"I had the very devil of a squeak for it," he went on. "I did the
hurdles over two or three garden-walls, but so did the flyer who was on
my tracks, and he drove me back into the straight and down to High
Street like any lamplighter. If he had only had the breath to sing out
it would have been all up with me then; as it was I pulled off my coat
the moment I was round the corner, and took a ticket for it at the
Empress Rooms."
"I suppose you had one for the dance that was going on," I growled. Nor
would it have been a coincidence for Raffles to have had a ticket for
that or any other entertainment of the London season.
"I never asked what the dance was," he returned. "I merely took the
opportunity of revising my toilet, and getting rid of that rather
distinctive overcoat, which I shall call for now. They're not too
particular at such stages of such proceedings, but I've no doubt I
should have seen someone I knew if I had none right in. I might even
have had a turn, if only I had been less uneasy about you, Bunny."
"It was like you to come back to help me out," said I. "But to lie to
me, and to inveigle me with your lies into that house of all
houses--that was not like you, Raffles--and I never shall forgive it or
you!"
Raffles took my arm again. We were near the High Street gates of
Palace Gardens, and I was too miserable to resist an advance which I
meant never to give him an opportunity to repeat.
"Come, come, Bunny, there wasn't much inveigling about it," said he. "I
did my level best to leave you behind, but you wouldn't listen to me."
"If you had told me the truth I should have listened fast enough," I
retorted. "But what's the use of talking? You can boast of your own
adventures after you bolted. You don't care what happened to me."
"I cared so much that I came back to see."
"You might have spared yourself the trouble! The wrong had been done.
Raffles--Raffles--don't you know who she was?"
It was my hand that gripped his arm once more.
"I guessed," he answered, gravely enough even for me.
"It was she who saved me, not you," I said. "And that is the bitterest
part of all!"
Yet I told him that part with a strange sad pride in her whom I had
lost--through him--forever. As I ended we turned into High Street; in
the prevailing stillness, the faint strains of the band reached us from
the Empress Rooms; and I hailed a crawling hansom as Raffles turned
that way.
"Bunny," said he, "it's no use saying I'm sorry. Sorrow adds insult in
a case like this--if ever there was or will be such another! Only
believe me, Bunny, when I swear to you that I had not the smallest
shadow of a suspicion that she was in the house."
And in my heart of hearts I did believe him; but I could not bring
myself to say the words.
"You told me yourself that you had written to her in the country," he
pursued.
"And that letter!" I rejoined, in a fresh wave of bitterness: "that
letter she had written at dead of night, and stolen down to post, it
was the one I have been waiting for all these days! I should have got
it to-morrow. Now I shall never get it, never hear from her again, nor
have another chance in this world or in the next. I don't say it was
all your fault. You no more knew that she was there than I did. But
you told me a deliberate lie about her people, and that I never shall
forgive."
I spoke as vehemently as I could under my breath. The hansom was
waiting at the curb.
"I can say no more than I have said," returned Raffles with a shrug.
"Lie or no lie, I didn't tell it to bring you with me, but to get you
to give me certain information without feeling a beast about it. But,
as a matter of fact, it was no lie about old Hector Carruthers and Lord
Lochmaben, and anybody but you would have guessed the truth."
"What is the truth?"
"I as good as told you, Bunny, again and again."
"Then tell me now."
"If you read your paper there would be no need; but if you want to
know, old Carruthers headed the list of the Birthday Honors, and Lord
Lochmaben is the title of his choice."
And this miserable quibble was not a lie! My lip curled, I turned my
back without a word, and drove home to my Mount Street flat in a new
fury of savage scorn. Not a lie, indeed! It was the one that is half
a truth, the meanest lie of all, and the very last to which I could
have dreamt that Raffles would stoop. So far there had been a degree
of honor between us, if only of the kind understood to obtain between
thief and thief. Now all that was at an end. Raffles had cheated me.
