our crass stupidity. Not a man will budge, that much I can 
 say for my countrymen, who are ready to face death any 
 day under a vertical sun, amid deadly swamps and human 
 beings almost as dangerous. But they will not see that 
 while the fanaticism of one hallucinated individual (Ish-
 
 452 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 mael, for example) may be a little thing, the soul of a whole 
 nation is a big- thing, and God help the Government that 
 attempts to crush it ! 
 
 In order to realise the situation here at this moment 
 one has to make a daring, audacious, almost impious com- 
 parison — to think of the day when Christ entered Jeru- 
 salem through a dense, delirious crowd that shouted " Ho- 
 sanna to the Son of David!" and (forgetting that, soon 
 afterward, they deserted him when his divinity appeared 
 to fail) ask oneself what would have happened tJieii if the 
 Roman Consul, prompted by the chief priests, had met that 
 frenzied multitude with a charge of Roman steel! 
 
 God keep us from such consequences in Cairo, but mean- 
 time, though the Arabic newspapers are suppressed, the 
 natives know that Ishmael's host is coming on, and the 
 effect of the rumour that has gone through the air like a 
 breath of wind seems to be frantically intoxicating. I con- 
 fess that the sense of that mighty human wave, sweeping 
 down the red waters of the high Nile, coming on and on, 
 as they think to the millennium, but as I know to death, sits 
 on me, too, like a nightmare. It has the effect of the super- 
 natural, and I ask myself what in the name of God I can 
 do to prevent the collision that will occur between two forces 
 that seem bent on destroying each other. 
 
 Something I must do, that is certain, and seeing that I 
 am now the only one who knows what is being done on both 
 sides, and that it is useless to appeal to either (my father 
 or Ishmael), what I do must be done by me alone. Alone is 
 a terrible wx)rd, Helena, but what I do I do, and the devil 
 take the consequences. 
 
 I expect to get further information from Hafiz to-mor- 
 row, so (D. V.) I'll write my last letter to Bedrasheen, 
 where, as I hear, you are to encamp. Look out for it there 
 — I see something I may want you to do for me with Ish- 
 mael. ^leantime, don't be afraid of him. Remember that 
 you belong to me, to me only, and that I'm thinking of you 
 every hour and minute, and then nothing can go seriously 
 astray. Good-bye, my beloved, my dear, my darling! 
 
 GOUDON.
 
 THE CO-MLNG DAY 453 
 
 P. S. Is it not extraordinary, my dear Helena, that not- 
 withstanding the torment I suffer at the thought of your 
 position in Ishmael's camp I continue to ask you to remain 
 in it ? But wait, only wait ! Something good is going to 
 happen ! I n-sha-a llah ! 
 
 XI 
 
 The Nile (betweex Luxor and Bedrasheex). 
 
 My dear, dear Gordon: I saw your Hamid Ibrahim the 
 moment I set foot in Luxor, and the way he passed your 
 letter to me and I passed mine to him would have done 
 credit to Charlie Bates and the Artful Dodger in the art 
 of passing " a wipe." 
 
 I really think we escaped the eyes of this odious Arab 
 woman, but I am bound to add that almost as soon as I 
 got back to the boat, and began to read your letter and 
 to weep tears of joy over it, I was conscious of a shadow 
 at the mouth of my cabin, and it was she, the daughter of 
 a dog! 
 
 Xo matter! Who the dickens cares! I shall be gone 
 from here before the woman can do me any mischief, and 
 if I am still in Ishmael's camp it is only because you said 
 you were sending your last letter to Bedrasheen, so, you see,. 
 I had no choice but to come on. 
 
 What you tell me of the course of affairs in Cairo only 
 fills me with hatred of the Grand Cadi ("whom Allah 
 damn"), and I find that I exhaust my Christianity in find- 
 ing names that seem suitable to " his Serenity " — beginning,, 
 of course, with the fourth letter of the English alphabet. 
 
 I see already what you are going to do, and when I 
 think of it I feel like a shocking coward. If you cannot 
 work with the Consul-General I suppose you will work with- 
 out him, perhaps against him, and a conflict between you 
 and your father is the tragedy I always foresaw. It will 
 be the end of one or both of you, and I am trembling at the- 
 bare thought. 
 
 Oh, I know you are the bravest thing God ever made, 
 30
 
 454 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 and at the same time the most unselfish, but I sometimes 
 ■wish to Heaven you were not — though I suppose in that 
 event you would fall from your godlike pedestal, and I 
 should not love you so much if I admired you less. 
 
 We left Luxor immediately, for although there wei'e still 
 three days to spare before the day of the " festivities," and 
 the river was racing down fast enough to carry a fleet of 
 war, the people were in a fever to reach the end of their 
 journey, so Ishmael consented to go on without a rest. 
 
 I find the whole thing more frightening than ever, now 
 that we are so near to the end, for I suppose it is certain 
 that whatever else happens, this vast horde of Ishmael's 
 fanatical followers will never be allowed to enter Cairo, and 
 it will be impossible to convince the Consul-General and the 
 Government that they are not coming as an armed force. 
 Then what will the people do ? What will they say to Ish- 
 mael? And if Ishmael suspects treachery what will he say? 
 What will he say to mef But no matter — I shall be gone 
 before that can occur. 
 
 It is now eleven o'clock at night, yet I cannot sleep, so 
 I shall sit up all night and see the rising of the South- 
 ern Cross. A silver slip of a moon has just appeared, and 
 by its shimmering light our vast fleet seems to be floating 
 down the river like ships in a dream. Such calm, such 
 silence ! Phantoms of houses, of villages, of funereal palms 
 gliding in ghostly muteness past us! Sometimes an obe- 
 lisk goes like a dark skeleton down the bank — vestige of a 
 vanished civilisation as full, perhaps, of delusive faith as 
 ours. What is God doing with us all, I wonder? Why 
 does He. . . . 
 
 Another thrilling moment! I must tell you — I cannot 
 help myself. 
 
 You may have gathered that since the scene in the tent 
 on the desert Ishmael has left me alone, but last night he 
 came again. 
 
 That grim woman had gone to her crib somewhere out- 
 side, and I was writing to you as you see above, when sud-
 
 THE COMING DAY 455 
 
 denly in the silence, broken by nothing but the snores of 
 the men in the hold, the lapping of the water against the 
 side of the boat and the occasional voice of the Reis at the 
 rudder, I heard a soft step which I have learned to know. 
 
 " Rani ! " said a voice outside, and in a moment the 
 canvas of my cabin was drawn and Ishmael was sitting by 
 my side. 
 
 There was a look in his eyes that told of depths of ten- 
 derness, not to speak of consuming emotion, but at first 
 he talked calmly. He began by speaking of you. It seems 
 he had had news of you at Assouan, that you were staying 
 at the Chancellor of El Azhar's house, and that the Old 
 Chancellor had no words Avarm enough for your wisdom 
 and courage. Neither had Ishmael, who said the whole 
 Mohammedan world was praising you. 
 
 I really believe he loves you, and I was beginning to melt 
 toward him, thinking how much more he would worship 
 you if he only knew what you had really done for him, when 
 — heigh-ho ! — he began to speak of me and to return to his 
 old subject. Love was a God-given passion, and he was 
 looking forward to the end of his work, when he might 
 give himself up to it. His vow of chastity and consecration 
 would then be annulled and he could live the life of a man ! 
 
 Very tender, very delicate, but very warm and dreadfully 
 Oriental. My nerves were tingling all over, and I was feel- 
 ing shockingly weak and womanish while the great powerful 
 man sat beside me, and when he talked about children, say- 
 ing a woman without them was like a tree without fruit, 
 I found myself for the first time in my life in actual 
 physical terror. 
 
 At last he rose to go, and before I knew what he was 
 doing he had flung his arms around me and kissed me, and 
 when I recovered myself he was gone. 
 
 Then all the physical repulsion I spoke of before arose 
 in me again, and at the same moment, as if by a whirlwind 
 of emotion, I remembered you, and my strength came back. 
 
 I have often wondered what sort of horror it must be to 
 the woman who is married to an unfaithful husband or to 
 a drunkard, to have him come in his uncleanness to claim
 
 456 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 lier, and now (though Ishmael is neither of these, but 
 merely a man who has " rights " in me) I think I know. 
 
 No matter! I am not afraid of Ishmael any longer, so 
 you need not be afraid for me. It is not for nothing that 
 I have Jewish blood in me, and if Ishmael attempts to force 
 me, as surely as I am a daughter of Zion, I will — well, 
 never mind ! Dreadful ? Perhaps so. Jezebel ? I cannot 
 help it. My husband? No, no, no; and if destiny has put 
 me into the position of his wife, I despise and intend to 
 defy it. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Of course I did not sleep a wink last night, but I crept 
 out of my hiding-place under the high prow of the boat, 
 when the dawn came up like a bride robed in pearly gray 
 and blushing rosy red. By that time we were nearing Bed- 
 rasheen, and now we are moored alongside of it, and the peo- 
 ple are beginning to land, for it seems they are to camp at 
 Sakkara, in order to be in a position to see the light which 
 is to shine from the minaret of Mohammed Ali. 
 
 Such joy, such rapture! Men with the madra pole sound- 
 ing the depths of the water: men with sculls pushing the 
 boats ashore; all shouting in strident voices, or singing in 
 guttural tones ! 
 
 Soon, very soon, their hopes will be blighted. "Will they 
 ever know by whom? I wonder if anybody will tell them 
 about that letter? Where is Mosie? I trust the Consul- 
 General may keep him in Cairo. The boy is as true as 
 steel, but with this woman to question him! . . , My God, 
 make her meet a fate as black as her heart, the huzzy ! 
 
 But why do I trouble about this? It matters nothing 
 to me what becomes of the Arab woman, or of the Egyp- 
 tians, or of the Soudanese, or even of Ishmael himself — 
 the whole boiling of them, as you say. I know I'm heartless, 
 but I can't help it. The only question of any consequence 
 is what is happening to you. After all, it was I who put 
 you where you are, and it is quite enough for me to reproach 
 myself with that. 
 
 What is the Government doing to you? What has your
 
 THE COMING DAY 457 
 
 father done? What is going on among the descendants of 
 the creeping things that came out of the Ark? 
 
 • ••••• • 
 
 I cannot see Hamid among the crowd on the land, but I 
 hope to find him as soon as I go ashore. If I miss him 
 in the fearful chaos I suppose I shall have to go on to the 
 camp, for, besides my anxiety to receive your letter, I am 
 living under the strongest conviction that there is some- 
 thing for me to do for you, and that it has not been for 
 nothing that I have gone through the bog and slush of this 
 semi-barbaric life. 
 
 There ! You see what you've done for me ! You've given 
 me as strong a belief in the " mystic sense " as you have 
 yourself, and as firm a faith in fatality. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 ISTo sign of Ilamid yet ! Xever mind ! Don't be afraid 
 for me — I am all rif-'ht. 
 
 Gordon, my dear, my dear — dear, good-bye ! 
 
 Helena. 
 
 XII 
 
 For more than three weeks the Consul-General had kept 
 his own counsel, and not even to the Sirdar, whom he saw 
 daily, did he reveal the whole meaning of his doings. 
 
 When the Sirdar had come to say that through the Sou- 
 dan Intelligence Department in Cairo he had heard that Ish- 
 mael and his vast company had left Khartoum, and that 
 the Inspector-General was of opinion that the pilgrimage 
 must be stopped or it would cause trouble, the Consul- 
 General had said : 
 
 " No ! Let the man come on. We shall be ready to 
 receive him." 
 
 Again, when the Governor at Assouan, hearing of the 
 approach of the ever-increasing horde of Soudanese had 
 telegraphed for troops to keep them out of Egypt, the Con- 
 sul-General had replied : 
 
 " Leave them alone, and mind your own business."
 
 458 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Finally, when the Commandant of Police at Cairo had 
 come with looks of alarm to say that a thousand open boats, 
 all packed with people, were sailing down the river like an 
 invading army, and that if they attempted to enter the city 
 the native police could not be relied upon to resist them, 
 the Consul-General had said: 
 
 " Don't be afraid. I have made other arrangements." 
 
 Meantime, the great man who seemed to be so calm on 
 the outside was white hot within. Every day, while Ishmael 
 was in the Soudan, and every hour after the Prophet had 
 entered Egypt, he had received telegrams from his Inspec- 
 tors saying where the i^ilgrimage was and what was hap- 
 pening to it. So great, indeed, had been the fever of his 
 anxiety that he had caused a telegraphic tape to be fixed up 
 in his bedroom that in the middle of the night, if need be, 
 he might rise and read the long white slips. 
 
 A few days before the date fixed for the festivities, one 
 of the Inspectors of the Ministry of the Interior came to 
 tell him that there were whispers of a conspiracy that had 
 been blown upon, with hushed rumours of some bitter pun- 
 ishment which the Consul-General was preparing for those 
 who had participated in it. As a consequence a number 
 of the Notables and certain of the diplomats were rajjidly 
 leaving the country, nearly every train containing some of 
 them. A sombre fire shone in the great man's eyes while 
 he listened to this, but he only answered with a sinister 
 smile : 
 
 " The air of Egypt doesn't agree with them perhaps. 
 Let them go. They'll be lucky if they live to come back." 
 
 As soon as the Inspector was gone the Consul-General 
 sent for his Secretary and asked what acceptances had been 
 received of the invitations to the King's Dinner, w-hereupon 
 the Secretary's face fell and he replied that there had been 
 many excuses. 
 
 Half the diplomats had pleaded calls from their own 
 countries, and half the Pashas had protested with apologetic 
 prayers that influenza or funerals in their families would 
 compel them to decline. The Ministers had accepted, as 
 they needs must, but, with a few exceptions, the Ulema,
 
 THE COMING DAY 459 
 
 after endless invocations to God and the Prophet, had, on 
 various grounds, begged to be excused. 
 
 "And the exceptions — which are they?" asked the Con- 
 sul-General. 
 
 " The Chancellor of El Azhar, his guest the Sheikh Omar 
 Benani, the Grand Mufti and ..." 
 
 " Good ! All goes well," said the Consul-General. " Make 
 a list of the refusals, and let me have it on the day of the 
 dinner." 
 
 Before that day there was much to do, and on the day 
 immediately preceding it the British Agency received a 
 stream of visitors. The first to come by appointment was 
 the English Adviser to the Ministry of Justice. 
 
 " I wish you," said the Consul-General, " to summon the 
 new Special Tribunal to hold a court in Cairo at ten o'clock 
 to-morrow night." 
 
 "Ten o'clock to-morrow night? Did your lordship say 
 ten? " asked the Adviser. 
 
 " Don't I speak plainly ? " replied the Consul-General, 
 whereupon the look of bewilderment on the Adviser's face 
 broke up into an expression of embarrassment and his de- 
 sire to ask further questions was crushed. 
 
 The next visitor to come by appointment was the British 
 Adviser to the Minister of the Interior, the tall young Eng- 
 lishman on whose red hair the red fez sat strangely. 
 
 " I wish you," said the Consul-General, " to arrange that 
 the gallows be got out and set up after dark to-morrow 
 night in the square in front of the Governorat." 
 
 "The square in front of the Governorat?" repeated the 
 Adviser, in tones of astonishment. " Does your lordship 
 forget that public execution within the citv is no longer 
 legal ? " 
 
 " Damn it, I'll make it legal," replied the Consul-General, 
 whereupon the red head under the red fez bowed itself out 
 of the library without waiting to ask who was to be hanged. 
 
 The next visitor to come to the Agency by appointment 
 was the burly Commandant of Police. 
 
 " You still hold your Avarrant for the arrest of Ishmael 
 Ameer?" asked the Consul-General.
 
 460 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " I do, my lord." 
 
 " Then come to Ghezirah to-morrow night and be ready 
 to receive my orders." 
 
 Then came the Colonel who, since the death of General 
 Graves, had been placed in temporary command of the Army 
 of Occupation. 
 
 " Is everything in order ? " 
 
 " Everything, my lord." 
 
 " All your regiments now in the country can arrive at 
 Calioub by the last train to-morrow night i " 
 
 " All of them." 
 
 " Then wait there yourself until you hear from me. 
 I shall speak to you over the telephone from Ghezirah. 
 On receiving my message you will cause fifty rounds of 
 ammunition to be issued to your men and then march them 
 into the city and line them up in the principal thorough- 
 fares. Let them stay there as long as they may be required 
 to do so — all night if necessary — and if there is unrest or 
 armed resistance on the part of the populace, of the native 
 army, or of people coming into the town, you will promptly 
 put it down. You understand ? " 
 
 " I understand, my lord." 
 
 " But wait for my telephone call. Don't let one man stir 
 out of barracks until you receive it. Mind that. Good-bye!" 
 
 The better part of the day was now gone, yet so great 
 had been the Consul-General's impatience that he had not 
 even yet broken his fast, although Fatimah, who alone would 
 have been permitted to do so, had repeatedly entered his 
 room to remind him that his meals were ready. 
 
 At sunset he went up to the roof of his house. Every 
 day for nearly a week he had done this, taking a telescope in 
 his hand that he might look down the river for the mighty 
 octopus of demented people who were soon to come. Yes- 
 terday he had seen them for the first time — a vast flotilla 
 of innumerable native boats, with white three-cornered sails, 
 stretching far down the Nile, as a flight of birds of passage 
 might stretch along the sky. 
 
 Now the people were encamped on the desert between 
 Bedrasheen and Sakkara, a sinuous line of speckled white
 
 THE COMING DAY 461 
 
 and black on the golden yellow of the sand, looking like a 
 great serpent encircling the city on the south. As a serpent 
 they fascinated the Consul-Gencral when he looked at them, 
 but not with fear, so sure was he that, by the machinery he 
 had set to work, the vermin would soon be trampled into 
 the earth. 
 
 There they were, he thought, an armed force, the scour- 
 ings of the Soudan, under the hypnotic sway of a fanatic- 
 hypocrite, waiting to fall on the city and to destroy its civil- 
 isation. In every saddle-bag a rifle; in every gebah a copy of 
 the Koran ; in every heart a spirit of hatred and revenge. 
 
 Since the Grand Cadi had told him of the conspiracy to 
 establish an Arab Empire, the Consul-General's mind had 
 evolved developments of the devilish scheme. The practical 
 heart of the matter was Pan-Islamism, a combination of 
 all the Moslem peoples to resist the Christian nations. 
 Therefore, in the great historical drama which he was soon 
 to play, he would be seen to be the saviour not only of 
 England and of Europe and of civilisation, but even of 
 Christianity itself! 
 
 It would be a life and death struggle, in which cruel 
 things could not fail, but the issues were world-great, and 
 therefore he would not shrink. He who wanted the end 
 must not think too much about the means. 
 
 Ishmael? The gallows in the square of the Governorat I 
 Why not ? The man might have begun as a mere paid emis- 
 sary of the Khedive, but having developed the Mahdist mal- 
 ady, a belief in his own divinity, he meant to throw off his- 
 allegiance to his master and proclaim himself as Caliph. 
 Therefore they must hang him — hang him before the eyes, 
 of his followers, and fling his " divine " body into the Nile ! 
 
 As the Consul-General stopped down from the roof Ibra- 
 him met him with a letter from the Grand Cadi saying he 
 found himself suspected by his own people, and therefore 
 begged to be excused from attendance at the King's Din- 
 ner, but sent this secret message to warn his Excellency 
 that by the plotting of his enemies the Kasr el Nil bridge, 
 which connected Ghezirah with Cairo, would be opened im- 
 mediately after the beginning of the festival. 
 31
 
 462 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " The fox ! " thought the Consul-General, but interpret- 
 ing in his own way the dim purpose of the plot — that it was 
 intended to imprison him on the island, while Ishmael's 
 followers entered the citj- — he merely added to his order 
 for his carriage an order for his steam-launch as well. 
 
 Daylight had faded by this time, and as soon as dark- 
 ness fell the Consul-General received a line of other visit- 
 ors — strange visitors, such as the British Agency had never 
 seen before. They were women, Egyptian women, the harem, 
 shrouded figures in black satin and the yashmak, the wives 
 of the Ministers who had felt compelled to accept their in- 
 vitations, but were in fear of the consequences of having 
 done so. 
 
 Unexampled, unparalleled event, never before known in 
 an Eastern country, the women, disregarding the seclusion 
 of their sex, had come to plead for their husbands, to make 
 tacit admission of a conspiracy, but to say, each trembling 
 woman in her turn, " My husband is not in it," and to im- 
 plicate other men who were. 
 
 The Consul-General listened with cold, old-fashioned 
 courtesy to everything they had to say, and then bowed 
 them out without many words. Instinctively Ibrahim had 
 darkened the Agency as soon as they began to come, so 
 that veiled they passed in, veiled they passed out, and they 
 were gone before anybody else was aware. 
 
 The dinner hour was now near, and leaving the library 
 with the intention of going up to dress, the Consul-General 
 came upon two men who were sitting in an alcove of the 
 hall. They were Keuter's reporters, who, for the past ten 
 years, had been accustomed to come for official information. 
 Rising as the Consul-General approached, they asked him 
 if he had anything to say. 
 
 " Be here at ten o'clock to-morrow night, and I shall 
 have something to give you," he said. " It will be something 
 important, so keep the wires open to receive it." 
 
 "The wires to London, my lord?" 
 
 " To London, Paris, Berlin — everv-^vhere ! Good-night ! " 
 
 Going upstairs with a flat and heavy step, but a light and 
 almost joyous heart, the Consul-General remembered his
 
 THE COMING DAY 463 
 
 letter of resignation, and thought of the hubbub in Down- 
 ing Street the day after to-morrow when news of the con- 
 spiracy, and of how he had scotched it, fell like a thunder- 
 bolt on the " fossils of Whitehall." 
 
 In the conflagration that would blaze heaven high in 
 England it would be seen at last how necessary a strong 
 authority in Egypt was, and then — what then? He would 
 be asked to use his own discretion, unlimited power be re- 
 posed in him, he would hoist the Union Jack over the Cita- 
 del, annex the countiy to the British Crown, cast off all 
 futile obligations to the Sultan, and so end for ever the 
 present ridiculous, paradoxical, suicidal situation. 
 
 While Ibrahim helped him to dress for dinner, he was 
 partly conscious that the man was talking about Mosie and 
 repeating some bewildering story which the black boy had 
 been telling downstairs of Helena's " marriage to the new 
 Mahdi," 
 
 This turned his thoughts in another direction, and for 
 a few short moments the firm and stern, but not fundam.en- 
 tally hard and cruel man, became aware that all his fierce 
 and savage and candid ferocity that day had been no more 
 than the wild ejaculation of a heart that was broken and 
 trembling because it was bereaved. 
 
 It was Gordon again — always Gordon ! Where was " our 
 boy" now? What was happening to him? Could it be 
 possible that he was so far away that he would not hear 
 of the weltering downfall, so soon to come, of the " charla- 
 tan mummer " whose evil influence had brought his bright 
 young life to ruin? 
 
 XIII 
 
 That night the Sirdar dined with the Consul-General, 
 and as soon as the servants had gone from the dining-room 
 he said: 
 
 " Xunoham, I have something to tell you." 
 
 " What is it ? " asked the Consul-General. 
 
 " Notwithstanding three weeks of the closest observa-
 
 464 THE WHITE PEOPHET 
 
 tion I have found no trace of insubordination in the Egyp- 
 tian Army, but nevertheless, in obedience to your warning, 
 I have taken one final precaution. I have given orders that 
 the ammunition with which every soldier is intrusted shall 
 be taken from him to-morrow evening, so that if Ishmael 
 Ameer comes into Cairo at night with any hope of " 
 
 " My dear Mannering," interrupted the Consul-General, 
 with his cold smile, " would it surprise you to be told that 
 Ishmael Ameer is already in Cairo ? " 
 
 " Already ? Did you say " 
 
 " That he has been here for three weeks, that he came 
 by the same train as yourself, wearing the costume of a 
 Bedouin Sheikh, and that " 
 
 " But, my dear Xuneham, this is incredible," said the 
 Sirdar, with his buoyant laugh. " It is certainly true that 
 a Bedouin Sheikh travelled in the same train with me from 
 the Soudan, but that he was Ishmael Ameer in disguise 
 is of course utterly unbelievable." 
 
 " ^Yhy so ? " 
 
 " Because a week after I left Khartoum I heard that 
 Ishmael was still living there, and because every other day 
 since then has brought us advices from our Governors say- 
 ing the man was coming across the desert with his people." 
 
 " My dear friend," said the Consul-General, " in jvidging 
 of the East one must use Eastern weights and measures. 
 The race that could for fourteen centuries accept the pre- 
 posterous tradition that it was not Jesus Christ who was 
 crucified but some one else who took on his likeness and 
 died instead of him, is quite capable of accepting for itself 
 and imposing upon others a substitute for this White 
 Prophet." 
 
 " But you bewilder me," said the Sirdar. " Isn't the man 
 Ishmael at this moment lying encamped, with fifty thousand 
 of his demented people, on the desert outside Cairo ? " 
 
 " Xo," said the Consul-General. 
 
 And then in his slow, deep, firm voice, grown old and 
 husky, he unburdened himself for the first time — telling of 
 Helena's departure for Khartoum on her errand of ven- 
 geance; of her letter from there announcing Ishmael's in-
 
 THE COlIINTx DAY 465 
 
 tention of coming into Cairo in advance of his people, in 
 order to draw off the allegiance of the Egyptian Army; of 
 Ishmael's arrival and his residence at the house of the 
 Chancellor of El Azhar; of the visit of the Princess Xazimah, 
 and her report of the conspiracy of the diplomatic corps, 
 and finally of the Grand Cadi's disclosure of the Khedive's 
 plot for the establishment of an Arab Empire. 
 
 " So you see," said the Consul-General with an indulgent 
 smile, " that all the bad concomitants of an Oriental revolu- 
 tion are present, and that while you, my dear friend, have 
 been holding your hand in the Soudan for fear of repeating 
 the error of two thousand years ago — troubling yourself 
 about Pontius Pilate and moral forces versus physical ones, 
 and giving me the benefit of all the catchwords of your 
 Christian socialism and Western democracy — a conspiracy of 
 gigantic proportions has been gathering about us." 
 
 The Sirdar's usually ruddy face whitened, and he listened 
 with a dumb, vague wonder while the Consul-General went 
 on, with bursts of bitter humour, to describe one bj* one 
 the means he had taken to defeat the enemies by whom 
 they were surrounded. 
 
 " So you see, too," he said at last, lifting unconsciously 
 his tired voice, "that by this time to-morrow we shall have 
 defeated the worst conspiracy that has ever been made even ia 
 Egypt — meted out sternly retributive justice to the authors 
 of it ; put an end to all forms of resistance, whether passive or 
 active, silenced all chatter about Nationalism and all prattle 
 about representative institutions, destroyed the devilish 
 machinery of this accursed Pan-Islamism, crushed the Khe- 
 dive, and wiped out his fanatic-hypocrite and charlatan- 
 mummer, Ishmael Ameer." 
 
 The Consul-General had spoken with such intensity, and 
 the Sirdar had listened so eagerly, that down to that mo- 
 ment neither of them had been aware that another person 
 was in the room. It was Fatimah, who was standing with 
 the deathlike rigidity of a ghost near to the door, in the 
 half-light of the shaded electric lamps. 
 
 The Sirdar saw her first, and with a motion of his hand 
 he indicated her presence to the Consul-General, who, with
 
 466 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 a face that was pale and stern, turned angrily round and 
 asked the woman what she wanted; whereupon, Fatimah, 
 with trembling lips and a quivering voice, as if struggling 
 with the spirit of falsehood, said she had only come to ask 
 if the Sirdar intended to sleep there that night, and whether 
 she was to make up a bed for him. 
 
 "'No, certainly not! Why should you think so? Go to 
 bed yourself," said the Consul-General, and with obvious 
 relief the woman turned to go. 
 
 " Wait ! " said the Consul-General. " How long have you 
 been in the room?" 
 
 " Only a little moment, oh, my lord," replied Fatimah. 
 
 After that the two men went to the libraiy, but some time 
 passed before the conversation was resumed. The Sirdar 
 lit a cigar and puffed in silence, while the Consul-General, 
 who did not smoke, sat in an arm chair with his wrinkled 
 hands clasped before his breast. At length the Sirdar said: 
 
 "And all this came of Helena's letter from Khartoum? " 
 
 " Was suggested by it," said the Consul-General, 
 
 " You told me she was there, but I could not imagine 
 what she was doing — what her errand was. Good heavens, 
 what a revenge! It makes one shiver! Carries one back 
 to another age! " 
 
 " A better age," said the Consul-General. " A more natu- 
 ral and less hypocritical age at all events." 
 
 " The age of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, per- 
 haps — the age of a hot and consuming God." 
 
 "Yes, a God of wrath, a God of anger, a God who did 
 something, not the pale, meek, forgiving, anaemic God of our 
 day — a God who does nothing." 
 
 " The God of our day is at least a God of mercy, of pity, 
 and of love," said the Sirdar. 
 
 " He is a lay figure, my friend, who pennits wrong with- 
 out revenging it — in short, no God at all, but an illogical, 
 inconsequential, useless creature." 
 
 The Sirdar made no further resistance, and the Consul- 
 General went on to defend Helena's impulse of vengeance 
 by assailing the Christian spirit of forgiveness. 
 
 " There was at least something natural and logical as
 
 THE COMING DAY 467 
 
 well as majestic and magnificent in the old ideal of Jehovah, 
 but your new ideal of Jesus is contrary to nature and op- 
 posed to the laws of life. * Love your enemies.' * Do good 
 to them that hate you.' * If a man smite thee on the right 
 cheek turn to him the other also.' 'Resist not evil!' * If 
 any man take away thy coat let him have thy cloak also ! ' 
 Impossible ! Fatal ! If this is Christianity I am no Chris- 
 tian. When I am hit I hit back. When I am injured I de- 
 mand justice. The only way ! Any other would lead to the 
 triumph of the worst elements in humanity. And what I 
 do everybody else does — everybody — though the hypocrisy 
 of the modern world will not permit people to admit it." 
 
 The Consul-General had risen and was tramping heavily 
 across the room. 
 
 " Is there one man alive who will dare to say that he 
 actually orders his life according to the precepts of Christ ? 
 If so, he is either a liar or a fool. As for the nations, look 
 at the facts. Christianity has been two thousand years in 
 the world, yet here we are competing against each other in 
 the building of war-ships, the imposition of tariffs, the 
 union of trades. Why not ? I say why not ? " 
 
 The Consul-General drew up and waited, but getting no 
 answer he continued : 
 
 " Civilisation requires it. I say requires it. What holds 
 the world together and preserves peace among the nations 
 is not Christianity but cast-iron and gunpowder. Yet what 
 vexes me and stirs my soul is to hear people praying in 
 their churches for 'peace and concord,' while all the time 
 they know that ' peace and concord ' is an impossible ideal, 
 that Christianity in its first sense is dead, and that Jesus 
 as a practical guide to life — as a practical guide to life, 
 mind you — has failed." 
 
 Then the Sirdar lifted his eyes and said: 
 
 " Do you know, my dear Xuneham, I once heard some- 
 body else talk like that, though from the opposite standpoint 
 of sympathy, not contempt." 
 
 " Who was it ? " 
 
 " Your own son." 
 
 " Plumph ! "
 
 468 THE "S^TIITE PROPHET 
 
 The Consul-General frowned, and there was silence again 
 for some moments. When the conversation was resumed it 
 concerned the dangers of the Arab Empire, which, accord- 
 ing to the Grand Cadi, the Khedive (with the help of Ish- 
 mael) expected to found. 
 
 " What would it mean? " said the Consul-General. " The 
 utter annihilation of the unbeliever. Does not the word 
 * Ghazi ' signify a hero who slays the infidel ? Does not 
 every Mollah, when he recites the Khuttab in the mosque, 
 invoke divine wrath on the non-Moslem i What then ? The 
 establishment of an Arab Empire would mean the revolt of 
 the whole Eastern world against the Western world, and a 
 return to all the brutality, all the intolerance of the farrago 
 of moribund nonsense known as the Sacred Law." 
 
 The Sirdar made no reply and after a moment the Con- 
 sul-General said: 
 
 " Then think of the spectacle of a conquering Moham- 
 medan ai-my in Cairo ! If the Citadel and the Arsenal of the 
 capital could be occupied by that horde outside, it would 
 not be merely England's power in Egypt that would be 
 ended, or the English Empire as a. world-force that would 
 be injured — it would be Western civilisation itself that 
 would in the end be destroyed. The Mohammedans in 
 India would think that what their brethren in Cairo had 
 done they might do. The result would be incalculable chaos, 
 unlimited anarchy, the turning back of the clock ten cen- 
 turies. 
 
 The Consul-General returned to his seat, saying : 
 
 " No, no, my friend, a catastrophe so appalling as that 
 cannot be left to chance, and if it is necessary to blow these 
 fifty thousand fanatics out of the mouths of guns rather 
 than lay the fate of the world open to irretrievable ruin I 
 — / will do it.'' 
 
 " But all this depends on the truthfulness of the Grand 
 Cadi's story — isn't it so ? " asked the Sirdar. 
 
 The Consul-General bent his head. 
 
 " And the first test of its truthfulness is whether or not 
 these thousands of Ishmael's followers are an armed force ? " 
 
 Again the Consul-General bent his head.
 
 THE COMING DAY 469 
 
 " Well," said the Sirdar, rising and throwing away his 
 cigar, " I am bound to tell you that I see no reason to think 
 they are. More than that, I will not believe that when our 
 boy took his serious step he would have sided with this 
 White Prophet if he had suspected that the man's aims in- 
 cluded an attack upon England's power in Egypt, and I 
 cannot imagine for a moment that he could be fool enough 
 not to know." 
 
 Again the Consul-General frowned, but the Sirdar went 
 on firmly : 
 
 " I believe he thought and knew that Ishmael Ameer's 
 propaganda was purely spiritual, the establishment of an 
 era of universal peace and brotherhood, and that is a world- 
 question having nothing to do with England or Egypt or 
 Arab Empires, except so far as " 
 
 But the Consul-General, who was cut to the quick by 
 the Sirdar's praise of Gordon, could bear no more. 
 
 " Only old women of both sexes look for an era of uni- 
 versal peace," he said testily. 
 
 " In that case," replied the Sirdar, " the old women are 
 among the greatest of mankind — the Hebrew prophets, the 
 prophets of Buddhism, of Islam, and of Christianity. And 
 if that is going too far, then Abraham Lincoln and John 
 Bright, and, to come -closer home, your own son, as brave 
 a man as ever drew a sword, a soldier, too, the finest young 
 soldier in the King's service, one who might have risen to 
 any height, if he had been properly handled, instead of 
 being " 
 
 But the old man, whose nostrils were swelling and dilat- 
 ing like the nostrils of a broken-winded horse, leaped to 
 his feet and stopped him. 
 
 " Why will you continue to talk about my son ? " he cried. 
 "Do you wish to torture me? He allowed himself to be- 
 come a tool in the hands of my enemies, yet you are accus- 
 ing me of destroying his career and driving him away. You 
 are — you know you are ! " 
 
 " Ah, well ! God grant everything may go right to-mor- 
 row," said the Sirdar after a while, and with that he rose 
 to go.
 
 470 THE \\'HITE PROPHET 
 
 It was now very late, and when Ibrahim in the hall, with 
 two sleepy eyes, hardly able to keep himself from yawning, 
 opened the outer door, the horses of the Sirdar's carriage, 
 which had been waiting for nearly an hour, were heard 
 stamping impatiently on the gravel of the drive. 
 
 At the last moment the old man relented. 
 
 " Reg," he said, and his voice trembled, " forgive me if 
 I have been rude to you. I have been hard hit and I must 
 make a fight. I need not explain. Good-night ! " And he 
 had gone back to the library before the Sirdar could 
 reply. 
 
 But after a while the unconquerable spirit and force of 
 the man enabled him to regain his composure, and before 
 going to bed he went up on to the roof to take a last look 
 at the enemy he was about to destroy. There it lay in the 
 distance, more than ever like a great serpent encircling the 
 city on the south, for there was no moon, the night was 
 very dark, and the dying fires -of the sinuous camp at Sak- 
 kara made patches of white and black like the markings of a 
 mighty cobra. 
 
 Fatiraah was at his bedroom door, waiting to bring his 
 hot water and to ask if he wanted anything else. 
 
 "Yes, I want you to go to bed," he replied, but the 
 Egyptian woman, still dallying about the room and speak- 
 ing with difiiculty, wished to know if it was true, as the 
 black boy had said, that Miss Helena was in Khartoum and 
 that she had betrothed herself to the White Prophet. 
 
 " I don't know and I don't care — go to bed," said the 
 Consul-General. 
 
 " Poor Gordon ! My poor boy ! Wah I Wah I Everything 
 goes wrong with him. Yet he hadn't an evil thought in his 
 heart." 
 
 "Go to bed, I tell you!" 
 
 It was even longer than usual before the Consul-General 
 slept. 
 
 He thought of Helena. Where was she now? He had 
 been telling himself all along that to save appearances she 
 might find it necessary to remain for a while in Ishmael's 
 camp, but surely she might have escaped by this time.
 
 THE COMING DAY 471 
 
 Could it be possible that she was kept as a prisoner? "Was 
 there anything he ought to do for her? 
 
 Then he thought of the speech he was to make in pro- 
 posing the King's health to-morrow, and framed some of the 
 stinging ironical sentences with which he meant to lash his 
 enemies to the bone. 
 
 Last of all he thought of Gordon, as he always did when 
 he was dropping off to sleep, and the only regret that 
 mingled with his tingling sense of imminent triumph was 
 that his son could not be present at the King's Dinner to 
 see — what he would see! 
 
 " Oh, if I could have him there to-morrow night — what 
 I would give for it ! " he thought. 
 
 At length the Consul-General slept and his big desolate 
 house was silent. If any human eye could have looked upon 
 him as he lay on his bed that night, the old man with his 
 lips sternly set, breathing fitfully, only the tired body over- 
 come, the troubled brain still working, it would have been 
 a pitiful thing to think that he who was the virtual master 
 of millions appeared to be himself the sport of those in- 
 scrutable demons of destiny which seem to toss us about 
 like toys. 
 
 His power, his pride, his life-success — what had he gained 
 by them? His wife dead, his son in revolt against him — 
 alone, enfeebled, duped, and self-deluded. 
 
