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THE WEAVERS
By Gilbert Parker
CONTENTS
BOOK I
I. AS THE SPIRIT MOVED
II. THE GATES OF THE WORLD
III. BANISHED
IV. THE CALL
BOOK II
V. THE WIDER WAY
VI. "HAST THOU NEVER BILLED A MANY"
VII. THE COMPACT
VIII. FOR HIS SOUL'S SAKE AND THE LAND'S SAKE
IX. THE LETTER, THE NIGHT, AND THE WOMAN
X. THE FOUR WHO KNEW
XI. AGAINST THE HOUR OF MIDNIGHT
XII. THE JEHAD AND THE LIONS
XIII. ACHMET THE ROPEMAKER STRIKES
XIV. BEYOND THE PALE
BOOK III
XV. SOOLSBY'S HAND UPON THE CURTAIN
XVI. THE DEBT AND THE ACCOUNTING
XVII. THE WOMAN OF THE CROSS-ROADS
XVIII. TIME, THE IDOL-BREAKER
XIX. SHARPER THAN A SWORD
XX. EACH AFTER HIS OWN ORDER
XXI. "THERE IS NOTHING HIDDEN WHICH SHALL NOT BE REVEALED"
XXII. AS IN A GLASS DARKLY
XXIII. THE TENTS OF CUSHAN
XXIV. THE QUESTIONER
XXV. THE VOICE THROUGH THE DOOR
XXVI. "I OWE YOU NOTHING"
XXVII. THE AWAKENING
BOOK IV
XXVIII. NAHOUM TURNS THE SCREW
XXIX. THE RECOIL
XXX. LACEY MOVES
XXXI. THE STRUGGLE IN THE DESERT
XXXII. FORTY STRIPES SAVE ONE
XXXIII. THE DARK INDENTURE
XXXIV. NAHOUM DROPS THE MASK
BOOK V
XXXV. THE FLIGHT OF THE WOUNDED
XXXVI. "IS IT ALWAYS SO-IN LIFE?"
XXXVII. THE FLYING SHUTTLE
XXXVIII. JASPER KIMBER SPEAKS
XXXIX. FAITH JOURNEYS TO LONDON
BOOK VI
XL. HYLDA SEEKS NAHOUM
XLI. IN THE LAND OF SHINAR
XLII. THE LOOM OF DESTINY
INTRODUCTION
When I turn over the hundreds of pages of this book, I have a feeling
that I am looking upon something for which I have no particular
responsibility, though it has a strange contour of familiarity. It is as
though one looks upon a scene in which one had lived and moved, with the
friendly yet half-distant feeling that it once was one's own possession
but is so no longer. I should think the feeling to be much like that of
the old man whose sons, gone to distant places, have created their own
plantations of life and have themselves become the masters of
possessions. Also I suppose that when I read the story through again
from the first page to the last, I shall recreate the feeling in which
I lived when I wrote it, and it will become a part of my own identity
again. That distance between himself and his work, however, which
immediately begins to grow as soon as a book leaves the author's hands
for those of the public, is a thing which, I suppose, must come to one
who produces a work of the imagination. It is no doubt due to the fact
that every piece of art which has individuality and real likeness to the
scenes and character it is intended to depict is done in a kind of
trance. The author, in effect, self-hypnotises himself, has created
an atmosphere which is separate and apart from that of his daily
surroundings, and by virtue of his imagination becomes absorbed in that
atmosphere. When the book is finished and it goes forth, when the
imagination is relaxed and the concentration of mind is withdrawn, the
atmosphere disappears, and then. One experiences what I feel when I take
up 'The Weavers' and, in a sense, wonder how it was done, such as it is.
The frontispiece of the English edition represents a scene in the House
of Commons, and this brings to my mind a warning which was given me
similar to that on my entering new fields outside the one in which I
first made a reputation in fiction. When, in a certain year, I
determined that I would enter the House of Commons I had many friends
who, in effect, wailed and gnashed their teeth. They said that it would
be the death of my imaginative faculties; that I should never write
anything any more; that all the qualities which make literature living
and compelling would disappear. I thought this was all wrong then, and I
know it is all wrong now. Political life does certainly interfere with
the amount of work which an author may produce. He certainly cannot
write a book every year and do political work as well, but if he does not
attempt to do the two things on the same days, as it were, but in blocks
of time devoted to each separately and respectively, he will only find,
as I have found, that public life the conflict of it, the accompanying
attrition of mind, the searching for the things which will solve the
problems of national life, the multitudinous variations of character with
which one comes in contact, the big issues suddenly sprung upon the
congregation of responsible politicians, all are stimulating to the
imagination, invigorating to the mind, and marvellously freshening to
every literary instinct. No danger to the writer lies in doing political
work, if it does not sap his strength and destroy his health. Apart from
that, he should not suffer. The very spirit of statesmanship is
imagination, vision; and the same quality which enables an author to
realise humanity for a book is necessary for him to realise humanity in
the crowded chamber of a Parliament.
So far as I can remember, whatever was written of The Weavers, no critic
said that it lacked imagination. Some critics said it was too crowded
with incident; that there was enough incident in it for two novels; some
said that the sweep was too wide, but no critic of authority declared
that the book lacked vision or the vivacity of a living narrative. It is
not likely that I shall ever write again a novel of Egypt, but I have
made my contribution to Anglo-Egyptian literature, and I do not think I
failed completely in showing the greatness of soul which enabled one man
to keep the torch of civilisation, of truth, justice, and wholesome love
alight in surroundings as offensive to civilisation as was Egypt in the
last days of Ismail Pasha--a time which could be well typified by the
words put by Bulwer Lytton in the mouth of Cardinal Richelieu:
"I found France rent asunder,
Sloth in the mart and schism in the temple;
Broils festering to rebellion; and weak laws
Rotting away with rust in antique sheaths.
I have re-created France; and, from the ashes
Of the old feudal and decrepit carcase,
Civilisation on her luminous wings
Soars, phoenix-like, to Jove!"
Critics and readers have endeavoured to identify the main characteristics
of The Weavers with figures in Anglo-Egyptian and official public life.
David Claridge was, however, a creature of the imagination. It has been
said that he was drawn from General Gordon. I am not conscious of having
taken Gordon for David's prototype, though, as I was saturated with all
that had been written about Gordon, there is no doubt that something of
that great man may have found its way into the character of David
Claridge. The true origin of David Claridge, however, may be found in a
short story called 'All the World's Mad', in Donovan Pasha, which was
originally published by Lady Randolph Churchill in an ambitious but
defunct magazine called 'The Anglo-Saxon Review'. The truth is that
David Claridge had his origin in a fairly close understanding of, and
interest in, Quaker life. I had Quaker relatives through the marriage of
a connection of my mother, and the original of Benn Claridge, the uncle
of David, is still alive, a very old man, who in my boyhood days wore the
broad brim and the straight preacher-like coat of the old-fashioned
Quaker. The grandmother of my wife was also a Quaker, and used the
"thee" and "thou" until the day of her death.
Here let me say that criticism came to me from several quarters both in
England and America on the use of these words thee and thou, and
statements were made that the kind of speech which I put into David
Claridge's mouth was not Quaker speech. For instance, they would not
have it that a Quaker would say, "Thee will go with me"--as though they
were ashamed of the sweet inaccuracy of the objective pronoun being used
in the nominative; but hundreds of times I have myself heard Quakers use
"thee" in just such a way in England and America. The facts are,
however, that Quakers differ extensively in their habits, and there grew
up in England among the Quakers in certain districts a sense of shame
for false grammar which, to say the least, was very childish. To be
deliberately and boldly ungrammatical, when you serve both euphony and
simplicity, is merely to give archaic charm, not to be guilty of an
offence. I have friends in Derbyshire who still say "Thee thinks,"
etc., and I must confess that the picture of a Quaker rampant over my
deliberate use of this well-authenticated form of speech produced to my
mind only the effect of an infuriated sheep, when I remembered the
peaceful attribute of Quaker life and character. From another quarter
came the assurance that I was wrong when I set up a tombstone with a name
upon it in a Quaker graveyard. I received a sarcastic letter from a lady
on the borders of Sussex and Surrey upon this point, and I immediately
sent her a first-class railway ticket to enable her to visit the Quaker
churchyard at Croydon, in Surrey, where dead and gone Quakers have
tombstones by the score, and inscriptions on them also. It is a good
thing to be accurate; it is desperately essential in a novel. The
average reader, in his triumph at discovering some slight error of
detail, would consign a masterpiece of imagination, knowledge of life
and character to the rubbish-heap.
I believe that 'The Weavers' represents a wider outlook of life, closer
understanding of the problems which perplex society, and a clearer view
of the verities than any previous book written by me, whatever its
popularity may have been. It appealed to the British public rather more
than 'The Right of Way', and the great public of America and the Oversea
Dominions gave it a welcome which enabled it to take its place beside
'The Right of Way', the success of which was unusual.
NOTE
This book is not intended to be an historical novel, nor are its
characters meant to be identified with well-known persons connected with
the history of England or of Egypt; but all that is essential in the tale
is based upon, and drawn from, the life of both countries. Though Egypt
has greatly changed during the past generation, away from Cairo and the
commercial centres the wheels of social progress have turned but slowly,
and much remains as it was in the days of which this book is a record in
the spirit of the life, at least.
G. P.
"Dost thou spread the sail, throw the spear, swing the axe, lay
thy hand upon the plough, attend the furnace door, shepherd the
sheep upon the hills, gather corn from the field, or smite the
rock in the quarry? Yet, whatever thy task, thou art even as
one who twists the thread and throws the shuttle, weaving the
web of Life. Ye are all weavers, and Allah the Merciful, does
He not watch beside the loom?"
BOOK I
CHAPTER I
AS THE SPIRIT MOVED
The village lay in a valley which had been the bed of a great river in
the far-off days when Ireland, Wales and Brittany were joined together
and the Thames flowed into the Seine. The place had never known turmoil
or stir. For generations it had lived serenely.
Three buildings in the village stood out insistently, more by the
authority of their appearance and position than by their size. One was a
square, red-brick mansion in the centre of the village, surrounded by a
high, redbrick wall enclosing a garden. Another was a big, low, graceful
building with wings. It had once been a monastery. It was covered with
ivy, which grew thick and hungry upon it, and it was called the
Cloistered House. The last of the three was of wood, and of no great
size--a severely plain but dignified structure, looking like some
council-hall of a past era. Its heavy oak doors and windows with diamond
panes, and its air of order, cleanliness and serenity, gave it a
commanding influence in the picture. It was the key to the history of
the village--a Quaker Meeting-house.
Involuntarily the village had built itself in such a way that it made a
wide avenue from the common at one end to the Meeting-house on the gorse-
grown upland at the other. With a demure resistance to the will of its
makers the village had made itself decorative. The people were
unconscious of any attractiveness in themselves or in their village.
There were, however, a few who felt the beauty stirring around them.
These few, for their knowledge and for the pleasure which it brought,
paid the accustomed price. The records of their lives were the only
notable history of the place since the days when their forefathers
suffered for the faith.
One of these was a girl--for she was still but a child when she died;
and she had lived in the Red Mansion with the tall porch, the wide garden
behind, and the wall of apricots and peaches and clustering grapes. Her
story was not to cease when she was laid away in the stiff graveyard
behind the Meeting-house. It was to go on in the life of her son, whom
to bring into the world she had suffered undeserved, and loved with a
passion more in keeping with the beauty of the vale in which she lived
than with the piety found on the high-backed seats in the Quaker Meeting-
house. The name given her on the register of death was Mercy Claridge,
and a line beneath said that she was the daughter of Luke Claridge, that
her age at passing was nineteen years, and that "her soul was with the
Lord."
