Venus in India (20 page)

The month of March had arrived; the sun was daily gaining power which before the end of the month would be tremendous. This is the season when fruit is most abundant in northern India and I daily feasted on figs, peaches, grapes and even strawberries. The letters I had lately received had been of a more cheerful character and you know what it is to be relieved of such killing anxieties.

One morning at the beginning of March I came home from parade and whilst I was drinking my tea and eating my chotah-hazry of fruit and bread and butter the postman came and handed me a letter addressed to me by the darling Louie herself. It brought a joy not to be expressed in words. Ah! but if every cloud has its silver lining so does every rose have its thorn. For though her doctor assured her that no permanent injury had been done to her he had told her that on no account must she go to a hot climate and on doubly no account was she to sleep with her husband if he came home for, though so sweetly, so gloriously, so entrancingly genial, fucking was the last thing she should do for at least two long years to come! Else he would not be responsible for her complete cure and immunity from danger. He even warned her that fucking might result, if too soon indulged in, in pain and anything but pleasure, and he said that as I was 'providentially' in India it was well to allow me to remain where I was out of the way of doing her any harm.

Poor Louie. She told me that the tears were rolling down her cheeks as she wrote the sentence of the banishment of my prick from her longing - really longing - cunt. 'It is only for a short season, though two years seems a long time to young people like us, my beloved darling husband Charlie! Still just fancy what grief and utter desolation would be ours if our coming together too soon resulted in what the doctor threatens - the complete death of all that lovely love which made our marriage-bed so supremely delightful to both of us! Oh! I love my Charlie and I desire the staff of his manhood - that splendid 'prick' as you have taught me to call it - too much, too well, to like to think of endangering all the happiness and delight I can give him and all the rapture and heaven he can give me. No! I will stay at home and be a nun and who can tell but that when the time comes I may not be, as it were, a new bride for my darling husband to enjoy, without that fearful shyness which to some degree marred the joy I experienced when he first entered the virgin territory of which he and he alone is Lord and Master!'

I was joyful. I was so full of the thought of my Louie that the thought never struck me that part of my joy might arise from the fact that she could no longer stand in my path towards a certain delightful little cunt. That cunt was between Fanny Selwyn's thighs. I say I did not think consciously of Fanny but as my story will now tell I had no Louie to raise a warning finger and say, 'Not into that cunt but into mine only must your prick glide, Charlie!'

I saw Lavie come down the verandah towards me.

'Ah! Lavie, good-morning! How are you old chap? Sit down!'

'No, thank you, Devereaux,' said he with a half-sigh.

'Why what is the matter with you, Lavie? You sigh like a calf kicked away by its mother. Has Jumali or any other frail one given you the clap?'

For some minutes he remained as he was, then, slowly raising his head, he looked at me with the queerest expression and said, 'Devereaux, I can trust you You swear you won't tell a soul if I tell you what it is?'

'Of course,' I replied wondering what on earth it could be.

'Well,' said he speaking extremely slow, 'I love Fanny Selwyn!'

'Good God!' cried I, roaring with laughter, 'is that all? But man alive! if you are in love it should make you frisky and not as gloomy as a sick cat!'

'Ah! but she does not love me,' he groaned.

'How do you know?'

'Oh! I know it only too well!'

'But, my dear fellow, can you tell me why you know it so well? Perhaps I may be able to give you some comfort if you will treat me as your mental physician and tell me the truth and nothing but the truth.'

Lavie groaned, leant his elbows on the table, hid his face in his hands and at last he said, evidently with an effort. 'Last Sunday evening she would not walk with me to church -'

I roared with laughter! It was so superb! A young lady does not walk to church with a gentleman who admires her and thereby proves that she does not love him!

