Mansoor waited expectantly for a titter, and bowed to it when it arrived. “You will then return to Wady Haifa, and there remain two hours to suspect (sp.) the Camel Corps, including the grooming of the beasts, and the bazaar before returning, so I wish you a very happy good-night.” There was a gleam of his white teeth in the lamplight, and then his long, dark petticoats, his short English cover-coat, and his red tarboosh vanished successively down the ladder. The low buzz of conversation which had been suspended by his coming broke out anew.
“I’m relying on you, Mr. Stephens, to tell me all about Abousir,” said Miss Sadie Adams. “I do like to know what I am looking at right there at the time, and not six hours afterwards in my state-room. I haven’t got Abou-Simbel and the wall pictures straight in my mind yet, though I saw them yesterday.”
“I never hope to keep up with it,” said her aunt. “When I am safe back in Commonwealth Avenue, and there’s no dragoman to hustle me around, I’ll have time to read about it all, and then I expect I shall begin to enthuse and want to come right back again. But it’s just too good of you, Mr. Stephens, to try and keep us informed.”
“I thought that you might wish precise information, and so I prepared a small digest of the matter,” said Stephens, handing a slip of paper to Miss Sadie. She looked at it in the light of the deck lamp, and broke into her low, hearty laugh.
“Re Abousir,” she read; “now, what do you mean by ‘re,’ Mr. Stephens? You put ‘re Rameses the Second’ on the last paper you gave me.”
“It is a habit I have acquired, Miss Sadie,” said Stephens; “it is the custom in the legal profession when they make a memo.”
“Make what, Mr. Stephens?”
“A memo a memorandum, you know. We put re so-and-so to show what it is about.”
“I suppose it’s a good short way,” said Miss Sadie, “but it feels queer somehow when applied to scenery or to dead Egyptian kings. ‘Re Cheops,’ — doesn’t that strike you as funny?”
“No, I can’t say that it does,” said Stephens.
“I wonder if it is true that the English have less humour than the Americans, or whether it’s just another kind of humour,” said the girl. She had a quiet, abstracted way of talking as if she were thinking aloud. “I used to imagine they had less, and yet, when you come to think of it, Dickens and Thackeray and Barrie, and so many other of the humourists we admire most, are Britishers. Besides, I never in all my days heard people laugh so hard as in that London theatre. There was a man behind us, and every time he laughed auntie looked round to see if a door had opened, he made such a draught. But you have some funny expressions, Mr. Stephens!”
“What else strikes you as funny, Miss Sadie?”
“Well, when you sent me the temple ticket and the little map, you began your letter, ‘Enclosed, please find,’ and then at the bottom, in brackets, you had ‘2 enclo.’”
“That is the usual form in business.”
“Yes, in business,” said Sadie, demurely, and there was a silence.
“There’s one thing I wish,” remarked Miss Adams, in the hard, metallic voice with which she disguised her softness of heart, “and that is, that I could see the Legislature of this country and lay a few cold-drawn facts in front of them, I’d make a platform of my own, Mr. Stephens, and run a party on my ticket. A Bill for the compulsory use of eyewash would be one of my planks, and another would be for the abolition of those Yashmak veil things which turn a woman into a bale of cotton goods with a pair of eyes looking out of it.”
“I never could think why they wore them,” said Sadie; “until one day I saw one with her veil lifted. Then I knew.”