Another whose life had given pages to the village history was one of
noble birth, the Earl of Eglington. He had died twenty years after the
time when Luke Claridge, against the then custom of the Quakers, set up a
tombstone to Mercy Claridge's memory behind the Meeting-house. Only
thrice in those twenty years had he slept in a room of the Cloistered
House. One of those occasions was the day on which Luke Claridge put up
the grey stone in the graveyard, three years after his daughter's death.
On the night of that day these two men met face to face in the garden of
the Cloistered House. It was said by a passer-by, who had involuntarily
overheard, that Luke Claridge had used harsh and profane words to Lord
Eglington, though he had no inkling of the subject of the bitter talk.
He supposed, however, that Luke had gone to reprove the other for a
wasteful and wandering existence; for desertion of that Quaker religion
to which his grandfather, the third Earl of Eglington, had turned in the
second half of his life, never visiting his estates in Ireland, and
residing here among his new friends to his last day. This listener--John
Fairley was his name--kept his own counsel. On two other occasions had
Lord Eglington visited the Cloistered House in the years that passed, and
remained many months. Once he brought his wife and child. The former
was a cold, blue-eyed Saxon of an old family, who smiled distantly upon
the Quaker village; the latter, a round-headed, warm-faced youth, with a
bold, menacing eye, who probed into this and that, rushed here and there
as did his father; now built a miniature mill; now experimented at some
peril in the laboratory which had been arranged in the Cloistered House
for scientific experiments; now shot partridges in the fields where
partridges had not been shot for years; and was as little in the picture
as his adventurous father, though he wore a broad-brimmed hat, smiling
the while at the pain it gave to the simple folk around him.
And yet once more the owner of the Cloistered House returned alone. The
blue-eyed lady was gone to her grave; the youth was abroad. This time he
came to die. He was found lying on the floor of his laboratory with a
broken retort in fragments beside him. With his servant, Luke Claridge
was the first to look upon him lying in the wreck of his last experiment,
a spirit-lamp still burning above him, in the grey light of a winter's
morning. Luke Claridge closed the eyes, straightened the body, and
crossed the hands over the breast which had been the laboratory of many
conflicting passions of life.
The dead man had left instructions that his body should be buried in the
Quaker graveyard, but Luke Claridge and the Elders prevented that--he had
no right to the privileges of a Friend; and, as the only son was afar,
and no near relatives pressed the late Earl's wishes, the ancient family
tomb in Ireland received all that was left of the owner of the Cloistered
House, which, with the estates in Ireland and the title, passed to the
wandering son.
CHAPTER II
THE GATES OF THE WORLD
Stillness in the Meeting-house, save for the light swish of one
graveyard-tree against the window-pane, and the slow breathing of the
Quaker folk who filled every corner. On the long bench at the upper end
of the room the Elders sat motionless, their hands on their knees,
wearing their hats; the women in their poke-bonnets kept their gaze upon
their laps. The heads of all save three were averted, and they were Luke
Claridge, his only living daughter, called Faith, and his dead daughter's
son David, who kept his eyes fixed on the window where the twig flicked
against the pane. The eyes of Faith, who sat on a bench at one side,
travelled from David to her father constantly; and if, once or twice, the
plain rebuke of Luke Claridge's look compelled her eyes upon her folded
hands, still she was watchful and waiting, and seemed demurely to defy
the convention of unblinking silence. As time went on, others of her sex
stole glances at Mercy's son from the depths of their bonnets; and at
last, after over an hour, they and all were drawn to look steadily at the
young man upon whose business this Meeting of Discipline had been called.
The air grew warmer and warmer, but no one became restless; all seemed as
cool of face and body as the grey gowns and coats with grey steel buttons
which they wore.
At last a shrill voice broke the stillness. Raising his head, one of the
Elders said: "Thee will stand up, friend." He looked at David.
With a slight gesture of relief the young man stood up. He was good to
look at-clean-shaven, broad of brow, fine of figure, composed of
carriage, though it was not the composure of the people by whom he was
surrounded. They were dignified, he was graceful; they were consistently
slow of movement, but at times his quick gestures showed that he had not
been able to train his spirit to that passiveness by which he lived
surrounded. Their eyes were slow and quiet, more meditative than
observant; his were changeful in expression, now abstracted, now dark and
shining as though some inner fire was burning. The head, too, had a
habit of coming up quickly with an almost wilful gesture, and with an air
which, in others, might have been called pride.
"What is thy name?" said another owl-like Elder to him.
A gentle, half-amused smile flickered at the young man's lips for an
instant, then, "David Claridge--still," he answered.
His last word stirred the meeting. A sort of ruffle went through the
atmosphere, and now every eye was fixed and inquiring. The word was
ominous. He was there on his trial, and for discipline; and it was
thought by all that, as many days had passed since his offence was
committed, meditation and prayer should have done their work. Now,
however, in the tone of his voice, as it clothed the last word, there was
something of defiance. On the ear of his grandfather, Luke Claridge, it
fell heavily. The old man's lips closed tightly, he clasped his hands
between his knees with apparent self-repression.
The second Elder who had spoken was he who had once heard Luke Claridge
use profane words in the Cloistered House. Feeling trouble ahead, and
liking the young man and his brother Elder, Luke Claridge, John Fairley
sought now to take the case into his own hands.
"Thee shall never find a better name, David," he said, "if thee live a
hundred years. It hath served well in England. This thee didst do.
While the young Earl of Eglington was being brought home, with noise and
brawling, after his return to Parliament, thee mingled among the
brawlers; and because some evil words were said of thy hat and thy
apparel, thee laid about thee, bringing one to the dust, so that his life
was in peril for some hours to come. Jasper Kimber was his name."
"Were it not that the smitten man forgave thee, thee would now be in a
prison cell," shrilly piped the Elder who had asked his name.
"The fight was fair," was the young man's reply. "Though I am a Friend,
the man was English."
"Thee was that day a son of Belial," rejoined the shrill Elder. "Thee
did use thy hands like any heathen sailor--is it not the truth?"
"I struck the man. I punished him--why enlarge?"
"Thee is guilty?"
"I did the thing."
"That is one charge against thee. There are others. Thee was seen to
drink of spirits in a public-house at Heddington that day. Twice--
thrice, like any drunken collier."
"Twice," was the prompt correction.
There was a moment's pause, in which some women sighed and others folded
and unfolded their hands on their laps; the men frowned.
"Thee has been a dark deceiver," said the shrill Elder again, and with a
ring of acrid triumph; "thee has hid these things from our eyes many
years, but in one day thee has uncovered all. Thee--"
"Thee is charged," interposed Elder Fairley, "with visiting a play this
same day, and with seeing a dance of Spain following upon it."
"I did not disdain the music," said the young man drily; "the flute, of
all instruments, has a mellow sound." Suddenly his eyes darkened, he
became abstracted, and gazed at the window where the twig flicked softly
against the pane, and the heat of summer palpitated in the air. "It has
good grace to my ear," he added slowly.
Luke Claridge looked at him intently. He began to realize that there
were forces stirring in his grandson which had no beginning in Claridge
blood, and were not nurtured in the garden with the fruited wall. He was
not used to problems; he had only a code, which he had rigidly kept. He
had now a glimmer of something beyond code or creed.
He saw that the shrill Elder was going to speak. He intervened. "Thee
is charged, David," he said coldly, "with kissing a woman--a stranger and
a wanton--where the four roads meet 'twixt here and yonder town." He
motioned towards the hills.
"In the open day," added the shrill Elder, a red spot burning on each
withered cheek.
"The woman was comely," said the young man, with a tone of irony,
recovering an impassive look.
A strange silence fell, the women looked down; yet they seemed not so
confounded as the men. After a moment they watched the young man with
quicker flashes of the eye.
"The answer is shameless," said the shrill Elder. "Thy life is that of a
carnal hypocrite."
The young man said nothing. His face had become very pale, his lips were
set, and presently he sat down and folded his arms.
"Thee is guilty of all?" asked John Fairley.
His kindly eye was troubled, for he had spent numberless hours in this
young man's company, and together they had read books of travel and
history, and even the plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe, though drama was
anathema to the Society of Friends--they did not realize it in the life
around them. That which was drama was either the visitation of God or
the dark deeds of man, from which they must avert their eyes. Their own
tragedies they hid beneath their grey coats and bodices; their dirty
linen they never washed in public, save in the scandal such as this where
the Society must intervene. Then the linen was not only washed, but duly
starched, sprinkled, and ironed.
"I have answered all. Judge by my words," said David gravely.
"Has repentance come to thee? Is it thy will to suffer that which we may
decide for thy correction?" It was Elder Fairley who spoke. He was
determined to control the meeting and to influence its judgment. He
loved the young man.
David made no reply; he seemed lost in thought. "Let the discipline
proceed--he hath an evil spirit," said the shrill Elder.
"His childhood lacked in much," said Elder Fairley patiently.
To most minds present the words carried home--to every woman who had a
child, to every man who had lost a wife and had a motherless son. This
much they knew of David's real history, that Mercy Claridge, his mother,
on a visit to the house of an uncle at Portsmouth, her mother's brother,
had eloped with and was duly married to the captain of a merchant ship.
They also knew that, after some months, Luke Claridge had brought her
home; and that before her child was born news came that the ship her
husband sailed had gone down with all on board. They knew likewise that
she had died soon after David came, and that her father, Luke Claridge,
buried her in her maiden name, and brought the boy up as his son, not
with his father's name but bearing that name so long honoured in England,
and even in the far places of the earth--for had not Benn Claridge,
Luke's brother, been a great carpet-merchant, traveller, and explorer in
Asia Minor, Egypt, and the Soudan--Benn Claridge of the whimsical speech,
the pious life? All this they knew; but none of them, to his or her
knowledge, had ever seen David's father. He was legendary; though there
was full proof that the girl had been duly married. That had been laid
before the Elders by Luke Claridge on an occasion when Benn Claridge, his
brother was come among them again from the East.
At this moment of trial David was thinking of his uncle, Benn Claridge,
and of his last words fifteen years before when going once again to the
East, accompanied by the Muslim chief Ebn Ezra, who had come with him to
England on the business of his country. These were Benn Claridge's
words: "Love God before all, love thy fellow-man, and thy conscience will
bring thee safe home, lad."
"If he will not repent, there is but one way," said the shrill Elder.
"Let there be no haste," said Luke Claridge, in a voice that shook a
little in his struggle for self-control.
Another heretofore silent Elder, sitting beside John Fairley, exchanged
words in a whisper with him, and then addressed them. He was a very
small man with a very high stock and spreading collar, a thin face, and
large wide eyes. He kept his chin down in his collar, but spoke at the
ceiling like one blind, though his eyes were sharp enough on occasion.
His name was Meacham.
"It is meet there shall be time for sorrow and repentance," he said.
"This, I pray you all, be our will: that for three months David live
apart, even in the hut where lived the drunken chair-maker ere he
disappeared and died, as rumour saith--it hath no tenant. Let it be that
after to-morrow night at sunset none shall speak to him till that time be
come, the first day of winter. Till that day he shall speak to no man,
and shall be despised of the world, and--pray God--of himself. Upon the
first day of winter let it be that he come hither again and speak with
us."
