E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 02 (20 page)

Our landlady first wept on hearing our determination, and then
longed to have the pulling of certain whiskers (with the tongs,
and they should be red-hot); but from that day, and for as many
as were left to us, the good soul made more of us than ever. Not
that she was at all surprised; dear brave gentlemen who could
look for burglars on their bicycles at dead of night, it was only
what you might expect of them, bless their lion hearts. I
wanted to wink at Raffles, but he would not catch my eye. He was
a ginger-headed Raffles by the end of January, and it was
extraordinary what a difference it made. His most elaborate
disguises had not been more effectual than this simple
expedient, and, with khaki to complete the subdual of his
individuality, he had every hope of escaping recognition in the
field. The man he dreaded was the officer he had known in old
days; there were ever so many of him at the Front; and it was to
minimize this risk that we went out second-class at the beginning
of February.

It was a weeping day, a day in a shroud, cold as clay, yet for
that very reason an ideal day upon which to leave England for the
sunny Front. Yet my heart was heavy as I looked my last at her;
it was heavy as the raw, thick air, until Raffles came and leant
upon the rail at my side.

"I know what you are thinking, and you've got to stop," said he.
"It's on the knees of the gods, Bunny, whether we do or we
don't, and thinking won't make us see over their shoulders."

Now I made as bad a soldier (except at heart) as Raffles made a
good one, and I could not say a harder thing of myself. My
ignorance of matters military was up to that time unfathomable,
and is still profound. I was always a fool with horses, though I
did not think so at one time, and I had never been any good with
a gun. The average Tommy may be my intellectual inferior, but he
must know some part of his work better than I ever knew any of
mine. I never even learnt to be killed. I do not mean that I
ever ran away. The South African Field Force might have been
strengthened if I had.

The foregoing remarks do not express a pose affected out of
superiority to the usual spirit of the conquering hero, for no
man was keener on the war than I, before I went to it. But one
can only write with gusto of events (like that little affair at
Surbiton) in which one has acquitted oneself without discredit,
and I cannot say that of my part in the war, of which I now
loathe the thought for other reasons. The battlefield was no
place for me, and neither was the camp. My ineptitude made me
the butt of the looting, cursing, swash-buckling lot who formed
the very irregular squadron which we joined; and it would have
gone hard with me but for Raffles, who was soon the darling
devil of them all, but never more loyally my friend. Your
fireside fire-eater does not think of these things. He imagines
all the fighting to be with the enemy. He will probably be
horrified to hear that men can detest each other as cordially in
khaki as in any other wear, and with a virulence seldom inspired
by the bearded dead-shot in the opposite trench. To the
fireside fire-eater, therefore (for you have seen me one myself),
I dedicate the story of Corporal Connal, Captain Bellingham, the
General, Raffles, and myself.

I must be vague, for obvious reasons. The troop is fighting as I
write; you will soon hear why I am not; but neither is Raffles,
nor Corporal Connal. They are fighting as well as ever, those
other hard-living, harder-dying sons of all soils; but I am not
going to say where it was that we fought with them. I believe
that no body of men of equal size has done half so much heroic
work. But they had got themselves a bad name off the field, so
to speak; and I am not going to make it worse by saddling them
before the world with Raffles and myself, and that ruffian
Connal.

The fellow was a mongrel type, a Glasgow Irishman by birth and
upbringing, but he had been in South Africa for years, and he
certainly knew the country very well. This circumstance, coupled
with the fact that he was a very handy man with horses, as all
colonists are, had procured him the first small step from the
ranks which facilitates bullying if a man be a bully by nature,
and is physically fitted to be a successful one. Connal was a
hulking ruffian, and in me had ideal game. The brute was
offensive to me from the hour I joined. The details are of no
importance, but I stood up to him at first in words, and finally
for a few seconds on my feet. Then I went down like an ox, and
Raffles came out of his tent. Their fight lasted twenty minutes,
and Raffles was marked, but the net result was dreadfully
conventional, for the bully was a bully no more.

