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“I say, Higgins-” Pickering glanced up from the newspaper he had been quite immersed in, intending to regale his friend with only one of the many tidbits of ridiculousness found therein - Professor Henry Higgins was very much of a disposition to enjoy raging at such nonsense - only to stop short when he spotted him by the window, peering out at the street. “...are we expecting company? You hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort.”
“Company? Oh, company indeed!” Higgins had the look of a foxhound about him, something perilously eager and only mildly ferocious about him. Pickering knew he ought not approve of it, this excitement that spoke of mischief, inadvisable bets, and the sort of soliloquy that would seriously damage someone’s reputations or feelings - and yet, he found it a rather charming attribute of Higgins’, most days. It surely helped that he had never yet been the target of this fervour; its recipient at most, chuckling pleasantly at Higgins’ tirade. “A most interesting fellow telegraphed this morning, and I was rather eager to hear him in person.”
“Oh?” Pickering shook out his newspaper, folded it, and turned more fully towards Higgins. “What does he do then, this fellow that piqued your interest?”
“He,” declared Higgins with unabashed glee, “intends to blackmail us!”
Pickering dropped the newspaper.
“Now really, Pickering, you’re making a mountain out of a molehill,” Higgins insisted, waving his hand about as if he could swat Pickering’s concerns away as one would a fly. “What is there to fret about? Sit, sit, old man - and some port, I think. Heavens, what an abominable fuss!”
“A fuss!” Pickering exclaimed, agitated. “Higgins, this telegram proclaims that the fellow means to ruin us!”
“Melodramatics.” Again, the fly-swatting gesture. “Consider his motivation: if we were ruined, we would no longer be in any position to fill his pockets, eh? Now, here, port. Drink up, drink up!”
Pickering drank up. It did little to improve matters. Higgins poured again.
“I do not understand why you are in such a strop about it, my dear fellow,” He huffed - and he really and truly did not, face distorted in puzzlement. “You were here when Eliza’s father attempted to, as he would put it, ‘touch us’, were you not? And blasted Kaparthy - now there’s a criminal, a dyed-in-the-wool blackguard! He’s extorting half of Europe’s high society, to hear him tell it. With his modest five pounds, Doolittle would have been cheap at twice the price. Come now, Pickering!”
A steadying hand descended unto Pickering’s shoulder. For all of Higgins’ tendency towards incessant motion - Eliza liked to compare him to a steamroller, never stopping for anyone’s sake, pressing them flat as he passed over - his grip was warm and solid.
“We’ve dealt with both of them easily enough, did we not? Are you not a military man? Brave heart, Colonel!”
“The Hungarian was oblivious to our crime, Higgins.” Pickering pointed out sharply, sharper than he usually allowed himself to be. He considered standing, to add weight to his words, but the shock had gone to his knees, and the port to his head, and Higgins would be somewhat taller than him regardless. It seemed unwise to chance it. “And at the time of Mr. Doolittle’s visit, we had not yet committed it.”
“A crime?” Higgins laughed. “Pshah, as if that little schoolboy prank would qualify as such!”
“Impersonation, Higgins!” Pickering only barely stopped himself from adding ‘damn you’. “It is no trifling matter, what we did at the Embassy Ball! Lord help us, she danced with the Prince of Transylvania! If this fellow-” he waved the telegram “-has somehow found us out-!”
“Oh, don’t let’s fall prey to hysteria.” Higgins grimaced. His hand still had not left Pickering’s shoulder. “I am beginning to fear Eliza has influenced you far more than we did her.”
“Heavens, Higgins, the girl!” Pickering rubbed a hand over his face. “What will become of her, if this gets out? I told you, didn’t I, I told you from the very start, I would feel responsible if any harm came to Eliza!”
Higgins scoffed. Pickering did not appreciate it.
“And your damnable nonchalance! He will not ruin us, you say - but if he ruins Eliza! What then?” He rose, a fire in his breast. “Higgins, Henry, I could not stand for it!”
“Then sit.” Higgins roughly pushed him back into his seat. “Eliza, Eliza, Eliza! You fret over her like her only maiden aunt. What is there to ruin? This blackmailer could do no worse to her than her pitiful upbringing already has. Hah, why, perhaps it will even be a lovely nostalgic treat for her, to be shoved back into the gutter by circumstance!”
“You are beastly!”
