The Four Feathers

by AEW Mason

  All the sternness had now gone from Durrance's face, and Mrs. Adair was speaking with a great simplicity. Of the violence which she had used before there was no longer any trace. She did not appeal for pity, she was not even excusing herself; she was just telling her story quietly and gently.

  "And then you came," she continued. "I met you, and met you again. You went away upon your duties and you returned; and I learnt now, not that there was ever so much more, but just what that ever so much more was. But it was still, of course, denied to me. However, in spite of that I felt happier. I thought that I should be quite content to have you for a friend, to watch your progress, and to feel pride in it. But you see—Ethne came, too, and you turned to her. At once—oh, at once! If you had only been a little less quick to turn to her! In a very short while I was sad and sorry that you had ever come into my life."

  "I knew nothing of this," said Durrance. "I never suspected. I am sorry."

  "I took care you should not suspect," said Mrs. Adair. "But I tried to keep you; with all my wits I tried. No match-maker in the world ever worked so hard to bring two people together as I did to bring together Ethne and Mr. Feversham, and I succeeded."

  The statement came upon Durrance with a shock. He leaned back against the stile and could have laughed. Here was the origin of the whole sad business. From what small beginnings it had grown! It is a trite reflection, but the personal application of it is apt to take away the breath. It was so with Durrance as he thought himself backwards into those days when he had walked on his own path, heedless of the people with whom he came in touch, never dreaming that they were at that moment influencing his life right up to his dying day. Feversham's disgrace and ruin, Ethne's years of unhappiness, the wearying pretences of the last few months, all had their origin years ago when Mrs. Adair, to keep Durrance to herself, threw Feversham and Ethne into each other's company.

  "I succeeded," continued Mrs. Adair. "You told me that I had succeeded one morning in the Row. How glad I was! You did not notice it, I am sure. The next moment you took all my gladness from me by telling me you were starting for the Soudan. You were away three years. They were not happy years for me. You came back. My husband was dead, but Ethne was free. Ethne refused you, but you went blind and she claimed you. You can see what ups and downs have fallen to me. But these months here have been the worst."

  "I am very sorry," said Durrance. Mrs. Adair was quite right, he thought. There was indeed something to be said on her behalf. The world had gone rather hardly with her. He was able to realise what she had suffered, since he was suffering in much the same way himself. It was quite intelligible to him why she had betrayed Ethne's secret that night upon the terrace, and he could not but be gentle with her.

  "I am very sorry, Mrs. Adair," he repeated lamely. There was nothing more which he could find to say, and he held out his hand to her.

  "Good-bye," she said, and Durrance climbed over the stile and crossed the fields to his house.

  Mrs. Adair stood by that stile for a long while after he had gone. She had shot her bolt and hit no one but herself and the man for whom she cared.

  She realised that distinctly. She looked forward a little, too, and she understood that if Durrance did not, after all, keep Ethne to her promise and marry her and go with her to her country, he would come back to Guessens. That reflection showed Mrs. Adair yet more clearly the folly of her outcry. If she had only kept silence, she would have had a very true and constant friend for her neighbour, and that would have been something. It would have been a good deal. But, since she had spoken, they could never meet without embarrassment, and, practise cordiality as they might, there would always remain in their minds the recollection of what she had said and he had listened to on the afternoon when he left for Wiesbaden.

  Chapter XXIV - On the Nile

  *

  It was a callous country inhabited by a callous race, thought Calder, as he travelled down the Nile from Wadi Halfa to Assouan on his three months' furlough. He leaned over the rail of the upper deck of the steamer and looked down upon the barge lashed alongside. On the lower deck of the barge among the native passengers stood an angareb,[2] whereon was stretched the motionless figure of a human being shrouded in a black veil. The angareb and its burden had been carried on board early that morning at Korosko by two Arabs, who now sat laughing and chattering in the stern of the barge. It might have been a dead man or a dead woman who lay still and stretched out upon the bedstead, so little heed did they give to it. Calder lifted his eyes and looked to his right and his left across glaring sand and barren rocks shaped roughly into the hard forms of pyramids. The narrow meagre strip of green close by the water's edge upon each bank was the only response which the Soudan made to Spring and Summer and the beneficent rain. A callous country inhabited by a callous people.

  Calder looked downwards again to the angareb upon the barge's deck and the figure lying upon it. Whether it was man or woman he could not tell. The black veil lay close about the face, outlining the nose, the hollows of the eyes and the mouth; but whether the lips wore a moustache and the chin a beard, it did not reveal.

  The slanting sunlight crept nearer and nearer to the angareb. The natives seated close to it moved into the shadow of the upper deck, but no one moved the angareb, and the two men laughing in the stern gave no thought to their charge. Calder watched the blaze of yellow light creep over the black recumbent figure from the feet upwards. It burnt at last bright and pitiless upon the face. Yet the living creature beneath the veil never stirred. The veil never fluttered above the lips, the legs remained stretched out straight, the arms lay close against the side.

  Calder shouted to the two men in the stern.

  "Move the angareb into the shadow," he cried, "and be quick!"

  The Arabs rose reluctantly and obeyed him.

