Flashman in the Great Game. George Fraser MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ been at the head of the charge, right enough, with me alongside on a bolting horse, farting my fearful soul out, but after we’d reached the battery he’d barely paused to exchange a cut or two with the Ruski gunners before heading for home and safety again. Shocking bad form in a commander, says I, who was trying to hide under a gun limber at the time – not that I think for a moment that he was funking it; he hadn’t the brains to be frightened, our Lord Haw-Haw. But he had retreated without undue delay, and since he was never short of enemies eager to believe the worst, the gossips were having a field day now. There were angry letters in the press, and even a law-suit,¹ and since I’d been in the thick of the action, it was natural that I should be asked about it.

      In fact, it was George Paget, who’d commanded the 4th Lights in the charge, who put the thing to me point-blank in the card-room at White’s (can’t imagine what I was doing there; must have been somebody’s guest) in front of a number of people, civilians mostly, but I know Spottswood was there, and old Scarlett of the Heavies, I think.

      ‘You were neck and neck with Cardigan,’ says Paget, ‘and in the battery before anyone else. Now, God knows he’s not my soul-mate, but all this talk’s getting a shade raw. Did you see him in the battery or not?’

      Well, I had, but I wasn’t saying so – far be it from me to clear his lordship’s reputation when there was a chance of damaging it. So I said offhand:

      ‘Don’t ask me, George; I was too busy hunting for your cigars,’ which caused a guffaw.

      ‘No gammon, Flash,’ says he, looking grim, and asked again, in his tactful way: ‘Did Cardigan cut out, or not?’

      There were one or two shocked murmurs, and I shuffled a pack, frowning, before I answered. There are more ways than one of damning a man’s credit, and I wanted to give Cardigan of my best. So I looked uncomfortable, and then growled, slapped the pack down as I rose, looked Paget in the eye, and said:

      ‘It’s all by and done with now, ain’t it? Let’s drop it, George, shall we?’ And I went out then and there, leaving behind the impression that bluff, gallant Flashy didn’t want to talk about it – which convinced them all that Cardigan had shirked, better than if I’d said so straight out, or called him a coward to his face. I had a chance to do that, too, a bare two hours later, when the man himself came raging up to me with a couple of his toadies in tow, just as Spottswood and I were coming out of the Guards Club. The hall was full of fellows, goggling at the sensation.

      ‘Fwashman! You there, sir!’ he croaked – they were absolutely the first words between us since the Charge, nearly two years before. He was breathing frantically, like a man who has been running, his beaky face all mottled and his grey whiskers quaking with fury. ‘Fwashman – this is intolewable! My honour is impugned – scandalous lies, sir! And they tell me that you don’t deny them! Well, sir? Well? Haw-haw?’

      I tilted back my tile with a forefinger and looked him up and down, from his bald head and pop eyes to his stamping foot. He looked on the edge of apoplexy; a delightful sight.

      ‘What lies are these, my lord?’ says I, very steady.

      ‘You know vewy well!’ he cried. ‘Bawacwava, sir – the storming of the battewy! Word George Paget has asked you, in pubwic, whether you saw me at the guns – and you have the effwontewy to tell him you don’t know! Damnation, sir! And one of my own officers, too—’

      ‘A former member of your regiment, my lord – I admit the fact.’

      ‘Blast your impudence!’ he roared, frothing at me. ‘Will you give me the lie? Will you say I was not at the guns?’

      I settled my hat and pulled on my gloves while he mouthed.

      ‘My lord,’ says I, speaking deliberately clear, ‘I saw you in the advance. In the battery itself – I was otherwise engaged, and had no leisure nor inclination to look about me to see who was where. For that matter, I did not see Lord George himself until he pulled me to my feet. I assumed –’ and I bore on the word ever so slightly ‘– that you were on hand, at the head of your command. But I do not know, and frankly I do not care. Good day to you, my lord.’ And with a little nod I turned to the door.

      His voice pursued me, cracking with rage.

      ‘Colonel Fwashman!’ he cried. ‘You are a viper!’

      I turned at that, making myself go red in the face in righteous wrath, but I knew what I was about; he was getting no blow or challenge from me – he shot too damned straight for that.

      ‘Indeed, my lord,’ says I. ‘Yet I don’t wriggle and turn.’ And I left him gargling, well pleased with myself. But, as I say, it probably cost me the V.C. at the time; for all the rumours, he was still a power at Horse Guards, and well insinuated at Court, too.

      However, our little exchange did nothing to diminish my popularity at large; a few nights later I got a tremendous cheer at the Guards Dinner at Surrey Gardens, with chaps standing on the table shouting ‘Huzza for Flash Harry!’ and singing ‘Garryowen’ and tumbling down drunk – how they did it on a third of a bottle of bubbly beat me.² Cardigan wasn’t there, sensible fellow; they’d have hooted him out of the kingdom. As it was, Punch carried a nasty little dig about his absence, and wondered that he hadn’t sent along his spurs, since he’d made such good use of them in retiring from the battery.

      Of course, Lord Haw-Haw wasn’t the only general to come under the public lash that summer; the rest of ’em, like Lucan and Airey, got it too for the way they’d botched the campaign. So while we gallant underlings enjoyed roses and laurels all the way, our idiot commanders were gainfully employed exchanging recriminations, writing furious letters to the papers saying ’twasn’t their fault, but some other fellow’s, and there had even been a commission set up to investigate their misconduct of the war.

      Unfortunately, government picked the wrong men to do the investigating – MacNeill and Tulloch – for they turned out to be honest, and reported that indeed our high command hadn’t been fit to dig latrines, or words to that effect. Well, that plainly wouldn’t do, so another commission had to be hurriedly formed to investigate afresh, and this time get the right answer, and no nonsense about it. Well, they did, and exonerated everybody, hip-hip-hurrah and Rule, Britannia. Which was what you’d have expected any half-competent government to stage-manage in the first place, but Palmerston was in the saddle by then, and he wasn’t really good at politics, you know.

      To crown it all, in the middle of the scandal the Queen herself had words about it with Hardinge, the Commander-in-Chief, at the Aldershot Review, and poor old Hardinge fell down paralysed and never smiled again. It’s true; I was there myself, getting soaked through, and Hardinge went down like a shanghaied sailor, with all his faculties gone, not that he had many to start with. Some said it was a judgement on the Army and government corruption, so there.

      All of which mattered rather less to me than the width of Elspeth’s crinolines, but if I’ve digressed it is merely to show you how things were in England then, and also because I can never resist the temptation to blackguard Cardigan as he deserves. Meanwhile, I was going happily about my business, helping my dear wife spend her cash – which she did like a clipper-hand in port, I’m bound to say – and you would have said we were a blissful young couple, turning a blind eye to each other’s infidelities and galloping in harness when we felt like it, which was frequent, for if anything she got more beddable with the passing years.

      And then came the invitation to Balmoral, which reduced Elspeth to a state of nervous exultation close to hysterics, and took me clean aback. СКАЧАТЬ