Venus in India (13 page)

'Ah!' said the colonel, rising, 'glad to see you, Devereaux! I heard you were stuck at Nowshera. You came at an unlucky time when all the conveyances were engaged. I am afraid you had a wretched time of it down there!'

He shook me warmly by the hand, and introduced me to various officers, who did the same, and then, recommending me to go and get a peg before anything else, he asked the others to show me the way to the mess, saying he must himself hurry off home.

I accompanied my new brothers-in-arms, who led the way chatting and laughing and making many enquiries of me, until we reached the miserable shanty, called by courtesy 'the mess'.

I will not go in for a description of each and every officer. Suffice it to say that they were a very fair sample of the officers who form a proportion of every regiment in Her Majesty's Service. The seniors as usual proved to be selfish and greedy. The captains verged on the same state, but the subalterns were, as usual, gay devil-may-care, generous and ever ready to share their pittance with a brother in distress.

First thing I learnt was that, as water was very scarce, it was doubtful if I should get a wash that day; everyone was on an allowance, and my coming was not provided for. The next, that unless I had a chokidar [native watchman] neither my property nor my throat would be safe, since it was impossible to keep robbers out of the camp at night.

All this was a strange and by no means welcome contrast to the life I had been so lately leading at Nowshera, where I had the soft and delicious cunt of a perfect Venus to revel in. But as almost always is the case, my lines eventually turned out to be not cast in altogether so bad a mould as first appearances led me to expect.

In a few days I had found a nice little mud bungalow which would hold me. It is true it swarmed with the most formidable-looking and really dangerous centipedes, but I never got bitten by any, so that they only helped to keep me in a pleasant state of excitement, and I killed many of them. What made up for a great deal of the discomfort at Cherat was the delicious, cool and bracing air. I felt invigorated and strengthened by it. I enjoyed to the fullest inhaling it; and the savage grandeur of the scenery added enjoyment to breathing the pure mountain breezes which played upon it.

Soubratie had returned to Nowshera for his wife and my baggage, and it was nearly a fortnight before he returned. It was so difficult getting a cart, he said, he had to stay until Stone could get one for him, but I suspect that the profit arising from Mrs Soubratie's facile charms amongst the officers at Nowshera had much to do with his extra-long delay. I had not mentioned Mrs Soubratie to anybody and indeed hardly thought of her, but I got a most unmerciful chaffing about her the first night of her arrival. A married man! Just from his wife's arms! To engage a woman! It was in vain I endeavoured to defend myself, until I said that, as far as I was concerned, any fellow might have her, that it was my belief she would not be coy! At first my comrades would not believe me, but when they realised that such was indeed the case, their joy was unbounded. Like elsewhere, all the regiment's whores had deserted when the cry for 'cunt' went over the land from Peshawar on the arrival of the troops from Afghanistan and for several months neither officers nor men had enjoyed the sweet solace of a good luscious fuck at Cherat unless, as was the case in a few instances, he happened to be married and his wife was with him.

Mrs Soubratie was allowed no rest. That night she went from tent to tent, from hut to hut, and by morning a dozen officers had once more tasted of that meat of which, until exhausted nature can take no more, man never tires.

There was at this time in Cherat several officers of other corps or regiments in charge of details who had been sent up from Peshawar to recruit their health in our cool and salubrious air. With these gentlemen my story has nothing to do, except that perhaps I should do Mrs Soubratie the justice to tell my gentle readers that her active and much-sought-after cunt drew the coin it loved from their balls, and the coin she liked from their willingly opened purses. But there were two officers of the army medical department whom I must mention more particularly, because the action of one of them unconsciously pushed and almost forced me into that road which ended in pretty Fanny Selwyn's delicious little cunt, whence it branched off into that equally sweet one between her sister Amy's plump white thighs.

The two doctors were Surgeon Major Jardine and Surgeon Lavie. The former was a huge, coarse Scotchman, of low birth and low mind. Coarse in appearance and conversation, he was equally coarse in manners and soul, and I was amazed, after some months had elapsed, to find that he had not only thought of Fanny as a prospective wife, but had actually proposed to her.

