The White Prophet, Volume I (of 2)
"I killed him like a dog, sir."
It was the black flag of the Khalifa 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 generally in staff appointments, promotions came quickly, 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, Second 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 admiration 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 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."
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 fraternise with the Egyptians, but Gordon shook hands with everybody and walked down the platform with his arm round Hafiz's shoulders, while the others who had come to meet him cried, "Salaam, brother!" and laughed like children.
By his own choice, and contrary to custom, quarters had 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 open he looked out on the river flowing 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-horn, and saw a white automobile threading its way through the crowd. The driver was a girl, and a veil 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 its big black eyes and 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 daughter came to offer his apologies – and she was the driver of the automobile.
The impression of strength and energy which the girl bad 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, and 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 remember."
"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 he took up his cap and riding-whip she threw the same chiffon veil over her head and walked with him through the garden to 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 when he heard what had happened, 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 husband 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 anybody 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-morrow, and finding it necessary to begin preparations immediately.
"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 to me.
"The Governor thinks the man is making mischief, inciting the people to rebellion by preaching sedition, so with the General's consent I am to smash him without delay.
"Hafiz is to go with me to Alexandria, and strangely enough, he tells me over the telephone that the new 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, tête-à-tête, 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 thoughts, though, I prefer you as you are and am not exactly dying to see you turned into a man.
"Maa-es-salamah! I kiss your hand!
"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 repeating 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 servant brought in Hafiz, a bright young Egyptian officer, whose plump face seemed to be all smiles.
"Helloa! Here you are!" cried Gordon, and then giving his letter to his servant, he said, "Citadel – General's house, you know… And now, Hafiz, my boy, let's be off."
CHAPTER 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, unpaved streets, with a swarming population of Mohammedans 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 kingdoms 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 low roofs supported by a forest of columns, and floors covered by a vast multitude of men and boys, who were squatting on the ground in knots and circles, all talking together, 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 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, with his venerable face, long white beard, high forehead, refined features, graceful robes, and very soft voice, a type of the grave and dignified Oriental, such as might have walked out of the days of the prophet Samuel.
"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 Gordon 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, O 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 Koranist – 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."
"Ishmael Ameer thinks Islam should advance with advancing 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. Wallahi! (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 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 selfishness 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-preservation – but my father, the Consul-General … What is there in all this to create … Why should such teaching set Moslem against Christian?"
"Ishmael Ameer, O my brother," the Chancellor continued 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 polygamy, Christianity has drunkenness and prostitution."
"No doubt – certainly."
"Coming out of the East, out of the desert, Ishmael Ameer sees in the Christianity of the West a contradiction of every principle 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. Ishmael 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 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 what is known to the world as Christian civilisation is little better than an organised hypocrisy, a lust of empire in nations and a greed of gold in men, destroying liberty, morality, 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 national greatness are moral, not material; that man does not live by bread alone; that it is of little value to Egypt that her barns 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 threescore and ten years, but when Egypt reviews her past she looks back on threescore and ten centuries."
There was silence for a moment, during which the muezzin'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 Ishmael Ameer transcends Egypt, transcends even Europe, and says to humanity in general, 'What you call civilisation is killing religion, because the nations – Christian and Moslem alike – have sold themselves to the lust of empire and the greed of gold' – isn't that what you mean?"
The Chancellor bowed his grave 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 Chancellor 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?"
"Yes."
"That is enough for me. Now I must go to Alexandria and see him for myself."
"May God guide you, O my son," said the Chancellor, and a moment afterwards 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."
CHAPTER VIII
It was night by this time; the courts and corridors of El Azhar were empty, and even the tangled streets outside were 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 multitude of tiny lanterns, stood long rows of men in stockinged 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 Imam 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 quarter of Cairo that is nick-named 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 wave their hands from barred windows and call to men who sit at tables in front of the cafés opposite, drinking wine, smoking cigarettes, 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 soldiers in khaki, who looked across at the women in the flare of the coarse light and laughed.
At the gate of the Kasr-el-Nil barracks the young men parted.
"Tell me, Hafiz," 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 Hafiz.
"His duty to what – his Commander or his conscience?"
"If a soldier is under orders I suppose he has no conscience?"
"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 earnestness which he recognised as her chief characteristics: —
"MISTER, most glorious and respected, the illustrious Colonel Lord, owner of Serenity and Virtue, otherwise 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, wearing 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 hippopotamus.
"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 suggesting 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!