The Four Feathers

by A. E. W. Mason

  CHAPTER XXVII

  THE HOUSE OF STONE

  These were the days before the great mud wall was built about the Houseof Stone in Omdurman. Only a thorn zareeba as yet enclosed that noisomeprison and the space about it. It stood upon the eastern border of thetown, surely the most squalid capital of any empire since the worldbegan. Not a flower bloomed in a single corner. There was no grass northe green shade of any tree. A brown and stony plain, burnt by the sun,and, built upon it a straggling narrow city of hovels crawling withvermin and poisoned with disease.

  Between the prison and the Nile no houses stood, and at this time theprisoners were allowed, so long as daylight lasted, to stumble in theirchains down the half-mile of broken sloping earth to the Nile bank, sothat they might draw water for their use and perform their ablutions.For the native or the negro, then, escape was not so difficult. Foralong that bank the dhows were moored and they were numerous; the rivertraffic, such as there was of it, had its harbour there, and the wideforeshore made a convenient market-place. Thus the open space betweenthe river and the House of Stone was thronged and clamorous all day,captives rubbed elbows with their friends, concerted plans of escape, orthen and there slipped into the thickest of the crowd and made theirway to the first blacksmith, with whom the price of iron outweighed anyrisk he took. But even on their way to the blacksmith's shop, theirfetters called for no notice in Omdurman. Slaves wore them as a dailyhabit, and hardly a street in all that long brown treeless squalid citywas ever free from the clink of a man who walked in chains.

  But for the European escape was another matter. There were not so manywhite prisoners but that each was a marked man. Besides relays of camelsstationed through the desert, much money, long preparations, and aboveall, devoted natives who would risk their lives, were the firstnecessities for their evasion. The camels might be procured andstationed, but it did not follow that their drivers would remain at thestations; the long preparations might be made and the whip of the gaoleroverset them at the end by flogging the captive within an inch of hislife, on a suspicion that he had money; the devoted servant might shrinkat the last moment. Colonel Trench began to lose all hope. His friendswere working for him, he knew. For at times the boy who brought his foodinto the prison would bid him be ready; at times, too, when at someparade of the Khalifa's troops he was shown in triumph as an emblem ofthe destiny of all the Turks, a man perhaps would jostle against hiscamel and whisper encouragements. But nothing ever came of theencouragements. He saw the sun rise daily beyond the bend of the riverbehind the tall palm trees of Khartum and burn across the sky, and themonths dragged one after the other.

  On an evening towards the end of August, in that year when Durrancecame home blind from the Soudan, he sat in a corner of the enclosurewatching the sun drop westwards towards the plain with an agony ofanticipation. For however intolerable the heat and burden of the day, itwas as nothing compared with the horrors which each night renewed. Themoment of twilight came and with it Idris es Saier, the great negro ofthe Gawaamah tribe, and his fellow-gaolers.

  "Into the House of Stone!" he cried.

  Praying and cursing, with the sound of the pitiless whips fallingperpetually upon the backs of the hindmost, the prisoners jostled andstruggled at the narrow entrance to the prison house. Already it wasoccupied by some thirty captives, lying upon the swamped mud floor orsupported against the wall in the last extremities of weakness anddisease. Two hundred more were driven in at night and penned there tillmorning. The room was perhaps thirty feet square, of which four feetwere occupied by a solid pillar supporting the roof. There was no windowin the building; a few small apertures near the roof made a pretence ofgiving air, and into this foul and pestilent hovel the prisoners werepacked, screaming and fighting. The door was closed upon them, utterdarkness replaced the twilight, so that a man could not distinguish eventhe outlines of the heads of the neighbours who wedged him in.

  Colonel Trench fought like the rest. There was a corner near the doorwhich he coveted at that moment with a greater fierceness of desire thanhe had ever felt in the days when he had been free. Once in that corner,he would have some shelter from the blows, the stamping feet, thebruises of his neighbour's shackles; he would have, too, a supportagainst which to lean his back during the ten interminable hours ofsuffocation.