 God, what a little thing is man ! He who for forty years 
 had guided the ship of State, before whose word Ministers 
 and even Khedives had trembled, could not see into the dark 
 glass of the first few hours before him. 
 
 Peace to him — until to-morrow! 
 
 XIV 
 
 Serai Fum El Khalig, Cairo. 
 My dearest Helena: I am going to that dinner! Yes, 
 as Ishmael Ameer in the disguise of the Sheikh Omar 
 Benani, chief of the Ababdah, I am to be one of my father's 
 guests.
 
 472 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 This is the morning of the day of the festivities, and 
 from Ilafiz, by the instrumentality of one who would live 
 or die or give her immortal soul for me, I have at length 
 learned all the facts of my father's coup. 
 
 Did you ever hear of the incident of the OiDera House? 
 Well, this incident is to be a replica of that, though the 
 parts to be played in the drama are in danger of being 
 differently cast. 
 
 As this is the last letter I shall be able to send to you 
 before an event which may decide one way or another the 
 fate of England in Egypt, my father's fate, IshmaeFs, and 
 perhaps yours and mine, I must tell you as much as I dare 
 commit to paper. 
 
 The British Army, as I foresaw from the first, is being 
 brought back to Cairo. It is to come in to-night as quietly 
 as possible by the last trains arriving at Calioub. The Con- 
 sul-General is to go to Ghezirah as if nothing were about to 
 happen, but at the last moment when his enemies have been 
 gathered under one roof — Ministers, Diplomats, Notables, 
 Ulema — when the operation of their plot has begun, and 
 the bridge is drawn, and the island is isolated, and Ishmael 
 and his vast following are making ready to enter the city, 
 my father is to speak over the telephone to the officer com- 
 manding at Abbassiah, and then the soldiers, with fifty 
 rounds of ammunition, are to march into Cairo and line up 
 in the streets. 
 
 Such is my father's coup, and to make sure of the com- 
 plete success of it — that Ishmael's following is on the move, 
 and that no conspirator (myself above all) escapes — he has 
 given orders to the Colonel not to stir one man out of the 
 barracks until he receives his signal. Well, my work to-night 
 is to see that he never receives it. 
 
 Already you will guess what I am going to do. I must 
 go to the dinner in order to do it, for both the central office 
 of the telephone and the office of the telegraph are now imder 
 the roofs of the Ghezirah Palace and Pavilion. 
 
 I hate to do the damnable thing, but it must be done. 
 It must, it must! There is no help for it. 
 
 I cannot tell you how hard it is to me to be engaged in
 
 THE COxMlNG DAY 473 
 
 a secret means to frustrate my father's plans — it is like 
 fighting one's own tiesh and blood, and is not fair war- 
 fare. Neither can I say what a struggle it has been to me, 
 as an English soldier, to make up my mind to intercept an 
 order of the British Army — it is like playing traitor, and I 
 can scarcely bear to think of it. 
 
 But all the same I know it is necessary, I also know God 
 knows it is necessary, and when I think of that my heart 
 beats wildly. 
 
 It is necessary to prevent the massacre which I know 
 (and my father docs not) would inevitably ensue; necessary 
 to save my father himself from the execration of the civilised 
 world; necessary to save Ishmael from the tragic conse- 
 quences of his determined fanaticism; necessary to save 
 England from the possible loss of her Mohammedan domin- 
 ions, from being faithless to her duty as a Christian nation, 
 and from the divine judgment which will overtake her if 
 she wantonly destroys her great fame as the one Western 
 power that seems designed by Providence to rule and to guide 
 the Eastern peoples; and necessary, above all, to save the 
 -white man and the black man from a legacy of hatred that 
 would divide them for another hundred years, and put back 
 the union of races and of faiths for countless centuries. 
 
 If I am not a vain fool this is what I (D. V.) have got 
 to do, so why in the name of God need I trouble myself 
 about the means by which I do it? And if I am the only 
 man who can, I must, or I shall be a coward skulking out 
 of his plain responsibility, and a traitor not only to Eng- 
 land but to humanity itself. 
 
 God docs not promise me success, but I believe I shall 
 succeed. Indeed I am so sure of success that I feel as 
 if all the recent events of my life have been leading up 
 to this one. What I felt when I left Cairo for Khartoum, 
 and again when I left Khartoum for Cairo — that every- 
 thing had been governed by higher powers which could not 
 err — I feel now more than ever. 
 
 If I had delivered myself up to the authorities after 
 your father's death my life would have been wasted and 
 thrown away. Nay, if I had obeyed orders over the blun-
 
 474 THE ^^'HITE trophet 
 
 der of El Azhar I should not have been -where I am now — 
 between two high-spirited men who are blindly making for 
 each other's ruin, and the destruction of all they stand for. 
 
 This reconciles me to everything that has happened, and 
 if I have to pay the penalty of playing buffer I am ready 
 to do so. I have great trust that God will bring me out all 
 right, but if that is not His plan, then so be it. I am will- 
 ing to give my life for England, whatever name she may 
 know me by when she comes to see what I have done, and 
 I am willing to die for these poor Egyptians, because I was 
 born and brought up among them, and I cannot helj) loving 
 them. 
 
 Death has no terrors for me anyway. I think the expe- 
 riences of the past months have taught me all that death 
 has to teach. In fact, I feel at this moment exactly as I 
 have felt at the last charge in battle, when, fighting against 
 frightful odds, it has not been a case of every man for 
 himself, but of God for us all. 
 
 Besides, I feel that on the day of your father's death I 
 died to myself — to my selfish hopes of life, I mean — and 
 if God intends to crush me in order that I may save my 
 country, and these people whom I love and who love me, I 
 really wish and long for Him to do so. 
 
 But In-sha-allah! It will be as God pleases, and I believe 
 from the bottom of my heart that He is working out His 
 wonderful embroidery of events to a triumphant issue. So 
 don't be afraid, my dear Helena, whatever occurs to-night. 
 I may be taken, but (D. V.) I shall not be taken in disgrace. 
 In any case I feel that my hour has come — the great hour 
 that I have been waiting for so long. 
 
 This may be the last letter I shall write to you, so I 
 am sending it by Hosie, lest Ilamid should find a difficulty 
 in getting into your camp. I hope to God you may get it, 
 for I want you to know that my last thoughts are about 
 yourself. 
 
 Upon my soul, dear, I believe the end will be all right, 
 but if it is to be otherwise, and we are to be separated, and 
 our lives in this world are to be wasted, remember that deep 
 love bridges death.
 
 THE COMING DAY 475 
 
 Remember, too, what you said to me at Khartoum. " I 
 am a soldier's daughter," you said, " and in my heart I am a 
 soldier's wife as well, and I shouldn't be worthy to be either 
 if I didn't tell you to do your duty, whatever the conse- 
 quences to me." 
 
 Good-bye, my dear, my dear! If anything happens you 
 will know what to do. I trust you without fear. I have 
 always trusted you. I can say it now, at this last moment 
 — never, dearest, never for one instant has the shadow of a 
 doubt of you entered into my heart. My brave girl, my 
 love, my life, my Helena ! 
 
 May the great God of Heaven bless and protect you ! 
 
 Gordon. 
 
 P. S. Oh, how the deuce did I forget ? There is some- 
 thing for you to do — something important — and I had al- 
 most sent off my letter without saying anything about it. 
 
 Do you remember that on the day I left Ivhartoum it 
 was ordered by Ishmael that after the call of the muezzin to 
 midnight prayers, a light was to be set up in the minaret 
 of the mosque of Mohammed Ali as a sign that he might 
 enter the city in peace? 
 
 Well, if I fail and the British Army comes into Cairo, 
 Ishmael must be kept out of it. He may be stubborn — a 
 man who thinks God guides and protects him and makes a 
 special dispensation for him is not easy to dissuade — but if 
 the light does not appear he must be restrained. 
 
 That is your work with Ishmael — why you are with him 
 still. I knew it would be revealed to us some day. Once 
 more, my dear, my dear, God bless and protect you ! 
 
 XV 
 
 UxDEE THE Pyramids. 
 
 My dear Gordon : Your letter has not yet reached me. 
 What has happened? Has your messenger been caught? 
 Who was it ? Was it Hamid ? 
 
 Not having heard from you, I was of course compelled to
 
 476 THE \\liliE PROPHET 
 
 come on with the camp and, therefore, I am with it still. 
 We are under the shadow of the Pyramids, with the mud- 
 built village of ISakkara by our side and Cairo in front of us, 
 beyond the ruins of old Memphis and across a stretch of 
 golden sand. 
 
 This is, it seems, the day of " the King's Dinner," and 
 at sunset when the elephant's horn was blown for the last 
 time we gathered for prayers under a sea-blue sky on the 
 blood-red side of the Step pyramid. 
 
 It was a splendid, horrible, inspiring, depressing, devilish, 
 divine spectacle. First Ishmael recited from the Koran the 
 chapter about the Prophet's great vision (the Surat er Ras- 
 soul, I think) Avhile the people on their knees in the shadow, 
 with the sun slanting over their heads, shouted their re- 
 sponses. Then in rapturous tones he preached, and though 
 I was on the farthest verge of the vast crowd I heard nearly 
 all he said. 
 
 They had reached their journey's end and had to thank 
 God who had brought them so far without the loss of a 
 single life. Soon they were to go into Cairo, the Mecca of 
 the new world, but they were to enter it in the spirit of love, 
 not hate, of peace, not war, doing violence to none, and 
 raising no rebellion. What said the Holy Koran? "Who- 
 soever among Moslems, Christians, or Jews believe in God 
 and in another life shall be rewarded." 
 
 Therefore let no man think they were come to turn the 
 Christians out of Egypt. They were there on a far higher 
 errand — to turn the devil out of the world! The intolerance 
 and bitterness of past ages had been the product of hatred 
 and darkness. The grinding poverty and misery of the pres- 
 ent age was the result of a false faith and civilisation. But 
 they were come to bring imiversal peace, universal brother- 
 hood, and univei-sal religion to all nations and races and 
 creeds — one State, one Faith, one Law, one God! 
 
 Cairo was the gate to the East. Tt was also the gate 
 to the West. He who held the keys of that gate was master 
 of the world. Who, then, should hold them but God's own, 
 His Guided One, His Expected One. His Christ? 
 
 More and yet more of this kind Ishmael said in his thril-
 
 THE COMING DAY 477 
 
 ling, throbbing voice, and of course the people greeted every 
 sentence with shouts of joy. And then finally, pointing to 
 the minarets of the mosque of Mohammed AH, far off on 
 the Mokattam hills, he told them that at midnight, after the 
 call to prayers, a light was to shine there, and they were 
 to take it for a sign that they might enter Cairo without 
 injury to any and with goodwill toward all. 
 
 "Watch for that light, oh, my brothers! It will come! 
 As surely as the sun will rise on you to-morrow that light 
 will shine on you to-night ! " 
 
 It is now quite dark and the camp is in a delirious state 
 of excitement. The scene about my tent is simply terrifying. 
 At one side there is an immense Zikr, with fifty frantic 
 creatures crying " Allah ! " to a leader, who in wild, guttural 
 tones is reciting the ninety-nine attributes of God. At the 
 other side there is a huge fire at which a group of men, hav- 
 ing slaughtered a sheep, are boiling it in a cauldron, with 
 many pungent herbs, that they may feast and rejoice together 
 in honour of the coming day. People are sitting in circles and 
 singing hymns of victory; tambourines, kettle-drums, and 
 one-stringed lutes are being played everywhere, and strolling 
 singers are going about from fire to fire making up songs 
 that describe Ishmael's good looks, and good deeds, and 
 his " divinity " — the wildest ditty being the most ap- 
 plauded. 
 
 Where Ishmael himself is I do not know, but he must 
 indeed be carried away by religious ecstasy if he is not 
 trembling at the mere thought of to-morrow morning. What 
 is to happen if these " Allah-intoxicated Arabs " have to 
 meet five-thousand British bayonets? Or, supposing you 
 can obviate that, what is to occur when they are compelled 
 to realise that all their high-built hopes are in the dust? 
 O God! O God! 
 
 II 
 
 El Hamdnl.liV.ah! Your letter has come at last! Per- 
 haps I wish it hadn't been Mosie who brought it, but the boy 
 was clever in riding into the camp unobserved, and now I 
 have sent him outside to hide in the darkness while I scrib-
 
 478 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 ble a few lines in reply. He is to come back presently, and 
 meantime, please God, he will keep out of the sight of that 
 she-cat of an Arab woman. 
 
 You are doing right, darling — I am sure you are ! Natu- 
 rally you must be troubled with thoughts about England 
 and your father, but both will yet see what motives inspired 
 you. and whatever they do now they will eventually make 
 amends. 
 
 Bravo, my boy, bravo ! Perhaps we shall all become 
 Quakers some day, but let the peace people croak as they 
 please, it is war that brings out the truly heroic virtues, and 
 though you are trying to prevent bloodshed you are really 
 going into battle. Go, then, and God bless you ! 
 
 What wretched ink this is — it must have got mixed with 
 ■water. 
 
 Oh, yes, certainly ! I will stay here to the end, and if 
 occasion arises I will do what you desire, though I have not 
 the faintest hope of succeeding. The fact is that even if 
 I could persuade Ishmael not to enter Cairo the people would 
 not under any circumstances be restrained. 
 
 To tell you the truth I cannot help feeling sorry for him. 
 He really began with the highest aims and the strongest 
 common-sense, but he has become the victim of his people's 
 idolatry, and, being made an idol, he may no longer be 
 a man. 
 
 I cannot help feeling sorry for the people also, for I sup- 
 pose they have only tried in their blind way to realise the 
 dream of humanity in all ages, the dream of all the holy 
 books and all the great prophets — the dream of a mil- 
 lennium. 
 
 It seems, too, as if God, who puts beautiful ideals in 
 people's hearts, always calls for a scapegoat to pay the price 
 of them. That is what you are to be, dear, and when I 
 think of what you are going to do to save these poor people 
 I begin to see for the first time what is meant by the sacri- 
 ficial blood of Christ. 
 
 I suppose this is shocking, but I don't care a pin about 
 that. Every heroic man who risks his life for his fellow- 
 man is doing what Christ did. You are doing it, and I don't
 
 THE COMING DAY 479 
 
 believe the good God will ask any questions about ways and 
 means. 
 
 There! That's something out of my eyes splash on to 
 the very point of my pen. Don't take it as a mark of weak- 
 ness, though, but as the sign-manual of Helena's heart tell- 
 ing you to go on without thinking about her. 
 
 Forget what I said about my Jewish blood and Jezebel 
 and all that nonsense. Ishmael's " work " will not be " fin- 
 ished " until he enters into Cairo, so I run no risk while 
 I am here, you see. 
 
 Of course I am in a fever of impatience to know what 
 is happening on Ghezirah to-night, but you must not sup- 
 pose that I am afraid. In any case I shall stay here, having 
 no longer the faintest thought of running away, and if there 
 is anything to do I'll do it. 
 
 This may be the last letter I am to write to you, so 
 good-bye, my Gordon, and God bless you again! My dear, 
 my dear, my dear ! Helena. 
 
 P. S. I suppose you are in the thick of it by this time, 
 for I see that the illuminations at Ghezirah have already 
 begun. My dear, my dear, my . . . my .... 
 
 XVI 
 
 At eight o'clock that night the Pavilion of the Ghezirah 
 Palace was brilliantly lit up for the " King's Dinner." A 
 troop of British cavalry was mounted in front of it under 
 the sparkling lights that swung from the tall palms of the 
 garden, and a crowd of eager spectators were waiting to see 
 the arrival of the guests. 
 
 The Consul-General came early, driving in his open car- 
 riage with two gorgeously clad sais inanning before him. 
 When he stepped down at the door, in his cocked hat, laced 
 coat, and gold-braided trousers, he was saluted like a sov- 
 ereign. The band of a British regiment under the trees 
 played some bars of the national Anthem, and the English 
 onlookers cheered.
 
 480 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 In the open court of the Pavilion, which was walled about 
 by Oriental hangings, the Consul-General's own people were 
 waiting to receive him. Ilis old and weakened but still mas- 
 sive and even menacing i:)ersonality showed out strongly 
 against the shadowy forms of some of the Advisers and 
 Under Secretaries who stood behind him. 
 
 It was quickly seen that his manner was less brusque 
 and masterful than usual, but that his tone was cynical 
 and almost bitter. When his first Seci'etary stepped up to 
 him and whispered that a Renter's telegram, which had just 
 come, announced that the Khedive had left Paris for Mar- 
 seilles intending to take steamer for Egypt, he was heard 
 to say: 
 
 " I don't care a what the Khedive does or what he 
 
 intends to do. Let him wait until to-morrow." 
 
 The Sirdar was one of the first of the guests to arrive, 
 and after saying in a low tone that he had just taken the 
 necessary steps to withdraw the ammunition from the native 
 troops, he whispered : 
 
 " The great thing is to keep calm — not to allow yourself 
 to lose your temper." 
 
 " I am calm, perfectly calm," said the Consul-General. 
 
 Then the other guests came in quick succession : Envoys 
 Extraordinary, Ministers-Plenipotentiary, Chancellors and 
 Counsellors of Legation and Attaches, wearing all their 
 orders ; Barons, Counts, and Marquises attired magnificently 
 in a prodigious quantity of pad and tailor work, silk stock- 
 ings, white, blue, and red coats with frogs and fur collars, 
 stars, ribbons, silver shoe-buckles, tight breeches, and every 
 conceivable kind of uniform and court dress. 
 
 Among the diplomatic corps came Egyptian Ministers 
 wearing the tarboosh and many decorations; the Turkish 
 High Commissioner, a gorgeous and expansive person; a 
 Prince of the Khedivial house, a long miscellaneous line 
 of Pashas and Beys, and finally a few of the Ulema in their 
 turbans and flowing Eastern robes. 
 
 The Consul-General received them all with smiles, and 
 it was said aftein\'ard that never before had he seemed to 
 be so ceremoniously polite.
 
 THE COillNG DAY 4S1 
 
 There was a delay in announcing dinner, and people were 
 beginning to ask who else was expected, when the first 
 Secretary was seen to approach the host and to say some- 
 thing which only he could hear. A moment later the ven- 
 erable Chancellor of El Azhar entered the hall in his simple 
 gray farageeyah, accompanied by a tall, strong, upright man 
 in the ample folds of a Bedouin Sheikh, and almost immedi- 
 ately afterward the guests went into the dining-hall. 
 
 Dinner was served by Arab waiters in white, and while 
 the band in the gardens outside played selections from 
 the latest French operas, some of the European guests con- 
 sumed a prodigious deal of fermented liquor and buzzed and 
 twittered and fribbled in the manner of their kind. The 
 Egyptian Ministers and Pashas were less at ease, and the 
 Ulema were obviously constrained, but the Consul-General 
 himself, though he continued to smile and to bow, was the 
 most preoccupied person in the room. 
 
 He passed dish after dish, eating little and drinking 
 nothing, though his tongue was dry and his throat was 
 parched. From time to time he looked about him with keen 
 eyes as if counting up the number of those among his 
 guests who had conspired against him. There they were, 
 nearly all of them, his secret enemies, his unceasing revilers, 
 his heartless and treacherous foes. But wait ! Only wait ! 
 He would soon see their confusion ! 
 
 The Sirdar, who sat on the left of the host, seemed 
 to be conscious of the Consul-General's impatience, and he 
 whispered again : 
 
 " The great thing is to be calm — perfectly calm." 
 
 " I am calm," said the Consul-General, but in a tone of 
 anger which belied his words. 
 
 Toward the end of the dinner his Secretary stepped up 
 to the back of his chair and whispered to him that the bridge 
 had been opened, and after that his impatience increased 
 visibly, until the last dish had been served, the waiters had 
 left the room, the band outside had ceased playing, and the 
 toast-master had called silence for the first toast. Then in 
 an instant all impatience, all nervousness, all anxiety disap- 
 peared, and the Consul-General rose to propose " The King."
 
 482 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Never had any one heard such a bitter, ironical, biting 
 speech. Every word blistered, every sentence cut to the 
 bone. 
 
 He began by telling his guests how happy he was to wel- 
 come them in that historic hall " sacred to the memory 
 of the glories of Ishmael Pasha, whose princely prodigality 
 brought Egj'pt to bankruptcy." Then he assured them that 
 he took their presence there that night as a cordial recogni- 
 tion of what Great Britain had done through forty hard and 
 sleepless years to rescue the Valley of the Xile from financial 
 ruin and moral corrujDtion. j^ext, he reminded them that 
 England was now reaping the results of the education it had 
 given the country, and among these results were certain im- 
 mature efforts to found Western institutions on Eastern 
 soil, not to speak of secret conspiracies to embarrass, dis- 
 turb, and even destroy her rule in Egypt altogether. 
 
 " But I am glad to realise," he said in a withering tone, 
 " that all such attempts to carry the country back from 
 civilisation to barbarism have been repelled by the best ele- 
 ments in the community, European and Egyptian alike, and 
 especially by the illustrious leaders by whom I am now sur- 
 rounded." 
 
 Then his eyes flashed like the eyes of an old eagle, while, 
 amid breathless silence, in the husky voice that came from 
 his drj' throat, turning from side to side, he thanked his 
 guests, class by class, for the help they had given to the 
 representative of the King in putting down political and 
 religious fanaticism. 
 
 " Gentlemen of the diplomatic corps," he said, " you are 
 satisfied with what England has done for Egypt and you 
 do not wish to see her rule disturbed. Between you and 
 ourselves there are no animosities, no selfish interests to 
 serve, no hostile groupings, no rival combinations. Knowing 
 that we are the joint trustees of civilisation in a backward 
 Eastern countr5% nothing could induce you so to act as if 
 you wanted Egypt for yourselves. Gentlemen, in the name 
 of the King I thank you ! " 
 
 Turning then to the Egyptian Ministers, he said in tones 
 of blistering irony:
 
 THE COMING DAY 4S3 
 
 " Your Excellencies, it seems idle to thank you for your 
 loyalty to the nation by whose power you live. You are far 
 too intelligent not to see that a man cannot set fire to his 
 house and yet hope to preserve it from being burned to the 
 ground, far too sensible of your own interests to listen to 
 the revolutionaries who would tear to pieces the country 
 you govern and give it back to bankruptcy and ruin. Gen- 
 tlemen, in the name of the King, I thank you." 
 
 Then facing the Notables he said, with a curl of his firm 
 lip: 
 
 " It might perhaps be thought that you, of all others, 
 had least reason to be grateful to the Power that took the 
 courhash out of your hands and deprived you of the advan- 
 tages of forced labour; but you do not want to regain the 
 powers you once held over the great unmoving masses of the 
 people; you are willing to see all false ledgers showing un- 
 just debts burned in the public squares with your whips 
 and instruments of the bastinado. Therefore, gentlemen, in 
 the name of the King I thank you." 
 
 Finally, looking down the middle table to where the 
 Chancellor of El Azhar sat with his Bedouin friend beside 
 him, he said : 
 
 " And your Eminences of the Ulema, I thank you also. 
 Your enemies sometimes say that you continue to live in the 
 middle ages, but you are much too keenly alive to your in- 
 terests in the present hour not to realize how necessary it 
 is to you to be assured for 'the future against the possible 
 recurrence of Mahdist raids and revolutions. You know 
 that the hydra-headed monster called fanaticism would de- 
 stroy you and your class, and therefore you support with 
 all the loyalty of your eager hearts the Power which in the 
 interests of true religion would crush and quell it. Gen- 
 tlemen, in the name of the King, I thank you." 
 
 The effect of the speech was paralysing. As, one by one, 
 the Consul-General spoke to the classes represented by his 
 guests, there was not a response, not a sound, nothing but 
 silence in the room, with white faces and quivering lips on 
 every side. 
 
 At length the Consul-General raised his glass and, in a
 
 484 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 last passage of withering sarcasm, called on the company 
 to drink to the great sovereign of the great nation which, 
 with the cordial sympathy and united help of the whole 
 community, as represented by those who were there present, 
 had done so much for civilisation and progress in the East — 
 "The King!" 
 
 They could not help themselves — they rose, a lame, halt- 
 ing, half-terrified company, getting up irregularly, with 
 trembling hands and pallid cheeks, and repeated after the 
 toast-master, in nervous, faltering, broken voices, " The 
 King!" 
 
 After the speaker sat down there was a subdued murmur 
 Avhich rose by degrees to a sort of muffled growl. The Con- 
 sul-General heard it, and his keen eyes flashed around the 
 company. Down to this moment he had done no more than 
 he intended to do, but now, carried away by the excitement 
 created within himself by his own speech, he wished to 
 throw off all disguise and fling out at everybody. 
 
 " Better be calm, though," he thought, remembering the 
 Sirdar's advice, and at the next moment the Sirdar himself, 
 whom he had missed from his side, returned and said, in a 
 whisper : 
 
 " Afraid I must go. Just heard that some of the Egj'p- 
 tian soldiers have been knocking down the officers who were 
 sent to remove their ammunition." 
 
 At that news, which appeared to confirm predictions, and 
 to be the beginning of everything he had been led to expect, 
 the Consul-General lost all control of himself. 
 
 "Wait! Wait a little and we'll go together," he whis- 
 pered back, and then, calling for silence, he rose to his feet 
 again and faced full upon his guests. 
 
 " Your Highnesses, your Eminences, your Excellencies, 
 and Gentlemen," he said in a loud voice, " I have one more 
 toast. I have given you the health of the King, and now 
 I give you ' Confusion to his Enemies.' " 
 
 If a bomb had fallen in the dining-hall it could scarcely 
 have made more commotion. The Consul-General saw this 
 and smiled. 
 
 " Yes, gentlemen, I say his enemies, and when I speak
 
 THE COMING DAY 485 
 
 of the King's enemies I refer to his enemies in Egypt, his 
 enemies in this room." 
 
 The sensation produced by these words was compounded 
 of many emotions. To such of the guests as were entirely 
 innocent of conspiracy it seemed phiinly evident that a kind 
 of mental vertigo had seized the Consul-General. One of 
 them looked round for a doctor, another rose from his seat 
 with the intention of stepping up to the speaker, while a 
 third took out his gold pencil-case and began to scribble 
 a note to the Sirdar, asking him, as the best friend 
 of their host, to remove the Consul-General from the 
 room. 
 
 On the other hand, the persons who were actually par- 
 ticipating in conspiracy, had, by operation of that inscru- 
 table instinct which compels guilty men to expose them- 
 selves, risen to their feet, and were loudly shouting their 
 protests. 
 
 "Untrue!" "Disgraceful!" "False!" "Utterly 
 false!" 
 
 "False, is it?" said the Consul-General. "We shall 
 see." 
 
 Then glancing over them one by one as they stood about 
 him, his eye fixed itself first upon a foreign representative 
 whose breast was covered with decorations, and he said: 
 
 " Baron, did you not say in the salon of a certain Prin- 
 cess that out of your secret service money you were pro- 
 viding ai-ms for the Egyptian populace ? " 
 
 The baron gave a start of surprise, made some movement 
 of the lips as if trying to reply, and sank back to his seat. 
 Then the Consul-General turned to one of two Egyptian 
 Ministers who, with faces as red as their tarbooshes, were 
 standing side by side, and said : 
 
 " Pasha, will you deny that a% recently as yesterday you 
 sent somebody to me in secret to say that while you were 
 innocent of conspiracy against British rule, your colleague 
 who stands at your right was deeply guilty ? " 
 
 The Pasha stammered out some confused words and col- 
 lapsed. 
 
 Then the Consul-General faced down to one of the Ulema, 
 32
 
 486 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 the Grand Mufti, ^vho, in his white turban and graceful 
 robes, was trying his best to smile, and said: 
 
 " Your Eminence, can it be possible that you were not 
 present at the house of the Chancellor of El Azhar when a 
 letter was sent to a certain visionaiy mummer then in the 
 Soudan, asking him to return to Cairo in order to draw 
 off the allegiance of the Egyptian Army?" 
 
 The smile passed in a flash from the Grand Mufti's face, 
 and he, too, dropped back to his seat. Then one by one the 
 others who had been standing slithered down to their places, 
 as if each of them was in fear that some secret he had whis- 
 pered in the salon, the harem, or the mosque would in like 
 manner be blurted from the housetops. 
 
 The Consul-General swept the whole company with a 
 look of triumph and said : 
 
 " You see, gentlemen, I know everything and it is useless 
 to deny. In order to overthrow the authority of England 
 in Egypt you have condescended to the arts of anarchists — 
 you have joined together to provoke rebellion against law 
 and order." 
 
 All this time the Sirdar's face had been stamped with an 
 expression of sadness, and now he was seen to be addressing 
 the Consul-General in a few low-toned words, but his warn- 
 ing, if such it was, seemed to be quite unheeded. With in- 
 creasing excitement and intense bitterness the Consul-Gen- 
 eral turned hotly upon the foreign representatives and said : 
 
 " Gentlemen of the diplomatic corps, joint trustees with 
 me of peace and civilisation in a backward country, you 
 thought you were using the unrest of the Egyptians to serve 
 your own ends, but listen and I will tell you what you were 
 really doing." 
 
 Then, more fiercely than ever, his face aflame, his hoarse 
 voice breaking into harsh cries, he disclosed his knowledge 
 of the Egj'ptian plot as he understood it to be — how the 
 final aim, the vast and luminous fact to which all Moslem 
 energies were directed, was the establishment of an Arab 
 Empire which should have it for its first purpose to resist 
 the Christian nations; how this Empire had originated in 
 the mind of the Khedive, who wished to put himself at the
 
 THE COMING DAY 487 
 
 head of it ; and how, since it Avas necessary in an Eastern 
 country to give a religious colour to political intriguing, 
 Ishmael Ameer, the mock Mahdi, the fanatic-hypocrite, had 
 been employed to intimidate the British authorities by 
 bringing up the scourings of the Soudan to their very doors. 
 
 This fell on the whole company, innocent and guilty, like 
 a thunderclap. 
 
 The great Proconsul, the strong and practical intellect 
 which had governed the State so long, had been deceived 
 on the main issue, had been fooled and was fighting a gigan- 
 tic phantom! 
 
 " Is this news to you, gentlemen of the diplomatic corps ? 
 Ask your friends, the Ulema ! Is it news to you, too, gentle- 
 men of El Azhar? Ask your Grand Cadi! But that is not 
 all. You have had no scruples, no shame! In hitting at 
 England you have not hesitated to hit at England's servant 
 — myself. You have hit me where I could least bear the 
 blow. By lies, by hypocrisies, by false pretences you have 
 got hold of my son, my only son, my only relative, all that 
 was left to me . . . the one in whom my hopes in life were 
 centred and . . . . " 
 
 Here the old man's voice faltered, and it was afterward 
 remembered that at this moment the Bedouin Sheikh rose in 
 obvious agitation, made some steps foi-ward and then 
 stopped. 
 
 At the next instant the Consul-General had recovered 
 himself, and, with increasing strength and still greater feroc- 
 ity, was hurling his last reproaches upon his enemies. 
 
 " But you are mistaken, gentlemen. I may be old but 
 I am not yet helpless. In the interests not only of England 
 but of Europe I have made all necessary preparations to 
 defeat your intrigues, and now — now I am about to put 
 them into execution." 
 
 Saying this he left his seat and directed his steps toward 
 the door. Nearly the whole of the company rose at the 
 same moment, and all stood aside to let him pass, l^o- 
 body spoke, nobody made a gesture. In that room there 
 were now no longer conspirators and non-conspirators. 
 There were only silent spectators of a great tragedy. Every-
 
 4SS THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 body felt that an immense figure was passing from the 
 world's stage, and none would have been more surprised 
 if the pyramid of Glieza had crumbled before their eyes. 
 
 On reaching the door the Consul-General stopped and 
 spoke again, but with something of his old courageous calm. 
 
 " I understand," he said, " that it was part of the plan 
 that to-night at midnight while the British Army were ex- 
 pected to be on the Delta and I and my colleagues were to 
 be held prisoners here at Ghezirah, the horde of armed 
 fanatics now lying outside on the desert were to enter and 
 occupy the city. That was a foolish scheme, gentlemen, 
 such as could only have been conceived in the cobwebbed 
 brains of El Azhar. But whatever it was I must ask you 
 to abide by its consequences. In the interests of peace and 
 of your own safety you will remain on this island until 
 to-morrow, and in the morning you shall see . . . what you 
 shall see ! " 
 
 Then saying something in a low voice to the Comman- 
 dant of Police, who was standing near, he passed out of the 
 dining-hall and the door was closed behind him. 
 
 XVII 
 
 A FEAV minutes afterward the military band in the gar- 
 den was playing again, red and white rockets were shooting 
 into the dark sky from the grounds of the Khedivial Sports 
 Club, and the Consul-General was entering the little in- 
 sular telephone office of Ghezirah, which was under the same 
 roof as the Pavilion. 
 
 " Call me up the colonel commanding at Abbassiah and 
 ask him to hold the line." 
 
 " Yes, my lord." 
 
 While the attendant put in the plugs of his machine 
 and waited for a reply, the Consul-General walked nervously 
 to and fro between the counter and the door. He was ex- 
 pecting the Commandant of Police to come to him in a 
 moment with news of the arrest of Ishmael Ameer. With-
 
 THE COMING DAY 489 
 
 out this certainty (though he had never had an instant's 
 doubt of it) he could not allow himself to proceed to the 
 last and most serious extremity. 
 
 " Xot got him yet ? " 
 
 " Not yet, my lord." 
 
 The Consul-General resumed his restless perambulation. 
 He was by no means at ease about the unpremeditated de- 
 velopments of the scene in the dining-hall, but he had always 
 intended to make sure that his enemies were safely housed 
 on the island and thereby cut off from the power of making 
 further mischief, before he ordered the Army into the city. 
 
 " Not got him even yet, boy ? " 
 
 " Cannot get an answer from the central in Cairo, my 
 lord." 
 
 " Try another line. Quick ! " 
 
 The Consul-General thought the Commandant was long 
 in coming, but no doubt the police staff had removed the 
 supposed " Bedouin " to a private room, so that in making 
 his arrest, and in stripping off his disguise to secure evi- 
 dence of his identity, there might be no unnecessary com- 
 motion, no vulgar sensation. 
 
 " Got him at last ? " 
 
 " No, my lord. Think there must be something wrong 
 with the w'ires." 
 
 "The wires?" 
 
 " They seem to have been tampered with." 
 
 " You mean — cut ? " 
 
 " Afraid they are, my lord." 
 
 " Then the island — so far as the telephone goes — the 
 island is isolated ? " 
 
 " Yes, my lord." 
 
 The old man's face, which had been flushed, became 
 deadly pale, and liis stubborn lower lip began to tremble. 
 
 "Who can have done this? Who? Who?" 
 
 The attendant, terrified by the fierce eye that looked into 
 his face, was answering with, a vacant stare and a shake 
 of the head when the Sirdar entered the oflSce, accom- 
 panied by the Commandant of Police, and both were as white 
 as if they had seen a ghost.
 
 490 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 "Well, what is it now?" demanded the Consul-General ; 
 ^vhereupon the Sirdar answered: 
 
 " The Commandant's men have got him, hut . . . ." 
 
 " But— what ? " 
 
 " It is not Ishmael Ameer." 
 
 " Not Ishma . . . you say it is not Ish ..." 
 
 The Consul-General stopped, and for a long moment he 
 stared in silence into the blanched faces before him. Then 
 he said shai-ply, " Who is it ? " 
 
 The Commandant dropped his head, and the Sirdar 
 seemed unwilling to reply. 
 
 "Who is it, then?" 
 
 " It is ... it is a British officer." 
 
 " A British . . . you say a British ..." 
 
 " A colonel." 
 
 The old man's lips moved as if he were repeating the 
 word without uttering it. 
 
 " His tunic was torn where his decorations had been. 
 He looked like . . , like a man who might have been de- 
 graded." 
 
 The Consul-General's face twitched, but in a fierce, al- 
 most ferocious voice, he said, " Speak ! Who is it ? " 
 
 There was another moment of silence, which seemed to 
 be eternal, and then the Sirdar replied: 
 
 " Xuneham, -it is your own son." 
 
 XVIII 
 
 FHOM THE SLAVE OF THE MOST HIGH, ABDUL ALI, CHANCELLOR OF 
 EL AZHAR, TO ISHMAEL AMEER, THE MESSENGER OF GOD, PRAISE 
 BE TO HIM THE EXALTED ONE. 
 
 A word in haste to say that he who came here as your 
 missionary and representative has within the hour been 
 arrested by the officials of the Government, having, so far as 
 we can yet learn and surmise, been most treacherously and 
 maliciously betrayed into their hands by means of a letter
 
 THE COMING DAY 491 
 
 to the English lord from one who stands near to you in your 
 camp. 
 
 In sadness and tears, with faces bowed to the earth and 
 ashes on our heads, we send our sympathy to you and to 
 your stricken followers, entreating you on our knees, in 
 the name of the Compassionate, not to attempt to carry out 
 your design of coming into Cairo, lest further and more 
 fearful calamities should occur. 
 
 This by swift and trusty messenger to your hands at 
 Sakkara. 
 
 The Slave of your Virtues, Abdul Alt.
 
 FIFTH BOOK 
 THE DAAVN 
 
 33
 
 The day that Ishmael had looked for, longed for, prayed 
 for — the day that was to see the fulfilment not only of his 
 spiritual hopes but of his rapturous dream of bliss, the day 
 of his return to Cairo — had come at last. 
 
 But the Ishmael Ameer who was returning to Cairo was 
 by no means the same man as the Ishmael who had gone 
 away. In a few short months he had become a totally dif- 
 ferent person. Two forces had changed him — two forces 
 which in their effect were one. 
 
 By the operation of the first of these forces he had 
 become more of a mystic; by the operation of the second 
 he had become more of a man; by the operation of both 
 together he had become a creature who was controlled by 
 his emotions alone. 
 
 When he left Cairo he had been a man of elevated spirit 
 but of commanding common-sense. He had looked upon 
 himself as one whose sole work was to call men back to 
 God and to righteousness. But little by little the tyranny 
 of outward events, the pressure of responsibility, and above 
 all the heartfelt and prostrate but dim and perverted adu- 
 lation of his followers, had led him to believe that he was 
 a being apart, specially directed by the Almighty, and even 
 permitted to be his mouthpiece. 
 
