white shoulders, teasing the speaker innocently. Moran looked at her for a moment, and when his eyes came back to mine he was grinning—and it wasn’t a nice grin.
Now all this happened in an instant, while I was recognising him, and realising that he had recognised me. There was a second’s pause, and then as I was about to move forward and greet him he stepped quickly back, murmuring an excuse to Selly and the others, and slipped into the bar. I didn’t know what to make of it, but it seemed damned odd behaviour; however, it didn’t matter, and Selly was taking my arm and murmuring farewells, so I exchanged another disgusted glare with Wilde and led her away. She had noticed, though—sharp little creature that she was.
'Why did that gentleman—Colonel Moran—hurry off so suddenly?' says she, when we were in the carriage. 'I’m sure he knew you.'
'He did,' says I. 'At least, we met once—in a war.'
'But then, so many of these people seem to behave … most curiously,' says Selly. 'Mr Oscar Wilde, for instance—is he not a very strange person, gramps?'
'That’s one way of putting it,' says I. 'And don’t call me `gramps', young woman; I’m grandpapa.'
Now, why the blazes should Moran have avoided me? Lots of fellows do, of course, but he had no earthly reason that I could think of. We’d met only once, as you know, and been comrades-in-arms after a fashion—indeed, he’d saved my life. It, seemed odd, and I puzzled over it for a while, but then gave it up, and was snoozing in my corner of the carriage and had to be roused by a giggling Selina when we reached home in Berkeley Square.
Moran wasn’t alone in giving me the cold shoulder at that time, though. Only a couple of days after the theatre I was cut stone dead by someone a deal more important—the Prince of Wales, no less, shied violently away from me in the United Service card-room, and hightailed it as fast as his ponderous guts would let him, giving me a shifty squint over his shoulder as he went. That, I confess, I found pretty raw. It’s embarrassing enough to be cut by the most vulgar man in Europe, but when he is also a Prince who is deeply in your debt you begin to wonder what royalty’s coming to. For if ever anyone had cause to be grateful to me, it was Beastly Bertie; not only had I done my bit to guide his youthful footsteps along the path of vice and loose living (not that he’d needed much coaching), I’d even resigned Lily Langtry in his favour, turned a deaf ear to rumours that he and my darling Elspeth had behaved indecorously in a potting-shed, and only three years earlier had plucked him, only slightly soiled, out of the Tranby card scandal. If that wasn’t enough, he was still using a cosy little property of mine on Hay Hill to conduct his furtive fornications with the worst sort of women, duchesses and actresses and the like. Well, thinks I, as I watched him rolling off, if that’s your gratitude you can take your trollops elsewhere; I’d a good mind to charge him rent, or corkage. I didn’t, of course; a bounder he might be, but it don’t pay to offend the heir to the Throne.
Such rubs apart, I passed the next few weeks agreeably enough. There was plenty of interest about town, what with a Society murder—a young sprig of the nobility called Adair getting himself shot mysteriously in the West End—and a crisis in the government, when that dodderer Gladstone finally resigned. I ran into him in the lavatory of the Reform Club—not a place I belong to, you understand, but I’d been to a champagne and lobster supper in St James’s, and just looked in to unload. Gladstone was standing brooding over a basin in a nonconformist way, offensively sober as usual, when I staggered along, middling tight.
'Hollo, old ’un,' says I. 'Marching orders at last, hey? Ne’er mind, it happens to all of us. It’s this damned Irish business, I suppose—' for as you know, he was always fussing over Ireland; no one knew what to do about it, and while the Paddies seemed to be in favour of leaving the place and going to America, Glad-stone was trying to make ’em keep it; something like that.
'Where you went wrong,' I told him, 'was in not giving the place back to the Pope long ago, and apologising for the condition it’s in. Fact.'
He stood glaring at me with a face like a door-knocker.
