Nipper Nasmyth had been head of our school when Raffles was captain of
cricket. I believe he owed his nickname entirely to the popular
prejudice against a day-boy; and in view of the special reproach which
the term carried in my time, as also of the fact that his father was
one of the school trustees, partner in a banking firm of four
resounding surnames, and manager of the local branch, there can be
little doubt that the stigma was undeserved. But we did not think so
then, for Nasmyth was unpopular with high and low, and appeared to
glory in the fact. A swollen conscience caused him to see and hear
even more than was warranted by his position, and his uncompromising
nature compelled him to act on whatsoever he heard or saw: a savage
custodian of public morals, he had in addition a perverse enthusiasm
for lost causes, loved a minority for its own sake, and untenable
tenets for theirs. Such, at all events, was my impression of Nipper
Nasmyth, after my first term, which was also his last. I had never
spoken to him, but I had heard him speak with extraordinary force and
fervor in the school debates. I carried a clear picture of his unkempt
hair, his unbrushed coat, his dominant spectacles, his dogmatic jaw.
And it was I who knew the combination at a glance, after years and
years, when the fateful whim seized Raffles to play once more in the
Old Boys' Match, and his will took me down with him to participate in
the milder festivities of Founder's Day.
It was, however, no ordinary occasion. The bicentenary loomed but a
year ahead, and a movement was on foot to mark the epoch with an
adequate statue of our pious founder. A special meeting was to be held
at the school-house, and Raffles had been specially invited by the new
head master, a man of his own standing, who had been in the eleven with
him up at Cambridge. Raffles had not been near the old place for
years; but I had never gone down since the day I left; and I will not
dwell on the emotions which the once familiar journey awakened in my
unworthy bosom. Paddington was alive with Old Boys of all ages--but
very few of ours--if not as lively as we used to make it when we all
landed back for the holidays. More of us had moustaches and cigarettes
and "loud" ties. That was all. Yet of the throng, though two or three
looked twice and thrice at Raffles, neither he nor I knew a soul until
we had to change at the junction near our journey's end, when, as I
say, it was I who recognized Nipper Nasmyth at sight.
The man was own son of the boy we both remembered. He had grown a
ragged beard and a moustache that hung about his face like a neglected
creeper. He was stout and bent and older than his years. But he
spurned the platform with a stamping stride which even I remembered in
an instant, and which was enough for Raffles before he saw the man's
face.
"The Nipper it is!" he cried. "I could swear to that walk in a
pantomime procession! See the independence in every step: that's his
heel on the neck of the oppressor: it's the nonconformist conscience in
baggy breeches. I must speak to him, Bunny. There was a lot of good
in the old Nipper, though he and I did bar each other."
And in a moment he had accosted the man by the boy's nickname,
obviously without thinking of an affront which few would have read in
that hearty open face and hand.
"My name's Nasmyth," snapped the other, standing upright to glare.
"Forgive me," said Raffles undeterred. "One remembers a nickname and
forgets all it never used to mean. Shake hands, my dear fellow! I'm
Raffles. It must be fifteen years since we met."
"At least," replied Nasmyth coldly; but he could no longer refuse
Raffles his hand. "So you are going down," he sneered, "to this great
gathering?" And I stood listening at my distance, as though still in
the middle fourth.
"Rather!" cried Raffles. "I'm afraid I have let myself lose touch, but
I mean to turn over a new leaf. I suppose that isn't necessary in your
case, Nasmyth?"
He spoke with an enthusiasm rare indeed in him: it had grown upon
Raffles in the train; the spirit of his boyhood had come rushing back
at fifty miles an hour. He might have been following some honorable
calling in town; he might have snatched this brief respite from a
distinguished but exacting career. I am convinced that it was I alone
who remembered at that moment the life we were really leading at that
time. With me there walked this skeleton through every waking hour
that was to follow. I shall endeavor not to refer to it again. Yet it
should not be forgotten that my skeleton was always there.
"It certainly is not necessary in my case," replied Nasmyth, still as
stiff as any poker. "I happen to be a trustee."
"Of the school?"
"Like my father before me."
"I congratulate you, my dear fellow!" cried the hearty Raffles--a
younger Raffles than I had ever known in town.
"I don't know that you need," said Nasmyth sourly.
"But it must be a tremendous interest. And the proof is that you're
going down to this show, like all the rest of us."
