Donovan Pasha and Some People of Egypt: 8. At the Mercy of Tiberius

8. At the Mercy of Tiberius

In a certain year when Dicky Donovan was the one being in Egypt who had
any restraining influence on the Khedive, he suddenly asked leave of
absence to visit England. Ismail granted it with reluctance, chiefly
because he disliked any interference with his comforts, and Dicky was one
of them--in some respects the most important.

"My friend," he said half petulantly to Dicky, as he tossed the plans for
a new palace to his secretary and dismissed him, are you not happy here?
Have you not all a prince can give?"

"Highness," answered Dicky, "I have kith and kin in England. Shall a man
forget his native land?" The Khedive yawned, lighted a cigarette, and
murmured through the smoke: "Inshallah! It might be pleasant--betimes."

"I have your Highness's leave to go?" asked Dicky. "May God preserve your
head from harm!" answered Ismail in farewell salutation, and, taking a
ring from his finger set with a large emerald, he gave it to Dicky. "Gold
is scarce in Egypt," he went on, "but there are jewels still in the
palace--and the Khedive's promises-to-pay with every money-barber of
Europe!" he added, with a cynical sneer, and touched his forehead and his
breast courteously as Dicky retired.

Outside the presence Dicky unbuttoned his coat like an Englishman again,
and ten minutes later flung his tarboosh into a corner of the room; for
the tarboosh was the sign of official servitude, and Dicky was never the
perfect official. Initiative was his strong point, independence his life;
he loathed the machine of system in so far as he could not command it; he
revolted at being a cog in the wheel. Ismail had discovered this, and
Dicky had been made a kind of confidential secretary who seldom wrote a
line. By his influence with Ismail he had even more power at last than
the Chief Eunuch or the valet-de-chambre, before whom the highest
officials bowed low. He was hated profoundly by many of the household,
cultivated by certain of the Ministers, fawned upon by outsiders, trusted
by the Khedive, and entirely believed in by the few Englishmen and
Frenchmen who worked for decent administration faithfully but without
hope and sometimes with nausea.

It was nausea that had seized upon Dicky at last, nausea and one other
thing--the spirit of adventure, an inveterate curiosity. His was the
instinct of the explorer, his feet were the feet of the Wandering Jew. He
knew things behind closed doors by instinct; he was like a thought-reader
in the sure touch of discovery; the Khedive looked upon him as occult
almost and laughed in the face of Sadik the Mouffetish when he said some
evil things of Dicky. Also, the Khedive told the Mouffetish that if any
harm came to Dicky there would come harm to him. The Khedive loved to
play one man off against another, and the death of Sadik or the death of
Dicky would have given him no pain, if either seemed necessary. For the
moment, however, he loved them both after his fashion; for Sadik lied to
him, and squeezed the land dry, and flailed it with kourbashes for gold
for his august master and himself; and Dicky told him the truth about
everything--which gave the Khedive knowledge of how he really stood all
round.

Dicky told the great spendthrift the truth about himself; but he did not
tell the truth when he said he was going to England on a visit to his
kith and kin. Seized by the most irresistible curiosity of his life,
moved by desire for knowledge, that a certain plan in his mind might be
successfully advanced he went south and east, not west and north.

For four months Egypt knew him not. For four months the Khedive was never
told the truth save by European financiers, when truths were obvious
facts; for four long months never saw a fearless or an honest eye in his
own household. Not that it mattered in one sense; but Ismail was a man of
ideas, a sportsman of a sort, an Iniquity with points; a man who chose
the broad way because it was easier, not because he was remorseless. At
the start he meant well by his people, but he meant better by himself;
and not being able to satisfy both sides of the equation, he satisfied
one at the expense of the other and of that x quantity otherwise known as
Europe. Now Europe was heckling him; the settling of accounts was near.
Commissioners had been sent to find where were the ninety millions he had
borrowed. Only Ismail and Sadik the Mouffetish, once slave and
foster-brother, could reply. The Khedive could not long stave off the
evil day when he must "pay the debt of the lobster," and Sadik give
account of his stewardship. Meanwhile, his mind turned to the resourceful
little Englishman with the face of a girl and the tongue of an honest
man.

