No Hero

matter for philosophy in what is always the expressionless shell of a boundless possibility. Your friend may run after you in the street, and you know at a glan

r to lend him ten pounds, his handwriting at least will be the same, unless, indeed, he be offended, when he will

stant correspondent. And so I sat studying the envelope with a curiosity too piquant not to be enjoyed. What in the world could so obsolete a friend find to say to one now? Six months earlier there had been a certain opportunity for an advance, which at that time could not possibly have been misconstrued; when they landed me, a few later, there was another and perhaps a better one. But this was t

same inconsistent forest of exclamatory notes, thick as poplars across the channel. The present plantation started after my own Christian name, to wit "Dear Duncan!!" Yet there was nothing Germanic in Catherine's ancestry; it was only her apologetic little wa

d to do anyt

vour in her first breath? It was true, as she went on to remind me, that we were more or less connected after all, and at least conceivable that no one else could help her as I could, if I would. In any case, it was a certain satisfaction to hear that Catherine herself was of the last opinion. I read on. She was in a

'!! between us when you went away! Mind, I never meant it to be so, but suppose it was: could I treat the dear old you like that, and the Great New You like some

o set a fresh match to me. That, I was resolved, she should never do; nor was I quite coxcomb enough to suspect her of the desire for a moment. But a man who has once made a fool of himself, e

ng in town. I was staying at the time at the Kensington Palace Hotel, to be out of the central racket of things, and yet more or less under the eye of the surgeon who still hoped to extract the last bullet in time. I can remember spending half the morning gazing aimlessly over the grand old tre

rd work to forget as it was. Nor had it changed any more than her handwriting, or than the woman herself as I confidently expected to find her now. I have often thought that at about forty both sexes stand still to the eye, and I did not expect Catherine Evers, who could barely have reached that rubicon, to show much symptom of the later marches. To me, here in her den, the other year was just the o

of grand-stand for the photographs of Catherine's friends. I descried my own young effigy among the rest, in a frame which I recollected giving her at the time. Well, I looked all the idiot I must have been; and there was the very Persian rug that I had knelt on in my idiocy! I could afford to smile at myself to-day; yet now it all seemed yesterday, not even the day before, until of a sudden I caught sight of that other photograph in the place of honour on the mantelpiece. It

e youthful still; yet in all this there was no intent; the dry cool smile was that of an older woman, and I was prepared for greater cordiality than I could honestly detect in the greeting of the small firm hand. But it was kind, as indeed her whol

d over my sticks. "You poor thing,

had, merely remarking that I

ontinued Catherine, seating herself

nearly knocked me out, but I'

ever felt quite

the day itself," explained Catherine, and paused in so

ction to the epithet until it was out. But Catherin

"One depressing morning I had a te

, "had it as badly

do to keep him at Cambridge, though he had only just gone up. He wou

of Catherine's life was her boy, the only son of his mother, and she a widow. It had been so when he was quite small, as I remembered it with a pinch of jealousy startling as a twinge from an old wound. More t

assing through one's mind, "the first thing I saw, the first time I put my nose out

tight," I said,

abandoned it long before. I should have run away-hard

t speechless awe which was yet unembarrassing

n't a leg to run on," I had to

your

n." But it put

hane' you have only to say so; but in that case I can't ask

f scorn in it was enough to stimulate, but not to sting; and it w

k any favour of me! There you are quite r

e of her deliberate l

enough at last. "It is really your advice I want to ask, i

quaint humorous concern, and as a preamble I was handed th

Bob's mother. "Would yo

potted him at a glance. He's

as though I had more than regained the lost ground of lost years. And in another moment, on the heels of the discovery, came the still more startling one that I was

d yet as simple and unaffected and unspoilt with it all as the small boy whom I remembered. And I did remember him, and knew his mother well enough to believe it all; for she did not chant his pr

