The Four Feathers | Page 3

loaded musket and a bayonet locked to
the muzzle, he had without an effort of self-defence received the
Cossack's lance-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 and
the same smile upon Harry's face. But no one had eyes for the lad; each
visitor was waiting too eagerly for an opportunity to tell a story of his
own. Sutch drew a breath of relief and turned to Harry. But the boy was
sitting with his elbows on the cloth and his head propped between his
hands, lost to the glare of the room and its glitter of silver, constructing
again out of the swift succession of anecdotes a world of cries and
wounds, and maddened riderless chargers and men writhing in a fog of
cannon-smoke. The curtest, least graphic description of the biting days
and nights in the trenches set the lad shivering. Even his face grew
pinched, as though the iron frost of that winter was actually eating into
his bones. Sutch touched him lightly on the elbow.
"You renew those days for me," said he. "Though the heat is dripping
down 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 in from the head of the table:--
"Harry, look at the clock!"
At once all eyes were turned upon the lad. The hands of the clock made
the 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-table
listening. Yet even now he rose with reluctance.
"Must I go, father?" he asked, and the general's guests intervened in a
chorus. The conversation was clear gain to the lad, a first taste of
powder which might stand him in good stead afterwards.
"Besides, it's the boy's birthday," added the major of artillery. "He

wants to stay; that's plain. You wouldn't find a youngster of fourteen sit
all these hours without a kick of the foot against the table-leg unless the
conversation entertained him. Let him stay, Feversham!"
For once General Feversham relaxed the iron discipline under which
the boy 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 rested
upon his face with a curious steady gaze. It seemed to Sutch that they
uttered a question, and, rightly or wrongly, he interpreted the question
into words:--
"Are you blind?"
But General Feversham was already talking to his neighbours, and
Harry quietly sat down, and again propping his chin upon his hands,
listened with all his soul. Yet he was not entertained; rather he was
enthralled; he sat quiet under the compulsion of a spell. His face
became unnaturally white, his eyes unnaturally large, while the flames
of the candles shone ever redder and more blurred through a blue haze
of tobacco smoke, and the level of the wine grew steadily lower in the
decanters.
Thus half of that one hour's furlough was passed; and then General
Feversham, himself jogged by the unlucky mention of a name,
suddenly blurted out in his jerky fashion:--
"Lord Wilmington. One of the best names in England, if you please.
Did you ever see his house in Warwickshire? Every inch of the ground
you would think would have a voice to bid him play the man, if only in
remembrance of his fathers.... It seemed incredible and mere camp
rumour, but the rumour grew. If it was whispered at the Alma, it was
spoken aloud at Inkermann, it was shouted at Balaclava. Before
Sebastopol the hideous thing was proved. Wilmington was acting as
galloper to his general. I believe upon my soul the general chose him

for the duty, so that the fellow might set himself right. There were three
hundred yards of bullet-swept flat ground, and a message to be carried
across them. Had Wilmington toppled off his horse on the way, why,
there were the whispers silenced for ever. Had he ridden through alive
he earned distinction besides. But he didn't dare; he refused! Imagine it
if you can! He sat shaking on his horse and declined. You should have
seen the general. His face turned the colour of that Burgundy. 'No
doubt you have a previous engagement,' he said, in the politest voice
you ever heard--just that, not a word of abuse. A previous engagement
on the battlefield! For the life of me, I could hardly help laughing. But
it was a tragic business for Wilmington.