The Four Feathers by A. E. W. Mason

Author:A. E. W. Mason [Mason, Alfred Edward Woodley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Adventure, War
Publisher: epubBooks (www.epubbooks.com)
Published: 1903-08-29T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XVIII

THE ANSWER TO THE OVERTURE

Ethne did not turn towards Durrance or move at all from her attitude. She sat with her violin upon her knees, looking across the moonlit garden to the band of silver in the gap of the trees; and she kept her position deliberately. For it helped her to believe that Harry Feversham himself was speaking to her, she was able to forget that he was speaking through the voice of Durrance. She almost forgot that Durrance was even in the room. She listened with Durrance’s own intentness, and anxious that the voice should speak very slowly, so that the message might take a long time in the telling, and she gather it all jealously to her heart.

"It was on the night before I started eastward into the desert—for the last time," said Durrance, and the deep longing and regret with which he dwelt upon that "last time" for once left Ethne quite untouched.

"Yes," she said. "That was in February. The middle of the month, wasn’t it? Do you remember the day? I should like to know the exact day if you can tell me."

"The fifteenth," said Durrance; and Ethne repeated the date meditatively.

"I was at Glenalla all February," she said. "What was I doing on the fifteenth? It does not matter."

She had felt a queer sort of surprise all the time while Willoughby was telling his story that morning, that she had not known, by some instinct, of these incidents at the actual moment of their occurrence. The surprise returned to her now. It was strange that she should have had to wait for this August night and this summer garden of moonlight and closed flowers before she learned of the meeting between Feversham and Durrance on February 15 and heard the message. And remorse came to her because of that delay. "It was my own fault," she said to herself. "If I had kept my faith in him I should have known at once. I am well punished." It did not at all occur to her that the message could convey any but the best of news. It would carry on the good tidings which she had already heard. It would enlarge and complete, so that this day might be rounded to perfection. Of this she was quite sure.

"Well?" she said. "Go on!"

"I had been busy all that day in my office finishing up my work. I turned the key in the door at ten o’clock, thinking with relief that for six weeks I should not open it, and I strolled northward out of Wadi Halfa along the Nile bank into the little town of Tewfikieh. As I entered the main street I saw a small crowd—Arabs, negroes, a Greek or two, and some Egyptian soldiers, standing outside the café, and lit up by a glare of light from within. As I came nearer I heard the sound of a violin and a zither, both most vilely played, jingling out a waltz. I stood at the back of the crowd and looked over the shoulders of the men in front of me into the room.

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