tarting-point, "it's about poor

a fix,

not, D

e was se

misc

on what you me

as more ser

only one or two that really poison-un

ow conceivable enough; but Catherine told me her boy was not poor, with the air of

age, he will have quite as much as is good for him. You know what he is, or rather y

imal glitter, a far harder light than had accompanied the significant reference to the patriotic impulse which she had nipped in the bud. It was probably only th

to say it's that

gh. "He's not quite twenty, remember; but I am afraid tha

ely venturing to nod m

ty. But I always thought he had his head screwed on, and his heart screwed in, or I never would have let him loose in a Swiss

on her walls, there was no doubt at all as to which of the two an

ge for Bob, and it was quite a chance; he must do a certain amount of work, you see. Well, they o

an that they'

clined a mor

ody who succeeded in having one with Bob. It does take two, you know. An

ther," I put in, as she pa

e as he can be himself, in his own sober, honest, plodding way. He may not have the temp

me back, and yo

that George had had enough of it and was off home. It was a little too casual to be quite natural in old Bob, and there are other things he has been mentioning in the

el

ou could have seen the poor fellow sitting where you are sitting now, like a prisoner in the dock! I put him in the witness-box instead, and examined him on scraps of

as Bob's moth

reature at the hotel-a widow, if you please! A 'ripping widow' Bob called her in his first letter; then it was 'M

unmercifully. I r

me, mind, but he couldn't deny a single thing. It was about her that they fell out. Poor George remonstrated, not too diplomatically, I daresay,

, with the somewhat shaky confi

ked at me in

n now, Duncan-it'

y far at his age!" Nor to this hour can I yet conceive a sounder saying, in all the circumstances of the case, and with one's knowledge of the type o

y tradition of the exasperated lady. Not go far? As if it had not gone t

gone? Duncan, it must be stopped, and stopped at once; but I am not the one to do it. I would rather it went on," cried Catherine tragically, a

d dropped. I

ighed, "I had a

sciousness of the past (I thought), and (I even fancied) some penitence for a wrong by no means past undoing, were in every sensitive inch of her, as she sat a suppliant to the old player of that part. And there are emotions of which the body may be yet more eloquent than

ks, but I cannot say that my voice betrayed m

aid Catherine-"abov

morning," I rejoine

tion were the idle word, but the inadequate, and yet more than on

o?" she cried. "Do

eplied, "that it w

would be wee

r story! I may be

he instant; only a gleam of

for what,

xcept stoppin

nonsense, Duncan.

eing talked about, well, they are being talked about. You know Bob best: suppose he is making a fool of himself,

ased with her compliment. "You used to have q

ut then he was a small bo

re a much

to trust

been wounded

case I'll go. I should have to go somewhere before many days. It may as well be to that place as to anot

and good sense and better heart. And I never shall forget it, Duncan, never, never! You are the one person he wouldn't instant

st in the eyes that now melted into mine; there was liking at least, and gratitude enough to inspire one to win infinitely more. I went so far as to take in mine the hand to which I had dared to aspire in the temerity of my youth; nor shall I pretend for

ll give me another chance, and take me seriously thi

when tea came up, and saved a dangerous

ng that), she had nevertheless married for mere love as a very young girl, and had been left a widow before the birth of her boy. I never knew her husband, though we were distant kin, nor yet herself during the long years through which she mourned him. Catherine Evers was beginning to recover her interest in the world when first we met; but she never returned to that identical fold of society in which she had been born and bred. It was, of course, despite her own performances, a fold to wh

est interest in the career into which he had allowed himself to drift. An early stage of that career brought him up to London, where family pressure drove him on a day to Elm Park Gardens. The rest is easily conceived. Here was a woman, still young, though some years older than oneself; attractive, intellectual, amusing, the soul of sympathy, at once a spiritual influence and the best compani

a taste of two wars. But Catherine's room was Catherine's room, a very haunt of the higher sirens, charged with noble promptings and forgotten influe