E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 02 (16 page)

"Go?" I echoed. "Go where?"

"It's that ass Theobald," said Raffles. "He insists."

"On my going altogether?"

He nodded.

"And you mean to let him have his way?"

I had no language for my mortification and disgust, though
neither was as yet quite so great as my surprise. I had
foreseen almost every conceivable consequence of the mad act
which brought all this trouble to pass, but a voluntary division
between Raffles and me had certainly never entered my
calculations. Nor could I think that it had occurred to him
before our egregious doctor's last visit, this very morning.
Raffles had looked irritated as he broke the news to me from his
pillow, and now there was some sympathy in the way he sat up in
bed, as though he felt the thing himself.

"I am obliged to give in to the fellow," said he. "He's saving
me from my friend, and I'm bound to humor him. But I can tell
you that we've been arguing about you for the last half hour,
Bunny. It was no use; the idiot has had his knife in you from
the first; and he wouldn't see me through on any other
conditions."

"So he is going to see you through, is he?"

"It tots up to that," said Raffles, looking at me rather hard.
"At all events he has come to my rescue for the time being, and
it's for me to manage the rest. You don't know what it has been,
Bunny, these last few weeks; and gallantry forbids that I
should tell you even now. But would you rather elope against
your will, or have your continued existence made known to the
world in general and the police in particular? That is
practically the problem which I have had to solve, and the
temporary solution was to fall ill. As a matter of fact, I am
ill; and now what do you think? I owe it to you to tell you,
Bunny, though it goes against the grain. She would take me 'to
the dear, warm underworld, where the sun really shines,' and she
would 'nurse me back to life and love!' The artistic temperament
is a fearsome thing, Bunny, in a woman with the devil's own
will!"

Raffles tore up the letter from which he had read these piquant
extracts, and lay back on the pillows with the tired air of the
veritable invalid which he seemed able to assume at will. But
for once he did look as though bed was the best place for him;
and I used the fact as an argument for my own retention in
defiance of Dr. Theobald. The town was full of typhoid, I said,
and certainly that autumnal scourge was in the air. Did he want
me to leave him at the very moment when he might be sickening for
a serious illness?

"You know I don't, my good fellow," said Raffles, wearily; "but
Theobald does, and I can't afford to go against him now. Not
that I really care what happens to me now that that woman knows
I'm in the land of the living; she'll let it out, to a dead
certainty, and at the best there'll be a hue and cry, which is
the very thing I have escaped all these years. Now, what I want
you to do is to go and take some quiet place somewhere, and then
let me know, so that I may have a port in the storm when it
breaks."

"Now you're talking!" I cried, recovering my spirits. "I thought
you meant to go and drop a fellow altogether!"

"Exactly the sort of thing you would think," rejoined Raffles,
with a contempt that was welcome enough after my late alarm.
"No, my dear rabbit, what you've got to do is to make a new
burrow for us both. Try down the Thames, in some quiet nook that
a literary man would naturally select. I've often thought that
more use might be made of a boat, while the family are at dinner,
than there ever has been yet. If Raffles is to come to life, old
chap, he shall go a-Raffling for all he's worth! There's
something to be done with a bicycle, too. Try Ham Common or
Roehampton, or some such sleepy hollow a trifle off the line;
and say you're expecting your brother from the colonies."

Into this arrangement I entered without the slightest hesitation,
for we had funds enough to carry it out on a comfortable scale,
and Raffles placed a sufficient share at my disposal for the
nonce. Moreover, I for one was only too glad to seek fresh
fields and pastures new—a phrase which I determined to
interpret literally in my choice of fresh surroundings. I was
tired of our submerged life in the poky little flat, especially
now that we had money enough for better things. I myself of
late had dark dealings with the receivers, with the result that
poor Lord Ernest Belville's successes were now indeed ours.
Subsequent complications had been the more galling on that
account, while the wanton way in which they had been created
was the most irritating reflection of all. But it had brought
its own punishment upon Raffles, and I fancied the lesson would
prove salutary when we again settled down.

"If ever we do, Bunny!" said he, as I took his hand and told him
how I was already looking forward to the time.

"But of course we will!" I cried, concealing the resentment at
leaving him which his tone and his appearance renewed in my
breast.

"I'm not so sure of it," he said, gloomily. "I'm in somebody's
clutches, and I've got to get out of them first."

"I'll sit tight until you do."

"Well," he said, "if you don't see me in ten days you never
will."

"Only ten days?" I echoed. "That's nothing at all."

"A lot may happen in ten days," replied Raffles, in the same
depressing tone, so very depressing in him; and with that he held
out his hand a second time, and dropped mine suddenly after as
sudden a pressure for farewell.

I left the flat in considerable dejection after all, unable to
decide whether Raffles was really ill, or only worried as I knew
him to be. And at the foot of the stairs the author of my
dismissal, that confounded Theobald, flung open his door and
waylaid me.

"Are you going?" he demanded.

The traps in my hands proclaimed that I was, but I dropped them
at his feet to have it out with him then and there.

"Yes," I answered fiercely, "thanks to you!"

"Well, my good fellow," he said, his full-blooded face lightening
and softening at the same time, as though a load were off his
mind, "it's no pleasure to me to deprive any man of his billet,
but you never were a nurse, and you know that as well as I do."

I began to wonder what he meant, and how much he did know, and my
speculations kept me silent. "But come in here a moment," he
continued, just as I decided that he knew nothing at all. And,
leading me into his minute consulting-room, Dr. Theobald
solemnly presented me with a sovereign by way of compensation,
which I pocketed as solemnly, and with as much gratitude as if I
had not fifty of them distributed over my person as it was. The
good fellow had quite forgotten my social status, about which he
himself had been so particular at our earliest interview; but he
had never accustomed himself to treat me as a gentleman, and I
do not suppose he had been improving his memory by the tall
tumbler which I saw him poke behind a photograph as we entered.

