Thus the two aims in the great Proconsul's life had become one, and that one aim centred in his son.
CHAPTER V
As Gordon went into the British Agency a small, wizened man with a pock-marked face, wearing Oriental dress, came out. He was the Grand Cadi (Chief Judge) of the Mohammedan courts and representative of the Sultan of Turkey in Egypt, one who had secretly hated the Consul-General and raved against the English rule for years; and as he saluted obsequiously with his honeyed voice and smiled with his crafty eyes, it flashed upon Gordon—he did not know why—that just so must Caiaphas, the high priest, have looked when he came out of Pilate's judgment hall after saying, "If thou let this man go thou art not Cæsar's friend."
Gordon leapt up the steps and into the house as one who was at home, and going first into the shaded drawing-room he found his mother on the couch looking to the sunset and the Nile—a sweet old lady in the twilight of life, with white hair, a thin face almost as white, and the pale smile of a patient soul who had suffered pain. With her, attending upon her, and at that moment handing a cup of chicken broth to her, was a stout Egyptian woman with a good homely countenance—Gordon's old nurse, Fatimah.
His mother turned at the sound of his voice, roused herself on the couch, and with that startled cry of joy which has only one note in all nature, that of a mother meeting her beloved son, she cried, "Gordon! Gordon!" and clasped her delicate hands about his neck. Before he could prevent it, his foster-mother, too, muttering in Eastern manner, "O my eye! O my soul!" had snatched one of his hands and was smothering it with kisses.
"And how is Helena?" his mother asked, in her low, sweet voice.
"Beautiful!" said Gordon.
"She couldn't help being that. But why doesn't she come to see me?"
"I think she's anxious about her father's health, and is afraid to leave him," said Gordon; and then Fatimah, with blushes showing through her Arab skin, said—
"Take care! a house may hold a hundred men, but the heart of a woman has only room for one of them."