Flashman at the Charge. George Fraser MacDonald
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one wall, full of clothes and linen and what-not, so I toddled in, like the drunken, love-sick ass I was – you’d wonder at it, wouldn’t you, with all my experience? – settled down on something soft, took a last pull at my bottle – and fell fast asleep.
How long I snoozed I don’t know; not long, I think, for I was still well fuddled when I came to. It was a slow business, in which I was conscious of a woman’s voice humming ‘Allan Water’, and then I believe I heard a little laugh. Ah, thinks I, Elspeth; time to get up, Flashy. And as I hauled myself ponderously to my feet, and stood swaying dizzily in the dark of the closet, I was hearing vague confused sounds from the room. A voice? Voices? Someone moving? A door closing? I can’t be sure at all, but just as I blundered tipsily to the closet door, I heard a sharp exclamation which might have been anything from a laugh to a cry of astonishment. I stumbled out of the closet, blinking against the sudden glare of light, and my boisterous view halloo died on my lips.
It was a sight I’ll never forget. Elspeth was standing by the bed, naked except for her long frilled pantaloons; her flowers were still twined in her hair. Her eyes were wide with shock, and her knuckles were against her lips, like a nymph surprised by Pan, or centaurs, or a boozed-up husband emerging from the wardrobe. I goggled at her lecherously for about half a second, and then realised that we were not alone.
Half way between the foot of the bed and the door stood the 7th Earl of Cardigan. His elegant Cherrypicker pants were about his knees, and the front tail of his shirt was clutched up before him in both hands. He was in the act of advancing towards my wife, and from the expression on his face – which was that of a starving, apoplectic glutton faced with a crackling roast – and from other visible signs, his intention was not simply to compare birthmarks. He stopped dead at sight of me, his mottled face paling and his eyes popping, Elspeth squealed in earnest, and for several seconds we all stood stock-still, staring.
Cardigan recovered first, and looking back, I have to admire him. It was not an entirely new situation for me, you understand – I’d been in his shoes, so to speak, many a time, when husbands, traps, or bullies came thundering in unexpectedly. Reviewing Cardigan’s dilemma, I’d have whipped up my britches, feinted towards the window to draw the outraged spouse, doubled back with a spring on to the bed, and then been through the door in a twinkling. But not Lord Haw-Haw; his bearing was magnificent. He dropped his shirt, drew up his pants, threw back his head, looked straight at me, rasped: ‘Good night to you!’, turned about, and marched out, banging the door behind him.
Elspeth had sunk to the bed, making little sobbing sounds; I still stood swaying in disbelief, trying to get the booze out of my brain, wondering if this was some drunken nightmare. But it wasn’t, and as I glared at that big-bosomed harlot on the bed, all those ugly suspicions of fourteen years came flooding back, only now they were certainties. And I had caught her in the act at last, all but in the grip of that lustful, evil old villain! I’d just been in the nick of time to thwart him, too, damn him. And whether it was the booze, or my own rotten nature, the emotion I felt was not rage so much as a vicious satisfaction that I had caught her out. Oh, the rage came later, and a black despair that sometimes wounds me like a knife even now, but God help me, I’m an actor, I suppose, and I’d never had a chance to play the outraged husband before.
‘Well?’ It came out of me in a strangled yelp. ‘Well? What? What? Hey?’
I must have looked terrific, I suppose, for she dropped her squeaking and shuddering like a shot, and hopped over t’other side of the bed like a jack rabbit.
‘Harry!’ she squealed. ‘What are you doing here?’
It must have been the booze. I had been on the point of striding – well, staggering – round the bed to seize her and thrash her black and blue, but at her question I stopped, God knows why.
‘I was waiting for you! Curse you, you adulteress!’
‘In that cupboard?’
‘Yes, blast it, in that cupboard. By God, you’ve gone too far, you vile little slut, you! I’ll—’
‘How could you!’ So help me God, it’s what she said. ‘How could you be so inconsiderate and unfeeling as to pry on me in this way? Oh! I was never so mortified! Never!’
‘Mortified?’ cries I. ‘With that randy old rip sporting his beef in your bedroom, and you simpering naked at him? You – you shameless Jezebel! You lewd woman! Caught in the act, by George! I’ll teach you to cuckold me! Where’s a cane? I’ll beat the shame out of that wanton carcase, I’ll—’
‘It is not true!’ she cried. ‘It is not true! Oh, how can you say such a thing!’
I was glaring round for something to thrash her with, but at this I stopped, amazed.
‘Not true? Why, you infernal little liar, d’you think I can’t see? Another second and you’d have been two-backed-beasting all over the place! And you dare—’
‘It is not so!’ She stamped her foot, her fists clenched. ‘You are quite in the wrong – I did not know he was there until an instant before you came out of that cupboard! He must have come in while I was disrobing – Oh!’ And she shuddered. ‘I was taken quite unawares—’
‘By God, you were! By me! D’you think I’m a fool? You’ve been teasing that dirty old bull this month past, and I find him all but mounting you, and you expect me to believe—’ My head was swimming with drink, and I lost the words. ‘You’ve dishonoured me, damn you! You’ve—’
‘Oh, Harry, it is not true! I vow it is not! He must have stolen in, without my hearing, and—’
‘You’re lying!’ I shouted. ‘You were whoring with him!’
‘Oh, that is untrue! It is unjust! How can you think such a thing? How can you say it?’ There were tears in her eyes, as well there might be, and now her mouth trembled and drooped, and she turned her head away. ‘I can see,’ she sobbed, ‘that you merely wish to make this an excuse for a quarrel.’
God knows what I said in reply to that; sounds of rupture, no doubt. I couldn’t believe my ears, and then she was going on, sobbing away:
‘You are wicked to say such a thing! Oh, you have no thought for my feelings! Oh, Harry, to have that evil old creature steal up on me – the shock of it – oh, I thought to have died of fear and shame! And then you – you!’ And she burst into tears in earnest and flung herself down on the bed.
I didn’t know what to say, or do. Her behaviour, the way she had faced me, the fury of her denial – it was all unreal. I couldn’t credit it, after what I’d seen. I was full of rage and hate and disbelief and misery, but in drink and bewilderment I couldn’t reason straight. I tried to remember what I’d heard in the closet – had it been a giggle or a muted shriek? Could she be telling the truth? Was it possible that Cardigan had sneaked in on her, torn down his breeches in an instant, and been sounding the charge when she turned and saw him? Or had she wheedled him in, whispering lewdly, and been stripping for action when I rolled out? All this, in a confused brandy-laden haze, passed through my mind – as you may be sure it has passed since, in sober moments.
I was lost, standing there half-drunk. That queer mixture of shock and rage and exultation, and the vicious desire to punish her brutally, had suddenly passed. With any of my other women, I’d not even have listened, but taken out my spite on them with a whip – except on Ranavalona, who was bigger and stronger than I. But I didn’t care for the other women, you see. Brute and all that I am, I wanted to believe Elspeth.
Mind you, it was still touch and go whether I suddenly went for her or not; but for the booze I probably would have done. There was all the suspicion of the past, and the evidence of my eyes tonight. I stood, panting and glaring, and suddenly she swung up in a sitting position, like Andersen’s mermaid, her eyes full of tears, and threw out her arms. ‘Oh, Harry! Comfort me!’
If you had seen her – aye. It’s so easy, as none knows better than I, to sneer at the Pantaloons of this world, and the cheated wives, too, while