Donovan Pasha, and Some People of Egypt Part 16

That night at sunset, d.i.c.ky, once more clothed and shaven and well appointed, but bronzed and weatherbeaten, was shown into the presence of the Khedive, whose face showed neither pleasure nor displeasure.

"You have returned from your kith and kin in England?" asked Ismail, with malicious irony.

"I have no excuses, Highness. I have done what I set out to do."

"If I had given you to death as an infidel who had defiled the holy tomb and the sacred city--"

"Your Highness would have lost a faithful servant," answered d.i.c.ky. "I took my chances."

"Even now it would be easy to furnish--accidents for you."

"But not wise, Highness, till my story is told."

"Sadik Pasha suspects you."

"I suspect Sadik Pasha," answered d.i.c.ky.

"Of what?" inquired Ismail, starting. "He is true to me--Sadik is true to me?" he urged, with a shudder; for if Sadik was false in this crisis, with Europe clamouring for the payment of debts and for reforms, where should he look for faithful knavery?

"He will desert your Highness in the last ditch. Let me tell your Highness the truth, in return for saving my life. Your only salvation lies in giving up to the creditors of Egypt your own wealth, and also Sadik's, which is twice your own."

"Sadik will not give it up."

"Is not Ismail the Khedive master in Egypt?"

"Sit down and smoke," said Ismail eagerly, handing d.i.c.ky a cigarette.

When d.i.c.ky left the Khedive at midnight, he thought he saw a better day dawning for Egypt. He felt also that he had done the land a good turn in trying to break the shameless contract between Ismail and Sadik the Mouffetish; and he had the Khedive's promise that it should be broken, given as Ismail pinned on his breast the Order of the Mejidieh.

He was not, however, prepared to hear of the arrest of the Mouffetish before another sunset, and then of his hugger-mugger death, of which the world talks to this day; though the manner of it is only known to a few, and to them it is an ugly memory.

ALL THE WORLD'S MAD

Up to thirty-two years of age David Hyam, of the village of Framley, in Staffords.h.i.+re, was not a man of surprises. With enough of this world's goods to give him comfort of body and suave gravity of manner, the figure he cut was becoming to his Quaker origin and profession. No one suspected the dynamic possibilities of his nature till a momentous day in August, in the middle Victorian period, when news from Bristol came that an uncle in chocolate had died and left him the third of a large fortune, without condition or proviso.

This was of a Friday, and on the Sat.u.r.day following David did his first startling act--he offered marriage to Hope Marlowe, the only Quaker girl in Framley who had ever dared to discard the poke bonnet even for a day, and who had been publicly reproved for laughing in meeting--for Mistress Hope had a curious, albeit demure and suggestive, sense of humour; she was, in truth, a kind of sacred minuet in grey. Hope had promptly accepted David, at the same time taunting him softly with the fact that he had recklessly declared he would never marry, even saying profanely that upon his word and honour he never would! She repeated to him what his own mother once replied to his audacious worldly protests:

"If thee say thee will never, never, never do a thing, thee will some day surely do it."

Then, seeing that David was a bit chagrined, Hope slipped one hand into his, drew him back within the door, lifted the shovel hat off his forehead, and whispered with a coquetry unworthy a Quaker maid:

"But thee did not say, friend David, thee would never, never, never smite thy friend on both cheeks after she had flouted thee."

Having smitten her on both cheeks, after the manner of foolish men, David gravely got him to his home and to a sound sleep that night.

Next morning, the remembrance of the pleasant smiting roused him to an outwardly sedate and inwardly vainglorious courage. Going with steady steps to the Friends' meeting-house at the appointed time, the Spirit moved him, after a decorous pause, to announce his intended marriage to the prettiest Quaker in Framley, even the maid who had shocked the community's sense of decorum and had been written down a rebel--though these things he did not say.

