"And whom one never loses whether absent or dead," continued Ethne. "I said that one could always be sure of such friends, and you answered-"
"I answered that one could make mistakes," again Feversham interrupted.
"Yes, and I disagreed. I said that one might seem to make mistakes, and perhaps think so for a long while, but that in the end one would be proved not to have made them. I have often thought of those words. I remembered them very clearly when Captain Willoughby brought to me the first feather, and with a great deal of remorse. I remember them again very clearly to-day, although I have no room in my thoughts for remorse. I was right, you see, and I should have clung firmly to my faith. But I did not." Her voice shook a little, and pleaded as she went on: "I was young. I knew very little. I was unaware how little. I judged hastily; but to-day I understand."
She opened her hand and gazed for a while at the white feathers. Then she turned and went inside the church. Feversham followed her.
Chapter XXXII–In the Church at Glenalla
Ethne sat down in the corner of a pew next to the aisle, and Feversham took his stand beside her. It was very quiet and peaceful within that tiny church. The afternoon sun shone through the upper windows and made a golden haze about the roof. The natural murmurs of the summer floated pleasantly through the open door.
"I am glad that you remembered our drive and what we said," she continued. "It is rather important to me that you should remember. Because, although I have got you back, I am going to send you away from me again. You will be one of the absent friends whom I shall not lose because you are absent."
She spoke slowly, looking straight in front of her without faltering. It was a difficult speech for her to deliver, but she had thought over it night and day during this last fortnight, and the words were ready to her lips. At the first sight of Harry Feversham, recovered to her after so many years, so much suspense, so much suffering, it had seemed to her that she never would be able to speak them, however necessary it was that they should be spoken. But as they stood over against one another she had forced herself to remember that necessity until she actually recognised and felt it. Then she had gone back into the church and taken a seat, and gathered up her strength.
It would be easier for both of them, she thought, if she should give no sign of what so quick a separation cost her. He would know surely enough, and she wished him to know; she wished him to understand that not one moment of his six years, so far as she was concerned, had been spent in vain. But that could be understood without the signs of emotion. So she spoke her speech looking steadily straight forward and speaking in an even voice.
"I know that you will mind very much, just as I do. But there is no help for it," she resumed. "At all events you are at home again, with the right to be at home. It is a great comfort to me to know that. But there are other, much greater reasons from which we can both take comfort. Colonel Trench told me enough of your captivity to convince me that we both see with the same eyes. We both understand that this second parting, hard as it is, is still a very slight, small thing compared with the other, our first parting over at the house six years ago. I felt very lonely after that, as I shall not feel lonely now. There was a great barrier between us then separating us forever. We should never have met again here or afterwards. I am quite sure of that. But you have broken the barrier down by all your pain and bravery during these last years. I am no less sure of that. I am absolutely confident about it, and I believe you are too. So that although we shall not see one another here and as long as we live, the afterwards is quite sure for us both. And we can wait for that. You can. You have waited with so much strength all these years since we parted. And I can too, for I get strength from your victory."
She stopped, and for a while there was silence in that church. To Feversham her words were gracious as rain upon dry land. To hear her speak them uplifted him so that those six years of trial, of slinking into corners out of the sight of his fellows, of lonely endurance, of many heart-sinkings and much bodily pain, dwindled away into insignificance. They had indeed borne their fruit to him. For Ethne had spoken in a gentle voice just what his ears had so often longed to hear as he lay awake at night in the bazaar at Suakin, in the Nile villages, in the dim wide spaces of the desert, and what he had hardly dared to hope she ever would speak. He stood quite silently by her side, still hearing her voice though the voice had ceased. Long ago there were certain bitter words which she had spoken, and he had told Sutch, so closely had they clung and stung, that he believed in his dying moments he would hear them again and so go to his grave with her reproaches ringing in his ears. He remembered that prediction of his now and knew that it was false. The words he would hear would be those which she had just uttered.
For Ethne's proposal that they should separate he was not unprepared. He had heard already that she was engaged, and he did not argue against her wish. But he understood that she had more to say to him. And she had. But she was slow to speak it. This was the last time she was to see Harry Feversham; she meant resolutely to send him away. When once he had passed through that church door, through which the sunlight and the summer murmurs came, and his shadow gone from the threshold, she would never talk with him or set her eyes on him until her life was ended. So she deferred the moment of his going by silences and slow speech. It might be so very long before that end came. She had, she thought, the right to protract this one interview. She rather hoped that he would speak of his travels, his dangers; she was prepared to discuss at length with him even the politics of the Soudan. But he waited for her.
"I am going to be married," she said at length, "and immediately. I am to marry a friend of yours, Colonel Durrance."
There was hardly a pause before Feversham answered: "He has cared for you a long while. I was not aware of it until I went away, but, thinking over everything, I thought it likely, and in a very little time I became sure."
"He is blind."
"Blind!" exclaimed Feversham. "He, of all men, blind!"
"Exactly," said Ethne. "He-of all men. His blindness explains everything-why I marry him, why I send you away. It was after he went blind that I became engaged to him. It was before Captain Willoughby came to me with the first feather. It was between those two events. You see, after you went away one thought over things rather carefully. I used to lie awake and think, and I resolved that two men's lives should not be spoilt because of me."
"Mine was not," Feversham interrupted. "Please believe that."
"Partly it was," she returned, "I know very well. You would not own it for my sake, but it was. I was determined that a second should not be. And so when Colonel Durrance went blind-you know the man he was, you can understand what blindness meant to him, the loss of everything he cared for-"
"Except you."
"Yes," Ethne answered quietly, "except me. So I became engaged to him. But he has grown very quick-you cannot guess how quick. And he sees so very clearly. A hint tells him the whole hidden truth. At present he knows nothing of the four feathers."
"Are you sure?" suddenly exclaimed Feversham.
"Yes. Why?" asked Ethne, turning her face towards him for the first time since she had sat down.
"Lieutenant Sutch was at Suakin while I was at Omdurman. He knew that I was a prisoner there. He sent messages to me, he tried to organise my escape."
Ethne was startled.
"Oh," she said, "Colonel Durrance certainly knew that you were in Omdurman. He saw you in Wadi Halfa, and he heard that you had gone south into the desert. He was distressed about it; he asked a friend to get news of you, and the friend got news that you were in Omdurman. He told me so himself, and-yes, he told me that he would try to arrange for your escape. No doubt he has done that through Lieutenant Sutch. He has been at Wiesbaden with an oculist; he only returned a week ago. Otherwise he would have told me about it. Very likely he was the reason why Lieutenant Sutch was at Suakin, but he knows nothing of the four feathers. He only knows that our engagement was abruptly broken off; he believes that I have no longer any thought of you at all. But if you come back, if you and I saw anything of each other, however calmly we met, however indifferently we spoke, he would guess. He is so quick he would be sure to guess." She paused for a moment, and added in a whisper, "And he would guess right."