 Insensibly Ishmael had come to look upon himself as a 
 " Son of God." When he first saw that the crowds who came 
 to him from East and West were beginning to believe that 
 he was the Redeemer, the Deliverer, the Expected One whom 
 he foretold, he was shocked and he protested. But when he 
 perceived that this belief helped him to comfort and con- 
 sole and direct them he ceased to deny; and when he real- 
 ised that it was necessary to his people's confidence that 
 
 495
 
 496 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 they should think that he who guided them was himself 
 guided by God, he permitted himself, by his silence, to 
 acquiesce. 
 
 From allowing others to believe in his divinity he had 
 come to believe in it himself. His burning, boundless influ- 
 ence over his people had seemed to his deej) heart to be 
 only intelligible as a thing given to him from Heaven, and 
 then the " miracle " in the desert, the raising of the Sheikh's 
 daughter from the dead, had swept down the last of his 
 scruples. God had given him supernatural powers and made 
 him the mouthpiece of His will. 
 
 And now, at the end of his pilgrimage, if he did not 
 accept the idea that he was in very fact the Redeemer who 
 Avas to bring in the golden age, the Kingdom of God, he 
 succumbed to a delusion that was nearly akin to it — that 
 just as the Lord of the Christians, being condemned by the 
 Roman Governor, had permitted another to take His form 
 and face and bodily presence and to die on the cross instead 
 of him, so the Messiah, the Mahdi, the Christ who was to 
 come, was now using him as His substitute to lead and 
 control His poor, oppressed, and helpless people until the 
 time came for Him to appear in His own person. 
 
 Such was the operation of the force that had made Ish- 
 mael more of a mystic, and the force that had made him 
 more of a man had been playing in the same way upon his 
 heart. 
 
 It had played upon him through Helena. 
 
 When Helena entered into his life and he betrothed him- 
 self to her, he honestly believed that he was doing no more 
 than protect her good name. For some time afterward he 
 continued to deceive himself, but the constant presence of 
 a beautiful woman by his side produced its effect, and little 
 by little he came to know that his heart was touched. 
 
 As soon as he became conscious of this he remembered 
 the vow he had made when his Coptic slave wife died, that 
 no other woman should take her place, and he also reminded 
 himself of his mission, his consecration to the welfare of 
 humanity. V>u\ the more he tried to crush his affection for 
 Helena, the more it grew.
 
 THE DAWN 497 
 
 He was like a boy in the first beautiful mf)rning light 
 of love. The moment he was alone, after parting from 
 Helena at the door of her sleeping-raom, he would kiss the 
 hand that had touehed her hand, and find a tingling joy in 
 stepping afresh over the places on which her feet had trod. 
 A glance from her beaming eyes made his pulses beat rap- 
 idly, and when, one day, he saw her combing out her hair, 
 with her round white arm bare to the elbow, his breathing- 
 came quick and loud. 
 
 His passion was like a flower which had sprung up in the 
 parched place of the desert of his desolate soul, and eveiy- 
 thing that Helena did seemed to water it. Reading her 
 conduct by the only light he had, he thought she loved him. 
 Had she not followed him f"rom India, breaking from her 
 own people to live by his side? Had she not betrothed 
 herself to him without a thought of any other than spiritual 
 joys? 
 
 His pride in him, too, was no less than her affection. 
 Had she not proposed that he should go into Cairo in ad- 
 vance because, that being the place of the greatest danger, 
 was the place of highest honour also? In her womanly 
 jealousy for her husband's rank, had she not resisted and 
 resented the substitution of another when it was decided by 
 the sheikhs that " Omar " should go instead ? And, notwith- 
 standing her illness at Khartoum, had she not insisted on 
 following him across the desert, and, weak as she was, en- 
 during the pains of his pilgrimage in order to continue by 
 his side? 
 
 Allah bless and cherish her ! Was there anything in the 
 world so good as a sweet, unselfish, devoted woman ? 
 
 During the journey Ishmael's love for Helena grew hour 
 by hour until it filled his whole being, and made his wild 
 heart a globe of infinite radiance and hope. Her beauty, 
 her gifts of mind as well as of body, took complete posses- 
 sion of him. Whenever he saw her everything brightened 
 up. Whenever he turned on his camel, and caught sight of 
 her dromedary at the tail of the caravan, he became excited. 
 Whenever evil things befell he had only to think of the Rani 
 and his troubles died away. All that was good and beautiful
 
 498 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 in the world seemed to centre in the litter that held her by 
 day and in the tent that covered her by night. 
 
 Then, in spite of his mission and the burden of his work, 
 he began to remember that all this loveliness, all this sweet- 
 ness, belonged to him. The Rani was his wife, and he could 
 not help but think of the possibility of nearer relations be- 
 tween them. 
 
 When this thought first came to him he repelled it as a 
 species of treachery. Had he not pledged himself to a 
 spiritual union? Would it not be wrong to break that 
 pledge — wrong to the Rani, wrong to his own higher nature, 
 wrong to God? 
 
 But nevertheless the temptation to claim the rights of 
 a husband became stronger day by day, and he struggled to 
 reconcile his faith with his affection. He reminded himself 
 that renunciation was no part of Islam, that it was a Chris- 
 tian error, that " monkery " had been condemned by the 
 Prophet, that it was contrary to the clear law of nature, and 
 that as soon as his task was finished it was his duty to live 
 a human life with woman and with children. 
 
 This seemed to solve the sphinx-like problem of exist- 
 ence, but when he tried to talk of it to the Rani, in order 
 to break the ground with her, his tongue would not utter 
 the words that were in his heart, and something made him 
 stop in confusion and go away quickly. 
 
 Yet his self-denial only intensified his desire. Keeping 
 away from Helena by day, he was with her in his dreams 
 by night. One rapturous, incredible, almost impossible, and 
 even terrible dream of bliss was always stirring within 
 him. A little longer, only a little longer. The hour in 
 which he would lay down his task as leader, as prophet, 
 would be the hour in which he would take up his new life 
 as a man. 
 
 That hour was now near. He was outside the gates of 
 Cairo. Nothing Avould, nothing could, intervene at this 
 last stage to prevent him from entering the city, and once 
 within his work would be at an end. Oh, God, how good it 
 was to live! 
 
 All that day at Sakkara Ishmael had been in the highest
 
 THE DAWN 499 
 
 state of religious exaltation, and when night came lie walked 
 about the camp as if demented both in heart and brain. 
 
 The camp stretched from the banks of the Nile at Ber- 
 rashcen over the black ruins of Memphis to the broad sands 
 before the Step Pyramid, and everywhere the people sat in 
 groups about their fires, eating, drinking, playing their pipes, 
 tambourines, and drums, and singing to tunes that were 
 like "wild dance music their songs of rejoicing. 
 
 They were singing about himself, his wise words, his 
 miracles, his miraculous birth (born of a virgin), his good 
 looks, which made all women love him, and his divinity, 
 which would save him from death. Ishmael heard this, yet 
 he had no misgivings, no fear of what the coming day would 
 bring forth. A sort of spiritual lightning blinded him to 
 possible danger, and his heart swelled with love for his peo- 
 ple. God bless them ! God bless everybody ! Bless East and 
 West, white man and black man, sons of one Father, soon 
 to be united in one hope, one love, one faith ! 
 
 Ishmael felt as if he wanted to take the whole world in 
 his arms. Above all he wanted to take the Rani in his arms. 
 It was not that the lower man, the animal man, was con- 
 quering the higher man, the spiritual man, but that both 
 body and soul were aflame, that a sense of fierce joy filled 
 his whole being at the thought of entering into a new life, 
 and that he wished to find physical expression for it. 
 
 Before he was aware of what he was doing he was walk- 
 ing in the direction of Helena's tent. Striding along in the 
 darkness which was slashed here and there with shafts of 
 light from the camp fires, he approached the tent from the 
 back, the mouth being toward the city. Close behind it he 
 stumbled upon, some one who was crouching there. It was 
 a boy, and he rose hastily and hurried away without speak- 
 ing, being followed immediately by a woman who seemed to 
 have been watching him. 
 
 Ishmael's heart was beating so violently by this time that 
 he had only a confused impression of having seen this, and 
 at the next instant, treading softly on the silent sand, he 
 was in front of the tent looking at Helena, who was within. 
 
 She was sitting on her camp bed, her angerib, writing on
 
 500 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 a pad that rested upon her hip, by the light of a lamp which 
 hung from the pole which upheld the canvas. Though her 
 face was down, Ishmael could see that it was suffused by a 
 rosy blush, and when at one moment she raised her head, her 
 bright and shining eyes seemed to him to be wet with tears, 
 but fiill, nevertheless, of joy and love. 
 
 Ishmael thought he knew what she was doing. She was 
 thinking of him and writing, as she loved to do, the im- 
 mortal story of his pilgrimage, happy in the near approach 
 of his great triumph. 
 
 Standing in the darkness to look at her he could hardly 
 restrain himself any longer. He wanted to burst in upon 
 hor and to be alone with her. 
 
 Behind and about him were the lights of the camp and 
 its many sounds of rejoicing, but he did not see or hear 
 them now. His heart was afire. He was intoxicated with 
 love. What had been for so long his almost unconquerable 
 dream of bliss was about to be fulfilled. 
 
 " Rani ! " he whispered in a quivering voice, and then, 
 plunging into the tent, he caught her up in his anns. 
 
 II 
 
 Half blind with tears which belied her brave words, 
 Helena had been writing the letter to Gordon which Mosi© 
 was waiting to take away. She had told him not to think 
 of her, for she was quite able to take care of herself what- 
 ever happened. Then wiping the tears from her eyes, she 
 had smiled as she told him to forget the nonsense she had 
 written about Jezebel and her Jewish blood and to remember 
 that until Ishmael's work was " finished " and he entered 
 Cairo, she ran no risk by remaining in his camp. 
 
 She had got thus far when she thought she heard a step 
 on the sand outside, but raising her eyes to look, and seeing 
 nothing except the red and white stars from the rockets 
 that rained through the air at Ghezirah, she resumed her 
 letter, telling herself as she did so that if the worst came to 
 the worst nnrl matters reached an unexpected crisis with
 
 THE DAWN 501 
 
 Ishmaol, she could defeat him again, as she had done before, 
 by diplomacy, by linesse, and by woman's wit. 
 
 " I suppose you are in the thick of it by this time, for I 
 see that the illuminations at Ghezirah have already begun. 
 My dear, my dear, my " 
 
 Her last word was not yet written when she heard lah- 
 mael's tremulous whisper of the name he knew her by, and, 
 starting up as if she had received an electric shock, she saw 
 the Egyptian coming into her tent with the glittering eyes 
 of one who was about to accomplish some joyous task. At 
 the next moment, before she knew what was happening, she 
 found herself clasped in his arms. 
 
 " My life ! My heart ! My eyes ! My own ! " he was 
 saying in hot and impetuous whispers, and raising her face 
 to his face he was kissing her on the lips. 
 
 She struggled to liberate herself, but felt like a helpless 
 child in his strong, irresistible grasp. 
 
 " Leave me ! Let me go ! " she said with heat and anger, 
 but he did not seem to hear her or to be conscious of her 
 resistance. 
 
 " Oh, how glad I am ! " he said. " Our journey is at an 
 end ! Our new life is about to begin ! How happy we 
 shall be ! " 
 
 All the blood in Helena's body rushed to her cheeks, and 
 putting up her hands between their faces, she demanded 
 angrily : 
 
 " What do you mean by this? What are you doing? " 
 
 Yet still he did not hear her, for his passion was over- 
 powering him, its intoxicating voice was ringing through 
 his whole being, and he continued to pour into her ears a 
 torrent of endearing words. 
 
 " Yes, yes, our new life is about to begin ! It is to begin 
 to-night — now ! " 
 
 Helena was overwhelmed with fear, but suddenly, by the 
 operation of an instinct which she did not comprehend, she 
 smiled up into Ishmael's smiling face — a feeble, frightened, 
 involuntary smile — and pointing to the open mouth of the 
 tent, she said with a sense of mingled cunning and con- 
 fusion :
 
 502 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Be careful ! Look ! " 
 
 Ishmael loosened his hold of her and, stepping back to 
 the tent's mouth, he began to close and button it. 
 
 While he did so Helena watched him and asked herself 
 Avhat she ought to do next. Cry for help? It would be 
 useless. There were none to hear her except Ishmael's own 
 people, and they worshipped him and looked upon her as his 
 wife, his property, his slave, his chattel. Escape? Impos- 
 sible! More than ever impossible for what (at her own 
 direction) he was doing now. 
 
 ''Then what am I do to?" she asked herself, and before 
 she had found an answer Ishmael, having sealed up the 
 tent, was returning with outstretched arms, as if with the 
 intention of embracing and kissing her again. 
 
 She read in his great wild eyes the light of a passion 
 which she had never seen in a man's face before, but she 
 put on a bold front in spite of the terror which possessed 
 her, thrust out her right hand to keep him off, looked him 
 full in the face and cried: 
 
 " ISTo, no ! You shall not ! On no account ! No ! " 
 
 At that he dropped his outstretched arms, but, still smil- 
 ing his joyous smile, he continued to approach her, saying 
 as he did so in a tone of affectionate surprise and remon- 
 strance : 
 
 " W^hy, what is this, O my Rani? Have we not joined 
 hands under the handkerchief? Are you not my wife? Am 
 I not your husband ? It is true that I pledged myself to 
 renunciation. But renunciation is wrong. It is against 
 religion, against God." 
 
 He came nearer. She could feel his hot breath upon her 
 face. It made her shiver with the race-feeling she had 
 experienced before. 
 
 "And then, how can I continue to deny myself?" he 
 said. "I am like one Avho has been dying of hunger in the 
 sight of food. You are my joy, my flower, my treasure. 
 God has given you to me. You are mine." 
 
 W^ith that he threw his irresistible arms about her again, 
 and bringing his glittering eyes close to her eyes he whis- 
 pered :
 
 THE DAWX 503 
 
 " My Rani ! ^ly wife ! " 
 
 Ilt'lcna knew that the hour she had looked forward to 
 with dread had come at length; she saw that the diplomacy, 
 the finesse, the woman's wit she had counted upon to save 
 her were useless to quell the passion which flashed from 
 Ishmael's eyes and throbbed in his voice, and she made one 
 last and violent effort to escape from his arms. 
 
 " Let me go ! Let me go ! " she cried. 
 
 "Am I doing wrong?" he said. "No, no! I would not 
 harm you for all the kingdoms of the world. But every wife 
 must submit to her husband." 
 
 " No, no, no ! " she cried in tones of repulsion and 
 loathing. 
 
 " Yes, yes, yes," he replied, still more tenderly, still more 
 passionately. " But if she is a good woman she has her 
 modesty, her shield of shame. That is only right, only 
 natural. It makes her the more sweet, the more dear, the 
 more charming " 
 
 Helena felt his arms tightening about her; she knew that 
 he was lifting her oif her feet, and realised that she was 
 being carried across the tent. 
 
 Then she remembered the assurances she had given to 
 Gordon, the promises she had made to herself, and hardly 
 conscious of what she did until it was done, or of what she 
 was saying until it was said, she brought her open hands 
 heavily down upon his face and cried in a fury of wrath and 
 scorn : 
 
 " Let me go, I tell you. You shall ! You must ! Can't 
 you see that you are hateful and odious to me — that you are 
 a black man and I am a white woman? " 
 
 At the next moment she felt Ishmael's arms relax and 
 she found herself on her feet. A sense of immense, im- 
 measurable relief came over her. A sense of triumph, too, 
 for what she had said she would do she had done. 
 
 When she recovered herself sufficiently to look at Ish- 
 mael again he was standing apart from her and his head 
 was down. He could no longer deceive himself. A whirl- 
 wind of chaotic darkness had swept over him. The storm of 
 his passion was gone.
 
 504 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Helena saw that he was deeply wounded, and notwith- 
 standing the aversion he had inspired in her a moment 
 before, she pitied him from the bottom of her heart. 
 
 " I am sori-j- for what I said just now," she mumiured 
 in a low tone. " It was hateful of me, and I ask your 
 pardon." 
 
 She was still panting and she had to pause for breath, 
 but he did not reply, -and after a moment she began to 
 excuse herself, saying falteringly: 
 
 " But you must see that — that there could never have 
 been anything between you and me because — because " 
 
 Raising his eyes, he looked not into her face, but at the 
 veil that was fixed to her hair, and she found it difficult 
 to go on. 
 
 " Did you not say yourself," she said, " that marriage 
 was not joining hands under a handkerchief or repeating 
 words after a Cadi, but a sacrament of love, mutual love, 
 and that everything else was sin ? Therefore " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " Therefore if — if I do not love you " 
 
 " And you do not ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Allah ! Allah ! " he muttered in a voice that seemed 
 to come up out of the depths of his soul, and at the next 
 moment he sank down onto the angerib, which was close 
 behind him. 
 
 But hardly had he done so when he leaped to his feet 
 again and in a voice that rang with wrath he said : 
 
 "Then why did you betroth yourself to me? I put no 
 constraint upon you. If you had told me that your heart 
 was far from me I should have gone no further. But I 
 gave you time to consider and you came to me of your own 
 free will. Why was this? Answer me. I have a right to 
 know that, at all events." 
 
 It came into her mind to reply that when they were 
 betrothed he did not ask her if she loved him, and she did 
 not understand that she was to belong to him. But what 
 was the use of defending herself? On what ground could 
 she justify her conduct?
 
 THE DAWS 505 
 
 " Or if," he said, and his voice shook with the intensity 
 of his emotion, " if it was after our betrothal that your 
 heart left me — if something I said or did lost me your love 
 — why did you follow me from Khartoum? You might 
 have stayed there. I was willing to leave you behind me. 
 Why did you follow me over the desert? Why did you 
 come with my company? Whj' are you here now?" 
 
 She found it impossible to answer him, and feeling how 
 deeply she had wronged him, yet how impossible, how un- 
 thinkable, how inconceivable it was that she could have 
 acted otherwise than she had, in the light of her great and 
 undying love for Gordon, she clasped her hands in front 
 of her face and burst into a flood of tears. 
 
 Her tears drove away his anger in a moment, for he 
 mistook the cause of them, and deeply and incurably 
 wounded as he was, a wave of sympathy and compassion 
 passed over him. Drawing her hands from her face and 
 holding them in his own, he looked steadfastly into her wet 
 eyes, and said in a softer voice : 
 
 " I see how it has been, O my Rani ! You followed the 
 teacher, not the man — the message, not the poor soiled vol- 
 ume it was written in — and perhaps you were right — quite 
 right." 
 
 Every word he uttered went like iron into Helena's soul. 
 
 " I thought a woman lived by her heart alone," he said, 
 " and that when she betrothed herself it must be for love, 
 not from any higher and nobler motive, but it seems I was 
 wrong — quite wrong. I thought, too," he said, " that where 
 love was," and here his voice thickened and almost broke, 
 " there was neither black nor white, neither race nor caste ; 
 but it seems I was wrong in that also. Forgive me, forgive 
 me, forgive me ! " 
 
 He lifted her hands in his own long and delicate ones 
 and put them to his lips, and then gently let them fall. 
 
 " But God knows best what is good for us," he said, 
 "and perhaps — perhaps He has sent me this as a warning 
 and a punishment, lest — lest I forget — in the love of home 
 and wife and children, the task — the great task He has laid 
 upon me. In-sha-allah! In-sha-allah ! "
 
 506 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 With that he turned to leave the tent, a shaken and agi- 
 tated and totally different man from the man who had 
 entered it, and Helena, notwithstanding that she was deeply 
 moved, again felt a sense of immense, immeasurable relief. 
 
 But at the next moment a feeling akin to terror seized 
 her, for while Ishmael was unbuttoning the canvas at the 
 tent's mouth, there came, over the dull rumble of many 
 sounds outside, a clear, sharp voice ciying: 
 
 " Ishmael Ameer ! Ishmael Ameer ! Urgent news ! 
 Where are you ? " 
 
 Helena's heart stood still. She seemed to know in ad- 
 vance what was coming. The hour of Ishmael's downfall 
 had arrived, and he was to hear that he had been betrayed. 
 She had escaped from her physical danger — what, now, of 
 her moral peril? 
 
 Ill 
 
 A MOMENT later Ishmael had torn the mouth of the tent 
 open. An Egyptian was standing there in the turban and 
 farageeyah of an Alim. The man, who was solemnly mak- 
 ing his salaams, held a huitern in one hand and a letter in 
 the other. Behind him, against the dark sky, were a num- 
 ber of Ishmael's own people. Tlieir mouths were open and 
 fear was on their faces. 
 
 " What words are these, oh, my brother? " asked Ishmael. 
 
 Without speaking, the Alim offered him the letter. It 
 was that of the Chancellor of El Azhar, written immediately 
 after the arrest of Gordon. 
 
 Ishmael took it, and standing under the lamp that hung 
 from the pole of the tent, he read it. For some moments 
 he did not move or raise his eyes, but little by little his 
 face assumed a death-like rigidity, and at length the paper 
 crinkled in his trembling fingers. 
 
 So strong had been his faith in his mission, and so firm 
 his conviction that God would not allow anything to inter- 
 fere with its fulfilment, that it was almost impossible for 
 him to take in the truth — that his cause was lost, that his
 
 TIIJ-: DAWN 507 
 
 pilgrimage was wasted, that his people could not enter 
 Cairo, and their hope was at an end. 
 
 When at length he raised his eyes he looked wirh an ex- 
 pression of blank bewilderment into Helena's face. 
 
 " See," he said in a tone of piteous helplesssness, and he 
 put the letter into her reluctant hand. 
 
 The blood rushed to Helena's head, stars danced before 
 her eyes, and it was with difficulty that she could see to read. 
 But there was little need to do so, for already she knew, as 
 by a sense of doom, what the letter contained. 
 
 In a moment the people behind the Alim grew more and 
 more numerous. The mouth of the tent became choked Avith 
 them, and their faces were blotched with lights and shadows 
 from the lamp within. They were talking eagerly among 
 themselves in low tones, full of dread. At length one of 
 them spoke to Ishmael. 
 
 "Is it bad news, O Master?" he asked, but with the ex- 
 pressionless voice of one who knew already what the answer 
 would be. 
 
 There was a moment of strained silence, and then Ish- 
 mael turned again to Helena and said, in the same tone of 
 piteous helplessness as before : 
 
 " Read it to them. Let them know the worst, O Rani ! " 
 Helena could find no escape. With a fearful effort she 
 began to read the letter aloud. But hardly had she finished 
 the first clause of it, telling Ishmael that his messenger and 
 missionary had been betrayed into the hands of the Govern- 
 ment by means of a message sent into Cairo from some one 
 who stood near to him in his own camp, than a deep groan 
 came from the people at the mouth of the tent. 
 
 Black Zogal was there with his wild eyes, and by his side 
 stood old Zewar Pasha with his suspicious looks. 
 
 "Who is the traitor, O Master?" asked the old man in 
 his rasping voice, and it seemed to Helena that while he 
 spoke every eye except Ishmael's was fixed upon her face. 
 
 Then a fearful thing befell. Ishmael, the man of peace, 
 whom none had ever seen in any mood but one of tender- 
 ness and love, broke into a torrent of fierce passion. 
 
 " Allah curse him, whoever he is ! " he cried. " Curse
 
 508 THE WHITE PEOPHET 
 
 him in his lying down and in his getting up ! Curse him in 
 the morning splendour and in the still of night ! Curse him 
 in the life that now is and in the life that is to come ! " 
 
 Helena felt as if the tent itself as well as the black and 
 copper-coloured faces at the mouth of it were reeling around 
 her. But it was not alone the terror of Ishmael's curse, 
 with its unrevealed reference to herself, that created her 
 confusion. She was thinking of Gordon. What did his 
 arrest imply? Did it mean that he had succeeded in the 
 perilous task he had undertaken? Or did it mean that he 
 had failed? 
 
 When she recovered consciousness of what was going on 
 about her she heard, above a wild tumult of voices outside, 
 the voice of a woman and the voice of a boy. She kncAV 
 that the woman was Zenoba and the boy was Mosie. At 
 the next moment both were coming headlong into the tent, 
 the one dragging the other through a way that had been 
 made for them. The boy's shaven black head was bare, his 
 caftan was torn open at the breast, and his skin was bleed- 
 ing at the neck as if vindictive fingers had been clutching 
 him by the throat. The woman's swarthy face was bathed 
 with sweat, twitching with excitement, and convulsed with 
 evil passions. 
 
 " There ! " she cried. " There he is, O Master ! and if 
 you want to know who took the letter to the English lord, 
 ask him." 
 
 " Who is he ? " asked Ishmacl. 
 
 " Your Kani's servant," replied the Arab woman, with 
 a curl of her cruel lip. " He left Khartoum for Cairo a 
 month ago, and has not been seen until to-day." 
 
 Another deep groan came from the people at the tent's 
 mouth, and again it seemed to Helena that every eye except 
 Ishmael's was looking into her face. 
 
 Meantime Mosie, thinking the groan of the people was 
 meant for him, and that his life was in danger from their 
 anger, had broken away from the woman's grasp and flung 
 himself at Ishmael's feet, crying: 
 
 " Mercy, O Master ! I kiss your feet. I take refuge with 
 God and with you. Save me and I will tell you everything."
 
 THE DAWN 509 
 
 Ishmael, who by this time had regained his self-com- 
 mand, motioned to the Arab woman to stand back. Then he 
 questioned the boy calmly, and the boy answered him in a 
 fever of fear, gasping and sobbing at every word. 
 
 " My boy, you have come out of Cairo ? " 
 
 "Yes, Master! yes." 
 
 " You went there from Khartoum ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes, O Master ! yes." 
 
 " You took a letter to the English lord ? " 
 
 " Yes, Master, a letter to the English lord." 
 
 " From some one in Khartoum ? " 
 
 " Yes, I will tell my Master everything — from some one 
 in Khartoum." 
 
 "What treacherous man sent you wnth that letter?" 
 
 "K'o man at all, O Master! You see, I am telling my 
 Master everything." 
 
 " Was it a woman ? " 
 
 " Yes, Master, a woman. See, I kiss your feet. I keep 
 nothing back from my Master." 
 
 Another groan came from the people at the tent's mouth 
 and the black boy clutched at Ishmael's white caftan as if 
 to protect himself from their wrath. Ishmael himself had 
 a confused sense of something terrible that had not yet 
 taken shape in his mind. He looked round at Helena, who 
 was standing by the angerib at the back, but her head was 
 down and her thoughts were far away. 
 
 " What woman, then? " he asked in a sterner voice. 
 
 " No, no, I cannot tell you that," said the boy. 
 
 " Speak, boy. You shall be safe. I will protect you from 
 all harm. What woman was it ? " 
 
 " Master, do not ask me. I dare not tell you." 
 
 " Listen," said Ishmael, and his voice grew hard and 
 hoarse. " There is a traitor in my camp, and I must find 
 out who it is. What treacherous woman sent you into Cairo 
 with that letter r' 
 
 The boy struggled hard. His ugly black face under his 
 shaven poll was distorted by his fear. He hesitated, began 
 to speak, then stopped altogether. 
 
 At that moment Helena came forward as if she had
 
 510 THE WHITE TROPHET 
 
 suddenly awakened from a dream, and Mosie saw her for the 
 first time since he had been dragged into the tent. In an- 
 other instant all fear had gone from his face and his eyes 
 were blazing with courage. 
 
 " Tell me, I command you," said Ishmael. 
 
 " No, no, I will never tell you," said the boy. 
 
 Again a groan — this time a growl — came from the people 
 at the tent's mouth. 
 
 " Torment would make his tongue wag," said one. 
 
 " Beat the innocent until the guilty confess — it is a good 
 maxim, O Master! " said Zewar in his rasping tones. 
 
 Black Zogal, with his wild eyes, stepped out as if to lay 
 hold of the lad, but Ishmael waved him back. 
 
 " Wait ! " he said. 
 
 He was looking at Helena again, and his face had under- 
 gone a fearful change. 
 
 " My boy," he said, still keeping his eyes on Helena, 
 " if you do not tell me I must give you back to the people." 
 
 At that the boy broke into a paroxysm of hysterical sobs. 
 
 " Xo, no, my Master will not do that. But see," he said, 
 tearing wider his torn caftan so as to expose his breast, " my 
 Master himself shall kill me." 
 
 At the next moment Helena's hand was on Ishmael's 
 arm. 
 
 " Let the boy go," she said " I can tell you the rest." 
 
 A gloomy chill traversed Ishmael's heart. He had a sense 
 of spiritual paralysis — as if everything in the world were 
 crumbling and crashing down to impotent wreck and ruin. 
 
 His people at the tent's mouth were muttering among 
 themselves. He dismissed them, sending everybody away, 
 including the boy and the Arab woman. Most of them went 
 off grudgingly, ungraciously, for the first time reluctant to 
 obey his will. 
 
 Then he closed up the mouth of the tent, and was once 
 more alone with Helena.
 
 THE DAWN 511 
 
 IV 
 
 In spite of the dread with which, for more than a month, 
 Helena had looked forward to the hour in which Ishmael 
 should hear of his betrayal, she felt none of the terror from 
 that cause which she had feared and expected. 
 
 She could think of nothing but Gordon. Where was he 
 now? What were they doing to him? It seemed to be the 
 only possible explanation of his arrest that his scheme for 
 the salvation of the people had failed. Would he be handed 
 over to the military authorities? Would he be tried by 
 court-martial ? And what would be the punishment of his 
 offences as a soldier? Sinking down on the angerib she 
 pressed her hands over her brow and over her eyes that she 
 might think of this and shut out everything else. 
 
 Meantime the mind of Ishmael was going through a con- 
 flict as strange and no less cruel. Although the plain evi- 
 dences of his senses had already told him that he had been 
 betrayed by the woman he loved, yet the dread of discover- 
 ing the traitor in his own tent, in his own wife, filled him 
 with terror, and he tried to escape from it. 
 
 Having fastened up the tent he walked to and fro for 
 some moments without speaking, and then sitting down by 
 Helena's side and taking her hand and smoothing it, he said 
 in his throbbing, quivering voice : 
 
 " Eani, we have eaten bread and salt together. Be faith- 
 ful with me — what woman sent that letter?" 
 
 Helena hardly heard what he was saying. She was still 
 thinking of Gordon. " They will condemn him to death," 
 she told herself. 
 
 " Rani," said Ishmael again, " we have lived under the 
 same roof; you have shared with me the closest secrets of 
 my soul. Tell me — what woman sent that letter?" 
 
 Helena looked at him and tried to listen, but Gordon's 
 doom was ringing in her ears, and it drowned all the other 
 sounds of life. 
 
 " Eani," said Ishmael once more, " though you denied 
 me the rights of a husband, yet you are my wife. Our lives
 
 512 THE WHITE PEOPHET 
 
 have been united not by man but by God, and in the presence 
 of Ilim whose name be exalted — of Him who reads all hearts 
 — I ask you — what woman sent that letter ? " 
 
 Helena heard him, yet terrible as his question was, and 
 perilous as she knew her answer must be, she felt no fear. 
 '' 1*11 tell him," she thought. " Why not ? It does not mat- 
 ter now." 
 
 " Rani," said Ishmael yet again, " God gives me the right 
 to command you. I do command you. What woman sent 
 that letter?" 
 
 " I did," said Helena, and though the words were spoken 
 in a faltering whisper they seemed to Ishmael like a deafen- 
 ing roar. 
 
 " Allah ! Allah ! " he cried, leaping to his feet, for 
 though he had expected that reply he reeled under it as 
 under a blow. 
 
 Helena realised what her answer meant to him, and 
 again, from the bottom of her heart she pitied him, but 
 at the next moment her thoughts swung back to her own 
 trouble. 
 
 She remembered that her father had admitted that the 
 British Army in Egypt was always on active service, and 
 she asked herself what would happen to Gordon if the mili- 
 tary authorities lost their heads in fear of insurrection. 
 Would they try him by Field General Court-Martial I In 
 that case would the Court be called instantly? Would the 
 inquiry last only a few minutes? Would the sentence be 
 carried into immediate effect? 
 
 "O God! can it be possible that it is all over already?" 
 she asked herself. 
 
 Meantime Ishmael, after moments of suffering which 
 seemed hours of eternity, was again struggling to resist the 
 only conclusion the facts had left to him. It was true that 
 the Rani had confessed to sending the letter which had led 
 to the arrest of his messenger, but all his heart rebelled 
 against the inference that she had intended to betray his 
 cause and his people Had she not cast in her own lot with 
 them ? Had she not come from a distant country and a 
 richer home to live in their poor house in Khartoum ? And
 
 [Page :i'.>7.] 
 
 "She was l)eiiig carried into the silence of her 
 own room."
 
 THE DAWN 513 
 
 had she not endured the hardship of the desert journey in 
 their company? 
 
 Like a man who had been shipwrecked in a whirlwind of 
 darkness, he was groping blindly through tempestuous waves 
 for some means of rescue At length a sort of raft of hope 
 came to him, a helpless, impotent thing, but he clung to it, 
 and sitting down by Helena's side again he said in the same 
 piteous voice as before: 
 
 " I see how it has been, oh, my Kani. You did not intend 
 to betray my people — my poor people whose sufferings you 
 have seen, whose faith and hopes and dreams you have 
 shared and witnessed. It was Omar you were thinking of. 
 Your heart has never forgiven him for taking the place you 
 meant for your husband. You were jealous of him for my 
 sake, and your jealousy got the better of your judgment. 
 * I will punish him,' you thought. ' I will make his mission 
 of no effect.' And so you sent that letter. But you did not 
 reflect that in destroying Omar you would be destroying my 
 people also. It was wrong, it was cruel, but it was a wom- 
 an's fault and you have seen it and suffered for it ever since. 
 Jealousy of Omar, perhaps hatred of Omar — that was it, 
 was it not, oh, my Rani ? " 
 
 His voice was breaking as he spoke, for the pitiful ex- 
 planation he had lighted upon was failing to bring con- 
 viction to his own mind, yet he fixed his sad eyes eagerly 
 on Helena's face and repeated: 
 
 " Jealousy of Omar, perhaps hatred of Omar — that was 
 what caused you to send that letter? " 
 
 Helena could not speak. The pathos of his error was 
 choking her. But she replied to him with a look which it 
 required no words to interpret. 
 
 " Xo ? " he said. " Xot of Omar? Of whom, then ? " 
 
 Helena could not lie. " He must know some day," she 
 thought. 
 
 " Of whom, then ? " he repeated in his helpless confusion. 
 
 " Yourself," she replied. 
 
 " Allah ! Allah ! Myself ! Myself ! " he said in a breath- 
 less whisper, rising to his feet again and striding across 
 the tent.
 
 514 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 At the first moment after Helena's confession it seemed 
 to Ishmael that both sun and moon had suffered eclipse and 
 the world was in total darkness. Why had the Rani betrayed 
 him? From what motive? For what object? He tried to 
 follow her thoughts and found it impossible to do so. 
 
 There was a short period of frightful silence, and then, 
 feeling as if he wanted to cry, he drew up before Helena 
 again, and said in a husky voice, his swarthy face trembling 
 and twitching: 
 
 " But Avliy, O Rani ? I had done you no wrong. From 
 the day you came to me I did all I could for you — all I 
 could to make your nights peaceful and your mornings 
 happy. Why has your heart been so far away from me?" 
 
 Helena felt that the time had come to tell him every- 
 thing. Yet in order to do so she must begin with the death 
 of her father, and she could not speak of that without in- 
 A'olving Gordon. " But that is impossible," she thought, 
 " absolutely impossible." 
 
 " Speak," said Ishmael. " When you sent your letter to 
 the English lord you must have known that you were doom- 
 ing me to death — what had I done to deserve it ? " 
 
 " I cannot tell you — I cannot, I cannot," she answered. 
 
 " It is unnecessary," said Ishmael. 
 
 In the moment of Helena's silence a terrible explanation 
 of her conduct had come to him, and he thought he saw, 
 as by flashes of lightning, into the dark abyss that was at 
 his feet. 
 
 His manner, which had been gentle down to that moment, 
 suddenly became harsh, and his voice, which had been soft, 
 became hard. 
 
 " When did you send that letter ? " he demanded. 
 
 She saw the stern closing of his lips, and for an instant 
 she felt afraid. 
 
 " Was it before the meeting of the Sheikhs at which 
 Omar was chosen ? " 
 
 " Yes," she replied. If Gordon was to be condemned to 
 death it was of no consequence what become of her. 
 
 " You told the English lord that Ishmael was coming to 
 Cairo?"
 
 THE DAWN 515 
 
 "Yes." His deep, impenetrable eyes seemed to be look- 
 ing througli and through her. 
 
 "With what object and in — in what disguise?" 
 
 " Yes." She knew she was dashing herself to destruction, 
 but no matter. 
 
 " When you sent your letter you said to yourself, ' Ish- 
 mael will go into Cairo, but my letter shall go before him.' 
 Yes?" 
 
 " Yes." In the lowest depths of her soul she felt that if 
 he killed her now she did not care. 
 
 " And when Omar stepped into the place you had meant 
 for me you thought, ' The letter I wrote to destroy Ishmael 
 will destroy Omar instead?'" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Was that why you tried to prevent Omar from going? " 
 
 " Yes." Tears were choking her utterance. 
 
 "Why you were unwilling to make the kufiah?" 
 
 "Yes.""^ 
 
 "Why you fainted in the mosque?" 
 
 She bowed her head, being unable to utter another word. 
 
 " Then," said Ishmael, and his voice rose to a husky 
 cry, " then it was love of Omar, not hatred of him, that in- 
 spired your letter?" 
 
 She made no reply. Filled as she was with shame for 
 what she had done to Ishmael, the image of Gordon was 
 still in her mind. Even at that moment, when terrible con- 
 sequences threatened her, . she could not help thinking of 
 him. If he were tried by Field General Court-Martial to- 
 night he might be executed in the morning ! 
 
 That thought carried her back to the Citadel. She was 
 on the drilling-ground in the dead gray light of dawn. A 
 regiment of soldiers were drawn up in line. Sis of them 
 stood out from the rest -with rifles to their shoulders. And 
 before them, standing alone, with his back to the ramparts, 
 was one condemned but dauntless man. " My last thoughts 
 are about you," he was saying to her, and living in that 
 cruel dream she burst into tears. 
 
 Again Ishmael misunderstood her weeping, and again a 
 ■wave of compassion passed over him.
 
