Flashman Papers Omnibus

by Fraser George MacDonald

  If I hadn’t, the morning’s events would have driven it from my mind. I came down late, and cornered my father in his study before he could slip out to his club. He was sitting with his feet along the couch, preparing for the rigours of the day with a glass of brandy, and looking liverish, but I plunged right in, and told him my thoughts about Judy.

  “Things have changed,” says I, “and we can’t have her seen about the place nowadays.” You’ll gather that two years among the Afghans had changed my attitude to parental discipline; I wasn’t so easy to cow as I had been.

  “Oh, aye,” says he, “and how have things changed?”

  “You’ll find,” I told him, “that I’m known about the town henceforth. What with India and so on. We’ll be more in the public eye now, and folk will talk. It won’t do for Elspeth, for one thing.”

  “Elspeth likes her,” says he.

  “Does she, though? Well, that’s no matter. It ain’t what Elspeth likes that counts, but what the town likes. And they won’t like us if we keep this … this pet pussy in the house.”

  “My, we’re grown very nice.” He sneered and took a good pull at his brandy. I could see the flush of temper on his face, and wondered why he hadn’t lost it yet. “I didn’t know India bred such fine sensibilities,” he went on. “Quite the reverse, I’d have thought.”

  “Oh, look, father, it won’t do and you know it. Send her up to Leicestershire if you want, or give her a maison of her own – but she can’t stay here.”

  He looked at me a long while. “By God, maybe I’ve been wrong about you all along. I know you’re a wastrel, but I never thought you had the stuff to be brave – in spite of all the tales from India. Perhaps you have, or perhaps it’s just insolence. Anyway, you’re on the wrong scent, boy. As I said, Elspeth likes her – and if she don’t want her away, then she stays.”

  “In God’s name, what does it matter what Elspeth likes? She’ll do as I tell her.”

  “I doubt it,” says he.

  “What’s that?”

  He put down his glass, wiped his lips, and said:

  “You won’t like it, Harry, but here it is. Who pays the piper calls the tune. And your Elspeth and her damned family have been calling the tune this year past. Hold on, now. Let me finish. You’ll have plenty to say, no doubt, but it’ll wait.”

  I could only stare at him, not understanding.

  “We’re in Queer Street, Harry. I hardly know how, myself, but there it is. I suppose I’ve been running pretty fast, all my life, and not taking much account of how the money went – what are lawyers for, eh? I took some bad tumbles on the turf, never heeded the expenses of this place, or Leicestershire, didn’t stint any way at all – but it was the damned railway shares that really did the trick. Oh, there are fortunes being made out of ’em – the right ones. I picked the wrong ones. A year ago I was a ruined man, up to my neck with the Jews, ready to be sold up. I didn’t write to you about it – what was the point? This house ain’t mine, nor our place in Leicestershire; it’s hers – or it will be, when old Morrison goes. God rot and damn him, it can’t be too soon.”

  He jumped up and walked about, finally stopping before the fireplace.

  “He met the bill, for his daughter’s sake. Oh, you should have seen it! More canting, head-wagging hypocrisy than I’ve seen in years in Parliament, even! He had the effrontery to stand in my own hall, by God, and tell me it was a judgement on him for letting his daughter marry beneath herself! Beneath herself, d’ye hear? And I had to listen to him, and keep myself from flooring the old swine! What could I do? I was the poor relation; I still am. He’s still paying the bills – through the simpering nitwit you married. He lets her have what she wants, and there you are!”

  “But if he’s settled an allowance on her …”

  “He’s settled nothing! She asks him, and he provides. Damned if I would if I was him – but, there, perhaps he thinks it worth while. He seems to dote on her, and I’ll say this for the chit, she’s not stingy. But she’s the pay-mistress, Harry, my son, and you’d best not forget it. You’re a kept man, d’you see, so it don’t become you, or me, to say who’ll come and who’ll go. And since your Elspeth is astonishingly liberal-minded – why, Miss Judy can stay, and be damned to you!”

