They gathered the stones quickly and made a low wall about a foot high; within this wall Feversham and Trench laid themselves down upon the ground with a water-skin and their rifles at their sides.

"You have dates, too," said Abou Fatma.

"Yes."

"Then do not stir from the hiding-place till I come back. I will take your camels, and bring you back fresh ones in the evening." And in company with his fellow-Arab he rode off towards the river.

Trench and Feversham dug out the sand within the stones and lay down, watching the horizon between the interstices. For both of them this perhaps was the longest day of their lives. They were so near to safety and yet not safe. To Trench's thinking it was longer than a night in the House of Stone, and to Feversham longer than even one of those days six years back when he had sat in his rooms above St. James's Park and waited for the night to fall before he dared venture out into the streets. They were so near to Berber, and the pursuit must needs be close behind. Feversham lay wondering how he had ever found the courage to venture himself in Berber. They had no shade to protect them; all day the sun burnt pitilessly upon their backs, and within the narrow circle of stones they had no room wherein to move. They spoke hardly at all. The sunset, however, came at the last, the friendly darkness gathered about them, and a cool wind rustled through the darkness across the desert.

"Listen!" said Trench; and both men as they strained their ears heard the soft padding of camels very near at hand. A moment later a low whistle brought them out of their shelter.

"We are here," said Feversham, quietly.

"God be thanked!" said Abou Fatma. "I have good news for you, and bad news too. The boat is ready, our friends are waiting for us, camels are prepared for you on the caravan track by the river-bank to Abu Hamed. But your escape is known, and the roads and the ferries are closely watched. Before sunrise we must have struck inland from the eastern bank of the Nile."

They crossed the river cautiously about one o'clock of the morning, and sank the boat upon the far side of the stream. The camels were waiting for them, and they travelled inland and more slowly than suited the anxiety of the fugitives. For the ground was thickly covered with boulders, and the camels could seldom proceed at any pace faster than a walk. And all through the next day they lay hidden again within a ring of stones while the camels were removed to some high ground where they could graze. During the next night, however, they made good progress, and, coming to the groves of Abu Hamed in two days, rested for twelve hours there and mounted upon a fresh relay. From Abu Hamed their road lay across the great Nubian Desert.

Nowadays the traveller may journey through the two hundred and forty miles of that waterless plain of coal-black rocks and yellow sand, and sleep in his berth upon the way. The morning will show to him, perhaps, a tent, a great pile of coal, a water tank, and a number painted on a white signboard, and the stoppage of the train will inform him that he has come to a station. Let him put his head from the window, he will see the long line of telegraph poles reaching from the sky's rim behind him to the sky's rim in front, and huddling together, as it seems, with less and less space between them the farther they are away. Twelve hours will enclose the beginning and the end of his journey, unless the engine break down or the rail be blocked. But in the days when Feversham and Trench escaped from Omdurman progression was not so easy a matter. They kept eastward of the present railway and along the line of wells among the hills. And on the second night of this stage of their journey Trench shook Feversham by the shoulders and waked him up.

"Look," he said, and he pointed to the south. "To-night there's no Southern Cross." His voice broke with emotion. "For six years, for every night of six years, until this night, I have seen the Southern Cross. How often have I lain awake watching it, wondering whether the night would ever come when I should not see those four slanting stars! I tell you, Feversham, this is the first moment when I have really dared to think that we should escape."

Both men sat up and watched the southern sky with prayers of thankfulness in their hearts; and when they fell asleep it was only to wake up again and again with a fear that they would after all still see that constellation blazing low down towards the earth, and to fall asleep again confident of the issue of their desert ride. At the end of seven days they came to Shof-el-Ain, a tiny well set in a barren valley between featureless ridges, and by the side of that well they camped. They were in the country of the Amrab Arabs, and had come to an end of their peril.

"We are safe," cried Abou Fatma. "God is good. Northwards to Assouan, westwards to Wadi Halfa, we are safe!" And spreading a cloth upon the ground in front of the kneeling camels, he heaped dhurra before them. He even went so far in his gratitude as to pat one of the animals upon the neck, and it immediately turned upon him and snarled.

Trench reached out his hand to Feversham.

"Thank you," he said simply.

"No need of thanks," answered Feversham, and he did not take the hand. "I served myself from first to last."

"You have learned the churlishness of a camel," cried Trench. "A camel will carry you where you want to go, will carry you till it drops dead, and yet if you show your gratitude it resents and bites. Hang it all, Feversham, there's my hand."

Feversham untied a knot in the breast of his jibbeh and took out three white feathers, two small, the feathers of a heron, the other large, an ostrich feather broken from a fan.

"Will you take yours back?"

"Yes."

"You know what to do with it."

"Yes. There shall be no delay."

Feversham wrapped the remaining feathers carefully away in a corner of his ragged jibbeh and tied them safe.

"We shake hands, then," said he; and as their hands met he added, "To-morrow morning we part company."

"Part company, you and I—after the year in Omdurman, the weeks of flight?" exclaimed Trench. "Why? There's no more to be done. Castleton's dead. You keep the feather which he sent, but he is dead. You can do nothing with it. You must come home."

"Yes," answered Feversham, "but after you, certainly not with you. You go on to Assouan and Cairo. At each place you will find friends to welcome you. I shall not go with you."

Trench was silent for a while. He understood Feversham's reluctance, he saw that it would be easier for Feversham if he were to tell his story first to Ethne Eustace, and without Feversham's presence.

"I ought to tell you no one knows why you resigned your commission, or of the feathers we sent. We never spoke of it. We agreed never to speak, for the honour of the regiment. I can't tell you how glad I am that we all agreed and kept to the agreement," he said.

"Perhaps you will see Durrance," said Feversham; "if you do, give him a message from me. Tell him that the next time he asks me to come and see him, whether it is in England or Wadi Halfa, I will accept the invitation."

"Which way will you go?"

