The Four Feathers quotes

He sat with his hands now clenched upon his knees and leaning forward a little across the table toward the surgeon, his cheeks white as paper, his eyes burning, and burning with ferocity.

He had the look of a dangerous 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 strike with all his strength in the savagery of despair.

But it was spoken, and Harry’s eyes turned swiftly toward Sutch, and rested upon his face, not, however, with any betrayal of guilt, but quietly, inscrutably. Nor did he answer the question, although it was answered 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 the same mute way repeated. “Are you blind?” his eyes asked of General Feversham. Never had he heard an untruth so demonstrably untrue.

and, as Harry opened the door, the hall gaped black like the mouth of night. For a second or two the boy hesitated upon the threshold, and seemed almost to shrink back into the lighted room as though in that dark void peril awaited him.

And peril did⁠—the peril of his thoughts.

He stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him. The decanter was sent again upon its rounds; there was a popping of soda-water bottles; the talk revolved again in its accustomed groove. Harry was in an instant forgotten by all but Sutch.

“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.

“I do not believe that is true,” she said. “You could not look me in the face so steadily were it true. Your eyes would seek the floor, not mine.”

“Three little white feathers,” she said slowly; and then, with a sob in her throat, “This afternoon we were under the elms down by the Lennon River⁠—do you remember, Harry?⁠—just you and I. And then come three little white feathers; and the world’s at an end.”

“Oh, don’t!” cried Harry, and his voice broke upon the word. Up till now he had spoken with a steadiness matching the steadiness of his eyes.

Her face lost its colour and grew tired and very grey. Her eyes shut tightly and then opened again. He thought that she would faint. “The morning at last!” she exclaimed; and then, in a voice as weary as her face,

“I wonder whether it is right that one should suffer so much pain.”

“Hush!” whispered Feversham. “Courage! A few minutes more—only a very few!” He stopped and stood in front of her until her strength returned.

He stared into the flame now instead of into Feversham’s face, and for an equal length of time. He could think of nothing whatever to say, and yet he was conscious that something must be said. In the end he said lamely:—

“If you want any whiskey, stamp twice on the floor with your foot. The servants understand.”

Thereupon he walked heavily up the stairs. The old man’s forbearance was perhaps not the least part of Harry Feversham’s punishment.

“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.

“If only I had spoken,” he said sadly. He dropped the end of his cigar into his coffee-cup, and standing up, reached for his hat.

“Many things are irrevocable, Harry,” he said. “But one never knows whether they are irrevocable or not until one has found out. It is always worth while finding out.”

The next evening Feversham crossed to Calais. It was a night as wild as that on which Durrance had left England; and, like Durrance, Feversham had a friend to see him off.

“I come back to it,” said Durrance.

“I like it. I like the people.”

Mather thought the taste unaccountable, but he knew nevertheless that, however unaccountable in itself, it accounted for his companion’s rapid promotion and success. Sympathy had stood Durrance in the stead of much ability.

“Yes, I shall come back,” he said, “and in three months’ time. For one thing, we know—every Englishman in Egypt, too, knows—that this can’t be the end. I want to be here when the work’s taken in hand again.

I hate unfinished things.

”

to us it’s always something external, at the best the rung of a ladder, at the worst a weight on the heel. Don’t you think so, too? I phrase the thought badly. But put it this way:

Women look backwards, we look ahead; so misfortune hits them harder, eh?

”

and the remnants of a house built of branches bent in hoops showed that once Arabs had herded their goats and made their habitation there. Now the sun rose and set, and the hot sky pressed upon an empty round of honey-coloured earth.

Silence brooded there like night upon the waters; and the absolute stillness made it a place of mystery and expectation.

Yet in this month of May one man sojourned by the wells and sojourned secretly.

It must be sent, he knew; its destruction would be of no more than a temporary avail. Yet he could hardly bring himself to post it. With the passage of every minute he realised more clearly what blindness meant to Durrance.

A man not very clever, as he himself was ever the first to acknowledge, and always the inheritor of the other places

—how much more it meant to him than to the ordinary run of men! Would the girl, he wondered, understand as clearly? It was very silent that morning on the verandah at Wadi Halfa; the sunlight blazed upon desert and river;

“Certainly, my dear, if you like,” returned Mrs. Adair, with an ungracious shrug of the shoulders. “But there is a reason, I suppose. I don’t understand why you exact the promise.”

“Two lives must not be spoilt because of me.”

There was some ground for Mrs. Adair’s suspicion that Ethne expected the blind man to whom she was betrothed, with apprehension. It is true that she was a little afraid.

But none the less she was uneasy. Durrance had grown more acute. Not only his senses had been sharpened—that, indeed, was to be expected—but trouble and thought had sharpened his mind as well. It had become more penetrating.

She felt that she was entering upon an encounter of wits, and she had a fear lest she should be worsted.

“Two lives shall not be spoilt because of me,” she repeated, but it was a prayer now, rather than a resolve. For one thing she recognised quite surely: Durrance saw ever so much more clearly now that he was blind.

“Two lives shall not be spoilt because of me,” she repeated, but it was a prayer now, rather than a resolve. For one thing she recognised quite surely:

Durrance saw ever so much more clearly now that he was blind.

