The Light Of Other Days

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Title:     The Light Of Other Days
Author: Gilbert Parker [More Titles by Parker]

I

Dimsdale's prospects had suddenly ceased by the productive marriage of a rich uncle late in life; and then his career began. He went to Egypt at the time when men who knew things had their chance to do things. His information was general and discursive, but he had a real gift for science: an inheritance from a grandfather who received a peerage for abstruse political letters written to the Times and lectures before the Royal Institution. Besides, he had known well and loved inadvertently the Hon. Lucy Gray, who kept a kind of social kindergarten for confiding man, whose wisdom was as accurate as her face was fair, her manners simple, and her tongue demure and biting.

Egypt offered an opportunity for a man like Dimsdale, and he always said that his going there was the one inspiration of his life. He did not know that this inspiration came from Lucy Gray. She had purposely thrown him in the way of General Duncan Pasha, who, making a reputation in Egypt, had been rewarded by a good command in England and a K.C.B.

After a talk with the General, who had spent his Egyptian days in the agreeable strife with native premiers and hesitating Khedives, Dimsdale rose elated, with his mission in his hand. After the knock-down blow his uncle had given him, he was in a fighting mood. General Duncan's tale had come at the psychological moment, and hot with inspiration he had gone straight off to Lucy Gray with his steamship ticket in his pocket, and told her he was going to spend his life in the service of the pasha and the fellah. When she asked him a little bitingly what form his disciplined energy would take, he promptly answered: "Irrigation."

She laughed in his face softly. "What do you know about irrigation?" she asked.

"I can learn it--it's the game to play out there, I'm sure of that," he answered.

"It doesn't sound distinguished," she remarked drily. Because she smiled satirically at him, and was unresponsive to his enthusiasm, and gave him no chance to tell her of the nobility of the work in which he was going to put his life; of the work of the Pharaohs in their day, the hope of Napoleon in his, and the creed Mahomet Ali held and practised, that the Nile was Egypt and Egypt was irrigation--because of this he became angry, said unkind things, drew acid comments upon himself, and left her with a last good-bye. He did not realise that he had played into the hands of Lucy Gray in a very childish manner. For in scheming that he should go to Egypt she had planned also that he should break with her; for she never had any real intention of marrying him, and yet it was difficult to make him turn his back on her, while at the same time she was too tender of his feelings to turn her back on him. She held that anger was the least injurious of all grounds for separation. In anger there was no humiliation. There was something dignified and brave about a quarrel, while a growing coolness which must end in what the world called "jilting" was humiliating. Besides, people who quarrel and separate may meet again and begin over again: impossible in the other circumstance.

II

In Egypt Dimsdale made a reputation; not at once, but he did make it. The first two years of his stay he had plenty to do. At the end of the time he could have drawn a map of the Nile from Uganda to the Barrages; he knew the rains in each district from the region of the Sadds to the Little Borillos; there was not a canal, from the small Bahr Shebin to the big Rayeh Menoufieh or the majestic Ibrahimieh, whose slope, mean velocity and discharge he did not know; and he carried in his mind every drainage cut and contour from Tamis to Damanhur, from Cairo to Beltim. He knew neither amusement nor society, for every waking hour was spent in the study of the Nile and what the Nile might do.

After one of his journeys up the Nile, Imshi Pasha, the Minister of the Interior, said to him: "Ah, my dear friend, with whom be peace and power, what have you seen as you travel?"

"I saw a fellah yesterday who has worked nine months on the corvee--six months for the Government and three for a Pasha, the friend of the Government. He supplied his own spades and baskets; his lantern was at the service of the Khedive; he got his own food as best he could. He had one feddan of land in his own village, but he had no time to work it or harvest it. Yet he had to pay a house-tax of five piastres, a war-tax of five piastres, a camel-tax of five piastres, a palm-tax of five piastres, a salt-tax of nine piastres, a poll-tax of thirty piastres, a land-tax of ninety piastres. The canal for which he was taxed gave his feddan of land no water, for the Pasha, the friend of the Government, took all the water for his own land."

Prince Imshi stifled a yawn. "I have never seen so much at one breath, my friend. And having seen, you feel now that Egypt must be saved--eh?"

