Apologia
On one of the worst days of last year, to wit the first day of the Eton
and Harrow match, I had turned into the Hamman, in Jermyn Street, as the
best available asylum for wet boots that might no longer enter any club.
Mine had been removed by a little pinchbeck oriental in the outer courts,
and I wandered within unpleasantly conscious of a hole in one sock, to
find myself by no means the only obvious refugee from the rain. The bath
was in fact inconveniently crowded. But at length I found a divan to suit
me in an upstairs alcove. I had the choice indeed of more than one; but
in spite of my antecedents I am fastidious about my cooling companions in
a Turkish bath, and it was by no accident that I hung my clothes opposite
to a newer morning coat and a pair of trousers more decisively creased
than my own.
But the coincidence in pickle was no less remarkable. In ensuing stages
of physical devastation one had dim glimpses of a not unfamiliar,
reddish countenance; but with the increment of years it has been my lot
to contract short sight as well as incipient obesity, and in the hot
rooms my glasses lose their grip upon my nose. So it was not until I lay
swathed upon my divan that I recognised E.M. Garland in the fine
fresh-faced owner of the nice clothes opposite mine. A tawny moustache
rather spoilt him as Phoebus, and there was a hint of old gold about the
shaven jaw and chin; but I never saw better looks of the unintellectual
order; and the amber eye was as clear as ever, the great strong
wicket-keeper's hand unexpectedly hearty, when recognition dawned on
Teddy in his turn.
He spoke of Raffles without hesitation or reserve, and of me and my
Raffles writings as though there was nothing reprehensible in one or the
other, displaying indeed a flattering knowledge of those pious memorials.
"But of course I take them with a grain of salt," said Teddy Garland;
"you don't make me believe you were either of you such desperate dogs
as all that. I can't see you climbing ropes or squirming through
scullery windows--even for the fun of the thing!" he added with
somewhat tardy tact.
It is certainly rather hard to credit now. I felt that after all there
was something to be said for being too fat at forty, and that Teddy
Garland had said it excellently.
"Now," he continued, "if only you would give us the row between Raffles
and Dan Levy, I mean the whole battle royal that A.J. fought and won for
me and my poor father, that would be something like! The world would see
the sort of chap he really was."
"I am afraid it would have to see the sort of chaps we all were just
then," said I, as I still think with exemplary delicacy; but Teddy lay
silent and florid for some time. These athletes have their vanity. But
this one rose superior to his.
"Manders," said he, leaving his divan and coming and sitting on the edge
of mine, "you have my free leave to give me and mine away to the four
winds, if you will tell the truth about that duel, and what Raffles did
for the lot of us!"
"Perhaps he did more than you ever knew."
"Put it all in."
"It was a longer duel than you think. He once called it a guerilla duel."
"Then make a book of it."
"But I've written my last word about the old boy."
"Then by George I've a good mind to write it myself!"
This was an awful threat. Happily he lacked the materials, and so I told
him. "I haven't got them all myself," I added, only to be politely but
openly disbelieved. "I don't know where you were," said I, "all that
first day of the match, when it rained."
Garland was beginning to smile when the surprise of my statement got home
and changed his face.
"Do you mean to say A.J. never told you?" he cried, still incredulously.
"No; he wouldn't give you away."
"Not even to you--his pal?"
"No. I was naturally curious on the point. But he refused to tell me."
"What a chap!" murmured Teddy, with a tender enthusiasm that made me love
him. "What a friend for a fellow! Well, Manders, if you don't write all
this I certainly shall. So I may as well tell you where I was."
"I must say it would interest me to know."
My companion resumed his smile where he had left it off. "I wonder if you
would ever guess?" he speculated, looking down into my face.
"I don't suppose I should."
"No more do I; not in a month of Sundays; for I spent that day on the
very sofa I was on a minute ago!"
