A Thief in the Night - E. W. Hornung (phonics reader .TXT) 📗

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