'Good-night, General Flashman,' he snapped, and I just sank my head on the basin and cried: 'Oh, God, what a loss Palmerston was!' while he stumped off, and took to his bed in Brighton.[12]
However, that’s by the way: I must return to the matter of Colonel Tiger Jack Moran, who had gone clean out of my mind after that fleeting glimpse of him at the theatre, until a dirty night at the end of March, when I was sitting up late reading, Elspeth having taken herself off to bed with the new serial story. The house was still, the fire almost out, and I was drowsing over the paper, which was full of interesting items about the Matabele war, and the Sanitation Conference in Paris, and news of an action by the Frogs against my old chums the Touaregs at Timbuctoo, in which large numbers of sheep had been captured,[13] when Shadwell, the butler, came in all agog to say that my grand-daughter was here, and must see me.
'At this hour?' says I, and then she came fluttering into the room in a rush of pink ball-gown, her lovely little face staring with woe, and fairly flung herself on my chest, crying:
'Oh, grandpapa, grandpapa, what shall I do? Oh, gramps, please help-me—please!'
'In God’s name, Selina!' says I, staggered. I waved the goggling Shadwell out of the room, and sat her down, all trembling, in a chair. 'My dear child, whatever’s the matter?'
For a moment she couldn’t tell me, but could only sit shuddering and sobbing and biting her lip, so I pushed a tot of brandy into her, and when she had coughed and swallowed she lifted her tear-streaked face and caught my hand.
'Oh, gramps, I don’t know what to do! It is the most dreadful thing—I think I shall die!' She took a great sobbing breath. 'It is Randall—and … and Colonel Moran! Oh, what are we to do?'
'Moran?' I was dumfounded. 'That fellow we saw at the theatre? Why, what the dooce has he to do with you, child?'
It took some more sips of brandy, punctuated by wails and tears, to get the story out of her, and it was a beauty, if you like. Apparently Moran was well known in gaming circles in Town, and made a practice of inveigling young idiots to play with him—that solved the mystery of why he’d been in Oscar Wilde’s company; there was never any lack of rich and witless young gulls round Oscar. And among the spring lambs he’d fleeced was Selina’s intended, Randall Stanger; by what she said, Moran had got into him for a cool few thou'.
'In God’s name, girl, if it’s only money—' I was crying out in relief, but it was worse than that; fatally worse. The half-wit Randall, ,afraid to tell his lordly Papa, had set out to recoup his losses, using regimental money, heaven help us, and had lost that, too. Which was black ruin, and disgrace, when the thing was detected, as it would be.
However, I’m an old hand at scandals, as you may guess. How much? I asked her briskly, and she bleated out, picking her fan to pieces: twelve thousand. I swallowed hard and said, well, Randall shall have it from my bank tomorrow—he can pay off Moran, and put whatever is necessary back into his mess funds double quick, and no one’ll be the wiser. (What the blazes, I’m not a charitable man, but the young fool was going to be my grandson-in- law.)
Would you believe it, she just wailed the louder, shaking her head and sobbing that it wouldn’t save him— nothing would. 'Colonel Moran knows—he knows where Randall has got the money from, and promises to expose him … unless …' She buried her face in the cushions, bawling fit to break her stays.
'Unless what, confound it? What does he want, except his money?'
'Unless … unless …' says she, gazing at me with those great tear-filled eyes. 'Unless … I … oh, gramps, I must die first! He will expose Randall unless I … submit … oh, God! I’m his price! Don’t you see? Oh, what am I to do?'
Well, this was Act Two of 'The Villain Still Pursued Her' with a vengeance, wasn’t it just? Not that I disbelieved it for an instant – show me melodrama, and I’ll show you truth, every time. And I didn’t waste effort clutching my brow, exclaiming 'The villain he shall rue this day!'
I could even see Moran’s point of view—I’d played Wicked Jasper myself, in my time, twirling my whiskers at Beauty and chivvying ’em into bed as the price of my silence or good will. But this was my own grand-daughter, and my gorge rose at the thought of her at the mercy of that wicked old roue. She must be saved, at any cost.
'When do you have to answer him?' I asked.
'Next week,' she sobbed. 'He will wait only a few days—and then … then I must be … ruined!'
'Does Randall know?' I asked, and she shook her head, snivel-ling into her handkerchief. 'Well, don’t let him know, understand? No one must know—above all, not your grandmother. Let me see
– first thing is an order on my bank for the twelve thousand, so that this idiot you’re going to marry can square his accounts—'
