They had hardly entered this silent room, with its thick carpets on which their slippered feet made no noise, when the Chancellor came to welcome them. He was a striking figure, with his venerable face, long white beard, high forehead, refined features, graceful robes, and very soft voice, a type of the grave and dignified Oriental, such as might have walked out of the days of the prophet Samuel.
"Peace be on you!" they said.
"And on you too! Welcome!" he said, and motioned them to sit on the divans that ran round the walls.
Then Hafiz explained the object of their visit – how Gordon was ordered to Alexandria to suppress the riots there, and, if need be, to arrest the preacher who was supposed to have provoked them.
"I have already told him," said Hafiz, "that so far as I know Ishmael Ameer is no firebrand; but, hearing through the mouth of one of our own people that he is another Mahdi, threatening the rule of England in Egypt – "
"Oh, peace, my son," said the Chancellor. "Ishmael Ameer is no Mahdi. He claims no divinity."
"Then tell me, O Sheikh," said Gordon, "tell me what Ishmael Ameer is, that I may know what to do when it becomes my duty to deal with him."
Leisurely the Chancellor took snuff, leisurely he opened a folded handkerchief, dusted his nostrils, and then, in his soft voice, said —
"Ishmael Ameer is a Koranist – that is to say, one who takes the Koran as the basis of belief and keeps an open mind about tradition."
"I know," said Gordon. "We have people like that among Christians – people who take the Bible as the basis of faith and turn their backs on dogma."
"Ishmael Ameer reads the Koran by the spirit, not the letter."
"We have people like that too – the letter killeth, you know, the spirit maketh alive."
"Ishmael Ameer thinks Islam should advance with advancing progress."
"There again we are with you, O Sheikh – we have people of the same kind in Christianity."
"Ishmael Ameer thinks slavery, the seclusion of women, divorce, and polygamy are as much opposed to the teaching of Mohammed as to the progress of society."
"Excellent! My father says the same thing. Wallahi! (I assure you!) Or rather, he holds that Islam can never take its place as the religion of great progressive nations until it rids itself of these evils."
"Ishmael Ameer thinks the corruptions of Islam are the work of the partisans of the old barbaric ideas, who are associating the cause of religion with their own interests and passions."
"Splendid! Do you know the Consul-General is always saying that, sir?"
"Ishmael Ameer believes that if God wills it (praise be to Him, the Exalted One!) the day is not distant when an appeal to the Prophet's own words will regenerate Islam, and banish the Caliphs and Sultans whose selfishness and sensuality keep it in bondage to the powers of darkness."
"Really," said Gordon, rising impetuously to his feet, "if Ishmael Ameer says this, he is the man Egypt, India, the whole Mohammedan world, is waiting for. No wonder men like the Cadi are trying to destroy him, though that's only an instinct of self-preservation – but my father, the Consul-General … What is there in all this to create … Why should such teaching set Moslem against Christian?"
"Ishmael Ameer, O my brother," the Chancellor continued with the same soft voice, "thinks Islam is not the only faith that has departed from the spirit of its founder."
"True!"
"If Islam for its handmaidens has divorce and polygamy, Christianity has drunkenness and prostitution."
"No doubt – certainly."
"Coming out of the East, out of the desert, Ishmael Ameer sees in the Christianity of the West a contradiction of every principle for which your great Master fought and suffered."
Gordon sat down again.
"His was a religion of peace, but while your Christian Church prays for unity and concord among the nations your Christian States are daily increasing the instruments of destruction. His was a religion of poverty, but while your Christian priests are saying 'Blessed are the meek,' your Christian communities are struggling for wealth and trampling upon the poor in their efforts to gain it. Ishmael Ameer believes that if your great Master came back now He would not recognise in the civilisation known by His name the true posterity of the little church He founded on the shores of the Lake of Galilee."
"All this is true, too true," said Gordon, "yet under all that … Doesn't Ishmael Ameer see that under all that – "
"Ishmael Ameer sees," said the Chancellor, "that what is known to the world as Christian civilisation is little better than an organised hypocrisy, a lust of empire in nations and a greed of gold in men, destroying liberty, morality, and truth. Therefore he warns his followers against a civilisation which comes to the East with religion in one hand and violence and avarice in the other."
"But surely he sees," said Gordon, "what Christian civilisation has done for the world, what science has done for progress; what England, for example, has done for Egypt?"
"Ishmael Ameer thinks," replied the Chancellor in the same slow, soft voice, "that the essential qualities of national greatness are moral, not material; that man does not live by bread alone; that it is of little value to Egypt that her barns are full if the hearts of her children are empty; that Egypt can afford to be patient, for she is old and eternal; that many are the events which have passed before the eyes of the crouching Sphinx; that the life of man is threescore and ten years, but when Egypt reviews her past she looks back on threescore and ten centuries."
There was silence for a moment, during which the muezzin's voice was heard again, calling the first hour of night, and then Gordon, visibly agitated, said —
"You think Ishmael Ameer a regenerator, a reformer, a redeemer of Islam; and if his preaching prevailed it would send the Grand Cadi back to his Sultan – isn't that so?" But the Chancellor made no reply.
"It would also send England out of Egypt – wouldn't it?" said Gordon, but still the Chancellor gave no sign.
"It would go farther than that perhaps – it would drive Western civilisation out of the East – wouldn't that be the end of it?" said Gordon, and then the Chancellor replied —
"It would drive a corrupt and ungodly civilisation out of the world, my son."
"I see!" said Gordon. "You think the mission of Ishmael Ameer transcends Egypt, transcends even Europe, and says to humanity in general, 'What you call civilisation is killing religion, because the nations – Christian and Moslem alike – have sold themselves to the lust of empire and the greed of gold' – isn't that what you mean?"
The Chancellor bowed his grave head, and in a scarcely audible voice said, "Yes."
"You think, too," said Gordon, whose breathing was now quick and loud, "that Ishmael Ameer is an apostle of the soul of Islam – perhaps of the soul of religion itself without respect of creed – one of the great men who come once in a hundred years to call the world back from a squalid and sordid materialism, and are ready to live, aye, and to die for their faith – the Savonarolas, the Luthers, the Gamal-ed-Deens – perhaps the Mohammeds and" (dropping his voice) "in a sense the Christs?"
But the Egyptian soul, like the mirage of the Egyptian desert, recedes as it is approached, and again the Chancellor made no reply.
"Tell me, O Sheikh," said Gordon, rising to go, "if Ishmael Ameer came to Cairo, would you permit him to preach in El Azhar?"
"He is an Alim" (a doctor of the Koran); "I could not prevent him."
"But would you lodge him in your own house?"
"Yes."
"That