"No, I'm not. I live there, you see."
And I think the Nipper recalled that name as he ground his heel upon an
unresponsive flagstone.
"But you're going to this meeting at the school-house, surely?"
"I don't know. If I do there may be squalls. I don't know what you
think about this precious scheme Raffles, but _I_..."
The ragged beard stuck out, set teeth showed through the wild
moustache, and in a sudden outpouring we had his views. They were
narrow and intemperate and perverse as any I had heard him advocate as
the firebrand of the Debating Society in my first term. But they were
stated with all the old vim and venom. The mind of Nasmyth had not
broadened with the years, but neither had its natural force abated, nor
that of his character either. He spoke with great vigor at the top of
his voice; soon we had a little crowd about us; but the tall collars
and the broad smiles of the younger Old Boys did not deter our dowdy
demagogue. Why spend money on a man who had been dead two hundred
years? What good could it do him or the school? Besides, he was only
technically our founder. He had not founded a great public school. He
had founded a little country grammar school which had pottered along
for a century and a half. The great public school was the growth of
the last fifty years, and no credit to the pillar of piety. Besides, he
was only nominally pious. Nasmyth had made researches, and he knew.
And why throw good money after a bad man?
"Are there many of your opinion?" inquired Raffles, when the agitator
paused for breath. And Nasmyth beamed on us with flashing eyes.
"Not one to my knowledge as yet," said he. "But we shall see after
to-morrow night. I hear it's to be quite an exceptional gathering this
year; let us hope it may contain a few sane men. There are none on the
present staff, and I only know of one among the trustees!"
Raffles refrained from smiling as his dancing eye met mine.
"I can understand your view," he said. "I am not sure that I don't
share it to some extent. But it seems to me a duty to support a
general movement like this even if it doesn't take the direction or the
shape of our own dreams. I suppose you yourself will give something,
Nasmyth?"
"Give something? I? Not a brass farthing!" cried the implacable
banker. "To do so would be to stultify my whole position. I cordially
and conscientiously disapprove of the whole thing, and shall use all my
influence against it. No, my good sir, I not only don't subscribe
myself, but I hope to be the means of nipping a good many subscriptions
in the bud."
I was probably the only one who saw the sudden and yet subtle change in
Raffles--the hard mouth, the harder eye. I, at least, might have
foreseen the sequel then and there. But his quiet voice betrayed
nothing, as he inquired whether Nasmyth was going to speak at next
night's meeting. Nasmyth said he might, and certainly warned us what
to expect. He was still fulminating when our train came in.
"Then we meet again at Philippi," cried Raffles in gay adieu. "For you
have been very frank with us all, Nasmyth, and I'll be frank enough in
my turn to tell you that I've every intention of speaking on the other
side!"
It happened that Raffles had been asked to speak by his old college
friend, the new head master. Yet it was not at the school-house that
he and I were to stay, but at the house that we had both been in as
boys. It also had changed hands: a wing had been added, and the double
tier of tiny studies made brilliant with electric light. But the quad
and the fives-courts did not look a day older; the ivy was no thicker
round the study windows; and in one boy's castle we found the
traditional print of Charing Cross Bridge which had knocked about our
studies ever since a son of the contractor first sold it when he left.
Nay, more, there was the bald remnant of a stuffed bird which had been
my own daily care when it and I belonged to Raffles. And when we all
filed in to prayers, through the green baize door which still separated
the master's part of the house from that of the boys, there was a small
boy posted in the passage to give the sign of silence to the rest
assembled in the hall, quite identically as in the dim old days; the
picture was absolutely unchanged; it was only we who were out of it in
body and soul.
On our side of the baize door a fine hospitality and a finer flow of
spirits were the order of the night. There was a sound representative
assortment of quite young Old Boys, to whom ours was a prehistoric
time, and in the trough of their modern chaff and chat we old stagers
might well have been left far astern of the fun. Yet it was Raffles
who was the life and soul of the party, and that not by meretricious
virtue of his cricket. There happened not to be another cricketer
among us, and it was on their own subjects that Raffles laughed with
the lot in turn and in the lump. I never knew him in quite such form.
I will not say he was a boy among them, but he was that rarer being,
the man of the world who can enter absolutely into the fun and fervor
of the salad age. My cares and my regrets had never been more acute,
but Raffles seemed a man without either in his life.
