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‘You never know,’ laughs a third, ‘maybe the dear Basutos’ll do the decent thing an’ starve themselves to death, what?’
‘Not old Moshesh – that’s a Bantu who’s too smart by half, as we’ll find out to our cost one o’ these days.’
‘Oh, Grey’ll see to him, never fear – an’ the Boers, if only London will let him alone. Any more word of his goin’?’
‘You may bet on it – if the Colonial Office don’t ship him home, the doctor will. I don’t like his colour; the man’s played out.’
‘Well, he can go for me. We bade good riddance to Brother Boer years ago – why should we want him back?’
These are just scraps of talk that I remember, and no doubt they’re as Greek to you as they were to me, but being a curious child I listened, and learned a little, for these fellows – English civilians and merchants mostly, a Cape Rifleman or two, and a couple of trader-hunters down from the frontiers – knew their country, which was a closed book to me, then, bar my brief visit to the Slave Coast, and that was years ago and a world away from the Cape. Truth to tell, Africa’s never been my patch, much; I’ve soldiered on veldt and desert, and seen more of its jungle than I cared for, but like our statesmen I’ve always thought it a dam’ nuisance. Perhaps Dahomey inoculated me against the African bug which has bitten so many, to their cost, for it breeds grand dreams which often as not turn into nightmares.
It was biting hard at this time, not least on Grey, the Governor, and since he was to play a small but crucial part in my present story, I must tell you something of him – but I can’t do that without first telling you about South Africa, as briefly as may be. It won’t explain the place to you (God Himself couldn’t do that), but it may lead you to wonder if two damned dirty and costly wars mightn’t have been avoided (and who knows what hellish work in the future?) if only those Reform Club buffoons hadn’t thought they knew better than the man on the spot.
You have to understand that in ’59 Africa was the last great prize and mystery, an unmapped hinterland twice the size of Europe where anything was possible: lost civilisations, hidden cities, strange white tribes – they were no joke then. Real exploration of the dark heart of the continent had just begun; Livingstone had blazed his trails up and down it and across, farther north Dick Burton was making an ass of himself by not finding the source of the Nile, but the broad steady inroad was from the south, where we’d established ourselves. The Dutch settlers, not caring for us much, had trekked north to found their own Boer republics in lands where they met hordes of persevering black gentlemen coming t’other way; they fought the Zulus and Basutos (and each other) while we fought the Kaffirs to the east, and everything was dam’ confused, chiefly because our rulers at home couldn’t make up their minds, annexing territories and then letting ’em go, interfering with the Boers one minute and recognising their independence the next, trying to hold the ring between black and white and whining at the expense, and then sending out Grey, who brought the first touch of common sense – and, if you ask me, the last.
His great gift, I was told, was that he got on splendidly with savages – even the Boers. He’d been a soldier, explored in Australia, governed there and in New Zealand, and saw at once that the only hope for southern Africa was to reunite Briton and Boer and civilise the blacks within our borders, which he’d begun to do with schools and hospitals and teaching them trades. In this he’d been helped by one of those lunatic starts which happen among primitive folk: in ’57 a troublesome warrior tribe, the ’Zozas, had got the notion that if they destroyed all their crops and cattle, the gods would send them bumper harvests and even fatter herds, and all the white men in Africa would obligingly drown themselves; accordingly, the demented blighters starved themselves to death, which left more space for white settlement, and the surviving ’Zozas were in a fit state to be civilised.
Meanwhile Grey was using his persuasive arts to charm the Boers back under the Union Jack, and since our Dutch friends were beginning to feel the pinch of independence – isolated up yonder, cut off from the sea, worn out with their own internal feuding, and fighting a running war against the Basutos (whose wily chief, Moshesh, had egged on the ’Zozas’s suicide for his own ends) – they were only too ready to return to Britannia’s fold.
That was the stuff of Grey’s dream, as I gathered from my fellow-guests at the hotel – a united South Africa of Briton, Boer, and black. Most of my informants were all for it, but one or two were dead against the Boers, which put one grizzled old hunter out of all patience.
‘I don’t like the Hollanders any better’n you do,’ says he, ‘but if whites won’t stand together, they’ll fall separately. Besides, if we don’t have the Boers under our wing, they’ll go on practisin’ their creed that the only good Bantu’s a dead one – or a slave, an’ we know where that leads – bloody strife till Kingdom Come.’
