Donovan Pasha, and Some People of Egypt Part 36

Futility was written over the Temple of Endeavour, and by-and-by Dimsdale lost hope and health and heart. He had Nilotic fever, he had ophthalmia; and hot with indomitable will, he had striven to save one great basin from destruction, for one whole week, without sleeping or resting night and day: working like a navvy, sleeping like a fellah, eating like a Bedouin.

Then the end came. He was stricken down, and lay above a.s.souan in a hut by the sh.o.r.e, from which he could see the Temple of Philoe, and Pharaoh's Bed, and the great rocks, and the swift-flowing Nile. Here lay his greatest hope, the splendid design of his life--the great barrage of a.s.souan. With it he could add to the wealth of Egypt one-half. He had believed in it, had worked for it and how much else! and his dreams and his working had come to naught. He was sick to death--not with illness alone, but with disappointment and broken hopes and a burden beyond the powers of any one man.

He saw all now: all the falsehood and treachery and corruption. He realised that Ims.h.i.+ Pasha had given him his hand that he might ruin himself, that his own schemes might overwhelm him in the end. At every turn he had been frustrated--by Ims.h.i.+ Pasha: three years of underground circ.u.mvention, with a superficial approval and a mock support.

He lay and looked at the glow, the sunset glow of pink and gold on the Libyan Hills, and his fevered eyes scarcely saw them; they were only a part of this last helpless, senseless dream. Life itself was very far away-practical, generous, hot-blooded life. This distance was so ample and full and quiet, this mystery of the desert and the sky was so immense, the spirit of it so boundless, that in the judgment of his soul nothing mattered now. As he lay in reverie, he heard his servant talking: it was the tale of the Mahdi and British valour and hopeless fighting, and a red martyrdom set like a fixed star in a sunless sky.

What did it matter--what did it all matter, in this grave tremendous quiet wherein his soul was hasting on?

The voices receded; he was alone with the immeasurable world; he fell asleep.

IV

When he woke again it was to find at his bedside a kava.s.s from Ims.h.i.+ Pasha at Cairo. He shrank inwardly. The thought of the Pasha merely nauseated him, but to the kava.s.s he said: "What do you want, Mahommed?"

The kava.s.s smiled; his look was agreeably mysterious, his manner humbly confidential, his tongue officially deliberate.

"Efendina chok yasha--May the great lord live for ever! I bring good news."

"Leave of absence, eh?"--rejoined Dimsdale feebly, yet ironically; for that was the thing he expected now of the Minister, who had played him like a ball on a racquet these three years past.

The kava.s.s handed him a huge blue envelope, salaaming impressively.

"May my life be thy sacrifice, effendi," he said, and salaamed again.

"It is my joy to be near you."

"We have tasted your absence and found it bitter, Mahommed," Dimsdale answered in kind, with a touch of plaintive humour, letting the envelope fall from his fingers on the bed, so little was he interested in any fresh move of Ims.h.i.+ Pasha. "More tricks," he said to himself between his teeth.

"Shall I open it, effendi? It is the word that thy life shall carry large plumes."

"What a blitherer you are, Mahommed! Rip it open and let's have it over."

The kava.s.s handed him a large letter, pedantically and rhetorically written; and Dimsdale, scarce glancing at it, sleepily said: "Read it out, Mahommed. Skip the flummery in it, if you know how."

Two minutes later Dimsdale sat up aghast with a surprise that made his heart thump painfully, made his head go round. For the letter conveyed to him the fact that there had been placed to the credit of his department, subject to his own disposal for irrigation works, the sum of eight hundred thousand pounds; and appended was the copy of a letter from the Caisse de la Dette granting three-fourths of this sum, and authorising its expenditure. Added to all was a short scrawl from Ims.h.i.+ Pasha himself, beginning, "G.o.d is with the patient, my dear friend," and ending with the remarkable statement: "Inshallah, we shall now reap the reward of our labours in seeing these great works accomplished at last, in spite of the suffering thrust upon us by our enemies--to whom perdition come."

