Donovan Pasha, and Some People of Egypt Part 4

It was d.i.c.ky Donovan who cooked Fielding's supper that night, having harried the onion-field and fought the barn-yard fowl, as Fielding had commanded Seti.

But next evening at sunset Mahommed Seti came into the fort, slashed and bleeding, with Bashi-Bazouk limping heavily after him.

Fielding said that Seti's was the good old game for which V.C.'s were the reward--to run terrible risks to save a life in the face of the enemy; but, heretofore, it had always been the life of a man, not of a horse. To this day the Gippies of that regiment still alive do not understand why Seti should have stayed behind and risked his life to save a horse and bring him wounded back to his master. But little d.i.c.ky Donovan understood, and Fielding understood; and Fielding never afterwards mounted Bashi-Bazouk but he remembered. It was Mahommed Seti who taught him the cry of Mahomet:

"By the CHARGERS that pant, And the hoofs that strike fire, And the scourers at dawn, Who stir up the dust with it, And cleave through a host with it!"

And in the course of time Mahommed Seti managed to pay the price of the grindstone and also of the drum.

THE DESERTION OF MAHOMMED SELIM

The business began during Ramadan; how it ended and where was in the mouth of every soldier between Beni Souef and Dongola, and there was not a mud hut or a mosque within thirty miles of Mahommed Selim's home, not a khia.s.sa or felucca dropping anchor for gossip and garlic below the mudirieh, but knew the story of Soada, the daughter of Wa.s.sef the camel-driver.

Soada was pretty and upright, with a full round breast and a slim figure. She carried a bala.s.s of water on her head as gracefully as a princess a tiara. This was remarked by occasional inspectors making their official rounds, and by more than one khowagah putting in with his dahabeah where the village maidens came to fill their water-jars.

Soada's trinkets and bracelets were perhaps no better than those of her companions, but her one garment was of the linen of Beni Mazar, as good as that worn by the Sheikh-Elbeled himself.

Wa.s.sef the camel-driver, being proud of Soada, gave her the advantage of his frequent good fortune in desert loot and Nile backsheesh. But Wa.s.sef was a hard man for all that, and he grew bitter and morose at last, because he saw that camel-driving must suffer by the coming of the railway. Besides, as a man gets older he likes the season of Ramadan less, for he must fast from sunrise to sunset, though his work goes on; and, with broken sleep, having his meals at night, it is ten to one but he gets irritable.

So it happened that one evening just at sunset, Wa.s.sef came to his hut, with the sun like the red rim of a huge thumb-nail in the sky behind him, ready beyond telling for his breakfast, and found nothing. On his way home he had seen before the houses and cafes silent Mussulmans with cigarettes and matches in their fingers, cooks with their hands on the lids of the cooking pots, where the dourha and onions boiled; but here outside his own doorway there was no odour, and there was silence within.

"Now, by the beard of the Prophet," he muttered, "is it for this I have fed the girl and clothed her with linen from Beni Mazar all these years!" And he turned upon his heel, and kicked a yellow cur in the ribs; then he went to the nearest cafe, and making huge rolls of forcemeat with his fingers crammed them into his mouth, grunting like a Berkshire boar. Nor did his anger cease thereafter, for this meal of meat had cost him five piastres--the second meal of meat in a week.

As Wa.s.sef sat on the mastaba of the cafe sullen and angry, the village barber whispered in his ear that Mahommed Selim and Soada had been hunting jackals in the desert all afternoon. Hardly had the barber fled from the anger of Wa.s.sef, when a glittering kava.s.s of the Mouffetish at Cairo pa.s.sed by on a black errand of conscription. With a curse Wa.s.sef felt in his vest for his purse, and called to the kava.s.s--the being more dreaded in Egypt than the plague.

That very night the conscription descended upon Mahommed Selim, and by sunrise he was standing in front of the house of the Mamour with twelve others, to begin the march to Dongola. Though the young man's father went secretly to the Mamour, and offered him backsheesh, even to the tune of a feddan of land, the Mamour refused to accept it. That was a very peculiar thing, because every Egyptian official, from the Khedive down to the ghafhr of the cane-fields, took backsheesh in the name of Allah.

Wa.s.sef the camel-driver was the cause. He was a deep man and a strong; and it was through him the conscription descended upon Mahommed Selim--"son of a burnt father," as he called him--who had gone shooting jackals in the desert with his daughter, and had lost him his breakfast.

Wa.s.sef's rage was quiet but effective, for he had whispered to some purpose in the ear of the Mamour as well as in that of the dreaded kava.s.s of conscription. Afterwards, he had gone home and smiled at Soada his daughter when she lied to him about the sunset breakfast.

