The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald
mad,” says I. “If they had your looks it might be a half-chance, but one sight of your dear parents is going to scare any eligible sprig a mile off. Sorry, m’dear, but they ain’t acceptable, you know.”
“My parents certainly lack the advantages,” says Elspeth seriously. Marrying me had turned her into a most wonderful snob. “That I admit. But father is extremely rich, as you are aware—”
“To hear him, it’s no fault of ours if he is.”
“—and you know, Harry, that quite a few of our titled acquaintances are not too nice to look above a fine dowry. I think, with the right introductions, that Mama might find very suitable husbands for them. Agnes is plain, certainly, but little Grizel is really pretty, and their education has been quite as careful as my own.”
It isn’t easy for a beautiful woman with blue eyes, a milky complexion, and corn-gold hair to look pompous, especially when she is wearing only a French corset decorated with pink ribbons, but Elspeth managed it. At that moment I was overcome again with that yearning affection for her that I sometimes felt, in spite of her infidelities; I can’t explain it, beyond saying that she must have had some magic quality, something to do with the child-like, thoughtful look she wore, and the pure, helpless stupidity in her eyes. It is very difficult not to like a lovely idiot.
“Since you’re so well-educated,” says I, pulling her down beside me, “let’s see how much you remember.” And I put her through a most searching test which, being Elspeth, she interrupted from time to time with her serious observations on Mrs Morrison’s chances of marrying off the two chits.
“Well,” says I, when we were exhausted, “so long as I ain’t expected to help launch ’em in Society, I don’t mind. Good luck to it, I say, and I hope they get a Duke apiece.”
But of course, I had to be dragged into it: Elspeth was quite determined to use my celebrity for what it was still worth, on her sisters’ behalf, and I knew that when she was insistent there was no way of resisting her. She controlled the purse-strings, you see, and the cash I had brought home wouldn’t last long at my rate of spending, I knew. So it was a fairly bleak prospect I had come back to: the guv’nor away in the grip of the quacks and demon drink, old Morrison in the house carping and snuffling, Elspeth and Mrs Morrison planning their campaign to inflict her sisters on unsuspecting London, and myself likely to be roped in—which meant being exposed in public alongside my charming Scotch relations. I should have to take old Morrison to my club, and stand behind Mrs Morrison’s chair at parties—no doubt listening to her teaching some refined mama the recipe for haggis—and have people saying: “Seen Flashy’s in-laws? They eat peat, don’t you know, and speak nothing but Gaelic. Well, it wasn’t English, surely?”
Oh, I knew what to expect, and determined to keep out of it. I thought of going to see my Uncle Bindley at the Horse Guards, and beseeching him to arrange an appointment for me to some regiment out of town—I was off the active list just then, and was not relishing the idea of half-pay anyway. And while I was hesitating, in those first few days at home, the letter came that helped to solve my difficulties for me and incidentally changed the map of Europe.
It came like the answer to a pagan’s prayer, along with a dun from some tailor or other, an anti-popish tract, a demand for my club subscription, and an invitation to buy railway shares—all the usual trash. Why I should remember the others, I don’t know. I must have a perverse memory, for the contents of the big white envelope should have been enough to drive them out of my head.
It was a fine, imposing cover—best quality paper, with a coat-of-arms on the back, which I have before me now. There was a shield, quartered red, blue, blue, and white, and in the quarters were a sword, a crowned lion, what looked like a fat whale, and a pink rose. Plainly it was either from someone of tremendous rank or the manufacturers of a new brand of treacle.19
Inside there was a letter, and stamped at the top in flowery letters, surrounded by foliage full of pink-bottomed cupids, were the words, “Gräfin de Landsfeld”. And who the deuce, I wondered, might she be, and what did she want with me.
The letter I reproduce exactly as it now lies in my hand, very worn and creased after sixty years, but still perfectly legible. It is, I think, quite the most remarkable communication I have ever received—even including the letter of thanks I got from Jefferson Davis and the reprieve I was given in Mexico. It said:
Most Honoured Sir,
I write to you on instruction of Her Grace, the Countess de Landsfeld, of whom you had the honour to be acquainted in Londres some years ago. Her Grace commands me to inform you that she holds the warmest recollection of your friendship, and wishes to convey her strongest greetings on this occasion.
I made nothing of this. While I couldn’t have recited the names of all the women I had known, I was pretty clear that there weren’t any foreign countesses that had slipped my mind. It went on:
Sir, while Her Grace doubts not that your duties are of the most important and exacting nature, she trusts that you will have opportunity to consider the matter which, on her command, I am now to lay before you. She is confident that the ties of your former friendship, no less than the chivalrous nature of which she has such pleasing memory, will prevail upon you to assist her in a matter of the most extreme delicate.
Now he’s certainly mad, this fellow, thinks I, or else he’s got the wrong chap. I don’t suppose there are three women in the world who ever thought me chivalrous, even on short acquaintance.
Her Grace therefore directs me to request that you will, with all speed after receiving this letter, make haste to present yourself to her in München, and there receive, from her own lips, particulars of the service which it is her dearest wish you will be obliged to render to her. She hastens to assure you that it will be of no least expense or hardship to you, but is of such particular nature that she feels that you, of all her many dear friends, are most suitable to its performing. She believes that such is the warmth of your heart that you will at once agree with her, and that the recollection of her friendship will bring you at once as an English gentleman is fitting.
Honoured Sir, in confidence that you will wish to assist Her Grace, I advise you that you should call on William Greig & Sons, attorneys, at their office in Wine Office Court, Londres, to receive instruction for your journey. They will pay £500 in gold for your travelling, etc. Further payments will be received as necessary.
Sir, Her Grace commands me to conclude with the assurance of her deepest friendship, and her anticipation of the satisfaction of seeing you once again.
Accept, dear Sir, etc.,
R. Lauengram, Chamberlain.
My first thought was that it was a joke, perpetrated by someone not quite right in the head. It made no sense; I had no idea who the Gräfin de Landsfeld might be, or where “München” was. But going over it again several times, it occurred to me that if it had been a fake, whoever had written it would have made his English a good deal worse than it was, and taken care not to write several of the sentences without howlers.
But if it was genuine, what the devil did it mean? What was the service (without expense or hardship, mark you) for which some foreign titled female was willing to slap £500 into my palm—and that only a first instalment, by the looks of it?
I sat staring at the thing for a good twenty minutes, and the more I studied it the less I liked it. If I’ve learned one thing in this wicked life, it is that no one, however rich, lays out cash for nothing, and the more they spend the rummer the business is likely to be. Someone, I decided, wanted old Flashy pretty badly, but I couldn’t for the life of me think why. I had no qualification that I knew of that suited me for a matter of the most “extreme delicate”: all I was good at was foreign languages and riding. And it couldn’t be some desperate risk in which my supposed heroism would be valuable—they’d as good as said so. No, it beat me altogether.
I have always kept by me as many books and pamphlets on foreign tongues as I can collect, this being my occasional hobby, and since I guessed that the writer of the