 516 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " It. is possible I am wrong," he said. " I may be judg- 
 ing you unjustly. In that case tell me so and I will kiss 
 your feet. I will ask your pardon." 
 
 She could not speak. " This Avill end in some way," she 
 thought. 
 
 " In the name of Heaven, speak ! Tell me you do not love 
 this man. Tell me I am wrong," he cried. 
 
 " Xo, you are not wrong," she said. " I do love him and 
 I am in despair. All you have said is true, but I cannot 
 help it. I am a wicked woman, and my life by your side has 
 been a deception from the first." 
 
 With that she burst into another flood of tears, and fall- 
 ing face downward on the angerib she buried her head in 
 the pillow. 
 
 " Allah ! Allah ! " said Ishmacl, and all the blood in his 
 body seemed to flush his heart. He was passing through the 
 supreme phase of his agony — perhaps the crudest that man 
 can suffer — the agony of knowing that the woman he loved, 
 the woman he worshipped, loved and worshipped another man. 
 
 In the cloud of maddening thoughts which sprang to his 
 brain he imagined he read the mystery of Helena's conduct 
 from the first. Remembering that she had called him a 
 black man, the wild deep heart in him rose to a fever of 
 jealous wrath. 
 
 " I see how it has been," he said. " The white man came 
 to my tent. I welcomed him. I loved him. I trusted him. 
 He was my brother and he slept- by my side. I made him 
 free of my harem. I put my honour in his hands. And 
 how did he repay me? By robbing me of the love that was 
 my love, the heart that was my heart." 
 
 She tried to speak, to protest, but in a torrent of wrath 
 he bore her down. 
 
 " Your white man has overreached himself, though. ' I 
 will outdo Ishmael in her eyes,' he thought. But he has 
 only fallen into the pit that was dug for me. Let him perish 
 there, and the curse of God be on him ! " 
 
 Again she tried to protest, and again in the blind hurri- 
 cane of his anger he silenced her. 
 
 " And you — it was nothing to you that in betraying me
 
 THE DAWN 517 
 
 you were betraying my people also — my poor people who have 
 suffered so much and followed me so faithfully." 
 
 His face was terrible — it had the sullen glow of the 
 western sky before a storm. 
 
 " You have wrecked my hopes in the hour of their ful- 
 filment. You have made dust and ashes of the expectations 
 of my people. You have uncovered my nakedness and made 
 me a thing to point the finger at and to scorn. You have 
 turned my heart to stone." 
 
 Then the wild anguish of the jealous man became united 
 to the fierce wrath of the fanatic, and going nearer to 
 Helena and leaning over her he said : 
 
 " Worse than that — a hundredfold worse — you have made 
 the plans and promises of God of no avail. You have al- 
 lowed the Evil One to enter into your heart and to use your 
 guilty passions to defeat the schemes of the Most High. 
 Therefore," he said, raising his quivering voice until it rang 
 through the tent like a tortured cry, " therefore as the in- 
 strument of Satan you have no right to live. I say you 
 have no right to live. And I — I who have loved you — I 
 whose heart has been wrapped about you like the rope about 
 the wheel of the well — I whom you have betrayed and de- 
 stroyed and — and my people with me — it is I — yes, it is I 
 who must — who must " 
 
 Helena heard him stammering and sobbing over her. At 
 the same time she felt that his strong ferocious hands were 
 laying hold of her. She felt that the long Eastern veil that 
 had hung down her back was being wrapped around her 
 throat. She felt that its folds were growing tighter and yet 
 tighter and that she was being strangled and was losing con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 Then suddenly she became aware that Ishmael's formid- 
 able grasp had slackened, that he had stepped back from the 
 angerib on which she lay, and was saying to himself in a 
 tremulous whisper : 
 
 "Allah! Allah! What is this I am doing? Allah! 
 Allah' Allah!" 
 
 And at the next moment she realised that in horror of 
 his own impulse he had turned and fled out of the tent. 
 34
 
 518 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Being left alone, Helena's emotions were so strange, so 
 bewildering, so overpowering that she could not immedi- 
 ately make out clearly what she felt The most contradictory 
 thoughts and feelings crowded upon her. 
 
 First came a sense of suffocating shame, due to Ishmael's 
 hideous misconception of her relation to Gordon, which put 
 her into the position of an unfaithful wife. But would the 
 truth have been any better — that she was not an Indian Rani, 
 not a Muslemah, that she and Gordon had known and loved 
 each other before Ishmael came into their lives, and that 
 a desire to punish him for coming between them had been 
 the impulse that had taken her to Khartoum? 
 
 Xext came a sense of her utter degradation during the 
 recent scene, in which her lips had been sealed and she had 
 been compelled to submit to Ishmael's just and natural 
 wrath. 
 
 Then came a sense of abject humiliation with the thought 
 that Ishmael had been right from the beginning and she 
 had been wrong, and therefore she had merited all that had 
 come to her. " If he had killed me I could have forgiven 
 him," she told herself. 
 
 Finally (perhaps from some deep place in her Jewish 
 blood) came the feeling that after all it was not so much 
 Ishmael who had been shaming her for her treachery as the 
 Almighty who had been punishing her for attempting to 
 take His vengeance out of His hand. " Vengeance is Mine," 
 saith the Lord, and her impious act had deserved the penalty 
 that had overtaken it. 
 
 But against all this, opposing it, fighting it, conquering 
 it, triumphing over it, was the memory of her love for Gor- 
 don. " I loved him and I could not have acted otherwise," 
 she thought. 
 
 More plainly than ever she now saw that her love for 
 Gordon had been the first cause and origin of all she had 
 done. This single-hearted devotion left her nothing else 
 to think about. It wiped out Ishmael and his troubles and
 
 THE DAWN 519 
 
 all the ti-oublcs of his people. " I may be selfish and cruel, 
 but I cannot help it," she told herself again and again, as 
 she continued to lie where Ishmael had left her, face down 
 on the angerib, shaken with sobs. 
 
 After a while she heard a step approaching. The Arab 
 woman had entered the tent. 
 
 " So you are there, oh, my beauty," said Zenoba with a 
 bitter ring in her voice. 
 
 Without raising her head to look, Helena knew that the 
 usual obsequious smiles had gone from the woman's face, 
 and that her eyes were full of undisguised contempt. In 
 another moment all the impulses of hatred which had 
 scoured through her jealous soul for months fell on Helena 
 in bitter reproaches. 
 
 " I knew it would come to this. I always told him so, but 
 he would not listen. ' Ask pardon of God, Zenoba,' he said. 
 Now he will have to ask pardon of me." 
 
 Helena could hardly control herself, but with an effort 
 she submitted in silence and let the woman have her way. 
 
 " Anybody might have seen what was going on from the 
 moment the white Christian came to Khartoum. But no, 
 it was no use talking. When a man looks at a woman he 
 sees her eyes, not her heart, and is blind to those that love 
 and serve him." 
 
 Helena's own heart was beating violently and painfully, 
 but she compelled herself to lie still. " It's no more than I 
 deserve," she thought. 
 
 And then the Arab woman lashed her to the bone with 
 reports of what the people in the camp were saying. All 
 that had happened might have been foreseen. He who tried 
 to emancipate woman had been the first to suffer for it. 
 Good women did not wish to be emancipated, and the bad 
 women who let their veils fall and meddled Avith the affairs 
 of men, only wanted to imitate the evil ways of the women 
 of the West. " Our mothers did not do it, and neither shall 
 our wives," said some, while others declared that it was 
 better to have a thousand enemies outside your house than 
 one within. 
 
 The camp was utterly disorganised, utterly demoralised.
 
 520 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Instead of the singing and rejoicing of an hour ago, there 
 was now wailing and lamentation; instead of prayer and 
 praise, there was cursing and swearing. Some of the people, 
 in a state of panic, were saying that the soldiers of the 
 Christian government would soon be upon them; that they 
 would be shot dead with bullets; that they would be carried 
 into Cairo as prisoners and crucified in the public streets; 
 that the Christians would eat their flesh and suck their 
 blood ; that those who were not slgiin would be walking skele- 
 tons and talking images and made to worship the wooden 
 cross instead of their own God, their Allah. As a conse- 
 quence, many were packing their baggage hurriedly and turn- 
 ing the heads of their camels to the south. Boats were being 
 unmoored at Bedrasheen and boatloads were preparing to 
 push off. 
 
 Desolation was over the whole camp. The hopes of the 
 people were in the dust. Some of the women were kneeling 
 on the ground and throwing the sand over their heads and 
 faces. Some of the men were heaping insults on Ishmael's 
 name — their former love and reverence being already gone. 
 " Where are the promises he made us ? " they were asking. 
 " Is it for this that he brought us from our homes ? " 
 
 Others were calling and searching for the Master. His 
 tent was empty. He was nowhere to be seen. Had he de- 
 serted them in their hour of trouble? " Where is he? " they 
 were crying. " What has become of him ? " No one knew. 
 Even Black Zogal could not say. And then some were cry- 
 ing, " Ela'an abu, abu, abu ! " (" Cursed be his father, and 
 his father's father, and his father's father's father!"). 
 
 But worse, far worse, because more fierce and terrible 
 than the people's anger against Ishmael, was their wrath 
 against the " White Woman." It was she who had betrayed 
 them. But for her evil influence and secret schemes they 
 might have inherited Egypt and all the rich lands and treas- 
 ures of the Valley of the Nile. Listen ! They were gather- 
 ing about the tent, and murmuring and shouting excitedly. 
 Hark! That was Zogal's voice — he was persuading them to 
 go away. 
 
 " But they'll come back, oh, my beauty," said Zenoba.
 
 THE DAWN 521 
 
 " Better get away before they return and tear you to pieces, 
 as a hungry jackal tears a dog." 
 
 With that merciless word the bitter-hearted woman took 
 herself off, leaving Helena still lying face down on the 
 angerib in her agony of mingled anger and shame. 
 
 Being once more left alone in the tent, Ilelena continued 
 to see what was going on in the camp. The wailing of the 
 women, who were throwing sand over their heads, seemed 
 as if it would never cease. At length some of them began 
 to sing. They sang songs of sorrow which contrasted 
 strangely with the songs of victory which the men had sung 
 before. The weird and monotonous but moving notes that 
 are peculiar to Arab music sounded like dirges in the depth 
 of night. 
 
 The people were in despair. Their consoling and inspir- 
 ing idea of divine guidance was gone, and the hope that had 
 sustained their souls through the toils of the desert march 
 was dead. The myth of Ishmael's divinity had already dis- 
 appeared ; the Master was no longer the Redeemer, the 
 Mahdi, the Christ. All that had been a hideous illusion, a 
 mirage of the soul, without reason or reality. 
 
 It was terrible, it was horrible, it was almost as if the 
 whole people had died an hour ago in " the sure and certain 
 hope," and then suddenly awakened in the other world to 
 find that there was no God, no heaven, no reward for the 
 pains of this life, and all they had looked for and expected 
 had been the shadow of a dream. 
 
 Listening to this as she lay on the angerib, and thinking 
 she was partly to blame for it, Helena asked herself if there 
 was anything she could do to save Ishmael and his people. 
 
 "O God! is there nothing I can do?" she thought. 
 
 At first there came no answer to this question. Do what 
 she would to fix her mind on the people's sufferings and 
 Ishmael's downfall, her mind swung back to its old subject 
 and once again she thought of Gordon and his arrest. 
 
 Things in that regard were plainer to her now. The idea 
 of a Field General Court-Martial, which had made her chill 
 with fear, had been the figment of an over-excited brain. 
 Whatever had happened to Gordon's efforts in the interests
 
 522 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 of peace — whether they had failed or succeeded — his own 
 trial would take the ordinary course. A military court of 
 the usual kind would have to be summoned, its sentence 
 would have to be confirmed and only the King could con- 
 firm it. 
 
 All this would take time and therefore there was no 
 need for panic. But meantime what was Gordon's position? 
 He had been arrested in mistake for Ishmael, and conse- 
 quently he would, one way or another, be liable to punish- 
 ment for Ishmael's offence. That was to say, for the offence 
 she had attributed to Ishmael. Yet Gordon had done no 
 wrong, he had intended no evil. 
 
 " Is there nothing I can do ? — nothing at all ? " she 
 asked herself again. 
 
 Suddenly a light dawned on her. If the Consul-General 
 could be made to see what Gordon's motives had really 
 been — to save England, to save Egypt, to save the good name 
 of his own father — and if he could be made to realise that 
 Ishmael's aim was not rebellion and his followers were not 
 an armed force, but merely a vast concourse of religious 
 visionaries — w'hat then ? 
 
 Then as a just man, if a stern and hard one, he would be 
 compelled to see that his own son was not punished, and per- 
 haps — who could say? — he might even permit Ishmael's 
 people to enter Cairo. 
 
 Vague, undefined and unconsidered as this idea was, 
 Helena leaped at it as a solution of all their difficulties, 
 and when she asked herself how she was to bring conviction 
 to the Consul-General's mind she remembered Gordon's 
 letters. 
 
 Nothing could be better. Being written before the event, 
 and intended for her eyes only, they must be convincing 
 to anybody whatever and absolutely irresistible to a father. 
 Private? No matter! Intimate and affectionate and full 
 of the closest secrets of the soul ? Never mind ! She w^ould 
 share them with one who was flesh of Gordon's flesh, for his 
 heart must be with her and the issue was life or death. 
 
 Yes, she would go into Cairo, see the Consul-General, 
 show him Gordon's letters, and prove and explain every-
 
 THE DAWN 523 
 
 thing. Thus she who had been the first cause of the peo- 
 ple's sufferings, of Ishmael's downfall and of Gordon's 
 arrest, would be Gordon's, Ishmael's, and the people's de- 
 liverer ! Yes, she, she, she ! 
 
 But wait! Had she not promised Gordon that she 
 would remain in the camp, whatever happened? She had. 
 But that promise was annulled by this time, while this 
 great ei*rand must be precisely what she had been sent there 
 for, and by flying away now she would be fulfilling her 
 destiny in a wider and deeper sense than even Gordon him- 
 self could have conceived. 
 
 " I'll go at once," she thought, and she sprang up from 
 the angerib to carry out her purpose. 
 
 As she did so she saw a little ugly black face, all 
 blubbered over with tears, on the ground beside her. It 
 was Mosie, and he was kissing the hem of her skirt and 
 saying : 
 
 " Mosie very sorry. He not know. "Will lady ever for- 
 give Mosie ? " 
 
 Helena's heart leaped up at sight of the boy. She wanted 
 his help immediately, and his unexpected appearance at 
 that moment was like an assurance from heaven that what 
 she intended to do ought to be done. 
 
 Comforting the lad and. drying his eyes, she asked him 
 in breathless whispers a number of questions. Where was 
 the donkey on which he had ridden into the camp ? It was 
 near by, tethered. Did he know the way to the railway 
 station at Bedrasheen? He did. Could he lead her there 
 through the darkness? He could. It was now half-past nine 
 — would there be a train to Cairo soon? Yes, for the Alim 
 had just gone to catch one that was to go to Boulaq Dacrour 
 at ten o'clock. 
 
 " The very thing," said Helena. " Bring your donkey 
 to the back of the tent and wait there until I come." 
 
 " Yes, yes," said the boy, now ablaze Avith eagerness, 
 and kissing both her hands alternately, he shot out on his 
 errand. 
 
 Then Helena picked up a little locked handbag which 
 contained Gordon's precious letters, added her own letter to
 
 524 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 them, and after extinguishing the lamp that hung from the 
 pole, stepped out of the tent. 
 
 A few minutes later, mounted on a donkey that was led 
 by a boy, a woman, looking like an Egyptian, with her 
 black skirt drawn over the back of her head and closely 
 clipped under her nose, was picking her way through the 
 darkness. 
 
 All was quiet by this time. The weeping and wailing had 
 at last come to an end, and from the vast encampment there 
 rose nothing but the deep somnambulant moan that comes 
 up from a great city when it is falling asleep. The fires 
 wore smouldering out, and the people, such of them as 
 remained, were lying, some in their tents, others out- 
 stretched on the sand, all weary and heartbroken in the 
 misery of their dead hope, their dead dream, their dead 
 faith. 
 
 A kind of soulless silence hung in the air. Even the 
 call of the night-watchman ("God is one!") was no more 
 to be heard. Only the braying of donkeys at intervals, the 
 ruckling of camels and the barking of dogs. 
 
 There was no moon, but the stars were thick and one 
 was falling. 
 
 VI 
 
 Taking his steam-launch which had been moored to 
 the boat-landing of the Ghezirah Palace, the Consul-General 
 returned home immediately after Gordon's arrest. He did 
 not wait to say what was to be done with the prisoner, or 
 to tell his officials what further steps, if any, were to be 
 taken to prevent the expected insurrection. One ovenvhelm- 
 ing event had wiped ever;s-thing else out of his mind. His 
 plans had been frustrated ; he had been degraded, made a 
 laughing stock of, and by Gordon — his own son. 
 
 As his launch skimmed across the river in the darkness 
 he could hear in the back-wash of the screw, the guffaws of 
 the diplomatic corps, and in the throbbing of the engine the 
 choking laughter of the whole world.
 
 THE DAWN 525 
 
 * 
 
 His mind was going like a weaver's shuttle, and he was 
 asking himself by what sinister development of fate this 
 devilish surprise had been brought about. He could find 
 no answer. In the bafiiing mystery of events only one thing 
 seemed clear — that Gordon, when he disappeared from Cairo 
 after the affair of El Azhar, had not gone to America or 
 India or Australia, as everybody had supposed, but straight 
 to the man Ishmael's camp, and that he had allowed himself 
 to be used by that charlatan mummer to further his in- 
 trigues. Against his own father, too ! His father who had 
 been thinkingof him every day, every night, and nearly all 
 night, and was now, by his instrumentality, made an object 
 of derision and contempt. 
 
 "Fool! Fool! Fool!" thought the Consul-General, 
 and his anger against Gordon burned in his heart like a 
 fierce and consuming fire. 
 
 On reaching the Agency he went upstairs to his room 
 and rang violently for Fatimah. Somebody within his own 
 household had become aware of his plans and revealed 
 them to his enemies. He had little doubt of the identity 
 of the traitor, for he remembered Fatimah's unexpected 
 appearance in the dining-room the night before, and her 
 confusion and lame excuse when the Sirdar observed her 
 presence. 
 
 Fatimah answered her bell cheerfully as one who had 
 nothing to fear, but the moment she saw the Consul-Gener- 
 al's face, with the deep folds in his forehead and the hard 
 and implacable lines about his mouth, she dropped on her 
 knees before he had uttered a word. 
 
 " What is this you have been doing, woman ? " he de- 
 manded, in a stern voice, whereupon Fatimah made no 
 attempt at disguise. 
 
 " I couldn't help it, O Master ! " she said, breaking 
 into tears. " I would have given him my eyes. He was 
 the same as my own son and I had suckled him at my 
 breast. Can a woman deny anything to her own ? " 
 
 The Consul-General looked down at her for a moment 
 in silence and his drooping lower lip trembled. Then with 
 a gesture of, impatience he said: 
 35
 
 526 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Get away to your room at once," and opening the door 
 for her he closed and locked it when she was gone. 
 
 But the momentary spasm of tenderness toward Gordon 
 which had come to the Consul-General at sight of the 
 foster-mother's love disappeared at the next instant. The 
 only excuse he could find for his son's conduct in duping 
 his ignorant Egyptian nurse was that perhaps he had him- 
 self been duped. 
 
 After the first plans had been formed in Khartoum and 
 Helena's letter had been despatched, the " fanatic-hypocrite " 
 had probably discovered that his intrigue had become known 
 in Cairo. That he had put Gordon into the gap, and Gor- 
 don had been so simple, so innocent, so stupid as to be 
 deceived ! There was small comfort in this reading of the 
 riddle and the Consul-General's fury and shame increased 
 tenfold. 
 
 " Fool ! Fool ! Fool ! " he thought, and taking from 
 the mantelpiece the portrait of the boy in the Arab fez, he 
 looked at it for a moment and then flung it back impatient- 
 ly. It fell onto the floor. 
 
 Some minutes passed in which the infuriated man was 
 unconscious of his surroundings, for great anger wipes out 
 time and place, and then he became aware that there was 
 a knock at the door of his room. 
 
 "Who's there?" he cried. 
 
 It was Ibrahim. He had come to tell his Excellency 
 that two reporters from Renter's Agency were below by 
 appointment and wished to hear what his Excellency had 
 to give them. 
 
 " Nothing. Send them away," said the Consul-General. 
 
 A moment afterward there was another knock at the 
 door. 
 
 "Who's there now?" cried the Consul-General. 
 
 It was his First Secretary. The Adviser to the Ministry 
 of Justice had come to say that the Special Tribunal had 
 been summoned and the Judges were waiting for further 
 instructions. 
 
 " Tell them there will be no sitting to-night," said the 
 Consul-General.
 
 THE DAWN 527 
 
 A little later there was yet another knock at the door. 
 It was the Secretary again. The Adviser to the Ministry 
 of the Interior had called him up on the telephone to say 
 that, according to instructions, the gallows had been set up 
 in the Square in front of the Governorat, and now he 
 wished to know 
 
 " Tell the men to take it down again at once, and don't 
 come up again," said the Consul-General in a %'oice that 
 was hoarse with wrath and thick with shame. 
 
 These interruptions had been like visitations of the spir- 
 its of the dead to a murderer who had killed them, and it 
 was some time before the Consul-General could bring his 
 mind back to the mystery before him. When he was able 
 to do so he asked himself how it had come to pass that if 
 Gordon had been in Khartoum, and if he had been duped 
 into taking Ishmael's place, Helena had not informed him 
 of The change? Where had she been? Where was she now? 
 What had become of her? Could it be possible that she, too, 
 by her love for Gordon, had been won over to the side of 
 his enemies? 
 
 Thinking of that as a possible explanation of the devil- 
 ish tangle of circumstance by which he was surrounded, the 
 Consul-General's wrath against Gordon rose to a frenzy of 
 madness. Fierce and wild imprecations broke from his 
 mouth, such as had never passed his lips before, and then, 
 suddenly remembering that they were directed against his 
 own flesh and blood, his own son, he cried, in the midst of 
 his fury and passion : 
 
 " No, no ! God forgive me ! Not that ! " 
 
 Ibrahim knocked at the door again. The Grand Cadi 
 had come, and begged the inestimable privilege of approach- 
 ing his Excellency's honorable person. 
 
 " Say I can't see him," said the Consul-General, and then, 
 sitting down on a sofa in an alcove of the room, he tried 
 his best to compose himself. 
 
 In the silence of the next few minutes he was conscious, 
 of the ticking of the telegraph tape that was unrolling itself 
 by his side, and, to relieve his mind of the burden that op- 
 pressed it, he stretched out his hand for the long white slip.
 
 528 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 It reported a debate on the Address to the Crown, at the 
 opening of a new session of Parliament. Somebody, a rabid, 
 irresponsible Radical, had proposed as an Amendment that 
 " the time had come to associate the people of Egypt in the 
 government of the countrj^" and the Foreign Minister was 
 making his reply, 
 
 " This much I am willing to admit," said the Minister, 
 ^' that there are two cardinal errors in the governing of alien 
 races — to rule them as if thoy were Englishmen, and to re- 
 press their aspirations by blowing them out of the mouth of 
 a gun." 
 
 The Consul-General rose to his feet in a new flood of 
 anger. But for Gordon he would have silenced all such bab- 
 bling. To-morrow morning was to have seen Downing 
 Street in confusion, and in the conflagration that was to 
 have blazed heaven-high on the report of the Egyptian con- 
 spiracy and how he had crushed it, he was to have found 
 himself the saviour of civilisation. 
 
 But now — what now? Duped by his own son, who had 
 taken sides against him, he was about to become the laugh- 
 ing-stock of all Europe. 
 
 "Fool! Fool! Fool!" he cried, and in the cruel riot of 
 anger and love that was going on within him he felt for the 
 first time in his life as if he wanted to burst into tears. 
 
 Another knock came to the door. It was Ibrahim again, 
 to say that the Grand Cadi, who sent his humble salaams, 
 had said he would wait, and now the Sirdar had come and he 
 wished to see his Excellency immediately. 
 
 " Tell the Sirdar I can see no one to-night," said the 
 Consul-General. 
 
 " But his Excellency says his business is urgent, and he 
 must come upstairs if your Excellency will not come down." 
 
 The Consul-General reflected for a moment and then 
 replied : 
 
 " Tell the Sirdar I will be down presently."
 
 THE DAWN 529 
 
 VII 
 
 Besides the Grand Cadi with his pockmarked checks and 
 base eyes, and the Sirdar with his ruddy face (suddenly 
 gro%vn sallow), the plump person of the Commandant of 
 Police was waiting in the library. 
 
 The Grand Cadi in his turban and silk robes sat in the 
 extreme corner of the room, opposite to the desk; the Sirdar, 
 in his full-dress uniform, stood squarely on the hearth-rug 
 with his back to the empty fireplace; and the Commandant, 
 in his gold-braided blue, stood near to the door. 
 
 No one spoke. There was a tense silence, such as per- 
 vades a surgeon's consulting room immediately before a 
 serious operation. 
 
 When the Consul-General came in, still wearing his court- 
 dress, it was plainly apparent to those who had seen him as 
 recently as half an hour before that he was a changed man. 
 Although perfectly self-possessed and as firm and implacable 
 as ever, there was an indefinable something about his eyes, 
 his mouth, and his square jaw which seemed to say that he 
 had gone through a great struggle with his own heart and 
 conquered it — perhaps killed it — and that henceforth his 
 affections were to be counted as dead. 
 
 The Sirdar saw this at a glance, and thereby realised the 
 measure of what he had come to do. He had come to fight 
 this father for his own son. 
 
 Answering the salute of the Commandant, the salutation 
 of the Sirdar and the salaam of the Cadi with the curtest 
 bow, the old man stepped forward to his desk, and seating 
 himself in the revolving chair behind it, said brusquely: 
 
 " Well, what is the matter now ? " 
 
 " Nuneham," said the Sirdar, with an oblique glance 
 in the direction of the Cadi, " the Commandant and I wish 
 to speak to you in private on a personal and urgent 
 subject." 
 
 "Does it concern my son?" asked the Consul-General 
 sharply. 
 
 " I do not say it concerns your son," said the Sirdar, with
 
 530 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 another oblique glance at the Cadi. " I only say it is per- 
 sonal and urgent and therefore ought to be discussed in 
 private." 
 
 " Humph ! We'll discuss it here. I'll have no secrets on 
 that subject." 
 
 "In that case," said the Sirdar, "you must take the 
 consequences." 
 
 " Go on, please." 
 
 " In the first jjlace the Commandant finds himself in a 
 predicament." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " The warrant he holds is for the arrest of Ishmael 
 Ameer, but the prisoner he has taken to-night is — an- 
 other person." 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " The Commandant wishes to know what he is to do? " 
 
 " What is it his duty to do? " 
 
 " That depends on circumstances, and the circumstances 
 in the present case are peculiar." 
 
 " State them precisely, please." 
 
 The Sirdar hesitated, glanced again at the Cadi, this 
 time with an expression of obvious repugnance, and then 
 said : 
 
 " The peculiar circumstances in this case are, my dear 
 Xuneham, that though the prisoner cannot possibly be held 
 under the warrant by which he was arrested, he is wanted 
 by the military courts for other offences." 
 
 " Therefore " 
 
 " Therefore the Commandant has come with me to ask 
 you whether the man he has taken to-night is to be handed 
 over to the military authorities or " 
 
 "Or what?" 
 
 " Or allowed to go free," 
 
 The Consul-General swung his chair round until he came 
 face to face with the Sirdar, and said with withering bit- 
 ternesss : 
 
 " So you have come to rae — British Agent and Consul- 
 General — to ask if I will connive at your prisoner's escape ! 
 Is that it?"
 
 THE DAWN 531 
 
 The Sirdar flinched, bit the ends of his moustache for a 
 moment, and then said, with a faint tremor in his voice : 
 
 " Nuneham, if the prisoner is handed over to the authori- 
 ties he will be court-martialled." 
 
 " Let it be so," said the Consul-General. 
 
 " As surely as he is court-martialled his sentence will be 
 death." 
 
 The old man swung his chair back and answered huskily : 
 " If his offences deserve it, what matter is that to me? " 
 
 " Ilis offences," said the Sirdar, " were insubordination, 
 refusal to obey the orders of his general and " 
 
 " Isn't that enough ? " asked the Consul-General, where- 
 upon the Sirdar drew himself up and said : 
 
 " I plead no excuses for insubordination. I am myself a 
 soldier. I think discipline is the backbone of the army. 
 Without that everything' must go to chaos. But the general 
 who exacts stern compliance with military discipline on the 
 part of his officers has it for his sacred duty to see that his 
 commands are just and that he does not provoke disobedi- 
 ence by outrageous and illegal insults." 
 
 The old man's face twitched visibly, but still he stood 
 firm. 
 
 " Provoked or not provoked, your prisoner disobeyed the 
 orders of his recognised superior — what more is there to 
 8ay?" 
 
 " Only that he acted from a sense of right, and that he 
 was right " 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 " I say he ^vas right, as subsequent events proved, and if 
 his conscience " 
 
 " Conscience ! What has a soldier to do with conscience ? 
 My servant Ibrahim, perhaps, any fellah, may have a right 
 to exercise what he is pleased to call his conscience, but the 
 first and only duty of an English soldier is to obey." 
 
 " Then God help England ! If an English soldier is only 
 a machine, a human gun-waggon, with no right to think 
 about anything but his rations and his pay, and how to use 
 his rifle, he is a butcher and a hireling — not a hero. No, no, 
 some of the greatest soldiers and sailors have resisted au-
 
 532 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 thority when authority has been in the wrong. Nelson did 
 it and General Gordon did it, and if this one " 
 
 But the old man burst out again in a quivering voice : 
 
 " Why do you come to tell me this ? What has it got to 
 do with me ? The case before us is perfectly clear. By some 
 tangle and devilish circumstances the wrong man has been 
 arrested to-night. But your prisoner is wanted by the mili- 
 tary authorities for other offences. Very well, let him be 
 handed over to them." 
 
 The Sirdar now saw that he had not only to fight the 
 father for his own flesh and blood, but the man for himself. 
 He looked across the room to where the Grand Cadi sat in 
 smug silence, but his clawlike hands clasped before his 
 breast, and then, as if taking a last chance, he said: 
 
 " Nuneham, the prisoner is your son." 
 
 " All the more reason why I should treat him as I should 
 treat anybody else." 
 
 " Your only son." 
 
 " Humph ! " 
 
 " If anything happens to him — if he dies before you — 
 your family will come to an end when you are gone." 
 
 The old man trembled. The Sirdar was cutting him in 
 the tenderest place — ploughing deep into his lifelong secret. 
 
 " Your name will be wiped out. You will have wiped it 
 out, Nuneham." 
 
 The old man was shaking like a rock which vibrates in 
 an earthquake. To steady his nerves he took a pen and 
 held it firmly in the fingers of both hands. 
 
 " If you tell the Commandant to hand him over to the 
 military authorities, it will be the same in the court of your 
 conscience as if you had done it. You will have cut off your 
 own line." 
 
 The old man fought hard with himself. It was a fear- 
 ful struggle. 
 
 " More than that, it will be the same — it will be the same 
 when you come to think of it — as if with that pen in your 
 hands you had signed your own son's death-warrant." 
 
 The pen dropped, as if it had been red hot, from the old 
 man's trembling fingers. Still he struggled.
 
 THE DAWN 533 
 
 " If my son is a guilty man, let the law deal with him 
 as it would deal with any other," he said, but his voice shook 
 — it could scarcely sustain itself. 
 
 The Sirdar saw that deep under the frozen surface, the 
 heart of the old man was breaking up; he knew that the shot 
 that killed Gordon would kill the Consul-General also, and 
 he felt that he was now pleading for the life of the father 
 as well as of the son. 
 
 " It's not as if the boy were a prodigal, a wastrel," he 
 said. " He is a gentleman, every inch of him, and if he has 
 gone wrong, if he has acted improperly, it has only been 
 from the highest impulses. He has sincerity and he has 
 courage, and they are the noblest virtues of the soul." 
 
 The old man's head was down, but he was conscious that 
 the Cadi's cruel eyes were upon him. 
 
 " He's a soldier, too. In some respects the finest young 
 soldier in the army, whoever the next may be. He saw his 
 first fighting with me, I remember. It was at Omdurman. 
 He had taken the Khalifa's flag. The dervish who carried 
 it had treacherously stabbed his comrade, and when he came 
 up with fire and tears in his eyes together, he said, ' I killed 
 him like a dog, sir.' * My God,' I said to myself, * here is a 
 soldier born.' " 
 
 The old man was silent, but he was still conscious that 
 the Cadi's cruel eyes were upon him, watching him, inter- 
 rogating him, saying, " What will you do now, I wonder ? " 
 
 " God has never given me a son," continued the Sirdar, 
 " but from that day to this I have always felt as if that boy 
 belonged also to myself." 
 
 The old man was breaking up rapidly, but still he would 
 not yield. 
 
 " His mother loved him, too. Perhaps he was the only 
 human thing that came between her and her God. She is 
 dead, and they say the dead see all. Who knows, JSTuneham ? 
 — she may be waiting now to find out what you are going 
 to do." 
 
 The strain was terrible. The two old friends, one visibly 
 moved and making no effort to conceal his emotion, the 
 other fighting hard with the dark spirits of pride and wrath.
 
 534 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 The Sirdar's mind went back to the days when they were 
 young men themselves, at Sandhurst together, and approach- 
 ing the Consul-General he put one hand on his shoulder and 
 said: 
 
 " Nuncham — John iSTuneham — John — Jack — give the boy 
 another chance. Let him go." 
 
 Then with a cry of agony and with an oath, never heard 
 from his lips before, the Consul-General rose from his seat 
 and said : 
 
 " No, no, no ! You come here asking me to put my 
 honour into the hands of my enemies — to leave myself at 
 the mercy of any scoundrel who cares to say that the meas- 
 ure I mete out to others is not that which I keep for my 
 own. You come, too, excusing my son's offences against 
 military law, but saying nothing of the other crimes in 
 which you have this very night caught him red-handed." 
 
 After that he smote the desk with his clenched fist and 
 cried : 
 
 " No, no, I tell you no ! My son is a traitor. He has 
 joined himself to his father's and his country's enemies in 
 order to destroy him and to destroy England in Egypt, and 
 if the punishment of a traitor is death, then death it must 
 be to him as to any other, that the same justice may be dealt 
 out to all." 
 
 Then to the Commandant, who was still standing by the 
 door, he said: 
 
 " Go, sir! Let your prisoner be handed over to the mili- 
 tary authorities without one moment's further delay." 
 
 It was like the moment of the breaking of an ava- 
 lanche, and after it there came the same awful still- 
 ness. No one spoke. The Commandant bowed and left the 
 room. 
 
 The Consul-General returned to his seat at the desk, 
 and, digging his elbows into the blotting-pad, rested his head 
 on his hands. The Sirdar stood sideways with one arm on 
 the chimney-piece. The Cadi sat in liis smug silence with 
 his claw-like hands still clasped in front of his breast. 
 
 They heard the Commandant's heavy step and the click 
 of his sjiurs as he walked across the marble floor of the hall.
 
 THE DAWN 535 
 
 They heard the front door close with a bang. Still no one 
 spoke and the silence seemed to be everlasting. 
 
 Then they heard the outer bell ringing loudly. They 
 hoard the front door opened and then closed again, as if 
 after admitting somebody. At the next moment Ibrahim, 
 looking as if he had just seen a ghost, had come, with his 
 slippered feet, into the library, and was stammering: 
 
 " If you please, your Excellency — if you please, your 
 Ex " 
 
 " Speak out, you fool — who is it ? " said the Consul- 
 General. 
 
 " It is — it is Miss — Miss Helena, your Excellency." 
 
 The Consul-General's face contracted for an instant, as 
 if he were trying to recover the plain sense of where he was 
 and what was going on. Then he rose and went out of the 
 room, Ibrahim following him. 
 
 The Sirdar and the Grand Cadi were left together. They 
 did not speak or exchange a sign. The Sirdar felt that the 
 Cadi's presence had contributed to the late painful scene — 
 that it had been a silent, subtle devilish influence against 
 Gordon — and he was conscious of an almost unconquerable 
 desire to take the man by the throat and wring his neck as he 
 would wring the neck of a bird of prey. 
 
 Quarter of an hour passed. Half an hour. Still the two 
 men did not speak. And the Consul-General did not return. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Meantime Helena, in another room, still wearing her 
 mixed Eastern and Western dress, was sitting by a table in 
 an attitude of supplication, with her arms outstretched and 
 her hands clasped across a corner of it, speaking earnestly 
 and rapidly to the Consul-General, who was standing with 
 head down in front of her. 
 
 Pale, in spite of the heat of the South and the sun of the 
 desert, very nervous, flurried, and a little ashamed, yet with 
 a sense of urgent necessity, she was telling him all that had 
 happened since she left Cairo — how she had gone to Khar-
 
 536 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 toum under an impulse of revenge that was inspired by a 
 mistaken idea of the cause of her father's death; how, being 
 there, she had been compelled to accept the position of Ish- 
 mael's nominal wife or go back with her errand unfulfilled; 
 how she had come to know of the base proposals of certain 
 of the Ulema; and how, at length, when Ishmael had suc- 
 cumbed to the last of them, she had written and despatched 
 her letter saying he was coming into Cairo in disguise. 
 
 Then in her soft voice, with its deep note, she told of 
 Gordon's arrival in Khartoum, of his own tragic mistake 
 and awful sufferings, of his confession to her, of her con- 
 fesssion to him, and of how she realised her error, but found 
 herself powerless to overtake or undo it. 
 
 Finally she told the Consul-General of Gordon's determi- 
 nation to take Ishmael's place, being impelled to do so by 
 the firmest conviction that his father was being deceived by 
 some one in Cairo, by the certainty that Ishmael could not 
 otherwise be moved from his fanatical purpose, and that 
 while the consequences of his own arrest must be merely 
 personal to himself, the result of Ishmael's death at the 
 hands of the authorities might be a holy war, which would 
 put Egypt in the right and England in the wrong and cover 
 his father's honoured name with infamy. 
 
 The old man listened eagerly, standing as long as he 
 could on the same spot, then walking to and from with ner- 
 vous and irregular steps, but stopping at intervals as if 
 breathless from an overpow^ering sense of the presence of the 
 hand of fate. 
 
