Stirred Up 2 Angela Graham Epub 23
Bernd Manison
CHAPTER I. A Crimean Night
CHAPTER II. Captain Trench and a Telegram
CHAPTER III. The Last Ride Together
CHAPTER IV. The Ball at Lennon House
CHAPTER V. The Pariah
CHAPTER VI. Harry Feversham's Plan
CHAPTER VII. The Last Reconnaissance
CHAPTER VIII. Lieutenant Sutch is tempted to lie
CHAPTER IX. At Glenalla
CHAPTER X. The Wells of Obak
CHAPTER XI. Durrance hears News of Feversham
CHAPTER XII. Durrance sharpens his Wits
CHAPTER XIII. Durrance begins to see
CHAPTER XIV. Captain Willoughby reappears
CHAPTER XV. The Story of the First Feather
CHAPTER XVI. Captain Willoughby retires
CHAPTER XVII. The Musoline Overture
CHAPTER XVIII. The Answer to the Overture
CHAPTER XIX. Mrs. Adair interferes
CHAPTER XX. West and East
CHAPTER XXI. Ethne makes Another Slip
CHAPTER XXII. Durrance lets his Cigar go out
CHAPTER XXIII. Mrs. Adair makes her Apology
CHAPTER XXIV. On the Nile
CHAPTER XXV. Lieutenant Sutch comes off the Half-pay List
CHAPTER XXVI. General Feversham's Portraits are appeased
CHAPTER XXVII. The House of Stone
CHAPTER XXVIII. Plans of Escape
CHAPTER XXIX. Colonel Trench assumes a Knowledge of Chemistry
CHAPTER XXX. The Last of the Southern Cross
CHAPTER XXXI. Feversham returns to Ramelton
CHAPTER XXXII. In the Church at Glenalla
CHAPTER XXXIII. Ethne again plays the Musoline Overture
CHAPTER XXXIV. The End
Other Books By A. E. W. Mason
Lieutenant Sutch was the first of General Feversham's guests to reachBroad Place. He arrived about five o'clock on an afternoon of sunshinein mid June, and the old red-brick house, lodged on a southern slope ofthe Surrey hills, was glowing from a dark forest depth of pines with thewarmth of a rare jewel. Lieutenant Sutch limped across the hall, wherethe 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 foundhis host sitting erect like a boy, and gazing southward toward theSussex Downs.
"How's the leg?" asked General Feversham, as he rose briskly from hischair. 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 narrowforehead and steel-blue inexpressive eyes, suggested a barrenness ofmind.
"It gave me trouble during the winter," replied Sutch. "But that was tobe expected." General Feversham nodded, and for a little while both menwere silent. From the terrace the ground fell steeply to a wide levelplain of brown earth and emerald fields and dark clumps of trees. Fromthis plain voices rose through the sunshine, small but very clear. Faraway toward Horsham a coil of white smoke from a train snaked rapidly inand out amongst the trees; and on the horizon rose the Downs, patchedwith white chalk.
General Feversham glanced at his companion as though he hardlyunderstood. But he asked no questions. What he did not understand hehabitually let slip from his mind as not worth comprehension. He spokeat once upon a different topic.
"Yes. Collins, Barberton, and Vaughan went this winter. Well, we areall permanently shelved upon the world's half-pay list as it is. Theobituary column is just the last formality which gazettes us out of theservice altogether," and Sutch stretched out and eased his crippled leg,which fourteen years ago that day had been crushed and twisted in thefall of a scaling-ladder.
So that night Harry Feversham took a place at the dinner-table andlistened to the stories which his elders told, while Lieutenant Sutchwatched him. The stories were all of that dark winter in the Crimea, anda fresh story was always in the telling before its predecessor wasended. They were stories of death, of hazardous exploits, of the pinchof famine, and the chill of snow. But they were told in clipped wordsand with a matter-of-fact tone, as though the men who related them wereonly conscious of them as far-off things; and there was seldom a commentmore pronounced than a mere "That's curious," or an exclamation moresignificant than a laugh.
Sutch glanced hurriedly about the table, afraid that General Feversham,or that some one of his guests, should have remarked the same look andthe same smile upon Harry's face. But no one had eyes for the lad; eachvisitor was waiting too eagerly for an opportunity to tell a story ofhis own. Sutch drew a breath of relief and turned to Harry. But the boywas sitting with his elbows on the cloth and his head propped betweenhis hands, lost to the glare of the room and its glitter of silver,constructing again out of the swift succession of anecdotes a world ofcries and wounds, and maddened riderless chargers and men writhing in afog of cannon-smoke. The curtest, least graphic description of thebiting days and nights in the trenches set the lad shivering. Even hisface grew pinched, as though the iron frost of that winter was actuallyeating into his bones. Sutch touched him lightly on the elbow.
