Charles Devereaux - Venus in India

‘Well! Major Searle,’ I replied, ‘I am a married man and so I hope less liable to temptation from the path of duty than the unfortunate bachelor. Many thanks, however, for your timely warning, for of course I know that, married or single, a man may become the victim of his passions, especially when taken off his guard by a pretty woman!’

‘Ah! You speak truly!’ he replied, ‘and I can tell you that this wretched creature is as lovely as a houri, and as lustful as the most able whore in Babylon.’

I had not lived so long a life in the worship of Venus without having seen a good deal of the hidden springs of men’s minds, and I came to the conclusion that this tirade of friend Major Searle’s was not altogether spoken on the side of virtue, or caution, but that it was a kind of warning, ‘Don’t you touch that woman, she is my preserve, and no one hunts in the forest between her thighs but myself!’

Our arrival at the mess brought the conversation to a close. Like most messes of regiments which have been some time in India, this one was composed of a nice set of generally hospitable officers, all more or less languid from a long residence in a hot and unhealthy climate. They were also too much accustomed to seeing new faces, through the men going to or returning from Afghanistan, to be very greatly interested in me, but they were cordial and kind, made me drink a couple of pegs, asked me to dinner the next night, which happened to be their guest night, and begged me to consider myself an honorary member of their mess so long as I should remain in Nowshera.

I would willingly have excused myself from accepting their kind invitation to dinner, because I was so infatuated with my charming girl in the dak bungalow that the thought of being out of reach of her brilliant charms was purgatory to me, and my senses, but Major Searle was there, and his eyes were on me, and I felt that if my surmises as to the relations between himself and my lovely woman were correct, I had better ward off any suspicion on his part by cordially accepting the invitation, which I accordingly did with all the warmth I could muster. This seemed to relieve the major, for he turned and chatted with another officer. They asked Searle whether he would come and meet me at dinner, but he said he had some work to do tomorrow evening, but if he could find time he would gladly come and rattle the balls about at a game of billiards later in the evening.

After waiting a decent time I said I would go and have a look about whilst daylight lasted, and Searle proposed to accompany me. The man bored and bothered me and I wished him in hell, for my ideas about him began to become very jealous. I thought it extremely likely that he had fucked my charmer, indeed I was certain he had, but I could not suffer him to continue to do so whilst I was in Nowshera. I meant to keep her delicious cunt for myself, she had offered it to me, and I was its present master and entitled to remain so! I knew of the law and of the fine of which he had spoken, and they did not frighten me (as like all Draconian laws, it was seldom it was put in force), but I could not hide from myself that a jealous man, especially one who was something of a brute, would be able to interfere very sadly with such a liaison as I had now on hand, and make it very uncomfortable for the woman too. I had the sense, however, to try and keep my feelings under control and be as agreeable as possible. Our walk was a very simple and short one, for it was straight from the mess to the dak bungalow, whither Searle, as if unconsciously, led the way. I offered him a peg but he declined, as he said the liquor in the bungalow was vile, which was true, and they had no ice. Neither had the mess, then. Ice was unknown beyond Jhelum. But the mess had the simple means, so easily used whilst the hot, dry winds last, of cooling liquids by placing bottles in baskets of wet straw, in a position where the wind blows upon them. The rapid evaporation soon causes the temperature of the bottles to fall very low, and ice is not wanted. I did not know or had forgotten this, but I very soon had it put into practice by the khansama , and that very night and every day following I had cool drinks.

We sat on the verandah until it was dark. The gallant major never referred to my connection, whose brilliant and piercing eyes I felt darting their rays at us from behind the chick , and whose ears I was sure were drinking in every word. Then Searle went, only referring to his important conversation with the warning words: ‘Don’t forget what I told you!’

‘All right, major. Many thanks. Good-night.’

When it was certain that he was gone, my lady glided on to the verandah and occupied the chair that Searle had sat in.

‘What has that brute been telling you about me?’ she asked, her voice quivering with passion.

I gave her an exact account of all that had passed between us, and when I told her, though in much softened language, about the way he had spoken of her, she rose to her feet and walked up and down the verandah in a towering rage — like an infuriated tiger.

‘The black-livered blackguard!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh! truly a nice man to preach continence and virtue! I should like to know who drove his wife to the hills to become the real whore she is! Yes! she is a whore if you like! She asks money from her men! It’s five hundred rupees a night to have her, it is! I never yet asked a man for a pice, and I would not take one, or a million, as payment! If I do fuck, I fuck for pleasure, and because I like my lover! But I hate a cad! and if ever there was a cad in this world, it is Major Searle,’ and she spat on the floor in token of her disgust for him!

I used all my arts of gentle persuasion to try and calm her down, and at length succeeded. She told me that Searle had never had her with her permission.

I propose, but not just at present, to take you, my patient readers, into my confidence, and tell you what were the adventures of her amorous life, but before doing so I must explain how the abhorred attentions of Major Searle were put a complete end to and how Lizzie Wilson rid herself of a man who had been her plague for some years.

I had hired a native servant as my factotum when I stayed in Lahore en route for my destination at Cherat; a capable man he was, and one who had an eye to business, for whether he was married or not I do not know, but he brought a very fine young native woman with him and, as the reader will hear, her talents were not thrown away at Cherat — although for myself I had far finer game to follow than was afforded by Mrs Soubratie’s brown skin and somewhat mellow charms. Though no more than twenty she had gone the way of almost all Indian women and her bosom had begun to flow so that her bubbies, otherwise fine and plump, hung in a despondent manner. Such defects, however, are so common that they are little heeded by the British officers or soldiers, who whet their appetite on the fine, juicy cunt, rather than on other personal graces of the dame who affords them pleasure.

Soubratie, hearing I was going to mess, got out my nice, new, clean, white mess clothes, and himself gorgeously adorned and armed with a lantern, saw me safely across the compound, ankle deep in dust, to the mess of the regiment, there to partake of the generous hospitality of the glorious 130th. Is it any use to describe the ante-room, with its swinging punkahs, chairs, tables and pictures, carpets, books, newspapers, trophies of the chase, etc., etc. Shall I tell how the staff and self-important adjutant welcomed me in a proper and decent style; how the colonel seemed to inspect me; how the other officers, whom I had not yet met, greeted me with a polite ‘glad to see you’ from their lips, and ‘I wonder what the devil kind of a fellow you are’ glance from their eyes. Most regiments are alike; when you have seen one you have seen all. The English officer is undoubtedly a fearful ‘stick’ and of all weary humdrum lives, mess life is the most dreary. Along with the air of ennui and lassitude, however, there is a wicked, devil-may-care current, which forms the pith of an officer’s life, and I knew well that when a good dinner had been eaten, a good share of fairly good wine drunk, and cigars and pegs had become the evening fare, I should hear a great deal more than I was likely to at the dinner table, where propriety and stiffness more or less ruled the roost. Accordingly, I was now regaled with old stories of the war, tales of savagery and cowardly cruelty on the part of the Afghans, with an occasional growl at the generals and authorities who, it seemed, must have been incompetent to a degree or far more significant results would have accrued from the valour of the British troops. I knew how to discount all this, and listened with interest, more or less affected, to my new friends’ views.