On the long stillness of assent that followed there came a voice across
the room, from within a grey-and-white bonnet, which shadowed a delicate
face shining with the flame of the spirit within. It was the face of
Faith Claridge, the sister of the woman in the graveyard, whose soul was
"with the Lord," though she was but one year older and looked much
younger than her nephew, David.
"Speak, David," she said softly. "Speak now. Doth not the spirit move
thee?"
She gave him his cue, for he had of purpose held his peace till all had
been said; and he had come to say some things which had been churning in
his mind too long. He caught the faint cool sarcasm in her tone, and
smiled unconsciously at her last words. She, at least, must have reasons
for her faith in him, must have grounds for his defence in painful days
to come; for painful they must be, whether he stayed to do their will, or
went into the fighting world where Quakers were few and life composite of
things they never knew in Hamley.
He got to his feet and clasped his hands behind his back. After an
instant he broke silence.
"All those things of which I am accused, I did; and for them is asked
repentance. Before that day on which I did these things was there
complaint, or cause for it? Was my life evil? Did I think in secret
that which might not be done openly? Well, some things I did secretly.
Ye shall hear of them. I read where I might, and after my taste, many
plays, and found in them beauty and the soul of deep things. Tales I
have read, but a few, and John Milton, and Chaucer, and Bacon, and
Montaigne, and Arab poets also, whose books my uncle sent me. Was this
sin in me?"
"It drove to a day of shame for thee," said the shrill Elder.
He took no heed, but continued: "When I was a child I listened to the
lark as it rose from the meadow; and I hid myself in the hedge that,
unseen, I might hear it sing; and at night I waited till I could hear the
nightingale. I have heard the river singing, and the music of the trees.
At first I thought that this must be sin, since ye condemn the human
voice that sings, but I could feel no guilt. I heard men and women sing
upon the village green, and I sang also. I heard bands of music. One
instrument seemed to me more than all the rest. I bought one like it,
and learned to play. It was the flute--its note so soft and pleasant.
I learned to play it--years ago--in the woods of Beedon beyond the hill,
and I have felt no guilt from then till now. For these things I have no
repentance."
"Thee has had good practice in deceit," said the shrill Elder.
Suddenly David's manner changed. His voice became deeper; his eyes took
on that look of brilliance and heat which had given Luke Claridge anxious
thoughts.
"I did, indeed, as the spirit moved me, even as ye have done."
"Blasphemer, did the spirit move thee to brawl and fight, to drink and
curse, to kiss a wanton in the open road? What hath come upon thee?"
Again it was the voice of the shrill Elder.
"Judge me by the truth I speak," he answered. "Save in these things my
life has been an unclasped book for all to read."
"Speak to the charge of brawling and drink, David," rejoined the little
Elder Meacham with the high collar and gaze upon the ceiling.
"Shall I not speak when I am moved? Ye have struck swiftly; I will draw
the arrow slowly from the wound. But, in truth, ye had good right to
wound. Naught but kindness have I had among you all; and I will answer.
Straightly have I lived since my birth. Yet betimes a torturing unrest
of mind was used to come upon me as I watched the world around us. I saw
men generous to their kind, industrious and brave, beloved by their
fellows; and I have seen these same men drink and dance and give
themselves to coarse, rough play like young dogs in a kennel. Yet, too,
I have seen dark things done in drink--the cheerful made morose, the
gentle violent. What was the temptation? What the secret? Was it but
the low craving of the flesh, or was it some primitive unrest, or craving
of the soul, which, clouded and baffled by time and labour and the wear
of life, by this means was given the witched medicament--a false freedom,
a thrilling forgetfulness? In ancient days the high, the humane, in
search of cure for poison, poisoned themselves, and then applied the
antidote. He hath little knowledge and less pity for sin who has never
sinned. The day came when all these things which other men did in my
sight I did--openly. I drank with them in the taverns--twice I drank.
I met a lass in the way. I kissed her. I sat beside her at the roadside
and she told me her brief, sad, evil story. One she had loved had left
her. She was going to London. I gave her what money I had--"
"And thy watch," said a whispering voice from the Elders' bench.
"Even so. And at the cross-roads I bade her goodbye with sorrow."
"There were those who saw," said the shrill voice from the bench.
"They saw what I have said--no more. I had never tasted spirits in my
life. I had never kissed a woman's lips. Till then I had never struck
my fellow-man; but before the sun went down I fought the man who drove
the lass in sorrow into the homeless world. I did not choose to fight;
but when I begged the man Jasper Kimber for the girl's sake to follow and
bring her back, and he railed at me and made to fight me, I took off my
hat, and there I laid him in the dust."
"No thanks to thee that he did not lie in his grave," observed the shrill
Elder.
"In truth I hit hard," was the quiet reply.
"How came thee expert with thy fists?" asked Elder Fairley, with the
shadow of a smile.
"A book I bought from London, a sack of corn, a hollow leather ball, and
an hour betimes with the drunken chair-maker in the hut by the lime-kiln
on the hill. He was once a sailor and a fighting man."
A look of blank surprise ran slowly along the faces of the Elders. They
were in a fog of misunderstanding and reprobation.
"While yet my father"--he looked at Luke Claridge, whom he had ever been
taught to call his father--"shared the great business at Heddington, and
the ships came from Smyrna and Alexandria, I had some small duties, as is
well known. But that ceased, and there was little to do. Sports are
forbidden among us here, and my body grew sick, because the mind had no
labour. The world of work has thickened round us beyond the hills. The
great chimneys rise in a circle as far as eye can see on yonder crests;
but we slumber and sleep."
"Enough, enough," said a voice from among the women. "Thee has a friend
gone to London--thee knows the way. It leads from the cross-roads!"
Faith Claridge, who had listened to David's speech, her heart panting,
her clear grey eyes--she had her mother's eyes--fixed benignly on him,
turned to the quarter whence the voice came. Seeing who it was--a widow
who, with no demureness, had tried without avail to bring Luke Claridge
to her--her lips pressed together in a bitter smile, and she said to her
nephew clearly:
"Patience Spielman hath little hope of thee, David. Hope hath died in
her."
A faint, prim smile passed across the faces of all present, for all knew
Faith's allusion, and it relieved the tension of the past half-hour.
From the first moment David began to speak he had commanded his hearers.
His voice was low and even; but it had also a power which, when put to
sudden quiet use, compelled the hearer to an almost breathless silence,
not so much to the meaning of the words, but to the tone itself, to the
man behind it. His personal force was remarkable. Quiet and pale
ordinarily, his clear russet-brown hair falling in a wave over his
forehead, when roused, he seemed like some delicate engine made to do
great labours. As Faith said to him once, "David, thee looks as though
thee could lift great weights lightly." When roused, his eyes lighted
like a lamp, the whole man seemed to pulsate. He had shocked, awed, and
troubled his listeners. Yet he had held them in his power, and was
master of their minds. The interjections had but given him new means to
defend himself. After Faith had spoken he looked slowly round.
"I am charged with being profane," he said. "I do not remember. But is
there none among you who has not secretly used profane words and, neither
in secret nor openly, has repented? I am charged with drinking. On one
day of my life I drank openly. I did it because something in me kept
crying out, 'Taste and see!' I tasted and saw, and know; and I know that
oblivion, that brief pitiful respite from trouble, which this evil
tincture gives. I drank to know; and I found it lure me into a new
careless joy. The sun seemed brighter, men's faces seemed happier, the
world sang about me, the blood ran swiftly, thoughts swarmed in my brain.
My feet were on the mountains, my hands were on the sails of great ships;
I was a conqueror. I understood the drunkard in the first withdrawal
begotten of this false stimulant. I drank to know. Is there none among
you who has, though it be but once, drunk secretly as I drank openly? If
there be none, then I am condemned."
"Amen," said Elder Fairley's voice from the bench. "In the open way by
the cross-roads I saw a woman. I saw she was in sorrow. I spoke to her.
Tears came to her eyes. I took her hand, and we sat down together. Of
the rest I have told you. I kissed her--a stranger. She was comely.
And this I know, that the matter ended by the cross-roads, and that by
and forbidden paths have easy travel. I kissed the woman openly--is
there none among you who has kissed secretly, and has kept the matter
hidden? For him I struck and injured, it was fair. Shall a man be
beaten like a dog? Kimber would have beaten me."
"Wherein has it all profited?" asked the shrill Elder querulously.
"I have knowledge. None shall do these things hereafter but I shall
understand. None shall go venturing, exploring, but I shall pray for
him."
"Thee will break thy heart and thy life exploring," said Luke Claridge
bitterly. Experiment in life he did not understand, and even Benn
Claridge's emigration to far lands had ever seemed to him a monstrous and
amazing thing, though it ended in the making of a great business in which
he himself had prospered, and from which he had now retired. He suddenly
realized that a day of trouble was at hand with this youth on whom his
heart doted, and it tortured him that he could not understand.
"By none of these things shall I break my life," was David's answer now.
For a moment he stood still and silent, then all at once he stretched out
his hands to them. "All these things I did were against our faith. I
desire forgiveness. I did them out of my own will; I will take up your
judgment. If there be no more to say, I will make ready to go to old
Soolsby's hut on the hill till the set time be passed."
There was a long silence. Even the shrill Elder's head was buried in
his breast. They were little likely to forego his penalty. There was
a gentle inflexibility in their natures born of long restraint and
practised determination. He must go out into blank silence and
banishment until the first day of winter. Yet, recalcitrant as they held
him, their secret hearts were with him, for there was none of them but
had had happy commerce with him; and they could think of no more bitter
punishment than to be cut off from their own society for three months.
They were satisfied he was being trained back to happiness and honour.
A new turn was given to events, however. The little wizened Elder
Meacham said: "The flute, friend--is it here?"
"I have it here," David answered.
"Let us have music, then."
"To what end?" interjected the shrill Elder.
"He hath averred he can play," drily replied the other. "Let us judge
whether vanity breeds untruth in him."
The furtive brightening of the eyes in the women was represented in the
men by an assumed look of abstraction in most; in others by a bland
assumption of judicial calm. A few, however, frowned, and would have
opposed the suggestion, but that curiosity mastered them. These watched
with darkening interest the flute, in three pieces, drawn from an inner
pocket and put together swiftly.
David raised the instrument to his lips, blew one low note, and then a
little run of notes, all smooth and soft. Mellowness and a sober
sweetness were in the tone. He paused a moment after this, and seemed
questioning what to play. And as he stood, the flute in his hands, his
thoughts took flight to his Uncle Benn, whose kindly, shrewd face and
sharp brown eyes were as present to him, and more real, than those of
Luke Claridge, whom he saw every day. Of late when he had thought of
his uncle, however, alternate depression and lightness of spirit had
possessed him. Night after night he had troubled sleep, and he had
dreamed again and again that his uncle knocked at his door, or came and
stood beside his bed and spoke to him. He had wakened suddenly and said
"Yes" to a voice which seemed to call to him.
Always his dreams and imaginings settled round his Uncle Benn, until he
had found himself trying to speak to the little brown man across the
thousand leagues of land and sea. He had found, too, in the past that
when he seemed to be really speaking to his uncle, when it seemed as
though the distance between them had been annihilated, that soon
afterwards there came a letter from him. Yet there had not been more
than two or three a year. They had been, however, like books of many
pages, closely written, in Arabic, in a crabbed characteristic hand, and
full of the sorrow and grandeur and misery of the East. How many books
on the East David had read he would hardly have been able to say; but
something of the East had entered into him, something of the philosophy
of Mahomet and Buddha, and the beauty of Omar Khayyam had given a touch
of colour and intellect to the narrow faith in which he had been
schooled. He had found himself replying to a question asked of him in
Heddington, as to how he knew that there was a God, in the words of a
Muslim quoted by his uncle: "As I know by the tracks in the sand whether
a Man or Beast has passed there, so the heaven with its stars, the earth
with its fruits, show me that God has passed." Again, in reply to the
same question, the reply of the same Arab sprang to his lips--"Does the
Morning want a Light to see it by?"
