“I saw you in the crowd,” continued Feversham. “I thought that I would speak to you, because—do you remember, a long time ago you gave me your card? I have always kept it, because I have always feared that I would have reason to use it. You said that if one was in trouble, the telling might help.”
Sutch stopped his companion.
“We will go in here. We can find a quiet corner in the upper smoking-room;” and Harry, looking up, saw that he was standing by the steps of the Army and Navy Club.
“Good God, not there!” he cried in a sharp low voice, and moved quickly into the roadway, where no light fell directly on his face. Sutch limped after him. “Nor tonight. It is late. Tomorrow if you will, in some quiet place, and after nightfall. I do not go out in the daylight.”
Again Lieutenant Sutch asked no questions.
“I know a quiet restaurant,” he said. “If we dine there at nine, we shall meet no one whom we know. I will meet you just before nine tomorrow night at the corner of Swallow Street.”
They dined together accordingly on the following evening, at a table in the corner of the Criterion grillroom. Feversham looked quickly about him as he entered the room.
“I dine here often when I am in town,” said Sutch. “Listen!” The throbbing of the engines working the electric light could be distinctly heard, their vibrations could be felt.
“It reminds me of a ship,” said Sutch, with a smile. “I can almost fancy myself in the gun-room again. We will have dinner. Then you shall tell me your story.”
“You have heard nothing of it?” asked Feversham, suspiciously.
“Not a word;” and Feversham drew a breath of relief. It had seemed to him that everyone must know. He imagined contempt on every face which passed him in the street.
Lieutenant Sutch was even more concerned this evening than he had been the night before. He saw Harry Feversham clearly now in a full light. Harry’s face was thin and haggard with lack of sleep, there were black hollows beneath his eyes; he drew his breath and made his movements in a restless feverish fashion, his nerves seemed strung to breaking-point. Once or twice between the courses he began his story, but Sutch would not listen until the cloth was cleared.
“Now,” said he, holding out his cigar-case. “Take your time, Harry.”
Thereupon Feversham told him the whole truth, without exaggeration or omission, forcing himself to a slow, careful, matter-of-fact speech, so that in the end Sutch almost fell into the illusion that it was just the story of a stranger which Feversham was recounting merely to pass the time. He began with the Crimean night at Broad Place, and ended with the ball at Lennon House.
“I came back across Lough Swilly early that morning,” he said in conclusion, “and travelled at once to London. Since then I have stayed in my rooms all day, listening to the bugles calling in the barrack-yard beneath my window. At night I prowl about the streets or lie in bed waiting for the Westminster clock to sound each new quarter of an hour. On foggy nights, too, I can hear steam-sirens on the river. Do you know when the ducks start quacking in St. James’s Park?” he asked with a laugh. “At two o’clock to the minute.”
Sutch listened to the story without an interruption. But halfway through the narrative he changed his attitude, and in a significant way. Up to the moment when Harry told of his concealment of the telegram, Sutch had sat with his arms upon the table in front of him, and his eyes upon his companion. Thereafter he raised a hand to his forehead, and so remained with his face screened while the rest was told. Feversham had no doubt of the reason. Lieutenant Sutch wished to conceal the scorn he felt, and could not trust the muscles of his face. Feversham, however, mitigated nothing, but continued steadily and truthfully to the end. But even after the end was reached, Sutch did not remove his hand, nor for some little while did he speak. When he did speak, his words came upon Feversham’s ears with a shock of surprise. There was no contempt in them, and though his voice shook, it shook with a great contrition.
“I am much to blame,” he said. “I should have spoken that night at Broad Place, and I held my tongue. I shall hardly forgive myself.” The knowledge that it was Muriel Graham’s son who had thus brought ruin and disgrace upon himself was uppermost in the lieutenant’s mind. He felt that he had failed in the discharge of an obligation, self-imposed, no doubt, but a very real obligation none the less. “You see, I understood,” he continued remorsefully. “Your father, I am afraid, never would.”
“He never will,” interrupted Harry.
“No,” Sutch agreed. “Your mother, of course, had she lived, would have seen clearly; but few women, I think, except your mother. Brute courage? Women make a god of it. That girl for instance—” and again Harry Feversham interrupted.
“You must not blame her. I was defrauding her into marriage.”
Sutch took his hand suddenly from his forehead.
“Suppose that you had never met her, would you still have sent in your papers?”
“I think not,” said Harry, slowly. “I want to be fair. Disgracing my name and those dead men in the hall I think I would have risked it. I could not risk disgracing her.”
And Lieutenant Sutch thumped his fist despairingly upon the table. “If only I had spoken at Broad Place. Harry, why didn’t you let me speak? I might have saved you many unnecessary years of torture. Good heavens! What a childhood you must have spent with that