"To Wadi Halfa," said Feversham, pointing westwards over his shoulder. "I shall take Abou Fatma with me and travel slowly and quietly down the Nile. The other Arab will guide you into Assouan."

They slept that night in security beside the well, and the next morning they parted company. Trench was the first to ride off, and as his camel rose to its feet, ready for the start, he bent down towards Feversham, who passed him the nose rein.

"Ramelton, that was the name? I shall not forget."

"Yes, Ramelton," said Feversham; "there's a ferry across Lough Swilly to Rathmullen. You must drive the twelve miles to Ramelton. But you may not find her there."

"If not there, I shall find her somewhere else. Make no mistake, Feversham, I shall find her."

And Trench rode forward, alone with his Arab guide. More than once he turned his head and saw Feversham still standing by the well; more than once he was strongly drawn to stop and ride back to that solitary figure, but he contented himself with waving his hand, and even that salute was not returned.

Feversham, indeed, had neither thought nor eyes for the companion of his flight. His six years of hard probation had come this morning to an end, and yet he was more sensible of a certain loss and vacancy than of any joy. For six years, through many trials, through many falterings, his mission had strengthened and sustained him. It seemed to him now that there was nothing more wherewith to occupy his life. Ethne? No doubt she was long since married ... and there came upon him all at once a great bitterness of despair for that futile, unnecessary mistake made by him six years ago. He saw again the room in London overlooking the quiet trees and lawns of St. James's Park, he heard the knock upon the door, he took the telegram from his servant's hand.

He roused himself finally with the recollection that, after all, the work was not quite done. There was his father, who just at this moment was very likely reading his Times after breakfast upon the terrace of Broad Place among the pine trees upon the Surrey hills. He must visit his father, he must take that fourth feather back to Ramelton. There was a telegram, too, which must be sent to Lieutenant Sutch at Suakin.

He mounted his camel and rode slowly with Abou Fatma westwards towards Wadi Halfa. But the sense of loss did not pass from him that day, nor his anger at the act of folly which had brought about his downfall. The wooded slopes of Ramelton were very visible to him across the shimmer of the desert air. In the greatness of his depression Harry Feversham upon this day for the first time doubted his faith in the "afterwards."



CHAPTER XXXI

FEVERSHAM RETURNS TO RAMELTON

On an August morning of the same year Harry Feversham rode across the Lennon bridge into Ramelton. The fierce suns of the Soudan had tanned his face, the years of his probation had left their marks; he rode up the narrow street of the town unrecognised. At the top of the hill he turned into the broad highway which, descending valleys and climbing hills, runs in one straight line to Letterkenny. He rode rather quickly in a company of ghosts.

The intervening years had gradually been dropping from his thoughts all through his journey across Egypt and the Continent. They were no more than visionary now. Nor was he occupied with any dream of the things which might have been but for his great fault. The things which had been, here, in this small town of Ireland, were too definite. Here he had been most happy, here he had known the uttermost of his misery; here his presence had brought pleasure, here too he had done his worst harm. Once he stopped when he was opposite to the church, set high above the road upon his right hand, and wondered whether Ethne was still at Ramelton—whether old Dermod was alive, and what kind of welcome he would receive. But he waked in a moment to the knowledge that he was sitting upon his horse in the empty road and in the quiet of an August morning. There were larks singing in the pale blue above his head; a landrail sent up its harsh cry from the meadow on the left; the crow of a cock rose clear from the valley. He looked about him, and rode briskly on down the incline in front of him and up the ascent beyond. He rode again with his company of ghosts—phantoms of people with whom upon this road he had walked and ridden and laughed, ghosts of old thoughts and recollected words. He came to a thick grove of trees, a broken fence, a gateway with no gate. Inattentive to these evidences of desertion, he turned in at the gate and rode along a weedy and neglected drive. At the end of it he came to an open space before a ruined house. The aspect of the tumbling walls and unroofed rooms roused him at last completely from his absorption. He dismounted, and, tying his horse to the branch of a tree, ran quickly into the house and called aloud. No voice answered him. He ran from deserted room to deserted room. He descended into the garden, but no one came to meet him; and he understood now from the uncut grass upon the lawn, the tangled disorder of the flowerbeds, that no one would come. He mounted his horse again, and rode back at a sharp trot. In Ramelton he stopped at the inn, gave his horse to the ostler, and ordered lunch for himself. He said to the landlady who waited upon him:—

"So Lennon House has been burned down? When was that?"

"Five years ago," the landlady returned, "just five years ago this summer." And she proceeded, without further invitation, to give a voluminous account of the conflagration and the cause of it, the ruin of the Eustace family, the inebriety of Bastable, and the death of Dermod Eustace at Glenalla. "But we hope to see the house rebuilt. It's likely to be, we hear, when Miss Eustace is married," she said, in a voice which suggested that she was full of interesting information upon the subject of Miss Eustace's marriage. Her guest, however, did not respond to the invitation.

"And where does Miss Eustace live now?"

"At Glenalla," she replied. "Halfway on the road to Rathmullen there's a track leads up to your left. It's a poor mountain village is Glenalla, and no place for Miss Eustace, at all, at all. Perhaps you will be wanting to see her?"

"Yes. I shall be glad if you will order my horse to be brought round to the door," said the man; and he rose from the table to put an end to the interview.

The landlady, however, was not so easily dismissed. She stood at the door and remarked:—

"Well, that's curious—that's most curious. For only a fortnight ago a gentleman burnt just as black as yourself stayed a night here on the same errand. He asked for Miss Eustace's address and drove up to Glenalla. Perhaps you have business with her?"

"Yes, I have business with Miss Eustace," the stranger returned. "Will you be good enough to give orders about my horse?"

While he was waiting for his horse he looked through the leaves of the hotel book, and saw under a date towards the end of July the name of Colonel Trench.

"You will come back, sir, to-night?" said the landlady, as he mounted.

"No," he answered, "I do not think I shall come again to Ramelton." And he rode down the hill, and once more that day crossed the Lennon bridge. Four miles on he came to the track opposite a little bay of the Lough, and, turning into it, he rode past a few white cottages up to the purple hollow of the hills. It was about five o'clock when he came to the long, straggling village. It seemed very quiet and deserted, and built without any plan. A few cottages stood together, then came a gap of fields, beyond that a small plantation of larches and a house which stood by itself. Beyond the house was another gap, through which he could see straight down to the water of the Lough, shining in the afternoon sun, and the white gulls poising and swooping above it. And after passing that gap he came to a small grey church, standing bare to the winds upon its tiny plateau. A pathway of white shell-dust led from the door of the church to the little wooden gate. As he came level with the gate a collie dog barked at him from behind it.

The rider looked at the dog, which was very grey about the muzzle. He noticed its marking, and stopped his horse altogether. He glanced towards the church, and saw that the door stood open. At once he dismounted; he fastened his horse to the fence, and entered the churchyard. The collie thrust its muzzle into the back of his knee, sniffed once or twice doubtfully, and suddenly broke into an exuberant welcome. The collie dog had a better memory than the landlady of the inn. He barked, wagged his tail, crouched and sprang at the stranger's shoulders, whirled round and round in front of him, burst into sharp, excited screams of pleasure, ran up to the church door and barked furiously there, then ran back and jumped again upon his friend. The man caught the dog as it stood up with its forepaws upon his chest, patted it, and laughed. Suddenly he ceased laughing, and stood stock-still with his eyes towards the open door of the church. In the doorway Ethne Eustace was standing. He put the dog down and slowly walked up the path towards her. She waited on the threshold without moving, without speaking. She waited, watching him, until he came close to her. Then she said simply:—

"Harry."

She was silent after that; nor did he speak. All the ghosts and phantoms of old thoughts in whose company he had travelled the whole of that day vanished away from his mind at her simple utterance of his name. Six years had passed since his feet crushed the gravel on the dawn of a June morning beneath her window. And they looked at one another, remarking the changes which those six years had brought. And the changes, unnoticed and almost imperceptible to those who had lived daily in their company, sprang very distinct to the eyes of these two. Feversham was thin, his face was wasted. The strain of life in the House of Stone had left its signs about his sunken eyes and in the look of age beyond his years. But these were not the only changes, as Ethne noticed; they were not, indeed, the most important ones. Her heart, although she stood so still and silent, went out to him in grief for the great troubles which he had endured; but she saw, too, that he came back without a thought of anger towards her for that fourth feather snapped from her fan. But she was clear-eyed even at this moment. She saw much more. She understood that the man who stood quietly before her now was not the same man whom she had last seen in the hall of Ramelton. There had been a timidity in his manner in those days, a peculiar diffidence, a continual expectation of other men's contempt, which had gone from him. He was now quietly self-possessed; not arrogant; on the other hand, not diffident. He had put himself to a long, hard test; and he knew that he had not failed. All that she saw; and her face lightened as she said:—

"It is not all harm which has come of these years. They were not wasted."

But Feversham thought of her lonely years in this village of Glenalla—and thought with a man's thought, unaware that nowhere else would she have chosen to live. He looked into her face, and saw the marks of the years upon it. It was not that she had aged so much. Her big grey eyes shone as clearly as before, the colour was still as bright upon her cheeks. But there was more of character. She had suffered; she had eaten of the tree of knowledge.

"I am sorry," he said. "I did you a great wrong six years ago, and I need not."

She held out her hand to him.

"Will you give it me, please?"

And for a moment he did not understand.

"That fourth feather," she said.

He drew his letter-case from his coat, and shook two feathers out into the palm of his hand. The larger one, the ostrich feather, he held out to her. But she said:—

"Both."

There was no reason why he should keep Castleton's feather any longer. He handed them both to her, since she asked for them, and she clasped them, and with a smile treasured them against her breast.

"I have the four feathers now," she said.

"Yes," answered Feversham; "all four. What will you do with them?"

Ethne's smile became a laugh.

"Do with them!" she cried in scorn. "I shall do nothing with them. I shall keep them. I am very proud to have them to keep."

She kept them, as she had once kept Harry Feversham's portrait. There was something perhaps in Durrance's contention that women so much more than men gather up their experiences and live upon them, looking backwards. Feversham, at all events, would now have dropped the feathers then and there and crushed them into the dust of the path with his heel; they had done their work. They could no longer reproach, they were no longer needed to encourage, they were dead things. Ethne, however, held them tight in her hand; to her they were not dead.

"Colonel Trench was here a fortnight ago," she said. "He told me you were bringing it back to me."

"But he did not know of the fourth feather," said Feversham. "I never told any man that I had it."

"Yes. You told Colonel Trench on your first night in the House of Stone at Omdurman. He told me. I no longer hate him," she added, but without a smile and quite seriously, as though it was an important statement which needed careful recognition.

"I am glad of that," said Feversham. "He is a great friend of mine."

Ethne was silent for a moment or two. Then she said:—

"I wonder whether you have forgotten our drive from Ramelton to our house when I came to fetch you from the quay? We were alone in the dog-cart, and we spoke—"

"Of the friends whom one knows for friends the first moment, and whom one seems to recognise even though one has never seen them before," interrupted Feversham. "Indeed I remember."

"And whom one never loses whether absent or dead," continued Ethne. "I said that one could always be sure of such friends, and you answered—"

"I answered that one could make mistakes," again Feversham interrupted.

"Yes, and I disagreed. I said that one might seem to make mistakes, and perhaps think so for a long while, but that in the end one would be proved not to have made them. I have often thought of those words. I remembered them very clearly when Captain Willoughby brought to me the first feather, and with a great deal of remorse. I remember them again very clearly to-day, although I have no room in my thoughts for remorse. I was right, you see, and I should have clung firmly to my faith. But I did not." Her voice shook a little, and pleaded as she went on: "I was young. I knew very little. I was unaware how little. I judged hastily; but to-day I understand."

