Donovan Pasha and Some People of Egypt: 5. Fielding Had An Orderly

5. Fielding Had An Orderly

His legs were like pipe-stems, his body was like a board, but he was
straight enough, not unsoldierly, nor so bad to look at when his back was
on you; but when he showed his face you had little pleasure in him. It
seemed made of brown putty, the nose was like india-rubber, and the eyes
had that dull, sullen look of a mongrel got of a fox-terrier and a
bull-dog. Like this sort of mongrel also his eyes turned a brownish-red
when he was excited.

You could always tell when something had gone wrong with Ibrahim the
Orderly, by that curious dull glare in his eyes. Selamlik Pasha said to
Fielding that it was hashish; Fielding said it was a cross breed of
Soudanese and fellah. But little Dicky Donovan said it was something
else, and he kept his eye upon Ibrahim. And Dicky, with all his faults,
could screw his way from the front of a thing to the back thereof like no
other civilised man you ever knew. But he did not press his opinions upon
Fielding, who was an able administrator and a very clever fellow also,
with a genial habit of believing in people who served him: and that is
bad in the Orient.

As an orderly Ibrahim was like a clock: stiff in his gait as a pendulum,
regular as a minute. He had no tongue for gossip either, so far as
Fielding knew. Also, five times a day he said his prayers--an unusual
thing for a Gippy soldier-servant; for as the Gippy's rank increases he
soils his knees and puts his forehead in the dust with discretion. This
was another reason why Dicky suspected him.

It was supposed that Ibrahim could not speak a word of English; and he
seemed so stupid, he looked so blank, when English was spoken, that
Fielding had no doubt the English language was a Tablet of Abydos to him.
But Dicky was more wary, and waited. He could be very patient and simple,
and his delicate face seemed as innocent as a girl's when he said to
Ibrahim one morning: "Ibrahim, brother of scorpions, I'm going to teach
you English!" and, squatting like a Turk on the deck of the Amenhotep,
the stern-wheeled tub which Fielding called a steamer, he began to teach
Ibrahim.

"Say 'Good-morning, kind sir,'" he drawled.

No tongue was ever so thick, no throat so guttural, as Ibrahim's when he
obeyed this command. That was why suspicion grew the more in the mind of
Dicky. But he made the Gippy say: "Good-morning, kind sir," over and over
again. Now, it was a peculiar thing that Ibrahim's pronunciation grew
worse every time; which goes to show that a combination of Soudanese and
fellah doesn't make a really clever villain. Twice, three times, Dicky
gave him other words and phrases to say, and practice made Ibrahim more
perfect in error.

Dicky suddenly enlarged the vocabulary thus: "An old man had three sons:
one was a thief, another a rogue, and the worst of them all was a
soldier. But the soldier died first!"

As he said these words he kept his eyes fixed on Ibrahim in a smiling,
juvenile sort of way; and he saw the colour--the brownish-red
colour--creep slowly into Ibrahim's eyes. For Ibrahim's father had three
sons: and certainly one was a thief, for he had been a tax-gatherer; and
one was a rogue, for he had been the servant of a Greek money-lender; and
Ibrahim was a soldier!

Ibrahim was made to say these words over and over again, and the red fire
in his eyes deepened as Dicky's face lighted up with what seemed a mere
mocking pleasure, a sort of impish delight in teasing, like that of a
madcap girl with a yokel. Each time Ibrahim said the words he jumbled
them worse than before. Then Dicky asked him if he knew what an old man
was, and Ibrahim said no. Dicky said softly in Arabic that the old man
was a fool to have three such sons--a thief and a rogue and a soldier.
With a tender patience he explained what a thief and a rogue were, and
his voice was curiously soft when he added, in Arabic: "And the third son
was like you, Mahommed--and he died first."

Ibrahim's eyes gloomed under the raillery--under what he thought the
cackle of a detested Inglesi with a face like a girl, of an infidel who
had a tongue that handed you honey on the point of a two-edged sword. In
his heart he hated this slim small exquisite as he had never hated
Fielding. His eyes became like little pots of simmering blood, and he
showed his teeth in a hateful way, because he was sure he should glut his
hatred before the moon came full.

