by AEW Mason
"One would pray for death," said Ethne, slowly, "unless—" She was on the point of adding "unless one went there deliberately with a fixed thing to do," but she cut the sentence short. Durrance carried it on:—
"Unless there was a chance of escape," he said. "And there is a chance—if Feversham is in Omdurman."
He was afraid that he had allowed himself to say too much about the horrors of the prison in Omdurman, and he added: "Of course, what I have described to you is mere hearsay and not to be trusted. We have no knowledge. Prisoners may not have such bad times as we think;" and thereupon he let the subject drop. Nor did Ethne mention it again. It occurred to her at times to wonder in what way Durrance had understood her abrupt disappearance from the drawing-room on the night when he had told her of his meeting with Harry Feversham. But he never referred to it himself, and she thought it wise to imitate his example. The noticeable change in his manner, the absence of that caution which had so distressed her, allayed her fears. It seemed that he had found for himself some perfectly simple and natural explanation. At times, too, she asked herself why Durrance had told her of that meeting in Wadi Halfa, and of Feversham's subsequent departure to the south. But for that she found an explanation—a strange explanation, perhaps, but it was simple enough and satisfactory to her. She believed that the news was a message of which Durrance was only the instrument. It was meant for her ears, and for her comprehension alone, and Durrance was bound to convey it to her by the will of a power above him. His real reason she had not stayed to hear.
During the month of September, then, they kept up the pretence. Every morning when Durrance was in Devonshire he would come across the fields to Ethne at The Pool, and Mrs. Adair, watching them as they talked and laughed without a shadow of embarrassment or estrangement, grew more angry, and found it more difficult to hold her peace and let the pretence go on. It was a month of strain and tension to all three, and not one of them but experienced a great relief when Durrance visited his oculist in London. And those visits increased in number, and lengthened in duration. Even Ethne was grateful for them. She could throw off the mask for a little while; she had an opportunity to be tired; she had solitude wherein to gain strength to resume her high spirits upon Durrance's return. There came hours when despair seized hold of her. "Shall I be able to keep up the pretence when we are married, when we are always together?" she asked herself. But she thrust the question back unanswered; she dared not look forward, lest even now her strength should fail her.
After the third visit Durrance said to her:—
"Do you remember that I once mentioned a famous oculist at Wiesbaden? It seems advisable that I should go to him."
"You are recommended to go?"
"Yes, and to go alone."
Ethne looked up at him with a shrewd, quick glance.
"You think that I should be dull at Wiesbaden," she said. "There is no fear of that. I can rout out some relative to go with me."
"No; it is on my own account," answered Durrance. "I shall perhaps have to go into a home. It is better to be quite quiet and to see no one for a time."
"You are sure?" Ethne asked. "It would hurt me if I thought you proposed this plan because you felt I would be happier at Glenalla."
"No, that is not the reason," Durrance answered, and he answered quite truthfully. He felt it necessary for both of them that they should separate. He, no less than Ethne, suffered under the tyranny of perpetual simulation. It was only because he knew how much store she set upon carrying out her resolve that two lives should not be spoilt because of her, that he was able to hinder himself from crying out that he knew the truth.
"I am returning to London next week," he added, "and when I come back I shall be in a position to tell you whether I am to go to Wiesbaden or not."
Durrance had reason to be glad that he had mentioned his plan before the arrival of Calder's telegram from Wadi Halfa. Ethne was unable to connect his departure from her with the receipt of any news about Feversham. The telegram came one afternoon, and Durrance took it across to The Pool in the evening and showed it to Ethne. There were only four words to the telegram:—
"Feversham imprisoned at Omdurman."
