The White Prophet, Volume I (of 2)

CHAPTER I

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 officers and men of the British Army quartered in Cairo, assisted by a detachment of the soldiers of the Army of Egypt, had been giving a sham fight in imitation 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 with a company 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 Ministers of State in Western dress, and British Advisers and Under-Secretaries in Eastern tarbooshes; officers 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 are 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 crimson, 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 minarets, as far up as 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 Egypt, 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 infantry, 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 Adjutant-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 ripples of merry laughter had whispered "Littleton's," "Wauchope'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 tum, tum, tum of the war drums of the enemy, followed by the boom, boom, boom of their war-horns, a melancholy note, half bellow and half wail. Then everybody in the pavilion had stood up, everybody'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 whisper, 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, some brown as bronze, brandishing their glistening spears, their swords, and their flintlocks, beating their war-drams, 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 themselves 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 dervishes, 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 everywhere, 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 before 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 immense creature that trembled without drawing breath. But then the Umpire's big bell had been rung again, the dead men had leapt briskly to their feet and scampered back to paddock, and a rustling breeze of laughter, half merriment and half surprise, had swept over the pavilion and the field.

This was another moment at which the atmosphere had 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 Egyptian Commandant of Police, had cried —

"If it had gone the other way, though – if the Mahdists had beaten us 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 more grim. Unfortunately the Egyptian Ministers, the Sheikhs, the Pashas, the Beys, and the Effendis had heard them also, and by the mysterious law of nature that sends messages over a trackless 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 everything in an instant; transformed the sham battle into a serious incident; made it an insult, an outrage, a pre-arranged political innuendo, something got up by the British Army of Occupation or perhaps by the Consul-General himself to rebuke the Egyptians for the fires of disaffection that had smouldered in their midst for years, and to say as by visible historiography —

"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 his ground like a man; but not even when young Colonel Lord, the most popular Englishman in Egypt, the one officer 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 receiving 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 demonstration. Their opportunity came a few minutes later, and, sullen and grim under the gall of their unfounded suspicion, 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, followed by a carriage drawn by two high-stepping horses, between a body-guard 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 scaffolding from which to witness the departure of the Prince.

Then the Prince came out, a rather slack, feeble, ineffectual-looking man, and there were the ordinary salutations 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 apparently students of law or medicine, shouted over the heads of the people, "Long live Egypt!" and in an instant the cry was repeated in a deafening roar from every side.

The Prince signalled to his body-guard and his carriage started, but all the way down the line of the enclosure, where the red-capped 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 something 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 towards the men, all trying to attract his attention – a medium-sized yet massive person, with a stern jaw and steady grey 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-General 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 Egyptians listened in silence, some of them spitting 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 Nuneham'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 serpent of immense size which had stretched itself along the sand to sleep.

CHAPTER II

General Graves's daughter had been at the sports that day, sitting in the chair immediately behind Lord Nuneham's. Her name was Helena, and she was a fine, handsome 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, Colonel 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 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 cloud 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 dervishes, forgetting 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 Consul-General's chair convulsively, breathing so audibly that he had heard her, and lowering the glasses through which he had watched the distant scene, had patted her arm and said —

"He'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 light 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. He 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, without 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 people, some complimenting Helena, others 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 was just like a premeditated 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 pre-concerted 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, grey-headed man, a Judge in the native courts; and then the Commandant of Police, a somewhat pompous person, 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. "Naturally we were popular as long as we were plastering the wounds made by tyrannical masters, 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 who 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 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 was terrible, and thank the Lord it is over. But tell me about yourself, dear. You are desperately in love, they say, and no wonder. I'm in love with him myself, I really am, and if … Oh, you're there, are you? Well, I'm telling Helena I'm in love with you. Such strength, such courage —pluck, 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 taskmasters 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 gratitude?"

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?" asked the Princess.

"Pardon me, Princess. I say the demonstration of your countrymen to-day is an example of the grossest ingratitude."

"You're quite right, General. But Ma'aleysh! (No matter!) 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?"

"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."

"Not 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 Egyptians the English are the best friends Egypt ever had, and Nuneham 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 Government is going to do. Nuneham 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 English 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? Excuse 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 eyes, and yours are shining like moons. After all, your Western ways 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 wiser 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 corner 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 appealed to her. The Judge had been saying —

"I should call it a religious rather than a political unrest. 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 firmament of Alexandria."

"Some holy man, I suppose. Oh, I know. Holy man indeed! Shake hands with him and count your rings, General! Another impostor riding on the people's backs, and they can't see it, the stupids! But the camel never can see his hump – 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 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 courage in a hundred of them, and a score of good soldiers would sweep all the native Egyptians of Alexandria into the sea."