No Hero | Page 3

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 was
one by Hills and Sanders, of a tall youth in flannels, armed with a
long-handled racket, and the sweet open countenance which Robin
Evers had worn from his cradle upward. I should have known him
anywhere and at any age. It was the same dear, honest face; but to think
that this giant was little Bob! He had not gone to Eton when I saw him
last; now I knew from the sporting papers that he was up at Cambridge;
but it was left to his photograph to bring home the flight of time.
Certainly his mother would never have done so when all at once the
door opened and she stood before me, looking about thirty in the ample
shadow of a cavalier's hat. Simply but admirably gowned, as I knew
she would be, her slender figure looked more 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
whole reception of me was; only it had always been the way of
Catherine the correspondent to make one expect a little more than mere
kindness, and of Catherine the companion to disappoint that
expectation. Her conversation needed few exclamatory points.
"Still halt and lame," she murmured over my sticks. "You poor thing,
you are to sit down this instant."

And I obeyed her as one always had, merely remarking that I was
getting along famously now.
"You must have had an awful time," continued Catherine, seating
herself near me, her calm wise eyes on mine.
"Blood-poisoning," said I. "It nearly knocked me out, but I'm glad to
say it didn't quite."
Indeed, I had never felt quite so glad before.
"Ah! that was too hard and cruel; but I was thinking of the day itself,"
explained Catherine, and paused in some sweet transparent awe of one
who had been through it.
"It was a beastly day," said I, forgetting her objection to the epithet
until it was out. But Catherine did not wince. Her fixed eyes were full
of thought.
"It was all that here," she said. "One depressing morning I had a
telegram from Bob, 'Spion Kop taken'--"
"So Bob," I nodded, "had it as badly as everybody else!"
"Worse," declared Catherine, her eye hardening; "it was all I could do
to keep him at Cambridge, though he had only just gone up. He would
have given up everything and flown to the Front if I had let him."
And she wore the inexorable face with which I could picture her
standing in his way; and in Catherine I could admire that dogged look
and all it spelt, because a great passion is always admirable. The
passion 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 than ever must it be so now; that was as natural as the maternal
embargo in which Catherine seemed almost to glory. And yet, I
reflected, if all the widows had thought only of their only sons--and of
themselves!

"The next depressing morning," continued Catherine, happily oblivious
of what was passing through one's mind, "the first thing I saw, the first
time I put my nose outside, was a great pink placard with 'Spion Kop
Abandoned!' Duncan, it was too awful."
"I wish we'd sat tight," I said, "I must confess."
"Tight!" cried Catherine in dry horror. "I should have abandoned it long
before. I should have run away--hard! To think that you didn't--that's
quite enough for me."
And again I sustained the full flattery of that speechless awe which was
yet unembarrassing by reason of its freedom from undue solemnity.
"There were some of us who hadn't a leg to run on," I had to say; "I was
one, Mrs. Evers."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Catherine, then." But it put me to the blush.
"Thank you. If you really wish me to call you 'Captain Clephane' you
have only to say so; but in that case I can't ask the favour I had made up
my mind to ask--of so old a friend."
Her most winning voice was as good a servant as ever; the touch of
scorn in it was