'Don't be such an infernal fool another time. You don't fight duels in order to delope, but to kill your adversary.'
So, with Josette mine by right of conquest - and she was in some awe of me, I may say - and a reputation for courage, marksmanship, and downright decency established, I was pretty well satisfied. The only snag was Bryant, but I dealt with that easily.
When he had finished toadying me on the day of the duel, he got round to asking about his ten thousand - he knew I had great funds, or at least that my father did, but I knew perfectly well I could never have pried ten thousand out of my guv'nor. I told Bryant so, and he gaped as though I had kicked him in the stomach.
'But you promised me ten thousand,' he began to bleat.
'Silly promise, ain't it? - when you think hard about it,' says I.
'Ten thousand quid, I mean - who'd pay out that much?'
'You lying swine!' shouts he, almost crying with rage. 'You swore you'd pay me!'
'More fool you for believing me,' I said.
'Right, by God!' he snarled. 'We'll see about this! You won't cheat me, Flashman, I'll - '
'You'll what?' says I. 'Tell everyone all about it? Con-fess that you sent a man into a duel with an unloaded gun? It'll make an interesting story. You'd be confessing to a capital offence - had you thought of that? Not that anyone'd believe you - but they'd certainly kick you out of the service for conduct unbecoming, wouldn't they?'
He saw then how it lay, and there was nothing he could do about it. He actually stamped and tore his hair, and then he tried pleading with me, but I laughed at him, and he finished up swearing to be even yet.
'You'll live to regret this!' he cried. 'By God, I'll get you yet!'
'More chance of that then you have of getting ten thousand anyway,' I told him, and he slunk off.
He didn't worry me; what I'd said was gospel true. He daren't breathe a word, for his own safety's sake. Of course if he had thought at all he would have sniffed some-thing fishy about a ten thousand bribe in the first place. But he was greedy, and I've lived long enough to discover that there isn't any folly a man won't contemplate if there's money or a woman at stake.
However, if I could congratulate myself on how the matter had turned out, and can look back now and say it was one of the most important and helpful incidents of my life, there was trouble in store for me very quickly as a result of it. It came a few weeks afterwards, and it ended in my having to leave the regiment for a while.
It had happened not long before that the regiment had been honoured (as they say) by being chosen to escort to London the Queen's husband-to-be, Albert, when he arrived in this country. He had become Colonel of the Regiment, and among other things we had been given a new-designed uniform and had our name changed to the Eleventh Hussars. That by the way; what mattered was that he took a close interest in us, and the tale of the duel made such a stir that he took special notice of it, and being a prying German busybody, found out the cause of it.
That almost cooked my goose for good. His lovely new regiment, he found, contained officers who consorted with French whores and even fought duels over them. He played the devil about this, and the upshot was that Cardigan had to summon me and tell me that for my own good I would have to go away for a while.
'It has been demanded,' said he, 'that you weave the wegiment -I take it the official intention is that that should be permanent, but I intend to interpwet it as tempowawy. I have no desire to lose the services of a pwomising officer - not for His Woyal Highness or anyone, let me tell you. You might go on weave, of course, but I think it best you should be detached. I shall have you posted, Fwashman, to another unit, until the fuss has died down.'
I didn't much like the idea, and when he announced that the regiment he had chosen to post me to was stationed in Scotland, I almost rebelled. But I realised it would only be for a few months, and I was relieved to find Cardigan still on my side - if it had been Reynolds who had fought the duel it would have been a very different kettle offish, but I was one of his favourites. And one must say it of old Lord Haw Haw, if you were his favourite he would stand by you, right, reason or none. Old fool.
I have soldiered in too many countries and known too many peoples to fall into the folly of laying down the law about any of them. I tell you what I have seen, and you may draw your own conclusions. I disliked Scotland and the Scots; the place I found wet and the people rude. They had the fine qualities which bore me - thrift and industry and long-faced holiness, and the young women are mostly great genteel boisterous things who are no doubt bedworthy enough if your taste runs that way. (One acquaintance of mine who had a Scotch clergyman's daughter described it as like wrestling with a sergeant of dragoons.) The men I found solemn, hostile, and greedy, and they found me insolent, arrogant, and smart.
This for the most part; there were exceptions, as you shall see.
The best things I found, however, were the port and the claret, in which the Scotch have a nice taste, although I never took to whisky.
The place I was posted to was Paisley, which is near Glasgow, and when I heard of the posting I as near as a toucher sold out. But I told myself I should be back with the 11th in a few months, and must take my medicine, even if it meant being away from all decent living for a. while. My forebodings were realised, and more, but at least life did not turn out to be boring, which was what I had feared most. Very far from it.
At this time there was a great unrest throughout Britain, in the industrial areas, which meant very little to me, and indeed I've never troubled to read up the particulars of it.' The working people were in a state of agitation, and one heard of riots in the mill towns, and of weavers smashing looms, and Chartists(7) being arrested, but we younger fellows paid it no heed. If you were country-bred or lived in London these things were nothing to you, and all I gathered was that the poor folk were mutinous and wanted to do less work for more money, and the factory owners were damned if they'd let them. There may have been more to it than this, but I doubt it, and no one has ever convinced me that it was anything but a war between the two. It always has been, and always will be, as long as one man has what the other has not, and devil take the hindmost.
The devil seemed to be taking the workers, by and large, with government helping him, and we soldiers were the government's sword. Troops were called out to subdue the agitators, and the Riot Act was read, and here and there would be clashes between the two, and a few killed. I am fairly neutral now, with my money in the bank, but at that time everyone I knew was damning the workers up and down, and saying they should be hung and flogged and transported, and I was all for it, as the Duke would say. You have no notion, today, how high feeling ran; the mill-folk were the enemy then, as though they had been Frenchmen or Afghans. They were to be put down when- ever they rose up, and we were to do it.
I was hazy enough, as you see, on the causes of k all, but I saw further than most in some ways, and what I
