The Four Feathers

by A. E. W. Mason

  CHAPTER XVIII

  THE ANSWER TO THE OVERTURE

  Ethne did not turn towards Durrance or move at all from her attitude.She sat with her violin upon her knees, looking across the moonlitgarden to the band of silver in the gap of the trees; and she kept herposition deliberately. For it helped her to believe that Harry Fevershamhimself was speaking to her, she was able to forget that he was speakingthrough the voice of Durrance. She almost forgot that Durrance was evenin the room. She listened with Durrance's own intentness, and anxiousthat the voice should speak very slowly, so that the message might takea long time in the telling, and she gather it all jealously to herheart.

  "It was on the night before I started eastward into the desert--for thelast time," said Durrance, and the deep longing and regret with which hedwelt upon that "last time" for once left Ethne quite untouched.

  "Yes," she said. "That was in February. The middle of the month, wasn'tit? Do you remember the day? I should like to know the exact day if youcan tell me."

  "The fifteenth," said Durrance; and Ethne repeated the datemeditatively.

  "I was at Glenalla all February," she said. "What was I doing on thefifteenth? It does not matter."

  She had felt a queer sort of surprise all the time while Willoughby wastelling his story that morning, that she had not known, by someinstinct, of these incidents at the actual moment of their occurrence.The surprise returned to her now. It was strange that she should havehad to wait for this August night and this summer garden of moonlightand closed flowers before she learned of the meeting between Fevershamand Durrance on February 15 and heard the message. And remorse came toher because of that delay. "It was my own fault," she said to herself."If I had kept my faith in him I should have known at once. I am wellpunished." It did not at all occur to her that the message could conveyany but the best of news. It would carry on the good tidings which shehad already heard. It would enlarge and complete, so that this day mightbe rounded to perfection. Of this she was quite sure.

  "Well?" she said. "Go on!"

  "I had been busy all that day in my office finishing up my work. Iturned the key in the door at ten o'clock, thinking with relief that forsix weeks I should not open it, and I strolled northward out of WadiHalfa along the Nile bank into the little town of Tewfikieh. As Ientered the main street I saw a small crowd--Arabs, negroes, a Greek ortwo, and some Egyptian soldiers, standing outside the cafe, and lit upby a glare of light from within. As I came nearer I heard the sound of aviolin and a zither, both most vilely played, jingling out a waltz. Istood at the back of the crowd and looked over the shoulders of the menin front of me into the room. It was a place of four bare whitewashedwalls; a bar stood in one corner, a wooden bench or two were rangedagainst the walls, and a single unshaded paraffin lamp swung and glaredfrom the ceiling. A troupe of itinerant musicians were playing to thatcrowd of negroes and Arabs and Egyptians for a night's lodging and theprice of a meal. There were four of them, and, so far as I could see,all four were Greeks. Two were evidently man and wife. They were bothold, both slatternly and almost in rags; the man a thin, sallow-facedfellow, with grey hair and a black moustache; the woman fat, coarse offace, unwieldy of body. Of the other two, one it seemed must be theirdaughter, a girl of seventeen, not good-looking really, but dressed andturned out with a scrupulous care, which in those sordid and meansurroundings lent her good looks. The care, indeed, with which she wasdressed assured me she was their daughter, and to tell the truth, I wasrather touched by the thought that the father and mother would go inrags so that she at all costs might be trim. A clean ribbon bound backher hair, an untorn frock of some white stuff clothed her tidily; evenher shoes were neat. The fourth was a young man; he was seated in thewindow, with his back towards me, bending over his zither. But I couldsee that he wore a beard. When I came up the old man was playing theviolin, though playing is not indeed the word. The noise he made wasmore like the squeaking of a pencil on a slate; it set one's teeth onedge; the violin itself seemed to squeal with pain. And while hefiddled, and the young man hammered at his zither, the old woman andgirl slowly revolved in a waltz. It may sound comic to hear about, butif you could have seen! ... It fairly plucked at one's heart. I do notthink that I have ever in my life witnessed anything quite so sad. Thelittle crowd outside, negroes, mind you, laughing at the troupe, passingfrom one to the other any sort of low jest at their expense, and insidethe four white people--the old woman, clumsy, heavy-footed, shining withheat, lumbering round slowly, panting with her exertions; the girl,lissom and young; the two men with their discordant, torturing music;and just above you the great planets and stars of an African sky, andjust about you the great silent and spacious dignity of the moonlitdesert. Imagine it! The very ineptness of the entertainment actuallyhurt one."

