Flash for Freedom!. George Fraser MacDonald

out now that he was here, squiring her at tea, and fetching her fan, clucking round her in the drawing-room, and taking her arm in to dinner. Locke and the rest of her family were all for him, I could see, so I couldn’t put him down as I’d have done anywhere else. It was d----d vexing, but where’s the fun if it’s all too easy, I told myself, and set to scheme how I might bring the lady to the sticking point, as we Shakespeare scholars say.

      I was much distracted from these fine thoughts by old Morrison, who berated me privately for what he called ‘godless gallivanting after yon hussy’; it seemed I should have spent the day hanging on the lips of Bentinck and D’Israeli and Locke, who had been deep in affairs. I soothed him with a promise that I’d attend them after dinner, which I did, and steep work it was. Ireland was very much exciting them, I recall, and the sentencing and transportation of some rebel called Mitchel; old Morrison was positive he should have been hanged, and got into a great passion because when they shipped him off to the Indies they didn’t send him in chains with a bread-and-water diet.⁹

      ‘If the d---d rascal had sailed on any vessel o’ mine, it would hae been sawdust he got tae eat, and d----d little o’ that,’ says dear kind Papa, and the rest of them cried ‘hear, hear,’ and agreed that it was this kind of soft treatment that encouraged sedition; they expected the Paddies to rise at any time, and there was talk of Dublin being besieged. All humbug, of course; you can’t mount a rebellion on rotten potatoes.

      After that there was fierce debate over whether the working class wanted reform, and one Hume was damned for a scoundrel, and D’Israeli discoursed on the folly of some measure to exclude M.P.s who couldn’t pay their debts – no doubt he had a personal interest there – and I sat and listened, bored to death, until Bentinck suggested we join the ladies. Not that there was much sport there either, for Mrs Locke was reading aloud from the great new novel, Jane Eyre, and from the expression on the faces of Fanny and the other young misses, I guessed they’d have been happier with Vamey the Vampire or Sweeney Todd.¹⁰ In another corner the older folk were looking at picture books – German churches, probably – another pack of females were sewing and mumbling to each other, and in an adjoining salon some hysterical bitch was singing ‘Who will o’er the downs with me?’ with a governess thrashing away at the pianoforte. A couple of wild old rakes were playing backgammon, and Duberly was explaining to whoever would listen that he would have been glad to serve in India, but his health wouldn’t allow, don’t ye know. I asked myself how long I could bear it.

      I believe it was Bentinck who suggested cards – Locke looked like the kind who wouldn’t have permitted such devices of the devil under his roof, but Bentinck was the lion, you see, and couldn’t be gainsaid; besides, there was still a little leeway in those days which you’d never have got in the 'sixties or 'seventies. I wasn’t in at the beginning of the game, having been ambushed by an old dragon in a lace cap who told me how her niece Priscilla had written to her with an envelope, instead of waxing her letter, and what did I think of that? I despaired of getting away, until who should appear but Fanny herself, sparkling and full of nonsense, to insist that I should come and show her how to make her wagers.

      ‘I am quite at sea,’ says she, ‘and Henry’ – this was Duberly – ‘vows that counting makes his head ache.¹¹ You will assist me, Captain Flashman, won’t you, and Aunt Selina will not mind, will you, auntie dear?’

      I should have told her to go straight to h--l, and clung to Aunt Selina like a shipwrecked lascar – but you can’t read the future. Ain’t it odd to think, if I’d declined her invitation, I might have been in the Lords today – and a certain American might never have become President? Mind you, even now, if a fresh piece like Fanny Locke stooped in front of me, with those saucy eyes and silken hair, and pushed those pouting lips and white shoulders at me – ah, dry your whiskers, old Flash – you could keep your coronet for me, and I’d take her hand and hobble off to my ruin, whatever it was.