“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man,” Higgins quoted, the glee of wickedness still shining from his eyes. A colleague of Pickering’s had once described Professor Higgins as “brilliant but horrible”, and Pickering now considered this a fair assessment. What did it say about him, he wondered, that this had yet to chase him away? “But again, I ask you, what would be ruined? Her marriage prospects? Freddy Eynsford-Hill has made it more than clear that he will marry a flower girl as readily as a duchess, provided her name starts with E- and ends with -lizadoolittle. She need only say the word, and he will scamper up to the altar, the poor unfortunate soul.” A shake of the head. “An all too common tragedy, one almost becomes numb to it. Here, let’s have some more port, and we’ll toast to young Freddy and his impending wedded doom.”
Pickering made no move to do so. “He cannot marry her if she’s in gaol, Henry,” he muttered reproachfully. “Or, God Forbid, in a grave, should the judge choose to make an example out of her. We must warn her, must-”
“Oh yes, warn her! And call in the police next, I suspect? We shall do no such thing. I have it well in hand. And it’s very much in our favour that she danced with that princeling - a scandal would embarrass those Transylvanian royals. There will be no examples made, so buck up, man, and cease your damnable fussing.”
Impatiently, Higgins strode over to the window again, abandoning Pickering to his enduring distress.
But then, a hesitation.
There was the shade of Eliza in it, in that momentary pause; a voice hissing ‘ere, ‘enry ‘iggins, don’t you go an’ be a bloomin’ basterd now into his ear, causing him to consider persons other than himself, however briefly.
Higgins sighed at the unwelcome and increasingly regular imposition on his peace of mind, and turned on his heel.
“Here, Hugh, dear fellow.” He knelt before Pickering, taking his hand and wearing his most charming smile, the one that he did not usually put on for anything less than his mother’s most forceful insistence. “You trust me, yes?”
“Why, naturally,” Pickering said immediately, even though he really ought to add on a caveat or two.
“Naturally.” The smile morphed into a grin, far more genuine, giving even a man of Higgins’ advanced age the look of a schoolboy. “There’s a good chap. You’ll see, I shall get it sorted, and neither you nor Eliza will have any reason to fret over it any-”
A knock. Higgins, ever uncaring of appearances, did not bother to rise from the floor, only barked “YES?” over his shoulder.
“A gentleman here to see you, Professor Higgins,” Mrs. Pearce announced, imbuing every syllable of the word ‘gentleman’ with the full force of her considerable disapproval. “He claims he has an appointment. Shall I admit him?”
“Certainly!” Higgins leapt up, clasping his hands together with something approaching childish glee. “Send the fellow in!”
“Well then. I’d rather have no part in this meeting,” Pickering unsteadily collected his newspaper, and made for the side room. Higgins, unusually considerate, accompanied him there, one hand steadying Pickering’s elbow, the other on his back, as it often was. “Henry, promise me this: do not antagonise him unduly, will you? Pay the man whatever he demands, I shall gladly reimburse you for it; I have funds enough to afford his silence. Only do not-”
“Yes, yes.” An only slightly irritable pat to the back. “If you nag me any further, I shall mistake you for a carriage horse - or, worse, Mother. Here, let’s make a bet of it: a sovereign says we’ll weather this little unpleasantness unscathed, with no change to our daily lives whatsoever. You, I, and I suppose Eliza as well, if you insist.”
“I do insist. I can take or leave the sovereign, but we’ve done more than enough damage to that poor child’s life already, Higgins! If this affair ends up adding to it, then, by Jove-!”
The side room door was unceremoniously slammed in his face.
Pickering briefly had the wistful thought that, perhaps, he should have remained in India, or at least gone to Switzerland instead to discuss the finer points of Sanskrit with that de Saussure fellow - but no, of course it simply had to be Henry Higgins, hadn’t it? Beastly Henry Higgins, brilliantly horrible Henry Higgins, with his fascinating phonetic systems and theories, with his inadvisable bets that would yet ruin them all, with his deplorable manners and complete disregard for anything that did not excite his fancy…
Pickering sighed and sat down, unfolding his crumpled newspaper and attempting to bury himself in it far enough that whatever discussion took place on the other side of the door would not reach his ears.
(Oh yes. It did have to be Henry Higgins, didn’t it - and wasn’t that bloody unfortunate.)
