The Light That Failed

A few dropping shots heralded their approach, and a few horsemen led, but the bulk of the force was naked humanity, mad with rage, and armed with the spear and the sword. The instinct of the desert, where there is always much war, told them that the right flank of the square was the weakest, for they swung clear of the front. The camel-guns shelled them as they passed and opened for an instant lanes through their midst, most like those quick-closing vistas in a Kentish hop-garden seen when the train races by at full speed; and the infantry fire, held till the opportune moment, dropped them in close-packing hundreds. No civilised troops in the world could have endured the hell through which they came, the living leaping high to avoid the dying who clutched at their heels, the wounded cursing and staggering forward, till they fell – a torrent black as the sliding water above a mill-dam – full on the right flank of the square.

Then the line of the dusty troops and the faint blue desert sky overhead went out in rolling smoke, and the little stones on the heated ground and the tinder-dry clumps of scrub became matters of surpassing interest, for men measured their agonised retreat and recovery by these things, counting mechanically and hewing their way back to chosen pebble and branch. There was no semblance of any concerted fighting. For aught the men knew, the enemy might be attempting all four sides of the square at once. Their business was to destroy what lay in front of them, to bayonet in the back those who passed over them, and, dying, to drag down the slayer till he could be knocked on the head by some avenging gun-butt.

Dick waited with Torpenhow and a young doctor till the stress grew unendurable. It was hopeless to attend to the wounded till the attack was repulsed, so the three moved forward gingerly towards the weakest side of the square. There was a rush from without, the short hough-hough of the stabbing spears, and a man on a horse, followed by thirty or forty others, dashed through, yelling and hacking. The right flank of the square sucked in after them, and the other sides sent help. The wounded, who knew that they had but a few hours more to live, caught at the enemy’s feet and brought them down, or, staggering into a discarded rifle, fired blindly into the scuffle that raged in the centre of the square.

Dick was conscious that somebody had cut him violently across his helmet, that he had fired his revolver into a black, foam-flecked face which forthwith ceased to bear any resemblance to a face, and that Torpenhow had gone down under an Arab whom he had tried to ‘collar low,’ and was turning over and over with his captive, feeling for the man’s eyes. The doctor jabbed at a venture with a bayonet, and a helmetless soldier fired over Dick’s shoulder: the flying grains of powder stung his cheek. It was to Torpenhow that Dick turned by instinct. The representative of the Central Southern Syndicate had shaken himself clear of his enemy, and rose, wiping his thumb on his trousers. The Arab, both hands to his forehead, screamed aloud, then snatched up his spear and rushed at Torpenhow, who was panting under shelter of Dick’s revolver. Dick fired twice, and the man dropped limply. His upturned face lacked one eye. The musketry-fire redoubled, but cheers mingled with it. The rush had failed and the enemy were flying. If the heart of the square were shambles, the ground beyond was a butcher’s shop. Dick thrust his way forward between the maddened men. The remnant of the enemy were retiring, as the few – the very few – English cavalry rode down the laggards.

Beyond the lines of the dead, a broad blood-stained Arab spear cast aside in the retreat lay across a stump of scrub, and beyond this again the illimitable dark levels of the desert. The sun caught the steel and turned it into a red disc. Some one behind him was saying, ‘Ah, get away, you brute!’ Dick raised his revolver and pointed towards the desert. His eye was held by the red splash in the distance, and the clamour about him seemed to die down to a very far-away whisper, like the whisper of a level sea. There was the revolver and the red light… and the voice of some one scaring something away, exactly as had fallen somewhere before, – a darkness that stung. He fired at random, and the bullet went out across the desert as he muttered, ‘Spoilt my aim. There aren’t any more cartridges. We shall have to run home.’ He put his hand to his head and brought it away covered with blood.

‘Old man, you’re cut rather badly,’ said Torpenhow. ‘I owe you something for this business. Thanks. Stand up! I say, you can’t be ill here.’

Throughout the night, when the troops were encamped by the whale-boats, a black figure danced in the strong moonlight on the sand-bar and shouted that Khartoum the accursed one was dead, – was dead, – was dead, – that two steamers were rock-staked on the Nile outside the city, and that of all their crews there remained not one; and Khartoum was dead, – was dead, – was dead!

But Torpenhow took no heed. He was watching Dick, who called aloud to the restless Nile for Maisie, – and again Maisie!

‘Behold a phenomenon,’ said Torpenhow, rearranging the blanket. ‘Here is a man, presumably human, who mentions the name of one woman only. And I’ve seen a good deal of delirium, too. – Dick, here’s some fizzy drink.’

‘Thank you, Maisie,’ said Dick.

CHAPTER III

So he thinks he shall take to the sea again
For one more cruise with his buccaneers,
To singe the beard of the King of Spain,
And capture another Dean of Jaen
And sell him in Algiers. – A Dutch Picture. – Longfellow

THE SOUDAN campaign and Dick’s broken head had been some months ended and mended, and the Central Southern Syndicate had paid Dick a certain sum on account for work done, which work they were careful to assure him was not altogether up to their standard. Dick heaved the letter into the Nile at Cairo, cashed the draft in the same town, and bade a warm farewell to Torpenhow at the station.

