CHAPTER XIV
CAPTAIN WILLOUGHBY REAPPEARS
During the months of July and August Ethne's apprehensions grew, andonce at all events they found expression on her lips.
"I am afraid," she said, one morning, as she stood in the sunlight at anopen window of Mrs. Adair's house upon a creek of the Salcombe estuary.In the room behind her Mrs. Adair smiled quietly.
"Of what? That some accident happened to Colonel Durrance yesterday inLondon?"
"No," Ethne answered slowly, "not of that. For he is at this momentcrossing the lawn towards us."
Again Mrs. Adair smiled, but she did not raise her head from the bookwhich she was reading, so that it might have been some passage in thebook which so amused and pleased her.
"I thought so," she said, but in so low a voice that the words barelyreached Ethne's ears. They did not penetrate to her mind, for as shelooked across the stone-flagged terrace and down the broad shallowflight of steps to the lawn, she asked abruptly:--
"Do you think he has any hope whatever that he will recover his sight?"
The question had not occurred to Mrs. Adair before, and she gave to itnow no importance in her thoughts.
"Would he travel up to town so often to see his oculist if he hadnone?" she asked in reply. "Of course he hopes."
"I am afraid," said Ethne, and she turned with a sudden movement towardsher friend. "Haven't you noticed how quick he has grown and is growing?Quick to interpret your silences, to infer what you do not say from whatyou do, to fill out your sentences, to make your movements thecommentary of your words? Laura, haven't you noticed? At times I thinkthe very corners of my mind are revealed to him. He reads me like achild's lesson book."
"Yes," said Mrs. Adair, "you are at a disadvantage. You no longer haveyour face to screen your thoughts."
"And his eyes no longer tell me anything at all," Ethne added.
There was truth in both remarks. So long as Durrance had had Ethne'sface with its bright colour and her steady, frank, grey eyes visiblebefore him, he could hardly weigh her intervals of silence and hermovements against her spoken words with the detachment which was nowpossible to him. On the other hand, whereas before she had never beentroubled by a doubt as to what he meant or wished, or intended, now shewas often in the dark. Durrance's blindness, in a word, had produced aneffect entirely opposite to that which might have been expected. It hadreversed their positions.
Mrs. Adair, however, was more interested in Ethne's unusual burst ofconfidence. There was no doubt of it, she reflected. The girl, onceremarkable for a quiet frankness of word and look, was declining into acreature of shifts and agitation.
"There is something, then, to be concealed from him?" she askedquietly.
"Yes."
"Something rather important?"
"Something which at all costs I must conceal," Ethne exclaimed, and wasnot sure, even while she spoke, that Durrance had not already found itout. She stepped over the threshold of the window on to the terrace. Infront of her the lawn stretched to a hedge; on the far side of thathedge a couple of grass fields lifted and fell in gentle undulations;and beyond the fields she could see amongst a cluster of trees the smokefrom the chimneys of Colonel Durrance's house. She stood for a littlewhile hesitating upon the terrace. On the left the lawn ran down to aline of tall beeches and oaks which fringed the creek. But a broad spacehad been cleared to make a gap upon the bank, so that Ethne could seethe sunlight on the water and the wooded slope on the farther side, anda sailing-boat some way down the creek tacking slowly against the lightwind. Ethne looked about her, as though she was summoning her resources,and even composing her sentences ready for delivery to the man who waswalking steadily towards her across the lawn. If there was hesitationupon her part, there was none at all, she noticed, on the part of theblind man. It seemed that Durrance's eyes took in the path which hisfeet trod, and with the stick which he carried in his hand he switchedat the blades of grass like one that carries it from habit rather thanfor any use. Ethne descended the steps and advanced to meet him. Shewalked slowly, as if to a difficult encounter.
But there was another who only waited an opportunity to engage in itwith eagerness. For as Ethne descended the steps Mrs. Adair suddenlydropped the book which she had pretended to resume and ran towards thewindow. Hidden by the drapery of the curtain she looked out and watched.The smile was still upon her lips, but a fierce light had brightened inher eyes, and her face had the drawn look of hunger.
"Something which at all costs she must conceal," she said to herself,and she said it in a voice of exultation. There was contempt too in hertone, contempt for Ethne Eustace, the woman of the open air who wasafraid, who shrank from marriage with a blind man, and dreaded therestraint upon her freedom. It was that shrinking which Ethne had toconceal--Mrs. Adair had no doubt of it. "For my part, I am glad," shesaid, and she was--fiercely glad that blindness had disabled Durrance.For if her opportunity ever came, as it seemed to her now more and morelikely to come, blindness reserved him to her, as no man was everreserved to any woman. So jealous was she of his every word and lookthat his dependence upon her would be the extreme of pleasure. Shewatched Ethne and Durrance meet on the lawn at the foot of the terracesteps. She saw them turn and walk side by side across the grass towardsthe creek. She noticed that Ethne seemed to plead, and in her heart shelonged to overhear.
And Ethne was pleading.
"You saw your oculist yesterday?" she asked quickly, as soon as theymet. "Well, what did he say?"