As he stood with his flute--his fingers now and then caressingly rising
and falling upon its little caverns, his mind travelled far to those
regions he had never seen, where his uncle traded, and explored.
Suddenly, the call he had heard in his sleep now came to him in this
waking reverie. His eyes withdrew from the tree at the window, as if
startled, and he almost called aloud in reply; but he realised where he
was. At last, raising the flute to his lips, as the eyes of Luke
Claridge closed with very trouble, he began to play.
Out in the woods of Beedon he had attuned his flute to the stir of
leaves, the murmur of streams, the song of birds, the boom and burden of
storm; and it was soft and deep as the throat of the bell-bird of
Australian wilds. Now it was mastered by the dreams he had dreamed of
the East: the desert skies, high and clear and burning, the desert
sunsets, plaintive and peaceful and unvaried--one lovely diffusion, in
which day dies without splendour and in a glow of pain. The long velvety
tread of the camel, the song of the camel-driver, the monotonous chant of
the river-man, with fingers mechanically falling on his little drum, the
cry of the eagle of the Libyan Hills, the lap of the heavy waters of the
Dead Sea down by Jericho, the battle-call of the Druses beyond Damascus,
the lonely gigantic figures at the mouth of the temple of Abou Simbel,
looking out with the eternal question to the unanswering desert, the
delicate ruins of moonlit Baalbec, with the snow mountains hovering
above, the green oases, and the deep wells where the caravans lay down in
peace--all these were pouring their influences on his mind in the little
Quaker village of Hamley where life was so bare, so grave.
The music he played was all his own, was instinctively translated from
all other influences into that which they who listened to him could
understand. Yet that sensuous beauty which the Quaker Society was so
concerned to banish from any part in their life was playing upon them
now, making the hearts of the women beat fast, thrilling them, turning
meditation into dreams, and giving the sight of the eyes far visions of
pleasure. So powerful was this influence that the shrill Elder twice
essayed to speak in protest, but was prevented by the wizened Elder
Meacham. When it seemed as if the aching, throbbing sweetness must
surely bring denunciation, David changed the music to a slow mourning
cadence. It was a wail of sorrow, a march to the grave, a benediction, a
soft sound of farewell, floating through the room and dying away into the
mid-day sun.
There came a long silence after, and David sat with unmoving look upon
the distant prospect through the window. A woman's sob broke the air.
Faith's handkerchief was at her eyes. Only one quick sob, but it had
been wrung from her by the premonition suddenly come that the brother--
he was brother more than nephew--over whom her heart had yearned had,
indeed, come to the cross-roads, and that their ways would henceforth
divide. The punishment or banishment now to be meted out to him was as
nothing. It meant a few weeks of disgrace, of ban, of what, in effect,
was self-immolation, of that commanding justice of the Society which no
one yet save the late Earl of Eglington had defied. David could refuse
to bear punishment, but such a possibility had never occurred to her or
to any one present. She saw him taking his punishment as surely as
though the law of the land had him in its grasp. It was not that which
she was fearing. But she saw him moving out of her life. To her this
music was the prelude of her tragedy.
A moment afterwards Luke Claridge arose and spoke to David in austere
tones: "It is our will that thee begone to the chair-maker's but upon the
hill till three months be passed, and that none have speech with thee
after sunset to-morrow even."
"Amen," said all the Elders.
"Amen," said David, and put his flute into his pocket, and rose to go.
CHAPTER III
BANISHED
The chair-maker's hut lay upon the north hillside about half-way between
the Meeting-house at one end of the village and the common at the other
end. It commanded the valley, had no house near it, and was sheltered
from the north wind by the hill-top which rose up behind it a hundred
feet or more. No road led to it--only a path up from the green of the
village, winding past a gulley and the deep cuts of old rivulets now
over grown by grass or bracken. It got the sun abundantly, and it was
protected from the full sweep of any storm. It had but two rooms, the
floor was of sanded earth, but it had windows on three sides, east, west,
and south, and the door looked south. Its furniture was a plank bed, a
few shelves, a bench, two chairs, some utensils, a fireplace of stone, a
picture of the Virgin and Child, and of a cardinal of the Church of Rome
with a red hat--for the chair-maker had been a Roman Catholic, the only
one of that communion in Hamley. Had he been a Protestant his vices
would have made him anathema, but, being what he was, his fellow-
villagers had treated him with kindness.
After the half-day in which he was permitted to make due preparations,
lay in store of provisions, and purchase a few sheep and hens, hither
came David Claridge. Here, too, came Faith, who was permitted one hour
with him before he began his life of willing isolation. Little was said
as they made the journey up the hill, driving the sheep before them, four
strong lads following with necessities--flour, rice, potatoes, and
suchlike.
Arrived, the goods were deposited inside the hut, the lads were
dismissed, and David and Faith were left alone. David looked at his
watch. They had still a handful of minutes before the parting. These
flew fast, and yet, seated inside the door, and looking down at the
village which the sun was bathing in the last glowing of evening, they
remained silent. Each knew that a great change had come in their
hitherto unchanging life, and it was difficult to separate premonition
from substantial fact. The present fact did not represent all they felt,
though it represented all on which they might speak together now.
Looking round the room, at last Faith said: "Thee has all thee needs,
David? Thee is sure?"
He nodded. "I know not yet how little man may need. I have lived in
plenty."
At that moment her eyes rested on the Cloistered House.
"The Earl of Eglington would not call it plenty." A shade passed over
David's face. "I know not how he would measure. Is his own field so
wide?"
"The spread of a peacock's feather."
"What does thee know of him?" David asked the question absently.
"I have eyes to see, Davy." The shadows from that seeing were in her
eyes as she spoke, but he did not observe them.
"Thee sees but with half an eye," she continued. "With both mine I have
seen horses and carriages, and tall footmen, and wine and silver, and
gilded furniture, and fine pictures, and rolls of new carpet--of Uncle
Benn's best carpets, Davy--and a billiard-table, and much else."
A cloud slowly gathered over David's face, and he turned to her with an
almost troubled surprise. "Thee has seen these things--and how?"
"One day--thee was in Devon--one of the women was taken ill. They sent
for me because the woman asked it. She was a Papist; but she begged that
I should go with her to the hospital, as there was no time to send to
Heddington for a nurse. She had seen me once in the house of the toll-
gate keeper. Ill as she was, I could have laughed, for, as we went in
the Earl's carriage to the hospital-thirty miles it was--she said she
felt at home with me, my dress being so like a nun's. It was then I saw
the Cloistered House within and learned what was afoot."
"In the Earl's carriage indeed--and the Earl?"
"He was in Ireland, burrowing among those tarnished baubles, his titles,
and stripping the Irish Peter to clothe the English Paul."
"He means to make Hamley his home? From Ireland these furnishings come?"
"So it seems. Henceforth the Cloistered House will have its doors flung
wide. London and all the folk of Parliament will flutter along the dunes
of Hamley."
"Then the bailiff will sit yonder within a year, for he is but a starved
Irish peer."
"He lives to-day as though he would be rich tomorrow. He bids for fame
and fortune, Davy."
"'Tis as though a shirtless man should wear a broadcloth coat over a
cotton vest."
"The world sees only the broadcloth coat. For the rest--"
"For the rest, Faith?"
"They see the man's face, and--"
His eyes were embarrassed. A thought had flashed into his mind which he
considered unworthy, for this girl beside him was little likely to dwell
upon the face of a renegade peer, whose living among them was a constant
reminder of his father's apostasy. She was too fine, dwelt in such high
spheres, that he could not think of her being touched by the glittering
adventures of this daring young member of Parliament, whose book of
travels had been published, only to herald his understood determination
to have office in the Government, not in due time, but in his own time.
What could there be in common between the sophisticated Eglington and
this sweet, primitively wholesome Quaker girl?
Faith read what was passing in his mind. She flushed--slowly flushed
until her face--and eyes were one soft glow, then she laid a hand upon
his arm and said: "Davy, I feel the truth about him--no more. Nothing of
him is for thee or me. His ways are not our ways." She paused, and then
said solemnly: "He hath a devil. That I feel. But he hath also a mind,
and a cruel will. He will hew a path, or make others hew it for him. He
will make or break. Nothing will stand in his way, neither man nor
thing, those he loves nor those he hates. He will go on--and to go on,
all means, so they be not criminal, will be his. Men will prophesy great
things for him--they do so now. But nothing they prophesy, Davy, keeps
pace with his resolve."
"How does thee know these things?"
His question was one of wonder and surprise. He had never before seen in
her this sharp discernment and criticism.
"How know I, Davy? I know him by studying thee. What thee is not he is.
What he is thee is not." The last beams of the sun sent a sudden glint
of yellow to the green at their feet from the western hills, rising far
over and above the lower hills of the village, making a wide ocean of
light, at the bottom of which lay the Meeting-house and the Cloistered
House, and the Red Mansion with the fruited wall, and all the others,
like dwellings at the bottom of a golden sea. David's eyes were on the
distance, and the far-seeing look was in his face which had so deeply
impressed Faith in the Meeting-house, by which she had read his future.
"And shall I not also go on?" he asked.
"How far, who can tell?"
There was a plaintive note in her voice--the unavailing and sad protest
of the maternal spirit, of the keeper of the nest, who sees the brood fly
safely away, looking not back.
"What does thee see for me afar, Faith?" His look was eager.
"The will of God, which shall be done," she said with a sudden
resolution, and stood up. Her hands were lightly clasped before her like
those of Titian's Mater Dolorosa among the Rubens and Tintorettos of the
Prado, a lonely figure, whose lot it was to spend her life for others.
Even as she already had done; for thrice she had refused marriages
suitable and possible to her. In each case she had steeled her heart
against loving, that she might be all in all to her sister's child and to
her father. There is no habit so powerful as the habit of care of
others. In Faith it came as near being a passion as passion could have a
place in her even-flowing blood, under that cool flesh, governed by a
heart as fair as the apricot blossoms on the wall in her father's garden.
She had been bitterly hurt in the Meeting-house; as bitterly as is many a
woman when her lover has deceived her. David had acknowledged before
them all that he had played the flute secretly for years! That he should
have played it was nothing; that she should not have shared his secret,
and so shared his culpability before them all, was a wound which would
take long to heal.
She laid her hand upon his shoulder suddenly with a nervous little
motion.
"And the will of God thee shall do to His honour, though thee is outcast
to-day. . . . But, Davy, the music-thee kept it from me."
He looked up at her steadily; he read what was in her mind.
"I hid it so, because I would not have thy conscience troubled. Thee
would go far to smother it for me; and I was not so ungrateful to thee.
I did it for good to thee."
A smile passed across her lips. Never was woman so grateful, never wound
so quickly healed. She shook her head sadly at him, and stilling the
proud throbbing of her heart, she said:
"But thee played so well, Davy!"
He got up and turned his head away, lest he should laugh outright. Her
reasoning--though he was not worldly enough to call it feminine, and
though it scarce tallied with her argument--seemed to him quite her own.
"How long have we?" he said over his shoulder. "The sun is yet five
minutes up, or more," she said, a little breathlessly, for she saw his
hand inside his coat, and guessed his purpose.
