A TYRANT AND A LADY
When Donovan Pasha discovered the facts for the first time, he found more difficulty in keeping the thing to himself than he had ever found with any other matter in Egypt. He had unearthed one of those paradoxes which make for laughter—and for tears. It gave him both; he laughed till he cried. Then he went to the Khedivial Club and ordered himself four courses, a pint of champagne and a glass of '48 port, his usual dinner being one course, double portion, and a pint of claret. As he sat eating he kept reading a letter over and over, and each time he read he grinned —he did not smile like a well-behaved man of the world, he did not giggle like a well-veneered Egyptian back from Paris, he chuckled like a cabman responding to a liberal fare and a good joke. A more unconventional little man never lived. Simplicity was his very life, and yet he had a gift for following the sinuosities of the Oriental mind; he had a quality almost clairvoyant, which came, perhaps, from his Irish forebears. The cross-strain of English blood had done him good too; it made him punctilious and kept his impulses within secure bounds. It also made him very polite when he was angry, and very angry when any one tried to impose upon him, or flatter him.
The letter he read so often was from Kingsley Bey, the Englishman, who, coming to Egypt penniless, and leaving estates behind him encumbered beyond release, as it would seem, had made a fortune and a name in a curious way. For years he had done no good for himself, trying his hand at many things—sugar, salt, cotton, cattle, but always just failing to succeed, though he came out of his enterprises owing no one. Yet he had held to his belief that he would make a fortune, and he allowed his estates to become still more encumbered, against the advice of his solicitors, who grew more irritable as interest increased and rents further declined. The only European in Egypt who shared his own belief in himself was Dicky Donovan. Something in the unfailing good-humour, the buoyant energy, the wide imagination of the man seized Dicky, warranted the conviction that he would yet make a success. There were reasons why sugar, salt, cotton, cattle and other things had not done well. Taxes, the corvee, undue influence in favour of pashas who could put his water on their land without compensation, or unearthed old unpaid mortgages on his land, or absorbed his special salt concession in the Government monopoly, or suddenly put a tax on all horses and cattle not of native breed; all these and various other imposts, exactions, or interferences engineered by the wily Mamour, the agent of the mouffetish, or the intriguing Pasha, killed his efforts, in spite of labours unbelievable. The venture before the last had been sugar, and when he arrived in Cairo, having seen his fields and factories absorbed in the Khedive's domains, he had but one ten pounds to his name.
He went to Dicky Donovan and asked the loan of a thousand pounds. It took Dicky's breath away. His own banking account seldom saw a thousand —deposit. Dicky told Kingsley he hadn't got it. Kingsley asked him to get it—he had credit, could borrow it from the bank, from the Khedive himself! The proposal was audacious—Kingsley could offer no security worth having. His enthusiasm and courage were so infectious, however, though his ventures had been so fruitless, that Dicky laughed in his face. Kingsley's manner then suddenly changed, and he assured Dicky that he would receive five thousand pounds for the thousand within a year. Now, Dicky knew that Kingsley never made a promise to any one that he did not fulfil. He gave Kingsley the thousand pounds. He did more. He went to the Khedive with Kingsley's whole case. He spoke as he had seldom spoken, and he secured a bond from Ismail, which might not be broken. He also secured three thousand pounds of the Khedive's borrowings from Europe, on Kingsley's promise that it should be returned five-fold.
That was how Kingsley got started in the world again, how he went mining in the desert afar, where pashas and mamours could not worry him. The secret of his success was purely Oriental. He became a slave-owner. He built up a city of the desert round him. He was its ruler. Slavery gave him steady untaxed labour. A rifle-magazine gave him security against marauding tribes, his caravans were never over powered; his blacks were his own. He had a way with them; they thought him the greatest man in the world. Now, at last, he was rich enough. His mines were worked out, too, and the market was not so good; he had supplied it too well. Dicky's thousand had brought him five thousand, and Ismail's three thousand had become fifteen thousand, and another twenty thousand besides. For once the Khedive had found a kind of taxation, of which he got the whole proceeds, not divided among many as heretofore. He got it all. He made Kingsley a Bey, and gave him immunity from all other imposts or taxation. Nothing but an Egyptian army could have removed him from his desert-city.
Now, he was coming back—to-night at ten o'clock he would appear at the Khedivial Club, the first time in seven years. But this was not all. He was coming back to be married as soon as might be.
This was the thing which convulsed Dicky.
