“Not every kind! I never—”
“A rake, a cheat, a bully and a whoremonger – that’s what I rescued that sweet, brave woman from. I took her from the hell of life with you—”
“You’re mad!” I croaked. “She never said it was hell! She loves me, curse you – as I love her—”
His hand swept across my face, knocking me back on my pillow, and I had sense enough to stay there, for he was a fearsome sight, shaking with fury, his mouth working.
“What did you ever know of love?” cries he. “Let me hear that word on your lips again, and I’ll have them sewn together, with a scorpion in your mouth!”
Well, when he put it like that, I saw there was no point in arguing. I lay there quaking, while he mastered himself and went on, more quietly:
“Love is not for animals like you. Love is what I felt – for the first time – on an afternoon at Lord’s, when I saw her. I knew then, as surely as I know there is One God, that there could be no other woman, that I should worship her for life, a life that would be death without her. Yes, I knew then – what love was.”
He let out a great breath, and he was trembling. By George, thinks I, we’ve got a maniac here – he means it. He heaved a minute, and then went on, like a poet on opium.
“She filled my life from that moment; there was nothing else. But it was a pure love – she would have been sacred to n e, had she been married to a husband truly worthy of her. But when I saw the truth – that she was shackled to the basest kind of brute” – he shot me a withering look – “I asked why my life, and hers (which was infinitely more precious) should be ruined by a stupid convention which, after all, meant nothing to me. Oh, I was a gentleman, trained in the English way, at an English school – but I was also a prince of the House of Magandanu, descended from the Prophet himself – and I was a pirate, as you of the West know the word. Why should I respect your customs; when I could offer her a destiny as high above life with you as the stars are above the slime, why should I hesitate? I could make her a queen, instead of the chattel of a drunken, licentious bully who had only married her at pistol point!”
“That ain’t fair! She was d----d glad to get me, and if that poxy little varmint Morrison says other – don’t hit me! I’m wounded!”
“Not by one word, by one gesture, did she complain! Her loyalty, like everything else about her, is perfect – even to a worm like you! But I knew, and I determined to save her for a love worthy of her. So I worked, carefully, patiently, for both our sakes – it was torture to impose on that sweet innocence, but I knew that in time she would bless me for the subterfuge. I was ready to sacrifice anything – millions, what were they to me? I, who was half of the East, half of the West, was prepared to put myself beyond the law, beyond civilization, for her sake. I would give her a throne, a fortune – and true love. For I still have my kingdom of the East, and she shall share it with me.”
Well, you won’t want me as British Ambassador, thinks I, but I kept mum, tactfully. He paced about the cabin, looking masterful as he prated on.
“So I took her, and I fought for her – in the face of that vicious madman Brooke! Oh, he’ll come too often to Borneo, that one, with his lying piety and promises – he that is the bloodiest pirate of us all! No doubt he made a fine pretext of rescuing her, so that he could come again and harry and burn us, butcher our people—” He was working into a fine froth now, waving his hands. “What’s it to him, how we live? What sacred right has he to war on us and our ways? I’d have eaten his fleet alive on the Skrang, but for Paitingi! As it was, I slipped him in the creeks and came downriver, with this one vessel. He thinks he’s finished Suleiman Usman, does he? Let him come to Maludu, when I return there!”
He paced some more, chewing over Brooke, and then rounded on me. “But he doesn’t matter – not now. You do. You’re here, and you’re inopportune.” He paused, considering me. “Yes … you should have died.”
I wished to G-d he’d stop harping on that – you could see where it was going to lead. This wasn’t Don Solomon of Brook Street any longer, not so you’d notice – this was a beastly aborigine who went plundering about in ships festooned with skulls, and I was an inconvenient husband, ’nuff said. In addition, he clearly had more screws loose than a drunk sapper – all that moonshine about worshipping Elspeth, not being able to live without her, making her a queen – well! It would have been laughable if it hadn’t been true; after all, when a man kidnaps a married woman and fights a war over her, it ain’t just a passing fancy.