I looked at the striped divan opposite. I looked at Teddy Garland
sitting on mine. His smile was a little wry with the remnant of his
bygone shame; he hurried on before I could find a word.
"You remember that drug I had? Somnol I think it was. That was a risky
game to play with any head but one's own; still A. J. was right in
thinking I should have been worse without any sleep at all. I should,"
said Teddy, "but I should have rolled up at Lord's! The beastly stuff put
me asleep all right, but it didn't keep me asleep long enough! I was
awake before four, heard you both talking in the next room, remembered
everything in a flash! But for that flash I should have dropped off again
in a minute; but if you remember all I had to remember, Manders, you
won't wonder that I lay madly awake all the rest of the night. My head
was rotten with sleep, but my heart was in such hell as I couldn't
describe to you if I tried."
"I've been there," said I, briefly.
"Well, then, you can imagine my frightful thoughts. Suicide was one; but
to get out of that came first, to get away without looking either of you
in the face in broad daylight. So I shammed sleep when Raffles looked in,
and when you both went out I dressed in five minutes and slunk out too.
I had no idea where I was going. I don't remember what brought me down
into this street. It may have been my debt to Dan Levy. All I remember is
finding myself opposite this place, my head splitting, and the sudden
idea that a bath might freshen me up and couldn't make me worse. I
remembered A.J. telling me he had once taken six wickets after one. So in
I came. I had my bath, and some tea and toast in the hot-rooms; we were
all to have a late breakfast together, if you recollect. I felt I should
be in plenty of time for that and Lord's--if only I hadn't boiled all the
cricket out of me. So I came up here and lay down there. But what I
hadn't boiled out was that beastly drug. It got back on me like a
boomerang. I closed my eyes for a minute--and it was well on in the
afternoon when I awoke!"
Here Teddy interrupted himself to order whiskies and soda of a
metropolitan Bashi-Bazouk who happened to pass along the gallery; and to
go stumbling over to his pockets, in his swaddling towels, for cigarettes
and matches. And the rest of his discourse was less coherent.
"Then I did feel it was a toss-up between my razor and a charge of shot!
I had no idea it was raining; if you look up at that coloured skylight,
you can't say if it's raining now. There's another sort of hatchway on
top of it. Then you hear that fountain tinkling all the time; you don't
hear any rain, do you?--It was after three, but I lay till nearly four
simply cursing my luck; there was no hurry then. At last I wondered what
the papers had to say about me--who was playing in my place, who'd won
the toss and all the rest of it. So I had the nerve to send out for one,
and what should I see? 'No play at Lord's'--and sudden illness of my poor
old father! You know the rest, Manders, because in less than twenty
minutes after that we met."
"And I remember thinking how fit you looked," said I. "It was the
bath, of course, and the sleep on top of it. But I wonder they let you
sleep so long."
"How could they know what I'd been up to?" said Teddy. "I mightn't have
had any sleep for a week; it was their business to let me be. But to
think of the rain coming on and saving me--for even Raffles couldn't have
done it without the rain. That was the great slice of luck--while I was
lying right there! And that's why I like to lie there still--for luck
rather than remembrance!"
The drinks came; we smoked and sipped. I regretted to find that Teddy was
no longer faithful to the only old cigarette. But his loyalty to Raffles
won my heart as he had never won it in his youth.
"Give us away to your heart's content," said he; "but give the dear old
devil his due at last."
"But who exactly do you mean by 'us'?"
"My father not so much, perhaps, because he's dead and gone; but self and
wife as much as ever you like."
"Are you sure Mrs. Garland won't mind?"
"Mind! It was for her he did it all; didn't you know that?"
I didn't know Teddy knew it, and I began to think him a finer fellow than
I had supposed.
"Am I to say all I know about that too?" I asked.
"Rather! Camilla and I will both be delighted--so long as you change our
names--for we both loved him!" said Teddy Garland.
I wonder if they both forgive me for taking him entirely at his word?