This Pasha was an Egyptian of the Egyptians--a Turk of the Turks, Oriental in mind with the polish of a Frenchman. He did not like Dimsdale, but he did not say so. He knew it was better to let a man have his fling and come a cropper over his own work than to have him unoccupied, excited, and troublesome, especially when he was an Englishman and knew about what he was talking. Imshi Pasha saw that Dimsdale was a dangerous man, as all enthusiasts are, no matter how right-headed; but it comforted him to think that many a reformer, from Amenhotep down, had, as it were, cut his own throat in the Irrigation Department. Some had tried to distribute water fairly, efficiently and scientifically, but most of them had got lost in the underbush of officialdom, and never got out of the wood again. This wood is called Backsheesh. Reformers like Dimsdale had drawn straight lines of purpose for the salvation of the country, and they had seen these straight lines go crooked under their very eyes, with a devilish smoothness. Therefore Imshi Pasha, being a wise man and a deep-dyed official who had never yet seen the triumph of the reformer and the honest Aryan, took Dimsdale's hands and said suddenly, with a sorrowful break in his voice:

"Behold, my friend, to tell the whole truth as God gives it, it is time you have come. Egypt has waited for you--the man who sees and knows. I have watched you for two years. I have waited, but now the time is ripe. You shall stretch your arm over Egypt and it will rise to you. You shall have paper for plans, and men and money for travel and works-cuttings, and pumps, and sand-bags for banks and barrages. You shall be second in your department--but first in fact, for shall not I, your friend, be your chief? And you shall say 'Go there,' and they shall go, and 'Come here,' and they shall come. For my soul is with you for Egypt, O friend of the fellah and saviour of the land. Have I not heard of the great reservoirs you would make in the Fayoum, of the great dam at Assouan? Have I not heard, and waited, and watched? and now..."

He paused and touched his breast and his forehead in respect.

Dimsdale was well-nigh taken off his feet. It seemed too wonderful to be true--a free hand in Egypt, and under Imshi Pasha, the one able Minister of them all, who had, it was said, always before resisted the irrigation schemes of the foreigners, who believed only in the corroee and fate!

Dimsdale rejoiced that at the beginning of his career he had so inspired the powerful one with confidence. With something very like emotion he thanked the Minister.

"Yes, my dear friend," answered the Pasha, "the love of Egypt has helped us to understand each other. And we shall know each other better still by-and-by-by-and-by.... You shall be gazetted to-morrow. Allah preserve you from all error!"

III

This began the second period of Dimsdale's career. As he went forth from Cairo up the Nile with great designs in his mind, and an approving Ministry behind him, he had the feeling of a hunter with a sure quarry before him. Now he remembered Lucy Gray; and he flushed with a delightful and victorious indignation remembering his last hour with her. He even sentimentally recalled a song he once wrote for her sympathetic voice. The song was called "No Man's Land." He recited two of the verses to himself now, with a kind of unction:

"And we have wandered far, my dear, and we have loved apace;
A little hut we built upon the sand;
The sun without to brighten it-within your golden face:
O happy dream, O happy No Man's Land!

"The pleasant furniture of spring was set in all the fields,
And sweet and wholesome all the herbs and flowers;
Our simple cloth, my dear, was spread with all the orchard yields,
And frugal only were the passing hours."

A wave of feeling passed over him suddenly. Those verses were youth, and youth was gone, with all its flushed and spirited dalliance and reckless expenditure of feeling. Youth was behind him, and love was none of his, nor any cares of home, nor wife nor children; nothing but ambition now, and the vanity of successful labour.