  He paused for a moment, while Ethne pictured to herself the scene whichhe had described. She saw Harry Feversham bending over his zither, andat once she asked herself, "What was he doing with that troupe?" It wasintelligible enough that he would not care to return to England. It wascertain that he would not come back to her, unless she sent for him. Andshe knew from what Captain Willoughby had said that he expected nomessage from her. He had not left with Willoughby the name of any placewhere a letter could reach him. But what was he doing at Wadi Halfa,masquerading with this itinerant troupe? He had money; so muchWilloughby had told her.

  "You spoke to him?" she asked suddenly.

  "To whom? Oh, to Harry?" returned Durrance. "Yes, afterwards, when Ifound out it was he who was playing the zither."

  "Yes, how did you find out?" Ethne asked.

  "The waltz came to an end. The old woman sank exhausted upon the benchagainst the whitewashed wall; the young man raised his head from hiszither; the old man scraped a new chord upon his violin, and the girlstood forward to sing. Her voice had youth and freshness, but no otherquality of music. Her singing was as inept as the rest of theentertainment. Yet the old man smiled, the mother beat time with herheavy foot, and nodded at her husband with pride in their daughter'saccomplishment. And again in the throng the ill-conditioned talk, theuntranslatable jests of the Arabs and the negroes went their round. Itwas horrible, don't you think?"

  "Yes," answered Ethne, but slowly, in an absent voice. As she had feltno sympathy for Durrance when he began to speak, so she had none tospare for these three outcasts of fortune. She was too absorbed in themystery of Harry Feversham's presence at Wadi Halfa. She was listeningtoo closely for the message which he sent to her. Through the openwindow the moon threw a broad panel of silver light upon the floor ofthe room close to her feet. She sat gazing into it as she listened, asthough it was itself a window through which, if she looked but hardenough, she might see, very small and far away, that lighted cafeblazing upon the street of the little town of Tewfikieh on the frontierof the Soudan.

  "Well?" she asked. "And after the song was ended?"

  "The young man with his back towards me," Durrance resumed, "began tofumble out a solo upon the zither. He struck so many false notes, notune was to be apprehended at the first. The laughter and noise grewamongst the crowd, and I was just turning away, rather sick at heart,when some notes, a succession of notes played correctly by chance,suddenly arrested me. I listened again, and a sort of haunting melodybegan to emerge--a weak thin thing with no soul in it, a ghost of amelody, and yet familiar. I stood listening in the street of sand,between the hovels fringed by a row of stunted trees, and I was carriedaway out of the East to Ramelton and to a summer night beneath a meltingsky of Donegal, when you sat by the open window as you sit now andplayed the Musoline Overture, which you have played again to-night."

  "It was a melody from this overture?" she exclaimed.

  "Yes, and it was Harry Feversham who played the melody. I did not guessit at once. I was not very quick in those days."

  "But you are now," said Ethne.

  "Quicker, at all events. I should have guessed it now. Then, however, Iwas only curious. I wondered how it was that an itinerant Greek
came topick up the tune. At all events, I determined to reward him for hisdiligence. I thought that you would like me to."

  "Yes," said Ethne, in a whisper.

  "So, when he came out from the cafe, and with his hat in his hand passedthrough the jeering crowd, I threw a sovereign into the hat. He turnedto me with a start of surprise. In spite of his beard I knew him.Besides, before he could check himself, he cried out 'Jack!'"

  "You can have made no mistake, then," said Ethne, in a wondering voice."No, the man who strummed upon the zither was--" the Christian name wasupon her lips, but she had the wit to catch it back unuttered--"was Mr.Feversham. But he knew no music I remember very well." She laughed witha momentary recollection of Feversham's utter inability to appreciateany music except that which she herself evoked from her violin. "He hadno ear. You couldn't invent a discord harsh enough even to attract hisattention. He could never have remembered any melody from the MusolineOverture."

  "Yet it was Harry Feversham," he answered. "Somehow he had remembered. Ican understand it. He would have so little he cared to remember, andthat little he would have striven with all his might to bring clearlyback to mind. Somehow, too, by much practice, I suppose, he had managedto elicit from his zither some sort of resemblance to what heremembered. Can't you imagine him working the scrap of music out in hisbrain, humming it over, whistling it uncounted times with perpetualerrors and confusions, until some fine day he got it safe and sure andfixed it in his thoughts? I can. Can't you imagine him, then, picking itout sedulously and laboriously on the strings? I can. Indeed, I can."

