Part 43 (2/2)

And for a moment he did not understand.

”That fourth feather,” she said.

He drew his letter-case from his coat, and shook two feathers out into the palm of his hand. The larger one, the ostrich feather, he held out to her. But she said:--

”Both.”

There was no reason why he should keep Castleton's feather any longer.

He handed them both to her, since she asked for them, and she clasped them, and with a smile treasured them against her breast.

”I have the four feathers now,” she said.

”Yes,” answered Feversham; ”all four. What will you do with them?”

Ethne's smile became a laugh.

”Do with them!” she cried in scorn. ”I shall do nothing with them. I shall keep them. I am very proud to have them to keep.”

She kept them, as she had once kept Harry Feversham's portrait. There was something perhaps in Durrance's contention that women so much more than men gather up their experiences and live upon them, looking backwards. Feversham, at all events, would now have dropped the feathers then and there and crushed them into the dust of the path with his heel; they had done their work. They could no longer reproach, they were no longer needed to encourage, they were dead things. Ethne, however, held them tight in her hand; to her they were not dead.

”Colonel Trench was here a fortnight ago,” she said. ”He told me you were bringing it back to me.”

”But he did not know of the fourth feather,” said Feversham. ”I never told any man that I had it.”

”Yes. You told Colonel Trench on your first night in the House of Stone at Omdurman. He told me. I no longer hate him,” she added, but without a smile and quite seriously, as though it was an important statement which needed careful recognition.

”I am glad of that,” said Feversham. ”He is a great friend of mine.”

Ethne was silent for a moment or two. Then she said:--

”I wonder whether you have forgotten our drive from Ramelton to our house when I came to fetch you from the quay? We were alone in the dog-cart, and we spoke--”

”Of the friends whom one knows for friends the first moment, and whom one seems to recognise even though one has never seen them before,”

interrupted Feversham. ”Indeed I remember.”

”And whom one never loses whether absent or dead,” continued Ethne. ”I said that one could always be sure of such friends, and you answered--”

”I answered that one could make mistakes,” again Feversham interrupted.

”Yes, and I disagreed. I said that one might seem to make mistakes, and perhaps think so for a long while, but that in the end one would be proved not to have made them. I have often thought of those words. I remembered them very clearly when Captain Willoughby brought to me the first feather, and with a great deal of remorse. I remember them again very clearly to-day, although I have no room in my thoughts for remorse.

I was right, you see, and I should have clung firmly to my faith. But I did not.” Her voice shook a little, and pleaded as she went on: ”I was young. I knew very little. I was unaware how little. I judged hastily; but to-day I understand.”

She opened her hand and gazed for a while at the white feathers. Then she turned and went inside the church. Feversham followed her.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

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