Bending his head, Trench could now hear the words. They were the words of a man in delirium, spoken in a voice of great pleading. He was telling some tale of the sea, it seemed.
'I saw the riding lights of the yachts-and the reflections shortening and lengthening as the water rippled- there was a band, too, as we passed the pier-head. What was it playing? Not the overture-and I don't think that I remember any other tune…' And he laughed with a crazy chuckle. 'I was always pretty bad at appreciating music, wasn't I? except when you played,' and again he came back to the sea. 'There was the line of hills upon the right as the boat steamed out of the bay-you remember there were woods on the hillside-perhaps you have forgotten. Then came Bray, a little fairyland of lights close down by the water at the point of the ridge… you remember Bray, we lunched there once or twice, just you and I, before everything was settled… it seemed strange to be steaming out of Dublin Bay and leaving you a long way off to the north among the hills… strange and somehow not quite right… for that was the word you used when the morning came behind the blinds-it is not right that one should suffer so much pain
… the engines didn't stop, though, they just kept throbbing and revolving and clanking as though nothing had happened whatever… one felt a little angry about that… the fairyland was already only a sort of golden blot behind… and then nothing but sea and the salt wind… and the things to be done.'
The man in his delirium suddenly lifted himself upon an elbow, and with the other hand fumbled in his breast as though he searched for something. 'Yes, the things to be done,' he repeated in a mumbling voice, and he sank to unintelligible whisperings, with his head fallen upon his breast.
Trench put an arm about him and raised him up. But he could do nothing more, and even to him, crouched as he was close to the ground, the noisome heat was almost beyond endurance. In front, the din of shrill voices, the screams for pity, the swaying and struggling, went on in that appalling darkness. In one corner there were men singing in a mad frenzy, in another a few danced in their fetters, or rather tried to dance; in front of Trench Ibrahim maintained his guard; and beside Trench there lay in the House of Stone, in the town beyond the world, a man who one night had sailed out of Dublin Bay, past the riding lanterns of the yachts, and had seen Bray, that fairyland of lights, dwindle to a golden blot. To think of the sea and the salt wind, the sparkle of light as the water split at the ship's bows, the illuminated deck, perhaps the sound of a bell telling the hour, and the cool dim night about and above, so wrought upon Trench that, practical unimaginative creature as he was, for very yearning he could have wept. But the stranger at his side began to speak again.
'It is funny that those three faces were always the same… the man in the tent with the lancet in his hand, and the man in the back room off Piccadilly… and mine. Funny and not quite right. No, I don't think that was quite right either. They get quite big, too, just when you are going to sleep in the dark-quite big, and they come very close to you and won't go away… they rather frighten one…' And he suddenly clung to Trench with a close, nervous grip, like a boy in an extremity of fear. And it was in the tone of reassurance that a man might use to a boy that Trench replied, 'It's all right, old man, it's all right.'
But Trench's companion was already relieved of his fear. He had come out of his boyhood, and was rehearsing some interview which was to take place in the future.
'Will you take it back?' he asked, with a great deal of hesitation and timidity. 'Really? The others have, all except the man who died at Tamai. And you will too!' He spoke as though he could hardly believe some piece of great good fortune which had befallen him. Then his voice changed to that of a man belittling his misfortunes. 'Oh, it hasn't been the best of times, of course. But then one didn't expect the best of times. And at the worst, one had always the afterwards to look forward to… supposing one didn't run… I'm not sure that when the whole thing's balanced, it won't come out that you have really had the worst time. I know you… it would hurt you through and through, pride and heart and everything, and for a long time just as much as it hurt that morning when the daylight came through the blinds. And you couldn't do anything! And you hadn't the afterwards to help you-you weren't looking forward to it all the time as I was… it was all over and done with for you…' and he lapsed again into mutterings.
