Flashman And The Tiger

"He reeked of bourbon whisky, which is not easy to obtain outside the American Bar, and his condition suggested that he had filled his flask at least once since coming ashore …"

I waited until the coast was clear, and then creaked to my feet and hurried homeward, stiff and sore and stinking of brandy (bourbon, my eye!—as though I’d pollute my liver with that rotgut) and if my "besotted shell" was in poor shape, my heart was rejoicing. It had all come right, for little Selly and me, and as I limped my way towards Berkeley Square I was in capital fettle. I was even whistling to myself as I loitered past the end of Hay Hill, and then my roving eye chanced to fall on a certain lighted window, and I bore up short, thinking hollo, what’s this?

For it was my window, in the chambers of my salad days, which as I’ve told you I had placed at the convenience of the Prince of Wales for the entertainment of his secret gallops. I remembered seeing in the morning’s paper that he had been due at Charing Cross that evening from France; by George, thinks I, the randy little pig can’t wait for his English muttons, for all that he must have been panting after half the skirt dancers of Paris this month past. No sooner home than he’s in the saddle again. I was shaking my head sadly over such scandalous conduct, when along comes a cab round the corner from Grafton Street, pulling up at the very door to my Hay Hill place—it was pretty late by now, and all quiet, very discreet. Aha, thinks I, here’s his little macaroon; let’s see who it is this time, so that we can tattle at the club in the morning.

So I shuffled close, just as a heavily-veiled lady got out, without paying the cab, which rattled off at once. That proved it, and as she crossed the pavement and passed into the entry I was abreast, glancing in. She pulled off her veil, and shook her hair, just as I passed, and for a split second I saw her face before she hurried on. And I staggered, as though from a blow, clutching the railings and sinking to the pavement. For there was no mistaking; it was my own grand-daughter, little Selina.

I’ve been hit hard in my time, but that nearly carried me off. My own grand-daughter—going up to that pot-bellied satyr! I sprawled there against the railings, dumfounded. Selina, the wide-eyed, tender innocent—mistress to the revolting Bertie! No, no, it couldn’t be … why, only that morning she’d been pleading with me to save her from the embraces of Moran; she’d seemed almost out of her wits—by George, though, well she might be, if she was the Prince of Wales’s secret pet! She couldn’t afford to compromise herself with half-pay adventurers like Tiger Jack, not if she was to keep in favour with her royal lover. And she couldn’t be mixed up in scandals over her fiancé’s pilfering regimental funds, neither. She had had to get Moran silenced (with my money, she hoped) if she was to stay topsides with Bertie. No wonder she’d wailed on my bosom, the designing, wicked little hussy. And I’d been in a lather about her honour—her honour! My own grand-daughter.

That, of course, was the point. She was my grand-daughter, and what’s bred in the bone … oh, but she’d hocussed me properly, playing shrinking Purity, and I’d been ready to shell out half my fortune—and I’d come within an ace of committing murder for her. That was the far outside of enough—I stared up at that lighted window, bursting with outrage—and then for all my fury I found I was grinning, and then laughing, as I clung to the railings. Say what you like; consider that sweet, innocent, butter-melting beauty and the mind behind it—oh, she was Flashy’s little grandchild, all right, every inch of her.

"Wot’s all the row, then?" says a voice, and there was a burly, bearded copper shining his bull’s-eye on me. "Yore tight," says he.

"No, guv’nor, not a bit," I wheezed. "Just resting."

"Don’t gimme none o' your sauce," says he. "This ’ere’s a respectable neighbour’ood—the likes o' you can do yer boozin' some place else, you follow? Nah then, ’op it."

"Yuss, guv’nor," says I. "Just goin', honnist."

"Orta know better, a man yore age. Look at yerself—proper disgrace, you are. Don’t you old rummies never learn?"

"No," says I. "We never do." And I set off, under his disapproving eye, across Berkeley Square.

Notes

[1]. Paul Kruger (1825-1904), later President of the South African Republic, claimed that if Lord Chelmsford had taken his advice on Zulu fighting, Isandhlwana need not have been lost. "Oom Paul" spoke from experience; he had himself been caught by the speed of a Zulu attack, and survived only after hand-to-hand fighting inside his laager (square of wagons). (See J. Martineau’s Life of Sir Bartle Frere, 1893.) In fairness to Chelmsford, the failure to laager was Colonel Durnford’s; Rider Haggard, who knew Durnford well, advances an interesting theory on his tactics in The Tale of Isandhlwana, but agrees with Kruger that laagering would have saved the day.