CHAPTER XXIII.
THE CITY OF THE CALIPHS—OCTOBER IN THE LAND OF
THE PHARAOHS.
Malcolm Skene had been three weeks among 'the flesh-pots of Egypt,' as he wrote to Roland Lindsay, since he landed from a great white 'trooper' at Alexandria.
It was now nearly the close of what is called the first season in that part of the world—that of the inundation of the Nile—which extends from the first of July to the winter solstice, and when, till the month preceding Skene's arrival, the whole country appears like one vast sea, in which the towns and villages rise like so many islands, and when the air is consequently moist, the mornings and evenings foggy; and Malcolm thought of what brown October was at home in his native land, where new vistas of hamlet and valley are seen through the half-stripped groves, a few hardy apples yet hang in the orchards, and nests are seen in the hedges where none were seen before; where the flocks are driven to fold as the dim sunset comes and the landscape assumes its sober hue, while the call of the partridge and of the few remaining birds on the low sighing wind, fall sadly on the ear. He thought of all this, and of the thick old woods that sheltered his ancestral home, where Dunnimarle looks down on the northern shore of the Forth.
He often thought of Hester Maule too, and why she had refused him, after all—after all he had been half led to hope.
'So—so,' he reflected, 'we shall live out the rest of our lives each without the other—forgetting and perhaps in time forgot.'
Thought was not dead nor memory faint yet, and he seemed, just then, to have no object to live for, save to kill both, if possible, amid any excitement that came to hand, and such was not wanting at that crisis both in Alexandria and Grand Cairo.
No fighting—though such was expected daily—was going on in the Upper Province or on its frontier; and to kill time, Skene more than once resorted to the gambling booths of the Greeks and Italians, as most of our officers did occasionally—a perilous resource at times, as the reader will admit, when we describe some of the events connected with them; and, curious to say, it was amid such scenes that Malcolm Skene was to hear some startling news of his friends at Earlshaugh.
Long before this he had 'done' Cairo, and seen all that was to been seen in that wonderful city, which, though less purely Oriental than Damascus, yet displays a more lively and varied kind of Oriental life than Constantinople itself; for there are still to be found the picturesque scenes and most of the dramatis personæ of the 'Arabian Nights'—and found side by side with the latest results of nineteenth century civilization. 'The short quarter of an hour's drive from the railway station,' says M'Coan, 'transports you into the very world of the Caliphs—the same as when Noureddin, Abou Shamma, Bedredden Hassan, Ali Cogia, the Jew Physician, and the rest of them played their parts any time since or before Saladin.'
A labyrinth of dark and tortuous lanes and alleys is the old city still—places where two donkeys cannot pass abreast, and the toppling stories and outshoots shut out the narrowest streak of sky; while the apparently masquerading crowd below seems unchanged from what it was when Elliot Warburton wrote of it a quarter of a century ago; 'Ladies wrapped closely in white veils; women of the lower classes carrying water on their heads, and only with a long blue garment that reveals too plainly the exquisite symmetry of the young, and the hideous deformity of the old; here are camels perched upon by black slaves, magpied with white napkins round their heads and loins; there are portly merchants, with turbans and long pipes, smoking on their knowing-looking donkeys; here an Arab dashes through the crowd at almost full gallop; or a European, still more haughtily, shoves aside the pompous-looking bearded throng; now a bridal or circumcising procession squeezes along, with music; now the running footmen of some Bey or Pacha endeavour to jostle you to the wall, till they recognise you as an Englishmen—one of that race whom they think the devil can't frighten or teach manners to.'
Now the streets and the Esbekeyeh Square are dotted by redcoats; the trumpets of our Hussars ring out in the Abbassiyeh Barracks; the drums of our infantry are heard at those of Kasr-el-Nil; and the pipes of the Highlanders ever and anon waken the echoes of El Kaleh, or the wondrous citadel of Saladin, with the 'March o' Lochiel,' or the pibroch of 'Donuill Dhu.'
Skene and his brother-officers enjoyed many a cigar on the low terrace in front of Shepheard's now historical hotel, under the shade of the acacia trees, watching the changing crowds in the modern street, which, with all its splendour, cannot compare with the picturesqueness of older Cairo; but the dresses are strangely beautiful, and the whole panorama seems part of a stage, rather than real life; while among the veiled women, the swarthy men in turban and tarboosh, the British orderly dragoon clanks past, or groups of heedless, thoughtless, and happy young officers set forth in open cabs to have a day at the Pyramids—an institution among our troops at Cairo—especially early in the day, when the air has that purity and freshness peculiar to a winter morning in Egypt, and towering skyward are seen those marvels in stone, of which it has been said, that 'Time mocks all things, but the Pyramids mock time!' and where the mighty Sphinx at their base, 'the Father of Terrors,' has its stony eyes for ever fixed on the desert—the gate of that other world, where the work of men's hands ends, and Eternity seems to begin.