He was not, however, the hero of the Old Boys' Match, and that was
expected of him by all the school. There was a hush when he went in, a
groan when he came out. I had no reason to suppose he was not trying;
these things happen to the cricketer who plays out of his class; but
when the great Raffles went on to bowl, and was hit all over the field,
I was not so sure. It certainly failed to affect his spirits; he was
more brilliant than ever at our hospitable board; and after dinner came
the meeting at which he and Nasmyth were to speak.
It was a somewhat frigid gathering until Nasmyth rose. We had all
dined with our respective hosts, and then repaired to this business in
cold blood. Many were lukewarm about it in their hearts; there was a
certain amount of mild prejudice, and a greater amount of animal
indifference, to be overcome in the opening speech. It is not for me
to say whether this was successfully accomplished. I only know how the
temperature of that meeting rose with Nipper Nasmyth.
And I dare say, in all the circumstances of the case, his really was a
rather vulgar speech. But it was certainly impassioned, and probably
as purely instinctive as his denunciation of all the causes which
appeal to the gullible many without imposing upon the cantankerous few.
His arguments, it is true, were merely an elaboration of those with
which he had favored some of us already; but they were pointed by a
concise exposition of the several definite principles they represented,
and barbed with a caustic rhetoric quite admirable in itself. In a
word, the manner was worthy of the very foundation it sought to shake,
or we had never swallowed such matter without a murmur. As it was,
there was a demonstration in the wilderness when the voice ceased
crying. But we sat in the deeper silence when Raffles rose to reply.
I leaned forward not to lose a word. I knew my Raffles so well that I
felt almost capable of reporting his speech before I heard it. Never
was I more mistaken, even in him! So far from a gibe for a gibe and a
taunt for a taunt, there never was softer answer than that which A. J.
Raffles returned to Nipper Nasmyth before the staring eyes and startled
ears of all assembled. He courteously but firmly refused to believe a
word his old friend Nasmyth had said--about himself. He had known
Nasmyth for twenty years, and never had he met a dog who barked so loud
and bit so little. The fact was that he had far too kind a heart to
bite at all. Nasmyth might get up and protest as loud as he liked: the
speaker declared he knew him better than Nasmyth knew himself. He had
the necessary defects of his great qualities. He was only too good a
sportsman. He had a perfect passion for the weaker side. That alone
led Nasmyth into such excesses of language as we had all heard from his
lips that night. As for Raffles, he concluded his far too genial
remarks by predicting that, whatever Nasmyth might say or think of the
new fund, he would subscribe to it as handsomely as any of us, like
"the generous good chap" that we all knew him to be.
Even so did Raffles disappoint the Old Boys in the evening as he had
disappointed the school by day. We had looked to him for a noble
raillery, a lofty and loyal disdain, and he had fobbed us off with
friendly personalities not even in impeccable taste. Nevertheless, this
light treatment of a grave offence went far to restore the natural
amenities of the occasion. It was impossible even for Nasmyth to reply
to it as he might to a more earnest onslaught. He could but smile
sardonically, and audibly undertake to prove Raffles a false prophet;
and though subsequent speakers were less merciful the note was struck,
and there was no more bad blood in the debate. There was plenty,
however, in the veins of Nasmyth, as I was to discover for myself
before the night was out.
You might think that in the circumstances he would not have attended
the head master's ball with which the evening ended; but that would be
sadly to misjudge so perverse a creature as the notorious Nipper. He
was probably one of those who protest that there is "nothing personal"
in their most personal attacks. Not that Nasmyth took this tone about
Raffles when he and I found ourselves cheek by jowl against the
ballroom wall; he could forgive his franker critics, but not the
friendly enemy who had treated him so much more gently than he deserved.
"I seem to have seen you with this great man Raffles," began Nasmyth,
as he overhauled me with his fighting eye. "Do you know him well?"
"Intimately."
"I remember now. You were with him when he forced himself upon me on
the way down yesterday. He had to tell me who he was. Yet he talks as
though we were old friends."
"You were in the upper sixth together," I rejoined, nettled by his tone.
"What does that matter? I am glad to say I had too much self-respect,
and too little respect for Raffles, ever to be a friend of his then. I
knew too many of the things he did," said Nipper Nasmyth.
His fluent insults had taken my breath. But in a lucky flash I saw my
retort.
