Flashman and the Redskins. George Fraser MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ between her udders and was ecstatically contradicting me at the top of her voice; I acted up with nice calculation, as though masking gallons of ardour beneath honest doubt – I didn’t know, I said, because no woman had ever – well, honoured me with true love before, and rake that I’d been, I’d grown to care for her too much to let her do something she might repent … you may imagine this punctuated by loving babble from her until the point where I thought, now for the coup de grâce, and with a muffled, despairing groan of ‘Ah, my darling!’ as though I couldn’t contain myself any longer, gave her the business for all I was worth on top of her dressing-stool. God knows how it stood the strain, for we must have scaled twenty-two stone between us, easy.

      Even when it was done, I still did a deal of head-shaking, an unworthy soul torn between self-knowledge and the dawning hope that the love of a good woman might be just what he needed. I didn’t do it too strong; I didn’t need to; she was over the main hurdle and ready to convince herself against all reason. That’s what love does to you, I suppose, although I don’t speak from personal experience.

      ‘I know I’m foolish,’ says she, all earnest and sentimental, ‘an’ that you’re the kind of rascal that could break my ’eart … but I’ll take my chance o’ that. I reckon you like me, an’ I ’ope you’ll like me more. Love grows,’ says the demented biddy, ‘an’ while I’m forty-two—’ she was pushing fifty, I may say ‘—an’ a bit older than you, that don’t ’ave to signify. An’ I reckon – please don’t mind me sayin’ this, dearest – that even at worst, you might settle for me bein’ well-off, which I am, an’ able to give you a comfortable life, as well as all the love that’s in me. It’s no use sayin’ practical things don’t matter, ’cos they do – an’ I wouldn’t expect you to have me if I was penniless. But you know me, an’ that when I say I can make a million, it’s a fact. You can be a rich man, with me, an’ ’ave everythin’ you could wish for, an’ if you was to say “aye” on those terms, I’d understand. But I reckon—’ she couldn’t keep the tears back, as she held my chin and stroked my whiskers and I looked like Galahad on his vigil ‘—I reckon you care for me enough, anyway – an’ we can be happy together.’

      I knew better than to be fervent. I just nodded, and ran a pin from her dressing-table into my leg surreptitiously to start a tear. ‘Thank you, Susie,’ says I quietly and kissed her gently. ‘Now don’t cry. I don’t know about love, but I know …’ I took a fairish sigh ‘… I know that I can’t say no.’

      That was the God’s truth, too, as I explained to Spring half an hour later, for while he wasn’t the man you’d seek out to discuss your affairs of the heart, it was our necks that were concerned here, and he had to be kept au fait. He gaped at me like a landed shark.

      ‘But you’re married!’ cries he.

      ‘Tut-tut,’ says I, ‘not so loud. She doesn’t know that.’

      He glared horribly. ‘It’s bigamy! Lord God Almighty, have you no respect for the sacraments?’

      ‘To be sure – which is why I don’t intend our union to last any farther than California, when I’ll—’

      ‘I won’t have it!’ snarls he, and that wild glitter came into his pale eyes. ‘Is there no indecency beneath you? Have you no fear of God, you animal? Will you fly in the face of His sacred law, damn your eyes?’

      I might have expected this, when I came to think of it. Not the least of Captain Spring’s eccentricities was that while he’d got crimes on his conscience that Nero would have bilked at, he was a fanatic for the proprieties, like Sunday observance and afternoon tea – he’d drop manacled niggers overboard at a sight of the white duster, but he was a stickler when it came to lining out the hymns while his equally demented wife pumped her accordion and his crew of brigands sang ‘Let us with a gladsome mind’. All the result of boning up the Thirty-nine Articles, I don’t doubt.

      ‘What else could I do?’ I pleaded, while he swore and stamped about the room, snarling about blasphemy and the corruption of the public school system. ‘The old faggot as good as promised that if I didn’t take her, she’d whistle up the pigs.³ Don’t you see – if I jolly her along, it’s a safe passage out, and then, goodbye Mrs Willinck. Or Comber, as the case may be. But if I jilt her, it’s both our necks!’ I near as told him I’d done it before, with Duchess Irma in Strackenz, but from the look of him he’d have burst a blood vessel, with luck.

      ‘Why in God’s name did I ever ship you aboard the College?’ cries he, clenching his hands in fury. ‘You’re a walking mass of decay, porcus ex grege diaboli!’^fn1 But he wasn’t too far gone to see reason, and calmed down eventually. ‘Well,’ says he, giving me his most baleful glower, ‘if your forehead is brazen enough for this – God have mercy on your soul. Which he won’t. Bah! Why the hell should I care? I can say with Ovid, video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor.^fn2 Now, get out of my sight!’

      He’d given me a scare, though, I can tell you. Even now, I couldn’t be sure that some quirk of that diseased mind wouldn’t make him blurt out to Susie that her intended was already a husband and father. So I was doubly uneasy, and puzzled, when Susie bade the pair of us that night to a supper party à trois in her salon – we’d had our meals on trays in our rooms since our arrival, and besides, I knew Susie’s first good opinion of Spring had worn thin. I’d given her a fair notion of the kind of swine he was, and since he could never conceal his delightful nature for long, she’d been able to judge for herself.

      ‘A small celebration,’ was how she described it when we sat down in her salon. ‘I daresay, captain, that Beauchamp ’as given you our happy news.’ And she beamed on me; she was dressed to her peak, which was dazzlingly vulgar, but I have to say that she didn’t look a year more than her pretended age, and deuced handsome. To my relief, Spring played up, and pledged her happiness; he didn’t include me, and he wasn’t quite Pickwick yet, but at least his tone was civil and he didn’t smash the crockery.

      Mind you, I’ve been at dinners I’ve enjoyed more. Susie, for once, seemed nervous, which I put down to girlish excitement; she prattled about slave prices, and the cost of high-bred yellows, and how the Cuban market was sky-high these days, and the delicacy of octoroon fancies, who didn’t seem to be able to stand the pace in her trade at all; Spring answered her, more or less, and they had a brief discussion on the breeding of sturdier stock by mating black Africans with mulattos, which is a capital topic over the pudding. But by and by he said less and less, and that none too clearly; I was just beginning to wonder if the drink had got to him for once when he suddenly gave a great sigh, and a staring yawn, caught at his chair arms as though to rise, and then fell face foremost into the blancmange.

      Susie glanced at me, lifting a warning finger. Then she got up, pulled his face out of the mess, and pushed up one eyelid. He was slumped like a sawdust doll, his face purple.

      ‘That’s all right,’ says she. ‘Brutus!’ And before my astonished eyes the butler went out, and presently in came two likely big coves in reefer jackets. At a nod from Susie, they hefted Spring out of his chair, and without a word bore him from the room. Susie sauntered back to her place, took a sip of wine, and smiled at my amazement.

      ‘Well,’ says she, ‘we wouldn’t ’ave wanted ’im along on our ’oneymoon, would we?’

      For a moment I was appalled. ‘You’re not letting the bogies have him? He’ll peach! For God’s sake, Susie, he’ll—’

      ‘If he does any peachin’, it’ll be in Cape Town,’ says she. ‘You don’t think I’d be as silly as that, do you – or serve ’im such a mean turn?’ She laughed СКАЧАТЬ