The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald

sorry, heaven knows why. He’d no cause to love me, and if I had been him I’d have been throwing my cap in the air and hurrahing. But he was soft: one of Arnold’s sturdy fools, manly little chaps, of course, and full of virtue, the kind that schoolmasters love. Yes, he was a fool then, and a fool twenty years later, when he died in the dust at Cawnpore with a Sepoy’s bayonet in his back. Honest Scud East; that was all that his gallant goodness did for him.

       Chapter 2

      I didn’t linger on the way home. I knew my father was in London, and I wanted to get over as soon as I could the painful business of telling him I had been kicked out of Rugby. So I decided to ride to town, letting my bags follow, and hired a horse accordingly at the “George”. I am one of those who rode as soon as he walked – indeed, horsemanship and my trick of picking up foreign tongues have been the only things in which you could say I was born gifted, and very useful they have been.

      So I rode to town, puzzling over how my father would take the good news. He was an odd fish, the guv’nor, and he and I had always been wary of each other. He was a nabob’s grandson, you see, old Jack Flashman having made a fortune in America out of slaves and rum, and piracy, too, I shouldn’t wonder, and buying the place in Leicestershire where we have lived ever since. But for all their moneybags, the Flashmans were never the thing – “the coarse streak showed through, generation after generation, like dung beneath a rosebush,” as Greville said. In other words, while other nabob families tried to make themselves pass for quality, ours didn’t, because we couldn’t. My own father was the first to marry well, for my mother was related to the Pagets, who as everyone knows sit on the right hand of God. As a consequence he kept an eye on me to see if I gave myself airs; before mother died he never saw much of me, being too busy at the clubs or in the House or hunting – foxes sometimes, but women mostly – but after that he had to take some interest in his heir, and we grew to know and mistrust each other.

      He was a decent enough fellow in his way, I suppose, pretty rough and with the devil’s own temper, but well enough liked in his set, which was country-squire with enough money to pass in the West End. He enjoyed some lingering fame through having gone a number of rounds with Cribb, in his youth, though it’s my belief that Champion Tom went easy with him because of his cash. He lived half in town, half in country now, and kept an expensive house, but he was out of politics, having been sent to the knacker’s yard at Reform. He was still occupied, though, what with brandy and the tables, and hunting – both kinds.

      I was feeling pretty uneasy, then, when I ran up the steps and hammered on the front door. Oswald, the butler, raised a great cry when he saw who it was, because it was nowhere near the end of the half, and this brought other servants: they scented scandal, no doubt.

      “My father’s home?” I asked, giving Oswald my coat and straightening my neck-cloth.

      “Your father, to be sure, Mr Harry,” cried Oswald, all smiles. “In the saloon this minute!” He threw open the door, and cried out: “Mr Harry’s home, sir!”

      My father had been sprawled on a settee, but he jumped up when he saw me. He had a glass in his hand and his face was flushed, but since both those things were usual it was hard to say whether he was drunk or not. He stared at me, and then greeted the prodigal with:

      “What the hell are you doing here?”

      At most times this kind of welcome would have taken me aback, but not now. There was a woman in the room, and she distracted my attention. She was a tall, handsome, hussy-looking piece, with brown hair piled up on her head and a come-and-catch-me look in her eye. “This is the new one,” I thought, for you got used to his string of madames; they changed as fast as the sentries at St James’.

      She was looking at me with a lazy, half-amused smile that sent a shiver up my back at the same time as it made me conscious of the schoolboy cut of my clothes. But it stiffened me, too, all in an instant, so that I answered his question pat:

      “I’ve been expelled,” I said, as cool as I could.

      “Expelled? D’ye mean thrown out? What the devil for, sir?”

      “Drunkenness, mainly.”

      “Mainly? Good God!” He was going purple. He looked from the woman back to me, as though seeking enlightenment. She seemed much amused by it, but seeing the old fellow in danger of explosion I made haste to explain what had happened. I was truthful enough, except that I made rather more of my interview with Arnold than was the case; to hear me you would suppose I had given as good as I got. Seeing the female eyeing me I acted pretty offhand, which was risky, perhaps, with the guv’nor in his present mood. But to my surprise he took it pretty well; he had never liked Arnold, of course.

      “Well, I’m damned!” he said, when I had finished, and poured himself another glass. He wasn’t grinning, but his brow had cleared. “You young dog! A pretty state of things, indeed. Expelled in disgrace, by gad! Did he flog you? No? I’d have had the hide off your back – perhaps I will, damme!” But he was smiling now, a bit sour, though. “What d’you make of this, Judy?” he said to the woman.

      “I take it this is a relative?” she says, letting her fan droop towards me. She had a deep husky voice, and I shivered again.

      “Relative? Eh? Oh, dammit, it’s my son Harry, girl! Harry, this is Judy … er, Miss Parsons.”

      She smiled at me now, still with that half-amused look, and I preened myself – I was seventeen, remember – and sized up her points while the father got himself another glass and damned Arnold for a puritan hedge-priest. She was what is called junoesque, broad-shouldered and full-breasted, which was less common then than it is now, and it seemed to me she liked the look of Harry Flashman.

      “Well,” said my father at last, when he had finished fulminating against the folly of putting prigs and scholars in charge of public schools. “Well, what’s to be done with you, eh? What’ll you do, sir? Now that you’ve disgraced the home with your beastliness, eh?”

      I had been thinking this over on my way home, and said straight out that I fancied the army.

      “The army?” he growled. “You mean I’m to buy you colours so that you can live like a king and ruin me with bills at the Guards’ Club, I suppose?”

      “Not the Guards,” I said. “I’ve a notion for the 11th Light Dragoons.”

      He stared at this. “You’ve chosen a regiment already? By gad, here’s a cool hand!”

      I knew the 11th were at Canterbury, after long service in India, and unlikely for that reason to be posted abroad. I had my own notions of soldiering. But this was too fast for the guv’nor; he went on about the expense of buying in, and the cost of army life, and worked back to my expulsion and my character generally, and so back to the army again. The port was making him quarrelsome, I could see, so I judged it best not to press him. He growled on:

      “Dragoons, damme! D’ye know what a cornet’s commission costs? Damned nonsense. Never heard the like. Impudence, eh, Judy?”

      Miss Judy observed that I might look very well as a dashing dragoon.

      “Eh?” said my father, and gave her a queer look. “Aye, like enough he would. We’ll see.” He looked moodily at me. “In the meantime, you can get to your bed,” he said. “We’ll talk of this tomorrow. For the moment you’re still in disgrace.” But as I left them I could hear him blackguarding Arnold again, so I went to bed well pleased, and relieved into the bargain. He was odd fish, all right; you could never tell how he would take anything.

In the morning, though, when I met my father at breakfast, there was no talk of the army. He was too busy damning Brougham – who had, I gathered, made a violent attack on the Queen in the House¹ – and goggling over some scandal about Lady Flora Hastings² in the Post, to give me much attention, and left presently for his club. Anyway, I was