Ethne

“ There was much to tell Ethne when they were once more alone together on their couches of heather and hay, in their own little sleeping-chamber.
“The heather is sweet,” said Ethne, always finding something pleasant to speak of. “It smells like our Ireland, like home.”
“There is no home,” sighed Baithene; “there are no homes in the world. ”

“ Cormac rose and thrust Ethne away from the creature. Gelert was now specially dear to him because of the lost Elgiva.
Ethne turned on her foster-brother. In her rage she was a mad-woman—forgetting that the Saxons had bereft her of her weapons she sprang backward, fumbling at her girdle for her dagger; her face horribly distorted, showed to their full her beast-like tusks.
The hound, looking on, understood the familiar action. He had lived too long among fighters not to know that she sought her sword; and that sword, he knew, was to be used against his master. ”

“ Ethne looked out across that cool garden. At this very moment Harry Feversham might be struggling for breath in that dark and noisome hovel, dry of throat and fevered with the heat, with a vision before his eyes of the grass slopes of Ramelton and with the music of the Lennon River liquid in his ears.
"One would pray for death," said Ethne, slowly, "unless—" She was on the point of adding "unless one went there deliberately with a fixed thing to do," but she cut the sentence short. ”

“ Roman and Gothic soldiers knelt together. Ethne’s head was bowed, and her eyes, when she lifted them, were full of tears. Perhaps alone among that exulting multitude, in her prayers the vanquished and retreating enemy had a share. The ugly brown head of the dying boy so near her brother’s age, his feeble, grateful smile, his groans of pain, were in her heart. Perhaps in that worshipping multitude there were few besides who felt as she did how far the tide of redeeming [110] love might reach from the heart of “the Lamb of God, Who taketh away the sins of the world.” ”

“ Ethne's violin would tell him assuredly whether he was right or no. Would friendship speak from it or the something more than friendship?
Ethne played the overture, and as she played she forgot that Durrance was in the room behind her. In the garden the air was still and summer-warm and fragrant; on the creek the moonlight lay like a solid floor of silver; the trees stood dreaming to the stars ”

“ To Feversham her words were gracious as rain upon dry land. To hear her speak them uplifted him so that those six years of trial, of slinking into corners out of the sight of his fellows, of lonely endurance, of many heart-sinkings and much bodily pain, dwindled away into insignificance. They had indeed borne their fruit to him. For Ethne had spoken in a gentle voice just what his ears had so often longed to hear as he lay awake at night in the bazaar at Suakin, in the Nile villages, in the dim wide spaces of the desert, and what he had hardly dared to hope she ever would speak. ”

“ Cormac drew deep breaths of rapture as he rode by Ethne’s side. It was good to feel a horse under him once more, to feel the wind on his face and hear the saddle creak beneath him. It was pleasant, too, to ride beside Ethne whom he loved; to laugh and talk; to be sure his wounds and weakness were a thing of the past; to cherish wild hopes of future war and victory—that seemed near and possible on this bright summer morning. He was a man now, he told himself; he had left boyhood behind him; a man and a leader of men—with a woman at his side. ”

“ But one does not get used to you, Ethne. Each time one meets you, one discovers something new and fresh to delight one. Besides, there is always the possibility of a cure."
He had his reward, for Ethne understood that he had laid aside his suspicions, and she was able to set off his indefatigable cheerfulness against her own misery. And her misery was great. If for one day she had recaptured the lightness of heart which had been hers before the three white feathers came to Ramelton, she had now recaptured something of the grief which followed upon their coming. ”

“ And Ethne their sister accompanied them, wailing and lamenting, but no words of cheer had they now to say to her, for now they began to comprehend that a mightier and a craftier mind had caught them in the net of fate. And whereas they had deemed themselves heroes and victors in the most glorious quest whereof the earth had record, they now knew that they were but as arrows in the hands of a laughing archer, who shoots one at a stag and one at the heart of a foe, and one, it may be, in sheer wantonness, and to try his bow, over a cliff edge into the sea. ”

