Mr. American

by George MacDonald Fraser

'I beg your pardon.' She gave a little frown, and for the first time in his experience she seemed slightly embarrassed. 'I think I must be rather tired, too.'

  'I'm sure you must be; that was a dreadful ordeal ... in the court.'

  Lady Helen took a deep breath. 'Yes,' she said. 'I am very angry, when I think of that. And of what he. .. did.'

  'What did he do, really? I know what he said - but d'you suppose it made so much difference?'

  'He kept me out of prison.' She looked directly at Mr Franklin and then away again. 'Oh, yes, what he said is true - influence counts for everything, and it can be very subtly directed. And he did it for what he conceives to be my own good - that is why I can hate him so much, sometimes. It is as though he were the embodiment of everything that we are struggling against - the belief that we have no minds and souls of our own, that we aren't fit to find our own way, to be independent, to rule ourselves, instead of always being the meek, stupid, obedient ... oh, why should I be saying this to you? It is no concern of yours.'

  'I don't think,' said Mr Franklin, 'that you are meek or stupid - or especially obedient.' He smiled at her. 'And I doubt if your great-uncle does, either.'

  She regarded him coldly. 'No, I'm not - and the very tone in which you recognise it, and the way in which you smile as you say it, is in itself a reminder of the fact that a woman who is not meek and stupid and obedient is .. oh, some kind of freak.'

  'I'm sorry. I'd no intention of suggesting that.'

  'I know. I beg your pardon. I'm afraid you must find me extremely tiresome. I have been a great deal of trouble to you, haven't I? But for me, you would not have had to give evidence in court - and my great-uncle would not have had the chance to use you, as he has just done. Perhaps you realise now how unscrupulous he can be.'

  'It's been no trouble. I'm just sorry for the whole thing. And I don't know that he's all that unscrupulous, is he? I know he talks a good deal, but - '

  'You're thinking of his threat to have me put into some exclusive madhouse if I don't behave?' Lady Helen gave a bitter little laugh. `Don't think he wouldn't, if it was to keep me out of prison. Oh, he would - and he could do it, too - nothing distasteful, just a pleasant country retreat that I could leave whenever I promised to do as I was

  told. I see you don't believe it.'

  'Well, it's a little hard to '

  'I had a cousin, a young man who was causing his parents distress because he had some trouble with a woman - a barmaid in some low place in London. ..'Lady Helen shrugged in a way which would have caused Mr Lees to reflect on the attitudes of the aristocracy. 'He wanted to marry her, his parents wished to avoid a scandal, and somehow the matter was mentioned to Uncle Harry. He invited my cousin to dinner - at one of his clubs, I believe. The young man woke up on a whaling ship bound for the Antarctic, and was away for two years. That is perfectly true. My great-uncle is an extremely resourceful and dangerous person; you should understand that.'

  Mr Franklin digested this in silence; it was crossing his mind that dangerous was a word that could reasonably have been applied to the entire family, from what he had seen of the great-niece. Suddenly Lady Helen said:

  'As you know, I wish now that I had been convicted of the assault charge today. I pleaded not guilty only because I was certain that Millicent Shore and I must both be acquitted, and when she was not ... I should have pleaded guilty in the first place, of course, but my solicitors advised against it. And it seemed such a trivial and demeaning charge . . .' She made a little impatient gesture. 'But I feel obliged to thank you for the way in which' you gave your evidence. I realise that you were trying to be considerate - although why you should have been I can't imagine.'

  She was looking a question, and he found it difficult to answer.

  'I don't know that there was any reason except that I didn't want to see you convicted. And - it wasn't much of an assault, was it?'

  The car, which had been threading slowly through the late afternoon traffic, was drawing into Berkeley Square. Lady Helen looked at Sir Harry; he was still sleeping peacefully, with rhythmic snoring. She leaned forward and tapped the glass.

  'Not here. Curzon Street.' To Mr Franklin she said: `So that odious barrister was right - chivalry. I suppose both you and he regard that as a proper attitude to women?'

