Part 36 (1/2)

Futility was written over the Temple of Endeavour, and by-and-by Dimsdale lost hope and health and heart. He had Nilotic fever, he had ophthalmia; and hot with indomitable will, he had striven to save one great basin from destruction, for one whole week, without sleeping or resting night and day: working like a navvy, sleeping like a fellah, eating like a Bedouin.

Then the end came. He was stricken down, and lay above a.s.souan in a hut by the sh.o.r.e, from which he could see the Temple of Philoe, and Pharaoh's Bed, and the great rocks, and the swift-flowing Nile. Here lay his greatest hope, the splendid design of his life--the great barrage of a.s.souan. With it he could add to the wealth of Egypt one-half. He had believed in it, had worked for it and how much else! and his dreams and his working had come to naught. He was sick to death--not with illness alone, but with disappointment and broken hopes and a burden beyond the powers of any one man.

He saw all now: all the falsehood and treachery and corruption. He realised that Ims.h.i.+ Pasha had given him his hand that he might ruin himself, that his own schemes might overwhelm him in the end. At every turn he had been frustrated--by Ims.h.i.+ Pasha: three years of underground circ.u.mvention, with a superficial approval and a mock support.

He lay and looked at the glow, the sunset glow of pink and gold on the Libyan Hills, and his fevered eyes scarcely saw them; they were only a part of this last helpless, senseless dream. Life itself was very far away-practical, generous, hot-blooded life. This distance was so ample and full and quiet, this mystery of the desert and the sky was so immense, the spirit of it so boundless, that in the judgment of his soul nothing mattered now. As he lay in reverie, he heard his servant talking: it was the tale of the Mahdi and British valour and hopeless fighting, and a red martyrdom set like a fixed star in a sunless sky.

What did it matter--what did it all matter, in this grave tremendous quiet wherein his soul was hasting on?

The voices receded; he was alone with the immeasurable world; he fell asleep.

IV

When he woke again it was to find at his bedside a kava.s.s from Ims.h.i.+ Pasha at Cairo. He shrank inwardly. The thought of the Pasha merely nauseated him, but to the kava.s.s he said: ”What do you want, Mahommed?”

The kava.s.s smiled; his look was agreeably mysterious, his manner humbly confidential, his tongue officially deliberate.

”Efendina chok yasha--May the great lord live for ever! I bring good news.”

”Leave of absence, eh?”--rejoined Dimsdale feebly, yet ironically; for that was the thing he expected now of the Minister, who had played him like a ball on a racquet these three years past.

The kava.s.s handed him a huge blue envelope, salaaming impressively.

”May my life be thy sacrifice, effendi,” he said, and salaamed again.

”It is my joy to be near you.”

”We have tasted your absence and found it bitter, Mahommed,” Dimsdale answered in kind, with a touch of plaintive humour, letting the envelope fall from his fingers on the bed, so little was he interested in any fresh move of Ims.h.i.+ Pasha. ”More tricks,” he said to himself between his teeth.

”Shall I open it, effendi? It is the word that thy life shall carry large plumes.”

”What a blitherer you are, Mahommed! Rip it open and let's have it over.”

The kava.s.s handed him a large letter, pedantically and rhetorically written; and Dimsdale, scarce glancing at it, sleepily said: ”Read it out, Mahommed. Skip the flummery in it, if you know how.”

Two minutes later Dimsdale sat up aghast with a surprise that made his heart thump painfully, made his head go round. For the letter conveyed to him the fact that there had been placed to the credit of his department, subject to his own disposal for irrigation works, the sum of eight hundred thousand pounds; and appended was the copy of a letter from the Caisse de la Dette granting three-fourths of this sum, and authorising its expenditure. Added to all was a short scrawl from Ims.h.i.+ Pasha himself, beginning, ”G.o.d is with the patient, my dear friend,” and ending with the remarkable statement: ”Inshallah, we shall now reap the reward of our labours in seeing these great works accomplished at last, in spite of the suffering thrust upon us by our enemies--to whom perdition come.”

Eight hundred thousand pounds!

In a week Dimsdale was at work again. In another month he was at Cairo, and the night after his arrival he attended a ball at the Khedive's Palace. To Fielding Bey he poured out the wonder of his soul at the chance that had been given him at last. He seemed to think it was his own indomitable patience, the work that he had done, and his reports, which had at last shamed the Egyptian Government and the Caisse de la Dette into doing the right thing for the country and to him.

He was dumfounded when Fielding replied: ”Not much, my Belisarius. As Ims.h.i.+ Pasha always was, so he will be to the end. It wasn't Ims.h.i.+ Pasha, and it wasn't English influence, and it wasn't the Caisse de la Dette, each by its lonesome, or all together by initiative.”

”What was it--who was it, then?” inquired Dimsdale breathlessly. ”Was it you?--I know you've worked for me. It wasn't backsheesh anyhow. But Ims.h.i.+ Pasha didn't turn honest and patriotic for nothing--I know that.”

Fielding, who had known him all his life, looked at him curiously for a moment, and then, in a far-away, sort of voice, made recitative:

”'Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray, And when I crossed the wild, I chanced to see at break of day The solitary child.'”

Dimsdale gasped. ”Lucy Gray!” he said falteringly.