“They make me tired, those women,” cried Miss Adams, wrathfully. “One might as well try to preach duty and decency and cleanliness to a line of bolsters. Why, good land, it was only yesterday at Abou-Simbel, Mr. Stephens, I was passing one of their houses, — if you can call a mud-pie like that a house, — and I saw two of the children at the door with the usual crust of flies round their eyes, and great holes in their poor little blue gowns! So I got off my donkey, and I turned up my sleeves, and I washed their faces well with my handkerchief, and sewed up the rents, — for in this country I would as soon think of going ashore without my needle-case as without my white umbrella, Mr. Stephens. Then as I warmed on the job I got into the room, — such a room! — and I packed the folks out of it, and I fairly did the chores as if I had been the hired help. I’ve seen no more of that temple of Abou-Simbel than if I had never left Boston; but, my sakes, I saw more dust and mess than you would think they could crowd into a house the size of a Newport bathing-hut. From the time I pinned up my skirt until I came out, with my face the colour of that smoke-stack, wasn’t more than an hour, or maybe an hour and a half, but I had that house as clean and fresh as a new pine-wood box. I had a New York Herald with me, and I lined their shelf with paper for them. Well, Mr. Stephens, when I had done washing my hands outside, I came past the door again, and there were those two children sitting on the stoop with their eyes full of flies, and all just the same as ever, except that each had a little paper cap made out of the New York Herald upon his head. But, say, Sadie, it’s going on to ten o’clock, and tomorrow an early excursion.”
“It’s just too beautiful, this purple sky and the great silver stars,” said Sadie. “Look at the silent desert and the black shadows of the hills. It’s grand, but it’s terrible, too; and then when you think that we really are, as that dragoman said just now, on the very end of civilisation, and with nothing but savagery and bloodshed down there where the Southern Cross is twinkling so prettily, why, it’s like standing on the beautiful edge of a live volcano.”
“Shucks, Sadie, don’t talk like that, child,” said the older woman, nervously. “It’s enough to scare any one to listen to you.”
“Well, but don’t you feel it yourself, Auntie? Look at that great desert stretching away and away until it is lost in the shadows. Hear the sad whisper of the wind across it! It’s just the most solemn thing that ever I saw in my life.”
“I’m glad we’ve found something that will make you solemn, my dear,” said her Aunt. “I’ve sometimes thought —— Sakes alive, what’s that?”
From somewhere amongst the hill shadows upon the other side of the river there had risen a high shrill whimpering, rising and swelling, to end in a long weary wail.
“It’s only a jackal, Miss Adams,” said Stephens. “I heard one when we went out to see the Sphinx by moonlight.”
But the American lady had risen, and her face showed that her nerves had been ruffled.
“If I had my time over again I wouldn’t have come past Assouan,” said she. “I can’t think what possessed me to bring you all the way up here, Sadie. Your mother will think that I am clean crazy, and I’d never dare to look her in the eye if anything went wrong with us. I’ve seen all I want to see of this river, and all I ask now is to be back at Cairo again.”
“Why, Auntie,” cried the girl, “it isn’t like you to be faint-hearted.”
“Well, I don’t know how it is, Sadie, but I feel a bit unstrung, and that beast caterwauling over yonder was just more than I could put up with. There’s one consolation, we are scheduled to be on our way home to-morrow, after we’ve seen this one rock or temple, or whatever it is. I’m full up of rocks and temples, Mr. Stephens. I shouldn’t mope if I never saw another. Come, Sadie! Good-night!”
“Good-night! Good-night, Miss Adams!” and the two ladies passed down to their cabins.
Monsieur Fardet was chatting, in a subdued voice, with Headingly, the young Harvard graduate, bending forward confidentially between the whiffs of his cigarette.
“Dervishes, Mister Headingly!” said he, speaking excellent English, but separating his syllables as a Frenchman will. “There are no Dervishes. They do not exist.”
“Why, I thought the woods were full of them,” said the American.
Monsieur Fardet glanced across to where the red core of Colonel Cochran
e’s cigar was glowing through the darkness.
“You are an American, and you do not like the English,” he whispered. “It is perfectly comprehended upon the Continent that the Americans are opposed to the English.”
“Well,” said Headingly, with his slow, deliberate manner, “I won’t say that we have not our tiffs, and there are some of our people — mostly of Irish stock — who are always mad with England; but the most of us have a kindly thought for the mother country. You see, they may be aggravating folk sometimes, but after all they are our own folk, and we can’t wipe that off the slate.”