  Mr Franklin considered her. 'You allow men to open doors for you, I guess. Women's rights notwithstanding.'

  'Courtesy is one thing. Coming close to giving false evidence is rather different, don't you think? Especially since our relations had hardly been friendly. The Waldorf Hotel -and I seem to remember we had a rather disagreeable conversation not long after

  'At Sandringham. When your great-uncle left early.'

  'Was that the time? Ah, yes. You were trying to flirt with me, as I recall.'

  'I was trying to be amiable, probably. But if you're trying to get me to admit that I was attracted by you, you're perfectly right. And so possibly my evidence - however I gave it - may have been slightly biased. And if that's an offence against the rights and dignity of women, I apologise.'

  'Why? Do you think that because a woman believes in women's rights, she ceases to be a woman?'

  'I've no idea, Lady Helen. I don't know enough about women.'

  'Are you married, Mr Franklin?'

  'Yes. I wasn't when we met at Sandringham.'

  'Does your wife believe in women's rights?'

  'She's not a suffragette, if that's what you mean.'

  'Would you have married her if she had been?'

  'Shouldn't the question be, would she have married me?'

  `Suffragettes do marry Mr Franklin - many of them. They are not some strange species, whatever the gutter press and political bigots may say about them.' Lady Helen glanced out at the passing traffic. 'And some simply prefer to live with the man, or men, of their choice, rather than submit to the legal slavery of marriage. But perhaps your wife does not regard it in that light?'

  Mr Franklin thought of Peggy, and smiled. 'I don't think she feels enslaved. I hope not, anyway.'

  'Most men would probably give the same answer. But she is bound to you nonetheless. You take it for granted that she is docile and faithful. And you - are you faithful to her?' Lady Helen glanced at him with a faint smile. 'Or does the question shock you?'

  Mr Franklin hesitated. 'No - it doesn't shock me. I guess I'm old-fashioned enough to find it unexpected, though.'

  'From a suffragette? We prefer the term suffragist, by the way.'

  'I didn't know. But - yes, I'm faithful.'

  'And Miss Delys?'

  Mr Franklin smiled. 'I see that being a suffragist doesn't deprive a lady of her sense of scandal. No, Miss Delys is an old friend - in the conventional sense. Not a mistress.'

  'Many wives would rather that their husbands had a mistress than an old friend in the conventional sense,' said Lady Helen. 'I think I should myself- but then, I am not married. And I believe my views are what are called advanced.'

  The car had turned into Curzon Street, and was drawing up outside a house near the Park Lane end. Lady Helen glanced at the General, still noisily asleep in his corner.

  'Would you care to accompany my great-uncle back to Berkeley Square?' she asked Mr Franklin. She paused and looked at him directly. 'Or if that is out of your way, his driver will deliver him safely.'

  'It's no trouble,' said Mr Franklin. He got out of the car and handed Lady Helen down to the pavement.

  'Then good-night, Mr Franklin.' The cool eyes met his again as she extended a gloved hand. 'Or, more probably, good-bye.'

  'I hope not,' said Mr Franklin courteously, taking her hand. 'Good night, Lady Helen.'

  He watched her mount the short flight of steps and let herself in, and turned back to the car. 'Berkeley Square,' he told the driver, and settled into the seat Lady Helen had vacated; the car drew away from the pavement.

  'It wasn't a whaler,' said the General's voice. 'It was an Atlantic tramp, but the young fool jumped ship so
mewhere in South America and got himself crimped.' He pushed back his hat and regarded Mr Franklin dyspeptically. 'Don't you care for Button, then?'

  Mr Franklin struggled for speech. 'I thought you were -

  'Asleep? Don't be an ass. I started snoring tactfully because I'd touched the poor little chit on the raw with a question she couldn't answer. Silly of me, but when she starts playing the grande dame and refusing to stay the night when she knows dam' well her great-aunt is fretting to death about her - well,' confessed the ageing warrior, 'she gets me riled peculiar, as your countrymen say. I shouldn't have asked her that, though - bad thing to let a woman know you've sniffed out her guilty secret. Mind you, it was as plain as the nose on your face.

