The Four Feathers Part 37

"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 well apart and guarded Trench and his new friend.

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

"I saw the riding lights of the yachts--and the reflections shortening and lengthening as the water rippled--there was a band, too, as we pa.s.sed the pier-head. What was it playing? Not the overture--and I don't think that I remember any other tune...." And he laughed with a crazy chuckle. "I was always pretty bad at appreciating music, wasn't I?

except when you played," and again he came back to the sea. "There was the line of hills upon the right as the boat steamed out of the bay--you remember there were woods on the hillside--perhaps you have forgotten.

Then came Bray, a little fairyland of lights close down by the water at the point of the ridge ... you remember Bray, we lunched there once or twice, just you and I, before everything was settled ... it seemed strange to be steaming out of Dublin Bay and leaving you a long way off to the north among the hills ... strange and somehow not quite right ...

for that was the word you used when the morning came behind the blinds--it is not right that one should suffer so much pain ... the engines didn't stop, though, they just kept throbbing and revolving and clanking as though nothing had happened whatever ... one felt a little angry about that ... the fairyland was already only a sort of golden blot behind ... and then nothing but sea and the salt wind ... and the things to be done."

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

Trench put an arm about him and raised him up. But he could do nothing more, and even to him, crouched as he was close to the ground, the noisome heat was almost beyond endurance. In front, the din of shrill voices, the screams for pity, the swaying and struggling, went on in that appalling darkness. In one corner there were men singing in a mad frenzy, in another a few danced in their fetters, or rather tried to dance; in front of Trench Ibrahim maintained his guard; and beside Trench there lay in the House of Stone, in the town beyond the world, a man who one night had sailed out of Dublin Bay, past the riding lanterns of the yachts, and had seen Bray, that fairyland of lights, dwindle to a golden blot. To think of the sea and the salt wind, the sparkle of light as the water split at the s.h.i.+p's bows, the illuminated deck, perhaps the sound of a bell telling the hour, and the cool dim night about and above, so wrought upon Trench that, practical unimaginative creature as he was, for very yearning he could have wept. But the stranger at his side began to speak again.

"It is funny that those three faces were always the same ... the man in the tent with the lancet in his hand, and the man in the back room off Piccadilly ... and mine. Funny and not quite right. No, I don't think that was quite right either. They get quite big, too, just when you are going to sleep in the dark--quite big, and they come very close to you and won't go away ... they rather frighten one...." And he suddenly clung to Trench with a close, nervous grip, like a boy in an extremity of fear. And it was in the tone of rea.s.surance that a man might use to a boy 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 come out of his boyhood, and was rehearsing some interview which was to take place in the future.

"Will you take it back?" he asked, with a great deal of hesitation and timidity. "Really? The others have, all except the man who died at Tamai. And you will too!" He spoke as though he could hardly believe some piece of great good fortune which had befallen him. Then his voice changed to that of a man belittling his misfortunes. "Oh, it hasn't been the best of times, of course. But then one didn't expect the best of times. And at the worst, one had always the afterwards to look forward to ... supposing one didn't run.... I'm not sure that when the whole thing's balanced, it won't come out that you have really had the worst time. I know you ... it would hurt you through and through, pride and heart and everything, and for a long time just as much as it hurt that morning when the daylight came through the blinds. And you couldn't do anything! And you hadn't the afterwards to help you--you weren't looking forward to it all the time as I was ... it was all over and done with for you ..." and he lapsed again into mutterings.

Colonel Trench's delight in the sound of his native tongue had now given place 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 the cab-stand in the southwest corner of St. James's Square: "I am an inquisitive, methodical person," he had said, and he had not described himself amiss. Here was a life history, it seemed, being unfolded to his ears, and not the happiest of histories, perhaps, indeed, with something of tragedy at the heart of it. Trench began to speculate upon the meaning of that word "afterwards," which came and went among the words 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 were having their effect. Trench bent his head again to his companion and now heard more clearly.

