Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 18, 2025
The wish, indeed, was almost curtly expressed, but there was nothing wanting in it to Feversham's ears. The friendship between these two men was not one in which affectionate phrases had any part. There was, in truth, no need of such.
Feversham's disgrace and ruin, Ethne's years of unhappiness, the wearying pretences of the last few months, all had their origin years ago when Mrs. Adair, to keep Durrance to herself, threw Feversham and Ethne into each other's company. "I succeeded," continued Mrs. Adair. "You told me that I had succeeded one morning in the Row. How glad I was! You did not notice it, I am sure.
"I t'ink you 'ave 'urt Sare Rowland," said Feversham composedly in his bad English. "Who are you, sare?" "This lady's husband," answered Wilding, whereupon the captain stared and Feversham's brows went up in surprised amusement. "So-ho! T'at true?" quoth the latter in a tone suggesting that it explained everything to him.
They stood up, looked at each other with a smile, and so walked slowly back to the house. It was an afternoon which Feversham was long to remember; for the next night was the night of the dance, and as the band struck up the opening bars of the fourth waltz, Ethne left her position at the drawing-room door, and taking Feversham's arm passed out into the hall.
Quite slowly their meaning broke in on Feversham's mind; quite slowly he recognised the man who uttered them. "Abou Fatma!" he said. "Hoosh!" returned Abou Fatma, "the camels are ready." "Now?" "Now." Trench leaned against the wall with his eyes closed, and the face of a sick man. It seemed that he would swoon, and Feversham took him by the arm. "Is it true?"
Feversham's scarred wrists confirmed the tale. "Well, I felt myself getting light-headed there," he went on. "I made up my mind that of your escape I must let no hint slip. So I tried to think of something else with all my might, when I was going off my head." And he laughed a little to himself. "That was why you heard me talk of Ethne," he explained.
Feversham did not ask him to explain what his allusion meant, nor could Trench have disclosed why he had spoken it; the words had come back to him suddenly with a feeling that it was somehow appropriate that the vision which was the last thing to meet Feversham's eyes as he set out upon his mission he should see again now that that mission was accomplished.
I might have been out there, sitting by a camp-fire in the desert, talking over the battle with Jack Durrance; or dead perhaps. What would it have mattered? I might have been in Egypt to-night!" Feversham's unexpected appearance, no less than his wandering tongue, told Sutch that somehow his fortunes had gone seriously wrong.
This was the most mysterious part of Harry Feversham's story to Captain Willoughby. Here was a man who so shrank from the possibilities of battle, that he must actually send in his papers rather than confront them; yet when he stood in dire and immediate peril he felt no fear. Captain Willoughby might well turn to Ethne for an explanation.
As he did so, Durrance laid down his cigar upon the table edge. "And we shall never dine with Castleton again," he said slowly. "Castleton wasn't there," Willoughby exclaimed, and quickly enough to betray that, however long the interval since that little dinner in Feversham's rooms, it was at all events still distinct in his recollections. "No, but he was expected," said Durrance.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking