Ethne nodded her head.
“Yes. The moment I went upstairs that night I packed up your presents and addressed them to your rooms.”
“Yes, I got them in London.”
“But I put your photograph aside first of all to keep. I burnt all your letters after I had addressed the parcel and taken it down to the hall to be sent away. I had just finished burning your letters when I heard your step upon the gravel in the early morning underneath my windows. But I had already put your photograph aside. I have it now. I shall keep it and the feathers together.” She added after a moment:—
“I rather wish that you had had something of mine with you all the time.”
“I had no right to anything,” said Feversham.
There was still a narrow slip of gold upon the grey space of stone.
“What will you do now?” she asked.
“I shall go home first and see my father. It will depend upon the way we meet.”
“You will let Colonel Durrance know. I would like to hear about it.”
“Yes, I will write to Durrance.”
The slip of gold was gone, the clear light of a summer evening filled the church, a light without radiance or any colour.
“I shall not see you for a long while,” said Ethne, and for the first time her voice broke in a sob. “I shall not have a letter from you again.”
She leaned a little forward and bent her head, for the tears had gathered in her eyes. But she rose up bravely from her seat, and together they went out of the church side by side. She leaned towards him as they walked so that they touched.
Feversham untied his horse and mounted it. As his foot touched the stirrup Ethne caught her dog close to her.
“Goodbye,” she said. She did not now even try to smile, she held out her hand to him. He took it and bent down from his saddle close to her. She kept her eyes steadily upon him though the tears brimmed in them.
“Goodbye,” he said. He held her hand just for a little while, and then releasing it, rode down the hill. He rode for a hundred yards, stopped and looked back. Ethne had stopped, too, and with this space between them and their faces towards one another they remained. Ethne made no sign of recognition or farewell. She just stood and looked. Then she turned away and went up the village street towards her house alone and very slowly. Feversham watched her till she went in at the gate, but she became dim and blurred to his vision before even she had reached there. He was able to see, however, that she did not look back again.
He rode down the hill. The bad thing which he had done so long ago was not even by his six years of labour to be destroyed. It was still to live, its consequence was to be sorrow till the end of life for another than himself. That she took the sorrow bravely and without complaint, doing the straight and simple thing as her loyal nature bade her, did not diminish Harry Feversham’s remorse. On the contrary it taught him yet more clearly that she least of all deserved unhappiness. The harm was irreparable. Other women might have forgotten, but not she. For Ethne was of those who neither lightly feel nor lightly forget, and if they love cannot love with half a heart. She would be alone now, he knew, in spite of her marriage, alone up to the very end and at the actual moment of death.
XXXIII
Ethne Again Plays the “Melusine Overture”
The incredible words were spoken that evening. Ethne went into her farmhouse and sat down in the parlour. She felt cold that summer evening and had the fire lighted. She sat gazing into the bright coals with that stillness of attitude which was a sure sign with her of tense emotion. The moment so eagerly looked for had come, and it was over. She was alone now in her remote little village, out of the world in the hills, and more alone than she had been since Willoughby sailed on that August morning down the Salcombe estuary. From the time of Willoughby’s coming she had looked forward night and day to the one half-hour during which Harry Feversham would be with her. The half-hour had come and passed. She knew now how she had counted upon its coming, how she had lived for it. She felt lonely in a rather empty world. But it was part of her nature that she had foreseen this sense of loneliness; she had known that there would be a bad hour for her after she had sent Harry Feversham away, that all her heart and soul would clamour to her to call him back. And she forced herself, as she sat shivering by the fire, to remember that she had always foreseen and had always looked beyond it. Tomorrow she would know again that they had not parted forever, tomorrow she would compare the parting of today with the parting on the night of the ball at Lennon House, and recognise what a small thing this was to that. She fell to wondering what Harry Feversham would do now that he had returned, and while she was building up for him a future of great distinction she felt Dermod’s old collie dog nuzzling at her hand with his sure instinct that his mistress was in distress. Ethne rose from her chair and took the dog’s head between her hands and kissed it. He was very old, she thought; he would die soon and leave her, and then there would be years and years, perhaps, before she lay down in her bed and knew the great moment was at hand.
There came a knock upon the door, and a servant told her that Colonel Durrance was waiting.
“Yes,” she said, and as he entered