She opened her hand and gazed for a while at the white feathers. Then she turned and went inside the church. Feversham followed her.



CHAPTER XXXII

IN THE CHURCH AT GLENALLA

Ethne sat down in the corner of a pew next to the aisle, and Feversham took his stand beside her. It was very quiet and peaceful within that tiny church. The afternoon sun shone through the upper windows and made a golden haze about the roof. The natural murmurs of the summer floated pleasantly through the open door.

"I am glad that you remembered our drive and what we said," she continued. "It is rather important to me that you should remember. Because, although I have got you back, I am going to send you away from me again. You will be one of the absent friends whom I shall not lose because you are absent."

She spoke slowly, looking straight in front of her without faltering. It was a difficult speech for her to deliver, but she had thought over it night and day during this last fortnight, and the words were ready to her lips. At the first sight of Harry Feversham, recovered to her after so many years, so much suspense, so much suffering, it had seemed to her that she never would be able to speak them, however necessary it was that they should be spoken. But as they stood over against one another she had forced herself to remember that necessity until she actually recognised and felt it. Then she had gone back into the church and taken a seat, and gathered up her strength.

It would be easier for both of them, she thought, if she should give no sign of what so quick a separation cost her. He would know surely enough, and she wished him to know; she wished him to understand that not one moment of his six years, so far as she was concerned, had been spent in vain. But that could be understood without the signs of emotion. So she spoke her speech looking steadily straight forward and speaking in an even voice.

"I know that you will mind very much, just as I do. But there is no help for it," she resumed. "At all events you are at home again, with the right to be at home. It is a great comfort to me to know that. But there are other, much greater reasons from which we can both take comfort. Colonel Trench told me enough of your captivity to convince me that we both see with the same eyes. We both understand that this second parting, hard as it is, is still a very slight, small thing compared with the other, our first parting over at the house six years ago. I felt very lonely after that, as I shall not feel lonely now. There was a great barrier between us then separating us forever. We should never have met again here or afterwards. I am quite sure of that. But you have broken the barrier down by all your pain and bravery during these last years. I am no less sure of that. I am absolutely confident about it, and I believe you are too. So that although we shall not see one another here and as long as we live, the afterwards is quite sure for us both. And we can wait for that. You can. You have waited with so much strength all these years since we parted. And I can too, for I get strength from your victory."

She stopped, and for a while there was silence in that church. To Feversham her words were gracious as rain upon dry land. To hear her speak them uplifted him so that those six years of trial, of slinking into corners out of the sight of his fellows, of lonely endurance, of many heart-sinkings and much bodily pain, dwindled away into insignificance. They had indeed borne their fruit to him. For Ethne had spoken in a gentle voice just what his ears had so often longed to hear as he lay awake at night in the bazaar at Suakin, in the Nile villages, in the dim wide spaces of the desert, and what he had hardly dared to hope she ever would speak. He stood quite silently by her side, still hearing her voice though the voice had ceased. Long ago there were certain bitter words which she had spoken, and he had told Sutch, so closely had they clung and stung, that he believed in his dying moments he would hear them again and so go to his grave with her reproaches ringing in his ears. He remembered that prediction of his now and knew that it was false. The words he would hear would be those which she had just uttered.

For Ethne's proposal that they should separate he was not unprepared. He had heard already that she was engaged, and he did not argue against her wish. But he understood that she had more to say to him. And she had. But she was slow to speak it. This was the last time she was to see Harry Feversham; she meant resolutely to send him away. When once he had passed through that church door, through which the sunlight and the summer murmurs came, and his shadow gone from the threshold, she would never talk with him or set her eyes on him until her life was ended. So she deferred the moment of his going by silences and slow speech. It might be so very long before that end came. She had, she thought, the right to protract this one interview. She rather hoped that he would speak of his travels, his dangers; she was prepared to discuss at length with him even the politics of the Soudan. But he waited for her.

"I am going to be married," she said at length, "and immediately. I am to marry a friend of yours, Colonel Durrance."

There was hardly a pause before Feversham answered:—

"He has cared for you a long while. I was not aware of it until I went away, but, thinking over everything, I thought it likely, and in a very little time I became sure."

"He is blind."

"Blind!" exclaimed Feversham. "He, of all men, blind!"

"Exactly," said Ethne. "He—of all men. His blindness explains everything—why I marry him, why I send you away. It was after he went blind that I became engaged to him. It was before Captain Willoughby came to me with the first feather. It was between those two events. You see, after you went away one thought over things rather carefully. I used to lie awake and think, and I resolved that two men's lives should not be spoilt because of me."

"Mine was not," Feversham interrupted. "Please believe that."

"Partly it was," she returned, "I know very well. You would not own it for my sake, but it was. I was determined that a second should not be. And so when Colonel Durrance went blind—you know the man he was, you can understand what blindness meant to him, the loss of everything he cared for—"

"Except you."

"Yes," Ethne answered quietly, "except me. So I became engaged to him. But he has grown very quick—you cannot guess how quick. And he sees so very clearly. A hint tells him the whole hidden truth. At present he knows nothing of the four feathers."

"Are you sure?" suddenly exclaimed Feversham.

"Yes. Why?" asked Ethne, turning her face towards him for the first time since she had sat down.

"Lieutenant Sutch was at Suakin while I was at Omdurman. He knew that I was a prisoner there. He sent messages to me, he tried to organise my escape."

Ethne was startled.