Sitting on the deck of the Sefi at El Wasta, he looked round him. In the far distance was the Maydoum Pyramid, "the Imperfect One," unexplored by man these thousands of years, and all round it the soft yellowish desert, with a mirage quivering over it in the distance, a mirage of trees and water and green hills. A caravan lounged its way slowly into the waste. At the waterside, here and there devout Mahommedans were saying their prayers, now standing, now bowing towards the east, now kneeling and touching the ground with the forehead. Then, piercing and painfully musical, came the call of the Muezzin from the turret of the mosque a quarter of a mile away. Near by the fellah worked in his onion-field; and on the khiassas loaded with feddan at the shore, just out of the current, and tied up for the night, sat the riverine folk eating their dourha and drinking black coffee. Now Dimsdale noticed that, nearer still, just below the Sefi, on the shore, sat a singing-girl, an a'l'meh, with a darkfaced Arab beside her, a kemengeh in his lap. Looking down, Dimsdale caught their eyes, nodded to them, and the singing-girl and the kemengeh-player got to their feet and salaamed. The girl's face was in the light of evening. Her dark skin took on a curious reddish radiance, her eyes were lustrous and her figure beautiful. The kemengeh-player stood with his instrument ready, and he lifted it in a kind of appeal. Dimsdale beckoned them up on deck. Lighting a cigarette, he asked the a'l'meh to sing. Her voice had the curious vibrant note of the Arab, and the words were in singular sympathy with Dimsdale's thoughts:

"I have a journey to make, and perils are in hiding,
Many moons must I travel, many foes meet;
A morsel of bread my food, a goolah of water for drinking,
Desert sand for my bed, the moonlight my sheet....
Come, my love, to the scented palms:
Behold, the hour of remembrance!"

For the moment Dimsdale ceased to be the practical scientist--he was all sentimentalist. He gave himself the luxury of retrospection, he enjoyed the languorous moment; the music, the voice, the tinkle of the tambourine, the girl herself, sinuous, sensuous. It struck him that he had never seen an a'l'meh so cleanly and so finely dressed, so graceful, so delicate in manner. It struck him also that the kemengeh-player was a better-class Arab than he had ever met. The man's face attracted him, fascinated him. As he looked it seemed familiar. He studied it, he racked his brain to recall it. Suddenly he remembered that it was like the face of a servant of Imshi Pasha--a kind of mouffetish of his household. Now he studied the girl. He had never seen her before; of that he was sure. He ordered them coffee, and handed the girl a goldpiece. As he did so, he noticed that among several paste rings she wore one of value. All at once the suspicion struck him: Imshi Pasha had sent the girl--to try him perhaps, to gain power over him maybe, as women had gained power over strong men before. But why should Imshi Pasha send the girl and his mouffetish on this miserable mission? Was not Imshi Pasha his friend?

Quietly smoking his cigarette, he said to the man: "You may go, Mahommed Melik; I have had enough. Take your harem with you," he added quickly.

The man scarcely stirred a muscle, the woman flushed deeply.

"So be it, effendi," answered the man, rising unmoved, for his sort know not shame. He beckoned to the girl. For an instant she stood hesitating, then with sudden fury she threw on the table beside him the gold-piece Dimsdale had given her.

"Magnoon!" she said, with blazing eyes, and ran after the man.

"I may be a fool, my dear," Dimsdale said after her; "but you might say the same of the Pasha who sent you here."

Dimsdale was angry for a moment, and he said some hard words of Imshi Pasha as he watched the two decoys hurry away into the dusk. He thought it nothing more serious than an attempt to know of what stuff he was made. He went to bed with dreams of vast new areas watered for summer rice, of pumping-stations lifting millions of cubic metres of water per day; of dykes to be protected by bulrushes and birriya weeds; of great desert areas washed free of carbonates and sulphates and selling at twenty pounds an acre; of a green Egypt with three crops, and himself the Regenerator, the Friend of the Fellah.

In this way he soon forgot that he had remembered Lucy Gray, and the incident of the girl ceased to trouble. His progress up the river, however, was marked by incidents whose significance he did not at once see. Everywhere his steamer stopped people came with backsheesh in the shape of butter, cream, flour, eggs, fowls, cloths, and a myriad things. Jewels from mummy cases, antichi, donkeys, were offered him: all of which he steadfastly refused, sometimes with contumely. Officials besought his services with indelicate bribes, and by devious hospitalities and attentions more than one governor sought to bring his projects for irrigation in line with their own particular duplicities.

"Behold, effendi," said one to whom Dimsdale's honesty was monstrous, "may God preserve you from harm--the thing has not been known, that all men shall fare alike! It is not the will of God."