“ Ethne had never freed herself from the haunting fear that one man's life had been spoilt because of her; she had never faltered from her determination that this should not happen with a second. Only with Durrance's letters before her she could not evade a new and perplexing question. ”

“ For Ethne's proposal that they should separate he was not unprepared. He had heard already that she was engaged, and he did not argue against her wish. But he understood that she had more to say to him. And she had. But she was slow to speak it. This was the last time she was to see Harry Feversham; she meant resolutely to send him away. When once he had passed through that church door, through which the sunlight and the summer murmurs came, and his shadow gone from the threshold, she would never talk with him or set her eyes on him until her life was ended. ”

“ Better a hundred deaths in the quest of honour than to live and die as cowards and sluggards." But Ethne said, "ye are banished from Erinn—never was there a sadder deed." Then they put forth from the river-mouth of the Boyne and soon the fair coasts of Erinn faded out of sight. ”

“ Ethne looked up at him with a shrewd, quick glance.
"You think that I should be dull at Wiesbaden," she said. "There is no fear of that. I can rout out some relative to go with me."
"No; it is on my own account," answered Durrance. "I shall perhaps have to go into a home. It is better to be quite quiet and to see no one for a time."
"You are sure?" Ethne asked. "It would hurt me if I thought you proposed this plan because you felt I would be happier at Glenalla." ”

“ Ethne did not consider what he precisely meant by the last reference to herself. For as he leaned complacently back in his seat, anger against him flamed suddenly hot in her. Occupied by his story, she had ceased to take stock of the story-teller. Now that he had ended, she looked him over from head to foot. An obstinate stupidity was the mark of the man to her eye. How dare he sit in judgment upon the meanest of his fellows, let alone Harry Feversham? ”

“ I knew then that there was not an instant to be lost, and like a flash I darted along the gallery and down the stairs. But ere I gained the hall a piercing scream rent the air, and I was just in time to see Ethne borne to the ground by a great, dark form, which had sprung at her like a tiger.
Half frantic, I dashed forward, snatching as I did so a rapier from the wall, the only weapon handy. But before I reached the spot, a voice from the study doorway called: "Stop!" and the next moment the report of a pistol rang out.
"Good God!" I cried. "Who have you shot?" ”

“ He seems only to care for one thing besides—these sacred relics of our ancient glory. He also steals in here from time to time, and I have seen the tears on his wrinkled old face, making it look for the moment young again, as if the old days and the old life might come back yet.”
The family stayed all that winter on the Aventine, and more and more Ethne’s heart was drawn [270] to Fabricius and Damaris, with a deep and tender reverence for the old age which seemed creeping on them too soon, as if the dissolution and decay of the falling world around them were gathering them into its shadow. ”

“ And as she looked at him in wonderment he went on: "Two lives should not be spoilt because of you. Had you had your way, had I not found out, not two but three lives would have been spoilt because of you—because of your loyalty."
"Three?"
"Yours. Yes—yes, yours, Feversham's, and mine. It was hard enough to keep the pretence during the few weeks we were in Devonshire. Own to it, Ethne! When I went to London to see my oculist it was a relief; it gave you a pause, a rest wherein to drop pretence and be yourself. It could not have lasted long even in Devonshire. ”

“ Marriage between a man crippled like myself, whose life is done, and a woman like you, active and young, whose life is in its flower, would be quite wrong unless each brought to it much more than friendship. It would be quite wrong if it implied a sacrifice for you."
"It implies no sacrifice," she answered firmly.
Durrance nodded. It was evident that the answer contented him, and Ethne felt that it was the intonation to which he listened rather than the words. His very attitude of concentration showed her that. ”

“ Harry Feversham had journeyed down to Broad Place in Surrey and made his confession no less unflinchingly to the old general. But Ethne knew enough. "It was the possibility of cowardice from which he shrank, not the possibility of hurt," she exclaimed. "If only one had been a little older, a little less sure about things, a little less narrow! I should have listened. I should have understood. At all events, I should not, I think, have been cruel."
Not for the first time did remorse for that fourth feather which she had added to the three, seize upon her. ”