But one thing was plain – his wooing hadn’t prospered, or I’d have been overside long ago, with a bag of coal round my ankles. Why the h--l couldn’t he have rattled her in London, and got tired of it, and we’d have been spared all this? But here we were, in a pickle whose delicacy made my flesh crawl. I considered, took a deep breath, and tried not to talk shrill.
“Well, now, Don Solomon,” says I, “I take note of what you’ve said, and – ah – I’m glad we’ve had this little prose together, you know, and you’ve told me – um – what you think. Yes – you’ve put it very fair, and while I can’t but deplore what you’ve done, mind – well, I understand your feelings, as any man of sensibility must – and I’m that, I hope – and I see you were deeply affected by … well, by my wife – and I know what it’s like, of course – I mean, she’s a little stunner, we agree-heavens yes,” I babbled on, while he gaped in bewilderment, small blame to him.
“But you’ve got it quite wrong you know; we’re a devoted couple, Elspeth – Mrs Flashman – and I, ask anyone – never a cross word – sublimely happy—”
“And that whore Lade?” he snarled. “Is that your devotion?”
“Why, my dear chap! The merest accident – I mean, that I noticed her at all – pure jealousy at seeing my wife flattered by your attentions – a man of your address, I mean, polished manners, charming, stinking rich – no, no, I mean, I found myself quite cut out – and Mrs Lade, well … heat of the moment – you know yourself how one can be carried away—”
It was touch and go that he didn’t savage me on the bed, considering the drivel I was talking – but it sometimes works, rubbish with a ring of sincerity, when you’re stuck with a hopeless case. It didn’t here; he strode to the bed, seized me by the shoulder, and drew back his great fist.
“You infernal liar!” cries he. “D’you think you can gammon me with your snivelling?”
“I’m not!” I bawled. “I love Elspeth, and she loves me, and you know it! She don’t want you!” I’d done it now, I could see, so I went roaring on: “That’s why you wish I’d died – because you know if you harm me now, your last hope of winning her is gone! Don’t – I’m an invalid – my wound!”
His fingers bit my shoulder like a vice; suddenly he flung me back and straightened up, with an ugly laugh.
“So that’s what you’re counting on! Why, you miserable toad, she doesn’t even know you’re here. I could drop you overboard, and she’d never know. Aye, you go pale at—”
“I don’t believe you! If that were true you’d have done me in already – you tried it in Singapore, rot you, with your foul black gangsters!”
He stared at me. “I’ve no notion what you’re talking about,” and he sounded sincere, curse him. “I don’t expect you to understand it, Flashman, but the reason you’re still alive is that I’m a man of honour. When I take her to her throne – and I shall – it will be with a clean hand, not one fouled with a husband’s blood – even a husband like you.”
That was reassuring enough to banish my immediate terrors; I even recovered sufficiently for a cautious sneer.
“Talk’s cheap, Solomon. Honour, says you – but you ain’t above wife-stealing, and cheating at cricket – oh, aye, breaking a chap’s wicket when you’ve laid him out foul! If you’re such a man of honour,” I taunted him, “you’d let Elspeth choose for herself – but you daren’t, ’cos you know she’d plump for me, warts and all!”
He stood sto
ck still, just looking at me, without expression, fingering his earring again. Then after a moment, he nodded, slowly.
“Yes,” says he quietly. “It must come to that, must it not? Very well.”
He threw open the door, and barked an order, glancing oddly at me while we waited. Feet sounded – and I felt my heart begin to thump uncontrollably as I sat up in bed; G-d knows why, but I was suddenly dizzy – and then she was there in the doorway, and for a moment I thought it was someone else – this was some Eastern nymph, in a clinging sarong of red silk, her skin tanned to the gold of honey, whereas Elspeth’s was like milk. Her blonde hair was bleached almost white by the sun – and then I saw those magnificent blue eyes, round with bewilderment like her lips, and I heard a sob coming out of me: “Elspeth!”
