Donovan Pasha, and Some People of Egypt — CompleteParker, Gilbert
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Donovan Pasha, and Some People of Egypt — Complete
Parker, Gilbert
Egypt -- Fiction; Short stories
“Tell the people to go to their homes and obey us,” said Dicky, putting
away his pistol.
“These be good men, I have seen with mine own eyes,” said Mustapha
hoarsely to the crowd. “It is for your good they do all. Have I not
seen? Let God fill both my hands with dust if it be not so! God hath
stricken me, and behold I give myself into the hands of the Inglesi, for
I believe!”
He would have fallen to the ground, but Dicky and the Soudanese caught
him and carried him down to the bank, while the crowd scuttled from the
boat, and Fielding made ready to bear the dying man to Abdallah--a race
against death.
Fielding brought Mustapha Kali to Abdallah in time to die there, and
buried him with his fathers; and Dicky stayed behind to cleanse Kalamoun
with perchloride and limewash.
The story went abroad and travelled fast, and the words of Mustapha
Kali, oft repeated, became as the speech of a holy man; and the people
no longer hid their dead, but brought them to the Amenhotep.
This was the beginning of better things; the disease was stayed.
And for all the things that these men did--Fielding Bey and Donovan
Pasha--they got naught but an Egyptian ribbon to wear on the breast and
a laboured censure from the Administration for overrunning the budget
allowance.
Dicky, however, seemed satisfied, for Fielding’s little barque of life
had not gone down “On the reef of Norman’s woe.” Mrs. Henshaw felt so
also when she was told all, and she disconcerted Dicky by bursting into
tears.
“Why those tears?” said Dicky to Fielding afterwards; “I wasn’t
eloquent.”
FIELDING HAD AN ORDERLY
His legs were like pipe-stems, his body was like a board, but he was
straight enough, not unsoldierly, nor so bad to look at when his back
was on you; but when he showed his face you had little pleasure in him.
It seemed made of brown putty, the nose was like india-rubber, and the
eyes had that dull, sullen look of a mongrel got of a fox-terrier and a
bull-dog. Like this sort of mongrel also his eyes turned a brownish-red
when he was excited.
You could always tell when something had gone wrong with Ibrahim the
Orderly, by that curious dull glare in his eyes. Selamlik Pasha said
to Fielding that it was hashish; Fielding said it was a cross breed of
Soudanese and fellah. But little Dicky Donovan said it was something
else, and he kept his eye upon Ibrahim. And Dicky, with all his faults,
could screw his way from the front of a thing to the back thereof like
no other civilised man you ever knew. But he did not press his opinions
upon Fielding, who was an able administrator and a very clever fellow
also, with a genial habit of believing in people who served him: and
that is bad in the Orient.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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