"Oh," she said, "Colonel Durrance certainly knew that you were in Omdurman. He saw you in Wadi Halfa, and he heard that you had gone south into the desert. He was distressed about it; he asked a friend to get news of you, and the friend got news that you were in Omdurman. He told me so himself, and—yes, he told me that he would try to arrange for your escape. No doubt he has done that through Lieutenant Sutch. He has been at Wiesbaden with an oculist; he only returned a week ago. Otherwise he would have told me about it. Very likely he was the reason why Lieutenant Sutch was at Suakin, but he knows nothing of the four feathers. He only knows that our engagement was abruptly broken off; he believes that I have no longer any thought of you at all. But if you come back, if you and I saw anything of each other, however calmly we met, however indifferently we spoke, he would guess. He is so quick he would be sure to guess." She paused for a moment, and added in a whisper, "And he would guess right."

Feversham saw the blood flush her forehead and deepen the colour of her cheeks. He did not move from his position, he did not bend towards her, or even in voice give any sign which would make this leave-taking yet more difficult to carry through.

"Yes, I see," he said. "And he must not guess."

"No, he must not," returned Ethne. "I am so glad you see that too, Harry. The straight and simple thing is the only thing for us to do. He must never guess, for, as you said, he has nothing left but me."

"Is Durrance here?" asked Feversham.

"He is staying at the vicarage."

"Very well," he said. "It is only fair that I should tell you I had no thought that you would wait. I had no wish that you should; I had no right to such a wish. When you gave me that fourth feather in the little room at Ramelton, with the music coming faintly through the door, I understood your meaning. There was to be a complete, an irrevocable end. We were not to be the merest acquaintances. So I said nothing to you of the plan which came clear and definite into my mind at the very time when you gave me the feathers. You see, I might never have succeeded. I might have died trying to succeed. I might even perhaps have shirked the attempt. It would be time enough for me to speak if I came back. So I never formed any wish that you should wait."

"That was what Colonel Trench told me."

"I told him that too?"

"On your first night in the House of Stone."

"Well, it's just the truth. The most I hoped for—and I did hope for that every hour of every day—was that, if I did come home, you would take back your feather, and that we might—not renew our friendship here, but see something of one another afterwards."

"Yes," said Ethne. "Then there will be no parting."

Ethne spoke very simply, without even a sigh, but she looked at Harry Feversham as she spoke and smiled. The look and the smile told him what the cost of the separation would be to her. And, understanding what it meant now, he understood, with an infinitely greater completeness than he had ever reached in his lonely communings, what it must have meant six years ago when she was left with her pride stricken as sorely as her heart.

"What trouble you must have gone through!" he cried, and she turned and looked him over.

"Not I alone," she said gently. "I passed no nights in the House of Stone."

"But it was my fault. Do you remember what you said when the morning came through the blinds? 'It's not right that one should suffer so much pain.' It was not right."

"I had forgotten the words—oh, a long time since—until Colonel Trench reminded me. I should never have spoken them. When I did I was not thinking they would live so in your thoughts. I am sorry that I spoke them."

"Oh, they were just enough. I never blamed you for them," said Feversham, with a laugh. "I used to think that they would be the last words I should hear when I turned my face to the wall. But you have given me others to-day wherewith to replace them."

"Thank you," she said quietly.

There was nothing more to be said, and Feversham wondered why Ethne did not rise from her seat in the pew. It did not occur to him to talk of his travels or adventures. The occasion seemed too serious, too vital. They were together to decide the most solemn issue in their lives. Once the decision was made, as now it had been made, he felt that they could hardly talk on other topics. Ethne, however, still kept him at her side. Though she sat so calmly and still, though her face was quiet in its look of gravity, her heart ached with longing. Just for a little longer, she pleaded to herself. The sunlight was withdrawing from the walls of the church. She measured out a space upon the walls where it still glowed bright. When all that space was cold grey stone, she would send Harry Feversham away.

"I am glad that you escaped from Omdurman without the help of Lieutenant Sutch or Colonel Durrance. I wanted so much that everything should be done by you alone without anybody's help or interference," she said, and after she had spoken there followed a silence. Once or twice she looked towards the wall, and each time she saw the space of golden light narrowed, and knew that her minutes were running out. "You suffered horribly at Dongola," she said in a low voice. "Colonel Trench told me."

"What does it matter now?" Feversham answered. "That time seems rather far away to me."

"Had you anything of mine with you?"

"I had your white feather."

"But anything else? Any little thing which I had given you in the other days?"

"Nothing."

"I had your photograph," she said. "I kept it."

Feversham suddenly leaned down towards her.

"You did!"

Ethne nodded her head.

"Yes. The moment I went upstairs that night I packed up your presents and addressed them to your rooms."

"Yes, I got them in London."

"But I put your photograph aside first of all to keep. I burnt all your letters after I had addressed the parcel and taken it down to the hall to be sent away. I had just finished burning your letters when I heard your step upon the gravel in the early morning underneath my windows. But I had already put your photograph aside. I have it now. I shall keep it and the feathers together." She added after a moment:—

"I rather wish that you had had something of mine with you all the time."

"I had no right to anything," said Feversham.

There was still a narrow slip of gold upon the grey space of stone.

"What will you do now?" she asked.

"I shall go home first and see my father. It will depend upon the way we meet."

"You will let Colonel Durrance know. I would like to hear about it."

"Yes, I will write to Durrance."

The slip of gold was gone, the clear light of a summer evening filled the church, a light without radiance or any colour.

"I shall not see you for a long while," said Ethne, and for the first time her voice broke in a sob. "I shall not have a letter from you again."

She leaned a little forward and bent her head, for the tears had gathered in her eyes. But she rose up bravely from her seat, and together they went out of the church side by side. She leaned towards him as they walked so that they touched.

Feversham untied his horse and mounted it. As his foot touched the stirrup Ethne caught her dog close to her.

"Good-bye," she said. She did not now even try to smile, she held out her hand to him. He took it and bent down from his saddle close to her. She kept her eyes steadily upon him though the tears brimmed in them.