She gave a little scream, and stumbled in the doorway, putting her hand to her eyes – and then she was running to my arms, crying “Harry! Oh, Harry!” flinging herself at me, her mouth against mine, clutching my head in wild hands, sobbing hysterically, and I forgot Solomon, and the ache of my wound, and fear, and danger, as I pressed that lovely softness against me and kissed and kissed her until she went suddenly limp, and slid from my arms to the floor in a dead faint. It was only then, as I scrambled out, clutching my bandaged side, that I realized the door was closed, and Solomon was gone.
I tried to haul her up to the bed, but I was still weak as a kitten from my wound and confinement, and couldn’t manage it. So I had to be content with pawing and fondling until her eyes fluttered open, and then she clung to me, muttering my name, and after we had babbled thankfully for a few minutes and exchanged our news, so to speak, we got down to the reunion in earnest – and in the middle of it, while I was just wondering if my wound was about to come asunder, she suddenly pulled her mouth free of mine and cried:
“Harry – what is Mrs Leo Lade to you?”
“Hey?” I yelped. “What? What d’ye mean? Who’s she? I mean—”
“You know her very well! The Duke’s … companion, who paid you such singular attention. What is between you?”
“Good G-d! At a time like this – Elspeth, my dear, what has Mrs Lade to do with anything?”
“That is what I am asking. No, desist – Don Solomon said … hinted … of an attachment. Is this true?”
You wouldn’t credit it – here she was, on a pirate ship, having been abducted, shanghaied round half the East, through war, ambush, and confounded head-hunters, reunited with her long-lost spouse, and just as he was proving his undying affection at grievous risk to his health, her jealous little pea-brain was off on another tack altogether. Unbelievable – and most unflattering. But I was equal to the occasion.
“Solomon!” cries I. “That viper! Has he been trying to poison your mind against me with his lies? I might have guessed it! Not content with stealing you, the villain traduces me to you – don’t you see? He’ll stop at nothing to win you away from me.”
“Oh.” She frowned up at me – G-d, she was lovely, if half-witted. “You mean he – oh, how could he be so base? Oh, Harry” – and she began to cry, trembling all down her body in a way that almost brought me to the boil – “all the rest I could bear – the fear and shame and … and all of it, but the thought that you might have been untrue … as he suggested – ah, that would have broken my heart! Tell me it wasn’t so, my love!”
“Course it wasn’t! Good l--d, that raddled pudding Lade! How could you think it? I despise the woman – and as though I could even look at her, or any other, when I have my own perfect, angelic, Aphrodite—” I tried a couple of cautious thrusts as I saw the suspicion dying in her eyes, but since attack’s the best form of defence I suddenly stopped, frowning thunderously. “That foul kite Solomon! He will stoop to any depth. Oh, dearest, I have been mad these past weeks – the thought of you in his clutches.” I gulped in manly torment. “Tell me – in your ordeal – did he … I mean – well … did he, the scoundrel?”
She was flushed with my attentions anyway, but at this she went crimson, and moaned softly, those innocent eyes brimming with tears.
“Oh, how can you ask? Would I be alive now, if … if … Oh, Harry, I cannot believe it is you, holding me safe! Oh, my love!”
Well, that was that settled (so far as it ever is with Elspeth; I’ve never been able to read those child-like eyes and butter-melting lips, so the d---l with it), and Mrs Lade disposed of, at least until we had finished the business in hand and were lying talking in the growing dusk of the cabin. Naturally, Elspeth’s story came flooding out in an excited stream, and I was listening with my mind in a great confusion, what with my weakened state, the crazy shock of our reunion, and the anxiety of our predicament – and suddenly, in the middle of describing the rations they’d fed her during her captivity, she suddenly said:
“Harry – you are sure you have not been astride Mrs Lade?”
I was so amazed she had to say it twice.
“Eh? Good G-d, girl, what d’you mean?”
“Have you mounted her?”
I can’t think how I’ve kept my sanity, talking to that woman for sixty years. Of course, at this time we’d only been married for five, and I hadn’t plumbed the depths of her eccentricity. I could only gargle and exclaim:
“D----t, I’ve told you I haven’t! And where on earth – it is shocking to use expressions of that kind!”