"You must have had special opportunities of observation, living in the
town," said I; and drew first blood between the long hair and the
ragged beard; but that was all.
"So he really did get out at nights?" remarked my adversary. "You
certainly give your friend away. What's he doing now?"
I let my eyes follow Raffles round the room before replying. He was
waltzing with a master's wife--waltzing as he did everything else.
Other couples seemed to melt before them. And the woman on his arm
looked a radiant girl.
"I meant in town, or wherever he lives his mysterious life," explained
Nasmyth, when I told him that he could see for himself. But his clever
tone did not trouble me; it was his epithet that caused me to prick my
ears. And I found some difficulty in following Raffles right round the
room.
"I thought everybody knew what he was doing; he's playing cricket most
of his time," was my measured reply; and if it bore an extra touch of
insolence, I can honestly ascribe that to my nerves.
"And is that all he does for a living?" pursued my inquisitor keenly.
"You had better ask Raffles himself," said I to that. "It's a pity you
didn't ask him in public, at the meeting!"
But I was beginning to show temper in my embarrassment, and of course
that made Nasmyth the more imperturbable.
"Really, he might be following some disgraceful calling, by the mystery
you make of it!" he exclaimed. "And for that matter I call first-class
cricket a disgraceful calling, when it's followed by men who ought to
be gentlemen, but are really professionals in gentlemanly clothing.
The present craze for gladiatorial athleticism I regard as one of the
great evils of the age; but the thinly veiled professionalism of the
so-called amateur is the greatest evil of that craze. Men play for the
gentlemen and are paid more than the players who walk out of another
gate. In my time there was none of that. Amateurs were amateurs and
sport was sport; there were no Raffleses in first-class cricket then.
I had forgotten Raffles was a modern first-class cricketer: that
explains him. Rather than see my son such another, do you know what
I'd prefer to see him?"
I neither knew nor cared: yet a wretched premonitory fascination held
me breathless till I was told.
"I'd prefer to see him a thief!" said Nasmyth savagely; and when his
eyes were done with me, he turned upon his heel. So that ended that
stage of my discomfiture.
It was only to give place to a worse. Was all this accident or fell
design? Conscience had made a coward of me, and yet what reason had I
to disbelieve the worst? We were pirouetting on the edge of an abyss;
sooner or later the false step must come and the pit swallow us. I
began to wish myself back in London, and I did get back to my room in
our old house. My dancing days were already over; there I had taken
the one resolution to which I remained as true as better men to better
vows; there the painful association was no mere sense of personal
unworthiness. I fell to thinking in my room of other dances ... and
was still smoking the cigarette which Raffles had taught me to
appreciate when I looked up to find him regarding me from the door. He
had opened it as noiselessly as only Raffles could open doors, and now
he closed it in the same professional fashion.
"I missed Achilles hours ago," said he. "And still he's sulking in his
tent!"
"I have been," I answered, laughing as he could always make me, "but
I'll chuck it if you'll stop and smoke. Our host doesn't mind; there's
an ash-tray provided for the purpose. I ought to be sulking between
the sheets, but I'm ready to sit up with you till morning."
"We might do worse; but, on the other hand, we might do still better,"
rejoined Raffles, and for once he resisted the seductive Sullivan. "As
a matter of fact, it's morning now; in another hour it will be dawn;
and where could day dawn better than in Warfield Woods, or along the
Stockley road, or even on the Upper or the Middle? I don't want to
turn in, any more than you do. I may as well confess that the whole
show down here has exalted me more than anything for years. But if we
can't sleep, Bunny, let's have some fresh air instead."
"Has everybody gone to bed?" I asked.
"Long ago. I was the last in. Why?"
"Only it might sound a little odd, our turning out again, if they were
to hear us."
Raffles stood over me with a smile made of mischief and cunning; but it
was the purest mischief imaginable, the most innocent and comic cunning.
"They shan't hear us at all, Bunny," said he. "I mean to get out as I
did in the good old nights. I've been spoiling for the chance ever
since I came down. There's not the smallest harm in it now; and if
you'll come with me I'll show you how it used to be done."
"But I know," said I. "Who used to haul up the rope after you, and let
it down again to the minute?"
Raffles looked down on me from lowered lids, over a smile too humorous
to offend.
