by AEW Mason
Willoughby's reticence was in itself a sufficient confirmation. Willoughby, without doubt, had been instructed by Ethne to keep his tongue in a leash. Colonel Durrance was prepared for reticence, he looked to reticence as the answer to his conjecture. His trained ear, besides, had warned him that Willoughby was uneasy at his visit and careful in his speech. There had been pauses, during which Durrance was as sure as though he had eyes wherewith to see, that his companion was staring at him suspiciously and wondering how much he knew, or how little. There had been an accent of wariness and caution in his voice, which was hatefully familiar to Durrance's ears, for just with that accent Ethne had been wont to speak. Moreover, Durrance had set traps,—that remark of his "for no obvious reason, I think I said," had been one,—and a little start here, or a quick turn there, showed him that Willoughby had tumbled into them.
He had no wish, however, that Willoughby should write off to Ethne and warn her that Durrance was making inquiries. That was a possibility, he recognised, and he set himself to guard against it.
"I want to tell you why I was anxious to meet you," he said. "It was because of Harry Feversham;" and Captain Willoughby, who was congratulating himself that he was well out of an awkward position, fairly jumped in his seat. It was not Durrance's policy, however, to notice his companion's agitation, and he went on quickly: "Something happened to Feversham. It's more than five years ago now. He did something, I suppose, or left something undone,—the secret, at all events, has been closely kept,—and he dropped out, and his place knew him no more. Now you are going back to the Soudan, Willoughby?"
"Yes," Willoughby answered, "in a week's time."
"Well, Harry Feversham is in the Soudan," said Durrance, leaning towards his companion.
"You know that?" exclaimed Willoughby.
"Yes, for I came across him this Spring at Wadi Halfa," Durrance continued. "He had fallen rather low," and he told Willoughby of their meeting outside of the café of Tewfikieh. "It's strange, isn't it?—a man whom one knew very well going under like that in a second, disappearing before your eyes as it were, dropping plumb out of sight as though down an oubliette in an old French castle. I want you to look out for him, Willoughby, and do what you can to set him on his legs again. Let me know if you chance on him. Harry Feversham was a friend of mine—one of my few real friends."
"All right," said Willoughby, cheerfully. Durrance knew at once from the tone of his voice that suspicion was quieted in him. "I will look out for Feversham. I remember he was a great friend of yours."
He stretched out his hand towards the matches upon the table beside him. Durrance heard the scrape of the phosphorus and the flare of the match. Willoughby was lighting his pipe. It was a well-seasoned piece of briar, and needed a cleaning; it bubbled as he held the match to the tobacco and sucked at the mouthpiece.
"Yes, a great friend," said Durrance. "You and I dined with him in his flat high up above St. James's Park just before we left England."
And at that chance utterance Willoughby's briar pipe ceased suddenly to bubble. A moment's silence followed, then Willoughby swore violently, and a second later he stamped upon the carpet. Durrance's imagination was kindled by this simple sequence of events, and he straightway made up a little picture in his mind. In one chair himself smoking his cigar, a round table holding a match-stand on his left hand, and on the other side of the table Captain Willoughby in another chair. But Captain Willoughby lighting his pipe and suddenly arrested in the act by a sentence spoken without significance, Captain Willoughby staring suspiciously in his slow-witted way at the blind man's face, until the lighted match, which he had forgotten, burnt down to his fingers, and he swore and dropped it and stamped it out upon the floor. Durrance had never given a thought to that dinner till this moment. It was possible it might deserve much thought.
"There were you and I and Feversham present," he went on. "Feversham had asked us there to tell us of his engagement to Miss Eustace. He had just come back from Dublin. That was almost the last we saw of him." He took a pull at his cigar and added, "By the way, there was a third man present."
"Was there?" asked Willoughby. "It's so long ago."
"Yes—Trench."
"To be sure, Trench was present. It will be a long time, I am afraid, before we dine at the same table with poor old Trench again."
The carelessness of his voice was well assumed; he leaned forwards and struck another match and lighted his pipe. As he did so, Durrance laid down his cigar upon the table edge.