But I began gradually to suspect that he was something worse.
All this time we were fighting every day, or so it seems when I
look back. Never a great engagement, and yet never a day when we
were wholly out of touch with the enemy. I had thus several
opportunities of watching the other enemy under fire, and had
almost convinced myself of the systematic harmlessness of his own
shooting, when a more glaring incident occurred.

One night three troops of our squadron were ordered to a certain
point whither they had patrolled the previous week; but our own
particular troop was to stay behind, and in charge of no other
than the villanous corporal, both our officer and sergeant having
gone into hospital with enteric. Our detention, however, was
very temporary, and Connal would seem to have received the usual
vague orders to proceed in the early morning to the place where
the other three companies had camped. It appeared that we were
to form an escort to two squadron-wagons containing kits,
provisions, and ammunition.

Before daylight Connal had reported his departure to the
commanding officer, and we passed the outposts at gray dawn.
Now, though I was perhaps the least observant person in the
troop, I was not the least wideawake where Corporal Connal was
concerned, and it struck me at once that we were heading in the
wrong direction. My reasons are not material, but as a matter of
fact our last week's patrol had pushed its khaki tentacles both
east and west; and eastward they had met with resistance so
determined as to compel them to retire; yet it was eastward that
we were travelling now. I at once spurred alongside Raffles, as
he rode, bronzed and bearded, with warworn wide-awake over eyes
grown keen as a hawk's, and a cutty-pipe sticking straight out
from his front teeth. I can see him now, so gaunt and grim and
debonair, yet already with much of the nonsense gone out of him,
though I thought he only smiled on my misgivings.

"Did he get the instructions, Bunny, or did we? Very well, then;
give the devil a chance."

There was nothing further to be said, but I felt more crushed
than convinced; so we jogged along into broad daylight, until
Raffles himself gave a whistle of surprise.

"A white flag, Bunny, by all my gods!"

I could not see it; he had the longest sight in all our squadron;
but in a little the fluttering emblem, which had gained such a
sinister significance in most of our eyes, was patent even to
mine. A little longer, and the shaggy Boer was in our midst upon
his shaggy pony, with a half-scared, half-incredulous look in his
deep-set eyes. He was on his way to our lines with some
missive, and had little enough to say to us, though frivolous and
flippant questions were showered upon him from most saddles.

"Any Boers over there?" asked one, pointing in the direction in
which we were still heading.

"Shut up!" interjected Raffles in crisp rebuke.

The Boer looked stolid but sinister.

"Any of our chaps?" added another.

The Boer rode on with an open grin.

And the incredible conclusion of the matter was that we were
actually within their lines in another hour; saw them as large as
life within a mile and a half on either side of us; and must
every man of us have been taken prisoner had not every man but
Connal refused to go one inch further, and had not the Boers
themselves obviously suspected some subtle ruse as the only
conceivable explanation of so madcap a manoeuvre. They allowed
us to retire without firing a shot; and retire you may be sure
we did, the Kaffirs flogging their teams in a fury of fear, and
our precious corporal sullen but defiant.

I have said this was the conclusion of the matter, and I blush to
repeat that it practically was. Connal was indeed wheeled up
before the colonel, but his instructions were not written
instructions, and he lied his way out with equal hardihood and
tact.

"You said 'over there,' sir," he stoutly reiterated; and the
vagueness with which such orders were undoubtedly given was the
saving of him for the time being.

I need not tell you how indignant I felt, for one.

"The fellow is a spy!" I said to Raffles, with no nursery oath,
as we strolled within the lines that night.

He merely smiled in my face.

"And have you only just found it out, Bunny? I have known it
almost ever since we joined; but this morning I did think we had
him on toast."

"It's disgraceful that we had not," cried I. "He ought to have
been shot like a dog."

