The Four Feathers

by A. E. W. Mason

  CHAPTER XX

  WEST AND EAST

  Durrance found his body-servant waiting up for him when he had comeacross the fields to his own house of "Guessens."

  "You can turn the lights out and go to bed," said Durrance, and hewalked through the hall into his study. The name hardly described theroom, for it had always been more of a gun-room than a study.

  He sat for some while in his chair and then began to walk gently aboutthe room in the dark. There were many cups and goblets scattered aboutthe room, which Durrance had won in his past days. He knew them each oneby their shape and position, and he drew a kind of comfort from the feelof them. He took them up one by one and touched them and fondled them,wondering whether, now that he was blind, they were kept as clean andbright as they used to be. This one, a thin-stemmed goblet, he had wonin a regimental steeple-chase at Colchester; he could remember the daywith its clouds and grey sky and the dull look of the ploughed fieldsbetween the hedges. That pewter, which stood upon his writing table andwhich had formed a convenient holder for his pens, when pens had been ofuse, he had acquired very long ago in his college "fours," when he was afreshman at Oxford. The hoof of a favourite horse mounted in silvermade an ornament upon the mantelpiece. His trophies made the room agigantic diary; he fingered his records of good days gone by and came atlast to his guns and rifles.

  He took them down from their racks. They were to him much what Ethne'sviolin was to her and had stories for his ear alone. He sat with aRemington across his knee and lived over again one long hot day in thehills to the west of Berenice, during which he had stalked a lion acrossstony, open country, and killed him at three hundred yards just beforesunset. Another talked to him, too, of his first ibex shot in the KhorBaraka, and of antelope stalked in the mountains northward of Suakin.There was a little Greener gun which he had used upon midwinter nightsin a boat upon this very creek of the Salcombe estuary. He had broughtdown his first mallard with that, and he lifted it and slid his lefthand along the under side of the barrel and felt the butt settlecomfortably into the hollow of his shoulder. But his weapons began totalk over loudly in his ears, even as Ethne's violin, in the earlierdays after Harry Feversham was gone and she was left alone, had spokenwith too penetrating a note to her. As he handled the locks, and wasaware that he could no longer see the sights, the sum of his losses waspresented to him in a very definite and incontestable way.

  He put his guns away, and was seized suddenly with a desire to disregardhis blindness, to pretend that it was no hindrance and to pretend sohard that it should prove not to be one. The desire grew and shook himlike a passion and carried him winged out of the countries of dim starsstraight to the East. The smell of the East and its noises and thedomes of its mosques, the hot sun, the rabble in its streets, and thesteel-blue sky overhead, caught at him till he was plucked from hischair and set pacing restlessly about his room.

  He dreamed himself to Port Said, and was marshalled in the longprocession of steamers down the waterway of the canal. The song of theArabs coaling the ship was in his ears, and so loud that he could seethem as they went at night-time up and down the planks between thebarges and the deck, an endless chain of naked figures monotonouslychanting and lurid in the red glare of the braziers. He travelled out ofthe canal, past the red headlands of the Sinaitic Peninsula, into thechills of the Gulf of Suez. He zigzagged down the Red Sea while theGreat Bear swung northward low down in the sky above the rail of thequarterdeck, and the Southern Cross began to blaze in the south; hetouched at Tor and at Yambo; he saw the tall white houses of Yeddah liftthemselves out of the sea, and admired the dark brine-withered woodworkof their carved casements; he walked through the dusk of its roofedbazaars with the joy of the homesick after long years come home; andfrom Yeddah he crossed between the narrowing coral-reefs into theland-locked harbour of Suakin.

  Westward from Suakin stretched the desert, with all that it meant tothis man whom it had smitten and cast out--the quiet padding of thecamels' feet in sand; the great rock-cones rising sheer and abrupt asfrom a rippleless ocean, towards which you march all day and get nonearer; the gorgeous momentary blaze of sunset colours in the west; therustle of the wind through the short twilight when the west is a purepale green and the east the darkest blue; and the downward swoop of theplanets out of nothing to the earth. The inheritor of the other placesdreamed himself back into his inheritance as he tramped to and fro,forgetful of his blindness and parched with desire as with afever--until unexpectedly he heard the blackbirds and the swallowsbustling and piping in the garden, and knew that outside his windows theworld was white with dawn.

