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It has been reverenced and shot at, so that its face is chipped and its nose broken away, and still it smiles with fierce serenity. Sit silently. "Poste-carte " "Imshi, imshi." That Arabic word, picked up at hazard from the dragoman, has acted like a talisman the pest has actually gone! There creeps up beside you, very slowly and determinedly, an old, old man.
It struck him also that the kemengeh-player was a better-class Arab than he had ever met. The man's face attracted him, fascinated him. As he looked it seemed familiar. He studied it, he racked his brain to recall it. Suddenly he remembered that it was like the face of a servant of Imshi Pasha a kind of mouffetish of his household. Now he studied the girl.
Therefore Imshi Pasha, being a wise man and a deep-dyed official who had never yet seen the triumph of the reformer and the honest Aryan, took Dimsdale's hands and said suddenly, with a sorrowful break in his voice: "Behold, my friend, to tell the whole truth as God gives it, it is time you have come. Egypt has waited for you the man who sees and knows. I have watched you for two years.
Prince Imshi stifled a yawn. "I have never seen so much at one breath, my friend. And having seen, you feel now that Egypt must be saved eh?" This Pasha was an Egyptian of the Egyptians a Turk of the Turks, Oriental in mind with the polish of a Frenchman. He did not like Dimsdale, but he did not say so.
What did it matter what did it all matter, in this grave tremendous quiet wherein his soul was hasting on? The voices receded; he was alone with the immeasurable world; he fell asleep. When he woke again it was to find at his bedside a kavass from Imshi Pasha at Cairo. He shrank inwardly. The thought of the Pasha merely nauseated him, but to the kavass he said: "What do you want, Mahommed?"
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.
Dimsdale was well-nigh taken off his feet. It seemed too wonderful to be true a free hand in Egypt, and under Imshi Pasha, the one able Minister of them all, who had, it was said, always before resisted the irrigation schemes of the foreigners, who believed only in the corroee and fate! Dimsdale rejoiced that at the beginning of his career he had so inspired the powerful one with confidence.
He seemed to think it was his own indomitable patience, the work that he had done, and his reports, which had at last shamed the Egyptian Government and the Caisse de la Dette into doing the right thing for the country and to him. He was dumfounded when Fielding replied: "Not much, my Belisarius. As Imshi Pasha always was, so he will be to the end.
He realised that Imshi Pasha had given him his hand that he might ruin himself, that his own schemes might overwhelm him in the end. At every turn he had been frustrated by Imshi Pasha: three years of underground circumvention, with a superficial approval and a mock support.
He knew neither amusement nor society, for every waking hour was spent in the study of the Nile and what the Nile might do. After one of his journeys up the Nile, Imshi Pasha, the Minister of the Interior, said to him: "Ah, my dear friend, with whom be peace and power, what have you seen as you travel?"
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