"Good-bye," he said. He held her hand just for a little while, and then releasing it, rode down the hill. He rode for a hundred yards, stopped and looked back. Ethne had stopped, too, and with this space between them and their faces towards one another they remained. Ethne made no sign of recognition or farewell. She just stood and looked. Then she turned away and went up the village street towards her house alone and very slowly. Feversham watched her till she went in at the gate, but she became dim and blurred to his vision before even she had reached it. He was able to see, however, that she did not look back again.

He rode down the hill. The bad thing which he had done so long ago was not even by his six years of labour to be destroyed. It was still to live, its consequence was to be sorrow till the end of life for another than himself. That she took the sorrow bravely and without complaint, doing the straight and simple thing as her loyal nature bade her, did not diminish Harry Feversham's remorse. On the contrary it taught him yet more clearly that she least of all deserved unhappiness. The harm was irreparable. Other women might have forgotten, but not she. For Ethne was of those who neither lightly feel nor lightly forget, and if they love cannot love with half a heart. She would be alone now, he knew, in spite of her marriage, alone up to the very end and at the actual moment of death.



CHAPTER XXXIII

ETHNE AGAIN PLAYS THE MUSOLINE OVERTURE

The incredible words were spoken that evening. Ethne went into her farm-house and sat down in the parlour. She felt cold that summer evening and had the fire lighted. She sat gazing into the bright coals with that stillness of attitude which was a sure sign with her of tense emotion. The moment so eagerly looked for had come, and it was over. She was alone now in her remote little village, out of the world in the hills, and more alone than she had been since Willoughby sailed on that August morning down the Salcombe estuary. From the time of Willoughby's coming she had looked forward night and day to the one half-hour during which Harry Feversham would be with her. The half-hour had come and passed. She knew now how she had counted upon its coming, how she had lived for it. She felt lonely in a rather empty world. But it was part of her nature that she had foreseen this sense of loneliness; she had known that there would be a bad hour for her after she had sent Harry Feversham away, that all her heart and soul would clamour to her to call him back. And she forced herself, as she sat shivering by the fire, to remember that she had always foreseen and had always looked beyond it. To-morrow she would know again that they had not parted forever, to-morrow she would compare the parting of to-day with the parting on the night of the ball at Lennon House, and recognise what a small thing this was to that. She fell to wondering what Harry Feversham would do now that he had returned, and while she was building up for him a future of great distinction she felt Dermod's old collie dog nuzzling at her hand with his sure instinct that his mistress was in distress. Ethne rose from her chair and took the dog's head between her hands and kissed it. He was very old, she thought; he would die soon and leave her, and then there would be years and years, perhaps, before she lay down in her bed and knew the great moment was at hand.

There came a knock upon the door, and a servant told her that Colonel Durrance was waiting.

"Yes," she said, and as he entered the room she went forward to meet him. She did not shirk the part which she had allotted to herself. She stepped out from the secret chamber of her grief as soon as she was summoned.

She talked with her visitor as though no unusual thing had happened an hour before, she even talked of their marriage and the rebuilding of Lennon House. It was difficult, but she had grown used to difficulties. Only that night Durrance made her path a little harder to tread. He asked her, after the maid had brought in the tea, to play to him the Musoline Overture upon her violin.

"Not to-night," said Ethne. "I am rather tired." And she had hardly spoken before she changed her mind. Ethne was determined that in the small things as well as in the great she must not shirk. The small things with their daily happenings were just those about which she must be most careful. "Still I think that I can play the overture," she said with a smile, and she took down her violin. She played the overture through from the beginning to the end. Durrance stood at the window with his back towards her until she had ended. Then he walked to her side.

"I was rather a brute," he said quietly, "to ask you to play that overture to-night."

"I wasn't anxious to play," she answered as she laid the violin aside.

"I know. But I was anxious to find out something, and I knew no other way of finding it out."

Ethne turned up to him a startled face.

"What do you mean?" she asked in a voice of suspense.

"You are so seldom off your guard. Only indeed at rare times when you play. Once before when you played that overture you were off your guard. I thought that if I could get you to play it again to-night—the overture which was once strummed out in a dingy cafe at Wadi Halfa—to-night again I should find you off your guard."

His words took her breath away and the colour from her cheeks. She got up slowly from her chair and stared at him wide-eyed. He could not know. It was impossible. He did not know.

But Durrance went quietly on.

"Well? Did you take back your feather? The fourth one?"

These to Ethne were the incredible words. Durrance spoke them with a smile upon his face. It took her a long time to understand that he had actually spoken them. She was not sure at the first that her overstrained senses were not playing her tricks; but he repeated his question, and she could no longer disbelieve or misunderstand.

"Who told you of any fourth feather?" she asked.

"Trench," he answered. "I met him at Dover. But he only told me of the fourth feather," said Durrance. "I knew of the three before. Trench would never have told me of the fourth had I not known of the three. For I should not have met him as he landed from the steamer at Dover. I should not have asked him, 'Where is Harry Feversham?' And for me to know of the three was enough."

"How do you know?" she cried in a kind of despair, and coming close to her he took gently hold of her arm.

"But since I know," he protested, "what does it matter how I know? I have known a long while, ever since Captain Willoughby came to The Pool with the first feather. I waited to tell you that I knew until Harry Feversham came back, and he came to-day."

Ethne sat down in her chair again. She was stunned by Durrance's unexpected disclosure. She had so carefully guarded her secret, that to realise that for a year it had been no secret came as a shock to her. But, even in the midst of her confusion, she understood that she must have time to gather up her faculties again under command. So she spoke of the unimportant thing to gain the time.

"You were in the church, then? Or you heard us upon the steps? Or you met—him as he rode away?"

"Not one of the conjectures is right," said Durrance, with a smile. Ethne had hit upon the right subject to delay the statement of the decision to which she knew very well that he had come. Durrance had his vanities like others; and in particular one vanity which had sprung up within him since he had become blind. He prided himself upon the quickness of his perception. It was a delight to him to make discoveries which no one expected a man who had lost his sight to make, and to announce them unexpectedly. It was an additional pleasure to relate to his puzzled audience the steps by which he had reached his discovery. "Not one of your conjectures is right, Ethne," he said, and he practically asked her to question him.