Little Dicky Donovan knew, as he sleepily told Ibrahim to go, that for
months the Orderly had listened to the wholesome but scathing talk of
Fielding and himself on the Egyptian Government, and had reported it to
those whose tool and spy he was.

That night, the stern-wheeled tub, the Amenhotep, lurched like a turtle
on its back into the sands by Beni Hassan. Of all the villages of Upper
Egypt, from the time of Rameses, none has been so bad as Beni Hassan.
Every ruler of Egypt, at one time or another, has raided it and razed it
to the ground. It was not for pleasure that Fielding sojourned there.

This day, and for three days past, Fielding had been abed in his cabin
with a touch of Nilotic fever. His heart was sick for Cairo, for he had
been three months on the river; and Mrs. Henshaw was in Cairo--Mrs.
Henshaw, the widow of Henshaw of the Buffs, who lived with her brother, a
stone's-throw from the Esbekieh Gardens. Fielding longed for Cairo, but
Beni Hassan intervened. The little man who worried Ibrahim urged him the
way his private inclinations ran, but he was obdurate: duty must be done.

Dicky Donovan had reasons other than private ones for making haste to
Cairo. During the last three days they had stopped at five villages on
the Nile, and in each place Dicky, who had done Fielding's work of
inspection for him, had been met with unusual insolence from the Arabs
and fellaheen, officials and others; and the prompt chastisement he
rendered with his riding-whip in return did not tend to ease his mind,
though it soothed his feelings. There had been flying up the river
strange rumours of trouble down in Cairo, black threats of rebellion--of
a seditious army in the palm of one man's hand. At the cafes on the Nile,
Dicky himself had seen strange gatherings, which dispersed as he came on
them. For, somehow, his smile had the same effect as other men's frowns.

This evening he added a whistle to his smile as he made his inspection of
the engine-room and the galley and every corner of the Amenhotep,
according to his custom. What he whistled no man knew, not even himself.
It was ready-made. It might have been a medley, but, as things happened,
it was an overture; and by the eyes, the red-litten windows of the mind
of Mahommed Ibrahim, who squatted beside the Yorkshire engineer at the
wheel, playing mankalah, he knew it was an overture.

As he went to his cabin he murmured to himself "There's the devil to pay:
now I wonder who pays?" Because he was planning things of moment, he took
a native drum down to Fielding's cabin, and made Fielding play it, native
fashion, as he thrummed his own banjo and sang the airy ballad, "The
Dragoons of Enniskillen." Yet Dicky was thinking hard all the time.

Now there was in Beni Hassan a ghdzeeyeh, a dancing-woman of the Ghawazee
tribe, of whom, in the phrase of the moralists, the less said the better.
What her name was does not matter. She was well-to-do. She had a husband
who played the kemengeh for her dancing. She had as good a house as the
Omdah, and she had two female slaves.

Dicky Donovan was of that rare type of man who has the keenest desire to
know all things, good or evil, though he was fastidious when it came to
doing them. He had a gift of keeping his own commandments. If he had been
a six-footer and riding eighteen stone--if he hadn't been, as Fielding
often said, so "damned finicky," he might easily have come a cropper.
For, being absolutely without fear, he did what he listed and went where
he listed. An insatiable curiosity was his strongest point, save one. If
he had had a headache--though he never had--he would at once have made an
inquiry into the various kinds of headache possible to mortal man, with
pungent deductions from his demonstrations. So it was that when he first
saw a dancing-girl in the streets of Cairo he could not rest until by
circuitous routes he had traced the history of dancing-girls back through
the ages, through Greece and the ruby East, even to the days when the
beautiful bad ones were invited to the feasts of the mighty, to charm the
eyes of King Seti or Queen Hatsu.

He was an authority on the tribe of the Ghawazee, proving, to their
satisfaction and his own, their descent from the household of Haroon al
Rashid. He was, therefore, welcome among them. But he had found also, as
many another wise man has found in "furrin parts," that your greatest
safety lies in bringing tobacco to the men and leaving the women alone.
For, in those distant lands, a man may sell you his nuptial bed, but he
will pin the price of it to your back one day with the point of a lance
or the wedge of a hatchet.