Well I heard the whole of his story, which was that up at Cherat he had been very much struck with Fanny Selwyn and in secret he had been fanning the spark of love within him which had at last burst into flame. He had indeed never shown Fanny any marked attention but as she never seemed to avoid him and always spoke kindly and politely to him he imagined she accepted his quiet way of showing his admiration and that in due course she would give him to understand that she quite understood and that she was quite ready to marry him. But on that unlucky Sunday evening he was sitting on his verandah without his coat on, expecting he would see Fanny and her sisters pass on their way to church and if he called out they would wait as they had done on previous occasions until he had got his coat on, for it was very hot and he did not wish to put that garment on a moment sooner than was absolutely necessary. But Oh! grief! dismay! horror! Fanny would not wait and not only did she not wait but when he hurried out after her he saw her and her sisters running - yes, actually running - away. It killed this poor heart! His hopes were violently dashed to the ground! There was nothing in life worth living for now it was plain that Fanny did not love him.

I listened with ever-increasing amazement. Hitherto I had looked upon Lavie as a particularly sensible fellow, but the story he told me and his reasoning were absolutely childish and proved him, when in love at all events, to be an egregious ass and fool. I, however, liked him a deal too much not to feel sorry for him and I set to work to comfort him and succeeded in doing so by telling him that, accepting his story as absolutely true, it only proved that Fanny Selwyn amused herself by giving him a chase after her. I admitted that she was a fine enough girl for any man to take some little trouble in trying to run after and I wondered that she had not been snapped up - young as she was, not quite seventeen - a year ago.

But do what I would I could not screw Lavie's courage up to going at once to see her (she lived only just across the road within seventy yards of my bungalow), declare himself and find out what her real feelings were towards him. He flunked it. I told him in vain that faint heart never yet won fair lady. All I could persuade him to do was to go and see Colonel and Mrs Selwyn and see whether they would countenance his suit. To this at last he assented and went off leaving me more than astonished at his pusillanimity. For Lavie was a man of strong passions, an ardent fucker; he had a reputation with Jumali and her companions of being one of the very best pokes in all Fackabad and I should have thought that where his prick led the heart his courage would have followed. For it was evident to me that he was much more cunt-struck with Fanny Selwyn than smitten with what we mean by the honourable term love.

Whilst I was still thinking over this astounding announcement of his and inwardly congratulating myself on my being free of any form of responsibility towards Fanny, he returned, his face wearing the appearance of satisfaction. He had seen the colonel and his wife and they had been very kind. They said they could not urge Fanny to marry him but they had no objection to his doing so himself. That their girls should choose for themselves and if Fanny chose to be his wife they would not say no. But when I asked him had he there and then asked to see Fanny he said he had not - another day would do! Gods alive! I did my best to make him go at once but it was of no use. He was satisfied to a certain degree and would live on what hopes he had extracted from the permission he had been granted. I said to myself that Fanny would not thank her papa and mama! Well! I knew Fanny better than he. None the less I hoped against hope that she would take him.

Why? Why? Ah! a smile comes; the more I looked back on the past, the more did I think it impossible that I could have even a chance in Fanny's heart. She had deliberately called me a fool. She had in a hundred little acid feminine ways shown me that she despised me and I believed that she would be more than delighted to say something sharply cutting if I ever showed that I sought her love once more. When a girl offers herself, take her, for she won't be likely to ask you again, my dear male friends! Moreover, although my faith in Lavie had been rudely shaken by his asinine ideas of conduct, I thought he would make Fanny a good husband. He was essentially a gentleman, he had a good profession at his back and I knew he would fuck her to her heart's content, and when a woman is well fucked she is always contented and happy.

I have known so many instances of girls marrying against their wills, going from the altar to the nuptial couch perfect victims, yet becoming quite happy women simply and solely because their husbands turned out to be first-class fuckers. This is absolute gospel and my gentle readers may believe it.

I was sitting reading Louie's delightful, loving, passionate letter for the fiftieth time, my prick standing deliciously all up my belly under the buttons of my trousers as it thought of the dear cunt it had so often fucked and spent in, when I was suddenly astonished at seeing Mrs Selwyn and Fanny walking into my room unannounced. It was very hot and I was surprised at seeing Mrs Selwyn, who was so delicate, expose herself too much to the sun.

