FEATHERS.

Observer, Volume XL, Issue 8, 25 October 1919, Page 8

FEATHERS.

"m HE GIRL leaned against the I green limb of a fallen gum * tree; a fresh and healthy feminine personality. Nearby sprawled the man, plucking at the crisp brown grass, with long nervous fingers. "I say, Ruth?" "Well." "Will you marry <me?" The goose quill in her rakish panama became abruptly upright. A scornful light gleamed in the grey eyes, that looked into his. Yet, he was good to look on: strong, endowed with wealth and intellectual gifts.

A year ago she would have answered., yes. That was before she discovered his yellow streak. He was a shirker, blind to all hints, deaf to every innuendo. While his friends enlisted, he went on in the old leisurely way. The races, theatres, and dances. Nearly a year ago, when motoring wth her from the theatre, lie had asked ; *the same question. For answer she had plucked a tiny feather from her white boa, and handed it to him in silence.

She remembered how his fingers trembled as he took it, and the hunted look in his big brown eyes as he left her in the hall.

He went to New Zealand, and she saw no more of him till he turned up that day with a picnic party. How it was she came to be with him now she could not explain. Curiosity perhaps, or a thought of what might have been had softened her. That he was an arrant coward he had shown that very afternoon.

As they were walking down the bush track a carpet snake glided across the path, almost under their feet. - She had started back with a sharp cry; but he had uttered almost a scream, and fled down the track. The snake slid through a. crevice in the rocks; then she turned and beckoned him.

"There is no danger," she said

His lips quivered as he came towards her, and said, "Nasty beggars ; -snakes; loathe them."

They went on in silence. On turn_iug a bend they saw a tramp approaching. Then he gripped her by the arm, and whisoered excitedly, "Quick; hide; I don't like the look of him!" and almost dragged her into the timber. And there she found herself, listening to his second proposal. She looked at him coldly. He was not only a coward; he was unashamed. "I cannot marry a coward," she said. His big eyes clouded, and he said in a sad voice, "You think I am a coward?" "What else can I think? You are afraid of a tramp. You scream and run when you .see a snake; you're a rank coward." "I'm not, really," he said in a low voice; "I'm—l'm nervous." "Not a doubt of it!" she said with a short laugh. "I showed you last, year what I thought of your nerve; I have still the same opinion," and she plucked the goose quill from her hat and threw it to him.

The white feather fell on his hand, and lay there a moment before he picked it up, and placed it between the leaves of his pocket book.

Then he lifted his eyes and said in his sad way, "I once knew a man who was a coward; he was afraid to enlist. Every day he went to the door of the recruiting office and turned away—afraid. Someone gave him a white feather. That helped him. He enlisted. But he kept the feather; it was his by right, tor in his heart he knew he was a coward. He sewed it inside his tunic. The time came when he had to go over the top. Fear crept through his veins, and chilled his heart; but he went over with the rest. Some

of them shouted, a few sang; othors were tight jawed and silent; the coward prayed, 'God, God, don't let me turn back! Don't let me turn back !' "

The rifle fell from his trembling hands—still he stumbled on.

"When will the bullet come? Where will it strike? It can't be long. It's very near now."

His heart was throbbing in his throat, and then live fire drilled his chest.

He was falling, down, down, clutching at the darkness.

"Oh, Gcd! The pain! The pain!"

The girl stood wide-eyed, awed by the intensity of his terror, as he lay clutching the grass, his face contorted and ghastly, his breath coming in convulsive sobs.

She knelt beside him, raised him in her strong, round arms, and drew his head down on her breast.

The paroxysm passed; he rose and took un his hat.

"Give me back the feather," said the gild.

"I will give you one now; the other perhaps—later." He took from his pocket-book a tiny stained feather.

"It means a lot to me," he said, simply, "when fear comes into my heart, and I hate myself; it seems to understand and say,

"You are a trembling coward, but you tried to be a man."

She took it. The dark stains were not gruesome to her. She had been blind—this was a man of quick visions, whose nature pulsated to possibilities more than to realities.

How she had stung him. The thought made her burn with shame. And he stood there without resentment. She would requit him with devoted tenderness and love.

"Give me the other feather," -she said.

"Not now; I will go again. It will give me strength. Good-bye." "You are not going—now?"

"Yes."

"But you asked me to —to—you asked me to marry you." "I will ask you again—when I come back."

TOM HARRIS