  "Is it a man or woman?" asked Calder.

  "A man. We are taking him to the hospital at Assouan, but we do not think that he will live. He fell from a palm tree three weeks ago."

  "You give him nothing to eat or drink?"

  "He is too ill."

  It was a common story and the logical outcome of the belief that life and death are written and will inevitably befall after the manner of the writing. That man lying so quiet beneath the black covering had probably at the beginning suffered nothing more serious than a bruise, which a few simple remedies would have cured within a week. But he had been allowed to lie, even as he lay upon the angareb, at the mercy of the sun and the flies, unwashed, unfed, and with his thirst unslaked. The bruise had become a sore, the sore had gangrened, and when all remedies were too late, the Egyptian Mudir of Korosko had discovered the accident and sent the man on the steamer down to Assouan. But, familiar though the story was, Calder could not dismiss it from his thoughts. The immobility of the sick man upon the native bedstead in a way fascinated him, and when towards sunset a strong wind sprang up and blew against the stream, he felt an actual comfort in the knowledge that the sick man would gain some relief from it. And when his neighbour that evening at the dinner table spoke to him with a German accent, he suddenly asked upon an impulse:—

  "You are not a doctor by any chance?"

  "Not a doctor," said the German, "but a student of medicine at Bonn. I came from Cairo to see the Second Cataract, but was not allowed to go farther than Wadi Halfa."

  Calder interrupted him at once. "Then I will trespass upon your holiday and claim your professional assistance."

  "For yourself? With pleasure, though I should never have guessed you were ill," said the student, smiling good-naturedly behind his eyeglasses.

  "Nor am I. It is an Arab for whom I ask your help."

  "The man on the bedstead?"

  "Yes, if you will be so good. I will warn you—he was hurt three weeks ago, and I know these people. No one will have touched him since he was hurt. The sight will not be pretty. This is not a nice country for untended wounds."

  The German student shrugged his shoulders
. "All experience is good," said he, and the two men rose from the table and went out on to the upper deck.

  The wind had freshened during the dinner, and, blowing up stream, had raised waves so that the steamer and its barge tossed and the water broke on board.

  "He was below there," said the student, as he leaned over the rail and peered downwards to the lower deck of the barge alongside. It was night, and the night was dark. Above that lower deck only one lamp, swung from the centre of the upper deck, glimmered and threw uncertain lights and uncertain shadows over a small circle. Beyond the circle all was black darkness, except at the bows, where the water breaking on board flung a white sheet of spray. It could be seen like a sprinkle of snow driven by the wind, it could be heard striking the deck like the lash of a whip.

  "He has been moved," said the German. "No doubt he has been moved. There is no one in the bows."

  Calder bent his head downwards and stared into the darkness for a little while without speaking.

  "I believe the angareb is there," he said at length. "I believe it is."

  Followed by the German, he hurried down the stairway to the lower deck of the steamer and went to the side. He could make certain now. The angareb stood in a wash of water on the very spot to which at Calder's order it had been moved that morning. And on the angareb the figure beneath the black covering lay as motionless as ever, as inexpressive of life and feeling, though the cold spray broke continually upon its face.

  "I thought it would be so," said Calder. He got a lantern and with the German student climbed across the bulwarks on to the barge. He summoned the two Arabs.

  "Move the angareb from the bows," he said; and when they had obeyed, "Now take that covering off. I wish my friend who is a doctor to see the wound."

  The two men hesitated, and then one of them with an air of insolence objected. "There are doctors in Assouan, whither we are taking him."

  Calder raised the lantern and himself drew the veil away from off the wounded man. "Now if you please," he said to his companion. The German student made his examination of the wounded thigh, while Calder held the lantern above his head. As Calder had predicted, it was not a pleasant business; for the wound crawled. The German student was glad to cover it up again.

  "I can do nothing," he said. "Perhaps, in a hospital, with baths and dressings—! Relief will be given at all events; but more? I do not know. Here I could not even begin to do anything at all. Do these two men understand English?"

  "No," answered Calder.

  "Then I can tell you something. He did not get the hurt by falling out of any palm tree. That is a lie. The injury was done by the blade of a spear or some weapon of the kind."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes."

  Calder bent down suddenly towards the Arab on the angareb. Although he never moved, the man was conscious. Calder had been looking steadily at him, and he saw that his eyes followed the spoken words.

  "You understand English?" said Calder.

  The Arab could not answer with his lips, but a look of comprehension came into his face.

  "Where do you come from?" asked Calder.

  The lips tried to move, but not so much as a whisper escaped from them. Yet his eyes spoke, but spoke vainly. For the most which they could tell was a great eagerness to answer. Calder dropped upon his knee close by the man's head and, holding the lantern close, enunciated the towns.

  "From Dongola?"

  No gleam in the Arab's eyes responded to that name.

  "From Metemneh? From Berber? From Omdurman? Ah!"

  The Arab answered to that word. He closed his eyelids. Calder went on still more eagerly.

  "You were wounded there? No. Where then? At Berber? Yes. You were in prison at Omdurman and escaped? No. Yet you were wounded."

