At ten o'clock next morning Helena was at the well by the Goods Landing where the water-women draw water in their earthen jars to water the gardens and the streets, and while standing among the gross creatures who, with their half-naked bodies and stark-naked souls, were crowding about her for what they could get, she saw Gordon coming down in his Bedouin dress with a firm, strong step.
His flickering, steel-blue eyes were as full of light as when she saw them last, but that vague suggestion of his mother which she had hitherto seen in his face was gone, and there was a look of his father which she had never observed before.
"Let us walk this way," he said, indicating a road that went down to the empty and unfrequented tongue of land that leads to the point at which the Blue Nile and the White Nile meet.
"Helena," he said, stepping closely by her side, and speaking almost in her ear, "there is something I wish to say—to ask—and everything depends on your answer—what we are to do and what is to become of us."
"What is it?" said she, with trembling voice.
"When our escape from Khartoum was stopped by the letter telling me of my mother's death, I thought at first it was only an accident—a sad, strange accident—that it should arrive at that moment."
"And don't you think so now?" she asked.
"No; I think it was a divine intervention."
She glanced up at him. "He is going to talk about the betrothal," she thought.
But he did not do so. In his intense and poignant voice he continued—
"When I proposed that we should go away together I supposed your coming here had been due to a mistake—that my coming here had been due to a mistake—that your sending that letter into Cairo and my promising to take Ishmael's place had been due to a mistake—that it had all been a mistake—a long, miserable line of mistakes."
"And wasn't it?" she asked, walking on with her eyes to the sand.
"So far as we are concerned, yes, but with God ... with God Almighty mistakes do not happen."
They walked some paces in silence, and then in a still more poignant voice he said—
"Don't you believe that, Helena? Wasn't it true, what Ishmael said yesterday? Can you possibly believe that we have been allowed to go on as we have been going—both of us—without anything being meant by it?—all a cruel, stupid, merciless, Almighty blunder?"
"Well?"
"Well, think of what would have happened if we had been allowed to carry out our plan. Ishmael would have gone into Cairo as he originally intended, and he would have been seized and executed for conspiracy. What then? The whole country—yes, the whole country from end to end—would have risen in revolt. The sleeping terror of religious hatred would have been awakened. It would have been the affair of El Azhar over again—only worse, a thousand-fold worse."
Again a few steps in silence, and then—
"The insurrection would have been suppressed of course, but think of the bloodshed, the carnage! On the other hand——"
She saw what was coming, and with difficulty she walked steadily.
"On the other hand, if I go into Cairo, as I have promised to do—as I am expected to do—there can be no such result. The moment I arrive I shall be arrested, and the moment I am arrested I shall be identified and handed over to the military authorities to be tried for my offences as a soldier. There will be no religious significance in my punishment, therefore there will be no fanatical frenzy provoked by it, and consequently there can be no bloodshed. Don't you see that, Helena?"
She could not answer; she felt sick and faint. After a moment he went on in the same eager, enthusiastic voice—
"But that's not all. There is something better than that."
"Better—do you say better?"
"Something that comes closer to us at all events. Do you believe in omens, Helena? That some mystic sense tells us things of which we have no proof, no evidence?"
She bent her head without raising her eyes from the sand.
"Well, I have a sense of some treachery going on in Cairo that Ishmael knows nothing about, and I believe it was just this treachery which led to the idea of his going there at all."
She looked up into his face, and thinking he read her thought, he said quickly—
"Oh, I know—I've heard about the letters of the Ulema—that those suggestions of assassination and so forth were signed by the simple old Chancellor of El Azhar. But isn't it possible that a subtler spirit inspired them? ... Helena?"
"Yes," she faltered.
"Do you remember that one day in the Citadel I said it was not really Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus, and that there was somebody in Egypt now who was doing what the High Priest of the Jews did in Palestine two thousand years ago?"
"The Grand Cadi?"
"Yes! Something tells me that that subtle old scoundrel is playing a double sword game—with the Ulema and with the Government—and that his object is not only to destroy Ishmael, but, by awakening the ancient religious terror, to ruin England as well—tempt her to ruin her prestige, at all events."
They had reached the margin of the river, and he stopped.
"Well?" she faltered again.
"Well, I am a British soldier still, Helena, even though I am a disgraced one, and I want to ... I want to save the good name of my country."
She could not speak—she felt as if she would choke.
"I want to save the good name of the Consul-General also. He is my father, and though he no longer thinks of me as his son, I want to save him from ... from himself."
"I can do it too," he added eagerly. "At this moment I am perhaps the only man who can. I am nobody now—only a runaway and a deserter—but I can cross the line of fire and so give warning."
"But, Gordon, don't you see——"
"Oh, I know what you are going to say, Helena—I must die for it. Yes! Nobody wants to do that, if he can help it, but I can't! Listen!"
She raised her eyes to his—they seemed to be ablaze with a kind of frenzy.
"Death was the penalty of what I did in Cairo, and if I did not stay there to be court-martialled and condemned, was it because I wanted to save my life? No; I thought there was nothing left in my life that made it worth saving. It was because I wanted to give it in some better cause. Something told me I should, and when I came to Khartoum I didn't know what fate was before me, or what I had to do, but I know now. This is what I have to do, Helena—to go back to Cairo instead of Ishmael, and so save England and Egypt and my father and these poor Moslem people, and prevent a world of bloodshed."
