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More than once Lieutenant Sutch had forgotten that his visitor was blind, and he forgot the fact again. He lighted both candles and held out one to his companion. Durrance knew from the noise of Sutch's movements what he was doing. "I have no need of a candle," he said with a smile. The light fell full upon his face, and Sutch suddenly remarked how tired it looked and old.
Sutch saw the road run steeply down in front of him between forests of pines to a little railway station. The sight of the rails gleaming bright in the afternoon sunlight, and the telegraph poles running away in a straight line until they seemed to huddle together in the distance, increased Sutch's discomposure.
Sutch's house was searched for maps, the various routes by which the prisoners might escape were described by Durrance the great forty days' road from Kordofan on the west, the straight track from Omdurman to Berber and from Berber to Suakin, and the desert journey across the Belly of Stones by the wells of Murat to Korosko.
Harry Feversham's return might be a little awkward for Durrance, and Lieutenant Sutch with that notion in his mind blurted out his sentences awkwardly, but to his surprise Durrance answered him at once. "I was waiting for you to say that. I wanted you to realise without any suggestion of mine that Harry must return. It was with that object that I came." Lieutenant Sutch's relief was great.
He had some knowledge, though how he had gained it Sutch could not guess. But the knowledge was not to Sutch's idea quite accurate, and the inaccuracy did Harry Feversham some injustice. It was on that account chiefly that Sutch did not affect any ignorance as to Durrance's allusion.
He roused the household, packed and repacked his clothes, and made such a bustle and confusion that everything to be done took twice its ordinary time in the doing. There never had been so much noise and flurry in the house during all the thirty years of Lieutenant Sutch's residence.
Even if he died with his mission unfulfilled, Sutch was to hide from the father that which was best in the son, at the son's request. And the saddest part of it, to Sutch's thinking, was that the son was right in so requesting. For what he said was true the father could not understand.
Lieutenant Sutch did not speak for some while after Harry Feversham had done, and in the end Harry looked up at his companion, prepared for almost a word of ridicule; but he saw Sutch's right hand outstretched towards him. "When I come back," said Feversham, and he rose from his chair. He gathered the feathers together and replaced them in his pocket-book. "I have told you everything," he said.
Durrance sat watching the sweep of her arm, the absorption of her face, and counting up his chances. He had not brought with him to Glenalla Lieutenant Sutch's anticipations that he would succeed. The shadow of Harry Feversham might well separate them. For another thing, he knew very well that poverty would fall more lightly upon her than upon most women. He had indeed had proofs of that.
He brought it down to that very day, for he ended with the news of Lieutenant Sutch's departure for Suakin. General Feversham heard the whole account without an interruption, without even stirring in his chair. Durrance could not tell in what spirit he listened, but he drew some comfort from the fact that he did listen and without argument.
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