"Well, I will, thank'ee," says he, and when the beer had come and we'd drunk to dear old Rugby (sincerely, no doubt, on his part) he puts down his mug and says:
"There's another thing - matter of fact it was the first thought that popped into my head when I saw you just now - I don't know how you'd feel about it, though - I mean, perhaps your wounds ain't better yet?"
He hesitated. "Fire away," says I, thinking perhaps he wanted to introduce me to his sister.
"Well, you won't have heard, but my last half at school, when I was captain, we had no end of a match against the Marylebone men - lost on first innings, but only nine runs in it, and we'd have beat 'em, given one more over. Anyway, old Aislabie - you remember him? - was so taken with our play that he has asked me if I'd like to get up a side, Rugby past and present, for a match against Kent. Well, I've got some useful hands - you know young Brooke, and Raggles - and I remembered you were a famous bowler, so … What d'ye say to turning out for us - if you're fit, of course?"
It took me clean aback, and my tongue being what it is, I found myself saying: "Why, d'you think you'll draw a bigger gate with the hero of Afghanistan playing?"
"Eh? Good lord, no!" He coloured and then laughed. "What a cynic you are, Flashy! D'ye know," says he, looking knowing, "I'm beginning to understand you, I think. Even at school, you always said the smart, cutting things that got under people's skins - almost as though you were going out of your way to have 'em think ill of you. It's a contrary thing - all at odds with the truth, isn't it? Oh, aye," says he, smiling owlishly, "Afghanistan proved that, all right. The German doctors are doing a lot of work on it - the perversity of human nature, excellence bent on destroying itself, the heroic soul fearing its own fall from grace, and trying to anticipate it. Interesting." He shook his fat head solemnly. "I'm thinking of reading philosophy at Oxford this term, you know. However, I mustn't prose. What about it, old fellow?" And damn his impudence, he slapped me on the knee. "Will you bowl your expresses for us - at Lord's?"
I'd been about to tell him to take his offer along with his rotten foreign sermonizing and drop 'em both in the Serpentine, but that last word stopped me. Lord's - I'd never played there, but what cricketer who ever breathed wouldn't jump at the chance? You may think it small enough beer compared with the games I'd been playing lately, but I'll confess it made my heart leap. I was still young and impressionable then and I almost knocked his hand off, accepting. He gave me another of his thunderous shoulder-claps (they pawed each other something d--nable, those hearty young champions of my youth) and said, capital, it was settled then.
"You'll want to get in some practice, no doubt," says he, and promptly delivered a lecture about how he kept himself in condition, with runs and exercises and foregoing tuck, just as he had at school. From that he harked back to the dear old days, and how he'd gone for a weep and a pray at Arnold's tomb the previous month (our revered mentor having kicked the bucket earlier in the year, and not before time, in my opinion). Excited as I was at the prospect of the Lord's game, I'd had about my bellyful of Master Pious Brown by the time he was done, and as we took our leave of each other in Regent Street, I couldn't resist the temptation to puncture his confounded smugness.
"Can't say how glad I am to have seen you again, old lad," says he, as we shook hands. "Delighted to know you'll turn out for us, of course, but, you know, the best thing of all has been - meeting the new Flashman, if you know what I mean. It's odd," and he fixed his thumbs in his belt and squinted wisely at me, like an owl in labour, "but it reminds me of what the Doctor used to say at confirmation class - about man being born again - only it's happened to you - for me, if you understand me. At all events, I'm a better man now, I feel, than I was an hour ago. God bless you, old chap," says he, as I disengaged my hand before he could drag me to my knees for a quick prayer and a chorus of "Let us with a gladsome mind". He asked which way I was bound.
"Oh, down towards Haymarket," says I. "Get some exercise, I think."
"Capital," says he. "Nothing like a good walk."
"Well … I was thinking more of riding, don't you know."
"In Haymarket?" He frowned. "No stables thereaway, surely?"
"Best in town," says I. "A few English mounts, but mostly French fillies. Riding silks black and scarlet, splendid exercise, but damned exhausting. Care to try it?"
For a moment he was all at a loss, and then as understanding dawned he went scarlet and white by turns, until I thought he would faint. "My God," he whispered hoarsely. I tapped him on the weskit with my cane, all confidential.
"You remember Stumps Harrowell, the shoemaker, at Rugby, and what enormous calves he had?" I winked while he gaped at me. "Well, there's a German wench down there whose poonts are even bigger. Just about your weight; do you a power of good."
He made gargling noises while I watched him with huge enjoyment.
"So much for the new Flashman, eh?" says I. "Wish you hadn't invited me to play with your pure-minded little friends? Well, it's too late, young Tom; you've shaken hands on it, haven't you?"
He pulled himself together and took a breath. "You may play if you wish," says he. "More fool I for asking you - but if you were the man I had hoped you were, you would—"
"Cry off gracefully - and save you from the pollution of my company? No, no, my boy - I'll be there, and just as fit as you are. But I'll wager I enjoy my training more."
"Flashman," cries he, as I turned away, "don't go to - to that place, I beseech you. It ain't worthy—"
"How would you know?" says I. "See you at Lord's." And I left him full of Christian anguish at the sight of the hardened sinner going down to the Pit. The best of it was, he was probably as full of holy torment at the thought of my foul fornications as he would have been if he'd galloped that German tart himself; that's unselfishness for you. But she'd have been wasted on him, anyway.
* * *
However, just because I'd punctured holy Tom's daydreams, don't imagine that I took my training lightly. Even while the German wench was recovering her breath afterwards and ringing for refreshments, I was limbering up on the rug, trying out my old round-arm swing; I even got some of her sisters in to throw oranges to me for catching practice, and you never saw anything jollier than those painted dollymops scampering about in their corsets, shying fruit. We made such a row that the other customers put their heads out, and it turned into an impromptu innings on the landing, whores versus patrons (I must set down the rules for brothel cricket some day, if I can recall them; cover point took on a meaning that you won't find in "Wisden", I know). The whole thing got out of hand, of course, with furniture smashed and the sluts shrieking and weeping, and the madame's bullies put me out for upsetting her disorderly house, which seemed a trifle hard.
Next day, though, I got down to it in earnest, with a ball in the garden. To my delight none of my old skill seemed to have deserted me, the thigh which I'd broken in Afghanis-tan never even twinged, and I crowned my practice by smashing the morning-room window while my father-in-law was finishing his breakfast; he'd been reading about the Rebecca Riots3 over his porridge, it seemed, and since he'd spent his miserable life squeezing and sweating his millworkers, and had a fearful guilty conscience according, his first reaction to the shattering glass was that the starving mob had risen at last and were coming to give him his just deserts.