The Hero

The Hero, by William Somerset Maugham, is listed as by the author of Liza of Lambeth, The Making of a Saint and Orientations. Colonel Parsons sits 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 has overlooked no part of it.

Colonel Parsons had shrunk from telling the youth anything of the catastrophe which had driven him from the service, but when James passed brilliantly out of Sandhurst, the thought seized him that the good name which he valued so highly might be retrieved. The Colonel says that he thought it better to hear it from him than from a stranger, and that men will nudge one another and say, There's the son of old Parsons, who bungled the affair against the Madda Khels. An object with a Victoria Cross in diamonds on one side and an inscription on the other is described as much too magnificent for use, and James asks whether they take that as equal in value to their son.