  Thus Ethne got her answer, and Durrance interpreted it to herunderstanding. She sat silent and very deeply moved by the story he hadtold to her. It was fitting that this overture, her favourite piece ofmusic, should convey the message that he had not forgotten her, that inspite of the fourth white feather he thought of her with friendship.Harry Feversham had not striven so laboriously to learn that melody invain. Ethne was stirred as she had thought nothing would ever again havethe power to stir her. She wondered whether Harry, as he sat in thelittle bare whitewashed cafe, and strummed out his music to the negroesand Greeks and Arabs gathered about the window, had dreamed, as she haddone to-night, that somehow, thin and feeble as it was, some echo of themelody might reach across the world. She knew now for very certain that,however much she might in the future pretend to forget Harry Feversham,it would never be more than a pretence. The vision of the lighted cafein the desert town would never be very far from her thoughts, but shehad no intention of relaxing on that account from her determination topretend to forget. The mere knowledge that she had at one time beenunjustly harsh to Harry, made her yet more resolved that Durrance shouldnot suffer for any fault of hers.

  "I told you last year, Ethne, at Hill Street," Durrance resumed, "that Inever wished to see Feversham again. I was wrong. The reluctance was allon his side and not at all on mine. For the moment that he realised hehad called out my name he tried to edge backward from me into the crowd,he began to gabble Greek, but I caught him by the arm, and I would notlet him go. He had done you some great wrong. That I know; that I knew.But I could not remember it then. I only remembered that years beforeHarry Feversham had been my friend, my one great friend; that we hadrowed in the same college boat at Oxford, he at stroke, I at seven;that the stripes on his jersey during three successive eights had mademy eyes dizzy during those last hundred yards of spurt past the barges.We had bathed together in Sandford Lasher on summer afternoons. We hadhad supper on Kennington Island; we had cut lectures and paddled up theCher to Islip. And here he was at Wadi Halfa, herding with that troupe,an outcast, sunk to such a depth of ill-fortune that he must come tothat squalid little town and play the zither vilely before a crowd ofnatives and a few Greek clerks for his night's lodging and the price ofa meal."

  "No," Ethne interrupted suddenly. "It was not for that reason that hewent to Wadi Halfa."

  "Why, then?" asked Durrance.

  "I cannot think. But he was not in any need of money. His father hadcontinued his allowance, and he had accepted it."

  "You are sure?"

  "Quite sure. I heard it only to-day," said Ethne.

  It was a slip, but Ethne for once was off her guard that night. She didnot even notice that she had made a slip. She was too engrossed inDurrance's story. Durrance himself, however, was not less preoccupied,and so the statement passed for the moment unobserved by either.

  "So you never knew what brought Mr. Feversham to Halfa?" she asked. "Didyou not ask him? Why didn't you? Why?"

  She was disappointed, and the bitterness of her disappointment gavepassion to her cry. Here was the last news of Harry Feversham, and itwas brought to her incomplete, like the half sheet of a letter. Theomission might never be repaired.

  "I was a fool," said Durrance. There was almost as much regret in hisvoice now as there had been in hers; and because of that regret he didnot remark the passion with which she had spoken. "I shall not easilyforgive myself. He was my friend, you see. I had him by the arm, and Ilet him go. I was a fool." And he knocked upon his forehead with hisfist.

  "He tried Arabic," Durrance resumed, "pleading that he and hiscompanions were just poor peaceable people, that if I had given him toomuch money, I should take it back, and all the while he dragged awayfrom me. But I held him fast. I said, 'Harry Feversham, that won't do,'and upon that he gave in and spoke in English, whispering it. 'Let mego, Jack, let me go.' There was the crowd about us. It was evident thatHarry had some reason for secrecy; it might have been shame, for all Iknew, shame at his downfall. I said, 'Come up to my quarters in Halfa assoon as you are free,' and I let him go. All that night I waited for himon the verandah, but he did not come. In the morning I had to startacross the desert. I almost spoke of him to a friend who came to see mestart, to Calder, in fact--you know of him--the man who sent you thetelegram," said Durrance, with a laugh.

  "Yes, I remember," Ethne answered.

  It was the second slip she had made that night. The receipt of Calder'stelegram was just one of the things which Durrance was not to know. Butagain she was unaware that she had made a slip at all. She did not evenconsider how Durrance had come to know or guess that the telegram hadever been despatched.

  "At the very last moment," Durrance resumed, "when my camel had risenfrom the ground, I stooped down to speak to him, to tell him to see toFeversham. But I did not. You see I knew nothing about his allowance. Imerely thought that he had fallen rather low. It did not seem fair tohim that another should know of it. So I rode on and kept silence."

