The Four Feathers Read online

  A. E. W. MASON

  Author of "Miranda of the Balcony," "The Courtship of Morrice Buckler,"Etc.

  New YorkThe MacMillan CompanyLondon: MacMillan & Co., Ltd.1903All rights reservedCopyright, 1901,By A. E. W. Mason.Copyright, 1902,By The MacMillan Company.Set up and electrotyped October, 1902. Reprinted November,December, 1902; January, 1903; February, March, 1903.Norwood PressJ. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & SmithNorwood Mass. U.S.A.

  ToMISS ELSPETH ANGELA CAMPBELLJune 19, 1902.

  CONTENTS

  I. A Crimean Night

  II. Captain Trench and a Telegram

  III. The Last Ride Together

  IV. The Ball at Lennon House

  V. The Pariah

  VI. Harry Feversham's Plan

  VII. The Last Reconnaissance

  VIII. Lieutenant Sutch is tempted to lie

  IX. At Glenalla

  X. The Wells of Obak

  XI. Durrance hears News of Feversham

  XII. Durrance sharpens his Wits

  XIII. Durrance begins to see

  XIV. Captain Willoughby reappears

  XV. The Story of the First Feather

  XVI. Captain Willoughby retires

  XVII. The Musoline Overture

  XVIII. The Answer to the Overture

  XIX. Mrs. Adair interferes

  XX. West and East

  XXI. Ethne makes Another Slip

  XXII. Durrance lets his Cigar go out

  XXIII. Mrs. Adair makes her Apology

  XXIV. On the Nile

  XXV. Lieutenant Sutch comes off the Half-pay List

  XXVI. General Feversham's Portraits are appeased

  XXVII. The House of Stone

  XXVIII. Plans of Escape

  XXIX. Colonel Trench assumes a Knowledge of Chemistry

  XXX. The Last of the Southern Cross

  XXXI. Feversham returns to Ramelton

  XXXII. In the Church at Glenalla

  XXXIII. Ethne again plays the Musoline Overture

  XXXIV. The End

  THE FOUR FEATHERS[1]

  [Footnote 1: The character of Harry Feversham is developed from a shortstory by the author, originally printed in the _Illustrated LondonNews_, and since republished.]

  CHAPTER I

  A CRIMEAN NIGHT

  Lieutenant Sutch was the first of General Feversham's guests to reachBroad Place. He arrived about five o'clock on an afternoon of sunshinein mid June, and the old red-brick house, lodged on a southern slope ofthe Surrey hills, was glowing from a dark forest depth of pines with thewarmth of a rare jewel. Lieutenant Sutch limped across the hall, wherethe portraits of the Fevershams rose one above the other to the ceiling,and went out on to the stone-flagged terrace at the back. There he foundhis host sitting erect like a boy, and gazing southward toward theSussex Downs.

  "How's the leg?" asked General Feversham, as he rose briskly from hischair. He was a small wiry man, and, in spite of his white hairs, alert.But the alertness was of the body. A bony face, with a high narrowforehead and steel-blue inexpressive eyes, suggested a barrenness ofmind.

  "It gave me trouble during the winter," replied Sutch. "But that was tobe expected." General Feversham nodded, and for a little while both menwere silent. From the terrace the ground fell steeply to a wide levelplain of brown earth and emerald fields and dark clumps of trees. Fromthis plain voices rose through the sunshine, small but very clear. Faraway toward Horsham a coil of white smoke from a train snaked rapidly inand out amongst the trees; and on the horizon rose the Downs, patchedwith white chalk.

  "I thought that I should find you here," said Sutch.

  "It was my wife's favourite corner," answered Feversham in a quiteemotionless voice. "She would sit here by the hour. She had a queerliking for wide and empty spaces."

  "Yes," said Sutch. "She had imagination. Her thoughts could peoplethem."

  General Feversham glanced at his companion as though he hardlyunderstood. But he asked no questions. What he did not understand hehabitually let slip from his mind as not worth comprehension. He spokeat once upon a different topic.

  "There will be a leaf out of our table to-night."

  "Yes. Collins, Barberton, and Vaughan went this winter. Well, we areall permanently shelved upon the world's half-pay list as it is. Theobituary column is just the last formality which gazettes us out of theservice altogether," and Sutch stretched out and eased his crippled leg,which fourteen years ago that day had been crushed and twisted in thefall of a scaling-ladder.

