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The Light Of Other Days
by
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.