The Four Feathers

Lieutenant Sutch was the first of General Feversham’s guests to reach Broad Place. He arrived about five o’clock on an afternoon of sunshine in mid June, and the old redbrick house, lodged on a southern slope of the Surrey hills, was glowing from a dark forest depth of pines with the warmth of a rare jewel. Lieutenant Sutch limped across the hall, where the 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 found his host sitting erect like a boy, and gazing southward toward the Sussex Downs.

“How’s the leg?” asked General Feversham, as he rose briskly from his chair. 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 narrow forehead and steel-blue inexpressive eyes, suggested a barrenness of mind.

“It gave me trouble during the winter,” replied Sutch. “But that was to be expected.” General Feversham nodded, and for a little while both men were silent. From the terrace the ground fell steeply to a wide level plain of brown earth and emerald fields and dark clumps of trees. From this plain voices rose through the sunshine, small but very clear. Far away toward Horsham a coil of white smoke from a train snaked rapidly in and out amongst the trees; and on the horizon rose the Downs, patched with white chalk.

“There is some mistake,” he said as he shook the lid open; and then he stopped abruptly. Three white feathers fluttered out of the box, swayed and rocked for a moment in the air, and then, one after another, settled gently down upon the floor. They lay like flakes of snow upon the dark polished boards. But they were not whiter than Harry Feversham’s cheeks. He stood and stared at the feathers until he felt a light touch upon his arm. He looked and saw Ethne’s gloved hand upon his sleeve.

“What does it mean?” she asked. There was some perplexity in her voice, but nothing more than perplexity. The smile upon her face and the loyal confidence in her eyes showed she had never a doubt that his first word would lift it from her. “What does it mean?”

“That there are things which cannot be hid, I suppose,” said Feversham.

For a little while Ethne did not speak. The languorous music floated into the hall, and the trees whispered from the garden through the open door. Then she shook his arm gently, uttered a breathless little laugh, and spoke as though she were pleading with a child.

“I don’t think you understand, Harry. Here are three white feathers. They were sent to you in jest? Oh, of course in jest. But it is a cruel kind of jest⁠—”

“They were sent in deadly earnest.”

He spoke now, looking her straight in the eyes. Ethne dropped her hand from his sleeve.

“Who sent them?” she asked.

He drew his pocketbook from his breast, and took from it the four white feathers. These he laid before him on the table.

“You have kept them?” exclaimed Sutch.

“Indeed, I treasure them,” said Harry, quietly. “That seems strange to you. To you they are the symbols of my disgrace. To me they are much more. They are my opportunities of retrieving it.” He looked about the room, separated three of the feathers, pushed them forward a little on the tablecloth, and then leaned across toward Sutch.

“What if I could compel Trench, Castleton, and Willoughby to take back from me, each in his turn, the feather he sent? I do not say that it is likely. I do not say even that it is possible. But there is a chance that it may be possible, and I must wait upon that chance. There will be few men leading active lives as these three do who will not at some moment stand in great peril and great need. To be in readiness for that moment is from now my career. All three are in Egypt. I leave for Egypt tomorrow.”

“Very well. I will look through it and return it to you, signed, at lunchtime. Will you give it to me, please?”

He held out his hand towards Calder. Calder took his pipe from his mouth, and, standing thus in full view of Durrance, slowly and deliberately placed it into Durrance’s outstretched palm. It was not until the hot bowl burnt his hand that Durrance snatched his arm away. The pipe fell and broke upon the floor. Neither of the two men spoke for a few moments, and then Calder put his arm round Durrance’s shoulder, and asked in a voice gentle as a woman’s:⁠—

“How did it happen?”

Durrance buried his face in his hands. The great control which he had exercised till now he was no longer able to sustain. He did not answer, nor did he utter any sound, but he sat shivering from head to foot.

“How did it happen?” Calder asked again, and in a whisper.

Durrance put another question:⁠—

“How did you find out?”

“You stood in the mess-room doorway listening to discover whose voice spoke from where. When I raised my head and saw you, though your eyes rested on my face there was no recognition in them. I suspected then. When you came down the steps into the verandah I became almost certain. When you would not help yourself to food, when you reached out your arm over your shoulder so that Moussa had to put the brandy-and-soda safely into your palm, I was sure.”

But at Dongola, on the great curve of the Nile southwards of Wadi Halfa, the sun was already blazing, and its inhabitants were awake. There was sport prepared for them this morning under the few palm trees before the house of the Emir Wad El Nejoumi. A white prisoner, captured a week before close to the wells of El Agia on the great Arbaîn road, by a party of Arabs, had been brought in during the night and now waited his fate at the Emir’s hands. The news spread quick as a spark through the town; already a crowd of men, women and children flocked to this rare and pleasant spectacle. In front of the palm trees an open space stretched to the gateway of the Emir’s house; behind them a slope of sand descended flat and bare to the river.

Harry Feversham was standing under the trees, guarded by four of the Ansar soldiery. His clothes had been stripped from him; he wore only a torn and ragged jibbeh upon his body and a twist of cotton on his head to shield him from the sun; his bare shoulders and arms were scorched and blistered. His ankles were fettered, his wrists were bound with a rope of palm fibre, an iron collar was locked about his neck, to which a chain was attached, and this chain one of the soldiers held.