It was, of course, the winter before last, and we had done nothing dreadful since the early autumn. Undoubtedly2 the war was the cause. Not that we were among the earlier victims of the fever. I took disgracefully little interest in the Negotiations3, while the Ultimatum4 appealed to Raffles as a sporting flutter. Then we gave the whole thing till Christmas. We still missed the cricket in the papers. But one russet afternoon we were in Richmond, and a terrible type was shouting himself hoarse5 with "'Eavy British lorsses—orful slorter o' the Bo-wers! Orful slorter! Orful slorter! 'Eavy British lorsses!" I thought the terrible type had invented it, but Raffles gave him more than he asked, and then I held the bicycle while he tried to pronounce Eland's Laagte. We were never again without our sheaf of evening papers, and Raffles ordered three morning ones, and I gave up mine in spite of its literary page. We became strategists. We knew exactly what Buller was to do on landing, and, still better, what the other Generals should have done. Our map was the best that could be bought, with flags that deserved a better fate than standing6 still. Raffles woke me to hear "The Absent-Minded Beggar" on the morning it appeared; he was one of the first substantial subscribers to the fund. By this time our dear landlady7 was more excited than we. To our enthusiasm for Thomas she added a personal bitterness against the Wild Boars, as she persisted in calling them, each time as though it were the first. I could linger over our landlady's attitude in the whole matter. That was her only joke about it, and the true humorist never smiled at it herself. But you had only to say a syllable8 for a venerable gentleman, declared by her to be at the bottom of it all, to hear what she could do to him if she caught him. She could put him in a cage and go on tour with him, and make him howl and dance for his food like a debased bear before a fresh audience every day. Yet a more kind-hearted woman I have never known. The war did not uplift our landlady as it did her lodgers9.
But presently it ceased to have that precise effect upon us. Bad was being made worse and worse; and then came more than Englishmen could endure in that black week across which the names of three African villages are written forever in letters of blood. "All three pegs," groaned10 Raffles on the last morning of the week; "neck-and-crop, neck-and-crop!" It was his first word of cricket since the beginning of the war.
We were both depressed11. Old school-fellows had fallen, and I know Raffles envied them; he spoke12 so wistfully of such an end. To cheer him up I proposed to break into one of the many more or less royal residences in our neighborhood; a tough crib was what he needed; but I will not trouble you with what he said to me. There was less crime in England that winter than for years past; there was none at all in Raffles. And yet there were those who could denounce the war!
So we went on for a few of those dark days, Raffles very glum13 and grim, till one fine morning the Yeomanry idea put new heart into us all. It struck me at once as the glorious scheme it was to prove, but it did not hit me where it hit others. I was not a fox-hunter, and the gentlemen of England would scarcely have owned me as one of them. The case of Raffles was in that respect still more hopeless (he who had even played for them at Lord's), and he seemed to feel it. He would not speak to me all the morning; in the afternoon he went for a walk alone. It was another man who came home, flourishing a small bottle packed in white paper.
"Bunny," said he, "I never did lift my elbow; it's the one vice14 I never had. It has taken me all these years to find my tipple15, Bunny; but here it is, my panacea16, my elixir17, my magic philtre!"
I thought he had been at it on the road, and asked him the name of the stuff.
"Look and see, Bunny."
And if it wasn't a bottle of ladies' hair-dye, warranted to change any shade into the once fashionable yellow within a given number of applications!
"What on earth," said I, "are you going to do with this?"
"Do you mean that you are going to the front?"
"If I can without coming to it."
I looked at him as he stood in the firelight, straight as a dart19, spare but wiry, alert, laughing, flushed from his wintry walk; and as I looked, all the years that I had known him, and more besides, slipped from him in my eyes. I saw him captain of the eleven at school. I saw him running with the muddy ball on days like this, running round the other fifteen as a sheep-dog round a flock of sheep. He had his cap on still, and but for the gray hairs underneath—but here I lost him in a sudden mist. It was not sorrow at his going, for I did not mean to let him go alone. It was enthusiasm, admiration20, affection, and also, I believe, a sudden regret that he had not always appealed to that part of my nature to which he was appealing now. It was a little thrill of penitence21. Enough of it.
"I think it great of you," I said, and at first that was all.