Then Helena, who in her nervousness had been scraping her feet on the sand, said in a halting, trembling voice—
"Was this what you wanted to say to me, Gordon?"
"Yes, but now I want you to say something to me."
"What is that?" she asked, trembling.
"To tell me to go."
It was like a blow. She felt as if she would fall.
"I cannot go unless you send me, Helena—not as things stand now—leaving you here—under these conditions—in a place like this—alone. Therefore tell me to go, Helena."
Tears sprang to her eyes. She thought of all the hopes she had so lately cherished, all the dreams of the day before of love and a new life among quite different scenes—sweet scenes full of the smell of new-cut grass, the rustling of trees, the swish of the scythe, the songs of birds, and the ringing of church bells, instead of this empty and arid wilderness—and then of the ruin, the utter wreck and ruin, that everything was falling to.
"Tell me to go, Helena—tell me," he repeated.
It was crushing. She could not bear it.
"I cannot," she said. "Don't ask me to do such a thing. Just when we were going away, too ... expecting to escape from all this miserable tangle and to be happy at last——"
"But should we be happy, Helena? Say we escaped to Europe, America, Australia, anywhere far enough away, and what I speak of were to come to pass, should we be happy—should we?"
"We should be together at all events, and we should be able to love each other——"
"But could we love each other with the memory of all that misery—the misery we might have prevented—left here behind us?"
"At least we should be alive and safe and well."
"Should we be well if our whole life became abominable to us, Helena? ... On the other hand——"
"On the other hand, you want us to part—never to see each other again."
"It's hard—I know it's hard—but isn't that better than to become odious in each other's eyes?"
A cruel mixture of anger and sorrow and despair took possession of her, and, choking with emotion, she said—
"I have nobody but you now, yet you want me to tear my heart out—to sacrifice the love that is my only happiness, my only refuge.... Oh, I cannot do it! You are asking me to send you into the jaws of death itself—that's it—the very jaws of death itself—and I cannot do it. I tell you I cannot, I cannot! There is no woman in the world who could."
There was silence for a moment after this vehement cry; then in a low tone he said—
"Every soldier's wife does as much when she sends her husband into battle, Helena."
"Ah!"
She caught her breath as if a hand from heaven had smitten her.
"Am I not going into battle now? And aren't you a soldier's daughter?"
There was another moment of silence in which he looked out on the sparkling waters of the Blue Nile and she gazed through clouded eyes on the sluggish waves of the White.
Something had suddenly begun to rise in her throat. This was the real Gordon, the hero who had won battles, the soldier who had faced death before, and she had never known him until now!
A whirlwind of sensation and emotion seemed to race through her soul and body. She felt hot, she felt cold, she felt ashamed, and then all at once she felt as if she were being lifted out of herself by the spirit of the man beside her. At length she said, trying to speak calmly—
"You are right, quite right; you are always right, Gordon. If you feel like that about going into Cairo you must go. It is your duty. You have received your orders."
"Helena!" he cried, in a burst of joy.
"You mustn't think about me, though. I'm sorry for what I said a while ago, but I'm better now. I have always thought that if the time ever came to me to see my dearest go into battle, I should not allow myself to be afraid."
"I was sure of you, Helena, quite sure."
"This doesn't look like going into battle, perhaps, but it may be something still better—going to save life, to prevent bloodshed."
"Yes, yes!" he said; and struggling to control herself, Helena continued—
"You mustn't think about leaving me here, either. Whatever happens in this place, I shall always remember that you love me, so ... so nothing else will matter."
"Nothing—nothing!"
"And though it may be hard to think that you have gone to your death, and that I ... that in a sense I have been the cause of it——"
"But you haven't, Helena! Your hand may have penned that letter, but a higher Power directed it."
She looked at him with shining eyes, and answered in a firmer voice and with a proud lift of her beautiful head—
"I don't know about that, Gordon. I only know that you want to give your life in a great cause. And though they have degraded you and driven you out and hunted you down like a dog, you are going to die like a man and an Englishman."
"And you tell me to do it, Helena?"
"Yes, for I'm a soldier's daughter, and in my heart I'm a soldier's wife as well, and I shouldn't be worthy to be either if I didn't tell you to do your duty, whatever the consequences to me."
"My brave girl!" he cried, clutching at her hand.
Then they began to walk back.
As they walked they encouraged each other.
"We are on the right road now, Helena."
"Yes, we are on the right road now, Gordon."
"We are doing better than running away."
"Yes, we are doing better than running away."
"The train leaves Khartoum this evening, and I suppose they want to say farewell to me in the mosque at sunset.... You'll be strong to the last and not break down when the time comes for me to go?"
"No, I'll not break down ... when the time comes for you to go."
But for all her brave show of courage, her eyes were filling fast and the tears were threatening to fall.
"Better leave me now," she whispered. "Let me go back alone."
He was not sorry to let her go ahead, for at sight of her emotion his own was mastering him.
"Will she keep up to the end?" he asked himself.