  'What was?' Mr Franklin was perplexed. 'What shouldn't you have asked her?'

  'Why she didn't cut up the painting with her own fair hands, if she's so all-fired set on playing the diehard suffragette? Instead of egging on that pathetic old harridan to do it. Of course, she couldn't look me in the face and answer.' He rolled a bright and bloodshot eye at Mr Franklin. 'Could she?'

  'I don't know what you're talking about, General.'

  'My God, you're dense. And from Nebraska, too. She's my great-niece, ain't she? You don't think she'd do the dirty deed herself if she could get some simpleton to do it for her? Of course, she won't care to admit it, even to herself, but it's true, just the same. I know my own kind.'

  'I don't believe that for a moment,' said Mr Franklin. 'Why, she wanted to share the blame - you heard her - she'd have gone to prison like a shot.'

  'Yes, I heard her,' said Sir Harry. 'Heard myself, in similar situations - when I reckoned it was safe. Oh, she's a bit of an ecstatic martyr, no doubt, our Button - as long as it don't go too far. And she may rage and rail at me for smoothing her path out of trouble, but she's not too sorry I did, I'll be bound. Not that she isn't sincere in her beliefs, and all this dam' nonsense about women's rights, and so forth. But you'll notice it's she who's loose, and Shore who's doing time. My conniving, if you like - but I wonder if Button would have been quite so ready to assist in outrages, and plead guilty, and damn the judge's eyes, if she hadn't known that Uncle Harry was on hand, pulling the strings? Eh? And you'll also notice that she pleaded not guilty to the assault business - if she'd been convicted on that, she'd have been in real peril of going to chokey, for all my efforts. No, she's sincere enough - ain't we all? - but like the rest of us she doesn't want to pay too high a price for it.'

  Mr Franklin sat a moment silent. 'I don't think you know your own great-niece very well,' he said. 'You're doing her a great injustice.'

  'Am I though?' The General grunted. 'Well, I'm not the only one. She's a damned sight madder at you this minute than she is at me.' The General surveyed him curiously. 'Didn't you want to go to bed with

  her?'

  Mr Franklin regarded him in disgust and wonder. `You're talking about the lady who is your own great-niece - '

  'So I am, but that doesn't mean she's any different from all the rest of them. Heavens above, you could have been snug on the sofa in Curzon Street this minute if you'd had your wits about you. Don't you know a plain invitation when you hear one?' The General shook his great head in disgust. 'You young fellows nowadays beat me. Just because Button looks down her haughty nose at you as though you're dirt, doesn't mean she hasn't got a healthy appetite. She came as near as she could to telling you, short of dragging you out of the car and upstairs. Would have done her a world of good, too, after the trying day she's had.' The General sighed moodily. 'In fact, one of the reasons I brought you along from court, and then obligingly dropped off to sleep, was so that you and she could size one another up, and... well, I knew back at Sandringham that you fancied each other rather above half. Still . . .' Sir Harry shrugged in resignation at the younger generation's lack of enterprise. 'Poor little Button. I hate to think of her being disappointed.'

  'One thing becomes clear,' said Mr Franklin grimly, 'and that is that every word she said about you is true.'

  'What, about being deceitful and dishonest and rotten to the core, you mean? Of course it's true,' said Sir Harry comfortably. 'Though why you should complain, when I was doing my best to help you into the saddle - ' A thought seemed to strike him. `Of course, if you're assigned to that little blonde bouncer you had in tow at the court, I can understand - '

  'I should have thought you overheard, while you were asleep,' said Mr Franklin caustically, 'that Miss Delys is only a friend, that I'm married, and strange as it may seem to you, I'm faithful to my wife.'

  'You don't say!' The General seemed genuinely surprised. 'Well, I'm blessed!' He gave Mr Franklin a curious look. 'You a Baptist, or something like that? Ah, well.' He ruminated on this, shaking his head. 'It's a shame you don't fancy Button, though, because she's taken quite a shine to you. Can't say I blame you, mind - she's the kind I'd love and leave in the deuce of a hurry. What's your own wife like? Good-looking? Bound to be - you're not the kind who'd settle for plain Jane. Like to meet her sometime. Ah, here we are.'