‘And what’s Grey’s style?’ asks a fat civilian. ‘Teach ’em ploughing and the Lord’s Prayer and make ’em wear trowsers? Try that with the Matabele, why don’t you? Or the Zulu, or the Masai.’
‘You’ve never seen the Masai!’ snaps the old chap. ‘Anyway, sufficient unto the day. I’m talkin’ about settlin’ the Bantu inside our own borders –’
‘We should never ha’ given ’em the vote,’ says a Cape Rifleman. ‘What happens when they outnumber us, tell me that?’ This was an eye-opener to me, I can tell you, but it’s true – every man-jack born on Cape soil had the vote then, whatever his colour; more than could be said for Old England.
‘Oh, by then all the Zulu and Mashona will be in tight collars, talking political economy,’ sneers the fat chap. He jabbed his pipe at the hunter. ‘You know it’s humbug! They ain’t like us, they don’t like us, and they’ll pay us out when they can. Hang it all, you were at Blood River, weren’t you? Well, then!’
‘Aye, an’ I back Grey ’cos I don’t want Blood River o’er again!’ cries the hunter. ‘An’ that’s what you’ll get, my boy, if the Boers ain’t reined up tight inside our laager! As for the tribes … look here, I don’t say you can civilise a Masai Elmoran now … but they’re a long way off. Given time, an’ peaceful persuasion when we come to ’em – oh, backed up by a few field pieces, if you like – things can be settled with good will. So I reckon Grey’s way is worth a try. It’s that or fight ’em to the death – an’ there’s a hell of a lot o’ black men in Africa.’
There were murmurs of agreement, but my sympathies were all with the fat chap. I don’t trust enlightened proconsuls, I’d heard no good of the Boers, and fresh from India as I was, the notion of voting niggers was too rich for me. Can’t say my views have changed, either – still, when I look back on the bloody turmoil of southern Africa in my lifetime, which has left Boer and Briton more at loggerheads than ever, the blacks hating us both, and their precious Union fifty years too late, I reckon the old hunter was right: Grey’s scheme was worth a try; God knows it couldn’t have made things worse.
But of course it never got a try, because the home government had the conniptions at the thought of another vast territory being added to the Empire, which they figured was too big already – odd, ain’t it, that the world should be one-fifth British today, when back in the ’fifties our statesmen were dead set against expansion – Palmerston, Derby, Carnarvon, Gladstone, aye, even D’Israeli, who called South Africa a millstone.
While I was at the Cape, though, the ball was still in the air; they hadn’t yet scotched Grey’s scheme of union and called him home, and he was fighting tooth and nail to get his way. Which was why, believe it or not, I found myself bidden to dine with his excellency a few days later – and that led to the first coincidence that set me on the road to Harper’s Ferry.
When I got the summons, aha, thinks I, he wants to trot the Mutiny hero up and down before Cape society, to raise their spirits and remind ’em how well the Army’s been doing lately. Sure enough, he had invited the local quality to meet me at a reception after dinner, but that wasn’t his reason, just his excuse.
We dined at the Castle, which had been the Governor’s residence in the days of the old Dutch East India Company, and was still used occasionally for social assemblies, since it had a fine hall overlooked at one end by a curious balcony called the Kat, from which I gather his Dutch excellency had been wont to address the burghers. I duly admired it before we went to dinner in an ante-room; it was a small party at table, Flashy in full Lancer fig with V.C. and assorted tinware, two young aides pop-eyed with worship, and Grey himself. He was a slim, poetic-looking chap with saintly eyes, not yet fifty, and might have been a muff if you hadn’t known that he’d walked over half Australia, dying of thirst most of the time, and his slight limp was a legacy of an Aborigine’s spear in his leg. The first thing that struck you was that he was far from well: the skin of his handsome face was tight and pallid, and you felt sometimes that he was straining to keep hold, and be pleasant and easy. The second thing, which came out later, was his cocksure confidence in G. Grey; I’ve seldom known the like – and I’ve been in a room with Wellington and Macaulay together, remember.