Eight hundred thousand pounds!

In a week Dimsdale was at work again. In another month he was at Cairo, and the night after his arrival he attended a ball at the Khedive's Palace. To Fielding Bey he poured out the wonder of his soul at the chance that had been given him at last. He seemed to think it was his own indomitable patience, the work that he had done, and his reports, which had at last shamed the Egyptian Government and the Caisse de la Dette into doing the right thing for the country and to him.

He was dumfounded when Fielding replied: "Not much, my Belisarius. As Ims.h.i.+ Pasha always was, so he will be to the end. It wasn't Ims.h.i.+ Pasha, and it wasn't English influence, and it wasn't the Caisse de la Dette, each by its lonesome, or all together by initiative."

"What was it--who was it, then?" inquired Dimsdale breathlessly. "Was it you?--I know you've worked for me. It wasn't backsheesh anyhow. But Ims.h.i.+ Pasha didn't turn honest and patriotic for nothing--I know that."

Fielding, who had known him all his life, looked at him curiously for a moment, and then, in a far-away, sort of voice, made recitative:

"'Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray, And when I crossed the wild, I chanced to see at break of day The solitary child.'"

Dimsdale gasped. "Lucy Gray!" he said falteringly.

Fielding nodded. "You didn't know, of course. She's been here for six months--has more influence than the whole diplomatic corps. Twists old Ims.h.i.+ Pasha round her little finger. She has played your game handsomely--I've been in her confidence. Wordsworth was wrong when he wrote:

"'No mate, no comrade Lucy knew; She dwelt on a wide moor: The sweetest thing that ever grew Beside a human door--'

"For my wife's been her comrade. And her mate--would you like to know her mate? She's married, you know."

Dimsdale's face was pale. He was about to reply, when a lady came into view, leaning on the arm of an Agency Secretary. At first she did not see Dimsdale, then within a foot or two of him she suddenly stopped. The Secretary felt her hand twitch on his arm; then she clenched the fingers firmly on her fan.

"My dear Dimsdale," Fielding said, "you must let me introduce you to Mrs. St. John."

Dimsdale behaved very well, the lady perfectly. She held out both her hands to him.

"We are old, old friends, Mr. Dimsdale and I. I have kept the next dance for him," she added, turning to Fielding, who smiled placidly and left with the Secretary.

For a moment there was silence, then she said quietly: "Let me congratulate you on all you have done. Everybody is talking about you.

They say it is wonderful how you have made things come your way.... I am very, very glad."

Dimsdale was stubborn and indignant and anything a man can be whose amour propre has had a shock.

"I know all," he said bluntly. "I know what you've done for me."

"Well, are you as sorry I did it as I am to know you know it?" she asked just a little faintly, for she had her own sort of heart, and it worked in its own sort of way.

"Why this sudden interest in my affairs? You laughed at me when I made up my mind to come to Egypt."

"That was to your face. I sent you to Egypt."

"You sent me?"

"I made old General Duncan talk to you. The inspiration was mine. I also wrote to Fielding Pasha--and at last he wrote to me to come."

"You--why--"

"I know more about irrigation than any one in England," she continued illogically. "I've studied it.

"I have all your reports. That's why I could help you here. They saw I knew."

Dimsdale shook a little. "I didn't understand," he said.

"You don't know my husband, I think," she added, rising slowly. "He is coming yonder with Ims.h.i.+ Pasha."

"I know of him--as a millionaire," he answered, in a tone of mingled emotions.

"I must introduce you," she said, and seemed to make an effort to hold herself firmly. "He will have great power here. Come and see me to-morrow," she added in an even voice. "Please come--Harry."

In another minute Dimsdale heard the great financier Arnold St. John say that the name of Dimsdale would be for ever honoured in Egypt.