"My dear good Bunny! And do you suppose that even then I had only one
way of doing a thing? I've had a spare loophole all my life, and when
you're ready I'll show you what it was when I was here. Take off those
boots, and carry your tennis-shoes; slip on another coat; put out your
light; and I'll meet you on the landing in two minutes."
He met me with uplifted finger, and not a syllable; and down-stairs he
led me, stocking soles close against the skirting, two feet to each
particular step. It must have seemed child's play to Raffles; the old
precautions were obviously assumed for my entertainment; but I confess
that to me it was all refreshingly exciting--for once without a risk of
durance if we came to grief! With scarcely a creak we reached the
hall, and could have walked out of the street door without danger or
difficulty. But that would not do for Raffles. He must needs lead me
into the boys' part, through the green baize door. It took a deal of
opening and shutting, but Raffles seemed to enjoy nothing better than
these mock obstacles, and in a few minutes we were resting with sharp
ears in the boys' hall.
"Through these windows?" I whispered, when the clock over the piano had
had matters its own way long enough to make our minds quite easy.
"How else?" whispered Raffles, as he opened the one on whose ledge our
letters used to await us of a morning.
"And then through the quad--"
"And over the gates at the end. No talking, Bunny; there's a dormitory
just overhead; but ours was in front, you remember, and if they had
ever seen me I should have nipped back this way while they were
watching the other."
His finger was on his lips as we got out softly into the starlight. I
remember how the gravel hurt as we left the smooth flagged margin of
the house for the open quad; but the nearer of two long green seats
(whereon you prepared your construe for the second-school in the summer
term) was mercifully handy; and once in our rubber soles we had no
difficulty in scaling the gates beyond the fives-courts. Moreover, we
dropped into a very desert of a country road, nor saw a soul when we
doubled back beneath the outer study windows, nor heard a footfall in
the main street of the slumbering town. Our own fell like the
night-dews and the petals of the poet; but Raffles ran his arm through
mine, and would chatter in whispers as we went.
"So you and Nipper had a word--or was it words? I saw you out of the
tail of my eye when I was dancing, and I heard you out of the tail of
my ear. It sounded like words, Bunny, and I thought I caught my name.
He's the most consistent man I know, and the least altered from a boy.
But he'll subscribe all right, you'll see, and be very glad I made him."
I whispered back that I did not believe it for a moment. Raffles had
not heard all Nasmyth had said of him. And neither would he listen to
the little I meant to repeat to him; he would but reiterate a
conviction so chimerical to my mind that I interrupted in my turn to
ask him what ground he had for it.
"I've told you already," said Raffles. "I mean to make him."
"But how?" I asked. "And when, and where?"
"At Philippi, Bunny, where I said I'd see him. What a rabbit you are
at a quotation!
"'And I think that the field of Philippi
Was where Caesar came to an end;
But who gave old Brutus the tip, I
Can't comprehend!'
"You may have forgotten your Shakespeare, Bunny, but you ought to
remember that."
And I did, vaguely, but had no idea what it or Raffles meant, as I
plainly told him.
"The theatre of war," he answered--"and here we are at the stage door!"
Raffles had stopped suddenly in his walk. It was the last dark hour of
the summer night, but the light from a neighboring lamppost showed me
the look on his face as he turned.
"I think you also inquired when," he continued. "Well, then, this
minute--if you will give me a leg up!"
And behind him, scarcely higher than his head, and not even barred, was
a wide window with a wire blind, and the name of Nasmyth among others
lettered in gold upon the wire.
"You're never going to break in?"
"This instant, if you'll, help me; in five or ten minutes, if you
won't."
"Surely you didn't bring the--the tools?"
He jingled them gently in his pocket.
"Not the whole outfit, Bunny. But you never know when you mayn't want
one or two. I'm only thankful I didn't leave the lot behind this time.
I very nearly did."
"I must say I thought you would, coming down here," I said
reproachfully.
"But you ought to be glad I didn't," he rejoined with a smile. "It's
going to mean old Nasmyth's subscription to the Founder's Fund, and
that's to be a big one, I promise you! The lucky thing is that I went
so far as to bring my bunch of safekeys. Now, are you going to help me
use them, or are you not? If so, now's your minute; if not, clear out
and be--"
"Not so fast, Raffles," said I testily. "You must have planned this
before you came down, or you would never have brought all those things
with you."