He was quiet enough at dinner, though, being content to watch me thoughtful-like while his aides pumped me about my Mutiny exploits, which I treated pretty offhand, for if I’m to be bongered
let it be by seniors or adoring females. I found Grey’s silent scrutiny unsettling, too, and tried to turn the talk to home topics, but the lads didn’t care for the great crusade against smoking, or the state of the Thames, or the Jews in Parliament;
they wanted the blood of Cawnpore and the thunder of Lucknow, and it was a relief when Grey sent them packing, and suggested we take our cigars on the verandah.
‘Forgive my young men,’ says he. ‘They see few heroes at the Cape.’ The sort of remark that is a sniff as often as not, but his wasn’t; he went on to speak in complimentary terms of my Indian service, about which he seemed to know a great deal, and then led the way down into the garden, walking slowly along in the twilight, breathing in the air with deep content, saying even New Zealand had nothing to touch it, and had I ever known anything to compare? Well, it was balmy enough with the scent of some blossom or other, and just the spot to stroll with one of the crinolines I could see driving in under the belfry arch and descending at the Castle doorway beyond the trees, but it was evidently heady incense to Grey, for he suddenly launched into the most infernal prose about Africa, and how he was just the chap to set it in order.
You may guess the gist of it from what I’ve told you already, and you know what these lyrical buggers are like when they get on their hobby-horses, on and on like the never-wearied rook. He didn’t so much talk as preach, with the quiet intensity of your true fanatic, and what with the wine at dinner and the languorous warmth of the garden, it’s as well there wasn’t a hammock handy. But he was the Governor, and had just fed me, so I nodded attentively and said ‘I never knew that, sir,’ and ‘Ye don’t say!’, though I might as well have hollered ‘Whelks for sale!’ for all he heard. It was the most fearful missionary dross, too, about the brotherhood of the races, and how a mighty empire must be built in harmony, for there was no other way, save to chaos, and now the golden key was in his hand, ready to be turned.
‘You’ve heard that the Orange Volksraad has voted for union with us?’ says he, taking me unawares, for until then he’d apparently been talking to the nearest tree. Not knowing what the Orange Volksraad was, I cried yes, and not before time, and he said this was the moment, and brooded a bit, à la Byron, stern but gleaming, before turning on me and demanding:
‘How well do you know Lord Palmerston?’
Too dam’ well, was the answer to that, but I said I’d met him twice in the line of duty, no more.
‘He sent you to India on secret political work,’ says he, and now he was all business, no visionary nonsense. ‘He must think highly of you – and so he should. Afghanistan, Punjab, Central Asia, Jhansi … oh, yes, Flashman, news travels, and we diplomatics take more note of work in the intelligence line than we do of …’ He indicated my Cross, with a little smile. ‘I have no doubt that his lordship values your opinion more than that of many general officers. Much more.’ He was looking keen, and my innards froze, for I’d heard this kind of talk before. You ain’t getting me up yonder disguised as a Zulu, you bastard, thinks I, but his next words quieted my fears.
‘I am not persona grata at home, colonel. To be blunt, they think me a dangerous dreamer, and there is talk of my recall – you’ve heard it bruited in the town, I don’t doubt. Well, sir,’ and he raised his chin, eye to eye, ‘I hope I have convinced you that I must not be recalled, for the sake of our country’s service – and for the sake of Africa. Now, Lord Palmerston will not be out of office long, I believe.
Will you do me the signal favour, when you reach home, of seeking him out and impressing on him the necessity – the imperative necessity – of my remaining here to do the work that only I can do?’
I’ve had some astonishing requests in my time – from women, mostly – but this beat all. If he thought the unsought opinion of a lowly cavalry colonel, however supposedly heroic and versed in political ruffianing, would weigh a jot with Pam, he was in the wrong street altogether. Why, the thought of my buttonholing that paint-whiskered old fox with ‘Hold on, my lord, while I set you right about Africa’ was stuff for Punch. I said so, politely, and he fixed me with that steely gazelle eye and sighed.