'Oh Mrs Selwyn! What on earth has made you come over here in this blazing sun? If you wanted me why did you not send word for me? Here sit down under the punkah! Here is a chair! There now! Tell me what I can do for you and you know I will do it.'

Mrs Selwyn looked at Fanny and smiled. Fanny looked at me with the queerest expression of half-fun, half-earnestness in her glorious violet eyes. She looked extremely pretty. She had not lost any of the fresh colour she had brought down in her face from Cherat. Clad in a thin muslin dress, her bosom was that of a glorious nymph. Its two little mountains, evidently much grown since I had seen them bare and uncovered some months before, were swelling out in the most voluptuously tempting manner on either side. Her well-rounded and healthfully shaped thighs were equally well shown off by the soft folds of her dress and her lovely little feet and ankles, crossed in front of her, ended a fine pair of well developed legs which I did not wonder Lavie would like to open and take his pleasure between. Fanny seemed to me altogether more beautiful this day than I had ever seen her before. But I looked upon her as never to be mine and so schooled was I in this thought that, much as I admired her, my prick grew none the stiffer and was standing simply and solely for the sweet cunt between my Louie's thighs, thousands of miles away.

'Now, Mrs Selwyn, please tell me to what I owe this unexpected and pleasant visit?'

Mrs Selwyn looked at Fanny and smiled. Fanny returned the look and did not smile; on the contrary, she looked rather put out.

'Well! Captain Devereaux, I, that is Fanny and I, have a crow to pluck with you. What made you send Dr Lavie on a wooing errand to my house?'

'I never sent him at all, Mrs Selwyn.'

'Then he told me an untruth for he certainly told Colonel Selwyn and me that you had sent him to ask permission to pay his addresses to Fanny.'

'Well,' I said, 'there is just this much truth in that assertion, Mrs Selwyn, and I will tell you just what took place between Lavie and me this morning. I was sitting on the verandah outside here when he came looking the picture of misery and woe. For some time he would not tell me what was the matter with him but he sat and held his head in his hands and sighed and groaned in the most dismal manner. At last he said that he loved Miss Selwyn.'

Both Mrs Selwyn and Fanny here burst out with merry laughter, Fanny's being sweet, silvery and hearty. There was no unkind ring to it but it was evident that she was greatly amused.

'Yes! and then!'

I said that was no reason to be so miserable and he said, 'But she wouldn't walk to church with me last Sunday evening.'

'The fool!' cried Fanny, again going off into another merry peal.

'That is what I thought, too. I had a long talk with him and asked him did Miss Selwyn know of his feelings towards her? He said he expected she did. I asked him had he spoken to her? He said no. Well, I said, if you have not done that yet you had better do so as soon as possible and not go imagining all kinds of things. But he seemed to be frightened at the idea. At last I suggested that at least he might see you, Mrs Selwyn, and the colonel and see if you approved of his proposal. The fact was I did not know what to do with him. He acted on my hint and went and apparently received a satisfactory reply for he seemed much relieved when he came back to me.

For a moment or two neither of the two ladies spoke. Fanny looked at me half-reproachfully; Mrs Selwyn was evidently cogitating something. My prick, no longer interested in Fanny's cunt and the current of its thoughts recalled from Louie's sweet secret charms, had begun to drop a bit and I waited to hear the next thing.

'Well! Neither Colonel Selwyn nor I would object to Dr Lavie. He is a nice fellow, a thorough gentleman, and no one could have been more attentive or kinder than he was to poor Amy when she was ill after the attack of those horrid Afghans at Cherat, but then both Colonel Selwyn and I think it only right and fair to let Fanny choose for herself. We cannot bring ourselves to advise her at all. Anybody may come forward as a suitor so long as he is a gentleman and has sufficient means to keep a wife, so far as we parents are concerned. So Fanny must speak for herself in this matter.

I looked enquiringly at Fanny who coloured a little and then turned pale whilst the movements of her lovely breasts showed that some thoughts, perhaps not pleasant ones, were agitating her.

'All I can say at present,' said she speaking slowly and deliberately, 'is that I find he is not the man I can marry!' She laid some little stress on the word marry.