  "I am glad that you came before the others," continued Feversham. "Iwould like to take your opinion. This day is more to me than theanniversary of our attack upon the Redan. At the very moment when wewere standing under arms in the dark--"

  "To the west of the quarries; I remember," interrupted Sutch, with adeep breath. "How should one forget?"

  "At that very moment Harry was born in this house. I thought, therefore,that if you did not object, he might join us to-night. He happens to beat home. He will, of course, enter the service, and he might learnsomething, perhaps, which afterward will be of use--one never knows."

  "By all means," said Sutch, with alacrity. For since his visits toGeneral Feversham were limited to the occasion of these anniversarydinners, he had never yet seen Harry Feversham.

  Sutch had for many years been puzzled as to the qualities in GeneralFeversham which had attracted Muriel Graham, a woman as remarkable forthe refinement of her intellect as for the beauty of her person; and hecould never find an explanation. He had to be content with his knowledgethat for some mysterious reason she had married this man so much olderthan herself and so unlike to her in character. Personal courage and anindomitable self-confidence were the chief, indeed the only, qualitieswhich sprang to light in General Feversham. Lieutenant Sutch went backin thought over twenty years, as he sat on his garden-chair, to a timebefore he had taken part, as an officer of the Naval Brigade, in thatunsuccessful onslaught on the Redan. He remembered a season in Londonto which he had come fresh from the China station; and he was curious tosee Harry Feversham. He did not admit that it was more than the naturalcuriosity of a man who, disabled in comparative youth, had made a hobbyout of the study of human nature. He was interested to see whether thelad took after his mother or his father--that was all.

  So that night Harry Feversham took a place at the dinner-table andlistened to the stories which his elders told, while Lieutenant Sutchwatched him. The stories were all of that dark winter in the Crimea, anda fresh story was always in the telling before its predecessor wasended. They were stories of death, of hazardous exploits, of the pinchof famine, and the chill of snow. But they were told in clipped wordsand with a matter-of-fact tone, as though the men who related them wereonly conscious of them as far-off things; and there was seldom a commentmore pronounced than a mere "That's curious," or an exclamation moresignificant than a laugh.

  But Harry Feversham sat listening as though the incidents thuscarelessly narrated were happening actually at that moment and withinthe walls of that room. His dark eyes--the eyes of his mother--turnedwith each story from speaker to speaker, and waited, wide open andfixed, until the last word was spoken. He listened fascinated andenthralled. And so vividly did the changes of expression shoot andquiver across his face, that it seemed to Sutch the lad must actuallyhear the drone of bullets in the air, actually resist the stunning shockof a charge, actually ride down in the thick of a squadron to where gunsscreeched out a tongue of flame from a fog. Once a major of artilleryspoke of the suspense of the hours between the parading of the troopsbefore a battle and the first comm
and to advance; and Harry's shouldersworked under the intolerable strain of those lagging minutes.

  But he did more than work his shoulders. He threw a single furtive,wavering glance backwards; and Lieutenant Sutch was startled, and indeedmore than startled,--he was pained. For this after all was MurielGraham's boy.

  The look was too familiar a one to Sutch. He had seen it on the faces ofrecruits during their first experience of a battle too often for him tomisunderstand it. And one picture in particular rose before hismind,--an advancing square at Inkermann, and a tall big soldier rushingforward from the line in the eagerness of his attack, and then stoppingsuddenly as though he suddenly understood that he was alone, and had tomeet alone the charge of a mounted Cossack. Sutch remembered veryclearly the fatal wavering glance which the big soldier had thrownbackward toward his companions,--a glance accompanied by a queer sicklysmile. He remembered too, with equal vividness, its consequence. Forthough the soldier carried a loaded musket and a bayonet locked to themuzzle, he had without an effort of self-defence received the Cossack'slance-thrust in his throat.

  Sutch glanced hurriedly about the table, afraid that General Feversham,or that some one of his guests, should have remarked the same look andthe same smile upon Harry's face. But no one had eyes for the lad; eachvisitor was waiting too eagerly for an opportunity to tell a story ofhis own. Sutch drew a breath of relief and turned to Harry. But the boywas sitting with his elbows on the cloth and his head propped betweenhis hands, lost to the glare of the room and its glitter of silver,constructing again out of the swift succession of anecdotes a world ofcries and wounds, and maddened riderless chargers and men writhing in afog of cannon-smoke. The curtest, least graphic description of thebiting days and nights in the trenches set the lad shivering. Even hisface grew pinched, as though the iron frost of that winter was actuallyeating into his bones. Sutch touched him lightly on the elbow.