“ Well, such friends—they are few, no doubt, but after all only the few really count—such friends one does not lose, whether they are absent, or even—dead."
"Unless," said Feversham, slowly, "one has made a mistake. Suppose the face in the crowd is a mask, what then? One may make mistakes."
Ethne shook her head decidedly.
"Of that kind, no. One may seem to have made mistakes, and perhaps for a long while. ”

“ Feversham caught his breath like a man in pain. But the girl's eyes were upon his face, and he sat still, staring in front of him without so much as a contraction of the forehead. But it seemed that he could not trust himself to answer. He kept his lips closed, and Ethne continued:—
"You see I can put up with the absence of the people I care about, a little better perhaps than most people. I do not feel that I have lost them at all," and she cast about for a while as if her thought was difficult to express. "You know how things happen," she resumed. ”

“ You would always know that nothing but truth could heal the wounded spirit, or bind up the broken heart. Nothing but the love which is true—nothing but God.”
“Nothing but God, Who is Truth and Love,” Ethne said, with her infectious smile; “Who has heard thy prayers and seen thy tears all through these weary years; Who gave thee compassion which made thee good as an angel to me. He has led me to thy child.”
And then she told Miriam the story of Rachel.
As early as possible on the morrow Ethne and Marius went to the farm on the mountains, and there they found Rachel amongst her children ”

“ The girl looked at him in horror.
“Cormac, we are Christians, and our Christian boast is Love and Charity. Yet you have not sufficient charity to grant the conversion of one poor soul. I tell you Ethne is changed—she is a Christian!”
[Pg 140]
Cormac was frowning, pacing up and down the cave, scarcely listening to his companion. He gave no thought to Ethne—all his thought was for Elgiva. He paused.
“You are beautiful, Elgiva—and you, I know, are as virtuous as only a Christian maid can be. I will not take you back to a woman, vile, infamous and treacherous as a serpent.” ”

“ He took on Him the form of a servant, of a slave” (at these words Ethne gently touched her brother’s arm) , “without the defilement of sin, enlarging the human and not diminishing the Divine; for that emptying of Himself whereby the Invisible made Himself visible, and the Creator of all things willed to be one among mortals, was [166] the stooping of compassion, not the failure of power.
“The infancy of the Babe is exhibited by the swaddling clothes; the greatness of the Highest is declared by the voices of angels. To hunger, to thirst, to be weary, is evidently human ”

“ In time Ethne grew into a fair and stately maiden Now in the Brugh of Angus there were two magical treasures, namely, an ale-vat which could never be emptied, and two swine whereof one was ever roasted and ready to be eaten while the other lived, and thus they were, day and day about. There was therefore always a store of food of faery, charged with magical spells, by eating of which one could never grow old or die. It came to be noticed that after Ethne had grown up she never ate or drank of the fairy food, or of any other, yet she continued to seem healthy and well-nourished. ”

“ I have known a long while, ever since Captain Willoughby came to The Pool with the first feather. I waited to tell you that I knew until Harry Feversham came back, and he came to-day."
Ethne sat down in her chair again. She was stunned by Durrance's unexpected disclosure. She had so carefully guarded her secret, that to realise that for a year it had been no secret came as a shock to her. But, even in the midst of her confusion, she understood that she must have time to gather up her faculties again under command. So she spoke of the unimportant thing to gain the time. ”

“ Durrance stood at the window with his back towards her until she had ended. Then he walked to her side.
"I was rather a brute," he said quietly, "to ask you to play that overture to-night."
"I wasn't anxious to play," she answered as she laid the violin aside.
"I know. But I was anxious to find out something, and I knew no other way of finding it out."
Ethne turned up to him a startled face.
"What do you mean?" she asked in a voice of suspense.
"You are so seldom off your guard. Only indeed at rare times when you play. Once before when you played that overture you were off your guard. ”