  I heard him out, flabbergasted at first, but perhaps because I was a more practical man than the guv’nor, or had fewer notions of gentility, through having an aristocratic mother, I took a different view of the matter. While he splashed more brandy into his glass, I asked:

  “How much does he let her have?”

  “Eh? I told you, whatever she wants. The old bastard seems to be warm enough for ten. But you can’t get your hands on it, I tell you.”

  “Well, I don’t mind,” says I. “As long as the money’s there, it don’t signify who draws the orders.”

  He gaped at me. “Jesus,” he said, in a choked voice, “have you no pride?”

  “Probably as much as you have,” says I, very cool. “You’re still here, ain’t you?”

  He took on the old familiar apoplectic look, so I slid out before he threw a bottle at me, and went upstairs to think. It wasn’t good news, of course, but I didn’t doubt I could come to a good understanding with Elspeth, which was all that mattered. The truth was, I didn’t have his pride; it wasn’t as if I should have to sponge off old Morrison, after all. No doubt I should have been upset at the thought of not inheriting my father’s fortune – or what had been his fortune – but when old Morrison ceased to trouble the world I’d have Elspeth’s share of the will, which would quite probably make up for all that.

  In the meantime, I tackled her on the subject at the first opportunity, and found her all brainless agreement, which was highly satisfactory.

  “What I have is yours, my love,” says she, with that melting look. “You know you have only to ask me for anything – anything at all.”

  “Much obliged,” says I. “But it might be a little inconvenient, sometimes. I was thinking, if there was a regular payment, say, it would save all the tiresome business for you.”

  “My father would not allow that, I’m afraid. He has been quite clear, you see.”

  I saw, all right, and worked away at her, but it was no use. A fool she might be, but she did what Papa told her, and the old miser knew better than to leave a loophole for the Flashman family to crawl in and lighten him. It’s a wise man that knows his own son-in-law. So it was going to have to be cash on demand – which was better than no cash at all. And she was ready enough with fifty guineas when I made my first application – it was all cut and dried, with a lawyer in Johnson’s Court, who advanced her whatever she asked for, in reason.

  However, apart from these sordid matters there was quite enough to engage me in those first days at home. No one at the Horse Guards knew quite what to do with me, so I was round the clubs a good deal, and it was surprising how many people knew me all of a sudden. They would hail me in the Park, or shake hands in the street, and there was a steady stream of callers at home; friends of my father’s whom he hadn’t seen for years popped up to meet me and greet him; invitations were showered on us; letters of congratulation piled up on the hall table and spilled on to the floor; there were paragraphs in the press about “the first of the returned heroes from Cabool and Jellulabad”, and the new comic paper Punch had a cartoon in its series of “Pencillings”25 which showed a heroic figure, something like me, wielding an enormous scimitar like a pantomime bandit, with hordes of blackamoors (they looked no more like Afghans than Eskimos) trying to wrest the Union Jack from me in vain. Underneath there was the caption: “A Flash(ing) Blade”, which give you some idea of the standard of humour in that journal.

  However, Elspeth was enchanted with it, and bought a dozen copies; she was in whirl of delight at being the centre of so much attention – for the hero’s wife gets as, many of the garlands as he does, especially if she’s a beauty. There was one night at the theatre when the manager insisted on taking us
out of our seats to a box, and the whole audience cheered and stamped and clapped. Elspeth was radiant and stood there squeaking and clasping her hands with not the least trace of embarrassment, while I waved, very good-natured, to the mob.

  “Oh, Harry!” says she, sparkling. “I’m so happy I could die! Why, you are famous, Harry, and I …”

  She didn’t finish, but I know she was thinking that she was famous too. At that moment I loved her all the more for thinking it.

