The Story of General Gordon Part 5

Three or four of the boys who stayed with him got scarlet fever, and far into the night he would sit with them, telling them stories, and soothing them until they stopped tossing about and fell asleep.

At first, when he came to Gravesend, he clothed two or three boys in the year. But it was not long before he gave away, each year, several hundreds of suits, and had to buy boys' boots by the gross.

All this came out of his pay. Gordon was always well-dressed, well-groomed, and looked like an officer and a gentleman, but upon himself he spent next to nothing.

His food was of the plainest, and sometimes of the scantiest. He would tell, with a twinkle in his eye, what a surprise it was to the boys who came to stay with him, expecting to be fed with all sorts of dainties, to find that salt beef, and just what other things were necessary, was what the Colonel had to eat.

Constantly his purse and pockets were empty, for scarcely ever did any one come to Gordon for help without getting it, and Gordon had no money save his pay as a colonel.

Often he had disappointments. There were people who were mean enough to deceive him, and people with no grat.i.tude in their hearts.

One boy he found starving, in rags, and miserably ill. He fed him, clothed him, had him doctored and nursed, and, when he was well, sent him back to his parents in Norfolk. But neither boy nor parents ever sent him one line of thanks.

Another starving, ragged boy he took into his house. He fed, clothed, and taught him, and at last found him a good place on a ship, and sent him to sea. Three times did this little scamp run away from the ship, and turn up filthy, starving, and in rags. The third time Gordon found him in the evening lurking at the door, half dead with hunger and cold.

The boy was much too dirty to be brought into the house with other boys, and Gordon looked at him for a minute in silence. He then led him to the stable, gave him a heap of clean straw in an empty stall to sleep on, and some bread and milk for supper. Early next morning Gordon appeared with soap, towels, a brush, a sponge, and a fresh suit of clothes. He poured a bucket of hot water into the horse trough, and himself gave him a thorough scrubbing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Gordon appeared with soap, towels, a brush, a sponge, and a fresh suit of clothes]

We do not know what afterwards became of the boy. It would be nice to think that he was the unknown man who came to the house of Sir Henry Gordon, when the news of General Gordon's death was heard, and wished to give 25 towards a memorial to him. "All my success and prosperity I owe to the Colonel," he said.

There were many boys--there are many men now--with good cause for saying from their hearts, "_G.o.d bless the Colonel._"

A boy, who worked in a shop, stole some money from his master, who was very angry, and said he would have him put in prison. The boy's mother, in a terrible state of grief, came to Gordon and begged him to help her. Gordon went to the boy's master, and persuaded him to let the boy off. He then sent the little lad to school for twelve months, and afterwards found him a berth at sea. The boy has grown up into an honest, good man. "G.o.d bless the Colonel," he, too, can say.

Two afternoons a week Gordon went to the infirmary, to cheer up the sick people there. And in all parts of Gravesend he would find out old and bedridden men and women, sit with them, cheer them up with tales of his days in Russia and China, and make them feel less lonely and less sad. "He always had handy a bit o' baccy for the old men, and a screw o' tea for the old women," it was said.

One poor, sick old woman was told by the doctor that she must have some dainties and some wine, which she had no money to buy. But each day a good fairy brought them to her, and the good fairy was Colonel Gordon.

A sick man, who lay fretting in bed, feeling there was nothing to do, nothing to interest him, found each day a _Daily News_ left at his door. Again the good fairy was Colonel Gordon.

A big, rough waterman, tossing about in bed with an aching, parched throat, and in a burning fever, also knew the good fairy. Night after night the Colonel sat by his bed, tending him as gently as the gentlest nurse, and placing cool grapes in his parched mouth.

In the Colonel's big, old-fashioned garden, with its trim borders of boxwood, one would find on summer days the old and the halt sunning themselves. Many nice flowers and vegetables were grown in the garden, but they did not belong to him. He allowed some of his poor people to plant and sow there what vegetables they chose, and then to make money for themselves by selling them.

Presents of fruit and flowers sent to him at once found their way to the hospital or to the workhouse. People saw that it was no use ever to give Gordon any presents, because they at once went to those who needed the things more than he did.

To the poor he gave pensions of so much a week--from 1s. to 1. Some of these pensions were still kept up and paid to the day of his death, thirteen years later.

He was always tender-hearted, always merciful, and he _always_ forgave.

A soldier got tipsy, and stole five valuable patent locks. Gordon asked the manager of the works from which they had been taken what he meant to do.

"The carpenters were to blame for leaving the locks about, so I am going to let the soldier off," said the manager.

"Thank you, thank you," said Gordon, as eagerly as if he himself had been the thief. "That is what I should have done myself."