The regret that it had not was her crumpled rose-leaf. Here she was in a strange land; there the brown mountains, with their outcroppings of granite and the voices of the streams, would have shared, she almost thought, in her new happiness.

Great sorrows or great joys had this in common for Ethne Eustace⁠—they both drew her homewards, since there endurance was more easy and gladness more complete.

She had, however, one living tie with Donegal at her side, for Dermod’s old collie dog had become her inseparable companion. To him she made her confidence, and if at times her voice broke in tears, why, the dog would not tell.

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.

He stood and smiled at the mocking crowd about him and seemed well pleased, like a lunatic.

That was the character which he had assumed.

And there was no deterring him, for he did not listen, he only talked. He took the most savage snub with a vacant and amicable face; and, wrapped in his own dull thoughts, he continued his copious monologue.

In the smoking-room or at the supper-table he crushed conversation flat as a steamroller crushes a road.

He was quite irresistible. Trite anecdotes were sandwiched between aphorisms of the copybook; and whether anecdote or aphorism, all was delivered with the air of a man surprised by his own profundity.

“Oh, I’ll smoke,” Durrance answered. “

It’s not quite true that a man can’t enjoy his tobacco without seeing the smoke of it.

If I let my cigar out, I should know at once. But you will see, I shall not let it out.” He lighted his cigar with deliberation, and leaned back in his chair.

“Castleton was dining with a big man from the War Office that night,” Durrance said, and a little movement at his side warned him that he was getting hot in his search.

He sat for a while longer talking about the prospects of the Sudan, and then rose up from his chair.

“Well, I can rely on you, Willoughby, to help Feversham if ever you find him. Draw on me for money.”

I don’t talk to you about compensations and patience.

That’s the gabble of people who are comfortable and haven’t suffered.

We know that for a man who is young and active, and who is doing well in a career where activity is a necessity, there are no compensations if his career’s suddenly cut short through no fault of his.”

“That is quite true, but you are none the less surprised,” continued Durrance. “I don’t blame you.

You could not know that it is only since I have been blind that I have begun to see.

Shall I give you an instance? This is the first time that I have ever come into this neighbourhood or got out at your station.

Durrance would have to get out of the way, of course, but then he should never have crossed Harry Feversham’s path.

Sutch was cruel with the perfect cruelty of which love alone is capable.

“You are very glad of that,” said Durrance, quietly. “Very glad that Ethne has not forgotten him. It is a little hard on me, perhaps, who have not much left.

Do you know the camel’s way? He is an unfriendly, graceless beast, but he marches to within an hour of his death.

He drops and dies with the load upon his back.

It seemed to me, even in those days, the right and enviable way to finish. You can imagine how I must envy them that advantage of theirs now. Good night.”

“It’s not to my credit. I practise thoughtfulness for others out of an instinct of self-preservation, that’s all,” said Durrance. “

Selfishness is the natural and encroaching fault of the blind. I know that, so I am careful to guard against it.

”

His throat was parched, his tongue was swollen in his mouth and stringy like a dried fig.

It seemed to him that the imagination of God could devise no worse hell than the House of Stone on an August night in Omdurman. It could add fire, he thought, but only fire.

“If I were to fall!” he cried, and as he spoke his hell was made perfect, for the door was opened. Idris-es-Saier appeared in the opening.

and while the crowd swayed again and the shrill cries and curses rose again, deafening the ears, piercing the brain, Trench supported his companion, and bending down his head caught again after so many months the accent of his own tongue.

And the sound of it civilised him like the friendship of a woman.

He could not hear what was said; the din was too loud. But he caught, as it were, shadows of words which had once been familiar to him, which had been spoken to him, which he had spoken to others—as a matter of course.

The truth was clear to him, appallingly clear. Abdul Kader was not going to risk his life; he would be the shuttle going backwards and forwards between Omdurman and Suakin as long as Feversham cared to write letters and Sutch to pay money.

But the shuttle would do no weaving.

“I have nothing with which to write,” said Feversham, and Abdul Kader produced them.

Trench and Feversham dug out the sand within the stones and lay down, watching the horizon between the interstices. For both of them this perhaps was the longest day of their lives.

They were so near to safety and yet not safe.

To Trench’s thinking it was longer than a night in the House of Stone, and to Feversham longer than even one of those days six years back when he had sat in his rooms above St.

“You have learned the churlishness of a camel,” cried Trench. “

A camel will carry you where you want to go, will carry you till it drops dead, and yet if you show your gratitude it resents and bites.

Hang it all, Feversham, there’s my hand.”

It was not that she had aged so much. Her big grey eyes shone as clearly as before, the colour was still as bright upon her cheeks. But there was more of character.

She had suffered; she had eaten of the tree of knowledge.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I did you a great wrong six years ago, and I need not.”

Ethne’s smile became a laugh.

“Do with them!” she cried in scorn. “I shall do nothing with them. I shall keep them. I am very proud to have them to keep.”

She kept them, as she had once kept Harry Feversham’s portrait. There was something perhaps in Durrance’s contention that women so much more than men gather up their experiences and live upon them, looking backwards.