when the king of the cannibal islands made faces at queen victoria, and a european monarch set the cables tingling with his compliments on the exploit, the indignation in england was not less than the surprise, for the thing was not so common as it has since become. but when it transpired that a gift of peculiar significance was to follow the congratulations, to give them weight, the inference prevailed that the white potentate and the black had taken simultaneous leave of their fourteen senses. for the gift was a pearl of price unparalleled, picked aforetime by british cutlasses from a polynesian setting, and presented by british royalty to the sovereign who seized this opportunity of restoring it to its original possessor.
the incident would have been a godsend to the press a few weeks later. even in june there were leaders, letters, large headlines, leaded type; the daily chronicle devoting half its literary page to a charming drawing of the island capital which the new pall mall, in a leading article headed by a pun, advised the government to blow to flinders. i was myself driving a poor but not dishonest quill at the time, and the topic of the hour goaded me into satiric verse which obtained a better place than anything i had yet turned out. i had let my flat in town, and taken inexpensive quarters at thames ditton, on the plea of a disinterested passion for the river.
"first-rate, old boy!" said raffles (who must needs come and see me there), lying back in the boat while i sculled and steered. "i suppose they pay you pretty well for these, eh?"
"not a penny."
"nonsense, bunny! i thought they paid so well? give them time, and you'll get your check."
"oh, no, i sha'n't," said i gloomily. "i've got to be content with the honor of getting in; the editor wrote to say so, in so many words," i added. but i gave the gentleman his distinguished name.
"you don't mean to say you've written for payment already?"
no; it was the last thing i had intended to admit. but i had done it. the murder was out; there was no sense in further concealment. i had written for my money because i really needed it; if he must know, i was cursedly hard up. raffles nodded as though he knew already. i warmed to my woes. it was no easy matter to keep your end up as a raw freelance of letters; for my part, i was afraid i wrote neither well enough nor ill enough for success. i suffered from a persistent ineffectual feeling after style. verse i could manage; but it did not pay. to personal paragraphs and the baser journalism i could not and i would not stoop.
raffles nodded again, this time with a smile that stayed in his eyes as he leant back watching me. i knew that he was thinking of other things i had stooped to, and i thought i knew what he was going to say. he had said it before so often; he was sure to say it again. i had my answer ready, but evidently he was tired of asking the same question. his lids fell, he took up the paper he had dropped, and i sculled the length of the old red wall of hampton court before he spoke again.
"and they gave you nothing for these! my dear bunny, they're capital, not only qua verses but for crystallizing your subject and putting it in a nutshell. certainly you've taught me more about it than i knew before. but is it really worth fifty thousand pounds—a single pearl?"
"a hundred, i believe; but that wouldn't scan."
"a hundred thousand pounds!" said raffles, with his eyes shut. and again i made certain what was coming, but again i was mistaken. "if it's worth all that," he cried at last, "there would be no getting rid of it at all; it's not like a diamond that you can subdivide. but i beg your pardon, bunny. i was forgetting!"
and we said no more about the emperor's gift; for pride thrives on an empty pocket, and no privation would have drawn from me the proposal which i had expected raffles to make. my expectation had been half a hope, though i only knew it now. but neither did we touch again on what raffles professed to have forgotten—my "apostasy," my "lapse into virtue," as he had been pleased to call it. we were both a little silent, a little constrained, each preoccupied with his own thoughts. it was months since we had met, and, as i saw him off towards eleven o'clock that sunday night, i fancied it was for more months that we were saying good-by.
but as we waited for the train i saw those clear eyes peering at me under the station lamps, and when i met their glance raffles shook his head.
"you don't look well on it, bunny," said he. "i never did believe in this thames valley. you want a change of air."
i wished i might get it.
"what you really want is a sea voyage."
"and a winter at st. moritz, or do you recommend cannes or cairo? it's all very well, a. j., but you forget what i told you about my funds."
"i forget nothing. i merely don't want to hurt your feelings. but, look here, a sea voyage you shall have. i want a change myself, and you shall come with me as my guest. we'll spend july in the mediterranean."
"but you're playing cricket—"
"hang the cricket!"
"well, if i thought you meant it—"
"of course i mean it. will you come?"
"like a shot—if you go."
and i shook his hand, and waved mine in farewell, with the perfectly good-humored conviction that i should hear no more of the matter. it was a passing thought, no more, no less. i soon wished it were more; that week found me wishing myself out of england for good and all. i was making nothing. i could but subsist on the difference between the rent i paid for my flat and the rent at which i had sublet it, furnished, for the season. and the season was near its end, and creditors awaited me in town. was it possible to be entirely honest? i had run no bills when i had money in my pocket, and the more downright dishonesty seemed to me the less ignoble.
but from raffles, of course, i heard nothing more; a week went by, and half another week; then, late on the second wednesday night, i found a telegram from him at my lodgings, after seeking him vainly in town, and dining with desperation at the solitary club to which i still belonged.