‘I am well aware that a word from you may carry little weight – all I ask is that … little. His lordship has not inclined to accept my advice in the past, and I must use every means to persuade him now, do you not see?’ He stared hard at me, impatient; there was a bead of sweat on his brow – and suddenly it came to me that the man was desperate, ready to snatch at anything, even me. He was furious at having to plead with a mutton-headed soldier (he, Sir George Grey, who alone could save Africa!), but he was in that state where he’d have tried to come round Palmerston’s cook. He tried to smile, but it was a wry grimace on the pale, strained face. ‘Decisions, you know, are not always swayed by senators; a word from the slave in the conqueror’s chariot may turn the scale.’ Gad, he could pay a compliment, though. ‘Well, Colonel Flashman, may I count on you? Believe me, you will be doing a service to your country quite as great as any you may have done in the past.’
I should have spat in his eye and told him I didn’t run errands for civil servants, but it’s not every day you’re toadied by a lofty proconsul, patronising jackanapes though he may be. So I accepted his hand-clasp, which was hard (but damp, I noted with amusement), marvelling at the spectacle of a proud man humbling himself for the sake of his pride, and ambition. All wasted, too, for they did recall him – and then Pam reinstated him, not at my prompting, you may be sure. But his great African dream came to nothing.
That’s by the way, and if I’ve told you of Grey and Africa at some length, well, I’m bound to record these things, and it was a queer start altogether, and he was an odd bird – but the point is that if he hadn’t thought he could use me, he’d never have dined me that night, or shown me off to Cape society … and I’d never have heard of Harper’s Ferry.
The last carriages had arrived while we talked, so now it was Flashy on parade in the hall before society assembled. Grey made me known from the Kat balcony, to polite applause, and led me down the little staircase to be admired and gushed over; there must have been thirty or forty under the chandeliers, and Grey steered me among them; I gave my bluff manly smile, with a click of the heels or an elegant inclination, depending on their sex, but when we came to a group by the piano, I thought, hollo, this is far enough.
She was seated at the keyboard, playing the last bars of a waltz, tra-la-ing gaily and swaying her shoulders to the music; they were the colour of old ivory, flaunting themselves from a silvery-white dress which clung to her top hamper in desperation. She laughed as she struck the final flourish, and as those nearest patted their palms she bowed and turned swiftly on the stool, smiling boldly up at me and extending a slim gloved hand as though she had timed the action precisely to Grey’s introduction. I didn’t hear the name, being intent on taking stock: bright black eyes alight with mischief, that dark cream complexion (touch o’ the tar brush, I fancied), glossy black hair that swung behind her in a great fan – a shade too wide in the mouth for true beauty, and with heavy brows that almost met above a slim aquiline nose, but she was young and gay and full of sauce, and in that pale, staid assembly she was as exotic as an orchid in a bed of lettuce, with a shape to rival Montez as she sat erect, sweeping her skirt clear of the piano stool.
‘Oah, I should have played a march in your honour, Sir Harree – nott a waltz!’ cries she. Chi-chi, beyond doubt, with that shrill lilt to her voice, and mighty pert for a colonial miss. I said gallantly ’twas all one, since in her presence I was bound to look, not listen – and I knew from the way she fluttered her lids, smiling, and then raised them, wide and insolent, that we were two of a mind. Her hand tightened, too, when I pressed it, nor did she withdraw it as Grey made another introduction, and I saw she was glancing with amusement at the chap who’d been turning her music, whom I hadn’t noticed. ‘My father,’ says she, and as I faced him I realised with an icy shock where I’d seen her dark brows and arched nose before, for I was staring into the pale terrible eyes of John Charity Spring.
It’s a shame those books on etiquette don’t have a chapter to cover encounters with murderous lunatics whom you’d hoped never to meet again. I could have used one then, and if you’ve met J. C. Spring, M.A., in my memoirs, you’ll know why. This was the mad villain who’d kidnapped me to the Slave Coast on his hell-ship in ’48 (on my own father-in-law’s orders, too), and perforce I’d run black ivory with him, and fled from she-devil Amazons, and been hunted the length of the Mississippi, and lied truth out of Louisiana to keep both our necks out of a noose.
The last time I’d seen him he’d been face down in a bowl of trifle in a New Orleans brothel, drugged senseless so that he could be hauled away and shanghaied – to Cape Town, bigod! Had he been here ever since – how long was it? Ten years almost, and here he was, brooding malevolently at me from those soulless eyes, while I gaped dumbstruck. The trim beard and hair were white now, but he was as burly as ever, the same homicidal pirate whom I’d loathed and dreaded; the weal on his forehead, which darkened whenever he was preparing to spill blood or talk about Oriel College, was glowing pink, and he spoke in the old familiar growl.