With a placid smile and lips that murmured, "Praise be to G.o.d," the malignant camel-driver watched the shrieking women of the village throwing dust on their heads and lamenting loudly for the thirteen young men of Beni Souef who were going forth never to return--or so it seemed to them; for of all the herd of human kine driven into the desert before whips and swords, but a moiety ever returned, and that moiety so battered that their mothers did not know them. Therefore, at Beni Souef that morning women wept, and men looked sullenly upon the ground--all but Wa.s.sef the camel-driver.

It troubled the mind of Wa.s.sef that Mahommed Selim made no outcry at his fate. He was still more puzzled when the Mamour whispered to him that Mahommed Selim had told the kava.s.s and his own father that since it was the will of G.o.d, then the will of G.o.d was his will, and he would go.

Wa.s.sef replied that the Mamour did well not to accept the backsheesh of Mahommed Selim's father, for the Mouffetish at the palace of Ismail would have heard of it, and there would have been an end to the Mamour.

It was quite a different matter when it was backsheesh for sending Mahommed Selim to the Soudan.

With a shameless delight Wa.s.sef went to the door of his own home, and, calling to Soada, told her that Mahommed Selim was among the conscripts.

He also told her that the young man was willing to go, and that the Mamour would take no backsheesh from his father. He looked to see her burst into tears and wailing, but she only stood and looked at him like one stricken blind. Wa.s.sef laughed, and turned on his heel; and went out: for what should he know of the look in a woman's face--he to whom most women were alike, he who had taken dancing-girls with his camels into the desert many a time? What should he know of that love which springs once in every woman's heart, be she fellah or Pharaoh's daughter?

When he had gone, Soada groped her way blindly to the door and out into the roadway. Her lips moved, but she only said: "Mahommed--Mahommed Selim!" Her father's words knelled in her ear that her lover was willing to go, and she kept saying brokenly: "Mahommed--Mahommed Selim!" As the mist left her eyes she saw the conscripts go by, and Mahommed Selim was in the rear rank. He saw her also, but he kept his head turned away, taking a cigarette from young Yusef, the drunken ghaffir, as they pa.s.sed on.

Unlike the manner of her people, Soada turned and went back into her house, and threw herself upon the mud floor, and put the folds of her garment in her mouth lest she should cry out in her agony. A whole day she lay there and did not stir, save to drink from the water-bottle which old Fatima, the maker of mats, had placed by her side. For Fatima thought of the far-off time when she loved Ha.s.san the potter, who had been dragged from his wheel by a kava.s.s of conscription and lost among the sands of the Libyan desert; and she read the girl's story.

That evening, as Wa.s.sef the camel-driver went to the mosque to pray, Fatima cursed him, because now all the village laughed secretly at the revenge that Wa.s.sef had taken upon the lover of his daughter. A few laughed the harder because they knew Wa.s.sef would come to feel it had been better to have chained Mahommed Selim to a barren fig-tree and kept him there until he married Soada, than to let him go. He had mischievously sent him into that furnace which eats the Fellaheen to the bones, and these bones thereafter mark white the road of the Red Sea caravans and the track of the Khedive's soldiers in the yellow sands.

When Fatima cursed Wa.s.sef he turned and spat at her; and she went back and sat on the ground beside Soada, and mumbled tags from the Koran above her for comfort. Then she ate greedily the food which Soada should have eaten; s.n.a.t.c.hing sc.r.a.ps of consolation in return for the sympathy she gave.

The long night went, the next day came, and Soada got up and began to work again. And the months went by.

II

One evening, on a day which had been almost too hot for even the seller of liquorice-water to go by calling and clanging, Wa.s.sef the camel-driver sat at the door of a malodorous cafe and listened to a wandering welee chanting the Koran. Wa.s.sef was in an ill-humour: first, because the day had been so hot; secondly, because he had sold his ten-months' camel at a price almost within the bounds of honesty; and thirdly, because a score of railway contractors and subs. were camped outside the town. Also, Soada had scarcely spoken to him for three days past.

In spite of all, Soada had been the apple of his eye, although he had sworn again and again that next to a firman of the Sultan, a ten-months'

camel was the most beautiful thing on earth. He was in a bitter humour.

This had been an intermittent disease with him almost since the day Mahommed Selim had been swallowed up by the Soudan; for, like her mother before her, Soada had no mind to be a mat for his feet. Was it not even said that Soada's mother was descended from an English slave with red hair, who in the terrible disaster at Damietta in 1805 had been carried away into captivity on the Nile, where he married a fellah woman and died a good Mussulman?

