The Weavers Part 20

Diamond-dust in his coffee? To be dropped into the Nile like a dog?

To be smothered in his sleep?--For who could be trusted among all his slaves and retainers when it was known he was disgraced, and that the Prince Pasha would be happier if Harrik were quiet for ever?

Mechanically he drew out his watch and looked at it. It was nine o'clock. In three hours more would have fallen the coup. But from this man's words he knew that the stroke was now with the Prince Pasha.

Yet, if this pale Inglesi, this Christian sorcerer, knew the truth in a vision only, and had not declared it to Kaid, there might still be a chance of escape. The lions were near--it would be a joy to give a Christian to the lions to celebrate the capture of Cairo and the throne.

He listened intently to the distant rumble of the lions. There was one cage dedicated to vengeance. Five human beings on whom his terrible anger fell in times past had been thrust into it alive. Two were slaves, one was an enemy, one an invader of his harem, and one was a woman, his wife, his favourite, the darling of his heart. When his chief eunuch accused her of a guilty love, he had given her paramour and herself to that awful death. A stroke of the vast paw, a smothered roar as the teeth gave into the neck of the beautiful Fatima, and then--no more.

Fanaticism had caught a note of savage music that tuned it to its height.

"Why art thou here? For what hast thou come? Do the spirit voices give thee that counsel?" he snarled.

"I am come to ask Prince Harrik to repair the wrong he has done. When the Prince Pasha came to know of thy treason--"

Harrik started. "Kaid believes thy tale of treason?" he burst out.

"Prince Kaid knows the truth," answered David quietly. "He might have surrounded this palace with his Nubians, and had thee shot against the palace walls. That would have meant a scandal in Egypt and in Europe. I besought him otherwise. It may be the scandal must come, but in another way, and--"

"That I, Harrik, must die?" Harrik's voice seemed far away. In his own ears it sounded strange and unusual. All at once the world seemed to be a vast vacuum in which his brain strove for air, and all his senses were numbed and overpowered. Distempered and vague, his soul seemed spinning in an aching chaos. It was being overpowered by vast elements, and life and being were atrophied in a deadly smother. The awful forces behind visible being hung him in the middle s.p.a.ce between consciousness and dissolution. He heard David's voice, at first dimly, then understandingly.

"There is no other way. Thou art a traitor. Thou wouldst have been a fratricide. Thou wouldst have put back the clock in Egypt by a hundred years, even to the days of the Mamelukes--a race of slaves and murderers. G.o.d ordained that thy guilt should be known in time. Prince, thou art guilty. It is now but a question how thou shalt pay the debt of treason."

In David's calm voice was the ring of destiny. It was dispa.s.sionate, judicial; it had neither hatred nor pity. It fell on Harrik's ear as though from some far height. Destiny, the controller--who could escape it?

Had he not heard the voices in the night--"The lions are loosed upon thee"? He did not answer David now, but murmured to himself like one in a dream.

David saw his mood, and pursued the startled mind into the pit of confusion. "If it become known to Europe that the army is disloyal, that its officers are traitors like thee, what shall we find? England, France, Turkey, will land an army of occupation. Who shall gainsay Turkey if she chooses to bring an army here and recover control, remove thy family from Egypt, and seize upon its lands and goods? Dost thou not see that the hand of G.o.d has been against thee? He has spoken, and thy evil is discovered."

He paused. Still Harrik did not reply, but looked at him with dilated, fascinated eyes. Death had hypnotised him, and against death and destiny who could struggle? Had not a past Prince Pasha of Egypt safeguarded himself from a.s.sa.s.sination all his life, and, in the end, had he not been smothered in his sleep by slaves?

"There are two ways only," David continued--"to be tried and die publicly for thy crimes, to the shame of Egypt, its present peril, and lasting injury; or to send a message to those who conspired with thee, commanding them to return to their allegiance, and another to the Prince Pasha, acknowledging thy fault, and exonerating all others. Else, how many of thy dupes shall die! Thy choice is not life or death, but how thou shalt die, and what thou shalt do for Egypt as thou diest. Thou didst love Egypt, Eminence?"

David's voice dropped low, and his last words had a suggestion which went like an arrow to the source of all Harrik's crimes, and that also which redeemed him in a little. It got into his inner being. He roused himself and spoke, but at first his speech was broken and smothered.

"Day by day I saw Egypt given over to the Christians," he said. "The Greek, the Italian, the Frenchman, the Englishman, everywhere they reached out, their hands and took from us our own. They defiled our mosques; they corrupted our life; they ravaged our trade, they stole our customers, they crowded us from the streets where once the faithful lived alone. Such as thou had the ear of the Prince, and such as Nahoum, also an infidel, who favoured the infidels of Europe. And now thou hast come, the most dangerous of them all! Day by day the Muslim has loosed his hold on Cairo, and Alexandria, and the cities of Egypt. Street upon street knows him no more. My heart burned within me. I conspired for Egypt's sake. I would have made her Muslim once again. I would have fought the Turk and the Frank, as did Mehemet Ali; and if the infidels came, I would have turned them back; or if they would not go, I would have destroyed them here. Such as thou should have been stayed at the door. In my own house I would have been master. We seek not to take up our abode in other nations and in the cities of the infidel. Shall we give place to them on our own mastaba, in our own court-yard--hand to them the keys of our harems? I would have raised the Jehad if they vexed me with their envoys and their armies." He paused, panting.

