Ethne might have become a little more gentle, Dermod a
little more irascible, but these were the only changes. So gossip had
the field to itself.
But Harry Feversham was in London, as Lieutenant Sutch discovered on the
night of the 30th. All that day the town had been perturbed by rumours
of a great battle fought at Kassassin in the desert east of Ismailia.
Messengers had raced ceaselessly through the streets, shouting tidings
of victory and tidings of disaster. There had been a charge by moonlight
of General Drury-Lowe's Cavalry Brigade, which had rolled up Arabi's
left flank and captured his guns. It was rumoured that an English
general had been killed, that the York and Lancaster Regiment had been
cut up. London was uneasy, and at eleven o'clock at night a great crowd
of people had gathered beneath the gas-lamps in Pall Mall, watching with
pale upturned faces the lighted blinds of the War Office. The crowd was
silent and impressively still. Only if a figure moved for an instant
across the blinds, a thrill of expectation passed from man to man, and
the crowd swayed in a continuous movement from edge to edge. Lieutenant
Sutch, careful of his wounded leg, was standing on the outskirts, with
his back to the parapet of the Junior Carlton Club, when he felt himself
touched upon the arm.
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