  "If I were to fall! If I were to fall!"

  That fear was always with him when he was driven in at night. It workedin him like a drug producing madness. For if a man once went down amidthat yelling, struggling throng, he never got up again--he was trampledout of shape. Trench had seen such victims dragged from the prison eachmorning; and he was a small man. Therefore he fought for his corner in afrenzy like a wild beast, kicking with his fetters, thrusting with hiselbows, diving under this big man's arm, burrowing between two others,tearing at their clothes, using his nails, his fists, and even strikingat heads with the chain which dangled from the iron ring about his neck.He reached the corner in the end, streaming with heat and gasping forbreath; the rest of the night he would spend in holding it against allcomers.

  "If I were to fall!" he gasped. "O God, if I were to fall!" and heshouted aloud to his neighbour--for in that clamour nothing less than ashout was audible--"Is it you, Ibrahim?" and a like shout answered him,"Yes, Effendi."

  Trench felt some relief. Between Ibrahim, a great tall Arab of theHadendoas, and Trench, a friendship born of their common necessities hadsprung up. There were no prison rations at Omdurman; each captive wasdependent upon his own money or the charity of his friends outside. ToTrench from time to time there came money from his friends, broughtsecretly into the prison by a native who had come up from Assouan orSuakin; but there were long periods during which no help came to him,and he lived upon the charity of the Greeks who had sworn conversion tothe Mahdist faith, or starved with such patience as he could. There weretimes, too, when Ibrahim had no friend to send him his meal into theprison. And thus each man helped the other in his need. They stood sideby side against the wall at night.

  "Yes, Effendi, I am here," and groping with his hand in the blackdarkness, he steadied Trench against the wall.

  A fight of even more than common violence was raging in an extremecorner of the prison, and so closely packed were the prisoners that witheach advance of one combatant and retreat of the other, the wholejostled crowd swayed in a sort of rhythm, from end to end, from side toside. But they swayed, fighting to keep their feet, fighting even withtheir teeth, and above the din and noise of their hard breathing, theclank of their chains, and their imprecations, there rose now and then awild sobbing cry for mercy, or an inhuman shriek, stifled as soon asuttered, which showed that a man had gone down beneath the stampingfeet. Missiles, too, were flung across the prison, even to the foulearth gathered from the floor, and since none knew from what quarterthey were flung, heads were battered against heads in the effort toavoid them. And all these things happened in the blackest darkness.

  For two hours Trench stood in that black prison ringing with noise, rankwith heat, and there were eight hours to follow before the door would beopened and he could stumble into the clean air and fall asleep in thezareeba. He stood upon tiptoe that he might lift his head above hisfellows, but even so he could barely breathe, and the air he breathedwas moist and sour. His throat was parched, his tongue was swollen inhis mouth and stringy like a dried fig. It seemed to him that theimagination of God could devise no worse hell than the House of Stone onan August night in Omdurman. It could add fire, he thought, but onlyfire.

  "If I were to fall!" he cried, and as he spoke his hell was madeperfect, for the door was opened. Idris es Saier appeared in theopening.

  "Make room," he cried, "make room," and he threw fire among theprisoners to drive them from the door. Lighted tufts of dried grassblazed in the darkness and fell upon the bodies of the prisoners. Thecaptives were so crowded they could not avoid the missiles; in places,even, they could not lift their hands to dislodge them from theirshoulders or their heads.


  "Make room," cried Idris. The whips of his fellow-gaolers enforced hiscommand, the lashes fell upon all within reach, and a little space wascleared within the door. Into that space a man was flung and the doorclosed again.

  Trench was standing close to the door; in the dim twilight which camethrough the doorway he had caught a glimpse of the new prisoner, a manheavily ironed, slight of figure, and bent with suffering.