"It would not have availed," was David's quiet answer. "This land may not be as Tibet--a prison for its own people. If the door opens outward, then must it open inward also. Egypt is the bridge between the East and the West. Upon it the peoples of all nations pa.s.s and repa.s.s. Thy plan was folly, thy hope madness, thy means to achieve horrible. Thy dream is done. The army will not revolt, the Prince will not be slain. Now only remains what thou shalt do for Egypt--"

"And thou--thou wilt be left here to lay thy will upon Egypt. Kaid's ear will be in thy hand--thou hast the sorcerer's eye. I know thy meaning.

Thou wouldst have me absolve all, even Achmet, and Higli, and Diaz, and the rest, and at thy bidding go out into the desert"--he paused--"or into the grave."

"Not into the desert," rejoined David firmly. "Thou wouldst not rest.

There, in the desert, thou wouldst be a Mahdi. Since thou must die, wilt thou not order it after thine own choice? It is to die for Egypt."

"Is this the will of Kaid?" asked Harrik, his voice thick with wonder, his brain still dulled by the blow of Fate.

"It was not the Effendina's will, but it hath his a.s.sent. Wilt thou write the word to the army and also to the Prince?"

He had conquered. There was a moment's hesitation, then Harrik picked up paper and ink that lay near, and said: "I will write to Kaid. I will have naught to do with the army."

"It shall be the whole, not the part," answered David determinedly. "The truth is known. It can serve no end to withhold the writing to the army.

Remember what I have said to thee. The disloyalty of the army must not be known. Canst thou not act after the will of Allah, the all-powerful, the all-just, the all-merciful?"

There was an instant's pause, and then suddenly Harrik placed the paper in his palm and wrote swiftly and at some length to Kaid. Laying it down, he took another and wrote but a few words--to Achmet and Diaz.

This message said in brief, "Do not strike. It is the will of Allah.

The army shall keep faithful until the day of the Mahdi be come. I spoke before the time. I go to the bosom of my Lord Mahomet."

He threw the papers on the floor before David, who picked them up, read them, and put them into his pocket.

"It is well," he said. "Egypt shall have peace. And thou, Eminence?"

"Who shall escape Fate? What I have written I have written."

David rose and salaamed. Harrik rose also. "Thou wouldst go, having accomplished thy will?" Harrik asked, a thought flashing to his mind again, in keeping with his earlier purpose. Why should this man be left to trouble Egypt?

David touched his breast. "I must bear thy words to the Palace and the Citadel."

"Are there not slaves for messengers?" Involuntarily Harrik turned his eyes to the velvet curtains. No fear possessed David, but he felt the keenness of the struggle, and prepared for the last critical moment of fanaticism.

"It were a foolish thing to attempt my death," he said calmly. "I have been thy friend to urge thee to do that which saves thee from public shame, and Egypt from peril. I came alone, because I had no fear that thou wouldst go to thy death shaming hospitality."

"Thou wast sure I would give myself to death?"

"Even as that I breathe. Thou wert mistaken; a madness possessed thee; but thou, I knew, wouldst choose the way of honour. I too have had dreams--and of Egypt. If it were for her good, I would die for her."

"Thou art mad. But the mad are in the hands of G.o.d, and--"

Suddenly Harrik stopped. There came to his ears two distant sounds--the faint click of horses' hoofs and that dull rumble they had heard as they talked, a sound he loved, the roar of his lions.

He clapped his hands twice, the curtains parted opposite, and a slave slid silently forward.

"Quick! The horses! What are they? Bring me word," he said.

The slave vanished. For a moment there was silence. The eyes of the two men met. In the minds of both was the same thing.

"Kaid! The Nubians!" Harrik said, at last. David made no response.

The slave returned, and his voice murmured softly, as though the matter were of no concern: "The Nubians--from the Palace." In an instant he was gone again.

"Kaid had not faith in thee," Harrik said grimly. "But see, infidel though thou art, thou trustest me, and thou shalt go thy way. Take them with thee, yonder jackals of the desert. I will not go with them. I did not choose to live; others chose for me; but I will die after my own choice. Thou hast heard a voice, even as I. It is too late to flee to the desert. Fate tricks me. 'The lions are loosed on thee'--so the voice said to me in the night. Hark! dost thou not hear them--the lions, Harrik's lions, got out of the uttermost desert?"

David could hear the distant roar, for the menagerie was even part of the palace itself.

"Go in peace," continued Harrik soberly and with dignity, "and when Egypt is given to the infidel and Muslims are their slaves, remember that Harrik would have saved it for his Lord Mahomet, the Prophet of G.o.d."

He clapped his hands, and fifty slaves slid from behind the velvet curtains.

"I have thy word by the tomb of thy mother that thou wilt take the Nubians hence, and leave me in peace?" he asked.

David raised a hand above his head. "As I have trusted thee, trust thou me, Harrik, son of Mahomet." Harrik made a gesture of dismissal, and David salaamed and turned to go. As the curtains parted for his exit, he faced Harrik again. "Peace be to thee," he said.

But, seated in his cushions, the haggard, fanatical face of Harrik was turned from him, the black, flaring eyes fixed on vacancy. The curtain dropped behind David, and through the dim rooms and corridors he pa.s.sed, the slaves gliding beside him, before him, and behind him, until they reached the great doors. As they swung open and the cool night breeze blew in his face, a great suspiration of relief pa.s.sed from him. What he had set out to do would be accomplished in all. Harrik would keep his word. It was the only way.