"And we shall never dine with Castleton again," he said slowly.
"Castleton wasn't there," Willoughby exclaimed, and quickly enough to betray that, however long the interval since that little dinner in Feversham's rooms, it was at all events still distinct in his recollections.
"No, but he was expected," said Durrance.
"No, not even expected," corrected Willoughby. "He was dining elsewhere. He sent the telegram, you remember."
"Ah, yes, a telegram came," said Durrance.
That dinner party certainly deserved consideration. Willoughby, Trench, Castleton—these three men were the cause of Harry Feversham's disgrace and disappearance. Durrance tried to recollect all the details of the evening; but he had been occupied himself on that occasion. He remembered leaning against the window above St. James's Park; he remembered hearing the tattoo from the parade-ground of Wellington Barracks—and a telegram had come.
Durrance made up another picture in his mind. Harry Feversham at the table reading and re-reading his telegram, Trench and Willoughby waiting silently, perhaps expectantly, and himself paying no heed, but staring out from the bright room into the quiet and cool of the park.
"Castleton was dining with a big man from the War Office that night," Durrance said, and a little movement at his side warned him that he was getting hot in his search. He sat for a while longer talking about the prospects of the Soudan, and then rose up from his chair.
"Well, I can rely on you, Willoughby, to help Feversham if ever you find him. Draw on me for money."
"I will do my best," said Willoughby. "You are going? I could have won a bet off you this afternoon."
"How?"
"You said that you did not let your cigars go out. This one's stone cold."
"I forgot about it; I was thinking of Feversham. Good-bye."
He took a cab and drove away from the club door. Willoughby was glad to see the last of him, but he was fairly satisfied with his own exhibition of diplomacy. It would have been strange, after all, he thought, if he had not been able to hoodwink poor old Durrance; and he returned to the smoking-room and refreshed himself with a whiskey and potass.
Durrance, however, had not been hoodwinked. The last perplexing question had been answered for him that afternoon. He remembered now that no mention had been made at the dinner which could identify the sender of the telegram. Feversham had read it without a word, and without a word had crumpled it up and tossed it into the fire. But to-day Willoughby had told him that it had come from Castleton, and Castleton had been dining with a high official of the War Office. The particular act of cowardice which had brought the three white feathers to Ramelton was easy to discern. Almost the next day Feversham had told Durrance in the Row that he had resigned his commission, and Durrance knew that he had not resigned it when the telegram came. That telegram could have brought only one piece of news, that Feversham's regiment was ordered on active service. The more Durrance reflected, the more certain he felt that he had at last hit upon the truth. Nothing could be more natural than that Castleton should telegraph his good news in confidence to his friends. Durrance had the story now complete, or rather, the sequence of facts complete. For why Feversham should have been seized with panic, why he should have played the coward the moment after he was engaged to Ethne Eustace—at a time, in a word, when every manly quality he possessed should have been at its strongest and truest, remained for Durrance, and indeed, was always to remain, an inexplicable problem. But he put
that question aside, classing it among the considerations which he had learnt to estimate as small and unimportant. The simple and true thing—the thing of real importance—emerged definite and clear: Harry Feversham was atoning for his one act of cowardice with a full and an overflowing measure of atonement.
"I shall astonish old Sutch," he thought, with a chuckle. He took the night mail into Devonshire the same evening, and reached his home before midday.
Chapter XXIII - Mrs. Adair Makes Her Apology
*
Within the drawing-room at The Pool, Durrance said good-bye to Ethne. He had so arranged it that there should be little time for that leave-taking, and already the carriage stood at the steps of Guessens, with his luggage strapped upon the roof and his servant waiting at the door.
Ethne came out with him on to the terrace, where Mrs. Adair stood at the top of the flight of steps. Durrance held out his hand to her, but she turned to Ethne and said:—
"I want to speak to Colonel Durrance before he goes."
"Very well," said Ethne. "Then we will say good-bye here," she added to Durrance. "You will write from Wiesbaden? Soon, please!"
