There was a silence of some length, and then Feversham replied slowly: "For my part I am not sorry. I mean I am not sorry that she was present when the feathers came. I think, on the whole, that I am rather glad. She gave me the fourth feather, it is true, but I am glad of that as well. For without her presence, without that fourth feather snapped from her fan, I might have given up there and then. Who knows? I doubt if I could have stood up to the three long years in Suakin. I used to see you and Durrance and Willoughby and many men who had once been my friends, and you were all going about the work which I was used to. You can't think how the mere routine of a regiment to which one had become accustomed, and which one cursed heartily enough when one had to put up with it, appealed as something very desirable. I could so easily have run away. I could so easily have slipped on to a boat and gone back to Suez. And the chance for which I waited never came-for three years."
"You saw us?" said Trench. "And you gave no sign?"
"How would you have taken it if I had?" And Trench was silent. "No, I saw you, but I was careful that you should not see me. I doubt if I could have endured it without the recollection of that night at Ramelton, without the feel of the fourth feather to keep the recollection actual and recent in my thoughts. I should never have gone down from Obak into Berber. I should certainly never have joined you in Omdurman."
Trench turned quickly towards his companion.
"She would be glad to hear you say that," he said. "I have no doubt she is sorry about her fourth feather, sorry as I am about the other three."
"There is no reason that she should be, or that you either should be sorry. I don't blame you, or her," and in his turn Feversham was silent and looked towards the river. The air was shrill with cries, the shore was thronged with a motley of Arabs and negroes, dressed in their long robes of blue and yellow and dirty brown; the work of unloading the dhows went busily on; across the river and beyond its fork the palm trees of Khartum stood up against the cloudless sky; and the sun behind them was moving down to the west. In a few hours would come the horrors of the House of Stone. But they were both thinking of the elms by the Lennon River and a hall of which the door stood open to the cool night and which echoed softly to the music of a waltz, while a girl and a man stood with three white feathers fallen upon the floor between them; the one man recollected, the other imagined, the picture, and to both of them it was equally vivid. Feversham smiled at last.
"Perhaps she has now seen Willoughby; perhaps she has now taken his feather."
Trench held out his hand to his companion.
"I will take mine back now."
Feversham shook his head.
"No, not yet," and Trench's face suddenly lighted up. A hope which had struggled up in his hopeless breast during the three days and nights of his watch, a hope which he had striven to repress for very fear lest it might prove false, sprang to life.
"Not yet, — then you have a plan for our escape," and the anxiety returned to Feversham's face.
"I said nothing of it," he pleaded, "tell me that! When I was delirious in the prison there, I said nothing of it, I breathed no word of it? I told you of the four feathers, I told you of Ethne, but of the plan for your escape I said nothing."
"Not a single word. So that I myself was in doubt, and did not dare to believe," and Feversham's anxiety died away. He had spoken with his hand trembling upon Trench's arm, and his voice itself had trembled with alarm.
"You see if I spoke of that in the House of Stone," he exclaimed, "I might have spoken of it in Dongola. For in Dongola as well as in Omdurman I was delirious. But I didn't, you say-not here, at all events. So perhaps not there either. I was afraid that I should-how I was afraid! There was a woman in Dongola who spoke some English-very little, but enough. She had been in the 'Kauneesa' of Khartum when Gordon ruled there. She was sent to question me. I had unhappy times in Dongola."
Trench interrupted him in a low voice. "I know. You told me things which made me shiver," and he caught hold of Feversham's arm and thrust the loose sleeve back. Feversham's scarred wrists confirmed the tale.
"Well, I felt myself getting light-headed there," he went on. "I made up my mind that of your escape I must let no hint slip. So I tried to think of something else with all my might, when I was going off my head." And he laughed a little to himself.
"That was why you heard me talk of Ethne," he explained.
Trench sat nursing his knees and looking straight in front of him. He had paid no heed to Feversham's last words. He had dared now to give his hopes their way.
"So it's true," he said in a quiet wondering voice. "There will be a morning when we shall not drag ourselves out of the House of Stone. There will be nights when we shall sleep in beds, actually in beds. There will be-" He stopped with a sort of shy air like a man upon the brink of a confession. "There will be-something more," he said lamely, and then he got up on to his feet.
"We have sat here too long. Let us go forward."
They moved a hundred yards nearer to the river and sat down again.
"You have more than a hope. You have a plan of escape?" Trench asked eagerly.
"More than a plan," returned Feversham. "The preparations are made. There are camels waiting in the desert ten miles west of Omdurman."
"Now?" exclaimed Trench. "Now?"
"Yes, man, now. There are rifles and ammunition buried near the camels, provisions and water kept in readiness. We travel by Metemneh, where fresh camels wait, from Metemneh to Berber. There we cross the Nile; camels are waiting for us five miles from Berber. From Berber we ride in over the Kokreb pass to Suakin."
"When?" exclaimed Trench. "Oh, when, when?"
"When I have strength enough to sit a horse for ten miles, and a camel for a week," answered Feversham. "How soon will that be? Not long, Trench, I promise you not long," and he rose up from the ground.
"As you get up," he continued, "glance round. You will see a man in a blue linen dress, loitering between us and the gaol. As we came past him, he made me a sign. I did not return it. I shall return it on the day when we escape."
"He will wait?"
"For a month. We must manage on one night during that month to escape from the House of Stone. We can signal him to bring help. A passage might be made in one night through that wall; the stones are loosely built."
They walked a little farther and came to the water's edge. There amid the crowd they spoke again of their escape, but with the air of men amused at what went on about them.
"There is a better way than breaking through the wall," said Trench, and he uttered a laugh as he spoke and pointed to a prisoner with a great load upon his back who had fallen upon his face in the water, and encumbered by his fetters, pressed down by his load, was vainly struggling to lift himself again. "There is a better way. You have money?"
"Ai, ai!" shouted Feversham, roaring with laughter, as the prisoner half rose and soused again. "I have some concealed on me. Idris took what I did not conceal."
"Good!" said Trench. "Idris will come to you to-day or to-morrow. He will talk to you of the goodness of Allah who has brought you out of the wickedness of the world to the holy city of Omdurman. He will tell you at great length of the peril of your soul and of the only means of averting it, and he will wind up with a few significant sentences about his starving family. If you come to the aid of his starving family and bid him keep for himself fifteen dollars out of the amount he took from you, you may get permission to sleep in the zareeba outside the prison. Be content with that for a night or two. Then he will come to you again, and again you will assist his starving family, and this time you will ask for permission for me to sleep in the open too. Come! There's Idris shepherding us home."