The Weavers: a tale of England and Egypt of fifty years ago - Complete. Gilbert Parker

ghiassa from end to end, from keel to gunwale. The man was singing a wild chant of cheerful labour, the soul of the hard-smitten of the earth rising above the rack and burden of the body:

      “O, the garden where to-day we sow and to-morrow we reap!

       O, the sakkia turning by the garden walls;

       O, the onion-field and the date-tree growing,

       And my hand on the plough-by the blessing of God;

       Strength of my soul, O my brother, all’s well!”

      The meaning of the song got into his heart. He pressed his hand to his breast with a sudden gesture. It touched something hard. It was his flute. Mechanically he had put it in his pocket when he dressed in the morning. He took it out and looked at it lovingly. Into it he had poured his soul in the old days—days, centuries away, it seemed now. It should still be the link with the old life. He rose and walked towards his home again. The future spread clearly before him. Rapine, murder, tyranny, oppression, were round him on every side, and the ruler of the land called him to his counsels. Here a great duty lay—his life for this land, his life, and his love, and his faith. He would expiate his crime and his sin, the crime of homicide for which he alone was responsible, the sin of secrecy for which he and another were responsible. And that other? If only there had been but one word of understanding between them before she left!

      At the door of his house stood the American whom he had met at the citadel yesterday-it seemed a hundred years ago.

      “I’ve got a letter for you,” Lacey said. “The lady’s aunt and herself are cousins of mine more or less removed, and originally at home in the U. S. A. a generation ago. Her mother was an American. She didn’t know your name—Miss Hylda Maryon, I mean. I told her, but there wasn’t time to put it on.” He handed over the unaddressed envelope.

      David opened the letter, and read:

      “I have seen the papers. I do not understand what has happened, but I know that all is well. If it were not so, I would not go. That is the truth. Grateful I am, oh, believe me! So grateful that I do not yet know what is the return which I must make. But the return will be made. I hear of what has come to you—how easily I might have destroyed all! My thoughts blind me. You are great and good; you will know at least that I go because it is the only thing to do. I fly from the storm with a broken wing. Take now my promise to pay what I owe in the hour Fate wills—or in the hour of your need. You can trust him who brings this to you; he is a distant cousin of my own. Do not judge him by his odd and foolish words. They hide a good character, and he has a strong nature. He wants work to do. Can you give it? Farewell.”

      David put the letter in his pocket, a strange quietness about his heart.

      He scarcely realised what Lacey was saying. “Great girl that. Troubled about something in England, I guess. Going straight back.”

      David thanked him for the letter. Lacey became red in the face. He tried to say something, but failed. “Thee wishes to say something to me, friend?” asked David.

      “I’m full up; I can’t speak. But, say—”

      “I am going to the Palace now. Come back at noon if you will.”

      He wrung David’s hand in gratitude. “You’re going to do it. You’re going to do it. I see it. It’s a great game—like Abe Lincoln’s. Say, let me black your boots while you’re doing it, will you?”

      David pressed his hand.

CHAPTER IX. THE LETTER, THE NIGHT, AND THE WOMAN

       Table of Contents

      “To-day has come the fulfilment of my dream, Faith. I am given to

       my appointed task; I am set on a road of life in which there is no

       looking back. My dreams of the past are here begun in very truth

       and fact. When, in the night, I heard Uncle Benn calling, when in

       the Meeting-house voices said, ‘Come away, come away, and labour,

       thou art idle,’ I could hear my heart beat in the ardour to be off.

       Yet I knew not whither. Now I know.

       “Last night the Prince Pasha called me to his Council, made me

       adviser, confidant, as one who has the ear of his captain—after he

       had come to terms with me upon that which Uncle Benn left of land

       and gold. Think not that he tempted me.

       “Last night I saw favourites look upon me with hate because of

       Kaid’s favour, though the great hall was filled with show of

       cheerful splendour, and men smiled and feasted. To-day I know that

       in the Palace where I was summoned to my first: duty with the

       Prince, every step I took was shadowed, every motion recorded, every

       look or word noted and set down. I have no fear of them. They are

       not subtle enough for the unexpected acts of honesty in the life of

       a true man. Yet I do not wonder men fail to keep honest in the

       midst of this splendour, where all is strife as to who shall have

       the Prince’s favour; who shall enjoy the fruits of bribery,

       backsheesh, and monopoly; who shall wring from the slave and the

       toil-ridden fellah the coin his poor body mints at the corvee, in

       his own taxed fields of dourha and cucumbers.

       “Is this like anything we ever dreamed at Hamley, Faith? Yet here

       am I set, and here shall I stay till the skein be ravelled out.

       Soon I shall go into the desert upon a mission to the cities of the

       South, to Dongola, Khartoum, and Darfur and beyond; for there is

       trouble yonder, and war is near, unless it is given to me to bring

       peace. So I must bend to my study of Arabic, which I am thankful I

       learned long ago. And I must not forget to say that I shall take

       with me on my journey that faithful Muslim Ebn Ezra. Others I shall

       take also, but of them I shall write hereafter.

       “I shall henceforth be moving in the midst of things which I was

       taught to hate. I pray that I may not hate them less as time goes

       on. To-morrow I shall breathe the air of intrigue, shall hear

       footsteps of spies behind me wherever I go; shall know that even the

       roses in the garden have ears; that the ground under my feet will

       telegraph my thoughts. Shall I be true? Shall I at last whisper,

       and follow, and evade, believe in no one, much less in myself, steal

       in and out of men’s confidences to use them for my own purposes?

       Does any human being know what he can bear of temptation or of the

       daily pressure of the life around him? what powers of resistance

       are in his soul? how long the vital energy will continue to throw

       off the never-ending seduction, the freshening force of evil?

       Therein lies the power of evil, that it is ever new, ever fortified

       by continuous conquest and achievements. It has the rare fire of

       aggression; is ever more upon the offence than upon the defence;

       has, withal, the false lure