"Then how did you find out?" she asked.

"I knew from Trench that Harry Feversham would come some day, and soon. I passed the church this afternoon. Your collie dog barked at me. So I knew you were inside. But a saddled horse was tied up beside the gate. So some one else was with you, and not any one from the village. Then I got you to play, and that told me who it was who rode the horse."

"Yes," said Ethne, vaguely. She had barely listened to his words. "Yes, I see." Then in a definite voice, which showed that she had regained all her self-control, she said:—

"You went away to Wiesbaden for a year. You went away just after Captain Willoughby came. Was that the reason why you went away?"

"I went because neither you nor I could have kept up the game of pretences we were playing. You were pretending that you had no thought for Harry Feversham, that you hardly cared whether he was alive or dead. I was pretending not to have found out that beyond everything in the world you cared for him. Some day or other we should have failed, each one in turn. I dared not fail, nor dared you. I could not let you, who had said 'Two lives must not be spoilt because of me,' live through a year thinking that two lives had been spoilt. You on your side dared not let me, who had said 'Marriage between a blind man and a woman is only possible when there is more than friendship on both sides,' know that upon one side there was only friendship, and we were so near to failing. So I went away."

"You did not fail," said Ethne, quietly; "it was only I who failed."

She blamed herself most bitterly. She had set herself, as the one thing worth doing, and incumbent on her to do, to guard this man from knowledge which would set the crown on his calamities, and she had failed. He had set himself to protect her from the comprehension that she had failed, and he had succeeded. It was not any mere sense of humiliation, due to the fact that the man whom she had thought to hoodwink had hoodwinked her, which troubled her. But she felt that she ought to have succeeded, since by failure she had robbed him of his last chance of happiness. There lay the sting for her.

"But it was not your fault," he said. "Once or twice, as I said, you were off your guard, but the convincing facts were not revealed to me in that way. When you played the Musoline Overture before, on the night of the day when Willoughby brought you such good news, I took to myself that happiness of yours which inspired your playing. You must not blame yourself. On the contrary, you should be glad that I have found out."

"Glad!" she exclaimed.

"Yes, for my sake, glad." And as she looked at him in wonderment he went on: "Two lives should not be spoilt because of you. Had you had your way, had I not found out, not two but three lives would have been spoilt because of you—because of your loyalty."

"Three?"

"Yours. Yes—yes, yours, Feversham's, and mine. It was hard enough to keep the pretence during the few weeks we were in Devonshire. Own to it, Ethne! When I went to London to see my oculist it was a relief; it gave you a pause, a rest wherein to drop pretence and be yourself. It could not have lasted long even in Devonshire. But what when we came to live under the same roof, and there were no visits to the oculist, when we saw each other every hour of every day? Sooner or later the truth must have come to me. It might have come gradually, a suspicion added to a suspicion and another to that until no doubt was left. Or it might have flashed out in one terrible moment. But it would have been made clear. And then, Ethne? What then? You aimed at a compensation; you wanted to make up to me for the loss of what I love—my career, the army, the special service in the strange quarters of the world. A fine compensation to sit in front of you knowing you had married a cripple out of pity, and that in so doing you had crippled yourself and foregone the happiness which is yours by right. Whereas now—"

"Whereas now?" she repeated.

"I remain your friend, which I would rather be than your unloved husband," he said very gently.

Ethne made no rejoinder. The decision had been taken out of her hands.

"You sent Harry away this afternoon," said Durrance. "You said good-bye to him twice."

At the "twice" Ethne raised her head, but before she could speak Durrance explained:—

"Once in the church, again upon your violin," and he took up the instrument from the chair on which she had laid it. "It has been a very good friend, your violin," he said. "A good friend to me, to us all. You will understand that, Ethne, very soon. I stood at the window while you played it. I had never heard anything in my life half so sad as your farewell to Harry Feversham, and yet it was nobly sad. It was true music, it did not complain." He laid the violin down upon the chair again.

"I am going to send a messenger to Rathmullen. Harry cannot cross Lough Swilly to-night. The messenger will bring him back to-morrow."

It had been a day of many emotions and surprises for Ethne. As Durrance bent down towards her, he became aware that she was crying silently. For once tears had their way with her. He took his cap and walked noiselessly to the door of the room. As he opened it, Ethne got up.

"Don't go for a moment," she said, and she left the fireplace and came to the centre of the room.

"The oculist at Wiesbaden?" she asked. "He gave you a hope?"

Durrance stood meditating whether he should lie or speak the truth.

"No," he said at length. "There is no hope. But I am not so helpless as at one time I was afraid that I should be. I can get about, can't I? Perhaps one of these days I shall go on a journey, one of the long journeys amongst the strange people in the East."

He went from the house upon his errand. He had learned his lesson a long time since, and the violin had taught it him. It had spoken again that afternoon, and though with a different voice, had offered to him the same message. The true music cannot complain.



CHAPTER XXXIV

THE END

In the early summer of next year two old men sat reading their newspapers after breakfast upon the terrace of Broad Place. The elder of the two turned over a sheet.

"I see Osman Digna's back at Suakin," said he. "There's likely to be some fighting."

"Oh," said the other, "he will not do much harm." And he laid down his paper. The quiet English country-side vanished from before his eyes. He saw only the white city by the Red Sea shimmering in the heat, the brown plains about it with their tangle of halfa grass, and in the distance the hills towards Khor Gwob.

"A stuffy place Suakin, eh, Sutch?" said General Feversham.

"Appallingly stuffy. I heard of an officer who went down on parade at six o'clock of the morning there, sunstruck in the temples right through a regulation helmet. Yes, a town of dank heat! But I was glad to be there—very glad," he said with some feeling.

"Yes," said Feversham, briskly; "ibex, eh?"