But the day Dicky had set for his return had come and gone, and Dicky
himself had not appeared. With a grim sort of satisfaction, harmonious
with his irritation, Ismail went forth with his retinue to the Dosah, the
gruesome celebration of the Prophet's birthday, following on the return
of the pilgrimage from Mecca. At noon he entered his splendid tent at one
side of a square made of splendid tents, and looked out listlessly, yet
sourly, upon the vast crowds assembled--upon the lines of banners, the
red and green pennons embroidered with phrases from the Koran. His
half-shut, stormy eyes fell upon the tent of the chief of the dervishes,
and he scarcely checked a sneer, for the ceremony to be performed
appealed to nothing in him save a barbaric instinct, and this barbaric
instinct had been veneered by French civilisation and pierced by the
criticism of one honest man. His look fell upon the long pathway whereon,
for three hundred yards, matting had been spread. It was a field of the
cloth of blood; for on this cloth dervishes returned from Mecca, mad with
fanaticism and hashish, would lie packed like herrings, while the Sheikh
of the Dosah rode his horse over their bodies, a pavement of human flesh
and bone.

As the Khedive looked, his lip curled a little, for he recalled what
Dicky Donovan had said about it; how he had pleaded against it,
describing loathsome wounds and pilgrims done to death. Dicky had ended
his brief homily by saying: "And isn't that a pretty dish to set before a
king!" to Ismail's amusement; for he was no good Mussulman, no Mussulman
at all, in fact, save in occasional violent prejudices got of inheritance
and association.

To-day, however, Ismail was in a bad humour with Dicky and with the
world. He had that very morning flogged a soldier senseless with his own
hand; he had handed over his favourite Circassian slave to a ruffian Bey,
who would drown her or sell her within a month; and he had dishonoured
his own note of hand for fifty thousand pounds to a great merchant who
had served him not wisely but too well. He was not taking his troubles
quietly, and woe be to the man or woman who crossed him this day!
Tiberius was an hungered for a victim to his temper. His entourage knew
it well, and many a man trembled that day for his place, or his head, or
his home. Even Sadik the Mouffetish--Sadik, who had four hundred women
slaves dressed in purple and fine linen--Sadik, whose kitchen alone cost
him sixty thousand pounds a year, the price of whose cigarette ash-trays
was equal to the salary of an English consul--even Sadik, foster-brother,
panderer, the Barabbas of his master, was silent and watchful to-day.

And Sadik, silent and watchful and fearful, was also a dangerous man. As
Sadik's look wandered over the packed crowds, his faded eyes scarce
realising the bright-coloured garments of the men, the crimson silk tents
and banners and pennons, the gorgeous canopies and trappings and plumes
of the approaching dervishes, led by the Amir-el-Haj or Prince of the
Pilgrims, returned from Mecca, he wondered what lamb for the sacrifice
might be provided to soothe the mind of his master. He looked at the
matting in the long lane before them, and he knew that the bodies which
would lie here presently, yielding to the hoofs of the Sheikh's horse,
were not sufficient to appease the rabid spirit tearing at the Khedive's
soul. He himself had been flouted by one ugly look this morning, and one
from Ismail was enough.

It did his own soul good now to see the dervish fanatics foaming at the
mouth, their eyes rolling, as they crushed glass in their mouths and ate
it, as they swallowed fire, as they tore live serpents to pieces with
their teeth and devoured them, as they thrust daggers and spikes of steel
through their cheeks, and gashed their breasts with knives and swords. He
watched the effect of it on the Khedive; but Ismail had seen all this
before, and he took it in the stride. This was not sufficient.

Sadik racked his brain to think who in the palace or in official life
might be made the scapegoat, upon whom the dark spirit in the heart of
the Khedive might be turned. His mean, colourless eyes wandered
inquiringly over the crowd, as the mad dervishes, half-naked, some with
masses of dishevelled hair, some with no hair at all, bleached, haggard,
moaning and shrieking, threw themselves to the ground on the matting,
while attendants pulled off their slippers and placed them under their
heads, which lay face downwards. At last Sadik's eyes were arrested by a
group of ten dervishes, among them one short in stature and very slight,
whose gestures were not so excited as those of his fellows. He also saw
that one or two of the dervishes watched the slight man covertly.

