Mr. Justice Raffles | Page 3

smiling matter out there. No one does smile after the first week; your
sense of humour is the first thing the cure eradicates. There was a
hunting man at my hotel, getting his weight down to ride a special
thoroughbred, and no doubt a cheery dog at home; but, poor devil, he
hadn't much chance of good cheer there! Miles and miles on his poor
feet before breakfast; mud-poultices all the morning; and not the
semblance of a drink all day, except some aerated muck called
Gieshübler. He was allowed to lap that up an hour after meals, when his
tongue would be hanging out of his mouth. We went to the same
weighing machine at cock-crow, and though he looked quite
good-natured once when I caught him asleep in his chair, I have known
him tear up his weight ticket when he had gained an ounce or two
instead of losing one or two pounds. We began by taking our walks
together, but his conversation used to get so physically introspective
that one couldn't get in a word about one's own works edgeways."

"But there was nothing wrong with your works," I reminded Raffles; he
shook his head as one who was not so sure.
"Perhaps not at first, but the cure soon sees to that! I closed in like a
concertina, Bunny, and I only hope I shall be able to pull out like one.
You see, it's the custom of the accursed place for one to telephone for a
doctor the moment one arrives. I consulted the hunting man, who of
course recommended his own in order to make sure of a companion on
the rack. The old arch-humbug was down upon me in ten minutes,
examining me from crown to heel, and made the most unblushing
report upon my general condition. He said I had a liver! I'll swear I
hadn't before I went to Carlsbad, but I shouldn't be a bit surprised if I'd
brought one back."
And he tipped his tankard with a solemn face, before falling to work
upon the Welsh rarebit which had just arrived.
"It looks like gold, and it's golden eating," said poor old Raffles. "I only
wish that sly dog of a doctor could see me at it! He had the nerve to
make me write out my own health-warrant, and it was so like my friend
the hunting man's that it dispelled his settled gloom for the whole of
that evening. We used to begin our drinking day at the same well of
German damnably defiled, and we paced the same colonnade to the
blare of the same well-fed band. That wasn't a joke, Bunny; it's not a
thing to joke about; mud-poultices and dry meals, with teetotal poisons
in between, were to be my portion too. You stiffen your lip at that, eh,
Bunny? I told you that you never would or could have stood it; but it
was the only game to play for the Emerald Stakes. It kept one above
suspicion all the time. And then I didn't mind that part as much as you
would, or as my hunting pal did; he was driven to fainting at the
doctor's place one day, in the forlorn hope of a toothful of brandy to
bring him round. But all he got was a glass of cheap Marsala."
"But did you win those stakes after all?"
"Of course I did, Bunny," said Raffles below his breath, and with a
look that I remembered later. "But the waiters are listening as it is, and
I'll tell you the rest some other time. I suppose you know what brought

me back so soon?"
"Hadn't you finished your cure?"
"Not by three good days. I had the satisfaction of a row royal with the
Lord High Humbug to account for my hurried departure. But, as a
matter of fact, if Teddy Garland hadn't got his Blue at the eleventh hour
I should be at Carlsbad still."
E.M. Garland (Eton and Trinity) was the Cambridge wicketkeeper, and
one of the many young cricketers who owed a good deal to Raffles.
They had made friends in some country-house week, and foregathered
afterward in town, where the young fellow's father had a house at
which Raffles became a constant guest. I am afraid I was a little
prejudiced both against the father, a retired brewer whom I had never
met, and the son whom I did meet once or twice at the Albany. Yet I
could quite understand the mutual attraction between Raffles and this
much younger man; indeed he was a mere boy, but like so many of his
school he seemed to have a knowledge of the world beyond his years,
and withal such a spontaneous spring of sweetness and charm as neither