‘Colonel and sir, now, eh? You’ve risen in rank since I saw you last – and in distinction, too, it seems.’ He glowered at my medals. ‘Bravely earned, I daresay. Ha!’
Grey wasn’t a diplomat for nothing. ‘You are acquainted?’ says he, and Spring bared his fangs in his notion of a smile.
‘Old shipmates, sir!’ barks he, glaring as though I were a focsle rat. ‘Reunited after many years, eh, Flashman? Aye, gratis superveniet quae non sperabitur hora!’
He wheeled on his daughter – Spring with a daughter, my God! – and I dropped her hand like a hot rivet. ‘My dear, will you not play your new Scarlatti piece for his excellency, while the Colonel and I renew old acquaintance – charming, sir, I assure you! Such delicacy of touch!’ And in an aside to me: ‘Outside, you!’
He had my arm in a grip like a steel trap, and I knew better than to argue. Maniacs like Spring don’t stand on ceremony for mere governors – four quick strides and he had me on the verandah, and as he almost threw me down the steps to the shadowy garden my one thought was that he was going to set about me in one of his berserk rages – I could guess why, too, so I wrenched clear, babbling.
‘I’d nothing to do with your being shanghaied! It was Susie Willinck – I didn’t even know she was going to –’
‘Shut your gob!’ Oriel manners still, I could see. He shoved me against a tree and planted himself four-square, hands thrust into pockets, quarter-deck style. ‘You needn’t protest innocence to me! You’d never have the spine to slip me a queer draught – aye, but you’d sit by and see it done, you mangy tyke! Well, nulla pallescere culpa,
my decorated hero, for it doesn’t matter a dam, d’ye see? Fuit Ilium,
if you know your Virgil, which you never did, blast you!’
So he was still larding his conversation with Latin tags – he’d been a mighty scholar, you see, before they rode him out of Oxford on a rail, for garrotting the Vice-chancellor or running guns into Wadham, likely, tho’ he always claimed it was academic jealousy.
‘Well, what the devil are you blackguarding a chap for, then?’ The horror of meeting him, and being rushed out headlong, had quite unmanned me – but this was civilisation, dammit, and even he daren’t offer violence, much. ‘By God, Spring!’ cries I, courage returning, ‘you’d best mind your manners! This ain’t Dahomey, or your bloody slave-deck, and I’m not your supercargo, either –’
‘Hold your infernal tongue!’ He thrust his face into mine, pale eyes glittering, and his scar pulsing like a snake. ‘Take that tone with me and, by God, you’ll wish you hadn’t! Bah! Think you’re safe, don’t you, because mortuo leoni et lepores insultant,
is that it?’
‘How the hell do I know? Can’t you speak English?’
‘Well, the lion may be old, mister, but he ain’t dead, and he can still take you by your dirty neck and scrag you like the rat you are!’ He gripped my collar, leaning closer and speaking soft. ‘I don’t know what ill wind blew you here, nor I don’t care, and I’ve no quarrel with you – yet – because you’re not worth it, d’ye see?’ He began to shake me, gritting his teeth. ‘But I’m telling you, for the good o’ your health, that while you continue to foul the Cape with your scabrous presence – you’ll steer clear of my daughter, d’ye hear me? Oh, I saw you leering yonder, like the rutting hog you are! I know you –’
‘Damn your eyes, I only said “How-de-do” –’
‘And I’m saying “How-de-don’t”! I know it means nothing to vermin like you that she’s seventeen and convent-reared and pure!’ That was what he thought; I’d seen the look in her eye. ‘So you can spare me your indignant vapourings, ye hear? Aye, fronti nulla fides
might ha’ been coined for you, you lecherous offal! Didn’t I see you tup your way from Whydah to the Gulf?’ His scar was warming up again, and his voice rising to its customary bawl. ‘And that fat slut in Orleans – did you have the gall to marry her?’
‘Hush, can’t you? Certainly not!’ In fact, I had; my second bigamy – but he’d opposed the match, being a Bible-thumper like so many blackguards, and I knew if I admitted it I’d have his teeth in my throat.
