The Four Feathers | Page 2

stretched out and eased his crippled leg,
which fourteen years ago that day had been crushed and twisted in the
fall of a scaling-ladder.
"I am glad that you came before the others," continued Feversham. "I
would like to take your opinion. This day is more to me than the
anniversary of our attack upon the Redan. At the very moment when

we were standing under arms in the dark--"
"To the west of the quarries; I remember," interrupted Sutch, with a
deep 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 be at
home. He will, of course, enter the service, and he might learn
something, perhaps, which afterward will be of use--one never knows."
"By all means," said Sutch, with alacrity. For since his visits to General
Feversham were limited to the occasion of these anniversary dinners,
he had never yet seen Harry Feversham.
Sutch had for many years been puzzled as to the qualities in General
Feversham which had attracted Muriel Graham, a woman as
remarkable for the refinement of her intellect as for the beauty of her
person; and he could never find an explanation. He had to be content
with his knowledge that for some mysterious reason she had married
this man so much older than herself and so unlike to her in character.
Personal courage and an indomitable self-confidence were the chief,
indeed the only, qualities which sprang to light in General Feversham.
Lieutenant Sutch went back in thought over twenty years, as he sat on
his garden-chair, to a time before he had taken part, as an officer of the
Naval Brigade, in that unsuccessful onslaught on the Redan. He
remembered a season in London to which he had come fresh from the
China station; and he was curious to see Harry Feversham. He did not
admit that it was more than the natural curiosity of a man who, disabled
in comparative youth, had made a hobby out of the study of human
nature. He was interested to see whether the lad took after his mother or
his father--that was all.
So that night Harry Feversham took a place at the dinner-table and
listened to the stories which his elders told, while Lieutenant Sutch
watched him. The stories were all of that dark winter in the Crimea, and
a fresh story was always in the telling before its predecessor was ended.
They were stories of death, of hazardous exploits, of the pinch of
famine, and the chill of snow. But they were told in clipped words and

with a matter-of-fact tone, as though the men who related them were
only conscious of them as far-off things; and there was seldom a
comment more pronounced than a mere "That's curious," or an
exclamation more significant than a laugh.
But Harry Feversham sat listening as though the incidents thus
carelessly narrated were happening actually at that moment and within
the walls of that room. His dark eyes--the eyes of his mother--turned
with each story from speaker to speaker, and waited, wide open and
fixed, until the last word was spoken. He listened fascinated and
enthralled. And so vividly did the changes of expression shoot and
quiver across his face, that it seemed to Sutch the lad must actually hear
the drone of bullets in the air, actually resist the stunning shock of a
charge, actually ride down in the thick of a squadron to where guns
screeched out a tongue of flame from a fog. Once a major of artillery
spoke of the suspense of the hours between the parading of the troops
before a battle and the first command to advance; and Harry's shoulders
worked 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
indeed more than startled,--he was pained. For this after all was Muriel
Graham's boy.
The look was too familiar a one to Sutch. He had seen it on the faces of
recruits during their first experience of a battle too often for him to
misunderstand it. And one picture in particular rose before his
mind,--an advancing square at Inkermann, and a tall big soldier rushing
forward from the line in the eagerness of his attack, and then stopping
suddenly as though he suddenly understood that he was alone, and had
to meet alone the charge of a mounted Cossack. Sutch remembered
very clearly the fatal wavering glance which the big soldier had thrown
backward toward his companions,--a glance accompanied by a queer
sickly smile. He remembered too, with equal vividness, its consequence.
For though the soldier carried a