Lady Gregory

“ Towards the end of March, before we left Cairo, Arabi came to say good-bye to us. A little worried and troubled by false accusations made against him in English newspapers, he was still confident that some day his character would be cleared. ‘They must know some day that it is the good of the people that we seek.’ A little time before their work was judged, that was all he asked. This has been denied him, and those who thought it well to ‘bring things to a crisis and hasten intervention’ by raising a quarrel between him and the Khedive have done their work. ”

“ Two little girls, her daughters, waited on us, and brought water to wash our hands. She, herself, kept up an animated conversation, and gave us a vivid account of the imprisonment of the three colonels and their rescue. When they were in prison the others were frightened, but Arabi was not. He said: ‘It is not the will of God that we should perish.’ ‘When I heard what had happened, though I was almost too ill to leave the house, I hired a carriage and drove up towards the palace to ask for news of them, but could hear nothing, and soon I had to come back, and that evening my baby was born. ”

“ All the slaves will leave as soon as they are freed, and European women will take their places, and they will seduce their masters, and their children will be stronger than ours, and we shall be driven out of the country.’ Poor old soul! she must have had sore and anxious days since then. I often think of her, and of the poor wife, puzzled and troubled, ‘Why should the Christian Powers want to harm my husband?’ ”

“ She wore a long dress of green silk. ‘My husband hates this long train,’ she told us afterwards; ‘he would like to take a knife and cut it off, but I say I must have a fashionable dress to wear when I visit the Khedive’s wife and other ladies.’ I think there are English husbands who, in this grievance at least, will sympathise with Arabi.
An old woman with white hair, dressed in the common country fashion—a woollen petticoat and blue cotton jacket—came into the room and occupied herself with the children. Presently we found that she was Arabi’s mother. ”

“ In appearance Arabi is a tall, strongly-built man; his face is 4grave, almost stern, but his smile is very pleasant. His photographs reproduce the sternness, but not the smile, and are, I believe, partly responsible for the ready belief which the absurd tales of his ferocity and bloodthirstiness have gained. He always wears the blue Egyptian uniform, the red tarboosh pushed back on his head, and the sword, whose imaginary feats rival those of Excalibur, by his side. ‘I make no more jokes,’ said M. de Blignières, the sharp-tongued Controller, after Arabi had been made Minister of War ”

“ After a few days he was told that some of the soldiers were neglecting his orders. Indignant at their disobedience, he himself went out, and, walking along the ranks, asked each man, ‘Do you fast?’ ‘Do you?’ A few confessed with fear and trembling—many denied. ”

“ Whether their friends would ever have seen them again is a matter for speculation; all Cairo to this day says ‘No’; but at sunset the soldiers arrived, demanding their officers, and then it was too late to do anything but throw the doors open as quickly as might be and let the prisoners out. Those who saw the release say that the two other colonels seemed in a great hurry to be safe in their barracks again, but Arabi walked slowly out, calm and unmoved as usual, Those who take the trouble may read this story, plainly told in the Blue-books published in June. ”

“ Now he gets up at daybreak and has only time to say his prayers before there are people waiting for him with petitions, and he has to attend to them and then go to his business, and often he is not back here until after midnight, 12and until he comes I cannot sleep, I cannot rest; I can do nothing but pray for him all the time. There are many who wish him evil and they will try to destroy him. ”

“ Price Twopence
3ARABI AND HIS HOUSEHOLD.
‘Report me and my cause aright to the unsatisfied.’ I wrote these last words of Hamlet on a photograph of Arabi which a friend asked me for at Cairo. But that friend had personal reason for supporting the rule of the English officials in Egypt, and had also doubt as to the possibility of a constitutional government succeeding in a country which could not boast a House of Peers. Other Englishmen have said to me, since I have come home: ‘Arabi is a good man, and his aims are honest. ”