He kept good natured and that is about all I can say for him. He was by no means handsome, though he was certainly very big; and in the eyes of some women huge proportions and the appearance of a Hercules strangely outweigh beauty of countenance and elegance of figure. Such women should be cows and consort with bulls.

Lavie was very different. He was a gentleman by birth and education. In mind he was as refined as Jardine was coarse. In manner he was decidedly reserved and shy, not given to much self-assertion, an interested listener and one who, when he did open his lips, spoke to the point. I used to take most pleasant walks with him, and soon he and I became real friends. In fact, Lavie was the quite unconscious instrument by which the road leading to the sweet little cunts of Fanny and Amy Selwyn was made, levelled and smoothed for me and along which I travelled almost unconsciously until I innocently arrived whither I was being conveyed.

It must not be supposed that I delayed making my first formal call on Mrs Selwyn and her fair daughters. Indeed I went to see them the second day of my arrival at Cherat, when I had at last succeeded in having a bath and a shave, neither of which feats I had been able to accomplish the day of my arrival.

The colonel was at home also and I saw the entire family. I was charmed with Mrs Selwyn, who was an enchanting woman, still beautiful though, alas! rapidly nearing the grave. She was tall and must always have been slender, and judging from the remains of her now faded charms she must, when young, have been more than ordinarily lovely. Her face had suffered far less ravagement than her person, and she still had most beautiful features and glorious eyes, but her poor bosom, alas! had entirely lost its billowy form, and I can hardly find the words to describe the condition of her body. Curious to say, though she knew she was delicate, and her husband had only too good reason to know it also, neither one seemed to have the remotest idea that her ever increasing emaciation must end in an early death; early, for Mrs Selwyn was not much more than forty years of age. Lavie, when I questioned him about her, would shake his head and say it was of no use hinting anything to the colonel, and that the only time he had ventured to do more than hint, the colonel had got quite angry and told him he was much too inexperienced a doctor to presume to give an opinion, and that all her life Mrs Selwyn had been as she then was, and he was sure she would outlive them all.

Naturally the conversation I had with this family, which was to prove so interesting in every sense to me, when I first called, rambled over a great space, for they knew from my darling Louie's letters, which had reached Cherat before I had, that I must be either married or engaged. I confessed to the former condition, which Mrs Selwyn declared she was delighted to hear. I thought, all the same, that as she had daughters rapidly growing up, she would have been better pleased had she found I had a heart still to be disposed of. Of one matter I was pleased to find that both she and the colonel were entirely ignorant, viz., that there was such a person in the world as Lizzie Wilson. They had, of course, heard that the brigade major at Nowshera had met with some kind of severe accident and was to be sent home as soon as he could be safely moved, and they questioned me about that accident, as it happened, as they knew, during my stay at Nowshera. I told them all I was disposed to allow I might know, stating that the story I heard was that Major Searle, having made himself obnoxious to the soldiers at Nowshera, had been waylaid and badly beaten by some of them.

'Ah!' said the colonel, 'that accounts for the extraordinary reticence on the part of the commanding officer down there! I could get no details of any kind from him, by either heliograph or letter - of course he does not like to publish the fact that his men have been guilty of so gross a breach of discipline as to beat an officer!'

'Fanny! Amy! dears, now run away to your lessons,' said Mrs Selwyn. 'My girls have no governess, Captain Devereaux, the poor things have to learn as best they can. India is a bad country for young children, but I could not leave them at home. We have not money enough to keep two establishments.'

I could see by Fanny's face that she quite understood why she was being sent out of the room, viz., that her mother wished to speak 'secrets', and although, as I afterwards found, she was not always ready to obey an unwelcome order without more or less remonstrance, she on this occasion rose and led the way, followed by Amy and the younger children.

When the room was left to the Colonel and Mrs Selwyn and myself, Mrs Selwyn said: 'Whilst you were at Nowshera, Captain Devereaux, did you hear any strange reports about Mrs Searle?'

'Well!' said I hesitatingly, as though not quite willing to enter on any details of scandal, 'I did, but I must say I do not entirely believe what I heard!'

'Then you have heard that she is separated from her husband?'

'Yes!'

'Did you hear anything else?'

'I heard that she was still in India, living at Ramsket, I think it was.'