"My dear Bunny, they're a part of my kit! I take them wherever I take
my evening-clothes. As to this potty bank, I never even thought of it,
much less that it would become a public duty to draw a hundred or so
without signing for it. That's all I shall touch, Bunny--I'm not on
the make to-night. There's no risk in it either. If I am caught I
shall simply sham champagne and stand the racket; it would be an
obvious frolic after what happened at that meeting. And they will
catch me, if I stand talking here: you run away back to bed--unless
you're quite determined to 'give old Brutus the tip!'"
Now we had barely been a minute whispering where we stood, and the
whole street was still as silent as the tomb. To me there seemed least
danger in discussing the matter quietly on the spot. But even as he
gave me my dismissal Raffles turned and caught the sill above him,
first with one hand and then with the other. His legs swung like a
pendulum as he drew himself up with one arm, then shifted the position
of the other hand, and very gradually worked himself waist-high with
the sill. But the sill was too narrow for him; that was as far as he
could get unaided; and it was as much as I could bear to see of a feat
which in itself might have hardened my conscience and softened my
heart. But I had identified his doggerel verse at last. I am ashamed
to say that it was part of a set of my very own writing in the school
magazine of my time. So Raffles knew the stuff better than I did
myself, and yet scorned to press his flattery to win me over! He had
won me: in a second my rounded shoulders were a pedestal for those
dangling feet. And before many more I heard the old metallic snap,
followed by the raising of a sash so slowly and gently as to be almost
inaudible to me listening just below.
Raffles went through hands first, disappeared for an instant, then
leaned out, lowering his hands for me.
"Come on, Bunny! You're safer in than out. Hang on to the sill and
let me get you under the arms. Now all together--quietly does it--and
over you come!"
No need to dwell on our proceedings in the bank. I myself had small
part in the scene, being posted rather in the wings, at the foot of the
stairs leading to the private premises in which the manager had his
domestic being. But I made my mind easy about him, for in the silence
of my watch I soon detected a nasal note overhead, and it was resonant
and aggressive as the man himself. Of Raffles, on the contrary, I
heard nothing, for he had shut the door between us, and I was to warn
him if a single sound came through. I need scarcely add that no
warning was necessary during the twenty minutes we remained in the
bank. Raffles afterward assured me that nineteen of them had been
spent in filing one key; but one of his latest inventions was a little
thick velvet bag in which he carried the keys; and this bag had two
elastic mouths, which closed so tightly about either wrist that he
could file away, inside, and scarcely hear it himself. As for these
keys, they were clever counterfeits of typical patterns by two great
safe-making firms. And Raffles had come by them in a manner all his
own, which the criminal world may discover for itself.
When he opened the door and beckoned to me, I knew by his face that he
had succeeded to his satisfaction, and by experience better than to
question him on the point. Indeed, the first thing was to get out of
the bank; for the stars were drowning in a sky of ink and water, and it
was a comfort to feel that we could fly straight to our beds. I said
so in whispers as Raffles cautiously opened our window and peeped out.
In an instant his head was in, and for another I feared the worst.
"What was that, Bunny? No, you don't, my son! There's not a soul in
sight that I can see, but you never know, and we may as well lay a
scent while we're about it. Ready? Then follow me, and never mind the
window."
With that he dropped softly into the street, and I after him, turning
to the right instead of the left, and that at a brisk trot instead of
the innocent walk which had brought us to the bank. Like mice we
scampered past the great schoolroom, with its gable snipping a paler
sky than ever, and the shadows melting even in the colonnade
underneath. Masters' houses flitted by on the left, lesser landmarks
on either side, and presently we were running our heads into the dawn,
one under either hedge of the Stockley road.
"Did you see that light in Nab's just now?" cried Raffles as he led.
"No; why?" I panted, nearly spent.
"It was in Nab's dressing-room."
"Yes?"
"I've seen it there before," continued Raffles. "He never was a good
sleeper, and his ears reach to the street. I wouldn't like to say how
often I was chased by him in the small hours! I believe he knew who it
was toward the end, but Nab was not the man to accuse you of what he
couldn't prove."
I had no breath for comment. And on sped Raffles like a yacht before
the wind, and on I blundered like a wherry at sea, making heavy weather
all the way, and nearer foundering at every stride. Suddenly, to my
deep relief, Raffles halted, but only to tell me to stop my pipes while
he listened.
"It's all right, Bunny," he resumed, showing me a glowing face in the
dawn. "History's on its own tracks once more, and I'll bet you it's
dear old Nab on ours! Come on, Bunny; run to the last gasp, and leave
the rest to me."