"But thee will not dare to play--thee will not dare," she said, but more
as an invitation than a rebuke. "Speech was denied me here, but not my
music. I find no sin in it."
She eagerly watched him adjust the flute. Suddenly she drew to him the
chair from the doorway, and beckoned him to sit down. She sat where she
could see the sunset.
The music floated through the room and down the hillside, a searching
sweetness.
She kept her face ever on the far hills. It went on and on. At last it
stopped. David roused himself, as from a dream. "But it is dark!" he
said, startled. "It is past the time thee should be with me. My
banishment began at sunset."
"Are all the sins to be thine?" she asked calmly. She had purposely let
him play beyond the time set for their being together.
"Good-night, Davy." She kissed him on the cheek. "I will keep the music
for the sin's remembrance," she added, and went out into the night.
CHAPTER IV
THE CALL
"England is in one of those passions so creditable to her moral sense,
so illustrative of her unregulated virtues. We are living in the first
excitement and horror of the news of the massacre of Christians at
Damascus. We are full of righteous and passionate indignation. 'Punish
--restore the honour of the Christian nations' is the proud appeal of
prelate, prig, and philanthropist, because some hundreds of Christians
who knew their danger, yet chose to take up their abode in a fanatical
Muslim city of the East, have suffered death."
The meeting had been called in answer to an appeal from Exeter Hall.
Lord Eglington had been asked to speak, and these were among his closing
words.
He had seen, as he thought, an opportunity for sensation. Politicians
of both sides, the press on all hands, were thundering denunciations upon
the city of Damascus, sitting insolent and satiated in its exquisite
bloom of pear and nectarine, and the deed itself was fading into that
blank past of Eastern life where there "are no birds in last year's
nest." If he voyaged with the crowd, his pennant would be lost in the
clustering sails! So he would move against the tide, and would startle,
even if he did not convince.
"Let us not translate an inflamed religious emotion into a war," he
continued. "To what good? Would it restore one single life in Damascus?
Would it bind one broken heart? Would it give light to one darkened
home? Let us have care lest we be called a nation of hypocrites. I will
neither support nor oppose the resolution presented; I will content
myself with pointing the way to a greater national self-respect."
Mechanically, a few people who had scarcely apprehended the full force of
his remarks began to applaud; but there came cries of "'Sh! 'Sh!" and
the clapping of hands suddenly stopped. For a moment there was absolute
silence, in which the chairman adjusted his glasses and fumbled with the
agenda paper in his confusion, scarcely knowing what to do. The speaker
had been expected to second the resolution, and had not done so. There
was an awkward silence. Then, in a loud whisper, some one said:
"David, David, do thee speak."
It was the voice of Faith Claridge. Perturbed and anxious, she had come
to the meeting with her father. They had not slept for nights, for the
last news they had had of Benn Claridge was from the city of Damascus,
and they were full of painful apprehensions.
It was the eve of the first day of winter, and David's banishment was
over. Faith had seen David often at a distance--how often had she stood
in her window and looked up over the apricot-wall to the chair-maker's
hut on the hill! According to his penalty David had never come to Hamley
village, but had lived alone, speaking to no one, avoided by all, working
out his punishment. Only the day before the meeting he had read of the
massacre at Damascus from a newspaper which had been left on his doorstep
overnight. Elder Fairley had so far broken the covenant of ostracism and
boycott, knowing David's love for his Uncle Benn.
All that night David paced the hillside in anxiety and agitation, and saw
the sun rise upon a new world--a world of freedom, of home-returning, yet
a world which, during the past four months, had changed so greatly that
it would never seem the same again.
The sun was scarce two hours high when Faith and her father mounted the
hill to bring him home again. He had, however, gone to Heddington to
learn further news of the massacre. He was thinking of his Uncle Benn-
all else could wait. His anxiety was infinitely greater than that of
Luke Claridge, for his mind had been disturbed by frequent premonitions;
and those sudden calls in his sleep-his uncle's voice--ever seemed to be
waking him at night. He had not meant to speak at the meeting, but the
last words of the speaker decided him; he was in a flame of indignation.
He heard the voice of Faith whisper over the heads of the people.
"David, David, do thee speak." Turning, he met her eyes, then rose to
his feet, came steadily to the platform, and raised a finger towards the
chairman.
A great whispering ran through the audience. Very many recognised him,
and all had heard of him--the history of his late banishment and self-
approving punishment were familiar to them. He climbed the steps of the
platform alertly, and the chairman welcomed him with nervous pleasure.
Any word from a Quaker, friendly to the feeling of national indignation,
would give the meeting the new direction which all desired.
Something in the face of the young man, grown thin and very pale during
the period of long thought and little food in the lonely and meditative
life he had led; something human and mysterious in the strange tale of
his one day's mad doings, fascinated them. They had heard of the liquor
he had drunk, of the woman he had kissed at the cross-roads, of the man
he had fought, of his discipline and sentence. His clean, shapely
figure, and the soft austerity of the neat grey suit he wore, his broad-
brimmed hat pushed a little back, showing well a square white forehead--
all conspired to send a wave of feeling through the audience, which
presently broke into cheering.
Beginning with the usual formality, he said: "I am obliged to differ from
nearly every sentiment expressed by the Earl of Eglington, the member for
Levizes, who has just taken his seat."
There was an instant's pause, the audience cheered, and cries of delight
came from all parts of the house. "All good counsel has its sting," he
continued, "but the good counsel of him who has just spoken is a sting in
a wound deeper than the skin. The noble Earl has bidden us to be
consistent and reasonable. I have risen here to speak for that to which
mere consistency and reason may do cruel violence. I am a man of peace,
I am the enemy of war--it is my faith and creed; yet I repudiate the
principle put forward by the Earl of Eglington, that you shall not clinch
your hand for the cause which is your heart's cause, because, if you
smite, the smiting must be paid for."
He was interrupted by cheers and laughter, for the late event in his own
life came to them to point his argument.
"The nation that declines war may be refusing to inflict that just
punishment which alone can set the wrong-doers on the better course. It
is not the faith of that Society to which I belong to decline correction
lest it may seem like war."
The point went home significantly, and cheering followed. "The high
wall of Tibet, a stark refusal to open the door to the wayfarer, I can
understand; but, friend"--he turned to the young peer--"friend, I cannot
understand a defence of him who opens the door upon terms of mutual
hospitality, and then, in the red blood of him who has so contracted,
blots out the just terms upon which they have agreed. Is that thy faith,
friend?"
The repetition of the word friend was almost like a gibe, though it was
not intended as such. There was none present, however, but knew of the
defection of the Earl's father from the Society of Friends, and they
chose to interpret the reference to a direct challenge. It was a
difficult moment for the young Earl, but he only smiled, and cherished
anger in his heart.
For some minutes David spoke with force and power, and he ended with
passionate solemnity. His voice rang out: "The smoke of this burning
rises to Heaven, the winds that wail over scattered and homeless dust
bear a message of God to us. In the name of Mahomet, whose teaching
condemns treachery and murder, in the name of the Prince of Peace, who
taught that justice which makes for peace, I say it is England's duty to
lay the iron hand of punishment upon this evil city and on the Government
in whose orbit it shines with so deathly a light. I fear it is that one
of my family and of my humble village lies beaten to death in Damascus.
Yet not because of that do I raise my voice here to-day. These many
years Benn Claridge carried his life in his hands, and in a good cause it
was held like the song of a bird, to be blown from his lips in the day of
the Lord. I speak only as an Englishman. I ask you to close your minds
against the words of this brilliant politician, who would have you settle
a bill of costs written in Christian blood, by a promise to pay, got
through a mockery of armed display in those waters on which once looked
the eyes of the Captain of our faith. Humanity has been put in the
witness-box of the world; let humanity give evidence."
Women wept. Men waved their hats and cheered; the whole meeting rose to
its feet and gave vent to its feelings.
For some moments the tumult lasted, Eglington looking on with face
unmoved. As David turned to leave the table, however, he murmured,
"Peacemaker! Peacemaker!" and smiled sarcastically.
As the audience resumed their seats, two people were observed making
their way to the platform. One was Elder Fairley, leading the way to a
tall figure in a black robe covering another coloured robe, and wearing a
large white turban. Not seeing the new-comers, the chairman was about to
put the resolution; but a protesting hand from John Fairley stopped him,
and in a strange silence the two new-comers mounted the platform. David
rose and advanced to meet them. There flashed into his mind that this
stranger in Eastern garb was Ebn Ezra Bey, the old friend of Benn
Claridge, of whom his uncle had spoken and written so much. The same
instinct drew Ebn Ezra Bey to him--he saw the uncle's look in the
nephew's face. In a breathless stillness the Oriental said in perfect
English, with a voice monotonously musical:
"I came to thy house and found thee not. I have a message for thee from
the land where thine uncle sojourned with me."
He took from a wallet a piece of paper and passed it to David, adding: "I
was thine uncle's friend. He hath put off his sandals and walketh with
bare feet!" David read eagerly.
"It is time to go, Davy," the paper said. "All that I have is thine.
Go to Egypt, and thee shall find it so. Ebn Ezra Bey will bring thee.
Trust him as I have done. He is a true man, though the Koran be his
faith. They took me from behind, Davy, so that I was spared temptation
--I die as I lived, a man of peace. It is too late to think how it might
have gone had we met face to face; but the will of God worketh not
according to our will. I can write no more. Luke, Faith, and Davy--dear
Davy, the night has come, and all's well. Good morrow, Davy. Can you
not hear me call? I have called thee so often of late! Good morrow!
Good morrow! . . . I doff my hat, Davy--at last--to God!"
David's face whitened. All his visions had been true visions, his dreams
true dreams. Brave Benn Claridge had called to him at his door--" Good
morrow! Good morrow! Good morrow!" Had he not heard the knocking and
the voice? Now all was made clear. His path lay open before him--a far
land called him, his quiet past was infinite leagues away. Already the
staff was in his hands and the cross-roads were sinking into the distance
behind. He was dimly conscious of the wan, shocked face of Faith in the
crowd beneath him, which seemed blurred and swaying, of the bowed head of
Luke Claridge, who, standing up, had taken off his hat in the presence of
this news of his brother's death which he saw written in David's face.
David stood for a moment before the great throng, numb and speechless.
"It is a message from Damascus," he said at last, and could say no more.
Ebn Ezra Bey turned a grave face upon the audience.
Will you hear me?" he said. "I am an Arab." "Speak--speak!" came from
every side.
"The Turk hath done his evil work in Damascus," he said. "All the
Christians are dead--save one; he hath turned Muslim, and is safe." His
voice had a note of scorn. "It fell sudden and swift like a storm in
summer. There were no paths to safety. Soldiers and those who led them
shared in the slaying. As he and I who had travelled far together these
many years sojourned there in the way of business, I felt the air grow
colder, I saw the cloud gathering. I entreated, but he would not go.
If trouble must come, then he would be with the Christians in their
peril. At last he saw with me the truth. He had a plan of escape.
There was a Christian weaver with his wife in a far quarter--against my
entreaty he went to warn them. The storm broke. He was the first to
fall, smitten in 'that street called Straight.' I found him soon after.
Thus did he speak to me--even in these words: 'The blood of women and
children shed here to-day shall cry from the ground. Unprovoked the host
has turned wickedly upon his guest. The storm has been sown, and the
whirlwind must be reaped. Out of this evil good shall come. Shall not
the Judge of all the earth do right?' These were his last words to me
then. As his life ebbed out, he wrote a letter which I have brought
hither to one"--he turned to David--"whom he loved. At the last he took
off his hat, and lay with it in his hands, and died. . . . I am a
Muslim, but the God of pity, of justice, and of right is my God; and in
His name be it said that was a crime of Sheitan the accursed."
