The Four Feathers Part 17

Durrance, it was true, was not particularly acute; he had never been inquisitive; he took his friends as he found them; he put them under no microscope. It would have been easy at any time, Ethne reflected, to quiet his suspicions, should he have ever come to entertain any. But _now_ it would be easier than ever. There was no reason for apprehension. Thus she argued, but in spite of the argument she rather nerved herself to an encounter than went forward to welcome her betrothed.

Mrs. Adair slipped out of the room, so that Ethne was alone when Durrance entered at the door. She did not move immediately; she retained her att.i.tude and position, expecting that the change in him would for the first moment shock her. But she was surprised; for the particular changes which she had expected were noticeable only through their absence. His face was worn, no doubt, his hair had gone grey, but there was no air of helplessness or uncertainty, and it was that which for his own sake she most dreaded. He walked forward into the room as though his eyes saw; his memory seemed to tell him exactly where each piece of the furniture stood. The most that he did was once or twice to put out a hand where he expected a chair.

Ethne drew silently back into the window rather at a loss with what words to greet him, and immediately he smiled and came straight towards her.

"Ethne," he said.

"It isn't true, then," she exclaimed. "You have recovered." The words were forced from her by the readiness of his movement.

"It is quite true, and I have not recovered," he answered. "But you moved at the window and so I knew that you were there."

"How did you know? I made no noise."

"No, but the window's open. The noise in the street became suddenly louder, so I knew that some one in front of the window had moved aside.

I guessed that it was you."

Their words were thus not perhaps the most customary greeting between a couple meeting on the first occasion after they have become engaged, but they served to hinder embarra.s.sment. Ethne shrank from any perfunctory expression of regret, knowing that there was no need for it, and Durrance had no wish to hear it. For there were many things which these two understood each other well enough to take as said. They did no more than shake hands when they had spoken, and Ethne moved back into the room.

"I will give you some tea," she said, "then we can talk."

"Yes, we must have a talk, mustn't we?" Durrance answered seriously. He threw off his serious air, however, and chatted with good humour about the details of his journey home. He even found a subject of amus.e.m.e.nt in his sense of helplessness during the first days of his blindness; and Ethne's apprehensions rapidly diminished. They had indeed almost vanished from her mind when something in his att.i.tude suddenly brought them back.

"I wrote to you from Wadi Halfa," he said. "I don't know whether you could read the letter."

"Quite well," said Ethne.

"I got a friend of mine to hold the paper and tell me when I was writing on it or merely on the blotting-pad," he continued with a laugh.

"Calder--of the Sappers--but you don't know him."

He shot the name out rather quickly, and it came upon Ethne with a shock that he had set a trap to catch her. The curious stillness of his face seemed to tell her that he was listening with an extreme intentness for some start, perhaps even a checked exclamation, which would betray that she knew something of Calder of the Sappers. Did he suspect, she asked herself? Did he know of the telegram? Did he guess that her letter was sent out of pity? She looked into Durrance's face, and it told her nothing except that it was very alert. In the old days, a year ago, the expression of his eyes would have answered her quite certainly, however close he held his tongue.

"I could read the letter without difficulty," she answered gently. "It was the letter you would have written. But I had written to you before, and of course your bad news could make no difference. I take back no word of what I wrote."

Durrance sat with his hands upon his knees, leaning forward a little.

Again Ethne was at a loss. She could not tell from his manner or his face whether he accepted or questioned her answer; and again she realised that a year ago while he had his sight she would have been in no doubt.

"Yes, I know you. You would take nothing back," he said at length. "But there is my point of view."

Ethne looked at him with apprehension.

"Yes?" she replied, and she strove to speak with unconcern. "Will you tell me it?"

Durrance a.s.sented, and began in the deliberate voice of a man who has thought out his subject, knows it by heart, and has decided, moreover, the order of words by which it will be most lucidly developed.

"I know what blindness means to all men--a growing, narrowing egotism unless one is perpetually on one's guard. And will one be perpetually on one's guard? Blindness means that to all men," he repeated emphatically.

"But it must mean more to me, who am deprived of every occupation. If I were a writer, I could still dictate. If I were a business man, I could conduct my business. But I am a soldier, and not a clever soldier.

Jealousy, a continual and irritable curiosity--there is no Paul Pry like your blind man--a querulous claim upon your attention--these are my special dangers." And Ethne laughed gently in contradiction of his argument.