  The parties in that first week were too many to count, and always we were the centre of attraction. They had a military flavour, for thanks to the news from Afghanistan, and China – where we had also been doing well26 – the army was in fashion more than usual. The more senior officers and the mamas claimed me, which left Elspeth to the young blades. This delighted her, of course, and pleased me – I wasn’t jealous, and indeed took satisfaction in seeing them clustering like flies round a jampot which they could watch but couldn’t taste. She knew a good many of them, and I learned that during my absence in India quite a few of the young sparks had squired her in the Park or ridden in the Row with her – which was natural enough, she being an army wife. But I just kept an eye open, all the same, and cold-shouldered one or two when they came too close – there was one in particular, a young Life Guards captain called Watney, who was often at the house, and was her riding partner twice in the week; he was a tall, curly-lipped exquisite with a lazy eye, who made himself very easy at home until I gave him the about-turn.

  “I can attend Mrs Flashman very well, thank’ee,” says I.

  “None better,” says he, “I’m sure. I had only hoped that you might relinquish her for a half-hour or so.”

  “Not for a minute,” says I.

  “Oh, come now,” says he, patronising me, “this is very selfish. I am sure Mrs Flashman wouldn’t agree.”

  “I’m sure she would.”

  “Would you care to test it?” says he, with an infuriating smile. I could have boxed his ears, but I kept my temper very well.

  “Go to the devil, you mincing pimp,” I told him, and left him standing in the hall. I went straight to Elspeth’s room, told her what had happened, and cautioned her against seeing Watney again.

  “Which one is he?” she asked, admiring her hair in the mirror.

  “Fellow with a face like a horse and a haw-haw voice.”

  “There are so many like that,” says she. “I can’t tell one from the other. Harry, darling, would I look well with ringlets, do you think?”

  This pleased me, as you can guess, and I forgot the incident at once. I remember it now, for it was that same day that everything happened all at once. There are days like that; a chapter in your life ends and another one begins, and nothing is the same afterwards.

  I was to call at the Horse Guards to see my Uncle Bindley, and I told Elspeth I would not be home until the afternoon, when we were to go out to tea at someone-or-others. But when I got to Horse Guards my uncle bundled me straight into a carriage and bore me off to meet – of all people – the Duke of Wellington. I’d never seen him closer than a distance, and it made me fairly nervous to stand in his ante-room after Bindley had been ushered in to him, and hear their voices murmuring behind the closed door. Then it opened, and the Duke came out; he was white-haired and pretty wrinkled at this time, but that damned hooked nose would have marked him anywhere, and his eyes were like gimlets.

  “Ah, this is the young man,” says he, shaking hands. For all his years he walked with the spring of a jockey, and was very spruce in his grey coat.

  “The town is full of you just now,” says he, looking me in the eyes. “It is as it should be. It was a damned good bit of work – about the only good thing in the whole business, by God, whatever Ellenborough and Palmerston may say.”

  Hudson, thinks I, you should see me now; short of the heavens opening, there was nothing to be added.

  The Duke asked me a few sharp questions, about Akbar Khan, and the Afghans generally, and how the troops had behaved on the retreat, which I answered as well as I could. He listened with his head back, and said “Hmm,” and nodded, and then said briskly:

  “It is a thorough shame that it has been so shockingly managed. But it is always the way with these damned politicals; there is no telling them. If I had had someone like McNaghten with me in Spain, Bindley, I’d still be at Lisbon, I dare say. And what is to happen to Mr Flashman? Have you spoken to Hardinge?”

  Bindley said they would have to find a regiment for me, and the Duke nodded.

  “Yes, he is a regimental man. You were in the 11th Hussars, as I remember? Well, you won’t want to go back there,” and he gave me a shrewd look. “His lordship is no better disposed to Indian offiers now than he ever was, the more fool he. I have thought of telling him, more than once, that I’m an Indian officer myself, but he would probably just have given me a setdown. Well, Mr Flashman, I am to take you to Her Majesty this afternoon, so you must be here at one o’clock.” And with that he turned back to his room, said a word to Bindley, and shut the door.

  Well, you can guess how all this dazzled me; to have the great Duke chatting to me, to learn that I was to be presented to the Queen – all this had me walking on the clouds. I went home in a rosy dream, hugging myself at the way Elspeth would take the news; this would make her damned father sit up and take notice, all right, and it would be odd if I couldn’t squeeze something out of him in consequence, if I played my cards well.