"No," replied Sutch. "All the ibex had been shot off by the English garrison for miles round."

"No? Something to do, then. That's it?"

"Yes, that's it, Feversham. Something to do."

And both men busied themselves again over their papers. But in a little while a footman brought to each a small pile of letters. General Feversham ran over his envelopes with a quick eye, selected one letter, and gave a grunt of satisfaction. He took a pair of spectacles from a case and placed them upon his nose.

"From Ramelton?" asked Sutch, dropping his newspaper on to the terrace.

"From Ramelton," answered Feversham. "I'll light a cigar first."

He laid the letter down on the garden table which stood between his companion and himself, drew a cigar-case from his pocket, and in spite of the impatience of Lieutenant Sutch, proceeded to cut and light it with the utmost deliberation. The old man had become an epicure in this respect. A letter from Ramelton was a luxury to be enjoyed with all the accessories of comfort which could be obtained. He made himself comfortable in his chair, stretched out his legs, and smoked enough of his cigar to assure himself that it was drawing well. Then he took up his letter again and opened it.

"From him?" asked Sutch.

"No; from her."

"Ah!"

General Feversham read the letter through slowly, while Lieutenant Sutch tried not to peep at it across the table. When the general had finished he turned back to the first page, and began it again.

"Any news?" said Sutch, with a casual air.

"They are very pleased with the house now that it's rebuilt."

"Anything more?"

"Yes. Harry's finished the sixth chapter of his history of the war."

"Good!" said Sutch. "You'll see, he'll do that well. He has imagination, he knows the ground, he was present while the war went on. Moreover, he was in the bazaars, he saw the under side of it."

"Yes. But you and I won't read it, Sutch," said Feversham. "No; I am wrong. You may, for you can give me a good many years."

He turned back to his letter and again Sutch asked:—

"Anything more?"

"Yes. They are coming here in a fortnight."

"Good," said Sutch. "I shall stay."

He took a turn along the terrace and came back. He saw Feversham sitting with the letter upon his knees and a frown of great perplexity upon his face.

"You know, Sutch, I never understood," he said. "Did you?"

"Yes, I think I did."

Sutch did not try to explain. It was as well, he thought, that Feversham never would understand. For he could not understand without much self-reproach.

"Do you ever see Durrance?" asked the general, suddenly.

"Yes, I see a good deal of Durrance. He is abroad just now."

Feversham turned towards his friend.

"He came to Broad Place when you went to Suakin, and talked to me for half an hour. He was Harry's best man. Well, that too I never understood. Did you?"

"Yes, I understood that as well."

"Oh!" said General Feversham. He asked for no explanations, but, as he had always done, he took the questions which he did not understand and put them aside out of his thoughts. But he did not turn to his other letters. He sat smoking his cigar, and looked out across the summer country and listened to the sounds rising distinctly from the fields. Sutch had read through all of his correspondence before Feversham spoke again.

"I have been thinking," he said. "Have you noticed the date of the month, Sutch?" and Sutch looked up quickly.

"Yes," said he, "this day next week will be the anniversary of our attack upon the Redan, and Harry's birthday."

"Exactly," replied Feversham. "Why shouldn't we start the Crimean nights again?"

Sutch jumped up from his chair.

"Splendid!" he cried. "Can we muster a tableful, do you think?"

"Let's see," said Feversham, and ringing a handbell upon the table, sent the servant for the Army List. Bending over that Army List the two veterans may be left.

But of one other figure in this story a final word must be said. That night, when the invitations had been sent out from Broad Place, and no longer a light gleamed from any window of the house, a man leaned over the rail of a steamer anchored at Port Said and listened to the song of the Arab coolies as they tramped up and down the planks with their coal baskets between the barges and the ship's side. The clamour of the streets of the town came across the water to his ears. He pictured to himself the flare of braziers upon the quays, the lighted port-holes, and dark funnels ahead and behind in the procession of the anchored ships. Attended by a servant, he had come back to the East again. Early the next morning the steamer moved through the canal, and towards the time of sunset passed out into the chills of the Gulf of Suez. Kassassin, Tel-el-Kebir, Tamai, Tamanieb, the attack upon McNeil's zareeba—Durrance lived again through the good years of his activity, the years of plenty. Within that country on the west the long preparations were going steadily forward which would one day roll up the Dervish Empire and crush it into dust. Upon the glacis of the ruined fort of Sinkat, Durrance had promised himself to take a hand in that great work, but the desert which he loved had smitten and cast him out. But at all events the boat steamed southwards into the Red Sea. Three nights more, and though he would not see it, the Southern Cross would lift slantwise into the sky.



* * * * *

By A. E. W. Mason

THE COURTSHIP OF MAURICE BUCKLER

A ROMANCE

Being a record of the growth of an English Gentleman, during the years of 1685-1687, under strange and difficult circumstances, written some while afterward in his own hand, and now edited by A. E. W. MASON

Philadelphia Evening Bulletin: In spirit and color it reminds us of the very remarkable books of Mr. Conon Doyle. The author has measurably caught the fascinating diction of the seventeenth century, and the strange adventures with which the story is filled are of a sufficiently perilous order to entertain the most Homeric mind.

Boston Courier: In this elaborately ingenious narrative the adventures recorded are various and exciting enough to suit the most exacting reader. The incidents recited are of extreme interest, and are not drawn out into noticeable tenuity.

The Outlook: "The Courtship of Maurice Buckler" is not only full of action and stimulating to curiosity, but tells a quite original plot in a clever way. Perhaps in its literary kinship it approaches more closely to "The Prisoner of Zenda" than to any other recent novel, but there is no evidence of imitation; the resemblance is in the spirit and dash of the narrative. The merit of this story is not solely in its grasp on the reader's attention and its exciting situations; it is written in excellent English, the dialogue is natural and brisk, the individual characters stand out clearly, and the flavor of the time is well preserved.

THE END