Flashman And The Tiger

"—and if I had told you at Tranby, why, you would have been in such a fix, on the horns of Tantalus, whether to speak out, which I knew you wouldn’t ever do, for my sake, or else be an … an accomplice in my dishonourable deed! And that would not have done!" She dabbed her eyes with her sleeve. "So I had to be silent, and deceive you, and I’m so sorry for that, dearest, I truly am—but not for what I did to Billy Cumming, and if you blame me, I can’t help it! Oh, Harry, I have so wanted to confess it all to you, so many, many times, but I was bound to wait until the trial was over, you see, for then it would be too late!" She had her arms round my neck, eyes piteous in entreaty. "Oh, Harry, my jo, can you forgive me? If you don’t, I think I’ll die … for I only did it for love of you and … and your honour!"

You understand now why I said that Elspeth must be allowed to babble to a conclusion if you’re to reach sense at last. Well, we were getting on.

"Dear lass," says I, trying not to wince with my leg cracking under the strain, "whatever does my honour have to do with it? And for heaven’s sake, what did Gordon Cumming do—to make you hate him so, and serve him such a ghastly turn?"

At last it came, in a whisper, her head bowed.

"He … he called you a coward."

I dam' near let her fall on the floor. "What was that?"

"A coward!" Her head came up, and suddenly she was fairly blazing with rage. "He said it to my face! He did! Oh, I burn with shame to think of it, the vile falsehood! The evil, wicked story-teller! He said you had run away from the Seekhs or the Zulus or someone at that place in Africa, Isal-something-or-other—"

"Isan’lwana? God love us, who didn’t?" But she was too angry to hear me, raging on in full spate about how the brazen rascal had dared to say that I had fled headlong, and escaped in a cart while my comrades perished, and had skulked in the hospital at Rorke’s Drift (all true, except the bit about the hospital—a fat chance anyone had to skulk with the roof on fire and those fearsome black buggers coming through the wall), and she had been so distraught by his slanders that she had removed from his presence, nigh weeping, and if she had been a man she would have slain him on the spot.

"To hear him lying in his jealous teeth, the toad, defaming you, the bravest, gallantest, best soldier in all the world, as everyone knows, that have won the V.C. and done ever so many heroic deeds, the Hector of Afghanistan and the Bayard of Balaclava it said in the papers, and I cut them out every one, and keep them, and didn’t I see you fight like a lion against those disagreeable folk in Madagascar, and you brought me away safe and sound, and had followed to the ends of the earth all for my sake, and rescued me, that didn’t deserve it, and you the dearest, kindest valiant knight, so you are …" At which point she buried her face in my neck and howled for a spell, while I moved her fine poundage on to a convenient chair and massaged my numbed limb, marvel-ling at the mysterious workings of the female mind. She continued to cling to me, uttering muffled anathemas against Cumming, and at last came to the surface, moist and pink.

"I would not have told you if you had not pressed me," gulps she, "for it soils my lips to have to repeat his sinful lies. He tried to dishonour you, and I was resolved to dishonour him by hook or crook, if it took a lifetime, and if what I did was dishonourable, too, and underhand and sly, I don’t care a docken! He’s a cur, and that’s what he is, and now every dog on the midden kens what he is!"

It ain’t easy for a sonsy matron with blonde curls to look like the wrath of God, but she was managing uncommon well. She sniffed, defiant and soulful together.

"Now you know the kind of woman you married. And if you spurn me it will break my heart—but I would do it again, a thousand times!" I’ll swear she gritted her teeth. "No one—no one!—speaks ill of my hero, and that’s the size of it!"

And that, dear reader, is why William Gordon-Cumming was cast into outer darkness: because he’d blown on Flashy’s honour. Ironic, wouldn’t you say? It had been his bad luck that where an ordinary wife would have treated his insults with icy disdain, or at most urged her husband to call on the cad with a horsewhip, my eccentric lady had nursed her vengeance for years before ruining him with a stratagem so dangerous (never mind its warped lunacy) that my blood still runs cold to think of it, twenty years on. Social ruin aside, the crazy bitch could have gone to gaol for criminal conspiracy—not that that would enter her empty head, or deter her if it had. The only qualm she’d felt was that if I learned the truth of the disgraceful way she’d engineered Cumming’s downfall, I might recoil from her in virtuous disgust—which only goes to show that after fifty years she knew no more of my true character than I, apparently, did of hers.