The party soon broke up, none having any reassuring suggestions to offer; and Annie returned to her lodging to weep over her boy and pray for the safety of his father. Days and weeks passed, and still no word came to Cairo. At Khartoum there was a ferment among the native population. No secret was made of the fact that the tribesmen who came and went all declared that Hicks Pasha's army was utterly destroyed. At length the Egyptian government announced to the wives of the officers that pensions would be given to them according to the rank of their husbands. As captain and interpreter, Gregory's wife had but a small one, but it was sufficient for her to live upon. One by one the other ladies gave up hope and returned to England, but Annie stayed on. Misfortune might have befallen the arm} 7 , but Gregory might have escaped in disguise. She had, like the other ladies, put on mourning for him, for had she declared her belief that he might still be alive she could not have applied for the pension, and this was necessary for the child's sake. Of one thing she was determined: she would not go with him as beggars to the father who had cast Gregory off, until, as he had said, she received absolute news of his death. She was not in want; but as her pension was a small one, and she felt that it would be well for her to be employed, she asked Lady Hicks, before she left, to mention at the houses of the Egyptian ladies to whom she went to say good-bye, that Mrs. Hilliard would be glad to give lessons in English, French, or music.
The idea pleased them, and she obtained several pupils. Some of these were the ladies themselves, and the lessons generally consisted in sitting for an hour with them two or three times a week and talking to them, the conversation being in short sentences, of which she gave them the English translation, which they repeated over and over again until they knew them by heart. This caused great amusement, and was accompanied by much laughter on the part of the ladies and their attendants. Several of her pupils, however, were young boys and girls, and the teaching here was of a more serious kind. The lessons to the boys were given the first thing in the morning, and the pupils were brought to her house by attendants. At eleven o'clock she taught the girls, and returned at one, and had two hours more teaching in the afternoon. She could have obtained more pupils had she wished to, but the pay she received, added to her income, enabled her to live very comfortably and to save up money. She had a negro servant who was very fond of the boy, and she could leave him in her charge with perfect confidence while she was teaching.
In the latter part of 1884 she ventured to hope that some news might yet come to her, for a British expedition had started for the relief of General Gordon, who had gone up early in the year to Khartoum, where it was hoped that the influence he had gained among the natives at the time he was in command of the Egyptian forces in the Soudan would enable him to make head against the insurrection. His arrival had been hailed by the population, but it was soon evident to him that unless aided by England with something more than words Khartoum must finally fall. But his requests for aid were slighted. He had asked that two regiments should be sent from Suakim to keep open the route to Berber, but Mr. Gladstone's government refused even this slight assistance to the man they had sent out, and it was not until May that public indignation at this base desertion of one of the noblest spirits that Britain ever produced caused preparations for his rescue to be made, and it was December before the leading regiment arrived at Korti, far up the Nile.
After fighting two hard battles, a force that had marched across the loop of the Nile came down upon it above Metemmeh. A party started up the river at once in two steamers which Gordon had sent down to meet them, but only arrived near the town to hear that they were too late, + .haf- Khartoum had fallen, and that Gordon had been murdered. The army was at once hurried back to the coast, leaving it to the Mahdists—more triumphant than ever—to occupy Dongola, and to push down, and possibly, as they were confident they should do, to capture Egypt itself. The news of the failure was a terrible blow to Mrs. Hilliard. She had hoped that when Khartoum was relieved some information at least might be obtained from prisoners as to the fate of the British officers at El Obeid. That most of them had been killed was certain, but she still clung to the hope that her husband might have escaped from the general massacre, thanks to his knowledge of the language and the disguise he had with him; and even that if captured later on he might be a prisoner; or that he might have escaped detection altogether, and be still living among friendly tribesmen. It was a heavy blow to her, therefore, when she heard that the troops were being hurried down to the coast, and that the Madhi would be uncontested master of Egypt as far as Assouan.
She did, however, receive news when the force returned to Cairo, which, although depressing, did not extinguish all hope. Lieutenant-colonel Colborne, by good luck, had ascertained that a native boy in the service of General Buller claimed to have been at El Obeid. Upon questioning him closely he found out that he had unquestionably been there, for he described accurately the position Colonel Colborne— who had started with Hicks Pasha, but had been forced by illness to return—had occupied in one of the engagements. The boy was then the slave of an Egyptian officer of the expedition.
The army had suffered much from want of water, but they had obtained plenty from a lake within three days' march from El Obeid. From this point they were incessantly fired at by the enemy. On the second day they were attacked, but beat off the enemy, though with heavy loss to themselves. The next day they pressed forward, as it was necessary to get to water; but they were misled by their guide, and at noon the Arabs burst down upon them, the square in which the force was marching was broken, and a terrible slaughter took place. Then Hicks Pasha, with his officers, seeing that all was lost, gathered together and kept the enemy at bay with their revolvers till their ammunition was exhausted. After that they fought with their swords till all were killed, Hicks Pasha being the last to fall. The lad himself hid among the dead and was not discovered until the next morning, when he was made a slave by the man who found him.
This was terrible!—but there was still hope. If this boy had concealed himself among the dead, her husband might have done the same. Not being a combatant officer, he might not have been near the others when the affair took place; and moreover, the lad had said that the black regiment in the rear of the square had kept together and marched away; he believed all had been afterwards killed, but this he did not know. If Gregory had been there when the square was broken he might well have kept with them, and at nightfall slipped on his disguise and made his escape. It was at least possible—she would not give up all hope.
So years went on. Things were quiet in Egypt. A native army had been raised there under the command of British officers, and these had checked the northern progress of the Mahdists and restored confidence in Egypt. Gregory —for the boy had been named after his father—grew up strong and hearty. His mother devoted her evenings to his education. From the negress, who was his nurse and the general servant of the house, he had learnt to talk her native language. She had been carried off when ten years old by a slave-raiding party, and sold to an Egyptian trader at Khartoum, been given by him to an Atbara chief with whom he had dealings, and five years later had been captured in a tribal war by the Jaulin. Two or three times she had changed masters, and finally had been purchased by an Egyptian officer and brought down by him to Cairo. At his death four years afterwards she had been given her freedom, being now past fifty, and had taken service with Gregory Hilliard and his wife. Her vocabulary was a large one, and she was acquainted with most of the dialects of the Soudan tribes.