"Not so loud, Bunny, though I quite agree; but I don't regret
what has happened as much as you do. Not that I am less
bloodthirsty than you are in this case, but a good deal more so!
Bunny, I'm mad-keen on bowling him out with my own unaided
hand—though I may ask you to take the wicket. Meanwhile, don't
wear all your animosity upon your sleeve; the fellow has friends
who still believe in him; and there is no need for you to be
more openly his enemy than you were before."

Well, I can only vow that I did my best to follow this sound
advice; but who but a Raffles can control his every look? It was
never my forte, as you know, yet to this day I cannot conceive
what I did to excite the treacherous corporal's suspicions. He
was clever enough, however, not to betray them, and lucky enough
to turn the tables on us, as you shall hear.

Bloemfontein had fallen since our arrival, but there was plenty
of fight in the Free Staters still, and I will not deny that it
was thes gentry who were showing us the sport for which our
corps came in. Constant skirmishing was our portion, with now
and then an action that you would know at least by name, did I
feel free to mention them. But I do not, and indeed it is better
so. I have not to describe the war even as I saw it, I am
thankful to say, but only the martial story of us two and those
others of whom you wot. Corporal Connal was the dangerous
blackguard you have seen. Captain Bellingham is best known for
his position in the batting averages a year or two ago, and for
his subsequent failure to obtai a place in any of the five Test
Matches. But I only think of him as the officer who recognized
Raffles.

We had taken a village, making quite a little name for it and for
ourselves, and in the village our division was reinforced by a
fresh brigade of the Imperial troops. It was a day of rest, our
first for weeks, but Raffles and I spent no small part of it in
seeking high and low for a worthy means of quenching the kind of
thirst which used to beset Yeomen and others who had left good
cellars for the veldt. The old knack came back to us both,
though I believe that I alone was conscious of it at the time;
and we were leaving the house, splendidly supplied, when we
almost ran into the arms of an infantry officer, with a scowl
upon his red-hot face, and an eye-glass flaming at us in the sun.

"Peter Bellingham!" gasped Raffles under his breath, and then we
saluted and tried to pass on, with the bottles ringing like
church-bells under our khaki. But Captain Bellingham was a hard
man.

"What have you men been doin'?" drawled he.

"Nothing, sir," we protested, like innocence with an injury.

"Lootin' 's forbidden," said he. "You had better let me see
those bottles."

"We are done," whispered Raffles, and straightway we made a
sideboard of the stoop across which he had crept at so
inopportune a moment. I had not the heart to raise my eyes
again, yet it was many moments before the officer broke silence.

"Uam Var!" he murmured reverentially at last. "And Long John of
Ben Nevis! The first drop that's been discovered in the whole
psalm-singing show! What lot do you two belong to?"

I answered.

"I must have your names."

In my agitation I gave my real one. Raffles had turned away, as
though in heart-broken contemplation of our lost loot. I saw the
officer studying his half-profile with an alarming face.

"What's YOUR name?" he rapped out at last.

But his strange, low voice said plainly that he knew, and Raffles
faced him with the monosyllable of confession and assent. I did
not count the seconds until the next word, but it was Captain
Bellingham who uttered it at last.

"I thought you were dead."

"Now you see I am not."

"But you are at your old games!"

"I am not," cried Raffles, and his tone was new to me. I have
seldom heard one more indignant. "Yes," he continued, "this is
loot, and the wrong 'un will out. That's what you're thinking,
Peter—I beg your pardon—sir. But he isn't let out in the
field! We're playing the game as much as you are, old—sir."

The plural number caused the captain to toss me a contemptuous
look. "Is this the fellah who was taken when you swam for it?"
he inquired, relapsing into his drawl. Raffles said I was, and
with that took a passionate oath upon our absolute rectitude as
volunteers. There could be no doubting him; but the officer's
eyes went back at the bottles on the stoop.

"But look at those," said he; and as he looked himself the light
eye melted in his fiery face. "And I've got Sparklets in my
tent," he sighed. "You make it in a minute!"