Durrance, with one of the new instincts of delicacy which had been born in him lately by reason of his sufferings and the habit of thought, had moved away from Ethne's side as soon as he had given it to her, and had joined Mrs. Adair, who was reading a book in the drawing-room. He had folded up the telegram, besides, so that by the time Ethne had unfolded it and saw the words, she was alone upon the terrace. She remembered what Durrance had said to her about the prison, and her imagination enlarged upon his words. The quiet of a September evening was upon the fields, a light mist rose from the creek and crept over the garden bank across the lawn. Already the prison doors were shut in that hot country at the junction of the Niles. "He is to pay for his fault ten times over, then," she cried, in revolt against the disproportion. "And the fault was his father's and mine too more than his own. For neither of us understood."
She blamed herself for the gift of that fourth feather. She leaned upon the stone balustrade with her eyes shut, wondering whether Harry would outlive this night, whether he was still alive to outlive it. The very coolness of the stones on which her hands pressed became the bitterest of reproaches.
"Something can now be done."
Durrance was coming from the window of the drawing-room, and spoke as he came, to warn her of his approach. "He was and is my friend; I cannot leave him there. I shall write to-night to Calder. Money will not be spared. He is my friend, Ethne. You will see. From Suakin or from Assouan something will be done."
He put all the help to be offered to the credit of his own friendship. Ethne was not to believe that he imagined she had any further interest in Harry Feversham.
She turned to him suddenly, almost interrupting him.
"Major Castleton is dead?" she said.
"Castleton?" he exclaimed. "There was a Castleton in Feversham's regiment. Is that the man?"
"Yes. He is dead?"
"He was killed at Tamai."
"You are sure—quite sure?"
"He was within the square of the Second Brigade on the edge of the great gulley when Osman Digna's men sprang out of the earth and broke through. I was in that square, too. I saw Castleton killed."
"I am glad," said Ethne.
She spoke quite simply and distinctly. The first feather had been brought back by Captain Willoughby. It was just possible that Colonel Trench might bring back the second. Harry Feversham had succeeded once under great difficulties, in the face of great peril. The peril was greater now, the difficulties more arduous to overcome; that she clearly understood. But she took the one success as an augury that another might follow it. Feversham would have laid his plans with care; he had money wherewith to carry them out; and, besides, she was a woman of strong faith. But she was relieved to know that the sender of the third feather could never be approached. Moreover, she hated him, and there was an end of the matter.
Durrance was startled. He was a soldier of a type not so rare as the makers of war stories wish their readers to believe. Hector of Troy was his ancestor; he was neither hysterical in his language nor vindictive in his acts; he was not an elderly schoolboy with a taste for loud talk, but a quiet man who did his work without noise, who could be stern when occasion needed and of an unflinching severity, but whose nature was gentle and compassionate. And this barbaric utterance of Ethne Eustace he did not understand.
"You disliked Major Castleton so much?" he exclaimed.
"I never knew him."
"Yet you are glad that he is dead?"
"I am quite glad," said Ethne, stubbornly.
She made another slip when she spoke thus of Major Castleton, and Durrance did not pass it by unnoticed. He remembered it, and thought it over in his gun-room at Guessens. It added something to the explanation which he was building up of Harry Feversham's disgrace and disappearance. The story was
gradually becoming clear to his sharpened wits. Captain Willoughby's visit and the token he had brought had given him the clue. A white feather could mean nothing but an accusation of cowardice. Durrance could not remember that he had ever detected any signs of cowardice in Harry Feversham, and the charge startled him perpetually into incredulity.
But the fact remained. Something had happened on the night of the ball at Lennon House, and from that date Harry had been an outcast. Suppose that a white feather had been forwarded to Lennon House, and had been opened in Ethne's presence? Or more than one white feather? Ethne had come back from her long talk with Willoughby holding that white feather as though there was nothing so precious in all the world.
So much Mrs. Adair had told him.
It followed, then, that the cowardice was atoned, or in one particular atoned. Ethne's recapture of her youth pointed inevitably to that conclusion. She treasured the feather because it was no longer a symbol of cowardice but a symbol of cowardice atoned.