"Well, perhaps one may hold them off," he acknowledged, "but they are to be considered. I have considered them. I am not speaking to you without thought. I have pondered and puzzled over the whole matter night after night since I got your letter, wondering what I should do. You know how gladly, with what grat.i.tude, I would have answered you, 'Yes, let the marriage go on,' if I dared. If I dared! But I think--don't you?--that a great trouble rather clears one's wits. I used to lie awake at Cairo and think; and the unimportant trivial considerations gradually dropped away; and a few straight and simple truths stood out rather vividly.

One felt that one had to cling to them and with all one's might, because nothing else was left."

"Yes, that I do understand," Ethne replied in a low voice. She had gone through just such an experience herself. It might have been herself, and not Durrance, who was speaking. She looked up at him, and for the first time began to understand that after all she and he might have much in common. She repeated over to herself with an even firmer determination, "Two lives shall not be spoilt because of me."

"Well?" she asked.

"Well, here's one of the very straight and simple truths. Marriage between a man crippled like myself, whose life is done, and a woman like you, active and young, whose life is in its flower, would be quite wrong unless each brought to it much more than friendship. It would be quite wrong if it implied a sacrifice for you."

"It implies no sacrifice," she answered firmly.

Durrance nodded. It was evident that the answer contented him, and Ethne felt that it was the intonation to which he listened rather than the words. His very att.i.tude of concentration showed her that. She began to wonder whether it would be so easy after all to quiet his suspicions now that he was blind; she began to realise that it might possibly on that very account be all the more difficult.

"Then do you bring more than friendship?" he asked suddenly. "You will be very honest, I know. Tell me."

Ethne was in a quandary. She knew that she must answer, and at once and without ambiguity. In addition, she must answer honestly.

"There is nothing," she replied, and as firmly as before, "nothing in the world which I wish for so earnestly as that you and I should marry."

It was an honest wish, and it was honestly spoken. She knew nothing of the conversation which had pa.s.sed between Harry Feversham and Lieutenant Sutch in the grill-room of the Criterion Restaurant; she knew nothing of Harry's plans; she had not heard of the Gordon letters recovered from the mud-wall of a ruined house in the city of the Dervishes on the Nile bank. Harry Feversham had, so far as she knew and meant, gone forever completely out of her life. Therefore her wish was an honest one. But it was not an exact answer to Durrance's question, and she hoped that again he would listen to the intonation, rather than to the words. However, he seemed content with it.

"Thank you, Ethne," he said, and he took her hand and shook it. His face smiled at her. He asked no other questions. There was not a doubt, she thought; his suspicions were quieted; he was quite content. And upon that Mrs. Adair came with discretion into the room.

She had the tact to greet Durrance as one who suffered under no disadvantage, and she spoke as though she had seen him only the week before.

"I suppose Ethne has told you of our plan," she said, as she took her tea from her friend's hand.

"No, not yet," Ethne answered.

"What plan?" asked Durrance.

"It is all arranged," said Mrs. Adair. "You will want to go home to Guessens in Devonshire. I am your neighbour--a couple of fields separate us, that's all. So Ethne will stay with me during the interval before you are married."

"That's very kind of you, Mrs. Adair," Durrance exclaimed; "because, of course, there will be an interval."

"A short one, no doubt," said Mrs. Adair.

"Well, it's this way. If there's a chance that I may recover my sight, it would be better that I should seize it at once. Time means a good deal in these cases."

"Then there is a chance?" cried Ethne.

"I am going to see a specialist here to-morrow," Durrance answered.

"And, of course, there's the oculist at Wiesbaden. But it may not be necessary to go so far. I expect that I shall be able to stay at Guessens and come up to London when it is necessary. Thank you very much, Mrs. Adair. It is a good plan." And he added slowly, "From my point of view there could be no better."

Ethne watched Durrance drive away with his servant to his old rooms in St. James's Street, and stood by the window after he had gone, in much the same att.i.tude and absorption as that which had characterised her before he had come. Outside in the street the carriages were now coming back from the park, and there was just one other change. Ethne's apprehensions had taken a more definite shape.

She believed that suspicion was quieted in Durrance for to-day, at all events. She had not heard his conversation with Calder in Cairo. She did not know that he believed there was no cure which could restore him to sight. She had no remotest notion that the possibility of a remedy might be a mere excuse. But none the less she was uneasy. Durrance had grown more acute. Not only his senses had been sharpened,--that, indeed, was to be expected,--but trouble and thought had sharpened his mind as well.

It had become more penetrating. She felt that she was entering upon an encounter of wits, and she had a fear lest she should be worsted. "Two lives shall not be spoilt because of me," she repeated, but it was a prayer now, rather than a resolve. For one thing she recognised quite surely: Durrance saw ever so much more clearly now that he was blind.