Durrance shrugged his shoulders.
"That one must wait. Only time can show whether a cure is possible ornot," he answered, and Ethne bent forward a little and scrutinised hisface as though she doubted that he spoke the truth.
"But must you and I wait?" she asked.
"Surely," he returned. "It would be wiser on all counts." And thereuponhe asked her suddenly a question of which she did not see the drift. "Itwas Mrs. Adair, I imagine, who proposed this plan that I should comehome to Guessens and that you should stay with her here across thefields?"
Ethne was puzzled by the question, but she answered it directly andtruthfully. "I was in great distress when I heard of your accident. Iwas so distressed that at the first I could not think what to do. I cameto London and told Laura, since she is my friend, and this was her plan.Of course I welcomed it with all my heart;" and the note of pleadingrang in her voice. She was asking Durrance to confirm her words, and heunderstood that. He turned towards her with a smile.
"I know that very well, Ethne," he said gently.
Ethne drew a breath of relief, and the anxiety passed for a little whilefrom her face.
"It was kind of Mrs. Adair," he resumed, "but it is rather hard on you,who would like to be back in your own country. I remember very well asentence which Harry Feversham--" He spoke the name quite carelessly,but paused just for a moment after he had spoken it. No expression uponhis face showed that he had any intention in so pausing, but Ethnesuspected one. He was listening, she suspected, for some movement ofuneasiness, perhaps of pain, into which she might possibly be betrayed.But she made no movement. "A sentence which Harry Feversham spoke a longwhile since," he continued, "in London just before I left London forEgypt. He was speaking of you, and he said: 'She is of her country andmore of her county. I do not think she could be happy in any place whichwas not within reach of Donegal.' And when I remember that, it seemsrather selfish that I should claim to keep you here at so much cost toyou."
"I was not thinking of that," Ethne exclaimed, "when I asked why we mustwait. That makes me out most selfish. I was merely wondering why youpreferred to wait, why you insist upon it. For, of course, although onehopes and prays with all one's soul that you will get your sight back,the fact of a cure can make no difference."
She spoke slowly, and her voice again had a ring of pleading. This timeDurrance did not confirm her words, and she repeated them with a greateremphasis, "It can make no difference."
Durrance started like a m
an roused from an abstraction.
"I beg your pardon, Ethne," he said. "I was thinking at the moment ofHarry Feversham. There is something which I want you to tell me. Yousaid a long time ago at Glenalla that you might one day bring yourselfto tell it me, and I should rather like to know now. You see, HarryFeversham was my friend. I want you to tell me what happened that nightat Lennon House to break off your engagement, to send him away anoutcast."
Ethne was silent for a while, and then she said gently: "I would rathernot. It is all over and done with. I don't want you to ask me ever."
Durrance did not press for an answer in the slightest degree.
"Very well," he said cheerily, "I won't ask you. It might hurt you toanswer, and I don't want, of course, to cause you pain."
"It's not on that account that I wish to say nothing," Ethne explainedearnestly. She paused and chose her words. "It isn't that I am afraid ofany pain. But what took place, took place such a long while ago--I lookupon Mr. Feversham as a man whom one has known well, and who is nowdead."
They were walking toward the wide gap in the line of trees upon the bankof the creek, and as Ethne spoke she raised her eyes from the ground.She saw that the little boat which she had noticed tacking up the creekwhile she hesitated upon the terrace had run its nose into the shore.The sail had been lowered, the little pole mast stuck up above the grassbank of the garden, and upon the bank itself a man was standing andstaring vaguely towards the house as though not very sure of his ground.
"A stranger has landed from the creek," she said. "He looks as if he hadlost his way. I will go on and put him right."
She ran forward as she spoke, seizing upon that stranger's presence as ameans of relief, even if the relief was only to last for a minute. Suchrelief might be felt, she imagined, by a witness in a court when thejudge rises for his half-hour at luncheon-time. For the close of aninterview with Durrance left her continually with the sense that she hadjust stepped down from a witness-box where she had been subjected to across-examination so deft that she could not quite clearly perceive itstendency, although from the beginning she suspected it.
The stranger at the same time advanced to her. He was a man of themiddle size, with a short snub nose, a pair of vacuous protruding browneyes, and a moustache of some ferocity. He lifted his hat from his headand disclosed a round forehead which was going bald.
"I have sailed down from Kingsbridge," he said, "but I have never beenin this part of the world before. Can you tell me if this house iscalled The Pool?"
"Yes; you will find Mrs. Adair if you go up the steps on to theterrace," said Ethne.
"I came to see Miss Eustace."
Ethne turned back to him with surprise.
"I am Miss Eustace."
The stranger contemplated her in silence.
"So I thought."
He twirled first one moustache and then the other before he spoke again.
"I have had some trouble to find you, Miss Eustace. I went all the wayto Glenalla--for nothing. Rather hard on a man whose leave is short!"
"I am very sorry," said Ethne, with a smile; "but why have you been putto this trouble?"
Again the stranger curled a moustache. Again his eyes dwelt vacantlyupon her before he spoke.
"You have forgotten my name, no doubt, by this time."
