Donovan Pasha, and Some People of Egypt Part 8

As the day wore on, however, his spirits fell, for on every hand was suspicion, unrest, and opposition, and his native a.s.sistants went sluggishly about their work. It was pathetic and disheartening to see people refusing to be protected, the sick refusing to be relieved, all stricken with fear, yet inviting death by disobeying the Inglesi.

Kalamoun was hopeless; yet twenty-four hours earlier Fielding had fancied there was a little light in the darkness. That night Fielding's music gave him but two hours' sleep, and he had to begin the day on a brandy-and-soda. Wherever he went open resistance blocked his way, hisses and mutterings followed him, the sick were hid in all sorts of places, and two of his a.s.sistants deserted before noon. Things looked ominous enough, and at five o'clock he made up his mind that Egypt would be overrun with cholera, and that he should probably have to defend himself and the Amenhotep from rioters, for the native police would be useless.

But at five o'clock d.i.c.ky Donovan came in a boat, and with him Mustapha Kali under a native guard of four men. The Mudir's sense of humour had been touched, and this sense of humour probably saved the Mudir from trouble, for it played d.i.c.ky's game for him.

Mustapha Kali had been sentenced to serve in the Cholera Hospital of Kalamoun, that he might be cured of his unbelief. At first he had taken his fate hardly, but d.i.c.ky had taunted him and then had suggested that a man whose conscience was clear and convictions good would carry a high head in trouble. d.i.c.ky challenged him to prove his libels by probing the business to the bottom, like a true scientist. All the way from Abdallah d.i.c.ky talked to him so, and at last the only answer Mustapha Kali would make was, "Malaish no matter!"

Mustapha Kali p.r.i.c.ked up his ears with hope as he saw the sullen crowds from Kalamoun gathering on the sh.o.r.e to watch his deportation to the Cholera Hospital; and, as he stepped from the khia.s.sa, he called out loudly:

"They are all dogs and sons of dogs, and dogs were their grandsires. No good is in a dog the offspring of a dog. Whenever these dogs scratch the ground the dust of poison is in the air, and we die."

"You are impolite, Mustapha Kali," said d.i.c.ky coolly, and offered him a cigarette.

The next three days were the darkest in d.i.c.ky Donovan's career. On the first day there came word that Norman, overwrought, had shot himself. On the next, Mustapha Kali in a fit of anger threw a native policeman into the river, and when his head appeared struck it with a barge-pole, and the man sank to rise no more. The three remaining policemen, two of whom were Soudanese, and true to d.i.c.ky, bound him and shut him up in a hut.

When that evening Fielding refused to play, d.i.c.ky knew that Norman's fate had taken hold of him, and that he must watch his friend every minute--that awful vigilance which kills the watcher in the end. d.i.c.ky said to himself more than once that day:

"Christ save us all from a death like this, On the reef of Norman's woe!"

But it was not d.i.c.ky who saved Fielding. On the third day the long-deferred riot broke out. The Copt and the Arab had spread the report that Fielding brought death to the villages by moving the little flags on his map. The populace rose.

Fielding was busy with the map at the dreaded moment that hundreds of the villagers appeared upon the bank and rushed the Amenhotep. Fielding and d.i.c.ky were both armed, but Fielding would not fire until he saw that his own crew had joined the rioters on the bank. Then, amid a shower of missiles, he shot the Arab who had first spread the report about the map and the flags.

Now d.i.c.ky and he were joined by Holgate, the Yorkshire engineer of the Amenhotep, and together the three tried to hold the boat. Every native had left them. They were obliged to retreat aft to the deckcabin.

Placing their backs against it, they prepared to die hard. No one could reach them from behind, at least.

It was an unequal fight. All three had received slight wounds, but the blood-letting did them all good. Fielding was once more himself; nervous anxiety, unrest, had gone from him. He was as cool as a cuc.u.mber. He would not go shipwreck now "on the reef of Norman's woe." Here was a better sort of death. No men ever faced it with quieter minds than did the three. Every instant brought it nearer.

All at once there was a cry and a stampede in the rear of the attacking natives. The crowd suddenly parted like two waves, and retreated; and Mustapha Kali, almost naked, and supported by a stolid Soudanese, stood before the three. He was pallid, his hands and brow were dripping sweat, and there was a look of death in his eyes.

"I have cholera, effendi!" he cried. "Take me to Abdallah to die, that I may be buried with my people and from mine own house."

"Is it not poison?" asked Fielding grimly, yet seeing now a ray of hope in the sickening business.

"It is cholera, effendi. Take me home to die."

"Very well. Tell the people so, and I will take you home, and I will bury you with your fathers," said Fielding.

Mustapha Kali turned slowly. "I am sick of cholera," he said as loudly as he could to the awe-stricken crowd. "May G.o.d not cool my resting-place if it be not so!"

"Tell the people to go to their homes and obey us," said d.i.c.ky, putting away his pistol.

"These be good men, I have seen with mine own eyes," said Mustapha hoa.r.s.ely to the crowd. "It is for your good they do all. Have I not seen? Let G.o.d fill both my hands with dust if it be not so! G.o.d hath stricken me, and behold I give myself into the hands of the Inglesi, for I believe!"

He would have fallen to the ground, but d.i.c.ky and the Soudanese caught him and carried him down to the bank, while the crowd scuttled from the boat, and Fielding made ready to bear the dying man to Abdallah--a race against death.

Fielding brought Mustapha Kali to Abdallah in time to die there, and buried him with his fathers; and d.i.c.ky stayed behind to cleanse Kalamoun with perchloride and limewash.

The story went abroad and travelled fast, and the words of Mustapha Kali, oft repeated, became as the speech of a holy man; and the people no longer hid their dead, but brought them to the Amenhotep.

This was the beginning of better things; the disease was stayed.

And for all the things that these men did--Fielding Bey and Donovan Pasha--they got naught but an Egyptian ribbon to wear on the breast and a laboured censure from the Administration for overrunning the budget allowance.

d.i.c.ky, however, seemed satisfied, for Fielding's little barque of life had not gone down "On the reef of Norman's woe." Mrs. Henshaw felt so also when she was told all, and she disconcerted d.i.c.ky by bursting into tears.

"Why those tears?" said d.i.c.ky to Fielding afterwards; "I wasn't eloquent."

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 d.i.c.ky Donovan said it was something else, and he kept his eye upon Ibrahim. And d.i.c.ky, 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 d.i.c.ky 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 d.i.c.ky 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 d.i.c.ky. But he made the Gippy say: "Good-morning, kind sir," over and over again. Now, it was a peculiar thing that Ibrahim's p.r.o.nunciation 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, d.i.c.ky gave him other words and phrases to say, and practice made Ibrahim more perfect in error.

d.i.c.ky 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 d.i.c.ky'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 d.i.c.ky asked him if he knew what an old man was, and Ibrahim said no. d.i.c.ky 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 d.i.c.ky 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 Ha.s.san. Of all the villages of Upper Egypt, from the time of Rameses, none has been so bad as Beni Ha.s.san.

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 Ha.s.san intervened. The little man who worried Ibrahim urged him the way his private inclinations ran, but he was obdurate: duty must be done.

d.i.c.ky 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 d.i.c.ky, 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 chastis.e.m.e.nt 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, d.i.c.ky 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.