  Calder sank back upon his knee and reflected. His reflections roused in him some excitement. He bent down to the Arab's ear and spoke in a lower key.

  "You were helping some one to escape? Yes. Who? El Kaimakam Trench? No." He mentioned the names of other white captives in Omdurman, and to each name the Arab's eyes answered "No." "It was Effendi Feversham, then?" he said, and the eyes assented as clearly as though the lips had spoken.

  But this was all the information which Calder could secure. "I too am pledged to help Effendi Feversham," he said, but in vain. The Arab could not speak, he could not so much as tell his name, and his companions would not. Whatever those two men knew or suspected, they had no mind to meddle in the matter themselves, and they clung consistently to a story which absolved them from responsibility. Kinsmen of theirs in Korosko, hearing that they were travelling to Assouan, had asked them to take charge of the wounded man, who was a stranger to them, and they had consented. Calder could get nothing more explicit from them than this statement, however closely he questioned them. He had under his hand the information which he desired, the news of Harry Feversham for which Durrance asked by every mail, but it was hidden from him in a locked book. He stood beside the helpless man upon the angareb. There he was, eager enough to speak, but the extremity of weakness to which he had sunk laid a finger upon his lips. All that Calder could do was to see him safely bestowed within the hospital at Assouan. "Will he recover?" Calder asked, and the doctors shook their heads in doubt. There was a chance perhaps, a very slight chance; but at the best, recovery would be slow.

  Calder continued upon his journey to Cairo and Europe. An opportunity of helping Harry Feversham had slipped away; for the Arab who could not even speak his name was Abou Fatma of the Kabbabish tribe, and his presence wounded and helpless upon the Nile steamer between Korosko and Assouan meant that Harry Feversham's carefully laid plan for the rescue of Colonel Trench had failed.

  Chapter XXV - Lieutenant Sutch Comes Off the Half-Pay List

  *

  At the time when Calder, disappointed at his failure to obtain news of Feversham from the one man who possessed it, stepped into a carriage of the train at Assouan, Lieutenant Sutch was driving along a high white road of Hampshire across a common of heather and gorse; and he too was troubled on Harry Feversham's account. Like many a man who lives much alone, Lieutenant Sutch had fallen into the habit of speaking his thoughts aloud. And as he drove slowly and reluctantly forward, more than once he said to himself: "I foresaw there would be trouble. From the beginning I foresaw there would be trouble."

  The ridge of hill along which he drove dipped suddenly to a hollow. Sutch saw the road run steeply down in front of him between forests of pines to a little railway station. The sight of the rails gleaming bright in the afternoon sunlight, and the telegraph poles running away in a straight line until they seemed to huddle together in the distance, increased Sutch's discomposure. He reined his pony in, and sat staring with a frown at the red-tiled roof of the station building.

  "I promised Harry to say nothing," he said; and drawing some makeshift of comfort from the words, repeated them, "I promised faithfully in the Criterion grill-room."

  The whistle of an engine a long way off sounded clear and shrill. It roused Lieutenant Sutch from his gloomy meditations. He saw the white smoke of an approaching train stretch out like a riband in the distance.

  "I wonder what brings him," he said doubtfully; and then with an effort at courage, "Well, it's no use shirking." He flicked the pony with his whip and drove briskly down the hill. He reached the station as the train drew up at the platform. Only two passengers descended from the train. They were Durrance and his servant, and they came out at once on to the road. Lieutenant Sutch hailed Durrance, who walked to the side of the trap.

  "You received my telegram in time, then?" said Durrance.

  "Luckily it found me at home."

  "I have brought a bag. May I trespass upon you for a night's lodging?"

  "By all means," said Sutch, but the tone of his voice quite clearly to Durrance's ears belied the heartiness of the words. Durrance, however, was prepared for a reluctant welcome, and he had purposely sent his telegram at the last moment
. Had he given an address, he suspected that he might have received a refusal of his visit. And his suspicion was accurate enough. The telegram, it is true, had merely announced Durrance's visit, it had stated nothing of his object; but its despatch was sufficient to warn Sutch that something grave had happened, something untoward in the relations of Ethne Eustace and Durrance. Durrance had come, no doubt, to renew his inquiries about Harry Feversham, those inquiries which Sutch was on no account to answer, which he must parry all this afternoon and night. But he saw Durrance feeling about with his raised foot for the step of the trap, and the fact of his visitor's blindness was brought home to him. He reached out a hand, and catching Durrance by the arm, helped him up. After all, he thought, it would not be difficult to hoodwink a blind man. Ethne herself had had the same thought and felt much the same relief as Sutch felt now. The lieutenant, indeed, was so relieved that he found room for an impulse of pity.

  "I was very sorry, Durrance, to hear of your bad luck," he said, as he drove off up the hill. "I know what it is myself to be suddenly stopped and put aside just when one is making way and the world is smoothing itself out, though my wound in the leg is nothing in comparison to your blindness. I don't talk to you about compensations and patience. That's the gabble of people who are comfortable and haven't suffered. We know that for a man who is young and active, and who is doing well in a career where activity is a necessity, there are no compensations if his career's suddenly cut short through no fault of his."