How he laughed at me. He had had his innings; there was no better way of getting out. He had scored off an African millionaire, the Players, a Queensland Legislator, the Camorra, the late Lord Ernest Belville, and again and again off Scotland Yard. What more could one man do in one lifetime? And at the worst it was the death to die: no bed, no doctor, no temperature—and Raffles stopped himself.
"I don't like any of it," I cried, cordially; "you've simply got to come back."
"To what?" he asked, a strange look on him.
And I wondered—for one instant—whether my little thrill had gone through him. He was not a man of little thrills.
Then for a minute I was in misery23. Of course I wanted to go too—he shook my hand without a word—but how could I? They would never have me, a branded jailbird, in the Imperial Yeomanry! Raffles burst out laughing; he had been looking very hard at me for about three seconds.
"You rabbit," he cried, "even to think of it! We might as well offer ourselves to the Metropolitan24 Police Force. No, Bunny, we go out to the Cape25 on our own, and that's where we enlist26. One of these regiments27 of irregular horse is the thing for us; you spent part of your pretty penny on horse-flesh, I believe, and you remember how I rode in the bush! We're the very men for them, Bunny, and they won't ask to see our birthmarks out there. I don't think even my hoary28 locks would put them off, but it would be too conspicuous29 in the ranks."
Our landlady first wept on hearing our determination, and then longed to have the pulling of certain whiskers (with the tongs30, and they should be red-hot); but from that day, and for as many as were left to us, the good soul made more of us than ever. Not that she was at all surprised; dear brave gentlemen who could look for burglars on their bicycles at dead of night, it was only what you might expect of them, bless their lion hearts. I wanted to wink31 at Raffles, but he would not catch my eye. He was a ginger-headed Raffles by the end of January, and it was extraordinary what a difference it made. His most elaborate disguises had not been more effectual than this simple expedient32, and, with khaki to complete the subdual of his individuality, he had every hope of escaping recognition in the field. The man he dreaded33 was the officer he had known in old days; there were ever so many of him at the Front; and it was to minimize this risk that we went out second-class at the beginning of February.
It was a weeping day, a day in a shroud34, cold as clay, yet for that very reason an ideal day upon which to leave England for the sunny Front. Yet my heart was heavy as I looked my last at her; it was heavy as the raw, thick air, until Raffles came and leant upon the rail at my side.
"I know what you are thinking, and you've got to stop," said he. "It's on the knees of the gods, Bunny, whether we do or we don't, and thinking won't make us see over their shoulders."
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1
raffles
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| n.抽彩售物( raffle的名词复数 )v.以抽彩方式售（物）( raffle的第三人称单数 ) | |
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2
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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3
negotiations
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| 协商( negotiation的名词复数 )； 谈判； 完成（难事）； 通过 | |
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ultimatum
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| n.最后通牒 | |
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hoarse
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| adj.嘶哑的，沙哑的 | |
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6
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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7
landlady
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| n.女房东，女地主 | |
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8
syllable
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| n.音节；vt.分音节 | |
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lodgers
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| n.房客，租住者( lodger的名词复数 ) | |
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10
groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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11
depressed
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| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
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12
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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13
glum
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| adj.闷闷不乐的，阴郁的 | |
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14
vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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15
tipple
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| n.常喝的酒；v.不断喝，饮烈酒 | |
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16
panacea
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| n.万灵药；治百病的灵药 | |
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17
elixir
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| n.长生不老药，万能药 | |
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18
swelling
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| n.肿胀 | |
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19
dart
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| v.猛冲，投掷；n.飞镖，猛冲 | |
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20
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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21
penitence
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| n.忏悔，赎罪；悔过 | |
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22
pinioning
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| v.抓住[捆住]（双臂）( pinion的现在分词 ) | |
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23
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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metropolitan
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| adj.大城市的，大都会的 | |
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25
cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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26
enlist
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| vt.谋取(支持等)，赢得；征募；vi.入伍 | |
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27
regiments
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| （军队的）团( regiment的名词复数 )； 大量的人或物 | |
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28
hoary
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| adj.古老的；鬓发斑白的 | |
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29
conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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30
tongs
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| n.钳；夹子 | |
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31
wink
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| n.眨眼，使眼色，瞬间；v.眨眼，使眼色，闪烁 | |
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32
expedient
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| adj.有用的，有利的；n.紧急的办法，权宜之计 | |
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33
dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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34
shroud
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| n.裹尸布，寿衣；罩，幕；vt.覆盖，隐藏 | |
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