"It is the will of God that water shall be distributed as I am going to distribute it; and that is, according to every man's just claim," answered Dimsdale stubbornly, and he did not understand the vague smile which met his remark.

It took him a long time to realise that his plans, approved by Imshi Pasha, were constantly coming to naught; that after three years' work, and extensive invention and travel, and long reports to the Ministry, and encouragement on paper, he had accomplished nothing; and that he had no money with which to accomplish anything. Day in, day out, week in, week out, month in, month out, when the whole land lay sweltering with the moist heat of flood-time, in the period of the khamsin, in the dry heat which turned the hair grey and chapped the skin like a bitter wind, he slaved and schemed, the unconquerable enthusiast, who built houses which immediately fell down.

Fifty times his schemes seemed marching to fulfilment; but something always intervened. He wrote reams of protest, he made many arid journeys to Cairo, he talked himself hoarse; and always he was met by the sympathetic smiling of Imshi Pasha, by his encouraging approval.

"Ah, my dear friend, may. Heaven smooth your path! It is coming right. All will be well. Time is man's friend. The dam shall be built. The reservoirs shall be made. But we are in the hands of the nations. Poor Egypt cannot act alone--our Egypt that we love. The Council sits to-morrow--we shall see." This was the fashion of the Pasha's speech.

After the sitting of the Council, Dimsdale would be sent away with unfruitful promises.

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 Assouan in a hut by the shore, 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 Assouan. 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 Imshi 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 Imshi Pasha: three years of underground circumvention, 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 kavass from Imshi Pasha at Cairo. He shrank inwardly. The thought of the Pasha merely nauseated him, but to the kavass he said: "What do you want, Mahommed?"

The kavass 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 kavass 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 Imshi 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 kavass 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 Imshi Pasha himself, beginning, "God 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 Imshi Pasha always was, so he will be to the end. It wasn't Imshi 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 Imshi 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.

Fielding nodded. "You didn't know, of course. She's been here for six months--has more influence than the whole diplomatic corps. Twists old Imshi Pasha round her little finger. She has played your game handsomely--I've been in her confidence. Wordsworth was wrong when he wrote:

"'No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor:
The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door--'

"For my wife's been her comrade. And her mate--would you like to know her mate? She's married, you know."

Dimsdale's face was pale. He was about to reply, when a lady came into view, leaning on the arm of an Agency Secretary. At first she did not see Dimsdale, then within a foot or two of him she suddenly stopped. The Secretary felt her hand twitch on his arm; then she clenched the fingers firmly on her fan.

"My dear Dimsdale," Fielding said, "you must let me introduce you to Mrs. St. John."

Dimsdale behaved very well, the lady perfectly. She held out both her hands to him.

"We are old, old friends, Mr. Dimsdale and I. I have kept the next dance for him," she added, turning to Fielding, who smiled placidly and left with the Secretary.

For a moment there was silence, then she said quietly: "Let me congratulate you on all you have done. Everybody is talking about you. They say it is wonderful how you have made things come your way.... I am very, very glad."

Dimsdale was stubborn and indignant and anything a man can be whose amour propre has had a shock.

"I know all," he said bluntly. "I know what you've done for me."

"Well, are you as sorry I did it as I am to know you know it?" she asked just a little faintly, for she had her own sort of heart, and it worked in its own sort of way.

"Why this sudden interest in my affairs? You laughed at me when I made up my mind to come to Egypt."

"That was to your face. I sent you to Egypt."

"You sent me?"

"I made old General Duncan talk to you. The inspiration was mine. I also wrote to Fielding Pasha--and at last he wrote to me to come."

"You--why--"

"I know more about irrigation than any one in England," she continued illogically. "I've studied it.

"I have all your reports. That's why I could help you here. They saw I knew."

Dimsdale shook a little. "I didn't understand," he said.

"You don't know my husband, I think," she added, rising slowly. "He is coming yonder with Imshi Pasha."

"I know of him--as a millionaire," he answered, in a tone of mingled emotions.

"I must introduce you," she said, and seemed to make an effort to hold herself firmly. "He will have great power here. Come and see me to-morrow," she added in an even voice. "Please come--Harry."