Pickering had barely finished the page - a dreadfully misinformed article on the current situation in the Cabinet, which his old school chum in the Home Office had presented quite differently when they’d lunched and chatted last Friday - when the steady murmur of voices from beyond the door suddenly rose into something more akin to a loud clamour. Not angry shouts, but it was undoubtedly Higgins, making strange wordless exclamations that might be cries of pain.
Alarmed, Pickering rose, and, with nary a moment’s hesitation, made for the door again - he was getting rather long in the tooth, and had no weapon other than a rolled-up newspaper, but by Jove, if that dastardly blackmailer had so much as laid a finger on his friend, Pickering would wallop him straight across the Channel, and damn the repercussions!
He burst into the room, entirely prepared to lead a charge of the six-hundred against their guest - who was not, it turned out, doing Higgins any bodily harm whatever. In fact, the fellow - a narrow, underfed man of some twenty, thirty years in well-tended but worn-thin clothes, with a receding hairline and a beard that made up for it - was standing some good distance away, puzzlement written all over his features as his gaze sought out Pickering.
“For the life’o me, I don’t know what’s gone into ‘im!” said the blackmailer helplessly, in a poor attempt at covering an accent that Higgins had no doubt been able to identify with perfect accuracy, down to the street name.
And what had gone into Higgins indeed! The man was bent over, clutching his stomach… and laughing, Pickering realised. Laughing heartily, with a joy Pickering had last seen on him when Kaparthy’s rumours of the Hungarian princess had reached him, only far less restrained.
“Higgins!” Pickering exclaimed, rushing to his side. “What in Heaven’s name-!?”
“My dear- ah, my dear fellow!” Higgins chortled, heartily clapping Pickering on the back. “This is Colonel Pickering, and may I- hah! -introduce in turn: the most amusing blackmailer in all of His Majesty’s great Empire - and what a joke he has played on us! Oh, I shall laugh the whole day through!”
“It- it ain’t no joke, Profess’r!” The blackmailer, still visibly thrown, attempted to rally and affect a glower, but it was a rather poor show. “I’m serious, I am! If you don’t pay up, the whole world’ll know that-”
“Know what?” Higgins beamed, wide and carefree, spreading his arms. “My good man, I am ever so sorry to disappoint you, but I’m afraid your intel is, to put it in terms you may understand, a porky pie. Not worth sixpence, much less the price you hoped to put on it. And yet, you said it with such certainty! Oh, how delightful! How brilliant! May I offer you some port? Brandy? A cigar? I would get my hat and tip it to you, if you would but excuse me for a second…”
“Higgins,” Pickering caught him by the elbow, and leaned close to whisper, “are you attempting to bluff him?”
“Bluff?” Higgins exclaimed at full volume. Pickering winced. “Nothing of the sort! I tell you, Pickering, the poor man has no leg to stand on, and we needn’t pay him as much as a brass farthing.”
“Now look ‘ere-!” The blackmailer attempted, feebly.
“Truly, a shame - this man is entirely wasted on the criminal element, a worse waste than even Alfred P. Doolittle,” Higgins simply carried on, picking up steam like an out-of-control locomotive. “Perhaps… yes, never you fear, we shall find better employment for you, out of gratitude for this wonderful joke. I have improved Eliza, I have improved her father, and now, dear chap, I shall improve you!”
“Er-” The blackmailer threw a wild, desperate look towards the door to the front parlour, but Higgins was in the way of his escape route. Pickering, trusting that Higgins knew what he was about, manoeuvred himself to block it more thoroughly.
“Can you read and write, by any chance?” asked Higgins.
“...I do know me letters…?”
“Splendid! If not, I would have recommended politics, which requires no qualifications other than the ability to speak falsehoods with unabashed confidence. But since you are literate, and thus grossly overqualified for the Houses of Parliament…” Higgins dashed over to his writing table, and began hastily scribbling out a note. “I’ll write up a letter for you to take to Fleet Street and give to the chief editor at whichever newspaper you most like the look of - the Daily Mail might serve you well, though I daresay even the Times would gladly take on such a wonderfully creative mind as yours. Tell them that Henry Higgins sent you, and recommends you most heartily - you are a born journalist, and I look forward to seeing your misinformed suspicions in printed form!”
“Now really,” Pickering tutted mildly, though a smile stole on his face at Higgins’ mischief-making. “Are you quite sure about this, Higgins?”