In a low voice the chairman put the resolution. The Earl of Eglington
voted in its favour.
Walking the hills homeward with Ebn Ezra Bey, Luke, Faith, and John
Fairley, David kept saying over to himself the words of Benn Claridge:
"I have called thee so often of late. Good morrow! Good morrow! Good
morrow! Can you not hear me call?"
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
There is no habit so powerful as the habit of care of others
THE WEAVERS
By Gilbert Parker
BOOK II.
V. THE WIDER WAY
VI. "HAST THOU NEVER BILLED A MANY"
VII. THE COMPACT
VIII. FOR HIS SOUL'S SAKE AND THE LAND'S SAKE
IX. THE LETTER, THE NIGHT, AND THE WOMAN
X. THE FOUR WHO KNEW
XI. AGAINST THE HOUR OF MIDNIGHT
XII. THE JEHAD AND THE LIONS
XIII. ACHMET THE ROPEMAKER STRIKES
XIV. BEYOND THE PALE
CHAPTER V
THE WIDER WAY
Some months later the following letter came to David Claridge in Cairo
from Faith Claridge in Hamley:
David, I write thee from the village and the land of the people
which thou didst once love so well. Does thee love them still?
They gave thee sour bread to eat ere thy going, but yet thee didst
grind the flour for the baking. Thee didst frighten all who knew
thee with thy doings that mad midsummer time. The tavern, the
theatre, the cross-roads, and the cockpit--was ever such a day!
Now, Davy, I must tell of a strange thing. But first, a moment.
Thee remembers the man Kimber smitten by thee at the public-house on
that day? What think thee has happened? He followed to London the
lass kissed by thee, and besought her to return and marry him. This
she refused at first with anger; but afterwards she said that, if in
three years he was of the same mind, and stayed sober and hard-
working meanwhile, she would give him an answer, she would consider.
Her head was high. She has become maid to a lady of degree, who has
well befriended her.
How do I know these things? Even from Jasper Kimber, who, on his
return from London, was taken to his bed with fever. Because of the
hard blows dealt him by thee, I went to make amends. He welcomed
me, and soon opened his whole mind. That mind has generous moments,
David, for he took to being thankful for thy knocks.
Now for the strange thing I hinted. After visiting Jasper Kimber at
Heddington, as I came back over the hill by the path we all took
that day after the Meeting--Ebn Ezra Bey, my father, Elder Fairley,
and thee and me--I drew near the chairmaker's but where thee lived
alone all those sad months. It was late evening; the sun had set.
Yet I felt that I must needs go and lay my hand in love upon the
door of the empty hut which had been ever as thee left it. So I
came down the little path swiftly, and then round the great rock,
and up towards the door. But, as I did so, my heart stood still,
for I heard voices. The door was open, but I could see no one. Yet
there the voices sounded, one sharp and peevish with anger, the
other low and rough. I could not hear what was said. At last, a
figure came from the door and went quickly down the hillside. Who,
think thee, was it? Even "neighbour Eglington." I knew the walk
and the forward thrust of the head. Inside the hut all was still.
I drew near with a kind of fear, but yet I came to the door and
looked in.
As I looked into the dusk, my limbs trembled under me, for who
should be sitting there, a half-finished chair between his knees,
but Soolsby the old chair-maker! Yes, it was he. There he sat
looking at me with his staring blue eyes and shock of redgrey hair.
"Soolsby! Soolsby!" said I, my heart hammering at my breast; for
was not Soolsby dead and buried? His eyes stared at me in fright.
"Why do you come?" he said in a hoarse whisper. "Is he dead, then?
Has harm come to him?"
By now I had recovered myself, for it was no ghost I saw, but a
human being more distraught than was myself. "Do you not know me,
Soolsby?" I asked. "You are Mercy Claridge from beyond--beyond and
away," he answered dazedly. "I am Faith Claridge, Soolsby,"
answered I. He started, peered forward at me, and for a moment he
did not speak; then the fear went from his face. "Ay, Faith
Claridge, as I said," he answered, with apparent understanding, his
stark mood passing. "No, thee said Mercy Claridge, Soolsby," said
I, "and she has been asleep these many years." "Ay, she has slept
soundly, thanks be to God!" he replied, and crossed himself. "Why
should thee call me by her name?" I inquired. "Ay, is not her tomb
in the churchyard?" he answered, and added quickly, "Luke Claridge
and I are of an age to a day--which, think you, will go first?"
He stopped weaving, and peered over at me with his staring blue
eyes, and I felt a sudden quickening of the heart. For, at the
question, curtains seemed to drop from all around me, and leave me
in the midst of pains and miseries, in a chill air that froze me to
the marrow. I saw myself alone--thee in Egypt and I here, and none
of our blood and name beside me. For we are the last, Davy, the
last of the Claridges. But I said coldly, and with what was near to
anger, that he should link his name and fate with that of Luke
Claridge: "Which of ye two goes first is God's will, and according
to His wisdom. Which, think thee," added I--and now I cannot
forgive myself for saying it--"which, think thee, would do least
harm in going?" "I know which would do most good," he answered,
with a harsh laugh in his throat. Yet his blue eyes looked kindly
at me, and now he began to nod pleasantly. I thought him a little
mad, but yet his speech had seemed not without dark meaning. "Thee
has had a visitor," I said to him presently. He laughed in a
snarling way that made me shrink, and answered: "He wanted this and
he wanted that--his high-handed, second-best lordship. Ay, and he
would have it, because it pleased him to have it--like his father
before him. A poor sparrow on a tree-top, if you tell him he must
not have it, he will hunt it down the world till it is his, as
though it was a bird of paradise. And when he's seen it fall at
last, he'll remember but the fun of the chase; and the bird may get
to its tree-top again--if it can--if it can--if it can, my lord!
That is what his father was, the last Earl, and that is what he is
who left my door but now. He came to snatch old Soolsby's palace,
his nest on the hill, to use it for a telescope, or such whimsies.
He has scientific tricks like his father before him. Now is it
astronomy, and now chemistry, and suchlike; and always it is the
Eglington mind, which let God A'mighty make it as a favour. He
would have old Soolsby's palace for his spy-glass, would he then?
It scared him, as though I was the devil himself, to find me here.
I had but come back in time--a day later, and he would have sat here
and seen me in the Pit below before giving way. Possession's nine
points were with me; and here I sat and faced him; and here he
stormed, and would do this and should do that; and I went on with my
work. Then he would buy my Colisyum, and I wouldn't sell it for all
his puffball lordship might offer. Isn't the house of the snail as
much to him as the turtle's shell to the turtle? I'll have no
upstart spilling his chemicals here, or devilling the stars from a
seat on my roof." "Last autumn," said I, "David Claridge was housed
here. Thy palace was a prison then." "I know well of that.
Haven't I found his records here? And do you think his makeshift
lordship did not remind me?" "Records? What records, Soolsby?"
asked I, most curious. "Writings of his thoughts which he forgot--
food for mind and body left in the cupboard." "Give them to me upon
this instant, Soolsby," said I. "All but one," said he, "and that
is my own, for it was his mind upon Soolsby the drunken chair-maker.
God save him from the heathen sword that slew his uncle. Two better
men never sat upon a chair!" He placed the papers in my hand, all
save that one which spoke of him. Ah, David, what with the flute
and the pen, banishment was no pain to thee! . . . He placed the
papers, save that one, in my hands, and I, womanlike, asked again
for all. "Some day," said he, "come, and I will read it to you.
Nay, I will give you a taste of it now," he added, as he brought
forth the writing. "Thus it reads."
Here are thy words, Davy. What think thee of them now?
"As I dwell in this house I know Soolsby as I never knew him when he
lived, and though, up here, I spent many an hour with him. Men
leave their impressions on all around them. The walls which have
felt their look and their breath, the floor which has taken their
footsteps, the chairs in which they have sat, have something of
their presence. I feel Soolsby here at times so sharply that it
would seem he came again and was in this room, though he is dead and
gone. I ask him how it came he lived here alone; how it came that
he made chairs, he, with brains enough to build great houses or
great bridges; how it was that drink and he were such friends; and
how he, a Catholic, lived here among us Quakers, so singular,
uncompanionable, and severe. I think it true, and sadly true, that
a man with a vice which he is able to satisfy easily and habitually,
even as another satisfies a virtue, may give up the wider actions of
the world and the possibilities of his life for the pleasure which
his one vice gives him, and neither miss nor desire those greater
chances of virtue or ambition which he has lost. The simplicity of
a vice may be as real as the simplicity of a virtue."
Ah, David, David, I know not what to think of those strange words;
but old Soolsby seemed well to understand thee, and he called thee
"a first-best gentleman." Is my story long? Well, it was so
strange, and it fixed itself upon my mind so deeply, and thy
writings at the hut have been so much in my hands and in my mind,
that I have put it all down here. When I asked Soolsby how it came
he had been rumoured dead, he said that he himself had been the
cause of it; but for what purpose he would not say, save that he was
going a long voyage, and had made up his mind to return no more. "I
had a friend," he said, "and I was set to go and see that friend
again. . . . But the years go on, and friends have an end. Life
spills faster than the years," he said. And he would say no more,
but would walk with me even to my father's door. "May the Blessed
Virgin and all the Saints be with you," he said at parting, "if you
will have a blessing from them. And tell him who is beyond and away
in Egypt that old Soolsby's busy making a chair for him to sit in
when the scarlet cloth is spread, and the East and West come to
salaam before him. Tell him the old man says his fluting will be
heard."
And now, David, I have told thee all, nearly. Remains to say that
thy one letter did our hearts good. My father reads it over and
over, and shakes his head sadly, for, truth is, he has a fear that
the world may lay its hand upon thee. One thing I do observe, his
heart is hard set against Lord Eglington. In degree it has ever
been so; but now it is like a constant frown upon his forehead. I
see him at his window looking out towards the Cloistered House; and
if our neighbour comes forth, perhaps upon his hunter, or now in his
cart, or again with his dogs, he draws his hat down upon his eyes
and whispers to himself. I think he is ever setting thee off
against Lord Eglington; and that is foolish, for Eglington is but a
man of the earth earthy. His is the soul of the adventurer.
Now what more to be set down? I must ask thee how is thy friend Ebn
Ezra Bey? I am glad thee did find all he said was true, and that in
Damascus thee was able to set a mark by my uncle's grave. But that
the Prince Pasha of Egypt has set up a claim against my uncle's
property is evil news; though, thanks be to God, as my father says,
we have enough to keep us fed and clothed and housed. But do thee
keep enough of thy inheritance to bring thee safe home again to
those who love thee. England is ever grey, Davy, but without thee
it is grizzled--all one "Quaker drab," as says the Philistine. But
it is a comely and a good land, and here we wait for thee.
In love and remembrance.
I am thy mother's sister, thy most loving friend.
FAITH.
David received this letter as he was mounting a huge white Syrian donkey
to ride to the Mokattam Hills, which rise sharply behind Cairo, burning
and lonely and large. The cities of the dead Khalifas and Mamelukes
separated them from the living city where the fellah toiled, and Arab,
Bedouin, Copt strove together to intercept the fruits of his toiling, as
it passed in the form of taxes to the Palace of the Prince Pasha; while
in the dark corners crouched, waiting, the cormorant usurers--Greeks,
Armenians, and Syrians, a hideous salvage corps, who saved the house of
a man that they might at last walk off with his shirt and the cloth under
which he was carried to his grave. In a thousand narrow streets and
lanes, in the warm glow of the bazaars, in earth-damp huts, by blistering
quays, on the myriad ghiassas on the river, from long before sunrise till
the sunset-gun boomed from the citadel rising beside the great mosque
whose pinnacles seem to touch the blue, the slaves of the city of Prince
Kaid ground out their lives like corn between the millstones.