In another minute Dimsdale heard the great financier Arnold St. John say that the name of Dimsdale would be for ever honoured in Egypt.

GLOSSARY

Aiwa, effendi----Yea, noble sir. Allah----God. Allah-haly 'm alla-haly----A singsong of river-workers. Allah Kerim----God is bountiful. Allshu Akbar----God is most Great. A'l'meh----Female professional singers Antichi----Antiquities.

Backsheesh----Tip, douceur, bribe. Balass----Earthen vessel for carrying water. Basha----Pasha. Bersim----Grass. Bimbashi----Major. Bishareen----A native tribe. Bismillah----In the name of God. Bowab----A doorkeeper.

Corvee----Forced labour.

Dahabeah----A Nile houseboat with large lateen sails.

Darabukkeh----A drum made of a skin stretched over an earthenware funnel.
Doash----(Literally) Treading. A ceremony performed on the return of the Holy Carpet from Mecca.

Dourha----Maize.

Effendina----Highness. El aadah----The ordinary. El Azhar----The Arab University at Cairo. Fantasia----Celebration with music, dancing, and processions. Farshoot----The name of a native tribe. Fatihah----The opening chapter of the Koran, recited at weddings, etc.

Feddan----The most common measure of land--a little less than an acre. Also dried hay.
Fellah (plu. fellaheen)----The Egyptian peasant.
Felucca----A small boat, propelled by oars or sails.
Fessikh----Salted fish.
Ghaffirs----Humble village officials.

Ghawdzee----The tribe of public dancing-girls. A female of this tribe is called "Ghazeeyeh," and a man "Ghazee," but the plural Ghawazee is generally understood as applying to the female.

Ghimah----The Mahommedan Sunday.

Gippy----Colloquial name for an Egyptian soldier.

Goolah----Porous water-jar of Nile mud.

Hakim----Doctor.

Hanouti----Funeral attendants.
Hari-kari----An Oriental form of suicide.
Hashish----Leaves of hemp.
Inshallah----God willing.
Jibbeh----Long coat or smock, worn by dervishes.
Kavass----An orderly.
Kemengeh----A cocoanut fiddle.
Khamsin----A hot wind of Egypt and the Soudan.

Khedive----The title granted in 1867 by the Sultan of Turkey to the ruler of Egypt.
Khiassa----Small boat.
Khowagah----Gentleman.
Koran----The Scriptures of the Mahommedans.
Kourbash----A stick, a whip.

La ilaha illa-llah----There is no God but God. Mafish----Nothing.
Magnoon----Fool. Malaish----No matter. Mamour----A magistrate.
Mankalah----A game. Mastaba----A bench. Mejidieh----A Turkish Order.
Mirkaz----District. Moghassils----Washers of the dead. Moufetish----High steward. Mudir----A Governor of a Mudirieh or province. Muezzin----The sheikh of the mosque who calls to prayer. Mushrabieh----Lattice window.

Naboot----Quarter staff. Narghileh----The Oriental tobacco-pipe. Nehar-ak koom said----Greeting to you. Omdah----The head of a village.

Ooster----One of the best sort.

Ramadan----The Mahommedan season of fasting. Reis----Pilot.

Saadat el basha----Excellency.

Sais----Groom.

Sakkia----Persian water-wheel.

Salaam----A salutation of the East; an obeisance, performed by bowing very low and placing the right palm on the forehead and on the breast.

Sarraf----An accountant.

Shadoof----Bucket and pole used by natives for lifting water.

Sha'er----A reciter. (The singular of Sho'ara, properly signifying a poet.)

Sheikh-el-beled----Head of a village.

Shintiyan----Very wide trousers, worn by the women of the middle and higher orders.

Sitt----"The Lady."

Tarboosh----Fez or native turban. Tarah----A veil for the head.

Ulema----Learned men.

Waled----A boy. Wekeel----A deputy. Welee----A favourite of Heaven; colloquially a saint.

Yashmak----A veil for the lower part of the face. Yelek----A long vest or smock, worn over the shirt and shintiyan.

Zeriba----A palisade.

[The end]
Gilbert Parker's short story: The Light Of Other Days

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