“Entirely!” Higgins signed with a flourish, and advanced on the blackmailer, who shied away like a frightened mouse from a hungry cat. “Here’s the letter, and some money for cab fare and a hearty lunch - perhaps even a nicer suit, which you shall need when you start winning awards for your reporting.”
“You can’t be serious!” The fellow squeaked, though his hand almost instinctively twitched towards the money. “I- I ain’t cut out to be a shorn-a-list!”
“Neither are most journalists, you’ll be just fine.” Higgins turned. “Pickering, how many falsehoods in today’s newspaper?”
“I counted five so far,” Pickering reported dutifully, holding up the newspaper, which by now had seen better days, “and I’ve yet to reach the society pages.”
“And I shall count on you, young man, to turn those five into a nice round half-dozen.” Higgins patted the terrified blackmailer on the shoulder. “Or even a full dozen. You’ve been so marvellously wrong today, I can’t imagine it’ll be much of a hardship to you.”
“Y-you’ve gone off your ‘ead, Profess’r,” the man stuttered, though he snatched up the money and letter easy enough before inching his way to the door. “Bonkers! Completely cuckoo! You, guv’nor,” he pointed at Pickering there with one shaking finger, “you oughta run, you ought! Git away from the likes of ‘im, I tell you, afore he brings you propah trouble!”
“Thank you for the advice, young friend. I shall take it into consideration,” Pickering said mildly, stepping back and gallantly opening the door for their hastily departing guest. “Though I find Professor Higgins to be such edifying company that I rather doubt I’ll act on it.”
“Then you’re madder than what ‘e is!” The blackmailer spat - and with a last particularly uncouth curse, which only slightly suffered under the waver in his voice, he fled.
A moment’s silence, during which Pickering quietly slid the door closed.
And then, Higgins collapsed into laughter again, falling onto the settee with his limbs thrown all akimbo. Pickering, too, began first to chortle, and then laugh quite genuinely - ah, one could say what one might about Henry Higgins (and there was much to say, in so many variants of the English tongue), but at least it was never boring in his company.
Pickering had long preferred the Subcontinent to his native soil, simply because English society and academia had reliably bored him to tears when he’d been a younger man - it was a quite remarkable achievement of Higgins’, almost as remarkable as the transformation he’d effected in Eliza, simply to give Pickering cause to stay.
“Did you h-hear him?” Higgins could barely speak for the rather inelegant giggles bursting out of him. “Tried to w-warn you off me!”
“Quite sensible advice.” Pickering settled neatly next to him. “What a shame, that I am not an altogether sensible man.”
“Hah! Well, your insensibility is much appreciated. After that human blister named Eliza has so callously chosen to abandon us, another loss might well have broken my heart entire.”
“Oh, be fair, she visits.”
“Much too rarely! Ungrateful wretch. One would think-”
“But, I say,” Pickering interrupted hastily, before Higgins could once more engage in muttering uncharitable-yet-somewhat-wistful comments on the matter of Miss E. Doolittle, which had of late become his favourite pastime. “Was he truly mistaken, or did he, in fact, know…”
“Oh, he was entirely unaware of our little project, I assure you.” Higgins shrugged in that debonair way of his. “Your darling Eliza’s name was not uttered even once in our discussion, either, which I hope will satisfy you.”
“It’s a relief indeed. But, Higgins, what in God’s name was he trying to blackmail us with, then!?”
“Why, my dear fellow!” A rather Puck-ish cast fell onto Higgins’ features. “Our scandalous homosexual affair, naturally!”
Pickering blinked, once, twice. He took it somewhat better than the initial announcement of blackmailery, and rather intended to pride himself on it.
“...oh, well,” he cleared his throat. “I see.”
“Then you are one up on our presumptuous friend.” Higgins seemed slightly disappointed that Pickering had not reacted more amusingly, but gamely forgave him for it. “I rather wonder where he got the idea from- Pickering, you’ve got quite the cough, shall I ring for tea?”
“No, no, that-” Pickering sighed. “Henry, may I speak freely?”
“To me, always.” Higgins, to his credit, righted his slumped posture somewhat, and turned his full attention to his friend.
“I trust this will remain between us.”
“Yes, yes, if you insist.” An impatient gesture. “Get on with it, man.”
“He wasn’t… well, he wasn’t entirely wrong, you know. The blackmailing fellow. In his presumptions.”
