Day by day, as messengers came thronging into Khartoum with sadder and yet sadder stories of the people's sufferings—how, living under the shadow of the sword, impoverished by the law and by the cruel injustice of the native officers, the Omdehs and the Sarrafs, sold up and evicted from their homes, they were tramping the deserts, men, women, and children, hungry and naked, and with nothing of their own except the sand and the sky—Helena saw that Ishmael's face grew paler and paler, as if his sleep had left him, and under the burden of his responsibility for what had befallen the country as the consequence of its obedience to his will, his heart was bleeding and his life ebbing away.
"Master, is there no help for us?" the messengers would ask, with tears in their half-witted eyes. "You are our father, we are your children—what are we to do? We are sheep without a shepherd—will you not lead us?"
To all such pleading Ishmael would show a brave face and say—
"Not yet! Wait! The clouds that darken your sky will lift. Be patient! The arm of our God is long! Never despair! Allah feeds the worm that lies between the stones. Will He not feed you also? Yet better your bodies should starve than your souls should perish! Hold fast to the faith! Your children and your children's children will bless you!"
But sometimes in the midst of his comforting his voice would fail, and like Joseph, whose bowels yearned over his brethren, he would stop suddenly and hasten away to his room lest he should break down altogether. Helena saw all this, and it was as much as she could do to withstand it, when one night she was awakened in the small hours by Mosie, who was whispering through the door of her bedroom—
"Lady, lady, Master sick; come to him."
Then she walked across to the men's side of the house and heard Ishmael in his own room, calling on God to forgive him and crying like a child.
At that moment, in spite of herself, Helena felt a wave of pity take possession of her; but at the next, being back in her bedroom, she remembered her own secret and asked herself again—
"What pity had he for me when he killed my father?"
CHAPTER VII