  "You renew those days for me," said he. "Though the heat is drippingdown the windows, I feel the chill of the Crimea."

  Harry roused himself from his absorption.

  "The stories renew them," said he.

  "No. It is you listening to the stories."

  And before Harry could reply, General Feversham's voice broke sharply infrom the head of the table:--

  "Harry, look at the clock!"

  At once all eyes were turned upon the lad. The hands of the clock madethe acutest of angles. It was close upon midnight; and from eight,without so much as a word or a question, he had sat at the dinner-tablelistening. Yet even now he rose with reluctance.

  "Must I go, father?" he asked, and the general's guests intervened ina chorus. The conversation was clear gain to the lad, a first taste ofpowder which might stand him in good stead afterwards.

  "Besides, it's the boy's birthday," added the major of artillery. "Hewants to stay; that's plain. You wouldn't find a youngster of fourteensit all these hours without a kick of the foot against the table-legunless the conversation entertained him. Let him stay, Feversham!"

  For once General Feversham relaxed the iron discipline under which theboy lived.

  "Very well," said he. "Harry shall have an hour's furlough from his bed.A single hour won't make much difference."

  Harry's eyes turned toward his father, and just for a moment restedupon his face with a curious steady gaze. It seemed to Sutch that theyuttered a question, and, rightly or wrongly, he interpreted the questioninto words:--

  "Are you blind?"

  But General Feversham was already talking to his neighbours, and Harryquietly sat down, and again propping his chin upon his hands, listenedwith all his soul. Yet he was not entertained; rather he was enthralled;he sat quiet under the compulsion of a spell. His face becameunnaturally white, his eyes unnaturally large, while the flames of thecandles shone ever redder and more blurred through a blue haze oftobacco smoke, and the level of the wine grew steadily lower in thedecanters.

  Thus half of that one hour's furlough was passed; and then GeneralFeversham, himself jogged by the unlucky mention of a name, suddenlyblurted out in his jerky fashion:--

  "Lord Wilmington. One of the best names in England, if you please. Didyou ever see his house in Warwickshire? Every inch of the ground youwould think would have a voice to bid him play the man, if only inremembrance of his fathers.... It seemed incredible and mere camprumour, but the rumour grew. If it was whispered at the Alma, it wasspoken aloud at Inkermann, it was shouted at Balaclava. BeforeSebastopol the hideous thing was proved. Wilmington was acting asgalloper to his general. I believe upon my soul the general chose himfor the duty, so that the fellow might set himself right. There werethree hundred yards of bullet-swept flat ground, and a message to becarried across them. Had Wilmington toppled off his horse on the way,why, there were the whispers silenced for ever. Had he ridden throughalive he earned distinction besides. But he didn't dare; he refused!Imagine it if you can! He sat shaking on his horse and declined. Youshould have seen the general. His face turned the colour of thatBurgundy. 'No doubt you have a previous engagement,' he said, in thepolitest voice you ever heard--just that, not a word of abuse. Aprevious engagement on the battlefield! For the life of me, I couldhardly help laughing. But it was a tragic business for Wilmington. Hewas broken, of course, and slunk back to London. Every house was closedto him; he dropped out of his circle like a lead bullet you let slip outof your hand into the sea. The very women in Piccadilly spat if he spoketo them; and he blew his brains out in a back bedroom off the Haymarket.Curious that, eh? He hadn't the pluck to face the bullets when his namewas at stake, yet he could blow his own brains out afterwards."

  Lieutenant Sutch chanced to look at the clock as the story came to anend. It was now a quarter to one. Harry Feversham had still a quarter ofan hour's furlough, and that quarter of an hour was occupied by aretired surgeon-general with a great wagging beard, who sat nearlyopposite to the boy.