Soada's mother had had red-brown hair, and not black as becomes a fellah woman; but Wa.s.sef was proud of this ancient heritage of red hair, which belonged to a field-marshal of Great Britain--so he swore by the beard of the Prophet. That is why he had not beaten Soada these months past when she refused to answer him, when with cold stubbornness she gave him his meals or withheld them at her will. He was even a little awed by her silent force of will, and at last he had to ask her humbly for a savoury dish which her mother had taught her to make--a dish he always ate upon the birthday of Mahomet Ali, who had done him the honour to flog him with his own kourbash for filching the rations of his Arab charger.

But this particular night Wa.s.sef was bitter, and watched with stolid indifference the going down of the sun, the time when he usually said his prayers. He was in so ill a humour that he would willingly have met his old enemy, Yusef, the drunken ghaffir, and settled their long-standing dispute for ever. But Yusef came not that way. He was lying drunk with hashish outside the mosque El Ha.s.san, with a letter from Mahommed Selim in his green turban--for Yusef had been a pilgrimage to Mecca and might wear the green turban.

But if Yusef came not by the cafe where Wa.s.sef sat glooming, some one else came who quickly roused Wa.s.sef from his phlegm. It was Donovan Pasha, the young English official, who had sat with him many a time at the door of his but and asked him questions about Dongola and Berber and the Soudanese. And because d.i.c.ky spoke Arabic, and was never known to have aught to do with the women of Beni Souef, he had been welcome; and none the less because he never frowned when an Arab told a lie.

"Nehar-ak koom said, Mahommed Wa.s.sef," said d.i.c.ky; and sat upon a bench and drew a narghileh to him, wiping the ivory mouthpiece with his handkerchief.

"Nehar-ak said, saadat el Pasha," answered Wa.s.sef, and touched lips, breast, and forehead with his hand. Then they shook hands, thumbs up, after the ancient custom. And once more, Wa.s.sef touched his breast, his lips, and his forehead.

They sat silent too long for Wa.s.sef's pleasure, for he took pride in what he was pleased to call his friendship with Donovan Pasha, and he could see his watchful neighbours gathering at a little distance. It did not suit his book that they two should not talk together.

"May Allah take them to his mercy!--A regiment was cut to pieces by the Dervishes at Dongola last quarter of the moon," he said.

"It was not the regiment of Mahommed Selim," d.i.c.ky answered slowly, with a curious hard note in his voice.

"All blessings do not come at once--such is the will of G.o.d!" answered Wa.s.sef with a sneer.

"You brother of a.s.ses," said d.i.c.ky, showing his teeth a little, "you brother of a.s.ses of Bagdad!"

"Saadat el basha!" exclaimed Wa.s.sef, angry and dumfounded.

"You had better have gone yourself, and left Mahommed Selim your camels and your daughter," continued d.i.c.ky, his eyes straight upon Wa.s.sef's.

"G.o.d knows your meaning," said Wa.s.sef in a sudden fright; for the Englishman's tongue was straight, as he well knew.

"They sneer at you behind your back, Mahommed Wa.s.sef. No man in the village dare tell you, for you have no friends, but I tell you, that you may save Soada before it is too late. Mahommed Selim lives; or lived last quarter of the moon, so says Yusef the ghaffir. Sell your ten-months' camel, buy the lad out, and bring him back to Soada."

"Saadat!" said Wa.s.sef, in a quick fear, and dropped the stem of the narghileh, and got to his feet. "Saadat el basha!"

"Before the Nile falls and you may plant yonder field with onions,"

answered d.i.c.ky, jerking his head towards the flooded valley, "her time will be come!"

Wa.s.sef's lips were drawn, like shrivelled parchment over his red gums, the fingers of his right hand fumbled in his robe.

"There's no one to kill--keep quiet!" said d.i.c.ky, But Wa.s.sef saw near by the faces of the villagers, and on every face he thought he read a smile, a sneer; though in truth none sneered, for they were afraid of his terrible anger. Mad with fury he s.n.a.t.c.hed the turban from his head and threw it on the ground. Then suddenly he gave one cry, "Allah!" a vibrant clack like a pistol-shot, for he saw Yusef, the drunken ghaffir, coming down the road.

Yusef heard that cry of "Allah!" and he knew that the hour had come for settling old scores. The hashish clouds lifted from his brain, and he gripped his naboot of the hard wood of the dom-palm, and, with a cry like a wolf, came on.