seen, but Mrs Wilson was fretting at her fan and listening absent-minded to Lady Coventry in the drawing-room, and when I looked in at the smoke hole young Wilson and Levett were in deep confabulation, instantly dropped when I appeared, but not before I heard Levett exclaim: 'I can’t touch it, Jack, I tell you! He’s my chief, dash it!' Signs and portents, thinks I, and passed on to the music-room, where one of the females was butchering Yum-Yum to the feigned admiration of the company, and my quarry was ensconced in a corner, fleecing some unfortunate foreigner at backgammon, shaking the dice and her upper works, the abandoned old tart, in a way which plainly put him off his game altogether.
'Another double six, count!' trills she, all rosy triumph. 'I declare I never threw so many! Oh, and now a double four! What luck! Why, I am off entirely—oh, dear, and you have a man on the bar still! Oh, what a shame! Harry, come and see—I have a backgammon! Aren’t I lucky? No, no, count, I won’t have it—put your purse in your pocket! We play for love, not money,' says she, looking roguish. 'No, no, I shan’t take it, really, I assure you! Will you not play another game?'
'After two gammons and a backgammon in five games?' cries the ancient squarehead. 'Ah, dear Lady Flashman, against chance and skill I can struggle, but when they are allied with beauty and charm I am overpowered altogether. Am I not right, Sir Harry? But I insist on paying my just debts,' says he, planting his sovs in her palm, which gave the old goat the chance to kiss her hand and take a last fond leer at her top hamper, while she purred and protested.
'Och, isn’t he the wee duck?' sighs she, jingling her loot as he hobbled away. 'Aye, weel, mony a mickle mak’s a muckle, as Papa used to say.' She slipped it into her bag and broke into civilised speech. 'But, you know, Harry, it was quite embarrassing, for I threw six and one, and double one, and double six ever so often! I’m sure he believes I use loaded dice!' Loaded tits, more like. 'I was so glad to see you, for he breathes ever so hard, I can’t think why, and I could see he hated losing, and it was such a bore.' She lowered her voice as she took my arm. 'Indeed, it’s all rather a bore, don’t you think? Will we be able to go home tomorrow? Would the Prince be offended? I feel I have had as much of Tranby company as I can bear—and I’m sure it can be no fun for you, dearest.' The piano gang had begun to perform the last rites on 'Three Little Maids', with immense jollity, and as we went out she pulled a face and whispered: 'I mean, the Wilsons do their best and are ever so kind and … and eager to please—but they are not really quite the thing, are they?'
She’s God’s own original snob, my little Paisley princess—as though her mill-owning father had been a whit better than the Wilsons. But the little skinflint had collared a peerage in his declining years, you see, and she seemed to think that his coronet and cash, with my V.C. and military rank, to say nothing of her own occasional intimacy with the Queen, raised us above the common herd. Which I guess they did, in an odd way—or if not above, apart at least. We ain’t top-drawer, but there’s no denying we’re different.
I told her if she’d had enough of it we could be away on the morning train. 'Now that the Leger’s run, I doubt if H.R.H. will linger. But I thought you’d been enjoying yourself, old girl, what with cheering on the winners, and sporting your glad rags—and most becoming you look, I may tell you—and being the life and soul, and charming Dirty Bertie …'
Mention of her appearance had inevitably brought her to a halt at a mirror in the corridor, and now she gave me a reproachful blue eye in the reflection.
'I trust I know what is due to royal rank,' says she primly. 'And I may tell you that mere polite affability is not charming in the odious way you mean it.' She patted her gilded tresses complacently and touched a gloved finger to her plump pink cheek, sighing. 'Anyway, I doubt my charming days are gone lang syne—'
'You don’t think anything of the sort … and neither does Billy Cumming, by all accounts. Oh, I’ve heard all about that—flirting over the baccarat cards, the two of you!'
Now was there, or was there not, an instant flicker in those glorious eyes before she widened them at me in mock indignation?
'Flirrr-ting! I? Upon my word!' She tossed her head. 'The very idea—at my time of life! Flirting, quo' he! Goodness me—'
'I had a touch of your time of life t’other night—remember?' We were alone in the corridor, and I stepped close behind her and gave ’em a loving squeeze. She exclaimed 'Oh!' and hit me with her fan.