  "I can tell you an incident still more curious," he said. "The man inthis case had never been under fire before, but he was of my ownprofession. Life and death were part of his business. Nor was he reallyin any particular danger. The affair happened during a hill campaign inIndia. We were encamped in a valley, and a few Pathans used to lie outon the hillside at night and take long shots into the camp. A bulletripped through the canvas of the hospital tent--that was all. Thesurgeon crept out to his own quarters, and his orderly discovered himhalf-an-hour afterward lying in his blood stone-dead."

  "Hit?" exclaimed the major.

  "Not a bit of it," said the surgeon. "He had quietly opened hisinstrument-case in the dark, taken out a lancet, and severed his femoralartery. Sheer panic, do you see, at the whistle of a bullet."

  Even upon these men, case-hardened to horrors, the incident related inits bald simplicity wrought its effect. From some there broke ahalf-uttered exclamation of disbelief; others moved restlessly in theirchairs with a sort of physical discomfort, because a man had sunk so farbelow humanity. Here an officer gulped his wine, there a second shookhis shoulders as though to shake the knowledge off as a dog shakeswater. There was only one in all that company who sat perfectly still inthe silence which followed upon the story. That one was the boy, HarryFeversham.

  He sat with his hands now clenched upon his knees and leaning forward alittle across the table toward the surgeon, his cheeks white as paper,his eyes burning, and burning with ferocity. He had the look of adangerous animal in the trap. His body was gathered, his muscles taut.Sutch had a fear that the lad meant to leap across the table and strikewith all his strength in the savagery of despair. He had indeed reachedout a restraining hand when General Feversham's matter-of-fact voiceintervened, and the boy's attitude suddenly relaxed.

  "Queer incomprehensible things happen. Here are two of them. You canonly say they are the truth and pray God you may forget 'em. But youcan't explain, for you can't understand."

  Sutch was moved to lay his hand upon Harry's shoulder.

  "Can you?" he asked, and regretted the question almost be
fore it wasspoken. But it was spoken, and Harry's eyes turned swiftly toward Sutch,and rested upon his face, not, however, with any betrayal of guilt, butquietly, inscrutably. Nor did he answer the question, although it wasanswered in a fashion by General Feversham.

  "Harry understand!" exclaimed the general, with a snort of indignation."How should he? He's a Feversham."

  The question, which Harry's glance had mutely put before, Sutch in thesame mute way repeated. "Are you blind?" his eyes asked of GeneralFeversham. Never had he heard an untruth so demonstrably untrue. A merelook at the father and the son proved it so. Harry Feversham wore hisfather's name, but he had his mother's dark and haunted eyes, hismother's breadth of forehead, his mother's delicacy of profile, hismother's imagination. It needed perhaps a stranger to recognise thetruth. The father had been so long familiar with his son's aspect thatit had no significance to his mind.

  "Look at the clock, Harry."

  The hour's furlough had run out. Harry rose from his chair, and drew abreath.

  "Good night, sir," he said, and walked to the door.

  The servants had long since gone to bed; and, as Harry opened the door,the hall gaped black like the mouth of night. For a second or two theboy hesitated upon the threshold, and seemed almost to shrink back intothe lighted room as though in that dark void peril awaited him. Andperil did--the peril of his thoughts.

  He stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him. The decanterwas sent again upon its rounds; there was a popping of soda-waterbottles; the talk revolved again in its accustomed groove. Harry was inan instant forgotten by all but Sutch. The lieutenant, although heprided himself upon his impartial and disinterested study of humannature, was the kindliest of men. He had more kindliness thanobservation by a great deal. Moreover, there were special reasons whichcaused him to take an interest in Harry Feversham. He sat for a littlewhile with the air of a man profoundly disturbed. Then, acting upon animpulse, he went to the door, opened it noiselessly, as noiselesslypassed out, and, without so much as a click of the latch, closed thedoor behind him.