  He waked from his dream at the homely sound. There were to be no morejourneys for him; affliction had caged him and soldered a chain abouthis leg. He felt his way by the balustrade up the stairs to his bed. Hefell asleep as the sun rose.

  * * * * *

  But at Dongola, on the great curve of the Nile southwards of Wadi Halfa,the sun was already blazing and its inhabitants were awake. There wassport prepared for them this morning under the few palm trees before thehouse of the Emir Wad El Nejoumi. A white prisoner captured a weekbefore close to the wells of El Agia on the great Arbain road, by aparty of Arabs, had been brought in during the night and now waited hisfate at the Emir's hands. The news spread quick as a spark through thetown; already crowds of men and women and children flocked to this rareand pleasant spectacle. In front of the palm trees an open spacestretched to the gateway of the Emir's house; behind them a slope ofsand descended flat and bare to the river.

  Harry Feversham was standing under the trees, guarded by four of theAnsar soldiery. His clothes had been stripped from him; he wore only atorn and ragged jibbeh upon his body and a twist of cotton on his headto shield him from the sun. His bare shoulders and arms were scorchedand blistered. His ankles were fettered, his wrists were bound with arope of palm fibre, an iron collar was locked about his neck, to which achain was attached, and this chain one of the soldiers held. He stoodand smiled at the mocking crowd about him and seemed well pleased, likea lunatic.

  That was the character which he had assumed. If he could sustain it, ifhe could baffle his captors, so that they were at a loss whether he wasa man really daft or an agent with promises of help and arms to thedisaffected tribes of Kordofan--then there was a chance that they mightfear to dispose of him themselves and send him forward to Omdurman. Butit was hard work. Inside the house the Emir and his counsellors weredebating his destiny; on the river-bank and within his view a highgallows stood out black and most sinister against the yellow sand. HarryFeversham was very glad of the chain about his neck and the fetters onhis legs. They helped him to betray no panic, by assuring him of itsfutility.

  These hours of waiting, while the sun rose higher and higher and no onecame from the gateway, were the worst he had ever as yet endured. Allthrough that fortnight in Berber a hope of escape had sustained him, andwhen that lantern shone upon him from behind in the ruined acres, whathad to be done must be done so quickly there was no time for fear orthought. Here there was time and too much of it.

  He had time to anticipate and foresee. He felt his heart sinking tillhe was faint, just as in those distant days when he had heard the houndsscuffling and whining in a covert and he himself had sat shaking uponhis horse. He glanced furtively towards the gallows, and foresaw thevultures perched upon his shoulders, fluttering about his eyes. But theman had grown during his years of probation. The fear of physicalsuffering was not uppermost in his mind, nor even the fear that he wouldwalk unmanfully to the high gallows, but a greater dread that if he diednow, here, at Dongola, Ethne would never take back that fourth feather,and his strong hope of the "afterwards" would never come to itsfulfilment. He was very glad of the collar about his neck and thefetters on his legs. He summoned his wits together and standing therealone, without a companion to share his miseries, laughed and scrapedand grimaced at his tormentors.

  An old hag danced and gesticulated before him, singi
ng the while amonotonous song. The gestures were pantomimic and menaced him withabominable mutilations; the words described in simple and unexpurgatedlanguage the grievous death agonies which immediately awaited him, andthe eternity of torture in hell which he would subsequently suffer.Feversham understood and inwardly shuddered, but he only imitated hergestures and nodded and mowed at her as though she was singing to him ofParadise. Others, taking their war-trumpets, placed the mouths againstthe prisoner's ears and blew with all their might.

  "Do you hear, Kaffir?" cried a child, dancing with delight before him."Do you hear our ombeyehs? Blow louder! Blow louder!"