 Having finished her story, Helena produced Gordon's 
 letters from the little handbag which hung from one of 
 her arms, and having kissed them, as if the Consul-General 
 had not been present, she began with panting affection to 
 read passages from them in proof of what she had said. 
 
 Being a woman, she knew by instinct what to read first, 
 and one by one came the passionate words which told of 
 Gordon's affection for the father whom he felt bound to 
 resist. 
 
 " My father," she read, " is a great man who probably 
 does not need and would certainly resent my compassion.
 
 THE DAWN 537 
 
 but Lord God, how I pity him! Deceived by false friends, 
 alone in his old age, after all he has done for Egypt ! " 
 
 The old man stopped her and said : 
 
 " But how did he know that — that I was being deceived? 
 What right had he to say so?" 
 
 " Listen," said Helena, and she read Gordon's account of 
 his visit to the Grand Cadi, when the " oily scoundrel " had 
 called his father " the slave of power," " the evil-doer," " the 
 adventurer," and " the great assassin." 
 
 " Then why didn't he come like a man and tell me him- 
 self?" asked the Consul-General. 
 
 " Listen again, sir," said Helena, and she read what 
 Gordon had said of his impulse to go to his father, in order 
 to disclose the Grand Cadi's duplicity, and then of the rea- 
 sons restraining him, being sure that his father was aiming 
 at a coup and that acting from a high sense of duty the 
 Consul-General would hand him over to the military 
 authorities before the work he had come to do had been 
 done. 
 
 " But didn't he see what he was doing himself — aiding 
 and abetting a conspiracy?" 
 
 " Listen once more, please," said Helena, and she read 
 what Gordon had said of Ishmael's pilgrimage — that while 
 his father thought the Prophet was bringing up an armed 
 force, he was merely leading a vast multitude of religious 
 visionaries, who were expecting to establish in Cairo a mil- 
 lennium of universal faith and empire. 
 
 "But, even so, was it necessary to do what he did?" 
 demanded the Consul-General. 
 
 " Listen for the last time, sir," said Helena, and then in 
 her soft, earnest, pleading voice, she read: 
 
 " It is necessary to prevent the massacre which I know 
 (and my father does not) would inevitably ensue; necessary 
 to save my father himself from the execration of the civ- 
 ilised world ; necessary to save Ishmael from the tragic con- 
 sequences of his determined fanaticism; necessary to save 
 England " 
 
 " Give them to me," said the Consul-General, taking — 
 almost snatching — the letters out of Helena's hands in the
 
 538 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 fierce nervous tension which left him no time to think of 
 courtesies. 
 
 Then drawing a chair up to the table, and fixing his eye- 
 glasses over his spectacles, he turned the pages one by one 
 and read passages here and there. Helena watched him 
 while he did so, and in the changing expression of the 
 hitherto hard, immobile, implacable face, she saw the effect 
 that was being produced. 
 
 " I cannot say how hard it is to me to be engaged in 
 a secret means to frustrate my father's plans — it is like fight- 
 ing one's own flesh and blood and is not fair warfare . . . 
 
 " Neither can I say what a struggle it has been to me 
 as an English soldier to make up my mind to intercept an 
 order of the British Army — it is like playing traitor and I 
 can scarcely bear to think of it . . . 
 
 "But all the same I know it is necessary. I also know 
 God knows it is necessary, and when I think of that my 
 heart beats wildly . . . 
 
 " I am willing to give my life for England, whatever 
 name she may know me by . . . and I am willing to die for 
 these poor Egyptians, because . . . 
 
 " This may be the last letter I shall write to you . . . 
 
 " May the great God of Heaven bless and protect 
 you . . ." 
 
 The Consul-General was overwhelmed. The Grand Cadi's 
 duplicity stifled him, Ishmael's innocence of conspiracy 
 humiliated him, but his son's heroism crushed him and made 
 him feel like a little man. 
 
 Yet ho had just now denounced his son as a traitor, 
 handed him over to the military authorities, and, in effect, 
 condemned him to death ! 
 
 As the old man read Gordon's letters his iron face 
 seemed to decompose. Helena could not bear to look at him 
 any longer, and she had to turn her own face away. At 
 length she became conscious that he had ceased to read, 
 and that his great, sad, humid eyes were looking at her. 
 
 " So you came here to plead with me for the life of my 
 l»oy?" he said, and, as well as she could for the tears that 
 were choking her she answered :
 
 THE DAWN 539 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 lie hesitated for a moment, as if trying to summon 
 courage to tell her something, and then, in a voice that 
 was quite unlike his own, he said: 
 
 " Permit to take these letters away for a few minutes." 
 
 And rising unsteadily he left the room. 
 
 IX 
 
 When the Consul-General returned to the library he 
 looked like a feeble old man of ninety. It was just as if 
 twenty years of his life had been struck out of him in half 
 an hour. The Sirdar stepped up to him in alarm, saying: 
 
 "What has happened?" 
 
 " Read these," he answered, handing to the Sirdar the 
 letters he carried in his hand. 
 
 The Sirdar took the letters aside, and standing by the 
 chimney-piece he looked at them. While he did so his face, 
 which had hitherto been grave and pale, became bright and 
 ruddy, and he uttered little sharp cries of joy. 
 
 " I knew it ! " he said. " Although I was at a loss to 
 read the riddle of Gordon's presence at Ghezirah I knew 
 there must be some explanation. If he had acted with a 
 sense of conscience in the one case he must have done so 
 in the other. . . . Thank God! Splendid! Bravo! ... Of 
 course, you will stop the Commandant ? " 
 
 The Consul-General, who had returned to his seat at 
 the desk, did not reply, and the Sirdar, thinking to anticipate 
 his objection, said eagerly: 
 
 " Why not ? The Commandant will act as for himself 
 and nobody will know that you have been consulted. . . . 
 That is to say," he added, with another oblique glance in 
 the direction of the Grand Cadi, " nobody outside this room, 
 and if anybody here should ever whisper a word about it I'll 
 — I'll — well, never mind; nobody will, nobody dare." 
 
 Then in the fever of his impatience the Sirdar proposed 
 to call up the Commandant of Police on the telephone and 
 tell him to consider his order cancelled.
 
 540 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Don't stir," he said. " I'll do it. Your Secretary will 
 show me the box." 
 
 When, with a light step and a hopeful face, the Sirdar 
 had gone out of the room on this errand the Cadi began for 
 the first time to show signs of life. He coughed, cleared his 
 throat, and made other noises indicative of a desire to 
 speak, but the Consul-General, still sitting at the desk with 
 the look of a shattered man, seemed to be unconscious of his 
 presence. At length he said, in that hushed voice of one 
 who was habitually afraid of being overheard : 
 
 " I regret — sincerely regret — that I have been again 
 compelled to approach your Excellency's honourable person 
 — especially at a time like this — but a certain danger — per- 
 sonal danger — made me think that perhaps your Excellency 
 would deign " 
 
 Before he could say any more the Sirdar had returned 
 to the library with a long face and a slow step. 
 
 " Too late ! " he said. " I called up the Commandant at 
 his office and they said he had gone to the Citadel. Then I 
 called him up there, thinking I might still be in time. But 
 no, the thing was over. Gordon was under arrest." 
 
 After that there was silence for some moments while the 
 Sirdar looked again at the letters which he was still holding 
 in his hands. At one moment he raised his eyes, and turning 
 to the Consul-General he said: 
 
 ''You'll not call down the troops from Abbassiah?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " And you'll allow this man Ishmael and his visionary 
 followers to come into Cairo if they've a mind to? " 
 
 The Consul-General bent his head. 
 
 " Good ! " said the Sirdar. " At all events, that will shut 
 the mouths of the fine birds who must be getting ready to 
 crow." 
 
 But a look of alarm came into the Grand Cadi's eyes, 
 such as comes into the eyes of a hawk when an eagle is 
 about to pounce upon it. 
 
 " Surely," he said, " his Excellency does not intend to 
 allow this horde of fifty thousand fanatics to pour them- 
 selves into the Capital?"
 
 THE DAWN 541 
 
 Whereupon the Sirdar turned sharply upon the man and 
 answered : 
 
 " That is exactly what his Excellency does intend to 
 do." 
 
 " But what is to become of me? " asked the Cadi. " This 
 is exactly the errand I came upon. Already the people are 
 threatening me, and I came to ask for protection. I am sus- 
 pected of giving information to his Excellency. Will his 
 Excellency desert me — leave me to the mercy of this man 
 Ishmael, this corrupter and destroyer of the faith ? " 
 
 Then the Consul-General, who had sat with head down, 
 the picture of despair, rose to his full height and faced the 
 Grand Cadi. 
 
 " Listen," he said, with a flash of his old fire. " I give 
 your Eminence twenty-four hours to leave Egypt. If the 
 people do not dispose of you after that time, as sure as there 
 is a British Minister in Constantinople, / will." 
 
 The look of alarm in the Cadi's cunning face was smitten 
 into an expression of terror. Not a word more did he say. 
 One glance he gave at the letters in the Sirdar's hands, and 
 then rising, with a low bow and touching his breast and 
 forehead, he turned to leave the room. Meantime the Sirdar 
 had rung the bell for Ibrahim, and then stepping to the door 
 he had oi>ened it. The ample folds of the Cadi's sleeves 
 swelled as he walked and he passed out like a human bat. 
 
 Being alone with the Sirdar the Consul-General's mind 
 went back to Helena. 
 
 " Poor child I " he said. " I hadn't the heart to tell her 
 what I had done. Go to her, Reg. She's in the drawing- 
 room. Give her back her letters and tell her what has hap- 
 pened. Then take her to the Princess Nazimah. Poor girl ! 
 Poor Gordon ! " 
 
 The Sirdar made some effort to comfort him, but it was 
 hard to say anything now to the man who in the days of his 
 strength had hated all forms of sentimentality. Yet the 
 shadow of supernatural powers seemed to be over him, for 
 he muttered some simple, almost childlike words about the 
 Almighty permitting him to fall because he had wandered 
 away from Him.
 
 542 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Janet ! My poor Janet ! " he murmured, his once proud 
 head hung low. 
 
 The Sirdar could bear no more, and he quietly left the 
 library. 
 
 As he approached the drawing-room he heard voices 
 within. Fatimah was with Helena. All the mother-heart in 
 the Eg\-ptian woman had warmed to the girl in her trouble, 
 and forgetful of the difference of class, they were clasped 
 in each other's arms. 
 
 The Sirdar could see by the tears that were trickling 
 down Helena's cheeks that already she knew evei*ything, but 
 all the same he told her that Gordon had been handed over 
 to the military authorities. She stood the fire of the sad 
 news without flinching, and a few minutes afterward they 
 were in the Sirdar's carriage on their way to the Princess 
 Nazimah's — the black boy on his donkey trotting proudly 
 behind. 
 
 " We must not lose heart, though," said the Sirdar. 
 " Now that I come to think of it, to be court -martialled may 
 be the best thing that can happen to him. He'll have a 
 good deal to say for himself. And whatever the sentence may 
 be, there's the Army Council, and there's the Secretary of 
 State, and there's the King himself, you know." 
 
 " Then you think there's some hope still," she said 
 faintly but sweetly. 
 
 " I'm certain there is," said the Sirdar, and as the car- 
 riage passed under the electric arc lamps in the streets he 
 could see that Helena's wet eyes were shining. 
 
 After a while she asked where Gordon was imprisoned, 
 and was told that he was at the Citadel, but that he was in 
 officer's quarters and that his Egyptian foster-brother, Hafiz 
 Ahmed, was permitted to be with him. 
 
 Then she asked if Ishmael and his people would be per- 
 mitted to come into Cairo, and was told that they would, 
 and that they might encamp in El Azhar if they cared to — 
 Ishmael being nothing to the Sirdar but an inoffensive 
 dreamer with a disordered brain. 
 
 Helena's lovely face looked almost happy. She was 
 thinking of the light that was expected to shine at midnight
 
 THE DAWN 543 
 
 from the minaret of the mosque of Mohammed Ali, and was 
 telling- herself that as soon as she reached the house of the 
 Princess she would call up Hafiz at the Citadel and see what 
 could be done. 
 
 Meantime Fatimah, who had gone to the Consul-Gen- 
 eral's bedroom to see that everything was in order, had found 
 something crunching under her feet, and picking it up she 
 found that it was the portrait of Gordon as a boy in his Arab 
 fez. With many sighs she was putting the pieces aside 
 when the old man entered the room. He did not seem to 
 see her, and though she lingered some little while he did 
 not speak. 
 
 Sitting on the sofa he rested his head on his hands and 
 looked fixedly at the carpet between his feet. Half an hour 
 passed — an hour — two hours — but he did not move. At 
 intervals the telegraphic machine which stood in an alcove 
 of the room ticked for a time and then stopped. The de- 
 bate on the Amendment to the Address was still going on, 
 but that did not matter now. Nothing mattered except one 
 thing — that he, he himself, had sent his own son to his 
 death, thus cutting off his line, ending his family, and de- 
 stroying the one hope and loadstar of his life. 
 
 " Ah, well ! It's all over," he thought, and at length, 
 switching off the lights, he went to bed. 
 
 While the great Proconsul slept his restless, troubled 
 sleep, the telegraphic machine ticked out in the darkness 
 on the long slip of white paper that rolled onto the floor the 
 future history of Egypt and in some sense of the world. 
 
 Par away in London the Foreign Minister was speaking. 
 
 " I am one of those who think," he was saying, " that 
 just as religious leaders. Popes as well as Mahdis, may go 
 to wreck under the mental malady which permits them to 
 believe they are the mouthpieces of the Almighty, so states- 
 men may be destroyed by the seeds of dissolution which 
 power, especially absolute power, carries within itself 
 
 " Holding this opinion, I also hold that to place one 
 person in sole charge of millions of people of a different 
 race, creed, and mode of thought, is to put a load on one 
 man's shoulders which no man, whatever his power and in-
 
 544 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 fluence, his integrity and the nobility of his principles, 
 ought to be called upon to bear." 
 
 But the heavy-lidded house on the Nile was asleep. The 
 Consul-Geueral did not hear. 
 
 When Ishmael left Helena's tent he did not return to 
 his own. In the torment of his soul he sought the solitude 
 of the desert. For two hours he walked on the sand without 
 knowing where he was going. The night was dark save for 
 an innumerable army of stars; an Easter night, still and 
 fragrant, but the unhappy man was wandering in it like a 
 creature accursed, a prey to the most terrible upheaval of 
 the soul, the most bitter and sorrowful reflections. 
 
 His first thoughts were about Helena — that all the sweet- 
 ness, all the loveliness which had been his joy by day and 
 his dream by night belonged not to him but to another. 
 
 " I am nothing to her," he told himself, and greater grief 
 than he felt at that thought seemed to surpass the bounds 
 of possibility. 
 
 But there was worse behind. At the next moment of 
 his anguish he remembered that not only did Helena not 
 love him, but he was repulsive to her. " Don't you see you 
 are hateful and odious to me — that you are a black man and 
 I am a white woman ? " 
 
 This was more than heartrending — it was physically ex- 
 cruciating, like poison creeping under the skin. But it had 
 its spiritual torture also. He who had built his life on the 
 belief that the sons and daughters of men were all children 
 of one Father, had found out in a moment, in the twinkling 
 of an eye, within his own camp, in his own tent, that Nature 
 gave the lie to his faith, and that he— he himself— was only 
 as a black man to the white woman whom he called his wife. 
 
 " I thought that where love was there could be neither 
 race nor colour, but I was wrong, quite wrong," he told him- 
 self again, and it seemed as if everything that had built up 
 his soul was crumbling away.
 
 ' THE DAWN 545 
 
 But even worse than all this was the thought that Helena 
 had betrayed him — she who had seemed to sacrifice so much. 
 Pitiful delusion! Cruel snare! 
 
 It was maddening to think of the merely human side of 
 his betrayal — that between the guilty wife and her lover 
 he was only the husband who had to be got rid of — but the 
 spiritual aspect was still more terrible. He who had allowed 
 himself to believe that he was specially guided by God, that 
 the Merciful had made him His messenger, had been de- 
 ceived and duped and was no more than a poor, weak, help- 
 less man who had been led away by his love for a woman. 
 
 The shame of his betrayal was stifling, the sense of his 
 downfall was crushing, but still more painful was the con- 
 sciousness of the penalty which his people would have to 
 pay for the pride and blind love which had misled him. They 
 had followed him across the desert, suffering all the pains 
 of the long and toilsome journey, buoyed up by the hopes 
 with which he had inspired them ; they had trusted and loved 
 and looked up to him, hardly distinguishing between his 
 word and the word of God, and now — their leader was de- 
 ceived, their hopes were dead, the mirage of their dreams 
 had disappeared. 
 
 Thinking of this in the agony of his despair, he asked 
 himself why God had permitted it to come to pass that not 
 himself only but the whole body of his people should suffer. 
 " Why, O God! why? " he cried, lifting his arms to the sky. 
 
 For some moments a cloud passed between him and the 
 faith which had so long sustained him. He began to regret 
 his lofty mission and to remember with regret his earlier 
 days in Khartoum with the simple girl who loved him and 
 lay on the angerib in his arms. He had been humble then 
 — content to be a man — and recalling one by one the touch- 
 ing memories of his life with Adila, in their prison bright- 
 ened by rays of love, in their poor desert home, illuminated 
 more than a palace by expectation of the child that was to 
 come, his heart failed him and he wanted to curse the des- 
 tiny which had led him to a greatness wherein all was 
 vain. 
 
 The wild insurrection in his soul had left him no time
 
 546 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 to think which course he was taking, but wandering across 
 the Sakkara desert he had by this time come to the foot of 
 the Sphinx. 
 
 Calm, immovable, tremendous, the great scarred face 
 was gazing in passionless meditation into the luminous star- 
 light, asking, as it had asked through the long yesterday of 
 the past, as it will continue to ask through the long to-mor- 
 row of the future, the everlasting question — the question of 
 humanity, the question of all suffering souls. 
 
 " Why \ " 
 
 Why should man aim higher than he can reach? Why 
 should he give up the joys of humanity for divine dreams 
 that can never be realised ? Why should he be a victim to the 
 devilish powers, within and without, which are always wait- 
 ing to betray and destroy him? Why should God forsake 
 him just when he is striving to serve him most? 
 
 "Allah! Allah! Why? Why ?" he cried. 
 
 But his higher nature speedily regained its supremacy. 
 It came to him as a flash of light in his darkness that the 
 true explanation of his downfall was that God was punish- 
 ing him for his presumption in allowing the idolatry of his 
 people to carry him away from his first humility — to forget 
 his proper place as a man and to think of himself as if he 
 were a god. 
 
 This led him to thoughts of atonement, and in a moment 
 the image of death came to him — his own death — as a sac- 
 rifice. He began to see what he had now to do. He had to 
 take all that had happened upon himself. He had to call 
 his people together and to say: " I lied to you. I was a false 
 prophet ! I deceived myself, and in deceiving myself I de- 
 ceived you also ! The wonderful world I promised you — the 
 Redeemer I foretold — all, all is vain ! " 
 
 And then — what then? W^hat of himself — the betrayed, 
 the betrayer? After he had parted from the people with 
 their broken hearts, he would deliver himself up to the 
 authorities. He had done no wrong to the Government, but 
 he had sinned against his followers and he had sinned 
 against God, and God would accept the one punishment for 
 the other.
 
 THE DAWN 547 
 
 Yes, he would go into Cairo and say, " I am here — you 
 want me — take me! " 
 
 His regenerated soul saw in his death not only his own 
 salvation but the salvation of his people also. It was not 
 clear to him how this was to come to pass, but death had 
 always been a gain to great causes, and God was over all! 
 
 Under this sublime resolution his heart became almost 
 buoyant. He turned to go back to the camp, and as he 
 walked he thought of Helena again. The tender love which 
 had filled his whole being for months could not be banished 
 in an hour, and he began to tell himself that perhaps after 
 all she had not been to blame. Love could not be ruled by 
 a rudder like a boat. The white woman could not help but 
 love the white man. It was a woman's way to risk every- 
 thing, to sacrifice everybody, to commit sin and even crime 
 for the man she loved— how many good women had done so ! 
 
 That was the temptation to which the Hani had suc- 
 cumbed, and he — yes, he also — must submit to the pains of 
 it. They were hard, they were cruel, they cut to the core, 
 but with the idea of death before him they could now be 
 borne. 
 
 He remembered his unbridled wrath with the Rani, his 
 ferocious violence, and he felt ashamed. It was almost im- 
 possible to believe that he had really laid hands upon her 
 and tried to strangle her. 
 
 He remembered how he had left her, face down on the 
 angerib, in her misery and remorse. The picture in his 
 mind's eye of the weeping woman in her tent made his 
 heart bleed with pity. 
 
 He must go back to her. His people might suspect that 
 she was the author of their trouble and in their fury they 
 might threaten her. He must conceal her fault. He must 
 take her sin upon himself. 
 
 " I must cover her with my cloak," he thought. 
 
 Thus, thirsting with a desire to drink the cup of his 
 degradation to the dregs, Ishmael got back to camp. It was 
 full of touching sights. Instead of the flare of the lights 
 and the tumult of the excited crowds which he had left 
 behind him, there were now only the ashes of dying fires
 
 548 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 and the melancholy meanings of the people who were sitting 
 about them. 
 
 He made his way first to Helena's tent, and, standing 
 by the mouth of it, he called to her. 
 
 " Rani ! " 
 
 A woman who had been lying on the angerib rose to 
 answer him. It was Zenoba. 
 
 "Alas! Your Rani has gone, O Master!" she said, 
 with mock sympathy but ill-concealed tones of triumph. 
 
 "Gone?" 
 
 " She was afraid the people might kill her, so she fled 
 away." 
 
 "Fled away?" 
 
 " I did my best to keep her for your sake, but she loves 
 herself more than you, and that's the truth, O Master ! " 
 
 Ishmael groaned and staggered, but the woman showed 
 no pity. 
 
 " Better have contented yourself with a woman of your 
 own people, who would have been true and faithful," she 
 said in a bitter whisper. 
 
 Covered with shame, Ishmael turned away. He looked 
 for Zogal. 
 
 The black Dervish was at that moment struggling to 
 sustain the people's faith in the Master and his mission by 
 means of a pagan superstition. 
 
 " Give me a mutton bone," he had said, and having re- 
 ceived one he had looked at it long and steadfastly in order 
 to read the future. 
 
 As Ishmael came up to the smouldering fire about which 
 Zogal and his company were squatting, the wild-eyed Der- 
 vish was saying: 
 
 " It will be well ! Allah will preserve his people and the 
 Master will be saved! Did I not tell thee the bone never 
 lies?" 
 
 " Zogal," said Ishmael, " sound the horn and let the 
 people be brought together." 
 
 The sky was dark. The stars had gone out. It was 
 not yet midnight.
 
 THE DAWN 549 
 
 XI 
 
 At the next moment the melancholy notes of the great 
 horn rang out over the dark camp and within a few minutes 
 an immense multitude had gathered. 
 
 It was a strange spectacle under the blank darkness of 
 the sky. Men carrying lanterns, which cast coarse lights 
 upward into their swarthy faces, were standing in a surging 
 and murmuring mass, while women, like shadows in the 
 gloom, were huddling together on the outskirts of the crowd. 
 
 They were Ishmael's faithful people, all of them, broken- 
 hearted believers in his spiritual mission, for at the shadow 
 of disaster those who had followed him for personal gains 
 alone had gone. 
 
 Ishmael caused the people to be drawn up in a great 
 square, and then mounting a camel he rode into the midst 
 of them. He was seen to be in a state of great excitement. 
 
 " Brothers," he said, " we have passed through many 
 hard days together. You have shared with me your joys 
 and your sorrows. I have shared with you my hopes and my 
 dreams. We are one." 
 
 Touched to the heart by his voice as much as his words, 
 the people cried : 
 
 " May God preserve thee ! " 
 
 " Nay," he cried, " may God punish me, for I have per- 
 mitted myself to be deceived." 
 
 The people thought he was going to speak of the woman 
 who was understood to have betrayed him, but he did not 
 do so. 
 
 " Look ! " he cried, pointing toward the pyramid. " We 
 stand amid the ruins of a pagan world. Where are the Kings 
 and Counsellors who slept in these desolate places ? Gone ! 
 All gone ! Have not strangers from a far country taken 
 away their bodies to wonder at? Where is the king who 
 built this tomb? He thought himself the equal of God, 
 yet what was he? A man, shaped out of a little clay! And 
 I ? " he said, " I, too, have been drunk with power. I have 
 been living in the greatness of my own strength. I have 
 36
 
 550 THE WHITE PEOPHET 
 
 permitted myself to believe that I was the messenger of 
 God, and therefore God — God has brought me down. He 
 has laid me in the dust. Blessed be the name of God ! " 
 
 Only the broken ejaculations of the i^eople answered 
 him, and he went on without pausing : 
 
 " In bringing me down he has brought down my people 
 also. Alas for you, my brothers ! You cannot go into 
 Cairo. The armed forces of the Government are waiting 
 there to destroy you. Therefore turn back and go home. 
 Forgive your leader who has led you astray. And God 
 preserve and comfort you!" 
 
 "And you, O Master?" cried a voice that rose above 
 the confused voices of the people. 
 
 Ishmael paused for a moment and then said : 
 
 " In times of great war and pestilence God has accepted 
 an atonement, and perhaps he will do so now. I will go 
 into Cairo and deliver myself to the Government. I will 
 say, ' The man you hold was arrested instead of me. I am 
 your true prisoner. Take me and let him — and let my poor 
 followers — go free.' " 
 
 The anguish of the people swelled into sobs and some 
 of them, full of zeal, swore they would never return to their 
 homes without the Master but would follow him to prison 
 and to death. 
 
 " If you go into Cairo, so will I ! " cried one. 
 
 " And I, too ! " cried another. 
 
 "And I!" "And I!" "And I!" cried others, each 
 holding up his hand and stepping out as he spoke, until the 
 square in which Ishmael sat on his camel was full of excited 
 men. 
 
 At that moment of deep emotion, while great tears were 
 rolling down Ishmael's cheeks and the women on the out- 
 skirts of the crowd were uttering piercing cries, a loud 
 delirious shout was heard, and a man was seen to be crush- 
 ing his way through the people. 
 
 It was Zogal, and his wild eyes were ablaze with frenzy. 
 
 " Wait ! Wait ! " he cried. " Has the Master forgot- 
 ten his own message? He says the soldiers of the Franks 
 and Turks are waiting in Cairo to destroy us. But isn't
 
 THE DAWN 551 
 
 God greater than armies i We are weak and defenceless, 
 but does lie always give His victory to the armed and the 
 strong? What," he cried again, "are you afraid that the 
 Christians will kill us with bullets^ That they will eat our 
 flesh and drink our blood? That they will make us worship 
 the wooden cross? If God is with us what can our enemies 
 do? It is not they who throw the javelin — it is God! 
 Therefore," he cried, in a voice that had risen to a scream, 
 " if the Master is to go into Cairo we will all go with him." 
 
 In vain Ishmael tried to stop the man. His protests 
 w'ere drowned in the rapturous responses of the crowd. 
 People are as easily swayed to as fro, they regain confidence 
 as rapidly as they lose it. In a moment the Master was for- 
 gotten and only the wild-eyed Dervish seemed to be heard. 
 
 " Did not God promise us, through the mouth of His 
 messenger, that we should go into Cairo — and will He break 
 His word ? " 
 
 " Allah ! Allah ! " shouted the crowd. 
 
 " Did he not tell us He would send a sign ? " 
 
 "Allah! Allah!" 
 
 " Shall we say it will not come, and call God a liar? " 
 
 "Allah! Allah!" 
 
 ■" * At the hour of midnight prayers,' he said, ' the light 
 will shine ! ' " 
 
 "Allah! Allah! Allah!" 
 
 " Pray for it, my brothers, pray for it," cried Zogal, and 
 in another moment, with the delirious strength of one pos- 
 sessed, he had cleared a long passage through the people, 
 and begun to lead a wild barbaric zikr, such as he had seen 
 in the depths of the desert. 
 
 "The light! The light! Send the light, O Allah!" 
 cried Zogal, striding up and down the long alley of bowing 
 and swaying people, and tossing his sweating and foaming 
 face up to the dark sky. 
 
 It has been truly said that everything favours those who 
 have a special destiny — that they may become glorious 
 against their own will and as if by the command of fate. It 
 was so with Ishmael. At the very moment when Zogal, on 
 the desert, was calling for the light which he believed God
 
 552 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 had promised, Ilafiz, at the Citadel, having received the mes- 
 sage which Helena had sent over the telephone from the 
 house of the Princess Nazimah, was running with a power- 
 ful lantern up the winding stairway of one of the minarets 
 of the mosque of Mohammed Ali. 
 
 "The light! The light! Send the light, O Allah!" 
 cried the Dervish, and at the next moment, while the breath- 
 less crowd about him were looking through the darkness 
 toward the heights above Cairo, expecting to see the mani- 
 festation of God's sign in the sky, the light appeared! 
 
 In an instant the whole camp was a scene of frantic 
 rejoicing. Men were shouting, women were lu-luing, camels 
 and asses were being saddled, tents were being struck, and 
 everybody and everything was astir. 
 
 Oh, mysterious and divine power of destiny that could 
 make the fate of an entire nation hang on the accident of 
 time and the unreasoning impulses of one poor demented 
 man ! 
 
 XII 
 
 Next day Ishmael entered Cairo. News of his coming 
 had been noised abroad and the police at their various sta- 
 tions had been told that beyond the necessary efforts to 
 preserve order they were not in any way to interfere with 
 his procession. Neither Ishmael nor any of his people were 
 to be allowed to pose as martyrs. There was to be no re- 
 sistance and no bloodshed. If possible, there was to be no 
 scene. 
 
 The guests at the King's Dinner had left the Ghezirah 
 long before midnight. Such of them as were innocent of all 
 participation in conspiracy (they were the majority) at- 
 tributed the Consul-General's strange outbreak to an attack 
 of mental vertigo in an old man whose health had long been 
 failing from the pressure of public work. Nothing was al- 
 lowed to occur which would give the incident a more serious 
 significance. The bridge which had been opened was closed 
 and the guests had returned to their homes as usual.
 
 THE DAWN 553 
 
 In the early hours of morning they were awakened by 
 loud shoutings in the streets. Two hundred men from Ish- 
 mael's company had galloped ahead as heralds, and, flying 
 down every thoroughfare to reassure the population of the 
 nature of the vast procession that was coming, they were 
 crj'ing: 
 
 " Peace ! Peace ! It is Peace ! " 
 
 After that the general body of the native people, who 
 had been on the tiptoe of expectation, were speeding along 
 the streets. They found mounted and foot police stationed 
 at various points, but no military and no guns. 
 
 It was a triumphant entry. The procession came in by 
 the Gizeh bridge, and passing down the Kasr el Aini into 
 the place Ismailyah, it turned down the broad boulevard 
 Abul Aziz toward the heart of the city. 
 
 The sun was rising, and the scene was a blaze of colour. 
 Banners were swinging from the houses like ship's pen- 
 nants in stormy seas. The streets seemed to be carpeted 
 with the tarbooshes and turbans of the great, moving, surg- 
 ing masses of humanity, that were slowly passing through 
 them. There were brown faces that were almost white from 
 the fatigue of the long desert march, and white faces that 
 were burned brown by the tropical sun. It was a swarming, 
 shifting, variegated thi'ong, and over all was the dazzling 
 splendour of the Eastern sunrise. 
 
 Before the procession had gone far it seemed as if the 
 whole population of Cairo had come out to meet it. Eter- 
 nal children ! There is nothing they love more than to look 
 at a great spectacle, except to take part in it, and they hast- 
 ened to take part in this one. Every window and balcony 
 was soon full of faces ; every house-top was alive with move- 
 ment and aflame with colour. People were thronging the 
 footpaths on either side as the pilgrims passed between. 
 
 The wives and children of the hundred emissaries who 
 left Cairo on Tshmael's errand had come out to look for 
 their husbands and fathers returning home. Eagerly they 
 were scanning the faces of the pilgrims and loud and wild 
 were their cries of joy when thej' recognised their own. 
 
 Many of those who had no personal interest in the proces-
 
 554 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 sion fell into line with it. A company of Dervishes walked 
 by its side playing pipes and drums. Other musicians joined 
 them with strange-looking wooden and brass instruments. 
 Bursts of wild Arab music broke out from time to time and 
 then stopped, leaving a sort of confused and tumultuous si- 
 lence. 
 
 Carts filled with women and children, who were laughing 
 and lu-luing by turns, jolted along by the pilgrims and 
 shouted to them and cheered them. And then there were 
 the pilgrims themselves, the vast concourse of fully forty 
 thousand from the Soudan, from Assouan, from the long 
 Valley of the Nile, some on horses, some on camels, some on 
 donkeys, some wearing their simple felt skull caps and gala- 
 beahs, others in flow'ing robes and crimson head-dresses. 
 The barbaric splendour and intoxicating arrogance of it all 
 "was such as the people of Cairo had never seen before. 
 
 To the great body of the Cairenes the entrance of Ish- 
 mael Ameer denoted victory. That the Government per- 
 mitted it indicated defeat. The great English lord, who had 
 closed El Azhar, thereby damming up the chief fountain of 
 the Islamic faith, had been beaten. Either the Powers, or 
 God Himself, had suppressed him and rebuked England. 
 Pharaoh had fallen. The children of Allah were crossing 
 their Red Sea. Even as Mohammed, after being expelled 
 from Mecca as a rebel, had returned to it as a conqueror, so 
 Ishmael, after being cast out of Cairo as the enemy of 
 England, was coming back as England's master and king. 
 So louder and louder became their wild acclamations. 
 
 " Victory to Islam ! " 
 
 "El Hamdullillah!" 
 
 " God has willed it ! " 
 
 When Ishmael himself appeared the shouts of welcome 
 were deafening. lie had been long in coming, and the peo- 
 ple had been waiting for him all along the line. He came 
 at the end of the procession, and if he could have escaped 
 from it altogether he would have done so. 
 
 In spite of all this glory, all this grandeur, a deep melan- 
 choly filled the soul of Ishmael. He was not carried away 
 by what had happened. Nothing that had occurred since
 
 THE DAWN 555 
 
 the night before had touched his pride. When the light ap- 
 peared on the minaret he had not been deceived. He knew 
 that by some unknown turn of the wheel of chance his peo- 
 ple were to be allowed to enter Cairo, but all the same his 
 heart was low. 
 
 The only interpretation he put upon the change in events 
 was a mystic one. God had refused his atonement ! God 
 had taken the leadership of his people out of his hand! As 
 punishment of his weakness in permitting himself to be be- 
 trayed God had made him a mere follower of his own black 
 servant ! Therefore his glory was his shame ! His hour of 
 triumph was his hour of sorrow and disgrace ! He was 
 entering Cairo under the frown of the face of God! 
 
 When the camp had been ready to move he had mounted 
 his white camel and ridden last, beset by melancholy pre- 
 occupations. But when he came to the Gizeh bridge and 
 saw the crowds that were coming out to greet him, and met 
 Zogal, who had galloped into the city and was galloping 
 back to say that the people of Cairo were preparing a tri- 
 umph for him, he made his camel kneel and in the deep 
 abasement of his soul he got down to walk. 
 
 He walked the whole length of the Kasr el Aini, with 
 head down, like a man who was ashamed, shuddering visibly 
 when the onlookers cheered, trembling when they com- 
 mended him to God, and almost falling when they saluted 
 him as the Deliverer and Redeemer of Islam and its 
 people. 
 
 Although of large frame and strong muscle, he was a 
 man of delicate organisation, and the strain his soul was 
 going through was tearing his body to pieces. At length, 
 as he approached the place Ismailyah, where the crowd was 
 dense, he stumbled and fell on one knee. 
 
 Zogal, who was behind, leaped from the ass he was riding 
 and lifted the Master in his arms, but it was seen that he 
 could not stand. There was a moment's hesitation in which 
 the black man seemed to ask himself what he ought to do, 
 and at the next instant he had thrown his white cloak over 
 the donkey's back and lifted Ishmael into the saddle. 
 
 Meantime the people in the streets, in the balconies, on
 
 556 THE WHITE PKOPHET 
 
 the house-tops, were waiting for the new prophet. They ex- 
 pected to see him coming into Cairo as a conqueror — in a 
 litter perhaps, covered with gold and fringed with jingling 
 coins and cowries — the central figure of a great procession 
 such as would remind them of the grandeur of the Mahmal, 
 the holy carpet, returning from Mecca. 
 
 When at length he came, his appearance gave a shock. 
 His face was pale, his head was down, and he was riding on 
 an ass ! 
 
 But truly everything favours him who has the great des- 
 tiny. After the spectators had recovered from their first 
 shock at the sight of Ishmael, his humility touched their 
 imagination. Remembering how he had left Cairo and see- 
 ing how meekly he was returning to it, their acclamations 
 became deafening. 
 
 "Praise be to God!" 
 
 " May God preserve you ! " 
 
 "May God give you long life! " 
 
 And then some one who thought he saw in the entrance 
 of Ishmael into Cairo a reproduction of the most tri- 
 umphant if the most tragic incident in the life of the Lord 
 of the Christians, shouted: 
 
 " Seyidna Tsa ! Seyidna Isa ! " (" Our Lord Jesus ! ") 
 
 In a moment the name was taken up on every side and 
 resounded in joyous accents down the streets. The belief of 
 a crowd is created not by slow processes of reason, but by 
 quick flashes of emotion, and instantly the surging mass 
 of I^astern children had accepted the idea that Ishmael 
 Ameer was a reincarnation of that " divine man of Judea " 
 whom he had taught them to reverence, that " son of Mary " 
 whom the Prophet himself had placed first among the chil- 
 dren of men. 
 
 To make the parallel complete, people rushed out of the 
 bouses and spread their coats on the ground in front of him, 
 and some, pushing their adoration to yet greater lengths, 
 climbed the trees that lined the Boulevard, and tearing away 
 branches and boughs flung them before his feet. 
 