I was past arguing, and away he went. There was no help for it but to
follow as best I could. Yet I had vastly preferred to collapse on the
spot, and trust to Raffles's resource, as before very long I must. I
had never enjoyed long wind and the hours that we kept in town may well
have aggravated the deficiency. Raffles, however, was in first-class
training from first-class cricket, and he had no mercy on Nab or me.
But the master himself was an old Oxford miler, who could still bear it
better than I; nay, as I flagged and stumbled, I heard him pounding
steadily behind.
"Come on, come on, or he'll do us!" cried Raffles shrilly over his
shoulder; and a gruff sardonic laugh came back over mine. It was
pearly morning now, but we had run into a shallow mist that took me by
the throat and stabbed me to the lungs. I coughed and coughed, and
stumbled in my stride, until down I went, less by accident than to get
it over, and so lay headlong in my tracks. And old Nab dealt me a
verbal kick as he passed.
"You beast!" he growled, as I have known him growl it in form.
But Raffles himself had abandoned the flight on hearing my downfall,
and I was on hands and knees just in time to see the meeting between
him and old Nab. And there stood Raffles in the silvery mist, laughing
with his whole light heart, leaning back to get the full flavor of his
mirth; and, nearer me, sturdy old Nab, dour and grim, with beads of dew
on the hoary beard that had been lamp-black in our time.
"So I've caught you at last!" said he. "After more years than I mean
to count!"
"Then you're luckier than we are, sir," answered Raffles, "for I fear
our man has given us the slip."
"Your man!" echoed Nab. His bushy eyebrows had shot up: it was as much
as I could do to keep my own in their place.
"We were indulging in the chase ourselves," explained Raffles, "and one
of us has suffered for his zeal, as you can see. It is even possible
that we, too, have been chasing a perfectly innocent man."
"Not to say a reformed character," said our pursuer dryly. "I suppose
you don't mean a member of the school?" he added, pinking his man
suddenly as of yore, with all the old barbed acumen. But Raffles was
now his match.
"That would be carrying reformation rather far, sir. No, as I say, I
may have been mistaken in the first instance; but I had put out my
light and was looking out of the window when I saw a fellow behaving
quite suspiciously. He was carrying his boots and creeping along in
his socks--which must be why you never heard him, sir. They make less
noise than rubber soles even--that is, they must, you know! Well,
Bunny had just left me, so I hauled him out and we both crept down to
play detective. No sign of the fellow! We had a look in the
colonnade--I thought I heard him--and that gave us no end of a hunt for
nothing. But just as we were leaving he came padding past under our
noses, and that's where we took up the chase. Where he'd been in the
meantime I have no idea; very likely he'd done no harm; but it seemed
worth while finding out. He had too good a start, though, and poor
Bunny had too bad a wind."
"You should have gone on and let me rip," said I, climbing to my feet
at last.
"As it is, however, we will all let the other fellow do so," said old
Nab in a genial growl. "And you two had better turn into my house and
have something to keep the morning cold out."
You may imagine with what alacrity we complied; and yet I am bound to
confess that I had never liked Nab at school. I still remember my term
in his form. He had a caustic tongue and fine assortment of damaging
epithets, most of which were levelled at my devoted skull during those
three months. I now discovered that he also kept a particularly mellow
Scotch whiskey, an excellent cigar, and a fund of anecdote of which a
mordant wit was the worthy bursar. Enough to add that he kept us
laughing in his study until the chapel bells rang him out.
As for Raffles, he appeared to me to feel far more compunction for the
fable which he had been compelled to foist upon one of the old masters
than for the immeasurably graver offence against society and another
Old Boy. This, indeed, did not worry him at all; and the story was
received next day with absolute credulity on all sides. Nasmyth
himself was the first to thank us both for our spirited effort on his
behalf; and the incident had the ironic effect of establishing an
immediate _entente cordiale_ between Raffles and his very latest victim.
I must confess, however, that for my own part I was thoroughly uneasy
during the Old Boys' second innings, when Raffles made a selfish score,
instead of standing by me to tell his own story in his own way. There
was never any knowing with what new detail he was about to embellish
it: and I have still to receive full credit for the tact that it
required to follow his erratic lead convincingly. Seldom have I been
more thankful than when our train started next morning, and the poor,
unsuspecting Nasmyth himself waved us a last farewell from the platform.