"arrange to leave waterloo by north german lloyd special," he wired, "9.25 a. m. monday next will meet you southampton aboard uhlan with tickets am writing."
and write he did, a light-hearted letter enough, but full of serious solicitude for me and for my health and prospects; a letter almost touching in the light of our past relations, in the twilight of their complete rupture. he said that he had booked two berths to naples, that we were bound for capri, which was clearly the island of the lotos-eaters, that we would bask there together, "and for a while forget." it was a charming letter. i had never seen italy; the privilege of initiation should be his. no mistake was greater than to deem it an impossible country for the summer. the bay of naples was never so divine, and he wrote of "faery lands forlorn," as though the poetry sprang unbidden to his pen. to come back to earth and prose, i might think it unpatriotic of him to choose a german boat, but on no other line did you receive such attention and accommodation for your money. there was a hint of better reasons. raffles wrote, as he had telegraphed, from bremen; and i gathered that the personal use of some little influence with the authorities there had resulted in a material reduction in our fares.
imagine my excitement and delight! i managed to pay what i owed at thames ditton, to squeeze a small editor for a very small check, and my tailors for one more flannel suit. i remember that i broke my last sovereign to get a box of sullivan's cigarettes for raffles to smoke on the voyage. but my heart was as light as my purse on the monday morning, the fairest morning of an unfair summer, when the special whirled me through the sunshine to the sea.
a tender awaited us at southampton. raffles was not on board, nor did i really look for him till we reached the liner's side. and then i looked in vain. his face was not among the many that fringed the rail; his hand was not of the few that waved to friends. i climbed aboard in a sudden heaviness. i had no ticket, nor the money to pay for one. i did not even know the number of my room. my heart was in my mouth as i waylaid a steward and asked if a mr. raffles was on board. thank heaven—he was! but where? the man did not know, was plainly on some other errand, and a-hunting i must go. but there was no sign of him on the promenade deck, and none below in the saloon; the smoking-room was empty but for a little german with a red moustache twisted into his eyes; nor was raffles in his own cabin, whither i inquired my way in desperation, but where the sight of his own name on the baggage was certainly a further reassurance. why he himself kept in the background, however, i could not conceive, and only sinister reasons would suggest themselves in explanation.
"so there you are! i've been looking for you all over the ship!"
despite the graven prohibition, i had tried the bridge as a last resort; and there, indeed, was a. j. raffles, seated on a skylight, and leaning over one of the officers' long chairs, in which reclined a girl in a white drill coat and skirt—a slip of a girl with a pale skin, dark hair, and rather remarkable eyes. so much i noted as he rose and quickly turned; thereupon i could think of nothing but the swift grimace which preceded a start of well-feigned astonishment.
"why—bunny?" cried raffles. "where have you sprung from?"
i stammered something as he pinched my hand.
"and are you coming in this ship? and to naples, too? well, upon my word! miss werner, may i introduce him?"
and he did so without a blush, describing me as an old schoolfellow whom he had not seen for months, with wilful circumstance and gratuitous detail that filled me at once with confusion, suspicion, and revolt. i felt myself blushing for us both, and i did not care. my address utterly deserted me, and i made no effort to recover it, to carry the thing off. all i would do was to mumble such words as raffles actually put into my mouth, and that i doubt not with a thoroughly evil grace.
"so you saw my name in the list of passengers and came in search of me? good old bunny; i say, though, i wish you'd share my cabin. i've got a beauty on the promenade deck, but they wouldn't promise to keep me by myself. we ought to see about it before they shove in some alien. in any case we shall have to get out of this."
for a quartermaster had entered the wheelhouse, and even while we had been speaking the pilot had taken possession of the bridge; as we descended, the tender left us with flying handkerchiefs and shrill good-bys; and as we bowed to miss werner on the promenade deck, there came a deep, slow throbbing underfoot, and our voyage had begun.
it did not begin pleasantly between raffles and me. on deck he had overborne my stubborn perplexity by dint of a forced though forceful joviality; in his cabin the gloves were off.
"you idiot," he snarled, "you've given me away again!"
"how have i given you away?"
i ignored the separate insult in his last word.
"how? i should have thought any clod could see that i meant us to meet by chance!"
"after taking both tickets yourself?"
"they knew nothing about that on board; besides, i hadn't decided when i took the tickets."
"then you should have let me know when you did decide. you lay your plans, and never say a word, and expect me to tumble to them by light of nature. how was i to know you had anything on?"
i had turned the tables with some effect. raffles almost hung his head.