"I saw your light that morning ... you put it out suddenly ... did you hear my step on the gravel?... I thought you did, it hurt rather," and then he broke out into an emphatic protest. "No, no, I had no idea that you would wait. I had no wish that you should. Afterwards, perhaps, I thought, but nothing more, upon my word. Sutch was quite wrong.... Of course there was always the chance that one might come to grief oneself--get killed, you know, or fall ill and die--before one asked you to take your feather back; and then there wouldn't even have been a chance 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 any action of his own. He was more curious than ever about that "afterwards"; he began to have a glimmering of its meaning, and he was struck with wonderment at the thought of how many men there were going about the world with a calm and commonplace demeanour beneath which were hidden quaint fancies and poetic beliefs, never to be so much as suspected, until illness deprived the brain of its control.

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

The name came with something of a shock upon Trench's ears. This man knew Durrance! He was not merely a stranger of Trench's blood, but he knew 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 same square with him, perhaps, at Tokar, or Tamai, or Tamanieb, just as Trench had done! And so Trench's curiosity as to the life history in its turn gave place to a curiosity as to the ident.i.ty of the man. He tried to see, knowing that in that black and noisome hovel sight was impossible.

He might hear, though, enough to be a.s.sured. For if the stranger knew Durrance, it might be that he knew Trench as well. Trench listened; the sound of the voice, high pitched and rambling, told him nothing. He waited 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, that his new-found compatriot, this friend of Durrance, in his delirium imagined himself to be speaking--a woman named Ethne. Trench could recall no such name; but the voice in the dark went on.

"All the time when I was proposing to send in my papers, after the telegram had come, he stood at the window of my rooms with his back to me, looking out across the park. I fancied he blamed me. But I think now he 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 Durrance standing by a window with his back to the room. He remembered a telegram coming which took a long while in the reading--which diffused among all except Durrance an inexplicable suspense. He remembered, too, a man who spoke of his betrothal and of sending in his papers. But surely this could not be the man. Was the woman's name Ethne? A woman of Donegal--yes; and this man had spoken of sailing out of Dublin Bay--he had spoken, too, of a feather.

"Good G.o.d!" whispered Trench. "Was the name Ethne? Was it? Was it?"

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

"Three little white feathers," were the words. Trench leaned back against the wall. It was he who had devised that message. "Three little white feathers," the voice repeated. "This afternoon we were under the elms 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 feathers came. "Harry," she had said. "Do you remember, Harry?" Trench was certain.

"Feversham!" he cried. "Feversham!" And he shook the man whom he held in his arms and called to him again. "Under the elms by the Lennon River--" Visions of green shade touched with gold, and of the sunlight flickering between the leaves, caught at Trench and drew him like a mirage in that desert of which Feversham had spoken. Feversham had been under the elms of the Lennon River on that afternoon before the feathers came, and he was in the House of Stone at Omdurman. But why? Trench asked himself 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 sandhills which continually s.h.i.+fted and danced about him as he ran, so that he could 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. "Abou Fatma!" he cried, and the cry was the cry of a man whose throat is parched, and whose limbs fail beneath him. "Abou Fatma! Abou Fatma!" He stumbled as he ran, picked himself up, ran and stumbled again; and about him the deep soft sand piled itself into pyramids, built itself into long slopes and ridges, and levelled itself flat with an extraordinary and a malicious rapidity. "Abou Fatma!" cried Feversham, and he began to argue in a weak obstinate voice. "I know the wells are here--close by--within half a mile. I know they are--I know they are."

The clue to that speech Trench had not got. He knew nothing of Feversham's adventure at Berber; he could not tell that the wells were the Wells of Obak, or that Feversham, tired with the hurry of his travelling, and after a long day's march without water, had lost his way among the s.h.i.+fting sandhills. But he did know that Willoughby had taken back his feather, and he made a guess as to the motive which had brought Feversham now to the House of Stone. Even on that point, however, he was not to remain in doubt; for in a while he heard his own name upon Feversham's lips.