“Eh bien!” said the Frenchman. “At least I can say to you what I could not without offence say to these others. And I repeat that there are no Dervishes. They were an invention of Lord Cromer in the year 1885.”
“You don’t say!” cried Headingly.
“It is well known in Paris, and has been exposed in La Patrie and other of our so well-informed papers.”
“But this is colossal,” said Headingly.
“Do you mean to tell me, Monsieur Fardet, that the siege of Khartoum and the death of Gordon and the rest of it was just one great bluff?”
“I will not deny that there was an emeute, but it was local, you understand, and now long forgotten. Since then there has been profound peace in the Soudan.”
“But I have heard of raids, Monsieur Fardet, and I’ve read of battles, too, when the Arabs tried to invade Egypt. It was only two days ago that we passed Toski, where the dragoman said there had been a fight. Is that all bluff also?”
“Pah, my friend, you do not know the English. You look at them as you see them with their pipes and their contented faces, and you say, ‘Now, these are good, simple folk who will never hurt any one.’ But all the time they are thinking and watching and planning. ‘Here is Egypt weak,’ they cry. ‘Allons!’ and down they swoop like a gull upon a crust. ‘You have no right there,’ says the world. ‘Come out of it!’ But England has already begun to tidy everything, just like the good Miss Adams when she forces her way into the house of an Arab. ‘Come out,’ says the world. ‘Certainly,’ says England; ‘just wait one little minute until I have made everything nice and proper.’ So the world waits for a year or so, and then it says once again, ‘Come out.’ ‘Just wait a little,’ says England; ‘there is trouble at Khartoum, and when I have set that all right I shall be very glad to come out.’ So they wait until it is all over, and then again they say, ‘Come out.’ ‘How can I come out,’ says England, ‘when there are still raids and battles going on? If we were to leave, Egypt would be run over.’ ‘But there are no raids,’ says the world. ‘Oh, are there not?’ says England, and then within a week sure enough the papers are full of some new raid of Dervishes. We are not all blind, Mister Headingly. We understand very well how such things can be done. A few Bedouins, a little backsheesh, some blank cartridges, and, behold — a raid!”
“Well, well,” said the American, “I’m glad to know the rights of this business, for it has often puzzled me. But what does England get out of it?”
“She gets the country, monsieur.”
“I see. You mean, for example, that there is a favourable tariff for British goods?”
“No, monsieur; it is the same for all.”
“Well, then, she gives the contracts to Britishers?”
“Precisely, monsieur.”
“For example, the railroad that they are building right through the country, the one that runs alongside the river, that would be a valuable contract for the British?”
Monsieur Fardet was an honest man, if an imaginative one.
“It is a French company, monsieur, which holds the railway contract,” said he.
The American was puzzled.
“They don’t seem to get much for their trouble,” said he. “Still, of course, there must be some indirect pull somewhere. For example, Egypt no doubt has to pay and keep all those red-coats in Cairo.”
“Egypt, monsieur! No, they are paid by England.”
“Well, I suppose they know their own business best, but they seem to me to take a great deal of trouble, and to get mighty little in exchange. If they don’t mind keeping order and guarding the frontier, with a constant war against the Dervishes on their hands, I don’t know why any one should object. I suppose no one denies that the prosperity of the country has increased enormously since they came. The revenue returns show that. They tell me, also, that the poorer folks have justice, which they never had before.”
“What are they doing here at all?” cried the Frenchman, angrily. “Let them go back to their island. We cannot have them all over the world.”
“Well, certainly, to us Americans who live all in our own land it does seem strange how you European nations are for ever slopping over into some other country which was not meant for you. It’s easy for us to talk, of course, for we have still got room and to spare for all our people. When we start pushing each other over the edge we shall have to start annexing also. But at present just here in North Africa there is Italy in Abyssinia, and England in Egypt, and France in Algiers — —”
“France!” cried Monsieur Fardet. “Algiers belongs to France. You laugh, monsieur. I have the honour to wish you a very good-night.” He rose from his seat, and walked off, rigid with outraged patriotism, to his cabin.