  I hurried upstairs, but she wasn’t in her room; I called, and eventually old Oswald appeared and said she had gone out.

  “Where away?” says I.

  “Well, sir,” says he, looking mighty sour, “I don’t rightly know.”

  “With Miss Judy?”

  “No, sir,” says he, “not with Miss Judy. Miss Judy is downstairs, sir.”

  There was something damned queer about his manner, but there was nothing more to be got from him, so I went downstairs and found Judy playing with a kitten in the morning room.

  “Where’s my wife?” says I.

  “Out with Captain Watney,” says she, cool as you please. “Riding. Here, kitty-kitty. In the Park, I dare say.”

  For a minute I didn’t understand.

  “You’re wrong,” says I. “I sent him packing two hours ago.”

  “Well, they went riding half an hour ago, so he must have unpacked.” She picked up the kitten and began to stroke it.

  “What the devil d’you mean?”

  “I mean they’ve gone out together. What else?”

  “Dammit,” says I, furious. “I told her not to.”

  She went on stroking, and looked at me with her crooked little smile.

  “She can’t have understood you, then,” says she. “Or she would not have gone, would she?”

  I stood staring at her, feeling a chill suddenly settle on my insides.

  “What are you hinting, damn you?” I said.

  “Nothing at all. It is you who are imagining. Do you know, I believe you’re jealous.”

  “Jealous, by God! And what have I to be jealous about?”

  “You should know best, surely.”

  I stood looking thunder at her, torn between anger and fear of what she seemed to be implying.

  “Now, look’ee here,” I said, “I want to know what the blazes you’re at. If you have anything to say about my wife, by God, you’d best be careful …”

  My father came stumping into the hall at that minute, curse him, and calling for Judy. She got up and walked past me, the kitten in her arms. She stopped at the door, gave me a crooked, spiteful smile, and says:

  “What were you doing in India? Reading? Singing hymns? Or did you occasionally go riding in the Park?”

  And with that she slammed the door, leaving me shot to bits, with horrible thoughts growing in my mind. Suspicion doesn’t come gradually; it springs up suddenly, and grows with every breath it takes. If you have a foul mind, as I have, you think foul thoughts readier than c
lean ones, so that even as I told myself that Judy was a lying bitch trying to frighten me with implications, and that Elspeth was incapable of being false, at the same time I had a vision of her rolling naked in a bed with her arms round Watney’s neck. God, it wasn’t possible! Elspeth was an innocent, a completely honest fool, who hadn’t even known what “fornication” meant when I first met her … That hadn’t stopped her bounding into the bushes with me, though, at the first invitation. Oh, but it was still unthinkable! She was my wife, and as amiable and proper as a girl could be; she was utterly different from swine like me, she had to be. I couldn’t be as wrong in my judgement as that, could I?

  I was standing torturing myself with these happy notions, and then common sense came to the rescue. Good God, all she had done was go riding with Watney – why, she hadn’t even known who he was when I warned her against him that morning. And she was the most scatterbrained thing in petticoats; besides, she wasn’t of the mettle that trollops are made of. Too meek and gentle and submissive by half – she wouldn’t have dared. The mere thought of what I’d do would have terrified … what would I do? Disown her? Divorce her? Throw her out? By God, I couldn’t! I didn’t have the means; my father was right!

  For a moment I was appalled. If Elspeth was making a mistress for Watney, or anyone else, there was nothing I could do about it. I could cut her to ribbons, oh, aye, and what then? Take to the streets? I couldn’t stay in the army, or in town, even, without means …

  Oh, but to the devil with this. It was pure moonshine, aye, and deliberately put into my mind to make me jealous by that brown-headed slut of my father’s. This was her making mischief to get her own back for the hammering I’d given her three years ago. That was it. Why, I didn’t have the least reason to think ill of Elspeth; everything about her denied Judy’s imputations – and, by God, I’d pay that cow out for her lies and sneers. I’d find a way, all right, and God help her when I did.