      Aunt Selina sniffed, and told her she must not wager more than a pair of gloves – ‘and not your Houbigants, mind, you foolish little girl. Indeed, I don’t know what the world is coming to, or Henry Duberly thinking of, to permit you wagering at cards. No doubt he will be one of these husbands who will allow you to waltz, and drink porter in company. It would not have done in my day. What are the stakes?’

      ‘Oh, ever so little, aunt,’ says Fanny, tugging at my sleeve. ‘Farthings and sweets – and Lord George has the bank, and is ever such fun!’

      ‘Is he, indeed?’ says Aunt Selina, gathering up her reticule. ‘Then I shall come myself, to see you are not excessively silly.’

      There was quite a crowd round the table in the salon, where Bentinck was presiding over vingt-et-un, amid great merriment. He was playing the chef to perfection, calling the stakes and whipping round the pasteboards like a riverboat dude. Even Locke and Morrison were present, watching and being not too sour about it; Mrs Abigail Locke was among the players, with Bryant advising, toady-like, at her elbow; D’Israeli was making a great show of playing indulgently, like a great man who don’t mind stooping to trivialities if it will amuse lesser minds, and half a dozen others, old and young, were putting up their counters and laughing with delight at Bentinck’s sallies.

      As Fanny and Aunt Selina took their seats, an old fellow with white whiskers leans across to me. ‘I must warn you,’ says he, ‘that Lord George has us playing very deep – plunging recklessly, you know.’ He held up some counters. ‘The green ones are – a farthing; the blue – a ha’penny; and the yellow – you must take care – are a penny! It is desperate work, you see!’

      ‘I’m coming for you, Sir Michael!’ cries Bentinck, slapping the pack. ‘Now, ladies are you ready? Then, one for all, and all for the lucky winner!’ And he flicked the cards round to the players.

      It was silly harmless stuff, you see, all good nature and playfulness – and as desperate a card game as I ever sat in on in my life. Not that you’d have guessed it at first, with Bentinck making everyone merry, and one of the players – a sulky-looking youth of about fourteen, of the kind whose arse I delighted to kick in happier days – protesting that he was cleaned out, and Bentinck solemnly offering to take his note of hand for two-pence. Fanny was all excitement, holding her card up close for me to see and asking how much she should go, which gave me the opportunity to huddle in and stroke her bare shoulders as I whispered in her ear. Next to her, old Aunt Selina was buying cards like a St James’s shark, very precise and slow; she took four and paused at 17; Bentinck was watching her, his handsome face very intent, his thumb poised on the next card; she took it, and it was a trey, which meant that she had a five-card hand, at which there was great applause, and Bentinck laughed and cried ‘Well done, ma’am,’ as he paid her counters over.

      ‘I never buy beyond 16, you know,’ Aunt Selina confided to Fanny, ‘unless it is for a five-card hand. I find it a very good rule.’

      So the game went round, and I found myself thinking that it doesn’t take high stakes to show up who the real gamesters are. You could sense the rapport there was between Bentinck and Aunt Selina – two folk with not a jot in common, mark you. He was one of the sportsmen of the day, used to playing for thousands, a grandee of the turf and the tables who could watch a fortune slip away in five seconds at Epsom and never bat an eyelid, and here he was, watching like a hawk as some dowager hesitated over a farthing stake, or frowning as the sullen Master Jerry lost his two-penny I.O.U. and promptly demanded further credit. Wasn’t it Greville who said that the money Lord George Bentinck won was just so many paper counters to him – it was the game that mattered? And Aunt Selina was another of the same; she duelled with him like a good ’un, and won as often as not, and he liked her for it.

      And then the bank passed round to Fanny, and I had to deal the cards for her. Bryant, who had raised a great laugh by coming round to touch Aunt Selina’s mittened hand for luck, said we should have a fair deal at last, since I had been notoriously the worst vingt-et-un player in the whole Light Cavalry – there was more polite mirth at this, and I gave him a hard look as he went back to Mrs Locke, and wondered to myself just what he had meant by that. Then Fanny, all twittering as she handled the stakes, claimed my attention, and I dealt the