CHAPTER II
The young American hesitated for a little, debating in his mind whether he should not go down and post up the daily record of his impressions which he kept for his home-staying sister. But the cigars of Colonel Cochrane and of Cecil Brown were still twinkling in the far corner of the deck, and the student was acquisitive in the search of information. He did not quite know how to lead up to the matter, but the Colonel very soon did it for him.
“Come on, Headingly,” said he, pushing a camp-stool in his direction. “This is the place for an antidote. I see that Fardet has been pouring politics into your ear.”
“I can always recognise the confidential stoop of his shoulders when he discusses la haute politique” said the dandy diplomatist. “But what a sacrilege upon a night like this! What a nocturne in blue and silver might be suggested by that moon rising above the desert. There is a movement in one of Mendelssohn’s songs which seems to embody it all, — a sense of vastness, of repetition, the cry of the wind over an interminable expanse. The subtler emotions which cannot be translated into words are still to be hinted at by chords and harmonies.”
“It seems wilder and more savage than ever to-night,” remarked the American. “It gives me the same feeling of pitiless force that the Atlantic does upon a cold, dark, winter day. Perhaps it is the knowledge that we are right there on the very edge of any kind of law and order. How far do you suppose that we are from any Dervishes, Colonel Cochrane?”
“Well, on the Arabian side,” said the Colonel, “we have the Egyptian fortified camp of Sarras about forty miles to the south of us. Beyond that are sixty miles of very wild country before you would come to the Dervish post at Akasheh. On this other side, however, there is nothing between us and them.”
“Abousir is on this side, is it not?”
“Yes. That is why the excursion to the Abousir Rock has been forbidden for the last year. But things are quieter now.”
“What is to prevent them from coming down on that side?”
“Absolutely nothing,” said Cecil Brown, in his listless voice.
“Nothing, except their fears. The coming, of course, would be absolutely simple. The difficulty would lie in the return. They might find it hard to get back if their camels were spent and the Haifa garrison with their beasts fresh got on their track. They know it as well as we do, and it has kept them from trying.”
“It isn’t safe to reckon upon a Dervish’s fears,” remarked Brown. “We must always bear in mind that they are not amenable to the same motives as other people. Many of them are anxious to meet death, and all of them are absolute, uncompromising believers in destiny. They exist as a reductio ad absurd
um of all bigotry, — a proof of how surely it leads towards blank barbarism.”
“You think these people are a real menace to Egypt?” asked the American. “There seems from what I have heard to be some difference of opinion about it. Monsieur Fardet, for example, does not seem to think that the danger is a very pressing one.”
“I am not a rich man,” Colonel Cochrane answered, after a little pause, “but I am prepared to lay all I am worth that within three years of the British officers being withdrawn, the Dervishes would be upon the Mediterranean. Where would the civilisation of Egypt be? where would the hundreds of millions be which have been invested in this country? where the monuments which all nations look upon as most precious memorials of the past?”
“Come now, Colonel,” cried Headingly, laughing, “surely you don’t mean that they would shift the pyramids?”
“You cannot foretell what they would do. There is no iconoclast in the world like an extreme Mohammedan. Last time they overran this country they burned the Alexandrian library. You know that all representations of the human features are against the letter of the Koran. A statue is always an irreligious object in their eyes. What do these fellows care for the sentiment of Europe? The more they could offend it the more delighted they would be. Down would go the Sphinx, the Colossi, the Statues of Abou-Simbel, — as the saints went down in England before Cromwell’s troopers.”
“Well now,” said Headingly, in his slow, thoughtful fashion, “suppose I grant you that the Dervishes could overrun Egypt, and suppose also that you English are holding them out, what I’m never done asking is, what reason have you for spending all these millions of dollars and the lives of so many of your men? What do you get out of it, more than France gets, or Germany, or any other country, that runs no risk and never lays out a cent?”
Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) Page 586