David had been long enough in Egypt to know what sort of toiling it was.
A man's labour was not his own. The fellah gave labour and taxes and
backsheesh and life to the State, and the long line of tyrants above him,
under the sting of the kourbash; the high officials gave backsheesh to
the Prince Pasha, or to his Mouffetish, or to his Chief Eunuch, or to his
barber, or to some slave who had his ear.
But all the time the bright, unclouded sun looked down on a smiling land,
and in Cairo streets the din of the hammers, the voices of the boys
driving heavily laden donkeys, the call of the camel-drivers leading
their caravans into the great squares, the clang of the brasses of the
sherbet-sellers, the song of the vendor of sweetmeats, the drone of the
merchant praising his wares, went on amid scenes of wealth and luxury,
and the city glowed with colour and gleamed with light. Dark faces
grinned over the steaming pot at the door of the cafes, idlers on the
benches smoked hasheesh, female street-dancers bared their faces
shamelessly to the men, and indolent musicians beat on their tiny drums,
and sang the song of "O Seyyid," or of "Antar"; and the reciter gave his
sing-song tale from a bench above his fellows. Here a devout Muslim,
indifferent to the presence of strangers, turned his face to the East,
touched his forehead to the ground, and said his prayers. There, hung to
a tree by a deserted mosque near by, the body of one who was with them
all an hour before, and who had paid the penalty for some real or
imaginary crime; while his fellows blessed Allah that the storm had
passed them by. Guilt or innocence did not weigh with them; and the dead
criminal, if such he were, who had drunk his glass of water and prayed to
Allah, was, in their sight, only fortunate and not disgraced, and had
"gone to the bosom of Allah." Now the Muezzin from a minaret called to
prayer, and the fellah in his cotton shirt and yelek heard, laid his load
aside, and yielded himself to his one dear illusion, which would enable
him to meet with apathy his end--it might be to-morrow!--and go forth to
that plenteous heaven where wives without number awaited him, where
fields would yield harvests without labour, where rich food in gold
dishes would be ever at his hand. This was his faith.
David had now been in the country six months, rapidly perfecting his
knowledge of Arabic, speaking it always to his servant Mahommed Hassan,
whom he had picked from the streets. Ebn Ezra Bey had gone upon his own
business to Fazougli, the tropical Siberia of Egypt, to liberate, by
order of Prince Kaid,--and at a high price--a relative banished there.
David had not yet been fortunate with his own business--the settlement
of his Uncle Benn's estate--though the last stages of negotiation with
the Prince Pasha seemed to have been reached. When he had brought the
influence of the British Consulate to bear, promises were made, doors
were opened wide, and Pasha and Bey offered him coffee and talked to him
sympathetically. They had respect for him more than for most Franks,
because the Prince Pasha had honoured him with especial favour. Perhaps
because David wore his hat always and the long coat with high collar like
a Turk, or because Prince Kaid was an acute judge of human nature, and
also because honesty was a thing he greatly desired--in others--and never
found near his own person; however it was, he had set David high in his
esteem at once. This esteem gave greater certainty that any backsheesh
coming from the estate of Benn Claridge would not be sifted through many
hands on its way to himself. Of Benn Claridge Prince Kaid had scarcely
even heard until he died; and, indeed, it was only within the past few
years that the Quaker merchant had extended his business to Egypt and had
made his headquarters at Assiout, up the river.
David's donkey now picked its way carefully through the narrow streets of
the Moosky. Arabs and fellaheen squatting at street corners looked at
him with furtive interest. A foreigner of this character they had never
before seen, with coat buttoned up like an Egyptian official in the
presence of his superior, and this wide, droll hat on his head. David
knew that he ran risks, that his confidence invited the occasional
madness of a fanatical mind, which makes murder of the infidel a passport
to heaven; but as a man he took his chances, and as a Christian he
believed he would suffer no mortal hurt till his appointed time. He was
more Oriental, more fatalist, than he knew. He had also early in his
life learned that an honest smile begets confidence; and his face, grave
and even a little austere in outline, was usually lighted by a smile.
From the Mokattam Hills, where he read Faith's letter again, his back
against one of the forts which Napoleon had built in his Egyptian days,
he scanned the distance. At his feet lay the great mosque, and the
citadel, whose guns controlled the city, could pour into it a lava stream
of shot and shell. The Nile wound its way through the green plains,
stretching as far to the north as eye could see between the opal and
mauve and gold of the Libyan Hills. Far over in the western vista a long
line of trees, twining through an oasis flanking the city, led out to a
point where the desert abruptly raised its hills of yellow sand. Here,
enormous, lonely, and cynical, the pyramids which Cheops had built, the
stone sphinx of Ghizeh, kept faith with the desert in the glow of
rainless land-reminders ever that the East, the mother of knowledge, will
by knowledge prevail; that:
"The thousand years of thy insolence
The thousand years of thy faith,
Will be paid in fiery recompense,
And a thousand years of bitter death."
"The sword--for ever the sword," David said to himself, as he looked:
"Rameses and David and Mahomet and Constantine, and how many conquests
have been made in the name of God! But after other conquests there have
been peace and order and law. Here in Egypt it is ever the sword, the
survival of the strongest."
As he made his way down the hillside again he fell to thinking upon all
Faith had written. The return of the drunken chair-maker made a deep
impression on him--almost as deep as the waking dreams he had had of his
uncle calling him.
"Soolsby and me--what is there between Soolsby and me?" he asked himself
now as he made his way past the tombs of the Mamelukes. "He and I are as
far apart as the poles, and yet it comes to me now, with a strange
conviction, that somehow my life will be linked with that of the drunken
Romish chair-maker. To what end?" Then he fell to thinking of his Uncle
Benn. The East was calling him. "Something works within me to hold me
here, a work to do."
From the ramparts of the citadel he watched the sun go down, bathing the
pyramids in a purple and golden light, throwing a glamour over all the
western plain, and making heavenly the far hills with a plaintive colour,
which spoke of peace and rest, but not of hope. As he stood watching, he
was conscious of people approaching. Voices mingled, there was light
laughter, little bursts of admiration, then lower tones, and then he was
roused by a voice calling. He turned round. A group of people were
moving towards the exit from the ramparts, and near himself stood a man
waving an adieu.
"Well, give my love to the girls," said the man cheerily. Merry faces
looked back and nodded, and in a moment they were gone. The man turned
round, and looked at David, then he jerked his head in a friendly sort of
way and motioned towards the sunset.
"Good enough, eh?"
"Surely, for me," answered David. On the instant he liked the red,
wholesome face, and the keen, round, blue eyes, the rather opulent
figure, the shrewd, whimsical smile, all aglow now with beaming
sentimentality, which had from its softest corner called out:
"Well, give my love to the girls."
"Quaker, or I never saw Germantown and Philadelphy," he continued, with a
friendly manner quite without offence. "I put my money on Quakers every
time."
"But not from Germantown or Philadelphia," answered David, declining a
cigar which his new acquaintance offered.
"Bet you, I know that all right. But I never saw Quakers anywhere else,
and I meant the tribe and not the tent. English, I bet? Of course, or
you wouldn't be talking the English language--though I've heard they talk
it better in Boston than they do in England, and in Chicago they're
making new English every day and improving on the patent. If Chicago
can't have the newest thing, she won't have anything. 'High hopes that
burn like stars sublime,' has Chicago. She won't let Shakespeare or
Milton be standards much longer. She won't have it--simply won't have
England swaggering over the English language. Oh, she's dizzy, is
Chicago--simply dizzy. I was born there. Parents, one Philadelphy, one
New York, one Pawtucket--the Pawtucket one was the step-mother. Father
liked his wives from the original States; but I was born in Chicago. My
name is Lacey--Thomas Tilman Lacey of Chicago."
"I thank thee," said David.
"And you, sir?"
"David Claridge."
"Of--?"
"Of Hamley."
"Mr. Claridge of Hamley. Mr. Claridge, I am glad to meet you." They
shook hands. "Been here long, Mr. Claridge?"
"A few months only."
"Queer place--gilt-edged dust-bin; get anything you like here, from a
fresh gutter-snipe to old Haroun-al-Raschid. It's the biggest jack-pot
on earth. Barnum's the man for this place--P. T. Barnum. Golly, how the
whole thing glitters and stews! Out of Shoobra his High Jinks Pasha
kennels with his lions and lives with his cellars of gold, as if he was
going to take them with him where he's going--and he's going fast. Here
--down here, the people, the real people, sweat and drudge between a cake
of dourha, an onion, and a balass of water at one end of the day, and a
hemp collar and their feet off the ground at the other."
"You have seen much of Egypt?" asked David, feeling a strange confidence
in the garrulous man, whose frankness was united to shrewdness and a
quick, observant eye.
"How much of Egypt I've seen, the Egypt where more men get lost, strayed,
and stolen than die in their beds every day, the Egypt where a eunuch is
more powerful than a minister, where an official will toss away a life as
I'd toss this cigar down there where the last Mameluke captain made his
great jump, where women--Lord A'mighty! where women are divorced by one
evil husband, by the dozen, for nothing they ever did or left undone,
and yet 'd be cut to pieces by their own fathers if they learned that
'To step aside is human--' Mr. Claridge, of that Egypt I don't know much
more'n would entitle me to say, How d'ye do. But it's enough for me.
You've seen something--eh?"
"A little. It is not civilised life here. Yet--yet a few strong
patriotic men--"
Lacey looked quizzically at David.
"Say," he said, "I thought that about Mexico once. I said Manana--
this Manana is the curse of Mexico. It's always to-morrow--to-morrow
--to-morrow. Let's teach 'em to do things to-day. Let's show 'em what
business means. Two million dollars went into that experiment, but
Manana won. We had good hands, but it had the joker. After five years
I left, with a bald head at twenty-nine, and a little book of noble
thoughts--Tips for the Tired, or Things you can say To-day on what you
can do to-morrow. I lost my hair worrying, but I learned to be patient.
The Dagos wanted to live in their own way, and they did. It's one thing
to be a missionary and say the little word in season; it's another to
run your soft red head against a hard stone wall. I went to Mexico a
conquistador, I left it a child of time, who had learned to smile; and
I left some millions behind me, too. I said to an old Padre down there
that I knew--we used to meet in the Cafe Manrique and drink chocolate--
I said to him, 'Padre, the Lord's Prayer is a mistake down here.'
'Si, senor,' he said, and smiled his far-away smile at me. 'Yes,' said
I, 'for you say in the Lord's Prayer, "Give us this day our daily
bread."' 'Si, senor,' he says, 'but we do not expect it till to-morrow!'
The Padre knew from the start, but I learned at great expense, and went
out of business--closed up shop for ever, with a bald head and my Tips
for the Tired. Well, I've had more out of it all, I guess, than if I'd
trebled the millions and wiped Manana off the Mexican coat of arms."
"You think it would be like that here?" David asked abstractedly.
