CHAPTER VIII
LIEUTENANT SUTCH IS TEMPTED TO LIE
Durrance reached London one morning in June, and on that afternoon tookthe first walk of the exile, into Hyde Park, where he sat beneath thetrees marvelling at the grace of his countrywomen and the delicacy oftheir apparel, a solitary figure, sunburnt and stamped already with thatindefinable expression of the eyes and face which marks the men setapart in the distant corners of the world. Amongst the people whostrolled past him, one, however, smiled, and, as he rose from his chair,Mrs. Adair came to his side. She looked him over from head to foot witha quick and almost furtive glance which might have told even Durrancesomething of the place which he held in her thoughts. She was comparinghim with the picture which she had of him now three years old. She waslooking for the small marks of change which those three years might havebrought about, and with eyes of apprehension. But Durrance only noticedthat she was dressed in black. She understood the question in his mindand answered it.
"My husband died eighteen months ago," she explained in a quiet voice."He was thrown from his horse during a run with the Pytchley. He waskilled at once."
"I had not heard," Durrance answered awkwardly. "I am very sorry."
Mrs. Adair took a chair beside him and did not reply. She was a woman ofperplexing silences; and her pale and placid face, with its cold correctoutline, gave no clue to the thoughts with which she occupied them. Shesat without stirring. Durrance was embarrassed. He remembered Mr. Adairas a good-humoured man, whose one chief quality was his evidentaffection for his wife, but with what eyes the wife had looked upon himhe had never up till now considered. Mr. Adair indeed had been at thebest a shadowy figure in that small household, and Durrance found itdifficult even to draw upon his recollections for any full expression ofregret. He gave up the attempt and asked:--
"Are Harry Feversham and his wife in town?"
Mrs. Adair was slow to reply.
"Not yet," she said, after a pause, but immediately she correctedherself, and said a little hurriedly, "I mean--the marriage never tookplace."
Durrance was not a man easily startled, and even when he was, hissurprise was not expressed in exclamations.
"I don't think that I understand. Why did it never take place?" heasked. Mrs. Adair looked sharply at him, as though inquiring for thereason of his deliberate tones.
"I don't know why," she said. "Ethne can keep a secret if she wishes,"and Durrance nodded his assent. "The marriage was broken off on thenight of a dance at Lennon House."
Durrance turned at once to her.
"Just before I left England three years ago?"
"Yes. Then you knew?"
"No. Only you have explained to me something which occurred on the verynight that I left Dover. What has become of Harry?"
Mrs. Adair shrugged her shoulders.
"I do not know. I have met no one who does know. I do not think that Ihave met any one who has even seen him since that time. He must haveleft England."
Durrance pondered on this mysterious disappearance. It was HarryFeversham, then, whom he had seen upon the pier as the Channel boat castoff. The man with the troubled and despairing face was, after all, hisfriend.
"And Miss Eustace?" he asked after a pause, with a queer timidity. "Shehas married since?"
Again Mrs. Adair took her time to reply.
"No," said she.
"Then she is still at Ramelton?"
Mrs. Adair shook her head.
"There was a fire at Lennon House a year ago. Did you ever hear of aconstable called Bastable?"
"Indeed, I did. He was the means of introducing me to Miss Eustace andher father. I was travelling from Londonderry to Letterkenny. I receiveda letter from Mr. Eustace, whom I did not know, but who knew from myfriends at Letterkenny that I was coming past his house. He asked me tostay the night with him. Naturally enough I declined, with the resultthat Bastable arrested me on a magistrate's warrant as soon as I landedfrom the ferry."
"That is the man," said Mrs. Adair, and she told Durrance the historyof the fire. It appeared that Bastable's claim to Dermod's friendshiprested upon his skill in preparing a particular brew of toddy, whichneeded a single oyster simmering in the saucepan to give it itsperfection of flavour. About two o'clock of a June morning the spiritlamp on which the saucepan stewed had been overset; neither of the twoconfederates in drink had their wits about them at the moment, and thehouse was half burnt and the rest of it ruined by water before the firecould be got under.
"There were consequences still more distressing than the destruction ofthe house," she continued. "The fire was a beacon warning to Dermod'screditors for one thing, and Dermod, already overpowered with debts,fell in a day upon complete ruin. He was drenched by the water hosesbesides, and took a chill which nearly killed him, from the effects ofwhich he has never recovered. You will find him a broken man. Theestates are let, and Ethne is now living with her father in a littlemountain village in Donegal."
Mrs. Adair had not looked at Durrance while she spoke. She kept her eyesfixed steadily in front of her, and indeed she spoke without feeling onone side or the other, but rather like a person constraining herself tospeech because speech was a necessity. Nor did she turn to look atDurrance when she had done.
"So she has lost everything?" said Durrance.
"She still has a home in Donegal," returned Mrs. Adair.
"And that means a great deal to her," said Durrance, slowly. "Yes, Ithink you are right."
"It means," said Mrs. Adair, "that Ethne with all her ill-luck hasreason to be envied by many other women."
Durrance did not answer that suggestion directly. He watched thecarriages drive past, he listened to the chatter and the laughter of thepeople about him, his eyes were refreshed by the women in theirlight-coloured frocks; and all the time his slow mind was working towardthe lame expression of his philosophy. Mrs. Adair turned to him with aslight impatience in the end.
"Of what are you thinking?" she asked.
