"I will not interrupt you," said Ethne, as Willoughby took his seat beside her, and he had barely spoken a score of words before she broke that promise.  
"I am Deputy-Governor of Suakin," he began. "My chief was on leave in May. You are fortunate enough not to know Suakin, Miss Eustace, particularly in May. No white woman can live in that town. It has a sodden² intolerable heat peculiar³ to itself. The air is heavy with brine; you can't sleep at night for its oppression. Well, I was sitting in the verandah on the first floor of the palace about ten o'clock at night, looking out over the harbour and the distillation⁴ works, and wondering whether it was worth while to go to bed at all, when a servant told me that a man, who refused to give his name, wished particularly to see me. The man was Feversham. There was only a lamp burning in the verandah, and the night was dark, so that I did not recognise him until he was close to me."
 
And at once Ethne interrupted.
 
"How did he look?"
 
Willoughby wrinkled his forehead and opened his eyes wide.
 
"Really, I do not know," he said doubtfully. "Much like other men, I suppose, who have been a year or two in the Soudan, a trifle overtrained and that sort of thing."
 
"Never mind," said Ethne, with a sigh of disappointment. For five years she had heard no word of Harry⁵ Feversham. She fairly hungered for news of him, for the sound of his habitual⁶ phrases, for the description of his familiar gestures. She had the woman's anxiety for his bodily health, she wished to know whether he had changed in face or figure, and, if so, how and in what measure. But she glanced at the obtuse⁷, unobservant countenance⁸ of Captain Willoughby, and she understood that however much she craved⁹ for these particulars, she must go without.
 
"I beg your pardon," she said. "Will you go on?"
 
"I asked him what he wanted," Willoughby resumed, "and why he had not sent in his name. 'You would not have seen me if I had,' he replied, and he drew a packet of letters out of his pocket. Now, those letters, Miss Eustace, had been written a long while ago by General Gordon in Khartum. They had been carried down the Nile as far as Berber. But the day after they reached Berber, that town surrendered to the Mahdists. Abou Fatma, the messenger who carried them, hid them in the wall of the house of an Arab called Yusef, who sold rock-salt in the market-place. Abou was then thrown into prison on suspicion, and escaped to Suakin. The letters remained hidden in that wall until Feversham recovered them. I looked over them and saw that they were of no value, and I asked Feversham bluntly why he, who had not dared to accompany his regiment¹⁰ on active service, had risked death and torture to get them back."
 
Standing¹¹ upon that verandah, with the quiet pool of water in front of him, Feversham had told his story quietly and without exaggeration. He had related how he had fallen in with Abou Fatma at Suakin, how he had planned the recovery of the letters, how the two men had travelled together as far as Obak, and since Abou Fatma dared not go farther, how he himself, driving his grey donkey, had gone on alone to Berber. He had not even concealed¹² that access of panic which had loosened his joints¹³ when first he saw the low brown walls of the town and the towering date palms behind on the bank of the Nile; which had set him running and leaping across the empty desert in the sunlight, a marrowless¹⁴ thing of fear. He made, however, one omission¹⁵. He said nothing of the hours which he had spent crouching¹⁶ upon the hot sand, with his coat drawn¹⁷ over his head, while he drew a woman's face toward him across the continents and seas and nerved himself to endure by the look of sorrow which it wore.
 
"He went down into Berber at the setting of the sun," said Captain Willoughby, and it was all that he had to say. It was enough, however, for Ethne Eustace. She drew a deep breath of relief, her face softened¹⁸, there came a light into her grey eyes, and a smile upon her lips.
 
"He went down into Berber," she repeated softly.
 
"And found that the old town had been destroyed by the orders of the Emir, and that a new one was building upon its southern confines," continued Willoughby. "All the landmarks¹⁹ by which Feversham was to know the house in which the letters were hidden had gone. The roofs had been torn off, the houses dismantled²⁰, the front walls carried away. Narrow alleys²¹ of crumbling²³ fives-courts—that was how Feversham described the place—crossing this way and that and gaping²⁴ to the stars. Here and there perhaps a broken tower rose up, the remnant of a rich man's house. But of any sign which could tell a man where the hut of Yusef, who had once sold rock-salt in the market-place, had stood, there was no hope in those acres of crumbling mud. The foxes had already made their burrows²⁵ there."
 
The smile faded from Ethne's face, but she looked again at the white feather lying in her palm, and she laughed with a great contentment. It was yellow with the desert dust. It was a proof that in this story there was to be no word of failure.
 
"Go on," she said.
 
Willoughby related the despatch²⁶ of the negro with the donkey to Abou Fatma at the Wells of Obak.
 
"Feversham stayed for a fortnight in Berber," Willoughby continued. "A week during which he came every morning to the well and waited for the return of his negro from Obak, and a week during which that negro searched for Yusef, who had once sold rock-salt in the market-place. I doubt, Miss Eustace, if you can realise, however hard you try, what that fortnight must have meant to Feversham—the anxiety, the danger, the continued expectation that a voice would bid him halt and a hand fall upon his shoulder, the urgent knowledge that if the hand fell, death would be the least part of his penalty. I imagine the town—a town of low houses and broad streets of sand, dug here and there into pits for mud wherewith to build the houses, and overhead the blistering²⁷ sun and a hot shadowless sky. In no corner was there any darkness or concealment²⁸. And all day a crowd jostled and shouted up and down these streets—for that is the Mahdist policy to crowd the towns so that all may be watched and every other man may be his neighbour's spy. Feversham dared not seek the shelter of a roof at night, for he dared not trust his tongue. He could buy his food each day at the booths, but he was afraid of any conversation. He slept at night in some corner of the old deserted³⁰ town, in the acres of the ruined fives-courts. For the same reason he must not slink in the by-ways by day lest any should question him about his business; nor listen on the chance of hearing Yusef's name in the public places lest other loiterers should joke with him and draw him into their talk. Nor dare he in the daylight prowl about those crumbled³¹ ruins. From sunrise to sunset he must go quickly up and down the streets of the town like a man bent³² upon urgent business which permits of no delay. And that continued for a fortnight, Miss Eustace! A weary, trying life, don't you think? I wish I could tell you of it as vividly³³ as he told me that night upon the balcony of the palace at Suakin."
 
