The Essential W. Somerset Maugham Collection. W. Somerset Maugham

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      'You see, its come too late. Nothing much matters now, for to-morrow I go away for ever.'

      'But you'll come back.'

      He gave a short, scornful laugh.

      'They were so glad to give me that job on the Congo because no one else would take it. I'm going to a part of Africa from which Europeans seldom return.'

      'Oh, that's too horrible,' she cried. 'Don't go, dearest; I can't bear it.'

      'I must now. Everything is settled, and there can be no drawing back.'

      She let go hopelessly of his hand.

      'Don't you care for me any more?' she whispered.

      He looked at her, but he did not answer. She turned away, and sinking into a chair, began to cry.

      'Don't, Lucy,' he said, his voice breaking suddenly. 'Don't make it harder.'

      'Oh, Alec, Alec, don't you see how much I love you.'

      He leaned over her and gently stroked her hair.

      'Be brave, darling,' he whispered.

      She looked up passionately, seizing both his hands.

      'I can't live without you. I've suffered too much. If you cared for me at all, you'd stay.'

      'Though I love you with all my soul, I can't do otherwise now than go.'

      'Then take me with you,' she cried eagerly. 'Let me come too.'

      'You!'

      'You don't know what I can do. With you to help me I can be very brave. Let me come, Alec.'

      'It's impossible. You don't know what you ask.'

      'Then let me wait for you. Let me wait till you come back.'

      'And if I never come back?'

      'I will wait for you still.'

      He placed his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes, as though he were striving to see into the depths of her soul. She felt very weak. She could scarcely see him through her tears, but she tried to smile. Then without a word he slipped his arms around her. Sobbing in the ecstasy of her happiness, she let her head fall on his shoulder.

      'You will have the courage to wait?' he said.

      'I know you love me, and I trust you.'

      'Then have no fear; I will come back. My journey was only dangerous because I wanted to die. I want to live now, and I shall live.'

      'Oh, Alec, Alec, I'm so glad you love me.'

      Outside in the street the bells of the motor 'buses tinkled noisily, and there was an incessant roar of the traffic that rumbled heavily over the wooden pavements. There was a clatter of horses' hoofs, and the blowing of horns; the electric broughams whizzed past with an odd, metallic whirr.

      THE END

       THE HERO

      BY

      WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM

      "Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves; Britons never will be slaves." _"Alfred": a Masque. By James Thomson._

      "O Sophonisba, Sophonisba, O!" _"Sophonisba": a Tragedy. By the same Author._

      To

      MISS JULIA MAUGHAM

      THE HERO

      I

      Colonel Parsons sat by the window in the dining-room to catch the last glimmer of the fading day, looking through his _Standard_ to make sure that he had overlooked no part of it. Finally, with a little sigh, he folded it up, and taking off his spectacles, put them in their case.

      "Have you finished the paper?" asked his wife

      "Yes, I think I've read it all. There's nothing in it."

      He looked out of window at the well-kept drive that led to the house, and at the trim laurel bushes which separated the front garden from the village green. His eyes rested, with a happy smile, upon the triumphal arch which decorated the gate for the home-coming of his son, expected the next day from South Africa. Mrs. Parsons knitted diligently at a sock for her husband, working with quick and clever fingers. He watched the rapid glint of the needles.

      "You'll try your eyes if you go on much longer with this light, my dear."

      "Oh, I don't require to see," replied his wife, with a gentle, affectionate smile. But she stopped, rather tired, and laying the sock on the table, smoothed it out with her hand.

      "I shouldn't mind if you made it a bit higher in the leg than the last pair."

      "How high would you like it?"

      She went to the window so that the Colonel might show the exact length he desired; and when he had made up his mind, sat down again quietly on her chair by the fireside, with hands crossed on her lap, waiting placidly for the maid to bring the lamp.

      Mrs. Parsons was a tall woman of fifty-five, carrying herself with a certain diffidence, as though a little ashamed of her stature, greater than the Colonel's; it had seemed to her through life that those extra inches savoured, after a fashion, of disrespect. She knew it was her duty spiritually to look up to her husband, yet physically she was always forced to look down. And eager to prevent even the remotest suspicion of wrong-doing, she had taken care to be so submissive in her behaviour as to leave no doubt that she recognised the obligation of respectful obedience enjoined by the Bible, and confirmed by her own conscience. Mrs. Parsons was the gentlest of creatures, and the most kind-hearted; she looked upon her husband with great and unalterable affection, admiring intensely both his head and his heart. He was her type of the upright man, walking in the ways of the Lord. You saw in the placid, smooth brow of the Colonel's wife, in her calm eyes, even in the severe arrangement of the hair, parted in the middle and drawn back, that her character was frank, simple, and straightforward. She was a woman to whom evil had never offered the smallest attraction; she was merely aware of its existence theoretically. To her the only way of life had been that which led to God; the others had been non-existent. Duty had one hand only, and only one finger; and that finger had always pointed definitely in one direction. Yet Mrs. Parsons had a firm mouth, and a chin square enough to add another impression. As she sat motionless, hands crossed, watching her husband with loving eyes, you might have divined that, however kind-hearted, she was not indulgent, neither lenient to her own faults nor to those of others; perfectly unassuming, but with a sense of duty, a feeling of the absolute rightness of some deeds and of the absolute wrongness of others, which would be, even to those she loved best in the world, utterly unsparing.

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