"That women suffer much more than men when the world goes wrong withthem," he answered, and the answer was rather a question than a definiteassertion. "I know very little, of course. I can only guess. But I thinkwomen gather up into themselves what they have been through much morethan we do. To them what is past becomes a real part of them, as much apart of them as a limb; to us it's always something external, at thebest the rung of a ladder, at the worst a weight on the heel. Don't youthink so, too? I phrase the thought badly. But put it this way: Womenlook backwards, we look ahead; so misfortune hits them harder, eh?"
Mrs. Adair answered in her own way. She did not expressly agree. But acertain humility became audible in her voice.
"The mountain village at which Ethne is living," she said in a lowvoice, "is called Glenalla. A track strikes up towards it from the roadhalfway between Rathmullen and Ramelton." She rose as she finished thesentence and held out her hand. "Shall I see you?"
"You are still in Hill Street?" said Durrance. "I shall be for a timein London."
Mrs. Adair raised her eyebrows. She looked always by nature for theintricate and concealed motive, so that conduct which sprang from areason, obvious and simple, was likely to baffle her. She was bafflednow by Durrance's resolve to remain in town. Why did he not travel atonce to Donegal, she asked herself, since thither his thoughtsundoubtedly preceded him. She heard of his continual presence at hisService Club, and could not understand. She did not even have asuspicion of his motive when he himself informed her that he hadtravelled into Surrey and had spent a day with General Feversham.
It had been an ineffectual day for Durrance. The general kept himsteadily to the history of the campaign from which he had just returned.Only once was he able to approach the topic of Harry Feversham'sdisappearance, and at the mere mention of his son's name the oldgeneral's face set like plaster. It became void of expression andinattentive as a mask.
"We will talk of something else, if you please," said he; and Durrancereturned to London not an inch near
er to Donegal.
Thereafter he sat under the great tree in the inner courtyard of hisclub, talking to this man and to that, and still unsatisfied with theconversation. All through that June the afternoons and evenings foundhim at his post. Never a friend of Feversham's passed by the tree butDurrance had a word for him, and the word led always to a question. Butthe question elicited no answer except a shrug of the shoulders, and a"Hanged if I know!"
Harry Feversham's place knew him no more; he had dropped even out of thespeculations of his friends.
Toward the end of June, however, an old retired naval officer limpedinto the courtyard, saw Durrance, hesitated, and began with a remarkablealacrity to move away.
Durrance sprang up from his seat.
"Mr. Sutch," said he. "You have forgotten me?"
"Colonel Durrance, to be sure," said the embarrassed lieutenant. "It issome while since we met, but I remember you very well now. I think wemet--let me see--where was it? An old man's memory, Colonel Durrance, islike a leaky ship. It comes to harbour with its cargo of recollectionsswamped."
Neither the lieutenant's present embarrassment nor his previoushesitation escaped Durrance's notice.
"We met at Broad Place," said he. "I wish you to give me news of myfriend Feversham. Why was his engagement with Miss Eustace broken off?Where is he now?"
The lieutenant's eyes gleamed for a moment with satisfaction. He hadalways been doubtful whether Durrance was aware of Harry's fall intodisgrace. Durrance plainly did not know.
"There is only one person in the world, I believe," said Sutch, "who cananswer both your questions."
Durrance was in no way disconcerted.
"Yes. I have waited here a month for you," he replied.
Lieutenant Sutch pushed his fingers through his beard, and stared downat his companion.
"Well, it is true," he admitted. "I can answer your questions, but Iwill not."
"Harry Feversham is my friend."
"General Feversham is his father, yet he knows only half the truth. MissEustace was betrothed to him, and she knows no more. I pledged my wordto Harry that I would keep silence."
"It is not curiosity which makes me ask."
"I am sure that, on the contrary, it is friendship," said thelieutenant, cordially.
"Nor that entirely. There is another aspect of the matter. I will notask you to answer my questions, but I will put a third one to you. It isone harder for me to ask than for you to answer. Would a friend of HarryFeversham be at all disloyal to that friendship, if"--and Durranceflushed beneath his sunburn--"if he tried his luck with Miss Eustace?"
The question startled Lieutenant Sutch.
"You?" he exclaimed, and he stood considering Durrance, remembering therapidity of his promotion, speculating upon his likelihood to take awoman's fancy. Here was an aspect of the case, indeed, to which he hadnot given a thought, and he was no less troubled than startled. Forthere had grown up within him a jealousy on behalf of Harry Feversham asstrong as a mother's for a favourite second son. He had nursed with amost pleasurable anticipation a hope that, in the end, Harry would comeback to all that he once had owned, like a rethroned king. He stared atDurrance and saw the hope stricken. Durrance looked the man of couragewhich his record proved him to be, and Lieutenant Sutch had his theoryof women. "Brute courage--they make a god of it."
"Well?" asked Durrance.
Lieutenant Sutch was aware that he must answer. He was sorely tempted tolie. For he knew enough of the man who questioned him to be certain thatthe lie would have its effect. Durrance would go back to the Soudan, andleave his suit unpressed.
"Well?"
Sutch looked up at the sky and down upon the flags. Harry had foreseenthat this complication was likely to occur, he had not wished that Ethneshould wait. Sutch imagined him at this very moment, lost somewhereunder the burning sun, and compared that picture with the one before hiseyes--the successful soldier taking his ease at his club. He feltinclined to break his promise, to tell the whole truth, to answer boththe questions which Durrance had first asked. And again the pitilessmonosyllable demanded his reply.
"Well?"
"No," said Sutch, regretfully. "There would be no disloyalty."
And on that evening Durrance took the train for Holyhead.