Donovan Pasha, and Some People of Egypt Part 22

"That doesn't seem very clear," she said in answer. "Since I came out here I've been a sort of riverine missionary, an apostle with no followers, a reformer with a plan of salvation no one will accept."

"We are not stronger than tradition, than the long custom of ages bred in the bone and practised by the flesh. You cannot change a people by firmans; you must educate them. Meanwhile, things go on pretty much the same. You are a generation before your time. It is a pity, for you have saddened your youth, and you may never live to see accomplished what you have toiled for."

"Oh, as to that--as to that..." She smoothed back her hair lightly, and her eyes wandered over the distant hills-mauve and saffron and opal, and tender with the mist of evening. "What does it matter!" she added.

"There are a hundred ways to live, a hundred things to which one might devote one's life. And as the years went on we'd realise how every form of success was offset by something undone in another direction, something which would have given us joy and memory and content--so it seems. But--but we can only really work out one dream, and it is the working out--a little or a great distance--which satisfies. I have no sympathy with those who, living out their dreams, turn regretfully to another course or another aim, and wonder-wonder, if a mistake hasn't been made. Nothing is a mistake which comes of a good aim, of the desire for wrongs righted, the crooked places made straight. Nothing matters so that the dream was a good one and the heart approves and the eyes see far."

She spoke as though herself in a dream, her look intent on the glowing distance, as though unconscious of his presence.

"It's good to have lived among mountains and climbed them when you were young. It gives you bigger ideas of things. You could see a long way with the sun behind you, from Skaw Fell."

He spoke in a low voice, and her eyes drew back from the distance and turned on him. She smiled.

"I don't know. I suppose it gives one proportion, though I've been told by Donovan Pasha and the Consul that I have no sense of proportion. What difference does it make? It is the metier of some people of this world to tell the truth, letting it fall as it will, and offend where it will, to be in a little unjust maybe, measure wrongly here and there, lest the day pa.s.s and nothing be done. It is for the world to correct, to adjust, to organise, to regulate the working of the truth. One person cannot do all."

Every minute made him more and more regretful, while it deepened his feelings for her. He saw how far removed was her mind from the sordid views of things, and how sincere a philosophy governed her actions and her mission.

He was about to speak, but she continued: "I suppose I've done unwise things from a worldly, a diplomatic, and a political point of view.

I've--I've broken my heart on the rock of the impossible, so my father says.... But, no, I haven't broken my heart. I have only given it a little too much hope sometimes, too much disappointment at others. In any case--can one be pardoned for quoting poetry in these days? I don't know, I've been so long out of the world--

'Bruised hearts when all is ended, Bear the better all after-stings; Broken once, the citadel mended Standeth through all things.'

I'm not--not hopeless, though I've had a long hard fight here in Egypt; and I've done so little."... She kept smoothing out the letter she had had from Kingsley Bey, as though unconsciously. "But it is coming, the better day. I know it. Some one will come who will do all that I have pleaded for--stop the corvee and give the peasants a chance; stop slavery, and purify the harem and start the social life on a higher basis; remove a disgrace from the commerce of an afflicted land; remove--remove once for all such men as Kingsley Bey; make it impossible for fortunes to be made out of human flesh and blood." She had the rapt look of the dreamer. Suddenly she recovered her more worldly mood: "What are you doing here?" she added. "Have you come to take up official life?

Have you some public position--of responsibility? Ah, perhaps,"--she laughed almost merrily,--"you are the very man; the great reformer.

Perhaps you think and feel as I do, though you've argued against me.

Perhaps you only wanted to see how real my devotion to this cause is.

Tell me, are you only a tourist--I was going to say idler, but I know you are not; you have the face of a man who does things--are you tourist or worker here? What does Egypt mean to you? That sounds rather non-conformist, but Egypt, to me, is the saddest, most beautiful, most mysterious place in the world. All other nations, all other races, every person in the world should be interested in Egypt. Egypt is the lost child of Creation--the dear, pitiful waif of genius and mystery of the world. She has kept the calendar of the ages--has outlasted all other nations, and remains the same as they change and pa.s.s. She has been the watcher of the world, the one who looks on, and suffers, as the rest of the nations struggle for and wound her in their turn. What does Egypt mean to you? What would you do for her--anything?"

There was no more satirical laughter in his eyes. He was deeply in earnest, disturbed, even excited. "Egypt means everything in the world to me. I would do what I could for her."