Herebefore will be found the reason why Dicky Donovan--twenty-five and no
moustache, pink-cheeked and rosy-hearted, and "no white spots on his
liver"--went straight, that particular night, to the house of the chief
dancing-girl of Beni Hassan for help in his trouble. From her he had
learned to dance the dance of the Ghawazee. He had learned it so that,
with his insatiable curiosity, his archaeological instinct, he should be
able to compare it with the Nautch dance of India, the Hula-Hula of the
Sandwich Islanders, the Siva of the Samoans.

A half-hour from the time he set his foot in Beni Hassan two
dancing-girls issued from the house of the ghdzeeyeh, dressed in
shintiydn and muslin tarah, anklets and bracelets, with gold coins about
the forehead--and one was Dicky Donovan. He had done the rare thing: he
had trusted absolutely that class of woman who is called a "rag" in that
far country, and a "drab" in ours. But he was a judge of human nature,
and judges of human nature know you are pretty safe to trust a woman who
never trusts, no matter how bad she is, if she has no influence over you.
He used to say that the better you are and the worse she is, the more you
can trust her. Other men may talk, but Dicky Donovan knows.

What Dicky's aunt, the Dowager Lady Carmichael, would have said to have
seen Dicky flaunting it in the clothes of a dancing-girl through the
streets of vile Beni Hassan, must not be considered. None would have
believed that his pink-and-white face and slim hands and staringly white
ankles could have been made to look so boldly handsome, so impeachable.
But henna in itself seems to have certain qualities of viciousness in its
brownish-red stain, and Dicky looked sufficiently abandoned. The risk was
great, however, for his Arabic was too good and he had to depend upon the
ghdzeeyeh's adroitness, on the peculiar advantage of being under the
protection of the mistress of the house as large as the Omdah's.

From one cafe to another they went. Here a snakecharmer gathered a meagre
crowd about him; there an 'A'l'meh, or singing-girl, lilted a ribald
song; elsewhere hashish-smokers stretched out gaunt, loathsome fingers
towards them; and a Sha'er recited the romance of Aboo Zeyd. But Dicky
noticed that none of the sheikhs, none of the great men of the village,
were at these cafes; only the very young, the useless, the licentious, or
the decrepit. But by flickering fires under the palm-trees were groups of
men talking and gesticulating; and now and then an Arab galloped through
the street, the point of his long lance shining. Dicky felt a secret,
like a troubled wind, stirring through the place, a movement not
explainable by his own inner tremulousness.

At last they went to the largest cafe beside the Mosque of Hoseyn. He saw
the Sheikh-el-beled sitting on his bench, and, grouped round him,
smoking, several sheikhs and the young men of the village. Here he and
the ghdzeeyeh danced. Few noticed them; for which Dicky was thankful; and
he risked discovery by coming nearer the circle. He could, however, catch
little that they said, for they spoke in low tones, the Sheikh-el-beled
talking seldom, but listening closely.

The crowd around the cafe grew. Occasionally an Arab would throw back his
head and cry: "Allahu Akbar!" Another drew a sword and waved it in the
air. Some one in front of him whispered one startling word to a
camel-driver.

Dicky had got his cue. To him that whisper was as loud and clear as the
"La ilaha illa-llah!" called from the top of a mosque. He understood
Ibrahim the Orderly now; he guessed all--rebellion, anarchy, massacre. A
hundred thoughts ran through his head: what was Ibrahim's particular part
in the swaggering scheme was the first and the last of them.

Ibrahim answered for himself, for at that moment he entered the burning
circle. A movement of applause ran round, then there was sudden silence.
The dancing-girls were bid to stop their dancing, were told to be gone.
The ghazeeyeh spat at them in an assumed anger, and said that none but
swine of Beni Hassan would send a woman away hungry. And because the
dancing-girl has power in the land, the Sheikh-el-beled waved his hand
towards the cafe, hastily calling the name of a favourite dish. Eyes
turned unconcernedly towards the brown clattering ankles of the two as
they entered the cafe and seated themselves immediately behind where the
Sheikh-el-beled squatted. Presently Dicky listened to as sombre a tale as
ever was told in the darkest night. The voice of the tale-teller was that
of Ibrahim, and the story was this: that the citadel at Cairo was to be
seized, that the streets of Alexandria were to be swept free of
Europeans, that every English official between Cairo and Kordofan was to
be slain. Mahommed Ibrahim, the spy, who knew English as well as Donovan
Pasha knew Arabic, was this very night to kill Fielding Bey with his own
hand!

