.
quite in the wrong – I did not know he was there until an instant before you came out of that cupboard! He must have come in while I was disrobing – Oh!” And she shuddered. “I was taken quite unawares –”
“By God, you were! By me! D’you think I’m a fool? You’ve been teasing that dirty old bull this month past, and I find him all but mounting you, and you expect me to believe –” My head was swimming with drink, and I lost the words. “You’ve dishonoured me, damn you! You’ve –”
“Oh, Harry, it is not true! I vow it is not! He must have stolen in, without my hearing, and –”
“You’re lying!” I shouted. “You were whoring with him!”
“Oh, that is untrue! It is unjust! How can you think such a thing? How can you say it?” There were tears in her eyes, as well there might be, and now her mouth trembled and drooped, and she turned her head away. “I can see,” she sobbed, “that you merely wish to make this an excuse for a quarrel.”
God knows what I said in reply to that; sounds of rupture, no doubt. I couldn’t believe my ears, and then she was going on, sobbing away:
“You are wicked to say such a thing! Oh, you have no thought for my feelings! Oh, Harry, to have that evil old creature steal up on me – the shock of it – oh, I thought to have died of fear and shame! And then you – you!” And she burst into tears in earnest and flung herself down on the bed.
I didn’t know what to say, or do. Her behaviour, the way she had faced me, the fury of her denial – it was all unreal. I couldn’t credit it, after what I’d seen. I was full of rage and hate and disbelief and misery, but in drink and bewilderment I couldn’t reason straight. I tried to remember what I’d heard in the closet – had it been a giggle or a muted shriek? Could she be telling the truth? Was it possible that Cardigan had sneaked in on her, torn down his breeches in an instant, and been sounding the charge when she turned and saw him? Or had she wheedled him in, whispering lewdly, and been stripping for action when I rolled out? All this, in a confused brandy-laden haze, passed through my mind – as you may be sure it has passed since, in sober moments.
I was lost, standing there half-drunk. That queer mixture of shock and rage and exultation, and the vicious desire to punish her brutally, had suddenly passed. With any of my other women, I’d not even have listened, but taken out my spite on them with a whip – except on Ranavalona, who was bigger and stronger than I. But I didn’t care for the other women, you see. Brute and all that I am, I wanted to believe Elspeth.
Mind you, it was still touch and go whether I suddenly went for her or not; but for the booze I probably would have done. There was all the suspicion of the past, and the evidence of my eyes tonight. I stood, panting and glaring, and suddenly she swung up in a sitting position, like Andersen’s mermaid, her eyes full of tears, and threw out her arms. “Oh, Harry! Comfort me!”
If you had seen her – aye. It’s so easy, as none knows better than I, to sneer at the Pantaloons of this world, and the cheated wives, too, while the rakes and tarts make fools of them – “If only they knew, ho-ho!” Perhaps they do, or suspect, but would just rather not let on. I don’t know why, but suddenly I was seated on the bed, with my arm round those white shoulders, while she sobbed and clung to me, calling me her “jo” – it was that funny Scotch word, which she hadn’t used for years, since she had grown so grand, that made me believe her – almost.
“Oh, that you should think ill of me!” she sniffled. “Oh, I could die of shame!”
“Well,” says I, breathing brandy everywhere, “there he was, wasn’t he? By God! Well, I say!” I suddenly seized her by the shoulders at arms’ length. “Do you –? No, by God! I saw him – and you – and – and –”
“Oh, you are cruel!” she cried. “Cruel, cruel!” And then her arms went round my neck, and she kissed me, and I was sure she was lying – almost sure.
She sobbed away a good deal, and protested, and I babbled a great amount, no doubt, and she swore her honesty, and I didn’t know what to make of it. She might be true, but if she was a cheat and a liar and a whore, what then? Murder her? Thrash her? Divorce her? The first was lunatic, the second I couldn’t do, not now, and the third was unthinkable. With the trusts that old swine Morrison had left to tie things up, she controlled all the cash, and the thought of being a known cuckold living on my pay – well, I’m fool enough for a deal, but not for that. Her voice was murmuring in my ear, and all that naked softness was in my arms, and her fondling touch was reminding me of what I’d come here for in the first place, so what the devil, thinks I, first things first, and if you don’t pleasure her now till she faints, you’ll look back from your grey-haired evenings and wish you had. So I did.
I still don’t know – and what’s more I don’t care. But one thing only I was certain of that night – whoever was innocent, it wasn’t James Brudenell, Earl of Cardigan. I swore then inwardly, with Elspeth moaning through her kiss, that I would get even with that one. The thought of that filthy old goat trying to board Elspeth – it brought me out in a sweat of fury and loathing. I’d kill him, somehow. I couldn’t call him out – he’d hide behind the law, and refuse. Even worse, he might accept. And apart from the fact that I daren’t face him, man to man, there would have been scandal for sure. But somehow, some day, I would find a way.
We went to sleep at last, with Elspeth murmuring in my ear about what a mighty lover I was, recalling me in doting detail, and how I was at my finest after a quarrel. She was giggling drowsily about how we had made up our previous tiff, with me tumbling her in the broom closet at home, and what fun it had been, and how I’d said it was the most famous place for rogering, and then suddenly she asked, quite sharp:
“Harry – tonight – your great rage at my misfortune was not all a pretence, was it? You did not – you are sure? – have some … some female in the cupboard?”
And damn my eyes, she absolutely got out to look. I don’t suppose I’ve cried myself to sleep since I was an infant, but it was touch and go then.
a See Royal Flash.
b Striped trousers.
c Haricot mutton and asparagus.
While all these important events in my personal affairs were taking place – Willy and Elspeth and Cardigan and so forth – you may wonder how the war was progressing. The truth is, of course, that it wasn’t, for it’s a singular fact of the Great Conflict against Russia that no one – certainly no one on the Allied side – had any clear notion of how to go about it. You will think that’s one of these smart remarks, but it’s not; I was as close to the conduct of the war in the summer of ’54 as anyone, and I can tell you truthfully that the official view of the whole thing was:
“Well, here we are, the French and ourselves, at war with Russia, in order to protect Turkey. Ve-ry good. What shall we do, then? Better attack Russia, eh? H’m, yes. (Pause). Big place, ain’t it?”
So they decided to concentrate our army, and the Froggies, in Bulgaria, where they might help the Turks fight the Ruskis on the Danube. But the Turks flayed the life out of the Russians without anyone’s help, and neither Raglan, who was now out in Varna in command of the allies, nor our chiefs at home, could think what we might usefully do next. I had secret hopes that the whole thing might be called off; Willy and I were still at home, for Raglan had sent word that for safety’s sake his highness should not come out until the fighting started – there was so much fever about in Bulgaria, it would not be healthy for him.
But there was never any hope of a peace being patched up, not with the mood abroad in England