“Why? You use them – I heard you, at Lady Chalmers’, when you were talking to Jack Speedicut, and you were both remarking on Lottie Cavendish, and whatever her husband could see in such a foolish creature, and you said you expected he found her a good mount. I dare say I was not meant to hear.”
“I should think not! And I can have said no such thing – and anyway, ladies ain’t meant to understand such … such vulgar words.”
“The ladies who get mounted must understand them.”
“They ain’t ladies!”
“Why not? Lottie Cavendish is. So am I, and you have mounted me – lots of times.” She sighed, and nestled close, G-d help us.
“Well, I have not … done any such thing with Mrs Lade, so there.”
“I’m so glad,” says she, and promptly fell asleep.
Now, I’ve told you this, partly because it’s all of the conversation that I remember of that reunion, and also to let you understand what a truly impossible scatterhead Elspeth was – and still is. There’s something missing there; always has been, and it makes her senselessly unpredictable. (Heaven knows what idiocy she’ll come out with on her deathbed, but I’ll lay drunkard’s odds it’s nothing to do with dying. I only hope I ain’t still above ground to hear it, though.) She’d been through an ordeal that would have driven most women out of their wits – not that she had many to start with – but now she was back with me, safe as she supposed, she seemed to have no notion of the peril in which we both stood; why, when Solomon’s Malays took her away to her own quarters that first night, she was more concerned about the sunburn she’d taken, and if it would spoil her complexion, than about the fate Solomon might have in store for us. What can you do with a woman like that?
Mind you, there was a dead weight off my heart at having seen her, and knowing she’d come to no bodily harm. At least her captivity hadn’t changed her – come to think of it, if she’d wept and raved about her sufferings, or sat numb and shocked, or been terrified of her situation, like a normal woman – she wouldn’t have been Elspeth, and that would have been worse than anything, somehow.
For the next two days I was confined to my cabin, and didn’t see a living soul except the Chink steward who brought my food, and he was deaf to all my demands and questions. I’d no notion what was happening, or where we were going; I knew from what Solomon had said that we were in the South Indian Ocean, and the sun confirmed that we were westering steadily, but that was all. What did Solomon intend? – the one thing that grew on me was that he wasn’t likely to do me in, praise God, not now that Elspeth had seen me, for that would have scuppered any hopes he had of
winning her. And that was the nub of it.
You see, lunatic though his behaviour had been, the more I thought about it the more I believed him: the blighter was really mad about her, and not just to board and scuttle her, either, but with all the pure, romantic trimmings, like Shelley or one of those chaps. Astonishing – well, I love her myself, always have, but not to put me off my food.
But Solomon had it to the point of obsession, where he’d been willing to kidnap and kill and give up civilization for her. And he’d believed that, in spite of his behaving like a b----y Barbary corsair, he could eventually woo and win her, given time. But then he’d seen her run to my arms, sobbing, and had realized it was no go; shocking blow it must have been. He’d probably been gnawing his futile passion ever since, realizing that he’d bought outlawry and the gallows for nothing. But what was he to do now? Unless he chopped us both (which seemed far-fetched, pirate and Old Etonian though he was) it seemed to me he had no choice but to set us free with apologies, and sail away, grief-stricken, to join the Foreign Legion, or become a monk, or an American citizen. Why, he’d as good as thrown up the sponge in letting Elspeth and me spend hours together alone; he’d never have done that if he hadn’t given up all hope of her, surely?
He was in no hurry to repeat his generosity, however. On the third day a little Chink doctor visited me with the steward, but he didn’t have a word of English, and busied himself impassively examining the sumpitan-wound in my guts – which was fairly healed, and barely ached – while remaining deaf to my demands to see Solomon. In the end I lost patience, and made for the door, roaring for attention, but at this two of the Malay crew appeared, all bulging muscles and evil phizzes, and indicated that if I didn’t hold my tongue they’d hold it for me. So I did, until they’d gone, and then I set about the door with my boots, bawling for Elspeth, and calling Solomon every name I could think of – indulging my natural insolence, if you like, since I figured it was safe enough. By George, wasn’t I young and innocent, though?
Flashman Papers Omnibus Page 82