At once all eyes were turned upon the lad. The hands of the clock madethe 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-tablelistening. Yet even now he rose with reluctance.
"Besides, it's the boy's birthday," added the major of artillery. "Hewants to stay; that's plain. You wouldn't find a youngster of fourteensit all these hours without a kick of the foot against the table-legunless the conversation entertained him. Let him stay, Feversham!"
But General Feversham was already talking to his neighbours, and Harryquietly sat down, and again propping his chin upon his hands, listenedwith all his soul. Yet he was not entertained; rather he was enthralled;he sat quiet under the compulsion of a spell. His face becameunnaturally white, his eyes unnaturally large, while the flames of thecandles shone ever redder and more blurred through a blue haze oftobacco smoke, and the level of the wine grew steadily lower in thedecanters.
Lieutenant Sutch chanced to look at the clock as the story came to anend. It was now a quarter to one. Harry Feversham had still a quarter ofan hour's furlough, and that quarter of an hour was occupied by aretired surgeon-general with a great wagging beard, who sat nearlyopposite to the boy.
Even upon these men, case-hardened to horrors, the incident related inits bald simplicity wrought its effect. From some there broke ahalf-uttered exclamation of disbelief; others moved restlessly in theirchairs with a sort of physical discomfort, because a man had sunk so farbelow humanity. Here an officer gulped his wine, there a second shookhis shoulders as though to shake the knowledge off as a dog shakeswater. There was only one in all that company who sat perfectly still inthe silence which followed upon the story. That one was the boy, HarryFeversham.
He sat with his hands now clenched upon his knees and leaning forward alittle across the table toward the surgeon, his cheeks white as paper,his eyes burning, and burning with ferocity. He had the look of adangerous 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 strikewith all his strength in the savagery of despair. He had indeed reachedout a restraining hand when General Feversham's matter-of-fact voiceintervened, and the boy's attitude suddenly relaxed.
"Can you?" he asked, and regretted the question almost before it wasspoken. But it was spoken, and Harry's eyes turned swiftly toward Sutch,and rested upon his face, not, however, with any betrayal of guilt, butquietly, inscrutably. Nor did he answer the question, although it wasanswered in a fashion by General Feversham.
The question, which Harry's glance had mutely put before, Sutch in thesame mute way repeated. "Are you blind?" his eyes asked of GeneralFeversham. Never had he heard an untruth so demonstrably untrue. A merelook at the father and the son proved it so. Harry Feversham wore hisfather's name, but he had his mother's dark and haunted eyes, hismother's breadth of forehead, his mother's delicacy of profile, hismother's imagination. It needed perhaps a stranger to recognise thetruth. The father had been so long familiar with his son's aspect thatit had no significance to his mind.
He stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him. The decanterwas sent again upon its rounds; there was a popping of soda-waterbottles; the talk revolved again in its accustomed groove. Harry was inan instant forgotten by all but Sutch. The lieutenant, although heprided himself upon his impartial and disinterested study of humannature, was the kindliest of men. He had more kindliness thanobservation by a great deal. Moreover, there were special reasons whichcaused him to take an interest in Harry Feversham. He sat for a littlewhile with the air of a man profoundly disturbed. Then, acting upon animpulse, he went to the door, opened it noiselessly, as noiselesslypassed out, and, without so much as a click of the latch, closed thedoor behind him.
But Harry Feversham plainly saw none of their defects. To him theywere one and all portentous and terrible. He stood before them in theattitude of a criminal before his judges, reading his condemnation intheir cold unchanging eyes. Lieutenant Sutch understood more clearly whythe flame of the candle flickered. There was no draught in the hall, butthe boy's hand shook. And finally, as though he heard the mute voices ofhis judges delivering sentence and admitted its justice, he actuallybowed to the portraits on the wall. As he raised his head, he sawLieutenant Sutch in the embrasure of the doorway.
"Harry," he said, and in spite of his embarrassment he had the tact touse the tone and the language of one addressing not a boy, but a comradeequal in years, "we meet for the first time to-night. But I knew yourmother a long time ago. I like to think that I have the right to callher by that much misused word 'friend.' Have you anything to tell me?"
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