At this time several peculiar duties, exciting enough, though not orthodox soldiering, devolved on the troops, and more than once Malcolm Skene, as a subaltern, found himself with a part of the picket aiding the miserable Egyptian police in the now nightly task of closing and clearing out the Assommoirs and Brasseries, gambling and other dens, which were kept open with flaring lamps till gun-fire—a task often achieved by the fixed bayonet and clubbed rifle; and in the course of these duties he had more than once come unpleasantly in almost personal contact with Pietro Girolamo, a leading promoter and frequenter of such places, and one of the greatest ruffians in Cairo or Alexandria, under what is now known as the Band system.
One result of the leniency shown to the followers of Arabi Pacha, who were allowed to escape or disperse after Tel-el-Kebir, was a flooding of the country with armed banditti, by whom some districts were absolutely devastated, and with whom it was suspected that the native authorities were in league, as the police always disappeared with a curious rapidity whenever they were most required. A 'Flying Commission' was appointed to deal with these brigands, but without much avail, though certainly some were captured, tried, and hanged—even on the Shoubra Road, the 'Rotten Row' of the fashionable Cairenes.
The Band system, in which Pietro Girolamo figured so prominently, is a murdering one by no means stamped out by the presence even of our army of occupation, and is a result of the pernicious habit of carrying weapons among the lower class of Greeks and Italians; thus scarcely a week passes without a stabbing affray.
In the Esbekeyeh Gardens, outside the theatre, some high words passed one evening about a girl artiste, during one of the entr'actes, between an Italian and Girolamo, who laid the former dead by one blow of his poniard. For this he was tried before his Consulate and merely punished by a nominal fine, while nightly the actress appeared on the stage, draped in black for her lover, to sing her comic songs.
'Cairo and all the large towns' (says the Globe) 'are infested by the refuse of the Levant—hordes of Greeks of the criminal class and of the most desperate character, with no more respect for the sanctity of human life than a Thug. These men come here to spoil Egypt, and some of them are, in addition, retained by private persons as bullies, if not assassins. Appeal to the Greek Consul, and he will tell you that he can do nothing in regard to these idle and disorderly characters, though the French, Italian, and German authorities deport the same class of their own countrymen on the first complaint.'
The reason of Pietro Girolamo transferring the scene of his life, or operations, from Alexandria to Cairo was an outrage in which he had been concerned a year or two before this period.
In a café near the Place des Consuls were two respectable and very beautiful girls who served as waitresses, till one evening several carriages drove up and a number of ruffians, armed with yataghan, pistol, and poniard, entered, and instead of opposing them, every man in the café made his escape.
'This girl's smiles would inspire a flame in marble!' cried Girolamo, seizing one of the waitresses, whom his companions carried off to the Rosetta Gate, where she was savagely treated and left for dead by the wayside; and—according to a writer in the Standard—only one of her murderers—an Egyptian Bey—was punished by a fine.
'Life is short—what is the use of fussing about anything?' was the philosophic remark of Pietro Girolamo, who was a native of Cerigo (the Cythera of classical antiquity), and latterly the 'Botany Bay' of the Ionian Isles.
All unaware that this personage was in league with the proprietors—if not actually one—of a handsome roulette saloon, in a thoroughfare near the Esbekeyeh Gardens—a place from where it was said no man ever got home alive with his winnings—Malcolm Skene, then in the mood to do anything to teach him to forget, if possible, Hester Maule and that night in the conservatory at Earlshaugh, had spent on hour or so watching the fatal revolving ball, and risking a few coins thereon, after which he seated himself to enjoy a cigar, a glass of wine, and a London newspaper, at a little marble table, under a flower-decorated awning, in front of the edifice.
Malcolm had been deep in the columns of home news, while sipping his wine from time to time—wine that was not the Mareotic vintage so celebrated by Strabo and Horace, but of the common espalier trees in the Delta—before he became aware that he had a companion at his table similarly engaged, but in the pages of the obnoxious Bosphore Egyptien.
He was a striking and picturesque-looking fellow in the prime and strength of manhood. Though somewhat hawk-like in contour, his features were fine and dark; his eyes and moustache jetty black—the former keen, and his knitted brows betokened something of a stern and savage nature. He was well armed with a handsome poniard and pistols, and his dress resembled the Hydriote costume, which is generally of dark material, with wide blue trousers descending as far as the knee, a loose jacket of brown stuff braided with red, and an embroidered skull-cap with a gold tassel.
Furtively, above his paper, he had been eyeing from time to time the unconscious Skene, in whose grave face he was keen enough to trace a mixture of power and patience, of concentrated thought without gloom; a face well browned by exposure, a thick dark moustache, and expression that savoured of the resolution and perfect assurance of the genuine Briton; by all of which he was no way deterred, as the picturesque-looking rascal was no other than Pietro Girolamo, the perpetrator of so many unpunished outrages.