‘I’ll wager! Bah, who’s to believe you – lie by nature, don’t you!’ He stepped back, snarling. ‘So … you’re warned! Steer clear of my girl, because if you don’t … by the Holy, I’ll kill you!’
I believed him. I remembered Omohundro with two feet of steel through his innards – and Spring had only just met him. Now, my carnal thoughts had vanished like the morning dew before the warmth of the fond father’s admonition, and it was with relief and true sincerity that I drew myself up, straightened my tunic, and spoke with quiet dignity.
‘Captain Spring, I assure you that my regard for your daughter is merely that of a gentleman for a charming lady.’ Hearing his jaws grate at what he took for sarcasm, I added hastily: ‘By the way, how is Mrs Spring – in excellent health, I trust?’
‘Mrs Spring is dead!’ snaps he – and, d’ye know, I was quite put out, for she’d been a harmless old biddy, played the harmonium at sea-burials, used to chivvy her diabolic spouse to wear his muffler when he went a-slaving, mad as a hatter. ‘And that is not her daughter. Miranda’s mother was a Coast Arab.’ His glare dared me to so much as blink. I’d been right, though: half-caste.
‘Miranda, eh? Delightful name … from a play, ain’t it?’
‘Jesus wept!’ says he softly. ‘Arnold must ha’ been proud of you!’ He considered me, cocking his white head. ‘Aye … perhaps he would’ve been, at that … you’ve done well – by appearances, anyway.’ His voice was almost mild – but he was like that, raging storm and then flat calm, and both terrifying. I’d seen him lash a man almost to death, and then go down to afternoon tea and a prose about Ovid, with the victim’s blood on his sleeve. The hairy heel was never absent long, though. ‘Aye,’ says he sourly, looking me up and down, ‘I wish I’d a guinea for every poor bastard whose bones must ha’ gone to the making of your glorious pedestal. Gaudetque viam fecisse ruina,
I’ll lay!’
Seeing he was out to charm, I said that he seemed to have done pretty well himself – for he was looking mighty prosperous, suitings of the finest and diamonds on his daughter, and I was curious. He scratched his beard, sneering.
‘Well enough. That fat strumpet of yours did me a good turn, trepanning me to profit and position, ’though she didn’t know it. Yes, my bucko, I’m warm – and I draw enough water in this colony, as you’ll find if you cross me. Felicitas habet multos amicos,
you know!’
I didn’t, but couldn’t resist a gibe of my own. ‘Not in black ivory these days, though, I’ll bet!’ For a second the wild spark flickered in the empty eyes, and I prepared to dodge.
‘You’ll open that trap o’ yours once too often!’ growls he. ‘You’re sailing on the next mail, I take it? You’d better – and until then, keep your distance, d’ye hear? Good night, and be damned to you!’
Shipmate o’ mine, thinks I, as he stamped back to the house; I was wet with sweat, and it was with profound relief that I saw his carriage leave a few moments later, my half-caste charmer trilling with laughter and the Scourge of the Seas with his hat jammed down and snarling at the coachee. I ventured in again, but it was a half-hearted hero who acknowledged the compliments of the assembly, I can tell you; the coming of Spring is something you don’t get over quickly, and Grey eyed me curiously when I took my leave.
‘Interesting man – I had no notion you knew him in his trading days. Oh, he farms now, owns great acres about Grahamstown, and is quite the nabob – must be one of the wealthiest men in the Colony, I daresay, has his own yacht to bring him down from Port Elizabeth. His daughter is charming, is she not?’ An instant’s hesitation, then: ‘Captain Spring is a considerable classic, too; his lectures on the latifundia were widely attended last year. He is on the board of public examiners, you know, and is forever pressing us to found a university here.’
I decided to do J.C. a bit of good, in return for the scare he’d given me. ‘Ah, he misses the cloisters I suppose – you know they unfrocked him, or whatever they do, at Oxford? Never got over it, poor old chap, named his ship the Balliol College – slaver, she was, and a pirate, they say. He’s wanted for murder in Louisiana, too.’
He didn’t even stir a patrician brow. ‘Indeed … ah, well. A very good night to you, colonel … and my warmest regards to Lord Palmerston.’