Five of the little group suddenly threw themselves upon the matting,
adding their bodies to the highway of bones and flesh. Then another and
another did the same, leaving three who, with the little man, made a
fanatical chorus. Now the three near the little man began to cut
themselves with steel and knives, and one set fire to his jibbeh and
began to chew the flames. Yet the faces of all three were turned towards
the little man, who did no more than shriek and gesticulate and sway his
body wildly up and down. He was tanned and ragged and bearded and thin,
and there was a weird brilliance in his eyes, which watched his
companions closely.

So fierce and frenzied were the actions of those with him, that the
attention of the Khedive was drawn; and Sadik, looking at his master, saw
that his eyes also were intently fixed on the little man. At that instant
the little man himself caught the eye of the Khedive, and Ismail
involuntarily dropped a hand upon his sword, for some gesture of this
dervish, some familiar turn of his body, startled him. Where had he seen
the gesture before? Who was this pilgrim who did not cut and wound
himself like his companions? Suddenly the three mad dervishes waved their
hands towards the matting and shrieked something into his ear. The little
man's eyes shot a look at the Khedive. Ismail's ferret eye fastened on
him, and a quick fear as of assassination crossed his face as the small
dervish ran forward with the other three to the lane of human flesh,
where there was still a gap to be filled, and the cry rose up that the
Sheikh of the Dosah had left his tent and was about to begin his direful
ride.

Sadik the Mouffetish saw the Khedive's face, and suddenly said in his
ear: "Shall my slave seize him, Highness whom God preserve?"

The Khedive did not reply, for at that moment he recognised the dervish;
and now he understood that Dicky Donovan had made the pilgrimage to Mecca
with the Mahmal caravan; that an infidel had desecrated the holy city;
and that his Englishman had lied to him. His first impulse was to have
Dicky seized and cast to the crowd, to be torn to pieces. Dicky's eyes
met his without wavering--a desperate yet resolute look--and Ismail knew
that the little man would sell his life dearly, if he had but half a
chance. He also saw in Dicky's eyes the old honesty, the fearless
straightforwardness--and an appeal too, not humble, but still eager and
downright. Ismail's fury was great, for the blue devils had him by the
heels that day; but on the instant he saw the eyes of Sadik the
Mouffetish, and their cunning, cruelty, and soulless depravity, their
present search for a victim to his master's bad temper, acted at once on
Ismail's sense of humour. He saw that Sadik half suspected something, he
saw that Dicky's three companions suspected, and his mind was made up on
the instant--things should take their course--he would not interfere. He
looked Dicky squarely in the face, and Dicky knew that the Khedive's
glance said as plainly as words:

"Fool of an Englishman, go on! I will not kill you, but I will not save
you. The game is in your hands alone. You can only avert suspicion by
letting the Sheikh of the Dosah make a bridge of your back. Mecca is a
jest you must pay for."

With the wild cry of a dervish fanatic Dicky threw himself down, his head
on his arms, and the vengeful three threw themselves down beside him. The
attendants pulled off their slippers and thrust them under their faces,
and now the siais of the Sheikh ran over their bodies lightly, calling
out for all to lie still--the Sheikh was coming on his horse.

Dicky weighed his chances with a little shrinking, but with no fear: he
had been in imminent danger for four long months, and he was little
likely to give way now. The three men lying beside him had only suspected
him for the last three days, and during that time they had never let him
out of heir sight. What had roused their suspicion he did not know:
probably a hesitation concerning some Arab custom or the pronunciation of
some Arab word--the timbre of the Arab voice was rougher and heavier.
There had been no chance of escape during these three days, for his three
friends had never left his side, and now they were beside him. His
chances were not brilliant. If he escaped from the iron hoofs of the
Sheikh's horse, if the weight did not crush the life out of his small
body, there was a fair chance; for to escape unhurt from the Dosah is to
prove yourself for ever a good Mussulman, who has undergone the final
test and is saved evermore by the promise of the Prophet. But even if he
escaped unhurt, and the suspicions of his comrades were allayed, what
would the Khedive do? The Khedive had recognised him, and had done
nothing--so far. Yet Ismail, the chief Mussulman in Egypt, should have
thrown him like a rat to the terriers! Why he had acted otherwise he was
not certain: perhaps to avoid a horrible sensation at the Dosah and the
outcry of the newspapers of Europe; perhaps to have him assassinated
privately; perhaps, after all, to pardon him. Yet this last alternative
was not reasonable, save from the stand-point that Ismail had no religion
at all.