Remorse seized upon Colonel Trench. The sending of the feathers had been his invention and his alone. He could not thrust the responsibility of his invention upon either Willoughby or Castleton; it was just his doing. He had thought it rather a shrewd and clever stroke, he remembered at the time--a vengeance eminently just. Eminently just, no doubt, it was, but he had not thought of the woman. He had not imagined that she might be present when the feathers came. He had indeed almost forgotten 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 him talk. Now Feversham was lurking in the bazaar at Suakin and during the siege.

"During the siege," thought Trench. "While we were there, then, he was herding 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 with a zither, in the company of some itinerant musicians, hiding from any who might remember him and accuse him with his name. Trench heard of a man slipping out from Wadi Halfa, crossing the Nile and wandering with the a.s.sumed manner of a lunatic southwards, starving and waterless, until one day he was snapped up by a Mahdist caravan and dragged to Dongola as a spy. And at Dongola things had happened of which the mere mention made Trench shake. He heard of leather cords which had been bound about the prisoner's wrists, and upon which water had been poured until the cords swelled and the wrists burst, but this was among the minor 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 and the good daylight. He stood up and with Ibrahim's help protected this new comrade until the eager rush was past. Then he supported him out into the zareeba. Worn, wasted in body and face, with a rough beard straggled upon his chin, and his eyes all sunk and very bright, it was still Harry Feversham. Trench laid him down in a corner of the zareeba where 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 it back. As he poured it down Feversham's throat, Feversham seemed for a moment to recognise him. But it was only for a moment, and the incoherent tale of his adventures began again. Thus, after five years, and for the first time since Trench had dined as Feversham's guest in the high rooms overlooking St. James's Park, the two men met in the House of Stone.

CHAPTER XXVIII

PLANS OF ESCAPE

For three days Feversham rambled and wandered in his talk, and for three days Trench fetched him water from the Nile, shared his food with him, and ministered to his wants; for three nights, too, he stood with Ibrahim and fought in front of Feversham in the House of Stone. But on the fourth morning Feversham waked to his senses and, looking up, with his own eyes saw bending over him the face of Trench. At first the face seemed part of his delirium. It was one of those nightmare faces which had used to grow big and had come so horribly close to him in the dark nights of his boyhood as he lay in bed. He put out a weak arm and thrust it aside. But he gazed about him. He was lying in the shadow of the prison house, and the hard blue sky above him, the brown bare trampled soil on which he lay, and the figures of his fellow-prisoners dragging their chains or lying p.r.o.ne upon the ground in some extremity of sickness gradually conveyed their meaning to him. He turned to Trench, caught at him as if he feared the next moment would s.n.a.t.c.h him out of reach, and then he smiled.

"I am in the prison at Omdurman," he said, "actually in the prison! This is Umm Hagar, the House of Stone. It seems too good to be true."

He leaned back against the wall with an air of extreme relief. To Trench the words, the tone of satisfaction in which they were uttered, sounded like some sardonic piece of irony. A man who plumed himself upon indifference to pain and pleasure--who posed as a being of so much experience that joy and trouble could no longer stir a pulse or cause a frown, and who carried his pose to perfection--such a man, thought Trench, might have uttered Feversham's words in Feversham's voice. But Feversham was not that man; his delirium had proved it. The satisfaction, then, was genuine, the words sincere. The peril of Dongola was past, he had found Trench, he was in Omdurman. That prison house was his longed-for goal, and he had reached it. He might have been dangling on a gibbet hundreds of miles away down the stream of the Nile with the vultures perched upon his shoulders, the purpose for which he lived quite unfulfilled. But he was in the enclosure of the House of Stone in Omdurman.

"You have been here a long while," he said.

"Three years."

Feversham looked round the zareeba. "Three years of it," he murmured. "I was afraid that I might not find you alive."

Trench nodded.