This night was always associated in Dicky's mind with the memory of
stewed camel's-meat. At Ibrahim's words he turned his head from the rank
steam, and fingered his pistol in the loose folds of his Arab trousers.
The dancing-girl saw the gesture and laid a hand upon his arm.

"Thou art one against a thousand," she whispered; "wait till thou art one
against one."

He dipped his nose in the camel-stew, for some one poked a head in at the
door--every sense in him was alert, every instinct alive.

"To-night," said Mahommed Ibrahim, in the hoarse gutturals of the
Bishareen, "it is ordered that Fielding Bey shall die--and by my hand,
mine own, by the mercy of God! And after Fielding Bey the clean-faced ape
that cast the evil eye upon me yesterday, and bade me die. 'An old man
had three sons,' said he, the infidel dog, 'one was a thief, another a
rogue, and the third a soldier--and the soldier died first.' 'A camel of
Bagdad,' he called me. Into the belly of a dead camel shall he go, be
sewn up like a cat's liver in a pudding, and cast into the Nile before
God gives tomorrow a sun."

Dicky pushed away the camel-stew. "It is time to go," he said.

The ghdzeeyeh rose with a laugh, caught Dicky by the hand, sprang out
among the Arabs, and leapt over the head of the village barber, calling
them all "useless, sodden greybeards, with no more blood than a Nile
shad, poorer than monkeys, beggars of Beni Hassan!" Taking from her
pocket a handful of quarter-piastres, she turned on her heels and tossed
them among the Arabs with a contemptuous laugh. Then she and Dicky
disappeared into the night.

II

When Dicky left her house, clothed in his own garments once more, but the
stains of henna still on his face and hands and ankles, he pressed into
the ghazeeyeh's hand ten gold-pieces. She let them fall to the ground.

"Love is love, effendi," she said. "Money do they give me for what is no
love. She who gives freely for love takes naught in return but love, by
the will of God!" And she laid a hand upon his arm.

"There is work to do!" said Dicky; and his hand dropped to where his
pistol lay--but not to threaten her. He was thinking of others.

"To-morrow," she said; "to-morrow for that, effendi," and her beautiful
eyes hung upon his.

"There's corn in Egypt, but who knows who'll reap it to-morrow? And I
shall be in Cairo to-morrow."

"I also shall be in Cairo to-morrow, O my lord and master!" she answered.

"God give you safe journey," answered Dicky, for he knew it was useless
to argue with a woman. He was wont to say that you can resolve all women
into the same simple elements in the end.

Dicky gave a long perplexed whistle as he ran softly under the palms
towards the Amenhotep, lounging on the mud bank. Then he dismissed the
dancing-girl from his mind, for there was other work to do. How he should
do it he planned as he opened the door of Fielding's cabin softly and saw
him in a deep sleep.

He was about to make haste on deck again, where his own nest was, when,
glancing through the window, he saw Mahommed Ibrahim stealing down the
bank to the boat's side. He softly drew-to the little curtain of the
cabin window, leaving only one small space through which the moonlight
streamed. This ray of light fell just across the door through which
Mahommed Ibrahim would enter. The cabin was a large one, the bed was in
the middle. At the head was a curtain slung to protect the sleeper from
the cold draughts of the night.

Dicky heard a soft footstep in the companionway, then before the door. He
crept behind the curtain. Mahommed Ibrahim was listening without. Now the
door opened very gently, for this careful Orderly had oiled the hinges
that very day. The long flabby face, with the venomous eyes, showed in
the streak of moonlight. Mahommed Ibrahim slid inside, took a step
forward and drew a long knife from his sleeve. Another move towards the
sleeping man, and he was near the bed; another, and he was beside it,
stooping over. . .

Now, a cold pistol suddenly thrust in your face is disconcerting, no
matter how well laid your plans. It was useless for the Orderly to raise
his hand: a bullet is quicker than the muscles of the arm and the stroke
of a knife.