"the fact is, bunny, i didn't mean you to know. you—you've grown such a pious rabbit in your old age!"
my nickname and his tone went far to mollify me, other things went farther, but i had much to forgive him still.
"if you were afraid of writing," i pursued, "it was your business to give me the tip the moment i set foot on board. i would have taken it all right. i am not so virtuous as all that."
was it my imagination, or did raffles look slightly ashamed? if so, it was for the first and last time in all the years i knew him; nor can i swear to it even now.
"that," said he, "was the very thing i meant to do—to lie in wait in my room and get you as you passed. but—"
"you were better engaged?"
"say otherwise."
"the charming miss werner?"
"she is quite charming."
"most australian girls are," said i.
"how did you know she was one?" he cried.
"i heard her speak."
"brute!" said raffles, laughing; "she has no more twang than you have. her people are german, she has been to school in dresden, and is on her way out alone."
"money?" i inquired.
"confound you!" he said, and, though he was laughing, i thought it was a point at which the subject might be changed.
"well," i said, "it wasn't for miss werner you wanted us to play strangers, was it? you have some deeper game than that, eh?"
"i suppose i have."
"then hadn't you better tell me what it is?"
raffles treated me to the old cautious scrutiny that i knew so well; the very familiarity of it, after all these months, set me smiling in a way that might have reassured him; for dimly already i divined his enterprise.
"it won't send you off in the pilot's boat, bunny?"
"not quite."
"then—you remember the pearl you wrote the—"
i did not wait for him to finish his sentence.
"you've got it!" i cried, my face on fire, for i caught sight of it that moment in the stateroom mirror.
raffles seemed taken aback.
"not yet," said he; "but i mean to have it before we get to naples."
"is it on board?"
"yes."
"but how—where—who's got it?"
"a little german officer, a whipper-snapper with perpendicular mustaches."
"i saw him in the smoke-room."
"that's the chap; he's always there. herr captain wilhelm von heumann, if you look in the list. well, he's the special envoy of the emperor, and he's taking the pearl out with him."
"you found this out in bremen?"
"no, in berlin, from a newspaper man i know there. i'm ashamed to tell you, bunny, that i went there on purpose!"
i burst out laughing.
"you needn't be ashamed. you are doing the very thing i was rather hoping you were going to propose the other day on the river."
"you were hoping it?" said raffles, with his eyes wide open. indeed, it was his turn to show surprise, and mine to be much more ashamed than i felt.
"yes," i answered, "i was quite keen on the idea, but i wasn't going to propose it."
"yet you would have listened to me the other day?"
certainly i would, and i told him so without reserve; not brazenly, you understand; not even now with the gusto of a man who savors such an adventure for its own sake, but doggedly, defiantly, through my teeth, as one who had tried to live honestly and failed. and, while i was about it, i told him much more. eloquently enough, i daresay, i gave him chapter and verse of my hopeless struggle, my inevitable defeat; for hopeless and inevitable they were to a man with my record, even though that record was written only in one's own soul. it was the old story of the thief trying to turn honest man; the thing was against nature, and there was an end of it.
raffles entirely disagreed with me. he shook his head over my conventional view. human nature was a board of checkers; why not reconcile one's self to alternate black and white? why desire to be all one thing or all the other, like our forefathers on the stage or in the old-fashioned fiction? for his part, he enjoyed himself on all squares of the board, and liked the light the better for the shade. my conclusion he considered absurd.
"but you err in good company, bunny, for all the cheap moralists who preach the same twaddle: old virgil was the first and worst offender of you all. i back myself to climb out of avernus any day i like, and sooner or later i shall climb out for good. i suppose i can't very well turn myself into a limited liability company. but i could retire and settle down and live blamelessly ever after. i'm not sure that it couldn't be done on this pearl alone!"
"then you don't still think it too remarkable to sell?"
"we might take a fishery and haul it up with smaller fry. it would come after months of ill luck, just as we were going to sell the schooner; by jove, it would be the talk of the pacific!"
"well, we've got to get it first. is this von what's-his-name a formidable cuss?"
"more so than he looks; and he has the cheek of the devil!"
as he spoke a white drill skirt fluttered past the open state-room door, and i caught a glimpse of an upturned moustache beyond.
"but is he the chap we have to deal with? won't the pearl be in the purser's keeping?"
raffles stood at the door, frowning out upon the solent, but for an instant he turned to me with a sniff.
"my good fellow, do you suppose the whole ship's company knows there's a gem like that aboard? you said that it was worth a hundred thousand pounds; in berlin they say it's priceless. i doubt if the skipper himself knows that von heumann has it on him."
"and he has?"
"must have."
"then we have only him to deal with?"
he answered me without a word. something white was fluttering past once more, and raffles, stepping forth, made the promenaders three.