  "He will fall," he said, "he will fall to-night. God! if I were to!" andsuddenly the crowd swayed against him, and the curses rose louder andshriller than before.

  The new prisoner was the cause. He clung to the door with his faceagainst the panels, through the chinks of which actual air might come.Those behind plucked him from his vantage, jostled him, pressed himbackwards that they might take his place. He was driven as a wedge isdriven by a hammer, between this prisoner and that, until at last he wasflung against Colonel Trench.

  The ordinary instincts of kindness could not live in the nightmare ofthat prison house. In the daytime, outside, the prisoners were oftendrawn together by their bond of a common misery; the faithful as oftenas not helped the infidel. But to fight for life during the hours ofdarkness without pity or cessation was the one creed and practice of theHouse of Stone. Colonel Trench was like the rest. The need to live, ifonly long enough to drink one drop of water in the morning and draw oneclean mouthful of fresh air, was more than uppermost in his mind. It wasthe only thought he had.

  "Back!" he cried violently, "back, or I strike!"--and, as he wrestled tolift his arm above his head that he might strike the better, he heardthe man who had been flung against him incoherently babbling English.

  "Don't fall," cried Trench, and he caught his fellow-captive by the arm."Ibrahim, help! God, if he were to fall!" and while the crowd swayedagain and the shrill cries and curses rose again, deafening the ears,piercing the brain, Trench supported his companion, and bending down hishead caught again after so many months the accent of his own tongue. Andthe sound of it civilised him like the friendship of a woman.

  He could not hear what was said; the din was too loud. But he caught,as it were, shadows of words which had once been familiar to him, whichhad been spoken to him, which he had spoken to others--as a matter ofcourse. In the House of Stone they sounded most wonderful. They had amagic, too. Meadows of grass, cool skies, and limpid rivers rose in greyquiet pictures before his mind. For a moment he was insensible to hisparched throat, to the stench of that prison house, to the oppressiveblackness. But he felt the man whom he supported totter and slip, andagain he cried to Ibrahim:--

  "If he were to fall!"

  Ibrahim helped as only he could. Together they fought and wrestled untilthose about them yielded, crying:--

  "Shaitan! They are mad!"

  They cleared a space in that corner and, setting the Englishman downupon the ground, they stood in front of him lest he should be trampled.And behind him upon the ground Trench heard every now and then in a lullof the noise the babble of English.

  "He will die before morning," he cried to Ibrahim, "he is in a fever!"

  "Sit beside him," said the Hadendoa. "I can keep them back."

  Trench stooped and squatted in the corner, Ibrahim set his legs wellapart and guarded Trench and his new friend.

  Bending his head, Trench could now hear the words. They were the wordsof a man in delirium, spoken in a voice of great pleading. He wastelling some tale of the sea, it seemed.

  "I saw the riding lights of the yachts--and the reflections shorteningand lengthening as the water rippled--there was a band, too, as wepassed the pier-head. What was it playing? Not the overture--and I don'tthink that I remember any other tune...." And he laughed with a crazychuckle. "I was always pretty bad at appreciating music, wasn't I?except when you played," and again he came back to the sea. "There wasthe line of hills upon the right as the boat steamed out of the bay--youremember there were woods on the hillside--perhaps you have forgotten.Then came Bray, a little fairyland of lights close down by the water atthe point of the ridge ... you remember Bray, we lunched there once ortwice, just you and I, before everything was settled ... it seemedstrange to be steaming out of Dublin Bay and leaving you a long way offto the north among the hills ... strange and somehow not quite right ...for that was the word you used when the morning came behind theblinds--it is not right that one should suffer so much pain ... theengines didn't stop, though, they just kept throbbing and revolving andclanking as though nothing had happened whatever ... one felt a littleangry about that ... the fairyland was already only a sort of goldenblot behind ... and then nothing but sea and the salt wind ... and thethings to be done."

