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No Hero By: Ernest William Hornung (1866-1921) |
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By E.W. Hornung
1903 CONTENTS Chapter I. A Plenipotentiary II. The Theatre of War III. First Blood IV. A Little Knowledge V. A Marked Woman VI. Out of Action VII. Second Fiddle VIII. Prayers and Parables IX. Sub Judice X. The Last Word XI. The Lion's Mouth XII. A Stern Chase XIII. Number Three
No Hero
CHAPTER I A PLENIPOTENTIARY
Has no writer ever dealt with the dramatic aspect of the unopened
envelope? I cannot recall such a passage in any of my authors, and yet
to my mind there is much 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 glance whether his news is to
be good, bad, or indifferent; but in his handwriting on the
breakfast table there is never a hint as to the nature of his
communication. Whether he has sustained a loss or an addition to his
family, whether he wants you to dine with him at the club or to lend him
ten pounds, his handwriting at least will be the same, unless, indeed,
he be offended, when he will generally indite your name with a studious
precision and a distant grace quite foreign to his ordinary caligraphy. These reflections, trite enough as I know, are nevertheless inevitable
if one is to begin one's unheroic story in the modern manner, at the
latest possible point. That is clearly the point at which a waiter
brought me the fatal letter from Catherine Evers. Apart even from its
immediate consequences, the letter had a prima facie interest, of no
ordinary kind, as the first for years from a once constant
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 the last summer of the late
century, and already I was beginning to get about like a lamplighter on
my two sticks. Now, young men about town, on two walking sticks, in the
year of grace 1900, meant only one thing. Quite a stimulating thing in
the beginning, but even as I write, in this the next winter but one, a
national irritation of which the name alone might prevent you from
reading another word. Catherine's handwriting, on the contrary, was still stimulating, if
indeed I ever found it more so in the foolish past. It had not altered
in the least. There was the same sweet pedantry of the Attic e , the
same superiority to the most venial abbreviation, the 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 way of addressing me as though nothing had
ever happened, of asking whether she might. Her own old tact and charm
were in that tentative burial of the past. In the first line she had all
but won my entire forgiveness; but the very next interfered with the
effect. "You promised to do anything for me!" I should be sorry to deny it, I am sure, for not to this day do I know
what I did say on the occasion to which she evidently referred. But was
it kind to break the silence of years with such a reference? Was it even
quite decent in Catherine to ignore my existence until I could be of use
to her, and then to ask the favour 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
difficulty; but she did not say what the difficulty was. For one
unworthy moment the thought of money entered my mind, to be ejected the
next, as the Catherine of old came more and more into the mental focus... Continue reading book >>
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