  The car had turned into Berkeley Square, and as it drew into the kerb Sir Harry heaved himself painfully up, grunting, but restrained Mr Franklin as the latter made to help him out. 'Stay where you are - car can take you home. Well, thank'ee my son, for helping Button out - even if you did miss your chance this evening. You'll regret it someday - I always do, when I think back to the wasted opportunities of youth. Give me a call, any time you feel like standing me a dinner, and I'll tell you a few tales about the old days.'

  He climbed out on to the pavement and shouted to the driver: 'Take the gentleman wherever he wants to go, Wilkins or Jackson or whatever the hell your name is, and pick me up tomorrow at ten forty-five sharp. Lady Flashman's going shopping at eleven, and if you don't have me off and out of danger before that, I'll stop your grog.'

  He turned back to the open door. 'Well, good-night to you, young Franklin. Yes, give me a call one of these days. Perhaps you can tell me a few tales, instead. You're an interesting chap, you know.' The grotesquely-mottled old face with its flowing whiskers wore a curious, knowing expression. 'Knew it the first time I saw you. Yes. You've got gunfighter's eyes.'

  And that, thought Mr Franklin, as he drove back to Wilton Crescent was a most odd, and vaguely unsettling, thing for anyone to say. But then, Sir Harry was an odd and vaguely unsettling person - so, for that matter, was his great-niece, and Mr Franklin had quite enough masculine vanity to wonder if the cunning old gentleman's reading of her character, and of her supposed tendre for Mr Franklin himself, was correct. It seemed unlikely - he doubted if Lady Helen was amorously inclined towards anyone, and yet, when he thought back over their conversation, and tried to recall her expression and manner on the drive to Curzon Street, and the cool, direct glance of the fine eyes - of course, these emancipated women believed in free love and socialism and all manner of strange things, if rumour was to be believed. And, he admitted it, she was an attractive woman - formidable, yes, undoubtedly, and any man who became entangled with her had better be of a nature as resolute and implacable as her own. But that was no concern of his, not now. Perhaps, four years ago at Sandringham - if Sir Harry had not indulged in pinching maids' bottoms, and so led to his great-niece's early departure ...

  Mr Franklin dismissed his speculations, and as the car idled at a crossing, waiting to be waved on by the traffic constable, he bought an evening paper from a passing vendor. Yes, there were the morning's court proceedings, on an inside page - with a picture of Pip and a column of her evidence; his own contribution occupied about a sixth of that space, he was glad to see. The verdict and sentence had obviously come to late for the edition, but they would certainly be on the front pages in the morning. He glanced at the stop press, but there was nothing there except cricket scores, racing results, and an item headed "Outrage in the Balkans". Mr Franklin folded the paper and yawned as the car sped on the Wilton Crescent.

  23

  Rather more space was given
on the following morning to the latest Balkan atrocity, which Mr Franklin noted briefly was concerned with the murder by students of an Austrian princeling and his wife; it was quite overshadowed, however, by what one sheet described as "the Cessford Scandal". Even the serious papers devoted columns to it in their Law Reports, and the cheap press had a field day, with pictures, graphic accounts, interviews, and scathing leaderettes on the double standard of justice which appeared to have been applied. Samson had brought to the breakfast table as many of the daily journals as could be got from the local newsagent's, and Mr Franklin and Peggy scanned them with interest.

  Many carried studio portraits of Lady Helen looking disdainful and splendid in her debutante finery, and another of her in coronation dress, when she had been in attendance on royalty; she was also shown leaving court on the arm of her great-uncle, who appeared to be trying to brain a reporter with his cane while Lady Helen stared calmly to her front. There were pictures of Pip, theatrical and otherwise, and a long interview in which she tempered justice with mercy by describing the conviction of Millicent Shore as a downright scandal, and referring to the judge as 'a sweet old dear, a real pet'.