The Four Feathers

The Four Feathers by A.E.W. Mason

A young Englishman raised at Broad Place among generations of soldier ancestors, Harry Feversham grows up privately terrified that he will prove a coward in battle, a fear rooted in tales of disgraced officers told at his father's dinner table. Engaged to Ethne Eustace of Ramelton, Donegal, he resigns his commission the night his regiment is ordered to Egypt, concealing a telegram that gave him advance warning. Three brother officers—Trench, Castleton, and Willoughby—send him white feathers branding him a coward; Ethne, learning the truth, breaks their engagement and adds a fourth feather from her own fan. Confiding in the sympathetic Lieutenant Sutch, Harry conceives a plan: he will seek out opportunities to redeem himself before each of the three men, so that each might one day take back his feather, hoping this may eventually restore him to Ethne. Harry vanishes into Egypt and the Soudan under disguise, while his loyal friend Colonel Jack Durrance—who had introduced him to Ethne and still loves her—pursues his military career. Durrance eventually learns of the broken engagement but not its cause, since Sutch keeps his promise of secrecy. As a bearded Arab trader, Harry recovers letters written by General Gordon that were hidden in the ruined walls of Berber, risking capture among the Dervishes to retrieve them—an exploit that reaches Captain Willoughby, acting Deputy-Governor at Suakin. Meanwhile Ethne's father, Dermod Eustace, ruined by debt and a fire at Lennon House, dies with his daughter keeping vigil; his last words were of Feversham. Durrance, blinded by sunstroke while on a desert reconnaissance, conceals his condition until his friend Calder discovers it. Believing herself responsible for his ruined prospects and driven by her sense of duty, Ethne writes offering to marry him despite his blindness, and Durrance, though sensing something withheld, accepts. Now living near Ethne's guardian Mrs. Adair in Devonshire, Durrance grows unnervingly perceptive despite—or because of—his blindness, probing gently at the secret Ethne is determined to hide from him. Into this tense arrangement arrives Captain Willoughby, who has sailed to find Ethne and personally return the white feather he once sent, explaining Harry Feversham's transformation from disgraced quitter to a man risking death nightly in the ruins of Berber to prove himself worthy again.

By A.E.W. Mason · First published 1902 · Genre: Adventure, Historical Fiction, War · 34 chapters · 126,876 words

First lines

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 red-brick 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.

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adair · adventure stories · asked · back · british · came · come · could · cowardice · durrance · ethne · even

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