From the recesses of her poke bonnet Hope watched the effect of David's words upon the meeting; but when the elders turned and looked at her, as became her judges before the Lord, her eyes dropped; also her heart thumped so hard she could hear it; and in the silence that followed it seemed to beat time to the words like the pendulum of a clock: "Fear not-Love on! Fear not--Love on!" But the heart beat faster still, the eyes came up quickly, and the face flushed a deep, excited red when David, rising again, said that, with the consent of the community--a consent which his voice subtly insisted upon--he would take a long journey into the Holy Land, into Syria, travelling to Baalbec and Damascus, and even beyond as far as the desolate city of Palmyra; and then, afterwards, into Egypt, where Joseph and the sons of Israel were captive aforetime. He would fain visit the Red Sea, and likewise confer with the Coptic Christians in Egypt, "of whom thee and me have read to our comfort," he added piously, looking at friend Fairley, the oldest and heretofore the richest man in the community.

Friend Fairley rejoiced now that he had in by-gone days lent David books to read; but he rejoiced secretly, for though his old bookman's heart warmed at the thought that he should in good time hear, from one who had seen with his own eyes, of the wonders of the East, it became him to a.s.sume a ponderous placidity--for Framley had always been doubtful of his bookishness and its influence on such as David. They said it boded no good; there were those even who called Fairley "a new light," that schism in a sect.

These G.o.d-fearing, dull folk were present now, and, disapproving of David's choice in marriage, disapproved far more of its consequence; for so they considered the projected journey into the tumultuous world and the garish Orient. In the end, however, an austere approval was promised, should the solemn commission of men and women appointed to confer with and examine the candidates find in their favour--as in this case they would certainly do; for thirty thousand pounds bulked potently even in this community of unworldly folk, though smacking somewhat of the world, the flesh and the devil.

If David, however, would stand to the shovel hat, and if Hope would be faithful for ever to the poke bonnet and grey cloth, all might yet be well. At the same time, they considered that friend David's mind was distracted by the things of this world, and they reasoned with the Lord in prayer upon the point in David's presence.

In worldly but religiously controlled dudgeon David left the meeting-house, and inside the door of Hope's cottage said to his own mother and to hers some bitter and un-Quaker-like things against the stupid world--for to him as yet the world was Framley, though he would soon mend that.

When he had done speaking against "the mad wits that would not see,"

Hope laid her cool fingers on his arm and said, with a demure humour: "All the world's mad but thee and me, David--and thee's a bit mad!"

So pleased was David's mother with this speech that then and there she was reconciled to Hope's rebellious instincts, and saw safety for her son in the hands of the quaint, clear-minded daughter of her old friend and kinswoman, Mercy Marlowe.

II

Within three months David and Hope had seen the hills of Moab from the top of the Mount of Olives; watched the sun go down over the Sea of Galilee; plucked green boughs from the cedars on Lebanon; broken into placid exclamations of delight in the wild orchard of nectarine blossoms by the lofty ruins of Baalbac; walked in that street called Straight at Damascus; journeyed through the desert with a caravan to Palmyra when the Druses were up; and, at last, looked upon the spot where lived that Pharaoh who knew not Joseph.

In this land they stayed; and even now far up the Nile you will hear of the Two Strange People who travelled the river even to Dongola and some way back--only some way back, for a long time. In particular you will hear of them from an old dragoman called Mahommed Ramadan Saggara, and a white-haired jeweller of a.s.siout, called Abdul Huseyn. These two men still tell the tale of the two mad English folk with faces like no English people ever seen in Egypt, who refused protection in their travels, but went fearlessly among the Arabs everywhere, to do good and fear not. The Quaker hat and saddened drab worked upon the Arab mind to advantage.

In Egypt, David and Hope found their pious mission--though historians have since called it "whimsical and unpractical": David's to import the great Syrian donkey, which was to banish the shame of grossly burdening the small donkey of the land of Pharaoh; and Hope's to build schools where English should be taught, to exclude "that language of Belial,"

as David called French. When their schemes came home to Framley, with an order on David's bankers for ten thousand pounds, grey-garbed consternation walked abroad, and in meeting the First Day following no one prayed or spoke for an hour or more. At last, however, friend Fairley rose in his place and said:

"The Lord shall deliver the heathen into their hands."