  The man in his delirium suddenly lifted himself upon an elbow, and withthe other hand fumbled in his breast as though he searched forsomething. "Yes, the things to be done," he repeated in a mumblingvoice, and he sank to unintelligible whisperings, with his head fallenupon his breast.

  Trench put an arm about him and raised him up. But he could do nothingmore, and even to him, crouched as he was close to the ground, thenoisome heat was almost beyond endurance. In front, the din of shrillvoices, the screams for pity, the swaying and struggling, went on inthat appalling darkness. In one corner there were men singing in a madfrenzy, in another a few danced in their fetters, or rather tried todance; in front of Trench Ibrahim maintained his guard; and besideTrench there lay in the House of Stone, in the town beyond the world, aman who one night had sailed out of Dublin Bay, past the riding lanternsof the yachts, and had seen Bray, that fairyland of lights, dwindle to agolden blot. To think of the sea and the salt wind, the sparkle of lightas the water split at the ship's bows, the illuminated deck, perhaps thesound of a bell telling the hour, and the cool dim night about andabove, so wrought upon Trench that, practical unimaginative creature ashe was, for very yearning he could have wept. But the stranger at hisside began to speak again.

  "It is funny that those three faces were always the same ... the man inthe tent with the lancet in his hand, and the man in the back room offPiccadilly ... and mine. Funny and not quite right. No, I don't thinkthat was quite right either. They get quite big, too, just when you aregoing to sleep in the dark--quite big, and they come very close to youand won't go away ... they rather frighten one...." And he suddenlyclung to Trench with a close, nervous grip, like a boy in an extremityof fear. And it was in the tone of reassurance that a man might use to aboy that Trench replied, "It's all right, old man, it's all right."

  But Trench's companion was already relieved of his fear. He had comeout of his boyhood, and was rehearsing some interview which was to takeplace in the future.

  "Will you take it back?" he asked, with a great deal of hesitation andtimidity. "Really? The others have, all except the man who died atTamai. And you will too!" He spoke as though he could hardly believesome piece of great good fortune which had befallen him. Then his voicechanged to that of a man belittling his misfortunes. "Oh, it hasn't beenthe best of times, of course. But then one didn't expect the best oftimes. And at the worst, one had always the afterwards to look forwardto ... supposing one didn't run.... I'm not sure that when the wholething's balanced, it won't come out that you have really had the worsttime. I know you ... it would hurt you through and through, pride andheart and everything, and for a long time just as much as it hurt thatmorning when the daylight came through the blinds. And you couldn't doanything! And you hadn't the afterwards to help you--you weren't lookingforward to it all the time as I was ... it was all over and done withfor you ..." and he lapsed again into mutterings.

  Colonel Trench's delight in the sound of his native tongue had now givenplace to a great curiosity as to the man who spoke and what he said.Trench had described himself a long while ago as he stood opposite thecab-stand in the southwest corner of St. James's Square: "I am aninquisitive, methodical person," he had said, and he had not describedhimself amiss. Here was a life history, it seemed, being unfolded to hisears, and not the happiest of histories, perhaps, indeed, withsomething of trag
edy at the heart of it. Trench began to speculate uponthe meaning of that word "afterwards," which came and went among thewords like the _motif_ in a piece of music and very likely was the life_motif_ of the man who spoke them.

  In the prison the heat became stifling, the darkness more oppressive,but the cries and shouts were dying down; their volume was less great,their intonation less shrill; stupor and fatigue and exhaustion werehaving their effect. Trench bent his head again to his companion and nowheard more clearly.

  "I saw your light that morning ... you put it out suddenly ... did youhear my step on the gravel?... I thought you did, it hurt rather," andthen he broke out into an emphatic protest. "No, no, I had no idea thatyou would wait. I had no wish that you should. Afterwards, perhaps, Ithought, but nothing more, upon my word. Sutch was quite wrong.... Ofcourse there was always the chance that one might come to griefoneself--get killed, you know, or fall ill and die--before one asked youto take your feather back; and then there wouldn't even have been achance of the afterwards. But that is the risk one had to take."