Ethne wished it too with all her heart. Harry Feversham had made his story very real that night to Captain Willoughby; so that even after the lapse³⁴ of fifteen months this unimaginative creature was sensible of a contrast and a deficiency in his manner of narration³⁵.
 
"In front of us was the quiet harbour and the Red Sea, above us the African stars. Feversham spoke¹ in the quietest manner possible, but with a peculiar deliberation and with his eyes fixed³⁶ upon my face, as though he was forcing me to feel with him and to understand. Even when he lighted his cigar he did not avert³⁷ his eyes. For by this time I had given him a cigar and offered him a chair. I had really, I assure you, Miss Eustace. It was the first time in four years that he had sat with one of his equals, or indeed with any of his countrymen on a footing of equality. He told me so. I wish I could remember all that he told me." Willoughby stopped and cudgelled his brains helplessly. He gave up the effort in the end.
 
"Well," he resumed, "after Feversham had skulked³⁸ for a fortnight in Berber, the negro discovered Yusef, no longer selling salt, but tending a small plantation³⁹ of dhurra on the river's edge. From Yusef, Feversham obtained particulars enough to guide him to the house where the letters were concealed in the inner wall. But Yusef was no longer to be trusted. Possibly Feversham's accent betrayed him. The more likely conjecture⁴⁰ is that Yusef took Feversham for a spy, and thought it wise to be beforehand and to confess to Mohammed-el-Kheir, the Emir, his own share in the concealment of the letters. That, however, is a mere⁴¹ conjecture. The important fact is this. On the same night Feversham went alone to old Berber."
 
"Alone!" said Ethne. "Yes?"
 
"He found the house fronting a narrow alley²², and the sixth of the row. The front wall was destroyed, but the two side walls and the back wall still stood. Three feet from the floor and two feet from the right-hand corner the letters were hidden in that inner wall. Feversham dug into the mud bricks with his knife; he made a hole wherein he could slip his hand. The wall was thick; he dug deep, stopping now and again to feel for the packet. At last his fingers clasped and drew it out; as he hid it in a fold of his jibbeh, the light of a lantern shone upon him from behind."
 
Ethne started as though she had been trapped herself. Those acres of roofless fives-courts, with here and there a tower showing up against the sky, the lonely alleys, the dead silence here beneath the stars, the cries and the beating of drums and the glare of lights from the new town, Harry Feversham alone with the letters, with, in a word, some portion of his honour redeemed⁴³, and finally, the lantern flashing upon him in that solitary⁴⁴ place,—the scene itself and the progress of the incidents were so visible to Ethne at that moment that even with the feather in her open palm she could hardly bring herself to believe that Harry Feversham had escaped.
 
"Well, well?" she asked.
 
"He was standing with his face to the wall, the light came from the alley behind him. He did not turn, but out of the corner of his eye he could see a fold of a white robe hanging motionless. He carefully secured the package, with a care indeed and a composure which astonished him even at that moment. The shock had strung him to a concentration and lucidity⁴⁵ of thought unknown to him till then. His fingers were trembling, he remarked, as he tied the knots, but it was with excitement, and an excitement which did not flurry. His mind worked rapidly, but quite coolly, quite deliberately⁴⁶. He came to a perfectly⁴⁷ definite conclusion as to what he must do. Every faculty⁴⁸ which he possessed⁴⁹ was extraordinarily⁵⁰ clear, and at the same time extraordinarily still. He had his knife in his hand, he faced about suddenly and ran. There were two men waiting. Feversham ran at the man who held the lantern. He was aware of the point of a spear, he ducked and beat it aside with his left arm, he leaped forward and struck with his right. The Arab fell at his feet; the lantern was extinguished. Feversham sprang across the white-robed body and ran eastward⁵¹, toward the open desert. But in no panic; he had never been so collected. He was followed by the second soldier. He had foreseen that he would be followed. If he was to escape, it was indeed necessary that he should be. He turned a corner, crouched⁵² behind a wall, and as the Arab came running by he leaped out upon his shoulders. And again as he leaped he struck."
 
Captain Willoughby stopped at this point of his story and turned towards Ethne. He had something to say which perplexed⁵³ and at the same time impressed him, and he spoke with a desire for an explanation.
 
"The strangest feature of those few fierce, short minutes," he said, "was that Feversham felt no fear. I don't understand that, do you? From the first moment when the lantern shone upon him from behind, to the last when he turned his feet eastward, and ran through the ruined alleys and broken walls toward the desert and the Wells of Obak, he felt no fear."
 
This was the most mysterious part of Harry Feversham's story to Captain Willoughby. Here was a man who so shrank from the possibilities of battle, that he must actually send in his papers rather than confront them; yet when he stood in

Join or Log In! You need to log in to continue reading

Create a new account   I have a account already

	Create an New Account
Email:  (User Name)
Password:	Letters and numbers only. 6-20 characters.
Retype Password:
Screen Name:	Letters and numbers only. 6-50 Characters.
Confirmation Code:	(Please type in the characters in the green image.)

	Login into Your Account
Email:
Password:
	Remember me on this computer.