But Harry Feversham had not returned, he still slunk in the world's by-ways. Willoughby, then, was not the only man who had brought the accusation; there were others—two others. One of the two Durrance had long since identified. When Durrance had suggested that Harry might be taken to Omdurman, Ethne had at once replied, "Colonel Trench is in Omdurman." She needed no explanation of Harry's disappearance from Wadi Halfa into the southern Soudan. It was deliberate; he had gone out to be captured, to be taken to Omdurman. Moreover, Ethne had spoken of the untrustworthiness of the go-between, and there again had helped Durrance in his conjectures. There was some obligation upon Feversham to come to Trench's help. Suppose that Feversham had laid his plans of rescue, and had ventured out into the desert that he might be his own go-between. It followed that a second feather had been sent to Ramelton, and that Trench had sent it.
To-night Durrance was able to join Major Castleton to Trench and Willoughby. Ethne's satisfaction at the death of a man whom she did not know could mean but the one thing. There would be the same obligation resting upon Feversham with regard to Major Castleton if he lived. It seemed likely that a third feather had come to Lennon House, and that Major Castleton had sent it.
Durrance pondered over the solution of the problem, and more and more he found it plausible. There was one man who could have told him the truth and who had refused to tell it, who would no doubt still refuse to tell it. But that one man's help Durrance intended to enlist, and to this end he must come with the story pat upon his lips and no request for information.
"Yes," he said, "I think that after my next visit to London I can pay a visit to Lieutenant Sutch."
Chapter XXII - Durrance Lets His Cigar Go Out
*
Captain Willoughby was known at his club for a bore. He was a determined raconteur of pointless stories about people with whom not one of his audience was acquainted. And there was no deterring him, for he did not listen, he only talked. He took the most savage snub with a vacant and amicable face; and, wrapped in his own dull thoughts, he continued his copious monologue. In the smoking-room or at the supper-table he crushed conversation flat as a steam-roller crushes a road. He was quite irresistible. Trite anecdotes were sandwiched between aphorisms of the copybook; and whether anecdote or aphorism, all was delivered with the air of a man surprised by his own profundity. If you waited long enough, you had no longer the will power to run away, you sat caught in a web of sheer dulness. Only those, however, who did not know him waited long enough; the rest of his fellow-members at his appearance straightway rose and fled.
It happened, therefore, that within half an hour of his entrance to his club, he usually had one large corner of the room entirely to himself; and that particular corner up to the moment of his entrance had been the most frequented. For he made it a rule to choose the largest group as his audience. He was sitting in this solitary state one afternoon early in October, when the waiter approached him and handed to him a card.
Captain Willoughby took it with alacrity, for he desired company, and his acquaintances had all left the club to fulfil the most pressing and imperative engagements. But as he read the card his countenance fell. "Colonel Durrance!" he said, and scratched his head thoughtfully. Durrance had never in his life paid him a friendly visit before, and why should he go out of his way to do so now? It looked as if Durrance had somehow got wind of his journey to Kingsbridge.
"Does Colonel Durrance know that I am in the club?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," replied the waiter.
"Very well. Show him in."
Durrance had, no doubt come to ask questions, and diplomacy would be needed to elude them. Captain Willoughby had no mind to meddle any further in the affairs of Miss Ethne Eustace. Feversham and Durrance must fight their battle without his intervention. He did not distrust his powers of diplomacy, but he was not anxious to exert them in this particular case, and he looked suspiciously at Durrance as he entered the room. Durrance, however, had apparently no questions to ask. Willoughby rose from his chair, and crossing the room, guided his visitor over to his deserted corner.
"Will you smoke?" he said, and checked himself. "I beg your pardon."
"Oh, I'll smoke," Durrance answered. "It's not quite true that a man can't enjoy his tobacco without seeing the smoke of it. If I let my cigar out, I should know at once. But you will see, I shall not let it out." He lighted his cigar with deliberation and leaned back in his chair.