“...Pickering,” Higgins said, slowly, “I rather think I would know if you and I had been conducting an affair. It’s not the sort of thing one mislays, like a pair of slippers.”
“He was mistaken in terms of actions, yes.” Pickering studiously fixed his gaze on the phonetic vowel chart in the corner, tracing each now-familiar form with his eyes. He had not had occasion to address these matters often, thankfully, but it was a dreadfully unpleasant business to do it even once, much less multiple times in one lifetime. At least Higgins, with his habitual contempt for any aspect of societal conventions other than language, and marked disinterest in the female sex, was less likely to disapprove than most men. “But not, I fear, in terms of… inclination, on my part.”
Higgins’ gaze sharpened. The foxhound with his hackles raised, and his quarry well in sight. He leaned forward imperceptibly.
“Only inclination, Hugh?” He asked, in a low, serious voice. “Or are you declaring interest?”
Pickering studied him for a moment. Higgins was not a malicious man, never. Even his often deplorable conduct, particularly towards women, was fundamentally self-serving, and largely unintended cruelty. And he was fond of jokes and japes, but certainly would not play one such as this. It was not the way one joked among gentlemen.
“...yes.” Before Higgins, Pickering really and truly had not been much of a betting man. And yet he was betting again now, staking it all on this answer. Rien ne va plus. “Yes, I rather think I am!”
The gamble paid off; Higgins beamed like the sun in springtime, more brilliant than the diamonds Eliza had worn to the Embassy Ball, and reached for him.
(It had been quite some time since Pickering’s last occasion for indulgence - and yet, there were some dances whose steps, once learned, one never quite forgot.)
“We must be careful, of course,” Pickering said, adjusting his collar and tie only somewhat self-consciously. “More so than we have been. That blackmailing fellow had his suspicions simply from our collegial shared bachelorhood, and I should not like to be rightfully accused.”
“Pshah. Old fusspot.” Higgins was sprawled among the cushions, making very little effort to return his appearance to a more presentable state - though, in fairness, it was not so far from his habitual unruly manner of dress, in any case.
“Henry,” Pickering admonished, though he did not entirely succeed in banishing the warmth of mutually-declared affections from his tone, nor the fond smile from his face. “We took a dreadful risk just now, dear fellow. In broad daylight, blinds open and the door unlocked, and with the servants in the house… it could end very badly for us, you do realise?”
Higgins made another dismissive sound, and reached towards the coffee table and the plate of sweets. Pickering quietly resigned himself to taking on the chief responsibility for their safety; Higgins had a knack for handling blackmailers, evidently, but it would be much preferable if it never even came to that. If just because the steady influx of blackmailers into the middle class could not possibly end well; least of all for the blackmailers.
“And furthermore,” Pickering settled down on a part of the settee that was not entirely taken up by Higgins’ limbs, though he took advantage of their proximity by laying a hand on the joint of Higgins’ clothed knee. Between a gentleman and a lady, it would have been a decidedly scandalous gesture; and even now, there was an astonishing intimacy even to so chaste a touch. “You owe me a sovereign.”
“What!?” This, Higgins received with all due alarm and agitation. “Never!”
“I’m afraid so. I’ve won the bet, you see.”
“You don’t mean-! No! I chased the fellow off well enough,” Higgins argued wildly, “I’d eat my phonograph with a side of wax cylinders if he ever returned to bother us!”
“Ah, but those were not the conditions of the wager, if you’ll recall.” Pickering pointed out, in his most genial voice, patting Higgins’ knee, once, twice. “No change to our daily lives, you insisted; none whatsoever. Yet I daresay that this…”
“Which you initiated, you blighter, with your damned insistence on speaking frankly!” Higgins thrust an accusing finger towards Pickering. “Sabotage, is what I call this! For shame! I say, Hugh, are those the actions of a gentleman!?”
“Of a gentleman who has earned himself a sovereign, yes.” Pickering at last unfolded his rumpled newspaper again, and hid his smile behind it. He had acquired something of far greater value than a mere coin today. “Now, will you listen to the sort of nonsense the Telegraph prints these days…”
And God’s miracles still grazed humanity on occasion, it turned out; for Henry Higgins did not insist on arguing the point further, but conceded with minimal grumbling, leaning in to, of all things, listen.
How remarkable. Pickering would have to tell Eliza all about it - though he was certain that she would never quite believe him.