  But the prisoner only clapped his hands, and cried out that the musicwas good.

  Finally there came to the group a tall warrior with a long, heavy spear.A cry was raised at his approach, and a space was cleared. He stoodbefore the captive and poised his spear, swinging it backward andforward, to make his arm supple before he thrust, like a bowler beforehe delivers a ball at a cricket match. Feversham glanced wildly abouthim, and seeing no escape, suddenly flung out his breast to meet theblow. But the spear never reached him. For as the warrior lunged fromthe shoulder, one of the four guards jerked the neck chain violentlyfrom behind, and the prisoner was flung, half throttled, upon his back.Three times, and each time to a roar of delight, this pastime wasrepeated, and then a soldier appeared in the gateway of Nejoumi's house.

  "Bring him in!" he cried; and followed by the curses and threats of thecrowd, the prisoner was dragged under the arch across a courtyard into adark room.

  For a few moments Feversham could see nothing. Then his eyes began toadapt themselves to the gloom, and he distinguished a tall, bearded man,who sat upon an angareb, the native bedstead of the Soudan, and twoothers, who squatted beside him on the ground. The man on the angarebwas the Emir.

  "You are a spy of the Government from Wadi Halfa," he said.

  "No, I am a musician," returned the prisoner, and he laughed happily,like a man that has made a jest.

  Nejoumi made a sign, and an instrument with many broken strings washanded to the captive. Feversham seated himself upon the ground, andwith slow, fumbling fingers, breathing hard as he bent over the zither,he began to elicit a wavering melody. It was the melody to whichDurrance had listened in the street of Tewfikieh on the eve of his lastjourney into the desert; and which Ethne Eustace had played only thenight before in the quiet drawing-room at Southpool. It was the onlymelody which Feversham knew. When he had done Nejoumi began again.

  "You are a spy."

  "I have told you the truth," answered Feversham, stubbornly, and Nejoumitook a different tone. He called for food, and the raw liver of a camel,covered with salt and red pepper, was placed before Feversham. Seldomhas a man had smaller inclination to eat, but Feversham ate, none theless, even of that unattractive dish, knowing well that reluctance wouldbe construed as fear, and that the signs of fear might condemn him todeath. And, while he ate, Nejoumi questioned him, in the silkiest voice,about the fortifications of Cairo and the strength of the garrison atAssouan, and the rumours of dissension between the Khedive and theSirdar.

  But to each question Feversham replied:--

  "How should a Greek know of these matters?"

  Nejoumi rose from his angareb and roughly gave an order. The soldiersseized upon Feversham and dragged him out again into the sunlight. Theypoured water upon the palm-rope which bound his wrists, so that thethongs swelled and bit into his flesh.

  "Speak, Kaffir. You carry promises to Kordofan."

  Feversham was silent. He clung doggedly to the plan over which he hadso long and so carefully pondered. He could not improve upon it, he wassure, by any alteration suggested by fear, at a moment when he could notthink clearly. A rope was flung about his neck, and he was pushed anddriven beneath the gallows.

  "Speak, Kaffir," said Nejoumi; "so shall you escape death."

  Feversham smiled and grimaced, and shook his head loosely from side toside. It was astonishing to him that he could do it, that he did notfall down upon his knees and beg for mercy. It was still moreastonishing to him that he felt no temptation so to demean himself. Hewondered whether the oft repeated story was true, that criminals inEnglish prisons went quietly and with dignity to the scaffold, becausethey had been drugged. For without drugs he seemed to be behaving withno less dignity himself. His heart was beating very fast, but it waswith a sort of excitement. He did not even think of Ethne at thatmoment; and certainly the great dread that his strong hope would neverbe fulfilled did not trouble him at all. He had his allotted part toplay, and he just played it; and that was all.

  Nejoumi looked at him sourly for a moment. He turned to the men whostood ready to draw away from Feversham the angareb on which he wasplaced:--

  "To-morrow," said he, "the Kaffir shall go to Omdurman."

  Feversham began to feel then that the rope of palm fibre tortured hiswrists.