"The moment I arrive," answered Durrance. He descended the steps with Mrs. Adair, and left Ethne standing upon the terrace. The last scene of pretence had been acted out, the months of tension and surveillance had come to an end, and both were thankful for their release. Durrance showed that he was glad even in the briskness of his walk, as he crossed the lawn at Mrs. Adair's side. She, however, lagged, and when she spoke it was in a despondent voice.
"So you are going," she said. "In two days' time you will be at Wiesbaden and Ethne at Glenalla. We shall all be scattered. It will be lonely here."
She had had her way; she had separated Ethne and Durrance for a time at all events; she was no longer to be tortured by the sight of them and the sound of their voices; but somehow her interference had brought her little satisfaction. "The house will seem very empty after you are all gone," she said; and she turned at Durrance's side and walked down with him into the garden.
"We shall come back, no doubt," said Durrance, reassuringly.
Mrs. Adair looked about her garden. The flowers were gone, and the sunlight; clouds stretched across the sky overhead, the green of the grass underfoot was dull, the stream ran grey in the gap between the trees, and the leaves from the branches were blown russet and yellow about the lawns.
"How long shall you stay at Wiesbaden?" she asked.
"I can hardly tell. But as long as it's advisable," he answered.
"That tells me nothing at all. I suppose it was meant not to tell me anything."
Durrance did not answer her, and she resented his silence. She knew nothing whatever of his plans; she was unaware whether he meant to break his engagement with Ethne or to hold her to it, and curiosity consumed her. It might be a very long time before she saw him again, and all that long time she must remain tortured with doubts.
"You distrust me?" she said defiantly, and with a note of anger in her voice.
Durrance answered her quite gently:—
"Have I no reason to distrust you? Why did you tell me of Captain Willoughby's coming? Why did you interfere?"
"I thought you ought to know."
"But Ethne wished the secret kept. I am glad to know, very glad. But, after all, you told me, and you were Ethne's friend."
"Yours, too, I hope," Mrs. Adair answered, and she exclaimed: "How could I go on keeping silence? Don't you understand?"
"No."
Durrance might have understood, but he had never given much thought to Mrs. Adair, and she knew it. The knowledge rankled within her, and his simple "no" stung her beyond bearing.
"I spoke brutally, didn't I?" she said. "I told you the truth as brutally as I could. Doesn't that help you to understand?"
Again Durrance said "No," and the monosyllable exasperated her out of all prudence, and all at once she found herself speaking incoherently the things which she had thought. And once she had begun, she could not stop. She stood, as it were, outside of herself, and saw that her speech was madness; yet she went on with it.
"I told you the truth brutally on purpose. I was so stung because you would not see what was so visible had you only the mind to see. I wanted to hurt you. I am a bad, bad woman, I suppose. There were you and she in the room talking together in the darkness; there was I alone upon the terrace. It was the same again to-day. You and Ethne in the room, I alone upon the terrace. I wonder whether it will always be so. But you will not say—you will not say." She struck her hands together with a gesture of despair, but Durrance had no words for her. He walked silently along the garden path towards the stile, and he quickened his pace a little, so that Mrs. Adair had to walk fast to keep up with him. That quickening of the pace was a sort of answer, but Mrs. Adair was not deterred by it. Her madness had taken hold of her.
"I do not think I would have minded so much," she continued, "if Ethne had really cared for you; but she never cared more than as a friend cares, just a mere friend. And what's friendship worth?" she asked scornfully.
"Something, surely," said Durrance.
"It does not prevent Ethne from shrinking from her friend," cried Mrs. Adair. "She shrinks from you. Shall I tell you why? Because you are blind. She is afraid. While I—I will tell you the truth—I am glad. When the news first came from Wadi Halfa that you were blind, I was glad; when I saw you in Hill Street, I was glad; ever since, I have been glad—quite glad. Because I saw that she shrank. From the beginning she shrank, thinking how her life would be hampered and fettered," and the scorn of Mrs. Adair's voice increased, though her voice itself was sunk to a whisper. "I am not afraid," she said, and she repeated the words passionately again and again. "I am not afraid. I am not afraid."