Then the Spirit moved freely and severely among them all, and friend Fairley was, as he said himself, "crowded upon the rails by the yearlings of the flock." For he alone of all Framley believed that David and Hope had not thrown away the Quaker drab, the shovel hat and the poke bonnet, and had gone forth fas.h.i.+onable, worldly and an hungered, among the fleshpots of Egypt. There was talk of gilded palaces, Saracenic splendours and dark suggestions from the Arabian Nights.

Still, the ten thousand pounds went to David and Hope where they smilingly laboured through the time of high Nile and low Nile, and khamsin and sirocco, and cholera, and, worse than all, the banishments to the hot Siberia of Fazougli.

But Mahommed Ramadan Saggara babbles yet of the time when, for one day, David threw away his shovel hat; and Abdul Huseyn, the jeweller, tells how, on the same day, the Sitt--that is, Hope--bought of him a ring of turquoises and put it on her finger with a curious smile.

That day David and Hope, the one in a pith helmet, the other with a turquoise ring on her left hand, went to dine with Shelek Pasha, the Armenian Governor of the province, a man of varied talents, not least of which was deceit of an artistic kind. For, being an Armenian, he said he was a true Christian, and David believed him, though Hope did not; and being an Oriental, he said he told the truth; and again David believed him, though Hope did not. He had a red beard, an eye that glinted red also, and fat, smooth fingers which kept playing with a string of beads as though it were a rosary.

As hard as he worked to destroy the Quaker in David, she worked against him; and she did not fear the end, for she believed in David Hyam of Framley. It was Shelek Pasha's influence, persistently and adroitly used for two years, which made friend David at last put aside for this one day his Quaker hat. And the Pasha rejoiced; for, knowing human nature after a fas.h.i.+on, he understood that when you throw the outer sign away--the sign to you since your birth, like the fingers of your hand--the inner grace begins decadence and in due time disappears.

Shelek Pasha had awaited this with Oriental patience, for he was sure that if David gave way in one thing he would give way in all--and with a rush, some day. Now, at last, he had got David and Hope to dine with him; he had his meshes of deceit around them.

When they came to dinner Shelek Pasha saw the turquoise ring upon the finger of friend Hope, and this startled him and pleased him. Here, he knew, was his greatest enemy where David was concerned, and yet this pretty Saint Elizabeth was wearing a fine turquoise ring with a poke bonnet, in a very worldly fas.h.i.+on. He almost rubbed his eyes, it was so hard to believe; for time and again he had offered antichi in bracelets, rings and scarabs, and fine cottons from Beni-Mazar; and had been promptly and firmly told that the Friends wore no jewelry nor gay attire. Shelek Pasha, being a Christian--after the Armenian fas.h.i.+on--then desired to learn of this strange religion, that his own nature might be bettered, for, alas! snares for the soul are many in the Orient. For this Hope had quietly but firmly referred him to David.

Then he had tried another tack: he had thrown in his interest with her first school in his mudirieh; he got her Arab teachers from Cairo who could speak English; he opened the large schoolhouse himself with great ceremony, and with many kava.s.ses in blue and gold. He said to himself that you never could tell what would happen in this world, and it was well to wait, and to watch the approach of that good angel Opportunity.

With all his devices, however, he could not quite understand Hope, and he walked warily, lest through his lack of understanding he should, by some mischance, come suddenly upon a reef, and his plans go s.h.i.+pwreck.

Yet all the time he laughed in his sleeve, for he foresaw the day when all this money the Two Strange People were spending in his mudirieh should become his own. If he could not get their goods and estates peaceably, riots were so easy to arrange; he had arranged them before.

Then, when the Two Strange People had been struck with panic, the Syrian donkey-market, and the five hundred feddans of American cotton, and the new schools would be his for a song--or a curse.