Malcolm Skene was intent on his paper, and read calmly from column to column, till a start escaped him on his eye catching the following paragraph:
'Misfortune seems to attend the sporting season at Earlshaugh, in Fifeshire. A short time since we had to record the accidental—or supposed accidental—shooting of one of the guests—a distinguished young officer; and now we have to add thereto, the mysterious disappearance of the host, Captain Roland Lindsay, who, when covert shooting last evening, disappeared, and as yet cannot be traced, alive or dead.'
Skene started, and for a moment the paper dropped from his hand.
'Dogs dream of bones and fishermen of fish, but what the devil are you dreaming of?' said a voice in rather tolerable English, and Malcolm found himself seated face to face with Pietro Girolamo!
With an unmistakable expression of annoyance and disdain, if not positive disgust in his face, Skene rose to leave the table, when the hand of the other was lightly laid on his arm, and Pietro said with mock suavity;
'The Signor will make his apologies?'
'For what?' asked Malcolm bluntly.
'Permitting his English paper to touch my boot just now.'
'Absurd; I merely dropped it,' said Malcolm Skene, turning away and about to look at the paragraph again.
'You must, you shall apologize!' cried the Levantine bully, his sparkling eyes flaming and his pale cheek reddening with rage and rancour.
'This is outrageous. Stand back, fellow!' cried Malcolm, laying his left hand on the scabbard of his sword to bring the hilt handy.
'I mean what I say, Signor,' cried the Greek, snatching away the paper and treading it under foot.
'And so do I,' replied Malcolm, making a forward stride.
The hand of the Greek was wandering to the poniard in his girdle. Malcolm knew that in another moment it would be out; but, disdaining to draw his sword in an open thoroughfare and upon such an adversary, he clenched his right hand and dealt him, straight out from the shoulder, a blow fairly under the left ear that stretched him senseless in a heap on the pavement beside the marble table.
Thinking that he had sufficiently punished the fellow's overbearing insolence, Malcolm, with his usually quiet blood at fever heat, muttering with a grim laugh, 'That was not a bad blow for a kail-supper of Fife,' was turning away to leave the spot, when a dreadful uproar in the café behind him made him pause, and hearing shouts for succour in English he at once re-entered it.
There he found a number of Europeans and of British officers—chiefly middies—who had come by rail from Alexandria for a 'spree' in the city of the Caliphs, engaged in a fierce mêlée with a number of those ruffians who frequent such places.
The vicinity of the wretched roulette-table had been very much crowded, and a dozen or so of these thoughtless young Britons, who could not get near enough to stake their money personally, had been passing it on from one to another to stake it on the colours. A trivial dispute had occurred, and then a Greek ruffian, who was well known to be a terror to every gambling saloon, rushed forward with his cocked revolver, savagely resolute, and demanded as his, 'every piastre—yea, every para on the tables'—a demand not at all uncommon by such persons in such places. Greeks came in from all points, armed with cudgels and poniards, and in a moment a battle-royal ensued. The roulette-table was overturned, the chairs smashed, and bloodshed became plain on every hand.
While plunging into the mêlée to rescue more than one lad in peril, Malcolm Skene towered above them all, in his herculean strength; and as he laid about him with a cudgel he had found, there floated through his mind a sense of rage and mortification at what Hester Maule would think if he perished in a brawl so obscure and disreputable.
'Take, cut, and burn!' was the cry of the Greek, a local laconism, signifying 'take their money, burn their houses, cut their throats!'
'Kill the Frankish dogs, these smokers and pilaff eaters!' shouted Girolamo, who had now gathered himself up and plunged into the fray, intent only on putting his poniard into Skene.
But the latter, now relinquishing the cudgel, achieved the feat which afterwards found its way into more than one British print.
From the gambling saloon there was only one issue, down a narrow passage, in which a number of the rabble had taken post on both sides, and with knife and club allowed none to pass, so that the place soon became a species of shamble. Perceiving this, Malcolm Skene—bearing back the seething mass of yelling Greeks, Italians, and Levantine scum, who, with glaring black eyes, set white teeth, and visages pallid and distorted with avarice and the lust of blood and cruelty, surged about him with knife and cudgel, impeding and wounding each other in their frantic efforts to get at him—dragged up a couple of Greeks, one in each hand, and by sheer dint of muscular strength lifting them off the floor, and using their bodies as shields on each side, he charged right through the passage and gained the street, where he flung them down, gashed and bleeding from cuts and stabs by the misdirected weapons of their compatriots, while he escaped almost without a scratch; gathered about him his companions, all of whom had suffered more or less severely, and getting cabs they drove to the barracks.
For this affair Pietro Girolamo was arrested in the Shoubra Road, and brought before the Greek Consul after twenty-four hours' incarceration in the Zaptieh; but as usual, like all the rogues of his nationality, he claimed protection under the Alexandrian Capitulations, and went forth free into the streets again.
Malcolm Skene soon dismissed the row from his thoughts, but not the newspaper paragraph in the perusal or consideration of which he had been so roughly interrupted; and he pondered deeply and vainly on what was involved by the mysterious and alarming—'disappearance at Earlshaugh.'