"There's one thing I should like to know before I go," said I,
turning suddenly on the doctor's mat, "and that is whether Mr.
Maturin is really ill or not!"

I meant, of course, at the present moment, but Dr. Theobald
braced himself like a recruit at the drill-sergeant's voice.

"Of course he is," he snapped—"so ill as to need a nurse who can
nurse, by way of a change."

With that his door shut in my face, and I had to go my way, in
the dark as to whether he had mistaken my meaning, and was
telling me a lie, or not.

But for my misgivings upon this point I might have extracted some
very genuine enjoyment out of the next few days. I had decent
clothes to my back, with money, as I say, in most of the pockets,
and more freedom to spend it than was possible in the constant
society of a man whose personal liberty depended on a universal
supposition that he was dead. Raffles was as bold as ever, and
I as fond of him, but whereas he would run any risk in a
professional exploit, there were many innocent recreations still
open to me which would have been sheer madness in him. He could
not even watch a match, from the sixpenny seats, at Lord's
cricket-ground, where the Gentlemen were every year in a worse
way without him. He never travelled by rail, and dining out was
a risk only to be run with some ulterior object in view. In
fact, much as it had changed, Raffles could no longer show his
face with perfect impunity in any quarter or at any hour.
Moreover, after the lesson he had now learnt, I foresaw increased
caution on his part in this respect. But I myself was under no
such perpetual disadvantage, and, while what was good enough for
Raffles was quite good enough for me so long as we were
together, I saw no harm in profiting by the present opportunity
of "doing my-self well."

Such were my reflections on the way to Richmond in a hansom cab.
Richmond had struck us both as the best centre of operations in
search of the suburban retreat which Raffles wanted, and by
road, in a well-appointed, well-selected hansom, was certainly
the most agreeable way of getting there. In a week or ten days
Raffles was to write to me at the Richmond post-office, but for
at least a week I should be "on my own." It was not an
unpleasant sensation as I leant back in the comfortable hansom,
and rather to one side, in order to have a good look at myself in
the bevelled mirror that is almost as great an improvement in
these vehicles as the rubber tires. Really I was not an
ill-looking youth, if one may call one's self such at the age of
thirty. I could lay no claim either to the striking cast of
countenance or to the peculiar charm of expression which made the
face of Raffles like no other in the world. But this very
distinction was in itself a danger, for its impression was
indelible, whereas I might still have been mistaken for a hundred
other young fellows at large in London. Incredible as it may
appear to the moralists, I had sustained no external hallmark by
my term of imprisonment, and I am vain enough to believe that the
evil which I did had not a separate existence in my face. This
afternoon, indeed, I was struck by the purity of my fresh
complexion, and rather depressed by the general innocence of
the visage which peered into mine from the little mirror. My
straw-colored moustache, grown in the flat after a protracted
holiday, again preserved the most disappointing dimensions, and
was still invisible in certain lights without wax. So far from
discerning the desperate criminal who has "done time" once, and
deserved it over and over again, the superior but superficial
observer might have imagined that he detected a certain element
of folly in my face.

At all events it was not the face to shut the doors of a
first-class hotel against me, without accidental evidence of a
more explicit kind, and it was with no little satisfaction that
I directed the man to drive to the Star and Garter. I also told
him to go through Richmond Park, though he warned me that it
would add considerably to the distance and his fare. It was
autumn, and it struck me that the tints would be fine. And I had
learnt from Raffles to appreciate such things, even amid the
excitement of an audacious enterprise.

If I dwell upon my appreciation of this occasion it is because,
like most pleasures, it was exceedingly short-lived. I was very
comfortable at the Star and Garter, which was so empty that I
had a room worthy of a prince, where I could enjoy the finest of
all views (in patriotic opinion) every morning while I shaved. I
walked many miles through the noble park, over the commons of Ham
and Wimbledon, and one day as far as that of Esher, where I was
forcibly reminded of a service we once rendered to a
distinguished resident in this delightful locality. But it was
on Ham Common, one of the places which Raffles had mentioned as
specially desirable, that I actually found an almost ideal
retreat. This was a cottage where I heard, on inquiry, that
rooms were to be let in the summer. The landlady, a motherly
body, of visible excellence, was surprised indeed at receiving
an application for the winter months; but I have generally found
that the title of "author," claimed with an air, explains every
little innocent irregularity of conduct or appearance, and even
requires something of the kind to carry conviction to the lay
intelligence. The present case was one in point, and when I said
that I could only write in a room facing north, on mutton chops
and milk, with a cold ham in the wardrobe in case of nocturnal
inspiration, to which I was liable, my literary character was
established beyond dispute. I secured the rooms, paid a month's
rent in advance at my own request, and moped in them dreadfully
until the week was up and Raffles due any day. I explained that
the inspiration would not come, and asked abruptly if the mutton
was New Zealand.

Thrice had I made fruitless inquiries at the Richmond
post-office; but on the tenth day I was in and out almost every
hour. Not a word was there for me up to th last post at night.
Home I trudged to Ham with horrible forebodings, and back again
to Richmond after breakfast next morning. Still there was
nothing. I could bear it no more. At ten minutes to eleven I
was climbing the station stairs at Earl's Court.

It was a wretched morning there, a weeping mist shrouding the
long, straight street, and clinging to one's face in clammy
caresses. I felt how much better it was down at Ham, as I
turned into our side street, and saw the flats looming like
mountains, the chimney-pots hidden in the mist. At our entrance
stood a nebulous conveyance, that I took at first for a
tradesman's van; to my horror it proved to be a hearse; and all
at once the white breath ceased upon my lips.

I had looked up at our windows and the blinds were down!