Whatever it was to be, his fate would soon come, and in any case he had
done what only one European before him had done--he had penetrated to the
tomb of Mahomet at Mecca. Whatever should come, he had crowded into his
short life a thousand unusual and interesting things. His inveterate
curiosity had served him well, and he had paid fairly for the candles of
his game. He was ready.

Low moans came to his ears. He could hear the treading hoofs of the
Sheikh's horse. Nearer and nearer the frightened animal came; the shout
of those who led the horse was in his ears: "Lie close and still, O
brothers of giants!" he heard the ribs of a man but two from him break-he
heard the gurgle in the throat of another into whose neck the horse's
hoof had sunk. He braced himself and drew his breast close to the ground.

He could hear now the heavy breathing of the Sheikh of the Dosah, who, to
strengthen himself for his ride, had taken a heavy dose of hashish. The
toe of the Arab leading the horse touched his head, then a hoof was on
him--between the shoulders, pressing-pressing down, the iron crushing
into the flesh--down--down--down, till his eyes seemed to fill with
blood. Then another hoof--and this would crush the life out of him. He
gasped, and nerved himself. The iron shoe came down, slipped a little,
grazed his side roughly, and sank between himself and the dervish next
him, who had shrunk away at the last moment.

A mad act; for the horse stumbled, and in recovering himself plunged
forward heavily. Dicky expected the hind hoofs to crush down on his back
or neck, and drew in his breath; but the horse, excited by the cries of
the people, drove clear of him, and the hind hoofs fell with a sickening
thud on the back and neck of the dervish who had been the cause of the
disaster.

Dicky lay still for a moment to get his breath, then sprang to his feet
lightly, cast a swift glance of triumph towards the Khedive, and turned
to the dervishes who had lain beside him. The man who had shrunk away
from the horse's hoofs was dead, the one on the other side was badly
wounded, and the last, bruised and dazed, got slowly to his feet.

"God is great," said Dicky to him: "I have no hurt, Mahommed."

"It is the will of God. Extolled be Him who created thee!" answered the
dervish, all suspicion gone, and admiration in his eyes, as Dicky cried
his Allah Kerim--"God is bountiful!"

A kavass touched Dicky on the arm.

"His Highness would speak with you," he said. Dicky gladly turned his
back on the long lane of frantic immolation and the sight of the wounded
and dead being carried away. Coming over to the Khedive he salaamed, and
kneeling on the ground touched the toe of Ismail's boot with his
forehead.

Ismail smiled, and his eyes dropped with satisfaction upon the prostrate
Dicky. Never before had an Englishman done this, and that Dicky, of all
Englishmen, should do it gave him an ironical pleasure which chased his
black humour away.

"It is written that the true believer shall come unscathed from the hoofs
of the horse. Thou hast no hurt, Mahommed?"

"None, Highness, whose life God preserve," said Dicky in faultless
Arabic, with the eyes of Sadik upon him searching his mystery.

"May the dogs bite the heart of thine enemies! What is thy name?" said
Ismail.

"Rekab, so God wills, Highness."

"Thine occupation?"

"I am a poor scribe, Highness," answered Dicky with a dangerous humour,
though he had seen a look in the Khedive's face which boded only safety.

"I have need of scribes. Get you to the Palace of Abdin, and wait upon me
at sunset after prayers," said Ismail.

"I am the slave of your Highness. Peace be on thee, O Prince of the
Faithful!"

"A moment, Mahommed. Hast thou wife or child?"

"None, Highness."

"Nor kith nor kin?" Ismail's smile was grim.

"They be far away, beyond the blessed rule of your Highness."

"Thou wilt desire to return to them. How long wilt thou serve me?" asked
Ismail slowly.

"Till the two Karadh-gatherers return," answered Dicky, quoting the old
Arabic saying which means for ever, since the two Karadh-gatherers who
went to gather the fruit of the sant and the leaves of the selem never
returned.

"So be it," said the Khedive, and, rising, waved Dicky away. "At sunset!"

"At sunset after prayers, Highness," answered Dicky, and was instantly
lost in the throng which now crowded upon the tent to see the Sheikh of
the Dosah arrive to make obeisance to Ismail.

That night at sunset, Dicky, 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 Dicky. "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 Dicky.

"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 Dicky a cigarette.

......................

When Dicky 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.

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