 The Dervishes ran ahead crying the new name in frantic 
 tones, while a company of grave-looking men walked on
 
 THE DAWN 557 
 
 either side of Tshmael, chautiug the first Surah: "Praise be 
 to God the Lord of all creatures," and the muezzin in the 
 minarets of the mosques (blind men nearly all, who could 
 see nothing of the boiling, bubbling, gorgeous scene below) 
 chanted the profession of faith : " There is no god but God ! 
 God is Most Great ! God is Most Great ! " Men shouted 
 with delight, Avomen lu-lued with joy, and the thousands of 
 voices that clashed through the air sounded like bells ring- 
 ing a joyful peal. 
 
 Nothing could have exceeded the savage grandeur of Ish- 
 mael's return to Cairo ; but Ishmael himself, the white figure 
 sitting sideways on an ass, continued to move along with a 
 humbled and chastened soul. He was a sad man with his 
 own secret sorrow; a bereaved man, a betrayed man, with 
 a heart that was torn and bleeding. 
 
 When he remembered that in spite of his betrayal his 
 predictions were being fulfilled, he told himself that that was 
 by God's doing only, not by his in any way. When he heard 
 the divine name by which the people greeted him he felt as 
 if he were being burned to the very marrow. He was 
 crushed by their mistaken worship. He knew himself now 
 for a poor, weak, blind, deceived and self-deluded man whom 
 the Almighty had smitten and brought low. Therefore he 
 made no response to the frantic acclamations. Every step 
 of the road as he passed along was like a purgatorial pro- 
 cession, and his suffering was written in lines of fire on his 
 downcast face. 
 
 " O Father, spare me, spare me ! " he prayed as the peo- 
 ple shouted by his side. 
 
 Once he made an effort to dismount, but Zogal, think- 
 ing the Master's strength was failing, put an arm about him 
 and held him in his seat. 
 
 It took the whole morning for the procession to pass 
 through the city. Unconsciously, as the blood tiows to the 
 heart, it went up through the Mousky to El Azhar. All the 
 gates of the University, which had been so long closed, were 
 standing open. Who had opened them no one seemed to 
 know. The people crowded into the courtyard and in a little 
 while the vast place was full. A platform had been raised 
 ^7
 
 558 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 at the farther side and on this Ishmael was placed with the 
 chief of the Ulema beside him. 
 
 By one of those accidents which always attach them- 
 selves to great events it chanced that the day of Ishmael's 
 return to Cairo was also the first day of the Mouled — the 
 nine days of rejoicing for the birthday of the Prophet. This 
 fact was quickly seized upon as a means for uniting to the 
 beautiful Moslem custom for " attaining the holy satisfac- 
 tion " the opportunity of celebrating the victory for Islam 
 which Ishmael was thought to have attained. Therefore, the 
 Sheikh Seyid el Bakri, descendant of the Prophet and head 
 of the Moslem confraternities, determined to receive his 
 congregations in El Azhar, where Ishmael might share in 
 their homage. 
 
 They came in thousands, carrying their gilded banners 
 which were written over with lines from the Koran, ranged 
 themselves, company after company, in half-circles before 
 the dais, salaamed to those who sat on it, chanted words to 
 the glory of God and His Prophet, and then stepped up to 
 kiss the hands and sometimes the feet of their chief and 
 his companions. 
 
 Ishmael tried to avoid their homage, but could not do so. 
 Mechanically he uttered the usual response, " May God re- 
 peat upon you this feast in happiness and benediction," and 
 then fell back upon his own reflections. 
 
 Notwithstanding the blaze and blare of the scene about 
 him, his mind was returning to Helena. Where was she? 
 What fate had befallen her? At length, unable to bear any 
 longer the burden of his thoughts, and the purgatory of his 
 position, he got up and stole away through the corridors at 
 the back of the mosque. 
 
 When darkness fell the native quarters of Cairo were 
 illuminated. Lamps were hung from the poles which pro- 
 ject from the minarets of the mosque. Hopes were swung 
 from minaret to minaret, and from these, also, lamps were 
 suspended. In the poorer streets people were going about 
 with open flares in iron grills, and in the better avenues rich 
 men were walking behind their lantern bearers. Blind beg- 
 gars in the cafes were reciting the genealogy of the Prophet,
 
 THE DAWN 559 
 
 and at the end of every passage other blind beggars were 
 crying, " La Ihiha illa-llah ! " 
 
 Late at night, when the vast following which Ishmael 
 had brought into the city had to be housed, messengers ran 
 through the streets asking for lodgings for the pilgrims, and 
 people answered from their windows and balconies : " I'll 
 take one " ; " I'll take two," Twenty thousand slept in the * 
 courtyard and on the roofs of El Azhar; the rest in the 
 houses round about. 
 
 The trust in God which had seemed to be slain the night 
 before, awoke to a new life, and when at length the de- 
 lirious city lay down to sleep, the watchmen walked through 
 the deserted thoroughfares crying, " Wahhed ! Wahhed ! " 
 (God is One!) 
 
 In the dead, hollow, echoing hours of early morning a 
 solitary coach passed through the streets in the direction of 
 the outlying stations of the railway to Port Said. Its 
 blinds were down. It was empty. But on the box seat 
 beside the coachman sat a nervous, watchful person with an 
 evil face, wearing the costume of a footman. 
 
 It was the Grand Cadi. He had been the supreme ortho- 
 dox authority of the Moslem faith, sent from Constanti- 
 nople as representative and exponent of the spiritual au- 
 thority vested in the Sultan of Turkey as the Caliph of 
 Islam, but he was stealing out of Cairo like a thief. 
 
 XIII 
 
 A General Court-Martial was fixed for the following 
 morning, and Helena was for going to it just as she was, 
 in the mixed Eastern and Western costume which she had 
 worn on the desert, but the Princess would not hear of that. 
 She must wear the finest gown and the smartest Paris hat 
 that could be obtained in Cairo in order that Gordon might 
 see her at her best. 
 
 " He may be a hero," said the Princess, " but he is a 
 man, too, God bless him! and he'll want to see the woman 
 he loves look lovely."
 
 560 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 So the milliners and dressmakers were set to work 
 immediately and bound by endless pledges. 
 
 '* Of course they'll promise you the stars at noonday," 
 said the Princess, " but if they don't come up to the scratch 
 they get no money. lieep your cat hungry and she'll catch 
 the rat, you know." 
 
 In due time the costume was ready, and when Hel- 
 ena had put it on — a close-fitting silver-gray robe and a 
 a large black hat — the Princess stood off from her and 
 said : 
 
 " Well, my moon, my sweet, my beauty, if he doesn't 
 want to live a little longer after he has seen you in that he's 
 not fit to be alive! " 
 
 But at the last moment Helena called for a thick, dark 
 veil. 
 
 " I've no right to sap away his courage," she said, and 
 the Princess, who had heard everything that Helena had to 
 tell and had swung round to Gordon's side entirely, could 
 say no more. 
 
 Hafiz came to take the ladies to the Citadel, and as 
 he was leaving them at the gate to go to Gordon in his 
 quarters, Helena gave him the letter she had written at 
 Sakkara. 
 
 " Tell him I mean all I say — every word of it," she 
 whispered. 
 
 The Court-Martial was held in one of the rooms of the 
 palace of Mohammed Ali — up a wide stone staircase across 
 a bare court, through a grained archway, beyond a great 
 hall which in former days had seen vast assemblies, and 
 past a door labelled " Minister of War," into a gorgeously 
 decorated chamber, overlooking a garden, with its patch of 
 green shut in by high stone walls. It had once been the 
 harem of the great Pasha. 
 
 The room was already full when Helena and the Princess 
 arrived, but places were found for them near to the door. 
 This position suited Helena perfectly, but to the Princess 
 it was a deep disappointment, and as a consequence nothing 
 pleased her. 
 
 " All English and all soldiers ! Not an Egyptian among
 
 THE DAWN 561 
 
 them," she said. "After what he has done for them, too! 
 Ingrates ! Excuse the word. That's what I call them," 
 
 At that moment Hafiz entered, and the Princess, touch- 
 ing him on the arm, said: 
 
 " Here, you come and sit on the other side of her and 
 keep up her heart, the sweet one." 
 
 Hafiz did as he was told, and as soon as he was seated 
 beside Helena he whispered: 
 
 " I've just left him." 
 
 "How is he?" 
 
 " Firm as a rock. He sent you a message." 
 
 " What is it ? " 
 
 " Tell her," he said, " that great love conquers death." 
 
 " Ah ! " 
 
 At the next moment Helena's hand and Hafiz's found 
 each other in a fervent clasp, and sweetheart and foster- 
 brother sat together so until the end of the inquiry. 
 
 Presently the judges of the Court entered and took their 
 places at the table that had been prepared for them — one 
 full colonel and four lieutenant-colonels of mature age, from 
 different British regiments. 
 
 " They look all right, but white hairs are no proof of 
 wisdom," muttered the Princess. 
 
 Then the accused was called, and amid breathless silence 
 Gordon entered with a firm step, attended by the ofiicer 
 who had him in charge. His manner was calm, and though 
 his face was pale almost to pallor, his expression betrayed 
 neither fear nor bravado. His appearance made a deep 
 impression, and the President told him to sit. At the 
 same moment it was observed that the Sirdar came in by 
 a door at the farther end of the room and took a seat 
 immediately in front of him. 
 
 The Court was then sworn and the charge was read. It 
 accused the prisoner of three offences under the Army Act : 
 first, that being a person subject to military law, he had 
 disobeyed the lawful command of a superior in such a way 
 as to show a wilful disregard of authority (A. A., 9, 1) ; 
 second, that he had been guilty of acts and conduct to the 
 prejudice of good order and militarj^ discipline (A. A., 40) ;
 
 562 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 third, that he had deserted his Majesty's service while on 
 active service (A. A., 12, 1^). 
 
 " He heard it all yesterday morning," whispered Hafiz to 
 Helena, whose nervous fingers were tightening about his 
 own. 
 
 The charges having been read out to the accused, he 
 Avas called upon to plead. 
 
 " Are you guilty or not guilty ?" asked the President. 
 
 There was a moment of breathless silence, and then, 
 in a measured voice without a break or a tremor, Gordon 
 said: 
 
 " I do not wish to plead at all." 
 
 A subdued murmur passed through the room, and Hafiz 
 whispered again : 
 
 " He wanted to plead guilty and the Sirdar had all he 
 could do to prevent him." 
 
 " Enter a plea of ' Not guilty ' on the record," .said the 
 President. 
 
 Then, addressing Gordon, the President asked if he was 
 represented by counsel. Gordon shook his head. Did he 
 desire to conduct his own defence? Again Gordon shook 
 his head. The President conferred for a moment with other 
 members of the Court and then said : 
 
 " It is within the power of the Court to appoint a 
 properly-qualified person to act as counsel for the accused, 
 and in this case the Court desires to do so. Is there any 
 officer here, subject to military law, who wishes to under- 
 take the task of Defender ? " 
 
 In a moment it was plainly evident that the sympathies 
 of Gordon's brother officers were with him. Twenty men 
 in uniform had leaped to their feet and were holding up 
 their hands. 
 
 " Lord God, how they love him ! " whispered Hafiz, and 
 Helena had to hold down her head lest she should be seen 
 to cry. 
 
 The Defender selected was a young captain of cavalry 
 who had brought a brilliant reputation from the Staff Col- 
 lege, and in a moment he was in the midst of his duties. 
 
 " Does the accused desire a short adjournment of the
 
 THE DAWN 563 
 
 Court in order to instruct his Defender ? " asked the Presi- 
 dent. 
 
 Once more Gordon, who had stood passively during these 
 proceedings, shook his head, and then, without further pre- 
 liminaries, the trial began. The prosecutor rose to make 
 his opening address. He was an artillery officer of high 
 reputation. 
 
 " ITc'Il make it no worse than he can help," whispered 
 Hafiz. 
 
 In simple words the prosecutor stated his case, confining 
 himself to the briefest explanation of the facts he was about 
 to prove, and then he called the first of his witnesses. 
 This was the military secretary-, Captain Graham, who had 
 been present at the prisoner's intei-view with the late Gen- 
 eral Graves. 
 
 " Not a bad chap — ^he'll do no more than he must," whis- 
 pered Hafiz. 
 
 Replying to the prosecutor's questions, the military sec- 
 retary said that Gordon had refused to obey the order of 
 his superior given personally by that officer in the execution 
 of his office, and that his refusal had been deliberate and 
 distinct and such as showed an intention to defy and resist 
 authority. 
 
 " I object," said the young Defender, instantly, whereupon 
 the officer of the Court who filled the post of Judge- Advo- 
 cate submitted that the witness had drawn an inference 
 which was no evidence and ought therefore to be struck 
 out. 
 
 The Defender then rose to cross-examine the first wit- 
 ness, and in a few minutes the military secretary was made 
 to prove, first, that the prisoner had tried to show his 
 superior that the order he was giving him was contrary 
 to humanity and likely to lead to an irreparable result; 
 next that when executed by another officer, it had led to an 
 irreparable result, including bloodshed and loss of life; 
 and, finally, that after the order had been disobeyed by the 
 accused the most inexcusable and disgraceful and even 
 illegal and unsoldierly insults had been inflicted upon him 
 by his General.
 
 564 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " That's true ! My God, that's true ! Illegal and un- 
 soldierly ! " -whispered Hafiz, forgetting to whom he was 
 talking; and Helena, in the riot of her dual love, for her 
 father and for Gordon, could do nothing but hold down her 
 head. 
 
 Then the prosecutor called Colonel Macdonald. 
 
 " A bnite — he'll do his dam'dest," whispered Hafiz. 
 
 Amid scarcely suppressed murmurs Coloned Macdonald, 
 speaking with manifest bitterness, proved the assault upon 
 himself, and then went on to say that it was unprovoked, 
 it was brutal, and it was conduct unbecoming the character 
 of an officer and a gentleman. 
 
 " A lie like that has no legs to walk on," whispered 
 Hafiz. 
 
 " No, but it has wings to fly with, though," said the 
 Princess. 
 
 " Hush ! " said Helena. 
 
 Again, like a flash of light, the young Defender had 
 leapt up to protest against an inference which the Court 
 alone was entitled to draw, and again the Judge-Advocate 
 had submitted that the inference should be struck out. 
 
 Amid obvious excitement among the soldiers in Court, 
 the Defender then rose to cross-exmine the second witness, 
 and in a moment Macdonald's freckled face had become 
 scarlet, as he was compelled to admit that, at the instant 
 when he was assaulted, he had ordered the shooting of a 
 boy (who fell dead from the walls of El Azhar), and was 
 swearing at the boy's mother who was weeping over her 
 son. 
 
 " Ah, his rage will be at the end of his nose now," whis- 
 pered the Princess. 
 
 Finally the prosecutor called the officer who was tem- 
 porarily commanding the Army of Occupation to show that 
 the accused, after disobeying the order of his late General, 
 had disappeared from Cairo and had not been seen since 
 the riot at El Azhar until his capture two days before. 
 
 The evidence for the prosecution being now finished, 
 the Court prepared itself for the defence. There was a 
 certain appearance of anxious curiosity on the faces of the
 
 THE DAWN 565 
 
 judges, and a tingling atmosphere of expectancy among 
 the spectators. 
 
 Then came a surprise. The young Defender, who had 
 been holding a whispered conference with Gordon, turned 
 to the President and said: 
 
 " I regret to say that the accused has decided not to 
 call any witnesses in defence." 
 
 " But perhaps," said the President, turning to Gordon, 
 '* you wish to give evidence for yourself. Do you ? " 
 
 There was another moment of breathless silence, and 
 then Gordon, after looking slowly round the room, in the 
 direction of the place in which Helena sat with her head 
 down, said calmly: 
 
 " No." 
 
 At that the murmuring among the spectators could 
 hardly be suppressed. It was now plainly evident that 
 Gordon's brother officers were with him to a man. They 
 had been counting on an explanation that would at least 
 palliate his conduct if it could not excuse his offences. The 
 disappointment was deep, but the sympathy was still deeper. 
 Could it be possible that Gordon meant to die? 
 
 " Lift up your veil, child," whispered the Princess, but 
 Helena shook her head. 
 
 After the prosecutor had summed up his evidence, the 
 Defender addressed the Court for the defence. He pleaded 
 extenuating circumstances, first on the ground that the 
 order given to the accused, though not in opposition to 
 the established customs of the army or the laws of the 
 land, was calculated to do irreparable injury and had done 
 such injury, and next on the ground of outrageous provo- 
 cation. 
 
 When the Defender had finished the President announced 
 that his Excellency the Sirdar had volunteered to give evi- 
 dence in proof of the prisoner's honourable record, and that 
 the Court had decided to hear him. 
 
 The Sirdar was then sworn, and in strong, affecting, 
 soldierly words, he said the accused had rendered great 
 services to his country; that he had received many medals 
 and distinctions; that he was as brave a man as ever stood
 
 566 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 under arms and one of the young officers who made an old 
 soldier proud to belong to the British Army. 
 
 There is no company more easily moved to tears than a 
 company of soldiers, and when the Sirdar sat down there 
 was not a dry eye in that assembly of brave men. 
 
 After a pause the President announced that the Court 
 would be closed to consider the finding, but in order to 
 assist the judges in doing so it would be desirable that they 
 should know more of the conditions under which the accused 
 was arrested. Therefore the following persons would be 
 asked to remain : 
 
 His Excellency the Sirdar, 
 
 The Commandant of Police, 
 
 Captain Hafiz Ahmed of the Egyptian Army. 
 
 Helena, with the other spectators, was passing out of 
 the room when the Sirdar touched her on the shoulder and 
 said, haltingly: 
 
 " Have you perhaps got — Can you trust me with those 
 letters for a little while?" 
 
 By some impulse, hardly intelligible to herself, Helena 
 had brought Gordon's letters with her, and after a mo- 
 ment's hesitation she took them out of her pocket and 
 gave them to the Sirdar, saying, very faintly but very 
 sweetly : 
 
 " Yes, I can trust them to you." 
 
 Then, with the Princess, she went out into the great 
 hall and sat there on a window seat while the Court was 
 closed. There was a sad and solemn expression in her face, 
 and seeing this, even through her dark veil, the officers 
 who were pacing to and fro, moved by that delicacy which 
 is the nobler part of an English gentleman's reserve — re- 
 spect for the intimacies that are sacred to another person — 
 merely bowed to her as they passed. 
 
 The strain was great, for she knew what was going on 
 behind the closed door of the Court-room. The judges were 
 trying to find in the circumstances of Gordon's arrest some 
 excuse for his desertion. She could see the Sirdar and 
 Hafiz struggling to show that, however irregular and repre- 
 hensible from a disciplinary standpoint, Gordon's had been
 
 THE DAWN 567 
 
 the higher patriotism that, coming back under those strange 
 conditions and in that strange disguise, he had deliberately 
 returned to die. And she could see the Court powerfully 
 moved by that plea, yet helpless to take account of it. 
 
 Half an hour passed; an hour; nearly two hours, and 
 then a young officer came up to tell Helena that the Court 
 was about to reopen. 
 
 " I think — I hope they intend to recommend him to 
 mercy," he said, blunderingly, and at the next moment he 
 felt as if he would like to cut his tongue out. But Helena 
 was unhurt. She held up her head for the first time that 
 day, and, to the Princess's surprise, when they re-entered 
 the room, and the officers made way for her, she pushed 
 through to the front and took a seat, back to the wall, 
 immediately before the Sirdar and almost face to face with 
 Gordon. 
 
 There was that tense atmosphere in the Court which 
 always precedes a sentence, but there was also a sort of 
 humid air as if the angel of pity had passed through the 
 place and softened it to tears. 
 
 Gordon was told to rise, and then the President, obviously 
 affected, proceeded to address him. He might say at once 
 that the judges regretted to find themselves unable to take 
 account of the moral aspects of the case. Nothing but its 
 military aspects came within their cognizance. That being 
 so, the Court, notwithstanding the able and ingenious 
 defence, could find no excuse for insubordination — the first 
 duty of a soldier was to obey. In like manner they could 
 find no excuse for a savage personal attack by an officer in 
 uniform upon another officer in the exercise of his office — 
 it was conduct to the prejudice of good order and military 
 discipline. Finally, the Court could find no excuse for de- 
 sertion — it was an act of great offence to the flag which a 
 soldier was sworn to serve. 
 
 " Under these circumstances," continued the President, 
 " the Court have no alternative but to find you guilty of 
 the crimes with which you have been charged, and though 
 it is within the Court's discretion to mitigate the penalty 
 of your offences, they have decided, after anxious delibera-
 
 568 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 tion, remembering the grave fact that the force in Egypt 
 is on active service, not to exercise that right, but out of 
 regard to your high record as a soldier and the great provo- 
 cation which you certainly suffered, to content themselves 
 with recommending you to mercy, thus leaving the issue 
 to a higher authority. Therefore, whatever the result of 
 that recommendation, it is now my duty, my very painful 
 duty, to pronounce upon you, Charles Gordon Lord, the 
 full sentence prescribed by military law — death." 
 
 There was a solemn silence until the President's last 
 word was spoken, when all eyes turned toward Gordon. 
 
 He bore himself with absolute self-possession. There 
 was a slight quivering of the eyelids and a quick glint of 
 the steel-gray eyes in the direction of the opposite side 
 of the Court — nothing more. 
 
 Then a thrilling incident occurred. Helena, whose head 
 had been down was seen to rise in her seat, and to raise her 
 thick dark veil. One moment she stood there, back to the 
 wall, with her magnificent pale face all strength and courage, 
 looking steadily across at the prisoner as if nobody were 
 present in the room. Then as quietly as she had risen she 
 sank back to her place. 
 
 Oh, sublime power of love! Oh, pitiful impoterice of 
 words! Everybody felt the thousand inexpressible things 
 which that simple act was meant to convey. 
 
 Gordon was the first to feel them, and when his guard 
 touched him on the arm he turned and went out with a 
 step that rang on the marble floor — firm as a rock. 
 
 As the Court broke up one of the officers was heard to 
 whisper hoarsely: 
 
 " She's worthy of him — what more is there to say?" 
 
 At the last moment the Sirdar turned to her and whis- 
 pered : 
 
 " You must lend me these letters a little longer, my 
 dear. And remember what I said before — there's still the 
 Secretary of State, and there's still the King."
 
 THE DAWN 569 
 
 XIV 
 
 The strength in Helena's face was not belied by the will 
 behind it. Within an hour she was at work to save Gordon's 
 life. Going to the officer who had acted as Judge- Advocate, 
 she learned that the sentence would not go to headquarters 
 for confirmation until after two days. In those two days 
 she achieved wonders. 
 
 First, she approached the President of the Court and 
 made sure that the recommendation to mercy should go to 
 London by the same mail that carried the report of the pro- 
 ceedings. 
 
 Next, she visited the lieutenant-colonel of every regi- 
 ment of the Army of Occupation and secured his signature 
 and the signatures of his fellow-officers to a petition asking 
 for the commutation of the sentence. 
 
 Two days and two nights she spent in this work, and 
 everybody at Abbassiah and at the Citadel knew what the 
 daughter of the late General was doing. A woman is irre- 
 sistible to a soldier; a beautiful woman in distress is over- 
 powering; all the army was in love with Helena; every 
 soldier was her slave. 
 
 When, on the evening of the second day when she re- 
 turned to the house of the Princess, she found three '' Tom- 
 mies," two in khaki and one in Highland plaid, waiting for 
 her in the hall. They produced a thick packet of foolscap, 
 badly disfigured by finger-prints and smelling strongly of 
 tobacco, but containing four thousand signatures to her 
 appeal. 
 
 Perhaps her greatest triumph, however, was with Colonel 
 Macdonald. 
 
 " I must have his help, too." she said to the Princess, 
 whereupon her Highness put her finger to her nose and 
 answered : 
 
 " If you must, my heart, you must, but remember — when 
 you want a dog's service address him as ' Sir.' " 
 
 She did. With a blush she told the Colonel (it was a 
 dear divine falsehood) that Gordon had said he had had no
 
 570 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 personal animosity against him and was sorry if at a mo- 
 ment of undue excitement he had behaved badly. 
 
 The curmudgeon took the apology according to his kind, 
 saying that in his opinion an officer who struck a brother 
 officer publicly and before his men deserved to be shot or 
 drummed out of the army, but still, if Colonel Lord was 
 ashamed of what he had done — 
 
 Helena's eyes flashed with anger, but she compelled her- 
 self to smile and to say : 
 
 " He is, I assure you, he is." And before the big High- 
 lander knew what he was doing he had written to head- 
 quarters at Helena's dictation, to say that inasmuch as his 
 own quarrel with Colonel Gordon Lord had been composed, 
 that count in the offence might, so far as he was concerned, 
 be wiped out. 
 
 The sweet double-face told him how good and noble and 
 even Christlike this was of him, and then, marching off 
 with the letter, she said to herself, " The brute ! " 
 
 Meantime, Hafiz, acting through his uncle the Chancellor, 
 got the Ulema of El Azhar to send a message to the Foreign 
 Minister saying, with many Eastern flourishes, that what 
 General Graves had ordered Gordon to do, what his sub- 
 ordinate had done, was a deep injury to the religious sus- 
 ceptibilities of the Mohammedan people. 
 
 Besides this the Sirdar sent a secretary with Gordon's 
 letters and reams of written explanations of his conduct to 
 the permanent head of the War Office, a friend, a firm disci- 
 plinarian, but a man of strong humanity. Why had the 
 prisoner refused to plead ? Because he did not wish to 
 accuse his dead General. Why had he made no explanation 
 of his desertion and of his conduct at the time of his arrest? 
 Because he did not wish to impeach his father. Why had he 
 intercepted an order of the army? Because he had been 
 inspired solely by a desire to prevent the tumultous effusion 
 of blood, and he had prevented it. 
 
 Finally, as a technical point of the highest importance, 
 could it be deemed that the troops in Egypt were on active 
 service when there was no declaration to that effect such as 
 Section 189 (2) of the Army Act required?
 
 THE DAWN 571 
 
 Within two days everything was done, and then there 
 ■was nothing left but to await results. Helena wanted to 
 go up to see Gordon, but she was afraid to do so. When 
 sorrow is shared it is lessened, but suspense that is divided 
 is increased. 
 
 After five days the Sirdar began to hear from London 
 and to send his news to Helena over the telephone. The 
 matter was to be submitted to his Majesty personally — had 
 she any objection to the King seeing Gordon's letters ? So 
 very intimate? Well, what of that? The King was a good 
 fellow, and there was nothing in the world that touched 
 him 30 nearly as a beautiful woman, except a woman in 
 love and in trouble. 
 
 Then came two days of grim, unbroken silence and then 
 — a burst of great news. 
 
 In consideration of Colonel Lord's distinguished record 
 as a soldier and his unblemished character as a man, out of 
 regard to the obvious purity of his intentions and the un- 
 doubted fact that the order he disobeyed had led to irre- 
 parable results, remembering the great provocation he had 
 received, and not forgetting the valuable services rendered 
 by his father to England and to Egypt, the King had been 
 graciously pleased to grant him a free pardon ! 
 
 This coming first as a private message from the head 
 of the War Office, threw the Sirdar into an ecstasy of joy. 
 He called up the Consul-General immediately and repeated 
 the glad words over the telephone, but no answer came back 
 to him except the old man's audible breathing as it quivered 
 through the wires. 
 
 Then he thought of Helena, but with a soldier's terror 
 of tears in the eyes of a woman, even tears of joy, he decided 
 to let Hafiz carry the news to her. 
 
 " Tell her to go up to the Citadel and break the good 
 tidings to Gordon," he said, speaking to Egyptian headquar- 
 ters. 
 
 Nothing loath, Hafiz went bounding along to the house 
 of the Princess and blurted out his big message, expecting 
 that it would be received with shouts of delight, but to his 
 bewilderment Helena heard it with fear and trembling, and,
 
 572 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 becoming weak and womanish all at once, she seemed to be 
 about to faint. 
 
 Hafiz, with proper masculine simplicity, became alarmed 
 at this, but the Princess began to laugh. 
 
 " What ! " she cried. " You, that have been as brave as 
 a lion with her cub while your man's life has been in danger, 
 to go mooing now — no^v — like a cow with a sick calf!" 
 
 Helena recovered herself after a moment, and then Hafiz 
 delivered the Sirdar's mandate that she was to go up to 
 the Citadel and break the good news to Gordon. 
 
 " But I daren't, I daren't," she said, still trembling. 
 
 " What ! " cried the Princess again. " Not go and get 
 the kisses and hugs that — Well, what a dunce I was to 
 have that silver gray of yours made so tight about the waist ! 
 For two pins I would put on your black veil and go up 
 myself and take all the young man has to give a woman." 
 
 Helena smiled (a watery smile) and declared she would 
 go if Hafiz would go with her. Hafiz was ready, and in 
 less than half an hour they were driving up to the Citadel 
 in the Princess's carriage with the footmen and sais and 
 eunuch which her Highness, for all her emancipation, 
 thought necessary to female propriety in public. 
 
 Everything went well until they reached the fortress, 
 and then, going up the stone staircase to -Gordon's quarters, 
 Helena began to tremble more than ever. 
 
 " Oh ! Oh ! I daren't ! I must go home," she whis- 
 pered. 
 
 "Lord, no, not now," said Hafiz. " Kemember, up there 
 is some one who thinks he is going to die, while here are 
 we who know he isn't, and that life will be doubly sweet 
 if it's you that take it back to him. Come, sister, come ! " 
 
 " Give me your arm, then," said Helena, and, panting 
 with emotion and perilously near to the edge of tears, she 
 went up on shaking limbs to a door at which two soldiers, 
 armed to the teeth, were standing on guard. 
 
 At that moment Gordon, in the officer's bright room 
 which had been given to him as a cell, was leaning on 
 the sill of the open window and looking steadfastly down 
 at some object in the white city below. During the past
 
 THE DAWN 573 
 
 six days he had known what was being done on his behalf, 
 and the desire for life, which he had believed to be dead in 
 him, had quickened to suspense and pain. 
 
 To ease both feelings he had smoked innumerable cig- 
 arettes and made pretence of reading the illustrated papers 
 which his brother officers had poured in upon him, out of 
 their otherwise dumb and helpless sympathy. But every 
 few minutes of every day he had leaned out of the window 
 to look first, with a certain pang, at the heavy-lidded house 
 which contained his father; next, with a certain sense of 
 tears, at a green spot covered with cypress trees which 
 contained all that was left of his mother, and finally, with 
 a certain yearning, at the trellised Eastern palace of the 
 Princess Nazimah which contained Helena. 
 
 This is what he was doing at the moment when Helena 
 and Hafiz were ascending the stairs, and just as he was 
 asking himself for the hundredth time why Helena did 
 not come to see him he heard his guard's gruff tones mingled 
 with a woman's mellow voice. ^ 
 
 A deep note among the soft ones sent all the blood in 
 his body galloping to his heart, and turning round he saw 
 the door of his room open and Helena herself on the 
 threshold. 
 
 One moment she stood there, with her sweet, careworn 
 face growing red in her passion of joy, and then she rushed 
 at him and fell on his breast, throwing both arms about his 
 neck, and crying: 
 
 " Such news, Gordon ! Oh, my Gordon, I bring you 
 such good, good news! Such news, dear! Such news, oh, 
 such good, good news ! " 
 
 Thus trying to tell her tidings at a breath, she told him 
 nothing, but continued to laugh and sob and kiss and say 
 what good news she brought him. 
 
 Yet words were needless, and before Hafiz, whose fat, 
 wet face was shining like a round window on an April day, 
 could whisper " the King's Pardon," Gordon, like the true 
 lover he was, had said, and had meant it : 
 
 " But you bring me nothing so good as yourself, dearest 
 — nothing ! "
 
 574 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 XV 
 
 Helena was with Gordon the following morning when 
 one of the guard came in hurriedly and announced, amid 
 gusts of breath, that the Consul-General was coming up- 
 stairs. 
 
 Not without a certain nervousness Gordon rose to 
 receive his father, bvit he met him at the door with both 
 hands outstretched. The old man took one of them quietly, 
 with the air of a person who was struggling hard to hold 
 himself in check. He took Helena's hand also, and when 
 she would have left the room he prevented her. 
 
 " No, no," he said, " sit down, my child, resume your 
 seat." 
 
 It seemed to Gordon that his father looked whiter and 
 feebler, yet even firmer of will than before, like a lion that 
 had been shot and was dying hard. His lips were compressed 
 as he took the chair which Gordon offered him, and when 
 he spoke his voice was hard and a little bitter. 
 
 " First, let me give you good news," he said. 
 
 " Is it the pardon? " asked Gordon. 
 
 " No, something else — perhaps, in a sense, something 
 better," said the old man. 
 
 He had received an unofficial message from the War 
 Office to say that the King, taking no half-measures, in- 
 tended to promote Gordon to the rank of Major-General and 
 appoint him to the Command of the British Forces in 
 Egypt. 
 
 Helena could hardly contain her joy at this fresh proof 
 of good fortune, but Gordon made no demonstration. He 
 watched the pained expression in the old man's face, and 
 felt sure that something else was coming. 
 
 " It's a remarkable, perhaps unparalleled instance 
 of clemency," continued the Consul-General, " and under 
 the circumstances it may be said to open up as momen- 
 tous a mission as was ever confided to a military com- 
 mander."
 
 THE DAWN 575 
 
 "And you, father?" asked Gordon, not without an 
 effort. 
 
 The old man laughed. A flush overspread his pale face 
 for a moment. Then he said : 
 
 " I ? Oh, I— I am dismissed." 
 
 " Dismissed? " 
 
 Gordon had gasped. Helena's lips had parted. 
 
 " That's what it comes to — stated in plain words and 
 without diplomatic flourishes. True, I had sent in my 
 resignation, but — The long and the short of it is that 
 after a debate on the Address, and the carrying of an amend- 
 ment. Downing Street has agreed that the time has come 
 to associate the people of Egypt in the government of the 
 country." 
 
 "Well, sir?" 
 
 " Well, as that is a policy against which I have always 
 set my face, a policy I have considered premature, perhaps 
 suicidal, the Secretary of State has cabled that, being unable 
 to ask me to carry into effect a change that is repugnant 
 to my principles, he is reluctantly compelled to accept my 
 resignation." 
 
 Gordon could not speak, but again the old man tried to 
 laugh. 
 
 " Of course the pill is gilded," he continued, clasping his 
 blue-veined hands in front of his breast. " The Foreign 
 Secretary told Parliament that my resignation (on the 
 ground of age and ill health, naturally) was the heaviest 
 blow that had fallen on English public life within living 
 memory. He also said that while other methods might be 
 necessary for the future, none could have been so good as 
 mine in the past. And then the King " 
 
 "Yes, father?" 
 
 A hard, half-ironical smile passed over the old man's 
 face. 
 
 " The King has been graciously pleased to grant me an 
 Earldom and even make me a Knight of the Garter." 
 
 There was a moment's painful silence, and then the 
 Consul-General said: 
 
 " So I go home immediately."
 
 576 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 " Immediately ? " 
 
 " By to-night's train to take the P. & 0. to-morrow," 
 bowing over his clasped hands. 
 
 " To-morrow ? " 
 
 " Why not ? My secretaries can do without me. Why 
 should I linger on a stage on which I am no longer a leading 
 actor, but only a supernumerary-? Better make my exit with 
 what grace I can." 
 
 Under the semi-cynical tone Gordon could see his father's 
 emotion. He found it impossible to utter a word. 
 
 " But I thought I would come up before going away and 
 bring you the good news myself, though it is almost like a 
 father who is deposed congratulating the son who is to 
 take his place." 
 
 " Don't say that, sir," said Gordon. 
 
 " Why shouldn't I ? And why should I gird at my 
 fortune? It's strange, nevertheless, how history repeats 
 itself. I came to Egypt to wipe out the misrule of Ismail 
 Pasha, and now, like Ismail, I must leave my son be- 
 hind me." 
 
 There was a moment of strained silence, and then : 
 
 " I have often wondered what took place at that secret 
 meeting between Ismail and Tewfik, when we made the son 
 Khedive and sent the father back to Constantinople. Xow 
 I think I know." 
 
 The old man's emotion was cutting deep. Gordon could 
 scarcely bear to look at him. 
 
 " I wish you well, Gordon, and only hope these people 
 may be more grateful to you than they have been to me. 
 God grant it ! " 
 
 Gordon could not speak. 
 
 " I confess I have no faith in the proposed change. I 
 think all such concessions are so many sops to sedition. 
 I also think that to have raised the masses of a subject race 
 from abject misery to well-being, and then to allow them 
 to fall back to their former condition, as they surely will, 
 and to become the victims of the worst elements among 
 themselves, is not only foolish but utterly wrong and 
 wicked."
 
 THE DAWN 577 
 
 The old man rose, and in the intensity of his feelings 
 began to pace to and fro. 
 
 " They talk about the despotism of the One-Man rule," 
 he said. " What about the despotism of their Parliaments, 
 their Congresses, their Reichstags — the worst despotisms in 
 the world? Fools! Why can't they see that the difference 
 between the democracy of Europe and America and the 
 government proper to the ancient, slavish, and slow-moving 
 civilisation of the East is fundamental? " 
 
 The old man's lips stiffened and then he said: 
 
 " But perhaps I am only an antiquated person, behind 
 the new age and the new ideas. If so, I'm satisfied. I belong 
 to the number of those who have always thought it the duty 
 of great nations to carry the light of civilisation into dark 
 continents, and I am not sorry to be left behind by the 
 cranks who would legislate for all men alike. Pshaw ! You 
 might as well tailorise_for all men alike, and put clothes of 
 the same pattern on all mankind." 
 
 Again the old man laughed. 
 
 " It's part and parcel of the preposterous American doc- 
 trine that all men are born free and equal — the doctrine that 
 made the United States enfranchise as well as emancipate 
 their blacks. May the results be no worse in this case ! " 
 
 There was another moment of strained silence, and then 
 the Consul-General said : 
 
 " I suppose they'll say the man Ishmael has beaten me." 
 He gave a contemptuous but almost inaudible laugh, 
 and then added : " Let them ; they're welcome ; time will tell. 
 Anyhow, I do not lament. When a man is old his useless 
 life must burn itself out. That's only natural. And after 
 all, I've seen too much of power to regret the loss of it." 
 
 Still Gordon could not speak. He was feeling how great 
 bis father was in his downfall, how brave, how proud, how 
 splendid. 
 