‘I am going to lie up for a while and rest,’ said Torpenhow. ‘I don’t know where I shall live in London, but if God brings us to meet, we shall meet.

Are you starying here on the off-chance of another row? There will be none till the Southern Soudan is reoccupied by our troops. Mark that.

Good-bye; bless you; come back when your money’s spent; and give me your address.’

Dick loitered in Cairo, Alexandria, Ismailia, and Port Said, – especially Port Said. There is iniquity in many parts of the world, and vice in all, but the concentrated essence of all the iniquities and all the vices in all the continents finds itself at Port Said. And through the heart of that sand-bordered hell, where the mirage flickers day long above the Bitter Lake, move, if you will only wait, most of the men and women you have known in this life. Dick established himself in quarters more riotous than respectable. He spent his evenings on the quay, and boarded many ships, and saw very many friends, – gracious Englishwomen with whom he had talked not too wisely in the veranda of Shepherd’s Hotel, hurrying war correspondents, skippers of the contract troop-ships employed in the campaign, army officers by the score, and others of less reputable trades.

He had choice of all the races of the East and West for studies, and the advantage of seeing his subjects under the influence of strong excitement, at the gaming-tables, saloons, dancing-hells, and elsewhere. For recreation there was the straight vista of the Canal, the blazing sands, the procession of shipping, and the white hospitals where the English soldiers lay. He strove to set down in black and white and colour all that Providence sent him, and when that supply was ended sought about for fresh material. It was a fascinating employment, but it ran away with his money, and he had drawn in advance the hundred and twenty pounds to which he was entitled yearly. ‘Now I shall have to work and starve!’ thought he, and was addressing himself to this new fate when a mysterious telegram arrived from Torpenhow in England, which said, ‘Come back, quick; you have caught on. Come.’

A large smile overspread his face. ‘So soon! that’s a good hearing,’ said he to himself. ‘There will be an orgy to-night. I’ll stand or fall by my luck. Faith, it’s time it came!’ He deposited half of his funds in the hands of his well-known friends Monsieur and Madame Binat, and ordered himself a Zanzibar dance of the finest. Monsieur Binat was shaking with drink, but Madame smiles sympathetically – ‘Monsieur needs a chair, of course, and of course Monsieur will sketch; Monsieur amuses himself strangely.’

Binat raised a blue-white face from a cot in the inner room. ‘I understand,’ he quavered. ‘We all know Monsieur. Monsieur is an artist, as I have been.’ Dick nodded. ‘In the end,’ said Binat, with gravity, ‘Monsieur will descend alive into hell, as I have descended.’ And he laughed.

‘You must come to the dance, too,’ said Dick; ‘I shall want you.’

‘For my face? I knew it would be so. For my face? My God! and for my degradation so tremendous! I will not. Take him away. He is a devil. Or at least do thou, Celeste, demand of him more.’ The excellent Binat began to kick and scream.

‘All things are for sale in Port Said,’ said Madame. ‘If my husband comes it will be so much more. Eh, ‘how you call – ‘alf a sovereign.’

The money was paid, and the mad dance was held at night in a walled courtyard at the back of Madame Binat’s house. The lady herself, in faded mauve silk always about to slide from her yellow shoulders, played the piano, and to the tin-pot music of a Western waltz the naked Zanzibari girls danced furiously by the light of kerosene lamps. Binat sat upon a chair and stared with eyes that saw nothing, till the whirl of the dance and the clang of the rattling piano stole into the drink that took the place of blood in his veins, and his face glistened. Dick took him by the chin brutally and turned that face to the light. Madame Binat looked over her shoulder and smiled with many teeth. Dick leaned against the wall and sketched for an hour, till the kerosene lamps began to smell, and the girls threw themselves panting on the hard-beaten ground. Then he shut his book with a snap and moved away, Binat plucking feebly at his elbow. ‘Show me,’ he whimpered. ‘I too was once an artist, even I!’ Dick showed him the rough sketch. ‘Am I that?’ he screamed. ‘Will you take that away with you and show all the world that it is I, – Binat?’ He moaned and wept.

‘Monsieur has paid for all,’ said Madame. ‘To the pleasure of seeing Monsieur again.’

The courtyard gate shut, and Dick hurried up the sandy street to the nearest gambling-hell, where he was well known. ‘If the luck holds, it’s an omen; if I lose, I must stay here.’ He placed his money picturesquely about the board, hardly daring to look at what he did. The luck held.

Three turns of the wheel left him richer by twenty pounds, and he went down to the shipping to make friends with the captain of a decayed cargo-steamer, who landed him in London with fewer pounds in his pocket than he cared to think about.

A thin gray fog hung over the city, and the streets were very cold; for summer was in England.