Lacey whistled. "There the Government was all right and the people all
wrong. Here the people are all right and the Government all wrong. Say,
it makes my eyes water sometimes to see the fellah slogging away. He's a
Jim-dandy--works all day and half the night, and if the tax-gatherer
isn't at the door, wakes up laughing. I saw one"--his light blue eyes
took on a sudden hardness--"laughing on the other side of his mouth one
morning. They were 'kourbashing' his feet; I landed on them as the soles
came away. I hit out." His face became grave, he turned the cigar round
in his mouth. "It made me feel better, but I had a close call. Lucky
for me that in Mexico I got into the habit of carrying a pop-gun. It
saved me then. But it isn't any use going on these special missions.
We Americans think a lot of ourselves. We want every land to do as
we do; and we want to make 'em do it. But a strong man here at the
head, with a sword in his hand, peace in his heart, who'd be just and
poor--how can you make officials honest when you take all you can get
yourself--! But, no, I guess it's no good. This is a rotten cotton
show."
Lacey had talked so much, not because he was garrulous only, but because
the inquiry in David's eyes was an encouragement to talk. Whatever his
misfortunes in Mexico had been, his forty years sat lightly on him, and
his expansive temperament, his childlike sentimentality, gave him an
appearance of beaming, sophisticated youth. David was slowly
apprehending these things as he talked--subconsciously, as it were;
for he was seeing pictures of the things he himself had observed, through
the lens of another mind, as primitive in some regards as his own, but
influenced by different experiences.
"Say, you're the best listener I ever saw," added Lacey, with a laugh.
David held out his hand. "Thee sees things clearly," he answered.
Lacey grasped his hand.
At that moment an orderly advanced towards them. "He's after us--one of
the Palace cavalry," said Lacey.
"Effendi--Claridge Effendi! May his grave be not made till the karadh-
gatherers return," said the orderly to David.
"My name is Claridge," answered David.
"To the hotel, effendi, first, then to the Mokattam Hills after thee,
then here--from the Effendina, on whom be God's peace, this letter for
thee."
David took the letter. "I thank thee, friend," he said.
As he read it, Lacey said to the orderly in Arabic "How didst thou know
he was here?"
The orderly grinned wickedly.
"Always it is known what place the effendi honours. It is not dark where
he uncovers his face."
Lacey gave a low whistle.
"Say, you've got a pull in this show," he said, as David folded up the
letter and put it in his pocket.
"In Egypt, if the master smiles on you, the servant puts his nose in the
dust."
"The Prince Pasha bids me to dinner at the Palace to-night. I have no
clothes for such affairs. Yet--" His mind was asking itself if this was
a door opening, which he had no right to shut with his own hand. There
was no reason why he should not go; therefore there might be a reason why
he should go. It might be, it no doubt was, in the way of facilitating
his business. He dismissed the orderly with an affirmative and
ceremonial message to Prince Kaid--and a piece of gold.
"You've learned the custom of the place," said Lacey, as he saw the gold
piece glitter in the brown palm of the orderly.
"I suppose the man's only pay is in such service," rejoined David.
"It is a land of backsheesh. The fault is not with the people; it is
with the rulers. I am not sorry to share my goods with the poor."
"You'll have a big going concern here in no time," observed Lacey. "Now,
if I had those millions I left in Mexico--" Suddenly he stopped. "Is it
you that's trying to settle up an estate here--at Assiout--belonged to an
uncle?"
David inclined his head.
"They say that you and Prince Kaid are doing the thing yourselves, and
that the pashas and judges and all the high-mogul sharks of the Medjidie
think that the end of the world has come. Is that so?"
"It is so, if not completely so. There are the poor men and humble--the
pashas and judges and the others of the Medjidie, as thee said, are not
poor. But such as the orderly yonder--" He paused meditatively.
Lacey looked at David with profound respect. "You make the poorest
your partners, your friends. I see, I see. Jerusalem, that's masterly!
I admire you. It's a new way in this country." Then, after a moment:
"It'll do--by golly, it'll do! Not a bit more costly, and you do some
good with it. Yes--it--will--do."
"I have given no man money save in charity and for proper service done
openly," said David, a little severely.
"Say--of course. And that's just what isn't done here. Everything goes
to him who hath, and from him who hath not is taken away even that which
he hath. One does the work and another gets paid--that's the way here.
But you, Mr. Claridge, you clinch with the strong man at the top, and,
down below, you've got as your partners the poor man, whose name is
Legion. If you get a fall out of the man at the top, you're solid with
the Legion. And if the man at the top gets up again and salaams and
strokes your hand, and says, 'Be my brother,' then it's a full Nile, and
the fig-tree putteth forth its tender branches, and the date-palm
flourisheth, and at the village pond the thanksgiving turkey gobbles and
is glad. 'Selah'!"
The sunset gun boomed out from the citadel. David turned to go, and
Lacey added:
"I'm waiting for a pasha who's taking toll of the officers inside there
--Achmet Pasha. They call him the Ropemaker, because so many pass
through his hands to the Nile. The Old Muslin I call him, because he's
so diaphanous. Thinks nobody can see through him, and there's nobody
that can't. If you stay long in Egypt, you'll find that Achmet is the
worst, and Nahoum the Armenian the deepest, pasha in all this sickening
land. Achmet is cruel as a tiger to any one that stands in his way;
Nahoum, the whale, only opens out to swallow now and then; but when
Nahoum does open out, down goes Jonah, and never comes up again. He's a
deep one, and a great artist is Nahoum. I'll bet a dollar you'll see
them both to-night at the Palace--if Kaid doesn't throw them to the lions
for their dinner before yours is served. Here one shark is swallowed by
another bigger, till at last the only and original sea-serpent swallows
'em all."
As David wound his way down the hills, Lacey waved a hand after him.
"Well, give my love to the girls," he said.
CHAPTER VI
"HAST THOU NEVER KILLED A MAN?"
"Claridge Effendi!"
As David moved forward, his mind was embarrassed by many impressions.
He was not confused, but the glitter and splendour, the Oriental
gorgeousness of the picture into which he stepped, excited his eye,
roused some new sense in him. He was a curious figure in those
surroundings. The consuls and agents of all the nations save one were
in brilliant uniform, and pashas, generals, and great officials were
splendid in gold braid and lace, and wore flashing Orders on their
breasts. David had been asked for half-past eight o'clock, and he was
there on the instant; yet here was every one assembled, the Prince Pasha
included. As he walked up the room he suddenly realised this fact, and,
for a moment, he thought he had made a mistake; but again he remembered
distinctly that the letter said half-past eight, and he wondered now if
this had been arranged by the Prince--for what purpose? To afford
amusement to the assembled company? He drew himself up with dignity,
his face became graver. He had come in a Quaker suit of black
broadcloth, with grey steel buttons, and a plain white stock; and he wore
his broad-brimmed hat--to the consternation of the British Consul-General
and the Europeans present, to the amazement of the Turkish and native
officials, who eyed him keenly. They themselves wore red tarbooshes, as
did the Prince; yet all of them knew that the European custom of showing
respect was by doffing the hat. The Prince Pasha had settled that with
David, however, at their first meeting, when David had kept on his hat
and offered Kaid his hand.
Now, with amusement in his eyes, Prince Kaid watched David coming up the
great hall. What his object was in summoning David for an hour when all
the court and all the official Europeans should be already present,
remained to be seen. As David entered, Kaid was busy receiving salaams,
and returning greeting, but with an eye to the singularly boyish yet
gallant figure approaching. By the time David had reached the group, the
Prince Pasha was ready to receive him.
"Friend, I am glad to welcome thee," said the Effendina, sly humour
lurking at the corner of his eye. Conscious of the amazement of all
present, he held out his hand to David.
"May thy coming be as the morning dew, friend," he added, taking David's
willing hand.
"And thy feet, Kaid, wall in goodly paths, by the grace of God the
compassionate and merciful."
As a wind, unfelt, stirs the leaves of a forest, making it rustle
delicately, a whisper swept through the room. Official Egypt was
dumfounded. Many had heard of David, a few had seen him, and now all
eyed with inquisitive interest one who defied so many of the customs of
his countrymen; who kept on his hat; who used a Mahommedan salutation
like a true believer; whom the Effendina honoured--and presently honoured
in an unusual degree by seating him at table opposite himself, where his
Chief Chamberlain was used to sit.
During dinner Kaid addressed his conversation again and again to David,
asking questions put to disconcert the consuls and other official folk
present, confident in the naive reply which would be returned. For there
was a keen truthfulness in the young man's words which, however suave and
carefully balanced, however gravely simple and tactful, left no doubt as
to their meaning. There was nothing in them which could be challenged,
could be construed into active criticism of men or things; and yet much
he said was horrifying. It made Achmet Pasha sit up aghast, and Nahoum
Pasha, the astute Armenian, for a long time past the confidant and
favourite of the Prince Pasha, laugh in his throat; for, if there was
a man in Egypt who enjoyed the thrust of a word or the bite of a phrase,
it was Nahoum. Christian though he was, he was, nevertheless, Oriental
to his farthermost corner, and had the culture of a French savant. He
had also the primitive view of life, and the morals of a race who, in the
clash of East and West, set against Western character and directness, and
loyalty to the terms of a bargain, the demoralised cunning of the desert
folk; the circuitous tactics of those who believed that no man spoke the
truth directly, that it must ever be found beneath devious and misleading
words, to be tracked like a panther, as an Antipodean bushman once said,
"through the sinuosities of the underbrush." Nahoum Pasha had also a
rich sense of grim humour. Perhaps that was why he had lived so near the
person of the Prince, had held office so long. There were no Grand
Viziers in Egypt; but he was as much like one as possible, and he had one
uncommon virtue, he was greatly generous. If he took with his right hand
he gave with his left; and Mahommedan as well as Copt and Armenian, and
beggars of every race and creed, hung about his doors each morning to
receive the food and alms he gave freely.
After one of David's answers to Kaid, which had had the effect of causing
his Highness to turn a sharp corner of conversation by addressing himself
to the French consul, Nahoum said suavely:
"And so, monsieur, you think that we hold life lightly in the East--that
it is a characteristic of civilisation to make life more sacred, to
cherish it more fondly?"
He was sitting beside David, and though he asked the question casually,
and with apparent intention only of keeping talk going, there was a
lurking inquisition in his eye. He had seen enough to-night to make him
sure that Kaid had once more got the idea of making a European his
confidant and adviser; to introduce to his court one of those mad
Englishmen who cared nothing for gold--only for power; who loved
administration for the sake of administration and the foolish joy of
labour. He was now set to see what sort of match this intellect could
play, when faced by the inherent contradictions present in all truths or
the solutions of all problems.
"It is one of the characteristics of that which lies behind civilisation,
as thee and me have been taught," answered David.
Nahoum was quick in strategy, but he was unprepared for David's knowledge
that he was an Armenian Christian, and he had looked for another answer.
But he kept his head and rose to the occasion. "Ah, it is high, it is
noble, to save life--it is so easy to destroy it," he answered. "I saw
his Highness put his life in danger once to save a dog from drowning. To
cherish the lives of others, and to be careless of our own; to give that
of great value as though it were of no worth--is it not the Great
Lesson?" He said it with such an air of sincerity, with such
dissimulation, that, for the moment, David was deceived. There was,
however, on the face of the listening Kaid a curious, cynical smile.
He had heard all, and he knew the sardonic meaning behind Nahoum's words.
Fat High Pasha, the Chief Chamberlain, the corrupt and corruptible,
intervened. "It is not so hard to be careless when care would be
useless," he said, with a chuckle. "When the khamsin blows the dust-
storms upon the caravan, the camel-driver hath no care for his camels.
'Malaish!' he says, and buries his face in his yelek."
"Life is beautiful and so difficult--to save," observed Nahoum, in a tone
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