One day a woman called on him and told him a piteous story. He left the room to get her half-a-sovereign, and while he was gone she stole his overcoat, and hid it under her skirt. When he came back with the money, she thanked him again and again, and went away. As she walked along the street, the overcoat--a brown one--slipped down. A policeman noticed it, and asked her what it meant. The woman, too frightened to tell a lie, said she had stolen it from "the Kernel." Back to Gordon's house the policeman marched her. The coat was shown to Gordon, and the policeman asked him to charge the woman with the theft, and have her put in prison. But this Gordon refused to do. He was really far more distressed than was the thief herself. At last, his eyes twinkling, he turned to the woman.

"You wanted it, I suppose?" he asked.

"Yes," said the surprised woman.

"There, there, take her away and send her about her business," he said to the policeman, and the policeman could only obey.

The gold medal which the Empress of China had had made for him mysteriously disappeared, no one could tell how or where. Years afterwards, by accident, it was found that Gordon had had the inscription taken off it, and had sent it anonymously to Manchester, to help to buy food for the people who were starving there because of the Cotton Famine. It cost him so much to give it up that often, when he meant that others should give up something that was to cost them a very great deal, he would say, "You must give up your medal."

"In slums, hospitals, and workhouse, or knee-deep in the river at work upon the Thames defence," so he spent the six happiest years of his life.

In 1871, to the deep sorrow of all Gravesend, he was made British Commissioner to the European Commission of the Danube, where he had done good work fifteen years earlier.

To his "Kings" at the Ragged Schools he left a number of magnificent Chinese flags, trophies of his victories in China. They are still carried aloft every year at school treats, and the name of their giver is cheered until the echoes ring and voices grow hoa.r.s.e.

To the people of Gravesend, and to people of all lands who hear the story of those six years, he left the memory of a man whose charity was perfect, whose mercy was without limit, and whose faith in the G.o.d he served was never-failing.

CHAPTER V

GORDON AND THE SLAVERS

Gordon went to his work on the Danube on 1st October 1871, and remained there until 1873.

On his return to England then, his short visit was a sad one. While he was home his mother became paralysed, and no longer knew the son she loved so much; and the death took place of his youngest brother, who had shared his pranks in the long-ago happy days at Woolwich.

In the same year the Khedive of Egypt asked Gordon to come, at a salary of 10,000 a year, to be Governor of the tribes on the Upper Nile.

Gordon accepted the post, but would not take more than 2000 a year.

He wished, he said, "to show the Khedive and his people that gold and silver idols are not worshipped by all the world." He knew that the money was wrung from the poor people of Egypt and that some of it was the price of slaves, and he could not bear to enrich himself with money so gained.

The Soudan, or Country of the Blacks, which was now to be the scene of Gordon's work, is one of the dreariest parts of Africa.

In years not so long ago, the Egyptians had nothing to do with it. For between Egypt and the Black People's country lay hundreds of miles of sandy desert--desolate, lonely, without water. Behind its rocks the wild desert tribes could hide, to surprise and murder peaceful traders who tried to bring their camel caravans across the waste of sand. And when the desert was crossed and the Soudan reached, the country was not one to love or to long for.

A wretched, dry land is the Soudan, a land across which hot winds sweep, like blasts from a furnace, driving the sand before them. The Nile wanders through it, but in the Soudan there is none of the green and pleasant river country that we know, who know the Thames and the Tweed, the Hudson or St. Lawrence.

There is never a fresh leaf, never a blade of gra.s.s. The hills are bare slopes, the valleys strewn with sand and stones. Tufts of rough yellow gra.s.s and stunted grey bushes, a ma.s.s of thorns, grow here and there on the yellow sand. The mimosa trees, sapless and dry, are thick with thorns. The palms, called dom-palms, grow fruit like wood. The Sodom apples, that look like real fruit, are poisonous and horrible to the taste.

Tarantulas, scorpions, serpents, white ants, mosquitoes, and every kind of loathsome creature that flies and crawls is to be found there.

When men are toiling through that land, dust in their throats, sand in their eyes, and longing with all their hearts for the sight of something green, and the touch and taste of fresh, cool, sparkling water, sometimes they see a great wonder.

In front of them suddenly appears a lake or river, sparkling and shimmering. There is green gra.s.s at the water-side. White-winged birds float on it, and trees dip their leafy branches into its coolness. Sometimes great palaces and towers overlook it. Sometimes it seems a lonely spot, quiet and peaceful, and delicious for the weary wanderers to rest at.

English soldiers have often started off running with their empty water-bottles to fill them in that lake or river. Many, many travellers have hastened towards it when they knew that they must have water or die. But ever the mirage, as it is called, retreats before them. That water is like magic water that no human being can ever drink. The palaces and towers are like fairy palaces and towers into which no real person ever enters. The green leaves and white birds, the trees and the gra.s.s, are only a picture that the sun and the desert make to madden thirst-parched men.

"When Allah made the Soudan," say the Arabs, "he laughed."

European traders were amongst the first to open a way into the Soudan.