To Durrance it seemed that in all his experience nothing so horrible had ever occurred as this outburst by the woman who was Ethne's friend, nothing so unforeseen.
"Ethne wrote to you at Wadi Halfa out of pity," she went on, "that was all. She wrote out of pity; and, having written, she was afraid of what she had done; and being afraid, she had not courage to tell you she was afraid. You would not have blamed her, if she had frankly admitted it; you would have remained her friend. But she had not the courage."
Durrance knew that there was another explanation of Ethne's hesitations and timidities. He knew, too, that the other explanation was the true one. But to-morrow he himself would be gone from the Salcombe estuary, and Ethne would be on her way to the Irish Channel and Donegal. It was not worth while to argue against Mrs. Adair's slanders. Besides, he was close upon the stile which separated the garden of The Pool from the fields. Once across that stile, he would be free of Mrs. Adair. He contented himself with saying quietly:—
"You are not just to Ethne."
At that simple utterance the madness of Mrs. Adair went from her. She recognised the futility of all that she had said, of her boastings of courage, of her detractions of Ethne. Her words might be true or not, they could achieve nothing. Durrance was always in the room with Ethne, never upon the terrace with Mrs. Adair. She became conscious of her degradation, and she fell to excuses.
"I am a bad woman, I suppose. But after all, I have not had the happiest of lives. Perhaps there is something to be said for me." It sounded pitiful and weak, even in her ears; but they had reached the stile, and Durrance had turned towards her. She saw that his face lost something of its sternness. He was standing quietly, prepared now to listen to what she might wish to say. He remembered that in the old days when he could see, he had always associated her with a dignity of carriage and a reticence of speech. It seemed hardly possible that it was the same woman who spoke to him now, and the violence of the contrast made him ready to believe that there must be perhaps something to be said on her behalf.
"Will you tell me?" he said gently.
"I was married almost straight from school. I was the merest girl. I knew nothing, and I was married to a man of whom I knew
nothing. It was my mother's doing, and no doubt she thought that she was acting for the very best. She was securing for me a position of a kind, and comfort and release from any danger of poverty. I accepted what she said blindly, ignorantly. I could hardly have refused, indeed, for my mother was an imperious woman, and I was accustomed to obedience. I did as she told me and married dutifully the man whom she chose. The case is common enough, no doubt, but its frequency does not make it easier of endurance."
"But Mr. Adair?" said Durrance. "After all, I knew him. He was older, no doubt, than you, but he was kind. I think, too, he cared for you."
"Yes. He was kindness itself, and he cared for me. Both things are true. The knowledge that he did care for me was the one link, if you understand. At the beginning I was contented, I suppose. I had a house in town and another here. But it was dull," and she stretched out her arms. "Oh, how dull it was! Do you know the little back streets in a manufacturing town? Rows of small houses, side by side, with nothing to relieve them of their ugly regularity, each with the self-same windows, the self-same door, the self-same door-step. Overhead a drift of smoke, and every little green thing down to the plants in the window dirty and black. The sort of street whence any crazy religious charlatan who can promise a little colour to their grey lives can get as many votaries as he wants. Well, when I thought over my life, one of those little streets always came into my mind. There are women, heaps of them, no doubt, to whom the management of a big house, the season in London, the ordinary round of visits, are sufficient. I, worse luck, was not one of them. Dull! You, with your hundred thousand things to do, cannot conceive how oppressively dull my life was. And that was not all!" She hesitated, but she could not stop midway, and it was far too late for her to recover her ground. She went on to the end.
"I married, as I say, knowing nothing of the important things. I believed at the first that mine was just the allotted life of all women. But I began soon to have my doubts. I got to know that there was something more to be won out of existence than mere dulness; at least, that there was something more for others, though not for me. One could not help learning that. One passed a man and a woman riding together, and one chanced to look into the woman's face as one passed; or one saw, perhaps, the woman alone and talked with her for a little while, and from the happiness of her looks and voice one knew with absolute certainty that there was ever so much more. Only the chance of that ever so much more my mother had denied to me."
