“No, no, my son. Thou art too young as yet. Wait till the war is ended and then join the fray.”
With that he patted the boy’s cheek, bestowed his blessing on him, and went out, little guessing that he left despair behind him. A carriage waited for him at the door. An armed slave scrambled up beside the driver. It was the hour of sunset. Two months since the ways would have been merry at that hour. But now the passengers were few and fully armed; they looked suspicious and, where groups were formed, the talk seemed guarded. A curse had fallen on the happy city. The sunset blushed on her high roofs, the crescent flashed on all her spires and domes, and in the gullies which were streets lay depths of shade; yet no one felt the rapture of the evening.
Yûsuf, lolling in the carriage, gnawed his black moustache and cursed the revolutionaries from his heart. He had attained the wisdom which comes easily to middle age, hated disturbance and distrusted novelty. The nervous passion which had marked his youth still dwelt in him; but he reserved its transports for the calls of private life; having another wife besides the Englishwoman, and two concubines, whom he kept in the provincial centre whither public business often called him. Politics had been for him a well-ruled game, on which a man would be a fool to waste vitality. As a functionary, he had lounged on sofas, telling beads, dictating orders to his secretaries, at ease except when called before superiors; until this military rising scared his soul. Its swiftness and success seemed downright fiendish.
One day a painstaking, obedient native officer had been selected by the Khedive Ismaîl to organize a riot hostile to the Frank commissioners. He seemed so trusty and discreet that Ismaîl forbore to execute him for the trifling service. Within two years he was the idol of the native soldiers, the spokesman of their grievances against the foreign Turks; in five, he was the incubus and dread of Egypt, first Minister of War and now Dictator. That first employment recommended him to schemers as one who did not fear to lead rebellion. Straightforward and excitable, extremely zealous in whatever charge he undertook, he was thrust forward by the clever ones to posts of hazard. His prompters, Asiatics, saw the bounds of his intelligence and thought to keep him in their hands, a priceless instrument. But they had not allowed for the inflation of the African, who, being once exalted, swelled and swelled until his greatness overawed its very founders.
An honest man and a good Muslim, Ahmad Arâbi lacked the cleverness of the conspirator; nor was he one. The sordid plots which guided his career were spun behind him; while he pressed onward with clear brow and conquering smile—a doomed man, in the view of calm spectators.
Yûsuf had known Arâbi for some years and liked him personally; but the Khedive Muhammad Tewfik was his friend from childhood. Entreated by the agitators to take office with them, he had referred the question to the good Khedive, who begged him to accept the post thus offered, that he (Muhammad Tewfik Pasha, Lord of Egypt) might have one friend among his so-called servants. Tied by his duties, he had not fled to Alexandria with the Sovereign; but remained behind in an absurd position, a member of the rebel government which he abhorred. He was now upon his way to meet some other Turks thus stranded, to decide on some safe line of future conduct.
The rendezvous was at his father’s house, where, in the great reception-room, he found a score of men assembled. All had the faces of conspirators except his father, a very old man now, who bade them welcome as to some court function.
“Where is my son Hamdi?” asked the patriarch upon the dais, peering round upon the red-capped and black-coated throng.
“He is not with us. He has joined the fellâhîn. He dared not tell thee,” answered Yûsuf sadly.