The two stood silent an instant, the sleeping man peaceful between them.
Dicky made a motion of his head towards the door. Mahommed Ibrahim
turned. Dicky did not lower his pistol as the Orderly, obeying, softly
went as he had softly come. Out through the doorway, up the stairs, then
upon the moonlit deck, the cold muzzle of the pistol at the head of
Mahommed Ibrahim.

Dicky turned now, and faced him, the pistol still pointed.

Then Mahommed Ibrahim spoke. "Malaish!" he said. That was contempt. It
was Mahommedan resignation; it was the inevitable. "Malaish--no matter!"
he said again; and "no matter" was in good English.

Dicky's back was to the light, the Orderly's face in the full glow of it.
Dicky was standing beside the wire communicating with the engineer's
cabin. He reached out his hand and pulled the hook. The bell rang below.
The two above stood silent, motionless, the pistol still levelled.

Holgate, the young Yorkshire engineer, pulled himself up to the deck two
steps of the ladder at a time. "Yes, sir," he said, coming forward
quickly, but stopping short when he saw the levelled pistol. "Drop the
knife, Ibrahim," said Dicky in a low voice. The Orderly dropped the
knife.

"Get it, Holgate," said Dicky; and Holgate stooped and picked it up. Then
he told Holgate the story in a few words. The engineer's fingers
tightened on the knife.

"Put it where it will be useful, Holgate," said Dicky. Holgate dropped it
inside his belt.

"Full steam, and turn her nose to Cairo. No time to lose!" He had told
Holgate earlier in the evening to keep up steam.

He could see a crowd slowly gathering under the palm-trees between the
shore and Beni Hassan. They were waiting for Mahommed Ibrahim's signal.

Holgate was below, the sailors were at the cables. "Let go ropes!" Dicky
called.

A minute later the engine was quietly churning away below; two minutes
later the ropes were drawn in; half a minute later still the nose of the
Amenhotep moved in the water. She backed from the Nile mud, lunged free.

"An old man had three sons; one was a thief, another a rogue, and the
worst of the three was a soldier--and he dies first! What have you got to
say before you say your prayers?" said Dicky to the Orderly.

"Mafish!" answered Mahommed Ibrahim, moveless. "Mafish--nothing!" And he
said "nothing" in good English.

"Say your prayers then, Mahommed Ibrahim," said Dicky in that voice like
a girl's; and he backed a little till he rested a shoulder against the
binnacle.

Mahommed Ibrahim turned slightly till his face was towards the east. The
pistol now fell in range with his ear. The Orderly took off his shoes,
and, standing with his face towards the moon, and towards Mecca, he
murmured the fatihah from the Koran. Three times he bowed, afterwards he
knelt and touched the deck with his forehead three times also. Then he
stood up. "Are you ready?" asked Dicky.

"Water!" answered Mahommed Ibrahim in English. Dicky had forgotten that
final act of devotion of the good Mahommedan. There was a filter of
Nile-water near. He had heard it go drip-drip, drip-drip, as Mahommed
Ibrahim prayed.

"Drink," he said, and pointed with his finger. Mahommed Ibrahim took the
little tin cup hanging by the tap, half filled it, drank it off, and
noiselessly put the cup back again. Then he stood with his face towards
the pistol.

"The game is with the English all the time," said Dicky softly.

"Malaish!" said Mahommed. "Jump," said Dicky.

One instant's pause, and then, without a sound, Ibrahim sprang out over
the railing into the hard-running current, and struck out for the shore.
The Amenhotep passed him. He was in the grasp of a whirlpool so strong
that it twisted the Amenhotep in her course. His head spun round like a
water-fly, and out of the range of Dicky's pistol he shrieked to the
crowd on the shore. They burst from the palm-trees and rushed down to the
banks with cries of rage, murder, and death; for now they saw him
fighting for his life. But the Amenhotep's nose was towards Cairo, and
steam was full on, and she was going fast. Holgate below had his men
within range of a pistol too. Dicky looked back at the hopeless fight as
long as he could see.

Down in his cabin Fielding Bey slept peacefully, and dreamed of a woman
in Cairo.

Back to chapter list of: Donovan Pasha and Some People of Egypt