  And this is what he saw: Harry Feversham, holding in the centre of thehall a lighted candle high above his head, and looking up toward theportraits of the Fevershams as they mounted the walls and were lost inthe darkness of the roof. A muffled sound of voices came from the otherside of the door panels, but the hall itself was silent. Harry stoodremarkably still, and the only thing which moved at all was the yellowflame of the candle as it flickered apparently in some faint draught.The light wavered across the portraits, glowing here upon a red coat,glittering there upon a corselet of steel. For there was not one man'sportrait upon the walls which did not glisten with the colours of auniform, and there were the portraits of many men. Father and son, theFevershams had been soldiers from the very birth of the family. Fatherand son, in lace collars and bucket boots, in Ramillies wigs and steelbreastplates, in velvet coats, with powder on their hair, in shakos andswallow-tails, in high stocks and frogged coats, they looked down uponthis last Feversham, summoning him to the like service. They were men ofone stamp; no distinction of uniform could obscure theirrelationship--lean-faced men, hard as iron, rugged in feature,thin-lipped, with firm chins and straight, level mouths, narrowforeheads, and the steel-blue inexpressive eyes; men of courage andresolution, no doubt, but without subtleties, or nerves, or thatburdensome gift of imagination; sturdy men, a little wanting indelicacy, hardly conspicuous for intellect; to put it frankly, menrather stupid--all of them, in a word, first-class fighting men, butnot one of them a first-class soldier.

  But Harry Feversham plainly saw none of their defects. To him theywere one and all portentous and terrible. He stood before them in theattitude of a criminal before his judges, reading his condemnation intheir cold unchanging eyes. Lieutenant Sutch understood more clearly whythe flame of the candle flickered. There was no draught in the hall, butthe boy's hand shook. And finally, as though he heard the mute voices ofhis judges delivering sentence and admitted its justice, he actuallybowed to the portraits on the wall. As he raised his head, he sawLieutenant Sutch in the embrasure of the doorway.

  He did not start, he uttered no word; he let his eyes quietly rest uponSutch and waited. Of the two it was the man who was embarrassed.

  "Harry," he said, and in spite of his embarrassment he had the tact touse the tone and the language of one addressing not a boy, but a comradeequal in years, "we meet for the first time to-night. But I knew yourmother a long time ago. I like to think that I have the right to callher by that much misused word 'friend.' Have you anything to tell me?"

  "Nothing," said Harry.

  "The mere telling sometimes lightens a trouble."

  "It is kind of you. There is nothing."

  Lieutenant Sutch was rather at a loss. The lad's loneliness made astrong appeal to him. For lonely the boy could not but be, set apart ashe was, no less unmistakably in mind as in feature, from his father andhis father's fathers. Yet what more could he do? His tact again came tohis aid. He took his card-case from his pocket.

  "You will find my address upon this card. Perhaps some day you will giveme a few days of your company. I can offer you on my side a day or two'shunting."

  A spasm of pain shook for a fleeting moment the boy's steady inscrutableface. It passed, however, swiftly as it had come.

  "Thank you, sir," Harry monotonously repeated. "You are very kind."

  "And if ever you want to talk over a difficult question with an olderman, I am at your service."

  He spoke purposely in a formal voice, lest Harry with a boy'ssensitiveness should think he laughed. Harry took the card and repeatedhis thanks. Then he went upstairs to bed.

  Lieutenant Sutch waited uncomfortably in the hall until the light of thecandle had diminished and disappeared. Something was amiss, he was verysure. There were words which he should have spoken to the boy, but hehad not known how to set about the task. He returned to the dining room,and with a feeling that he was almost repairing his omissions, he filledhis glass and called for silence.

  "Gentlemen," he said, "this is June 15th," and there was great applauseand much rapping on the table. "It is the anniversary of our attack uponthe Redan. It is also Harry Feversham's birthday. For us, our work isdone. I ask you to drink the health of one of the youngsters who areousting us. His work lies before him. The traditions of the Fevershamfamily are very well known to us. May Harry Feversham carry them on!May he add distinction to a distinguished name!"

  At once all that company was on its feet.

  "Harry Feversham!"

  The name was shouted with so hearty a good-will that the glasses on thetable rang. "Harry Feversham, Harry Feversham," the cry was repeated andrepeated, while old General Feversham sat in his chair with a faceaflush with pride. And a boy a minute afterward in a room high up in thehouse heard the muffled words of a chorus--

  For he's a jolly good fellow, For he's a jolly good fellow, For he's a jolly good fellow, And so say all of us,

  and believed the guests upon this Crimean night were drinking hisfather's health. He turned over in his bed and lay shivering. He saw inhis mind a broken officer slinking at night in the shadows of the Londonstreets. He pushed back the flap of a tent and stooped over a man lyingstone-dead in his blood, with an open lancet clinched in his right hand.And he saw that the face of the broken officer and the face of the deadsurgeon were one--and that one face, the face of Harry Feversham.