That was how much I shocked him. The fact was, you see, that so many chaps who’d been little better than brigands in the earlies – fellows like Brooke and the Taipans and the South Sea crowd – had become upstanding pillars of society in their mellow years, that no one would care a fig if Spring had founded his fortune shipping niggers – not if he was going to apply it to good works like a new university, and went to morning service regular. As old Peacock says, respectable means rich – look at that slippery diamond-slinger Rhodes. What price the Spring Chair of Practical Philosophy? I’d give the inaugural lecture myself, on how he tried to drop blacks overboard before the patrollers boarded him.
That he was filthy rich was confirmed by gossip in the town. ‘He could write a draft for a million,’ I was told, and ‘I’d hate to be the man that bilked him of a fiver, though,’ says another, from which I gathered that my beloved old commander’s belaying-pin reputation still stuck to him, however loud he hollered in church. So it was a relief when I heard he’d gone back to Grahamstown, out of harm’s way, leaving the lovely Miranda to queen it at his fine house by the sea, where she was wont to entertain the younger set – of whom I was not going to be one, I may tell you. Delectable she might be, but even Helen of Troy would lose her allure if the price of her favours was liable to be a dip in the bay with a bag of coal on your feet. No, I was not tempted … until the day before I was due to sail, when a note was delivered at the hotel. It read:
My dear Sir Harry – altho’ I believe I should not style you so just yet, still everyone knows, and I have not so many Gallant Knights of my acquaintance that I can forgo the pleasure of addressing you again as – Dear Sir Harry!
Our meeting was cut so short by Papa that I shall feel myself altogether neglected if you do not call before you leave for Home, which I believe you do on tomorrow’s mail. We intend a ‘Sea-picnic’ today, and ’twill not be complete without the handsomest colonel in the Army! There! I have no shame at all, you see! Do come, and gratify your admirer, and soon to be, I hope, your friend,
Miranda Spring
P.S. Papa continues at Grahamstown, but we have the Ariel for our picnic. I shall send a carriage at noon – please, let it not return empty!
Well, this was a free and easy miss, if you like, for no Mama of Simla or Belgravia would have permitted a billet as warm as this one; she might as well have added ‘P.P.S. Bed at ten sharp’. But then, she had no Mama – and Papa was seven hundred miles away, bless his black heart … he’d warned her off, that was plain, but this was a filly who’d delight in defiance, from what I’d seen of her … and she wanted the ‘handsomest colonel in the Army’ to ‘gratify’ her, the saucy little spanker, and who could blame her? I tingled at the thought of those soft shoulders and the wanton glint in the black eyes – aye, but what about the bale-fire glint in dear Papa’s? For a second I quailed … but no, I couldn’t let this one slip by.
Don’t mistake me – I’m not one of those who count danger an added spice, least of all in houghmagandie, as Elspeth used to call it whenever I got her tipsy. But here, while there was no risk at all, there would be a special zest to romping Spring’s daughter – the pity was that he’d never know … unless I wrote him a line when I was safe in England … ‘Dear Prospero, have rogered Miranda. O, brave new world! The weather continues fine. Yours ever, Caliban.’ He’d absolutely die of rage. Better still, she might present him with a little supercargo nine months hence … gad, that would be an interesting infant, Flash-Spring with a dash of fellaheen. Oh, merry thoughts!
I made my packages then and there, whistling, and settled up, for the best plan would be to outstay the other guests, gallop the night away, kiss her a tearful farewell, and tool straight down to the mail tender. I’d be half way home before the swine was back from Grahamstown – oh, I must let him know, somehow! He’d never dare come back to England to seek revenge … would he? I had another qualm at the memory of those glaring eyes and murderous fury … well, we’d see.
The carriage was there sharp on twelve, Malay coachman and all, and I was in prime fettle as we bowled through the suburbs, which were a great contrast to the shabby port, being very grand even in those days, with shady avenues of oak and clumps of silver-trees, and fine houses among the green; it was Cape summer, and the whole countryside was ablaze with garden blossoms and the famous wild flowers. Chateau Spring, which stood by the sea, was even more splendid than I’d imagined, a lofty white colonial mansion in wide grounds fit to rival Kew, with a marble bathing pool
secluded among rhododendrons, and as I waited in the airy hall, admiring the circular sweep of the double staircase and inhaling the blissful aroma of money, I reflected that there’s no gain like the ill-gotten; it beats honest accumulation hands down.