  The allusion was not direct enough for Colonel Trench's comprehension.He heard the word "feather," but he could not connect it as yet with anyaction of his own. He was more curious than ever about that"afterwards"; he began to have a glimmering of its meaning, and he wasstruck with wonderment at the thought of how many men there were goingabout the world with a calm and commonplace demeanour beneath whichwere hidden quaint fancies and poetic beliefs, never to be so much assuspected, until illness deprived the brain of its control.

  "No, one of the reasons why I never said anything that night to youabout what I intended was, I think, that I did not wish you to wait orhave any suspicion of what I was going to attempt." And thenexpostulation ceased, and he began to speak in a tone of interest. "Doyou know, it has only occurred to me since I came to the Soudan, but Ibelieve that Durrance cared."

  The name came with something of a shock upon Trench's ears. This manknew Durrance! He was not merely a stranger of Trench's blood, but heknew Durrance even as Trench knew him. There was a link between them,they had a friend in common. He knew Durrance, had fought in the samesquare with him, perhaps, at Tokar, or Tamai, or Tamanieb, just as Trenchhad done! And so Trench's curiosity as to the life history in its turngave place to a curiosity as to the identity of the man. He tried tosee, knowing that in that black and noisome hovel sight was impossible.He might hear, though, enough to be assured. For if the stranger knewDurrance, it might be that he knew Trench as well. Trench listened; thesound of the voice, high pitched and rambling, told him nothing. Hewaited for the words, and the words came.

  "Durrance stood at the window, after I had told them about you, Ethne,"and Trench repeated the name to himself. It was to a woman, then, thathis new-found compatriot, this friend of Durrance, in his deliriumimagined himself to be speaking--a woman named Ethne. Trench couldrecall no such name; but the voice in the dark went on.

  "All the time when I was proposing to send in my papers, after thetelegram had come, he stood at the window of my rooms with his back tome, looking out across the park. I fancied he blamed me. But I think nowhe was making up his mind to lose you.... I wonder."

  Trench uttered so startled an exclamation that Ibrahim turned round.

  "Is he dead?"

  "No, he lives, he lives."

  It was impossible, Trench argued. He remembered quite clearly Durrancestanding by a window with his back to the room. He remembered a telegramcoming which took a long while in the reading--which diffused among allexcept Durrance an inexplicable suspense. He remembered, too, a man whospoke of his betrothal and of sending in his papers. But surely thiscould not be the man. Was the woman's name Ethne? A woman ofDonegal--yes; and this man had spoken of sailing out of Dublin Bay--hehad spoken, too, of a feather.

  "Good God!" whispered Trench. "Was the name Ethne? Was it? Was it?"

  But for a while he received no answer. He heard only talk of amud-walled city, and an intolerable sun burning upon a wide round ofdesert, and a man who lay there all the day with his linen robe drawnover his head, and slowly drew one face towards him across threethousand miles, until at sunset it was near, and he took courage andwent down into the gate. And after that, four words stabbed Trench.

  "Three little white feathers," were the words. Trench leaned backagainst the wall. It was he who had devised that message. "Three littlewhite feathers," the voice repeated. "This afternoon we were under theelms down by the Lennon River--do you remember, Harry?--just you and I.And then came three little white feathers; and the world's at an end."

  Trench had no longer any doubts. The man was quoting words, and words,no doubt, spoken by this girl Ethne on the night when the three featherscame. "Harry," she had said. "Do you remember, Harry?" Trench wascertain.

