“No; I think it was Trench,” he replied.
“Ah, Trench!” Ethne exclaimed. She struck one clenched hand, the hand which held the feather, viciously into the palm of the other. “I will remember that name.”
“But I share his responsibility,” Willoughby assured her. “I do not shrink from it at all. I regret very much that we caused you pain and annoyance, but I do not acknowledge to any mistake in this matter. I take my feather back now, and I annul my accusation. But that is your doing.”
“Mine?” asked Ethne. “What do you mean?”
Captain Willoughby turned with surprise to his companion.
“A man may live in the Sudan and even yet not be wholly ignorant of women and their great quality of forgiveness. You gave the feathers back to Feversham in order that he might redeem his honour. That is evident.”
Ethne sprang to her feet before Captain Willoughby had come to the end of his sentence, and stood a little in front of him, with her face averted, and in an attitude remarkably still. Willoughby in his ignorance, like many another stupid man before him, had struck with a shrewdness and a vigour which he could never have compassed by the use of his wits. He had pointed out abruptly and suddenly to Ethne a way which she might have taken and had not, and her remorse warned her very clearly that it was the way which she ought to have taken. But she could rise to the heights. She did not seek to justify herself in her own eyes, nor would she allow Willoughby to continue in his misconception. She recognised that here she had failed in charity and justice, and she was glad that she had failed, since her failure had been the opportunity of greatness to Harry Feversham.
“Will you repeat what you said?” she asked in a low voice; “and ever so slowly, please.”
“You gave the feathers back into Feversham’s hand—”
“He told you that himself?”
“Yes;” and Willoughby resumed, “in order that he might by his subsequent bravery compel the men who sent them to take them back, and so redeem his honour.”
“He did not tell you that?”
“No. I guessed it. You see, Feversham’s disgrace was, on the face of it, impossible to retrieve. The opportunity might never have occurred—it was not likely to occur. As things happened, Feversham still waited for three years in the bazaar at Suakin before it did. No, Miss Eustace, it needed a woman’s faith to conceive that plan—a woman’s encouragement to keep the man who undertook it to his work.”
Ethne laughed and turned back to him. Her face was tender with pride, and more than tender. Pride seemed in some strange way to hallow her, to give an unimagined benignance to her eyes, an unearthly brightness to the smile upon her lips and the colour upon her cheeks. So that Willoughby, looking at her, was carried out of himself.
“Yes,” he cried, “you were the woman to plan this redemption.”
Ethne laughed again, and very happily.
“Did he tell you of a fourth white feather?” she asked.
“No.”
“I shall tell you the truth,” she said, as she resumed her seat. “The plan was of his devising from first to last. Nor did I encourage him to its execution. For until today I never heard a word of it. Since the night of that dance in Donegal I have had no message from Mr. Feversham, and no news of him. I told him to take up those three feathers because they were his, and I wished to show him that I agreed with the accusations of which they were the symbols. That seems cruel? But I did more. I snapped a fourth white feather from my fan and gave him that to carry away too. It is only fair that you should know. I wanted to make an end for ever and ever, not only of my acquaintanceship with him, but of every kindly thought he might keep of me, of every kindly thought I might keep of him. I wanted to be sure myself, and I wanted him to be sure, that we should always be strangers now and—and afterwards,” and the last words she spoke in a whisper. Captain Willoughby did not understand what she meant by them. It is possible that only Lieutenant Sutch and Harry Feversham himself would have understood.
“I was sad and sorry enough when I had done it,” she resumed. “Indeed, indeed, I think I have always been sorry since. I think that I have never at any minute during these five years quite forgotten that fourth white feather and the quiet air of dignity with which he took it. But today I am glad.” And her voice, though low, rang rich with the fullness of her pride. “Oh, very glad! For this was his thought, his deed. They are both all his, as I would have them be. I had no share, and of that I am very proud. He needed no woman’s faith, no woman’s encouragement.”
“Yet he sent this back to you,” said Willoughby, pointing in some perplexity to the feather which Ethne held.
“Yes,” she said, “yes. He knew that I should be glad to know.” And suddenly she held it close to her breast. Thus she sat for a while with her eyes shining, until Willoughby rose to his feet and pointed to the gap in the hedge by which they had entered the enclosure.
“By Jove! Jack Durrance,” he exclaimed.
Durrance was standing in the gap, which was the only means