  Ethne nodded her head. She could not but approve, however poignant herregret for the lost news.

  "So you never saw Mr. Feversham again?"

  "I was away nine weeks. I came back blind," he answered simply, and thevery simplicity of his words went to Ethne's heart. He was apologisingfor his blindness, which had hindered him from inquiring. She began towake to the comprehension that it was really Durrance who was speakingto her, but he continued to speak, and what he said drove her quite outof all caution.

  "I went at once to Cairo, and Calder came with me. There I told him ofHarry Feversham, and how I had seen him at Tewfikieh. I asked Calderwhen he got back to Halfa to make inquiries, to find and help HarryFeversham if he could; I asked him, too, to let me know the result. Ireceived a letter from Calder a week ago, and I am troubled by it, verymuch troubled."

  "What did he say?" Ethne asked apprehensively, and she turned in herchair away from the moonlight towards the shadows of the room andDurrance. She bent forward to see his face, but the darkness hid it. Asudden fear struck through her and chilled her blood, but out of thedarkness Durrance spoke.

  "That the two women and the old Greek had gone back northward on asteamer to Assouan."

  "Mr. Feversham remained at Wadi Halfa, then? That is so, isn't it?" shesaid eagerly.

  "No," Durrance replied. "Harry Feversham did not remain. He slipped pastHalfa the day after I started toward the east. He went out in themor
ning, and to the south."

  "Into the desert?"

  "Yes, but the desert to the south, the enemy's country. He went just asI saw him, carrying his zither. He was seen. There can be no doubt."

  Ethne was quite silent for a little while. Then she asked:--

  "You have that letter with you?"

  "Yes."

  "I should like to read it."

  She rose from her chair and walked across to Durrance. He took theletter from his pocket and gave it to her, and she carried it over tothe window. The moonlight was strong. Ethne stood close by the window,with a hand pressed upon her heart, and read it through once and again.The letter was explicit; the Greek who owned the cafe at which thetroupe had performed admitted that Joseppi, under which name he knewFeversham, had wandered south, carrying a water-skin and a store ofdates, though why, he either did not know or would not tell. Ethne had aquestion to ask, but it was some time before she could trust her lips toutter it distinctly and without faltering.

  "What will happen to him?"

  "At the best, capture; at the worst, death. Death by starvation, orthirst, or at the hands of the Dervishes. But there is just a hope itmight be only capture and imprisonment. You see he was white. If caught,his captors might think him a spy; they would be sure he had knowledgeof our plans and our strength. I think that they would most likely sendhim to Omdurman. I have written to Calder. Spies go out and in from WadiHalfa. We often hear of things which happen in Omdurman. If Feversham istaken there, sooner or later I shall know. But he must have gone mad. Itis the only explanation."

  Ethne had another, and she knew hers to be the right one. She was offher guard, and she spoke it aloud to Durrance.

  "Colonel Trench," said she, "is a prisoner at Omdurman."

  "Oh, yes," answered Durrance. "Feversham will not be quite alone. Thereis some comfort in that, and perhaps something may be done. When I hearfrom Calder I will tell you. Perhaps something may be done."

  It was evident that Durrance had misconstrued her remark. He at allevents was still in the dark as to the motive which had taken Fevershamsouthward beyond the Egyptian patrols. And he must remain in the dark.For Ethne did not even now slacken in her determination still to pretendto have forgotten. She stood at the window with the letter clenched inher hand. She must utter no cry, she must not swoon; she must keep verystill and quiet, and speak when needed with a quiet voice, even thoughshe knew that Harry Feversham had gone southward to join Colonel Trenchat Omdurman. But so much was beyond her strength. For as ColonelDurrance began to speak again, the desire to escape, to be alone withthis terrible news, became irresistible. The cool quietude of thegarden, the dark shadows of the trees, called to her.

  "Perhaps you will wonder," said Durrance, "why I have told you to-nightwhat I have up till now kept to myself. I did not dare to tell it youbefore. I want to explain why."

  Ethne did not notice the exultation in his voice; she did not considerwhat his explanation might be; she only felt that she could not nowendure to listen to it. The mere sound of a human voice had become anunendurable thing. She hardly knew indeed that Durrance was speaking,she was only aware that a voice spoke, and that the voice must stop. Shewas close by the window; a single silent step, and she was across thesill and free. Durrance continued to speak out of the darkness,engrossed in what he said, and Ethne did not listen to a word. Shegathered her skirts carefully, so that they should not rustle, andstepped from the window. This was the third slip which she made uponthat eventful night.