Harry Feversham's place knew him no more; he had dropped even out of the speculations of his friends.
Toward the end of June, however, an old retired naval officer limped into the courtyard, saw Durrance, hesitated, and began with a remarkable alacrity 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 is some while since we met, but I remember you very well now. I think we met-let me see-where was it? An old man's memory, Colonel Durrance, is like a leaky ship. It comes to harbour with its cargo of recollections swamped."
Neither the lieutenant's present embarrassment nor his previous hesitation escaped Durrance's notice.
"We met at Broad Place," said he. "I wish you to give me news of my friend 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 had always been doubtful whether Durrance was aware of Harry's fall into disgrace. Durrance plainly did not know.
"There is only one person in the world, I believe," said Sutch, "who can answer 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 down at his companion.
"Well, it is true," he admitted. "I can answer your questions, but I will not."
"Harry Feversham is my friend."
"General Feversham is his father, yet he knows only half the truth. Miss Eustace was betrothed to him, and she knows no more. I pledged my word to 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 the lieutenant, cordially.
"Nor that entirely. There is another aspect of the matter. I will not ask you to answer my questions, but I will put a third one to you. It is one harder for me to ask than for you to answer. Would a friend of Harry Feversham be at all disloyal to that friendship, if"-and Durrance flushed 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 the rapidity of his promotion, speculating upon his likelihood to take a woman's fancy. Here was an aspect of the case, indeed, to which he had not given a thought, and he was no less troubled than startled. For there had grown up within him a jealousy on behalf of Harry Feversham as strong as a mother's for a favourite second son. He had nursed with a most pleasurable anticipation a hope that, in the end, Harry would come back to all that he once had owned, like a rethroned king. He stared at Durrance and saw the hope stricken. Durrance looked the man of courage which his record proved him to be, and Lieutenant Sutch had his theory of women. "Brute courage-they make a god of it."
"Well?" asked Durrance.
Lieutenant Sutch was aware that he must answer. He was sorely tempted to lie. For he knew enough of the man who questioned him to be certain that the lie would have its effect. Durrance would go back to the Soudan, and leave his suit unpressed.
"Well?"
Sutch looked up at the sky and down upon the flags. Harry had foreseen that this complication was likely to occur, he had not wished that Ethne should wait. Sutch imagined him at this very moment, lost somewhere under the burning sun, and compared that picture with the one before his eyes-the successful soldier taking his ease at his club. He felt inclined to break his promise, to tell the whole truth, to answer both the questions which Durrance had first asked. And again the pitiless monosyllable demanded his reply.
"Well?"
"No," said Sutch, regretfully. "There would be no disloyalty."
And on that evening Durrance took the train for Holyhead.
Chapter IX — At Glenalla
The farm-house stood a mile above the village, in a wild moorland country. The heather encroached upon its garden, and the bridle-path ended at its door. On three sides an amphitheatre of hills, which changed so instantly to the season that it seemed one could distinguish from day to day a new gradation in their colours, harboured it like a ship. No trees grew upon those hills, the granite cropped out amidst the moss and heather; but they had a friendly sheltering look, and Durrance came almost to believe that they put on their different draperies of emerald green, and purple, and russet brown consciously to delight the eyes of the girl they sheltered. The house faced the long slope of country to the inlet of the Lough. From the windows the eye reached down over the sparse thickets, the few tilled fields, the whitewashed cottages, to the tall woods upon the bank, and caught a glimpse of bright water and the gulls poising and dipping above it. Durrance rode up the track upon an afternoon and knew the house at once. For as he approached, the music of a violin floated towards him from the windows like a welcome. His hand was checked upon the reins, and a particular strong hope, about which he had allowed his fancies to play, rose up within him and suspended his breath.
He tied up his horse and entered in at the gate. A formless barrack without, the house within was a place of comfort. The room into which he was shown, with its brasses and its gleaming oak and its wide prospect, was bright as the afternoon itself. Durrance imagined it, too, with the blinds drawn upon a winter's night, and the fire red on the hearth, and the wind skirling about the hills and rapping on the panes.
Ethne greeted him without the least mark of surprise.
"I thought that you would come," she said, and a smile shone upon her face.
Durrance laughed suddenly as they shook hands, and Ethne wondered why. She followed the direction of his eyes towards the violin which lay upon a table at her side. It was pale in colour; there was a mark, too, close to the bridge, where a morsel of worm-eaten wood had been replaced.
"It is yours," she said. "You were in Egypt. I could not well send it back to you there."
"I have hoped lately, since I knew," returned Durrance, "that, nevertheless, you would accept it."
"You see I have," said Ethne, and looking straight into his eyes she added: "I accepted it some while ago. There was a time when I needed to be assured that I had sure friends. And a thing tangible helped. I was very glad to have it."
Durrance took the instrument from the table, handling it delicately, like a sacred vessel.
"You have played upon it? The Musoline overture, perhaps," said he.
"Do you remember that?" she returned, with a laugh. "Yes, I have played upon it, but only recently. For a long time I put my violin away. It talked to me too intimately of many things which I wished to forget," and these words, like the rest, she spoke without hesitation or any down-dropping of the eyes.
Durrance fetched up his luggage from Rathmullen the next day, and stayed at the farm for a week. But up to the last hour of his visit no further reference was made to Harry Feversham by either Ethne or Durrance, although they were thrown much into each other's company. For Dermod was even more broken than Mrs. Adair's description had led Durrance to expect. His speech was all dwindled to monosyllables; his frame was shrunken, and his clothes bagged upon his limbs; his very stature seemed lessened; even the anger was clouded from his eye; he had become a stay-at-home, dozing for the most part of the day by a fire, even in that July weather; his longest walk was to the little grey church which stood naked upon a mound some quarter of a mile away and within view of the windows, and even that walk taxed his strength. He was an old man fallen upon decrepitude, and almost out of recognition, so that his gestures and the rare tones of his voice struck upon Durrance as something painful, like the mimicry of a dead man. His collie dog seemed to age in company, and, to see them side by side, one might have said, in sympathy.