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Donovan Pasha, and Some People of Egypt - Volume 3
Donovan Pasha and Some People of Egypt Volume 3 Author:Gilbert Parker Wyndham Bimbashi's career in Egypt had been a series of mistakes. In the — first place he was opinionated, in the second place he never seemed to — have any luck; and, worst of all, he had a little habit of doing grave — things on his own lightsome responsibility. This last quality was — natural to him, but he added to it a supreme contempt for th... more »e native
mind and an unhealthy scorn of the native official. He had not that
rare quality, constantly found among his fellow-countrymen, of working
the native up through his own medium, as it were, through his own customs
and predispositions, to the soundness of Western methods of government.
Therefore, in due time he made some dangerous mistakes. By virtue of
certain high-handed actions he was the cause of several riots in native
villages, and he had himself been attacked at more than one village as he
rode between the fields of sugar-cane. On these occasions he had behaved
very well--certainly no one could possibly doubt his bravery; but that
was a small offset to the fact that his want of tact and his overbearing
manner had been the means of turning a certain tribe of Arabs loose upon
the country, raiding and killing.
But he could not, or would not, see his own vain stupidity. The climax
came in a foolish sortie against the Arab tribe he had offended. In that
unauthorised melee, in covert disobedience to a general order not to
attack, unless at advantage--for the Gippies under him were raw levies--
his troop was diminished by half; and, cut off from the Nile by a flank
movement of the Arabs, he was obliged to retreat and take refuge in the
well-fortified and walled house which had previously been a Coptic
monastery.
Here, at last, the truth came home to Wyndham bimbashi. He realised that
though in his six years' residence in the land he had acquired a command
of Arabic equal to that of others who had been in the country twice that
time, he had acquired little else. He awoke to the fact that in his
cock-sure schemes for the civil and military life of Egypt there was
not one element of sound sense; that he had been all along an egregious
failure. It did not come home to him with clear, accurate conviction--
his brain was not a first-rate medium for illumination; but the facts
struck him now with a blind sort of force; and he accepted the blank
sensation of failure. Also, he read in the faces of those round him an
alien spirit, a chasm of black misunderstanding which his knowledge of
Arabic could never bridge over.
Here he was, shut up with Gippies who had no real faith in him, in the
house of a Sheikh whose servants would cut his throat on no provocation
at all; and not an eighth of a mile away was a horde of Arabs--a circle
of death through which it was impossible to break with the men in his
command. They must all die here, if they were not relieved.
The nearest garrison was at Kerbat, sixty miles away, where five hundred
men were stationed. Now that his cup of mistakes was full, Wyndham
bimbashi would willingly have made the attempt to carry word to the
garrison there. But he had no right to leave his post. He called for
a volunteer. No man responded. Panic was upon the Gippies. Though
Wyndham's heart sickened within him, his lips did not frame a word of
reproach; but a blush of shame came into his face, and crept up to his
eyes, dimming them. For there flashed through his mind what men at home
would think of him when this thing, such an end to his whole career,
was known. As he stood still, upright and confounded, some one touched
his arm.
It was Hassan, his Soudanese servant. Hassan was the one person in Egypt
who thoroughly believed in him. Wyndham was as a god to Hassan, though
this same god had given him a taste of a belt more than once. Hassan
had not resented the belt, though once, in a moment of affectionate
confidence, he had said to Wyndham that when his master got old and died