Raffles had completed the ruin of my life. I was done with Raffles, as
she who shall not be named was done with me.
And yet, even while I blamed him most bitterly, and utterly abominated
his deceitful deed, I could not but admit in my heart that the result
was put of all proportion to the intent: he had never dreamt of doing
me this injury, or indeed any injury at all. Intrinsically the deceit
had been quite venial, the reason for it obviously the reason that
Raffles had given me. It was quite true that he had spoken of this
Lochmaben peerage as a new creation, and of the heir to it in a fashion
only applicable to Alick Carruthers. He had given me hints, which I
had been too dense to take, and he had certainly made more than one
attempt to deter me from accompanying him on this fatal emprise; had he
been more explicit, I might have made it my business to deter him. I
could not say in my heart that Raffles had failed to satisfy such honor
as I might reasonably expect to subsist between us. Yet it seems to me
to require a superhuman sanity always and unerringly to separate cause
from effect, achievement from intent. And I, for one, was never quite
able to do so in this case.
I could not be accused of neglecting my newspaper during the next few
wretched days. I read every word that I could find about the attempted
jewel-robbery in Palace Gardens, and the reports afforded me my sole
comfort. In the first place, it was only an attempted robbery; nothing
had been taken, after all. And then--and then--the one member of the
household who had come nearest to a personal encounter with either of
us was unable to furnish any description of the man--had even expressed
a doubt as to the likelihood of identification in the event of an
arrest!
I will not say with what mingled feelings I read and dwelt on that
announcement. It kept a certain faint glow alive within me until the
morning brought me back the only presents I had ever made her. They
were books; jewellery had been tabooed by the authorities. And the
books came back without a word, though the parcel was directed in her
hand.
I had made up my mind not to go near Raffles again, but in my heart I
already regretted my resolve. I had forfeited love, I had sacrificed
honor, and now I must deliberately alienate myself from the one being
whose society might yet be some recompense for all that I had lost.
The situation was aggravated by the state of my exchequer. I expected
an ultimatum from my banker by every post. Yet this influence was
nothing to the other. It was Raffles I loved. It was not the dark life
we led together, still less its base rewards; it was the man himself,
his gayety, his humor, his dazzling audacity, his incomparable courage
and resource. And a very horror of turning to him again in mere need
of greed set the seal on my first angry resolution. But the anger was
soon gone out of me, and when at length Raffles bridged the gap by
coming to me, I rose to greet him almost with a shout.
He came as though nothing had happened; and, indeed, not very many days
had passed, though they might have been months to me. Yet I fancied
the gaze that watched me through our smoke a trifle less sunny than it
had been before. And it was a relief to me when he came with few
preliminaries to the inevitable point.
"Did you ever hear from her, Bunny?" he asked.
"In a way," I answered. "We won't talk about it, if you don't mind,
Raffles."
"That sort of way!" he exclaimed. He seemed both surprised and
disappointed.
"Yes," I said, "that sort of way. It's finished. What did you expect?"
"I don't know," said Raffles. "I only thought that the girl who went
so far to get a fellow out of a tight place might go a little farther
to keep him from getting into another."
"I don't see why she should," said I, honestly enough, yet with the
irritation of a less just feeling deep down in my inmost consciousness.
"Yet you did hear from her?" he persisted.
"She sent me back my poor presents, without a word," I said, "if you
call that hearing."
I could not bring myself to own to Raffles that I had given her only
books. He asked if I was sure that she had sent them back herself; and
that was his last question. My answer was enough for him. And to this
day I cannot say whether it was more in relief than in regret that he
laid a hand upon my shoulder.
"So you are out of Paradise after all!" said Raffles. "I was not sure,
or I should have come round before. Well, Bunny, if they don't want
you there, there's a little Inferno in the Albany where you will be as
welcome as ever."
And still, with all the magic mischief of his smile, there was that
touch of sadness which I was yet to read aright.