Colonel Trench's delight in the sound of his native tongue had now given place to a great curiosity as to the man who spoke and what he said. Trench had described himself a long while ago as he stood opposite the cab- stand in the southwest corner of St. James's Square: 'I am an inquisitive, methodical person,' he had said, and he had not described himself amiss. Here was a life history, it seemed, being unfolded to his ears, and not the happiest of histories, perhaps, indeed, with something of tragedy at the heart of it. Trench began to speculate upon the meaning of that word 'afterwards,' which came and went among the words like the motif in a piece of music and very likely was the life motif of the man who spoke them.
In the prison the heat became stifling, the darkness more oppressive, but the cries and shouts were dying down; their volume was less great, their intonation less shrill; stupor and fatigue and exhaustion were having their effect. Trench bent his head again to his companion and now heard more clearly.
'I saw your light that morning… you put it out suddenly… did you hear my step on the gravel?… I thought you did, it hurt rather,' and then he broke out into an emphatic protest. 'No, no, I had no idea that you would wait. I had no wish that you should. Afterwards, perhaps, I thought, but nothing more, upon my word. Sutch was quite wrong… Of course there was always the chance that one might come to grief oneself-get killed, you know, or fall ill and die-before one asked you to take your feather back; and then there wouldn't even have been a chance of the afterwards. But that is the risk one had to take.'
The allusion was not direct enough for Colonel Trench's comprehension. He heard the word 'feather,' but he could not connect it as yet with any action of his own. He was more curious than ever about that 'afterwards'; he began to have a glimmering of its meaning, and he was struck with wonderment at the thought of how many men there were going about the world with a calm and commonplace demeanour beneath which were hidden quaint fancies and poetic beliefs, never to be so much as suspected, until illness deprived the brain of its control.
'No, one of the reasons why I never said anything that night to you about what I intended was, I think, that I did not wish you to wait or have any suspicion of what I was going to attempt.' And then expostulation ceased, and he began to speak in a tone of interest. 'Do you know, it has only occurred to me since I came to the Soudan, but I believe that Durrance cared.'
The name came with something of a shock upon Trench's ears. This man knew Durrance! He was not merely a stranger of Trench's blood, but he knew Durrance even as Trench knew him. There was a link between them, they had a friend in common. He knew Durrance, had fought in the same square with him, perhaps, at Tokar, or Tamai, or Tamanieb, just as Trench had done! And so Trench's curiosity as to the life history in its turn gave place to a curiosity as to the identity of the man. He tried to see, knowing that in that black and noisome hovel sight was impossible. He might hear, though, enough to be assured. For if the stranger knew Durrance, it might be that he knew Trench as well. Trench listened; the sound of the voice, high pitched and rambling, told him nothing. He waited for the words, and the words came.
'Durrance stood at the window, after I had told them about you, Ethne,' and Trench repeated the name to himself. It was to a woman, then, that his new-found compatriot, this friend of Durrance, in his delirium imagined himself to be speaking-a woman named Ethne. Trench could recall no such name; but the voice in the dark went on.
'All the time when I was proposing to send in my papers, after the telegram had come, he stood at the window of my rooms with his back to me, looking out across the park. I fancied he blamed me. But I think now he was making up his mind to lose you… I wonder.'
Trench uttered so startled an exclamation that Ibrahim turned round.
'Is he dead?'
'No, he lives, he lives.'
It was impossible, Trench argued. He remembered quite clearly Durrance standing by a window with his back to the room. He remembered a telegram coming which took a long while in the reading-which diffused among all except Durrance an inexplicable suspense. He remembered, too, a man who spoke of his betrothal and of sending in his papers. But surely this could not be the man. Was the woman's name Ethne? A woman of Donegal-yes; and this man had spoken of sailing out of Dublin Bay-he had spoken, too, of a feather.
'Good God!' whispered Trench. 'Was the name Ethne? Was it? Was it?'
But for a while he received no answer. He heard only talk of a mud-walled city, and an intolerable sun burning upon a wide round of desert, and a man who lay there all the day with his linen robe drawn over his head, and slowly drew one face towards him across three thousand miles, until at sunset it was near, and he took courage and went down into the gate. And after that, four words stabbed Trench.