'Ah! Well, she is as bad a woman as ever drew breath! A disgrace to her sex! I think it scandalous that the government should not force her to leave India! If there is a law which could be brought to bear! But the Viceroy -' and she made an expressive stop.

'Oh my dear!' interposed the colonel, 'you forget to say that if Mrs Searle is no better than she should be, it is on her husband the chief blame should fall!'

'Oh! I know! I know!' exclaimed Mrs Selwyn warmly and with much excitement, 'Oh! Captain Devereaux! I wonder whether you heard what led to the separation?'

'I can't say I did,' said I, telling a most tremendous lie, of course, but curious to see how Mrs Selwyn would reveal to me, as I could see she was dying to do, that Searle had compelled his wife to commit sodomy.

'Well, read the first chapter of Romans and especially that verse alluding to the conduct of certain men towards men! I cannot be more explicit, Captain Devereaux, and as it is my face feels as though it were burning!' and indeed her ordinarily pallid features were crimson, whether with shame or anger I could not well determine.

'I understand perfectly, Mrs Selwyn,' said I, 'and if Mrs Searle has disgraced her husband's name, I think it is hardly more than he can have deserved!'

'But she has disgraced her own, too, Captain Devereaux! Fancy what the natives must think when they see a lady - for she is a lady by birth and education and all - sell her charms to anyone who can afford to pay five hundred rupees for the possession of them - there is only one name for such a woman, and it is not prostitute, but one more vigorous and of course Saxon.'

I soon became a welcome guest at the colonel's house. The family was what we would call 'homely'.

During our married life Louie and I had lived very quietly. It was in bed that we lived a stormy life if anywhere! Fanny Selwyn, though not to be compared in character with my Louie, did in many ways remind me of her so that I found a charm at the colonel's house which made an invitation to tea always agreeable. On one of those early occasions on which I dined with them, our conversation fell on the advantages of education, and Fanny said, with an accent of great yearning, 'I know I do so wish I had a governess! I shall never be able to teach myself from books without help, and as for teaching a child anything more than their multiplication table and ABC, it is the blind leading the blind.'

'What is your special difficulty, Miss Selwyn?' asked I.

'Oh! everything! But perhaps anything harder than arithmetic beyond the rule of three!'

After dinner I asked her to show me what sums they were she found so difficult, and after a little pressure she brought one of simple fractions. I showed her how simple it was, did one after another for her, and finally pressed her to try her hand at one herself. She did, and though being afraid to express her ignorance, as she said, to her infinite delight she got the right answer, One would have thought I was a perfect god to see the delight of Fanny at what she said was all my doing, and I was so pleased at having been able to give her so much real and innocent pleasure, that the spirit moved me to propose that, as I had so much leisure, I could not do better than come for an hour or so every morning to assist at the lessons if Colonel and Mrs Selwyn had no objection. Mrs Selwyn jumped at the offer, but the colonel hung back a little. Whether this was because he might have thought of Fanny's growing bubbies and consequent approach to an age when desire, easily raised by close and constant communication with a young and lively male, might seize upon her youthful cunnie, even though the young man was married, or rather because he fancied I was generously rushing in on a task of which I should soon grow uneasy and repent having undertaken it, I don't know. But I at any rate stuck to my offer and it was accepted.

At first I had a tremendous amount of chaffing to undergo from my brother officers, who could not understand my motives; some hardly hid their suspicions that I aimed at seducing Fanny and Amy, others looked upon me as a lunatic who did not know how to appreciate the charms of perfect idleness, but I did not mind.

But as for Fanny! She afterwards told me that in those Cherat days she looked upon me as the most wonderful man in the whole world, for I knew everything. Poor little Fanny. The truth was she knew nothing, and my acquirements in the educational line were to her prodigious. It was not marvellous, therefore, that I obtained over her a degree of power which although hardly perceptible to her, existed like the steel hand in the velvet glove. My word of praise or commendation made her joyously happy, a tear would spring in her eyes if I forgot myself and hinted that she really should have done better. It was an association of real and true happiness, undisturbed by the flames of passion but full of affection on either side the communion, as it were, of beloved brother and dear sister.