Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 3: Flashman at the Charge, Flashman in the Great Game, Flashman and the Angel of the Lord. George Fraser MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ me off to India fourteen years before. I had loathed the brute then, and time hadn’t softened the sentiment; he was the swine who had kicked me out of the Cherrypickers for (irony of ironies) marrying Elspeth, and committed me to the horrors of the Afghan campaign.^a And here he was, getting spoony round my wife, whom he had affected to despise once on a day for her lowly origins. And spooning to some tune, too, by the way he was leaning confidentially across from his saddle, his rangy old boozy face close to her blonde and beautiful one, and the little slut was laughing and looking radiant at his attentions.

      She caught my eye and waved, and his lordship looked me over in his high-nosed damn-you way which I remembered so well. He would be in his mid-fifties by now, and it showed; the whiskers were greying, the gooseberry eyes were watery, and the legions of bottles he had consumed had cracked the veins in that fine nose of his. But he still rode straight as a lance, and if his voice was wheezy it had lost nothing of its plunger drawl.

      “Haw, haw,” says he, “it is Fwashman, I see. Where have you been sir? Hiding away these many years, I dare say, with this lovely lady. Haw-haw. How-de-do, Fwashman? Do you know, my dear” – this to Elspeth, damn his impudence – “I decware that this fine fellow, your husband, has put on fwesh alarmingly since last I saw him. Haw-haw. Always was too heavy for a wight dwagoon, but now – pwepostewous! You feed him too well, my dear! Haw-haw!”

      It was a damned lie, of course, no doubt designed to draw a comparison with his own fine figure – scrawny, some might have thought it. I could have kicked his lordly backside, and given him a piece of my mind.

      “Good day, milord,” says I, with my best toady smile. “May I say how well your lordship is looking? In good health, I trust.”

      “Thank’ee,” says he, and turning to Elspeth: “As I was saying, we have the vewy finest hunting at Deene. Spwendid sport, don’t ye know, and specially wecommended for young wadies wike yourself. You must come to visit – you too, Fwashman. You wode pwetty well, as I wecollect. Haw-haw.”

      “You honour me with the recollection, milord,” says I, wondering what would happen if I smashed him between the eyes. “But I –”

      “Yaas,” says he, turning languidly back to Elspeth. “No doubt your husband has many duties – in the ordnance, is it not, or some such thing? Haw-haw. But you must come down, my dear, with one of your fwiends, for a good wong stay, what? The faiwest bwossoms bwoom best in countwy air, don’t ye know? Haw-haw.” And the old scoundrel had the gall to lean over and pat her hand.

      She, the little ninny, was all for it, giving him a dazzling smile and protesting he was too, too kind – this aged satyr who was old enough to be her father and had vice leering out of every wrinkle in his face. Of course, where climbing little snobs like Elspeth are concerned, there ain’t such a thing as an ugly peer of the realm, but even she could surely have seen how grotesque his advances were. Of course, women love it.

      “How splendid to see you two old friends together again, after such a long time, is it not, Lord Cardigan? Why, I declare I have never seen you in his lordship’s company, Harry! Such a dreadfully long time it must have been!” Babbling, you see, like the idiot she was. I’m not sure she didn’t say something about “comrades in arms”. “You must call upon us, Lord Cardigan, now that you and Harry have met again. It will be so fine, will it not, Harry?”

      “Yaas,” says he. “I may call,” with a look at me that said he would never dream of setting foot in any hovel of mine. “In the meantime, my dear, I shall wook to see you widing hereabouts. Haw-haw. I dewight to see a female who wides so gwacefully. Decidedwy you must come to Deene. Haw-haw.” He took off his hat to her, bowing from the waist – and a Polish hussar couldn’t have done it better, damn him. “Good day to you, Mrs Fwashman.” He gave me the merest nod, and cantered off up the Ride, cool as you please.

      “Is he not wonderfully condescending, Harry? Such elegant manners – but of course, it is natural in one of such noble breeding. I am sure if you spoke to him, my dear, he would be ready to give the most earnest consideration to finding a place for you – he is so kind, despite his high station. Why, he has promised me almost any favour I care to ask – Harry, whatever is the matter? Why are you swearing – oh, my love, no, people will hear! Oh!”

      Of course, swearing and prosing were both lost on Elspeth; when I had vented my bile against Cardigan I tried to point out to her the folly of accepting the attentions of such a notorious roué, but she took this as mere jealousy on my part – not jealousy of a sexual kind, mark you, but supposedly rooted in the fact that here she was climbing in the social world, spooned over by peers, while I was labouring humbly in an office like any Cratchit, and could not abide to see her ascending so far above me. She even reminded me that she was a baron’s daughter, at which I ground my teeth and hurled a boot through our bedroom window, she burst into tears, and ran from the room to take refuge in a broom cupboard, whence she refused to budge while I hammered on the panels. She was terrified of my brutal ways, she said, and feared for her life, so I had to go through the charade of forcing open the door and rogering her in the cupboard before peace was restored. (This was what she had wanted since the quarrel began, you see; very curious and wearing our domestic situation was, but strangely enjoyable, too, as I look back on it. I remember how I carried her to the bedroom afterwards, she nibbling at my ear with her arms round my neck, and at the sight of the broken window we collapsed giggling and kissing on the floor. Aye, married bliss. And like the fool I was I clean forgot to forbid her to talk to Cardigan again.)

      But in the next few days I had other things to distract me from Elspeth’s nonsense; my jape in the pool-room with the little greenhorn came home to roost, and in the most unexpected way. I received a summons from my Lord Raglan, of all people.

      You will know all about him, no doubt. He was the ass who presided over the mess we made in the Crimea, and won deathless fame as the man who murdered the Light Brigade. He should have been a parson, or an Oxford don, or a waiter, for he was the kindliest, softest-voiced old stick who ever spared a fellow-creature’s feelings – that was what was wrong with him, that he couldn’t for the life of him say an unkind word, or set anyone down. And this was the man who was the heir to Wellington – as I sat in his office, looking across at his kindly old face, with its rumpled white hair and long nose, and found my eyes straying to the empty right sleeve tucked into his breast, he looked so pathetic and frail, I shuddered inwardly. Thank God, thinks I, that I won’t be in this chap’s campaign.

      They had just made him Commander-in-Chief, after years spent bumbling about on the Board of Ordnance, and he was supposed to be taking matters in hand for the coming conflict. So you may guess that the matter on which he had sent for me was one of the gravest national import – Prince Albert, our saintly Bertie the Beauty, wanted a new aide-de-camp, or equerry, or toad-eater-extraordinary, and nothing would do but our new Commander must set all else aside to see the thing was done properly.

      Mark you, I’d no time to waste marvelling over the fatuousness of this kind of mismanagement; it was nothing new in our army, anyway, and still isn’t, from all I can see. Ask any commander to choose between toiling over the ammunition returns for a division fighting for its life, and taking the King’s dog for a walk, and he’ll be out there in a trice, bawling “Heel, Fido!” No, I was too much knocked aback to learn that I, Captain Harry Flashman, former Cherrypicker and erstwhile hero of the country, of no great social consequence and no enormous means or influence, should even be considered to breathe the lordly air of the court. Oh, I had my fighting reputation, but what’s that, when London is bursting with pink-cheeked viscounts with cleft palates and long pedigrees? My great-great-great-grandpapa wasn’t even a duke’s bastard, so far as I know.

      Raglan approached the thing in his usual roundabout way, by going through a personal history which his minions must have put together for him.

      “I СКАЧАТЬ