"I am lucky to find you, Willoughby," he continued, "for I am only in town for to-day. I come up every now and then from Devonshire to see my oculist, and I was very anxious to meet you if I could. On my last visit Mather told me that you were away in the country. You remember Mather, I suppose? He was with us in Suakin."
"Of course, I remember him quite well," said Willoughby, heartily. He was more than willing to talk about Mather; he had a hope that in talking about Mather, Durrance might forget that other matter which caused him anxiety.
"We are both of us curious," Durrance continued, "and you can clear up the point we are curious about. Did you ever come across an Arab called Abou Fatma?"
"Abou Fatma," said Willoughby, slowly, "one of the Hadendoas?"
"No, a man of the Kabbabish tribe."
"Abou Fatma?" Willoughby repeated, as though for the first time he had heard the name. "No, I never came across him;" and then he stopped. It occurred to Durrance that it was not a natural place at which to stop; Willoughby might have been expected to add, "Why do you ask me?" or some question of the kind. But he kept silent. As a matter of fact, he was wondering how in the world Durrance had ever come to hear of Abou Fatma, whose name he himself had heard for the first and last time a year ago upon the verandah of the Palace at Suakin. For he had spoken the truth. He never had come across Abou Fatma, although Feversham had spoken of him.
"That makes me still more curious," Durrance continued. "Mather and I were together on the last reconnaissance in '84, and we found Abou Fatma hiding in the bushes by the Sinkat fort. He told us about the Gordon letters which he had hidden in Berber. Ah! you remember his name now."
"I was merely getting my pipe out of my pocket," said Willoughby. "But I do remember the name now that you mention the letters."
"They were brought to you in Suakin fifteen months or so back. Mather showed me the paragraph in the Evening Standard. And I am curious as to whether Abou Fatma returned to Berber and recovered them. But since you have never come across him, it follows that he was not the man."
Captain Willoughby began to feel sorry that he had been in such haste to deny all acquaintance with Abou Fatma of the Kabbabish tribe.
"No; it was not Abou Fatma," he said, with an awkward sort of hesitation. He dreaded the next question which Durrance would put to him. He filled his pipe, pondering what answer he should make to it. But Durrance put no question at all for the moment.
"I wondered," he said slowly. "I thought that Abou Fatma would hardly return to Berber. For, indeed, whoever undertook the job underto
ok it at the risk of his life, and, since Gordon was dead, for no very obvious reason."
"Quite so," said Willoughby, in a voice of relief. It seemed that Durrance's curiosity was satisfied with the knowledge that Abou Fatma had not recovered the letters. "Quite so. Since Gordon was dead, for no reason."
"For no obvious reason, I think I said," Durrance remarked imperturbably. Willoughby turned and glanced suspiciously at his companion, wondering whether, after all, Durrance knew of his visit to Kingsbridge and its motive. Durrance, however, smoked his cigar, leaning back in his chair with his face tilted up towards the ceiling. He seemed, now that his curiosity was satisfied, to have lost interest in the history of the Gordon letters. At all events, he put no more questions upon that subject to embarrass Captain Willoughby, and indeed there was no need that he should. Thinking over the possible way by which Harry Feversham might have redeemed himself in Willoughby's eyes from the charge of cowardice, Durrance could only hit upon this recovery of the letters from the ruined wall in Berber. There had been no personal danger to the inhabitants of Suakin since the days of that last reconnaissance. The great troop-ships had steamed between the coral reefs towards Suez, and no cry for help had ever summoned them back. Willoughby risked only his health in that white palace on the Red Sea. There could not have been a moment when Feversham was in a position to say, "Your life was forfeit but for me, whom you call coward." And Durrance, turning over in his mind all the news and gossip which had come to him at Wadi Halfa or during his furloughs, had been brought to conjecture whether that fugitive from Khartum, who had told him his story in the glacis of the silent ruined fort of Sinkat during one drowsy afternoon of May, had not told it again at Suakin within Feversham's hearing. He was convinced now that his conjecture was correct.