"I do not think that I have ever heard it," she answered.
"Oh, yes, you have, believe me. You heard it five years ago. I amCaptain Willoughby."
Ethne drew sharply back; the bright colour paled in her cheeks; her lipsset in a firm line, and her eyes grew very hard. She glowered at himsilently.
Captain Willoughby was not in the least degree discomposed. He took histime to speak, and when he did it was rather with the air of a manforgiving a breach of manners, than of one making his excuses.
"I can quite understand that you do not welcome me, Miss Eustace, butnone of us could foresee that you would be present when the three whitefeathers came into Feversham's hands."
Ethne swept the explanation aside.
"How do you know that I was present?" she asked.
"Feversham told me."
"You have seen him?"
The cry leaped loudly from her lips. It was just a throb of the heartmade vocal. It startled Ethne as much as it surprised CaptainWilloughby. She had schooled herself to omit Harry Feversham from herthoughts, and to obliterate him from her affections, and the cry showedto her how incompletely she had succeeded. Only a few minutes since shehad spoken of him as one whom she looked upon as dead, and she hadbelieved that she spoke the truth.
"You have actually seen him?" she repeated in a wondering voice. Shegazed at her stolid companion with envy. "You have spoken to him? And heto you? When?"
"A year ago, at Suakin. Else why should I be here?"
The question came as a shock to Ethne. She did not guess the correctanswer; she was not, indeed, sufficiently mistress of herself tospeculate upon any answer, but she dreaded it, whatever it might be.
"Yes," she said slowly, and almost reluctantly. "After all, why are youhere?"
Willoughby took a letter-case from his breast, opened it withdeliberation, and shook out from one of its pockets into the palm of hishand a tiny, soiled, white feather. He held it out to Ethne.
"I have come to give you this."
Ethne did not take it. In fact, she positively shrank from it.
"Why?" she asked unsteadily.
"Three white feathers, three separate accusations of cowardice, weresent to Feversham by three separate men. This is actually one of thosefeathers which were forwarded from his lodgings to Ramelton five yearsago. I am one of the three men who sent them. I have come to tell youthat I withdraw my accusation. I take my feather back."
"And you bring it to me?"
"He asked me to."
Ethne took the feather in her palm, a thing in itself so light andfragile and yet so momentous as a symbol, and the trees and the gardenbegan to whirl suddenly about her. She was aware that Captain Willoughbywas speaking, but his voice had grown extraordinarily distant and thin;so that she was annoyed, since she wished very much to hear all that hehad to say. She felt very cold, even upon that August day of sunlight.But the presence of Captain Willoughby, one of the three men whom shenever would forgive, helped her to command herself. She would give noexhibition of weakness before any one of the detested three, and with aneffort she recovered herself when she was on the very point of swooning.
"Come," she said, "I will hear your story. Your news was rather a shockto me. Even now I do not quite understand."
She led the way from that open space to a little plot of grass above thecreek. On three sides thick hedges enclosed it, at the back rose thetall elms and poplars, in front the water flashed and broke in ripples,and beyond the water the trees rose again and were overtopped by slopingmeadows. A gap in the hedge made an entrance into this enclosure, and agarden-seat stood in the centre of the grass.
"Now," said Ethne, and she motioned to Captain Willoughby to take a seatat her side. "You will take your time, perhaps. You will forget nothing.Even his words, if you remember them! I shall thank you for his words."She held that white feather clenched in her hand. Somehow HarryFeversham had redeemed his honour, somehow she had been unjust to him;and she was to learn how. She was in no hurry. She did not even feel onepang of remorse that she had been unjust. Remorse, no doubt, would comeafterwards. At present the mere knowledge that she had been unjust wastoo great a happiness to admit of abatement. She opened her hand andlooked at the feather. And as she looked, memories sternly repressed forso long, regrets which she had thought stifled quite out of life,longings which had grown strange, filled all her thoughts. TheDevonshire meadows were about her, the salt of the sea was in the air,but she was back again in the midst of that one season at Dublin duringa spring five years ago, before the feathers came to Ramelton.
Willoughby began to tell his story, and almost at once even the memoryof that season vanished.
&nbs
p; Ethne was in the most English of counties, the county of Plymouth andDartmouth and Brixham and the Start, where the red cliffs of itscoast-line speak perpetually of dead centuries, so that one cannot putinto any harbour without some thought of the Spanish Main and of thelittle barques and pinnaces which adventured manfully out on their longvoyages with the tide. Up this very creek the clink of theship-builders' hammers had rung, and the soil upon its banks wasvigorous with the memories of British sailors. But Ethne had no thoughtfor these associations. The country-side was a shifting mist before hereyes, which now and then let through a glimpse of that strange widecountry in the East, of which Durrance had so often told her. The onlytrees which she saw were the stunted mimosas of the desert; the only seathe great stretches of yellow sand; the only cliffs the sharp-peakedpyramidal black rocks rising abruptly from its surface. It was part ofthe irony of her position that she was able so much more completely toappreciate the trials which one lover of hers had undergone through theconfidences which had been made to her by the other.