I’d expected the place to be alive with company, but there wasn’t a soul except the ancient black butler who’d gone to announce me – and I found myself wondering about that capital ‘H’ she’d put on ‘home’ in her note. She was half-caste, you see, and they put far more stock in being ‘English’ than we who take it for granted … so she’d spelled it ‘Home’ – where she’d never been, and likely never would be. Not that being ‘coloured’, as they call it down yonder, mattered much in those days, not with a white father who could have bought Natal and would have kicked the life out of anyone who didn’t treat his daughter like a duchess … still, I wondered how many Mamas with eligible sons regretted previous engagements. And I was just concluding hornily that I was probably the only guest, when:
‘Sir Harree!’ Here she was, sailing down the staircase, and I took in breath at the sight of her. She was wearing a dress of pale muslin, sari-style, that clung like a gauzy skin but flounced out below the knee above thonged sandals; one ivory shoulder and both arms were bare, and as she swept towards me with a swift graceful stride the flimsy material outlined her figure – gad, it was all there. She carried a long scarf of black silk over one arm – and then to my astonishment I saw it was her hair, gathered in from behind.
‘Sir Harree!’ again, with a glowing smile and her free hand extended, and since we were alone and I was bursting with buck I pressed my lips to her fingers – and nuzzled swiftly up her naked arm in Flashy’s flank attack, across shoulder and neck to her cheek and fastened on her full red lips. She didn’t even gasp; after a second her mouth opened wide, and when I drew her in with a hand on her rump she clung like a good ’un while I kneaded avidly and breathed in her heavy perfume … and then the blasted butler’s step sounded at the stairhead, and she broke away, flushed and laughing, and quickly drew herself up, mock demure.
‘How-de-do, Sir Harree?’ says she, bobbing a curtsey. ‘So kind of you to coll! May I offer you some … refreshment?’
‘Another o’ the same, marm, if you please,’ says I, and she burst out laughing and drew me out on to a shady verandah commanding a splendid view of the sunlit Bay. There was a low table with liquor and tidbits (for two, I noticed), and cushioned rattan swing-chairs, and when the butler had poured us iced slings and tottered away, she made pretty work of seating herself, shrugging this way and that to display her shape, and sweeping that wondrously long hair over the back of her seat – I’d known at first sight that she was a great show-off, and now she raised her glass with a flourish in smiling salute.
‘Thatt is iced brandy and orange, Sir Harree! Your favourite in New Orleans, so Papa told me … among other things, oah yess!’
‘Did he, now? Observant chap, Papa.’ How the blazes had he come to tell her that? ‘But you mustn’t believe all he tells you, you know.’
‘Oah, but I want to!’ cries she, quite the rogue. ‘Such a shocking character he gave you, you can nott imagine!’ She sat erect, counting on slim fingers. ‘Lett me see … oll your naughtee ways, drinking, and smoking and … that you are a verree shameless rake – but he would give no particulars, was that nott mean of him? … oah, and that you were a scoundrel, and told stretchers – and he said you were most cowardlee – which I did nott believe, you are so famous –’
‘But you believed the rest, eh?’
‘Butt of carse, Sir Harree!’ Her voice had the native sing-song that can be delightful in a woman, but in her excitement the chi-chi vowels slipped out hot and strong, and for an instant the ivory skin seemed a shade darker, and the sharp nose and heavy brows more pronounced, as she gestured and prattled – and I admired the stirring curves of breast and hip under the flimsy muslin: never mind the pasture it comes from, it’s the meat that matters.
‘Papa said, of oll the bad men he had known, you were quite the worst!’ She shook her head, wide-eyed. ‘So of carse I must see for myself, you knoaw? Are you so verree wicked … Harree?’
‘Here, I’ll show you!’ says I, and lunged at her, but she drew back, with a pretty little comical flutter towards the hall, where I supposed the butler was lurking, and pressed me to try the tidbits, especially a great sticky bowl of creamed chocolate – in summer! – which she spooned into herself with gluttonous delicacy, between sips at her sling, teasing me with sidelong smiles and assuring me that the mixture was ‘quite heavenlee’.
