he moved, that he could not now fail and the world go on, that there could be no injustice in the whole scheme of the universe great enough to lay this heavy burden upon the one man least fitted to bear it and then callously to destroy him because he tried.
Fear had him in its grip on that morning three days after he had left Abou Fatma at the wells, when coming over a slope he first saw the sand stretched like a lagoon up to the dark brown walls of the town, and the overshadowing foliage of the big date palms rising on the Nile bank beyond. Within those walls were the crowded Dervishes. It was surely the merest madness for a man to imagine that he could escape detection there, even for an hour. Was it right, he began to ask, that a man should even try? The longer he stood, the more insistent did this question grow. The low mud walls grew strangely sinister; the welcome green of the waving palms, after so many arid days of sun and sand and stones, became an ironical invitation to death. He began to wonder whether he had not already done enough for honour in venturing so near.
The sun beat upon him; his strength ebbed from him as though his veins were opened. If he were caught, he thought, as surely he would be-oh, very surely! He saw the fanatical faces crowding fiercely about him… were not mutilations practised?… He looked about him, shivering even in that strong heat, and the great loneliness of the place smote upon him, so that his knees shook. He faced about and commenced to run, leaping in a panic alone and unpursued across the naked desert under the sun, while from his throat feeble cries broke inarticulately.
He ran, however, only for a few yards, and it was the very violence of his flight which stopped him. These four years of anticipation were as nothing, then? He had schooled himself in the tongue, he had lived in the bazaars, to no end? He was still the craven who had sent in his papers? The quiet confidence with which he had revealed his plan to Lieutenant Sutch over the table in the Criterion grill-room was the mere vainglory of a man who continually deceived himself? And Ethne?…
He dropped upon the ground and, drawing his coat over his head, lay, a brown spot indistinguishable from the sand about him, an irregularity in the great waste surface of earth. He shut the prospect from his eyes, and over the thousands of miles of continent and sea he drew Ethne's face towards him. A little while and he was back again in Donegal. The summer night whispered through the open doorway in the hall; in a room near by people danced to music. He saw the three feathers fluttering to the floor; he read the growing trouble in Ethne's face. If he could do this thing, and the still harder thing which now he knew to lie beyond, he might perhaps some day see that face cleared of its trouble. There were significant words too in his ears, 'I should have no doubt that you and I would see much of one another afterwards.' Towards the setting of the sun he rose from the ground, and walking down towards Berber, passed between the gates.
Chapter XI — Durrance Hears News of Feversham
A month later Durrance arrived in London and discovered a letter from Ethne awaiting him at his club. It told him simply that she was staying with Mrs. Adair, and would be glad if he would find the time to call; but there was a black border to the paper and the envelope. Durrance called at Hill Street the next afternoon and found Ethne alone.
'I did not write to Wadi Halfa,' she explained at once, 'for I thought that you would be on your way home before my letter could arrive. My father died last month, towards the end of May.'
'I was afraid when I got your letter that you would have this to tell me,' he replied. 'I am very sorry. You will miss him.'
'More than I can say,' said she, with a quiet depth of feeling. 'He died one morning early-I think I will tell you if you would care to hear,' and she related to him the manner of Dermod's death, of which a chill was the occasion rather than the cause; for he died of a gradual dissolution rather than a definite disease.
It was a curious story which Ethne had to tell, for it seemed that just before his death Dermod recaptured something of his old masterful spirit. 'We knew that he was dying,' Ethne said. 'He knew it too, and at seven o'clock of the afternoon after-' she hesitated for a moment and resumed, 'after he had spoken for a little while to me, he called his dog by name. The dog sprang at once on to the bed, though his voice had not risen above a whisper, and crouching quite close, pushed its muzzle with a whine under my father's hand. Then he told me to leave him and the dog altogether alone. I was to shut the door upon him. The dog would tell me when to open it again. I obeyed him and waited outside the door until one o'clock. Then a loud sudden howl moaned through the house.' She stopped for a while. This pause was the only sign of distress which she gave, and in a few moments she went on, speaking quite simply, without any of the affectations of grief. 'It was trying to wait outside that door while the afternoon faded and the night came. It was night, of course, long before the end. He would have no lamp left in his room. One imagined him just the other side of that thin door-panel, lying very still and silent in the great four-poster bed with his face towards the hills, and the light falling. One imagined the room slipping away into darkness, and the windows continually looming into a greater importance, and the dog by his side and no one else, right to the very end. He would have it that way, but it was rather hard for me.'
Durrance said nothing in reply, but gave her in full measure what she most needed, the sympathy of his silence. He imagined those hours in the passage, six hours of twilight and darkness; he could picture her standing close by the door, with her ear perhaps to the panel, and her hand upon her heart to check its loud beating. There was something rather cruel, he thought, in Dermod's resolve to die alone. It was Ethne who broke the silence.
'I said that my father spoke to me just before he told me to leave him. Of whom do you think he spoke?'
She was looking directly at Durrance as she put the question. From neither her eyes nor the level tone of her voice could he gather anything of the answer, but a sudden throb of hope caught away his breath.
'Tell me!' he said, in a sort of suspense, as he leaned forward in his chair.
'Of Mr. Feversham,' she answered, and he drew back again, and rather suddenly. It was evident that this was not the name which he had expected. He took his eyes from hers and stared downwards at the carpet, so that she might not see his face.
'My father was always very fond of him,' she continued gently, 'and I think that I would like to know if you have any knowledge of what he is doing or where he is.'
Durrance did not answer nor did he raise his face. He reflected upon the strange strong hold which Harry Feversham kept upon the affections of those who had once known him well; so that even the man whom he had wronged, and upon whose daughter he had brought much suffering, must remember him with kindliness upon his death-bed. The reflection was not without its bitterness to Durrance at this moment, and this bitterness he was afraid that his face and voice might both betray. But he was compelled to speak, for Ethne insisted.
'You have never come across him, I suppose?' she asked.
Durrance rose from his seat and walked to the window before he answered. He spoke looking out into the street, but though he thus concealed the expression of his face, a thrill of deep anger sounded through his words, in spite of his efforts to subdue his tones.
'No,' he said, 'I never have,' and suddenly his anger had its way with him; it chose as well as informed his words. 'And I never wish to,' he cried. 'He was my friend, I know. But I cannot remember that friendship now. I can only think that if he had been the true man we took him for, you would not have waited alone in that dark passage during those six hours.' He turned again to the centre of the room and asked abruptly: 'You are going back to Glenalla?'
'Yes.'
'You will live there alone?'
'Yes.'
For a little while there was silence between them. Then Durrance walked round to the back of her chair.
'You once said that you would perhaps tell me why your engagement was broken off.'
'But you know,' she said. 'What you said at the window showed that you knew.'
'No, I do not. One or two words your father let drop. He asked me for news of Feversham the last time that I spoke with him. But I know nothing definite. I should like you to tell me.'
Ethne shook her head and leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. 'Not now,' she said, and silence again followed her words. Durrance broke it again.
'I have only one more year at Halfa. It would be wise to leave Egypt then, I think. I do not expect much will
