If there had been a cat handy I’d have kicked it. What had promised to be a splendid scandal looked like fizzling out like the dampest of squibs, and this damned baronet would walk away without a blot on his escutcheon … or so it seemed to me just then. From the first, you see, I’d feared that there might be a simple explanation, and here was a plausible one, rot it. It was all most damnably deflating—and worse because I’d guided him to his bloody loophole of escape.
"Don’t you see?" cries he again, impatiently. "Heavens, it’s as plain as daylight now! You must see that! It’s obvious to anyone above a half-wit—even a muttonhead like Williams can’t fail to see it! Am I right?"
I put on my judicial face and said that he probably was. "Well, thank God for that!" cries he sarcastically, and if anything had been needed to convince me he was telling the truth, it was his sneering tone. Not a hint of doubt that his explanation mightn’t wash, no palpitating hope of its acceptance—only cold fury that he, the soul of honour, had been disgracefully traduced, and that his peers had believed it. Two minutes since he’d been in an agony of despair, but now Sir William Gordon-Cumming, Bart, was back in the saddle, bursting with injured self-righteousness and the arrogant certainty of his kind. And, you’ll note, not a whisper of gratitude to your correspondent.
"The Prince must be told at once! He’s a man of sense—unlike those clowns Coventry and Williams. I don’t doubt they persuaded him against his will, but when I put it to him he’ll see the right of it." He was at his dressing-table, flourishing his silver-backed brushes, improving his parting, with a dab or two at the ends of his pathetic Guardee moustache, and shooting his cuffs, while I marvelled at the human capacity for self-delusion. He was full of exultant confidence now, and it never crossed his shallow mind that others might be less ready to take his view of the matter. I’ve said his explanation was plausible, but it wasn’t near as cast-iron as he thought. Much would depend on how it was presented … and how ready they were to believe it.
"It may be a lesson to them against jumping to conclusions! And on such flimsy evidence—the babbling of those whippersnappers! And my character, my good name, my record of honourable service, were to count for nothing against their damned gossip, the confounded little spies!" He was striding for the door, in full raging fettle, when he suddenly wheeled about. "No, by heavens, I’ll not do it!" He snapped his fingers, pointing at me. "Why should I?"
"Why shouldn’t you do what?" was all I could say, for his anger had dropped from him like a shed cloak, and he was smiling grimly as he came slowly back to me.
"Why should I humble myself with explanations? I’m the injured party, am I not? I’m the one who has suffered this … this intolerable affront! I have been insulted in the grossest fashion on the word of a pack of mannerless brats, and two elderly fools who, I have no doubt, persuaded His Royal Highness against his better judgment and honourable instincts." Drunk with vindictive justification he might be, he wasn’t ass enough to impugn Saintly Bertie. He gave a barking laugh. "Lord, Flashman, in our fathers' day I’d have been justified in blowing their imbecile heads off on Calais sands! Am I to crawl to them and say `Please, sir, I can prove your informants—ha, informers, I should say!—have been utterly in the wrong, and will you kindly tell ’em so, and condescend to forgive me for having conducted myself like a man of honour?' Is that what I’m supposed to do?"
Talk about women scorned; their fury ain’t in it with a Scotch baronet’s wounded self-esteem. Had I ever, I wondered, encountered such an immortally conceited ass with a truer touch for self-destruction? George Custer came to mind. Aye, put him and Gordon-Cumming on the edge of a precipice and I’d not care to bet which would tumble first into the void, bellowing his grievance.
"What," says I, keeping my countenance with proper gravity, "do you propose to do?"
"Not a damned thing! You—" stabbing me on the chest "—since you’ve thrust your spoon into the dixie, can do it for me! You can be my messenger, Flashman, and have the satisfaction of showing them what asses they’ve made of themselves! You’ve got the gift o' the gab, don’t we know it?" says he, with a curl of his voice if not of his lip. "You can explain about the coup de trois and the rest of it—because I’m damned if I will! It’s not for me to make a plea to them—let ’em come to me! I’ll accept their apology—Coventry and Williams, I mean, and those three guttersnipes! Not the ladies, of course—and certainly not His Royal Highness, who has been most disgracefully imposed on, I’m sure of that. Yes," says he, head up and shoulders square, with exultation in his eye, "that’s the way to do it! So off you go, old fellow, and don’t spare ’em!" Seeing me stand thoughtful, he frowned impatiently. "Well—will you?"
Would I not? I’ve told you my score against Gordon-Cumming—a natural detestation of his supercilious vanity, his unconcealed dislike of me, above all the suspicion that he’d ploughed with my heifer, and now, if you please, the arrogant bastard was appointing me his message-boy. Throw into the scale his overweening certainty that he’d cleared himself, and must be grovelled to in consequence, and you’ll understand (if you know me at all) that I would not have missed the chance to sink the swine, not for my soul’s salvation.
For it was in my hands, no error. His coup de trois excuse had put the whole affair on a knife-edge. If it were shrewdly urged, the three wise men, and the witnesses, might be disposed, for the sake of avoiding a horrid scandal, to swallow it. Well, by the time I’d done with it, they’d spew it all over the floor.
So I consented to act as his go-between, and left him grinding his teeth at the prospect of accusers confounded and honour restored. No time, we agreed, must be lost, so I made for the Prince’s apartments, and whom should I meet on the way but the three leading witnesses, plainly just come from a royal audience: Master Wilson bright with excitement, Lycett Green tight-lipped, and young Levett plainly wishing himself in the Outer Hebrides. No change on that front, thinks I, and the air of gloom in H.R.H.’s sitting-room, most of it cigar smoke, confirmed my conclusion.
"That fellow is impossible!" Bertie was croaking, and I gathered he meant Lycett Green. "Not a shadow of doubt, according to him. Oh, it’s intolerable! What can we do but believe them?"
"As your highness says." Coventry sounded like a vicar at the graveside. "That being so, we are bound to take …" he frowned as he dredged his vocabulary "… ah, measures … in regard to Sir William."
"Lycett Green won’t keep quiet if we don’t," says Williams.
"Self-righteous ass!" snaps Bertie. "No, that’s not fair … he’s a decent man, no doubt—I only wish he weren’t so infernally adamant." He scowled at me. "Well?" I said I’d seen Gordon-Cumming.
"And much good that will have done! I’ve seen him myself—and it was heart-breaking! I tell you, the man almost had tears in his eyes! One of my closest friends, I’d ha' trusted him with my life—but how can I credit his denial in the face of … of …" He flourished a paw in the direction of the door. "They’re so sure! Even Levett, poor devil—heavens, we could hardly drag it out of him!" He sat down, groaning, drew on his cigar as though it were poisoned, and regarded me dyspeptically. "What did Cumming have to say to you?"