‘It’s a cheerful wilderness, and it hasn’t the knack of altering much,’ Dick thought, as he tramped from the Docks westward. ‘Now, what must I do?’

The packed houses gave no answer. Dick looked down the long lightless streets and at the appalling rush of traffic. ‘Oh, you rabbit-hutches!’ said he, addressing a row of highly respectable semi-detached residences. ‘Do you know what you’ve got to do later on? You have to supply me with men-servants and maid-servants,’ – here he smacked his lips, – ‘and the peculiar treasure of kings. Meantime I’ll find clothes and boots, and presently I will return and trample on you.’ He stepped forward energetically; he saw that one of his shoes was burst at the side. As he stooped to make investigations, a man jostled him into the gutter. ‘All right,’ he said.

‘That’s another nick in the score. I’ll jostle you later on.’

Good clothes and boots are not cheap, and Dick left his last shop with the certainty that he would be respectably arrayed for a time, but with only fifty shillings in his pocket. He returned to streets by the Docks, and lodged himself in one room, where the sheets on the bed were almost audibly marked in case of theft, and where nobody seemed to go to bed at all. When his clothes arrived he sought the Central Southern Syndicate for Torpenhow’s address, and got it, with the intimation that there was still some money waiting for him.

‘How much?’ said Dick, as one who habitually dealt in millions.

‘Between thirty and forty pounds. If it would be any convenience to you, of course we could let you have it at once; but we usually settle accounts monthly.’

‘If I show that I want anything now, I’m lost,’ he said to himself. ‘All I need I’ll take later on.’ Then, aloud, ‘It’s hardly worth while; and I’m going to the country for a month, too. Wait till I come back, and I’ll see about it.’

‘But we trust, Mr. Heldar, that you do not intend to sever your connection with us?’

Dick’s business in life was the study of faces, and he watched the speaker keenly. ‘That man means something,’ he said. ‘I’ll do no business till I’ve seen Torpenhow. There’s a big deal coming.’ So he departed, making no promises, to his one little room by the Docks. And that day was the seventh of the month, and that month, he reckoned with awful distinctness, had thirty-one days in it!

It is not easy for a man of catholic tastes and healthy appetites to exist for twenty-four days on fifty shillings. Nor is it cheering to begin the experiment alone in all the loneliness of London. Dick paid seven shillings a week for his lodging, which left him rather less than a shilling a day for food and drink. Naturally, his first purchase was of the materials of his craft; he had been without them too long. Half a day’s investigations and comparison brought him to the conclusion that sausages and mashed potatoes, twopence a plate, were the best food. Now, sausages once or twice a week for breakfast are not unpleasant. As lunch, even, with mashed potatoes, they become monotonous. At dinner they are impertinent. At the end of three days Dick loathed sausages, and, going forth, pawned his watch to revel on sheep’s head, which is not as cheap as it looks, owing to the bones and the gravy. Then he returned to sausages and mashed potatoes. Then he confined himself entirely to mashed potatoes for a day, and was unhappy because of pain in his inside. Then he pawned his waistcoat and his tie, and thought regretfully of money thrown away in times past. There are few things more edifying unto Art than the actual belly-pinch of hunger, and Dick in his few walks abroad, – he did not care for exercise; it raised desires that could not be satisfied – found himself dividing mankind into two classes, – those who looked as if they might give him something to eat, and those who looked otherwise. ‘I never knew what I had to learn about the human face before,’ he thought; and, as a reward for his humility, Providence caused a cab-driver at a sausage-shop where Dick fed that night to leave half eaten a great chunk of bread. Dick took it, – would have fought all the world for its possession, – and it cheered him.

The month dragged through at last, and, nearly prancing with impatience, he went to draw his money. Then he hastened to Torpenhow’s address and smelt the smell of cooking meats all along the corridors of the chambers. Torpenhow was on the top floor, and Dick burst into his room, to be received with a hug which nearly cracked his ribs, as Torpenhow dragged him to the light and spoke of twenty different things in the same breath.

‘But you’re looking tucked up,’ he concluded.

‘Got anything to eat?’ said Dick, his eye roaming round the room.

‘I shall be having breakfast in a minute. What do you say to sausages?’

‘No, anything but sausages! Torp, I’ve been starving on that accursed horse-flesh for thirty days and thirty nights.’

‘Now, what lunacy has been your latest?’

Dick spoke of the last few weeks with unbridled speech. Then he opened his coat; there was no waistcoat below. ‘I ran it fine, awfully fine, but I’ve just scraped through.’

‘You haven’t much sense, but you’ve got a backbone, anyhow. Eat, and talk afterwards.’ Dick fell upon eggs and bacon and gorged till he could gorge no more. Torpenhow handed him a filled pipe, and he smoked as men smoke who for three weeks have been deprived of good tobacco.

‘Ouf!’ said he. ‘That’s heavenly! Well?’

‘Why in the world didn’t you come to me?’