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.