  "Feversham!" he cried. "Feversham!" And he shook the man whom he heldin his arms and called to him again. "Under the elms by the LennonRiver--" Visions of green shade touched with gold, and of the sunlightflickering between the leaves, caught at Trench and drew him like amirage in that desert of which Feversham had spoken. Feversham had beenunder the elms of the Lennon River on that afternoon before the featherscame, and he was in the House of Stone at Omdurman. But why? Trench askedhimself the question and was not spared the answer.

  "Willoughby took his feather back"--and upon that Feversham broke off.His voice rambled. He seemed to be running somewhere amid sandhillswhich continually shifted and danced about him as he ran, so that hecould not tell which way he went. He was in the last stage of fatigue,too, so that his voice in his delirium became querulous and weak. "AbouFatma!" he cried, and the cry was the cry of a man whose throat isparched, and whose limbs fail beneath him. "Abou Fatma! Abou Fatma!" Hestumbled as he ran, picked himself up, ran and stumbled again; and abouthim the deep soft sand piled itself into pyramids, built itself intolong slopes and ridges, and levelled itself flat with an extraordinaryand a malicious rapidity. "Abou Fatma!" cried Feversham, and he began toargue in a weak obstinate voice. "I know the wells are here--closeby--within half a mile. I know they are--I know they are."

  The clue to that speech Trench had not got. He knew nothing ofFeversham's adventure at Berber; he could not tell that the wells werethe Wells of Obak, or that Feversham, tired with the hurry of histravelling, and after a long day's march without water, had lost his wayamong the shifting sandhills. But he did know that Willoughby had takenback his feather, and he made a guess as to the motive which had broughtFeversham now to the House of Stone. Even on that point, however, he wasnot to remain in doubt; for in a while he heard his own name uponFeversham's lips.

  Remorse seized upon Colonel Trench. The sending of the feathers had beenhis invention and his alone. He could not thrust the responsibility ofhis invention upon either Willoughby or Castleton; it was just hisdoing. He had thought it rather a shrewd and clever stroke, heremembered at the time--a vengeance eminently just. Eminently just, nodoubt, it was, but he had not thought of the woman. He had not imaginedthat she might be present when the feathers came. He had indeed almostforgotten the episode, he had never speculated upon the consequences,and now they rose up and smote the smiter.

  And his remorse was to grow. For the night was not nearly at its end.All through the dark slow hours he supported Feversham and heard himtalk. Now Feversham was lurking in the bazaar at Suakin and during thesiege.

  "During the siege," thought Trench. "While we were there, then, he washerding with the camel-drivers in the bazaar learning their tongues,watching for his chance. Three years of it!"

  At another moment Feversham was slinking up the Nile to Wadi Halfa witha zither, in the company of some itinerant musicians, hiding from anywho might remember him and accuse him with his name. Trench heard of aman slipping out from Wadi Halfa, crossing the Nile and wandering withthe assumed manner of a lunatic southwards, starving and waterless,until one day he was snapped up by a Mahdist caravan and dragged toDongola as a spy. And at Dongola things had happened of which the meremention made Tr
ench shake. He heard of leather cords which had beenbound about the prisoner's wrists, and upon which water had been poureduntil the cords swelled and the wrists burst, but this was among theminor brutalities. Trench waited for the morning as he listened,wondering whether indeed it would ever come.

  He heard the bolts dragged back at the last; he saw the door open andthe good daylight. He stood up and with Ibrahim's help protected thisnew comrade until the eager rush was past. Then he supported him outinto the zareeba. Worn, wasted in body and face, with a rough beardstraggled upon his chin, and his eyes all sunk and very bright, it wasstill Harry Feversham. Trench laid him down in a corner of the zareebawhere there would be shade; and in a few hours shade would be needed.Then with the rest he scrambled to the Nile for water and brought itback. As he poured it down Feversham's throat, Feversham seemed for amoment to recognise him. But it was only for a moment, and theincoherent tale of his adventures began again. Thus, after five years,and for the first time since Trench had dined as Feversham's guest inthe high rooms overlooking St. James's Park, the two men met in theHouse of Stone.