No Hero

No Hero

The Project Gutenberg EBook of No Hero, by E.W. Hornung This
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Title: No Hero
Author: E.W. Hornung
Release Date: February 18, 2004 [EBook #11153]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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No Hero
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;