"Lucky we weren't staying at Nab's," said Raffles, as he lit a Sullivan
and opened his Daily Mail at its report of the robbery. "There was one
thing Nab would have spotted like the downy old bird he always was and
will be."
"What was that?"
"The front door must have been found duly barred and bolted in the
morning, and yet we let them assume that we came out that way. Nab
would have pounced on the point, and by this time we might have been
nabbed ourselves."
It was but a little over a hundred sovereigns that Raffles had taken,
and, of course, he had resolutely eschewed any and every form of paper
money. He posted his own first contribution of twenty-five pounds to
the Founder's Fund immediately on our return to town, before rushing
off to more first-class cricket, and I gathered that the rest would
follow piecemeal as he deemed it safe. By an odd coincidence, however,
a mysterious but magnificent donation of a hundred guineas was almost
simultaneously received in notes by the treasurer of the Founder's
Fund, from one who simply signed himself "Old Boy." The treasurer
happened to be our late host, the new man at our old house, and he
wrote to congratulate Raffles on what he was pleased to consider a
direct result of the latter's speech. I did not see the letter that
Raffles wrote in reply, but in due course I heard the name of the
mysterious contributor. He was said to be no other than Nipper Nasmyth
himself. I asked Raffles if it was true. He replied that he would ask
old Nipper point-blank if he came up as usual to the Varsity match, and
if they had the luck to meet. And not only did this happen, but I had
the greater luck to be walking round the ground with Raffles when we
encountered our shabby friend in front of the pavilion.
"My dear fellow," cried Raffles, "I hear it was you who gave that
hundred guineas by stealth to the very movement you denounced. Don't
deny it, and don't blush to find it fame. Listen to me. There was a
great lot in what you said; but it's the kind of thing we ought all to
back, whether we strictly approve of it in our hearts or not."
"Exactly, Raffles, but the fact is--"
"I know what you're going to say. Don't say it. There's not one in a
thousand who would do as you've done, and not one in a million who
would do it anonymously."
"But what makes you think I did it, Raffles?"
"Everybody is saying so. You will find it all over the place when you
get back. You will find yourself the most popular man down there,
Nasmyth!"
I never saw a nobler embarrassment than that of this awkward, ungainly,
cantankerous man: all his angles seemed to have been smoothed away:
there was something quite human in the flushed, undecided, wistful face.
"I never was popular in my life," he said. "I don't want to buy my
popularity now. To be perfectly candid with you, Raffles--"
"Don't! I can't stop to hear. They're ringing the bell. But you
shouldn't have been angry with me for saying you were a generous good
chap, Nasmyth, when you were one all the time. Good-by, old fellow!"
But Nasmyth detained us a second more. His hesitation was at an end.
There was a sudden new light in his face.
"Was I?" he cried. "Then I'll make it _two_ hundred, and damn the odds!"
Raffles was a thoughtful man as we went to our seats. He saw nobody,
would acknowledge no remark. Neither did he attend to the cricket for
the first half-hour after lunch; instead, he eventually invited me to
come for a stroll on the practice ground, where, however, we found two
chairs aloof from the fascinating throng.
"I am not often sorry, Bunny, as you know," he began. "But I have been
sorry since the interval. I've been sorry for poor old Nipper Nasmyth.
Did you see the idea of being popular dawn upon him for the first time
in his life?"
"I did; but you had nothing to do with that, my dear man."
Raffles shook his head over me as our eyes met. "I had everything to
do with it. I tried to make him tell the meanest lie. I made sure he
would, and for that matter he nearly did. Then, at the last moment, he
saw how to hedge things with his conscience. And his second hundred
will be a real gift."
"You mean under his own name--"
"And with his own free-will. My good Bunny, is it possible you don't
know what I did with the hundred we drew from that bank!"
"I knew what you were going to do with it," said I. "I didn't know you
had actually got further than the twenty-five you told me you were
sending as your own contribution."
Raffles rose abruptly from his chair.
"And you actually thought that came out of his money?"
"Naturally."
"In my name?"
"I thought so."
Raffles stared at me inscrutably for some moments, and for some more at
the great white numbers over the grand-stand.
"We may as well have another look at the cricket," said he. "It's
difficult to see the board from here, but I believe there's another man
out."