Upon the Nile at Assiout lived a young English lady whose life was devoted to agitation against slavery in Egypt. Perhaps the Civil War in America, not so many years before, had fired her spirit; perhaps it was pious enthusiasm; perhaps it was some altruistic sentiment in her which must find expression; perhaps, as people said, she had had a love affair in England which had turned out badly. At any rate she had come over to Egypt with an elderly companion, and, after a short stay at the Consulate, had begun the career of the evangel. She had now and then created international difficulty, and Ismail, tolerant enough, had been tempted to compel her to leave the country, but, with a zeal which took on an aspect of self-opinionated audacity, she had kept on. Perhaps her beauty helped her on her course—perhaps the fact that her superb egotism kept her from being timorous, made her career possible. In any case, there she was at Assiout, and there she had been for years, and no accident had come to her; and, during the three months she was at Cairo every year, pleading against slavery and the corvee, she increased steadily the respect in which she was held; but she was considered mad as Gordon. So delighted had Ismail been by a quiet, personal attack she made upon him, that without malice, and with an obtuse and impulsive kindness, he sent her the next morning a young Circassian slave, as a mark of his esteem, begging her through the swelling rhetoric of his messenger to keep the girl, and more than hinting at her value. It stupefied her, and the laughter of Cairo added to her momentary embarrassment; but she kept the girl, and prepared to send her back to her people.
The girl said she had no people, and would not go; she would stay with "My Lady"—she would stay for ever with "My Lady." It was confusing, but the girl stayed, worshipping the ground "My Lady" walked on. In vain My Lady educated her. Out of hearing, she proudly told whoever would listen that she was "My Lady's slave." It was an Egyptian paradox; it was in line with everything else in the country, part of the moral opera boufe.
In due course, the lady came to hear of the English slave-owner, who ruled the desert-city and was making a great fortune out of the labours of his slaves. The desert Arabs who came down the long caravan road, white with bleached bones, to Assiout, told her he had a thousand slaves. Against this Englishman her anger, was great. She unceasingly condemned him, and whenever she met Dicky Donovan she delivered her attack with delicate violence. Did Dicky know him? Why did not he, in favour with Ismail, and with great influence, stop this dreadful and humiliating business? It was a disgrace to the English name. How could we preach freedom and a higher civilisation to the Egyptians while an Englishman enriched himself and ruled a province by slavery? Dicky's invariable reply was that we couldn't, and that things weren't moving very much towards a higher civilisation in Egypt. But he asked her if she ever heard of a slave running away from Kingsley Bey, or had she ever heard of a case of cruelty on his part? Her reply was that he had given slaves the kourbash, and had even shot them. Dicky thereupon suggested that Kingsley Bey was a government, and that the kourbash was not yet abolished in the English navy, for instance; also that men had to be shot sometimes.
At last she had made a direct appeal to Kingsley Bey. She sent an embassy to him—Dicky prevented her from going herself; he said he would have her deported straightway, if she attempted it. She was not in such deadly earnest that she did not know he would keep his word, and that the Consulate could not help her would have no time to do so. So, she confined herself to an elaborate letter, written in admirable English and inspired by most noble sentiments. The beauty that was in her face was in her letter in even a greater degree. It was very adroit, too, very ably argued, and the moral appeal was delicate and touching, put with an eloquence at once direct and arresting. The invocation with which the letter ended was, as Kingsley Bey afterwards put it, "a pitch of poetry and humanity never reached except by a Wagner opera."
Kingsley Bey's response to the appeal was a letter to the lady, brought by a sarraf, a mamour and six slaves, beautifully mounted and armed, saying that he had been deeply moved by her appeal, and as a proof of the effect of her letter, she might free the six slaves of his embassy. This she straightway did joyfully, and when they said they wished to go to Cairo, she saw them and their horses off on the boat with gladness, and she shook them each by the hand and prayed Heaven in their language to give them long plumes of life and happiness. Arrived at Cairo these freemen of Assiout did as they had been ordered by Kingsley—found Donovan Pasha, delivered a certain letter to him, and then proceeded, also as they had been ordered, to a certain place in the city, even to Ismail's stables, to await their master's coming.
This letter was now in Dicky's hand, and his mirth was caused by the statement that Kingsley Bey had declared that he was coming to marry My Lady—she really was "My Lady," the Lady May Harley; that he was coming by a different route from "his niggers," and would be there the same day. Dicky would find him at ten o'clock at the Khedivial Club.
My Lady hated slavery—and unconsciously she kept a slave; she regarded Kingsley Bey as an enemy to civilisation and to Egypt, she detested him as strongly as an idealistic nature could and should—and he had set out to marry her, the woman who had bitterly arraigned him at the bar of her judgment. All this play was in Dicky's hands for himself to enjoy, in a perfect dress rehearsal ere ever one of the Cairene public or the English world could pay for admission and take their seats. Dicky had in more senses than one got his money's worth out of Kingsley Bey. He wished he might let the Khedive into the secret at once, for he had an opinion of Ismail's sense of humour; had he not said that very day in the presence of the French Consul, "Shut the window, quick! If the consul sneezes, France will demand compensation!" But Dicky was satisfied that things should be as they were. He looked at the clock—it was five minutes to ten. He rose from the table, and went to the smoking-room. In vain it was sought to draw him into the friendly circles of gossiping idlers and officials. He took a chair at the very end of the room and opposite the door, and waited, watching.