'That was not flirting,' says she. 'I was a helpless victim—a poor defenceless old buddy, and you should think shame of your-self.' She gave her hair a last touch, and turned to peck me on the cheek. 'And who says I tried to fetch Billy Cumming, I should like to know? No—stop it, you bad old man, and tell me!'
'Owen Williams—an officer an' a gent, so there! Very jolly over the cards together you were, he tells me.'
'He’s an auld haver,' says she elegantly. 'Just because a gentle-man helps a lady to make her bets—well, you know I cannae count—'
'Except at backgammon, apparently.'
'Backgammon or no, I’m a duffer at cards, as well you know, and I dare say I said something exceptionally foolish, and made him laugh. As for flirting, Harry Flashman, who are you to talk? Do I not remember Mrs Leo Lade—and Kitty Stevens?' Names from fifty years ago, God help me, still green in her eccentric memory—and I didn’t even know who Kitty Stevens was! 'Uhhuh, that’s your eye on a plate, my lad,' says she, slipping her arm through mine as we passed on. 'What else did that blether Williams tell you?'
Now that was odd; lightly asked—too lightly. 'Oh, just that,' says I. 'I guess he was trying to take a rise out of me, knowing I can’t stand Cumming—but not knowing that you can’t stand him either.' I gave her hand a squeeze, reassuring like. 'Why, you crossed him off our list years ago.'
'Did I? I don’t recollect.' And that was odder still, for if there’s an elephantine memory in London W.I. it resides in the otherwise wayward mind of Elspeth, Lady Flashman (as she had just proved by reference to Mrs Leo Lade and that other bint, whoever she may have been). Suddenly, I knew that something was up. For all her banter, she’d been on the q.v. from the moment Cumming’s name was mentioned: the quick wary glint in the mirror, her artless inquiry about what Williams had said, and the indifferent 'Did I? I don’t recollect' told me she was keeping something from me. Was it possible that Cumming had been trying his lecherous hand again? At her age? Damned unlikely … yet then again, Queen Ranavalona had been a grandmother, and that hadn’t stopped me. By God, if he had, I’d see to it that he came out of his present pickle with his name and fame in the gutter. But that could wait; I’d another fish to fry at the moment, and as we neared the drawing-room door I paused, assuming a frown.
'Hold on, though—yes, Williams did say another thing … Yes … At baccarat, last night, did you notice anything … well, out o' the way about Cumming’s play?'
She looked bewildered—but then, on any subject that hasn’t to do with money or erotic activity, she usually is.
'Why, Harry, whatever do you mean?'
'Was there anything remarkable about … his placing of the stakes?'
'My stakes, d’you mean? I told you he was helping me—'
'No, his stakes! How did he put ’em on the table?'
She looked at me as though I were simple-minded. 'Why, with his hand, of course. He just put them … down …'
'Yes, dearest,' says I, keeping a firm grip on myself, 'but that’s not quite what I mean—'
'—those wee coloured counters with the feathers on them, he just put them in front of him—and mine too, because, you see, he was advising me how to bet, since I did not understand the rules, or how much it would be safe to wager. And I must say,' says she, opening the floodgates, 'it is quite the silliest game, for there’s no cleverness in it, and indeed I told him so. `For how can we tell what to wager,' I said, `when we have no notion of what the Prince’s cards may amount to? Why, he may have a count of nine, and then where shall we be?' He laughed and said we must take the risk, for it was a gamble. `I know that,' I said, `but it would be more fun if we knew one of the Prince’s cards, and he knew one of ours, for then we could judge how much to put on.' He said we must be like Montrose, and repeated that verse we used to recite at school, you know the one, about fearing our fate too much who will not put it to the touch to win or lose it all, and I said `That is all very well, Sir William, but remember what happened to him,' and he laughed more than ever …'
I love her dearly, far beyond any creature I’ve ever known, and I can prove it, for never once in almost seventy years of married life have I taken her by the throat. Mind you, it’s been a near thing, once or twice.
'—and the court cards, would you believe it, count for nothing! `Why, then,' I asked him, `do they have them in the pack at all?' and he said he supposed it was to make weight, whatever that may mean, and I said it was a