 The old man walked to the window and looked out with 
 fixed eyes. After a moment he turned back and said: 
 
 " All the same, Gordon, I am glad of what has hap- 
 pene<l for your sake — sincerely glad. You've not always 
 been with me, but you've won, and I do not grudge you
 
 578 THE -WTIITE PROPHET 
 
 your victory. Indeed," he added, and here his voice trembled 
 perceptibly, " I am a little proud of it. Yes, proud ! An 
 old man cannot be indifferent to the fact that his son has 
 won the hearts of twelve millions of people, even though — 
 even though he himself may have lost them." 
 
 Gordon's throat was hurting him and Helena's eyes were 
 full of tears. The old man, too, was struggling to control 
 his voice. 
 
 " You thought Nunehamism wasn't synonymous with 
 patriotism. Perhaps you were right. You believed yourself 
 to be the better Englishman of the two. I don't say you 
 were not. And it may be that in her present mind England 
 will think that one secret withheld from me has been re- 
 vealed to you — namely, that an alien race can only be ruled 
 by — by love. Yes, I'm glad for your sake, Gordon, and as for 
 me — I leave myself to Time and Fate." 
 
 The old man's pride in his son's success was fighting 
 hard with his own humiliation. After a while Gordon recov- 
 ered strength enough to ask his father what he meant to do 
 in England. 
 
 "Who can say?" answered the Consul-General, lifting 
 one hand with a gesture of helplessness. " I have spent the 
 best years of my life in Egypt. What is England to me 
 now? Home? No, exile." 
 
 He had moved to the window again, and following the 
 direction of his eyes Gordon could sec that he was looking 
 toward the cypress trees which shaded the English cemetery 
 of Cairo. 
 
 A deep and profound silence ensued, and, feeling as if 
 his mother's angel were passing through the room, Gordon 
 dropped his head and tears leaped to his eyes. 
 
 It was the first time father and son had been together 
 since the tcnderest link that had bound them had been 
 broken, but while both were thinking of this neither of 
 them could trust himself to speak of it. 
 
 ".Timet, your dream has come true! ITow happy you 
 would have been ! " thought the Consul-General, while Gor- 
 don, unable to unravel the intricacies of his emotions, was 
 saying to himself, " Mother! My sweet mother! "
 
 THE DAWN 579 
 
 The last moment came and it was a very moving one. 
 Up from some hidden depths of the old man's oceanic soul 
 there came a certain joy. In spite of all that he in his blind- 
 ness had done to prevent it, by the operation of the inscru- 
 table powers that had controlled his destiny, the great hope 
 of his life was about to be realised. Gordon and Helena 
 had been brought together, and as he looked at them, stand- 
 ing side by side when they rose to bid farewell to him, the 
 man so brave and fearless, the girl so fine and beautiful, he 
 thought, with a thrill of the heart, that, whatever might 
 happen to himself — old, worn-out, fallen perhaps, his life 
 ended — yet would his line go on in the time to come, pure, 
 clean and strong, and the name of Nuneham be written high 
 in the history of his country. 
 
 Holding out a hand to each, he looked steadily into their 
 faces for a moment, while he said his silent good-bye. Not 
 a word, not the quiver of an eyelid. It was the English 
 gentleman coming out top in the end, firm, stern, heroic. 
 
 Before Gordon and Helena seemed to be aware of it, 
 the old man was gone, and they heard the rumble of the 
 wheels of his carriage as it passed out of the courtyard. 
 
 XVI 
 
 At nightfall the great Proconsul left Cairo. He knew 
 that all day long the telegraphic agencies had been busy 
 with messages from London about his resignation. He 
 also knew that after the first thunderclap of surprise the 
 Egyptian population had concluded that he had been recalled 
 — recalled in disgrace and at the petition of the Khedive 
 to the King. 
 
 It did not take him long to prepare for his departure. 
 In the course of an hour Ibrahim was able to pack up the 
 few personal effects — how few! — which, during the longest 
 residence, gather about the house of a servant of the State. 
 
 Perhaps the acutest of his feelings on leaving Egypt 
 came to him as he drove in a closed carriage out of the
 
 580 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 grounds of the Agency and looked up for the last time at 
 the windows of the room that used to be occupied by his 
 wife. At that moment he felt something of the dumb 
 desolation which rolls over the strongest souls when, after 
 a lifetime of comradeship, the asundering comes and they 
 long for the voice that is still. 
 
 Poor Janet ! He must leave all that remained of her 
 behind him under the tall cypress trees on the edge of the 
 Nile. Yet no, not all, for he was carrying away the better 
 part of her — her pure soul and saintly memory — within him. 
 !N^one the less, that moment of parting brought the old 
 man nearer than he had ever been to the sense of tears in 
 mortal things. 
 
 The Sirdar had accompanied him, but though the fact 
 of his intended departure had become known, having been 
 announced in all the evening papers, there was nobody at 
 the station to bid adieu to him, not a member of the Khe- 
 dive's entourage; not one of the Egyptian Ministers, and 
 eyen none of the Advisers and Under-Secretaries whom he 
 had himself created. 
 
 Xever had there lived a more self-centred and self-suffi- 
 cient man, but this fact cut him to the quick. He had done 
 what he believed to be his duty in Egypt, and feeling that 
 he was neglected and forgotten at the end, the ingratitude 
 of those whom he had served went like poison into his soul. 
 
 To escape from the sense of it he began to talk with 
 a bitter raillery which in a weaker man would have expressed 
 itself in tears, and seemed indeed to have tears — glittering, 
 frozen tears — behind it. 
 
 " Do you know, my dear Reg," he said, " I feel to-night 
 as if I might be another incai'nation of your friend Pontius 
 Pilate. Like him, I am being withdrawn, you see, and ap- 
 parently for the same reason. And — who knows? — perhaps 
 like him, too, I am destined to earn the maledictions of 
 mankind." 
 
 The Sirdar found the old man's irony intensely afPecting, 
 and therefore he made no protest. 
 
 " Well, I'm not ashamed of the comparison, if it means 
 that against all forms of anarchy I have belonged to the
 
 THE DAWN 581 
 
 party of order, though of course there will be some wise 
 heads that will see the finger of heaven in what has hap- 
 pened." 
 
 The strong man, with his fortunes sunk to zero, was 
 defiant to the very edge and last hour of calamity. But 
 standing on the platform by the door of the compartment 
 that had been reserved for him, he looked round at length 
 and said — all his irony, all his raillery suddenly gone: 
 
 " Reg, I have given forty years of my life to these peo- 
 ple, and there is not one of them to see me off." 
 
 The Sirdar tried his best to cheer him, saying: 
 
 " England remembers, though, and if — " but the old man 
 looked into his face and his next words died on his lips. 
 
 The engine was getting up steam, and its rhythmic throb 
 was shaking the glass roof overhead when Gordon and Hafiz, 
 wearing their military great-coats, came up the platform. 
 They had carefully timed it to arrive at the last moment. 
 A gleam of light came into the father's face at the sight 
 of his son. Gordon stepped up, Hafiz fell back. Lord Nune- 
 ham entered the carriage. 
 
 "Well, good-bye, old friend," said the old man, shaking 
 hands waimly with the Sirdar. " I may see you again — in 
 my exile in England, you know." 
 
 Then he turned to Gordon and took his outstretched 
 hand. Father and son stood face to face for the last time. 
 Xot a word was spoken. There was a long, firm, quivering 
 hand-clasp — and that was all. At the next moment the 
 train was gone. 
 
 The Sirdar, who had stood watching it until it disap- 
 peared, then turned to Gordon, and, thinking of the England 
 the Consul-General had loved, the England he had held high, 
 he said, speaking of him as if he were already dead: 
 
 " After all, my boy, your father was one of the great 
 Englishmen." 
 
 Gordon could not answer him, and after a while they 
 shook hands and separated. The two young soldiers walked 
 back to the Citadel through the native streets. The 
 " Nights of the Prophet " were nearly over and the illumina- 
 tions were being put out. 
 33
 
 582 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Hafiz talked about the Khedive — he had just arrived at 
 Khubbah. Then about Ishmael — the Prophet had shut 
 himself up in the Chancellor's house and was pemiitting 
 nobody to see him. 
 
 " His Highness has asked Ishmael to be Imam to-mor- 
 row morning, but it is thought that he is ill — it is even 
 whispered that he is going mad," said Hafiz. 
 
 Gordon did not speak until they reached the foot of the 
 hill. Then he said : 
 
 " I must go up and lie down. Good-night, old fellow ! 
 God bless you ! " 
 
 XVII 
 
 Half an hour before, Gordon's guard, now transformed 
 into his soldier servant, had been startled by the appear- 
 ance of an Egyptian, wearing the flowing white robes of a 
 Sheikh and asking in almost faultless English for Colonel 
 Lord. 
 
 " The Colonel has gone to the station to see his Lord- 
 ship off to England, but I'm expecting him back presently," 
 said the orderly. 
 
 " I'll wait," said the Sheikh, and the orderly showed him 
 into Gordon's room. 
 
 "Looks like a bloomin' death's head! Wonder if he's 
 the bloomin' Prophet they're jawrin' about!" 
 
 Since coming into Cairo Ishmael had been a prey to 
 thoughts that were indeed akin to madness. Perhaps he 
 was seized by one of those nervous maladies in which a 
 man no longer belongs to himself. Certainly he suffered 
 the pangs of heart and brain which come only to the purest 
 and most spiritual souls in their darkest hours and seem 
 to make it literally true that their tortured spirits descend 
 into hell. 
 
 Now that his anxiety for his followers was relaxed and 
 •their hopes had in some measure been realised, his mind 
 swung back to the sorrowful decay and ruin that had fallen
 
 THE DAWN 583 
 
 upon himself. It was no longer the shanae of the prophet 
 but the bereavement of the man that tormented him. His 
 lacerated heart left him no power of thinking or feeling 
 anything but the loss of Helena. 
 
 Again he saw her beaming eyes, her long black lashes, 
 and her smiling mouth. Again he heard her voice and 
 again the sweet perfume of her presence seemed to be about 
 him. That all this was lost to him forever, that hence- 
 forth he had to put away from him all the sweetness, all 
 the beauty, all the tenderness of a woman's life linked with 
 his, brought him a paroxysm of pain in which it seemed 
 as if his heart would break and die. 
 
 He recalled the promises he had made to himself, of 
 taking up the life of a man when his work was done. His 
 work was done now — in some sort ended at all events — but 
 the prize he had promised himself had been snatched away. 
 She was gone, she who had been all his joy. An impassable 
 gulf divided them. The infinite radiance of hope and love 
 that was to have crowned his restless and stormy life had 
 disappeared. Henceforth he must walk through the world 
 alone. 
 
 " O God! can it be? " he asked himself, with the startled 
 agony of one who awakes from a single-pillowed sleep and 
 remembers that he is bereaved. 
 
 If anything had been necessary to make his position 
 intolerable, it came with the thought that all this was due 
 to the treachery of the man he had loved and trusted, the 
 man he had believed to be his friend and brother, the one 
 being, besides the woman, who had gone to his heart of 
 hearts. The Rani had confessed to him that she loved 
 " Omar," and notwithstanding that all his life he had strug- 
 gled to liberate himself from the prejudices of his race, 
 yet now, in the melancholy broodings of his Eastern brain, 
 he could not escape from the conclusion that the only love 
 possible between a man and the wife of another was guilty 
 love. 
 
 When he thought of that, both body and soul seemed 
 to be afire, and he became conscious of a feeling about 
 " Omar," which he had never experienced before toward
 
 584 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 any human creature — a feeling of furious and inextin- 
 guishable hatred. 
 
 He began to be afraid of himself, and just as a dog will 
 shun its kind and hide itself from sight when it feels the 
 poison of madness working in its blood, so Ishmael under 
 the secret trouble which he dared reveal to none, shut him- 
 self up in his sleeping room in the old Chancellor's house. 
 
 It was a small and silent chamber at the back, overlook- 
 ing a little paved courtyard containing a well and bounded 
 by a very high wall that shut off sight and sound of the 
 city outside. Once a day an old man in a blue galabeah 
 came into the court to draw water, and twice a day a servant 
 of the Sheikh's came into the room with food. Save for 
 these two, and the old Chancellor himself at intervals, Ish- 
 mael saw no one for nine days, and in the solitude and semi- 
 darkness of his self-imposed prison a hundred phantoms 
 were bred in his distempered brain. 
 
 On the second day after his retirement the Chancellor 
 came to tell him that his emissary, his missionary, " Omar 
 Benani," had been identified on his arrest, that in his true 
 character as Colonel Lord he was to be tried by his fellow- 
 officers for his supposed offences as a soldier at the time 
 of the assault on El Azhar and that the only sentence that 
 could possibly be passed upon him would be death. At this 
 news, which the Chancellor delivered with a sad face, Ish- 
 mael felt a fierce but secret joy. 
 
 " God's arm is long," he told himself. " He allowed the 
 man to escape while his aims were good, but now he is 
 going to punish him for his treachery and deceit." 
 
 Three days afterward, the old Chancellor came again to 
 say that Colonel Lord had been tried and condemned to 
 death, as everybody had foreseen and expected, but never- 
 theless the sympathy of all men was with him, because he 
 was seen to have acted from the noblest motives, with- 
 standing his own father for what he believed to be the 
 right, and exposing himself to the charge of being a bad 
 son and a bad patriot in order to prevent bloodshed; that 
 he had indeed prevented bloodshed by preventing a col- 
 lision of the British and Native armies, that it had been
 
 THE DAWN 585 
 
 by his efforts that the pilgrimage had been able to enter 
 Cairo in peace; and that in recognition of the great sac- 
 rifice made by the Christian soldier for the love of human- 
 ity, the Ulema wore joining with others in petitioning his 
 King to pardon him. 
 
 At this news a chill came over Ishmael. His heart grew 
 cold as stone, and when the Chancellor was gone, he found 
 himself praying: 
 
 "Forbid it, God, forbid it! Let not Thy justice be 
 taken out of Thine awful hands ! " 
 
 Four days later the old Chancellor came yet again to say 
 that the King's pardon had been granted ; that Colonel Lord 
 was free; that the people were rejoicing; that everybody at- 
 tributed the happy issue of the Christian's case mainly to 
 zealous efforts on his behalf of the woman who loved him, 
 the daughter of the dead General whose unwise command 
 had been the cause of all his trouble; and finally that it 
 was expected that these two would soon heal their family 
 feud by marriage. 
 
 At this news Ishmael's tortured heart was aflame and his 
 brain was reeling. The thought that " Omar " was not to 
 be punished, that he was to be honoured, that he was to be 
 made happy, filled him with passions never felt before. Be- 
 hind the strongest and most spiritual soul there lurks a 
 wild beast that seems to be ever waiting to destroy it, and 
 in the torment of Ishmael's heart the thought came to him 
 that as his earthly judges were permitting the guilty one to 
 escape God called on him to punish the man. 
 
 Irresistible as the thought was it brought a feeling of 
 indescribable dread. " I must be going mad," he told him- 
 self, remembering how he had spent his life in the cause 
 of peace. All day long he fought against a hatred that was 
 now so fierce that it seemed as if death alone could satisfy 
 it. His soul wrestled with it, baffled for life against it, 
 and at length conquered it, and he rose from his knees 
 saying to himself: 
 
 "No; vengeance belongs to God! When did He ask for 
 my hand to execute it ? " 
 
 But the compulsion of great passion was driving him
 
 586 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 on, and after dismissing the thought of his own wrongs 
 he began to think of the Rani's. Where was she now? 
 What had become of her? He dared not ask. Ashamed, 
 humiliated, abased, he had become so sensitive to. pain on 
 the subject of the woman whom he had betrothed, the wom- 
 an who had betrayed him, the woman he still loved in spite 
 of everything, that he was even afraid that some one might 
 speak of her. 
 
 But in the light of what the Chancellor had said about 
 the daughter of the General, he pictured the Rani as a re- 
 jected and abandoned woman. This thought was at first 
 so painful that it deprived him of the free use of his 
 faculties. He could not see anything plainly. His mind 
 was a battlefield of confused sights, half hidden in clouds 
 of smoke. That after all the Rani had sacrificed for 
 " Omar " — her husband, her happiness and her honour 
 — she should be cast aside for another — this was mad- 
 dening. 
 
 He asked himself what he was to do. Find her and 
 take her back? Impossible! Her heart was gone from him. 
 She would continue to love the other man whatever he 
 might do to her. That was the way of all women — Allah 
 pity and bless them ! 
 
 Then a flash of illumination came to him in the long 
 interval of his darkness. He would liberate the Rani, and 
 the man she loved should marry her! No matter if she be- 
 longed to another race — he should marry her! ISTo matter 
 if she belonged to another faith — he should marry her! 
 And as for himself — his sacrifice should he his revenge! 
 
 " Yes, that shall be my revenge," he thought. 
 
 This, in the wild fire of his heart and brain, was the 
 thought with which Ishmael had come to Gordon's door, and 
 being shown into the soldier's room he sat for some time 
 without looking about him. Then raising his eyes and 
 gazing round the bare apartment, with its simple bed, its 
 table, its shelves of military boots, stirrups and swords and 
 rifles, he saw on the desk under the lamp a large photo- 
 graph in a frame. 
 
 It was the photograph of a woman in Western costume.
 
 THE DAWN 587 
 
 and he told himsolf in an instant who the woman was — 
 she was the daughter of the Geneial who was dead. 
 
 He remembered that he had heard of her before and that 
 he had even spoken about her to her father when he came 
 to warn the General that the order he was giving to Colonel 
 Lord would lead to the injury of England in Egypt and 
 the ruin of his own happiness. From that day to this he 
 had never once thought of the girl, but now, recalling what 
 the old Chancellor had said of her devotion, her fidelity, 
 her loyalty to the man she loved, he turned his eyes from 
 her picture lest the sight of it should touch him with ten- 
 derness and make harder the duty he had come to do. 
 
 " No, I will not look at it," he told himself, with the 
 simplicity of a sick child. 
 
 Trying to avoid the softening effects of the photograph 
 under the lamp, he saw another on the table by his side 
 and yet another on the wall. They were all pictures of 
 the same woman, and, hastily as he glanced at them, there 
 was something in the face of each that kindled a light in 
 his memory. Was it only a part of his haunting torment 
 that, in spite of the Western costume that obscured the 
 woman in the photographs, her brilliant, beaming eyes were 
 the eyes of the Rani? 
 
 A wave of indescribable tenderness broke over him for 
 a moment, an odor of perfume, an atmosphere of sweetness 
 and delicacy and charm, and then, telling himself that all 
 this was gone from him for ever and that every woman's 
 face wo\ild henceforth remind him of her whom he had 
 lost, the hatred in his heart against Gordon gave him the 
 pain of an open wound. 
 
 " O God, let me forget, let me forget ! " he prayed. 
 
 Then suddenly, while he was in the tempest of these 
 contrary emotions, which were whirling like hot sand in 
 a sandstorm about his brain, he heard a footstep on the 
 stairs, followed by a voice outside the door. It was the 
 voice of Colonel Lord's soldier-servant, and he was telling 
 his master who was within — an Arab, a Sheikh, in white 
 robes and a turban. 
 
 " He's coming ! He's here," thought Ishmael.
 
 588 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 With chokinj? throat and throbbing heart he rose to his 
 feet and stood waiting. At the next moment the door was 
 thrown open and the man he had come to meet was in the 
 room. 
 
 XVIII 
 
 With all his heart occupied by thoughts of his father, 
 Gordon had hardly listened to what Hafiz had been saying 
 about Ishmael, but walking up the hill to the Citadel he 
 began to think of him and of Helena and of the bond of 
 the betrothal which still bound them together. 
 
 " Until that is broken there can be nothing between her 
 and me," he told himself, and this was the thought in his 
 mind at the moment when he reached his quarters and his 
 servant told him who was waiting within. 
 
 "Ishmael Ameer! Is it you?" he cried as he burst 
 the door open, and stepping eagerly, cheerfully, almost joy- 
 fully forward, he stretched out his hand. 
 
 But Ishmael drew back, and then Gordon saw that his 
 eyes were swollen as if by sleeplessness, that his lips were 
 white, that his cheeks were terribly pale, and that the ex- 
 pression of his face was shocking. 
 
 " Why, what is this ? Are you ill ? " he asked. 
 
 '• Omar Bcnani," said Ishmael, " you and I are alone, 
 and only God is our witness. I have something to say to 
 you. Let us sit." 
 
 Ho spoke in a low, tremulous tone, rather with his 
 breath than with his voice, and Gordon, after looking at 
 him for an instant, and seeing the smouldering fire of mad- 
 ness that was in the man's face, threw off his great-coat 
 and sat down. 
 
 There was a moment in which neither spoke, and then 
 Ishmael, still speaking in a scarcely audible voice, said: 
 
 " Omar Benani, I am a son of the Beni Azra. Honour 
 is our watchword. When a traveller in the Libyan Desert, 
 tired and weary, seeks the tent of one of my people, the 
 Master takes him in. He makes him free of all that he
 
 THE DAWN 589 
 
 possesses. Sometimes he sends the stranger into the harem 
 itself that the women may wash his feet. He leaves him 
 there to rest and to sleep. He puts his faith, his honour, 
 the most precious thing God has given him, into his hands. 
 But," said Ishmael, with suppressed fire flashing in his 
 eyes, " if the stranger should ever wrong that harem, if 
 he should ever betray the trust reposed in him, no matter 
 who he is or where he flies to, the Master will follow him 
 and kill him ! " 
 
 Involuntarily, seeing the error that Ishmael had fallen 
 into, Gordon rose to his feet, whereupon Ishmael, mistak- 
 ing the gesture, held up his hand. 
 
 " Xo," he said, " not that ! I have not come to do that. 
 I put my honour in your hands, Omar Benani, I made you 
 free of my family. Could I have done more? You were 
 my brother, yet you outraged the sacred rights of brother- 
 hood. You tore open the secret chamber of my heart. You 
 deceived me and robbed me and betrayed me and you are 
 a traitor. But I am not here to avenge myself. Sit, sit. 
 I will tell you what I have come for." 
 
 Breathless and bewildered, Gordon sat again, and after 
 another moment of silence Ishmael said : 
 
 " Omar Benani, there is one who has sacrificed every- 
 thing for you. She has broken her vows for you, sinned for 
 you, suffered for you. That woman is my wife and by all 
 the rights of a hvisband I could hold her. But her heart is 
 yours and therefore — therefore / intend to give her up." 
 
 Involuntarily Gordon rose to his feet again, and again 
 Ishmael held up his hand. 
 
 " But if I liberate her," he said, " if I divorce her, you 
 must marry her. That is what I have come to say." 
 
 Utterly amazed and dumfounded, Gordon could not at 
 first find words to speak, whereupon Ishmael, mistaking his 
 silence, said: 
 
 " You need not be afraid of scandal. My people know 
 something about the letter that was sent into Cairo, but 
 neither my people nor yours know anything of the motives 
 that inspired it. Therefore nobody except ourselves will 
 understand the reason for what is done."
 
 590 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 He paused as if waiting for a reply, and then said in a 
 voice that quavered with emotion: 
 
 " Can it be possible that you hesitate ? Do you suppose 
 I am offering to you what I do not wish to keep for my- 
 self? I tell you that if that poor girl could say that her 
 feeling for me was the same as before you came between 
 us — But no, that is impossible ! God, who is on high, 
 looks down on what I am doing, and He knows that it is 
 right." 
 
 Gordon, still speechless with astonishment, twisted about 
 to the desk, which was behind him, and stretched out his 
 hand as if with the intention of taking up the photograph, 
 but at that action Ishmael, once more mistaking his mean- 
 ing, flashed out on him in a blaze of passion. 
 
 " Don't tell me you cannot do it. You must and you 
 shall! Xo matter what pledges you may have made — you 
 shall marry her. No matter if she is of another race and 
 faith — you shall marry her. She may be an outcast now, 
 but you shall find her and save her. Or else," he cried, in 
 a thundering voice, rising to his feet and lifting both arms 
 above Gordon's head with a terrible dignity, " the justice 
 of God shall overtake you, His hand shall smite you, his 
 wrath shall hurl you down." 
 
 Seeing that all the wild blood of the man's race was 
 aflame, Gordon leaped up, and laying hold of Ishmael's 
 upraised arms he brought them, by a swift wrench, down 
 to his sides. 
 
 The two men were then face to face, the Arab with his 
 dusky cheeks and flashing black eyes, the Englishman with 
 his glittering gray eyes and lips set firm as steel. There 
 was another moment of silence while they stood together 
 so, and then Gordon, liberating Ishmael's arms, said, in a 
 commanding voice : 
 
 " I have listened to you. Now you shall listen to me. 
 Sit down." 
 
 More than the strength of Gordon's muscles the un- 
 blanched look in his face compelled Ishmael to obey. Then 
 Gordon said : 
 
 " You believe you have been deceived and wronged, and
 
 THE DAWN 591 
 
 you have been deceived and wronged, but not in the way 
 you think. The time has come for you to learn the truth 
 — the whole truth. You shall learn it now. Look at this," 
 he said, snatching up the photograph from the desk and 
 holding it out to Ishmael. 
 
 Ishmael tried to push the photograph awaj-. 
 
 " Look at it, I say. Do you know who that is ? " 
 
 At the next moment Ishmael was trembling in every 
 limb, and without voice, almost without breath, he was 
 stammering, as he held the photograph in his hand : 
 
 "The Rani?" 
 
 " Yes, and no," said Gordon. " That is the daughter 
 of our late General." 
 
 It seemed to Ishmael that Gordon had said something, 
 but he tried in vain to realise what it was. 
 
 " Tell me," he stammered, " tell me." 
 
 Then rapidly but forcibly Gordon told him Helena's 
 storj', beginning with the day on which Ishmael came to 
 the Citadel — how she had concluded, not without reason, 
 that he had killed her father, he being the last person to be 
 seen with him alive, and how, finding that the law and the 
 government were powerless to punish him, she had deter- 
 mined to avenge her father's death herself. 
 
 Ishmael listened with mouth open, fixing on Gordon a 
 bewildered eye. 
 
 " Was that why she came to Khartoum ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Why she prompted me to come into Cairo ? " 
 
 « Yes." 
 
 "Why she wrote that letter?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Overwhelmed with the terrible enlightenment, Ishmael 
 fumbled his beads and muttered, " Allah ! Allah ! " 
 
 Then Gordon told his own story — how he, too, acting 
 under the impulse of an awful error, had fled to the Sou- 
 dan, leaving an evil name behind him rather than kill his 
 dear ones by the revelation of what he believed to be the 
 truth; how, finding the pit that had been dug for the inno- 
 cent man, he had thought it his duty as the guilty one
 
 592 THE WHITE PEOPHET 
 
 to step into it himself; and how finally being appeased on 
 that point, he had determined to come into Cairo in Ish- 
 mael's place in order to save both him from the sure con- 
 sequences of his determined fanaticism and his father from 
 the certain ruin that must follow upon the work of liars 
 and intriguers. 
 
 By this time Ishmael was no longer pale but pallid. 
 His lips were trembling, his heart was beating audibly. 
 Again without voice, almost without breath, he stam- 
 mered : 
 
 " When you offered to take my place you knew that the 
 Kani — Helena — had sent that letter ? " 
 
 Gordon bowed without speaking. 
 
 " You knew, too, that you might be coming to your 
 death?" 
 
 Once more Gordon bowed his head. 
 
 " Coming to your death that I — that I might live ? " 
 
 Gordon stood silent and motionless. 
 
 " Allah ! Allah ! " mumbled Ishmael, who was now 
 scarcely able to hear or see. 
 
 Last of all Gordon returned to the story of Helena, 
 showing how she had suffered for the impulse of vengeance 
 that had taken possession of her; how she had wanted to 
 fly from Ishmael's camp but had remained there in the hope 
 of helping to save his people, and how at length she had 
 saved them by going to the Consul-General to prove that 
 the pilgrims were not an armed force, and by ordering the 
 light that had led them into the city. 
 
 Ishmael was deeply moved. With an effort he said : 
 
 " Then — then she was yours from the first ! And while 
 I hated you because I thought you had come between us, 
 it was really T— I who— Allah ! Allah ! " 
 
 Gordon having finished, a silence ensued, and then Ish- 
 mael, looking at the photograph which was still in his 
 trembling hands, said in a pitiful voice: 
 
 " God sees all, and when He tears the scales from our 
 eyes — what are we? The children of one father fighting 
 in the dark ! " 
 
 Then he rose to his feet, a broken man, and approaching
 
 THE DAWN 593 
 
 Gordon he tried to kneel to him, but in a moment Gordon 
 had prevented him and was holding out his hand. 
 
 Nervously, timidly, reluctantly, he took it and said, in 
 a voice that had almost gone: 
 
 " God will reward thee for this, my brother — for kiss- 
 ing the hand of him who came to smite thy face." 
 
 With that he turned and staggered toward the door. 
 Gordon opened it and at the same moment called to his 
 servant : 
 
 " Orderly, show the Sheikh to the gate, please." 
 
 "Yes, Colonel." 
 
 " No, I beg of you, no," said Ishmael, and, while Gordon 
 stood watching him, he went heavily down the stairs. 
 
 XIX 
 
 That night at the house of the Chancellor of El Azhar 
 Ishmael was missing. Owing to the state of his health 
 the greatest anxiety was experienced and half the profes- 
 sors and teachers of the University were sent out to search. 
 They scoured the city until morning without finding the 
 slightest trace of him. Then the servant who had at- 
 tended upon him remembered that shortly before his dis- 
 appearance he had asked if the English Colonel who had 
 lately been pardoned by his King still lived on the Citadel. 
 
 This led to the discovery of his whereabouts, and to 
 some knowledge of his movements. On leaving Gordon's 
 quarters he had crossed the courtyard of the fortress to the 
 mosque of Mohammed AH. It was then dark and only the 
 Sheikh in charge had seen him when after making his 
 ablutions he entered by the holy door. 
 
 It was certain that he had spent the entire night in the 
 mosque. The muezzin going up to the minaret at mid- 
 night had seen a white figure kneeling before the Kibleh. 
 Afterward, when traditions began to gather about Ishmael's 
 name, the man declared that he saw a celestial light de- 
 scending upon the White Prophet as of an angel hovering
 
 594 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 over him. There was a new moon that night, and perhaps 
 its rays came down from the little Avindow that looks 
 toward Mecca. 
 
 The muezzin also said that at sunrise when he went up 
 to the minaret again the Prophet was still there, and that 
 an infinite radiance was then around him as of a multitude 
 of angels in red and blue and gold. There are many stained 
 glass windows in the mosque of Mohammed Ali and per- 
 haps the rising sun was shining through them. 
 
 Certainly Ishmael was kneeling before the Kibleh at 
 eleven o'clock in the morning when the people began to 
 gather for prayers. It was Friday and the last of the days 
 kept in honour of the birthday of the Prophet, therefore 
 there was a great congregation. 
 
 The Khedive was present. He had come early, with 
 his customary bodyguard, and had taken his usual place 
 in the front row close under the pulpit. The carpeted floor 
 of the mosque was densely crowded. Rows on rows of men 
 wearing tarbooshes and turbans and sitting on their 
 haunches extended to the great door. The gallery was full 
 of women, most of them veiled, but some of them with un- 
 covered faces. 
 
 The sun, which was hot, shone through the jewelled win- 
 dows and cast a glory like that of rubies and sapphires on 
 the alabaster pillars and glistening marble walls. Three 
 muezzins chanted the call to prayers, two from the min- 
 arets facing toward the city, the other from the minaret 
 overlooking the inner square of the Citadel, where a British 
 sentinel in khaki paced to and fro. 
 
 While the congregation assembled, one of the Readers 
 of the mosque, seated in a reading desk in the middle, read 
 prayers from the Koran in a slow, sonorous voice, and was 
 answered by rather drowsy cries of " Allah ! Allah ! " But 
 there was a moment of keen expectancy, and the men on 
 the floor rose to their feet, when the voice of the muezzin 
 ceased and the Reader cried : 
 
 " God is Most Great ! God is Most Great ! There is no 
 god but God. Mohammed is his Prophet. Listen to the 
 preacher."
 
 THE DAWN 595 
 
 Then it was seen that the white figure that had been 
 prostrate before the Kibleh had risen and was approaching 
 the pulpit. People tried to kiss his hand as he passed, and 
 it was noticed that the Khedive put his lips to the fringe 
 of the Imam's caftan. 
 
 Taking the wooden sword from the attendant, Ishmael 
 ascended the pulpit steps. When he had reached the top 
 of them he was in the full stream of the sunlight and for 
 the first time his face was clearly seen. 
 
 His cheeks were hollow and very pale; his lips were 
 bloodless; his black eyes were heavy and sunken, and his 
 whole appearance was that of a man who had passed 
 through a night of sleepless suffering. Even at sight of 
 him and before he had spoken the congregation were deeply 
 moved. 
 
 " Peace be upon you, oh, children of the Compassion- 
 ate ! " he begauj and the people answered according to 
 custom : 
 
 " On you be peace, oh, servant of Allah ! " 
 
 Then the people sat and, sitting himself, Ishmael began 
 to preach. 
 
 It was said afterward that he had never before spoken 
 with so much emotion or so deeply moved his hearers; that 
 he was like one who was speaking out of the night-long 
 travail of his soul ; and that his words, which were often 
 tumultuous and incoherent, were not like sentences spoken 
 to listeners, but like the secrets of a suffering heart utter- 
 ing themselves aloud. 
 
 Beginning in a low, tired voice, that would barely have 
 reached the limits of the mosque but for the breathlessness 
 of the people, he said that God had brought them to a new 
 stage in the progress of humanity. Islam was rising out 
 of the corruption of ages. Egypt was having a new birth 
 of freedom. God had whitened their faces before the world 
 and in His wisdom He had willed it that the oldest of the 
 nations should not perish from the earth. 
 
 " Ameen ! Ameen ! " replied a hundred vehement voices, 
 whereupon Ishmael rose from his seat and raised his 
 arm.
 
 596 THE WIDTE PROPHET 
 
 It was an hour of gloiy, but let them not be vainglorious. 
 Let them not think that with their puny hands they had 
 won these triumphs. Allah alone did all. 
 
 " Beware of boasting/' he cried ; " it is the strong drink 
 of ignorance. Beware of them that would tell you that by 
 any act of yours you have humbled the pride or lowered 
 the strength of the great nation under whose arm we live. 
 Only God has changed its heart. He has given it to see 
 that the true welfare of a people is moral, not material. 
 And now, steadily, calmly, out of the spirit that has always 
 inspired its laws, its traditions and its faith, it shows us 
 mercy and justice." 
 
 " Ameen ! Ameen!" came again, but less vehemently 
 than before. 
 
 Then speaking of Gordon without naming him, Ish- 
 mael reminded his people that some of the great nation's 
 own sons had helped them. 
 
 " One there is who has been our warmest friend," he 
 cried. " To him, the pure of heart, the high of soul, al- 
 though he is a soldier and a great one, may Peace herself 
 award the crown of life ! Christian he may be, but may 
 God place His benediction upon him to all eternity. May 
 the God of the East bless him! May the God of the West 
 bless him ! May his name be inscribed with blessings from 
 the Koran on the walls of every mosque ! " 
 
 This reference, plainly understood by all, was received 
 with loud and ringing shouts of "Allah! Allah!" 
 
 Then Ishmael's sermon took a new direction. For 
 thirteen centuries the children of men, forgetting their 
 prophets, Mohammed and Jesus and Moses, had been given 
 over to idolatry. They had worshipped a god of their own 
 fashioning. That god was gold. Its temples were great 
 cities given up to material pursuits, and under them were 
 the dead souls of millions of human beings. Its altars were 
 vast armies which spilled the rivers of blood which had to 
 be sacrificed to its lust. As men had become rich they had 
 become barbarous, as nations had become great they had be- 
 come pagan. Islam and Christianity alike had had to fight 
 against some of the powers of darkness which called them-
 
 THE DAWN 597 
 
 selves civilisation and progress. But a new era had begun 
 and the human heart was raising its face to God. 
 
 " Once again a voice has gone out from Mecca, from 
 Nazareth, from Jerusalem, saying ' There is no god but God.' 
 Once again a voice has gone out from the desert, crying, 
 * Thou shalt have no other god but Me! ' " 
 
 At this the people were carried out of themselves with 
 excitement, and loud shouts again rang through the mosque. 
 
 Then Ishmael spoke of the future. The world had been 
 in labour, in the throes of a new birth, but the end was not 
 yet. Had he promised them that the Kingdom of Heaven 
 would come when they entered Cairo? Then let him bend 
 his knee in humility and ask pardon of the Merciful. Had 
 he said the Redeemer would appear? Let him fall on his 
 face before God. Not yet! Not yet! 
 
 " But," he cried, leaning out of the pulpit, with a look 
 of inspiration in his upraised eyes, " I see a time coming 
 when the worship of wealth will cease; when the govern- 
 ments of the nations will realise that man does not live by 
 bread alone; when the children of men will see that the 
 things of the spirit are the only true realities, worth more 
 than much gold and many diamonds and not to be bartered 
 away for the shows of life; when the scourge of war will 
 pass away; Avhen divisions of faith will be no more known; 
 when all men, whether black or white, will be brothers ; and 
 in the larger destiny of the human race the world will be 
 One." 
 
 " That time is near, oh, brothers," cried Ishmael, " and 
 many who are with us to-day will live to witness it." 
 
 " You, Master, you ! " cried a voice from below, where- 
 upon Ishmael paused for a perceptible moment, and then 
 said in a sadder voice : 
 
 " No, with the eyes of the body I shall not see that 
 time." 
 
 Loud shouts of affectionate protest came from the people. 
 
 " God forbid it ! " they cried. 
 
 " God has forbidden it," said Ishmael. " I pass out of 
 
 your lives from this day forward. Our paths part. You 
 
 will see me no more." 
 39
 
 598 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Again came loud shouts of protest — not unusual in a 
 mosque — with voices calling on Ishmael to remain and lead 
 the people. 
 
 " My work here is done," he answered. " The little that 
 God gave me to do is finished. And now he calls me away." 
 
 " Xo, no," cried the people. 
 
 " Yes, yes," replied Ishmael, and then in simple, touching 
 words he told them the story of the Prophet Moses — how 
 by reason of his sin he was forbidden to enter the Promised 
 Land. 
 
 " Many of us have our promised land which we may 
 never enter," he said. " This is mine, and here I may not 
 stay." 
 
 The protests of the people ceased; they listened with- 
 out breathing. 
 