Precisely at ten the door opened and a tall, thin, loose-knit figure entered. He glanced quickly round, saw Dicky, and swung down the room, nodding to men who sprang to their feet to greet him. Some of the Egyptians looked darkly at him, but he smiled all round, caught at one or two hands thrust out to him, said: "Business—business first!" in a deep bass voice, and, hastening on, seized both of Dicky's hands in his, then his shoulders, and almost roared: "Well, what do you think of it? Isn't it all right? Am I, or am I not, Dicky Pasha?"
"You very much are," answered Dicky, thrust a cigar at him, and set him down in the deepest chair he could find. He sprawled wide, and lighted his cigar, then lay back and looked down his long nose at his friend.
"I mean it, too," he said after a minute, and reached for a glass of water the waiter brought. "No, thanks, no whiskey—never touch it—good example to the slaves!" He laughed long and low, and looked at Dicky out of the corner of his eye. "Good-looking lot I sent you, eh?"
"Oosters, every one of 'em. Butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. I learnt their grin, it suits my style of beauty." Dicky fitted the action to the word. "You'll start with me in the morning to Assiout?"
"I can start, but life and time are short."
"You think I can't and won't marry her?"
"This isn't the day of Lochinvar."
"This is the day of Kingsley Bey, Dicky Pasha."
Dicky frowned. He had a rare and fine sense where women were concerned, were they absent or present. "How very artless—and in so short a time, too!" he said tartly.
Kingsley laughed quietly. "Art is long, but tempers are short!" he retorted.
Dicky liked a Roland for his Oliver. "It's good to see you back again," he said, changing the subject.
"How long do you mean to stay?"
"Here?" Dicky nodded. "Till I'm married."
Dicky became very quiet, a little formal, and his voice took on a curious smoothness, through which sharp suggestion pierced.
"So long?—Enter our Kingsley Bey into the underground Levantine world."
This was biting enough. To be swallowed up by Cairo life and all that it involves, was no fate to suggest to an Englishman, whose opinion of the Levantine needs no defining. "Try again, Dicky," said Kingsley, refusing to be drawn. "This is not one huge joke, or one vast impertinence, so far as the lady is concerned. I've come back-b-a-c-k" (he spelled the word out), "with all that it involves. I've come back, Dicky."
He quieted all at once, and leaned over towards his friend. "You know the fight I've had. You know the life I've lived in Egypt. You know what I left behind me in England—nearly all. You've seen the white man work. You've seen the black ooster save him. You've seen the ten-times- a-failure pull out. Have I played the game? Have I acted squarely? Have I given kindness for kindness, blow for blow? Have I treated my slaves like human beings? Have I—have I won my way back to life—life?" He spread out a hand with a little grasping motion. "Have I saved the old stand off there in Cumberland by the sea, where you can see the snow on Skaw Fell? Have I? Do you wonder that I laugh? Ye gods and little fishes! I've had to wear a long face years enough—seven hard years, seven fearful years, when I might be murdered by a slave, and I and my slaves might be murdered by some stray brigade, under some general of Ismail's, working without orders, without orders, of course—oh, very much of course! Why shouldn't I play the boy to-day, little Dicky Donovan? I am a Mahommedan come Christian again. I am a navvy again come gentleman. I am an Arab come Englishman once more.
"I am an outcast come home. I am a dead man come to life."
Dicky leaned over and laid a hand on his knee. "You are a credit to Cumberland," he said. "No other man could have done it. I won't ask any more questions. Anything you want of me, I am with you, to do, or say, or be."
"Good. I want you to go to Assiout to-morrow."
"Will you see Ismail first? It might be safer—good policy."
"I will see My Lady first. . . . Trust me. I know what I'm doing. You will laugh as I do." Laughter broke from his lips. It was as though his heart was ten years old. Dicky's eyes moistened. He had never seen anything like it—such happiness, such boyish confidence. And what had not this man experienced! How had he drunk misfortune to the dregs! What unbelievable optimism had been his! How had he been at once hard and kind, tyrannical and human, defiant and peaceful, daring yet submissive, fierce yet just! And now, here, with so much done, with a great fortune and great power, a very boy, he was planning to win the heart of, and marry, his avowed foe, the woman who had condemned him without stint.