"What has she done for you?"

"She has brought me to you again--to make me know that what you were by Skaw Fell all those years ago, you are now, and a thousand times more."

She parried the dangerous meaning in his voice, refused to see the tenderness in his manner.

"I'm very sorry to hear that," she added in a tone vainly trying to be unconcerned. "It is a pity that our youth pursues us in forms so little desirable.... Who are they?" she added quickly, nodding towards the sh.o.r.e, from which d.i.c.ky was coming with an Egyptian officer and a squad of soldiers.

"H'm," he responded laughing, "it looks like a matter of consequence. A Pasha, I should think, to travel with an escort like that."

"They're coming here," she added, and, calling to her servant, ordered coffee.

Suddenly Kingsley got to his feet, with a cry of consternation; but sat down again smiling with a shrug of the shoulders.

"What is it?" she asked, with something like anxiety, for she had seen the fleeting suspicion in his look.

"I don't know," he answered lightly, and as though the suspicion had gone. He watched d.i.c.ky and his companions closely, however, though he chatted unconcernedly while they stood in apparent debate, and presently came on. d.i.c.ky was whistling softly, but with an air of perplexity, and he walked with a precision of step which told Kingsley of difficulty ahead. He had not long to wait, and as d.i.c.ky drew nearer and looked him in the eyes, he came to his feet again, his long body gathering itself slowly up, as though for deliberate action. He felt trouble in the air, matters of moment, danger for himself, though of precisely what sort was not clear. He took a step forward, as though to s.h.i.+eld the lady from possible affront.

"I fancy they want to see me," he said. He recognised the officer--Foulik Pasha of the Khedive's household.

The Pasha salaamed. d.i.c.ky drew over to the lady, with a keen warning glance at Kingsley. The Pasha salaamed again, and Kingsley responded in kind. "Good-day to you, Pasha," he said.

"May the dew of the morning bring flowers to your life, Excellency," was the reply. He salaamed now towards the lady, and Kingsley murmured his name to her.

"Will you not be seated," she said, and touched a chair as though to sit down, yet casting a doubtful glance at the squad of men and the brilliant kava.s.s drawn up near by. The Pasha looked from one to the other, and Kingsley spoke.

"What is it, Pasha? Her ladys.h.i.+p doesn't know why she should be honoured."

"But that makes no difference," she interposed. "Here is coffee--ah, that's right, cigarettes too! But, yes, you will take my coffee, Pasha,"

she urged.

The insolent look which had gathered in the man's face cleared away. He salaamed, hesitated, and took the coffee, then salaamed again to her.

She had caught at a difficulty; an instinctive sense of peril had taken possession of her; and, feeling that the danger was for the Englishman who had come to her out of her old life, she had interposed a diplomatic moment. She wanted to gain time before the mystery broke over her. She felt something at stake for herself. Premonition, a troubling of the spirit, told her that she was in the presence of a crisis out of which she would not come unchanged.

d.i.c.ky was talking now, helping her--asking the Pasha questions of his journey up the river, of the last news from Europe, of the Khedive's health, though he and Kingsley had only left Cairo a half-day before the Pasha.

The officer thanked the lady and salaamed again, then turned towards Kingsley.

"You wished to speak with me, perhaps, Pasha," said Kingsley.

"If a moment of your time may have so little honour, saadat el bey."

Kingsley moved down the veranda shoulder to shoulder with the Pasha, and the latter's men, responding to a glance, moved down also. Kingsley saw, but gave no heed.

"What's up, Pasha?" he asked in a low voice. "The Khedive commands your return to Cairo."

"With you?"

"So, effendi."

"Compulsion, eh? I don't see quite. I'm an Englishman, not a fellah."

"But I have my commands, saadat el bey."

"What's the row, Pasha?"

"Is it for the servant to know the mind of his master?"

"And if I don't go?"

The Pasha pointed to his men, and motioned towards the boat where forty or fifty others showed. "Bosh, Pasha! That's no reason. That's flummery, and you know and the Highness knows it. That would have been all very well in the desert, but this is not the desert, and I'm not doing business with the Highness any more. What's the penalty if I don't go?"

"Twenty men will lose their heads to-morrow morning, a riot will occur, the bank where much gold is will be broken into, some one will be made poor, and--"

"Come, never mind twaddle about my money--we'll see about that. Those twenty men--my men?"

"Your men, saadat el bey."

"They're seized?"