 " Yet Moses was taken up into a high mountain and 
 from there he saw what lay before his people, and from a 
 high mountain of my soul I see the Promised Land which 
 lies before you. But to me a voice has come which says, 
 ' Enter thou not ! ' " 
 
 The people were now deeply moved. 
 
 " We are all sinners," Ishmael continued. 
 
 " Not thou, O Master ! " cried several voices at once. 
 
 " Yes, I more than any other, for I have sinned against 
 you and against the Merciful." 
 
 Then raising his arms as if in blessing he cried: 
 
 " Oh, slaves of God, be brothers one to another ! If you 
 think of me when I am gone, think of me as of one who 
 saw the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth as 
 Ijlainly as his eyes behold you now. If I leave you I leave 
 this hope, this comforter, behind me. Think that Azrael, 
 the angel of death, has spread his wings over the desert 
 track that hides me from your eyes. But pray for me — pray 
 for me with the sinner's prayer, the sinner's cry." 
 
 Then in deep, tremulous tones which seemed to be the 
 inner voice of the whole of his being, he cried: 
 
 " Oh, thou who knowcst every heart and hearest every 
 cry, look down and hearken to me now! One sole plea I 
 make — my need of Thee! One only hope I have — to stand
 
 THE DAWN 599 
 
 at Thy mercy-gate and knock! Penitent, I kneel at Thy 
 feet! Suppliant, I stretch forth my hands! Save me, O 
 God, from every ill ! " 
 
 The words of the prayer were familiar to everybody in 
 the mosque, but so deep was their effect as Ishmael repeated 
 them, in his trembling, throbbing voice, that it seemed as 
 if nobody present had ever heard them before. 
 
 The emotion of the people was now very great. " Allah ! '^ 
 " Allah ! " " Allah ! " they cried and they prostrated them- 
 selves with their faces to thie floor. 
 
 When the cold, slow, sonorous voice of the Header began 
 again, and the vast congregation raised their heads, the pul- 
 pit was empty and Ishmael was gone. 
 
 XX 
 
 Meantime the General's house on the edge of the ram- 
 parts was being made ready for its new tenant. Fatiraah, 
 Ibrahim and Mosie, with a small array of Arab servants, had 
 been there since early morning, washing, dusting, and alter- 
 ing the position of furniture. 
 
 Toward noon the Princess had arrived in her carriage, 
 which, with her customary retinue of gorgeously appareled 
 black attendants, was now standing by the garden gate. 
 Helena had come with her, but for the first time in her 
 life she was utterly weak and helpless. Just as a nervous 
 collapse may follow upon a nervous strain, so a collapse of 
 character may come after prolonged exercise of will. Some- 
 thing of this kind was happening to Helena, who stood by 
 the window in the General's office, looking down at the city 
 and running her fingers along the hem of her handkerchief, 
 while the Princess, bustling about, laughed at her and ral- 
 lied her. 
 
 " Goodness me, girl, you used to have some blood in 
 your veins, but now — il/on Dieu! To think of you who 
 went down there and did that, and used to drive a motor- 
 car through the traffic as calmly as if it had been a go-cart, 
 trembling and jerking as if you had got the jumps! "
 
 600 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Meantime, the Princess herself, full of energy, was or- 
 dering the servants about, and by a hundred little changes 
 was giving to the General's office a look that almost oblit- 
 erated its former appearance. 
 
 " We'll have the desk here and the sofa there — what 
 do you say to the sofa there, my sweet ? " 
 
 " Hadn't you better ask Gordon himself. Princess ? " 
 asked Helena. 
 
 " But the man isn't here, and how can I — never mind, 
 leave them where they are, Ibrahim. And now for the 
 pictures — nothing makes a room look so fresh as a lot of 
 pictures." 
 
 Ibrahim had brought up from the Agency a number 
 of pictures which had belonged to Gordon's mother, and 
 the Princess, using her lorgnette, proceeded to examine 
 them. 
 
 "What's this? ' Charles George Gordon.' I know! The 
 White Pasha. Put him over the General's desk. ' Ecce 
 Homo.' Humph ! A man couldn't wish to have a thing like 
 this in his office, and a natural woman can't want it over her 
 bed. Mosie ! Take 'Ecce Homo ' to a nice dark corner of 
 the servant's hall." 
 
 At that moment Fatimah came from the kitchen, which 
 had been shut up since the day after Helena's departure for 
 the Soudan, to say that half the cooking tins had disap- 
 peared. 
 
 " Just what I expected ! Stolen by those rascally Egyp- 
 tian cooks, no doubt. Rascally Egyptians! That's what I 
 call them. Excuse the word, my dear. I speak my mind. 
 They'd steal the kohl from your eyes — if you had any. And 
 these are the people who are to govern the country! But 
 I say nothing — not I indeed ! The virtue of a woman is in 
 holding her tongue — Fatimah, now that you are here, you 
 might make yourself iiseful. Dust that big picture of the 
 naked babies. What's it called? 'Suffer Little Children.' 
 Goodness! He looks as if he were giving away clothes. 
 Helena, my moon, my beauty, you really must tell me 
 where to put this one." 
 
 " But hadn't you better ask Gordon himself. Princess ?
 
 THE DAWN 601 
 
 It's to be his house, you know," repeated Helena, whereupon 
 the Princess, wheeling round on her, said : 
 
 " Gracious me, what's come over you, girl ? Here you 
 are to be mistress of the whole place within a month, I sup- 
 pose, and yet " 
 
 " Hush, Princess." 
 
 There were footsteps in the hall, and at the next mo- 
 ment, Gordon, in his frock-coat uniform, looking flushed 
 and excited, and accompanied by Hafiz, whose chubby face 
 was wreathed in smiles, had entered the room. 
 
 After he had shaken hands with the Princess, the serv- 
 ants rushed upon him, Mosie, who had come behind, kissing 
 his sword, Ibrahim his hand, and Fatimah struggling with 
 an impulse to throw her arms about his neck. 
 
 " So you've come at last, have you ? " said the Princess. 
 " Time enough, too, for here's Helena of no use to anybody. 
 Your father has gone back to England, hasn't he? He might 
 have come up to see me, I think. He wrote a little letter to 
 say good-bye, though. It was just like him. I could hear 
 him speaking. ^ My goodness,' I said, ' that's Nuncham ! ' 
 Well, we shall never see his equal. No, never ! He might have 
 left Egypt with twenty millions in his pocket and he has gone 
 with nothing but his v/ages. I suppose they're slandering him 
 all the same. Ingrates! But no matter! The dogs bark, 
 but the camel goes along. And now that I've time, let me 
 take a look at you. What a colour ! But what are you trem- 
 bling about? Goodness me, has everybody got the jumps?" 
 
 Helena was the only one in the room who had not come 
 forward to greet Gordon, and seeing his sidelong look in 
 her direction, the Princess began to lay plans for leaving 
 them together. 
 
 " Ibrahim," she cried, " hang up these naked babies in 
 the bath-room — the only place for them, it seems to me. 
 Fatimah, go back and look if the cooking tins are not in 
 the kitchen cupboard." 
 
 " They're not — I've looked already," said Fatimah. 
 
 " Then go and look again. Mosie, you want to inspect 
 my horses — I can see you do." 
 
 "No, lady I have i'spected them."
 
 602 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 '' Then i'spcct them a second time. Off you go ! — where's 
 my lorgnette i' Oh, dear me. I fancy I must have left it 
 in the boudoir." 
 
 " Let me go for it, Princess," said Helena. 
 
 " Certainly not! Why should you? Do you think I'm a 
 cripple that I can't go myself? Hafiz Eifendi, where are 
 your manners that you don't open this door for me? That's 
 better. Now the inner one." 
 
 At the next moment Gordon and Helena were left to- 
 gether. Helena was still standing by the window looking 
 down at the city which seemed to lie dazed under the mid- 
 day sun. Gordon stepped up and stood by her side. It was 
 hard to realise that they were there again. But in spite of 
 their happiness there was a little cloud over both. They 
 knew what caused it. 
 
 While they stood together in silence they could hear the 
 low reverberation of the voices of the people who were pray- 
 ing within the mosque. 
 
 " They are chanting the first Surah," said Gordon. 
 
 " Yes, the first Surah," said Helena. 
 
 Their hands found each other as they stood side by side. 
 
 " I saw Ishmael last night. He came to my quarters," 
 said Gordon in a low tone. 
 
 "Well?" asked Helena, faintly. 
 
 " It was most extraordinary. He came to tell me that 
 — to compel me to " 
 
 " Hush ! " 
 
 There was a soft footstep behind them. It was the step 
 of some one walking in Oriental slippers. Withovit turning 
 round they know who it was. 
 
 It was Ishmael. Notwithstanding his dusky complexion, 
 his face was very pale — almost as white as his turban. His 
 eyes looked weary, their light was almost extinct. Perhaps 
 lais sermon had exhausted him. It was almost as if there 
 vras no life left in him except the life of the soul. But he 
 smiled — it was the smile of a spectre — as he stepped forward 
 and held out his hand. 
 
 Gordon's heart shuddered for pity. "Are you well?" 
 he asked.
 
 THE DAWN 603 
 
 "Oh, yes." 
 
 " But you look tired." 
 
 " It's nothing," Ishmael said, and then, with a touching 
 simplicity, he added, " I have been troubled in my heart, but 
 now I am at peace and all is well." 
 
 They sat, Ishmael on the sofa, Helena on a chair at his 
 right, Gordon on a chair at his left, the window open be- 
 fore them, the city slumbering below. 
 
 Ishmael's face, though full of lines of pain, continued to 
 smile, and his voice, though hoarse and faint, was cheerful. 
 He had come to tell them that he was going away. 
 
 "Going away?" said Gordon. 
 
 " Yes, my work here is done, and when a man's work is 
 done he stands outside of life. So I am going back." 
 
 " Back ? You mean back to Khartoum ? " asked Helena 
 timidly. 
 
 " Perhaps there, too. But back to the desert. I am a 
 son of the desert. Therefore, what other place can be so 
 good for me ? " 
 
 " Are you going alone ? " 
 
 " Yes, or rather no ! When a man has lived, has la- 
 boured, he has always one thing — ^memory. And he who 
 has memory can never be quite alone." 
 
 " Still you will be very " 
 
 Ishmael turned to her with an almost imperceptible 
 smile. 
 
 " Perhaps, yes, at first, a little lonely, and all the more 
 so for the sweet glimpse I have had of human company." 
 
 " But this is not what you intended to — what you hoped 
 to " 
 
 " No ! It's true I nourished other dreams for a while — 
 dreams of living a human life after my work was done. It 
 would have been very sweet, very beautiful. And now to 
 go away, to give it up, never more to have part and lot in — 
 never again to see those who — Yes, it's hard, a little 
 hard." 
 
 Helena turned her head aside and looked out at the win- 
 dow. 
 
 " But that is all over now," said Ishmael. " Love is
 
 604 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 the crown of life, but it is not for all of us. Your great 
 Master knew that as he knew everything. Some men have 
 to be eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake. How 
 true ! How right ! " 
 
 His pallid face struggled to smile as he said this. 
 
 " And then, what does our Prophet say ? — on him be 
 prayer and peace ! ' The man who loves and never attains to 
 the joy of his love, but renounces it for another who has 
 more right to it, is as one who dies a martyr.' " 
 
 Still looking out at the window, Helena tried to say she 
 would always remember him, and hoped he would be very 
 happy. 
 
 " Thank you ! That also will be a sweet memory," he 
 said. " But happy moments are rare in the lives of those 
 who are called to a work for humanity." 
 
 Then, coming gently to closer quarters, he told them he 
 was there to say good-bye to them. " I had intended to 
 write to you," he said, turning again to Helena, " but it is 
 better so." 
 
 Then, facing toward Gordon, he said: 
 
 " I must confess that I have not always loved you. But 
 I have been in the wrong and I ask your pardon. It is God 
 who governs the heart. And what does your divine Mas- 
 ter say about that, too? 'Whom God hath joined together 
 let no man put asunder.' That is the true word about love 
 and marriage — the first, and the last, and the only one." 
 
 Then he rose and both Helena and Gordon rose with 
 him. One moment ho stood between them without speak- 
 ing, and then, stooping over Helena's hand and kissing it, 
 he said, in a scarcely audible whisper: 
 
 " I divorce thee ! I divorce thee ! I divorce thee ! " 
 
 It was the Mohammedan form of divorce and all that 
 was necessary to set Helena free. When he raised his head 
 his face was still smiling — a pitiful, heart-breaking smile. 
 
 Then, still holding Helena's hand, he reached out for 
 Gordon's also, and said : 
 
 " I give her back to thee, my brother. And do not think 
 I give what I would not keep. Perhaps — who knows ? — per- 
 haps I loved her, too."
 
 THE DA\VN ^ 605 
 
 Helena was deeply affected. Gordon found it impossible 
 to look into Ishmael's face. They felt his wearied eyes 
 resting upon them; they felt their hands being brought to- 
 gether; they felt Ishmael's hand resting for a moment on 
 their hands; and then they heard him say: 
 
 " Maa-es-salamah ! Be happy! Keep together as long 
 as you can. And never forget we shall meet again some 
 day." 
 
 Then in a voice so low that they could scarcely hear it, 
 he said: 
 
 " Peace be with you both! Peace! " and passed out of the 
 room. 
 
 They stood where he had left them in the middle of the 
 room, with faces to the ground and their hands quivering 
 in each other's clasp, until the sound of his footsteps had 
 died away. Then Gordon said: 
 
 " Shall we go into the garden, Helena ? " 
 
 "Yes," she replied in a whisper. 
 
 They went out hand in hand and walked to the arbour 
 on the edge of the ramparts. There, on that loved spot, the 
 past rolled back on them like billows of the soul. The 
 bushes seemed to have grown, the bougainvillaea was more 
 purple than before, the air was full of the scent of blossom, 
 and everything was turning to love and to song. 
 
 They did not speak, but they put their arms about each 
 other, and looked down on the wide panorama below — the 
 city, the Nile, the desert, the pyramids, and that old, old 
 Sphinx whose scarred face had witnessed so many incidents 
 in the story of humanity, and was now witnessing the last 
 incident of one story more. 
 
 How long they stood there in their great happiness 
 they never knew, but they were called back to themselves 
 by a shrill, clear voice that came from a minaret behind 
 them: 
 
 "God is Most Great! God is Most Great!" 
 
 Then, turning in the direction of the voice, they saw a 
 white figure on a white camel ascending the yellow road that 
 leads up to the fort on the top of the Mokattam hills and 
 onward to the desert.
 
 606 
 
 THE WHITE PROrHET 
 
 '•'Look," said Gordon. "Is it ?" 
 
 Without speaking, Helena bent her head in assent. 
 
 With hands still clasped and quivering, they watched the 
 white figure as it passed away. It stopped at the crest of 
 the hill, and looked back for a moment; then turned again 
 and went on. At the next moment it was gone. 
 
 And then once more came the voice from the minaret, 
 like the voice of an angel winging its way through the air: 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 #-H^ 
 
 -^zi: 
 
 :«5~»" 
 
 ^2^- 
 
 tt±=U: 
 
 AL-LA-UUAK-BAR. 
 God is Most Great! 
 
 AL-LA - - EUAK-BAR. 
 God is Most Great!
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 Lord Nuneham lived ten years longer, but never, after 
 the first profound sensation caused by his retirement, was 
 he heard of again. The House of Lords did not sec him, 
 he was never found on any public platform, and no pub- 
 lisher could prevail upon him to write the story of his life. 
 
 He bought a majestic but rather melancholy place in 
 Berkshire, one of the great historic seats of an extinguished 
 noble family, and there, under the high elms and amid the 
 green and cloudy landscape of his own country, he lived out 
 his last years in unbroken obscurity. 
 
 It has been well said that deep tragedy is the school of 
 great men, but there was one ray of sunshine to brighten 
 Lord Nuneham's solitude. On a table, by his bedside, in a 
 room darkened by nastling leaves, stood two photographs in 
 silver frames. They were of two boys, one dark like his 
 mother, the other fair like his father, both bright and strong 
 and clear-eyed. Down to the end the old man never went to 
 bed without taking up these pictures and looking at them, 
 and as often as he did so a faint smile would pass over his 
 seamed and weary face. 
 
 After a while the world forgot that he was alive, and 
 when he died the public seemed to be taken by surprise. " I 
 thought he died ten years ago," said somebody. 
 
 Gordon held his post as General in command of the 
 British Army in Egypt for four successive terms, his ap- 
 pointment being renewed first by the wish of the War Office 
 and afterward at the request of the Egyptian Government. 
 The civil occupation having become less active since his 
 father's time (the new Consul-General being a pale shadow 
 of his predecessor), the military occupation became more 
 important, and except for his subjection to headquarters, 
 
 607
 
 608 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 Gordon appeared to stand in the position of a military auto- 
 crat. But in the difficult and delicate task of maintaining 
 order iu a foreign country without exasperating the feelings 
 of the native people, he showed great tact and sym- 
 pathy. While allowing the utmost liberty to thought, 
 Avhethcr political or religious, he never for a moment per- 
 mitted it to be believed that the Government could be de- 
 fied with impunity in matters affecting peace, order, life, and 
 property. 
 
 For this the best elements honoured him, and when the 
 poor and illiterate, who were sometimes the victims of Ex- 
 tremists, whose only aim was to throw flaming torches into 
 pits of inflammable gas, saw that he was just as ready to 
 put down lawlessness among Europeans as among Egyp- 
 tians, they loved as well as trusted him. His life in Egypt 
 lessened the gulf which Easterners always find between 
 Christians and Christianity, and whenever he had to re- 
 turn to England, the streets of Cairo would be red with the 
 tarbooshes of the people who ran to the railway-station to 
 see him off. " Maa-es-salamah, brother ! " they would say, 
 with the simplicity of children, and then, " Don't forget we 
 will be waiting for you to come back." 
 
 Gordon's love for the Egyptians never failed him, and 
 he was entirely happy in his home, where Helena developed 
 the summer bloom of beautiful womanhood, where the light, 
 merry sound of the voices of her two young boys was al- 
 ways ringing like music through the house. 
 
 It must be confessed that for a while Egypt had a hard 
 and almost tragic time. After the Consul-General's depart- 
 ure she went through a period of storm and stress. There 
 were both errors and crimes. These were the inevitable re- 
 sults of progressive stages of self-rule; and even anarchy, 
 the travail of a nation's birth, was not altogether unknown. 
 During the earlier years there were some to regret the ab- 
 sence of the mailed fist of Lord Nuneham and to question 
 the benefit of quasi-Western institutions in an Eastern 
 country. But the atmosphere cleared at last, the sinister 
 anticipations were falsified, a bold and magnanimous policy 
 brought peace, and the destinies of Egypt were firmly united
 
 EPILOGUE 609 
 
 to those of the country that had yiven her a new lease of 
 life and liberty. 
 
 England never regretted what she had done on that 
 day when, true to her high traditions, she decided that a 
 great nation had no longer any right to govern with abso- 
 lute and undivided authority, another race living under an- 
 other sky. And her reward seems likely to come in a way 
 that might have been least expected. As " God chooseth 
 His fleshly instruments and with imperfect hearts doeth 
 His perfect work," He seems to have put it into the hearts 
 of the Arab people to sink their tribal differences and to 
 act on the prompting of the gigantic myth with which the 
 Grand Cadi deceived the Consul-General. 
 
 Indeed, those who gaze into the future as into a crystal 
 say that the time is near when the long drama of dissension 
 that has been played between Arabs and Turks will end in 
 the establishment of a vast Arabic Empire, extending from 
 the Tigris and the Euphrates Valley to the Mediterranean, 
 and from the Indian Ocean to Jerusalem, with Cairo as its 
 Capital, the Khedive as its Caliph, and England as its lord 
 and protector. Xo one can foreshadow the future, but this 
 was Napoleon's greatest dream, and the nation that can 
 realise it will hold the peace of the world in the palm of its 
 almighty hand. 
 
 And Ishmael? 
 
 After he left Cairo he was never seen again by anyone 
 who could positively identify him. Some say he returned 
 to the home of his childhood on the Libyan Desert and 
 that he died there; others that he went back to Khartoum 
 and thence to the heart of the Sahara, and that he is still 
 alive. However this may be, it is certain that his disap- 
 pearance has had the effect of death, that it has deepened 
 the impression of his life, and that a huge shadow of him 
 remains on those among whom he lived and laboured. 
 
 It was said on the day of his departure that Black Zogal, 
 who followed him to the last with the fidelity of a human 
 dog, kept close at his heels until he came to the top of the 
 Mokattam hills, where the Master sent him back after 
 strictly charging him to tell no one which way he was
 
 610 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 going. Since then, however, Zogal has given it out ("with 
 eveiy appearance of believing his own story) that he saw 
 Ishmael ascend to heaven from the Gebel Mokattam in a 
 blinding whirlwind of celestial light, a flight of angels car- 
 rying him away. 
 
 A Saint's House has been built for Black Zogal on the 
 spot on which he says he saw the ascent; the half-crazy 
 Soudanese inhabits it, and its outer walls are almost cov- 
 ered with the small flags which devotees have brought and 
 fixed to them in their childlike effort to show reverence. 
 
 Xothing could exceed the boundless affection which is 
 still felt for Ishmael by those who came into immediate con- 
 tact with him. He seems to have inspired them with a love 
 which survives absence and could even conquer death. 
 Everybody who ever spoke to him has a story to tell of his 
 wisdom, his power, and his tenderness. The number of 
 his " miracles " has increased tenfold, and though not 
 described as sinless, he is always talked of as if he were 
 divine. 
 
 His Mouled (his birthday, a conjectural date) is cele- 
 brated by ceremonies which almost outrival the " Nights of 
 the Prophet." About the Saint's House on the Mokattam 
 hills a huge encampment of tents is made, and there, under 
 the blaze of thousands of dazzling lights, the dervishes hold 
 their Zikrs amid scenes of frantic excitement due to exhi- 
 bitions of hypnotic suggestion which ever include " the 
 effect of tongues," while more serious-minded Sheikhs re- 
 peat a long record of Ishmael's genealogy. This is a very 
 circumstantial story with a vague resemblance to something 
 w^hich Christians speak of with bated breath — how, when his 
 mother, who was a virgin, was bearing him, an angel ap- 
 peared to her in a dream and said, " You carry the Lord of 
 Man," and how, when the child was delivered, three great 
 Sheikhs came from Mecca to pay reverence to him, having 
 seen a star in the sky which told them where he was to be 
 born. 
 
 In the course of years a great body of Ishmael's " Say- 
 ings " have been gathered up. Some of them are authentic, 
 but most of them are out of the wisdom of the ages, and
 
 EPILOGUE 611 
 
 not a few are directly borrowed from the Christian gospels, 
 which the Moslems, as a whole, do not know. Whatever 
 their sources, they are deeply treasured. Women chant 
 them to the children at their knees, and men lisp them with 
 their last breath and then die with brave faces. 
 
 Besides the impression he has produced upon the people, 
 which is strong and likely to be enduring, Ishmael seems to 
 have an almost unaccountable fascination for Arabic schol- 
 ars and theologians. A number of the professors at El 
 Azhar are already deep in metaphysical disputations about 
 the inner significance of the words attributed to him, and 
 it is whispered that the venerable Chancellor (now nearly 
 a hundred years of age) is compiling a book, half biography 
 and half commentary, that is full of mystical meanings. 
 
 More extraordinary still, it seems probable that a large 
 and gorgeous mosque will be built in Ishmael's honour, and 
 that he who loved best to worship in that temple of the 
 open desert whereof the dome is the sky, he who cared so 
 little about dogmatic theology that he never even wrote a 
 line, may, by the wild irony of fate, become the founder of 
 a sect in Islam which will teach everything he fought 
 against and practise everything he condemned. 
 
 Chief among the subjects of disputation is Ishmael's ex- 
 pectation of a Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, though the 
 IJlema, less concerned with the spirit than with the letter 
 of the Prophet's hope, are divided as to the source of it. 
 Some say it is plainly indicated in the Koran and the tra- 
 ditions; others, more widely read, say it is borrowed from 
 the Hebrew Bible, while a few refer it to a vague and misty 
 antiquity. 
 
 Hardly less interesting to the theologians is the ques- 
 tion of Ishmael's identity. !N"early all agree that there was 
 an element of the supernatural about him, so hard is it to 
 attribute to men of ordinary human passions the great 
 movements that affect the world. But while there are those 
 who believe him to have been the Mahdi, sent expressly to 
 earth to destroy Anti-Christ, that is to say, the Consul-Gen- 
 eral, an influential group hold to the opinion that he was, 
 and is, Seyidna Isa — Our Lord Jesus.
 
 612 THE WHITE PROPHET 
 
 About this latter view there gathers a strange and not 
 unimpressive theory — that Jesus (who, according to the Is- 
 lamic faith, did not die on the cross) reappears at intervals 
 among different races — now among the Jews, now among 
 the Indians, now among the Arabs — and that he will con- 
 tinue to make these manifestations until the world is ready 
 for the greatest happiness obtainable by man — the estab- 
 lishment of the Kingdom of God. 
 
 But not all the disputations of the wise heads of El Az- 
 har can rob the humble of the object of their veneration. 
 Ishmael came from the people, and with the people he will 
 always remain. His blameless life, his touching history, 
 his deep humanity, his simple teaching and, above all, his 
 lofty hopes have made him Sultan of a vast empire of souls 
 — the empire of the poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden, 
 and the broken-hearted. From the central heart of the East 
 his spirit came as a ray of sunlight, inspiring men in the 
 dark places to live nobly, to die bravely, and to keep up 
 their courage to the last. 
 
 And lohat of Ishmael's influence in the West? 
 
 Nothing! European historians have written since his 
 time ivithout saying a ivord ahout him. One of them who 
 devotes long chapters to accounts of the homhardment of 
 Alexandria, the battle of Tel-el-Kehir, the craven flight of 
 Arahi and his theatrical scene with the Khedive in Ahdeen 
 Square, and yet other chapters to the huilding of the As- 
 souan Dam and the construction of the Cape to Cairo rail- 
 way, dismisses Ishmael's pilgrimage from Khartoum in five 
 lines of a section dealing with " Mahdism and Sedition in 
 the Soudan." 
 
 And indeed, so hard do we find it, in spite of our civilisa- 
 tion and Christianity, to believe that the things of the spirit 
 may be more helpful in sustaining our steps and shaping 
 our destinies than any forces we can weigh., measure, and 
 calculate, that it is difficult to thinlc of any real welcome 
 in the cities of the West for one whose only teaching was 
 that great wealth is an inheritance tahen by force from the 
 Almighty, that property beyond the proper needs of civil-
 
 EPILOGUE 613 
 
 ised human life is pillage; and that God so loves the world 
 that He will come in person to govern it and to save man- 
 hind from its suffering and the consequences of its sins. 
 
 Certainly the mere thought of anyone holding these 
 opinions, least of all an Arab, the son of a hoat-huilder, horn 
 on the Libyan Desert, brought up in the depths of the Sou- 
 dan, educated in the stagnant schools of El Azhar, wearing 
 sandals and a turban and probably eating with his fingers — 
 the mere thought of such a one, in the present year of 
 grace, forcing liis way into the Cathedrals and Parliament 
 Houses of Westminster, Washington, Rome, Berlin, and 
 Paris, where Archbishops officiate in embroidered copes 
 and Ministers prepare budgets toward the re-paganization 
 of the world, would at least provoke a smile. 
 
 Nevertheless, there are some who thinh that the world 
 is not ruled by its great men, but by its great ideas, that 
 these ideas are few and very old; that when as humanity 
 needs to renew itself it has only to go bach to them, and 
 that it is not so often in the " sick hurry " of civilised com- 
 munities as out of the calm solitude of the desert that ive 
 hear the sublime but simple notes of the World's One Voice. 
 
 U) 
 
 THE END 
 
 40
 
 THE MASTERPIECE OF A MASTER MIND. 
 
 The Prodigal Son. 
 
 By Hall Caine. i2mo, Ornamental Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 " The Prodigal Son " follows the lines of the Bible para- 
 ble in the principal incidents, but in certain important 
 particulars it departs from them. In a most convincing 
 way, and with rare beauty, the story shows that Christ's 
 parable is a picture of heavenly mercy, and not of human 
 justice, and if it were used as an example of conduct among 
 men it would destroy all social conditions and disturb ac- 
 cepted laws of justice. The book is full of movement and 
 incident, and must appeal to the public by its dramatic 
 story alone. The Prodigal Son at the close of the book 
 has learned this great lesson, and the meaning of the parable 
 is revealed to him. Neither success nor fame can ever wipe 
 out the evil of the past. It is not from the unalterable laws 
 of nature and life that forgiveness can be hoped for. 
 
 ■' Since ' The Manxman ' Hall Caine has written nothing so moving 
 in its elements of pathos and tragedy, so plainly marked with the power 
 to search the human heart and reveal its secret springs of strength and 
 weakness, its passion and strife, so sincere and satisfying as 'The Prodi- 
 gal Son.' " — Neiu York Times. 
 
 " It is done with supreme self-confidence, and the result is a work 
 of genius." — A^e7v York Evening Post. 
 
 " ' The Prodigal Son' will hold the reader's attention from cover to 
 cover." — Philadelphia Record. 
 
 " This is one of Hall Caine's best novels — one that a large portion 
 of the fiction-reading public will thoroughly enjoy." 
 
 — Chicago Record-Herald. 
 "It is a notable piece of fiction." — Philadelphia Inquirer. 
 " In ' The Prodigal Son' Hall Caine has produced his greatest work.'' 
 
 — Boston Herald. 
 
 " Mr. Caine has achieved a work of extraordinary merit, a fiction as 
 finely conceived, as deftly constructed, as some of the best work of our 
 living novelists." — London Daily Mail. 
 
 " ' The Prodigal Son ' is indeed a notable novel ; and a work that 
 may certainly rank with the best of recent fiction. . . ." 
 
 — Westminster Gazette, 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
 
 NOVELS BY ROBERT W. CHAMBERS. 
 
 SPECIAL MESSENGER. Illustrated. J2mo. Cloth, $i.50. 
 A romantic love storj' of a woman spy in the Civil War. 
 
 THE FIRING UNE. Illustrated. J2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 " The taleis rich in vivid descriptions, pleasing incidents, effective situations, 
 human interest and luxurious scenic effects. It is a story to be remembered." 
 
 — Grand Rapids Herald. 
 
 THE YOUNGER SET. Illustrated. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 "The Younger Set" is a novel of the swirl of wealthy New York society. 
 The hero, forced out of the army by domestic troubles, returns to New York 
 homeless and idle. He finds a beautiful girl who promises ideal happiness. 
 But new complications intervene and are described with what the New York 
 Sun calls Mr. Chambers' "amazing knack of narrative." 
 
 THE FIGHTING CHANCE. Illustrated. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 One of the most brilliant pictures of wealthy American society ever painted; 
 one of the most interesting and appealing stories ever written ; one of the most 
 ■widely read of all American novels. 
 
 SOME LADIES IN HASTE. Illustrated. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 Mr. Chambers has written most delightfully, and in his charming satire 
 depicts the plight of five society girls and five clubmen. 
 
 lOLE. Illustrated. Cloth, $1.25. 
 
 " Think of eight pretty girls in pink silk pajamas and sunbonnets, brought 
 up in innocence in a scientific Eden, with a 'House Beautiful' in the back- 
 ground, and a poetical father in the foreground. Think again of those rose- 
 petalled creations turned loose upon New York .society and then enjoy the fun 
 of it all in ' lole.' "—Boston Herald. 
 
 THE TRACER OF LOST PERSONS. Illustrated. Qoth, $1.50. 
 
 The captivating account of the strangely absorbing adventures of a "matri- 
 monial sleuth," "a deputy of Cupid." 
 
 "Compared with him Sherlock Holmes is clumsy and without human 
 emotions. " — Chicago Inter-Ocean. 
 
 THE TREE OF HEAVEN. Illustrated. Cloth, $1.50, 
 
 If you looked squarely into a mirror and saw your PROFILE instead of 
 your full face, if you suddenly found yourself 25 ?niles away from yourself, 
 you would be in one of the tantalizing situations that give fascination to this 
 charming book. 
 
 THE RECKONING. Illustrated. Goth, $1.50. 
 
 A story of northern New York during the last fierce fights between Tories 
 and Revolutionaries and the Iroquois Indians, by which tribe the hero had 
 been adopted. 
 
 " It would be but an unresponsive American that would not thrill to such 
 relations." — New York Times. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 
 
 433
 
 BOOKS BY DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS 
 
 The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig 
 
 The story of a strong, virile personality, set among the frothy super- 
 ficialities of society life in Washing^ton. Joshua Craig is a young lawyer who 
 is striving to make a name for himself in national politics. He is big, rough, 
 and crude, repelling and yet compelling. He fights quite as hard to gain the 
 love of a lady as he does to attain his coveted political goal. 
 
 Illustrated by A. B. JVenzelL 121110, cloth, ^J'-JO 
 
 Old Wives for New 
 
 A daring title. The story is just as daring, but nevertheless it rings true. 
 It is a frank and faithful picture of married life as it exists to-day among cer- 
 tain classes in this country. It is the story of a young couple who loved as 
 others do, but whose love turns to indifference, and Mr. Phillips shows us why 
 their married life was a failure. 
 
 j2mo, cloth, $1.^0 
 
 The Second Generation 
 
 It is a double-decked romance, telling the love stories of a young man 
 and his sister, both reared in great extravagance and suddenly left without 
 means by their father, who, being a self-made man has come to feel that his 
 wealth has been a curse to his children, and would prove their ruination if left 
 to them. The young man and the young woman find life very hard sledding 
 for a time, but gain strength and courage and make a good fight for love, 
 happiness, and life. 
 
 Illustrated, izmo, ornamental cover in colors inlaid, $i.jo 
 
 Light-Fingered Gentry 
 
 In this story Mr. Phillips has chosen the inside workings of the great 
 insurance companies as his field of battle ; the salons of the great Fifth Avenue 
 mansions as the antechambers of his field of intrigue ; and the two things 
 which every natural big man desires, love and success, as the goal of his lead- 
 ing character. 
 
 Illustrated, ornamental cloth, S^-JO 
 
 The Worth of a Woman — A Play 
 
 "It is a remarkable piece of work, showing keen, logical thought, a 
 daring rush to conclusions, a bold and sportsmanlike grip of an ugly problem. 
 I admire the pluck of this author." — A/an Dale in the N. Y. American. 
 
 i2mo, cloth, $1.2^ net 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK 
 
 444
 
 TWO GOOD NOVELS. 
 
 Cy Whittaker's Place. 
 
 A Novel of Cape Cod Life, by Joseph C. 
 Lincoln, Author of " Mr. Pratt," " Cap'n Eri," etc. 
 2"] illustrations by Wallace Morgan, colored inlay 
 on cover. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 Cape Cod life, as pictured by Joseph C. Lincoln, is de- 
 lightful in its homeliness, its wholesomeness, its quaint sim- 
 plicity. The plot of this novel revolves around a little girl 
 •whom an old bachelor, Cy Whittaker, adopts. Her educa- 
 tion is too stupendous a task for the old man to attempt alone, 
 so he calls in two old cronies and they form a *' Board 
 of Strategy." A dramatic story of unusual merit then de- 
 velops, and through it all runs that rich vein of humor which 
 has won for the author a fixed place in the hearts of thousands 
 of readers. Cy Whittaker is the David Harum of Cape Cod. 
 
 The "Whispering Man. 
 
 A Detective Story Worth While, by Henry 
 KiTCHELL Webster. Frontispiece. i2mo. Deco- 
 rated cloth, $1.50. 
 
 A detective story you ought to read. Something alto- 
 gether different in that the clues to the mystery lie open to 
 the reader throughout the whole story, and are yet so con- 
 cealed that the unsuspecting reader is amazed at the outcome. 
 To those who have tired of the ordinary type of detective 
 story, we commend this different novel as most refreshing. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 
 
 432
 
 By ROBERT W. CHAMBERS. 
 
 The Firing Line. 
 
 Illustrated by Will Foster. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 In this rare, strange story, Mr. Chambers en- 
 trances us with the exotic life oi Palm Beach, Florida. 
 We see the lights at America's greatest playground 
 as clearly as if we were there. We become ac- 
 quainted with its actors. We feel and see as they 
 do. We learn to respect Malcourt, the villain, and 
 to love Shiela, whose love story follows the tempest- 
 uous scenes to the Adirondacks, and we are there 
 mystified as they so weirdly enter the world of the 
 occult. 
 
 " The book sparkles with bright comedy, beautiful de- 
 scriptions of outdoor life, and mirrors to better satisfaction 
 than anything heretofore from his pen the author's remark- 
 able characteristics and good qualities." — The Boston Globe. 
 
 " Mr. Chambers is a great novel writer, with a fame 
 throughout the English-speaking world. Yet we do not 
 think that he has done anything so powerful, so vivid, so 
 strong, as his writing in this novel." — Salt Lake Tribune. 
 
 "From the vivid opening of the first chapter to the vivid 
 close of the last there is no moment when character is not 
 being tested in the crucible of circumstances .... it is a 
 warm, full-blooded tale of American life and love." 
 
 — Chicago Record-Herald. 
 
 " Indeed, there rarely has been collected in any story 
 such a fascinating company as these who take part in the 
 battle of love on ' The Firing Line.' " 
 
 — The Transcript, Boston, Mass. 
 
 " One of the most fascinating novels of his many good 
 books." — Cleveland Leader. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
 
 AN UNUSUAL NOVEL. 
 
 Old Wives for New. 
 
 By David Graham Phillips. i2mo. Cloth, 
 $1.50. 
 
 The title of Mr. Phillips' new novel is a daring 
 one. The story itself is just as daring, but never- 
 theless it rings true. It is a frank and faithful 
 picture of married life as it exists to-day among the 
 prosperous classes of this country. It is the story 
 of a young couple who loved as others do, but 
 whose love turns to indifference, and Mr. Phillips 
 shows us why their married life was a failure. 
 
 " Things about women which have never seen the light 
 of day before." — S^. Faul Pioneer Press. 
 
 " Comes near being a second Balzac." 
 
 — Los Angeles Times. 
 
 " One of the most thoroughly interesting books that 
 has been written in many a long month." 
 
 — St. Louis Republic. 
 
 D. APPLET ON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 
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